Tel Aviv Review
646 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★★ - 138 ratingsShowcasing the latest developments in the realm of academic and professional research and literature, about the Middle East and global affairs. We discuss Israeli, Arab and Palestinian society, the Jewish world, the Middle East and its conflicts, and issues of global and public affairs with scholars, writers and deep-thinkers.
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Episodes
Whither the Palestinian Citizens of Israel?
April 22, 2024 16:21 - 36 minutes - 33.5 MBThe 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 Undying Legacy of Frantz Fanon
April 15, 2024 16:16 - 53 minutes - 49.3 MBAdam 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.
Has the Jewish Nation-State Model Run Its Course?
April 08, 2024 13:11 - 36 minutes - 34.2 MBThe 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” conferen...
Israel/Palestine: A Gaze From Below
April 01, 2024 08:06 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBDr 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.
The Prophet: On Judah Magnes' Politics and Theology
March 25, 2024 05:30 - 35 minutes - 34 MBDr 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.
Rabbi Binyamin: Zionism’s Ultimate Contrarian
March 18, 2024 17:01 - 47 minutes - 44.5 MBDr 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.
Their War, Our War
March 11, 2024 08:35 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBYaroslav 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?
Jews for Palestine, The First Generation
March 04, 2024 20:08 - 30 minutes - 28.8 MBDr 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.
The Time They Wrote Old Dixie Up
February 26, 2024 15:40 - 37 minutes - 35.4 MBYael 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.
People of the Books
February 19, 2024 18:49 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBYosef Halper, a legendary Tel Aviv bookdealer, discusses his book The Bibliomaniacs: Tales from a Tel Aviv Bookseller.
Climate Change: A Middle Eastern Perspective (Rerun)
February 05, 2024 15:08 - 41 minutes - 39.5 MBDan 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.
Staying Alive: Mental Health in the Wake of October 7th
January 29, 2024 19:53 - 37 minutes - 35.8 MBJonathan 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.
The Many Lives of Bruno Schulz
January 15, 2024 10:58 - 24 minutes - 22.9 MBBenjamin 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.
Schooling the Nation
January 08, 2024 11:37 - 28 minutes - 26.8 MBHilary 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.
The Third Way to Peace and Justice
December 18, 2023 11:44 - 38 minutes - 36.7 MBDr 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.
“We Are All Still Living October 7th”
December 11, 2023 14:48 - 24 minutes - 23.2 MBAmir 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 pea...
Before and After 1948: Gaza, a Prehistory
December 04, 2023 12:00 - 43 minutes - 40.7 MBDr. 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.
“Hamas Is Not Going Anywhere”
November 13, 2023 12:13 - 40 minutes - 38.1 MBDr 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.
Hope. Yes, Hope
November 06, 2023 10:50 - 38 minutes - 35.8 MBDr 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
Jerusalem as a Contested City: Role Model or Cautionary Tale?
September 04, 2023 06:56 - 37 minutes - 35.9 MBDr 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 ...
Land and Power: Understanding How the Politics of Space Shape Our Lives
August 28, 2023 17:57 - 41 minutes - 38.8 MBProfessor 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.
Intractable Conflicts: Between Temptation and Resistance
August 21, 2023 05:00 - 39 minutes - 37.6 MBDaniel 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.
Meet Jerusalem’s Top Catholic Monk
August 14, 2023 16:32 - 38 minutes - 36.8 MBAbbot 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.
Detente? Christian-Jewish Relations in the Postwar Era
August 07, 2023 09:35 - 35 minutes - 33.4 MBDr 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, free...
What Do Israeli Haredim Really Care About?
July 31, 2023 04:47 - 37 minutes - 35.4 MBDr 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-host...
The Forces of Nature
July 24, 2023 04:53 - 41 minutes - 39.2 MBIrus Braverman, Professor of Law, Geography and Environmental Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, discusses her book Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine/Israel. How does Israel's management of nature fit into its broader settler logic? Get a 40% percent discount with coupon code MN90160 (visit z.umn.edu/settlingnature)
Revolution and National Liberation
July 17, 2023 10:21 - 36 minutes - 34.1 MBTamir 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
Withdrawal: The Continuation of Occupation by Other Means?
July 10, 2023 17:48 - 32 minutes - 31.1 MBDr 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.
Man of the Night
July 03, 2023 16:41 - 28 minutes - 27.3 MBJoseph 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.
This Is Israel
June 26, 2023 04:49 - 37 minutes - 35.2 MBIsabel 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.
Arabs, Israelis or Palestinians?
June 19, 2023 14:02 - 34 minutes - 33 MBThe 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 comp...
The Other ‘National Home’
June 12, 2023 08:55 - 37 minutes - 35.2 MBLerna 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.
The Poetics of the Political, the Politics of the Poetic
June 05, 2023 17:10 - 38 minutes - 36.8 MBSidra 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.
Haredim in Israel: Success, but at What Cost?
May 29, 2023 12:38 - 40 minutes - 38.4 MBKimmy 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.
An Israeli’s Home Is His Fortress
May 22, 2023 06:04 - 29 minutes - 28 MBHagar 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
Where Do We Go From Here?
May 15, 2023 09:12 - 40 minutes - 38.5 MBMartin 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?
Coalonialism (Rerun)
May 01, 2023 05:54 - 41 minutes - 39.2 MBProf. 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 Commodification of Citizenship
April 24, 2023 07:43 - 36 minutes - 34.9 MBDr 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.
The Non-zionist Zionist
April 17, 2023 11:41 - 37 minutes - 35.7 MBJonathan 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
Emotional Zionists
April 03, 2023 11:25 - 43 minutes - 41.1 MBDerek 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. Join us on Patreon and help support the show
Judaism and Liberalism: Brothers From Another Mother
March 27, 2023 09:45 - 33 minutes - 31.8 MBDr 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.
From the Sea They Came: Migration, Humanity and International Law
March 20, 2023 11:03 - 35 minutes - 33.9 MBItamar 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.
Safed: A Reality and a Metaphor
March 13, 2023 12:42 - 46 minutes - 43.7 MBAmnon 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 sponsor...
Public Enemy No. 1
March 06, 2023 15:48 - 39 minutes - 37.4 MBYuli 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.
The “History Will Judge Us” Edition
February 27, 2023 13:34 - 40 minutes - 38.3 MBIn 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...
Hitler’s Willing Profiteers
February 20, 2023 12:00 - 37 minutes - 35.9 MBDavid 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.
Our Republic: Ben Gurion's Constitutional Vision
February 13, 2023 10:04 - 54 minutes - 50.6 MBProf. 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?
Intifada 1.0
February 06, 2023 12:13 - 38 minutes - 36.6 MBOren 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.
This Land Will Be Shared
January 30, 2023 16:54 - 34 minutes - 33.1 MBShuli 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.
The Demjanjuk Affair: A Study in the Culture of Memory
January 23, 2023 12:47 - 41 minutes - 38.9 MBDr 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.