Hosted by: Dr. Ümit Kurt and Dr. Dotan Halevy
Polonsky Academy Fellows at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

A century before the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), a passionate discourse emerged in the Ottoman Empire, rebutting politicized Western representations of the East. Ottoman and early Turkish Republican intellectuals, well acquainted with the European political and cultural scene and charged with their own ideological agendas, deconstructed tired clichés about “the Orient.” In her new book, Zeynep Çelik recontextualizes Eurocentric studies, unearthing an important episode in modern Middle Eastern intellectual history and curating a selection of primary texts illustrating the debates.

Zeynep Çelik is Sakip Sabanci Visiting Professor at Columbia University and distinguished professor emerita at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Prof. Menachem Lorberbaum’s new book, Before Hasidism, provides a profound new frame for one of the most outstanding and fascinating figures in Jewish history, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (the Besht, 1699–1760). Although the Besht is one of the most famous figures in modern Jewish history and inspired the establishment of the Hassidic movement, he himself and his direct teachings remain an enigma, because he left hardly any writings. Prof. Lorberbaum’s research adds a unique contribution to the growing scholarship in recent years regarding the character of the Besht. He provides a broad panorama of contexts that shed fresh light on the teachings of the Besht and the meaning of his personality—both as reflected in the lines the Besht draws from the tradition of the Kabbalah and in the shaping of his teachings by the first generation of his disciples, which present the verbal teachings of the Besht. Thus, the book clarifies fundamental issues in the formation of Jewish theology and the life that it shapes. In a conversation of the Polonsky Salon series we will try to clarify with Prof. Lorberbaum the place of the Besht, and of his book about the Besht, in the broad span of his scholarship on Jewish theology from the Middle Ages to our day and ask together how this research may help us formulate a responsible Jewish theology for our time.

The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early modern Ottoman Empire, by Polonsky Academy Fellow, Henry Shapiro, was published in the EDINBURGH  University Press

The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province,  written by the Polonsky Academy Fellow, Umit Kurt, has become the finalist for 2022 PROSE Award in World History, Association of American Publishers

An article Acknowledging loss, materializing language: translation and hermneutics of gaps in nineteenth century Baghdad by Polonsky Academy Fellow, Avi-ram Tzoreff was published in Middle Eastern Studies Journal

Polonsky Academy Fellow, Assaf Tamari gave a talk “’The immense thrust of Safedian Kabbalah’: On the Practicality of Lurianic Kabbalah, Following Gershom Scholem”.

The talk was in the framework of academic conference Innovations in Kabbalah Research Marking Forty Years since the Passing of Gershom Scholem z”l.

Polonsky Academy Fellow, Adane Zawdu Gebyanesh wrote a chapter, titled “Community Is A Resource” for the book “Diversifying The Ivory Tower: First Generation For Higher Education Write.” The book by Pardes Publishing was out in February 2022. In this chapter, Adane shared the different social and scholarly communities he was fortunate to be part of and emphasized the importance of investing in community building.

In the framework of 2022 MBI Lecture Series co-hosted with the International Association for the Study of Arabia and the British-Yemeni Society, the Polonsky Academy Fellow, Dr, Ekaterina Pukhovaia gave a talk on “The Transformation of the Imamate in Yemen 1200-1800”.

Polonsky Academy Fellow, Dr. Umit Kurt gave two talks titled “Obstinate Unionist Celal Bayar alias Galip Hoca” and “Wealth Tax Policy and Turkification Policies”, in the Istanbul Literature House

A Series of Conversations on The Anthropocene Epoch: Life after Nature, led by the Polonsky Academy Fellow, Dr. Ofri Ilany, was launched on January 25, 2022 with conversation on Despair and Hope in a Warming World. Participants: Dr. Yonatan Goldsmith, Institute for Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Michal Givoni, The Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Meital Lukoff, The Extinction Rebellion Movement, Israel. Dr. Ofri Ilany moderated the conversation.

An article Studying Ibn Sīnā, Performing Abulafia in a Mid-Sixteenth-Century Prison: Emotional, Medical, and Mystical Bodies between Italy and Silesia, by the Polonsky Academy Fellow Magdalena Janosikova, was published in European Journal of Jewish Studies

An article Shifting Paradigms: Ideas, Materiality and the Changing Shape of Grammar in the Renaissance by the Polonsky Academy fellow Ray Schrire, was published in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes: Vol 84, No 1

An article Standing behind your phrase – Arendt and Jaspers on the (Post-)Metaphysics of Evil, by the Polonsky Academy Fellow Carmen Lea Dege, was published at the European Journal of Political Theory, Online First, November 24, 2021.

Polonsky Academy Fellow, Ekaterina Pukhovaia gave a talk Patterns of Institutional and Elite Transformation in Early Modern Yemen (15th – 17th Centuries) at Princeton University.

The talk was a part of the Department & Program in Near Eastern Studies Seminar Series 2021-2022, University of Princeton

An article Uncertainty and Inequality in Early Financial Thought: John Hicks as a Reader of Knight and Keynes written by Polonsky Academy Fellow, Roni Hirsch, PhD, was published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics 45, no. 5 (2021): 1145–1163
This article looks at the early reception of Knight’s and Keynes’ accounts of uncertainty, and their outsize role in the development of contemporary financial economics.

A conversation with Prof. Sergio Tenenbaum Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto on his new book Rational Powers in Action

Instrumental Rationality and Extended Agency Hosted by Dr. Rory O’Connell Polonsky Academy Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

The project, Global Patterns of Mass Violence: Ottoman Borderlands in Context, 1890-1920, by Polonsky Academy Fellow, Umit Kurt, PhD, has been awarded Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA), given by Australian Research Council and Government
As of Fall 2022, Umit Kurt will be working as a Senior Lecturer at the Center for Study of Violence in the History Department of the University of Newcastle, Australia

Umit Kurt in conversation with Prof. Ugur Umit Ungo

Daniel Telech in conversation with Prof. Pamela Hieronymi

A book “The Armenians of Aintab” The economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province by the Polonsky Academy Fellow Umit Kurt, PhD, was published by the Harvard University Press on April 13, 2021

The Polonsky Academy is proud to announce that Alberto Bardi, a second year fellow, was appointed as an Associate Professor at the Department of the History of Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing

An International workshop Varieties of Moral Address Agency, Authority and Responsibility, co-organized by the Polonsky Academy Fellow, Daniel Telech, PhD and Prof. David Enoch of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem took place (digitally) on April 20-22, 2021

Ray Schrire was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The project Documenting Early-Modern Popular Mathematical Culture that is an integral part of Ray’s research at the Polonsky Academy, was selected for its exceptional merit by an international committee of scholars. The fellowship’s funds will be used to digitize early modern manuscripts found in libraries in the UK and Continental Europe. Ray aims to shed light on hidden aspects of the mathematical practices of early modern merchants, accountants, and shopkeepers.

The Polonsky Academy is proud to announce that Casper Storm Hansen, a fifth year fellow, was appointed as an Associate Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ newly founded Institute of Philosophy in Beijing.

An article by Nimrod Ben Zeev, Palestine Along the Colour Line: Race, Colonialism, and Construction Labour, 1918–1948,” was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal.

Henry Shapiro presented a lecture Eremia Chelebi Keomurchean (1637-1695) and the Foundation of the Western Armenian Intellectual Tradition in Ottoman Istanbul at Haifa Center for Mediterranean History at Haifa University.

A conversation with Prof. Bernard E. Harcourt

Tuesday | 02/03/21 | 07:00 pm

Participants:

Opening remarks: Prof. Shai Lavi, Director, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Polonsky Academy

Prof. Bernard E. Harcourt, Columbia University

Hosted by Dr. Carmen Lea Dege, Polonsky Academy Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

>>>Program

An Op-Ed The sultan and his sycophants: Erdoğan is leading Turkey towards a bleak future coauthored by Umit Kurt (with Oguz Alyanak) was published on the Open Democracy website

Alberto Bardi delivered an invited lecture, entitled Controversies about Astrology in the Arabic and the Byzantine Worlds, at the Israeli Institute of Advanced Studies. The event was organized by the Israeli Institute of Advanced Studies research group Cultural Brokerage in Pre-modern Islam

The Polonsky Academy is proud to announce that Orit Malka, our second year fellow, was appointed to a tenure-track joint position as an Assistant Professor in the Talmud Department and the Law faculty at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  Orit will be the first woman in the 100 year history of the Talmud Department of the HUJ to obtain such a position.

Orit Malka is co-organizing (together with Dr. Yair Furstenberg, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Yael Wilfand, Bar Ilan University) an annual research workshop: Rabbinic Halakha and Roman law: How to Identify Influence. The workshop was hosted by the Talmud and Halakha department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Past sessions of the workshop – 1.11.20, 29.11.20, 27.12.20. The next session of the workshop will take place on 24.1.21.

