IIJS Welcomed Nadav Eyal for the 2026 Jack Abel Lecture

Nadav Eyal joined IIJS on Wednesday, September 16, for the 2026 Jack Abel Lecture: “Israel at the Ballot Box: An Election About the Country’s Future.”

Israel’s coming elections on October 27, 2026 are widely seen as the most consequential in a generation. They will be the first national elections since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the far-reaching regional conflict that followed, and will inevitably serve, in part, as a referendum on the record of the current government and coalition.

Yet the stakes extend beyond the conventional question of who will govern Israel next. The election brings to a head political, social, and demographic transformations that have been reshaping Israeli society for decades and that touch on fundamental questions about the country’s identity and future. At issue are competing visions of Israel: its relationship to the liberal and democratic principles embedded in its founding vision, the growing political influence of religious and traditional communities, and the broader shift toward conservatism within significant parts of Israeli society.

This lecture examined the forces shaping the election, the constituencies behind them, and what the outcome may tell us about Israel after October 7. More than a contest between parties, the election may become a referendum on the kind of country Israel intends to be.

Nadav Eyal is one of Israel's most prominent journalists, and is Senior Research Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is winner of the Sokolov Award (Israel’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and recipient of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism. He writes columns for Yediot Ahronot and Ynet, and serves as a commentator for Channel 12. 

Beginning on October 7, 2023, he has focused his work on stories and analyses related to the Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza and the northern border of Israel, including reporting multiple times from the field and writing the accounts of victims.

Eyal authored the bestseller "REVOLT, the Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization," which was published in 2021 by Ecco HarperCollins (USA) and Picador (UK), and has been translated into multiple languages. In 2023, Eyal published "HOW DEMOCRACY WINS (if it does)" in Hebrew. Haaretz described the book as "one of the most interesting books ever written on democracy in Hebrew."

His writings have appeared occasionally in Haaretz, the Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, The Washington Post, and The Daily Beast. He has also produced major documentary projects, including: Trumpland (2016), Syrian refugee crisis (2015), and Hate on rising anti-Semitism (2014). 

This recording will be available to view until Wednesday, September 23, 2026.

Supported by the generosity of the Abel family.

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Lelia Stadler Awarded the 2027 Baron Young Scholar Award

We are delighted to congratulate Lelia Stadler, Ph.D. candidate in History, on being selected for the University of Vienna’s 2027 Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Young Scholar Award.

Lelia Stadler, PhD Candidate, History

Lelia’s scholarship focuses on modern Jewish and Latin American history. Her dissertation is a social and legal history of Jewish immigration to South America, examining Jewish immigrants’ encounters with the Argentine state and how competing legal systems and regional norms shaped experiences of family, marriage, and divorce in a predominantly Catholic country.

Her publications include “In Search of Wandering Husbands: Jewish Migration, Desertion, and Divorce between Poland and Argentina, 1919–1939” (Brill, 2020), with “Ethical and Legal Bigamy: Transatlantic Jewish Families Caught between Conflicting Legalities, Argentina, 1930–1939” forthcoming in Jewish Social Studies.

We warmly congratulate Lelia on this well-deserved recognition.

Rebecca Kobrin’s "Credit to the Nation" Highlighted by Columbia News

IIJS Prof. Rebecca Kobrin discusses her recent book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, with Columbia News.

In her new book, Prof. Rebecca Kobrin traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry but also revolutionized the US financial industry. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Kobrin tells a story that is also crucial to the history of New York, as immigrant bankers’ financing of real estate transformed wide swathes of the city.

“These forgotten East European Jewish immigrant bankers were a twofold credit to the nation: Through their offers of credit, they made it possible for thousands to make it to America, and then make it in America by offering uncollateralized loans.”

Read the full Columbia News article here.

"Jewish Action" reviews "A Woman Is Responsible for Everything", by Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan

Jewish Action published a review of A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe, coauthored by IIJS faculty member Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan.

