Walter Benjamin: A Jewish Lens on the Intellectual Icon
Hosted By: My Jewish Learning
3 Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. ET
March 4, 11 and 18
All sessions are recorded for registrants.
When he died trying to escape the Third Reich in 1940, Walter Benjamin was far from a household name. Today, he is a cultural phenomenon — among the most widely read and cited intellectual figures of the 20th century.
His work is regarded as pioneering and authoritative in a variety of fields, from literary and film criticism to philosophy — even Jewish mysticism.
In this new three-part online course, join My Jewish Learning and scholar Benjamin Sax to explore Benjamin’s life and work, including how Jewishness influenced his many passions.
Some see Benjamin as the prototypical “secular European Jew,” but his views on his Jewishness were representative of the complex relationship that German Jews had not only to German culture, but also to Europe. We will examine how his ideas remain important to the deeply complex conversations about Jews and political life.
His critique of fascism and his fear of the commodification of art also remain trenchant.
In this course, we will think together about how an early 20th-century German-Jewish thinker can speak to our contemporary political and existential situation.