2020’s Existentialist Turn by Carmen Lea Dege, published August 2020 in the Boston Review and translated into Chinese and Spanish languages, was chosen by the readers of as the ninth most popular Boston Review essay of the year

A creative nonfiction essay Chicken Soup: The Story of a Jewish Family by Alma Igra was published in the Winter 2021 issue of World Literature Today

An article by Nimrod Ben-Zeev “We Built This Country”: Palestinian Citizens in Israel’s Construction Industry, 1948–73 was published in the Jerusalem Quarterly’s winter 2020 issue

Alberto Bardi’s article The Transmission of a Byzantine Astronomical Commentary: Philological Problems and Editing Criteria was published in one of the most prestigious journals of textual criticism and philology, Revue d’Histoire des Textes (in Italian)

Casper Hansen participated in Formal Philosophy 2020, Moscow, Nov. 16-18, and gave a talk titled The Dogmatism Required to Avoid Learning through Induction.  The conference was organized by The International Laboratory for Logic, Linguistics and Formal Philosophy (Higher School of Economics, Russia).

Polonsky Academy is delighted to announce that project, Global Patterns of Mass Violence: Ottoman Borderlands in Context, 1890-1920, developed by Polonsky Fellow Umit Kurt, has been awarded Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA), given by Australian Research Council and Government

On October 20, the new academic year 2020-2021 was launched at the Polonsky Academy at VLJI. The Polonsky Fellows were greeted by the Director of VLJI Prof. Shai Lavi and listened to the opening lecture by Prof. Ruth HaCohen from HUJI on Sonic Solidarity in Times of Trouble.

Polonsky Fellows – Roni Hirsch, Jacob Abolafia and Guy Paltieli participated in the Inter-University Workshop on Political Thought. Guy Paltieli, who was in the organizational committee of the Workshop, chaired one of the sessions: Profit, Welfare and Justice. 

Five Fellows obtained tenure-track positions and will teach  from the next academic year in  leading academic institutions:

Karma Ben-Johanan (2017 intake) – Humboldt University, Berlin

Elvira Di Bona (2015 intake) – University of Turin

Tanja Werthmann (2018 intake) – Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Rawia Aburabia (2019 intake) – Sapir college

Lucia Carminati (2018 intake) – Texas Tech University

Prof. David Heyd from HUJI  gave a talk on Better Not to Be Born: A Talmudic Debate

A group of Polonsky Fellows organized a discussion on the current situation (Covid-19), its histories, and what the future holds

Torbjorn Ottersen gave a talk on : The replay’s the thing? Nixon in China in Stuttgart

Karma Ben-Johanan had published a book A Pottage of Lentils Mutual Perceptions of Christians and Jews in the Age of Reconciliation at the TAU University Press

Karma Ben-Johanan – Jewish-Christian Relations and “Irrevocable” Problem of Political Theology

Umit Kurt – The Curious Case of Ali Cenani Bey:Story of a Genociaire

Guy Paltieli – Data Republic: Civic Virtues and AL Politics

Magdalena Luszczynska – In search for Eutopia. From a printer’s mistake to translator’s marginalia

Uri Weiss – Justice and Labor Negotiation

Daniel Telech – Praise as Moral Address

Firat Kurt – Giving Messages, Creating Values: Financial Capitalism as the Infrastructure of Populist Mobilization

Assaf Tamari – R.Hayyim Vital’s Political Imagination: Localizing the Dream Messianism of Sefer ha-Hezyonot

Ella Klik – Media and the Accidental: The Lost Apollo 11 Tapes

Elvira Di Bona – On Music as the Language of Emotions

Rawia Aburabia – The Law on The Books Versus the Law in Action: Muslim Women in Polygamous Marriages Under The Jewish State

Casper Hansen – The dogmatism required to avoid learning from induction

An initiative that became a tradition – a celebration of new beginnings, an introduction between the new Library Fellows and the Polonsky Fellows. Irit Kornblit of Library Fellows and Assaf Tamari of Polonsky Fellows gave greetings speeches.

