Christian Zionism

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This event will be held in English.

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Although the great majority of Zionists across the globe today, as in the past, are Christians, most scholarly and popular accounts of the phenomenon continue to associate it exclusively with Judaism. We cannot begin to understand Zionism without first acknowledging it as a global Christian project that, by the 21st century, had spread across Latin America, the African continent, East Asia, Europe, and the United States. In this talk, Gil Hochberg explains how there is no Zionism outside of Christianity, and at this point in history there might be very little (western) Christianity outside of Zionism.

Gil Z. Hochberg is a writer and scholar whose work bridges the political and the artistic. Trained in comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, she is now the Ransford Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at Columbia University in New York. She is the author of four books, several art catalogs, and numerous essays and is widely recognized as a leading scholar of Palestine and Zionism, and as a public intellectual. Her latest book, My Father, The Messiah, a memoir of her father, was just published by Duke University Press in 2026.

The Rendez-Vous de l’Institut Series is generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

This event will be recorded and may be broadcast as part of our SNF Rendez-vous de l’Institut podcast series. By participating and asking questions, you consent to the use of your voice in this context.