Tel Aviv Review

Shibley Telhami is the master of survey research in the Middle East. His book The World Through Arab Eyes walks through the complexities of characterizing the Arab world through survey data. His research tracks and explains changes over time on the most sensitive public issues, from the Arab Spring, America, Israel, al Jazeera, and democracy. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by...

Dr. Yonatan Mendel, the director of the Center for Jewish-Arab relations at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is author of the recently published " The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel."   Dr. Mendel explains to host Gilad Halpern why generations of Israeli high school students who specialized in Arabic are unable to string a sentence together. Song:...

Dr Gilad Malach, head of the ultra-Orthodox research program at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses the findings of the 2018 statistical report on the ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, which he directed. This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute , an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli...

Dr Hagai Boas, head of the Science, Technology and Civilization Program at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his co-edited volume Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-Legal, Political and Empirical Analysis . This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in...

Israeli film scholar Dan Chyutin observes that Israeli film once reflected secular Israeli society, and religion appeared mainly as stage dressing. But in recent decades, a steady stream of films have put religion, especially ultra-orthodox Judaism, in the foreground. Is this a mirror of Israeli society? Or just an excuse to discuss our favorite films? This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made po...

Israel's 2018 Democracy Index, an annual survey of the health of Israeli democracy, shows off the deepest contradictions in Israeli life. Tamar Hermann of the Israeli Democracy Institute explains why half the country thinks democracy is endangered but half do not, why the left-right divide is now seen as the most threatening division in Israeli society, but the number of Israeli Jews who think thi...

Derek Penslar, Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book, Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader , an addition to more than 200 biographies of the founder of Zionism. Sometimes, there's a very fine line between an eccentric and a visionary. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, dem...

Jeffrey S. Gurock, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, delves into the realm of counterfactual history in his recently published The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jews, 1938-1967.  Talking with host Gilad Halpern, he imagines a very different existence for the community had the Second World War taken a different course. Music: Noa Shemer - Noa

Dr. Seth Anziska, a lecturer in Jewish-Muslim relations at University College, London and a visiting fellow at the US/Middle East Project, discusses his book Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo . This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in...

Former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf discusses her book War of Return , arguing that the conflict will never end until the world recognizes that Palestinian refugees, as they are usually defined, do not have the right to return to their pre-1948 homes. Sparks fly. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and lib...

Dr Jonathan Rokem, a geographer and architecture scholar at University College, London, discusses his book Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities , which encompasses 15 comparative studies of the meeting point between urban planning and politics. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and...

Prof. Meir Zamir , Middle East scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of the newly published  The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948 . He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the efforts of British intelligence officials, sometimes unbeknown to their government, to "advance" British interests in the Middle East at the expense o...

Idan Barir, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking and a translator for the Van Leer Institute's Maktoob series of Arabic literature in Hebrew, tells the story of the Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority in Iraqi Kurdistan who, in 2014, fell victim to an Islamic State rampage. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promote...

Dr Shira Klein, professor of modern history at Chapman University, discusses her book Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism , analyzing the contested legacy of the modern Jewish experience in Italy. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by  The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel. Tel Aviv Revi...

Arie Dubnov, professor of History and Israel Studies at the George Washington University, discusses his new book Partitions: A Transnational of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separation . This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel. Tel Aviv Review is also suppor...

Dr Eddy Portnoy, Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, discusses his book Bad Rabbi and Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press , a compendium of stories that is at once a quirky and piercing window into the pre-WWII Jewish culture of New York and Warsaw. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem I...

Dr. Adam Rovner, an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver in the United States, recently had his book  In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel published by New York University Press. Dr. Rovner speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the step-siblings of Zionism – six different attempts to establish a Jewish political entity in the 19th and 20th ce...

Adi Gordon, professor of Jewish and European intellectual histories at Amherst College, discusses his new book Towards Nationalism's End , an intellectual biography of 20th-century nationalism scholar and lapsed Zionist official Hans Kohn. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the socia...

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, author of numerous books including, very recently, Lincoln and the Jews: A history, which he co-edited with Benjamin Shapell. The book, which was published by St Martin's Press, recounts the relationship of the 16th president of the United States with a then still small and relatively uninfluential ethnic group, based on...

Ron Hassner, professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses his book Religion on the Battlefield , which explores the place occupied by religious faith and practices in modern warfare. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Isr...

Prof. Alon Confino discusses the Nazi desire to remove the Jews not only from the present and the future, but also from the past.

Eran Kaplan, Israel Studies professor at San Francisco State University, discusses his book Beyond Post-Zionism , a critical analysis of an intellectual fad that took the Israeli political and intellectual debate by storm in 1990s, and seems to have disappeared, since then, into thin air. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes human...

Dr. Lee Perlman, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research discusses his new book, "But Abu Ibrahim, We're Family!", exploring several theater productions, all with a joint Jewish-Arab component, as a potential backdrop for peace building. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, d...

Dr. Rachel Harris, professor of Israeli literature and culture at the University of Urbana Champaign, discusses her new book Warrior, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema. How do the evolving representations of women relate to broader changes in Israeli society and culture? This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute , which promotes humanistic, demo...

Dr. Stefan Ihrig, a historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, recently had his book  Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination published in English by Harvard University Press. He tells host Gilad Halpern how rising Turkish nationalism in the wake of WWI served as valuable inspiration for the Nazis in the early Weimar years and beyond. This episode originally aired July 17, 201...