Contesting the Legitimacy of a Jewish State: Towards a Second Century of a Modern Conflict

The Bobbi & Vic Samuels Center for Jewish Living and Learning (CJLL) offers classes, lectures, programs, and other meaningful Jewish experiences for the Houston community, including rich, in-depth Jewish studies courses designed by local Jewish educators. This upcoming CJLL lecture features Ilan Troen.

Despite the expectation that modernity would inexorably lead to secularization, religious culture retains its power. This observation may apply to many societies, but it is poignantly pertinent to the nature and longevity of the Arab/Israeli conflict where resistance to Jews as a presence in Palestine, let alone to Jewish sovereignty, is anchored in secular as well as theological discourse. A similar mix has been employed to justify the Jewish state. Examining these multiple and opposing possibilities provides the substance of Ilan Troen’s Israel/Palestine in World Religions—Whose Holy Land?