What image of Israel have Central European Jews in mind? Is Israel seen as a distant beloved homeland or more as a confusing bond or even an uncomfortable social burden? How has this attitude developed since the end of the Cold War and what does Israel represent for Diaspora Jews today?

The lecture will focus on the contemporary attitudes of the Diaspora towards Israel and Israelis. 

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Marcela Menachem Zoufalá is a researcher and lecturer at Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and Jewish Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and published the outcomes of her doctoral dissertation as the monograph Judaism and Women in Israel (in Czech, Karolinum University Press, 2012). 

She co-authored and edited a collective monograph Jewish Studies in the 21st Century: Prague – Europe – World, Jüdische Kultur: Studien zur Geistesgeschichte, Religion und Literatur (Harrassowitz 2014), and co-edited with Jiří Holý The disintegration of Jewish Life: 167 days of the Second Republic (in Czech, Academia, 2016).  

Marcela Menachem Zoufalá is currently a Guest Professor for Israel Studies at the Moses Mendelssohn Center Potsdam and at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg.