Tel Aviv Review

Prof. Steven Gimbel, philosopher of science at Gettysburg College in the United States, is the author of the recently published Einstein: His Space and Time. He analyzes with host Gilad Halpern what factors propelled Albert Einstein to be the most celebrated scientist of our time, and what part his Jewishness played in it. Song: Dudu Tassa - Mishtara

Prof. Monty Noam Penkower, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Machon Lander Graduate School of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, is the author of Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty 1933-1939. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the period during which two intractably adversarial national movements were formed in Palestine. Song: Gidi Gov - Bil'adayich

Prof. Warren Brodsky, a music psychologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of the recently published Driving With Music: Cognitive-Behavioral Implications, explains to host Gilad Halpern why you should be extra careful before you choose the playlist for your daily commute. Song: Berry Saharof - Od Chozer Hanigoon

Dr. Adi Moreno, a sociologist at the University of Manchester in the UK, studies how the increasing phenomenon of gay couples starting families affects preconceptions about family and continuity in Israel. She sits down with host Gilad Halpern. Song: Keren Ann - Lay Your Head Down

Dr. Ron Schleifer, head of the Center for Defense and Communication at Ariel University and author of Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict talks to host Gilad Halpern about an invisible, yet extremely effective, element of warfare in the protracted Middle East conflict and beyond. Song: Ester Rada - Monsters

Dr. Cecile Kuznitz, director of Jewish Studies at Bard College and author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation retraces with host Gilad Halpern the history of the 90-year-old Yiddish Scientific Institute from Interwar Poland to Postwar America. Song: Tuna ft. Shlomi Saranga - Lama Lo Achshav

Dr. Assaf Nativ, post-doctoral fellow in archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of Prioritizing Death and Society: The Archaeology of Chalcolithic and Contemporary Cemeteries in the Southern Levant. He explains to host Gilad Halpern how comparing burial practices that are millennia apart can shed light on each other, and on the human condition. Song: Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad feat. Karolina & Loren Oden - Feel Alive

Dr. Yonatan Mendel, the director of the Center for Jewish-Arab relations at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is author of the recently published "The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel." Dr. Mendel explains to host Gilad Halpern why generations of Israeli high school students who specialized in Arabic are unable to string a sentence together. Song: Guy Mazig - Levad Bamidbar

Jeffrey S. Gurock, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, delves into the realm of counterfactual history in his recently published The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jews, 1938-1967. Talking with host Gilad Halpern, he imagines a very different existence for the community had the Second World War taken a different course. Song: Noa Shemer - Noa

Dr. Jonathan Rynhold is a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University and the author of a new book The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture, which can be bought here. The United States is the only western country where support for Israel has reached an all-time high in the 21st century - Dr. Rynhold explains to Gilad Halpern why this is. Song: Asaf Avidan & The Mojos - Hangwoman

Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, has co-authored a new book Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about the involvement of American religious groups in diplomacy and refugee relief during Israel's War of Independence and its immediate aftermath. Song: Ehud Banai - Florentin

Prof. Meir Zamir, Middle East scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is the author of the newly published The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948. He talks to host Gilad Halpern about efforts of British intelligence officials, sometimes unbeknown to their government, to "advance" British interests in the Middle East at the expense of the new order that was shaping the region in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Song: Eatliz - Sunshine

Dr. Moshe Berent, a political scientist at the Open University, is the author of the recently published A Nation Like All Nations: Towards the the Establishment of an Israeli Republic. He reviews with host Gilad Halpern the marginal role that republicanism played in Zionist thought, and highlights its tensions with the idea of a Jewish state.

Dr. Hilla Dayan, a sociologist at Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands, is working to lay the theoretical and institutional foundations for the establishment of a new academic discipline, 'Occupation Studies' - in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course. She tells host Gilad Halpern what needs this discipline is designed to address, and what analytic void it's intended to fill, inside Israeli academia and beyond. Song: Shlomi Shaban & Chava Alberstein - Targil BeHit'orerut

Dr. Adam Rovner, an Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver in the United States, recently had his book In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel published by New York University Press. Dr. Rovner speaks to host Gilad Halpern about the step-siblings of Zionism – six different attempts to establish a Jewish political entity in the 19th and 20th centuries – and why they all failed. Song: LessAcrobats - Time

Dr. Noa Lavie, a sociologist at the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College, specializes in the impact of television on society, in Israel and beyond. She discusses with host Gilad Halpern her most recent research about reality television - how it's been shaped by forces like capitalism and art. Song: Riff Cohen - Helas

Noga Kadman, an Israeli researcher and tour guide, recently had her book, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948, published in English by Indiana University Press. Kadman sits down with host Gilad Halpern and traces the ruins of hundreds of Arab-Palestinian villages in the current physical landscape, and tries to place them in the discursive or ideological landscape of contemporary Israel. Song: Tislam - Hatzavim Porchim

Prof. Yosef Toby, professor emeritus of Medieval Hebrew poetry at the University of Haifa, talks to host Gilad Halpern about the cultural golden age of Tunisian Jews, and their being torn between European acculturation and cultural conservatism.

Professor Meron Medzini, a Japanologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem but also, perhaps surprisingly, a biographer of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel between 1969-1974 - our very own Iron Lady. Professor Medzini's mother was a childhood friend of Meir, and Medzini served as her press secretary. His book is the work of a political scientist but is riddled with personal anecdotes that shed light into the virtually most prominent woman in the history of Zionism.

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, author of numerous books including, very recently, Lincoln and the Jews: A history, which he co-edited with Benjamin Shapell. The book, which was published by St Martin's Press, recounts the relationship of the 16th president of the United States with a then still small and relatively uninfluential ethnic group, based on hundreds of archival items, some of them newly unveiled.