Tel Aviv Review

Liora Halperin, Professor of International Studies and History and Distinguished Endowed Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, discusses her book The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past.

Yael Zerubavel, Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and History at Rutgers University, discusses her new book Desert, Island, Wall: Symbolic Landscapes and the Politics of Space in Israeli Culture, which has just been published in Hebrew and is an updated version of her 2019 book Desert in the Promised Land.

Dr. Jonathan Grossman explores Israel’s evolving attitude and discourse toward Israeli emigrants, shifting from viewing them as selfish deserters to embracing them as loyal partners, fostering a legitimate and valuable diaspora community abroad.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Anne Rethmann examines post-1945 human rights discourses, highlighting the concept of justice by the Austrian-Jewish lawyer Franz Bienenfeld. Comparing it with T. W. Adorno's notion of maturity, she emphasizes the significance of dignity within the framework of human rights.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Prof. Rotem Giladi discusses his book “Jews, Sovereignty, and International Law: Ideology and Ambivalence in Early Israeli Legal Diplomacy” (Oxford 2021), which explores the role of ideology in shaping Israel’s early attitudes towards international law.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Dr. Timo Aava examines Estonia's establishment of non-territorial autonomies during the interwar period, with a particular focus on the Jewish self-government case, thereby providing intriguing insights into Estonia's treatment of minorities.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Dr. Eran Shlomi discusses Zionist diplomacy and representation at the League of Nations, the UN predecessor, during the interwar period. He analyzes the League’s role in the Zionist path to statehood.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Dr. Iris Nachum introduces the jurist Jacob Robinson (1889-1977), emphasizing his activism for minority rights and compensation for expulsion. A research institute in his name has recently been established at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Prof. Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, discusses his book, The Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist.

What common ground do these three markedly different worldviews hold when it comes to the Jews?

Dr Roni Mikel-Arieli, a postdoctoral and teaching fellow at Ben Gurion University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and until recently the academic director of the Oral History Division at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, discusses her book Remembering the Holocaust in a Racial State: Holocaust Memory in South Africa from Apartheid to Democracy (1948-1994).

Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission's Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life, talks about the EU's response to anti-Jewish hate crimes and speech. Despite the alarming increase in cases, she says that the Union has taken many measures (some of them long before October 2023) that have begun to bear fruit.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Andrew Port, a historian at Wayne State University, discusses his new book Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, analyzing German responses to cases of genocide from the 1970s to the 1990s.

A special collaboration with the Jerusalem Unplugged podcast, where host Robert Mazza and the Tel Aviv Review's Gilad Halpern discuss the current moment for Israel domestically and internationally.

Dr Lihi Ben Shitrit, the director of the Taub Center for Israel Studies at NYU and editor of the forthcoming The Gates of Gaza: Critical Voices from Israel on October 7 and the War with Hamas, and Dr Dahlia Scheindlin, author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled assess what lies ahead for Israel: A sea change, or more of the same?

Dr Ben Shitrit and Dr Scheindlin (and Dr Agbaria, in the older ep) are fellows at the Institute of Advanced Israel Studies at Brandeis University's Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. The interview was recorded on the sidelines of the "Democracy and Its Alternatives: The Origins of Israel's Current Crisis" conference, held at Brandeis University and organized in partnership with the Center for Jewish History in New York.

The already volatile situation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel has been exacerbated by the October 7th massacre and the war with Hamas that ensued. Dr Ahmad Agbaria of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, talks about how their status and democratic rights have been affected, and what role they might play in its aftermath.

The interview was recorded on the sidelines of the "Democracy and Its Alternatives: The Origins of Israel's Current Crisis" conference, held at Brandeis University and organized in partnership with the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Adam Shatz, author and writer, US Editor for the London Review of Books and a visiting professor at Bard College, discusses his book The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.

The October 7th attack undermined some of the basic assumptions Israelis have had about the tenets of their sovereignty. Will the crisis send the country into a post-nation-state phase?

Dr. Julie Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Tel Aviv University, and a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Israel Studies at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, shares her thoughts at the “Democracy and Its Alternatives: The Origins of Israel’s Current Crisis” conference.

Dr Dafna Hirsch, senior lecturer at the Open University of Israel’s Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, discusses her edited book, Entangled Histories in Palestine/Israel: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives.

Dr David Barak-Gorodetsky, Lecturer in Israel Studies at the University of Haifa and the Director of the Ruderman Program for American-Jewish Studies, discusses his book Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist, a biography of one of the more unusual characters in the history of Zionism.

Dr Avi-Ram Tzoreff, a Polonsky Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his new book R. Binyamin, Binationalism and Counter-Zionism, dedicated to one of the most unusual Jewish and Zionist intellectuals of the 20th century.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, discusses his new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence. What parallels can be drawn between Ukraine’s war with Russia and Israel’s with Hamas?

Dr Geoffrey Levin, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University, discusses his book Our Palestine Problem: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978. The book looks at a network of early anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian thought leaders, active in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of the State of Israel.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Yael Sternhell, Professor of History and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, discusses her book, War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War, a historians’ history which looks at Washington’s Civil War archive, rather than through it.

Yosef Halper, a legendary Tel Aviv bookdealer, discusses his book The Bibliomaniacs: Tales from a Tel Aviv Bookseller.

Dan Rabinowitz, Professor of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book The Power of Deserts: Climate Change, the Middle East and the Promise of a Post-Oil Era, analyzing the role of the Middle East as both a major generator and a primary victim of climate change, the dashed and renewed hopes for a coherent climate policy, and the role of social science in policy-making.

Jonathan Huppert, Professor of Psychology and the director of the Laboratory for the Treatment and Study of Mental Health and Well Being at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses mental health response in the wake of the October 7th attack. Is Israel, a society riddled with trauma, facing unprecedented challenges?

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Benjamin Balint, an award-winning American-Israeli writer based at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his book Bruno Schulz: An Artist, A Murder, and the Hijacking of History. The literary legacy of Schulz, the  so-called Polish Kafka, has been the subject of an international legal, cultural and diplomatic debate.

Hilary Falb-Kalisman, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, discusses her book, Teachers as State Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Dr Limor Yehuda, lecturer in law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Collective Equality: Human Rights and Democracy in Ethno-National Conflicts. Taking national identity seriously, she charts a new way of thinking about statehood and partition.

Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz newspaper and a resident of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, survived the October 7th massacre with his wife and young daughters. He talks about his harrowing story, about Israel’s systemic failure to protect its citizens, what it will take for them to return to live less than a mile from Gaza City, and why he doesn’t regret having done it in the first place.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Dotan Halevy, environmental and social historian of the late Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses the history of Gaza from the mid-19th century until today. How did Gaza come to encapsulate 1948, and the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Michael Milstein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the former Head of the Palestinian Department for the IDF intelligence, analyzes what Israeli military leaders and political decision-makers got – and are still getting – wrong about Hamas.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Oded Adomi Leshem (rethink-hope.com), political psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book Hope Amid Conflict: Philosophical and Psychological Explorations. The book was published in eerie proximity to Hamas’ Oct. 7th attack, which many see as having delivered a tremendous blow to the hope of a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr Leshem’s facts and figures paint a more complex picture.

Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Dr Marik Shtern, political geographer and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy research, discusses his co-authored paper “Shared Spaces in Contested Cities: A Model for Analysis and Action.”

Jerusalem is, at the same time, the most segregated and most integrated urban area in Israel/Palestine – what lessons can be drawn from the city’s experience?

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Professor Oren Yiftachel discusses more than a decade of his scholarship on colonial regimes, identities and futures in Israel and Palestine through the lens of geography and urban planning.

Daniel Bar-Tal, professor (emeritus) of social psychology at Tel Aviv University, discusses his new book, Sinking into the Honey Trap: The Case of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. How can social psychology contribute to our understanding of a conflict that never ends?

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel, the head of Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey, in conversation about Christian life in Israel (including of thousands of migrant workers), the nature of interfaith dialogue amid mounting extremism, the role of religion in diplomacy and conflict resolution, and more.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Karma Ben-Johanan, religion scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in modern Christianity and Jewish-Christian relations, discusses her new book Jacob's Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish relations after Vatican II. What were the implications of the Vatican's new approach to Judaism, announced in the 1960s, across the Catholic world and among Jewish theologians?

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Nechumi Yaffe of Tel Aviv University’s School of Social and Policy Studies, the first ultra-Orthodox woman to serve as a faculty member in an Israeli university, discusses her research on ultra-Orthodox “capabilities” – a tool used by social scientists to measure the well-being and opportunities afforded to people – as well as the relationship between a Haredi lifestyle and higher education.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Tamir Sorek, professor of history at Penn State University specializing in Palestinian politics and culture in the State of Israel, discusses his book The Optimist: A social biography of Tawfiq Zayyad, the story of one of the foremost Palestinian politicians and intellectuals in Israel of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s

Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs, discusses his book Understanding Territorial Withdrawals: Israeli Occupations and Exits, offering a cross-section examination of several cases of territorial expansion and realignment throughout Israel’s history.

Joseph Berger, formerly a New York Times journalist, discusses his book Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, the first English-language biography of the iconic Jewish intellectual and Holocaust author.

Isabel Kershner, Israel reporter for the New York Times, discusses her new book The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

The Arab community in Israel is at a crossroads: the most right-wing government in the country’s history, and its plan for a judicial overhaul, casts doubt on the fragile relations between the state and its largest minority, as well as their perception of their citizenship and what it stands for. Dr. Arik Rudnitzky, the head of the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, unveils data of a new comprehensive survey.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Professor of History and Gender Studies at MIT, specializing in Turkish and Armenian history, discusses Armenian demands for a “national home” in the newly founded Turkish Republic, in the 1920s.

Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Professor (Emerita) of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Figuring Jerusalem: Politics and Poetics in the Sacred Center, a reading of five constitutive Jewish texts that paints a comprehensive and thought-provoking portrait of Jerusalem as a physical and symbolic place.

Kimmy Caplan, Professor of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University, discusses his co-edited book Contemporary Israeli Haredi Society: Profiles, Trends and Challenges, building on an analysis combining sociological observations with a historical long-view.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Hagar Kotef, Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London, discusses her book The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, analyzing the concept of “home” as both a physical endeavor and an object of attachment, against the backdrop of the Zionist settlement and the dispossession of Palestinians that it entailed

Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times, discusses his new book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. How have the failings of the late 20th-century economic system affected governance, and vice-versa?

Prof. On Barak of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University discusses his book, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization.

He takes on a historical journey to think of energy in the historical context of the making of the Middle East as a region, during the long 19th century. Instead of thinking that we are in a transition from coal to oil to cleaner energies, he argues, we need to understand the persistence of coal in the Middle East and how our reliance on it has shaped our politics, economics and culture.

Dr Yossi Harpaz, sociologist at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Citizenship 2.0 and how the relationship between citizenship and other sociological categories, such as migration and national identity, has evolved.

Jonathan Graubart, professor of political science at San Diego State University, discusses his book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, offering a contemporary re-evaluation of early 20th-century thought on Jewish sovereignty and statehood.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA’s Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman

Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book Zionism: An Emotional State, an interdisciplinary attempt to study the history of Jewish nationalism through a history of emotions lens.

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Dr Shivi Greenfield, political theorist and Deputy Director General for Strategy and Planning, discusses his book Judaism and Liberalism: A Metaphysical Tale of Two Siblings. In it, he claims that not only can the two coexist, they also stem from the same metaphysical source.

Itamar Mann, Professor of Law at the University of Haifa, specializing, among other things, in international law and legal theory, discusses his book Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Professor of Jewish History at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in religious and political thought in early modern and contemporary Judaism, discusses his new book Mishna Consciousness, Bible Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture. The book considers Safed (Tzfat), the old Jewish center in the Galilee, as the crux of a religious and political worldview that could – and still might – pose an alternative to the prevalent one.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Yuli Novak, the former director of Breaking the Silence, the IDF veterans’ organization, reflects in her new memoir, Who Do You Think You Are, on her 2012-2017 tenure at the helm of the most reviled human rights group in Israel.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA's Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman.

In this first-in-all-of-human-history, cross-over edition of TLV1’s Tel Aviv Review and TLV1’s The Promised Podcast, we discuss the open letter of more than 160 renowned historians of Jews, Judaism and/or Israel (“Israel on the Edge of an Abyss”), which opens, “We, historians of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel, accuse the sixth government of Benjamin Netanyahu of endangering the very existence of the State of Israel and the Israeli nation.” Joining us is the author of the letter, the brilliant historian Orit Rozin.

David de Jong, a Tel Aviv-based journalist for the Dutch Financial Daily, discusses his book Nazi Billionaires: The Dark Histories of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties. The book, a collective biography of Nazi Germany’s top industrialists and their heirs, sheds light on the dark corners of Germany’s postwar Denazification.

Prof. Nir Keidar, legal historian and President of Sapir College, discusses his book David Ben Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy. How did Israel's founding father conceptualize the Republican idea and adapt it to the unique reality of the State of Israel, and in what ways is the Netanyahu Government's judicial overhaul a contradiction of the original vision?

Oren Kessler, journalist and author, discusses his new book “Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict,” the first general-interest book in English dedicated to one of the key moments in the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine and Israel.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA’s Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman.

Shuli Dichter, a veteran activist for a Jewish-Arab shared society in Israel, discusses his political memoir Sharing the Promised Land: In Pursuit of Equality between Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel. The timing of its publication in English, when Israel seems to be moving in the opposite direction, is not a coincidence.

Dr Tamir Hod, a historian at Tel Hai college, discusses his book Did We Remember to Forget?, a study into the Demjanjuk affair of the 1980s and 1990s – the trial and eventual acquittal of Ukrainian-American John Demjanjuk, who was extradited to Israel on suspicion of being a notorious concentration camp guard.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Tamar Hermann, professor of political science at the Open University and Senior Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses the 20th edition of the annual Democracy Index, the most comprehensive annual survey of Israeli public opinion on matters of public importance.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Steven Fine, professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Israel Studies at Yeshiva University in New York, discusses The Samaritans: A Biblical People, a documentary film, edited book and museum exhibition dedicated to the Samaritans, a tiny ethnoreligious group native to Israel and Palestine.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Gilad Malach, the director of the “Ultra-Orthodox in Israel” program at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses the latest “Haredi Report”, published annually by the IDI. The ultra-Orthodox parties are back in government with a vengeance, after almost two years in Opposition. How did their stay in the political wilderness affect their constituency, and what trends can already be observed?

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Dr Omer Einav, a historian at Hadassah Academic College, discusses his book Defending the Goal: Football and the relations between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, 1917-1948.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Yoram Hazony, President of the Herzl Institute and Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, discusses his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery, advocating for ending the “marriage of convenience between conservatism and liberalism.”

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Rachel Azaria, CEO of Darkenu, the largest civil society organization in Israel, a veteran public campaigner and former politician (Member of Knesset, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem), discusses her book Guided Revolution: A step-by-step manual towards social change in Israel. Why do some campaigns succeed and others fail? Can activism in Israel be salvaged from its association with the depleted left-wing?

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Hillel Cohen, historian of the Middle East at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book Enemies, a love story: Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews from the Rise of Zionism to the Present, an attempt to define Mizrahi politics in historical and contemporary contexts.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland, discusses his new book Israel's Moment: International Support and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949, analyzing how Israeli independence benefited from the changing international landscape in the "twilight" period between the Second World War and the Cold War.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA’s Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman.

Filmmaker Alon Schwarz discusses his new documentary Tantura, which reopens an episode from Israel's War of Independence and a controversy that erupted in the 1990s, seeking to shed new light on the question whether Israeli troops committed a massacre of Palestinian civilians in a village near Haifa.

Avner Wishnitzer, professor of Ottoman history at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities After Dark, a groundbreaking social history of Istanbul and Jerusalem on the cusp of modernity.

Hagar Lahav, professor of communication at Sapir Academic College, discusses her book Women, Secularism and Belief: A Sociology of Belief in the Jewish-Israeli Secular Landscape.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Gideon Rahat, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses the insights that emanate from The Elections in Israel 2019-2021, a book he co-edited with Prof. Michal Shamir. Is there any reason to believe that Israel’s fifth general election in two and a half years will be any different?

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA’s Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman.

Mikhael Manekin, a prominent Israeli activist (former director of Breaking the Silence and Molad) discusses his new book, A Dawn of Redemption, an attempt to address the ostensible contradiction between his progressive politics and his Modern Orthodox devotion.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Nora Derbal, an Islamic Studies scholar and a Martin Buber Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society Under Authoritarianism.

Shlomit Ravitsky-Tur Paz, head of the program on Religion, Nation and State and the director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Shared Society at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses some recent findings - some unprecedented - from the new biannual statistical report on religion and state, published this week.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Haggai Ram, professor of Middle East History at Ben Gurion University, discusses his book Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel.

Adam Raz, historian at Tel Aviv University and Akevot – the Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, has written several history books. His most recent work is a stage play – his first – The Personal Tragedy of Mr Sami Saada. It focuses on how the life of an Arab family man from Haifa unraveled in April 1948, and his attempts to cope with the new reality.

This episode is co-hosted by Prof. David N. Myers and sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA.

Prof. On Barak of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University discusses his book, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization.

He takes on a historical journey to think of energy in the historical context of the making of the Middle East as a region, during the long 19th century. Instead of thinking that we are in a transition from coal to oil to cleaner energies, he argues, we need to understand the persistence of coal in the Middle East and how our reliance on it has shaped our politics, economics and culture.

Dr Andreas Hackl, anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, discusses his new book, The Invisible Palestinians: The Hidden Struggle for Inclusion in Jewish Tel Aviv.

Dr Louis Fishman, historian of modern Turkey and Israel/Palestine, discusses his book Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914, breaking down conventional wisdoms about politics and identity in Palestine on the eve of the First World War.

Matt Sienkiewicz, Professor of Communication and International Studies at Boston College, discusses his new co-authored book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, analyzing the reach and influence of openly right-wing comedians on old and new media in the United States.

Avi Dabush, veteran social activist, Meretz politician and author of the new semi-autobiographical book The Periphery Rebellion: The Guide to a Much-Needed Revolution in Israeli Society, analyzes the origins of social inequalities in Israel and explains why the liberal left – despite everything – is the answer (albeit not always the Israeli left in its current form).

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Naomi Shmuel, author and anthropologist, from the department of Folklore at the Hebrew University, discusses her book Generations of Hope: Traditions and Intergenerational Transferal with the Transition from Ethiopia to Israel, analyzing the hybrid identity of Israelis of Ethiopian descent across the generations.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Norbert Lammert, the chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and former President of the German Bundestag, joins us in Tel Aviv for a conversation about the challenges of the liberal and democratic order in his native Germany and elsewhere, upon the 40th anniversary of the Foundation’s presence in Israel.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Jewish history professor Aron Rodrigue of Stanford University was the keynote speaker at an international conference held this week at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, dedicated to the Jewish history of Salonica. In the late 15th century, the then-Ottoman city (today the Greek city of Thessaloniki) welcomed large numbers of Sephardi Jews who had been expelled from Spain, making it very soon the largest Jewish city in Europe. A series of crises and disasters, culminating in the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, led to its ultimate destruction.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, discusses his new book (co-edited with Barbara Engelking) Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, focusing on the generally overlooked stories of the persecution and liquidation of Jews in rural and provincial areas in Poland, following the Nazi occupation.

Professor Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute and the Open University discusses fresh findings from the annual Israel Democracy Index of 2021, including low optimism for the general future of the country, low optimism about democratic governance in Israel, declining trust in public institutions, and ongoing polarization of public attitudes.

Israelis also reveal what they really think about the judiciary in light of populist political attacks in recent years.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Nathan Sussman, Professor of Economics and Senior Visiting Research Fellow and leader of the “Israel 2050: Climate Crisis Preparedness” project at the Israel Democracy Institute, explains how carbon tax can lower emissions while having virtually no adverse effects on business activity and growth.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Hungary’s Jewish community is the largest in central and eastern Europe, and its regime the most ‘advanced’ among its neighbors in undoing the tenets of liberal democracy. How does this affect the memory of the Holocaust in the country, as well as Jewish life more broadly?

Dr Raphael Vago, retired Senior Lecturer in History and research fellow at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, joins us in the studio.

This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Amalia Sa’ar, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Haifa, discusses her co-authored book (together with Dr. Hawazin Younis) Diversity: Palestinian career women in Israel, reviewing the professional and personal experiences of female doctors, lawyers and engineers in the Jewish state.

Sari Bashi’s life was already complicated, as a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer defending Palestinian freedom of movement. Then she fell in love with a Palestinian man trapped in Ramallah by the occupation. Her book, Maqluba: Upside-Down Love, tells what happened next.

Dr Itay Lotem, Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Westminster, discusses his new book The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence. In both countries, though in different ways, memory is more about issues of the present than about the past.

Dr Radu Ioanid, Romanian Ambassador to Israel and historian of Romanian Jewry, discusses his book The Ransom of the Jews: The Story of the Extraordinary Secret Bargain between Romania and Israel detailing how, over decades, hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews were exchanged for money, livestock and goods.

This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Philosopher and cultural critic Susan Sontag spent a lifetime thinking about the mysterious space between reality and representation, becoming one of the most influential public intellectuals of the 20th century.

Benjamin Moser’s acclaimed biography, Sontag: Her Life and Work captures her story with photographic complexity, leaving only a longing for Sontag’s perspective on life today.

Batya Ungar-Sargon believes woke culture has created a smokescreen of racial identity politics that obfuscates the real force tearing American society apart: class inequality. But it took the liberal media to exponentially amplify the problem.

Her new book Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy explains why.

Quarantine wasn’t invented for corona. At the start of statehood, Israel encouraged mass immigration while seeking to prevent mass disease by putting immigrants through a quarantine camp called Shaar Ha’aliya.

Rhona Seidelman, a historian of medicine and public health, examines the camp’s legacy both remembered and forgotten, in Under Quarantine: Immigrants and Disease at Israel’s Gate.

Dr Laura Wharton, a Jerusalem City Council member for Meretz and an adjunct lecturer at the Hebrew University’s Department of Political Science, discusses her book Is the Party Over? How Israel Lost its Social Agenda, analyzing the ideological and institutional decline of the Labor Party up until the 1970s.

Prof. Daniel Statman, head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Haifa and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, where he is the director of the Human Rights and Judaism program, discusses his new co-authored book State and Religion is Israel, a joint legal and philosophical attempt to conceptualize the role of religion in democratic regimes.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

In Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, Eyal Press takes a tough look at the people squeezed in the middle of America’s moral pyramid. Neither dishwashers nor bond traders, these are the prison guards, drone operators and poultry packers doing jobs we would all prefer to forget.

Although he came to prominence in Israel, as the undisputed emblem of the far-right, Rabbi Meir Kahane was a quintessential American Jew, claims Prof. Shaul Magid in a new book, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish radical.

After reporting on the cruelest wars of the late 20th century, journalist and cultural critic David Rieff concluded that remembering history was no defense against repeating it, and could even be a culprit.

His book, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies, explains why.

Dr Yair Wallach, Senior Lecturer in Israel Studies at SOAS, University of London, discusses his new book A City in Fragments: Urban Texts in Modern Jerusalem, which focuses on the changing nature and meaning of text – from stone inscriptions to street names to business cards – in Jerusalem of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Timothy Brennan, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, has published a new biography of Edward Said, the feted Palestinian-American scholar and public intellectual, and his former PhD advisor at Columbia University. Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said explores the different aspects of a quintessential 20th-century intellectual.

Dan Rabinowitz, Professor of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, discusses his new book The Power of Deserts: Climate Change, the Middle East and the Promise of a Post-Oil Era, analyzing the role of the Middle East as both a major generator and a primary victim of climate change, the dashed and renewed hopes for a coherent climate policy, and the role of social science in policy-making.

