Walter Benjamin
A Jewish Lens on the Intellectual Icon
3 Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. ET
March 4, 11 and 18
All sessions are recorded for registrants.
When he died trying to escape the Third Reich in 1940, Walter Benjamin was far from a household name. Today, he is a cultural phenomenon — among the most widely read and cited intellectual figures of the 20th century.
His work is regarded as pioneering and authoritative in a variety of fields, from literary and film criticism to philosophy — even Jewish mysticism.
In this new three-part online course, join My Jewish Learning and scholar Benjamin Sax to explore Benjamin's life and work, including how Jewishness influenced his many passions.
Some see Benjamin as the prototypical "secular European Jew," but his views on his Jewishness were representative of the complex relationship that German Jews had not only to German culture, but also to Europe. We will examine how his ideas remain important to the deeply complex conversations about Jews and political life.
His critique of fascism and his fear of the commodification of art also remain trenchant.
In this course, we will think together about how an early 20th-century German-Jewish thinker can speak to our contemporary political and existential situation.
Class sessions are one hour long. There are no refunds for this course.
About Your Teacher
Benjamin Sax is the Head of Scholarship at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. He is an experienced professor and public speaker who has published on topics relating to Jewish philosophy, German-Jewish history and culture, Jewish-Christian relations, and interreligious dialogue. Ben has discussed his work on PBS and Baltimore’s NPR affiliate WYPR, and he has been invited to lecture all around the world, from Oxford to Rome to Jerusalem. He has been a speaker in the U.S. State Department’s Speaker Program, most recently at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ben currently serves as co-editor for the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, the President for the Association for Interreligious and Interfaith Studies, and the co-chair for the Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies Unit for American Academy of Religion. Ben's most recent research project, a book entitled “Winged Words: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, and the Life of Quotation” was published in 2023.
Related Courses
About My Jewish Learning
My Jewish Learning is the internet's leading pluralistic Jewish education resource. We offer thousands of articles, videos, live classes and other resources to help you navigate all aspects of Judaism and Jewish life — from Jewish ritual and practice to texts to history and culture.
My Jewish Learning is geared toward all backgrounds and levels of knowledge and is a part of 70 Faces Media, the largest Jewish digital media organization in North America.