Yoav Alon, Ph.D. (Spring 2024)

Department of History

Yoav Alon is a professor in the Department of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on topics such as the British Empire in the Middle East, the Palestine mandate, and tribal societies in the modern Middle East. Dr. Alon uses cutting-edge scholarship in the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, and political science to offer a close analysis of the historical and current role of tribes and tribal values in the region.

Teaching:

• HIST 442: People from our Past
• HIST 574. Arab-Israeli Relations, Past and Present
  
  

Dekel Shay Schory, Ph.D.  (Spring 2024)

Department of English & Comparative Literature

Shay Schory is a literary researcher and editor and teaches in the Departments of Literature at Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University. Her research focuses on Hebrew and German-Jewish literature, mainly the relations between German and Hebrew literature and language from 1900 to 1933. Her book, “Tree Trunks in The Snow: Four Jewish Authors in Vienna” is forthcoming (2023). Since 2022, she is a senior editor at The Hebrew Literature Department at the Kinneret-Zmora-Dvir publishing house, one of the leading publishing houses in Israel. Following her passion for Israeli graphic literature, she has researched the short history of the genre in Israel and has created academic and non-academic courses on the subject. She frequently publishes graphic novel reviews.

• ECL 527: Graphic Narratives (The Rapid Rise of the Israeli Graphic Novel)
• ECL 564: World Literatures (Trends in Contemporary Israeli Literature)
  
  

Uri Bar-on (Fall 2023)

Department of English & Comparative Literature

Uri Bar-on has continuously created worldwide acclaimed shorts, documentaries, and fiction. His debut feature film, "10% my child," won the Israeli Academy Award for the best indie film and was nominated for Best Israeli Film of the Year.  His documentary series "Under the iron dome" was nominated for 3 Israeli T.V. academy awards, including best series and best director. His short documentary "72 Virgins" was screened at Sundance and Tribeca film festivals. His short drama "A Different Love Song" won Best Short at Marbella Film Festival. Uri has now written and directed for nearly every broadcast company in Israel, and his work was screened on major worldwide television stations such as Arte. Uri is also a lecturer at Reichman University, Minshar School for the Arts, and Beit Berl College. For more info, visit https://www.uri-bar-on.com/en.

Teaching

• ECL 577: Techniques of Screenwriting
• TFM 296: Israeli Cinema: Scripting to Production, and Post-Production
  
  

Amos Nadan, Ph.D. (Fall 2023)

Department of History

Amos Nadan is a senior lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, and a senior researcher at Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies (both at Tel Aviv University). He holds a PhD degree in economic history from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on Middle East political economies and the economic history of the peasants in the Levant.

Teaching

• HIST 442: People From Our Past
• HIST 574: Arab-Israeli Relations, Past and Present
  
  

Maya Tevet Dayan (Fall 2023)

Department of English & Comparative Literature

Maya Tevet Dayan is a is an Israeli-Canadian poet and writer. She's the recipient of the Israeli Prime Minister award for literature for 2018, and an honorable mention from the Kugel Poetry Prize for 2016. Poems from her three critically acclaimed poetry collections have been translated into English, Spanish, German and Chinese, and have appeared ןn Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, Literary Review of Canada, Granta, Asymptote, The New Quarterly, Rattle, Copper Nickle, Cagibi and others. Her poem “Foreign-ness” was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize for 2019, and her poem “Cotton” won the 2021 Rhino translation prize. She holds a PhD in Indian Philosophy and Literature and her translations of Sanskrit Poetry have appeared in various venues in Israel, the US and India. Her latest book, “Feminism, as I Told it to My Daughters” (Israel, 2023) is a short memoir in essays based on her highly popular feminist columns and essays published over the years in “Haaretz” magazine.   

Teaching:

• ECL 570: Techniques of Poetry
• ECL 750P: M.F.A. Seminar: Poetry Writing 

 

Haneen Magadlah (2022-2023) (Hebrew University)

The Gloria and Rod Stone Visiting Professorship, School of Social Work 

Dr. Haneen Magadlah holds a bachelor’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in non-profit management. She received her PhD in Social work from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is now a lecturer at Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, Israel, and at Bethlehem University. Her research focuses on social change, active citizenship, and religious (Islamic) education. Haneen’s research has been published in local institutes and has had significant impact on the field of social work. Her broad interests include community engagement, teaching for social activism and social justice and Phd degree all from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She holds a teaching certificate in psychology and sociology from the Hebrew University’s school of education. She is working on developing volunteerism in the Palestinian community.