Amichai Cohen, Professor of Law at Ono Academic College and Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute discusses his new book The Constitutional Revolution and Counter-Revolution, and explains the changing role of the High Court of Justice in maintaining the checks and balances of Israeli democracy.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Edna Harel-Fischer, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Religion, Nation and State and the Center for Democratic values, unpacks the recent controversy around governance/governability in Israel: How did it become a partisan issue? And what is the role of the public service in safeguarding the will of the people?

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

The Tel Aviv Review takes a detour to follow the path of American nudists (intellectually). From the late 19th century to the prudish post-war years, through to the let-loose sexual revolution, historian Sarah Schrank of California State University, Long Beach reveals all, in her book Free and Natural: Nudity and the American Cult of the Body.

The putative omnipotence of Vladimir Putin has led many to view Russia as a uniquely autocratic country. In Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia, Columbia University’s Timothy M. Frye argues that Russia is neither completely unique, nor primordially prone to strongman leadership – the explanations are far more complex.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

A historian’s hunch led Nancy MacLean to the archives of James McGill Buchanan, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who also incidentally became the patron saint of the Koch brothers, modern libertarian thinking, and the far-right plan to rig the system beyond recognizable democracy. Her book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, sparked a controversy as deep as her subjects.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Jan Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian historian, discusses Jewish-Polish relations during the Nazi occupation, as well as the politics of memory in contemporary Poland and how he has been personally affected by it.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

David N Myers and Benjamin Ravid, professors of Jewish history at UCLA and Brandeis University, respectively, discuss the life and work of Simon Rawidowicz, a seminal, albeit somewhat forgotten, 20th-century Jewish intellectual, upon the publication of an edited volume of his selected writings.

Why would citizens vote freely for political leaders plotting or even promising to attack their democracy? Why do certain policies, parties or people take priority over democratic norms at the ballot box? And can democracy count on voters to save it?

Professor Milan Svolik of Yale University addresses these questions through rigorous research, but no easy solutions.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Since when do xenophobic nationalist political actors in Europe devote themselves to gender equality, protection of women and human rights?

Véronique Mottier of Jesus College, University of Cambridge, shows how populist parties in Switzerland, France, Italy and the Netherlands join the struggle to protect women’s rights – when it advances their aim of excluding non-white migrants from the nation.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Facebook may not be the source of all evils – but at least many of them. In his book Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that while Facebook has some charms, it holds special responsibility for major social and political ills today.

Alongside Will Hitchcock, Siva hosts the podcast Democracy in Danger, where together, they, along with leading thinkers from around the world, put illiberal trends in context and explore ways to turn them around.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Daniella Talmon-Heller of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University, discusses her new book Sacred Place and Sacred Time in the Medieval Islamic Middle East: A Historical Perspective.

How and why did practices of pilgrimage and temporal rituals evolve in the first few centuries of Islam’s existence?

How did America’s political culture move from civil disagreement to visceral rage? In American Affective Polarization in Comparative Perspective, Noam Gidron, James Adams and Will Horne argue that intense, emotional partisanship is distinct from routine ideological differences, and possibly more dangerous. And America isn’t the only country torn apart by politics.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Is love of country a blessing or a menace? Can a citizen of the world embrace universal values but also love one’s country, and does it matter if old fashioned patriotism fades into the past? In Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes, Professor Steven B. Smith defends – and rebuilds – American patriotism as an antidote to America’s upheavals.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers, chronicles the evolution of the legal pillars of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinians, including deportation, settlements, torture policies and more.

But in his book “The Wall and the Gate,” Sfard also tells of the lives and legal struggles of people who fight the policy with its very own tools: in Israeli courts. For each emerging body of law assisting occupation, there is a relentless human rights lawyer campaigning against it, undaunted by lengthy, thankless legal battles, hostile public reactions and scarce victories.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Why is Israel hacking away at its own democratic institutions and values? The assault on the judiciary, primacy of the majority at the expense of minorities, loyalty as a litmus test, corruption and illiberalism – are these Israel’s destiny?

Hebrew University political scientist Gayil Talshir, editor of the book “Governability or Democracy” examines the roots, causes and manifestations of democratic erosion in Israel today.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

The nationalist-populist wave of the 21st century has affected Western liberal democracies, as well as countries from a very different political background. Julius Rogenhofer of the University of Cambridge studies manifestations of populism and democratic erosion in deeply divided societies.

Rogenhofer identifies the causes and consequences of populist-driven democratic erosion in Turkey, India and Israel, shaped by each state’s social, ethnic and religious divisions.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Rabbi Dr Tal Sessler, the incoming Dean of the Rabbinical School at the Academy of Jewish Religion in California, discusses his forthcoming book, Leibowitz and Levinas: Between Judaism and Universalism, juxtaposing the political and theological thought of two of the most prominent Jewish philosophers in the 20th century.

Dr Arik Rudnitzky, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, analyzes the changing voting patterns in the Arab community ahead of Israel's fourth general election in two years.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Navigating queerness in the West Bank, Gaza or Israel, in refugee camps or as a Palestinian in the West Bank? It's complicated. Why is the LGBTQ global movement intensely invested in the Palestinian cause, and when does a social movement grow or plateau?

Sa'ed Atshan asks and answers these questions in Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique.

When Robert Berman, an American Jewish immigrant to Israel began studying Arabic, he didn't stop until he had written a book full of idioms. Together with language expert Christy Bandak as editor, the linguistic duo wrote Min Taq Taq: A Collection of Arabic Idioms, in which they explain what “his face is good on me” conveys in Arabic, and why they included a whole chapter on fingers.

Ahead of a fourth general election in under two years, Yohanan Plesner, President of the Israel Democracy Institute, joins us to discuss what needs to be done to come out of the ongoing political crisis that has left Israel without a stable government, a state budget for three years on end, and an effective response to the Covid pandemic.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

In their documentary film King Bibi: The Life and Performances of Benjamin Netanyahu, Dan Shadur and Liran Atzmor get to the bottom of Benjamin Netanyahu’s magic, which has made him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history and a prominent fixture in Israeli politics for the past four decades, and counting.

It took the world’s most advanced digital pioneers, when the computer as we know it was barely born, to stave off Nazi conquest of the Middle East. And it took Gershom Gorenberg to write the true history of the “War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East” – as if it was a novel.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

At times reminiscent of European Jewry in the 19th century, at others of American Jewry in the 20th, the modern history of Iran’s Jews varies radically from contemporary Jewish histories in the Middle East.

The new book Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran by Lior Sternfeld, assistant professor of history and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, focuses on the unique case of Iranian Jewry.

Musa Hadid is an all-around nice guy; he’s determined to fix up the old town, re-brand his city, and have a Christmas celebration for everyone. But being the Mayor of Ramallah is no ordinary job and a new documentary, Mayor, is no ordinary film about Palestine. David Osit, the director, explains why.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

If a former White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf, who served as special assistant to President Obama concludes that you shouldn’t undertake regime change in the Middle East, you probably shouldn’t. But nothing is ever quite that simple.

In Losing the Long Game, The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, Philip Gordon examines what went wrong.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

Prof. Karnit Flug, Vice President of the Israel Democracy Institute and former Chancellor of the Bank of Israel, assesses the effects of the COVID pandemic on the Israeli economy.

Does the fact that Israel is a small and centralized economy work in its benefit? To what extent was the relative robustness of the Israeli economy squandered by the mishandling of the pandemic response by decision makers? How quickly will it bounce back?

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

In her bestselling Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, acclaimed journalist and historian Anne Applebaum examines how a wave of nationalist populism swept through the western world – and tore apart her own circle of friends.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

German-Jewish poet, political scientist and sometimes-provocateur Max Czollek examines the complex dance between modern Germany and German Jews, Holocaust memory, minority identity, radical diversity, art and politics. His book “De-integrate Yourselves” has launched a thousand conversations.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

Dr. Gilad Malach, Director of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses how the Covid pandemic has affected internal dynamics within the Haredi community in Israel, as well as their relationship with their political leadership and the state.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Yuval Feldman, professor of law at Bar-Ilan University and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, utilizes behavioral analysis of regulation, enforcement and compliance to discuss how trust in the state has affected the response to the Covid pandemic, in Israel and beyond.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Social media has corrupted the truth, spawned fake news and contributed to the collapse of polite political norms – right or wrong?

A systematic, in-depth study of American news media before and after Trump takes a deeper plunge into the right-wing ecosystem at large, with surprising findings. Yochai Benkler of Harvard University, co-author of Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics explains.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Moran Zaga was studying the Persian Gulf countries long before it became fashionable for Israel to make peace with them. She explains the historic and political background to a series of unlikely diplomatic deals between Israel and certain Arab states, what’s in it for them, and why the United Arab Emirates seeks to position itself as the moderate actor between competing extremist forces throughout the Middle East.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

Ksenia Svetlova’s story is gripping: she moved to Israel as a teen, grew up to become a journalist, and eventually served as a Member of Knesset. In her book: “Reporting the Middle East on High Heels,” Ksenia brings her story to her beat, giving readers an over-her-shoulder view of the Middle East from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, to the Palestinians areas much closer to home.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

In The Management of Hate: Nation, Affect, and the Governance of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany, Dr. Nitzan Shoshan travels with the marginalized, outcasts and left-behind members of German society today to find out what drives some to the far-right – and how the state tries to contain them.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education

Prof. Havi Dreifuss of the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and the International Institute of Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, discusses her book Relations Between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust: The Jewish Perspective, laying out the myriad views and feelings Polish Jews harbored for their country and their non-Jewish compatriots.

This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Dr. Scott Ury, the outgoing director of Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, and Guy Meron, Prof. of Jewish History at the Open University of Israel, discuss their collected issue entitled Antisemitism: Historical Concept, Public Discourse.

This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Prof. Bashir Bashir of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel, and Prof. Amos Goldberg of the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discuss their edited volume The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is among the most prominent and complex foreign policy challenges for the European Union. Anders Persson looks at the evolution of EU policy towards the conflict through the EU’s own documentation, from 1967 to the present.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

In The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force Jeremy Pressman challenges the notion that violence is the best way to win concessions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or in the Israeli-Arab context more broadly. His research shows that diplomacy, negotiations, and shared interests are no less important for making genuine progress towards peace – and often more.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Michal Ben Naftali’s novel The Teacher examines memories of those who can never forget. People die, but their collective trauma lives on.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Amir Teicher, a historian at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Social Mendelism: Genetics and the Politics of Race in Germany, 1900-1948, exploring the cooptation of a seminal, 19th-century genetic theory by a climate of racial categorization several decades on.

This episode is supported by The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Amos Morris-Reich, the incoming director of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, discusses his book Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence 1876-1980, exploring the meeting point between culture and science against the backdrop of racism.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

As part of our special series sponsored by the German government, the Tel Aviv Review hosts Germany’s Ambassador to Israel, Dr. Susanne Wasum-Rainer.

The Ambassador discusses Germany’s vision at the start of its Presidency of the Council of the EU, challenges to the post-war global order, German-Israel relations, and her long professional connection to Israel.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

If healthy democracies depend on a well-informed citizen body, does disinformation destroy them? Can the average person know when to trust science, or spot bad information causing political and social mayhem?

In Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World, co-authors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin D. West argue that people have the power to judge data critically and independently – and they teach us how.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Menny Mautner, Professor Emeritus of Law at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Liberalism in Israel: History, Problems and Contingencies, analyzing the onset of the liberal agenda in Israel’s political history, up to its precarious state at present.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Ruth HaCohen-Pinczower, co-author of Singing Freedom: The Interplay between Music and Politics in the West, discusses the power of music as well as power and music.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

After decades of diplomacy, Oded Eran, former Ambassador to the EU and Jordan, now at the Institute for National Security Studies, provides a comprehensive checkup of Israeli foreign policy. He examines Israel’s relations with the Middle East, India and China, the EU, the Palestinians and the US, and we consider what impact annexation – or COVID – will have on Israel’s standing in the world.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was among the seminal events of modern Jewish history. The violence was memorialized in ways that shaped Jewish identity, from the early Zionist national narrative to Jewish American social activism. Prof. Steven Zipperstein examines the history, memory and myth of the violence in Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

A politician you don’t like might be running child prostitutes from a pizzeria. Election results you don’t like were rigged. In their new book A Lot of People are Saying, Professors Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead argue that new conspiracists in Donald Trump’s America have no evidence and no argument – in essence, no theory at all. Rosenberg explains how they harm democracy.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

In his authoritative book on the subject, Prof. Jan Werner Muller asked What is Populism; in other works, he considers “militant democracy,” when constitutions protect countries from populist injury, Christian democracy, conservatives and populism, and how communities of democratic countries can deal with members who stray.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Gili Hammer, an anthropologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Blindness through the Looking Glass: The Performance of Blindness, Gender, and the Sensory Body, exploring how visually impaired Israeli women grasp and perform the interface between blindness and gender.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

In his new biography, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores the journey of the Jewish philosopher, from his early years as a polyglot cosmopolitan intellectual under the waning Habsburg empire, to a voice of political dissent in the new state of Israel.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

How can the EU cope with recent or ongoing ruinous wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, in a field full of foreign powers, and still tow a clear line on the Israeli Palestinian conflict?

Muriel Asseburg of the German foreign policy think tank SWP makes sense of the quagmire and offers policy ideas for a mission that can look impossible.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Rashid Khalidi, a leading historian of the Palestinian national movement, weaves his family history into a century of the Palestinian national struggle against Israel and international forces seeking to thwart self-determination in his new book, The 100 Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

There’s no time like the COVID-19 pandemic to learn about the interconnectedness of countries in the Middle East – even across conflict lines.

Gidon Bromberg, director of EcoPeace Middle East, shows the urgency – and feasibility – of coordinating environmental policies and sharing vital resources between Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Because water, energy and climate change won’t wait.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel's relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Nancy Sinkoff, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History and the academic director of the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, discusses her new book From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals and the Politics of Jewish Life, recounting her life on the cusp between Europe and America, and between liberal socialism and Reagan-era conservatism.

This episode is sponsored by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Dani Filc of Ben Gurion University continues our populism and democracy series by shining the spotlight on Israel. With comparative global context, he asks how Israeli political populism differs from all others, or does it differ? What other countries share similar qualities in their own populist movements? And he has surprising answers.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Zohar Maor, lecturer in history at Bar Ilan University and co-editor of the new volume Nationalism and Secularization, discusses new views on the crux of political modernity, and old views revisited.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

The European Union treats Israel like the closest of cousins. However, the EU remains vexed by the atrophied peace process, and seeks measures to push the sides to end their conflict. But can EU’s current response be effective?

Hugh Lovatt of the European Council on Foreign Relations explains the EU dilemmas regarding Israel, Palestine and an elusive peace.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Israel and the European Union were both founded following World War II – Israel would protect the Jews and the EU would inoculate the continent from another war. Yet their relationship with each other has been uneven: robust economic ties are beset by political tension.

Dr. Maya Sion of Hebrew University explains why.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Rachel Mesch, professor of French and English at Yeshiva University, discusses her new book Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Ronnie Perelis, Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies and the director of the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, discusses his book Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic, a collective biography of three Iberian crypto Jews in the late 16th and 17th centuries.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Why are young Israeli Jews, three generations after the Holocaust, moving to Germany in droves? Who are they, how do they explain their choices, and what are the reactions back home? What does the trend say about both Israel and Germany?

Political scientist Hadas Cohen asked them.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel's relationship with the EU and European countries.

Yeshiva University professors Jess Olson, Ronnie Perelis and Steven Fine, contributors to the edited book Jewish Religious Architecture: From Biblical Israel to Modern Judaism, come together to discuss the role of aesthetics and functionality for a predominantly text-based faith, focusing on different instances in the long history of the Jews.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Orthodox journalists Sivan Rahav-Meir and Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt discuss the media, religion and gender in a panel discussion held at Yeshiva University in New York.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University's Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Jess Olson, Associate Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, discusses his book Jewish Culture: A Quick Immersion. Is the title not a contradiction in terms?

