Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers
Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Eva Illouz
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 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 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 twentieth century and asks what long-overlooked answers their work might offer to the current challenges of Jewish life in Germany.
We invite five 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.
Eva Illouz; photo: Corinna Kern/laif/Suhrkamp Verlag
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Ofer Waldman
Since summer 2025 Ofer Waldman is head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office in Tel Aviv. Born in Jerusalem, he moved to Berlin in 1999 as a member of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and played among others in the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Waldman received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin (German Studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jewish History). He is a freelance author and journalist. In 2021, he and Noam Brusilovsky won the ARD German Radio Play Award for the radio play Adolf Eichmann: Ein Hörprozess (roughly: Adolf Eichmann: An Audio Trial) (RBB/DLF). His literary debut, Singularkollektiv. Erzählungen (Singular Collective: Stories), was published by Wallstein Verlag in 2023, and in 2024 Suhrkamp published his correspondence with Sasha Marianna Salzmann about the world after 7 October under the title Gleichzeit (roughly: Sametime). His new book Verkämpftes Land. Beobachtungen (roughly: A country torn apart. Observations) was just published with Wallstein.
Ofer Waldman; photo: Bernd Brundert
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Updated on 14 April 2025
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
- Events
- Current page: Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Eva Illouz: 16 Oct 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Liliane Weissberg – 11 Nov 2025
- Digital Content
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Yael Kupferberg: Video recording from 25 Sep 2025, in German
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Delphine Horvilleur: Video recording from 22 May 2025
- Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Moshe Sakal: Video recording from 12 Jun 2025
- See also
- The W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin: A Platform and Laboratory for Diverse Perspectives
We would like to thank the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung for supporting the Digital Lecture Series.
