Israel Studies Seminar

This lecture examines the commercial legacy of the Ḥibshūsh family, a prominent Yemenite Jewish dynasty that played a pivotal role in the Red Sea basin trade from the 1880s to the 1970s Utilizing a rich archive of primary sources, this global micro-historical study illuminates the intricate Jewish-Arab commercial networks that flourished across geopolitical boundaries, encompassing Yemen, Mandatory Palestine, Israel, Ethiopia, and beyond. By analyzing the Ḥibshūsh family's extensive business operations, particularly in coffee trade and textile imports, we gain novel insights into Jewish-Muslim relations from a transnational, commercial perspective. This approach reveals the nuanced interactions between Arab-Asian, Israeli, and African communities in the Red Sea region, offering a fresh historical perspective within the contexts of colonial rule (Italian and British) and the Yemenite monarchy. While existing scholarship on Israel's engagement with the Red Sea region and Africa has predominantly focused on political, and security dimensions, this study shifts the lens to long-established Jewish business networks. It explores how Yemenite Jewish entrepreneurs, exemplified by the Ḥibshūsh family, maintained and adapted trade routes connecting Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and Israel before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This research contributes significantly to our understanding of Israel's economic history and its commercial ties in the region. By examining how the Ḥibshūsh family navigated shifting political landscapes while sustaining cross-cultural business relationships, we gain deeper insights into the role of Yemenite Jews in shaping Israel's early economic connections in the region; the continuity and adaptation of pre-state Jewish trade networks in the post-1948 era; and the interplay between Israel's diplomatic efforts and private commercial initiatives in Africa. Through this focused study, we illuminate a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of Israeli-African relations, demonstrating how commerce served as a bridge between cultures and nations in this strategically vital region.

How does the global entrepreneurial discourse, which advocates for a neoliberal, individualistic, and future-oriented identity, intersects with a state education system that seeks to establish a collectivist and ethno-national identity? Over the past two decades, the entrepreneurial ethos has gained prominence in state education systems across many countries, aiming to construct an entrepreneurial identity among children and youth. The entrepreneurial ideal is frequently regarded in sociological literature as part of the neoliberal culture serving the global free market economy. The global entrepreneurial discourse promotes neoliberal values which include future orientation, personal autonomy and individualisation. Concurrently, state education systems strive to shape a national identity. In Israel, this objective is uniquely translated to promote an ethno-national, Zionist, Jewish- Israeli identity. The paradox between entrepreneurialism and ethno-nationalism raises an important question: How does the global entrepreneurial discourse, which advocates for a neoliberal, individualistic, and future- oriented identity, intersects with a state education system that seeks to establish a collectivist and ethno-national identity? The study followed the translation of the global entrepreneurial discourse into the local Israeli state education system (mamlakhti) among policymakers, educators, and within educational spaces through a multi- focal qualitative research. Findings reveal a hybrid entrepreneurial-nationalistic ideal emerging in Israeli education, merging neoliberalism and ethno-nationalism, and combining future orientation with Jewish-Israeli narratives and symbols. As neoliberal and ethno-national narratives are weaved together, the local discourse reclaims and reproduces social in/exclusion, marking social boundaries and perpetuating inequality. The research contributes to the understanding of how discourse (re)shapes the social, by showing how a global educational discourse is redesigned and translated within a socio-political context.

Israeli synagogues in mixed cities following the 1948 war, and their sovereign role This paper will focus on synagogues in the urban internal frontier in Israel following the 1948 war and the Nakba. Following the 1948 war and the collapse of Palestinian urbanity, several administrative initiatives were held by the authorities to demonstrate sovereignty in these urban internal frontiers. Among these initiatives were the establishment of new synagogues. Two significant features were highlighted in these newly constructed Israeli synagogues – their architectural design and location within urban space. Synagogues were built in monumental dimensions and were located in locations where they would overshadow other religious buildings and extract Israeli surveillance over the surviving Palestinians in the urban sphere. Thus, the synagogues, as well as the communities that gathered around them, were harnessed into the Zionist colonial policy in the urban sphere and served as national-sovereign agents. This phenomenon is demonstrated through close analysis of archival documents in several urban frontiers in the State of Israel and point out the implications of this shift in various contexts by illustrating five examples of synagogues in Haifa, and Jaffa, Ramla. These examples demonstrate the shift in synagogues role within Jewish society and theology – from places of worship and longevity to the destroyed Temple to symbols of Jewish sovereignty. Moreover, these synagogues demonstrate a shift in the role of religion in Jewish society following the establishment of the state of Israel.