Published by Harvard University Press, A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe explores the lived experiences, religious practices, economic activity, and communal roles of Ashkenazi Jewish women across early modern Europe (ca. 1500–1800), drawing on a wide range of archival, printed, and material sources.

“Thanks to Professors Kaplan and Carlebach, anyone even marginally interested in Jewish history can access the ways Ashkenazi Jewish women of the early modern period lived, died, argued, married, wrote, did business and nearly everything in between.”— Jewish Action

Read the full Jewish Action review here.

Jewish Studies @ CU Libraries: "Old Books, New Bindings"

In a new post by Michelle Margolis (July 15, 2026) Jewish Studies @ CU Libraries highlights recent conservation work—supported by donor generosity and the Gottschalk Foundation—focused on restoring and stabilizing book bindings so materials can be used safely and prepared for a fall 2027 exhibition on the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa.

Items from Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Read the full blog post: “Old Books, New Bindings”

Actress Naomi Levov joins IIJS to Discuss "Bloody Murray" and "On the Spectrum”

The IIJS Summer Film Series, in partnership with ChaiFlicks, shared a sneak peek (the first two episodes) into two of Israel’s biggest TV series of the last few years, On the Spectrum and Bloody Murray. Leading actress Naomi Levov joined Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock for a Q&A on Tuesday, July 14 via Zoom.

On the Spectrum, introduces viewers to Zohar, Ron, and Dana — three 20-something-year-old roommates, each on the autism spectrum and learning to live life on their own terms. This touching dramedy was winner of six Israeli TV Academy Awards including Best Series and Best Actress (Naomi Levov). On The Spectrum captures their vulnerabilities, triumphs, friendships, and quiet moments as they learn to live more independently, together.
 
Bloody Murray is Israel's newest hit romantic comedy series starring Naomi Levov and Rotem Sela (The Beauty & The Baker, A Body That Works). This witty and smart romantic comedy series is a fresh take on the "messy magic of friendship", following two 30-something female roommates, Murray (Levov) and Dana (Sela), both successful, bright, and single. The series highlights their contrasting, yet deeply connected personalities, their somewhat messy romances, and the inevitable ticking clock of being a 30-something single woman. Bloody Murray recently swept the Israeli TV Academy Awards, winning Best Comedy, Best Actress (Naomi Levov), Best Supporting Actress (Rotem Sela) and Best Creator.

The Q&A is available to view in full below.

This event was sponsored by ChaiFlicks.

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IIJS Film@Home: "From Darkness to Light" Q&A with Bob Furmanek, Jerry Lewis' Former Archivist

IIJS hosted a virtual screening of From Darkness to Light, a documentary exploring the making—and ultimate abandonment—of Jerry Lewis's Holocaust film, followed by a Q&A with Jerry Lewis's former archivist, Bob Furmanek.

In 1972, movie legend and comedy auteur Jerry Lewis gambled his career and his own money to direct and star in a Holocaust film called The Day the Clown Cried. A series of troubles ensued and the film never saw the light of day, becoming an object of fascination for 50+ years. The documentary From Darkness to Light chronicles the doomed production comprehensively (including new interviews with Lewis before his death) and breaks new ground in film history by including fully edited scenes from The Day the Clown Cried—the first time they have ever been publicly seen.

Bob Furmanek’s career in film includes working as the personal archivist for Jerry Lewis, co-writing a celebrated book on the legendary comedy team Abbott & Costello, delving deep into the making of all their films, and founding the 3-D Film Archive in 1990. For more on Bob and the 3-D Film Archive, please click here.

The Q&A is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

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Michelle Margolis Named a 2026 Library Journal “Mover & Shaker”

Michelle Margolis, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies and Curator of Columbia University Libraries’ Jewish Studies collections, has been named one of Library Journal’s “Movers & Shakers” for 2026 in the Educators category. This annual recognition honors library professionals whose work is shaping the future of the field through teaching, scholarship, and public engagement.

