Tel Aviv Review – Details, episodes & analysis

Can films reveal what a nation really believes about itself?

For decades, Dutch cinema told one story about its Jews. Then, slowly, that story began to change.

This week, Dr. Eyal Boers, head of Film and Television at Ariel University, takes us on a fascinating journey through more than a century of Dutch cinema, showing how films have reflected—and shaped—the Netherlands' evolving relationship with its Jewish community, the Holocaust, national identity, and Israel.

Why did Jewish characters move from being outsiders to symbols of national guilt? Why does Anne Frank loom so large over Dutch filmmaking? And what does today's portrayal of Israelis reveal about contemporary Europe?

It's a conversation about cinema—but even more, it's about memory, identity, and the stories societies tell themselves.

Check out Dr. Boers book, The Jew in Dutch Cinema: Images, Stereotypes and National Identity.

Upon the publication of Autocorrect, his latest collection of short stories, Etgar Keret joins us to discuss his favorite literary form, the impact of AI on storytelling and the power of literature post-Oct 7.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

How will the much-touted special relationship be affected by President Trump's overhaul of many aspects of American governance? Alon Pinkas, former Israeli diplomat and author of the forthcoming book An Unnatural Alliance, reflects on his time as Consul-General in New York in the early 2000s - how has Israeli diplomacy in the US evolved since?

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Hagar Kotef, Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London, discusses her book The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, analyzing the concept of "home" as both a physical endeavor and an object of attachment, against the backdrop of the Zionist settlement and the dispossession of Palestinians that it entailed

Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times, discusses his new book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. How have the failings of the late 20th-century economic system affected governance, and vice-versa?

Prof. On Barak of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University discusses his book, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization.

He takes on a historical journey to think of energy in the historical context of the making of the Middle East as a region, during the long 19th century. Instead of thinking that we are in a transition from coal to oil to cleaner energies, he argues, we need to understand the persistence of coal in the Middle East and how our reliance on it has shaped our politics, economics and culture.

Dr Yossi Harpaz, sociologist at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Citizenship 2.0 and how the relationship between citizenship and other sociological categories, such as migration and national identity, has evolved.

Jonathan Graubart, professor of political science at San Diego State University, discusses his book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, offering a contemporary re-evaluation of early 20th-century thought on Jewish sovereignty and statehood.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA's Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman

Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book Zionism: An Emotional State, an interdisciplinary attempt to study the history of Jewish nationalism through a history of emotions lens.

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Dr Shivi Greenfield, political theorist and Deputy Director General for Strategy and Planning, discusses his book Judaism and Liberalism: A Metaphysical Tale of Two Siblings. In it, he claims that not only can the two coexist, they also stem from the same metaphysical source.