Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers
Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Eva Illouz (in German)
In the fourth event of Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers, Ofer Waldman talks to the French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz about the writer Jean Améry. His essays My Jewishness (original title Mein Judentum, 1978), The Limits of Solidarity (original title Grenzen der Solidarität, 1977) and those on the new antisemitism from 1969–1976 were republished in German and French in 2024. Améry, born in Vienna in 1912, describes his existential connection to Israel. The former Resistance fighter, concentration camp prisoner and Auschwitz survivor also discusses how left-wing anti-Zionism as “respectable antisemitism” separates him from the new left. Eva Illouz, who also wrote the foreword for the new French edition, uses Améry’s analyses to discuss the tensions of Jewish existence in the present, for which neither Zionism nor the political left or right can serve as orientation, a way out or consolation. According to Illouz, Améry demonstrates an “orphaned” Jewish consciousness.
The digital lecture series examines Jewish intellectuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and asks what long-overlooked answers their work might offer to the current challenges of Jewish life in Germany.
We invite four intellectuals from the social sciences and literature to answer the question: Which historic texts do they return to for answers to pressing present-day questions? And how do they read these texts?
Eva Illouz
Eva Illouz is Director of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Her research interests include the sociology of culture, emotions and capitalism, in particular the impact of consumer culture and mass media on emotional patterns. Illouz is the author of 17 books on topics as diverse as romantic love, the emergence of psychological culture in the 20th century, the happiness industry and the impact of technology and modernity on emotions. Her books have been translated into 23 languages and her work has won numerous international awards. Illouz publishes regularly in , Süddeutsche Zeitung, Haaretz, El País and other media.
Ofer Waldman
Born in Jerusalem, Ofer Waldman moved to Berlin in 1999 as a member of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He completed his studies at the UdK Berlin and played in numerous German and Israeli orchestras, including the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Waldman earned his doctorate in German studies at the FU Berlin and in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works as an author and journalist, and is active in multiple civil society NGOs. His literary debut, Singularkollektiv. Erzählungen (Singular Collective: Stories), was published in 2023 by Wallstein Verlag. In 2021, together with Noam Brusilovsky, he won the ARD German Radio Play Prize for the radio play Adolf Eichmann: Ein Hörprozess (RBB/DLF). In 2024, Suhrkamp publishers published Gleichzeit (roughly: Sametime), presents a correspondence between Ofer Waldman and Sasha Marianna Salzmann exploring the world in the wake of 7 October 2023.
Ofer Waldman; photo: Bernd Brundert
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Digital Lecture Series
Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers
- Landing Page
- Digital Lecture Series Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers: The event series at a glance
- Digital Content
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Delphine Horvilleur: 22 May 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Moshe Sakal: 12 Jun 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Yael Kupferberg: 18 Sep 2025, in German
- Current page: Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Eva Illouz: 16 Oct 2025, in German
- See also
- The W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin: A Platform and Laboratory for Diverse Perspectives
Wir danken der Berthold Leibinger Stiftung für ihre Unterstützung der Digital Lecture Series.
