Shattered World : Jews and Israel After October 7

October 7, 2023, was a watershed event in contemporary Jewish history. What took place on that date challenged the two most basic assumptions of post-Holocaust Jewish life: that the future security of the Jewish people would be assured by an independent Jewish state backed by an army, and that the freedom for Jews in the Diaspora to live as Jews would be secured by democratic rights and liberties. The pogroms of October 7 and the worldwide explosion of antisemitism that followed―even preceding Israel taking military action against Hamas―challenged both assumptions. The Israel Defense Forces could not prevent a slaughter from occurring even in the independent State of Israel, and throughout the world democracies seem less secure than at any time in the post-World War II era.

The editors have turned to leading Jewish thinkers in the United States, Israel, and Europe to grapple with the implications of October 7 with respect to the Jewish future, the State of Israel, the relationship of Jews with Israel, and the character of Israel’s relationships in the world. A Shattered World is one of the first scholarly collections of essays to address the hard question of what the nature of the Jewish future should be.

Michael Berenbaum is a distinguished professor of Jewish studies and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust at the American Jewish University. He is the author and editor of some twenty-five books and was executive editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. In the past, he served as project director overseeing the creation of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Berenbaum has helped create Holocaust and human rights museums on three continents and in some half dozen American cities. His work on One Survivor Remembers and A Call to Remember: The David Schaecter Story have earned Emmy Awards and several films that he has worked on including One Survivor Remembers and The Last Days have won Academy Awards.

Gilbert N. Kahn is a professor of political science at Kean University and a member of the Holocaust and Genocide Master’s Program. He was also the director of the political consulting firm, GNK Associates. His publications and research focus primarily on US foreign policy decision-making in the Middle East. Over the past several years Kahn has focused on the character and nature of antisemitism in America and Western Europe, and the extent to which antisemitism influences decision makers as well as how antisemitism manifests itself under the guise of white supremacy. He has been published widely in academic journals including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Studies of Religion, and Jewish-Muslim Encounters. Since 2005 he has been a columnist for a number of Anglo-Jewish publications and author of the blog Kahntentions.