Jehad Abusalim
No bio provided.
Benjamin Gladstone
Benjamin Gladstone is pursuing his PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History at the Taub Center for Israel Studies. His research focuses on Operation On Eagles' Wings and on Yemeni Jewish history and politics in the Yishuv and Israel. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies from Brown University, where he wrote his thesis on the idea of an "Ingathering of Exiles" in relations between Jewish communities in the United States, Israel, Yemen, and 'Aden during Operation On Eagles' Wings and his capstone on state-sponsored secularism and anti-Mizrahi racism in 1940s-50s Israel. In 2018-19, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in Jerusalem examining Yemeni Jewish narrative construction in Israel and the relationship between British colonialism and anti-Jewish violence in 'Aden, Tripolitania, and Mandate Palestine. His research interests include Mizrahi and Sephardi history, Zionist thought, migration and refugee histories, nationalism and narrative construction, colonialist violence, and the role of religion and secularism in state-building.
Dotan Greenvald
No bio provided.
Brett Levi
Brett Levi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Taub Center for Israel Studies at NYU. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied History, Jewish Studies, and History of Art. Brett received his master's degree from Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, where he was awarded the prize for best master's thesis in 2013 for his paper “Hasidic Geopolitics and the Greater Land of Israel: Israeli Hasidic Rebbes Encounter the West Bank, Gaza and Territorial Withdrawal, 1982–2013.” Brett has worked at research institutes and non-profit organizations in New York, Boston, and Jerusalem. His primary research interests include political geography; religious Zionism; ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities; and post-WWII European Jewish history.
Idan Rochelle
No bio provided.
Graduates
Ahmad Amara, PhD Awarded Spring 2016
Ahmad Amara, is a Palestinian Human rights lawyer. In 2005, Amara co-founded Karama (Arabic for "Dignity"), a human rights organization located in Nazareth, where he served as a Senior Staff Attorney. Before beginning his doctoral work, Amara served for three years as a global advocacy fellow and clinical instructor in the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. Amara's current research focuses on the legal history of late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine with regard to property rights and legal advocacy.
Shirly Bahar, PhD Awarded Spring 2017
Shirly Bahar is the Director of Public Programs at the American Jewish Historical Society. Shirly is also the founder and organizer of the first Mizrahi Film Series at NYU, running since 2014. Shirly's dissertation focuses on pain, affect, and performance in Palestinian and Mizrahi contemporary documentary cinema. Shirly’s article “Coming Out as Queen: Queer Studies, Jewish Identity, and the Book of Esther” was published inStudies in Gender and Sexuality Journal (September 2012). Shirly’s review article “Restrictions Apply: Agency, Affect and Reenactment in Einat Amir’s Performance and Video Installation Our Best Intentions” was published in Third Text (August 2015).
Dekel Canetti, PhD Awarded Spring 2019
Dekel Canetti is a cultural sociologist, interested in generation and maintenance of common narratives. His dissertation research explored the born-again (Tshuva) Hasidic community in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem. Dekel received his MA in sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and BA in economics from Haifa University. He is currently continuing his research in Israel. At night he is a brave superhero.
Hillel Gruenberg, PhD Awarded Fall 2014
Hillel Gruenberg earned his PhD in the joint program in Hebrew & Judaic Studies and History at New York University, specializing in Israeli/Zionist Political History. His chief interests include the encounter between Zionism and Liberalism in practice and theory as well as the adaptation of Zionist ideologies to the Israeli political sphere.
Shay Hazkani, PhD Awarded Spring 2016
Shay Hazkani is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland. He received his PhD in the joint program of the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and the Department of History. Originally from Israel, Shay received his Master’s Degree in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and his B.A in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on subaltern and socio-cultural history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prior to starting his Masters, Shay worked for seven years as a West Bank correspondent and as a war correspondent for Israeli radio and television, where he covered the Second Intifada, the 2005 Israeli pull-out from Gaza and the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Donna Herzog, PhD Awarded Spring 2019
Shira Klein, PhD Awarded Spring 2012
Dr. Shira Klein is an Assistant Professor of History at Chapman University, where she teaches Jewish, European, migration, and Holocaust history. She received her BA from Tel Aviv University and her MA from La Sapienza University in Rome. She completed her PhD in 2012 at New York University, where she was a proud member of the Taub Center for Israel Studies. Dr Klein is currently revising her doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript, a cultural history of Italian Jewry and its diaspora in the United States and Palestine. It enquires into the experiences of Italian Jews from the time of emancipation in the nineteenth century until after the Holocaust. Dr Klein has received a Yad Hanadiv Fellowship in Jewish Studies for 2014-2015, which will enable her to spend the year in Israel working on her manuscript.
Geoffrey Levin, PhD Awarded Spring 2019
Geoffrey Levin is the Alan M. Stroock Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. He received his PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies/History from New York University in spring 2019. He is currently preparing a book manuscript on the emergence of Palestinian rights as a contentious issue in the relationship between American Jews and Israel during the first three decades after 1948. Peer-reviewed articles by Dr. Levin have appeared in Israel Studies Review, Arab Studies Journal, Israel Affairs, and Shofar.
Fredrik Meiton, PhD Awarded Spring 2015
Fredrik Meiton is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. He earned his doctorate in the joint History and Hebrew & Judaic Studies program at New York University. He has a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Lund in Sweden, and an MPhil in Modern Middle East Studies from Oxford University. The working title of his dissertation is “The Electrification of Palestine.” It focuses on the political and social significance of electricity generation and distribution in Palestine during the period of British rule, 1917-1948.
Dan Tsahor, PhD Awarded Fall 2015
Amy Weiss, PhD Awarded Fall 2014
Amy Weiss earned her doctorate in the joint PhD program in Hebrew & Judaic Studies and History at NYU. She is currently the Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at the College of Saint Elizabeth in New Jersey.
Shayna Weiss, PhD Awarded Fall 2014
Shayna Weiss is Associate Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. She is completing a manuscript on the origins of gender segregation in the Israeli public sphere. During her "free time," she blogs about Israeli television and culture.