People

Faculty Publications

Yael Zerubavel

  • Yael Zerubavel
  • Zerubavel, Yael
  • Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and History
  • Schools: Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, M.A. University of Pennsylvania, B.A. Tel-Aviv University

Founding Director

The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Nationalism, national myths 
  • Israeli culture, Israeli literature, Israeli film
  • Jewish memory, Jewish space
  • Trauma and identity

COURSES TAUGHT

  • Israeli Culture
  • Cultural Memory
  • Jewish Immigrant Experience
  • Jewish Memory
    Jewish Space
  • Trauma and Memory in Israeli Culture
  • Israeli Society through Film

 

PUBLICATIONS

Image COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

Books

Desert, Island, Wall: Symbolic Landscapes the Politics of Space in Israeli Culture Desert, Island, Wall: Symbolic Landscapes the Politics of Space in Israeli Culture

Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, and Shazar Center for Jewish History (Hebrew), 2023

 Tel Hai, 1920-2020: History and Memory Tel Hai, 1920-2020: History and Memory

Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi & Tel Aviv University Press, 2020

 Desert in the Promised Land Desert in the Promised Land

Stanford University Press, 2019

 Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition

University of Chicago Press, 1995

Recent Articles (Selected)

"Zikaron ve-shikheha ba-hevra ha-yisra’elit” [Memory and Forgetting in Israeli Society]: an introductory essay, in Zikaron, hafatsim ve-yitsugim [Memory, Artefacts and Representations], edited by Naama Sheffi and Edna Lomsky-Feder. Haifa: Pardes Publishing, 2023, 29-43.

 

"Identity (Ex)Changes, Gender, and Family Ties: Cinematic Representations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians,” in Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema, edited by Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022, 197-229

“My Life as a Dialogue: An Autobiographical Essay” [Ha’hayim be’dialog: Masa otobiographit] in Kavin li’demutenu, edited by Avner Ben-Amos and Ofer Shiff, Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University & Yediot Ahronot, 2020 (Hebrew).

“The Shepherd, the Well, and the Jug: National Memory and Symbolic Bridges to Antiquity in Modern Hebrew Culture", in Contexts of Folklore: Festschrift for Dan Ben-Amos, edited by Simon J. Bronner and Wolfgang Mieder. Peter Lang Publishers: 2019, 333-42.

“Negotiating Difference and Empathy: Cinematic Representations of Passing and Exchanged Identities in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Rethinking Peace: Discourse, Memory, Translation and Dialogue, edited by Alexander Laban Hinton, Gorgio Shari and Jeremiah Alberg. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, 93-107.

“Putting Numbers into Space: Place Names and Collective Remembrance in Israeli Culture,” in Taking Stock: Cultures of Enumeration in Contemporary Jewish Life, edited by Michal Kravel-Tovi and Deborah Dash Moore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016, 69-92

“’Numerical Commemoration and the Challenges of Collective Remembrance in Israel,” History and Memory 26, 1 (Spring/Summer 2014): 5-38.
Hebrew version: “Hantsaha misparit ve-shiyum he-avar: zikaron ve-shikhekha ba-merhav ha-tziburi be’israel,” in Majority-Minority Relations: Memory and Oblivion in Geographical Place Names, eds. Amer Dahamshe and Yossi Schwartz. Tel Aviv: Resling (191-223)

"Passages, Wars, and Encounters with Death: The Desert as a Site of Memory in Israeli Film,” in Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema, edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin. New York & London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 299-327.

“Ha’tanakh akhshav: Ikh’shuv, satira politit ve’zikaron le’umi” [“'The Bible Now': Contemporizing, Political Satire, and National Memory”], a combined issue of Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore vol. 28 and Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature vol. 25 in honor of Galit Hasan-Rokem, (2013), II, 755-74 [in Hebrew].

“Transforming Myths, Contested Narratives: The Reshaping of Mnemonic Traditions in Israeli Culture,” in National Myths: Constructed Pasts, Contested Presents, edited by Gérard Bouchard. London: Routledge, 2013, 173-90.

“Ha’hazara el ha’tanakh:Ha’tiyul ve’zikhron ha’avar ba’siah ha’tayaruti be’israel [“Back to the Bible: Hiking in the Land as a Mnemonic Practice in Contemporary Israeli Tourist Discourse”], in History and Memory: Essays in Honor of Anita Shapira, edited by Meir Hazan and Uri Cohen. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2012, vol. 2, 497- 522 [in Hebrew].

“Coping with the Legacy of Death: The War Widow in Israeli Films,” in Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion, edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011, 84-95.

 

HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Lifetime Achievement Award, Association for Israel Studies, 2019
Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Fall 2016
Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994-95, 2009-10
Ben-Gurion Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, Spring 2005 (visiting fellow)
Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Spring 2004
Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers, 2001-2
École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, Spring 2000 (visiting fellow)
The 1996 Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research

RECENT INVITED LECTURES (SELECTED)

Lectures & Programs related to Desert in the Promised Land:

  • Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, February 2020
  • Middle Eastern Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 2019
  • Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, May 2019
  • The Woolf Institute, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, May 2019
  • Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, May 2020
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September 2019
  • Plenary Session, Association for Israel Studies, June 2019
  • Taub Center for Israel Studies, New York University, April 2019
  • Kwartler Lecture, Princeton University, November 2018
  • Middle East Studies, Yale University, October 2018

“Israeli Memorial Landscape: Competing Approaches to Remembrance and Forgetting," Israel Studies Colloquium, University of California, Berkley, February 2020

"Re-enacting the Bible: Iconic Symbols and Subversive Narratives in Israel," Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 2019

The Inaugural Michael Feige Annual Lecture, “The Desert and the Island as Symbolic Spaces: On Landscapes, Identity and Memory in Israeli Culture,” Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sde Boker, May 2018

“The 'Return to the Bible' and the Performance of the Past in Israeli Culture,” Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, September 2016

“Numerical Commemoration and Commemorative Place Names: Memory and Forgetting in Israeli Public Space,” The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, January 2015

Subcategories

Zerubavel Publications