Dr. Dekel Peretz

Dekel Peretz is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max-Weber-Institute of Sociology of Heidelberg University. His current research focuses on Muslim-Jewish encounters in Berlin within the framework of the ORA and DFG funded joint research project: “Muslim-Jewish encounter, diversity & distance in urban Europe: religion, culture and social model.” This project is a cooperation of Heidelberg University, Birkbeck University of London, University of Strasbourg and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Dekel obtained his PhD in history from the University of Potsdam in 2020. In his dissertation Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine Dekel dealt with the history of sociology and Jewish identity in fin de siècle Germany in the context of the racial and colonial discourses. His previous research and publications focused on schools and social transformation in Arab Palestine during the British Mandate, Zionism, utopian thought, colonial fantasies and German memorial culture.

Research project

• ORA Joint Research Project ENCOUNTERS · Muslim-Jewish encounter, diversity & distance in urban Europe: Religion, culture and social model

Publications

Zionism and Cosmopolitanism. Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, De Gruyter, Berlin, (fothcoming).

“Altneuland – A German Colonial Journal,” in: Susanne Marten-Finnis; Michael Nagel. (ed.), Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts, Mohr Siebeck, Tuebingen, (forthcoming).

"Zwischen Tradition und Freiheit. Religion, Säkularität und Religionsfreiheit aus jüdischer Perspektive." Religionsverfassungsrecht revisited. 2023. In cooperation with Vanessa Rau. 

“Franz Oppenheimer: A Pioneer of Diasporic Zionism,” in: Ulrike Brunotte et al. (ed.), Internal Outsiders - Imagined Orientals - invented Occidentals? Antisemitism, Colonialism and modern Constructions of Jewish Identity, ERGON, Wuerzburg 2017, pp. 187-200.

“‘Utopia as a Fact’. Franz Oppenheimer’s Path in Utopia between Science, Fiction and Realization,” In: Caspar Battegay (ed.), Yearbook for European Jewish Literature Studies, vol. 3 (European Jewish Utopias), De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 64-85.

Franz Oppenheimer: Arzt – Nationalökonom – Soziologe, Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2015. In cooperation with Elke-Vera Kotowski.