Jan-31 2pm Zoom: New Jerusalem, Down Under: The search for a Jewish homeland in Australia
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Adam Rovner will detail the cultural context and legacy of proposals to create mass settlements of Jewish refugees in Australia before, during, and after the Nazi era.
Adam Rovner
Adam Rovner is the director of the Centre for Judaic Studies and an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver, Colorado, USA.
Archives located on four continents reveal how poets, playwrights, journalists, civil servants, humanitarians, and social revolutionaries all worked to imagine the Jewish colonization of portions of Australia. This little known chapter of intellectual history stems from a long tradition of Jewish Territorialism, a political ideology that merged literature with nationalist projects. For much of the 20th century, the question was not whether there should be a Jewish political entity, but where to put it.
The story of abortive efforts to settle Jews in the Kimberley region and in southwestern Tasmania is the story of plans to find a territorial solution to centuries of Jewish homelessness.
Dr Rovner has thoroughly researched attempts to establish a Jewish homeland across the globe, as reflected in the book In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel and the documentary No Land Without Heaven: Isaac Nachman Steinberg & The Freeland League.
This event will be hosted on Zoom, Sunday, 31 January @ 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm AEDT.
In order to attend you must complete the registration form at the following link:
