Tel Aviv Review

Dr. Ido Yoav, a sociologist and anthropologist at Sapir College, joins host Gilad Halpern to analyze the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on its 20th anniversary, through the perspective of the sociology of emotions. The lesson: It could happen again, and for the reasons you may think. Song: Gan Khayot - Yareakh Kakhol

Dr. Dara Barnat, a poet and culture scholar at Tel Aviv University, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the universal message of the great 19th-century American poet, and how it influenced future generations of Jewish-American poets in their quest to come to terms with their composite identity. Song: Russo & Weinberg - My Man

Dr. Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler, historian of architecture at Sapir Academic College and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the post-colonial perspective she espouses when studying the history of architecture in Israel throughout the 20th century. Song: Marina Maximilian - Tango

Dr. Omri Asscher, head of the Translation Diploma Track at Beit Berl College and a post-doctoral fellow at the Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies and the State of Israel at the University of Haifa, explains to host Gilad Halpern how Israeli literature was modified by translators and editors to conform with the prevalent worldview of American Jews. Song: Red Band ft. Sarit Hadad - Baby Ca...

Dr. Boaz Lev Tov, academic director of the Time Tunnel at Beit Berl College, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the benefits of oral history in understanding the lives and interactions of ordinary people in Israel throughout the generations. Song: Tsliley Ha'ud - Ani Gedalia

Prof. Hillel Cohen, a Middle East historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of the newly published 1929: Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict . He talks to host Gilad Halpern about how the violent Palestinian uprising of August 1929 was a watershed moment for the Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and for the entire world. Song: KerenDun and Echo - I'll Follow You

Assaf Gamzou, curator at the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon, gives host Gilad Halpern a review of a new exhibition that tells the Bible stories in caricatures, and ponders the link between cartoons and Judaism. Song: Maor Cohen - Adam Acher

Elliot Jager, journalist, political scientist, and commentator, is the author of the recently published The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness.  He takes host Gilad Halpern through a semi-autobiographical exploration of what it means to be a childless Jewish man today, in Israel and beyond. Song: Eatliz - One of Us

Prof. Steven Gimbel, philosopher of science at Gettysburg College in the United States, is the author of the recently published Einstein: His Space and Time. He analyzes with host Gilad Halpern what factors propelled Albert Einstein to be the most celebrated scientist of our time, and what part his Jewishness played in it. Song: Dudu Tassa - Mishtara

Prof. Monty Noam Penkower, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Machon Lander Graduate School of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, is the author of Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty 1933-1939. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the period during which two intractably adversarial national movements were formed in Palestine. Song: Gidi Gov - Bil'adayich

Prof. Warren Brodsky, a music psychologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of the recently published Driving With Music: Cognitive-Behavioral Implications , explains to host Gilad Halpern why you should be extra careful before you choose the playlist for your daily commute. Song: Berry Saharof - Od Chozer Hanigoon

Dr. Adi Moreno, a sociologist at the University of Manchester in the UK, studies how the increasing phenomenon of gay couples starting families affects preconceptions about family and continuity in Israel. She sits down with host Gilad Halpern. Song: Keren Ann - Lay Your Head Down

Dr. Ron Schleifer, head of the Center for Defense and Communication at Ariel University and author of Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict talks to host Gilad Halpern about an invisible, yet extremely effective, element of warfare in the protracted Middle East conflict and beyond. Song: Ester Rada - Monsters

Dr. Cecile Kuznitz, director of Jewish Studies at Bard College and author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation retraces with host Gilad Halpern the history of the 90-year-old Yiddish Scientific Institute from Interwar Poland to Postwar America. Song: Tuna ft. Shlomi Saranga - Lama Lo Achshav

Dr. Assaf Nativ, post-doctoral fellow in archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of Prioritizing Death and Society: The Archaeology of Chalcolithic and Contemporary Cemeteries in the Southern Levant . He explains to host Gilad Halpern how comparing burial practices that are millennia apart can shed light on each other, and on the human condition. Song: Adrian Younge, Ali S...

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: ...

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. Song: Noa Shemer - Noa

Dr. Jonathan Rynhold is a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University and the author of a new book The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture, which can be bought here . The United States is the only western country where support for Israel has reached an all-time high in the 21st century - Dr. Rynhold explains to Gilad Halpern why this is. Song: Asaf Avidan & The Mojos - Hangwoman

Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, has co-authored a new book Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the involvement of American religious groups in diplomacy and refugee relief during Israel's War of Independence and its immediate aftermath. Song: Ehud Banai - Florentin

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 efforts of British intelligence officials, sometimes unbeknown to their government, to "advance" British interests in the Middle East at the expense of th...

Dr. Moshe Berent, a political scientist at the Open University, is the author of the recently published  A Nation Like All Nations: Towards the the Establishment of an Israeli Republic . He reviews with host Gilad Halpern the marginal role that republicanism played in Zionist thought, and highlights its tensions with the idea of a Jewish state.

Dr. Hilla Dayan, a sociologist at Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands, is working to lay the theoretical and institutional foundations for the establishment of a new academic discipline, 'Occupation Studies' - in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course. She tells host Gilad Halpern what needs this discipline is designed to address, and what analytic void it's intende...

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 c...

Dr. Noa Lavie, a sociologist at the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, specializes in the impact of television on society, in Israel and beyond. She discusses with host Gilad Halpern her most recent research about reality television - how it's been shaped by forces like capitalism and art. Song: Riff Cohen - Helas

Noga Kadman, an Israeli researcher and tour guide, recently had her book,  Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 , published in English by Indiana University Press. Kadman sits down with host Gilad Halpern and traces the ruins of hundreds of Arab-Palestinian villages in the current physical landscape, and tries to place them in the discursive...