Ran Tal (2022-2023) (Tel Aviv University)

Department of English & Comparative Literature

Ran Tal is a world-renowned independent director whose documentaries focus on Israeli reality through an historic social perspective. Tal graduated from the Tel Aviv University Department of Film in 1994. Tal’s focus is on documentary films, in addition to which he directs diverse television projects and is editor of artistic social endeavors. Tal is the recipient of the Ophir Prize, the Jerusalem Film Festival Volgin Award, the DocAviv Film Festival Award, the Forum for the Preservation of Audio-Visual award and the Documentary Forum award. Tal also won the Ministry of Culture Cinema Art prize, and the Mifal Hapayis Landau Award for Stage Art. Tal teaches cinema at the Film Departments at Sapir College and Tel Aviv University. His most recent film “Love and War,” will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival later this year. In addition, Ran teaches cinema at Tel Aviv University, where he founded the Masters in Documentary Film, an international program taught in English. 

Matan Yair (2022-2023)

Department of English & Comparative Literature

Matan Yair is a filmmaker, an author and a high school history and literature teacher. He is a graduate of the screenwriting program at the prestigious Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem, as well as of the MFA directing program at Tel Aviv University. Matan’s literary and artistic work derives from his personal experiences and biography. His documentary film IT IS WRITTEN IN YOUR ID THAT I AM YOUR FATHER (2008) describes a process of growing intimacy between himself and his father, Mordechai, who left home when he was thirteen. The film participated in Haifa International Film Festival’s competitive section as well as other film festivals. Matan’s drama UNSEEN focuses on his experience working as a teacher in a class for kids who were rejected from the regular school system. In 2009, Matan published his first novel, which is built as a diary of a teenager who documents one dramatic year of his adolescence. The novel was awarded from the National Library of Israel, described by the jury as a groundbreaking work. SCAFFOLDING, his first feature film was elected to have its premiere at Cannes 2017 in the Acid program, which highlights works from emerging indie filmmakers. 

 

Gilad Halpern (Spring 2022) - University of Haifa

Gilad Halpern is a journalist, broadcaster and media historian. He is the News and Current Affairs Editor at TLV1 Radio, and host of The Tel Aviv Review, a podcast dedicated to all things intellectual (and Israeli). He is 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.

Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz (Fall 2021 & Spring 2022) - Tel Aviv University

Ronit teaches screenwriting at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and is one of the founders of the Screenwriting Program at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. She has been a writer on several television series, directed documentaries and also served as a script editor on two series. She is well known in Israel for the drama A Touch Away and the documentary A Place Under the Sun. She was Editor-in-Chief at Keter Publishing House, one of the largest publishers in Israel, and has edited books by celebrated writers, including Amoz Oz, Shemi Zarhin, and Nava Semel. Her latest series, Abducted (an Israeli Norwregian co-production) will premiere on Netflix later this year.

 

Ori Elon (Fall 2021) - Sam Spiegel Film School

Ori Elon is an award-winning screenwriter and creator of several popular Israeli Television shows, including Shtisel, which won 17 Israeli Academy Awards. Currently in its third season on Netflix, Shtisel has become an international sensation. He is also the author of The Invisible Show, a collection of short stories which won the Israeli Ministry of Culture Best Novel Award, and several successful children's books.

Dr. Meir Litvak (Fall 2021) - Tel Aviv University

Dr. Meir Litvak is a Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern History and former Director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on modern Islamic movements, Arab perceptions of the Holocaust and Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Dr. Litvak has written numerous articles and books on modern Shi‘a and Iranian history, as well as on modern Islamic movements. He is the author of Shi'a Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The ‘Ulama’ of Najaf and Karbala’ (Cambridge University Press, 1998); and co-author of From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2009) and of the Iran: from a Persian Empire to an Islamic Republic (Open University of Israel Press, 2010). In addition, he is the co-editor of Religious Fanaticism (Zalman Shazar Center, 2007); Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity (Palgrave-McMillan); and The Sunna and Shi‘a in History Division and Ecumenism in Islam (Palgrave-McMillan, 2011). His most recent book, Know Thy Enemy: Evolving Attitudes towards "Others" in Modern Shiʻi Thought and Practice came out by Brill this year. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1991.

Visiting Israeli Scholar, Fall 2020 - Nitzan Gilady

Nitzan Gilady's films have received 13 international awards, participated in over 120 international film festivals and broadcast in prestigious TV channels over the world including Sundance Channel and ZDF-ARTE. His TV work includes: Singing to Oblivion - The Story of Miri Aloni, Do Not Call Me Black 2008 and Dark Southern Deal.

The short fiction drama Queens Up directed by Gilady has participated at the international Jerusalem Film Festival and received an Audience Award at Sedicicorto - Forli International film festival.

