Three Israeli Scholars discuss "Framing October 7: A Date of Inflection for Jewish History"

The Institute hosted a panel discussion led by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin and featuring Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Nadav Eyal, and Avi Shilon on Sunday, October 5, 2025.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and carried out the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. The attack not only shattered assumptions about Jewish sovereignty, security, and politics but also reshaped Israel’s relationship with the wider world. In the months that followed, the war in Gaza and the intensifying debates it provoked deeply influenced global perceptions of Israel, the Jewish diaspora, and the boundaries of antisemitism.

As scholars continue to assess the aftermath, new questions emerge. How should October 7 and its consequences be integrated into the broader trajectory of Jewish history? What insights do Jewish historical experience and memory offer for understanding this moment? In what ways are shifting international responses to the Hamas–Israel conflict reshaping Jewish life worldwide?

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies continues this vital conversation with the second event in our series, Framing October 7.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz. The Hamas attack on his kibbutz on October 7, 2023 resulted in the massacre of dozens of its members, the captivity of many dozens more as well as the physical destruction and looting of Nir Oz. His 37 year-old son Sagui – a father of three young girls – was among the hostages from Nir Oz; he was released on February 14, 2025.

Since the Hamas attack on his kibbutz, Dekel-Chen has advocated in the US and Israel for release of the hostages, including many meetings with senior officials in both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as members of Congress. He has also made hundreds of media appearances to inform the public about the plight of the hostages.

Dekel-Chen is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History and in the Department of General History; he is also the Academic Chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian & East European Jewry. Dekel-Chen’s research deals with modern Jewish history, modern Israel, transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration.

Together with Sagui, his older son Etai, and the late Tamar Kedem Siman-Tov, in 2014 Jonathan co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts in Eshkol. Relocated to Ein Gedi in 2020, Bikurim provides world-class artistic training for underserved high school students from throughout Israel.

Nadav Eyal is a leading Israeli journalist, Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and Senior Scholar. 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. 

Nadav chaired the Movement for Freedom of Information, which promotes transparency and accountability in Israel from 2021-2026. His recent book HOW DEMOCRACY WINS (if it does) (2023), was lauded by Haaretz as a major contribution to the study of democracy. He has also produced major documentary projects, including: Trumpland (2016), Syrian refugee crisis (2015), and Hate on rising anti-Semitism (2014). 

Since October 7, 2023, he has focused on covering the Hamas attack, Gaza war, and northern border, including field reporting and victim accounts.

Avi Shilon is a historian who specializes in Israel Studies. His PhD dissertation focuses on the attitudes of the leaders of the Revisionist Movement toward Jewish religion from 1925 to 2005.

He is the author of Menachem Begin’s biography, Menachem Begin: A Life (Yale University Press, 2013); Ben Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and The Decline of the Left-wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (I.B. Tauris, 2020).

Shilon was a visiting scholar at NYU from 2019 to 2022, teaching courses at the Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, as well as at NYU and Rutgers University in the U.S, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. Last year, he taught at Columbia University.

Shilon is also the editor of the non-fiction section at Am-Oved Publishing House and writes op-ed columns for Yedioth Ahronoth. He is currently teaching at the Tel-Hai Academic College in Israel.

The panel is available to view in full below.

New Research by Professor Rebecca Kobrin on October 7 and Its Impact on Israeli Students at Columbia

We are proud to share recent research by IIJS Co-Director Professor Rebecca Kobrin, examining the events and aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. This work offers critical insight into the surge of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on U.S. college campuses, including the experiences of Israeli students at Columbia.

Her study examines how the October 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing campus activism affected Israeli students’ sense of belonging at Columbia University, arguing that the concept of “anti-Israelism” is essential to understanding these dynamics fully. 

Read her research in detail, linked below:

Anti-Israelism, Social Media and the College Campus in the Aftermath of October 7: The Case of Columbia

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Jewish Studies Professors discuss "Framing October 7: A Date of Inflection for Jewish History"

The Institute hosted a panel discussion led by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin and featuring Professor Arnie Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Professor David Feldman of Birkbeck, University of London, Professor Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College, and Professor Derek Penslar of Harvard University on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and perpetrated the most deadly assault on Jews since the Holocaust.  This attack upended many assumptions both scholars and the public held about Jewish sovereignty, security, and politics.  The activism and protests that exploded throughout the world in the aftermath of this attack raised questions about antisemitism and Israel's place in the world.

Now that a year has passed, scholars must begin to frame and analyze all that took place on and since October 7 within the broader scope of Jewish history.  What are the best frameworks through which to think about, conceptualize, and narrate the events of the past year?  What will this date signify for Jewish history in the future?  Should October 7 be considered a turning point in Jewish history? 

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Arnie Eisen is Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is a leading authority on American Judaism, and has made significant contributions to Jewish thought and education. Serving as JTS chancellor from 2007 to 2020, he transformed the training of Jewish leaders, emphasizing innovation and authenticity in Jewish life during times of rapid change. Eisen spearheaded the development of JTS’s 21st Century Campus and launched initiatives to expand access to Jewish learning through online resources, public courses, and digitization of JTS’s library. His scholarship includes Galut and Rethinking Modern Judaism, and he has taught at Stanford, Tel Aviv, and Columbia universities. Eisen also serves on advisory boards for the Tanenbaum Center, Covenant Foundation, and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture.

David Feldman is Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and a Professor of History, specializing in the history of antisemitism, Jewish history, racialization, and migration in modern Britain. Since joining Birkbeck in 1994, he has been actively engaged in research which addresses public policy, leading a pan-European project on contemporary antisemitism in Western Europe. Feldman has advised institutions such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Human Rights Watch, as well as UK bodies like the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. His writings on antisemitism have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, and Haaretz. His latest book, co-edited with Marc Volovici, is Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition (2023).

Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, where she chairs the Jewish Studies Program and is a faculty member in the Religion Department. Her scholarship focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Jewish and Protestant thought, the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of antisemitism. Among her many publications are Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. She has a forthcoming book, co-written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies with Princeton University Press. Heschel has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Frankfurt, Cape Town, and Princeton. Heschel has been honored with five honorary doctorates and the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute. Currently, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on European Jewish scholarship on Islam and serves on the academic advisory council of the Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin and the Board of Trustees of Trinity College.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology, economic history, military history, biography, and the history of emotions. Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

Click on the panelists’ names to read their full remarks.

Arnie Eisen
David Feldman
Susannah Heschel
Derek Penslar
Rebecca Kobrin

The panel is available to view in full below.

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

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Israeli Organizers Discuss the Democracy Movement Post-October 7 in IIJS Webinar

On April 28, the IIJS hosted a webinar with Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur (Tel Aviv University) and Shany Granot-Lubaton (NYC Hostages Families Forum), titled “Fighting for Democracy: Reflections on the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement from the Post-October 7 World.”

The past year has been unprecedentedly dramatic and tumultuous for Israeli citizens. Ever since the newly elected far right-wing government declared its plan for a judicial overhaul in January 2023, there have been protests throughout the country—creating the largest protest movement in Israel’s history and one of the most persistent in recent global history—culminating after 9 months with the October 7th attack. With global democratic deterioration, and the upcoming contentious elections in the US, two leading Israeli organizers, Ronit Levine-Schnur and Shany Granot-Lubaton, recount the challenges, successes, and failures of the democratic protest movement, reflect on the impact of October 7th events on the movement, and offer insights on fighting for democracy.

Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur is a Senior Lecturer at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She was the co-founder and the leader of “The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy” until Oct. 7th. Currently she is a co-leader of “The Day After the War Forum”.

Shany Granot-Lubaton is the leader of the New York City protests for Israeli democracy (the largest protest community outside of Israel). Right after Oct. 7th she co-founded the Hostages Families Forum in NYC. She was previously the chief of staff and spokesperson of the former head of the labor party, MK Shelly Yechimovich and deputy director of the “Darkenu” movement.

The event was organized and moderated by Maya Gayer - Journalist, Fulbright fellow in Public Humanities and MA student in the Oral History Program at Columbia University, who is building an oral history archive of the Israeli democracy protest movement as her thesis project.

This webinar is available to view in full below.

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

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Adam Teller Delivers First Spring Lecture of Israel-Hamas War Webinar Series

On Sunday, January 28, at 4:00 PM, the IIJS hosted a webinar with Adam Teller, titled “Jewish Hostages in Captivity: A Historical Perspective.” This webinar is the first entry of Spring 2024 in our Israel-Hamas War Webinar Series.

Adam Teller is Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Brown University in the USA. Born in London, he studied at Oxford University and completed his graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in the history of the Jews in eastern Europe. He taught at the University of Haifa in Israel for 15 years before moving to Brown in 2010.

Dr. Teller has written widely on the economic, social, and cultural history of the Jews in early modern Poland-Lithuania. He has written three books on the subject and edited (or co-edited) a further four. He is the author of many academic articles in English, Hebrew, Polish, and German.

His newest book, Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, which deals with how the Jewish world organized in order to help the waves of Polish Jewish refugees that spread out across Europe, Asia, and North Africa following the Khmelnytsky uprising of 1648, was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

Dr. Teller was a member of the core academic team that created the exhibit at the prize-winning POLIN Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and is currently a member of the museum’s Academic Advisory Council.

Dr. Teller’s lecture is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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Derek Penslar Joins IIJS for Third Installment of Webinar Series on Israel-Hamas War

On Sunday, December 3, Derek Penslar (Harvard University) joined the Institute to continue our webinar series on the Israel-Hamas war, presenting a talk titled “American Jews and Israel: From Love to Anguish” and answering audience questions. Dr. Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. His most recent book, Zionism: An Emotional State (2023), examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement’s history.

This event is the third in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which has featured “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” with Avi Shilon, and “Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus,” with Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis.

Dr. Penslar’s talk is available to view in full below.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology (Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine 19870-1918, 1991), economic history (Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, 2001), military history (Jews and the Military: A History, 2013), biography (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, 2020), and the history of emotions (Zionism: An Emotional State, 2023). In two co-edited volumes, Penslar has brought Jewish studies into conversation with postcolonial studies (Orientalism and the Jews, [2005] and Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Theory and the Historiography of Zionism [2023]). Penslar’s current interests lie in international history, and he is writing a book about worldwide reactions to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Penslar’s teaching reflects his interests in integrating Jewish history into global contexts. In addition to teaching courses in modern Jewish history and the history of Zionism and Israel, he teaches courses on nationalism, military history, and the history of emotions. He brings these themes into his General Education course on war and anti-war movements in the modern world.

Before coming to Harvard, Penslar taught at Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Israel Studies. He has taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He has held research fellowships in Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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IIJS Panel Grapples with Campus Antisemitism

On Sunday, October 22, the IIJS and the American University Program in Jewish Studies co-hosted a webinar with academics Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis, alongside Columbia student Rebecca Massel: “Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus.”

Their discussion spans a wide variety of relevant topics, such as defining antisemitism, understanding its relationship to anti-Zionism, American campus culture, and the importance of free speech. The panel also sets aside a significant portion of the session to answer student and general audience questions. This event is the second in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which began last week with “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” featuring Avi Shilon and Rebecca Kobrin.

This discussion is available to view in full below.

Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Her awards include AU’s highest faculty award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year (2007). Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.” Past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998). She consults for museums including the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. In 2017, she testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses. She is currently writing a history of antisemitism in America.

Britt P. Tevis is the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research examines the intersections between Jews and American law and her work has appeared in American Jewish History, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History. She has held fellowships at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.

Rebecca Massel is a sophomore at Columbia College studying political science. Currently, she serves as the Vice President of Communications for Columbia Barnard Hillel, where she works with and supports the Jewish community. She is also a senior staff writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator, reporting on University-related matters, like demonstrations on campus, school policies and statements, and, most recently, campus responses to the Israel-Hamas War.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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Avi Shilon Discusses Attack on Israel and War in Gaza

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is devastated by the horrific attacks on Israel. We extend our deepest sympathies and support to the families of those who lost their lives and condemn the abhorrent slaughter and kidnapping of civilians. As it has since its inception in 1950, the Institute stands in solidarity with the people of Israel.

On Sunday, October 15, Avi Shilon—a journalist, historian, and political scientist who has taught at Columbia, NYU, Tsinghua University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev—joined us for a webinar, “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv.” This talk was moderated by Rebecca Kobrin, IIJS Co-Director and Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History. Dr. Shilon discussed the terrorist attacks that took place in Israel on October 7th, as well as Israel’s response and impending military campaign, before answering audience questions.

This discussion is available to view in full below.

Avi Shilon has taught with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University and the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University. He also has been a postdoctoral fellow at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and at Tsinghua University, China. He has published the books The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (2020), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016) and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012) as well as articles in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal. Dr. Shilon also writes for the Ha’aretz newspaper. He received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel in 2015.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, in Columbia University’s Department of History, where she teaches in the field of American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She is also the Co-Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research, teaching, and publications engage in the fields of international migration, urban history, Jewish history, American religion, and diaspora studies. She is one of the principal investigators leading the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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