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Déjà-vu? A New Search for Old Answers

Online Lecture and Discussion with Ofer Waldman and Moshe Sakal (video recording available)

In the second lecture, Ofer Waldman and Moshe Sakal explore the life and legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld. The focus will be on Hirschfeld as a Jewish intellectual, doctor and sexologist who championed the rights and acceptance of minorities. His groundbreaking research and activism, along with his Jewish identity, led to persecution by the Nazi regime and ultimately forced him into exile. In conversation with Ofer Waldman, Sakal will offer a personal perspective on Hirschfeld, reflecting on the ways in which Hirschfeld’s ideas still influence our understanding of sexuality and Jewish identity today.

recording available

Where

online

Where, when, what?

Video recording from 12 Jun 2025; Jewish Museum Berlin 2025

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 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?

Moshe Sakal

Moshe Sakal is an accomplished author and the co-founder of Altneuland Press, the first international Hebrew publishing house based in Berlin. His six Hebrew-language novels explore themes such as exile, migration, diaspora, queer life, transcending temporal and spatial boundaries, and the impact of technology on culture. Sakal is a two-time Sapir Prize nominee, a winner of the Eshkol Prize, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Iowa. He publishes regularly in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde, Haaretz and Sinn und Form. Sakal was awarded a Berlin Senate Literature Grant for his book project nachs.

A man with a three-day beard, bald head and herringbone jacket over a purple shirt and necklace sits in a room with plants and pictures on the walls and looks into the camera with a lively gaze. — Moshe Sakal; photo: Shai Levy

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.

A man with dark hair looks friendly into the camera. — Ofer Waldman; photo: Bernd Brundert

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Updated on 14 April 2025