Sartre and the Question of Jewish History: Menahem Brinker reads Anti-Semite and Jew

Through both his Hebrew translation of Sartre`s Anti-Semite and Jew and his afterword to the translation, Menahem Brinker engages in a critical dialogue with Sartre on the question of the existence of a Jewish history. Arguing against Sartre`s thesis that there is no such history, Brinker reveals, implicitly, his conception of Jewish history. Is this conception metaphysical? Is it cultural? In this talk, I will analyze those questions, stressing the tensions inherent in Menahem Brinker`s translation and afterword, tensions that are symptomatic of his relation to Judaism.