In 2004, he received a grant for the art of cinema initiated by the Israeli Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport given to outstanding Israeli filmmakers and film professionals.

Gilady is a graduate of the Academy of Arts "Circle in the Square" in New York and a senior lecturer at The Academy Institute of Holon (for 8 years) in the Visual Communication Department.

The film "Jerusalem Is Proud to Present" - Synopsis - In the summer of 2006, Jerusalem was to host, for the first time in history, the World Pride events, which were to culminate in a traditional gay pride parade. The planned events stirred turmoil in the politically complex city, with Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders banding together in an uncompromising battle against what they said would “defile the holy city”. On the other side stood the activists of the Open House, Jerusalem’s LGBT community center, who planned the events. Steadfast in the face of the heated and violent anti-gay sentiment, they had to deal with threats to much more than just their right to march… The film participated at the following film festivals - Docaviv (ISRAEL), Outfest (USA), Sheffield (UK), DOCNZ (New Zealand), Festival de Popoli (ITALY), IDFA (Amsterdam), FICCO (Mexico), One World (Prague), Cleveland International Film Festival, Guth Gafa (Ireland), PIFF (Provincetown, US), Banff World Television Film Festival, London Jewish Film Festival, Fresco LGBT Film Festival, Seattle LGBT Film Festival, Washington Jewish film festival, New York Jewish film festival, Chicago LGBT film festival, Atlanta Jewish film festival, Boston LGBT Film Festival.

The film "In Satmar Custody" - Synopsis - In Satmar Custody reveals the story of the Jaradi’s, a Jewish Yemenite family, one of many that were brought from Yemen to the US (Monroe, NY) by the Ultra orthodox Satmar Community which operates a propaganda machine against the immigration to Israel. The story exposes a deep cultural gap between the Yemenite families and the Yiddish Satmar Community that became distractive and tragic to families who have traveled thousands of miles to an entirely different planet of their own, with strange rules, norms, morals and lifestyles. Still in Yemen, Yemenite Jewish families are brainwashed by skillful missionaries, unable to defend themselves in the eye of this intricate and deceptive operation. The film follows the life of Yahia and Lauza Jaradi who were brought from Yemen into the Satmar Community. It starts on the day that the Jaradi couple received an urgent phone call notifying that their two and a half year old daughter, Hadia, died in a hospital in Paterson, N.J. Through their search for their daughter’s body, they are getting closer and closer to what seems as the very painful truth about her faith. The film participated at the following film festivals - Marseille Documentary Film Festival 2003 / Jerusalem Film Festival 2003 / IDFA 2003 /Golden Gate Competition – San Francisco International Film Festival / Newport Beach International Film Festival / Palm Beach International Film Festival / Input, Barcelona / Munich Documentary Film Festival / Beverly Hills Film Festival / Toronto Jewish Film Festival / Cork, Ireland / Cape Town World Cinema / Pioneer Theater, New York – A theatrical run.

The Film "The Last Enemy" - Synopsis - “The Last Enemy” tells the story of a group of nine Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian actors who work on a play that was written especially for them by the American Playwright Jim Mirioene. It takes a closer look at Achsen, a Palestinian actress, who finds it difficult to fit into the group because of a painful personal experience that she had long repressed. The film participated at the following film festivals - Leipzig International Documentary and Animated Film Festival • Victorian Independent Film and Video Festival • Mumbai (Bombay) International Documentary and Animation Film Festival • Cine’ma du Re’el • Munich International Documentary Film Festival • Docaviv- The Tel-Aviv International Documentary Film Festival • US International Film And Video festival • Parnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival (Estonia) • The International Festival of New Film (Croatia) • Intercom- The International Communication Film &Video Competition (Chicago) • Hot Springs International Documentary film festival (Arkansas, USA) • Cork Int’ Film Festival (Ireland) • Oslo international film festival • Brussels Int’ Independent film festival • Ajijc International film festival (Mexico) • The Jewish Film Festival in Copenhagen •The Israeli Film Festival In Paris • The Australian Documart & Doco Conference • 1001The Turkish Documentary Film Festival • The Israeli Film Festival In Berlin (opening film) •The Ethnofilmfest In Berlin • The Motovun Film Festival (Croatia) • Medfilm festival (Roma) chaverimchaverim (Poland) • Baker Peace Conference (Ohio).

