Tel Aviv Review (TLV1 Studios)

Dr Kinneret Lahad, a senior lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies program at Tel Aviv University, discusses her book A Table for One: Re-Scheduling Singlehood and Time, proposing a welcome addition to the established feminist scholarship on family structures.

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.

Dr. Roni Weinstein, a historian of Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores with host Gilad Halpern the origins of Jewish mysticism (in 16th and 17th century Palestine), which influenced Jewish orthodoxy for centuries to come.

Song: Sivan Talmor - I'll Be

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.

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. Sharman Kadish, a historian of British Jewry and founding director of the charity Jewish Heritage UK, takes host Gilad Halpern through the demographic and cultural evolution of the Jewish community of Great Britain.

Song: Hakeves HaShisha Asar - Kshe Ehye Gadol

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.

Dr. Yael Dekel, a literary scholar at the Open University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev and a lead fellow at Brandeis University's Institute of Advanced Israel Studies, talks about the Literary Laboratory: how can digital methods be used to study the canon of Hebrew literature - and redefine it, along the way?

This episode is part of a series in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Israel Studies at Brandeis University.

Song: Berry Saharof

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.

Dr. Yael Sternhell, lecturer in American history at Tel Aviv University, discusses her book Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South, and analyzes the interplay between physical movement of populations and the redrawing of the social and political order.

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.

Tues. 9-11PM (Israel); 3-5PM (EST); 12-2PM (PT)

Join TLV1 anchors Ilene Prusher and Gilad Halpern for LIVE coverage of Israel's election madness as the exit polls come out and the votes begin to be counted.

We'll have TLV1 & Haaretz correspondents at the major campaign headquarters and special reports on the issues facing Israeli voters.

Weds. 7AM (Israel); 1AM (EST); 10PM (PT)

Listen to our special LIVE election panel of Noah Efron, Debra Kamin, and Gil Troy putting together the pieces of the jigsaw as the Israeli election results come in - that's when the political game really begins in the race to form a coalition.

Tune in LIVE at www.tlv1.fm

Liza Rozovsky, culture reporter for Haaretz newspaper, writes about contemporary Russian culture under ongoing forms of political oppression, alongside artistic expressions of the experiences former Soviet immigrants to Israel.

Her subjects touch on alienation, marginalization, subversion and defiance in literature, drama, art and politics.

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.

Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers, chronicles the evolution of the legal pillars of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinians, including deportation, settlements, torture policies and more.

But in his book “The Wall and the Gate,” Sfard also tells of the lives and legal struggles of people who fight the policy with its very own tools: in Israeli courts. For each emerging body of law assisting occupation, there is a relentless human rights lawyer campaigning against it, undaunted by lengthy, thankless legal battles, hostile public reactions and scarce victories.

This episode 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.

Gwen Ackerman, a veteran American-Israeli journalist, discusses her debut novel, “Goddess of Battle,” a story of an unlikely friendship between two women, a Jewish-American immigrant to Israel and a Palestinian.

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.

Rabbi Sigalit Ur, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, discusses her study encompassing hundreds of dialogues between Jews and Gentiles in Rabbinic literature.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

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.

Shulem Deen was raised in an ultra-orthodox sect, the Skverers, considered too extreme even for other Hasidic Jews. He grew up speaking Yiddish in the middle of New York, married in his teens and had five children. Then everything began to change. His book All Who Go Do Not Return is a tell-all of both of the extreme insularity of Hasidic life, and the journey of his soul from the Skverers to the secular world he lives in today. It is a path of great discovery, and tremendous sacrifice.

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. 

Prof. Daniella Talmon-Heller of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University, discusses her new book Sacred Place and Sacred Time in the Medieval Islamic Middle East: A Historical Perspective.

How and why did practices of pilgrimage and temporal rituals evolve in the first few centuries of Islam’s existence?

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 humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Elyakim Rubinstein has had an incredibly prolific career in academia, politics, diplomacy and the judiciary. Among his many accomplishments, he served as cabinet secretary, attorney general, chargé d’affaires in Israel’s embassy in Washington, and deputy chief justice until his retirement in 2017. He is the only living Israeli who has taken part in peace negotiations with all of Israel’s five neighboring countries, in which capacity he led the Israeli delegation to the peace negotiations with Jordan that culminated in an accord that recently marked its 30-year anniversary.

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.

Dr. Moran Zaga was studying the Persian Gulf countries long before it became fashionable for Israel to make peace with them. She explains the historic and political background to a series of unlikely diplomatic deals between Israel and certain Arab states, what’s in it for them, and why the United Arab Emirates seeks to position itself as the moderate actor between competing extremist forces throughout the Middle East.

