2018–2019 Events
Public Events
Double Amnesia: Rethinking the History of Zionism and Human Rights
Thursday, October 4, 2018, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm , 105 Law Building Berkeley Law
James Loeffler & Jay Berkowitz
The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global antisemitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today. Drawing
on his recent book, Professor Loeffler will discuss what international law’s forgotten Jewish past reveals about the current crisis and uncertain future of human rights.
Trump, Netanyahu and the Midterm Elections: How the Campaign and Results Will Affect the US-Israel Relationship
Tuesday, October 30, 2018, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, 110 Law Building Berkeley Law
Allison Kaplan Sommer: Journalist
The mantra of American supporters of Israel has always included the word “bipartisan.” Traditionally, Israeli leaders over the decades have worked hard to cultivate friends on both sides of the aisle to ensure that economic, military and political support for the Jewish state remains rock-solid. In turn, both Republican and Democratic leaders have bent over backwards to outdo one another in declarations of support for Israel to win key voter groups and major political donors. But as extreme partisanship has utterly transformed politics in the Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu era, the old rules of the U.S.-Israel relationship no longer apply. How has that affected the 2018 midterm campaign? And how might the results transform the relationship even further?
Allison Kaplan Sommer has been living and working as a journalist in Israel since 1993 and has been a staff writer at Haaretz since 2012. She is the former Washington DC correspondent, feature writer and critic for the Jerusalem Post, and has written on a freelance basis for numerous U.S. publications, including the New Republic, Politico, The Forward and the New York Daily News. Originally from Rhode Island, she earned her B.A. in English and Theater at Wesleyan University and her M.A. from the Columbia School of Journalism. In 2016, she received the 2016 B’nai B’rith World Center Award for Journalism and in 2017, she received Simon Rockower Award for Journalistic Excellence. In Fall 2017, she was the Arnold Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston.
Robbins Collection Annual Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity
Jewish Law and the #MeToo Movement: A Feminist Perspective
Rachel Adler: Rabbi and David Ellenson Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
The Robbins Collection and the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies will be co-hosting the Annual Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity on Thursday, February 21st. Rachel Adler, the David Ellenson Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College, will be discussing Jewish Law and the #MeToo movement, through a feminist perspective. The #MeToo movement has produced a flood of women’s testimony about a range of sexual aggression that halakhah inadequately addresses, if it does at all. Professor Adler is a pioneer in integrating feminist perspectives into interpreting Jewish texts and law.
Israeli Law and Society: Judicial Reflections
Thursday, March 14, 2019, 100 Law Building Berkeley Law, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Daphne Barak-Erez: Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel
Daphne Barak-Erez, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez will speak about pressing constitutional questions in Israeli society.
Jewish Identitites in Israel: Confrontations, Crises, and Novel Conceptions
Tomer Persico: Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies; Shalom Hartman Institute Scholar-in-Residence
Tuesday, April 2, 2019, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Morrison Library
Tomer Persisco, Koret Visiting Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies
Over the past three decades the Israeli society witnessed significant revisions in the way it understands itself and its Jewish identity. The collapse of the peace process, the “disengagement” from Gaza and the growing emphasis on self fulfillment have changed social structures that were taken for granted in the past, and have propelled each of the different Jewish “tribes” in Israel – the Secular Zionist, the Religious-Zionist and the Ultra-Orthodox – into an identity crises. We will examine the manifestation of and the reasons for these developments, and present two opposing but complementary frameworks for self-understanding that are defining Jewish identity in Israel anew.
Academic Events
The Role of the Supreme Court in Israel’s Democracy
Asher Grunis: Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel
S.Y. Agnon: A Nobel Laureate Between Traditionalism, Modernism, and Surrealism
R. Jeffrey Saks: Rabbi, Author
Israeli Media and Politics
Anat Balint: Israel Institute Visiting Professor, San Francisco State University
The Role of Rhetoric, Discourse and Language in Marketing Contested Infrastructure: The Case of Israel
Itay Fischhendler: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Temple Mount: Sanctity, Nationalism and the End Point of Zionism
Tomer Persico, Koret-Hartman Visiting Professor of Jewish Thought
The Israel Museum: Between Zionism and Civic Nationalism
Hilda Nissim: Chair of History, Tel Aviv University
Economic Policy in Israel after the 2011 Social Protests: A Turning Point or Just a Blip?
Itai Ater: Israel Institute Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley; Tel Aviv University
Real Time: Hip-Hop in Israel
Uri Dorchin: Israel Institute Visiting Professor, UCLA; Zefat Academic College
Jews and the Culture Wars: Consensus and Dissensus in Jewish Religious Liberty Advocacy
Michael Avi Helfand: Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
The Universality and Intersectionality of Suffering
Rachel Adler, Rabbi and David Ellenson Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Student Events
Student Debrief of Midterm Elections
Thursday, November 8, 2018, Room 141, Berkeley Law, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Allison Kaplan Sommer
Come join Haaretz Journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer for a lively discussion, debriefing the mid-term elections over dinner. How do the elections and their results impact American Jews? How do they affect U.S.–Israel relations going forward?
Law, Religion and State
Tuesday, February 26, 2019, Goldberg Room, Berkeley Law, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Come join us for a presentation about the complexities of religion and state in Israel. How does religion affect public policy and the law? How does freedom of religion work? Come hear Amnon Reichman, a scholar of comparative law, and Tomer Persico, a scholar of comparative religion, discuss these and other questions from their differing perspectives and approaches.
The Elections & The Fate of Israel
Thursday, April 11, 2019, Room 115, Berkeley Law School, 6:00pm – 8:00 pm
Join the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies to discuss the aftermath of the Israeli Elections with Professors Eran Kaplan and Anat Balint on April 11, between 6 and 8pm. We will explore how various pressing issues facing Israel today will be impacted by the election results.