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University's Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Adeena Sussman's new Israeli cookbook Sababa took the food world by storm, and everyone else. With prose as effortless as her recipes look, she tells the story of her life in Israel through the best edibles on offer, filtered through Israel's kaleidoscope of cultures.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Acclaimed novelist Colum McCann's newest novel confronts pain so deep, it can only be dismantled and reassembled as images. His new novel, Apeirogon, uses a unique literary form to make meaning out of trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Between 1950-1972, dozens of former Jewish kapos stood trial in Israel, yet their story is almost entirely unknown. Prof. Dan Porat, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his book Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators, a 2019 National Jewish Book Award finalist.

An excerpt appeared in Time magazine, read it here.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr. Kfir Cohen Lustig, Academic Director of the Globalization and Sovereignty Cluster at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his book Makers of Worlds, Readers of Signs: Israeli and Palestinian Literature of the Global Contemporary. Exploring the relevance of the Marxist tradition in literary criticism, he offers a new understanding of globalization.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Rabbi Hara Person, the Chief Executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, is the publisher of the new book Deepening the Dialogue: American Jews and Israelis Envision the Jewish Democratic State. She offers insights into how Reform Rabbis, whose finger is on the Jewish-American pulse virtually more than anyone else, can communicate Israel to their communities and vice-versa.

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Yoav Di Capua, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Arab intellectual history, discusses his new book No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre and Decolonization.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Behind the political bogeyman of modern Iran lie centuries of Persian poetry and literature. Orly Noy, journalist and political activist, translates Farsi literature into Hebrew, from the novels of Mahmoud Dowlatabadi to the poems of Forough Farrokhzad.

Her work brings the soul of Iran to Israel - and her readings bring the music.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Khaled Elgindy, formerly at the Brookings Institute and currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, writes that America's fundamental ambiguity over the Palestinian national cause has been an underlying and unappreciated factor in the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over the years, in his new book, Blind Spot – America & the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Scholars and co-authors Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Cas Mudde provide a comprehensive look at the elusive phenomenon of populism for the general reader. Their treatment of populism spans left to right, south to north, people to leaders, and explains why democracies are the most vulnerable to populist trends.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Karnit Flug, former Governor of the Bank of Israel and currently Vice President for Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli economy.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Yossi Klein Halevy, American-Israeli writer and public intellectual, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, discusses his best-selling book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, an attempt to engage in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue while transcending the temptation to try to converge the conflicting narratives.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger, a Reform rabbi at the West London Synagogue and a member of the House of Lords, as well as a member of several philanthropic organizations, including the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, of which she is chair, discusses her book Antisemitism: What it is. What it isn’t. Why it Matters.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Tomer Persico, a religions scholar, currently Shalom Hartman Institute Bay Area Scholar in Residence and the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley, discusses his forthcoming book, The Image of God: The Idea that Changed the World and Judaism.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Israeli law scholar Dr. Yaniv Roznai analyzes the multiple layers of damage populist leaders wreak on democracy, often attacking the foundation of political life: the constitution.

But he also argues that this is not a losing battle, and analyzes legal mechanisms for limiting the injury, and preserving liberal democracy values in the long game.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Rabbi Prof. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, one of the most prominent Jewish thinkers and community leaders in Postwar America, discusses the place of Israel in his theological worldview, and the shifting characteristics of the Jewish-American experience in the 21st century.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Two of the most prominent figures in America's efforts to advance a two-state solution, Ambassador Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, take a deep look at four Israeli leaders and their pivotal decisions.

Their book, Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny, shows how the strength of these leaders lay in their vision of knowing when to make historic compromise.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

The prominent New York Times columnist joins the Tel Aviv Review at the Z3 conference to discuss politics in the US and across the pond.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Edna Harel-Fisher, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former legal adviser to several government bodies, discusses her position paper on the government's role in financing culture as part of ensuring the freedom of expression - before, during and after Miri Regev.

This episode is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Sara Haetzni-Cohen, the director of My Israel, a grassroots organization dedicated to promote Zionism online and a columnist in the weekly Makor Rishon newspaper, explains the role of the hard right in challenging Likud centrists and center-left moderates alike.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Israeli television's veteran foreign affairs reporter Nadav Eyal has hung out with miners in Pennsylvania, Molotov-cocktail wielding anarchists in Greece, neo-Nazis in Germany, Marine LePen and other good company.

In his book The Revolt Against Globalization, he argues that globalization provides the unifying context for some of the most powerful, and worrying, political movements of our age.

This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Rabbi Sigalit Ur, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, discusses her study encompassing hundreds of dialogues between Jews and Gentiles in Rabbinic literature.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

Avishai Margalit, Prof. Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, as well as a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his 2017 book On Betrayal, a philosophical exploration of the similarities and differences between adultery, treason and apostasy as well as other forms of breach of trust.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Ben Kasstan, medical anthropologist at the University of Sussex and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book Making Bodies Kosher: The Politics of Reproduction Among Haredi Jews in England with Gilad Halpern and guest co-host Dina Kraft.

Shmuel Rosner, journalist, editor and senior research fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute discusses his new book (co-authored with Prof. Camil Fuchs), Israeli Judaism, an attempt at a snapshot of current Israeli attitudes towards Judaism as a religion, as peoplehood and as tradition.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Liza Rozovsky, culture reporter for Haaretz newspaper, writes about contemporary Russian culture under ongoing forms of political oppression, alongside artistic expressions of the experiences former Soviet immigrants to Israel.

Her subjects touch on alienation, marginalization, subversion and defiance in literature, drama, art and politics.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

How did Ben Gurion and first post-war German chancellor Konrad Adenauer become sincere political allies just a few years after the end of the war?

David Witzthum, historian and longtime journalist, explores how Germany and Israel built a critical and controversial political alliance, in his book, The Beginning of a Wondrous Friendship? The story of Israeli-German reconciliation 1948-1960.

Z3 Conference Tickets to The Promised Podcast Live Show (use promo code TLV1xZ3)

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Historian and journalist Dr Tom Segev discusses his new book, A State at all Costs: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, a new biography of Israel's founding father that draws heavily on his newly declassified personal papers.

Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Jerusalem Post reporter Sam Sokol traveled the Ukraine numerous times from 2013 to cover Jewish communities as the country spiraled into conflict with Russia. He found that each side wanted to exploit the Jews for competing political purposes, documented in his book, Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews: Antisemitism, Propaganda and the Displacement of Ukrainian Jewry.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Elizabeth Tsurkov is among the few Israelis to have visited Syria since the war began. She might be the only one to have reached a sweeping range of people from Kurdish fighters to ISIS supporters to Alawites, for in-depth interviews about the future of the tortured country.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Alejandro Paz, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, discusses his book Latinos in Israel: Language and Unexpected Citizenship, an ethnographic study into the formation of an unusual migrant community.

Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

In Zionism and Melancholy, The Short Life of Israel Zarchi, Nitzan Lebovic inhabits the mind and soul of a lesser-known early Zionist poet. The result is a literary, academic, psychoanalytic - and slightly melancholy - journey through a political movement, via the short life of a poet.

The Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

In A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture, Shachar Pinsker shows how coffee houses then and now, there and here, helped give rise to modernity itself.

The Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Joseph Zeira, Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book The Israeli Economy, an introduction to all matters Israeli and economic.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

What does it mean to live in the divided and unified city of Jerusalem? What are the different memories and narratives that inhabit its streets?

Dana Hercbergs, a scholar of folklore and anthropologist, discusses the role of social history and anthropology in telling a different story of the city.

Episode Discussion Forum

Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr Eitan Regev, an economist and Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, is a co-author of The Handbook on Vocational Training.

Regev analyzes the downsides of Israel's excessive reliance on academic higher education which has hurt its economic prospects and social integration, and offers policy recommendations to rectify that situation.

Episode Discussion Forum

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

The Tel Aviv Review of Books is a new online English-language publication that seeks, by way of book reviews, essays, literary criticism, original fiction and poetry, to give the international reader a glimpse into the Israeli world of letters.

The Tel Aviv Review's Gilad Halpern is joined by co-editors Akin Ajayi, Olga Kirschbaum and Alex Stein to discuss the whys and wherefores of a new magazine.

