EUME
2022/ 2023

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin

16th Century Safed, Zionism and Palestine

teaches at the department of Jewish history, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2003-2004), and a founding member of the Collegium of EUME. Among his publications are: The Censor, the Editor and the Text: Catholic Censorship and Hebrew Literature in the Sixteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Exil et Souverainete (Paris: La fabrique, 2007); Exile and Binationalism: From Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt to Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish (Carl Heinrich Becker Lecture 2011, Berlin 2012). His recent book in Hebrew is entitled “Mishnaic Consciousness, Biblical Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture” (Hebrew, Van Leer Institute and Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad, 2022). He is completing now a manuscript entitled Jewish History as a Counter-History. In the academic year 2022/23, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is a Senior Associated EUME Fellow.

16th Century Safed, Zionism and Palestine

Safed in northern Palestine was the site of a significant revival of Jewish Culture in the sixteenth century. The town attracted many exceptional figures from Spain, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, who manifestly reshaped the Jewish world. It has been a formative period, crucial for the developments of Jewish culture, both in the Muslim world (in particular in North Africa) and in Eastern Europe, mainly Hassidism. In his recent book, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has proposed to view Safed and Zionism as two different models of Jewish settlement in Palestine/the Land of Israel. Each of these approaches refers to a different historical period (Zionist to the biblical past, Safed to the period after the destruction of the Second Temple), and consequently provides a different understanding of the present and of redemption. In spite of the undeniable impact of sixteenth century Safed for later generations, modern Jewish historiography abandoned its legacies, or considered them as mere manifestations of traditional values and oriental culture. In contrast, he suggests to rethink “Safed” as a beginning of modernity, as a starting point for a counter-history of Europe, and for a different perspective on the history and presence of Palestine.