New Name. New Logo. Lasting Legacy.
Welcome to the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (formerly Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies). The Institute houses two core programs, its Program on Israel Studies, a nationally recognized initiative, and its Program on Jewish Law, Thought and Identity, the only program of its type in the western United States.
In honor of our 10th anniversary, the Helen Diller Foundation announced a $10 million endowment gift that will ensure a lasting legacy. Read more about this incredible gift here.
Please click Upcoming Events
Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save
America
Wed, January 25, 2023
Discussion: 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM, Room 105, Berkeley Law
Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators and a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won. Masua Sagiv, Hartman Scholar-in-Residence, Koret Assistant Visiting Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley, and a scholar of the intersection of law, religion and gender will talk with Lithwick about her new book, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America and what these significant political changes mean for America and for the Jewish community.
Dahlia Lithwick: Senior Editor, Slate; Host of Slate’s Amicus Podcast; Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center
Masua Sagiv: 2022–2023 Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies, UC Berkeley; Shalom Hartman Institute Scholar-in- Residence; Researcher, Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law, Bar-Ilan University Law Faculty
This program is in partnership with the Shalom Hartman Institute. It is part of the Helen Diller Institute’s Program on Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity.
The Libitzky Lecture on Israel and the Great Powers: The Case of Israel and Turkey
Thurs, Feb 16, 2023
Discussion: 6:10PM–7:40PM, Great Room, Bancroft Hotel
After a turbulent decade, Turkish-Israeli ties are now undergoing a revival. What are the implications of this reconciliation for stability in the region and what are the effects of global developments on the ties between these two regional powers? Please join Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Ron Hassner, the Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies UC Berkeley, for a conversation about Israel’s relationship with Turkey. This is the third in a series of talks examining Israel’s relationships with global powers.
Soner Cagaptay: Beyer Family Fellow; Director, Turkish Research Program, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Ron Hassner: Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science; Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies; Co-Faculty Director, Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
This program is made possible with a gift from the Libitzky Family Foundation.
Institute Celebrates 10th Anniversary With $10 Million Gift from Helen Diller Foundation
UC Berkeley has announced a $10 million endowment gift from the Helen Diller Foundation to the law school’s Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. In recognition of this generosity, the institute is now renamed the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Read more!
Institute in the News
Erasing the Ukrainian Holocaust Site of Babi Yar, Again
Babi Yar is the single most symbolic site of the Holocaust in Ukraine and across the former Soviet Union; it captures the predominant way in which the Germans and their allies massacred Jews on Soviet and Ukrainian soil, what priest and author Patrick Desbois has called “the Holocaust by bullets”. In the fall of 1941, […]BDS? Never Heard of it.
The massive international response to the crisis in Ukraine should have shocked BDS activists to the core. Twenty-plus years into its efforts to single-out Israel and sever its cultural, economic, and academic ties with the rest of the world, BDS has nothing to show for its efforts. Not a single company, bank, or university has […]Why I’m in Mourning for Hope and Democracy in Ukraine
This has been the worst month of my 50 years of life. My mom died suddenly and unexpectedly a few weeks ago, my cousin’s 26-year-old son took his own life last week, and now Russia has invaded Ukraine. I know these may seem like unrelated events — personal, tangential, global — but they are inextricably […]Former Student of the Tel Aviv – Berkeley Executive LL.M. Program Appointed as First Muslim Justice to Israeli Supreme Court
Last week, Khaled Kabub was appointed to the Israeli Supreme Court, making him the first Muslim to serve in this role. Justice Kabub is an alum of the Tel Aviv – Berkeley Executive LL.M. Program, a long-standing program of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, in partnership with Tel Aviv University. […]Analysis | When Recruiting the Diplomats of the 21st Century, Start at Community Colleges
This piece is part of ISD’s blog series, “A better diplomacy,” which highlights innovators and their ideas for how to make diplomacy more effective, resilient, and adaptive in the 21st century. Diplomacy is, at least in a democracy, about representing the people. Across the U.S. foreign affairs workforce, there is a crisis of representation– as […]California Can Learn Much From Israel on How To Conserve Water, Manage Drought Better
We can no longer pretend to be surprised by global warming. California experienced droughts in 11 of the last 15 years. The question is not whether another drought is looming. The question is: Why aren’t we better prepared?Alumni Spotlight: Nick Shafer – John Gardner Public Service Fellow, Middle East Bureau, USAID
The 10th Anniversary Spotlight Series highlights alumni, faculty, students and friends of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies who are agents of change in their communities and careers and have contributed to the vibrancy of the Institute. Nick Shafer, Class of ’19, an alumni of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish […]A Long Conflict Between Israel, Palestinians? No One Wins, Scholar Says
After years of relative calm, a sudden blitz of violence has raised worries of a new, protracted conflict in the Middle East. What happens next? Predicting the course of armed conflict is always difficult, says Ron Hassner, a Middle East expert at UC Berkeley, but neither side has much to gain by such a conflict, and both have much to lose.Jewish program at UC Berkeley gets $10m from Diller Foundation
The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley announced Tuesday it has received a $10 million gift from the S.F.-based Helen Diller Foundation to coincide with the institute’s 10-year anniversary.UC Berkeley Jewish Law and Israel Studies Institute Receives $10M Gift from Helen Diller Foundation
To kick off the 10th anniversary of UC Berkeley’s Jewish Law and Israel Studies Institute, the university announced on Feb. 9 that a $10 million endowment gift has been given by the Helen Diller Foundation.New podcast looks at Israel and Jewish identity in ‘Age of Covid’
Interested in how a plague of locusts impacted Jews and Arabs in Palestine under Ottoman rule in 1915? Or how Haredi communities in Israel today have chafed against government edicts during the Covid-19 pandemic? Or why massive, expensive fortified barriers, like the U.S.-Mexico border wall and the West Bank barrier in Israel, continue to proliferate all over the world?UC Berkeley Establishes First Faculty Chair in Israel Studies
May 2, 2019 – Joining a select group of universities in the world with an endowed faculty chair in Israel Studies, the University of California, Berkeley today announced the creation of the Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies. The chair is the university’s first in the field and will endow courses, research and programs […]Feminist icon Rachel Adler on #MeToo and Jewish law
Early in her lecture last week in Berkeley, theologian and feminist icon Rachel Adler brought up the #MeToo movement, but she quickly narrowed the focus to the #GamAni movement (Hebrew for MeToo). Her target? The long-standing male supremacy embedded in Jewish texts. “My task,” said the professor of modern Jewish thought and gender at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, “is to problematize certain halachic categories.”Key Funders Invest in the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
The Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley has received a $1 million matching grant from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation of Los Angeles, with the goal of meeting a $10 million endowment by 2024. The Institute also received grants totaling nearly $2 million from the Koret Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation in partial support of the Institute’s operations as it raises this endowment.