Check it out on tarb.co.il

One of the most controversial questions about the Holocaust is whether it should be seen as a universal human problem, or a unique horror perpetrated by Germans on Jews. At the heart of this question lies the work of Christopher Browning, author of numerous books on the history of the Holocaust, survivors, the Final Solution, and the story of a German auxiliary police battalion - Ordinary Men - who became killers.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

The rage against communism led some countries to diminish the historic fight against fascism under leaders they now loathe. Could this help justify neo-fascist revivals in the post-communist world?

In "Red Star, Yellow Star," Dr. Jelena Subotic examines Holocaust memory in the former Yugoslavia and other post-communist countries, showing why memory is never just memory, and it is always political.

Join the discussion on Patreon

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Israel's judiciary is under assault, according to some, or experiencing a necessary corrective to rampant judicial activism, according to others.

Dr. Amir Fuchs, legal expert and the head of the Defending Democratic Values project at the Israel Democracy Institute, walks through the Knesset's attempt to change the judiciary and the balance of powers in Israel, what's behind it, and what it means for the country.

Episode Discussion Forum

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Dr. Peter Lintl, a researcher at the German think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft Und Politik (SWP), has the complex job of analyzing Israeli political trends to the German policy community.

In this interview, he discusses how Germany views issues such as the Nation-State Law and the status of Israeli democracy, in the context of the sensitive Israel-German relations, and Israel-EU relations more broadly.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Why does a Palestinian professor believe it is so important for his students to learn about the Holocaust?

Mohammed Dajani talks about what he has learned from taking Palestinian students to Auschwitz, and why he believes his movement Wasatia - moderation - is the right path for Islam.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

“Liberal” and “nationalist” sound like mutually exclusive forces that cannot coexist. Yet Yuli Tamir, scholar, peace activist and a former government minister, makes the liberal case for nationalism, and argues for a nationalism that is liberal, in her book Why Nationalism.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Moshe Sakal's novel The Diamond Setter brings old Middle Eastern themes into contemporary Israel, and weaves them into a story comprising of a rediscovered Jewish-Arab heritage, reinvented Israeliness, cross-border relations and homosexuality.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Shane Baker, a theater director and creator, recounts his unusual entry into Yiddish theater and his efforts to revive a once-glorious artistic tradition in the city.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by YIVO, dedicated to fostering knowledge of the ongoing story of Jewish life, with a focus on the history and culture of East European Jewry.

All societies are divided, and constitutions are supposed to set the rules for a peaceful life. Hanna Lerner is the expert on how constitutions around the world seek to express complex national identities, contain and prevent conflict.

In her 2017 book co-authored with Asli Bali, Constitution Writing, Religion and Democracy, it turns out Israel isn't the only country with a thorny constitutional complex.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Ken Krimstein, an illustrator and graphic novelist, discusses his new book The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by YIVO, dedicated to fostering knowledge of the ongoing story of Jewish life, with a focus on the history and culture of East European Jewry.

Michael A. Cohen (no, not that one) and Micah Zenko have a radical proposal: The world is getting better, not worse.

Their book Clear and Present Safety looks beyond sensational and short-term political trends and finds that all global indicators have improved - as a result, Americans need not live in perpetual fear.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Having experienced virtually the most devastating crisis in its history, what can the media do to safeguard democracy, in an increasingly hostile environment?

Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, analyzes the challenges of the American media in the age of Trump.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Prof. Hanna Yablonka, a historian at Ben-Gurion University, discusses her book Children By The Book: Biography of a Generation, painting a collective portrait of a unique generation of Israelis who were born together with the state.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Stephanie Halpern and Leo Greenbaum of the YIVO archives take us on a stroll through decades of Jewish history via historical documents and paraphernalia that have made the institute the primary guardian of Jewish macro and micro history.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by YIVO, dedicated to fostering knowledge of the ongoing story of Jewish life, with a focus on the history and culture of East European Jewry.

Israel claims it owns his papers, but so does a German archive and an old lady on Spinoza Street in Tel Aviv. Nothing is more Kafka-esque than the story of his papers, chronicled in Benjamin Balint's Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Michael Walzer, political philosopher of international renown and Professor Emeritus of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, joins the Tel Aviv Review on the premises of YIVO for a discussion on his latest book, A Foreign Policy for the Left.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by YIVO, dedicated to fostering knowledge of the ongoing story of Jewish life, with a focus on the history and culture of East European Jewry.

Mustafa Akyol believes that it is high time for Islam to undergo liberalizing reforms and he knows just the person to do it: Mustafa Akyol.

In two books, Islam Without Extremes, and The Islamic Jesus, along with regular New York Times columns, Akyol articulates an emerging school of liberal Islamic thought and practice.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, recently participated in the Global Forum of the National Library of Israel. He discusses his book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics and offered insights into the past failures of progressive politics and how the liberal left can reinvent itself in a few easy steps.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Who lost Russia? In The Future is History, acclaimed author Masha Gessen dove into the heart of the Soviet Union and came up with the root causes of Russia's trajectory in the decades after communism.

In a twist of political fate, these insights positioned her to become one of the foremost cultural critics of the Trump era, and of populist, authoritarian regimes around the world.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr Shay Rabineau, Assistant Professor of Israel Studies at Binghamton University, discusses his forthcoming book Marking and Mapping the Nation: A history of Israel's hiking trail network, analyzing Israel's unique culture of yediat ha'aretz, educational outdoor activities.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Jonathan Karp, Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Binghamton University, discusses the crossover between Jewish-American and African-American cultural, economic and intellectual histories.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Nir Arielli, Associate Professor of International History at the University of Leeds, discusses his book From Byron To Bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

In Israel, people vote for a party rather than a candidate. But over the years, there has been a shift towards the personalization of politics. Why have our elections become a competition among single personalities rather than a confrontation among different parties and ideas?

Prof. Gideon Rahat, faculty member of the Political Sciences Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the political reform program at the Israel Democracy Institute, offers his take.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Gilad Malach of the Israel Democracy Institute gives the latest electoral trends among Israel's insular ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Why is a small community so divided, and why are growing numbers of ultra-Orthodox voters leaving the Haredi parties altogether?

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

In this special panel discussion recorded in Washington DC, Gilad Halpern and Americans for Peace Now's PeaceCast host Ori Nir speak to Amir Tibon, the Haaretz correspondent in Washington, and to Said Arikat, his counterpart for the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, about covering consecutive US administrations, journalism in the age of social media, and the role of diaspora groups in setting the dynamic of the Israeli-Palestinian-American love-hate triangle over the years.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Iran has apparently hacked the cellphone of Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Netanyahu's main challenger in the April 9 elections. But despite serving as a tool in Likud's campaign, it has not derailed the democratic process in any significant way.

In this conversation, produced as part of the Tel Aviv Review's special election series in partnership with the Israel Democracy Institute, we speak to Eli Bahar, former legal adviser to Shin Bet and IDI fellow, and Ron Shamir, the former head of the technology division at Shin Bet and a fellow at the Hebrew University's Federman Cybersecurity Center, about the danger posed by potential cyber attacks on the anyway vulnerable Israeli democracy.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Prof. Oren Harman, a historian of science and the Chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar-Ilan University, discusses his book Evolutions: Fifteen Myths that Explain Our World and Talking about Science in the 21st Century, a lecture series he directs at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Will Israel's democratic institutions prove resilient? How is the party system changing and is Israel headed for a tyranny of the majority?

Yohanan Plesner, President of the Israel Democracy Institute, examines the ramifications of the unprecedented indictment of an incumbent Prime Minister in Israel.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Dr. Cecile Kuznitz, director of Jewish Studies at Bard College and author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation retraces with host Gilad Halpern the history of the 90-year-old Yiddish Scientific Institute from Interwar Poland to Postwar America.

Song: Tuna ft. Shlomi Saranga - Lama Lo Achshav

This episode originally aired on Oct. 16, 2015

Yossi Dahan, a law and philosophy professor at the Ramat Gan College of Law and Business and at the Open University, and the chairman of the Adva Center for equality and social justice, discusses his new book "Justice, Privatization and the Objectives of the Education System," published by the Van Leer Institute press.

How has education in Israel been influenced by the encroachment of capitalism, on the one hand, and the growing awareness of multiculturalism in society, on the other? What is educational justice, and how should policymakers address it?

