Colloquium '07

Jews and the Muslim World: Solving the Puzzle

To truly understand the current situation in the Middle East, it is crucial to understand the past and present relations between Muslims and Jews. This publication offers penetrating insights into the socio-political tensions between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East and in-depth explorations of how Muslims and Jews have related throughout history.

Jews and the Muslim World: Solving the Puzzle, both the original Colloquium conference and the subsequent publication, also addresses modern issues including the effects of Zionism, Muslim anti-Semitism, and even progressive Islam on the tensions between Muslims and Jews, and opens the door to new understandings and new possibilities in a very old relationship.

The Colloquium series gathers historians, scholars and activists together to explore specific topics of interest to the Jewish world. Each published volume in The Colloquium series is edited to offer selected proceedings of that event. Colloquium '07 was held soon after the death of Rabbi Sherwin Wine, originator of the Colloquium program and its impresario. This Colloquium was dedicated to his memory.

You can read more about Colloquium '07, including synopses of the major speakers, in the introduction to the printed volume Jews and the Muslim World: Solving the Puzzle (IISHJ/Milan Press, $9.95) which can be purchased online at Amazon.com or from the IISHJ (phone order or publication catalog). Jews and the Muslim World is now available as an e-book: Kindle, Nook, and more.

Colloquium '07 is also available on DVD from the IISHJ (phone order or publications catalog), which includes introductions before and panel discussions after each presentation.

Listen to a sermon by Rabbi Adam Chalom on Jews and the Muslim World

Video for each Colloquium presentation and the following panel discussion is now available on the IISHJ YouTube channel. Click here to see the complete playlist, or on each title for that specific video.

Keynote – “The Broken Middle East”
Fawaz Gerges – Then-senior analyst and regular commentator for ABC Television News and Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy.

“Islam: Then and Now”
Jacob Lassner – Professor of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University, co-author of Jews and Muslims in Arab Lands: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined (2007).

“Jews in the Muslim World”
Jane Gerber – Director of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, author of The Jews of Spain (1992).

“Zionism and the Muslim World”
Derek Penslar - Director of the University of Toronto’s Jewish Studies program and expert on the history of modern European Jewry, Zionism and the state of Israel. Author of Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe and Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (2006).

“Antisemitism and the Muslim World”
Yehuda Bauer – Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University, author of many works including Rethinking the Holocaust (2001).

“What Can Be Done? The Muslim Response”
Amir Hussain – Then-Associate Professor in Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, author of Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God (2006).

“Conclusions”
Rabbi Adam Chalom – Rabbi of Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in suburban Chicago and Dean for North America of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism.