Yael Aronoff’s co-authored article with Myron Aronoff, “Continuity and Change in the Field of Israel Studies: Reflections of the Past Forty Years and Possible Future Directions,” was published in January 2026 in Israel Studies 30:3. Her chapter, “The Impact of October 7th and its Aftermath on Israel’s Zionist Opposition Parties,” in The Impact of the Israeli-Hamas War on Israeli Domestic Politics, Security Policy and Foreign Policy (Ed. Robert O. Freedman), is being reviewed this Spring for publication. Dr. Aronoff will be participating in roundtables and panels evaluating the impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s personality traits and ideology on his policy preferences, and on Israel’s opposition parties at the Association of Israel Studies (AIS) Conference, July 27-29, 2026, at the Ramat Gan Academic College. She is also serving on the Board of the AIS and is chairing its Lifetime Achievement Award Committee. Dr. Aronoff will also participate with Mohammad Khalil, Morgan Shipley, and Ralph Johnson from the office of Inclusive Excellence and Impact, to facilitate “Conversations on Antisemitism and Islamophobia” for MSU faculty, students, and staff on January 30th. She and Mohammad Khalil will also conduct a workshop on antisemitism and Islamophobia as part of an officer training series for student leaders at MSU this spring.
Kirsten Fermaglich lectured on name changing and civil rights on a panel with historian Ellen Wu at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in November 2025. In December 2025, Dr. Fermaglich will begin a 2-year tenure as vice president for publications for the Association for Jewish Studies. She will also present her research on antisemitism within the State Department in the 1920s as part of the Warren Public Library’s exhibition of “Americans and the Holocaust.” In January 2026, Dr. Fermaglich will participate in a conference on antisemitism at the University of Toronto. In April, she will participate in a panel on “Navigating Antisemitism” at the Organization of American Historians panel in Philadelphia. And throughout the spring semester of 2026, Dr. Fermaglich will be on sabbatical, traveling to archives to continue both her research on antisemitism at the State Department and her research on Jews’ academic migration.
Noah Kaye has been working for several years on the monetary history behind the original Hanukkah. His work will appear in the 2025 issue of Philia, an International Journal of Ancient Mediterranean Studies, titled “Seleucid Bronze Coinage from the Ödemiş Museum.” The article publishes 300+ coins, creating “big data” for the era of Antiochos/Maccabees. It features Antiochene coins from Turkey and pioneers a new method of data collection by surveying the archives of local museums. Coincident with this year’s Hanukkah, Noah will be speaking on Antiochene coins between Turkey and Israel in the numismatic division of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem. This comes on the heels of his publication of an American Journal of Archaeology open-access book review of a major new book on the archaeology of Jerusalem, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginning to the Crusades, by Jodi Magness (Review Link). Dr. Kaye will also be giving an invited lecture at Columbia University hosted by the Classics Department with participation from the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies: “Ground truthing the Paradigm: Normalizing Hellenistic Judea at Toriaion (Ilgın, Turkey).”
Aliza Lambert co-authored “Enhancing Religious and Spiritual Inclusion of Jewish Youth With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities” in Inclusion 13:4, December 2025.
Amy Simon presented the talk, “Visiting Mordechai Gebirtig’s Home in Krakow with Students” in November 2025 at the “Emotions of Holocaust Scholars Workshop” organized through Penn State University and Virginia Wesleyan University. On March 15, 2026, she will give the lecture, “Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries: Encountering Persecutors and Questioning Humanity,” at the Detroit Jewish Community Center. This will be a public lecture open to all.
Lynn Wolff participated in an online roundtable on the topic of “Visual Languages and Mediums of Holocaust Literature” for the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre on November 4, 2025. A recording of the presentation is available online via YouTube.
Yael Aronoff’s books include The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which compares and contrasts six Israeli prime ministers and their decision-making on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her co-edited book, Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond with Ilan Peleg and Saliba Sarsar (Lexington Books, 2021), includes ten leading scholars from multiple disciplines who address the theme of continuity and change in political culture as a tribute to Professor Myron (Mike) J. Aronoff. Dr. Aronoff co-authored the introduction and also contributed the chapter “Pathways to Peace: Legitimation of a Two-State Solution.” Her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Israel Studies, Israel Studies Review, and Political Science Quarterly.
Marc Bernstein is the author of Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam (Wayne State University Press, 2009), which focuses on a Judeo-Arabic account of the biblical Joseph and explores the interdependence of Muslim and Jewish traditions around shared sacred figures. His scholarly work examines the intersections of Jewish and Islamic literary and religious culture, with particular attention to how sacred narratives travel across confessional boundaries. He taught Hebrew language and Jewish literature at MSU for many years and is Associate Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures.
