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Past Events and Podcasts

Hold On to the Sun: Writing and Unholy Redemption

October 26th & 27th, 2011

Acclaimed Israeli author Michal Govrin gave a public talk about the process of writing her newly translated book, Hold On to the Sun. In this portrait of the artist as a young woman, Govrin offers a kaleidoscope of stories and essays -- a search for meaning in a post-Holocaust world.

Selected in 2010 by the Salon du Livre of Paris as one of the most influential writers of the past thirty years, Govrin also held workshops with two Brandeis classes. Click here for further information about the author and the book.

Click here for a videocast of her talk.

When Hope Ends in Slavery: Human Trafficking in Israel

September 13th, 2011

In an event cosponsored by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Rabbi Levi Lauer, executive director of ATZUM, spoke about the trafficking of women into Israel and efforts on the ground to stop it.  Following meetings with students and faculty, Rabbi Lauer spoke in an evening program to members of the Brandeis community and beyond.

Click here for an audiocast of this event.

UN Recognition of Palestinian Statehood: A New Dawn or Another Debacle?

September 7th, 2011

This September, Palestinian representatives are calling for a unilateral
 declaration of statehood in the United Nations. The implications and 
consequences of such a step were explored by two experienced
 observers and participants in Israeli/Palestinian negotiations:  David
 Makovsky, Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Project on
 the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute and Ghaith al-Omari, Executive Director at the American Task Force in Palestine 
(ATFP) and advisor to then Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. 

The panelists also met with student leaders to discuss bringing their message to college campuses.

Videocast of event - click here.

27th Association for Israel Studies Conference

June 13-15, 2011

"Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State" was the topic for the 27th AIS conference, cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, The Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

The Brandeis community was invited to attend Plenary sessions that featured leading scholars and public intellectuals who addressed the topics "What Does the US Want in the Middle East and What Should it Want?" and "Arabs in the Jewish State." A keynote speech was given by Professor Moshe Halbertal.

• Over 400 participants arrived from the US, Israel and Europe
• See the Jewish Advocate write-up of the conference.
• Click here for webcasts of the keynote address and plenary sessions.

Dedication of New Center Home

November 10, 2010

Click here to view a videocast of the dedication of our new Center home and the inauguration of Gannit Ankori as Chair of Israeli Art in the Department of Fine Arts. Ably assisted by Brandeis students, guest artist Nelly Agassi contributed a symbolic "ribbon-cutting" installation composed of red satin ribbons. See her installation unfolding here.

The Center also benefited by gifts of Israeli artwork that now grace its halls.

Conversation with MK Tzipi Livni:
A Town Hall Meeting on Israel-Diaspora Relations

October 4, 2010

An audience of some 350 people attended the town hall meeting with MK and leader of the opposition, Tzipi Livni. Another 100 view a live broadcast in the overflow facility at Shapiro Campus Center theater.

To view the video of the Tzipi Livni town hall meeting, click here.

Read Ms. Livni's article "We Need to Dialogue with Diaspora"

Sayed Kashua -  Author, Columnist, Screenwriter

March 8-10, 2010

Celebrated author, columnist and screenwriter Sayed Kashua was invited to campus to share his body of work with several Brandeis classes. The wider Brandeis community and general public enjoyed the screening of the "Passover" episode of his hit series Arab Labor at Wasserman Cinematheque. The show, based on his satirical weekly column in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, is among the top 10 most popular shows on Israeli TV, filmed in Arabic and Hebrew and boasting a mostly Arab cast.

After the screening, he answered questions from the audience as well as conducting a book signing.
To hear an audiocast of Arab Labor screening and Q&A, click here.

Photo by Max Shay

Covering the Middle East in 2010: A Report from the Field

February 2, 2010, International Lounge

Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the New York Times, shared behind-the-scenes stories and the challenges faced by a journalist covering two opposing narratives. Bronner has been Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times for the past two years following four years as the paper’s deputy foreign editor focused largely on the Middle East. A series of articles that he helped edit after Sept. 11th 2001 won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism.

To hear an audiocast of the Bronner lecture and Q&A, click here.

To read the Hoot article please follow this link.

This event was cosponsored with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

photo by Max Shay

Amos Oz, Israel: A Personal Perspective

November 15, 2009, Hassenfeld Conference Center

Acclaimed Israeli author and public intellectual, Amos Oz, addressed Brandeis audiences with his personal perspective on Israel and the art of story telling.

The Challenge of the U.N. Gaza Report

To view the discussion of the U.N. Gaza Report please follow this link.

November 5, 2009, Levin Ballroom

Hosted by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.

Justice Richard Goldstone, head of a controversial UN fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN, visited Brandeis to discuss assertions that Israel and Palestinian fighters committed war crimes during fighting last winter.

Dan Meridor, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel:
Israel in the Changing Middle East

October 15, 2009, Rapaporte Treasure Hall

Cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and
the Crown Center for Middle East Studies

Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, Dan Meridor, discussed the many challenges facing Israel due to the changing region of the Middle East. Among the issues touched upon were: The challenges of unconventional warfare and violence of non-state actors; The growing regional and international concern over the Iranian nuclear program; Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations; The Goldstone Report, etc. After speaking, the Deputy Prime Minister conducted a Q&A section moderated by Professor Shai Feldman, Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies.

Re-Viewing the Nation: Memory, Membership, and Ethnicity

A series of lectures with Alex Weingrod, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology-Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

October 14, 2009
Bones, Burials and Forming the Nation

October 19, 2009
Ethnicity Matters: Or Does it?

October 22, 2009
The New Israeli Minorities

Tel Aviv at 100: Myth, Memory & Actuality

March 22-23, 2009, Hassenfeld Conference Center

Scholars joined together from Israel and the United States to examine the significance and meaning of establishing the first Hebrew city in nearly two millennia. Panels were held to discuss Tel Aviv from its founding to the present, with an emphasis on its cultural legacy including art and architecture, and the world premiere of the documentary film Tel Aviv by two of Israel’s most popular filmmakers, Modi Bar-On and Anat Zeltser.

At Home Abroad: Diasporas and Homelands
Comparative Perspectives Workshop

March 1, 2009, Hassenfeld Conference Center

Cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and
Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies

Nili Scharf Gold, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature, University of Pennsylvania

February 9, 2009, Hassenfeld and Lown

Gold held a seminar and booksigning on two aspects of her book, Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet.  Considered an astonishing revision of the prevailing critical analysis of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Gold’s book is based on materials she discovered in a Yale archive and a cache of unpublished letters written by Amichai in 1947 and 1948 to his lover. She spoke both about the art of literary biography and about the nuances of her research.  

David Newman of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

November 4, 2009

David Newman spoke about Thirty Years of the Settlement Movement: Gush Emunim.
Newman is professor of political geography in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University in Israel. He edits the international journal Geopolitics, and has published widely on territorial dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Since the late 1980s, Newman has been involved in peace-related activities and in a variety of Track II discussions and negotiations.

Brandeis in the Berkshires, 2008

August 3-4, 2008

Irwin Cotler, MP, member of parliament, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada delivers keynote address at Brandeis in the Berkshire: Israel at 60: The Gathering Storm and Beyond.

Israeli Author and Filmmaker Etgar Keret

October 27, 2008
Film Screening of Jellyfish at the Wasserman Cinemateque

October 28, 2008
Meet the Author Series Public Lecture & Book Signing at Usdan

Etgar Keret is internationally acclaimed for his short stories. His book,The Nimrod Flip-Out, which was published in 2006, is a collection of 32 short stories that captures the craziness of life in Israel today. His books are bestsellers in Israel, and have been published in 22 languages. As a filmmaker, Keret is the writer of several feature screenplays, including Skin Deep (1996), which won First Prize at several international film festivals and was awarded the Israeli Oscar. Keret is a lecturer in the film department of Tel Aviv University. At Brandeis, in addition to his public events, he offered a creative writing workshop and participated in a Hebrew-language class.