Visiting Israeli Scholar, Fall 2019 - Dr. Eran Feitelson

Leading Expert on Israeli Water Policy to teach at SDSU

Dr. Eran Feitelson is a Professor in the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is the founder and previous director of the Advanced School for Environmental Studies.  He has served as head of the Federmann School for Public Policy and Government and chair of the Department of Geography.  He holds an MA in geography and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.  He has published over 100 articles in refereed journals and edited volumes on water policy issues, transport policy, environmental policy, and planning.  In addition to his academic work Eran Feitelson has participated in several national planning teams in Israel and has been a member of many national committees.  He is currently chairing for the second time the National Parks and Nature Reserves Commission, having chaired it for ten years in the past.  Prof. Feitelson received the “Yekir Hatichnun” award for 2015, the highest award of the Israeli Planning Association.

Visiting Israeli Scholar, Spring 2020 - Dr. Gilad Shteinberg

What were Middle East and Israel's climate like in the biblical period? That is the question Dr. Gilad Shteinberg (PhD, University of Haifa) has dedicated his academic career to researching. Currently focused on projects involving human settlement during the biblical period along Israel's northern Mediterranean coast, Dr. Shteinberg studies long-term climate change in Israel and neighboring lands and utilizes his findings as models for broader issues of global environmental changes as well as their implications in the present day. In particular, he specializes in understanding theoretical and practical aspects of the landscape changes that occur over time in the dynamic environments of the coast zone.

Visiting Israeli Scholar, 2019-2020 - Luba Levin-Banchik 

Dr. Luba Levin-Banchik is a political scientist and historian, studying the evolution of conflict and peace in contemporary international relations of the Middle East. Her expertise is in the field of global and regional security, international crisis escalation and recurrence, domestic and transnational terrorism, cooperation and violence between rivalries, and nonstate actors. Her current project focuses on what enemies do when they are not fighting and how their respite hostility affects crisis escalation into severe violence and wars. Dr. Levin-Banchik research has been published in Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Media, War & Conflict.

Dr. Levin-Banchik's expertise also includes design, application and study of active learning in higher education. Her book, World Politics Simulations in a Global Information Age (University of Michigan Press, 2015), coauthored with Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Chanan Naveh, examines face-to-face and cyber simulations in social science courses. Her recent study on a simulation of an Israeli security crisis over Iranian Plane is forthcoming in the Journal of Political Science Education. Dr. Levin-Banchik is a co-founder of the World Politics Simulation project. She has been recently elected as a member-at-large of active learning in international affairs (ALIAS) section of International Studies Association for the 2018-2019 years.

Dr. Levin-Banchik is completing a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with Israel Institute at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Davis. She has taught political science and international relations at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where she has developed online courses for undergraduate and graduate students. In 2017, Dr. Levin-Banchik has won Teaching with Impact Best Syllabus prize of Israel Institute for the course she developed on "Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Israel."

Her residency is also supported by the Lipinsky Institute for Jewish Studies endowment.

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist, Fall 2019 - Shuki Ben Naim 

Shuki Ben Naim is an Israeli television creator and screenwriter. Mr. Ben Naim is a graduate of the Utniel Yeshiva and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, where he majored in screenwriting.

Among his works:

• "Nuyork" – Creator and head screenwriter, daily drama, 3 seasons, 150 episodes (Darset Productions, YES)
• "Urim VeTumim" – Creator and head screenwriter (Herzliya Studios, YES)
• "Giora’s Wife" – Screenwriter (Darset Productions, Channel 10)
• "A Touch Away" – Writer, 2 episodes (TTV, Reshet)
• "Meorav Yerushalmi" – Writer, third season line and 2 episodes (in collaboration with Shuli Rand, Cineplus, Reshet)
• "Five Men and a Wedding" – Comic series by Eran Kolirin and Shay Kanot – Writer, 3 episodes (Dana Productions, Channel 10)
• "Once in a Lifetime" – Seasons 3 and 4, reality show (MYTV, YES)
• "Eyes Wide Open" – Screenplay Consultant – (Director: Haim Tabakman, Screenplay: Merav Doster, Pimpa Productions)
  
  

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist, Fall 2019 - Moshe Zonder 

Moshe Zonder was the head writer for Fauda, the enormously successful television series broadcast in Israel. In 2016, Fauda became the first Israeli series to be released as a Netflix Original. He has written many other screenplays for film and television, most recently for a documentary on the 1972 hijacking of a Sabena Airways flight bound for Israel. He began his career as a journalist working at Maariv, one of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language daily newspapers. Learn more about Moshe Zonder’s work.

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist, Spring 2019 - Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz

Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz currently teaches screenwriting at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. She has been active in all aspects of television as well as having a substantial teaching background. She has been a writer on several television series; she has directed several documentaries for television and also served as a script editor on two series. From 1985 to 1993 she was a journalist and editor at the Israeli newspaper Hadashot.  