On 1-2 January, Polonsky Fellow Orit Malka in cooperation with Omer Michaelis from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has organized a conference On Sacrifice in the frameworks of VLJI theme Sacredness Religion and Secularization

Professor Marc David Baer  from the International History Department of London School of Economics and Political Science will give a talk at the Polonsky Weekly Seminar.  Talk title is German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus

Lucia Carminati – Improvising and Humble. The Nineteenth-Century Migrants Whom Statisticians and Historians Have Neglected

Orit Malka – Testimony and Oath in Ancient Legal Thought

Alberto Bardi – The Celestial Bodies and the Problem of Knowledge in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople

Ofri Ilany – Astrology, Judaism and Homosexuality in the Diaries of Yedidiah (Eduard) Chavkin

Carmen Dege – Religion and the Dialectics of Enlightenment: Making Sense of the Turn to the Axial Age

The Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute will award up to seven Fellowships in the humanities or social sciences for up to four years (with a possible fifth year in exceptional circumstances), beginning October 1, 2020. The Fellowship offers an annual stipend of $40,000 and other benefits. Yearly renewal will be contingent upon demonstrated progress in research. Fellows are expected to be physically present at the Institute for consecutive years during the period of the award. Applications will be considered from those awarded a Ph.D. on or after October 1, 2015. The deadline for submission is January 1, 2020. More information you can find here

Polonsky Fellows and Junior Library Fellows celebrated Tu B’shvat. Ori Werdinger of the junior library Fellows gave a short explanation of Tu B’shvat and Uri Weiss of the Polonsky Fellows read from his and W. Auden poems.

Polonsky Academy Fellow Dr. Pavel Vasilyev organized a round table discussion in cooperation with The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, The Polonsky Academy and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Alexander Etkind of European University in Florence chaired the discussion.

Polonsky Academy Fellows celebrated the end of 2018 by watching the Gospel according to St. Matthew by Paolo Pasolini.

Michael P.Steinberg, Professor of Music and German Studies at Brown University was a guest speaker at the Polonsky weekly Seminar. Prof. Steinberg gave a talk on The School of Listening: Music, Politics, Psychoanalysis.

Polonsky Academy Fellows went on a field trip to Mount Meron and Sefad.  Dr. Assaf Tamari, one of the fellows, guided the trip. Assaf’s research is on Jewish Intellectual History, Kabbalah and Scientific Discourses, and he presented an interesting overview.

Polonsky Fellows celebrated the beginning of the academic year 2018-2019 together with the Fellows of the Martin Buber Society. The event took place on Thursday, October 25 at Hebrew University.

The Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute invites applications for up to six Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellowships in the humanities or social sciences tenable for up to five years, beginning October 1, 2019. The Fellowship offers an annual stipend of $40,000. Yearly renewal will be contingent upon demonstrated progress in research. Fellows are expected to be physically present at the Institute for consecutive years during the period of the award. Applications will be considered from those awarded a Ph.D. on or after October 1, 2012. The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2019.

For further information, please see here.

Israel’s higher education system is becoming increasingly integrated into the international academic community. This process has many positive aspects but also dangerous ramifications. One of those ramifications is the growing rift between scholars and the local society and culture.

The gathering was attended by researchers and officials in the higher education system who discussed the erosion of the status of the Hebrew language in the Israeli academic world. They also discussed the special, and even more fragile, state of Arabic in Israel’s academe.

The symposium was organized by Dr. Ofri Ilani , Polonsky Academy Fellow.

Program

A special event took place to mark Dr. Leonard Polonsky’s ninetieth birthday, with gratitude for his longtime support. A festive reception was held at the Polonsky Academy with the participation of the Polonsky family, Polonsky Academy Fellows and Alumni, and guests.

Perceptual experience is undoubtedly central in our lives. It provides us with the bulk—if not all—of the information we have about the external world. It is crucial to our survival and the survival of our evolutionary relatives. It’s also central to most of the sources of meaning and enjoyment that we have in our lives.

These facts have contributed to a rich history of research on the philosophy of perception that goes back thousands of years. But the developments of the last few decades in cognitive and perceptual sciences have led to an explosion of new and innovative developments in the philosophy of perception as well.

The aim of this conference was to further these recent developments by bringing together several of the top scholars in the field to present and workshop new work on a range of philosophical topics related to perceptual experience. Bringing these scholars together also allowed them to see the relationship between their projects in a way that would be difficult to do outside of a conference of this nature.

The conference was organized by Dr. Elvira Di Bona (The Polonsky Academy) and Dr. Preston Werner (The Hebrew University).

Program

We were honored to host Prof. Hartry Field from the Department of Philosophy at New York University, New York, USA. Prof. Field gave a lecture on “Modal Conditionals and the Semantic Paradoxes”, and held an open discussion with Polonsky Academy Fellows on his work in progress.

