lystn

The University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies is creating a Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site which honors memory through the active cultivation of social justice activities on campus. In this spirit, the site’s boundary is marked with the Hebrew “Hineni,” “Here I am,” a Levinasian call to enacting memory through ethical engagement and response. In this paper, I explore the Levinasian conception of memory and ethics that frames this project, as I also explore the theoretical limits of any counter-memorial that operates within the parameters of the “art world.” Our project is a counter-memorial that privileges ethics; we have used relatively few dollars for the material space and have moved away from a search for an artist; instead we have earmarked the majority of funds for programs and for an eventual Endowed Chair of Holocaust Studies and Social Justice. In the spirit of James Young’s reminder that the history of the memorial itself functions as an integral part of the memorial, I also talk, in the paper, about the journey in this particular project from aesthetics to ethics (in the recounting of our process of hiring a well-known artist and then finding our way instead to a series of interfaith and social justice projects on the campus). Sarah Pessin is Associate Professor of Philosophy, the Emil and Eva Hecht Chair in Judaic Studies, and the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. Sarah works on topics in Jewish and Islamic philosophy, Neoplatonisms, medieval philosophies, comparative philosophies of religion, modern Jewish philosophy, and post-Holocaust theology. She is very active in interfaith and cross-cultural bridge-building, and is interested in the nature of the sacred and its relation to inter-human engagement and response. Sarah has published and presented widely, and has recently published the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Solomon Ibn Gabirol; she is currently working on a manuscript on that medieval Neoplatonist’s “Theology of Desire”, and she has forthcoming essays on Muslim philosophical conceptions of matter; Jewish, Muslim and Christian Platonisms; Hans Jonas’s “Theology of Risk,” and an essay exploring the Levinasian elements of DU’s new Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site (forthcoming in the Memory issue of the University of Toronto’s Journal of Jewish Studies).