The grouping of Yiddish speaking Jews, of various origin countries in Central and Eastern Europe, into a single overarching identity of Ashkenazim, was meaningful particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Jewish contexts. This seminar examines the shaping of the Ashkenazi community in Ottoman Jerusalem, as facilitated by Ottoman legal and political context. Ottoman recognition of Ashkenazim as a corporate identity was crucial to its emergence and continuity. Dr Yair Wallach is a Reader (Ass...
Dec 03, 2025•49 min
In this talk, Dr Sapir will present her research on the historical development of student volunteering in Israeli higher education and its current implications. Based on archival analysis of two elite universities over four decades, the study identifies three key debates surrounding student volunteering: over the purpose of volunteering; over its mandatory nature; and over the awarding of academic credit. Challenging current critiques which focus on tensions embedded in the current neo-liberal c...
Dec 01, 2025•39 min
This study explores the mechanisms underlying the paradox of marginality experienced by middle-class Palestinian professional women in the Israeli labour market through an intersectional analysis of their everyday professional lives. It demonstrates that this paradox—characterised by their marginalisation despite possessing high educational capital comparable to that of highly educated Jewish (both men and women) and Palestinian male professionals—is perpetuated through biopolitical modes of pow...
Nov 25, 2025•45 min
In this lecture I present Religious Zionism, the right-wing religious nationalist movement, which despite representing 12-16% of Israel’s population, has a prominent and influential place in the current “fully” right-wing government. In contradistinction to previous research, I argue that this movement, which initiated and led the settlement movement in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, is best understood not as a fundamentalist movement, but as a religious romantic nationalist enterprise tha...
Nov 17, 2025•57 min
In this presentation, Professor Yacobi aims to discuss settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine/Israel, while exploring the different spatial and political typologies developed during the last few decades. He will discuss how colonial planning has been used as a tool of social, demographic, and spatial control and how Palestinian claims for the right to the city are meaningful political forms of protest. The presentation will refer to Palestinian cities (such as Lydda) that were transformed int...
Nov 10, 2025•42 min
This talk explores the notion of obligation towards others at the intersection of Jewish feminist thought and the lived religious practices of Sephardi women in Israel. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and her involvement in Arevot — the only Sephardi feminist beit midrash in Israel — Dr Cohen examines how women who engage in practices of blessing, healing, and intercessory prayer construct a moral and spiritual authority grounded in caregiving, vulnerability, and responsibility for others. Foc...
Nov 10, 2025•46 min
Although overshadowed by the scale of atrocities in Gaza since October 2023, employment and workers’ rights significantly affect individual lives, non-citizen workers, and the region’s political economy The scale of atrocities in Gaza since October 2023 has overshadowed less catastrophic issues such as employment and workers’ rights. Yet these concerns, while less urgent, significantly affect individual lives, non-citizen workers, and the region’s political economy. Key developments include the ...
Oct 23, 2025•53 min
By situating Hebrew textbooks for adults within their historical and social contexts, this lecture sheds light on the intricate relationship between pedagogy, national identity, and the challenges faced by immigrants adapting to a new homeland. Employing the concept of Entangled Histories, it connects global pedagogical knowledge of language instruction with the unique adaptations developed in Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel for adult learners. Through an examination of Hebrew textbo...
May 29, 2025•49 min
What emotional traits are essential for building a nation? More broadly, are there such things as ‘national emotions,’ and if so, what are they? In this lecture, I will explore these questions by analysing the Zionist case through the lens of the history of emotions. I will examine emotions where the national dimension is evident, such as honour and love of the homeland, alongside emotions that may seem less directly national, like fear and happiness.
May 15, 2025•49 min
The seminar explores the discursive mapping of far-right constituents within the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history, formed under Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership after the five elections held between 2019 and 2022. The Religious Zionism Party and Jewish Power have consistently been at the centre of heated debate—not only because their leaders hold critical ministerial positions, including finance and national security, which gained heightened relevance in the aftermath of October 7th...
