Sever Hall 102, Harvard Yard, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Geoffrey Levin | “Seeing Another People: Historical American Jewish Encounters with Palestinians”
Geoffrey Levin
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies, Emory University
Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University.
American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now‑forgotten voices, which include an aid‑worker‑turned‑academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti‑Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left‑wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era.
Geoffrey Levin is the author of Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978.
A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Israel focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights.
Geoffrey Levin is assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta and the Director of Undergraduate Engagement at Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.
Prior to joining Emory’s faculty, Levin was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. He holds a PhD in Hebrew & Judaic Studies/History from New York University and studied international relations at Michigan State University, the University of Haifa, and Johns Hopkins University.
Originally from Wheeling, Illinois, Levin is a recipient of the Association for Israel Studies’ Kimmerling Prize and co-chairs the Israel Studies Division of the Association for Jewish Studies. His writings have appeared in the scholarly journals Israel Studies Review, Arab Studies Journal, American Jewish History, Israel Affairs, Shofar, and the Journal of Jewish Identities (forthcoming) as well as in The Forward, The Daily Beast, and The Atlantic.