Women’s Initiative for Jewish Studies (WIJS) at Young Israel of New Rochelle is proud to present Dr. Karma Ben Johanan on Sunday, October 25, 2026 @ 10:00 am (ET) on Zoom. Dr. Ben Johanan will be the first speaker of the 2026-2027 season in the monthly scholarly programming offered by WIJS at YINR.
Dr. Ben Johanan’s lecture is entitled, “Conceptual Tangles in the Current Antisemitism Debate.” The discussion will challenge a common view that ‘eternalist’ and ‘contextualist’ explanations of contemporary antisemitism correspond to Zionist and anti-Zionist positions. “Eternalism” sees antisemitism as a lasting, deep-rooted hostility toward Jews, while “contextualism” explains it through political and social conditions. Writings of Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Shaul Magid, David Ben-Gurion, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, as well as recent public controversies, show that both sides use elements of both approaches. This lecture examines these overlaps and the ways ideas about Jewish agency, responsibility, and power shape the debate.
Dr. Karma Ben Johanan is an associate professor at the Department of Comparative Religion and head of the International Office at the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She previously served as a professor in the Faculty of Theology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she held the Chair of Jewish–Christian Relations. Her research focuses on contemporary Western Christianity, as well as on Jewish–Christian, religious–secular, and church–state relations. Ben Johanan was awarded the Dan David Prize for the Study of the Past in 2023 and the Mount Zion Award for her contribution to interreligious relations in 2025. Her book Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022), has received multiple awards.
All WIJS programming is open to women and men. Please visit https://www.yinr.org/wijs.html to view the complete WIJS 2026-27 schedule. For more information, to be added to the WIJS email list, or for Zoom information, please call 914-636-2215 or email: wijs@yinr.org. Individuals on the WIJS mailing list will automatically receive the Zoom information.