May 12, 2025•42 min
A book launch event marking the publication of Yaacov Yadgar's new book, To Be a Jewish State: Zionism as the New Judaism. The author in conversation with Amnon Ray-Krakotzkin
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 10 min
This lecture examines the commercial legacy of the Ḥibshūsh family, a prominent Yemenite Jewish dynasty that played a pivotal role in the Red Sea basin trade from the 1880s to the 1970s Utilizing a rich archive of primary sources, this global micro-historical study illuminates the intricate Jewish-Arab commercial networks that flourished across geopolitical boundaries, encompassing Yemen, Mandatory Palestine, Israel, Ethiopia, and beyond. By analyzing the Ḥibshūsh family's extensive business ope...
Dec 06, 2024•1 hr 5 min
How does the global entrepreneurial discourse, which advocates for a neoliberal, individualistic, and future-oriented identity, intersects with a state education system that seeks to establish a collectivist and ethno-national identity? Over the past two decades, the entrepreneurial ethos has gained prominence in state education systems across many countries, aiming to construct an entrepreneurial identity among children and youth. The entrepreneurial ideal is frequently regarded in sociological...
Nov 22, 2024•56 min
Israeli synagogues in mixed cities following the 1948 war, and their sovereign role This paper will focus on synagogues in the urban internal frontier in Israel following the 1948 war and the Nakba. Following the 1948 war and the collapse of Palestinian urbanity, several administrative initiatives were held by the authorities to demonstrate sovereignty in these urban internal frontiers. Among these initiatives were the establishment of new synagogues. Two significant features were highlighted in...
Nov 15, 2024•50 min
The Creation of Hebrew Music and its Origins The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on a very old story; so old that it became a myth. And since the distance between the Jewish present and the Jewish past was vast, the wish to make Palestine a home for a modern Jewish nation called for creating that nation anew. It was an immense claim that required an equally immense innovation. The lecture reexamines this well-known story by looking at some of the cultural innovations of Zionists - body cult...
Nov 06, 2024•54 min
Debates over housing and cemeteries in Jaffa. In the summer of 2020, protests erupted in Jaffa against a plan to build a homeless shelter on the site of the ancient Al-Isaaf Muslim cemetery, and in the following year, the community mobilized to protest a wave of housing demolitions. These were the latest in a long line of actions by the Muslim community opposing the sale and demolition of Muslim cemeteries and fighting to remain in their homes in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. This paper maps these struggles o...
Oct 30, 2024•48 min
Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist perceptions of Herod. Much is known from ancient authors and archaeological remains about the life and rule of Herod the Great (73-4 BCE), who was appointed king of Judaea by the Romans in 40 BCE. In later Christian mythology, Herod was depicted as an archetypical tyrant who had ordered a massacre of infants in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, but Jewish tradition was oblivious of the Christian myth and showed little interest in Herod until the nineteenth...
Oct 23, 2024•51 min
Contesting pacifist views and their implications today. In 1938, shortly after the November Reichspogromnacht, leaders of the Zionist movement turned to Gandhi with a request to support the Zionist enterprise in Eretz-Israel/Palestine. Gandhi, against their expectations, stated his strong objection to Zionism, suggesting that German Jews should stay in Germany and practice Satyagraha, even if it would result in massive martyrdom. In his response to Gandhi’s open letter, Buber questioned the wisd...
Oct 21, 2024•57 min
On judicial independence in Israel Israel was originally to have a Constitution, but it never did as the issue proved divisive on religious grounds, among others. An unwritten constitution developed in its place. This is the legal context of current constitutional debates, including on the constitutional status of religion in Israel. The solution was the adoption of chapters or Basic Laws, that together would form a constitution. What are the Basic Laws – an exercise of a constitutional authorit...
Mar 23, 2023•35 min
On Zionism's relation to Science Focusing on the relationship between Zionism and science in the first two decades of the Zionist movement, the argument of this paper is threefold. First, that a relationship was established with the very inception of the Zionist movement. Second, it is characterized by a duality, a tension between a highly pragmatic scientific attitude, on the one hand, namely science conceived as ‘engineering,’ as the principal instrument of national construction, and simultane...
Mar 23, 2023•39 min
Neta Schramm discusses the (non-ideological) "think Zionism" stances of two leading Israeli figures. Back in the days when the Israeli labour party enjoyed its dominance, two prominent agenda-setters in Israel shared an unpopular position: Zionism does not define nor embody Judaism. Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, two Orthodox Jews affiliated with different social and religious milieus, were unhappy about the theological overtones existing in most, or even all, streams of Zioni...
Dec 05, 2022•41 min
Maya Mark discusses Menachem Begin's commitment to Liberalism The Military Government over the Arab citizens of Israel was established several months after the founding of the state, and ended late in 1966. Although it was initially driven by security considerations and fears concerning the Arab citizens’ involvement in hostile activities, its political and economic usefulness to the government and particularly to the ruling party, Mapai, became increasingly apparent over time. The talk will foc...
Nov 30, 2022•41 min
Hillel Cohen discusses his new book on Mizrahim, Arabs, and Asheknazim in Israel The prominence of Mizrahi Jews as perpetrators of violent acts against Palestinians that have topped the headlines in recent years was the starting point of my recent study. The media coverage and public denunciation of these incidents are usually accompanied by reference to the attackers’ Mizrahi origins, frequently invoking controversy among the commentators: Does ‘Mizrahi culture’ generate excessive violence towa...
Nov 21, 2022•52 min
On the political theology of "illiberal democracy" The rise of right-wing ‘populist’ parties has generated considerable anxiety over the future of liberal democracy in countries ranging from India and Turkey to Israel, Hungary, Brazil, and the United States, among others. This talk will attend to the political-theological dimensions of what has variously been called post-liberalism, illiberal democracy, or populism (a usage the speaker will contest) by considering the ways in which champions of ...
Nov 10, 2022•43 min
Gabriel Schwake discusses his new book dealing with urban planning along the green line. Concealed within the walls of settlements along the Green Line, the border between Israel and the occupied West-Bank, is a complex history of territoriality, privatisation, and multifaceted class dynamics. Since the late 1970s, the state aimed to expand the heavily populated coastal area eastwards into the occupied Palestinian territories, granting favoured groups of individuals, developers, and entrepreneur...
Nov 03, 2022•56 min
Tilde Rosmer (Zayed University) discusses the history and politics of the Islamic Movement in Israel. The Islamic Movement in Israel was established in the early 1980s by and for Palestinian citizens of Israel. It has a non-violent approach focusing on providing its community with grassroots Islamization, as well as catering to this community’s socio-economic needs. Its trifecta of goals is to protect Palestinian land, religious sites, and people. In response to the shifting realities of the Isr...
Oct 19, 2022•41 min
Gideon Katz discusses some of the mure surprising aspect of Israeli secularism The fear of Judaism is an important theme in Israeli culture. By analyzing Israeli dystopias and essays we have the chance to “look” closely at this fear, and its images. The main one is the image on Judaism as the Israeli unconsciousness that ambush to the secular identity. This central image tells us something about the roots of the fear. Gideon Katz is an associate professor in Ben-Gurion Research Institute at Ben-...
May 27, 2022•39 min
Nitzan Levobic discusses Zionism and melancholy, through the woks of Israel Zarchi The story of the early Zionist settlement in Palestine could be told from the viewpoint of failure and melancholia. An untold history of this period ignores the high rate of suicides and cases of clinical depression among the Zionist “pioneers”. The story of the forgotten author Israel Zarchi (1909-1947) will serve as a test case: During his short life he published six novels and seven collections of short stories...
May 18, 2022•48 min
The authors of a recently published book dealing with the history of Hollywood's relation with Israel discuss some of their findings From Frank Sinatra's early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg's present-day peace-making, Hollywood has long enjoyed a 'special relationship' with Israel. Based on a newly-published book by Columbia University Press, this paper outlines the ways in which Hollywood's moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades,...
May 12, 2022•44 min
Haggai Ram charts the (modern) history of Hashish in the Holy Land After a century of prohibition, we are witnessing a dramatic shift in cannabis culture and policy around the world from a “killer weed” and a cause of racial degeneration to an accepted recreational drug and a “magic medicine.” In his lecture, Haggai Ram will examine this global shift of cannabis by focusing on the social history of the drug (i.e., hashish and marijuana) in Palestine-Israel from the late nineteenth century to the...
Dec 01, 2021•54 min
