Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Join author and scholar Benjamin Balint for a live virtual lecture on the international struggle to preserve Franz Kafka’s literary legacy. Balint will discuss the legal, ethical, and political dilemmas of a writer whose last wish was betrayed by his closest friend; a wrenching escape from Nazi invaders as the gates of Europe closed; a love affair between exiles stranded in Tel Aviv, and two countries whose obsessions with overcoming the traumas of the past came to a head in Israel’s Supreme Court. Held on Zoom, global audiences are invited to consider their own cultural connections to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
Benjamin Balint is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction including Kafka’s Last Trial (2018), winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature; Running Commentary (2010), and co-author of Jerusalem: City of the Book (2019). Balint has taught literature at the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem. His reviews and cultural journalism have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Claremont Review of Books, the Weekly Standard, and Die Zeit (Germany), and his translations from Hebrew have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry International, and Crazyhorse.
Held Wednesday, February 5, 2025.
Join author and scholar Benjamin Balint for a live virtual lecture on the international struggle to preserve Franz Kafka’s literary legacy. Balint will discuss the legal, ethical, and political dilemmas of a writer whose last wish was betrayed by his closest friend; a wrenching escape from Nazi invaders as the gates of Europe closed; a love affair between exiles stranded in Tel Aviv, and two countries whose obsessions with overcoming the traumas of the past came to a head in Israel’s Supreme Court. Held on Zoom, global audiences are invited to consider their own cultural connections to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
Benjamin Balint is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction including Kafka’s Last Trial (2018), winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature; Running Commentary (2010), and co-author of Jerusalem: City of the Book (2019). Balint has taught literature at the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem. His reviews and cultural journalism have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Claremont Review of Books, the Weekly Standard, and Die Zeit (Germany), and his translations from Hebrew have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry International, and Crazyhorse.
Held Wednesday, February 5, 2025.
