Past Visiting Scholars

Naama Sadan 
PhD Candidate, The Advanced School of Environmental Studies Hebrew University of Jerusalem
naama.sadan@berkeley.edu

Naama is a doctoral candidate at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests include institutional theory, environmental ethics, comparative education, change theory, and archetypal and behavioral studies. Sadan’s thesis examines the different and sometimes opposite motivations of discourses around environmental and sustainability education. She researches the motives and support systems that lead teachers to initiate environmental education programs in Palestinian, secular Jewish, and Hasidic schools in Jerusalem. Her dissertation expands this model to look at the case of San Mateo County in Silicon Valley, CA and examine the semantic and social ties that create conditions for educators to promote environmental and sustainability initiatives in the area. She holds a BA from Hebrew University and a permaculture design certification from Beit Ya’ar. She has also taught urban planning and environmental studies at the Hebrew University High School and Talmud and Hassidut at Hebrew University’s Havruta Beit Midrash.

Mishael Zion
Director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture
mishzion@gmail.com

Rabbi Mishael Zion is an educator for The Bronfman Fellowship, and a former Co-Director. He is Director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture. Mishael grew up in Jerusalem, served in the Israel Defense Forces, studied at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, and graduated summa cum laude from Hebrew University. He is the author of Esther: A New Israeli Commentary and, together with his father, Noam Zion, the author of ​Halaila Hazeh: An Israeli Haggadah and A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices. Mishael holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York. He has served as a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning in New York, and has been a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Law.

Ortal Merhav 
Gordon College of Education, Faculty of Education
ortalmerhav@gmail.com

Dr. Ortal Merhav holds a PhD from the School of Education at Tel Aviv University. Her dissertation examined the renewal of the Jewish community in the non-religious space in Israel. In 2018, she presented one chapter of her doctoral thesis at a conference at the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel studies. Ortal also received her Master’s degree with honors (Summa Cum Laude) from Tel Aviv University. She is a lecturer at the Gordon College of Education, whose teaching focuses on various topics, such as community building, qualitative research, and innovation in technology. She has held prior positions as a teaching assistant at Tel-Aviv University in the Department of Management and Leadership in Education. Ortal has co-authored two articles dealing with identity in school vision statements, which appeared in the scholarly journals Studies in Educational Administration and Organization (in Hebrew), and Leadership and Policy in Schools.

Ram Rivlin
Hebrew University, Faculty of Law
ram.rivlin@mail.huji.ac.il

Dr. Ram Rivlin has been a Lecturer at Hebrew University, Faculty of Law since 2013. He has held prior positions in Tel-Aviv University as a Postdoctoral Fellow and New York University School of Law as Postdoctoral Tikvah Scholar in Residence. In 2017, Dr. Rivlin published his scholarly work, “The Puzzle of Intra-Familial Commodification” for the University of Toronto Law Journal.

Yoel Greenberg 
Lecturer and Head of the Musicology Program, Bar-Ilan University
Violist, Carmel Quartet

Dr. Greenberg’s research studies the evolution of sonata form as a self-organizing system; interactions of music, arts and literature in the early 20th century; and computerized recognition of musical style. He has a BA in Math and Computer Science and an MA and PhD in music all from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Eva Gurevich
PhD Candidate of Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
Graduate Fellow, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

Eva Gurevich researches the intersection of cultural history and political theology, examining Israeli literary and public figures who converted from ‘left’ to ‘right’ wing after the 1967 war, and the history of the Israeli settler movement. She holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Eva Gurevich 
Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandies University
egurevich@brandeis.edu

Eva is a doctoral candidate at the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University, and a Graduate Fellow at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. Working at the intersection of cultural history and political theology, her dissertation is examining a group of hegemonic Israeli literary and public figures who converted from ‘left’ to ‘right’ wing in the aftermath of the 1967 war, paving the way for the settlement movement as we know it today. Her research interests include Jewish political thought, religious and secular messianism, gender and nationalism, radicalism and fundamentalism, place studies, as well as Israeli and Palestinian visual arts and literature. She holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and before starting Brandeis, she had worked at the Magnes Collection at UC Berkeley.

Yoel Greenberg
Department of Music, Bar Ilan University
yoel.greenberg@biu.ac.il

Dr. Yoel Greenberg is a lecturer and head of the musicology program at the department of music at Bar-Ilan University, and a violist with the Carmel Quartet.His research concerns the evolution of sonata form as a self-organizing system, interactions of music, arts and literature in the early 20th century, and computerized recognition of musical style. He completed his first degree with honors in Mathematics and Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and continued to an MA and PhD in the music department at the Hebrew University. He Joined the Faculty at Bar-Ilan in 2012. Greenberg’s published articles include Fugue as chaos in the early 20^th century (Music and Letters 2018), Schoenberg and anti-Semitic imagery (IRASM 2017), computerized differentiation between the styles of Mozart and Haydn, the music of Erwin Schulhoff (Music and Letters 2014), formal procedures in Haydn symphonies (Journal of Musicology 2012) and the chamber music of Paul Ben-Haim. Yoel Greenberg is a 2019-2020 visiting scholar with the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies.

Ruth Zafran 
Radzyner Law School, IDC, Herzliya
rzafran@idc.ac.il
Ruth Zafran is an Associate Professor at IDC, Herzliya, Radzyner Law School.  Her research focuses on family law, especially the status of children in the family and the legal ramifications of Assisted Reproductive Technology. Some of her recent chapters in refereed books and articles in refereed journals include: ‘Children Are a Blessing’-Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Parenthood by Same-Sex Couples and The Equal Right To Be A Parent? – Resort to Surrogacy in Israel.

Smadar Ben-Natan
Tel Aviv University
smadarl@post.tau.ac.il

Smadar Ben-Natan is a PhD candidate at the Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law. Her research interests include human rights, international and transnational law, criminal justice (fair trial rights, juvenile justice), military courts and tribunals, torture, feminism, immigration and asylum, the legal profession and role of lawyers. Her current research is titled Models of Criminal Enemy Adjudication: Armed Conflict, Martial Law and Criminal Law.

Smadar Ben-Natan

Tel Aviv University
smadarl@post.tau.ac.il

Smadar Ben-Natan is a PhD candidate at the Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law. Her research interests include human rights, international and transnational law, criminal justice (fair trial rights, juvenile justice), military courts and tribunals, torture, feminism, immigration and asylum, the legal profession and role of lawyers. Her current research is titled Models of Criminal Enemy Adjudication: Armed Conflict, Martial Law and Criminal Law.

Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg
Bar-Ilan University
hadar.rosenberg@biu.ac.il

Dr. Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg is an Assistant Professor at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law.  Her fields of interest are criminal law and procedure, non-adversarial criminal justice and the interface between criminal and constitutional law. Some of her recent publications in English include Unconstitutional Criminalization, New Criminal Law Review (forthcoming, 2016), Criminal Law Multitasking, Restorative Criminal Justice, and Pain, Love and Voice: The Place of Domestic Violence Victims in Sentencing.

Tamara Lotner Lev

Tamara Lotner Lev is a PhD. Candidate and a fellow at the Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Tel Aviv University. Tamara Holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law and Latin American Studies (The Hebrew University), and M.A in Public Policy (Tel Aviv University). Her academic fields of interest are law, environment and energy, and the wider arenas of policy and regulation relating to them. Her current research concerns comparative, economic and non-economic analysis of environmental regulation on offshore oil and gas industry. Tamara served as a course director of the Environmental Policy Clinic at the Porter School for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University; as a lecturer in the College for Law and Business in Ramat Gan, and as a researcher in the Law and Environment Program in Tel Aviv University. Previously, Tamara worked as a legal journalist, as practicing lawyer and as environmental projects entrepreneur.

Zeynep Civcik
Brandeis University
zeynepcivcik@gmail.com

Zeynep Civcik received her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from Brandeis University, where her research concentrates on the role of the military in politics in Israel and in Turkey. She holds an MA and a BA in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University. She is currently researching civil-military relations in Israel and Turkey, and studying a comparison of military interventions.

