Allen and Joan Bildner Visiting Scholar
(Spring 2021, extended through June 2022)
Professor Jonathan Dekel-Chen is Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History and in the Department of General History. He served from 2007-2019 as the Academic Chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry. He is currently Chairman of the Russian Studies Department. Dekel-Chen’s publications have appeared in prestigious scholarly presses. His current research and publications deal with transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration. In 2014 he co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Performing Arts in Eshkol, which provides world-class artistic training for underserved high school students from throughout Israel.
Digital Exhibit:
Jewish Agriculturalism in the Garden State
Programs:
2021 Mini-Course - Tevye’s Descendants: A Short History of Soviet Jewry
February 24, 2021 Faculty Seminar - Putting Agricultural History to Work Today: A Global Blueprint from the Jewish Past
March 2, 2021 Faculty Seminar - Echoes of Violence and their Deployment in Israel and the Diaspora
2022 Mini-Course - A Short History of Jewish Farming on Four Continents in the Modern Era
Essays:
For my children and the children of Gaza: A view from the Israeli border - May 13, 2021
Painful Truths, Rays of Hope: Shavuot 2021 - May 17, 2021
2021 Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award for the best article in Agricultural History (in 2020) from the Agricultural History Society - “Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past"
