Nationalism Studies

Selim Deringil is Recurrent Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University in Budapest.

This course highlights the transnational counter-current that emerged in the patterns of modern Jewish thought and communal organization at the very time the efforts of Western and Central European Jewries seemed to be directed towards integration into the emerging nation-states. An overview guided by the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer will detect the social and cultural motivations that counteracted to the national fragmentation of Jewish identities: the unabated demographic realities of Jewish migration and dispersion, the revival of age-old religious ideas about Jewish solidarity and messianic mission, the involvement of many Western Jews in global commerce and liberal consciousness, the example of Catholic, Protestant, Masonic, Socialist and other world alliances, and finally the return of anti-Jewish prejudice in certain countries, with exclusion and persecution pressing for joint action by Jewish communities.