Stanford University

Faculty Member, History

Acting Assistant Professor

About

Autobiographische Notizen:

Jew by birth, agnostic by formation and cast of mind; born (1977) and raised partly in Israel and partly in a settlement in the occupied territories. Rescued from this political misfortune by studying at the Israel Art and Science Academy in Jerusalem, followed by a year of voluntary community service (the Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature). Combat military service was followed by equally obligatory post-army trip to South-America.

Academic life was spent primarily at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (the last Germanic university on earth?), and included also an academic exchange year as G.L. Mosse Fellow at UW-Madison, where I decided to focus on modern intellectual history. In my PhD dissertation (submitted summer 2009, written under the auspices of Prof. Steven E. Aschheim) I examined the intellectual development of Sir Isaiah Berlin, reappraising his liberal philosophy by addressing the very ambivalent relationship between his activities as a British philosopher and diplomat and his ongoing support of Zionism. I’ve published a few essays on the subject and more will appear soon in my forthcoming book, Isaiah Berlin: The Journey of a Jewish Liberal (Palgrave-Macmillan, spring 2012).

At Stanford's History department since September 2009, writing and teaching courses in modern intellectual and Jewish history. As a teacher, busy exposing students to a canon (God forbid!) written by “dead white men” (oy vei!), while attempting, as much as possible, to stimulate critical engagement with sources, and increase students’ awareness to different modes of historical narration and contextualization.

Hobbies: hiking, gossip, scuba-diving, Italian coffee, Judo (or Yoga as substitute) and overuse of passive when writing in English.

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