The Creation of Hebrew Music and its Origins The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on a very old story; so old that it became a myth. And since the distance between the Jewish present and the Jewish past was vast, the wish to make Palestine a home for a modern Jewish nation called for creating that nation anew. It was an immense claim that required an equally immense innovation. The lecture reexamines this well-known story by looking at some of the cultural innovations of Zionists - body culture, space, art, music - and considering their fraught legacy a century later.

Debates over housing and cemeteries in Jaffa. In the summer of 2020, protests erupted in Jaffa against a plan to build a homeless shelter on the site of the ancient Al-Isaaf Muslim cemetery, and in the following year, the community mobilized to protest a wave of housing demolitions. These were the latest in a long line of actions by the Muslim community opposing the sale and demolition of Muslim cemeteries and fighting to remain in their homes in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. This paper maps these struggles over everyday spaces of living and dying from the 1950s to the present day and investigates how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protests as an urban citizenship mobilization. The aim of the paper is twofold: it seeks to demonstrate the inter connections between the history of colonialism, partition, new state formation, and contemporary urban conflict; and to theorize the role of the built environment that facilitates daily life, rituals, and mourning, in shaping urban citizenship under post/coloniality. The paper builds on a participatory ‘walk-along’ ethnography, interviews with community leaders and activists, as well as archival tracing of court rulings, newspaper reports, and spatial plans. Utilizing this framework, it will show how activists invoked and reinterpreted the right-to-the-city ideas; deploying creative spatial performances and appealing to municipal governance to demand a deeper geo-temporal right-to-the-city that encompasses its religious and historical dimensions.   Dr Michal Huss is a Leverhulme early career fellow and assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University. She researches spatial in/justice and struggles over urban planning and the right to the city.

Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist perceptions of Herod. Much is known from ancient authors and archaeological remains about the life and rule of Herod the Great (73-4 BCE), who was appointed king of Judaea by the Romans in 40 BCE. In later Christian mythology, Herod was depicted as an archetypical tyrant who had ordered a massacre of infants in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, but Jewish tradition was oblivious of the Christian myth and showed little interest in Herod until the nineteenth century, when he began to be seen by some as an example of a powerful Jew who had negotiated a line between subservience to the ruling power and service to his people. These Jewish depictions of Herod have mutated over the past two centuries under the influence of Zionist ideologies and in light of the establishment of the State of Israel and archaeological finds, and the image of Herod has been employed for markedly different and novel rhetorical purposes over recent years both by Israelis themselves and by others in relation to the actions of the Israeli state. Martin Goodman is Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a Supernumerary Fellow and former President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Among his books on Jewish and Roman history are Rome and Jerusalem (Allen Lane, 2007) and Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World (Yale University Press, 2024).

Contesting pacifist views and their implications today. In 1938, shortly after the November Reichspogromnacht, leaders of the Zionist movement turned to Gandhi with a request to support the Zionist enterprise in Eretz-Israel/Palestine. Gandhi, against their expectations, stated his strong objection to Zionism, suggesting that German Jews should stay in Germany and practice Satyagraha, even if it would result in massive martyrdom. In his response to Gandhi’s open letter, Buber questioned the wisdom of Satyagraha and effectively took a non-pacifist standpoint that justified violent resistance in extreme cases—such as the Nazi assault on defenseless Jews. He also tried to distinguish between the Zionist project and European colonialism, maintaining, however, that Zionism would only be successful if it could create a true Arab-Jewish cooperative. Martin Buber’s concept of dialogue and Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha developed in response to violent conflict, World War I and the British colonial occupation, respectively. Both Buber and Gandhi advocated non-violence as new paths of resolution and peacemaking. But they also differed in their approaches to pacifism and martyrdom. In this lecture, we will consider the famous Gandhi-Buber correspondence of 1938 to understand some of these differences and their implications for today. Yemima Hadad is an assistant professor for Jewish Studies the Theological Faculty at the University of Leipzig. Her research interests focus on Modern Jewish Thought, German-Jewish Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Political Theology and Jewish Feminism. She received her PhD from the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam (2021) and she is a research fellow at the Bucerius Institute for Research of German Contemporary History and Society at the University of Haifa. Her dissertation, Hasidism and Theopolitics in the Writings of Martin Buber, demonstrates the significance of Hasidism in explaining the political tenets of Martin Buber's thought. She held several fellowships including the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes scholarship (2019/2020) and the Leo Baeck Institute fellowship (2018/2019) and the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2017/2018). Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as the Hebrew Union College Annual, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Religions, etc. She is currently working on a monograph, Thinking with Care: Feminine Interventions into the Ethics of Dialogue (expected 2028). The book traces the meaning of feminine thought (Frauendenken) in the 20th century and discusses its relevance for contemporary gender discourses.