This episode is part of a series made possible by the German Government which examines Israel’s relationship with the EU and European countries.

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

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 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.

Dr Arik Rudnitzky, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, analyzes the changing voting patterns in the Arab community ahead of Israel's fourth general election in two 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.

Jupp, Salomon (Sally) Perel’s Nazi alter ego, which he had to play to survive in the Second World War, hasn’t left him more than 70 years on. Perel’s hair-raising story, and the baggage that he carries to this day, have been the center of “4 x Sally,” a thought-provoking art installation co-created by Shimon Lev, an Israeli, and Friedmann Derschmidt, an Austrian, and put on display at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

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.

Professor Erica Chenoweth, a scholar of international relations says that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of non-violent protests in the world. She knows because she counts them, rigorously; she also counts when they work and why.

Her 2011 book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict shows the data of violent and non-violent political action and analyzes when civil resistance succeeds in dozens of different countries. This is not a how-to book for revolutionaries, but it won't hurt them to read it.

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Little to nothing has changed since the 19th century in the way ancient Jewish scriptures are analyzed and understood. Prof. Hindy Najman, professor of scriptural interpretation of the Bible at Oriel College, University of Oxford, is on a mission to eradicate outdated "Protestant" and "parochial" approaches to Bible criticism, and introduce contemporary approaches to the field.

Receive extra segments, book discounts, and other patron-only perks by supporting the show on Patreon. Click to find out how a handful of dollars a month can help.

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.

Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, policy fellow at Mitvim - The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, discusses parallels between the ongoing Cyprus and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts and reflects on the benefit of comparing the two.
 
Song: Shlomo Artzi - Vehaemet

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

Gregory Wallance, a New York-based attorney and writer, discusses his new book The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and her Nili Spy Ring, telling the story of an Israeli icon - a young Jewish woman who during the First World War operated, together with a few neighbors and family members, a pro-British spy ring under the nose of the Ottoman authorities in Palestine. Her tumultuous life, tragic death, and considerable contribution to the Allied war effort are revisited in this book.

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Prof. Yosef Toby, professor emeritus of Medieval Hebrew poetry at the University of Haifa, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the cultural golden age of Tunisian Jews, and their being torn between European acculturation and cultural conservatism.

Orthodox journalists Sivan Rahav-Meir and Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt discuss the media, religion and gender in a panel discussion held at Yeshiva University in New York.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University's Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

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 Martina Weisz, a research fellow at the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, discusses the place of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial project, which started immediately after the momentous expulsion of the Jews from these countries, in the late 15th century.

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.

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 Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

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

The prominent New York Times columnist joins the Tel Aviv Review at the Z3 conference to discuss politics in the US and across the pond.

This episode is made possible by the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC, committed to creating an ongoing, dynamic forum for opinions and ideas about Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The Oshman Family JCC is a premier source in the Silicon Valley of exciting and innovative programming; focused on architecting the Jewish future.

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. Caroline Light of the Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Harvard University talks with host Gilad Halpern about her recent book, That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South. It analyses the circumstances that led to the establishment of a sizable Jewish charity network in the American South in the post-Reconstruction period.

This episode originally aired April 18, 2015.

In his authoritative book on the subject, Prof. Jan Werner Muller asked What is Populism; in other works, he considers “militant democracy,” when constitutions protect countries from populist injury, Christian democracy, conservatives and populism, and how communities of democratic countries can deal with members who stray.

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

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Jeffrey Herf, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Maryland, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the attitude of East Germany and the West German radical left towards Israel between 1967-1989, against the backdrop of the memory of the Holocaust as well as the Cold War.

This episode originally aired on June 23, 2015.

Isn’t art always political, and when it is not, is it just bad art? And what is the role of art in shaping our political outlook, when the Israeli reality offers little escape from politics?

Joshua Simon, a writer, editor and curator, will moderate a round-table discussion dedicated to those issues and more, with leading artists, thinkers and cultural critics. He offers hosts Gilad Halpern and Dahlia Scheindlin a glimpse.

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.

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.

Shmuel Rosner, journalist, editor and senior research fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute discusses his new book (co-authored with Prof. Camil Fuchs), Israeli Judaism, an attempt at a snapshot of current Israeli attitudes towards Judaism as a religion, as peoplehood and as tradition.

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.

Prof. Lev Grinberg, a sociologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, joins host Gilad Halpern to discuss his new book Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine 1931-2013. He gives a fresh analysis of power relations between the political hegemony and the people, exploring seven instances in the history of Israel.

Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, joins us to discuss the past accomplishments and future challenges of democracy in Israel. Ahead of the 70th Independence Day celebrations, the IDI will launch the Democracy Pavilion along the Independence Trail in Tel Aviv, with a view to celebrating its many achievements and educating local and international visitors about its importance.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by the Israel Democracy Institute, which works to bolster the values and institutions of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Dr Roni Mikel-Arieli, a postdoctoral and teaching fellow at Ben Gurion University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and until recently the academic director of the Oral History Division at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, discusses her book Remembering the Holocaust in a Racial State: Holocaust Memory in South Africa from Apartheid to Democracy (1948-1994).

Israel's Bedouin and the line between tradition and modernity

Dr. Sarab Abu Rabia-Queder, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University, specializes in the impact of higher education on Bedouin women. Herself of Bedouin origin, she talks about the nomadic people of Israel who straddle the line between tradition and modernity.

Who owns the media in Israel?

Prof. Amit Schejter, head of the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University, recently completed a study, soon to be published, about electronic media concentration in Israel between 1984-2013.

Music:

Faith No More - Easy
Itzchak Klepter - Shir Ahava Bedui
Fortis - Red Me'al Masach Hatelevisia Sheli

The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was among the seminal events of modern Jewish history. The violence was memorialized in ways that shaped Jewish identity, from the early Zionist national narrative to Jewish American social activism. Prof. Steven Zipperstein examines the history, memory and myth of the violence in Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

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

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

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. Rachel Harris, an associate professor of Israeli literature and culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sits down with host Gilad Halpern to put the spotlight on a relatively obscure Israeli film genre - the Western.

Song: Asaf Avidan - Love It Or Leave It

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.

Prof. Deborah Posel, a sociologist at the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, analyzes how racial tensions have played out in South Africa since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

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.

Dr. D Gershon Lewental, an Israel Studies professor at the University of Oklahoma, gives host Gilad Halpern an overview of the Baha'i religion - an offshoot of Shi'a Islam that set up shop in the Holy Land (albeit not in Jerusalem, thankfully). They discuss its relationship with the local ethnic groups under the different regimes.

Song: Ethnix - Tutim

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

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

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

Omer Bartov, a professor of European history at Brown University, discusses his forthcoming book, "Anatomy of Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz," which offers an intricate analysis of the catastrophic fate of a centuries-old Jewish community, incorporating archival material as well as personal testimonies.

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Timo Aava examines Estonia's establishment of non-territorial autonomies during the interwar period, with a particular focus on the Jewish self-government case, thereby providing intriguing insights into Estonia's treatment of minorities.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

One of the most controversial questions about the Holocaust is whether it should be seen as a universal human problem, or a unique horror perpetrated by Germans on Jews. At the heart of this question lies the work of Christopher Browning, author of numerous books on the history of the Holocaust, survivors, the Final Solution, and the story of a German auxiliary police battalion - Ordinary Men - who became killers.

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Ronen Mendelkern, a political economist at Tel Aviv University, discusses the 1962 New Economic Policy - a plan that sought to liberalize the highly interventionist Israeli economy of the time, that ended up almost entirely in the bin. 
 
Song: Yonatan Raz'El - Katonti

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.

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.

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.

Alejandro Paz, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, discusses his book Latinos in Israel: Language and Unexpected Citizenship, an ethnographic study into the formation of an unusual migrant community.

Tel Aviv Review is supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Dr. Eran Shlomi discusses Zionist diplomacy and representation at the League of Nations, the UN predecessor, during the interwar period. He analyzes the League’s role in the Zionist path to statehood.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights.

Navigating queerness in the West Bank, Gaza or Israel, in refugee camps or as a Palestinian in the West Bank? It's complicated. Why is the LGBTQ global movement intensely invested in the Palestinian cause, and when does a social movement grow or plateau?

Sa'ed Atshan asks and answers these questions in Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique.

Israel claims it owns his papers, but so does a German archive and an old lady on Spinoza Street in Tel Aviv. Nothing is more Kafka-esque than the story of his papers, chronicled in Benjamin Balint's Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy.

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Host Gilad Halpern speaks to Prof. Gili Drori, head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-chair of the international conference "Internationalization, Globalization and Governance of Academia," which was recently held at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. They discuss how universities have adapted to market forces and global capitalism with a mixture of accommodation and resistance.

Song: Eatliz - Attractive

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.

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.

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.

