Register: https://www.arabamerica.com/events/what-is-antisemitism/
Details: A JVP-Detroit initiated webinar to untangle a web of definitions and misunderstandings surrounding and fighting antisemitism. The two leading definitions of antisemitism now vying to win support are the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition and the more recent Jerusalem Declaration, signed by over 200 leading intellectuals and scholars. Both definitions purport to explain what antisemitism is and what it is not, with each coming to very different conclusions about how antisemitism relates to Zionism and criticism of Israeli governmental policies. Adoption of either could extensively impact political debate, freedom of speech and First Amendment rights in the U.S.
Moderator: Jeffrey L. Falick is rabbi at The Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism. He and his congregation are active locally and nationally in many social justice efforts.
Panelists:
Rene Lichtman, Ph.D was born in Paris, France, in 1937 of Polish Jewish parents. He and his mother survived in hiding in France. Rene was hidden with a Catholic family for the entire war; his mother was able to hide in Paris with the help of neighbors. They reunited after the war. His father had joined the French Army and was killed in combat in 1940 against the invading Germans. Rene came to the U.S. in 1950 with his mother. After attending the first Hidden Child Conference in New York in 1991, he helped start the Hidden Children and Child Survivors of Michigan. He is a founding member of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust. He also speaks regularly at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Rene has always been an artist. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in painting; holds degrees in Fine Arts, Mass Communication, and a PhD in Instructional Technology. As an artist, he continues to paint and has had two exhibits at the Ferndale Lawrence Street Gallery, including a current on during May 2021.
Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He takes a comparative and transnational approach to Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern capitalism, nationalism, and colonialism. Penslar has previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and Oxford University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Israel Studies. Penslar’s books include Shylock’s Children: Economics and Modern Identity in Modern Europe (2001), Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (2006), Jews and the Military: A History (2013), and Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020). He is currently writing a book titled Zionism: An Emotional State and is beginning work on a global history of the 1948 Palestine War.
Derek is President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.
Attorney Huwaida Arraf will present a Palestinian perspective on antisemitism. She is a Palestinian American human rights attorney and activist; co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led organization using non-violence and direct action to resist Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land; and former chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, which sailed the first boats into Gaza to confront Israel’s illegal blockade on the two million Palestinians living there, and organized the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was lethally attacked by Israeli forces.
Barbara Harvey, a labor law and civil rights attorney and member of the Free Palestine Committee of the National Lawyers Guild’s International Committee, will assess the lawfulness of the antisemitism definitions under the First Amendment, and their impact upon political debate within U.S academia about Israeli policies and practices towards Palestinians.
Sponsored by: Jewish Voice for Peace-Detroit Contact: https://www.facebook.com/events/477427340014996?ref=newsfeed
Co-sponsors: (As of May 8, 2021) Birmingham Temple–Congregation. for Humanistic Judaism, Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies, Huntington Woods Peace Group, JVP-Mid-Ohio, Peace Action of Michigan; Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, Detroit Branch (Detroit WILPF)
To read more about the two leading definitions of antisemitism that will be the focus of our discussion:
1. https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism
2. https://jerusalemdeclaration.org