On judicial independence in Israel Israel was originally to have a Constitution, but it never did as the issue proved divisive on religious grounds, among others. An unwritten constitution developed in its place. This is the legal context of current constitutional debates, including on the constitutional status of religion in Israel. The solution was the adoption of chapters or Basic Laws, that together would form a constitution. What are the Basic Laws – an exercise of a constitutional authority of the Knesset, if such existed? An exercise of legislative authority? The status of religion in the state is a constitutional matter which directly affects religious freedom, and the establishment of religious is a pivotal constitutional matter. Religious courts derive their legal powers from the statutes enacted by the Knesset and must abide by the laws of the Knesset as interpreted by the Supreme Court, even if it conflicts with their religious interpretation. The religious courts, however, view their authority as emanating from a religious normative system. Attempts to rectify inequalities in religious law through state law directed at religious courts, are destined for a clash of normative hierarchies. The talk will draw on the speaker’s experience as a constitutional law barrister representing litigants in the Supreme Court, as well as on her academic research.

On Zionism's relation to Science Focusing on the relationship between Zionism and science in the first two decades of the Zionist movement, the argument of this paper is threefold. First, that a relationship was established with the very inception of the Zionist movement. Second, it is characterized by a duality, a tension between a highly pragmatic scientific attitude, on the one hand, namely science conceived as ‘engineering,’ as the principal instrument of national construction, and simultaneously, on the other hand, science understood as working with the most fragile and inaccessible ‘materials’ or ‘building blocks.’ I will suggest that the Zionist movement was characterized by the quintessential place of programmatic and detailed planning and of striving towards pragmatically defined goals; at the same time, however, Zionism’s ultimate goal, idealistic, utopian, and always just out of reach, remained unstated. While focusing on the first two decades of the Zionist movement, I suggest, thirdly, that because this intellectual structure was embedded in the socialization processes of Zionism from its very earliest phase, it remains critically important, in spite of the many additional historical events that followed, for the understanding of key facets of Jewish, and later Israeli, society to this day.

Neta Schramm discusses the (non-ideological) "think Zionism" stances of two leading Israeli figures. Back in the days when the Israeli labour party enjoyed its dominance, two prominent agenda-setters in Israel shared an unpopular position: Zionism does not define nor embody Judaism. Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, two Orthodox Jews affiliated with different social and religious milieus, were unhappy about the theological overtones existing in most, or even all, streams of Zionism. They devoted their lifework to shaping and critiquing Israeli social and political policies because of religious sentiments. But Leibowitz and Yosef also refused to turn their “thin” Zionism into a strong ideology. In previous accounts of their positions, Leibowitz is hailed as the first post-Zionist, and Yosef is signaled as the architect of a Mizrahi, Haredi, and Zionist statism. However, turning to their sermons, lectures, and interviews and paying attention to the vocal registers of Leibowitz’s irony and Yosef’s parody shows both these assumptions seem inaccurate. The Iraqi-born Chief Rabbi and the Ostjuden science professor preferred to stick to sardonic statements and even used the same line of arguments (“we are fed up of being ruled by goyim,” as Lebowitz put it) to walk the tightrope between adamant Zionists and anti-Zionists. To sum up, their “pro-zionist” talk was closer to “Zionist neutral” than was previously supposed.

