New Books in Israel Studies
274 episodes - English - Latest episode: 26 days ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Israel about their New Books
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Episodes
Shaul Adar, "On the Border: The Rise and Decline of the Most Political Club in the World" (Pitch Publishing, 2022)
July 05, 2022 08:00 - 45 minutesOn the Border: The Rise and Decline of the Most Political Club in the World (Pitch Publishing, 2022) by Shaul Adar is the compelling tale of a football club sited in one of the most volatile places on earth. The book explores the radicalisation of Beitar and the fight for the soul of the club between the racists and open-minded fans. It is also a story of Jerusalem and how the holy city and the influence of religion have shaped Beitar. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose...
Yehudah Mirsky, "Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution" (Yale UP, 2014)
July 04, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesA powerfully original thinker, Rav Kook combined strict traditionalism and an embrace of modernity, Orthodoxy and tolerance, piety and audacity, scholasticism and ecstasy, and passionate nationalism with profound universalism. Though little known in the English-speaking world, his life and teachings are essential to understanding current Israeli politics, contemporary Jewish spirituality, and modern Jewish thought. Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale UP, 2014), the first biography ...
Seán William Gannon, "The Irish Imperial Service: Policing Palestine and Administering the Empire, 1922–1966" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
June 28, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourSeán William Gannon's book The Irish Imperial Service: Policing Palestine and Administering the Empire, 1922–1966 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) explores Irish participation in the British imperial project after ‘Southern’ Ireland’s independence in 1922. Building on a detailed study of the Irish contribution to the policing of the Palestine Mandate, it examines Irish imperial servants’ twentieth-century transnational careers and assesses the influence of their Irish identities on their experience...
Matthew Teller, "Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City" (Other Press/Profile Books, 2022)
June 24, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. Maps divide the walled Old City into four quarters, yet that division doesn’t reflect the reality of mixed and diverse neighbourhoods. Beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, much of the Old City remains little known to visitors, its people overlooked and their stories untold. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City (Other Press in the North America, 2022; Profile Books in the UK, 2022...
Nathan A. Kurz, "Jewish Internationalism and Human Rights after the Holocaust" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
June 22, 2022 08:00 - 53 minutesIn Jewish Internationalism and Human Rights after the Holocaust (Cambridge UP, 2020), Nathan A. Kurz charts the fraught relationship between Jewish internationalism and international rights protection in the second half of the twentieth century. For nearly a century, Jewish lawyers and advocacy groups in Western Europe and the United States had pioneered forms of international rights protection, tying the defense of Jews to norms and rules that aspired to curb the worst behavior of rapacious ...
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri, "European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948: Between Contention and Connection" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
June 22, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourEuropean Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine (1918-1948) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy. Relying predominantly on unpublished sources, it examines the relationship between European cultural agendas and local identity formation processes and discusses the social and religious transformations of Arab ...
Lori A. Allen, "A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2020)
June 20, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutesLori Allen’s A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine (Stanford UP, 2020) is a deep engagement with Palestinian political history through an examination of international commissions. Over twenty commissions established over the last century have investigated political violence and human rights violations in the context of Palestine and Palestinians’ rights, yet there has also been very little material change resulting from these commissions. These commissions, Allen arg...
Sarah Irving et al., "'The House of the Priest': A Palestinian Life (1885-1954)" (Brill, 2022)
June 17, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutes'The House of the Priest': A Palestinian Life (1885-1954) (Brill, 2022) presents and discusses the hitherto unpublished and untranslated memoirs of Niqula Khoury, a senior member of the Orthodox Church and Arab nationalist in late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. It discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion, diplomacy and identity in the Middle East in the interwar period. This original annotated translation and accompanying articles provide a thorough explicati...
Matthew Mark Silver, "Zionism and the Melting Pot: Preachers, Pioneers, and Modern Jewish Politics" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
June 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourZionism and the Melting Pot: Preachers, Pioneers, and Modern Jewish Politics (U Alabama Press, 2020) moves away from commonplace accounts of the origins of Jewish politics and focuses on the ongoing activities of actors instrumental in the theological, political, diplomatic, and philanthropic networks that enabled the establishment of new Jewish communities in Palestine and the United States. M. M. Silver’s new study highlights the grassroots nature of these actors and their efforts—preaching...
Jeffrey Herf, "Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
June 02, 2022 08:00 - 35 minutesIsrael's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international acc...
Christopher Harker, "Spacing Debt: Obligations, Violence, and Endurance in Ramallah, Palestine" (Duke UP, 2020)
May 31, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn Spacing Debt: Obligations, Violence, and Endurance in Ramallah, Palestine (Duke UP, 2020), Christopher Harker demonstrates that financial debt is as much a spatial phenomenon as it is a temporal and social one. Harker traces the emergence of debt in Ramallah after 2008 as part of the financialization of the Palestinian economy under Israeli settler colonialism. Debt contributes to processes through which Palestinians are kept economically unstable and subordinate. Harker draws extensively ...
Randa Khair Abbas and Deborah Court, "The Israeli Druze Community in Transition: Between Tradition and Modernity" (Cambridge Scholars, 2021)
May 30, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutesRanda Khair Abbas and Deborah Court's book The Israeli Druze Community in Transition: Between Tradition and Modernity (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) gives voice to the Israeli Druze through in-depth interviews with 120 people, 60 young adults and 60 of their parents’ generation. How is this traditional group, bound together through the centuries by their secret religion and strong value system, dealing with modernization? Can their religion, and their very identity, survive the meeting with the m...
Ehud Olmert, "Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel" (Brookings Institution, 2022) Part 2 of 2
May 27, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesNB: This is part 2 of a two part interview with Ehud Olert. Part 1 is here. Written almost entirely from inside a prison cell, Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel (Brookings Institution, 2022) is the compelling memoir of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The child of parents who were members of the Irgun, the paramilitary group that fought for the establishment of Israel, Olmert became the youngest member of the Israeli Knesset in 1973, serving in the right-wing Likud party. He r...
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, "Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization Across Guam and Israel-Palestine" (U California Press, 2022)
May 23, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour“Nước Việt Nam: a home, a cradle, a point of departure” (Gandhi, 1). The Vietnamese word nước embraces the duality of land and water with an idea of “home.” Through a nuanced examination of the meaning of homeland and politics of belonging, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi proposes nước to understand complex positionalities of refugee settlers on lands sutured through the traumas of US empire, militarization, and settler colonialism. Division in area studies has foreclosed conversations on how histori...
Maria Chiara Rioli, "A Liminal Church: Refugees, Conversions and the Latin Diocese of Jerusalem, 1946–1956" (Brill, 2020)
May 13, 2022 08:00 - 51 minutesThe history of the Palestine War does not only concern military history. It also involves social, humanitarian and religious history, as in the case of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jerusalem. A Liminal Church: Refugees, Conversions and the Latin Diocese of Jerusalem, 1946–1956 (Brill, 2020) offers a complex narrative of the Latin patriarchal diocese, commonly portrayed as monolithically aligned with anti-Zionist and anti-Muslim positions during the “long” year of 1948. Making use of largely ...
Louis Fishman, "Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland" (Edinburgh UP. 2021)
May 10, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourUncovering a history buried by different nationalist narratives (Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian) the book by Louis Fishman looks at how the late Ottoman era set the stage for the on-going Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This work presents an innovative analysis of the struggle in its first years, when Palestine was still an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. Fishman argues that in the late Ottoman era, Jews and Palestinians were already locked in conflict: the new freedoms introduced b...
Ehud Olmert, "Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel" (Brookings Institution, 2022)
May 05, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWritten almost entirely from inside a prison cell, Searching for Peace: A Memoir of Israel (Brookings Institution, 2022) is the compelling memoir of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The child of parents who were members of the Irgun, the paramilitary group that fought for the establishment of Israel, Olmert became the youngest member of the Israeli Knesset in 1973, serving in the right-wing Likud party. He rose quickly in the party, serving in national government before being electe...
Christine Leuenberger and Izhak Schnell, "The Politics of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Israel/Palestine" (Oxford UP, 2020)
May 04, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesThe land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley has been one of the most disputed territories in history. Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinians and Israelis have each sought to claim the national identity of the land through various martial, social, and scientific tactics, but no method has offered as much legitimacy and national controversy as that of the map. In The Politics of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Israel/Palestine (Oxford Universit...
Moshe Shokeid, "Can Academics Change the World?: An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus" (Berghahn, 2020)
May 03, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesAD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel’s 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia’s failure to engage with the realities of the momen...
Ramadan Violence: A Conversation with Ambassador Dore Gold
April 27, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutesA hilltop at the heart of Jerusalem, Israel, is known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. It has been the site of Muslim rioting during the month-long religious holiday of Ramadan. How did a holiday dedicated to fasting, prayer and charitable-giving become a time of violence – and not in Jerusalem alone? Recent years have seen Ramadan attacks in countries as different as France and Syria, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Somalia. Nevertheless, th...
Sigal Naor Perlman, "Machluta" (Pardes, 2020)
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThis episode is part of a series of recordings I do with artists and scholars from Israel and Palestine. To allow people from the conflict to make their voices heard. Today I interview Sigal Naor Perelman, who is a literary scholar, editor, founder, and co-director of the Derech Ruach organization to promote the humanities in Israel. Sigal has published two research books on Natan Zach and Noah Stern. Her first volume of poetry, Machluta, was published in 2020. Siegel's poetry book, Machluta ...
Sigal Naor Perelman, "Machluta" (Pardes, 2020)
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThis episode is part of a series of recordings I do with artists and scholars from Israel and Palestine. To allow people from the conflict to make their voices heard. Today I interview Sigal Naor Perelman, who is a literary scholar, editor, founder, and co-director of the Derech Ruach organization to promote the humanities in Israel. Sigal has published two research books on Natan Zach and Noah Stern. Her first volume of poetry, Machluta, was published in 2020. Sigal's poetry book, Machluta (...
Jeffrey Saks and Shalom Carmy, "Agnon’s Tales of the Land of Israel" (Pickwick Publications, 2021)
April 14, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutes"As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile,” S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. “But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.” Agnon’s act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon’s Hebrew ...
Anthony Shaw and Giora Goodman, "Hollywood and Israel: A History" (Columbia UP, 2022)
April 08, 2022 08:00 - 53 minutesFrom Frank Sinatra’s early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg’s present-day peacemaking, Hollywood has long enjoyed a “special relationship” with Israel. This book offers a groundbreaking account of this relationship, both on and off the screen. Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman investigate the many ways in which Hollywood’s moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades. They explore the complex story of Israel’s relationship with American Jewry...
On Israel, Palestine, and Christian Zionism
March 29, 2022 08:00 - 56 minutesDr. Daniel Hummel is a scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. He is currently a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hummel is also a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Constructi...
Jørgen Jensehaugen, "Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter: The US, Israel and the Palestinians" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
March 29, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThe history of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East is marked by numerous stark failures and a few ephemeral successes. Jimmy Carter's short-lived Middle East diplomatic strategy constitutes an exception in vision and approach. In this extensive and long-overdue analysis of Carter's Middle East policy, Jorgen Jensehaugen sheds light on this important and unprecedented chapter in U.S. regional diplomacy. Against all odds, including the rise of Menachem Begin's right-wing government in Israel, Car...
Andrew Lawler, "Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City" (Doubleday, 2021)
March 28, 2022 08:00 - 49 minutesUnder Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City (Doubleday, 2021) takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist. In 1863, a French sena...
Gardner Thompson, "Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel" (Saqi, 2020)
March 02, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutesIn Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel (Saqi Books, 2020), Gardner Thompson offers a clear-eyed review of political Zionism and Britain’s role in shaping the history of Palestine and Israel. Thompson explores why the British government adopted Zionism in the early twentieth century, issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and then retaining it as the cornerstone of their rule in Palestine after the First World War. Despite evidence and warnings, over the next two dec...
Jason Lustig, "A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture" (Oxford UP, 2021)
January 24, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutesHow do people link the past to the present, marking continuity in the face of the fundamental discontinuities of history? A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture (Oxford UP, 2021) argues that historical records took on potent value in modern Jewish life as both sources of history and anchors of memory because archives presented one way of transmitting Jewish history from one generation to another as well as making claims of access to an authentic Jewish culture. Indeed, b...
Gil Z. Hochberg, "Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future" (Duke UP, 2021)
January 12, 2022 09:00 - 52 minutesIn Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future (Duke UP, 2021), Gil Z. Hochberg examines how contemporary Palestinian artists, filmmakers, dancers, and activists use the archive in order to radically imagine Palestine's future. She shows how artists such as Jumana Manna, Kamal Aljafari, Larissa Sansour, Farah Saleh, Basel Abbas, and Ruanne Abou-Rahme reimagine the archive, approaching it not through the desire to unearth hidden knowledge, but to sever the identification o...
Gideon Sapir and Daniel Statman, "State and Religion in Israel: A Philosophical-Legal Inquiry" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
January 11, 2022 09:00 - 58 minutesMahatma Gandhi said, “Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either.” The relationship between religion and state presents complex challenges to liberal democracies around the world. In this work, Gideon Sapir and David Statman Propose a comprehensive theory about state and religion relations, providing tools to think systematically about questions in this field Use a clear philosophical underpinning for its analysis Offer a detailed case study of the arr...
Jonathan Schanzer, "Gaza Conflict 2021" (Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2021)
January 05, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Jonathan Schanzer about his new book Gaza Conflict 2021 (Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2021). The May 2021 conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas generated headlines around the world. However, much of the reporting was uninformed and misleading, ignoring the context of history, funding, political dynamics, and other key components of the story. Hamas initiates conflict with Israel every few years. But the reporting rarely improves. Social media has on...
Sa'ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, "The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians" (Duke UP, 2020)
December 17, 2021 09:00 - 56 minutesBerlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora community and one of the world’s largest Israeli diaspora communities. Germany’s guilt about the Nazi Holocaust has led to a public disavowal of anti-Semitism and strong support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Berlin report experiencing increasing levels of racism and Islamophobia. In The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020), Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor draw on ethnographic ...
Yossi Alpher, "Death Tango: Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and Three Fateful Days in March" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)
December 17, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourDeath Tango: Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and Three Fateful Days in March (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) traces the Middle East dynamic back to the events of March 27-29, 2002. March 27, Passover Eve, witnessed the most bloody and traumatic Arab terrorist attack in Israel's history, the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya. On March 28, an Arab League summit in Beirut adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, the most far-reaching Arab attempt to set parameters for ending the Israel-Arab conflict. The next...
Craig Jones, "The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare" (Oxford UP, 2020)
December 14, 2021 09:00 - 59 minutesOver the last 20 years the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations, spaces which had previously been exclusively for generals and commanders. These professionals, trained and hired to give legal advice on an array of military operations, have become known as war lawyers. In The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Craig Jones examines the ...
Rani Jaeger, "Abraham the Hebrew Believer: Secularism and Religion in the Work of Avraham Shlonsky (1900-1973)"
December 01, 2021 09:00 - 50 minutesHow can it be that deeply religious poetry is being written by a committed socialist, literary revolutionary and modernist? How sacredness appears in working in the field? How one can pray after the “death of God”? This magical contradiction is being explored and explained in the book Abraham the Hebrew Believer: Secularism and Religion in the work of Abraham Shlonsky (1900-1973). The book is a journey to the world of one of the most creative figures in modern Hebrew culture. Dr. Rani Jaeger ...
Anders Persson, "EU Diplomacy and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967-2019" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
November 18, 2021 09:00 - 59 minutesNearly 50 years since the European Foreign Ministers issued their first declaration on the conflict between Israel and Palestine in 1971, the European Union continues to have close political and economic ties with the region. Based exclusively on primary sources, Anders Persson's EU Diplomacy and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967-2019 (Edinburgh UP, 2020) offers an up-to-date overview of the European Union’s involvement in the Israeli-Arab conflict since 1967. This study uses an innovative conc...
David Barak-Gorodetsky, "Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
November 18, 2021 09:00 - 44 minutesIn this episode, I interview David Barak-Gorodetzky about his new book, Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist (U Nebraska Press, 2021). This comprehensive intellectual biography of Judah Magnes—the Reform rabbi, American Zionist leader, and inaugural Hebrew University chancellor—offers novel analysis of how theology and politics intertwined to drive Magnes’s writings and activism—especially his championing of a binational state—against all odds. Like a prophet unab...
Yair Wallach, "A City in Fragments: Urban Texts in Modern Jerusalem" (Stanford UP, 2020)
November 15, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn the mid-nineteenth century, Jerusalem was rich with urban texts inscribed in marble, gold, and cloth, investing holy sites with divine meaning. Ottoman modernization and British colonial rule transformed the city; new texts became a key means to organize society and subjectivity. Stone inscriptions, pilgrims' graffiti, and sacred banners gave way to street markers, shop signs, identity papers, and visiting cards that each sought to define and categorize urban space and people. A City in Fr...
Aaron Leibel, "Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant's Life in Israel in the 1970s And 1980s" (Chickadee Prince, 2021)
November 04, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn the wake of the Six Day War, Aaron and Bonnie Leibel decided to emigrate to Israel, or, as Jews call it, "make aliyah." What followed were sixteen tumultuous, frustrating, gratifying and productive years, raising their children, living on a Kibbutz, serving in the army and pursuing their careers. In Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant's Life in Israel in the 1970s And 1980s (Chickadee Prince, 2021), Aaron Leibel shares what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land where you expe...
Aubrey L. Glazer, "Mystical Vertigo: Contemporary Kabbalistic Hebrew Poetry Dancing Over the Divide" (Academic Studies Press, 2013)
November 03, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesAubrey L. Glazer's Mystical Vertigo: Contemporary Kabbalistic Hebrew Poetry Dancing Over the Divide (Academic Studies Press, 2013) immerses readers in the experience of the contemporary kabbalistic Hebrew poet, serving as a gateway into the poet’s quest for mystical union known as devekut. This journey oscillates across subtle degrees of devekut―causing an entranced experience for the Hebrew poet, who is reaching but not reaching, hovering but not hovering, touching but not touching in a stat...
Rebecca L. Stein, "Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2021)
October 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (Stanford UP, 2021) studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have proliferated as political tools in the hands of a broad range of actors and institutions, including Palestinian activists, I...
Mikhael Manekin, "The Dawn of Redemption: Ethics and Tradition in a Time of Power" (Evrit, 2021)
October 13, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesIn The Dawn of Redemption: Ethics and Tradition in a Time of Power (Evrit, 2021), Mikhael Manekin argues that modern Jewish nationalism--widespread today among secular as well as religious Israeli-Jews--is incompatible with traditional Jewish ethics. Manekin, an Orthodox religious Jew and anti-Occupation activist, draws on traditional texts, as well as his own family history, in an attempt to reconcile a religious ethical system created in the diaspora with the political reality of a modern n...
Lorena De Vita, "Israelpolitik: German-Israeli Relations, 1949-69" (Manchester UP, 2021)
October 07, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe rapprochement between Germany and Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust is one of the most striking political developments of the twentieth century. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to it as a 'miracle'. But how did this 'miracle' come about? In this book, Lorena De Vita traces the contradictions and dilemmas that shaped the making of German-Israeli relations at the outset of the global Cold War. Examining well known events like the Suez Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, and...
Shay Hazkani, "Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War" (Stanford UP, 2021)
September 29, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character o...
Rawya Jarjoura Burbara, "On Wandering Beaches" (Pardes, 2020)
September 23, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesOn Wandering Beaches (Pardes, 2020) is a novel of journeys, a novel of migration that conceals contradictions that summarize a whole world. Along the shores of Tel Aviv- Haifa-Acre-Nahariyya, all the contradictions are summarized: the Jewish nationalism versus the Arab nationalism, the individual principles versus the traditions of society, the heart versus the mind, femininity versus manliness, the ‘I’ versus the ‘Other’, geography of homeland versus geography of happiness, the end versus th...
Shachar-Mario Mordechai, "Make Room for the Rain" (Pardes, 2019)
September 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe poet Shachar-Mario Mordechai was born 1975 in Haifa and he currently lives in Tel Aviv. He has published four volumes of poetry, all of which attracted critical attention. Mordechai is the 2017 recipient of the Prime-Minister’s award for creativity in poetry and the 2010 recipient of Tel Aviv Municipality's nationwide Poetry Competition. He was Poet in Residence at Johns Hopkins University for 2018/9. His book of poems "Make Room For The Rain" won first place in poetry by the Rachel and L...
Rachel Rojanski, "Yiddish in Israel: A History" (Indiana UP, 2020)
September 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourYiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in I...
Emmanuel Navon, "The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
September 16, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutesThe first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel (Jewish Publication Society, 2020) retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the...
The Small Literary Press: An Interview with Nana Ariel and Uri Yoeli of Home Press (Israel)
September 13, 2021 08:00 - 45 minutesHome Press is a tiny local publishing house and press in Tel Aviv Jaffa. Uri Yoeli and Nana Ariel, a couple, established it in their apartment in 2019. The Home Press booklets are thin, hand-sewn with needle and thread, printed in small, numbered editions, and as opposed to bibliophilic books - cheaply produced and sold. They vary from prose and poetry to history and artist books. Home Press is an independent venture, inspired by the history of self publishing, but not nostalgic. It is a loca...