Tel Aviv Review

By TLV1 Studios

Society & Culture Religion & Spirituality Judaism

What's Tel Aviv Review about?

Showcasing the latest developments in the realm of academic and professional research and literature, about the Middle East and global affairs. We discuss Israeli, Arab and Palestinian society, the Jewish world, the Middle East and its conflicts, and issues of global and public affairs with scholars, writers and deep-thinkers.

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Tel Aviv Review episodes:

04.22.2024
Whither the Palestinian Citizens of Israel?
The already volatile situation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel has been exacerbated by the October 7th massacre and the war with Hamas that ensued. Dr Ahmad Agbaria of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas,...
04.15.2024
The Undying Legacy of Frantz Fanon
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.
04.08.2024
Has the Jewish Nation-State Model Run Its Course?
The October 7th attack undermined some of the basic assumptions Israelis have had about the tenets of their sovereignty. Will the crisis send the country into a post-nation-state phase? Dr. Julie Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Tel Aviv...
04.01.2024
Israel/Palestine: A Gaze From Below
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.
03.25.2024
The Prophet: On Judah Magnes' Politics and Theology
Dr David Barak-Gorodetsky, Lecturer in Israel Studies at the University of Haifa and the Director of the Ruderman Program for American-Jewish Studies, discusses his book Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist, a biography of one of the more...
03.18.2024
Rabbi Binyamin: Zionism’s Ultimate Contrarian
Dr Avi-Ram Tzoreff, a Polonsky Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his new book R. Binyamin, Binationalism and Counter-Zionism, dedicated to one of the most unusual Jewish and Zionist intellectuals of the 20th century. The episode is sponsored by...
03.11.2024
Their War, Our War
Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, discusses his new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence. What parallels can be drawn between Ukraine’s war with Russia and Israel’s with Hamas?
03.04.2024
Jews for Palestine, The First Generation
Dr Geoffrey Levin, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University, discusses his book Our Palestine Problem: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978. The book looks at a network of early anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian thought leaders, active in...
02.26.2024
The Time They Wrote Old Dixie Up
Yael Sternhell, Professor of History and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, discusses her book, War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War, a historians’ history which looks at Washington’s Civil War archive, rather than through it.
02.19.2024
People of the Books
Yosef Halper, a legendary Tel Aviv bookdealer, discusses his book The Bibliomaniacs: Tales from a Tel Aviv Bookseller.
02.05.2024
Climate Change: A Middle Eastern Perspective (Rerun)
Dan Rabinowitz, Professor of Sociology at Tel Aviv University, discusses his 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...
01.29.2024
Staying Alive: Mental Health in the Wake of October 7th
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....
01.15.2024
The Many Lives of Bruno Schulz
Benjamin Balint, an award-winning American-Israeli writer based at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his book Bruno Schulz: An Artist, A Murder, and the Hijacking of History. The literary legacy of Schulz, the so-called Polish Kafka, has been the subject of...
01.08.2024
Schooling the Nation
Hilary Falb-Kalisman, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, discusses her book, Teachers as State Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East.
12.18.2023
The Third Way to Peace and Justice
Dr Limor Yehuda, lecturer in law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Collective Equality: Human Rights and Democracy in Ethno-National Conflicts. Taking national identity seriously, she charts a new way of thinking about statehood and partition.
12.11.2023
“We Are All Still Living October 7th”
Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz newspaper and a resident of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, survived the October 7th massacre with his wife and young daughters. He talks about his harrowing story, about Israel’s systemic failure to protect its citizens, what...
12.04.2023
Before and After 1948: Gaza, a Prehistory
Dr. Dotan Halevy, environmental and social historian of the late Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses the history of Gaza from the mid-19th century until today. How did Gaza come to encapsulate...
11.13.2023
“Hamas Is Not Going Anywhere”
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...
11.06.2023
Hope. Yes, Hope
Dr Oded Adomi Leshem (rethink-hope.com), political psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book Hope Amid Conflict: Philosophical and Psychological Explorations. The book was published in eerie proximity to Hamas’ Oct. 7th attack, which many see as having delivered a...
10.02.2023
Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Arabs: A Bilateral Triangle?
Prof. Hillel Cohen, historian of the Middle East at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book Enemies, a love story: Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews from the Rise of Zionism to the Present, an attempt to define Mizrahi...
09.25.2023
High and Holy (Rerun)
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.
09.18.2023
Civil Society in an Islamic State: The Case of Charity in Saudi Arabia (Rerun)
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.
09.11.2023
Mutual Exclusion: The Plight and Hope of a Left-Wing Religious Zionist (Rerun)
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...
09.04.2023
Jerusalem as a Contested City: Role Model or Cautionary Tale?
Dr Marik Shtern, political geographer and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy research, discusses his co-authored paper “Shared Spaces in Contested Cities: A Model for Analysis and Action.” Jerusalem is, at the same time, the most segregated...
08.28.2023
Land and Power: Understanding How the Politics of Space Shape Our Lives
Professor Oren Yiftachel discusses more than a decade of his scholarship on colonial regimes, identities and futures in Israel and Palestine through the lens of geography and urban planning.
08.21.2023
Intractable Conflicts: Between Temptation and Resistance
Daniel Bar-Tal, professor (emeritus) of social psychology at Tel Aviv University, discusses his new book, Sinking into the Honey Trap: The Case of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. How can social psychology contribute to our understanding of a conflict that never ends? The...
08.14.2023
Meet Jerusalem’s Top Catholic Monk
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...
08.07.2023
Detente? Christian-Jewish Relations in the Postwar Era
Dr Karma Ben-Johanan, religion scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in modern Christianity and Jewish-Christian relations, discusses her new book Jacob's Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish relations after Vatican II. What were the implications of the Vatican's new approach to Judaism,...
07.31.2023
What Do Israeli Haredim Really Care About?
Dr Nechumi Yaffe of Tel Aviv University’s School of Social and Policy Studies, the first ultra-Orthodox woman to serve as a faculty member in an Israeli university, discusses her research on ultra-Orthodox “capabilities” – a tool used by social scientists...
07.24.2023
The Forces of Nature
Irus Braverman, Professor of Law, Geography and Environmental Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, discusses her book Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine/Israel. How does Israel's management of nature fit into its broader settler logic? Get...
07.17.2023
Revolution and National Liberation
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...
07.10.2023
Withdrawal: The Continuation of Occupation by Other Means?
Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs, discusses his book Understanding Territorial Withdrawals: Israeli Occupations and Exits, offering a cross-section examination of several cases of territorial expansion and realignment throughout Israel’s history.
07.03.2023
Man of the Night
Joseph Berger, formerly a New York Times journalist, discusses his book Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, the first English-language biography of the iconic Jewish intellectual and Holocaust author.
06.26.2023
This Is Israel
Isabel Kershner, Israel reporter for the New York Times, discusses her new book The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul. This episode is made possible by the Israel office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which promotes peace, freedom, and justice...
06.19.2023
Arabs, Israelis or Palestinians?
The Arab community in Israel is at a crossroads: the most right-wing government in the country’s history, and its plan for a judicial overhaul, casts doubt on the fragile relations between the state and its largest minority, as well as...
06.12.2023
The Other ‘National Home’
Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Professor of History and Gender Studies at MIT, specializing in Turkish and Armenian history, discusses Armenian demands for a “national home” in the newly founded Turkish Republic, in the 1920s.
06.05.2023
The Poetics of the Political, the Politics of the Poetic
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Professor (Emerita) of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book Figuring Jerusalem: Politics and Poetics in the Sacred Center, a reading of five constitutive Jewish texts that paints a comprehensive and thought-provoking portrait...
05.29.2023
Haredim in Israel: Success, but at What Cost?
Kimmy Caplan, Professor of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University, discusses his co-edited book Contemporary Israeli Haredi Society: Profiles, Trends and Challenges, building on an analysis combining sociological observations with a historical long-view. This episode is made possible by the...
05.22.2023
An Israeli’s Home Is His Fortress
Hagar Kotef, Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London, discusses her book The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, analyzing the concept of “home” as both a physical endeavor and an object of attachment, against the backdrop of the...
05.15.2023
Where Do We Go From Here?
Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times, discusses his new book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. How have the failings of the late 20th-century economic system affected governance, and vice-versa?
05.01.2023
Coalonialism (Rerun)
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...
04.24.2023
The Commodification of Citizenship
Dr Yossi Harpaz, sociologist at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Citizenship 2.0 and how the relationship between citizenship and other sociological categories, such as migration and national identity, has evolved.
04.17.2023
The Non-zionist Zionist
Jonathan Graubart, professor of political science at San Diego State University, discusses his book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, offering a contemporary re-evaluation of early 20th-century thought on Jewish sovereignty and statehood. This episode is part...
04.10.2023
Multi-Layered Palestinian Presence (Rerun)
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
04.03.2023
Emotional Zionists
Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book Zionism: An Emotional State, an interdisciplinary attempt to study the history of Jewish nationalism through a history of emotions lens. Join us on Patreon and help support the...
03.27.2023
Judaism and Liberalism: Brothers From Another Mother
Dr Shivi Greenfield, political theorist and Deputy Director General for Strategy and Planning, discusses his book Judaism and Liberalism: A Metaphysical Tale of Two Siblings. In it, he claims that not only can the two coexist, they also stem from the...
03.20.2023
From the Sea They Came: Migration, Humanity and International Law
Itamar Mann, Professor of Law at the University of Haifa, specializing, among other things, in international law and legal theory, discusses his book Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law.
03.13.2023
Safed: A Reality and a Metaphor
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Professor of Jewish History at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in religious and political thought in early modern and contemporary Judaism, discusses his new book Mishna Consciousness, Bible Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture. The book considers...
03.06.2023
Public Enemy No. 1
Yuli Novak, the former director of Breaking the Silence, the IDF veterans’ organization, reflects in her new memoir, Who Do You Think You Are, on her 2012-2017 tenure at the helm of the most reviled human rights group in Israel. This...
02.27.2023
The “History Will Judge Us” Edition
In this first-in-all-of-human-history, cross-over edition of TLV1’s Tel Aviv Review and TLV1’s The Promised Podcast, we discuss the open letter of more than 160 renowned historians of Jews, Judaism and/or Israel (“Israel on the Edge of an Abyss”), which opens,...

