This week, the conversation is in English and features Martin Jay, a leading authority on modern European intellectual history. We discuss the place of Zionism within the Frankfurt School, and in the second part, explore how some figures in the New Left maintained a relatively positive view of Israel well into the 1970s. It was especially fascinating to learn that Herbert Marcuse—one of the most prominent voices of the NewLeft—visited Israel in 1971, met with Moshe Dayan, and expressed support for the existence of the State of Israel and its right to defend itself. The conversation also touches on the thought of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Leo Löwenthal.

Martin Jay is the Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and is widely recognized as one of the foremost intellectual historians of modernEurope. Over the past five decades, Professor Jay has profoundly shaped the field through his scholarship on the Frankfurt School, critical theory,Marxism, socialism, cultural criticism, and the evolving landscape of visual culture. His landmark book The Dialectical Imagination (1973) remains a foundational study of the Frankfurt School and its enduring legacy. His more recent books include Immanent Critiques: The Frankfurt School under Pressure (2023) and Magical Nominalism: The Historical Event, Aesthetic Reenchantment, and the Photograph (2025).

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