The Ben Halpern Award For Best Dissertation in Israel Studies
The Association for Israel Studies awards the Ben Halpern Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in Israel Studies (broadly defined) approved during the 2024 calendar year. This award honors the memory of Ben Halpern (1912-1990), a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Israel Studies and the author of the influential book, The Idea of the Jewish State. An inspiring teacher at Brandeis University, Ben Halpern left a powerful and distinctive intellectual legacy including a commitment to the rigorous academic study of Israeli society.
To submit a dissertation for consideration, a candidate should send each member of the Halpern Award Committee a copy of the dissertation and two recommendation letters by scholars familiar with the candidate’s work. Recommendations should explain how the dissertation has advanced knowledge in the field of Israel Studies (including the Yishuv period).
Please find below the names and contacts of the other committee members:
Osnat Akirav, osnatak@bezeqint.net
Moti Gigi, motig@mail.sapir.ac.il
Amal Jamal, ajamal@tauex.tau.ac.il
Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman, lilach.rosenberg@biu.ac.il
Elisheva Rosman-Stollman Elisheva.Rosman-Stollman@biu.ac.il
A candidate for the award must be a member of the Association for Israel Studies prior to submitting their dissertation for consideration (newly registered or renewed membership for 2025). Dissertations in English or Hebrew will be accepted. Letters of recommendation can be in either language as well. It is up to the candidates to ensure that all letters of recommendation are received on time.
The prize awarded is $2,000.
Deadline for submissions: TBU
Questions about the submission process should be directed to committee Chair Donna Robinson Divine, drdivine@smith.edu
Past Winners of the Halpern Award:
2024
Dr. Omri Senderowicz (University of Michigan) for his dissertation “From Society to Community Privatizing the Israeli Kibbutz” (1975-2020).
The dissertation awarded an “Honorable Mention” to:
Yair Berlin (Bar-Ilan University) for his dissertation “אקלים רגשי וטקסטואליות ב’חברת הלומדים’ החרדית”.
Roni Tzoreff (Ben Gurion University), “Superfluous Jewish Material: Shiviti Objects in Zionist and Israeli Art and Visual Culture”.
Yulia Shevchenko (Ben Gurion University), “ממינסק וטביליסי לירוחם ושדרות:חוויות החיים של נשים פוסט-סובייטיות במרחבי השוליים של הדרום הישראלי”.
2023
Shlomi Balaban (University of Haifa), for “The Task of a Generation – The Knesset Institutionalization Process 1949-1959”.
Eli Osheroff (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), for “The Jewish Question, the Palestine Problem and Forgotten Political Solutions: The Arab Perspective, 1908-1948”.
2022
Caroline Kahlenberg (Harvard University), for “How Locals Became Settlers: Mizrahi Jews and Bodily Capital in Palestine, 1908-1948”.
2021
Lindsey Pullum (Indiana University), for “Faithful/Traitor: Violence, Nationalism, and Performances of Druze Belonging”.
Erez Maggor (New York University), for “Politics of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial State and the Making of Israel’s ‘Start-Up Nation”.
2020
Masua Sagiv (Tel Aviv University), for “A Time to Rend, and a Time to Sew: Halachic Feminism in Israel Between Law and Society”.
The dissertation awarded an “Honorable Mention” is by Irit Carmon Popper (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology), “Art as Preservation: Intervention in sites-in-conflict, Israel 1948-2008”.
2019
Elizabeth Imber (Johns Hopkins University), for “Jewish Political Lives in the British Empire: Zionism, Nationalism, and Imperialism in Palestine, India, and South Africa, 1917-1939”.
2018
Talia Diskin (Tel-Aviv University), “A Law of Our Own: Legal and Moral Values in Children and Youth Periodicals in the State of Israel, 1948-1958”.
2017 (co-winners)
Irit Katz (University of Cambridge), for “The Common Camp: Temporary Settlements as a Spatio-political Instrument in Israel-Palestine”.
Judah Troen (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “This is what is done abroad: Model Others and the Construction of National Identity in the Parliamentary Discourse of Israel”.
2016
Aviad Moreno (Ben-Gurion University), for: “Ethnicity in Motion: Social Networks in the Emigration of Jews from Northern Morocco to Venezuela and Israel, 1860-2010”.
2015
Tamar Novick (University of Pennsylvania), for “Milk & Honey: Technologies of Plenty in the Making of a Holy Land, 1890-1965”.
2014
Nitzan Rothem (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), for “The Domestication of Suicide Through Solidarity and Responsibility: Suicide of Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces as Portrayed in Psychology, Law, and Modern Hebrew Literature.”
2013
Tamar Kaminsky (Bar Ilan University), for “Women of Ein Harod as a Determining Factor of a New and Ever-Changing Society: 1921-1948”
2012
Rafi Nets-Zehngut, for “Fixation and Change of the Israeli Official Memory (1949-2004) Regarding the Causes for the Palestinian Exodus during the 1948 War”
2011
Hanna Shemesh, for “The Shaping of Memory in History Textbooks in the Arab Sector in Israel (1948-2000)”
2010
Michal Shaul, for “Holocaust Survivors And Holocaust Memory In The Rehabilitation Of Ashkenazi Haredi Society In The Yishuv And The State Of Israel, 1945-1961”
2009
Tali Kristal, for “Labor’s Share of National Income and the Diversification in Sources of Income among Wage and Salary Workers”
Ceren Belge, for “Whose Law?: Clans, Honor Killings, and State-Minority Relations in Turkey and Israel”
2008
Ilana Szobel, ’Not with My Feet on the Ground:’ Poetics of Estrangement, Subversion, and Witnessing in the Oeuvre of Dalia Ravikovitch. Submitted to the New York University.
2007
Sharon Asiskovitch, L’daber b’kama kolot, litsod b’kama shvilim: politika birokratit v’tmurot b’mediniut haravaha hayisraelit, 1985-2002 [Speaking with Different Voices, Walking Along Several Paths: Bureaucratic Politics and Changes in the Israeli Welfare State, 1985-2002]. Submitted to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
2004-2005 (biannual award)
Shira Robinson, Occupied Citizens in a Liberal State: Palestinians under Military Rule and the Colonial Formation of Israeli Society, 1948-1966. Submitted to Stanford University.
2002-2003 (biannual award) co-winners
Sharon Kangisser Cohen, Finding Their Voices: The Life Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Israel. Submitted to Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Oren Meyers, Israeli Journalists as an Interpretive Memory Community. Submitted to University of Pennsylvania.
2000-2001 (biannual award)
Sharon Lang, Shaking Hands with the Enemy: The Quest for Honor among Israeli-Palestinian Men. Submitted to Harvard University.
1998-1999 (biannual award)
Eli Avraham
1996-1997 (biannual award)
Adriana Kemp
1994-1995 (biannual award)Sara Helman, Hasiruv l’sharet b’tsava k’nisayon l’hagdara mehudeshet shel ezrahut (Conscientious Objection to Military Service as an Attempt to Change the Contents of Citizenship). Submitted to Hebrew University of Jerusalem.