The academic year 2017-18 opened with an Orientation Day at the Polonsky Academy. On this occasion, we welcomed our new fellows who were introduced to continuing Fellows and to the Van Leer academic and administrative staff. Later that week, the new academic year was celebrated in a joint barbeque party for Polonsky Academy Fellows and the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Shalom Sadik’s book “The Essence of Choice in Medieval Jewish Philosophy” (in Hebrew) has just been published by The Van Leer Institute Press and Magnes Press. Dr. Shalom Sadik is a Polonsky Academy Alumnus and currently serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. For further particulars, please visit the following Here.

This year, our field trip headed for Haifa and the Carmel Mountains. We followed unique religious minorities and got acquainted with the history, diverse and interesting traditions, and beliefs of various communities in the city and its surroundings.

We were honored to host Prof. Mark Risjord from the Department of Philosophy at Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Prof. Risjord held an open discussion with the Polonsky Academy Fellows on “Well-Being: Pluralism, Naturalism, and Interdisciplinarity”, and a workshop on writing academic grant applications. In addition, Prof. Risjord gave a public lecture at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute titled “Improvisation and Social Action: Perspectives from Philosophy and the Social Sciences” .

We are delighted to congratulate Dr. Sinai Rusinek, Polonsky Academy alumna and Dr. Almog Behar, Polonsky Academy fellow, upon the Council of Higher Education’s approval of their two new programmes for higher education. The first, The Digital Humanities Programme at Haifa University, was designed by and will be coordinated by Dr. Sinai Rusinek. The second, The Arab-Jewish culture studies programme at Tel Aviv University (with collaboration of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev) was designed by and will be coordinated by Dr. Almog Behar.

We were honored to host Dr. Michael Sharp, a well-established editor in the general academic publishing world, with 17 years of experience as a commissioning editor at Cambridge University Press. Dr. Sharp led a two-day workshop about how to get one’s book published and discussed a number of issues in contemporary publishing. The workshop included general sessions for all fellows and individual meetings to consult fellows with regard to their publishing plans.

We are happy to inform of a monthly colloquium for the Van Leer Campus, which will bring together Polonsky Academy Fellows and Alumni, with researchers of The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. At each session, two researchers will select a reading that will be the basis of discussion and give a short presentation on the reading. This project is an innovative exploration of a future for the sciences and the humanities beyond the current sense of crisis. The colloquium is for invitees only.

program

In the framework of the Polonsky Academy Fellows’ Weekly Seminar, we hosted four of the Polonsky Academy Alumni. Following an opening talk by Prof. Gabriel Motzkin, alumni shared their experience in the processes of Book Publishing and Job Talks, and conversations were held between fellows and alumni.

On the basis of textual and material sources, this workshop investigated the way in which, as well as the extent to which elements of Iranian culture, art, religion, ideology and politics were transplanted into the Islamic world and transformed by the emergent Islamic culture. This conference was organized by Dr. Domenico Agostini (Polonsky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute); Prof. Shaul Shaked (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities); Dr. Julia Rubanovich (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem); and Dr. Michael Shenkar (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

Program

The Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute invites applications for up to six Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellowships in the humanities or social sciences tenable for up to five years, beginning October 1, 2017. The Fellowship offers an annual stipend of $40,000. Yearly renewal will be contingent upon demonstrated progress in research. Fellows are expected to be physically present at the Institute for consecutive years during the period of the award. Applications will be considered only if the Ph.D. dissertation was completed no longer than seven years ago. The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2017.

For further information, please see here.

The new academic year was opened with an Orientation Day at the Polonsky Academy. On this occasion, we welcomed newcomer fellows, who got them acquainted with continuing ones and with the heads of the Van Leer Academic Units.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Ana Bajzelj’s book ‘Narava spremembe v jainisticni filozofiji (Nature of Change in Jain Philosophy)’ has just been published by Ljubljana University Press.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Weal Abu Uksa’ book Freedom in the Arab World: Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century has just been published with Cambridge University Press. For further particulars, please visit the following Here.

This workshop organized by Dr Silvia Jonas will bring together the leading analytical philosophers working on the topic of ineffability in order to discuss and exchange ideas and open up new directions for further research.

Workshop Website

Philevents

Venue: Polonsky Academy, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Silvia Jonas’ book Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy has just been published with Palgrave Macmillan, New York. For further particulars, please visit the following Here.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Stefan Ihrig’ book Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler has just been published with Harvard University Press. For further particulars, please visit the following Here.