IEA

Fellowship from October 2010 to June 2011

Research project:

"Political Zionism and religious anti-Zionism: searching an identity, redefining nation"

"Through an analysis of major texts of the religious anti-Zionism - Isaac Breuer, R. Yoel Teitelbaum and R. Chaim Shapira of Munkacs - and several representative texts of political Zionism, by a careful implementation in context and in contrast, I propose to distinguish antagonistic definitions of identity, the way in which these perspectives radically opposed are legitimate and some of their implications in the social and political sphere.
This attempt to reconstruct in deconstructing the process of defining identity in the case of two opposing positions follows three axes:
I. People versus Nation: a "traditional" definition of the jewish "people" as opposed to the national definition established in the late nineteenth century.
II. Religious Messianism versus Jewish State: the fate of this idea extremely complex, as reflected in religious contemporary interpretations, in contrast to its metamorphosis in the Zionist political ideology.
III. Holy Land versus Colonialism: the role played by the religious option of "holy land" in the discourse of political Zionism, contrasting with the anticolonial discourse - that meets the contemporary postcolonial discourse - of religious Zionism. "

Biographical elements:

Born April 24, 1979. Studies in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Bucharest, Doctor of Philosophy / Jewish Studies at the University Lyon3/Bucarest/Inalco Paris (co-supervision and co-directorship of thesis). Lecturer to the University of Bucharest between 2004 and 2008. Internships for Studies and Research in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Paris, Lyon and Oxford. Currently post-doctoral student in Jewish Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
Areas of activity and research: the medieval Jewish mysticism, the question of theodicy in medieval philosophy, Satmar Hasidism, the religious anti-Zionism.

Main publications:

« Le mal qui fonde Dieu. La redécouverte des origines et le dépassement des théodicées » (version révisée de la thèse doctorale), à paraître dans la collection « Studies in Jewish History and Culture » de Brill Publishing House, Leiden/New York ;
"The Neoplatonic Tradition and the Scheme of the Emanation", dans Les Cahiers d`Echinox, no. 12/2007 ;
« Tradition et interprétation. Le sabbataïsme comme dépassement de l`origine » dans Herméneutique et bricolage, édit. Madalina Vartejanu Joubert, Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2008 ;
"The Anti-Zionist Ideology of the Satmar (Satu Mare) Hasidic Community. Its Major Tenets and Implications", New Europe College Yearbook 2007-2008 ;
« L`histoire des études juives en Roumanie », Yod (la Revue du Département d`Hébreu, l`INALCO, Paris), No. 14 /2009 ;
« Esquisse de linguistique cabalistique » dans Les Annales de la Journée doctorale Langue et Sacré, INALCO, Paris, mars 2008 ;
« Croire au hasard. La démarche mystique et la providence chez Azriel de Gérone », à paraître dans les Annales de la journée d`études « Sous le Texte et la Loi. Mystique Juive et Musulmane » organisée par CERPHI (UMR CNRS) et IRSE (l`Université de Genève), Paris, Janvier 2009 ;
« Les penseurs du néant. Heidegger et la mystique juive » à paraître dans Yod, no. 15/2009-2010).