Pathways toward a Jewish Israeli restorative ethics
In the same way that it is no longer possible to talk about antisemitism without also thinking about Israel/Palestine, it is no longer possible to imagine Jewish ethics outside the realities of Jewish power. My focus here is on when such thinking unfolds through a restorative justice prism or carries a restorative justice potential. At stake is not only a Jewish critique of Zionism, but also justice for Palestinians. The two issues are forever enmeshed. Examining Judith Butler’s relational ethical analysis of Zionism in her Parting Ways and Michael Manekin’s recent The Dawn of Redemption, I argue that, to the degree that restorative justice practices are missing from ethical Jewish reflections on Zionism and Israelism, the sources of such Jewish critiques of Zionism remain diasporic. Butler approaches it from the comfort of diasporic “authenticity,” while Manekin reclaims a Jewish (Israeli) ethics from within the realities of Jewish Israeliness and with an effort to reimagine religious Zionism as gentle and kind. At the same time, focusing on Jewish Israeli restorative justice practices and potentials, including Zochrot, young “refusniks,” and the petition of Jewish Israelis against Israel apartheid propelled by the escalation of violence in May 2021, offers a pathway for unsettling the diasporic as the primary source of ethical critique of Israelism. These restorative pathways constitute sources for Jewish ethics from the ground up where the experiences of Jewish power and Israelism can no longer be bracketed or magically theorized out of existence as “inauthentic”.
Date: 19 October 2021, 14:15 (Tuesday, 2nd week, Michaelmas 2021)
Venue: St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details: The Board Room, Kirdar Building, Middle East Centre
Speaker: Prof Atalia Omer (University of Notre Dame)
Organising department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
Organiser: Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Organiser contact email address: middle.east@area.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Part of: Israel Studies Seminar - Oct 2017 – Mar 2023
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pathways-toward-a-jewish-israeli-restorative-ethics-atalia-omer-tickets-177691930347?aff=erelpanelorg
Audience: Public
Editors: Stephen Minay, Dorian Singh