In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Dr. Marina Rustow who is the director of the Princeton Genizah Lab and the Khedouri A Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at Princeton. She is also the director of the program of Near Eastern Studies. We spoke at length about the Cairo Genizah and what its findings can tell us about the everyday lives of people in Medieval Cairo, the world, and more.

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Professor Uri Bar-Joseph who is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa, an expert on Israeli intelligence, and the author of the book The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel. His book was recently adapted to a Netflix movie called The Angel and tells the story of Ashraf Marwan, who was the son in law of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser and ultimately ended up playing a key role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War becoming one of the greatest spies in modern history. 

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with director Kamal Hachkar who made the film Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah.

The film documents the story of the Berber Jews from the city of Tinghir who left in the 1960s with the majority of them winding up in Israel. In the film, Kamal travels to Morocco to interview the people of Tinghir about their past lives coexisting with Jews and he also makes his way to Israel where he found many of the people who left and succeeds in capturing the memories of their past lives

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad who is the Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies and an Associate Professor at Ohio State University. He is one of the foremost authorities on early Arabic and his work focuses on the languages and writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia and the ancient Near East. The focus of our discussion was his work researching the Safaitic inscriptions, which are concentrated in the basalt desert of southern Syria and northern Jordan. 

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Dr. Peter Webb who is a university lecturer of Arabic literature at Universiteit Leiden. Dr. Webb’s research focuses on literature and culture of pre-modern Islam and in this podcast, we discuss the origins of Arabness and his book Imaging the Arabs – Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam. 

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Aaron Rubin, who is The Malvin and Lea Bank Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Jewish Studies, and Linguistics at Penn State University. Professor Rubin is one of the leading scholars of the Modern South Arabian languages and in this episode we discussed his research on Jibbali and Mehri.  In our talk we discuss the history and development of these languages, how they can inform of us other ancient Semitic languages, and their current states.

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In this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Geoffrey Khan, who is the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge.

Over the last few years, Professor Khan has been working to document the last native speakers of Neo-Aramaic around the world as the language inches toward extinction.

In our talk we discuss the history of Aramaic, his efforts to document its last speakers, and the historical and cultural importance and impact of preserving this language.

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In this episode, I spoke with Ed Greenstein who is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Bar-Ilan University, where he served as Professor since 2006, headed the Institute for Jewish Biblical Interpretation and held the Meiser Chair in Biblical Studies. He also serves as Chair of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies.

We spoke at length about his research into the Near Eastern Fugitive Hero narrative or pattern, which was an ancient Near Eastern story-telling pattern that appears in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and is found in nearly all of the stories of the Hebrew Bible's major heroes. You can read a recent paper he's written on the topic below and watch one of his lectures:

The Fugitive Hero Story Pattern in Mesopotamia

A Fugitive Aramean Was My Father

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In this episode, I spoke with Guy Sharett who is the host of the Streetwise Hebrew podcast presented by TLV1. The Streetwise Hebrew podcast helps students learn and connect with  Hebrew spoken in the streets of Israel, offering a fresh take on what Hebrew language learning can be. The Streetwise Hebrew podcast is available on Apple, Android, and other podcasting platforms.

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In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking again with Dr. Jonas Sibony who is a professor of Modern Hebrew at the University of Strasbourg and a Semitic languages expert. We discussed a recent lecture and paper he presented on Moroccan Arabic's influence on Modern Hebrew spoken in Israel and how peripheral Hebrew (Hebrew spoken by Jews of Moroccan descent) developed on the social and economic peripheries. 

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