Margolis was recognized for her work bringing Jewish texts to students, scholars, and public audiences through exhibitions, collaborative programming, teaching, and innovative library initiatives, including digitization projects and podcasts.

Read the full Library Journal profile, here.

Professor Rebecca Kobrin’s “Credit to the Nation” Featured in The Wall Street Journal

Professor Rebecca Kobrin’s new book, Credit to the Nation: East European Jewish Bankers and American Finance, 1870–1920, was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. The review highlights the book’s account of how Jewish immigrant bankers extended credit to new arrivals while helping shape economic and communal life in the United States during a period of mass migration.

Published by Harvard University Press, Credit to the Nation explores the networks of trust, migration, finance, and entrepreneurship that connected Eastern Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

IIJS Professor Rebecca Kobrin Receives 2026 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching

Prof. Kobrin delivers remarks at the IIJS 75th Anniversary Celebration

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is delighted to share that Professor Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, has been named a recipient of Columbia University’s 2026 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.

This prestigious honor recognizes exceptional dedication to teaching and mentorship across the University. Professor Kobrin was selected following strong endorsement from the faculty nominating committee, which praised her thoughtful, often innovative approach in the classroom and the profound and lasting impact she has had on her students. Testimonials from past and present students spoke to the depth of her mentorship and the meaningful influence of her teaching on their academic paths and personal development.

We warmly congratulate Professor Kobrin on this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and mentorship.

IIJS Featured in Columbia Magazine

A new article explores the history of Jewish Studies at Columbia and the Institute’s role on campus today.

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is featured in a recent article by Paul Hond in Columbia Magazine. The piece traces the origins of Jewish Studies at Columbia through the work of its founding scholar, Salo Wittmayer Baron, and reflects on the Institute’s mission to support rigorous scholarship and thoughtful dialogue on Jewish history, culture, and contemporary issues.

Elissa Bemporad Discusses Jews in the Soviet Union

On Wednesday, March 11, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies welcomed historian Elissa Bemporad for a book talk on her recent publication, Jews in the Soviet Union, Volume 1: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, at 617 Kent Hall.

Jews in the Soviet Union, a new multi-volume history, is an unprecedented undertaking. This groundbreaking work draws on rare access to documents from the Soviet archives, allowing for the presentation of a sweeping history of Jewish life in the Soviet Union from 1917 through the early 1990s. Authored by Elissa Bemporad, Volume 1, Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, tells the story of the ways in which Jews endured, adjusted to, and participated in the Soviet system both as individuals and as part of a Jewish collectivity during the first decade of its existence. The volume explores Jewish cultural, political, and social life in the different regions of the Soviet Union, integrating gender and women’s issues, narratives of historical elites and ordinary folk. It focuses on everyday life and discusses the fate of Jews in the Soviet Union both as Soviet citizens and as Jews. Chronicling the ways in which different Jews became Soviet in the 1920s, the volume reveals how the lines of contact between Jews in the Soviet Union and the outside world fluctuated between open antagonism and impassioned support.

Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Bemporad is the author of three monographs, including Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the editor of several volumes, including, most recently, Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021) and The Destruction of Dubova: Chronicle of a Dead City (Bloomsbury 2025). Her work has appeared in different languages, including French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and Russian. 

The full recording of the event is available to view below.

This event was supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

Alex Weiser and Ben Kaplan Present The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language

On Thursday, March 5, IIJS and the Yiddish Studies Program in the Department of Germanic Languages welcomed composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan for a special presentation of their opera The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language at 617 Kent Hall.

The event featured an excerpt from the ambitious new opera, followed by a conversation with the artists about the work’s origins and the challenges of writing a twenty-first-century opera centered on Yiddish language and culture.

The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language tells the tragi-comic story of Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark and his unfinished effort to create the first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary. Through music and drama, the work reflects on the extraordinary ambitions of Yiddish cultural life in the aftermath of the Holocaust and invites audiences to consider the enduring power of language to shape identity, memory, and community.

