Purim and Diaspora Power— with Barbara Spectre

About this episode

The episode explores the story of Purim through the lens of existential uncertainty and cultural endurance with Barbara Spectre.

In the Megillah, Jewish safety depends on proximity to power — passing, hiding, and selectively revealing, and all the fraught calculations that come with minority life. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Barbara Spectre, founding director of Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies, to explore the story of Purim through a lens of existential uncertainty and cultural endurance. Drawing on Barbara’s decades of work with emerging European Jewish communities, they examine the pressures to fit in, the costs of standing out, and the tightrope between assimilation and sustaining culture that minorities have walked throughout history. The conversation offers a diasporic lens on power, vulnerability, and the possibility of choosing meaning even, and especially, when certainty is impossible. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Watch Donniel Hartman and Abby Pogrebin’s conversation on the war with Iran. Apply or refer a teen you know to the Hartman Teen Fellowship. Register for our virtual day of learning, In the…

People in this episode

Host: Yehuda Kurtzer

Guest: Barbara Spectre

Topics covered

• Purim
• Diaspora
• Jewish culture
• minority life
• power dynamics
• cultural endurance

Keywords

• Purim
• Diaspora
• Jewish safety
• cultural endurance
• assimilation
• minority life
• power

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies

Books & works: Megillah

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