[save the date:] Jewish Wit, Zionist Satire, and Humane Humor Conference on the Life and Works of Sammy Gronemann
This conference seeks to advance research on the satirist writer Sammy Gronemann (1875 Straßburg West-Prussia – 1952 Tel Aviv), a crucial but forgotten figure in Zionist historiography, German-Jewish literature, and Israeli culture. With focus on Gronemann’s irony, both as literary author and chief judge of the Zionist congress court, the conference hopes to unfold Gronemann’s multifaceted life and works in its various disciplinary, as well as European, Palestinian and Israeli contexts.
As the Chief Judge of the Zionist Congress Court, Gronemann embodied the “Constitutional Conscience” of the Zionist movement in a decisive period (1921-46). As the author of The Wise and the Fool (שלמה המלך ושלמי הסנדלר), Gronemann established the Zionist comedy in Hebrew theater and authored the most successful original comedy drama of Israeli theater to date (translated by Nathan Alterman). Gronemann was seen as an “Aristophanes of the Zionist movement”, or as “Sholem Aleichem of the Yekkes”, that is to say of the German-Jewish immigrants and refugees to Mandate Palestine. The conference seeks to do justice to these manifold aspects of Gronemann’s life and works and his political, religious and literary influences. It also wishes to advance Gronemann’s scholarly reception, by narrowing some of the gaps in the research about him.
Speakers:
Alfred Bodenheimer
Sidra DeKovenEzrahi
Rebekka Grossmann
Jakob Hessing
Jan Kühne
Dan Laor
Penny Milbouer
Peter Marx
Meron Piotrkowski
Sebastian Schirrmeister
Anna Rosa Schlechter
Franziska Weinmann
Moshe Zimmermann
Paola del Zoppa
Language:
The conference will be held in English.
The closing event on the evening of July 6 will be held in Hebrew, with simultaneous translation into English, at the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, and will include a live performance.