What's Tel Aviv Review about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Tel Aviv Review episodes:

Whither the Palestinian Citizens of Israel?

The Undying Legacy of Frantz Fanon

Has the Jewish Nation-State Model Run Its Course?

Israel/Palestine: A Gaze From Below

The Prophet: On Judah Magnes' Politics and Theology

Rabbi Binyamin: Zionism’s Ultimate Contrarian

Their War, Our War

Jews for Palestine, The First Generation

The Time They Wrote Old Dixie Up

People of the Books

Climate Change: A Middle Eastern Perspective (Rerun)

Staying Alive: Mental Health in the Wake of October 7th

The Many Lives of Bruno Schulz

Schooling the Nation

The Third Way to Peace and Justice

“We Are All Still Living October 7th”

Before and After 1948: Gaza, a Prehistory

“Hamas Is Not Going Anywhere”

Hope. Yes, Hope

Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Arabs: A Bilateral Triangle?

High and Holy (Rerun)

Civil Society in an Islamic State: The Case of Charity in Saudi Arabia (Rerun)

Mutual Exclusion: The Plight and Hope of a Left-Wing Religious Zionist (Rerun)

Jerusalem as a Contested City: Role Model or Cautionary Tale?

Land and Power: Understanding How the Politics of Space Shape Our Lives

Intractable Conflicts: Between Temptation and Resistance

Meet Jerusalem’s Top Catholic Monk

Detente? Christian-Jewish Relations in the Postwar Era

What Do Israeli Haredim Really Care About?

The Forces of Nature

Revolution and National Liberation

Withdrawal: The Continuation of Occupation by Other Means?

Man of the Night

This Is Israel

Arabs, Israelis or Palestinians?

The Other ‘National Home’

The Poetics of the Political, the Politics of the Poetic

Haredim in Israel: Success, but at What Cost?

An Israeli’s Home Is His Fortress

Where Do We Go From Here?

Coalonialism (Rerun)

The Commodification of Citizenship

The Non-zionist Zionist

Multi-Layered Palestinian Presence (Rerun)

Emotional Zionists

Judaism and Liberalism: Brothers From Another Mother

From the Sea They Came: Migration, Humanity and International Law

Safed: A Reality and a Metaphor

Public Enemy No. 1

The “History Will Judge Us” Edition