Lecture Series with Louis Fishman
About Louis Fishman:
Louis Fishman is an associate professor in the history department at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of the book Jews and Palestinians in the late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland (Edinburgh University Press, January 2020). Click here to purchase Professor Fishman's book.
His academic work focuses on late Ottoman Palestine, the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also regularly contributes to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, among other news sites, where he writes about Turkish and Israeli politics while providing political commentary to other international media and policy outlets. He divides his time between New York, Istanbul, and Tel Aviv.
Join us for the Upcoming Series!
Hone in on the vision for the upcoming lecture series and hear directly from the author himself. Read the insightful words from Professor Fishman and learn about the exciting things to come!
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Lecture 1 - Thursday, March 20, 2025 - 6:30 P.M. to 7:45 P.M.
- This will be a virtual lecture and a zoom link will be emailed to RSVPs. -
"This 45-minute Zoom presentation (with 30 minutes allotted for discussion) will focus on the Sephardic Jewish community during the late Ottoman Era (from the 1850s until World War One). During this era, they were an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and it was within this world that they acted and dreamed as they worked to integrate in the Ottoman Empire as modern Ottoman citizens. From Istanbul to Damascus, to Jerusalem and Cairo, divisions within the community started to blur as they transitioned into a united and dynamic Jewish community. With World War One, this community would be divided into modern nation-states, leading to fractures and divisions never encountered by them in modern history."
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Lecture 2 - Saturday, March 29, 2025 - 6:30 P.M. to 8:30 P.M.
- This will be an on-site lecture at Temple Mount Sinai, located at 4408 N. Stanton St. -
"This on-site lecture at Temple Mount Sinai Synagogue will start with an overview of my 2020 book, which has continued to capture readers who wish to understand better how the late Ottoman era provided a completely different backdrop to what would eventually become the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During this era, the Jews and Palestinians interacted on a daily basis, often having good relations. However, with nationalism on the rise in the Ottoman lands and Zionism starting to support an Ottoman autonomous homeland, tensions emerged within Palestine. Parallel to this, different from Baghdad and Cairo, where Jews were integrating within the greater Arab population, Jews in Palestine, regardless of ethnic background, started to unite as a modern Hebrew-speaking community, just as Palestinians began to unite as a modern community connecting different sectors of the Arab community. While reading the book will not be necessary for those who participate, for those who choose to, a greater understanding of the topic will ensure a more fruitful discussion following the one-hour lecture."
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Lecture 3- Thursday, April 03, 2025 - 6:30 P.M. to 7:45 P.M.
- This will be a virtual lecture and a zoom link will be emailed to RSVPs. -
"This 30-minute lecture will ponder questions raised in the first two lectures and will encourage a vibrant discussion of how the erasure of the Ottoman past has led the region into endless conflict. For this, I will ask the participants to think about how, despite almost two years of war, we can imagine a new future for Israel and the region at large. Can remembering the late Ottoman era and its vibrant Jewish community that interacted with a whole array of Muslim societies hold the key to the future? Indeed, this will be done with a constructive context that will set up the group for a dynamic discussion. For those who wish to read an article I wrote on the topic, I can also share this with them beforehand."
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A suggested read for the upcoming lecture series:
Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914
Claiming the Homeland
By: Louis A. Fishman
Uncovering a history buried by different nationalist narratives (Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian) this book looks at how the late Ottoman era set the stage for the on-going Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It presents an innovative analysis of the struggle in its first years, when Palestine was still an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. And it argues that in the late Ottoman era, Jews and Palestinians were already locked in conflict: the new freedoms introduced by the Young Turk Constitutional Revolution exacerbated divisions (rather than serving as a unifying factor). Offering an integrative approach, it considers both communities, together and separately, in order to provide a more sophisticated narrative of how the conflict unfolded in its first years.