Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas

We live in a time of food paradox. In a world of historically unprecedented abundance, many don’t have enough to eat.Life-limiting obesity coexists with malnutrition - at the same time, sometimes in the very same place.Food is the complex and critical subject that we will talk about today with Joseph Gitler who works to address the issue at a local, concrete level. He feeds the hungry.Back in 2003 Joseph Gitler was moved to act when he saw significant food waste in Israel at a time of rising poverty. He founded the nonprofit organization Leket, that has since become the largest food rescue organization in the country.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

The health care sector frequently emphasizes “Cultural competence”, an elastic concept that stretches from the simplest recognition of diversity of patient populations, to include policy implications of patients’ overall worldviews re the body, health, and decision-making.The issue, highlighted again in the recent U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision, gained prominence during Covid-19 pandemic, with the challenge of so-called marginal groups’ access to and compliance with vaccination programs.Legislation for equality impacts minority health care. It has brought both benefits and unintended consequences.We will talk about these important issues with today’s guest, Ben Kasstan, Ph.D., an anthropologist at the University of Bristol and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His research explores public health, specifically, what health protection means and according to whom. Ben’s published works on public health issues include maternity care, childhood vaccinations, and sexuality education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

“Narcissism” is truly one of the most important words of our time―ceaselessly discussed in the media, the subject of millions of online search queries, and at the center of serious social and political debates. But what does it really mean?In The New Science of Narcissism (Sounds True, 2020), Dr. W. Keith Campbell pulls back the curtain on this frequently misused label, presenting the most recent psychological, personality, and social research into the phenomenon.Rather than pathologizing all behaviors associated with the label, Campbell reveals that not only does narcissism occur on a spectrum, but almost everyone exhibits narcissistic tendencies in their day-to-day behavior. Drawing from real-life incidents and case studies, The New Science of Narcissism offers tools, tips, and suggestions for softening toxically selfish behaviors both in yourself and others. Here you will discover:· An exploration of personality disorders connected with and adjacent to narcissism· Why minor narcissistic tendencies are common in most people· The foundational difference between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism· The “recipe” of mental and emotional traits that combine into narcissism· How to identify when you’re in a relationship with a narcissist and what you can do about it· Why the 21st century has seen the rise of a “Great Fantasy Migration” into evermore insular subcultures· The connection between narcissistic tendencies and leadership· Why “the audience in your pocket” of social media has exacerbated culture-wide narcissistic tendenciesThough narcissism looms large in our cultural consciousness, The New Science of Narcissism offers many different options for understanding and treating it. With Campbell’s straightforward and grounded guidance, you’ll not only discover the latest and best information on the condition, but also a hopeful view of its future.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

What is the evolutionary purpose of religion, and are some individuals more inclined than others to be religious?Our species diverged from the great apes six to eight million years ago. Since then, our propensity toward spiritual thinking and ritual emerged. How, when, and why did this occur, and how did the earliest, informal shamanic practices evolve into the world religions familiar to us today?In How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures (Oxford UP, 2022), Robin Dunbar explores these and other questions, mining the distinctions between religions of experience--as practiced by the earliest hunter-gatherer societies--and doctrinal religions, from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and their many derivatives.Examining religion's origins, social functions, its effects on the brain and body, and its place in the modern era, Dunbar offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of the quintessentially human impulse to reach beyond.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

Genius or Charlatan?This is the story of Jacob Taubes, the controversial Jewish thinker whose tortured path led him into the heart of twentieth-century intellectual lifeScion of a distinguished line of Talmudic scholars, Jacob Taubes (1923–1987) was an intellectual impresario whose inner restlessness led him from prewar Vienna to Zurich, Israel, and Cold War Berlin. Regarded by some as a genius, by others as a charlatan, Taubes moved among yeshivas, monasteries, and leading academic institutions on three continents. He wandered between Judaism and Christianity, left and right, piety and transgression. Along the way, he interacted with many of the leading minds of the age, from Leo Strauss and Gershom Scholem to Herbert Marcuse, Susan Sontag, and Carl Schmitt. Professor of Apocalypse is the definitive biography of this enigmatic figure and a vibrant mosaic of twentieth-century intellectual life.Taubes’s personal tensions mirrored broader conflicts between tradition and radicalism, and religion and politics. Jerry Muller traces Taubes’s emergence as a prominent interpreter of the Apostle Paul, and how his journey led him from a radical Hasidic sect in Jerusalem to the center of academic debates over Gnosticism, secularization, and the revolutionary potential of apocalypticism.Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes (Princeton UP, 2022) offers an unforgettable account of an electrifying world of ideas, focused on a charismatic personality who thrived on controversy and conflict.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies.The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world.Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy (Penguin, 2022) is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

Randa Khair Abbas and Deborah Court's book The Israeli Druze Community in Transition: Between Tradition and Modernity (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) gives voice to the Israeli Druze through in-depth interviews with 120 people, 60 young adults and 60 of their parents’ generation. How is this traditional group, bound together through the centuries by their secret religion and strong value system, dealing with modernization? Can their religion, and their very identity, survive the meeting with the modern, technological world? What resources do the young and the not-so-young bring to the task of preserving their community and helping it to flourish as the world changes around them?The people in this text answer these questions through the telling of their stories, in which they express their values, opinions, beliefs and aspirations. The book draws out theoretical, practical, religious and sociological implications from this analysis, in order to shed light on the challenges faced by other traditional societies meeting modernity.More about their methodology is available in their brand-new book, Insider-Outsider Research in Qualitative Inquiry: New Perspectives on Method and Meaning.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

A hilltop at the heart of Jerusalem, Israel, is known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. It has been the site of Muslim rioting during the month-long religious holiday of Ramadan.How did a holiday dedicated to fasting, prayer and charitable-giving become a time of violence – and not in Jerusalem alone? Recent years have seen Ramadan attacks in countries as different as France and Syria, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Somalia. Nevertheless, there is something distinctive about violence on the Temple Mount, a location that some have called ground zero.Ambassador Dore Gold will provide insight into the dangerous dynamic of Ramadan violence: What incites it? Who benefits from it? And how can it best be countered?Ambassador Dore Gold is the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Among his many articles and books books are The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Iran Defies the West and Tower of Babel: How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

"As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile,” S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. “But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.” Agnon’s act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon’s Hebrew writing. Depending on which side of the lens one views Eretz Yisrael through, the vision of what can be achieved there appears clearer or more distorted. These themes wove themselves into the presentations at an international conference convened in 2016 by the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies in New York City, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Agnon’s Nobel Prize. The essays from that conference, collected in Agnon’s Tales of the Land of Israel (Pickwick Publications, 2021), explore Zionism’s aspirations and shortcomings and the yearning for the Land from afar from S. Y. Agnon’s Galician hometown, which served as a symbol of Jewish longing worldwide.Contributing authors: Shulamith Z. Berger, Shalom Carmy, Zafrira Cohen Lidovsky, Steven Gine, Hillel Halkin, Avraham Holtz, Alan Mintz, Jeffrey Saks, Moshe Simkovich, Laura Wiseman, and Wendy Zierler.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City (Doubleday, 2021) takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city’s streets and shrines.Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. Because of their authenticity, archeological findings confirm the long and deep Jewish history in Jerusalem and serve to cement the Jewish claim to the most contested city on the planet.Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute