Cairo's synagogues shed new light on the transformation Egyptian society and its Jewish community underwent from 1875 to the present.
Sacred Places Tell Tales: Jewish Life and Heritage in Modern Cairo (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) is the previously untold history of Egyptian Jewry and the ways in which Cairo's synagogues historically functioned as active inst ... Show More
Nov 22
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 21
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?
Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterre ... Show More
1h 5m
Nov 14
Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from t ... Show More
1h 16m
Dec 2024
How Zionism Perpetuates Antisemitism w/ Dr. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
<p>In this episode of Palestine Debrief, I speak with <a href='https://vivo.brown.edu/display/aazoulay'>Dr. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay</a>, a renowned scholar, filmmaker, and author whose work focuses on the intersections of colonialism, photography, and historical narratives. Ariella ... Show More
40m 50s
Apr 2024
Sandra Fox, "The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America" (Stanford UP, 2023)
In the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators a ... Show More
48m 55s
May 2024
Hala Auji et al., "The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment: Mass Culture and Modernity in the Middle East" (I. B. Tauris, 2023)
What was popular entertainment like for everyday Arab societies in Middle Eastern cities during the long nineteenth century? In what ways did café culture, theatre, illustrated periodicals, cinema, cabarets, and festivals serve as key forms of popular entertainment for Arabic-spe ... Show More
41m 24s
Sep 2024
Aviad Moreno, "Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community" (Indiana UP, 2024)
Dr. Aviad Moreno is himself an incarnation of entwined homelands. He is an Israeli whose grandfather moved from Morocco to Venezuela, sent his son back to Morocco to study. The family hailed from Spain before the Exile in 1492 only to maintain much of the Spanish language and cha ... Show More
59m 42s
Sep 2024
Ghada Karmi | I Returned to My Stolen Home in Palestine
Palestinian doctor, scholar and research fellow Ghada Karmi offers powerful, truthful and hard-hitting words on Palestine's past, present and future. She sheds light on a common experience amongst Palestinian diaspora: that of blocked memories, suppressed as a result of trauma. S ... Show More
52m 7s
Feb 2025
Judaism is 6000 years old. It can outlive Zionism | Rabbia Alissa Wise
Is Judaism itself an anti-Zionist religion?
According to Rabbi and organiser Alissa Wise, it's precisely the teachings of her faith that informs her stance against Israel, and her advocacy for a free Palestine.
Rabbi Wise is a former organiser with Jewish Voice for Peace, an ... Show More
47m 1s
Apr 2025
Palestinian Ingredients Through Time & Space | Fadi Kattan
This special episode of Matbakh is the first in a series of talks and special menu events called "dawaween al diwan" at restaurant, louf, in Toronto. Franco-Palestinian chef, Fadi Kattan, and Salma Serry, a doctoral researcher specializing in food history in West Asia and Egypt, ... Show More
57m 41s
Jul 2023
Ep 4: The Fatimids: Founders of Cairo, with Dr Shainool Jiwa
The Fatimids were an Ismaili dynasty that reigned over a diverse religious and ethnic population for about 200 years, emerging from the vibrant 10th century world of the Mediterranean. At its height, the Fatimid Empire stretched across the length of the southern Mediterranean and ... Show More
38m 11s
Jul 2024
Jonathan Branfman, "Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy" (NYU Press, 2024)
Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial Jewish stars have won stellar success while spotlighting (rather than muting) Jewish identity. In Millennial Jewish Stars ... Show More
56m 47s
Feb 2025
Heart and Soul: The caretaker of Bukhara
Abram Iskhakov is the caretaker of the oldest synagogue in Bukhara, one of the sacred cities of Islam. He is keeper of a Torah inscribed on deer velum and kept safe for 1000 years, or so the story goes. Abram has a powerful voice and recites for us a very special prayer, the Haqq ... Show More
27m 11s