Albert Swissa

Albert Swissa was born in Casablanca in 1959. His family moved to Israel when he was three years old. He grew up in Jerusalem, in one of the “projects,” those overcrowded and underdeveloped concrete towers built for immigrants, Jews of Islamic countries. He lived in Paris, where he joined the Théatre de l’Ange Fou, the famous school of corporeal mime founded by disciples of Etienne Decroux. Today, he is a prolific writer, poet, and art critic based in Jerusalem, where, for many years now, he has run Zigmond, a small café bistro and a long-standing bustling meet for conversations, cultural events, and learning.

Gil Anidjar lives in New York and teaches in the Dept. of Religion at Columbia. He is the author, among other books and articles, of Our Place in al-Andalus’: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters (2002) and The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (2003). His most recent book is Qu’appelle-ton destruction? Heidegger, Derrida (Montreal, 2017).