Israel Studies Seminar

Oxford University
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Israel Studies Seminar

Running weekly during Term time, the Israel Studies Seminar is the primary setting for public discussions on a wide spectrum of issues relating to Israeli society, history, politics and culture in the University of Oxford. With an international list of speakers, it has been attracting much attention and a growing audience participation. The seminar is convened by Prof. Yaacov Yadgar, the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, based at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relation. The seminar is hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College. For more details, see the Seminar’s website here: https://www.mes.ox.ac.uk/#/

  1. 6 NOV

    New & Jew, Zionism and the Quest for National Culture

    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. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    54 min

  2. 30 OCT

    Michal Huss - You cannot really live (or die) here: ongoing struggles over cemeteries and housing in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1957-2020

    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. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    48 min

  3. 23 OCT

    Martin Goodman - The Image of Herod in Modern Israel

    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).

    51 min

  4. 21 OCT

    Yemima Hadad - Buber and Gandhi on land and resistance: Reading the Buber-Gandhi correspondence after October 7

    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.

    57 min

  5. 23/03/2023

    Anat Scolnicov - The Israel Supreme Court Religion and the Relationship of State and Religion in Israel

    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.

    35 min

  6. 23/03/2023

    Amos Morris-Rich - The Fusion of Zionism and Science: The First Two Decades - And the Present Day?

    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.

    39 min

  7. 05/12/2022

    Neta Schramm - Zionist Neutral? The Sardonic Zionism of Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Ovadia Yosef

    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. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    41 min

  8. 30/11/2022

    Maya Mark - Menachem Begin’s stand on the imposition of the Military Government, 1948- 1966

    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. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    41 min
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About

Running weekly during Term time, the Israel Studies Seminar is the primary setting for public discussions on a wide spectrum of issues relating to Israeli society, history, politics and culture in the University of Oxford. With an international list of speakers, it has been attracting much attention and a growing audience participation. The seminar is convened by Prof. Yaacov Yadgar, the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, based at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relation. The seminar is hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College. For more details, see the Seminar’s website here: https://www.mes.ox.ac.uk/#/

Information

  • Creator
    Oxford University
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2024
  • Episodes
    74
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Oxford University
  • Show Website
    Israel Studies Seminar

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