Tel Aviv Review

Dr. Nora Derbal, an Islamic Studies scholar and a Martin Buber Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society Under Authoritarianism.

Shlomit Ravitsky-Tur Paz, head of the program on Religion, Nation and State and the director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Shared Society at the Israel Democracy Institute, discusses some recent findings - some unprecedented - from the new biannual statistical report on religion and state, published this week. 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.

Haggai Ram, professor of Middle East History at Ben Gurion University, discusses his book Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel.

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.

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 from coal to oil to cleaner energies, he argues, we need to understand the persistence of coal in the Middle East and how our reliance on it has shaped our politics, economics and culture.

Dr Andreas Hackl, anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, discusses his new book, The Invisible Palestinians: The Hidden Struggle for Inclusion in Jewish Tel Aviv.

Dr Louis Fishman, historian of modern Turkey and Israel/Palestine, discusses his book Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914, breaking down conventional wisdoms about politics and identity in Palestine on the eve of the First World War.

Matt Sienkiewicz, Professor of Communication and International Studies at Boston College, discusses his new co-authored book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, analyzing the reach and influence of openly right-wing comedians on old and new media in the United States.

Avi Dabush, veteran social activist, Meretz politician and author of the new semi-autobiographical book The Periphery Rebellion: The Guide to a Much-Needed Revolution in Israeli Society, analyzes the origins of social inequalities in Israel and explains why the liberal left – despite everything – is the answer (albeit not always the Israeli left in its current form). This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Dr. Naomi Shmuel, author and anthropologist, from the department of Folklore at the Hebrew University, discusses her book Generations of Hope: Traditions and Intergenerational Transferal with the Transition from Ethiopia to Israel, analyzing the hybrid identity of Israelis of Ethiopian descent across the generations. This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Prof. Norbert Lammert, the chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and former President of the German Bundestag, joins us in Tel Aviv for a conversation about the challenges of the liberal and democratic order in his native Germany and elsewhere, upon the 40th anniversary of the Foundation’s presence in Israel. This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice through political education.

Jewish history professor Aron Rodrigue of 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 episode of the Tel Aviv Review was made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, discusses his new book (co-edited with Barbara Engelking) Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, focusing on the generally overlooked stories of the persecution and liquidation of Jews in rural and provincial areas in Poland, following the Nazi occupation.

Professor Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute and the Open University discusses fresh findings from the annual Israel Democracy Index of 2021, including low optimism for the general future of the country, low optimism about democratic governance in Israel, declining trust in public institutions, and ongoing polarization of public attitudes. Israelis also reveal what they really think about the judiciary in light of populist political attacks in recent 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.

Nathan Sussman, Professor of Economics and Senior Visiting Research Fellow and leader of the “Israel 2050: Climate Crisis Preparedness” project at the Israel Democracy Institute, explains how carbon tax can lower emissions while having virtually no adverse effects on business activity and growth. 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.

Hungary’s Jewish community is the largest in central and eastern Europe, and its regime the most ‘advanced’ among its neighbors in undoing the tenets of liberal democracy. How does this affect the memory of the Holocaust in the country, as well as Jewish life more broadly? Dr Raphael Vago, retired Senior Lecturer in History and research fellow at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, joins us in the studio. This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Amalia Sa’ar, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Haifa, discusses her co-authored book (together with Dr. Hawazin Younis) Diversity: Palestinian career women in Israel, reviewing the professional and personal experiences of female doctors, lawyers and engineers in the Jewish state.

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 Itay Lotem, Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Westminster, discusses his new book The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence. In both countries, though in different ways, memory is more about issues of the present than about the past.

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.