Wednesday 19 May
1pm

Speaker: Donna Robinson Divine – Emerita, Smith College MA

The slaughter of European Jewry was once taken for granted as the most profound and consequential evil of the recent past and as a central event for Israel’s establishment. How has Israel dealt with the moral imperatives of ‘never forget’ and ‘never again’? In the state’s first decade, the country had to forge a policy to meet the need of survivors and craft principles committed to protecting Jewish life wherever threatened. But what does it mean for today’s politics when there are so few people left who actually witnessed this singular crime? This talk will explore how Israel deals with the memory of the Holocaust as part of its national culture.

Donna Robinson Divine is the Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Government, Emerita at Smith College where she taught courses on Middle East Politics. President of the Association for Israel Studies from 2017-2019, she was named to Algemeiner’s 2019 list of the top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life”.

This online lecture is being held in conjunction with Mandelbaum House and Sydney University’s Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies.