Tel Aviv Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us on Patreon and help support the show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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