New Books in Israel Studies
274 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Israel about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
David Jacobson, “The Charm of Wise Hesitancy: Talmudic Stories in Contemporary Israeli Culture” (Academic Studies Press, 2017)
November 28, 2017 11:00 - 38 minutesIn The Charm of Wise Hesitancy: Talmudic Stories in Contemporary Israeli Culture (Academic Studies Press, 2017), David Jacobson, Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University, offers an overview and detailed analysis of one of a most intriguing cultural phenomenon in contemporary Israel: A “return to the (supposedly religious) Jewish bookshelf” by both self-proclaimed secularist Israelis and orthodox Jews. Specifically, Jacobson is interested in Israeli readings of Talmudic narratives, and ...
Karen Ross, “Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity and Social Change” (Syracuse UP, 2017)
November 18, 2017 11:00 - 1 hourIn her new book, Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity and Social Change (Syracuse University Press, 2017), Karen Ross conducts an in-depth analysis of Jewish-Palestinian youth encounter peace-building programs in Israel. She adopts a narrative approach and carefully considers how these youth programs impacted their young participants in long-term, positive and profound ways. Of particular interest is her insights about how to research and evaluate the “impact” of education p...
Benjamin Brown, “The Haredim: A Guide to Their Beliefs and Sectors” (Am-Oved, 2017)
November 16, 2017 23:06 - 39 minutesIn The Haredim: A Guide to their Beliefs and Sectors (Am-Oved and the IDI, 2017, in Hebrew), Benjamin Brown, a professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, offers a mapping of the various sects that compose Jewish Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy. He aims to provide his readers with a “respectful yet critical approach” to a rather diverse community, which in many senses has become an Israeli “Other.” Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. ...
David Goldstein, “Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017)
November 11, 2017 11:00 - 37 minutesToday we are joined by David A. Goldstein, author of the book Alley-Oop To Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in The Holy Land (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.) Goldstein explores the story of the African-American professional basketball players who practice their craft in the Israeli Basketball Premier League, and what that means as far as religion, race, nationalism, power in international arenas, and identity. What are the tensions of African-Americans in Israeli basketball, while why has Israe...
Mya Guranieri Jaradat, “The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others” (U. Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017)
October 19, 2017 17:57 - 25 minutesIn The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017), Mya Guarnieri-Jaradat offers her readers an intimate, often devastatingly gloomy portrait of the lives of Southeast Asian migrant workers and African asylum seekers in Israel. She depicts an image of a reality of poverty, harassment, and abuse that often goes largely unseen. Based on a decade’s worth of experience in the field, The Unchosen sheds light on Israel’s often brutal treatment of these margi...
Yakov M. Rabkin, “What Is Modern Israel?” (U. Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016)
October 04, 2017 19:11 - 43 minutesIn What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to the history and socio-politics of Israel. He does not shy away from dealing with some of the most sensitive and controversial issues, such as the Christian roots of Zionist ideology, the commemoration and political uses of the Holocaust in Israel, and the problematic stance of Zionist ideology towar...
Cyrus Schayegh, “The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World” (Harvard UP, 2017)
October 02, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourThe question of how to write the history of the modern Middle East is a much contested one. Do we write national histories, focused on modern-nation states? Do we treat the Middle East as an integrated unit? What even constitutes the Middle East? At that, how do we deal with the great changes that swept the region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Cyrus Schayegh in The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 2017) introduces the concept of transp...
Andrea L. Stanton, “This is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine” (U of Texas Press, 2013)
September 14, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourDespite the recent booms in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, technology studies still remain scarce: one of the recent attempts to fill the void is Andrea L. Stanton‘s ‘This is Jerusalem Calling’: State Radio in Mandate Palestine (University of Texas Press, 2013). She weaves together different narratives to tell the story of the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS), launched in 1936 as an attempt by the mandate government to cater to different audiences, shaping middle class cul...
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict” (Oxford UP, 2017)
July 19, 2017 22:34 - 59 minutesThe title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this is a revisionist history, which argues that the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) were not merely brief explosions of Arab-Israeli violence but part of longer sustained conflict between Israel and the Soviet Union. The role of Soviet “advisors” in Egypt in the period is well known. U...
Amir Engel, “Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography” (U. Chicago Press, 2017)
May 15, 2017 17:38 - 38 minutesIn Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography (University of Chicago Press, 2017) , Amir Engel, a lecturer in the German Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, positions Gershom Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine and later the state of Israel. This book is an accessible and illuminating account of Gershom Scholem’s thought. It will become a very important reference for many years to come. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Mel...
Bryan K. Roby, “The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948-1966” (Syracuse UP, 2015)
November 14, 2016 16:53 - 27 minutesIn The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948-1966 (Syracuse University Press, 2015), Bryan K. Roby, fellow at the Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, traces the early history of Mizrahi struggle for equality and civil rights in Israel. Roby reexamines and destabilises our understandings of this period of Israeli history. This book is a highly original and compelling contribution that tells an unknown story of Mizrahi politicisation and r...
Adam Rovner, “In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel” (New York UP, 2014)
September 05, 2016 10:00 - 31 minutesIn his book, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014), Adam Rovner, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver, explores the possibilities for Jewish homelands before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. From Angola and Madagascar to southern Australia and Suriname, the unsuccessful attempts to create Jewish territories around the world show that the victory of Zionism was not inevitable. Learn mor...
Dov Waxman, “Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel” (Princeton UP, 2016)
August 08, 2016 10:00 - 31 minutesIn Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), Dov Waxman, professor of political science, international affairs, and Israel studies at Northeastern University, explores how Israel has become a source of tension within the American Jewish community. Drawing on dozens of interviews with American Jewish leaders, Waxman shows traces the ways that Israel used to unite American Jews, but increasingly seems to divide them. Learn more about y...
Bard Kartveit, “Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians” (Brill, 2014)
June 18, 2016 17:02 - 55 minutesBard Kartveit‘s Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians (Brill, 2014) is an outstanding book, which carefully describes the constraints faced by Palestinian Christians, particularly in the unique context of the Bethlehem area, painting a nuanced picture of the ways in which such realities are experienced and narrated in relation to questions of identity. The account is historically grounded and ethnographically rich, giving the reader a sense of the sometim...
Hillel Cohen, “Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929” (Brandeis UP, 2015)
April 27, 2016 14:48 - 34 minutesIn Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (Brandeis University Press, 2015), Hillel Cohen, senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores the outbreak of violence in Palestine in 1929. It was that year, not 1948 or 1967, that marked year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today. Cohen’s method is not only to examine the events, but how the events get written down, as history, and remembered as memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adch...
Theodore Sasson, “The New American Zionism” (NYU Press, 2014)
February 29, 2016 00:00 - 34 minutesIn The New American Zionism (New York University Press, 2014; paperback 2015), Theodore Sasson, Professor of Jewish Studies at Middlebury College and Visiting Research Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University, challenges the conventional view of declining American Jewish support for Israel. Rather, he argues, American Jews have shifted from a “mobilization” approach, featuring big, centralized organizations, to an “engagement” approach marked by direct relations with the Jewish state. Wh...
Yael Raviv, “Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel” (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)
December 17, 2015 12:47 - 42 minutesIn the late nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants inspired by Zionism began to settle in Palestine. Their goal was not only to establish a politically sovereign state, but also to create a new, modern, Hebrew nation. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist movement realized its political goal. It then sought to acculturate the multitude of Jewish immigrant groups in the new state into a unified national culture. Yael Raviv highlights the role of food and cuisine in ...
Erica Weiss, “Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
December 10, 2015 15:22 - 30 minutesIn Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Erica Weiss, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, examines the lives and choices Israeli conscientious objectors, those who have refused to perform military service for reasons of conscience. As an ethnographer, Weiss takes us into the the lives of two generations of conscientious objectors in a state that valorizes wha...
Ranen Omer-Sherman, “Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film” (Penn State UP, 2015)
December 08, 2015 11:56 - 30 minutesIn Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), Ranen Omer-Sherman, a professor at the University of Louisville, looks at literary and cinematic representations of the kibbutz, what he calls the world’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Complementing historical works on the kibbutz, Omer-Sherman explores how the kibbutz is depicted in novels, short fiction, memoirs, and films by both kibbutz “insiders” and “out...
Ilan Zvi Baron, “Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique” (Edinburgh UP, 2015)
November 19, 2015 11:41 - 32 minutesIn Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Ilan Baron, Lecturer in International Political Theory in the School of Government and International Affairs and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics at Durham University, explores the transnational political obligation of Diaspora Jewry to have a relationship with Israel, including one of critique. The book, featuring Baron’s interviews about the Is...
Lital Levy, “Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine” (Princeton UP, 2014)
April 06, 2015 23:39 - 58 minutesSince the beginning of the 20th century, Jewish settlement in Palestine and the revival of Hebrew as a national language have profoundly impacted the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. In a highly contentious political environment, the two languages have been identified with opposing national movements – Hebrew associated with Jews and Arabic with Palestinians. Lital Levy’s book destabilizes this categorization. Highlighting the space between these two languages, Levy asks not what it me...
Aristotle Tziampiris, “The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation” (Springer, 2015)
March 30, 2015 06:00 - 26 minutesAristotle Tziampiris is The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation (Springer, 2015). Tziampiris is Associate Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International and European Affairs at the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus. The recent fiscal debt crisis in Greece has drawn world attention to the country’s position in global affairs. Rather than pursue the financial situation, Tziampiris investigates the foreign policy ...
Emily Alice Katz, “Bringing Zion Home: Israel in American Jewish Culture, 1948-1967” (SUNY Press, 2015)
March 26, 2015 10:10 - 54 minutesWorld War Two and the establishment of the State of Israel significantly altered American Jewish attitudes toward Zionism. American Jews supported Israel during times of conflict, like the 1948 war. However, it was not until 1967 that Israel rose to the top of the American Jewish political agenda. Emily Alice Katz, in her new book, argues that the consumption of Israeli culture after 1948 laid the ground work for this political transformation. Katz’ book, Bringing Zion Home: Israel in Americ...
Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, “This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Wiley, 2011)
June 10, 2011 15:14 - 44 minutesIn their new book, This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), the husband and wife team of Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin recount their experiences working as reporters in Jerusalem during the eventful last decade. Myre, the editor of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and his wife Griffin, Pentagon Correspondent at Fox News, tell gripping stories from individuals involved in the conflict, as well as from their own struggles ...