Tel Aviv Review

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 f...

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 Studie...

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...

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...

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-h...

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...

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 ded...

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...

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? Th...

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-...

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 prom...

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-s...

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.