View The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language opera trailer here.

The full recording of the event is available to view below.

This event is co-sponsored by the Yiddish Studies Program in the Department of Germanic Languages.

"A Woman Is Responsible for Everything" Receives Two National Jewish Book Awards

We are delighted to share that A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2025), co-authored by IIJS Co-Director and Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society Elisheva Carlebach and Prof. Debra Kaplan (Bar-Ilan University), received two National Jewish Book Awards! The book was awarded the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies.

In A Woman Is Responsible for Everything, Carlebach and Kaplan draw on meticulous research and extensive archival and material sources to reveal Jewish women’s lives across three centuries, revealing how women were central to the economic, religious, and communal life of their communities. Richly documented with archival images, the work illuminates the lives of women whom scholars have long overlooked, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a broader understanding of the Jewish past.

To learn more about the award, please visit the Jewish Book Council’s announcement page. Additional information about the book is available through Princeton University Press.

Maya Gayer Delivers the Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award Talk

The Columbia Oral History MA Program and IIJS were pleased to host the Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award Talk: "Documenting Democratic Backsliding" featuring Maya Gayer.

OHMA alum and 2025 Brodsky Award recipient Maya Gayer, spoke about her award-winning thesis work, and its connections to broader trends of global democratic backsliding. The Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award recognizes a student whose thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge and most exemplifies the rigor, creativity, and ethical integrity that OHMA teaches its students. Gayer’s thesis, In Defense of Democracy: An Oral History Archive of the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement, examines the unprecedented wave of mobilization in Israel and worldwide during 2023–sparked by the Israeli government's proposed judicial overhaul, which threatened democratic checks and balances and led to the emergence of the largest grassroots protest movement in the country’s history. As a 2023–24 Fulbright Scholar at OHMA, Gayer conducted interviews with over twenty key leaders and organizers across the movement, foregrounding the voices and strategies of those who shaped the protest movement. The collection aims to preserve the history of this pivotal moment in Israeli society and contribute to the study of democratic backsliding and civil resistance, offering a critical case study for other societies facing similar challenges.

In this talk, Maya discussed the events leading up to the creation of the protest movement, its place within the global phenomenon of democratic backsliding, and the recurring patterns that characterize this trend. She also shared insights from interviewees about the elements of effective civic resistance, and reflect on the process and dilemmas of producing oral histories during a moment of crisis, including the tension between journalistic reporting and oral history practice.

Maya Gayer is a journalist, content editor, and program director with over two decades of experience in the media field. Maya was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Public Humanities to pursue an MA in Columbia University’s Oral History Program. Her Brodsky Award-winning thesis project–an oral history collection documenting the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement–is intended to be preserved in the Israel National Library, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Judaica and Hebraica Collections at Stanford University.

Prior to her studies in OHMA, Maya spent the past decade as a senior director of programming at one of Israel’s most popular public radio stations. She was responsible for the station's Holocaust Remembrance Day broadcasts and served as editor-in-chief of The Broadcast University, one of the station’s flagship programs, known for making academic knowledge accessible to the general public. In recent years, Maya established and directed the Persitz Program in Arts Management at the Tel Aviv–Jaffa municipality and was the head content editor of the science documentary series The Future is Already Here, which aired on KAN (Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation). She also taught radio and podcast production at Sapir Academic College and the University of Haifa. Maya holds an MA, Magna Cum Laude, in Film and Television studies from Tel Aviv University.

Read Maya’s full thesis, In Defense of Democracy: An Oral History Archive of the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement, linked here.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia University Oral History MA Program.

Dr. Jordan Finkin joins IIJS for the 15th Annual Naomi Prawer Kadar Memorial Lecture

IIJS, in partnership with the Naomi Foundation, welcomed Dr. Jordan Finkin for the 2026 Naomi Prawer Kadar Memorial Lecture, featuring his talk “Snow and Herring: The Work of Modern Yiddish Culture.”

