Israel Studies Seminar

About Israel Studies Seminar

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 Department of Politics and International Relation. The seminar is hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College. For more details, see the Seminar’s website here: https://www.mes.ox.ac.uk/#/

Publisher

Oxford University

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 Oct 2017

Latest episode

21 May 2026

Latest episodes

94 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 May 2026

   Stav Shufan-Biton/“Just Follow the Magic”: Ritual Holy Time among Jews as a Minority Community in Comparison to Their Position as a Cultural Majority in Israel

   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 distance and a sense of temporariness enable the selective adoption of Jewish mitzvot alongside openness to local ritual practices. Interviewees with flexible religious identities, particularly those identifying as secular or traditional, actively choose rituals they perceive as enjoyable and meaningful. These include Jewish practices such as Hanukkah, Purim, or partial Sukkot decorations, as well as local practices such as trick-or-treating on Halloween, Christmas decorations, singing carols learned at school or kindergarten, and exchanging gifts. At the same time, some halakhic practices that were part of everyday life in Israel, including the weekly Friday night Kiddush, fasting or reduced activity on Yom Kippur, and partial observance of Passover, tend to be less consistently maintained in the new context. Building on Ammerman’s framework of lived religion, the analysis highlights how enjoyment, curiosity, and a sense of magic, alongside child centered and family-oriented logics, shape ritual participation and contribute to a reconfiguration of ethnic and religious boundaries in everyday life. Stav Shufan-Biton is a sociologist and currently a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests focus on the sociology of religion, the sociology of time, and Israeli society. Her doctoral dissertation examined understandings of the weekend among Jews in Israel and resulted in several peer reviewed publications, which are available online. She currently studies experiences of sacred time among religious minorities, including Jews and other groups, across the UK, with support from the Argov Centre for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People.

2. 

   7 May 2026

   Elad Lapidot/Levinas and Decolonial Israel

   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 develop the foundations for decolonial Jewish thought – and for decolonial Zionism. To demonstrate this claim, his talk will analyze Levinas’s entire intellectual project as articulated around a fundamental turn between the period prior to 1968 and the post-68 period. The turn relates to Levinas’s understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Western civilization – and to his position with respect to the State of Israel and to the Palestinian question. Elad Lapidot is Professor for Jewish Thought at the University of Lille, France. His work is guided by questions concerning the relation between knowledge and politics. Among his publications: State of Others. Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2025), Politics of Not Speaking (Albany: SUNY Press, 2025), Jews Out of the Question. A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2020), Hebrew translation with introduction and commentary (with R. Bar) of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing, 2020).

3. 

   5 May 2026

   What's the problem with the Jewish State?

   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 Leer Institute, will talk 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 conceptual. Professor Zreik's recent publications include: Kant's Struggle for Autonomy (book), War and Self-Defense: Reflections on the War on Gaza in Analysis and Kritik, Zionism and Political Theology in the journal Political Theology; The Tyranny of Truth and the Tyranny of Opinion: Thinking with Hannah Arednt in Theoretical Inquiries in Law.

Who has been a guest on Israel Studies Seminar

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Rakefet Anzi
• Historian
• Dr Umit Inam
• Yaacov Yadgar
• Michal Huss

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 6 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

11

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0