How did Ben Gurion and first post-war German chancellor Konrad Adenauer become sincere political allies just a few years after the end of the war? David Witzthum, historian and longtime journalist, explores how Germany and Israel built a critical and controversial political alliance.

Historian and journalist Dr Tom Segev discusses his book, “A State at all Costs: The Life of David Ben-Gurion,” a biography of Israel’s founding father that draws heavily on his newly declassified personal papers.

Reporter Sam Sokol traveled the Ukraine to cover Jewish communities as the country spiraled into conflict with Russia. He found that each side wanted to exploit the Jews for competing political purposes.

Elizabeth Tsurkov is among the few Israelis to have visited Syria since the war began. She might be the only one to have interviewed a range of people, from Kurdish fighters to ISIS supporters to Alawites, about the future of the tortured country.

Alejandro Paz, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, discusses his book “Latinos in Israel: Language and Unexpected Citizenship,” an ethnographic study into the formation of an unusual migrant community.

In “Zionism and Melancholy, The Short Life of Israel Zarchi,” Nitzan Lebovic inhabits the mind and soul of a lesser-known early Zionist poet. The result is a literary, academic, psychoanalytic – and slightly melancholy – journey through a political movement, via the short life of a poet.

In “A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture,” Shachar Pinsker shows how coffee houses then and now, there and here, helped give rise to modernity itself.

Joseph Zeira, Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses his new book “The Israeli Economy,” an introduction to all matters Israeli and economic.

What does it mean to live in the divided and unified city of Jerusalem? What are the different memories and narratives that inhabit its streets?

Dr Eitan Regev, economist and Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, analyzes the downsides of Israel’s excessive reliance on academic higher education which has hurt its economic prospects and social integration, and offers policy recommendations to rectify that situation.