The workshop’s emphasis is on modern writing about Jews, money and economy. It aims to provide a forum for presenting and analysing the most recent critical and theoretical approaches for understanding self-representations of Jewish economic activity in the modern Diaspora, Mandate Palestine and Israel.
Through the workshop we hope to explore, among other topics: the varied textual constructions of the relationship between Jews and modern economics; Jewish writing on economy as a response to European dominant stereotypes on Jews and money, especially the double image of Jews as “conspiring bankers” or “degenerate paupers”; the participation, appropriation and subversion of antisemitic and philosemitic economic discourses by Jewish and early Israeli writers; and capitalist and socialist debates in the Zionist movement. In this vein, the workshop aims to trace the crucial role money and economy played in shaping modern Jewish and Israeli identities.
The day consists of three two-speaker panels, each panel centered on a particular theme.
Rich Jews
- Jewish Money and Jewish Politics, Adam Sutcliffe, Kings College London
- Market Economy and Emancipation: From Ellis Rivkin to Moses Mendelssohn, Gideon Rueveni, Centre for German Jewish Studies, University of Sussex
Poor Jews
- Paupers and Bankers: Zangwill, Zionism and Semitic discourse, Bryan Cheyette, University of Reading
- Beatrice Webb in the East End, Nadia Valman, Queen Mary, University of London
Money and Zionism
- Zionism, Judaism and the Threat of Money in Agnon’s A Guest for the Night, Yonatan Sagiv, Israel Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
- Theodor Herzl, the Jewish Question, and the Social Question, Derek J. Penslar, University of Oxford and the University of Toronto
Workshop co-conveners:
David Feldman, Director, Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London
Yair Wallach, Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Yonatan Sagiv, Post-doctoral Fellow of the Israel Institute, Centre for Jewish Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
We are grateful for the financial support of the Israel Institute