Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem

For many years Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) has been the object of intense debate. After her bitter critiques of Zionism, which seemed to nullify her early involvement with that movement, and her extremely controversial "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963), Arendt became virtually a taboo figure in Israeli and Jewish circles. Challenging the "curse" of her own title, "Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem" carries the scholorly investigation of this musch-discussed writer to the very place where her ideas have been most conspicuosly ignored. Sometimes sympathetically, sometimes critically, these distinguished contributors reexamine the crucial aspects of Arendt's lfe and thought: her complex identity as a German Jew; her commitment to and critique of Zionism and the State of Israel; her works on totalitarianism, Nazism and the Eichmann trial; her relationship to key twentieth-century intellectuals, from Gershom Scholem to Martin Heidegger; her intimate and tense connections to German culture; and her reworkings of political thought and philosophy in the light of the experience of the twentieth century.