Visiting Israeli Scholar, 2017/18 - Tamar Arieli

Tamar Arieli is the head of the Conflict Management Program at the Tel Hai College, Israel. She formerly served as a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC) and in Indiana University, Bloomington (2010-2011).

Tamar's academic background combines political geography – regional and urban planning, with the study of conflict and cooperation. She analyzes economic, social, and environmental aspects of life in border and peripheral regions, where social and political conflict may compromise prospects of regional development and social integration. Her past research involved extensive field work in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza strip as well as along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Tamar's publications focus on local and national government policy regarding security and development, social and economic entrepreneurship and methodological challenges of fieldwork in conflict environments.

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artists 2017/18 - Nir Bergman and David Ofek

Nir Bergman is one of Israel's most acclaimed directors. His feature films have won awards at some of the most prestigious international festivals. Nir was born in Israel and studied at the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem, graduating with honors in 1998. His graduation film, "Sea Horse" (Sus Yam), received the Miki Albin Prize for Best Short Script at the International Haifa Film Festival and a number of prizes at the Munich, Greece and Poland film festivals. The film was chosen in an international competition with directors such as Pedro Almadovar and Paul Newman as the best film ever made at Sam Spiegel. Nir's next film "Broken Wings" won the Best Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Best Debut Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival Panorama Audience Award. It also won the Israel Academy Awards Prize for the Best Director, Screenplay, Picture, Cinematography, Actress and Supporting Actress. "Broken Wings" has been distributed in the U.S.A, England, Germany, Mexico, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Greece Romania and others.

Nir has also written and directed a number of very successful Israeli TV series such as "hostages," "Catching the Sky," and "Meurav Yerushalmi," which was a prizewinner at the Israeli Academy Awards (2003). He is the co-creator of "Betipul" (2005) which was sold to HBO as the series "In Treatment." Bergman has been teaching in all the major film programs in Israel since 1999 including Sam Spiegel Film School, Tel Aviv University, Tel Hai College, Sapir College, Habama Workshops, and Shacham Association of Actors in Israel.

David Ofek grew up in the town of Ramat Gan, Israel. Besides being interested in mathematics and philosophy, he dreamed of making movies, and spent most of his free time during high school watching the great masterpieces at the Tel Aviv Cinamateque. After graduating from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem in 1993, Ofek continued devoting his talent and energy to creating movies that depict unique Israeli scenes and dilemmas. Always straddling a fine line between documentary and feature film, he keeps on challenging the obvious: from his first short film, "Home," the story of his family during the first Gulf War as they watch the CNN coverage of bombed-out Baghdad and excitedly recognize their old home there, through his feature-length documentary "No. 17," in which he insists on trying to identify the unknown victim of a terrorist attack. Among his other famous works are the TV mini-series "Melanoma My Love," a poignant and revealing portrait of a man who loses his wife to cancer; "The Ulpan" (A Hebrew Lesson), a delightful if thought-provoking look at the problems of several immigrant students in a Hebrew language ulpan; and "Nicolai and the Law of Return," which was awarded Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2008.

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist 2016/17 - Dana Ivgy

For the second year in a row the Jewish Studies Program has been chosen among a select group of 14 US universities to participate in the Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artists Program, under the auspices of the Israel Institute, to host leading Israeli artists who will be in residence for the 2016-17 academic year.

We are thrilled to be hosting actress Dana Ivgy who will be in residence at SDSU for the spring 2017 semester. Ivgy starred most recently in “Zero Motivation,” which won Best Narrative Feature and the Nora Ephron Prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and for which she received a Best Actress Award (her second) from the Israel Film Academy. Variety magazine cites her acting as “so natural, it’s hard to believe it’s even a performance.” For 10 years, she has also been performing internationally with the Israeli stage comedy troupe Tziporela, for which she serves as artistic director. Ivgy will be teaching two classes in the School of Theatre, Television and Film.

The Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artists Program celebrates Israeli artists in a variety of disciplines, including film, music, the visual arts and theater. The artists will spend a semester teaching and presenting their work to students and audiences in local communities through classes, exhibitions and performances.

Visiting Israeli Scholar, 2016/17 - Dr. Dr. Oded Brosh

Dr. Oded Brosh, a leading expert on nuclear politics, will serve as the Jewish Studies Program's Visitng Israeli Professor in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. Dr. Brosh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy and Director of M.A. Specialization in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. His expertise is in the field of nuclear politics, strategy in the nuclear age, deterrence and strategic development; nuclear proliferation and political, strategic and technological issues of weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Brosh previously taught at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Ben-Gurion University, Beersheva. His publications include The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East: Opacity, Theory and Reality, 1960-1991 - An Israeli Perspective, "The Emerging US Strategy on Iran's Nuclear Program - Containment," and "Iran in 2025: Four Scenarios." He has also served as a senior analyst with the Prime Minister's Office. Dr. Brosh holds an MA and a PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University. As an undergraduate he studied at Johns Hopkins University, and is a graduate of UCLA. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

As a child of a veteran diplomat in Israel's Foreign Service, serving with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Brosh's early education included school at the Belgian School in Cologne, Germany, in Jerusalem, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in Yangon, Myanmar and at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Brosh's residency at SDSU is supported by a grant from the Israel Institute (Washington, DC) , which is dedicated to the knowledge and study of modern Israel, and by the Lipinsky Institute for Jewish Studies endowment.

