Congregation Rodfei Zedek is pleased to host Jonathan Judaken in the CityTalk From the Bean to the Brasserie series, sponsored by Theater Wit, Northwestern’s Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, and Northlight Theatre.

For more than two centuries, French intellectuals have shaped and contested the meaning of
Jewish identity, belonging, and exclusion. From the Enlightenment to the present, France has
been both a beacon of Jewish emancipation and a crucible for modern antisemitism. In this
lecture, historian Jonathan Judaken traces the evolving discourse around the “Jewish Question”
in French intellectual life, exploring how key moments—such as the French Revolution, the
Dreyfus Affair, the rise of fascism, and the Holocaust—have influenced national debates on
Jewish inclusion, nationalism, and political belonging. As antisemitism resurges and political
alignments shift, understanding these historical patterns provides essential insight into today’s
challenges of Jewish identity, political belonging, and the broader struggle for justice.
CityTalk From the Bean to the Brasserie is a city-wide, free to the public forum exploring
ideas and themes related to Prayer for the French Republic, a play in co-production with Theater
Wit and Northlight Theatre, opening this spring. More information on the full series can be found
at citytalkchicago.org.

Jonathan Judaken is the Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at Washington
University in St. Louis. He has published more than 50 academic articles on the history of
existentialism, critical theory, anti-Semitism, racism, and post-Holocaust French Jewish thought.
He has written, edited, or co-edited 7 books. He is the author of Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish
Question (2006); editor of Race After Sartre (2008) and Naming Race, Naming Racisms (2009);
and co-editor of Situating Existentialism (2012), Memphis: 200 Years Together (2019), and most
recently The Albert Memmi Reader (2020). Recent publications also include introductions to a
co-edited special issue of Jewish History (with Ethan Katz) on “Jews and Muslims in France
Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher” (September 2018) and the roundtable he
edited in the American Historical Review titled, “Rethinking Anti-Semitism” (October 2018). His
most recent monograph is Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism (Columbia University Press, June
2024), and he is completing Judeophobia and Anti-Semitism: A Primary Source Reader from its
Origins to the Present (Palgrave).

Register here!