Dr Daniel Schiffman, an economic historian and a senior lecturer in the department of Economics and Business Administration at Ariel University, is the co-author of the forthcoming book Economic Advisers and Advice: Crises, Reform and Stabilization in Israel. Together host Gilad Halpern and Dr Schiffman explore the contribution of Jewish-American advisers to the Israeli economy over the years.

Song: Rita & Eliad - Im Niga

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.

This episode originally aired on Dec. 5th, 2014.

Bismarck famously said that "politics is not an exact science" - but what if exact sciences were determined by politics? Prof. Ute Deichmann, a historian of science at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, tells host Gilad Halpern about the exchanges between Israeli and German scientists in the early years.

The two countries have marked more than 50 years since the full normalization of diplomatic relations between them, and we enquire to what extent scientists paved the way.

Receive extra segments, book discounts, and other patron-only perks by supporting the show on Patreon. Click to find out how a handful of dollars a month can help.

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.

If healthy democracies depend on a well-informed citizen body, does disinformation destroy them? Can the average person know when to trust science, or spot bad information causing political and social mayhem?

In Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World, co-authors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin D. West argue that people have the power to judge data critically and independently – and they teach us how.

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

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Prof. Dani Filc of Ben Gurion University continues our populism and democracy series by shining the spotlight on Israel. With comparative global context, he asks how Israeli political populism differs from all others, or does it differ? What other countries share similar qualities in their own populist movements? And he has surprising answers.

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

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr. Rafael Medoff, the Founding Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., discusses his co-edited book, “Cartoonists Against the Holocaust,” which offers a comprehensive panorama of how editorial cartoons in newspapers across the United States perceived the rise of Hitler and the world’s reaction to it.

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.

America has long been viewed as the quintessential broker of Israeli-Palestinian peace. In his book Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi argues that it's no accident peace has not yet materialized. He shows how the US undermines, rather than advancing an agreement, by playing the role of "Israel's lawyer," or perhaps its siamese twin.

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.

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. Michal Aharony, political philosophy and Holocaust studies professor at Beit Berl Academic College, recently authored Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality and Resistance.

Dr. Aharony talks to host Gilad Halpern about her work, which evaluates the Jewish-German philosopher's theories on totalitarianism through testimonies of Holocaust victims and survivors.

Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, a historian of modern Germany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to draw lessons from the fragile and divided German democracy of the early 1930s for today's Israel, in the wake of a panel discussion entitled "The red lines of Israeli democracy" that was held at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Song: Uzi Ramirez - She's So Young

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.

Can we reconcile between business development and safeguarding human rights? David Bilchitz, professor of law at the University of Johannesburg, proposes a legal framework to do just that in his new book, “Building a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: Contexts and Contours” (Cambridge University Press).

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 supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

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 Tammy Hoffman, a research fellow and the Head of the Education Policy Program at the Israel Democracy Institute and a lecturer at Hakibbutzim College of Education, explains how public education can tackle the erosion of democratic norms and the adverse effects of social media on society.

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

Dr Rachel Mesch, professor of French and English at Yeshiva University, discusses her new book Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France.

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.

This episode was made possible by Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies and the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs, and was recorded on the YU premises in New York City in front of a live audience.

Yossi Dahan, a law and philosophy professor at the Ramat Gan College of Law and Business and at the Open University, and the chairman of the Adva Center for equality and social justice, discusses his new book "Justice, Privatization and the Objectives of the Education System," published by the Van Leer Institute press.

How has education in Israel been influenced by the encroachment of capitalism, on the one hand, and the growing awareness of multiculturalism in society, on the other? What is educational justice, and how should policymakers address it?

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.

Dr. Eli Cook, lecturer in American history at the University of Haifa, discusses his new book, “The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of of American Life,” a critical history of the emergence and establishment of economic metrics as the gold standard (no pun intended) of progress.

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.

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.

Nancy Sinkoff, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History and the academic director of the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, discusses her new book From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals and the Politics of Jewish Life, recounting her life on the cusp between Europe and America, and between liberal socialism and Reagan-era conservatism.

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

This season is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

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 the new order that was shaping the region in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

Song: Eatliz - Sunshine

Dr. Omar Dajani, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Global Center for Business and Development at the University of the Pacific in California, analyzes Israel's ongoing seizure of the West Bank from a legal perspective: Has the occupation morphed into a de facto annexation?

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.

Prof. Zvi Ziegler is Professor Emeritus of mathematics at the Technion and Chairman of the Israeli inter-university forum to combat academic boycotts. He assesses with host Gilad Halpern the threat posed to Israeli academia by international calls for a boycott, and explains how Israel tries - and in most cases succeeds - to thwart them.

