Tel Aviv Review

Israel's Bedouin and the line between tradition and modernity

Dr. Sarab Abu Rabia-Queder, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University, specializes in the impact of higher education on Bedouin women. Herself of Bedouin origin, she talks about the nomadic people of Israel who straddle the line between tradition and modernity.

Who owns the media in Israel?

Prof. Amit Schejter, head of the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University, recently completed a study, soon to be published, about electronic media concentration in Israel between 1984-2013.

Music:

Faith No More - EasyItzchak Klepter - Shir Ahava BeduiFortis - Red Me'al Masach Hatelevisia Sheli

What did the Crusaders ever learn from us?

Dr. Jonathan Rubin, a historian of the Medieval Levant at Tel Aviv University, talks about how the crusaders' encounters with local societies - beyond the initial indignation - led to theological, economic, and scientific developments.

Ramle remade: The Israelization of an Arab town

Dr. Danna Piroyansky, author of the recently published 'Ramle Remade: The Israelisation of an Arab Town 1948-1967,' talks about the very Israeli concept of 'mixed cities' - the result of government-sanctioned mixing of Jewish and Arab populations.

Music:

Bombino - AmidineNeil Young - Heart Of GoldRodriguez - I Wonder

Middle-of-the-road Judaism

Dr. Ephraim Chamiel, a lecturer and scholar of Jewish thought in the modern era, talks about his book, The Middle Way: The Emergence of Modern Religious Trends in Nineteenth-Century Judaism. Which Jewish philosophers sought to harmonize modernity and tradition?

Don't mention the 'A' word

Dr. Sonja Narunsky-Laden, a research fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Johannesburg, discusses to what extent the legacy of Apartheid is evoked in the contemporary Israel-Palestine debate in South Africa.

Music:

Berry Saharof & Re'a Mochiach - Ma Lach YechidaUzi Navon VeMakarim feat. Efrat Gosh - Im Ze Moocrach Liheyot HasofThe Specials - Free Nelson Mandela

Portrait of the father of a nation

Prof. Anita Shapira, one of Israel's most eminent historians of Zionism, discusses her newly published biography of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, with host Gilad Halpern.

Hebrew literature and the origins of Israeli malaise

Yigal Schwarz, professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, discusses his latest book, The Zionist Paradox: Hebrew Literature and Israeli Identity, which analyzes Israel's unique conceptualization of place through five canonical literary works.

Requiem for a bygone Jewish-Arab coexistence

Prof. Menachem Klein, a Middle East history professor at Bar-Ilan University, discusses his recent book Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron. Jewish-Arab common identity in Palestine was later subsumed by mutually opposing national identities.

The Holocaust: The litmus test of the Israeli media

Dr. Oren Meyers of the Department of Communications at the University of Haifa, co-author of Communicating Awe: Media Memory and Holocaust Commemoration, analyzes the disproportionate role Holocaust-related imagery plays in the Israeli media debate.

Music:

Paul McCartneyEagle Eye Cherry - Save TonightCee Lo Green - Forget You

Palestinian students and the struggle for nationhood

Dr. Ido Zelkovitz, a Middle East scholar at the University of Haifa, talks about his new book Students and Resistance in Palestine: Books, Guns and Politics, which explores the Palestinian student movement from a historical as well as sociological perspective.

Ecologically underprivileged: Environmental justice in Israel

Dr. Neta Lipman, deputy director of the Israeli Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, talks us about environmental justice: Is the green cause inextricably linked to social justice? And if so, how does it play out in America and Israel?

Music:

Coldplay - MiraclesSoak - Be a noBodyNeil Young - Be the Rain

In 1948, Palestine saw Jewish refugees too

Dr. Nurit Cohen Levinovsky, a historian and author of Jewish Refugees During the War of Independence, tells the story of the tens of thousands of Israeli Jews who became refugees during the War of Independence.

How the Bible became holy

Michael Satlow, a religious and Judaic studies professor at Brown University (US) and author of How the Bible Became Holy, sheds some light on the selection and canonization processes over the centuries that brought the Bible to the special status it holds today.

Music:

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna KnowMuse - InvincibleDavid Bowie - China Girl

You're in the army now: How Judaism fell back in love with the military

Prof. Stuart Cohen, a political scientist specializing in diplomatic and military history, explains how World War One - of all historical events - radically changed the attitude of Jews towards warfare.

Holocaust research: From academia to the public realm

Prof. Deborah Dwork, a historian of the Holocaust and Director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in the United States, discusses the production of knowledge about the Holocaust in an academic environment.

Music:

Muse - InvincibleDavid Bowie - China GirlYehuda Poliker - HaTachana Haba'a TreblinkaHachalonot Hagvohim - Chayal Shel Shokolad

Why the Diaspora is good for the Jews

Prof. Alan Wolfe, a political scientist at Boston College, explores why so few Jews in the West acknowledge their good fortune, and how their relationship to their home countries and to Israel evolves as the memory of the Holocaust wanes.

Narratives of betrayal in Holocaust survivors' memoirs

Prof. Dennis Klein, a historian at Kean University in New Jersey, discusses the main themes that feature in memoirs written by Holocaust survivors - chief among them, a narrative of betrayal.

Music:

Ibey - RiverMarina Maximilain Blumin - MaurinMatisyahu - Jerusalem

Political science: Early Israeli-German scientific exchanges

Prof. Ute Deichmann, a historian of science at Ben Gurion University, tells us to what extent exchanges between Israeli and German scientists in the early years of the state paved the way for the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Why secular people are more religious than they think

Prof. Benjamin Beit Hallahmi of the department of psychology at Haifa University tries to establish why, 250 years into the age of secularism, religion still plays a crucial role in the lives of people everywhere.

Music:

Blonde Redhead - The One I LoveBob Marley - One LoveShuly Rand - Mochin De'Katnoot