Yael Plitmann

Yael Plitmann holds an LL.B. from Tel Aviv University and an LL.M. from Yale Law School.  As a young Israeli scholar in the fields of law, religion, and sociology, Plitmann focuses her research on perceptions of minority communities within Israeli law and the narrative tensions and engagements of minority communities with official law and legal principles.  Her work is multidisciplinary and comparative.  It explores the intersections and entanglements between Israeli law and Jewish law, including the way their entanglement in Israel’s legal framework impacts religious minority communities.  Her work fits very much within both programs of the Berkeley Institute – its Program on Israel Studies and its Program on Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity – and integrates them nicely.

Patricia Munro

Dr. Patricia Munro holds a doctorate in Sociology from UC Berkeley. Her work examines the role of the synagogue in mediating changes in American Jewish practice and belief. Her dissertation, “What if I Drop the Torah?”: Tensions and Resolutions in Accomplishing B’nai Mitzvah Rituals, provides an example of how the synagogue, as an explicitly Jewish space where Jewish practice and belief are reproduced and interpreted, is also the place where congregational leaders and lay members negotiate issues of Jewish policy. Munro’s research is centered in the culturally diverse and Jewishly diffuse Bay Area. From this base, her current research includes examining Bay Area Jewish pluralism from several perspectives and developing a longitudinal study that investigates the role of synagogue affiliation in shaping Jewish knowledge, practice, and identity.

Motti Regev
The Open University of Israel
mottire@openu.ac.il
Motti Regev is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel.  He currently heads the MA program in Cultural Studies.  He is a sociologist of art and culture, and researches popular music studies.  His recent research focuses on pop-rock music and cultural globalization.  Some of his latest books include Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity, Popular Music and Culture in Israel, and Sociology of Culture: A General Introduction. 

Visiting Scholars 2015-2016

Guy Davidov
Prof. Guy Davidov, LL.B (Tel-Aviv, 1996), LL.M. (Toronto, 1998), SJD (Toronto, 2002), is the Elias Lieberman Chair in Labour Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he previously served as Vice-Dean as well as Chair of Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Law. He is the founding Chair of the Labour Law Research Network, a new world-wide organization of labour law scholars; Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations; and a member of the advisory board of several other labour law journals and research centres. He has published widely on labour law issues in top journals, including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Modern Law Review, the University of Toronto Law Journal, Law & Social Inquiry, Industrial Law Journal and the Comparative Labour Law and Policy Journal, and has co-edited (with Brian Langille) two influential books, Boundaries and Frontiers of Labour Law (Hart, 2006) and The Idea of Labour Law (OUP, 2011).

Shlomit Azgad-Tromer
Shlomit Azgad-Tromer holds a Ph.D., an LL.B. and a B.A. in English, all awarded magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University. During her doctoral studies, Shlomit was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School. Her research interests revolve around issues of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, corporate bankruptcy, and corporate accountability towards retail consumers. Recent articles include “A Hierarchy of Markets: How Basic Needs Induce Market Failure”, an economic analysis of the hierarchy of bounded voluntariness in various product markets, and “Corporations and the 99%: Team Production Revisited”, raising the timely concern for the agency costs embedded in the relationship between the general public and institutional investors. Shlomit frequently publishes op-eds on corporate law and economics in Israeli dailies, and has extensive practice experience, including some of Israel’s largest corporate and securities transactions. At Berkeley, Shlomit’s research addresses systemically-important non-financial corporations.

Tamara Lotner Lev
Tamara Lotner Lev is a PhD. Candidate and a fellow at the Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Tel Aviv University. Tamara Holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law and Latin American Studies (The Hebrew University), and M.A in Public Policy (Tel Aviv University). Her academic fields of interest are law, environment and energy, and the wider arenas of policy and regulation relating to them. Her current research concerns comparative, economic and non-economic analysis of environmental regulation on offshore oil and gas industry. Tamara served as a course director of the Environmental Policy Clinic at the Porter School for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University; as a lecturer in the College for Law and Business in Ramat Gan, and as a researcher in the Law and Environment Program in Tel Aviv University. Previously, Tamara worked as a legal journalist, as practicing lawyer and as environmental projects entrepreneur.

Shira Offer

Shira Offer is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and was a Research Analyst at the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work. Her main research interests include personal networks, work and family, gender relations, and poverty. As a sociologist studying families, Offer’s research is motivated by the concern of how the current social, cultural, and economic climate affects the well-being and functioning of parents and children of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. She has published a number of articles in such journals as the American Sociological Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Forces, Social Science Research, The Sociological Quarterly, Community, Work, and Family, Racial and Ethnic Studies, and Current Sociology. 