Maya Mark discusses Menachem Begin's commitment to Liberalism The Military Government over the Arab citizens of Israel was established several months after the founding of the state, and ended late in 1966. Although it was initially driven by security considerations and fears concerning the Arab citizens’ involvement in hostile activities, its political and economic usefulness to the government and particularly to the ruling party, Mapai, became increasingly apparent over time. The talk will focus on the campaign waged by Herut, a right-wing National-Liberal party, to abolish the Military Government. Launched in 1959, this campaign was a major rallying cry of the party and its leader Menachem Begin. A critical analysis suggests that Herut derived certain political benefits by campaigning for the annulment of the Military Government, the most important of which was undermining its political rival, Mapai. However, it also establishes that Herut paid a price for its campaign, suffering criticism from within the right-wing political camp and wrestling with allegations from the left-wing political camp. Nevertheless, Begin pursued the cause of abolishing the Military Government while articulating an explicit commitment to democracy, liberty and full civic equality between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Hillel Cohen discusses his new book on Mizrahim, Arabs, and Asheknazim in Israel The prominence of Mizrahi Jews as perpetrators of violent acts against Palestinians that have topped the headlines in recent years was the starting point of my recent study. The media coverage and public denunciation of these incidents are usually accompanied by reference to the attackers’ Mizrahi origins, frequently invoking controversy among the commentators: Does ‘Mizrahi culture’ generate excessive violence towards Palestinians? Are the Israeli media racist, denouncing Mizrahi Jews more than they do others? Or maybe this violence has to do with class and religious perceptions rather than ethnic origin? In this talk I will start with suggesting a definition to Mizrahi acts, i.e., what makes a certain act or view (violent or otherwise) to be defined as ‘Mizrahi’; then move on to present Mizrahi views and acts regarding the ‘Palestinian Question’ from the outset of Zionism to present. The changes over time will be discussed in the light of the influence of the Ashkenazi-Zionist hegemony over Mizrahim and Arabs alike, as well as vis-à-vis Palestinian acts and ideas regarding ethnic relations within the Yishuv and the Jewish society in Israel.

On the political theology of "illiberal democracy" The rise of right-wing ‘populist’ parties has generated considerable anxiety over the future of liberal democracy in countries ranging from India and Turkey to Israel, Hungary, Brazil, and the United States, among others. This talk will attend to the political-theological dimensions of what has variously been called post-liberalism, illiberal democracy, or populism (a usage the speaker will contest) by considering the ways in which champions of the post-liberal project understand the relationship between three fundamental political concepts: the law, the state, and the people. Looking in particular at the work of the American scholar Patrick Deneen and the Israeli thinker Yoram Hazony, it will outline the central attributes of the post-liberal vision: a natalist understanding of political community, the denigration of individual freedom, the displacement of ‘the law’ by ‘the people’ as the central legitimating concept, and the embrace of counter-majoritarian and authoritarian measures to enforce the desired moral order. The state, in this schema, is paradoxically required to support and sustain the supposedly organic and homogenous nation that precedes it and indeed justifies its existence. In this way post-liberals differ markedly from libertarian conservatives and represent a new chapter in relations between virtue and the state.

Gabriel Schwake discusses his new book dealing with urban planning along the green line. Concealed within the walls of settlements along the Green Line, the border between Israel and the occupied West-Bank, is a complex history of territoriality, privatisation, and multifaceted class dynamics. Since the late 1970s, the state aimed to expand the heavily populated coastal area eastwards into the occupied Palestinian territories, granting favoured groups of individuals, developers, and entrepreneurs the ability to influence the formation of built space as a means to continuously develop and settle national frontiers. As these settlements developed, they became a physical manifestation of the relationship between the political interest to control space and the ability to form it. Discussing a socio-political and economic story from an architectural and urban history perspective, this lecture focuses on how this production of space can be seen not only as a cultural phenomenon, but also as one that is deeply entangled with geopolitical agendas.

Tilde Rosmer (Zayed University) discusses the history and politics of the Islamic Movement in Israel. The Islamic Movement in Israel was established in the early 1980s by and for Palestinian citizens of Israel. It has a non-violent approach focusing on providing its community with grassroots Islamization, as well as catering to this community’s socio-economic needs. Its trifecta of goals is to protect Palestinian land, religious sites, and people. In response to the shifting realities of the Israeli social and political context, the leaders and activists of this movement continuously adjust (and sometimes disagrees on) its methodology and interaction with the state. The movement split in 1996 due to disagreement whether to participate in national elections or not and it has since has two branches. In 2015 the Northern branch of the movement was outlawed, whereas the Southern branch is today part of the Israeli government coalition. Thus, today its supporters are left with the choice between criminalization and integration.