Leading Israeli Artists Selected For U.S. Residencies Fall 2015-Spring 2016: Assaf Gavron

Jewish Studies Program has been chosen among a select group of universities across the US to host one of nine leading Israeli artists who will be in residence for the 2015-16 academic year. Among the artists are two best-selling Israeli writers whose works have been translated into more than a dozen languages and one of Israel’s leading composers. The artists will come as part of the Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artists Program, under the auspices of the Israel Institute, Washington, D.C. Celebrated in a variety of disciplines, including choreography, music, the visual arts and literature, the artists will spend a semester teaching and presenting their work to audiences in local communities through classes, exhibitions and performances.

Assaf Gavron, San Diego State University (Spring 2016). Of Gavron’s sixth novel, The Hilltop, published this year in English, Amos Oz wrote the work “shimmers with wisdom, truth, humour and melancholy.” The New York Times called it “structurally brilliant.”

Assaf Gavron has published five novels (Ice, Moving, Almost Dead, Hydromania and The Hilltop), a collection of short stories (Sex in the cemetery), and a non-fiction collection of Jerusalem falafel-joint reviews (Eating Standing Up). His fiction has been translated into German, Russian, Italian, French, English, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Bulgarian. His latest English translation, The Hilltop, was published in 2014 by Scribner in the US and Oneworld in the UK. Among the awards he has won are the Israeli Prime Minister’s Creative Award for Authors, the Israeli Bernstein Prize for the novel The Hilltop, the DAAD artists-in-Berlin fellowship in Germany, the Buch Fur Die Stadt award in Germany for the novel CrocAttack and the Prix Courrier International award in France for the same novel. His fiction was adapted for the stage in Habima – Israel’s national theatre, and four of his novels were optioned for film or TV by Israeli and international film producers.

As a translator of fiction, Gavron is responsible for the highly-regarded English-to-Hebrew translations of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels, among others. He also co-translated his own Almost Dead from Hebrew to English.

Gavron was the chief writer of the prize-winning computer game Peacemaker; and has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines, writing on subjects ranging from sports to politics, and from music to food. As the captain of Israel’s national writers’ and poets’ soccer team, he led it in several international matches.

Gavron is also the singer and main songwriter of cult pop group The Foot and Mouth. The group released five albums, six years apart from each other. The next album will be out in 2019.

Lipinsky Leichtag Visiting Israeli Scholar: 2015/16--Dr. Chanan Naveh

Dr. Chanan Naveh is a senior lecturer in the School of Communications, Sapir College, (Israel) and was the Chair of the School in the years 2010 – 2014. For 15 years he was a lecturer at the International Relations Department, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and at the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University. From 1969-2004 he worked for Kol Israel (Israeli Radio), news division in various positions including Editor-in-Chief and managing editor. Dr. Naveh specializes in research of the Internet and international relations, international media, media and foreign affairs, the radio in Israel and practicing these topics in international simulations..

His book, World Politics Simulations in a Global Information Age (together with his colleagues Hemda Ben-Yehuda, Luba Levin-Banchik from Bar-Ilan University), is going to be published in the fall 2015 by the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Some of his recent publications include: "Crisis Press Coverage in the Arab-Israel & East-West Conflicts", Media, War & Conflict (2013); "Israeli Radio during the Six-Day War", The Journal of Israeli History (2009); The Web as an Israeli Solidarity Environment during The second Lebanon War (2008) and Pirate Radio in Israel (2007), awarded the distinguished grant of the Second Authority for Radio and Television (Israel). 

Lipinsky Meyerhoff Visiting Israeli Scholar: 2013/14--Dr. Sariel Birnbaum

Dr. Sariel Birnbaum (Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010) is currently completing a post-doctoral fellowship with the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He served as a Judaic Studies Fellow at Binghamton University (SUNY), and at the Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace.  He has also worked for the Jewish People Planning Policy Institute on a Jewish Islamic relations project.

