The world order has been tumbled.
And we are now living in a world in which Iran attacks Israel. Again: Iran attacks Israel. I am still processing. I grew up before the wall came down in divided Germany. The possibility of USSR attacking West-Berlin was something we all lived with. A potential, but still unbelievable threat. Same here: Iran attacking Israel seemed to be a potential, but unbelievable threat. For me these threats were comparable in the past. But now it is reality. Unconsciously, I am shaking my head while writing this. A new world is reality. Took me the entire Sunday to deal with that thought. I reached out to friends and colleagues all over the world who were affected by, directly or not, to figure out if they are ok and to talk about the hardly unspeakable.
Triviality hit back on Monday, when I did what people do to start a new week. On Tuesday I attended a talk by Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel who spoke about “Antisemitic Hatred of Israel: The Role of intellectual and left discourse in disseminating Jew-hatred” organized by https://isgap.org/.
Unfortunately, not much new on the antisemitic front but it is good to know that people all over working to combat the hatred.
During the week I checked the new learning machine (so called AI) for one of my clients. I do not think that it should be used at this point. At this stage, it passes on antisemitic stereotypes and gives very confused answers. It will take quite some time until the machine will be helpful for learners – at least in my area of expertise. I of course feel vindicated: It is still a long way to go until intelligence!
New texts I wrote were published. You check out one example here about Kurt Huber, member of the resistance group "White Rose", murdered by the Nazis in 1943: https://brockhaus.de/ecs/julex/article/huber-kurt?isSearchResult=true
Also, I had a long meeting about a new chapter I wrote based on the new curriculum for the city of Hamburg. I was allowed to put in more teaching resources about the Holocaust – which is great. But it also meant that I needed to rewrite this part, which I did on Thursday and Friday morning. Besides this I did email stuff and worked on new opportunities. One of my plans for a research grant did not turn out successfully. Same is true for one publisher I was in touch with. This US publisher told me that he is not convinced my study fits in his program – well, that’s life. But then it looks like one of my books is now in the final furlong. Progress on this front! I had another meeting on Friday early afternoon with a colleague from Vienna who is interested in publishing me. I hope to present some more details soon.
And I also want to share that I got a very encouraging and heart-warming email from a colleague I did not know before. He found very nice words about my work – he made my day. Thanks again, Bernard.
It’s the little things… especially these days, in this new world.