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: Eat...
Sep 19, 2015•24 min
Dr. Moshe Berent, a political scientist at the Open University, is the author of the recently published A Nation Like All Nations: Towards the the Establishment of an Israeli Republic . He reviews with host Gilad Halpern the marginal role that republicanism played in Zionist thought, and highlights its tensions with the idea of a Jewish state.
Sep 18, 2015•19 min
Dr. Hilla Dayan, a sociologist at Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands, is working to lay the theoretical and institutional foundations for the establishment of a new academic discipline, 'Occupation Studies' - in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course. She tells host Gilad Halpern what needs this discipline is designed to address, and what analytic void it's intended to fill, inside Israeli academia and beyond. Song: Shlomi Shaban & Chava Alberstein - Targil B...
Sep 11, 2015•22 min
Dr. Adam Rovner, an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver in the United States, recently had his book In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel published by New York University Press. Dr. Rovner speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the step-siblings of Zionism – six different attempts to establish a Jewish political entity in the 19th and 20th centuries – and why they all failed. Song: LessAcrobats - Time
Sep 04, 2015•23 min
Dr. Noa Lavie, a sociologist at the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, specializes in the impact of television on society, in Israel and beyond. She discusses with host Gilad Halpern her most recent research about reality television - how it's been shaped by forces like capitalism and art. Song: Riff Cohen - Helas
Aug 13, 2015•21 min
Noga Kadman, an Israeli researcher and tour guide, recently had her book, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 , published in English by Indiana University Press. Kadman sits down with host Gilad Halpern and traces the ruins of hundreds of Arab-Palestinian villages in the current physical landscape, and tries to place them in the discursive or ideological landscape of contemporary Israel. Song: Tislam - Hatzavim Porchim...
Aug 13, 2015•13 min
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.
Aug 07, 2015•19 min
Professor Meron Medzini, a Japanologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem but also, perhaps surprisingly, a biographer of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel between 1969-1974 - our very own Iron Lady. Professor Medzini's mother was a childhood friend of Meir, and Medzini served as her press secretary. His book is the work of a political scientist but is riddled with personal anecdotes that shed light into the virtually most prominent woman in the history of Zionism.
Aug 02, 2015•19 min
Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, author of numerous books including, very recently, Lincoln and the Jews: A history, which he co-edited with Benjamin Shapell. The book, which was published by St Martin's Press, recounts the relationship of the 16th president of the United States with a then still small and relatively uninfluential ethnic group, based on hundreds of archival items, some of them newly unveiled.
Aug 02, 2015•21 min
Dr. Gabriel Noah Brahm, associate professor of English at Northern Michigan University, is probably best known for co-editing the comprehensive The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel . Today he talks to host Gilad Halpern about his forthcoming book, which dissects the theoretical underpinnings of the writing of Israel-bashers in academia around the world.
Jul 24, 2015•24 min
Prof. Alon Confino, a historian at the University of Virginia and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, recently had his book A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide published in English by Yale University Press. Prof. Confino talks to host Gilad Halpern about the Nazi desire to remove the Jews not only from the present and the future, but also from the past.
Jul 17, 2015•22 min
Dr. Stefan Ihrig, a historian and post-doctoral fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, recently had his book Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination published in English by Harvard University Press. Dr. Ihrig tells host Gilad Halpern how rising Turkish nationalism in the wake of WWI served as valuable inspiration for the Nazis in the early Weimar years and beyond.
Jul 17, 2015•22 min
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.
Jul 09, 2015•15 min
Dr. Michal Segal Arnold, a lawyer and political scientist, wrote her PhD thesis at the University of Pennsylvania about the American Indian Movement, a Native American pressure group. She explains to host Gilad Halpern how she lived for a year as the only non-Indian in Reservation Prairie Island in south-east Minnesota.
Jul 09, 2015•23 min
Omri Grinberg, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, tells host Gilad Halpern about his research that focuses on the ethnography of the so-called Palestinian "children of the junction" – teenage boys from the West Bank who slip into Israel to work as peddlers.
Jun 26, 2015•20 min
Dr. Liora Halperin, assistant professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, author of Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism and Language Diversity in Palestine 1920-1948 , tells host Gilad Halpern about the ideological as well as the practical aspects of the inculcation of the Hebrew language in pre-state Israel.
Jun 26, 2015•19 min
Dr. Amira Halperin, a communications scholar who has recently completed her PhD thesis at the University of Westminster, UK, is the first ever Israeli researcher to study the UK Palestinian diaspora. She discusses this community's use of new media with host Gilad Halpern.
Jun 20, 2015•19 min
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.
Jun 19, 2015•19 min
Prof. Yosef Salmon, a Jewish history professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of Do Not Provoke Providence: Orthodoxy In The Grip Of Nationalism , which was recently published in English by Academic Studies Press. He explores the history of the relationship between Zionism and Judaism with host Gilad Halpern.
Jun 11, 2015•19 min
Dr. Edna Barromi Perlman, a photography scholar and professor at the University of Haifa, speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the landscape photography in Palestine/Eretz Israel/the Holy Land, and how it became, just like anything else in the history of this place, an effective political and ideological tool.
Jun 11, 2015•20 min
Dr. Edna Barromi Perlman talks about the landscape photography in Israel and how it became an effective political and ideological tool.
Jun 11, 20150
Nachum Shiloh, who's about to complete his PhD at Tel Aviv University's Department of History, talks to host Gilad Halpern about his research that focuses on the history of Saudi elites in the first half of the 20th century. In our minds, Saudi Arabia, to this day, has been an ultraconservative, almost medieval society, with a clear hierarchy and a coercive leadership. But it turns out that is not exactly the case.
Jun 06, 2015•20 min
Prof. Roberta Ronsethal Kwall, a legal scholar and the founding director of the DePaul University College of Law, has just authored a new book entitled The Myth of the Cultural Jew – Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition . She explains to host Gilad Halpern why even the most secular Jews have imbibed the halakha , whether they like it or not.
Jun 05, 2015•26 min
Saudi Arabia has always seemed an ultraconservative society, with a clear hierarchy and a coercive leadership.
Jun 02, 2015•21 min
Dr. Susan Nashman Fraiman, an art historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, tells host Gilad Halpern about her recent research, which focuses on the emergence and evolution of candle-lighting practices – namely, the Shabbat Lamp – among the Jews of Ashkenaz.
May 22, 2015•16 min
Prof. Meir Amor, an Israeli sociologist teaching at Concordia University in Canada, has been a Mizrahi activist for decades, as well as a long-time researcher of the Mizrahi question. Prof. Amor talks to host Gilad Halpern about the principles of the Mizrahi struggle, theoretical as well as practical.
May 22, 2015•22 min
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.
May 15, 2015•25 min
Dr. Avi Bareli, a historian of Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, recently authored Authority and Participation in a New Democracy: Political Struggles in Mapai, Israel's Ruling Party, 1948-1953 . Dr. Bareli talks to host Gilad Halpern about opposition to Ben-Gurion's leadership from within the party, and how Israel's first prime minister was much less of a power-hungry, dictatorial leader than often thought.
May 15, 2015•18 min
Evaluating the Jewish-German philosopher's theories on totalitarianism through testimonies of Holocaust victims and survivors.
May 13, 20150
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.
May 09, 2015•21 min