In its millennium-long history, Yiddish has appeared in many guises, which have only proliferated in the modern world. With its fabric torn in the middle of the twentieth century, the field of Yiddish today confronts the perturbations of rupture and renewal. The stuff of Yiddish today is culture work. What does that work look like? How do contemporary practitioners navigate the tensions between the work of cultural preservation and creative reinvention? What visions for the future emerge from such efforts? Watch Dr. Finkin’s talk below to learn more.

Dr. Jordan Finkin is the Library Director and Rare Book and Manuscript Librarian at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. A scholar of modern Yiddish literature, Dr. Finkin is the author of several scholarly monographs as well as numerous academic essays and articles. A productive literary translator from Yiddish, German, and French, Dr. Finkin is also the founder and director of Naydus Press, a non-profit publisher of Yiddish literature in English translation.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

Supported by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.

The Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture invites the public to engage with topics in Yiddish language and linguistics, the history of Yiddish, and Yiddish children's literature and education. The lecture is supported by the Naomi Prawer Kadar Foundation.

The foundation champions Yiddish, Naomi's lifelong passion, as a vibrant, intellectually rich, and living language. It works to advance the teaching and study of Yiddish, with a particular focus on academic and scholarly settings.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen to Join SIPA Faculty and Teach with IIJS in 2026

Columbia SIPA and IIJS is pleased to announce the appointment of Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet and East European Jewry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who will join the faculty in July 2026. In addition to his teaching and other work for SIPA, Dekel-Chen will teach one course at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (IIJS) for undergraduate students each academic year. 

Dekel-Chen brings deep expertise in modern Jewish history, nonstate diplomacy, transnational philanthropy and advocacy, agrarian history, and migration. At SIPA, he will teach three new courses. The first will explore the intersection of Jewish legacies in Eastern Europe with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. The second course will deal with Russia’s engagement in the Middle East since 1774. The third will approach modern Israeli history from multiple perspectives. As part of his work at SIPA, he will also lead workshops and roundtables through the Institute of Global Politics (IGP).

“The ongoing wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East warrant greater reflection in academia, particularly through the prism of how Russia sees the world, which is informed by its own historical narratives,” said Dekel-Chen. “I hope to bring a holistic perspective to these and other modern conflicts – one informed by my scholarship and my own ground-level experiences in these wars.” 

Dekel-Chen served for many years as the academic chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at Hebrew University. He has also served as chairman of the Russian Studies Department and of the Jewish History Department at Hebrew University. Jonathan has been a visiting professor and research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, Columbia’s Harriman Institute, and at the Kennan Institute.

“Jonathan’s background and expertise are exactly what we need to help make sense of today’s conflicts, from Gaza to Ukraine,” said SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. “We are incredibly fortunate to welcome him to SIPA, and I know our students will benefit enormously from his scholarly insights and unique perspective shaped by his own story.”

Prof. Pamela Nadell joins IIJS for the 2026 Abel Lecture on Antisemitism

In commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, IIJS hosted the second annual Abel Lecture on Antisemitism. On Tuesday, January 27, we welcomed Professor Pamela Nadell via Zoom for a lecture based on her new book, Antisemitism, An American Tradition.

Book cover

Drawing on this work, Prof. Nadell traced the deep roots of antisemitism in American history and examined the many ways Jews have confronted it—through legal advocacy, communal organizing, direct action, and alliances with broader movements against hate. Her lecture underscored the enduring relevance of this history and issued a timely warning about a prejudice that continues to shape American life.

Photo of Prof. Pamela Nadell

Prof. Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. Her book America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Everett Family Foundation “Book of the Year”. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she is a consultant to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life museum, has testified multiple times before Congress, and lectures widely.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

Supported by the generosity of the Abel family.