Dr. Birnbaum specializes in Middle Eastern media, including cinema and television, and is an expert on Egyptian film.  His current research is about Muslim Immigrants in Europe, their cinematic representations and their encounter with the Jews of the continent. He completed his undergraduate work at the Open University in Israel, his MA in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies and Cinema from Hebrew University. His publications include "Historical Discourse in the Media of the Palestinian National Authority," in Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); "Iraq in Contemporary Egyptian Cinema – Impotence and Lack of Interest," in Hamizrah Hehadash (Hebrew) and "Get Ready for the Revolution of the Hungry in Egypt 2013,” (in East Wind, the e-journal of the Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel).  His appointment at SDSU is made possible through a generous grant from the Lipinsky Institute at SDSU, the Israel Studies Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation and from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). 

Leichtag Meyerhoff Visiting Israeli Professor: 2013/14--Dr. Moshe Naor

The Jewish Studies Program at SDSU is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Moshe Naor as Leichtag Visiting Israeli scholar for the 2013/14 academic year. Dr. Naor received his Ph.D. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has held several important fellowships including the Ray D. Wolfe Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto and a fellowship at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. He has been a Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at Tulane University; York University in Toronto, Canada; and University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Naor's research interests focus on the social, political and military history of the Jewish community in Palestine and the State of Israel. His book, Social Mobilization in the Arab/Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front, was published in 2013 by Routledge Press. Among his recent articles are: "The 1948 War Veterans and Postwar Reconstruction in Israel", Journal of Israeli History (2010); "The Israeli Volunteering Movement Preceding the 1956 War", Israel Affairs (2010); and Israel's 1948 War of Independence as a Total War", Journal of Contemporary History (2008). His current research deals with Israeli Post-War Reconstruction and State Building in the early 1950s and on the Middle Eastern Jews and Jewish-Arab Relations in Mandate Palestine. His appointment at SDSU is made possible through a generous grant from the Leichtag Family Foundation and from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE).

Lipinsky and Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar: 2010/12--Dr. Oren Meyers

The Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Oren Meyers as the Lipinsky and Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar for the academic year 2010/11. Dr. Meyers is a lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Haifa. He received his B.A. from the Hebrew University (1995). While studying in Jerusalem he worked as a reporter and an editor for two city newspapers. Later, he received an M.A. (1999) and a Ph.D. (2004) from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Meyers’s research interests focus on journalistic practices and values, Israeli collective memory, popular culture and the security discourse in Israeli society. His studies have been supported by the Burda Center for Innovative Communications Research, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Israel Science Foundation and other foundations.

Dr. Meyers' recent publications include "Memory in Journalism and the Memory of Journalism: Israeli Journalists and the Constructed Legacy of Haolam Hazeh," Journal of Communication, 2007; "The Engine's in the Front, But its Heart's in the Same Place: Advertising, Nostalgia and the Construction of Commodities as Realms of Memory," The Journal of Popular Culture, 2009; "Prime Time Commemoration: An Analysis of Television Broadcasts on Israel's Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism," Journal of Communication, 2009 (with Eyal Zandberg & Motti Neiger); "Expanding the Scope of Paradigmatic Research in Journalism Studies: The Case of Early Mainstream Israeli Journalism and Its Discontents,"Journalism (forthcoming); and "Communicating Critique: Towards a Conceptualization of Journalistic Criticism," Communication, Culture and Critique (forthcoming) (with Eyal Zandberg & Motti Neiger). Dr. Meyers will be teaching two courses each semester in the History Department and will be available for community lectures and events throughout 2010/11. His appointment is made possible by generous grants from the Lipinsky Visiting Israeli Fund and the Israel Scholars Fund from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

Schusterman Visiting Israeli Professor and Lipinsky Visiting Israeli Professor: 2009/2010--Dr. Chanan Naveh

Dr. Chanan Naveh is a senior lecturer and academic advisor in the School of Communications, Sapir College (Israel) and a lecturer at the International Relations Department, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. For 18 years he taught International Relations and Communication in the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University. From 1969-2004 he worked for Kol Israel (Israeli Radio), news division in various positions including Editor-in-Chief and managing editor. Dr. Naveh specializes in research of the Internet and international relations, international media, media and foreign affairs, and the radio in Israel. His recent publications include: Pirate Radio in Israel (2007), awarded the distinguished grant of the Second Authority for Radio and Television (Israel); "The Palestinian-Israeli Web War", in New Media and the New Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2007); The Web as an Israeli Solidarity Environment during The second Lebanon War (2008) & Israeli Radio during the Six-Day War: National Unity Government and Radio of National Unity, (forthcoming).

Dr. Naveh will be teaching courses in the History & Political Science Departments in Fall & Spring 2009/10.

2009--Dr. Adriana Kemp

Dr. Adriana Kemp is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University and a fellow at the Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem. Her main research areas are on the sociology of migration and gender, labor migration and the politics of citizenship, globalization and urban sociology. Kemp was a visiting professor at the Department of Sociology, Columbia University in 2004. She is currently a fellow researcher in the Working Group on Immigration and Human Rights at the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a staff member of the Refugee Rights Clinic at the Law Faculty, Tel Aviv University.

Kemp is the co-author of Foreigners and Workers: The Political Economy of Labor Migration in Israel (with Rebeca Raijman) (HaKibbutz Hameuchad Press and Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem, 2008) and the co-editor of Israelis in Conflict: Hegemonies, Identities, Challenges (Brighton: Sussex University Press, 2004) and Citizenship Gaps in Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008). Among her recent articles are: “Managing Migration, Reprioritizing National Citizenship: Undocumented Labor Migrants’ Children and Policy Reforms in Israel”, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 8(2), 2007 (pp. 663-691); "Globalization, Urban Economic Restructuring, and Gendered Socioeconomic Inequality: A Comparative Study of Tel Aviv and Haifa," Research in Urban Sociology Vol. 9;  "Fertile and Strangers: The Gendered Biopolitics of Israeli Labor Migration Programs” (forthcoming) in Y. Shenhav and Y. Yonna (Eds.) Race, Racialization and Racism; "Tel Aviv is Not Foreign to You: Urban Incorporation Policy on Labor Migrants in Israel," International Migration Review Vol. 38, 2004 (pp. 26-51); "International Migration, Domestic Work and Care Work: Undocumented Latina Migrants in Israel," Gender and Society Vol.17(5) 2003 (pp.727-749).

Dr. Kemp has been a member of the Steering Committee of Women Studies Forum at the Tel Aviv University since 2005 and the Faculty Link for the Hotline for Victims of Sexual Assault in campus. She has been recently recipient of the DeRoy Testamentary Foundation Certificate of Excellence in Education awarded by the NCJW (US National Council of Jewish Women) to scholars committed to the promotion of women and gender issues.

She is currently involved in a research on the role played by non governmental organizations in the promotion of " NGOs, Women and ´Welfare - to- Work´ Governance in Israel: A Sociological Analysis of an Emergent Field of Action," submitted to The Israel Science Foundation (The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities). In collaboration with Dr. Nitza Berkovitch, Ben Gurion University

2008--Dr. Uri Ben-Eliezer

Dr. Uri Ben-Eliezer is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Haifa University. He is a political sociologist and writes about Israeli army and politics, peace and war in the Middle East, Israel's civil society and democracy. Ben-Eliezer was a Post-Doctorate in the Jewish Studies Program at Stanford University in 1988-1989; a fellow in the Jewish Studies Program and the Jackson School of International Studies in University of Washington, Seattle, in 1990, and again in 1995; as well as a fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in 2002.

Ben-Eliezer is the author of the following books: The Making of Israeli Militarism (Indiana University Press, 1998); Old Conflict, New War, Israel in the Second Intifada (forthcoming), and co-authored of In the Name of Security (with Majid Al-Hag, 2002). Among his recent articles are: "Multiculturalism and Everyday Cultural Racism: Second Generation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel’s Crisis of Modernization," Ethnic and Racial Studies, forthcoming; “The Battle over Our Homes”: Reconstructing/Deconstructing Sovereign Practices around Israel’s Separation Barrier on the West Bank," Israel Studies, 12/1, 2007 (with Yuval Feinstein); “Secret States in World Risk Society: Nuclear Secrecy and Opacity in the Israeli Vanunu Affair”, Social Movement Studies, 7/2, 2008 (forthcoming) (with Adriana Kemp). Postmodern Armies and the Question of Peace and War: The I.D.F. in the New Times,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 36/1, 2004: 49-70; “Becoming a Black Jew, Cultural Racism and Anti-Racism in Contemporary Israel, Social Identities, 10/2, 2004: 245-266.

2007--Dr. Liora Lukitz

Dr. Lukitz receiver her PhD in 1988 from London School of Economics and Political Science on 'The History and Politics of Modern Iraq.' She was  a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard from 1989 to 1993, as well as the Wiener School of Modern European Studies at the Tel Aviv University (on Theories on Nationalism)  and a H.F. Guggenheim Fellow at the Guggenheim Foundation in NYC (writing on Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Islam in Iraq of the 1990s). She is currently a fellow at the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

She is the author of two books: Iraq: the Search for National Identity ( London, 1995) and A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Modern Iraq ( London, Ny 2006). She has also published articles  in political, historical, and literary journals and chapters in collective books.