2019–2020 Events
Public Events
A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion
Thursday, October 24, Berkeley Law, Room 100, 5:30pm–7:30pm
Tom Segev is among Israel’s leading journalists and historians. His works include The Seventh Million; 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East; Simon Wiesenthal; and One Palestine, Complete (chosen one of ten best books of 2000 by The New York Times).
Innovations and Collaborations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems: Toward Sustainability in the Middle East
Tuesday, October 29, Room 330 Blum Hall, 5:30pm–7:30pm
Suleiman Halasah: Founder of the Jordan-Israel Center for Community, Environment and Research, under the auspices of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies
Drawing from his extensive research and work in the region, Suleiman Halasah will present collaborative initiatives around food, energy and water in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. He will be joined by Berkeley Professor Isha Ray as a discussant.
Unlikely Refuge: Survivors, Aid Organizations and Local Communities in WWII Uzbekistan and Iran
Monday, November 4, 2019, Warren Room, Berkeley Law 295, 5:30pm–7:30pm
Mikhal Dekel is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the City College and the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of CCNY’s Rifkind Center for Humanities and the Arts. She is the recipient of many awards – including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the Lady Davis Foundation – and is the author of three books: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey (W.W. Norton in 2019) Oedipus in Kishinev (Bialik Institute, 2014), and The Zionist Moment (Northwestern University Press, 2011).
Religion in the Military: The Case of Israel
Monday, November 14, Bancroft Hotel, The Great Hall, 5:30pm–7:30pm
Join us for this inaugural lecture by Ron Hassner, Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, and Faculty Director at the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Professor Ron Hassner will explore how religion affects modern militaries. Shifting the focus away from radical religion as a source of extremist violence, Hassner studies how routine religious practices and preferences shape the tactics and strategies of all armed forces, in Israel and beyond.
Robbins Collection Annual Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity
From Sinai to Ethiopia, and Back to Israel: The Halakhic and Conceptual World of Ethiopian Jewry
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020, 5:30 pm Reception, 6 PM Lecture, Room 105
Prof. Rabbi Sharon Shalom: Ono College and Bar-Ilan University
In his talk, Prof. Rabbi Shalom delves into the history, customs, and law of the Beta Israel, codifying the ancient cultural heritage of Ethiopian Jewry and contrasting it with Orthodox rabbinic law. Navigating tensions between religion and culture, he offers suggestions for honoring Beta Israel tradition while fully participating in the greater Jewish community.
Desert in the Promised Land: Nature, Settlement, and the Politics of Space in Israel
Tuesday, February 18th
Professor Yael Zerubavel, Rutgers University 5:30 PM Lecture, 6 PM Reception, The Great Hall, Bancroft Hotel
Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement and security concerns, environmental sympathies, and the commodifying tourist gaze. Drawing on literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons, Zerubavel reveals the complexities and contradictions that mark Israeli society’s semiotics of space in relation to the Middle East, and the central role of the “besieged island” trope in Israeli culture and politics.
Podcast Series: Israel and Jewish Identity in the Age of COVID
Episode 1: Ha-Haydak Ha-Politi (The Political Bug)
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Prof. Roy Peled: Israel Institute Visiting Professor, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies; Administrative and Constitutional Law professor at the Haim Striks School of Law, College of Management, Academic Studies in Israel
Episode 2: Coronavirus Lesson — How Jews and Arabs United to Fight a Plague in Ottoman Palestine A Century Ago
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Zach Foster: Project Manager, Academia; Host of Middle East Tonight; Ph.D Near Eastern Studies Princeton
Episode 3: A Coronavirus Recession in Israel
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
David Rosenberg: Economics Editor and Columnist, Haaretz; Former Israel Bureau Chief, Bloomberg NewsModerated by: Rebecca Golbert, Berkeley Institute Executive Director
Episode 4: Democracy, Religion and State — Israeli Constitutional Law Update
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Prof. Ori Aronson: Senior Lecturer of Law; Deputy Director of the Center for Jewish and Democratic LawIn Conversation with Prof. Roy Peled; Visiting Professor, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
Episode 5: Mental Health and the Politics of Trauma in Israel — A Nation on the Couch
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Keren Friedman-Peleg, Senior Lecturer, School of Behavioral Science; Head of the President’s Program for Excellence, College of Management-Academic Studies in Israel
Episode 6: Emergency Law and Power in Israel — Where are the limits?