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Arnold Eisen Discusses “Seeking the Hiding God” at the Inaugural Cytron Family Lecture

On January 21, IIJS hosted the inaugural Cytron Family Lecture, welcoming Arnold Eisen, Professor of Jewish Thought and Chancellor Emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary, for a lecture drawn from his recent book and personal essay Seeking the Hiding God.

In his talk, Eisen explored the motivations behind writing Seeking the Hiding God and the choices that shaped the essay, giving particular attention to the question of God’s role in history. Long a source of division and debate among Jewish thinkers in Israel and the United States, this question has taken on renewed importance in modern Jewish life.

IIJS was honored to be joined by Rabbi Barry and Phyllis Cytron, whose generous support made this new lecture series possible. The Cytron Family Lecture invites reflection on the social, cultural, and spiritual questions shaping Jewish life in America and Israel—and how these communities might engage them in building a sustaining, creative future.

Arnold Eisen, one of the world’s foremost authorities on American Judaism, is Professor of Jewish Thought and Chancellor Emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary. During his tenure as Chancellor, Eisen oversaw curricular and programmatic innovations designed to give rabbinic, cantorial, and educational leaders the skills needed to cope with the unprecedented societal and spiritual challenges confronting Jews today. A popular and charismatic lecturer, Eisen has conducted frank discussions of faith, commandment, and community with hundreds of audiences at synagogues, universities, summer camps, and other venues throughout North America. Those conversations form the basis of Seeking the Hiding God.

Eisen is the author of a widely-read volume of personal reflection, Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America. His scholarly publications include many dozens of articles on the contemporary Jewish situation as well as The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology; Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming; Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community; and (with sociologist Steven M. Cohen) The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America. Eisen’s op-eds and blog posts have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, Time Magazine, and the Times of Israel, among other publications. His blog series, “On My Mind,” has reached many thousands of readers.

Seeking the Hiding God is his first published work of theology.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

Recording of the Cytron Family Lecture with Prof. Arnold Eisen

Supported by the generosity of the Cytron family.


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Naama Harel in Conversation with Beth Berkowitz on "The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast"

IIJS was pleased to host a conversation with Professor Naama Harel and Professor Beth Berkowitz on Wednesday, December 3. The discussion centered on Harel’s recent book, The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast: Gender and Animality in Modernist Hebrew Fiction.

Jews, women, and animals have been notoriously considered in Western thought as antithetical to the “civilized,” and therefore parallel. The trope of the womanized Jewish man has been widely recognized as a staple in otherizing portrayals of European Jews, as well as their self-perception. Similarly, ecofeminist critique has addressed the ubiquitous depiction of the animalized woman throughout history. Yet, the interconnection between the effeminization of Jews and the animalization of women has been overlooked. 

The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast critically explores the tangled interplay between Jewishness, gender, and animality and its manifestation in modernist Hebrew fiction. Through interdiscursive analysis and close readings, the effeminate Jew is examined vis-à-vis the animalized woman. Intertwining cutting-edge theoretical frameworks of posthumanism and animal studies with established scholarship of Hebrew literature, Jewish studies, and gender studies, Naama Harel offers new Hebrew literary historiography and innovative perspectives on canonical works by Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Devorah Baron, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Yosef Haim Brenner, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and David Vogel.

Naama Harel directs Columbia’s Hebrew program and co-chairs the University Seminar for Human-Animal Studies. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of Modern Jewish & Hebrew literature and Human-Animal Studies. She is the author of Kafka’s Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human/Animal Barrier (University of Michigan Press, 2020) and The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast: Gender and Animality in Modernist Hebrew Fiction (Rutgers University Press, 2025).

Beth A. Berkowitz is Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religion at Barnard College. She has authored books such as Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2006; winner of the Salo Baron Prize for Outstanding First Book in Jewish Studies), and is co-editor of Religious Studies and Rabbinics: A Conversation (Routledge, 2017). Her area of specialization is classical rabbinic literature, and her interests include animal studies, Jewish difference, rabbinic legal authority, and Bible reception history.


The full discussion is available to view below.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Appel families.