Patricia Munro

Dr. Patricia Munro holds a doctorate in Sociology from UC Berkeley. Her work examines the role of the synagogue in mediating changes in American Jewish practice and belief. Her dissertation, “What if I Drop the Torah?”: Tensions and Resolutions in Accomplishing B’nai Mitzvah Rituals, provides an example of how the synagogue, as an explicitly Jewish space where Jewish practice and belief are reproduced and interpreted, is also the place where congregational leaders and lay members negotiate issues of Jewish policy. Munro’s research is centered in the culturally diverse and Jewishly diffuse Bay Area. From this base, her current research includes examining Bay Area Jewish pluralism from several perspectives and developing a longitudinal study that investigates the role of synagogue affiliation in shaping Jewish knowledge, practice, and identity.

Visiting Scholars 2014-2015

Ori Aronson
Dr. Ori Aronson is an Assistant Professor at the Bar-Ilan Faculty of Law, where is is also a founding member of the Center for Democratic and Jewish Law. Ori recieved an LL.B from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and LL.M and S.J.D degrees from Harvard Law School. He has also served as a law clerk to Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, as well as to Judge Jon O. Newman (United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit). His research interests include constitutional law and civil procedure, with a special interest in political and constitutional implications of the institutional design of court systems. While in Berkeley, he will continue his research in the complex set of questions that arise out of the design of democratic institutions.

Maya Benish-Weisman
Dr. Maya Benish-Weisman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Counseling and Human Development, University of Haifa. She received her PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychology Department at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. Her academic research focuses on how context affects people, especially children and their development. Specifically, she researches the psychological effect of context change including traveling between contexts such as in case of immigration or negotiation between contexts like for minorities. She currently leads a longitudinal study about the relationship between values and social behavior among adolescents in educational context. She will hold a joint visiting scholar appointment with the Berkeley Institute and the School of Education at Berkeley..

Leron Dean-Fishhendler
Leron Dean is a doctoral candidate at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research topics are food policies to promote healthy diet and she will have a joint appointment with the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. Leron received her Master’s Degree in environmental studies and biology at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. Prior to starting her PhD Leron worked for seven years at the Ministry of Environmental Protection dealing with issues of biodiversity and the delicate interface between conservation and development while planning in rural areas. Her current research focuses on if, how and why health considerations are incorporated into food policy.

Shay Hazkani
Shay Hazkani is a doctoral candidate in the joint program of the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and the Department of History at New York University (NYU). Originally from Israel, Shay received his Master’s Degree in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and his B.A in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on subaltern and socio-cultural history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prior to starting his Masters, Shay worked for seven years as a West Bank correspondent and as a war correspondent for Israeli radio and television, where he covered the Second Intifada, the 2005 Israeli pull-out from Gaza and the 2006 war in Lebanon. Besides reporting on the daily clashes, Shay took special interest in human rights issues and the Israeli settler movement. Shay was also a visiting scholar during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Hila Shamir
Dr. Hila Shamir is an Associate Profesor at the Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. She has also served as a Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School and as  Lecturer for the Harvard University Department of Government. She also served as a law clerk to Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Eliyahu Mazza.  Dr. Shamir recieved her LL.B from the Tel Aviv School of Law, and her LL.M and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard. She has studied the divison of law between the family, the market, and the state and the distributive effects of various institutional arrangements on gender and class inequality. Dr. Shamir will be researching for a book project about the ‘Law of Care,’ which will be a comparative study between Israel, the United States, and Austrailia. She will be exploring the regulation of (traditionally) women’s paid and unpaid care work. She hopes to reveal the similarities and variations that exist between the threee states and the potential for market-based provision of welfare in the age of globalization.

Adi Youcht
Adi Youcht is a Doctoral Candidate at the Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, where she also received her LL.M, LL.B, and BA. As a Doctoral Candidate, she has served as a Research Fellow at the Edmond S. Safra Center for Ethics. Adi will be studying the effects of circumcision regulation outside of Israel in comparison to Israel’s non-regulation policies. She will be exploring the relationship between the Jewish-Muslim coalition regarding circumsion in Israel and the effects that circumcision policies have had on international and translational law. Adi has also been a visiting scholar at the Columbia School of Law and McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific.

