Visiting Faculty

The Schusterman Center hosts visiting faculty, who hold appointments in various departments across the university.

Zvi Zohar, Near Eastern & Judaic Studies (Spring 2018)

Zvi Zohar has been living in Israel since his parents came on Aliyyah when he was nine years old. After service in the IDF he studied for three years in the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, and then moved to academic studies. He received his PhD from Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry. After Zvi Zohar was appointed Chauncey Stillman Professor of Sephardic Law and Ethics at Bar Ilan University, he taught in the Faculty of Law and in the Faculty of Jewish Studies, until becoming Professor Emeritus in October 2017. He has been closely associated for many years with the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Zvi is interested in all aspects of Jewish life and thought, especially in modern times. His areas of special interest include: The sociology, anthropology and history of Jewish law and halakha; The culture and creativity of Sephardic-Oriental rabbis in modern times; And the history of the Jews of the Middle East in modern times.

Zvi’s most recent book, “Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East,” was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2013; he is currently working on a book in English surveying and analysing the variety of positions on Giyyur advocated by Sephardic Rabbis in Modern Times, as well as a book in Hebrew on the halakhic creativity of Algerian rabbis in the 19 and 20 centuries.

André Levy, Anthropology (2016-2017)

Dr. Levy is senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He obtained his PhD in Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996, conducting his doctoral research on the dwindling of the Jewish community in contemporary Casablanca. The bulk of his writing stemming from this anthropological fieldwork focuses on Jewish-Muslim relationships in Morocco and on homeland-diaspora relations. Jewish-Muslim relationships are examined within the ontological and epistemological framework of diaspora. Homeland-diaspora relations are critically examined through the day to day life experiences of the tiny Jewish minority in Morocco vis-à-vis Israel as a presumed symbolic center. Dr. Levy also publishes articles on roots travel to Morocco, and is interested in the theoretical issues of pilgrimages, identity politics, ethnicity, nation-states, and diasporas. With Alex Weingrod, he is editor of “On Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places,” Stanford University Press. He is most recently the author of “Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist,” University of Chicago Press. At Brandeis he will be teaching courses on “Global, Transnational and Diasporic Communities,” and “Ethnicities in Israel.”

Read a book review of André Levy's “Return to Casablanca” from American Anthropologist

Uri Bialer, History and NEJS (Fall 2015)

Uri Bialer is emeritus professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University and Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International Relations – Middle Eastern Studies. He is the former director of Yad Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Eretz Israel, visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College Oxford, at the British Academy, at Harvard University, and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, at Monash University and at New York University. Publications include: “Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy 1948-67 (2005); “Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1948-67 (1999); “Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation 1948-56,” Cambridge University Press (1990); and “The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics 1932-1939 (1980). At Brandeis in the Fall of 2011, Spring of 2014 and Fall of 2015, he is a Visiting Professor at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Department of History, teaching about Israeli foreign policy.
msbialer@gmail.com

Tuvia Friling, NEJS (2013-2014)

Tuvia Friling is a senior researcher and former head of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the State Archivist of Israel from 2001-2004 and has held visiting research positions at Oxford University, the University of Maryland and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, amongst others. Currently Friling serves as head of the Ben-Gurion Institute Press. He has published dozens of articles in Israel and abroad on his fields of expertise: Zionist movement policy; Ben-Gurion’s leadership; The Yishuv and the Holocaust; The Revisionist movement – the right wing movements in the Yishuv and their connection to aid and rescue during the Holocaust. His monograph “The Story of a Capo in Auschwitz: History, Memory and Politics” is being published in 2014 as part of the Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. At Brandeis he is Visiting Professor in the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. He co-taught “Conflict and Controversies in Israeli History” with Professor Troen in the fall and offers “The Yishuv, the State of Israel and the Holocaust” in the spring semester.
friling@bgu.ac.il

Michael Feige, Anthropology and NEJS (2011 - 2012)

Michael Feige is a sociologist and anthropologist that specializes in Israeli society, collective memory and political myth. He teaches at the Israel Studies program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he gives the introductory course: “Israeli Society: Sociological and anthropological aspects.” He is currently working with Prof. David Ohana on the commemoration of Ben-Gurion in Israel society. With Dr. Pnina Mutzafi-Haller he is co-editor of the academic journal “Hagar: Studies in Culture, Politics, Identities.” At Brandeis he taught a course on the politics of Israeli archaeology.

Sammy Smooha, Sociology (Fall 2010)

Sammy Smooha is professor of sociology and former dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Haifa, as well as former president of the Israeli Sociological Society. He spent the 2009-2010 academic year as a Senior Research Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. and will be a visiting professor of Sociology at Brandeis for the fall 2010 semester. The Israel Prize laureate for Sociology in 2008, Smooha specializes in ethnic relations in the world and Israel. He has published widely on the internal divisions and conflicts in Israeli society, especially on the relations between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim and between Arab and Jewish citizens. His books include “Israel: Pluralism and Conflict” (1978); “Arabs and Jews in Israel” (1989, 1992); and “The Fate of Ethnic Democracy in Post-Communist Europe” (2005, co-editor). He is currently writing a book on how Israel treats its Arab minority compared to how Northern Ireland, Estonia, Slovakia and Macedonia treat their national minorities. At Brandeis he taught courses on Israeli society.
ssmooha@univ.haifa.ac.il

Maoz Azaryahu, Anthropology (Spring 2010)

Maoz Azaryahu is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. He has written extensively on urban landscapes, memory, and society, and has recently published Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City (2006). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Penn State University, and Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. At Brandeis he taught a seminar on mythic Tel Aviv.
maoz.azaryahu@gmail.com

Yoram Bilu, Anthropology (Fall 2009)

Yoram Bilu holds a joint appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Psychology, where he is the Sylvia Bauman Professor, and in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. A clinical psychologist turned anthropologist, he is interested in the interface of culture and psychology as reflected in mental health, folk-religion, and altered states of consciousness. He received the Bahat Prize for his book, The Saint Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel’s Urban Periphery, Haifa University Press (2005). At Brandeis, he taught a seminar on the sanctification of space in contemporary Israel.
yobilu@gmail.com

Benjamin Gidron, Heller School for Social Policy and Management & Hornstein Professional Jewish Leadership Program (2008-2009)

Benjamin Gidron is director of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research and the School of Management at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He teaches courses on human service organizations, non-profit organizations, and third sector organizations. He has recently won an award for Innovation in Third Sector research from Ben Gurion University. He is the author of many books and articles, including the recent Third Sector in Israel: Between Society and State (2004). Gidron received a BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an MSW from the University of Pittsburg, and a PhD from the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Community Planning. At Brandeis, he taught courses on sustainable development and the third sector in society.
gidron@bgu.ac.il