In-depth, long-form interviews with scholars, writers, and thinkers about their work and ideas that make up the debate in and about Israel.

Yair Wallach
Yair WallachSOAS, University of London
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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.”
Martin Kramer
Martin KramerFounding President, Shalem College, Jerusalem
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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.”
Prof. Jeffrey Herf
Prof. Jeffrey HerfUniversity of Maryland
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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

Israel’s Ellis Island, Behind Barbed Wire

Quarantine wasn't invented for corona. At the start of statehood, Israel encouraged mass immigration while seeking to prevent mass disease by putting immigrants through a quarantine camp. Rhona Seidelman, a historian of medicine and public health, examines the camp's legacy both remembered and forgotten

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Labor’s Love’s Lost

Dr Laura Wharton discusses her book “Is the Party Over? How Israel Lost its Social Agenda,” analyzing the ideological and institutional decline of the Labor Party up until the 1970s

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Religiously Democratic?

Prof. Daniel Statman discusses his new co-authored book “State and Religion is Israel,” a joint legal and philosophical attempt to conceptualize the role of religion in democratic regimes

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About the Hosts

Gilad Halpern in the studio

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.