Lecture Series

The lecture series takes place in the autumn semester. It is organised together with the Sigi Feigel Visiting Professorship for Jewish Studies at UZH. The lecture series is open to the public.

Lecture Series Autumn Semester 2021

Deviance and Heresy - Diversion in Judaism

"Two Jews, Three Opinions": Jewish culture is said to have an extraordinary love of debate, an appreciation of controversy in all matters of lifestyle, including religion, and a marked diversity in terms of defining what it means to be "Jewish". Judaism exists only in variants, and it seems to get along relatively effortlessly without church and Sehramt, dogmatics and guardians of morals. Nevertheless, from Elisha Ben Abuya to Shabbtai Zvi and Spinozas in pre-modern times, there is the type of the Jewish heretic; and nevertheless, since the 19th century, one speaks of a Jewish Orthodoxy, which at that time formed as a "right-believing" counter-movement to the Jewish modernity of so-called Reform Judaism.

So how have the boundaries been drawn - and by whom - in the history of Judaism between what is "actually Jewish", what is "just Jewish" and what is "no longer Jewish"? And how were such deviations in the margins of Jewishness negotiated in different contexts?

The lecture series 2021 will explore these questions using selected examples from the history and present of Judaism.

Dates, times and venue can be found in the programme.

DownloadProgramme of the lecture series in the autumn semester 2021. (PDF, 119 KB)