The Tel Aviv Review

The Birth of a Nation: The Diplomatic Backstory of Israel’s Establishment

Prof. Jeffrey Herf discusses his new book which analyzes how Israeli independence benefited from the changing international landscape in the “twilight” period between the Second World War and the Cold War

Read More

Tantura: The Massacre That Was

Filmmaker Alon Schwarz discusses his new documentary, Tantura, which reopens an episode from Israel’s War of Independence and a controversy that erupted in the 1990s

Read More

Night Comes On: Ottoman Cities After Dark

Prof. Avner Wishnitzer discusses his book “As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities After Dark,” a groundbreaking social history of Istanbul and Jerusalem on the cusp of modernity

Read More

Not an Oxymoron: Secular Believers in Israel

Prof. Hagar Lahav discusses her book “Women, Secularism and Belief: A Sociology of Belief in the Jewish-Israeli Secular Landscape”

Read More

Groundhog Election Day? Analyzing the Deep Trends of Israeli Politics

Prof. Gideon Rahat discusses the insights that emanate from a recent book he co-edited with Prof. Michal Shamir. Is there any reason to believe that Israel’s fifth general election in two and a half years will be any different?

Read More

Mutual Exclusion: The Plight and Hope of a Left-Wing Religious Zionist

Mikhael Manekin, former director of Breaking the Silence and Molad, discusses his new book, “A Dawn of Redemption,” an attempt to address the ostensible contradiction between his progressive politics and his Modern Orthodox devotion

Read More

Civil Society in an Islamic State: The Case of Charity in Saudi Arabia

Dr. Nora Derbal, an Islamic Studies scholar and a Martin Buber Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses her book, “Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society Under Authoritarianism”

Read More

The State of Religion and State

Shlomit Ravitsky-Tur Paz discusses some recent findings – some unprecedented – from the new Israel Democracy Institute biannual statistical report on religion and state, published this week

Read More

High and Holy

Haggai Ram, professor of Middle East History at Ben Gurion University, discusses his book, “Intoxicating Zion: A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel”

Read More

Re-Humanizing the Victims of the Nakba

Adam Raz has written several history books. His most recent work is a stage play, “The Personal Tragedy of Mr Sami Saada,” which focuses on how the life of an Arab family man from Haifa unraveled in April 1948, and his attempts to cope with the new reality

Read More