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

When do people to commit mass violence against an ethnic, religious or racial group in their midst? Does the demand for minority rights inevitably spark existential fears and violent reactions from the majority group?

In his book Intimate Violence, co-author Jeffrey Kopstein of University of California, Irvine looks at pogroms against the Jews of Poland to explain when and why ethnic violence occurs.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Nurit Novis-Deutsch, a psychologist of religion, values, morality and identity, believes that people who perceive themselves as having a complex identity might be more tolerant of the "other" in society. Her research advances much-needed anecdotes to angry tribalism in the world today.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Before human rights was a universally accepted concept, and before there was Israel, there were prominent Jews who supported both. Some would contribute to the evolution of modern human rights concepts and conventions in place today.

James Loeffler's Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, tells the story of human rights pioneers and how their commitment grew out of the Jewish diaspora experience.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Yoav Alon, a historian of the Middle East, discusses his award-winning book The Shaykh of Shaykhs: Mithgal al Fayiz and Tribal Leadership in Modern Jordan.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

From Hungary to Brazil, to Italy, the UK and US a special style of nationalist politics seems to be taking over. But is the current wave of national-populism new, or rooted in older historic trends? Can its supporters be de-demonized, humanized or at the very least understood?

Co-authors Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin analyze the causes of the trend in their book National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Neil McGregor, the former director of the British Museum, analyzes the enduring validity of museums in the age of technological upheavals and fake news.

He recently visited Israel to deliver the inaugural lecture of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute's Tom de Swaan Series on the Role of Ideas and the Responsibility of Intellectuals in Contemporary Society.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Transparency International is among the most prominent global organizations fighting corruption through exposure, documentation and measurement.

Delia Ferreira Rubio, Chair of the organization, discusses the challenges, pitfalls and goals of their work, while Alona Vinograd of the Israel Democracy Institute brings the question of corruption home to Israel against the backdrop of a heated political stage.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Shibley Telhami is the master of survey research in the Middle East. His book The World Through Arab Eyes walks through the complexities of characterizing the Arab world through survey data.

His research tracks and explains changes over time on the most sensitive public issues, from the Arab Spring, America, Israel, al Jazeera, and democracy.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr. Yonatan Mendel, the director of the Center for Jewish-Arab relations at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is author of the recently published "The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel." 

Dr. Mendel explains to host Gilad Halpern why generations of Israeli high school students who specialized in Arabic are unable to string a sentence together.

Song: Guy Mazig - Levad Bamidbar

This episode originally aired 9-10-15.

Dr Gilad Malach, head of the ultra-Orthodox research program at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses the findings of the 2018 statistical report on the ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, which he directed.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Dr Hagai Boas, head of the Science, Technology and Civilization Program at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his co-edited volume Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-Legal, Political and Empirical Analysis.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Israeli film scholar Dan Chyutin observes that Israeli film once reflected secular Israeli society, and religion appeared mainly as stage dressing. But in recent decades, a steady stream of films have put religion, especially ultra-orthodox Judaism, in the foreground.

Is this a mirror of Israeli society? Or just an excuse to discuss our favorite films?

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Israel's 2018 Democracy Index, an annual survey of the health of Israeli democracy, shows off the deepest contradictions in Israeli life.

Tamar Hermann of the Israeli Democracy Institute explains why half the country thinks democracy is endangered but half do not, why the left-right divide is now seen as the most threatening division in Israeli society, but the number of Israeli Jews who think things are going well has been rising for over a decade.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Derek Penslar, Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book, Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, an addition to more than 200 biographies of the founder of Zionism. Sometimes, there's a very fine line between an eccentric and a visionary.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Jeffrey S. Gurock, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, delves into the realm of counterfactual history in his recently published The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jews, 1938-1967. Talking with host Gilad Halpern, he imagines a very different existence for the community had the Second World War taken a different course.

Music:

Noa Shemer - Noa

Dr. Seth Anziska, a lecturer in Jewish-Muslim relations at University College, London and a visiting fellow at the US/Middle East Project, discusses his book Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf discusses her book War of Return, arguing that the conflict will never end until the world recognizes that Palestinian refugees, as they are usually defined, do not have the right to return to their pre-1948 homes. Sparks fly.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Jonathan Rokem, a geographer and architecture scholar at University College, London, discusses his book Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities, which encompasses 15 comparative studies of the meeting point between urban planning and politics.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Meir Zamir, Middle East scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of the newly published The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the efforts of British intelligence officials, sometimes unbeknown to their government, to “advance” British interests in the Middle East at the expense of the new order that was shaping the region in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

For further reading click here and here.

Song: Eatliz – Sunshine

Idan Barir, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking and a translator for the Van Leer Institute's Maktoob series of Arabic literature in Hebrew, tells the story of the Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority in Iraqi Kurdistan who, in 2014, fell victim to an Islamic State rampage.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr Shira Klein, professor of modern history at Chapman University, discusses her book Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism, analyzing the contested legacy of the modern Jewish experience in Italy.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Arie Dubnov, professor of History and Israel Studies at the George Washington University, discusses his new book Partitions: A Transnational of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separation.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr Eddy Portnoy, Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, discusses his book Bad Rabbi and Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press, a compendium of stories that is at once a quirky and piercing window into the pre-WWII Jewish culture of New York and Warsaw.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Adam Rovner, an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver in the United States, recently had his book In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel published by New York University Press. Dr. Rovner speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the step-siblings of Zionism – six different attempts to establish a Jewish political entity in the 19th and 20th centuries – and why they all failed.

This episode originally aired September 4, 2015.

Adi Gordon, professor of Jewish and European intellectual histories at Amherst College, discusses his new book Towards Nationalism's End, an intellectual biography of 20th-century nationalism scholar and lapsed Zionist official Hans Kohn.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, author of numerous books including, very recently, Lincoln and the Jews: A history, which he co-edited with Benjamin Shapell. The book, which was published by St Martin’s Press, recounts the relationship of the 16th president of the United States with a then still small and relatively uninfluential ethnic group, based on hundreds of archival items, some of them newly unveiled.

This episode originally aired August 2, 2015.

Ron Hassner, professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses his book Religion on the Battlefield, which explores the place occupied by religious faith and practices in modern warfare.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Prof. Alon Confino discusses the Nazi desire to remove the Jews not only from the present and the future, but also from the past.

Eran Kaplan, Israel Studies professor at San Francisco State University, discusses his book Beyond Post-Zionism, a critical analysis of an intellectual fad that took the Israeli political and intellectual debate by storm in 1990s, and seems to have disappeared, since then, into thin air.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Lee Perlman, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research discusses his new book, “But Abu Ibrahim, We're Family!”, exploring several theater productions, all with a joint Jewish-Arab component, as a potential backdrop for peace building.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Rachel Harris, professor of Israeli literature and culture at the University of Urbana Champaign, discusses her new book Warrior, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema. How do the evolving representations of women relate to broader changes in Israeli society and culture?

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Stefan Ihrig, a historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, recently had his book Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination published in English by Harvard University Press. He tells host Gilad Halpern how rising Turkish nationalism in the wake of WWI served as valuable inspiration for the Nazis in the early Weimar years and beyond.

This episode originally aired July 17, 2015.

Gregory Wallance, a New York-based attorney and writer, discusses his new book The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and her Nili Spy Ring, telling the story of an Israeli icon - a young Jewish woman who during the First World War operated, together with a few neighbors and family members, a pro-British spy ring under the nose of the Ottoman authorities in Palestine. Her tumultuous life, tragic death, and considerable contribution to the Allied war effort are revisited in this book.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Eviatar Zerubavel, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, discusses his new book Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable. How do our linguistic priorities characterize the way we perceive the world, and how do they reinforce cultural norms?

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Professor Erica Chenoweth, a scholar of international relations says that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of non-violent protests in the world. She knows because she counts them, rigorously; she also counts when they work and why.

Her 2011 book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict shows the data of violent and non-violent political action and analyzes when civil resistance succeeds in dozens of different countries. This is not a how-to book for revolutionaries, but it won't hurt them to read it.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.