Steven Zipperstein | |
---|---|
Born | 1950 (age 73–74) |
Nationality | American |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Jewish history and culture |
Institutions | Stanford University |
Steven J. Zipperstein (born 1950) is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. Zipperstein earned his B.A., M.A and Ph.D. at the University of California at Los Angeles. [1]
In 1993 Zipperstein accepted an invitation to teach Jewish Studies for a semester at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia's main center for Archival Studies in Moscow. [2] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. [3]
He has reviewed books for various outlets, including for the New York Times. [4] He has also served as an editor of the journal Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture and Society. [5]
In a 2020 article published in The Atlantic, Zipperstein explores the reasons behind the enduring impact of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a fabricated text promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He states that "The Protocols has survived, more so than any other text of its kind... not because its ideas are particularly original... It has done so for the simple reason that The Protocols is... a compelling read. Conspiracy theories are many things, but most of all, they’re narratives... complete with the arcs and the rhythms of any other epic tale... Part of what makes certain ones endure is how well they unfurl that story. [6]
As of 2024, Zipperstein is working on a biography of Philip Roth and has commented on the controversy surrounding another Roth biography, Philip Roth: The Biography, by Blake Bailey. Despite that book being temporarily pulled from publication due to sexual assault allegations against Bailey, Zipperstein believes it deserves to be published due to what he sees as its thorough research. Zipperstein, who had an amicable personal relationship with Roth, plans to publish his own biography in the future. He aims to provide a deeper literary analysis of Roth's work, exploring why he held such a prominent place in the cultural landscape. [7]
In a letter to the editor titled "Divestment at Stanford is a Distraction," published in The Stanford Daily in January 2015, Zipperstein addressed the then-ongoing debate surrounding the push for Stanford University to divest from companies allegedly complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The divestment campaign, part of the broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, had gained traction on several university campuses, including Stanford, with the goal of pressuring Israel to change its policies toward Palestinians. Zipperstein, while making clear his opposition to the Israeli occupation, argues that divestment is a misguided and divisive tactic. He states it reduces a complex geopolitical issue to a simplistic moral stance, leading to polarization on campus rather than fostering productive dialogue. This opposition to divestment put him at odds with Stanford historian colleagues such as Joel Beinin. [8]
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a book by Norman Finkelstein arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests. According to Finkelstein, this "Holocaust industry" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.
The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states. It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.
The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on 19–21 April [O.S. 6–8 April] 1903. During the pogrom, which began on Easter Day, 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, a number of Jewish women were raped, over 500 were lightly injured and 1,500 homes were damaged. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help, and assisted in emigration. The incident focused worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews within the Russian Empire, and led Theodor Herzl to propose the Uganda Scheme as a temporary refuge for the Jews.
Anita Shapira is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, professor emerita of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, and former head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University. She received the Israel Prize in 2008.
Lucien Wolf was an English Jewish journalist, diplomat, historian, and advocate of rights for Jews and other minorities. While Wolf was devoted to minority rights, he opposed Jewish nationalism as expressed in Zionism, which he regarded an incentive to anti-Semitism. In 1917 he co-founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews.
Paula Hyman was an American social historian who served as the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University.
Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist conspiracy theory that claims that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a Jewish plot and that Jews controlled the Soviet Union and international communist movements, often in furtherance of a plan to destroy Western civilization. It was one of the main Nazi beliefs that served as an ideological justification for the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Holocaust.
Antisemitic tropes, also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels, are "sensational reports, misrepresentations or fabrications" about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as a religion.
The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is an antisemitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theory involving an alleged secret coalition of Jews and Freemasons. These theories are popular on the far-right, particularly in France, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia, Serbia, Eastern Europe, and Japan, with similar allegations still being published.
Bye Bye Braverman is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Sidney Lumet. The screenplay by Herbert Sargent was adapted from the 1964 novel To an Early Grave by Wallace Markfield.
The Koret Jewish Book Award is an annual award that recognizes "recently published books on any aspect of Jewish life in the categories of biography/autobiography and literary studies, fiction, history and philosophy/thought published in, or translated into, English." The award was established in 1998 by the Koret Foundation, in cooperation with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, to increase awareness of the best new Jewish books and their authors.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
Isaac Rosenfeld was an American writer who became a prominent member of New York intellectual circles. Rosenfeld wrote one novel, which, according to literary critic Marck Shechner, "helped fashion a uniquely American voice by marrying the incisiveness of Mark Twain to the Russian melancholy of Dostoevsky," and many articles for The Nation, Partisan Review, and The New Republic. Some of those articles were posthumously published in a volume titled An Age of Enormity, and his short stories were later published as Alpha and Omega.
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Jonathan Frankel was a historian and writer. He was a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1964 to 1985, and a professor between 1985 and 2004.
Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History is a 2018 non-fiction book by Steven J. Zipperstein on the events leading to the Kishinev Pogrom, the atrocities of the event itself, and its legacy.
The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) is a scholarly organization in the United States that promotes academic Jewish Studies.
Alla Efimova is an art historian, curator, and consultant based in Berkeley, CA. She grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The history of the Jews in Odesa dates to 16th century. Since the modern city's founding in 1795, Odesa has been home to one of the largest population of Jews in what is today Ukraine. Odesa was a major center of Eastern European Jewish cultural life. From Odesa sailed the SS Ruslan which is considered the mayflower of Israeli culture. They comprised the largest ethno-religious group in the region throughout most of the 19th century and until the mid-20th century when the Jews were massacred by Romanian forces occupying the city or deported to be later killed during the Holocaust.
The international Jewish conspiracy or the world Jewish conspiracy has been described as "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle, referred to as International Jewry, conspires for world domination, the theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration. It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, White genocide conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution, which culminated in the Holocaust.
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