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“A real gem - a podcast for intellectual conversations that manage to be erudite and fun. It's the best way to keep up with the latest ideas, research, and thinking on Israel and its interactions with the Jewish world, Palestinians and the Middle East. What I love about it is that I never know where the next conversation would go.”
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“The Tel Aviv Review has become my indispensable companion on the road and an always provocative challenge to my own fixed ideas. This podcast is easily on the level of the best public radio interview shows in America. Kudos for making this unique contribution to the intellectual life of Israel.”
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“The hosts' probing questions revealed a sophisticated grasp of modern European history and politics, their intersection with the history of Israel and a welcome ability to listen to what I said and respond with thoughtful follow-up questions.”
Recent Episodes
Public Enemy No. 1
Yuli Novak, the former director of Breaking the Silence, the IDF veterans' organization, reflects in her new memoir, “Who Do You Think You Are,” on her 2012-2017 tenure at the helm of the most reviled human rights group in Israel
The “History Will Judge Us” Edition
We discuss the open letter of more than 160 renowned historians of Jews, Judaism and/or Israel, titled “Israel on the Edge of an Abyss,” with its author, the brilliant historian Orit Rozin
About the Hosts
Gilad Halpern
Gilad is a journalist, broadcaster and media historian. He is also a founding co-editor of the Tel Aviv Review of Books magazine, an English-language online quarterly, and an Idit Fellow at the University of Haifa, researching the history of the Jewish press in Mandatory Palestine. Previously he was Managing Editor for Ynetnews and Assignments Editor for Haaretz English Edition. His work appeared on the BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Monitor, Time Out magazine, the Jewish Quarterly and the Jewish Chronicle.
Dr. Yael Berda
Dr. Yael Berda is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University, and a fellow at Middle East initiative at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She received her PhD from Princeton University; her MA from Tel Aviv University, and her LLB from Hebrew University faculty of Law. Previously a practicing Human Rights lawyer, representing clients in Military, District and Supreme courts in Israel, her most recent books are Living Emergency: Israel's Permit Regime in the West Bank and Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship: Legacies of Race and Emergencies in the Former British Empire.
Safed: A Reality and a Metaphor
Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin's new book, “Mishna Consciousness, Biblical Consciousness,” considers Safed (Tzfat), the old Jewish center in the Galilee, as the crux of a religious and political worldview that could - and still might - pose an alternative to the prevalent one