Since 1948 there have been some stable lines in Israeli politics, America-Israel and Israel-Diaspora relations. The majority of Israeli citizens supported Israel as a democratic and Jewish state and partition into two-states, one Israel and the other Palestine, as the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The majority of the Jewish diaspora, with its center in the US, adopted the same approach, offering financial and political backing to Israel. Over the same period, the US gave Israel financial and military support in its conflicts with Arab League states, if inconsistently, and likewise upheld partition as the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since October 7 a number of sectors in Israeli society, American society, and the Jewish-American diaspora from left to right have broken with this consensus. Are we in a new era? What are the new voices and options being proposed and on what basis as well as who wishes to maintain the status quo ante?
Flora Cassen Director, Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies, will moderate a conversation with the co-editors of the Tel Aviv Review of Books, Dr. Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki and Dr. Gilad Halpern.
BJ is pleased to present this event in partnership with the Tel Aviv Review of Books.
The opinions presented in this conversation reflect those of the individual panelists, and not those of BJ.
Flora Cassen is a former Senior Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America where she brought Jewish scholarship to public life. She is a scholar of early modern Jewish history, currently the director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies. Her op-eds have appeared in Haaretz, The Forward, Slate, Aeon, Sources, and Smithsonian Magazine.
Gilad Halpern is a co-host at the Tel Aviv Review Podcast. He is founding co-editor of the Tel Aviv Review of Books. A journalist by training, he is also a scholar of the history of journalism.
Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki is founding co-editor of the Tel Aviv Review of Books and a visiting fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. A historian by training with a focus on modern Europe, she has also taught and published on intercultural relations and modern politics.
