Our distinguished honoree, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, was born in Austria. He survived the Second World War in the Netherlands. He was educated later in France and made his way to Israel. This life experience reflects the history which became the subject of his research and his work – the scholarly study of antisemitism. Our speaker tonight exemplifies Jewish history Jewish tradition, Jewish resoluteness, and Jewish activism. Manfred Gerstenfeld is an exemplar of this tradition. He studies antisemitism in order to be able to act. He is as much an activist as a scholar – the two components are not easily separated. They should be one thing. He comes to us tonight at a critical moment – a fraught moment that we can learn from him what we’re facing and be led to think about how to deal with it.

– Fred Krantz, December 2019, CIJR