Israeli author Ronit Matalon: On Memory and Autobiography

September 24, 2009

Matalon discussed aspects of her books in public forums as well as classroom lectures in both English and Hebrew.

Ronit Matalon was born into a family of Egyptian-Jewish descent in 1959 and studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Matalon has worked as a journalist for Israel TV, and for the daily Ha`aretz (covering Gaza and the West Bank during the 1st Intifada). More recently, she has been a critic and book reviewer for Ha`aretz, and has taught at the Camera Obscura Academy for the Arts in Tel Aviv.  Matalon's critically acclaimed first novel, The One Facing Us, presents a kaleidoscopic saga chronicling several generations of an Egyptian Jewish family. At Brandeis, Matalon discussed her most recent novel The Sound of Her Steps.

Schusterman Center Inaugural Conference
Visions & Visionaries: Imagining Israel at Sixty

April 6, 2008, Sachar International Center

 The Schusterman Center for Israel Studies held its inaugural conference marking the sixtieth anniversary of the State of Israel. Invited speakers included Shlomo Avineri -- professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ruth Gavison -- Haim H. Cohn Professor of Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hillel Halkin -- translator, journalist and author, and David Makovsky -- senior fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Theology of the Disengagement: Rabbinical Response to a Crisis of Faith

Cosponsored by Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and
Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department

March 13, 2008, Lown

A public lecture by Dr. Motti Inbari, Post-Doctoral Fellow, on the theological dilemmas raised by Israel’s Disengagement plan (2005) and the widening faultline within the yeshiva world, particularly the Mercaz Harav.

New Forms of American Spirituality: Kabbalah Centre as an Israeli Export

A Public lecture by Jody Myers of California State University, Northridge

January 24, 2008, Lown

Cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry  and the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program

Jody E. Myers is a professor at the Department of Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge. Her most recent area of research is popularization of Kabbalah in contemporary American society. Her publications include “Phasing In: American Jewish Women’s Ritual Celebrations for the New Moon (Rosh Hodesh)” in Women Remaking American Judaism and Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in America.

One Land, Two Peoples:
Sixty Years since the 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine

An International Symposium

December 1-2, 2007, Hassenfeld Conference Center

Ccosponsored by the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

Sixty years after the U.N.. decision of November 29, 1947, the question of partitioning Palestine remains unresolved.  This symposium will explore the Jewish and Arab debates on partition in the 1930s and 40s, reflect on the history of partitions as a way of resolving multi-ethnic and multi-national conflicts worldwide, and examine the relevance of this issue in today’s discourse among Israelis and Palestinians.

Renowned Israeli Author, Meir Shalev, Speaks at Brandeis

November 14, 2007, Shapiro Campus Center

Meir Shalev, a leading Israeli author, is attracting widespread attention in the United States and Europe. At Brandeis, Shalev talked about his just-published sixth novel, A Pigeon and A Boy, a tale of wandering passion and the return home -- whether by humans or winged creatures. The talk was held at Shapiro Campus Center and was followed by a discussion and book signing.

Israeli NGO Expert Visits Heller School 

November 12, 2007, Heller School

Benny Gidron, director of Ben Gurion University's Center for Third Sector Research spoke at the Heller School on The Israeli Non-Profit Sector and an Evolving Policy Outlook.

South African-born Journalist Compares South Africa and Israel 

October 17, 2007, Golding

Is Israel the New Apartheid State?

A Public Lecture by Benjamin Pogrund. This lecture was presented by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, in cooperation with the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.

Benjamin Pogrund is the founding director of Yakar’s Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem, which promotes dialogue among Jews, and between Israelis and Palestinians. Born in South Africa, Pogrund served as a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg) newspaper, where he specialized in investigating apartheid. He was jailed for this work and later emigrated from South Africa. Pogrund has authored books about Nelson Mandela and the media under apartheid, and writes for newspapers such as Haaretz and The Guardian. He is a co-editor of Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, and a member of the editorial board of the Palestine-Israel Journal. Pogrund is currently serving as an INSPIRE Fellow at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University.