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Prof. Amnon ReichmanUniversity of Haifa Professor of Law: Principal Investigator, Minerva Center for the Study of the Rule of Law Under Extreme Condition, University of Haifa
Moderator: Prof. Ken Bamberger Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law, Berkeley Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkeley Institute for Jewish and Berkeley Center for Law and Technology
Episode 7: Technology, Surveillance, and COVID19: The Israel Experience
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Niva Elkin-KorenL Director, Haifa Center for Law & Technology (HCLT); Co-Director, Center for Cyber, Law and Politics; Former Dean, University of Haifa Faculty of Law
Moderators:
Kenneth A. Bamberger, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT), Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
Shafi Goldwasser: Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing; Professor of Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley; Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Episode 8: On Denisovans and Neanderthals — Breakthroughs in Human Evolution
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
David Gokhman, local Israeli evolutionary researcher, Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University Of Jerusalem (2018)
Episode 9: Holocaust Museums and Memory
Tuesday, April 21st, 2020
Stephanie Rotem, Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at UC Berkeley
Moderator: Rebecca Golbert
Episode 10: Borders — Why Are States Putting Up Fences?
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Prof. Ron Hassner, PhD Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies
Episode 11: Haredi Communities and the Religion and State Divide during COVID-19
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Prof. Tomer Persico, Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies
Episode 12: Talmudic Wisdom on Crisis and Catastrophe
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Deena Aranoff: Director of Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Jewish Studies, GTU
Kenneth A. Bamberger: The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT), Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
Episode 13: Jewish Journalism and Reporting on Crisis
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Sue Fishkoff, Editor of the J. Weekly
Moderator: Rebecca Golbert, Executive Director, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
Episode 14: Online Extremism in a Time of Global Pandemic
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Ahman Sultan: Associate Director for ADL’s Center on Technology and Society
Vlad KhaykinL Director of Antisemitism Programs at Anti-Defamation League
Moderator: Maya Shemtov, Assistant Director of Student Engagement and Programs, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
Academic Events
Hadassah Women Build a ‘Modern Hospital’ — The Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus
Stephanie Rotem: Berkeley Institute Visiting Professor; Tel Aviv University
The Growth of Religious Nationalism in Israeli Society
Alain Dieckhoff: Professor, Science Po
Special Joint Session with the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion
Israel as the State of Redemption: Political, Theological, and Cultural Implications
Eva Gurevich: PhD Candidate, Brandeis University
The Methodology of Immigration Law: The Case of Israel
Tally Kritzman-Amir: Visiting Professor, Harvard University
Israel-Gulf Relations: From Enemies to Allies of Convenience
Joshua Teitelbaum: Professor, Bar-Ilan University
Israeli Memorial Landscape: Competing Approaches to Remembrance and Forgetting
Yael Zerubavel: Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Criticism of Israel: Where to Draw the Line?
Dov Waxman: Gilbert Chair in Israel Studies, Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, UCLA
Student Events
From Ethiopia to Israel — My Story
Monday, February 3, 2020, Goldberg Room, 297 Berkeley Law School, 5:30pm – 7:00 pm
Prof. Rabbi Sharon Shalom, scholar of Ethiopian Jewish law, culture, and practice. He is the Chair of the International Center for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry at Ono Academic College and a Professor at Bar-Ilan University.
The Jewish Ethiopian Community, ‘Beta Israel,’ lived in Ethiopia for thousands of years. They experienced a long history of famine, religious oppression, and civil war. In the 20th century, tens of thousands immigrated to Israel. They faced a harrowing journey, many traveling on foot for up to 2 months from Ethiopia to Sudan, spending years in refugee camps, and experienced additional challenges once they did cross the border into Israel. Prof. Rabbi Shalom immigrated alone at 8 years old, certain that his parents were dead, and lived as an orphan at a children’s home in Afula. He joins us to share his personal journey, and the experiences he has had since then as an immigrant in Israeli society.
The Deal of The Century: A Legal Analysis of Trump’s Latest Plan
Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 297 Berkeley Law School, 5:00pm – 6:30 pm
Amnon Reichman, Robbins Collection Visiting Professor in Comparative Law & Professor of Law at the University of Haifa
In January 2020, President Donald Trump finally released his plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The plan has been 3 years in the making and since it’s release, has sparked a wide array of strong reactions. Join us for a deep dive into the legal landscape surrounding this plan with Berkeley Law Visiting Professor Amnon Reichman. We’ll discuss past Israeli/Palestinian peace negotiations, the current legal regime in the area, and the options that lie ahead.
Israeli Elections: Third Time’s a Charm?
Monday, March 2, 2020, 297 Berkeley Law School, 11:30am – 1:00 pm
Roy Peled: Israel Institute Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley for 2019–2020
As votes roll in, join the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies for live updates and analysis of the results. Who is winning? What does that mean? What is still left up to chance?