Song: Geva Alon - Days of Hunger

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

Facebook may not be the source of all evils – but at least many of them. In his book Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that while Facebook has some charms, it holds special responsibility for major social and political ills today.

Alongside Will Hitchcock, Siva hosts the podcast Democracy in Danger, where together, they, along with leading thinkers from around the world, put illiberal trends in context and explore ways to turn them around.

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

Dr. Paul Shrell-Fox, a rabbi and psychologist at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, tries to answer the question that's been troubling us for centuries. He explains to host Gilad Halpern how the Jewish intellect has developed over the years.

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

Liat Maggid-Alon, a historian of the modern Middle East at Kibbutzim College and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, discusses a paper she recently presented at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, focusing on the newly emerged stratum of upper-middle-class Jews in early-to-mid 20th century Egypt. The Egyptian-Jewish bourgeoisie serves as an ideal case study to explore how modernity, religion, nationalism and minority politics intermingled.

Receive extra segments, book discounts, and other patron-only perks by supporting the show on Patreon. Click to find out how a handful of dollars a month can help.

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.

More than moneylending: The economic history of the Jews

Economist Zvi Eckstein of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya offers an original and compelling explanation of the demographic meanders of the Jewish people in the common era.

Israeli conscientious objectors: Torn between values and struggle for survival

Dr. Erica Weiss, Tel Aviv University anthropologist  and author of Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty, tackles the concept of conscientious objection in Israel – a democratic society that honors the freedom of conscience while fighting for its survival.

Music:

Liron Amram - Hashachar
Blues LaHofesh Hagadol Cast - Lo Rotsim
Tiny Grimes Quintette (with Charlie Parker) -Romance Without Finance (Is a Nuisance)

In 1948, Palestine saw Jewish refugees too

Dr. Nurit Cohen Levinovsky, a historian and author of Jewish Refugees During the War of Independence, tells the story of the tens of thousands of Israeli Jews who became refugees during the War of Independence.

How the Bible became holy

Michael Satlow, a religious and Judaic studies professor at Brown University (US) and author of How the Bible Became Holy, sheds some light on the selection and canonization processes over the centuries that brought the Bible to the special status it holds today.

Music:

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know
Muse - Invincible
David Bowie - China Girl

Jonathan Israel, professor emeritus of modern European history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, discusses his book Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848.

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.

Prof. Uri Ram, a sociologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of the recently published The Return of Martin Buber: National and Social Thought in Israel from Buber to the Neo-Buberians, sheds light on an oft-forgotten chapter in the life of the celebrated Jewish theologian and political thinker. Appointed in 1947, Buber was the first chair in sociology in Israel, and introduced ideas that were quickly sidelined but have taken center stage in recent years. 

Song: Meir Ariel - Neshel Hanachash

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

Robert Goldenberg, Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University in New York, discusses the Jewish rituals of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and why a practicing Jew today will unlikely recognize any of them.

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. 

Why do Jews play a "ridiculously disproportionate" role in the sciences?

Dr. Noah Efron, the founding chair of the Program in Science, Technology, Society at Bar-Ilan University, and a fellow TLV1 broadcaster, recently published in English by Hebrew Union College Press and John Hopkins University Press. He will give his original take on a generations long question: Why are Jews so smart?

Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Urban Heritage

Dr. Shaul Sapir is a geography professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of several books. His most recent book, 'Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Urban Heritage,' tells us the outcome of unprecedented and meticulous research into the relatively obscure history of the predominantly Iraqi Jewish community in the Indian city.

Prof. Carole Fink, a scholar specializing in international European history at Ohio State University in the US, tells host Gilad Halpern about how Europe's Jews fit into the numerous minority protection schemes that emerged on the continent in the interwar period, and about the road to their catastrophic breakdown.

This episode originally aired March 27, 2015.

Why the Internet didn't kill the TV star

Jerome Bourdon, a professor of communications at Tel Aviv University, tell us about the evolution of the peoplemeter from a simple instrument accumulating data for commercial purposes to a matter of public interest, and why it remains such an important tool today.

Arizona and the Negev: An aquifer runs through them

Prof. Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona, US, discusses how limited water resources should be managed in arid areas like Israel and Arizona, and what she has learned from (and taught) her Israeli colleagues.

Music:

Mark Ronson feat. Robbie Williams - The Only One I Know
Alma Zohar - Shamaim Afrikaim
Shai Tzabari - Lavi Oti

Bernard Avishai, an essayist and lecturer at Dartmouth College and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discusses his book Promiscuous: 'Portnoy's Complaint and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness, outlining how Philip Roth's celebrated novel changed his life, as well as that of so many Americans of his generation.

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.