Gideon Katz discusses some of the mure surprising aspect of Israeli secularism The fear of Judaism is an important theme in Israeli culture. By analyzing Israeli dystopias and essays we have the chance to “look” closely at this fear, and its images. The main one is the image on Judaism as the Israeli unconsciousness that ambush to the secular identity. This central image tells us something about the roots of the fear. Gideon Katz is an associate professor in Ben-Gurion Research Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of To the Core of Secularism: A Philosophical Analysis of Secularism in its Israeli Context, (Jerusalem, 2011), The Pale God – Israeli Secularism and Spinoza's Philosophy of Culture (Boston, 2011) and co-editor of Music in Israel (Sede-Boker, 2014). His book In Silence and out Loud: Leibowitz in Israeli Context (Open University Press, Ra’anana) has been recently published.

Nitzan Levobic discusses Zionism and melancholy, through the woks of Israel Zarchi The story of the early Zionist settlement in Palestine could be told from the viewpoint of failure and melancholia. An untold history of this period ignores the high rate of suicides and cases of clinical depression among the Zionist “pioneers”. The story of the forgotten author Israel Zarchi (1909-1947) will serve as a test case: During his short life he published six novels and seven collections of short stories, as well as translations from German, English, and Polish. He also became a close friend of Bialik, Agnon, Klausner and other literary and academic dignitaries of the Jewish Yishuv. His “Left-Wing Melancholy” was adopted by the young Amos Oz who mentions him as a key source of inspiration. Zarchi’s life and writing reflects his deep melancholy, the result of the growing gap between the high Zionist ideals and the reality on the ground. Nitzan Lebovic is Professor of History and the Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of monographs and edited collections dedicated to German Lebensphilosophie [Life-Philosophy], Zionism and Melancholy, or happy concepts such as Nihilism, Catastrophe, Complicity, and Dissent.

The authors of a recently published book dealing with the history of Hollywood's relation with Israel discuss some of their findings From Frank Sinatra's early pro-Zionist rallying to Steven Spielberg's present-day peace-making, Hollywood has long enjoyed a 'special relationship' with Israel. Based on a newly-published book by Columbia University Press, this paper outlines the ways in which Hollywood's moguls, directors, and actors have supported or challenged Israel for more than seven decades, including Eddie Cantor, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Redgrave, Arthur Krim and Arnon Milchan. The paper probes the influence of Israeli public diplomacy on Hollywood's output and lobbying activities, but also highlight the limits of ideological devotion in high-risk entertainment industries. It demonstrates how show business has played an important role in crafting the U.S.-Israel alliance and illuminates how U.S. media and soft power have helped shape the Arab-Israeli conflict. Tony Shaw is professor of contemporary history at the University of Hertfordshire. Giora Goodman, a historian, chairs the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.

Haggai Ram charts the (modern) history of Hashish in the Holy Land After a century of prohibition, we are witnessing a dramatic shift in cannabis culture and policy around the world from a “killer weed” and a cause of racial degeneration to an accepted recreational drug and a “magic medicine.” In his lecture, Haggai Ram will examine this global shift of cannabis by focusing on the social history of the drug (i.e., hashish and marijuana) in Palestine-Israel from the late nineteenth century to the present. Ram will offer a vista into the political and cultural contexts within which cannabis became a “drug”; the underworlds of Jewish and Arab users and traffickers; the complex roles played by race, gender, and class in the construction of cannabis “addiction”; the place of the Zionist project in dispersing cannabis use and enforcing drug restrictions; and the normalization-cum-medicalization of this intoxicant in recent decades. In the process, he will demonstrate the extent to which the history of cannabis in Palestine-Israel offers a window through which one can explore broader political, economic, social, and cultural change. Prof. Haggai Ram is a historian of the Middle East at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His areas of teaching and research are the social and cultural histories of Iran and the Levant. Among his publications are Myth and Mobilization in Revolutionary Iran (American University Press, 1994); Reading Iran in Israel (in Hebrew, 2006); Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession (Stanford University Press, 2009); and Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel (Stanford University Press, 2020).

Amnon Aran maps the development of Israeli foreign policy since the end of the Cold War This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. The book provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. In my talk, I shall demonstrate how Israeli foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, I shall highlight the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. I shall demonstrate that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism-- and hope to explain why. Amnon Aran (LSE, PhD) is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. His research interests lie in the International Relations of the Middle East and Foreign Policy Analysis. His publications include three monographs, Israel's Foreign Policy towards the PLO: The Impact of Globalization (Sussex Academic Press, 2009); Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches (Routledge, 2016), with Chris Alden; and Israeli Foreign Policy since the End of the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). He has also published in journals such as International Studies Review, International Politics, and the Journal of Strategic Studies.