Visiting Scholars 2013-2014

Shay Hazkani

Shay Hazkani is a doctoral candidate in the joint program of the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and the Department of History at New York University (NYU). Originally from Israel, Shay received his Master’s Degree in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and his B.A in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on subaltern and socio-cultural history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Prior to starting his Masters, Shay worked for seven years as a West Bank correspondent and as a war correspondent for Israeli radio and television, where he covered the Second Intifada, the 2005 Israeli pull-out from Gaza and the 2006 war in Lebanon. Besides reporting on the daily clashes, Shay took special interest in human rights issues and the Israeli settler movement.

Osnat Grady-Schwartz

Osnat Grady-Schwartz is a PhD candidate in the faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation examines the growing visibility of international law in domestic courts’ decisions, and its relation to the global expansion of judicial power, from both a macro-level (courts as institutions) and a micro-level (individual judges as the decision-makers) perspective. Her research is interdisciplinary, encompassing several theories of international law and international relations, and also combines traditional legal methodology with empirical legal studies. While at the Institute, Osnat will primarily study the impact of international human rights law on Israel’s constitutional revolution. This will be Osnat’s second year with the Institute, she spent 2012-2013 as a Fulbright Scholar.

Meirav Mishali-Ram

Dr. Meirav Mishali-Ram is a lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University. She received her Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University in 2004. Her dissertation, guided by Prof. Michael Brecher from McGill University, focused on international crises in the Arab-Israel and the India-Pakistan protracted conflicts. She did her Post-Doctorate with Prof. Jonathan Wilkenfeld at the University of Maryland. She is a research fellow in the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), in Herzliya, and has long been a research associate of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project.

She is an author of several journal articles in international relations, and her main fields of interest are ethnic conflict, regional studies and civil war, applied in worldwide conflicts. Currently her research focuses on the sub-national and transnational dimensions of the conflicts in South Asia, mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Visiting Scholars 2012-2013

Omer Dekel

Omer Dekel is a Senior Lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel and the former Dean of the Academic Center’s Law School. In addition to his work at the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society, Omer is also a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. During his visit he will continue his research on the connection between Cognitive Psychology, Economics, and Law in the scope of government procurement.

Omer Tene

Omer Tene is an Associate Professor at the College of Management School of Law, Rishon Le Zion, Israel and a Visiting Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. He is also Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society; Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum; and Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology. He has published numerous articles about privacy and data protection. He is Managing Director of Tene & Associates, where he consults the Israeli government, data protection authority and private sector businesses ranging from technology start-ups to Fortune 100 companies in the financial, health, telecom, mobile and online industries on privacy, data protection and law and technology issues. He is a graduate of the JSD and LL.M. programs at NYU School of Law and received an MBA degree from INSEAD as well as LL.M. and LL.B. degrees from Tel Aviv University.

2012-2013 Visiting Fulbright Scholar

Osnat Grady-Schwartz

Osnat Grady-Schwartz is a PhD candidate in the faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation examines the growing visibility of international law in domestic courts’ decisions, and its relation to the global expansion of judicial power, from both a macro-level (courts as institutions) and a micro-level (individual judges as the decision-makers) perspective. Her research is interdisciplinary, encompassing several theories of international law and international relations, and also combines traditional legal methodology with empirical legal studies. While at the Institute, Osnat will primarily study the impact of international human rights law on Israel’s constitutional revolution.

Visiting Scholars- Fall 2011

Raphael (Rafi) Bitton is PhD. Candidate, Zvi Meitar Center of Advanced Legal Studies, Tel-Aviv University Law School. His research is titled: “Justifying Espionage – On the Law & Ethics of Justifying Human Intelligence”. While at the Institute he will focus on issues of law and national security and will also work on a research that explores the questions of law, Science & Faith.

Dr. Yaad Rotem is Assistant Professor at the Center of Law & Business in Ramat Gan, Israel; and serves there as the Academic Director of the Business Law Program. In Berkeley Yaad is also a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. During his visit he will continue to work on his research which is mainly focused on corporate bankruptcy law, and the conflict of laws (private international law).