2021–2022 Events
Public Events
Civil Society and Plurality in Israel: Virtual Lunchtime Series
A Multicultural Entrapment: Religion & State among the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel
Session 1, Tuesday, October 5, 2021, 12:40 – 2 PM PT
Michael Karayanni, (Bruce W. Wayne Chair in International Law, Hebrew University Faculty of Law) in conversation with Masua Sagiv (Koret Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley; Shalom Hartman Institute; Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law) about his new book A Multicultural Entrapment: Religion & State among the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Watch the recording here.
Reconstructing the Civic: Palestinian Civil Activism in Israel
Session 2, Thursday, November 4, 12:40 – 2 PM PT
Amal Jamal (Professor of Political Science, Head of Walter Lebach Institute for the Study of Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Tel Aviv University) in conversation with Daniel Zoughbie (Associate Project Scientist, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley) about his new book Reconstructing the Civic: Palestinian Civil Activism in Israel (SUNY Press, 2020). Watch the recording here.
Sex Segregation in Israel: Between Gender, Law, and Religion
Session 3, Tuesday, February 1, 2022, 12:40 – 2 PM PT
Yofi Tirosh (Associate Professor, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law; former Dean of Sapir Academic College School of Law) will join in conversation with Michael Helfand (Vice Dean for Faculty and Research, Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law) to discuss her work on sex segregation in Israeli society, including in academia, and the appropriate balance between religious accommodation and sex equality. Watch the recording here.
Gender, Religion, and the Military in Israel
Session 4, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, 12:40 – 2pm PT
Elisheva Rosman-Stollman (Associate Professor of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University) will join in conversation with Ronit Stahl (Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley) to discuss her work on religion and gender in the Israeli military, including questions of gender equality, religious accommodation, and the legitimation of religious female soldiers. Watch the recording here.
The New Governing Coalition and Shifts in Israeli Society
Thursday, October 14th
Moderator: Janine Zacharia, Carlos Kelly McClatchy Lecturer, Stanford University
Panel Participants: Rami Zeedan, Assistant Professor, University of Kansas; Tal Schneider, Diplomatic & Political correspondent, Globes Newspaper and Times of Israel; Noah Efron, Chair, Program on Science, Technology, and Society, Bar-Ilan University; Host, The Promised Podcast, TLV1
Join us for a virtual panel on Israel’s new governing coalition and the insights it provides on Israeli society. Janine Zacharia will moderate a lively discussion — with Rami Zeedan, Tal Schneider, and Noah Efron — about the current government and its very broad coalition, the challenges and opportunities this arrangement has created, some reflections to date on mistakes and successes, and a significant engagement with the shifts in Israeli society that are reflected through this new governing coalition. Watch the recording here.
The Libitzky Lecture on Israel and the Great Powers at UC Berkeley: Israel and the Case of Russia
Tuesday, November 16th
Anna Borshchevskaya, Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, joins Professor Ron Hassner, the Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at UC Berkeley, for a conversation exploring Israel’s relationship with Russia and what this might mean for geopolitics as we know it. This is the second in a series of talks examining Israel’s relationships with global powers. Watch the recording here.
Bad News: How Woke Media Undermines Democracy
Thursday, November 18th, 2021
Join us for a riveting conversation between Batya Ungar-Sargon, Deputy Opinion Editor of Newsweek, and Ethan Katz, Professor of History, UC Berkeley, as they dive into complex and controversial issues — raised by Ungar-Sargon’s new book — about American journalism and its role in shaping race, class, religion, and culture in America. Seeking to hold both the Left and the Right accountable, Batya takes issue with the “woke” media and the ways it has led the American public astray. Watch the recording here.
Symposium: Controversial Issues in Citizenship Education – Insights from Israel
Wednesday, February 16, 9 AM – 12:45 PM PT
The Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies and the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley are hosting a symposium to explore insights from the Israeli context on controversial issues in citizenship education.
Public dialogue about issues of civic concern is essential to a healthy common life in any open, liberal, pluralistic, democratic society. This includes the discussion of controversial social, political, and economic policies that may cause deep divisions and over which conflicting views may be based on alternative values and methods of analysis. Indeed, with the dramatic increase of migration across the globe over recent decades, the very idea of who should be afforded citizens’ rights, including the right to participate in the public discourse of a democracy, has become one such controversial issue.
The extreme challenges of discussing controversial issues has led to increased attention in the educational research and policies of many countries around the world, including Israel and the United States, as to the possible purposes, pedagogies, and products of citizenship education. Watch the recording here.
Participants:
Diana Hess, Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education and Dean of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Chris Edley, the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law, Former Dean of Berkeley Law, and Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley.
Hanan Alexander, Professor of Philosophy of Education, Immediate Past Dean of the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, and Koret Visiting Professor of Israel Studies, UC Berkeley.
Masua Sagiv, Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies, UC Berkeley, Scholar in Residence, Shalom Hartman Institute, and Menomadin Center, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law.
Adar Cohen, Academic Director of the Teacher Education Program, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Visiting Scholar, UC Davis.
Ayman Agbaria, Sr. Lecturer in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Haifa, and faculty member in the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, Jerusalem.
Why Do People Discriminate Against the Jews?
