Tag Archives: Israel

(Last Week) Erev Shabbat (Jerusalem)

Posted on August 15, 2025 by zjb

The place shuts down erev Shabbat on Rechov Azza. The sign reads, “They could have returned alive”

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Facts, Law, and Judaism (World Union of Jewish Studies)

Posted on August 5, 2025 by zjb

At a special panel at the World Union of Jewish Studies Congress taking place at the Hebrew University, colleagues, mostly Israeli, came to discuss facts, law, and Judaism. At the podium and from the floor, colleagues spoke to testimony, international … Continue reading →

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(נתיב ההפקרה) Tisha B’Av (2025)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by zjb

Tisha B’Av directs the religious imagination deep into its own pain. This fearsome day looks straight ahead, neither to the right nor to the left. In the book of Lamentations, read on the fast day, the suffering that the collective … Continue reading →

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(Desert) Makom (Palestine)

Posted on July 30, 2025 by zjb

[somewhere off rt. 1 in the desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea]

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New York City & New York Jews (Mamdani)

Posted on July 3, 2025 by zjb

Zohran Mamdani and New York Jews are in a bind with each other. This is the core of the knot: [1] NYC is home to a major, even singular Jewish community, and Israel is a fulcrum of Jewish identity. There … Continue reading →

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(Documenting Dispossession) No Other Land

Posted on February 28, 2025 by zjb

A lot of press attention has gone to the superb documentary No Other Land about the struggle of local Palestinian activists of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank against the Israeli state working to expropriate their lands. Much of … Continue reading →

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Anti-Politics of Israel and Palestine (Negative Affect in the Age of Misinformation)

Posted on February 21, 2025 by zjb

If the essence of “the political” is the binding together of a collective across social difference then what one would otherwise call politics today in the Age of Trump and Musk is distinctly anti-political. Anti-politics is fed by binary things. … Continue reading →

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(All Red Lines Crossed) Israel and Hamas Forever War in Gaza (2024)

Posted on January 2, 2025 by zjb

2024 –the year following October 7, 2023– was a long year of bewildering violence against civilians defined by systemic destruction of human life on both sides of the border between Israel and Gaza. Nothing coheres its disorientation of political consciousness. … Continue reading →

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(Workshop) Israel and Jewish Studies After October 7 (Syracuse University)

Posted on December 2, 2024 by zjb

3nd Annual Arlene and R. Raymond Rothman Workshop in Jewish Studies Jewish Studies Program Syracuse University Israel and Jewish Studies After October 7 December 1-2, 2024 Sunday, December 1, Tolley 304 5:00-6:00 Introductions: how was your year? 6:00-7:00 The Politics … Continue reading →

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(Auto-Emancipation) A Social Jewish Left (After October 7)

Posted on November 25, 2024 by zjb

Three questions for Jews on the Left in the fierce face of rising anti-democracy movements and religious ethno-nationalism in Israel and the United States and resurgent anti-Semitism before and after October 7 and the re-election of Donald Trump: What defines … Continue reading →

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