Running weekly during Term time, the Israel Studies Seminar is the primary setting for public discussions on a wide spectrum of issues relating to Israeli society, history, politics and culture in the University of Oxford. With an international list of speakers, it has been attracting much attention and a growing audience participation. The seminar is convened by Prof. Yaacov Yadgar, the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, based at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the…
In this lecture, Dr Stav Shufan-Biton examines how Israeli Jews living outside Israel experience holy time, focusing on Shabbat, Jewish holidays, and local religious and civil holidays such as Halloween and Christmas. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research based on interviews and observations conducted within Israeli Jewish communities in Cambridge and London, the findings show that cultural…
Professor Elad Lapidot reflects on the relations between post-Holocaust Jewish thought and decolonial thought through the work of French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Recently thinkers criticized Levinas for his Eurocentrism. In his recent book, State of Others. Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Indiana UP, 2025), he argues that Levinas anticipated this critique and from the 1960s on sought to…
Raef Zreik talks about his paper, with a focus on Zionist, Liberal and Movement. When things are presented in an alternative way, we will find out that the problem is political, not logical, it is historical and not merely concept Raef Zreik, a Professor of moral and political philosophy at Tel Aviv College and Prof. of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic college and senior researcher at Jerusalem Van…
The grouping of Yiddish speaking Jews, of various origin countries in Central and Eastern Europe, into a single overarching identity of Ashkenazim, was meaningful particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Jewish contexts. This seminar examines the shaping of the Ashkenazi community in Ottoman Jerusalem, as facilitated by Ottoman legal and political context. Ottoman recognition of Ashkenazim…
In this talk, Dr Sapir will present her research on the historical development of student volunteering in Israeli higher education and its current implications. Based on archival analysis of two elite universities over four decades, the study identifies three key debates surrounding student volunteering: over the purpose of volunteering; over its mandatory nature; and over the awarding of academic…
This study explores the mechanisms underlying the paradox of marginality experienced by middle-class Palestinian professional women in the Israeli labour market through an intersectional analysis of their everyday professional lives. It demonstrates that this paradox—characterised by their marginalisation despite possessing high educational capital comparable to that of highly educated Jewish…
In this lecture I present Religious Zionism, the right-wing religious nationalist movement, which despite representing 12-16% of Israel’s population, has a prominent and influential place in the current “fully” right-wing government. In contradistinction to previous research, I argue that this movement, which initiated and led the settlement movement in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, is best…
In this presentation, Professor Yacobi aims to discuss settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine/Israel, while exploring the different spatial and political typologies developed during the last few decades. He will discuss how colonial planning has been used as a tool of social, demographic, and spatial control and how Palestinian claims for the right to the city are meaningful political forms of…
This talk explores the notion of obligation towards others at the intersection of Jewish feminist thought and the lived religious practices of Sephardi women in Israel. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and her involvement in Arevot — the only Sephardi feminist beit midrash in Israel — Dr Cohen examines how women who engage in practices of blessing, healing, and intercessory prayer construct a…
Although overshadowed by the scale of atrocities in Gaza since October 2023, employment and workers’ rights significantly affect individual lives, non-citizen workers, and the region’s political economy The scale of atrocities in Gaza since October 2023 has overshadowed less catastrophic issues such as employment and workers’ rights. Yet these concerns, while less urgent, significantly affect…