Tuesday, February 15, 2022, 12:30 – 2:00PM, 295 Berkeley Law
Professor Jonathan Fox provides a data-rich analysis of the causes of discrimination against Jews across the globe (based on a book co-authored with Lev Topor). Using the tools of comparative political science, Fox and Topor examine the causes of both government-based and societal discrimination against Jews in 76 countries. The most rigorous adn geographically wide-ranging analysis of discrimination against Jews to date, their book reshapes our understanding of the persecution of religious minorities in general and the Jewish people in particular.
Jonathan Fox: Yehuda Avner Professor of Religion and Politics at Bar-Ilan University, the Director of the Religion and State (RAS) Project, and a Senior Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Robbins Collection Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity
Reimagining Diversity and Jewish Belonging: A Journey Through Genesis
Tuesday, February 22, 5:30 – 7PM PT
Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
In the U.S. American context, the dominant conception of Jewish identity does not fully reckon with the diversity that exists within the Jewish people. This talk will explore that gap in conversation with the book of Genesis, highlighting the book’s potential to inform a journey to reimagining Jewish belonging in more inclusive ways. Watch the recording here.
Bodies of Empathy
Tuesday, April 26, 11:10 AM – 12:30 PM PT
How can choreography practice and inspire empathy and care? How is performance conducted with socially engaged values? In what ways do choreographers think about dance as a participatory human event approaching questions of social inclusion and exclusion? Can dance be perceived as an ethical activity, and how can it inform and foster intercultural encounters? This talk joins a larger cultural discussion exploring the role of empathy in dance while offering a perspective from the Israeli dance scene. Watch the recording here.
Curated and Moderated by Prof. Yael Nativ, Spring 2022 Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor; Senior Lecturer, Academic College for Society and Arts, Levinsky College of Education
Yasmeen Godder, Israeli ChoreographerSharon Fridman, Israeli Choreographer and Director, Artist-in-Residence, Francisco Rabal Theater, Pinto Town Hall (Madrid, Spain)Dr. Einav Katan-Schmid, Head of the School of Dance, Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and ArtsProf. SanSan Kwan, UC Berkeley, TDPS
Academic Events
Human Dignity as a Chameleon
Monday, Oct 18, 2021, 12:30 - 2:00 PM, Warren Room
Michal Tamir: 2021-2022 Israel Institute Visiting Professor in Israel Studies; Associate Professor, The Academic Center of Law and Science, Israel
Correct Me If I Am Wrong: Institutional Hebrew vs. Native Hebrew in Israel
Monday, November 8, 12:30 – 2:00 PM, Berkeley Law, 297 Goldberg Room
Uri Mor: 2021–2022 Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor; former Head, Department of Hebrew Language, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Research Workshop: Exploring New Models of Criminal Courts
Friday, March 11, 2022, 9:30AM – 1:30PM
This research workshop seeks to explore and evaluate this intriguing phenomenon– the emergence of “new criminal courts” and alternatives. Focusing on four examples– virtual courts, technology-driven courts, community courts and private alternatives to the criminal courts, the workshop participants will probe deeper into these new ways of conflict resolution making and examine how these new judicial institutions and alternatives challenge the ways we understand the role and function of courts in the criminal sphere.
Featuring: Hadar Dancig-Rosenburg, Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor of Berkeley Law and Professor of law at Bar-Ilan University; Rebecca Wexler, Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Berkeley Law; Andrea Roth, Professor of Law at Berkeley Law; Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean’s Professor of Law at Berkeley Law; Hadar Aviram, Professor of Law at UC Hastings Law
Israeli Community Action: Living Through the War of Independence
Monday, March 14, 2022, 12:30 – 2:00 PM, Berkeley Law, 297 Goldberg Room
Paula Kabablo: Spring 2022 Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor; Professor of History, Head of the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Religious Discrimination, Diaspora, and the United Nations Voting on Israel
Monday, February 14, 2022, 12:30 – 2:00PM, Berkeley Law, 295 Warren Room
Jonathan Fox: Yehuda Avner Professor of Religion and Politics at Bar-Ilan University, the Director of the Religion and State (RAS) Project, and a Senior Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Student Events
Russia in the Middle East: Strategies, Tactics, and implications for U.S. Policy
Monday, November 15th, 2021, Room 295, Berkeley Law School, 5:00pm – 6:30 pm
Join us for a conversation with Anna Borshchevskaya, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for a conversation on foreign relations among Russia and the Middle East, and the U.S.
Israeli Community Action: Living Through the War of Independence
Monday, March 14, 2022, 12:30 – 2:00PM, Berkeley Law, 297 Goldberg Room
When the 1948 Israeli War of Independence broke out, population centers were rocked by sniper fire, bombings and roadside ambushes. As the fighting moved out of the cities into desert areas, private citizens and community organizations that were left behind gathered to revitalize and restore life in their devastated communities. In Israeli Community Action, Paula Kabalo presents a vivid portrait of these civilians who strove to help each other cope with the realities of war.
Paula Kabalo: Helen Diller Institute Visiting Professor; Professor of History, Head of the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Student-Centered Conversation about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Monday, March 16, 2022 | 12:45 – 2:00PM
George Breslauer, Rebecca Golbert, and David Kurvoskiy will bring different disciplinary lenses to bear on the current crisis in Ukraine and its political, historical, cultural and linguistic contexts.
George Breslauer: Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School in the Department of Political Science, former Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of UC Berkeley
Rebecca Golbert: Executive Director of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at Berkeley Law
David Kurkovskiy: PhD candidate in Slavic and Jewish Studies