Limmud Toronto 2021

The classic story of the foundations of the modern Jewish state starts in the nineteenth century, with Herzl and others of his time. Yet long before Jewish thinkers advocated for the possibility of a physical homeland that would protect the Jews from hatred and allow them to thrive culturally and religiously, modern philosophers raised the idea of a modern Jewish state. My presentation will offer insights into the early-modern discussion of the Jews in the founding theory of the modern state, and will ask what difference it makes to us today, if the modern world of states was imagined from the onset - by Christian theorists in the Christian world - of having a state for the Jews.