Alfred Bodenheimer is new Hans Blumenberg Professor
The Basel professor of Jewish literary and religious history will speak in Münster next week on how historical and biblical models of behaviour are used to justify Jewish actions – Evening lecture “Forward into the Past” about Judaism in the “grip of historical analogies” at the Cluster of Excellence on 16 June
Alfred Bodenheimer, Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Basel and professor of Jewish literary and religious history, is the 2026 Hans Blumenberg Professor at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in Münster. He will speak at the Cluster next week on how historical and, in part, biblical events or models of behaviour are used to justify Jewish actions today. Entitled “Forward into the Past: Contemporary Jewish Self-Definitions in the Grip of Historical Analogies”, the evening lecture on Tuesday 16 June 2026 was announced by the Cluster of Excellence’s speaker, Professor of Medieval Studies Wolfram Drews.
The event begins at 6.15 pm in the Fürstenberghaus, Lecture Theatre F2, Domplatz 20-22 in Münster. If you wish to participate via Zoom, then please register at: veranstaltungenEXC@uni-muenster.de. The Cluster of Excellence appoints international scholars to the Blumenberg Professorship, these then contributing new ideas to the University of Münster and deepening interdisciplinary discussion.
Bodenheimer: “The fact that the start of the war in Iran took place at the end of February this year, when the Jewish festival of Purim was being celebrated and the biblical Book of Esther, which deals with the salvation of the Jews in the Persian Empire, was being read – this has led, among other things, to analogies being made in Israel between biblical and contemporary events”. Anyone who looks more closely at Jewish self-identification today, regardless of political persuasion, will find that “Jewish actions today are situated within a ceaseless mode of purportedly reactivating historical – and, in part, biblical – events or models of behaviour”. While the phrase “eternal people” is often proclaimed with pride, it also risks becoming “a confinement within seemingly pre-determined, quasi-deterministic historical patterns of behaviour and modes of action”.
“Internal challenges and trials of Judaism today”
Bodenheimer argues that, to understand “the internal challenges and trials of Judaism today”, it is essential to recognise the interplay between historical self-understanding and the justification of one’s own actions or inaction. “This is particularly true at a time when Jewish life is under greater external threat than at any time since the Shoah”. His lecture will deal with this subject by drawing on Hans Blumenberg’s The Readability of the World and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s seminal work on Jewish history and historiography, Zakhor.
Bodenheimer has published numerous academic works, for example on Jewish narratives and the formation of tradition, as well as on the debate around circumcision in Germany in 2012. His book Which Language Does God Speak? Essays from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which he wrote with the Arabic scholar Thomas Bauer from the Cluster of Excellence and the theologian Michael Seewald, previous speaker at the Cluster, was published in 2022. Born in Basel in 1965, Bodenheimer has been professor of Jewish literary and religious history in Basel since 2003. The interdisciplinary Centre for Jewish Studies focuses on Jewish literature, religion and modern history.
Bodenheimer, who studied German and history at the University of Basel, received a traditional Jewish education at Talmudic seminaries in Israel and the USA. In 1993, he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on Else Lasker-Schüler’s emigration to Palestine. He then had research and teaching posts in Israel and at the University of Lucerne, before writing his postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) at the University of Geneva. He returned to Basel as a professor in 2003. He was also rector of the Heidelberg College of Jewish Studies between 2005 and 2008. He is now president of the Society for European-Jewish Literary Studies and co-editor of renowned series such as the ‘Reihe Jüdische Moderne’ (Böhlau Verlag). His crime novels featuring the Zurich investigator Rabbi Gabriel Klein have appeared on the Swiss bestseller list. (vvm)