Wednesday, November 8, 8:00 PM EDT

Host: Reconstructionists Expanding Our Conversation on Israel/Palestine

At this time of bloodshed we will continue with our series on Wednesday, November 8 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. We are pleased to welcome Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Karin Loevy, and Tamir Sorek who will speak on “Understanding the Current Situation in Israel/Palestine: A View from the Israeli Left.” They will highlight perspectives often omitted in mainstream coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and the nine month “pro-democracy” protest movement that preceded it.

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite is professor of Chinese and Islamic History in the Department of History and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Zvi is a scholar and a Mizrahi activist. His research centers on religions in world history and cultural exchanges across space and time. His books include Middle Eastern Jewish Thought (Brandeis, 2013) and The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009). He serves as Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Network Faculty Planning at NYU.

Karin Loevy was formerly a litigator with a leading Israeli public law firm and currently manages the JSD Program at the New York University School of Law where she is a researcher at the Institute for International Law and Justice. She is active in Academia for Equality, an organization working to promote democratization, equality and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel. Karin’s research and teaching focus on the history and theory of international law. She is the author of Emergencies in Public Law: The Legal Politics of Containment (Cambridge University Press, 2016). 

Tamir Sorek is Liberal Arts Professor of Middle East history at Penn State University. His interests include the politics of sport, Palestinian poetry, and collective memory. Tamir is co-editor of the new online journal Palestine/Israel Review which treats the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as a single region. He is the author of The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad (Stanford University Press, 2020), Palestinian Commemoration in Israel: Calendar, Monuments, and Martyrs (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (Cambridge University Press 2007).

Once you have registered for one session offered by Reconstructionists Expanding the Conversation on Israel-Palestine, you are registered for future programs and will automatically receive the link the day before each session. Feel free to share this Zoom registration link with friends and members of your community, and they will receive our emails.

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If you would like to join our online discussion group, please email Seth Horwitz at reachseth@gmail.com and type “Subscribe to Recon I-P listserve” in the subject line.  

This series is co-sponsored by the following Reconstructionist congregations: Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, Dorshei Tzedek, Havurah Shalom Israel/Palestine Committee, Kadima Reconstructionist Community, Kol Tzedek, and Mishkan Shalom.