New Books in Israel Studies
285 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Israel about their New Books
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Episodes
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...
Shlomit Naim Naor, "The Things We Are Not Talking About" (2020)
September 13, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesShlomit Naim Naor’s poetry is a unique voice in Israel. She is inviting the readers to delve deeper and engage in a dialogue with the Jewish religion and texts which are relevant to the most banal, everyday life. In her poetry, Naim Naor searches for places to which the Divine is NOT welcome, like abortions or the Oncology Department. She openly speaks about the (un)meaningful lives of single (religious) women and more. In her sensitive way she shares with us her personal journey as an Orthod...
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...
Ori Yehudai, "Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
September 09, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOri Yehudai's erudite examination of Jewish emigration from Israel in the early years of the state presents a fascinating study of the lived experiences of Israeli refugees from Israel. This book makes a precious contribution to the migration history of Israel. The story of Israel's foundation has often been told from the perspective of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II (Cambridge UP, 2020) turns this histor...
Lev Luis Grinberg, "Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine, 1931-2013" (Academics Studies Press, 2014)
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourLev Luis Grinberg presents a penetrating contribution to Israeli political economic history. In Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine, 1931-2013 (Academics Studies Press, 2014), Grinberg summarizes both his own work and that of other political economists, providing a coherent historical narrative covering the time from the beginning of Socialist Zionism (1904) to the Oslo Accords and the neoliberalization of the economy (1994–1996). The theoretical appro...
Danny Adeno Abebe, "From Africa To Zion" (Miskal, 2021)
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesIn 1984, in an unprecedented act of brotherhood, Israel airlifted thousands of persecuted and starving Ethiopian Jews from Africa to Israel. They had been waiting in Ethiopia for millennia, sustained by the hope to return home to the Holy Land. Among the refugees was an 8-year-old boy, Danny Adeno Abebe. Now an Israeli journalist, Abebe tells the story of his family and his village, and the journey they traveled from Ethiopia through Sudan to Israel, and the even longer distance from a rural ...
Hélène Jawhara Piñer, "Sephardi: Cooking the History. Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora, from the 13th Century Onwards" (Cherry Orchard, 2021)
August 30, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourHelene Jowhara-Piner has produced a masterpiece of culinary history. Sephardi: Cooking the History. Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora, from the 13th Century Onwards (Cherry Orchard, 2021) recreates and reconstructs recipes of Sephardic Jews consumed during the Inquisition, the Renaissance and medieval Spain and North Africa into meals that anyone can prepare with ease in their own kitchen. Recipes from Turkey to Mexico, Brazil to Spain, are offered accompanied by anecdotes explain...
David J. Goldberg, “Rabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity” (Open Agenda, 2021)
August 27, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourRabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and David J. Goldberg (1939-2019), former Senior Rabbi Emeritus of London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue and author and columnist. This wide-ranging conversation is based on Goldberg’s book, This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and Israel, which boldly explores a number of themes that interweave religion, politics, culture and identity in a way that is relevant to all of us, regardless of our c...
Naphtaly Shem-Tov, "Israeli Theatre: Mizrahi Jews and Self-Representation" (Routledge, 2021)
August 25, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourNaphtaly Shem-Tov's book Israeli Theatre: Mizrahi Jews and Self-Representation (Routledge, 2021) introduces readers to the stagecraft produced by Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) directors and artists. Describing the work of Yemenite, Iraqi, Moroccan and other minorities whose trauma was represented on Israeli stages, dramaturgy known to local Israeli audiences is made known to readers through this monograph. This book draws on the theoretical insights Israeli directors who theorized their phi...
Sara Reguer, "Winston S. Churchill and the Shaping of the Middle East, 1919-1922" (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
August 24, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn what ways was the course of twentieth-century Middle Eastern history shaped by the immediate post-World War I years at the dawn of the Mandatory Period? Winston S. Churchill and the Shaping of the Middle East, 1919-1922 (Academic Studies Press, 2020) examines the key developments in Iraq, Palestine and the Aegean as they were coped with by Winston S. Churchill, who served as Secretary for War and Air and as Colonial Secretary during 1919-1922. Author Sara Reguer depicts the diplomatic rela...
Mati Shemoelof, "The Prize" (Pardes Publishing, 2021)
July 19, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutesIn 2016, the German government announces a new prize for Hebrew writers around the world, the Berlin Prize for Hebrew Literature, which will return the Hebrew Literary Center to it. Chezi, an Israeli guy of Iraqi descent who came to Berlin following his love for his German wife Helena, is the first winner of the award - for his book "Staying in Baghdad". On the morning of the victory, while Helena is having an abortion, a political storm arises in Israel due to his winning the prize. The Priz...
Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesThe identity of contemporary Jews is multifaceted, no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God’s commandments. Indeed, the Jews of modernity are no longer exclusively Jewish. They are affiliated with a host of complementary and sometimes clashing communities—vocational, professional, political, and cultural—whose interests may not coincide with that of the community of their birth and inherited culture. In Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities (U Ch...
David Arnovitz, "Samuel: The Making of the Monarchy, Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel" (Koren Publishers, 2021)
July 14, 2021 08:00 - 18 minutesSamuel: The Making of the Monarchy, a volume of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel with Koren Publishers, offers an innovative and refreshing approach to the Hebrew Bible. By fusing extraordinary findings by modern scholars on the ancient Near East with the original Hebrew text and a brand new English translation, The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel clarifies and explains the Biblical narrative, laws, events, and prophecies in context with the milieu in which it took place. The Koren T...
Assaf Shelleg, "Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project" (Oxford UP, 2020)
July 02, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesTheological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project (Oxford UP, 2020) offers the first in-depth study of the development of art music in Israel from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. In a bold and deeply researched account, author Assaf Shelleg explores the theological grammar of Zionism and its impact on the art music written by emigrant and native composers. He argues that Israeli art music, caught in the tension between a bibliocentric territorial nationalism on ...
Xenia Svetlova, "On Heels in the Middle East" (Pardes Publishing, 2020)
June 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOn Heels in the Middle East (Pardes Publishing, 2020) is the first book of Ksenia Svetlova, an Israeli journalist of Russian origin who covered the Middle East extensively during the last two decades. Svetlova takes us on a journey to Hizbullah dominated parts of Beirut, refugee camps in Gaza, Qaddafi's Libya and the revolutionary squares of the Arab Spring. She describes the fateful events that had changed the face of the Middle East such as the US invasion to Iraq or the second Palestinian ...
Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp, "Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope" ( American University in Cairo Press, 2021)
May 28, 2021 08:00 - 39 minutesThe Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create t...
Cary Nelson, "Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities" (AEN, 2021)
May 25, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour“Allying with a Hamas cell (on a Palestinian university campus) is not the same as joining the College Republicans at the University of Kansas...in the West Bank and Gaza, we are not in Kansas anymore” - Cary Nelson Why is there no academic freedom on university campuses in the Palestinian territories? In Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities (AEN, 2021), Cary Nelson examines this question in the first empirical study of campus life under the Palestinian Authorit...
Heba Y. Amin, "The General's Stork" (Sternberg Press, 2020)
May 25, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesIn 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork for espionage. This incident is the focus of Heba Y. Amin’s The General’s Stork, an ongoing project that investigates the politics of aerial surveillance. It is also the subject of the most recent book in the Research/Practice edited by Anthony Downey. Research/Practice focuses on artistic research and how it contributes to the formation of experimental knowledge systems. Drawing on preliminary material such as diaries, notebooks, audio...
Teach-In on Sheikh Jarrah and Israel-Palestine
May 24, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourToday, I am introducing a recording of an event on Israel-Palestine organized by members of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The event took place on May 19th, 2021 and was co-sponsored by the Jadaliyya e-zine as well as the New Books Network. Here is the text of the event poster: When it comes to Palestine, there is a sharp disconnect between the ways academics specializing in the contemporary Middle East frame the dispute, and the discussions by jour...
Leon R. Kass, "Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus" (Yale UP, 2021)
May 17, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourEverything, in the end, comes down to Exodus. Everything that we are as a civilization goes back to Exodus. Every person, religious or not, who wants to consider him or herself educated needs to engage with Exodus. And, fortunately for us, the noted academic Leon Kass has provided us with that unique thing—a book that is both magisterial and readable. We will discuss with him his 2021 work, Founding God's Nation: Reading Exodus (Yale University Press, 2012). Kass examines Exodus in meticulous...
Mira Sucharov, "Borders and Belonging: A Memoir" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
May 11, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesMira Sucharov’s new book, Borders and Belonging: A Memoir (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), is a work that takes seriously the feminist adage that the “personal is political,” and vice versa. Through an intimate telling of her life, Sucharov uses the work to trace her shifting relationship to Israel, and the Israeli-Plaestinitan conflict, the meaning of diaspora Jewish identity, and what writing about International Relation can look like. The memoir covers topics such as the divorce of her parents,...
Stephen Fulder, "What's Beyond Mindfulness? Waking Up to This Precious Life" (Watkins, 2019)
April 14, 2021 08:00 - 52 minutesWhat is the power and significance of mindfulness and similar practices in conflict zones and conflict situations? Does a person need to challenge the norms and authority of the society and the attachment to nationality in order to seriously meditate? Is it possible to teach meditation and still encourage young people to serve in the military? What are the challenges and at the same time the opportunities of mindfulness for those who suffer from PTSD? Is it possible to believe in the power of...
Dina Porat, "Vengeance and Retribution Are Mine: Community, the Holocaust, and Abba Kovner's Avengers" (Pardes, 2019)
April 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourVengeance and Retribution Are Mine: Community, the Holocaust, and Abba Kovner's Avengers (Pardes, 2019) is a book by Israeli historian Dina Porat on Nakam, a small group of Holocaust survivors led by Abba Kovner which sought violent revenge against Germans. She chose the title to express her belief that humans should leave revenge for God. It was first published in 2019 by Pardes Publishing in Hebrew, and is the first scholarly book on Nakam. Dina Porat is an Israeli historian. She is profess...
Jeffrey Shandler, "Yiddish: Biography of a Language" (Oxford UP, 2020)
March 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe most widely spoken Jewish language on the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish continues to play a significant role in Jewish life today, from Hasidim for whom it is a language of daily life to avant-garde performers, political activists, and LGBTQ writers turning to Yiddish for inspiration. In Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford University Press, 2020), Jeffrey Shandler presents the story of this centuries-old language, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the pre...
Laura Robson, "The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2020)
March 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourMy students are generally 19 or 20 or 21. They have never known the Middle East without American boots on the ground. They have never turned on the news and seen a story about the region featuring a young couple in love, or a technological innovation or a sports star. Instead they see images of guns or bodies or burning buildings or all three. Laura Robson, in her new book The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2020), tries to explain why this is so. The book is concise,...
David Stavrou, "Zion: The Israeli Diaspora in Europe" (Pardes, 2019)
March 02, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourThe meaning of being an immigrant has changed significantly in the 21st century. The internet, social media and networks, cost of travels, homeland products of food that one can find all over the world, working far from home – all bring new opportunities to the idea of living in one place, but still feel deep belonging with the homeland. Growing numbers of Israelis are living today in Europe. The book, Zion: The Israeli Diaspora in Europe (Pardes, 2019; in Hebrew), gives us a wide picture of ...
David Stavrou, "Leaving Zion: The Israeli Diaspora in Europe" (Pardes, 2019)
March 02, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourThe meaning of being an immigrant has changed significantly in the 21st century. The internet, social media and networks, cost of travels, homeland products of food that one can find all over the world, working far from home – all bring new opportunities to the idea of living in one place, but still feel deep belonging with the homeland. Growing numbers of Israelis are living today in Europe. The book, Leaving Zion: The Israeli Diaspora in Europe (Pardes, 2019; in Hebrew), gives us a wide pic...
An Intercultural Friendship in the Context of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
February 10, 2021 09:00 - 15 minutesAmidst the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Dr. Daniel J.N. Weishut, psychologist and lecturer at Hadassah Academic College in Israel, developed a cross-cultural friendship with a Palestinian Bedouin man. In this podcast episode, Dr. Weishut assesses the vast cultural differences that he observed through this close friendship, which he describes as a ‘life-changing experience’, from the perspective of the psychologist Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Further, he provides interesting insig...
N. Darshan-Leitner and S. M. Katz, "Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters" (Hachette, 2017)
February 08, 2021 09:00 - 56 minutesCovid-19 is the global threat that owns today’s headlines, but the threat of international and domestic terrorism is still very much with us. Specifically, the widespread upheaval, uncertainty and global anxiety occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic has been seen by terror organizations as a golden opportunity to tie their messaging to information about the disease and intensify their propaganda for purposes of recruitment and incitement to violence. Whether it’s Boko Haram or ISIS, Hezbollah o...
J. Jay Garfinkel, "Heirlooms : Memory and Cherished Objects" (One Family Foundation, 2020)
February 01, 2021 04:00 - 36 minutesEveryone will lose someone they love at some point in their life; a spouse, a parent, or a child. Having to deal with the clothes or personal effects that remain can be a heartbreaking experience. It is a challenge: what is one to do with all the small and large items that made up the material life of the one who’s gone - store them in the attic? Discard them? Donate them to charity or call the junkman? In his recently released book, Heirlooms: Memory and Cherished Objects, artist and writer ...
David Nasaw, "The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War" (Penguin, 2020)
January 19, 2021 09:00 - 57 minutesIn May 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict did not cease with the German capitulation. Millions of lost and homeless concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators in flight from the Red Army overwhelmed Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate refugees and attempted to repatriate t...
Haggai Ram, "Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel" (Stanford UP, 2020)
January 13, 2021 09:00 - 31 minutesWhen European powers carved political borders across the Middle East following World War I, a curious event in the international drug trade occurred: Palestine became the most important hashish waystation in the region and a thriving market for consumption. British and French colonial authorities utterly failed to control the illicit trade, raising questions about the legitimacy of their mandatory regimes. The creation of the Israeli state, too, had little effect to curb illicit trade. By the...
Jeremy Pressman, "The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force" (Manchester UP, 2020)
January 07, 2021 09:00 - 57 minutesJeremy Pressman is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. Jeremy is the author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020), an exploration of the dominance of military force as the go-to option for political and social leaders on both sides of the Arab Israeli conflict. In our discussion, Jeremy and I discuss why violence is the default preference among some acto...
Adina Hoffman, "Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City" (FSG, 2017)
January 04, 2021 09:00 - 54 minutesA remarkable view of one of the world's most beloved and troubled cities, Adina Hoffman's Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City (FSG, 2017) is a gripping and intimate journey into the very different lives of three architects who helped shape modern Jerusalem. The book unfolds as an excavation. It opens with the 1934 arrival in Jerusalem of the celebrated Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn, a refugee from Hitler's Germany who must reckon with a complex new Middle Eastern realit...
Michal S. Raucher, "Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women" (Indiana UP, 2020)
December 17, 2020 09:00 - 58 minutesIn Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), Michal Raucher explores the ways ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel make decisions about their reproductive lives. Although they must contend with interference from doctors, rabbis, and the Israeli government, ultra-Orthodox women find space for―and insist on―autonomy from them when they make decisions regarding the use of contraceptives, prenatal testing, fetal ultrasounds, and other reproduc...
Jerome Slater, "Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020" (Oxford UP, 2020)
November 17, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourThe history of modern Israel is a fiercely contested subject. From the Balfour declaration to the Six-Day War to the recent assault on Gaza, ideologically-charged narratives and counter-narratives battle for dominance not just in Israel itself but throughout the world. In the United States and Israel, the Israeli cause is treated as the more righteous one, albeit with important qualifiers and caveats. In Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020 (Oxford...
Walker Robins, "Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
November 05, 2020 09:00 - 56 minutesIn Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel (University of Alabama Press, 2020), Walker Robins explores how Southern Baptists engaged what was called the “Palestine question”: whether Jews or Arabs would, or should, control the Holy Land after World War I. He argues that, in the decades leading up to the creation of Israel, most Southern Baptists did not directly engage the Palestine question politically. Rather, they engaged it indirectly through a variety of enc...
Alexis Wick, "The Red Sea In Search of Lost Space" (U California Press, 2016)
October 12, 2020 08:00 - 47 minutesThe Red Sea has, from time immemorial, been one of the world’s most navigated spaces, in the pursuit of trade, pilgrimage and conquest. Yet this multidimensional history remains largely unrevealed by its successive protagonists. Intrigued by the absence of a holistic portrayal of this body of water and inspired by Fernand Braudel’s famous work on the Mediterranean, this book brings alive a dynamic Red Sea world across time, revealing the particular features of a unique historical actor. In ca...
Sophie Richter-Devroe, "Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
October 05, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutesDr. Sophie Richter-Devroe’s book, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival (University of Illinois Press, 2018) offers an analysis of the forms assumed by women’s political resistance in Occupied Palestine and interrogates how an understanding of such activism might be expanded if one attends to the ‘everyday’. During the last twenty years, Palestinian women have practiced creative and, often, informal everyday forms of political activism. Building upon...