Dr Hagai Boas, head of the Science, Technology and Civilization Program at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, discusses his co-edited volume Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-Legal, Political and Empirical Analysis.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Israeli film scholar Dan Chyutin observes that Israeli film once reflected secular Israeli society, and religion appeared mainly as stage dressing. But in recent decades, a steady stream of films have put religion, especially ultra-orthodox Judaism, in the foreground.

Is this a mirror of Israeli society? Or just an excuse to discuss our favorite films?

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Israel's 2018 Democracy Index, an annual survey of the health of Israeli democracy, shows off the deepest contradictions in Israeli life.

Tamar Hermann of the Israeli Democracy Institute explains why half the country thinks democracy is endangered but half do not, why the left-right divide is now seen as the most threatening division in Israeli society, but the number of Israeli Jews who think things are going well has been rising for over a decade.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was brought to you by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent center of research and action dedicated to strengthening the foundations of Israeli democracy.

Derek Penslar, Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book, Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, an addition to more than 200 biographies of the founder of Zionism. Sometimes, there's a very fine line between an eccentric and a visionary.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Jeffrey S. Gurock, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, delves into the realm of counterfactual history in his recently published The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jews, 1938-1967. Talking with host Gilad Halpern, he imagines a very different existence for the community had the Second World War taken a different course.

Music:

Noa Shemer - Noa

Dr. Seth Anziska, a lecturer in Jewish-Muslim relations at University College, London and a visiting fellow at the US/Middle East Project, discusses his book Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.

Former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf discusses her book War of Return, arguing that the conflict will never end until the world recognizes that Palestinian refugees, as they are usually defined, do not have the right to return to their pre-1948 homes. Sparks fly.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr Jonathan Rokem, a geographer and architecture scholar at University College, London, discusses his book Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities, which encompasses 15 comparative studies of the meeting point between urban planning and politics.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

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 the 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.

For further reading click here and here.

Song: Eatliz – Sunshine

Idan Barir, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking and a translator for the Van Leer Institute's Maktoob series of Arabic literature in Hebrew, tells the story of the Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority in Iraqi Kurdistan who, in 2014, fell victim to an Islamic State rampage.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review is also supported by the Public Discourse Grant from the Israel Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening the field of Israel Studies in order to promote knowledge and enhance understanding of modern Israel.