Tel Aviv Review

Professor Hasia Diner, a world-renowned historian of Jewish-American history, discusses her latest book, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migration to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way.   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. Mark Raider, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, discusses Hayim Greenberg, a legendary yet all but forgotten mid-20th century Jewish-American essayist and thinker. Dr. Raider edited Greenberg’s work into the newly published The Essential Hayim Greenberg: Essays and Addresses on Jewish Culture, Socialism, and Zionism. 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. Felicia Waldman, a professor at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters and the author of "Tales and Traces of Sephardic Bucharest," discusses the history of Romanian Jewry on the cusp between East and West. 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.

Steven Fine, a Jewish history professor at Yeshiva University and the author of "The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel," analyzes the twists and turns in the millennia-long history of the "Jewish holy grail." 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. Sonja Wentling, a professor of history at Concordia College in the US, is the co-author of Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Vote’ and Bipartisan Support for Israel. Her book analyzes the attitude of the 31st president towards European Jews and Zionism during his administration and, more importantly, in the decades after he left office. 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. Joseph Ringel, a Jewish studies scholar at Northwestern University, discusses the links between halakha, politics, and culture among Sephardi religious leaders in Israel. 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.

Orly Benjamin, a professor of sociology at Bar-Ilan University, discusses her new book Gendering Israel’s Outsourcing: The Erasure of Employees’ Caring Skills, which offers a feminist critique of socioeconomic and political processes that have affected the most precarious sectors of the Israeli labor market in recent decades. 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.  

Listen to a recording of Tel Aviv Review host Gilad Halpern interviewing Yale University's Professor Timothy Snyder about his New York Times number one bestselling book, "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century." History doesn't repeat itself, but what can contemporary Americans learn from 20th-century Europe? 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.

When throngs of refugees poured into Europe in 2015, people wanted to help, but didn't know how. Holger Michel, a young German, decided to drop by a shelter and volunteer for a few hours. Immediately captivated, he came back. In short order, he found himself organizing a makeshift shelter for over 1000 refugees in an abandoned municipal building in Berlin for nearly two years. He became an organizer and spokesperson, learning remarkable things about the refugees -- and about Germany. Of her migration policy, Chancellor Angel Merkel said, "We can do it"; Michel's book about his experience is called, "We Are Doing 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 m

It is difficult to think of anything that has failed as often as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group argues in his book, “The Only Language they Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine,” that nice negotiations and incentives will never be enough for the stiff-necked people on either side of the Green Line. He claims that only force – either tough diplomatic pressure or actual physical violence – has ever generated real concessions. Thrall discusses why he has reached that conclusion and its implications for reaching a peace accord someday. 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.

Dorit Rabinyan's third novel about a stormy love between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man became a bestseller when Israel's Education Minister banned it from high school required reading lists. What was so threatening about it to the Minister, or to Israel in general? Was she advocating assimilation, humanizing and individualizing the other, or just writing about two young people in love? One of Israel's top novelists discusses her controversial book "All The Rivers," and the autobiographical experiences behind 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.

At the close of the 50th year since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza and applied military rule over the people residing there, Gershon Shafir publishes a new book that not only documents the occupation in all its facets, but also how Israelis and Palestinians experience it. The former group lives as subjects of a colonial system, in Shafir's view, while the latter, he argues, lives in their own state - one he terms "denialism." 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.

The giddy hopes of the Arab uprisings in 2011 have given way to resurgent authoritarian leadership in some states, while others are bleeding to death. These are not auspicious prospects for liberal democracy. But within each country lies a complex set of forces at work that differ from Tunisia to Morocco, or Egypt to Syria. In their collection "Arab Politics beyond the Uprisings: Experiments in an Era of Resurgent Authoritarianism," co-editors Thanassis Cambanis and Michael Wahid Hanna curate 20 articles considering constitutions and corporations, as well as cartoons, youth, women, football, and more. Michael Hanna explains what they learned. 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.

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. 

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.

Dr. Shlomo Fischer, a sociologist of religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Education, discusses the evolution of justifications presented by right-wing fringe groups who have lobbied to lift the ban on entering the Temple Mount, from the 1970s until today. 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 did the Nazis admire America? Yale University law professor James Q. Whitman started out asking why Hitler in Mein Kampf, and other Nazis in the 1930s, referred to American legal precedents on numerous occasions. What he discovered in the archives surprised him, and may shock readers of his book - or any American. Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, raises existentially uncomfortable questions about the sources of racial laws in Nazi Germany and the US. 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.

Jewish history professor Aron Rodrigue of  at 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 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.

Larry Derfner, a veteran American-Israeli journalist, discusses his new memoir No Country For Jewish Liberals, chronicling the twin ideological journey that he, as well as Israel, have made since his aliyah in 1985. 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. Amir Engel, a lecturer in German language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of the newly published Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography, analyzes the unique legacy of a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and one of Israel's first public intellectuals. 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.