Friends, Enemies, Frenemies: Ambivalences of Jewish-Muslim Relations - Workshop at the HfJS

Workshop: January 2025, 27-29

Research on Jewish-Muslim relations is slowly shifting from the meta-narratives of “eternal conflict” and “golden ages of coexistence” towards more complex theoretical frameworks, including cultural entanglement, mutual influences and transculturation as well as dialectical enmity. In this workshop, we will contribute to this emerging research agenda by highlighting ambivalence as a crucial element of Jewish-Muslim relations: The intimate connection between Jews and Muslims has produced a conflicting pattern of attraction and resentment, ranging from mutual admiration to enduring dynamics of violent conflict. 

The workshop is supported by the German-Israeli Foundation (GIF) and is organized by Prof. Dr. Johannes Becke (Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies) and Prof. Dr. Oren Barak (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), in cooperation with the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, the Department for Islamic and Middle East Studies (Heidelberg University), the Freigeist research group ´Invisible Architects´, Max Weber Institute of Sociology (Heidelberg University) and the DFG Research Training Group “Ambivalent Enmity” (Heidelberg).

In the context of the workshop, we are particularly interested in papers which contribute to our understanding of Jewish-Muslim ambivalence over time: In which contexts did Jews portray Muslims as role models? When and how did Muslims learn from Jewish culture or attempt to emulate it? How did political conflicts shape the dynamics of learning about the respective “other”? And how can we theorize the frequent shifts from amity to enmity (and back again)?

We invited contributions that cover a wide regional focus of Jewish-Muslim relations, including the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and the various diasporic settings, especially in Europe and North America. Organized as a transdisciplinary workshop, we are particularly interested in bringing together young scholars from Jewish Studies, Middle East Studies, History, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Transcultural Studies. 

To capture the complexities of Jewish-Muslim ambivalence original research papers focus on the following topics:

1. Knowing and learning about "the other": Representations of Muslims and Jews in religious education, media, and popular culture

2. Complicating narratives of conflict and coexistence: Jewish-Muslim ambivalence in comparative perspective 

3. Majority-minority relations of Jews and Muslims (in Israel, Muslim-majority countries, colonial settings, Europe, and North America)

4. Theology and Jewish-Muslim relations: Religious polemics and knowledge formation in Jewish-Muslim history 

5. Living together: Shared spaces as foci of interaction and conflict