Kirsten Fermaglich’s publications include A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (NYU Press, 2018), which won the Saul Viener Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society for the best book in American Jewish history. She is also the author of American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957–1965 (2006) and co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (2013). She has published in the Journal of American History, American Jewish History, and the Michigan Historical Review, and co-curated the award-winning MSU Museum exhibit “Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War.”
Steven Gold’s publications include Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration (Purdue University Press, 2020), an edited volume addressing Jewish global migration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is also the author of The Israeli Diaspora (2002), which won the Thomas and Znaniecki Award for the best book on international migration, and co-author of Ethnic Economies (2000) with Ivan Light. His additional books include Refugee Communities: A Comparative Field Study (Sage, 1992), From the Workers’ State to the Golden State: Jews from the Former Soviet Union in California (1995), and The Store in the Hood: A Century of Ethnic Business and Conflict (2010). Gold received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association’s International Migration Section in 2019.
Matthew Pauly is currently engaged on two book projects: a research monograph, City of Children: Juvenile Poverty, Crime, and Salvation in Odesa, 1881–1940, which investigates the impulse of Odesa’s citizens and tsarist authorities to care for marginalized children and the transformation of children’s welfare institutions under Soviet rule; and a textbook, Traversing Europe: Key Moments in 20th-Century History. He is the author of Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2014), as well as numerous articles on early Soviet nationalities policy and the intersection of national identity, education, and childhood. Pauly has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, IREX, and the Social Science Research Council.
Ronen Steinberg’s publications include The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell University Press, 2019), which explores how those who lived through the Reign of Terror struggled to come to terms with mass violence, revealing complex, active debates among citizens regarding accountability, retribution, and trauma. His articles have appeared in French Historical Studies, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, and Storia della Storiografia, and he has contributed chapters to the Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution and the Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism. He has been a research fellow at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Michigan and the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Alon Tal’s publications include Making Climate Tech Work: Policies that Drive Innovation (Island Press, 2024), which demystifies global climate innovation programs and maps out how smart public policies can accelerate critical technologies toward net-zero goals. He is also co-author of From Food Scarcity to Surplus: Innovations in Indian, Chinese, and Israeli Agriculture (Springer Press, 2021), co-editor of Climate Change, Environment and National Security, A New Front (2021), and author of Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel (University of California Press, 2002). Tal has published hundreds of academic and popular articles and written or edited eleven books on sustainability topics overall.
Amy Simon’s publications include Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries: Encountering Persecutors and Questioning Humanity (Routledge, 2024). The book uses an empathic reading of Yiddish diaries written inside the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos to trace an emotional history of persecution, exploring how victims used writing as a space of individual agency to navigate systemic trauma. Her research brings together the fields of Holocaust studies, emotional history, and Yiddish literary culture, centering survivor voices and the interior lives of those who documented persecution in real time.
Kenneth Waltzer’s publications include extensive research and writing on The Rescue of Children and Youth at Buchenwald, an international study utilizing Red Cross ITS documents and survivor testimonies to uncover a micro-history of solidarity and protection for young people inside the concentration camp. He co-developed the interactive digital resource The American Identity Explorer: Immigration and Migration CD-ROM (1998, 2001) and co-curated (with Kirsten Fermaglich) the award-winning MSU Museum exhibit “Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War.” He also served as historical consultant and appeared in the feature-length documentary film Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald, which tells the story of four survivors who return to the camp sixty-five years after liberation.
Vered Weiss’s co-edited book with Elana Gomel, Israeli Speculative Fiction: Beyond Is/real (Liverpool University Press, 2026), outlines the main elements that locate Israeli speculative fiction in relation to world speculative literature and explores how Israelis use the genre to imagine alternative futures. She is also co-editor of Israeli Culture and Emergency Routine: Normalizing Stress (Lexington, 2024), which exposes the ways in which Israel’s “emergency routine” leads to perpetual stress and trauma, and co-editor of Tracing Topographies: Revisiting the Concentration Camps Seventy Years after the Liberation of Auschwitz (Routledge, 2017). Her articles focus on Israeli literature, culture, and cinema.
Laura Yares’s book Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU Press, 2023) chronicles the development of the Sunday school as a mechanism for Jewish education in America, tracing its leadership by pioneering women from 1838 through the early twentieth century and arguing that their work shaped the broader American Jewish experience in an overwhelmingly Protestant context. Her co-authored book with Sharon Avni (CUNY), Judaism Mediated: Learning About Jewishness through the Cultural Arts (2026), is a multi-sited ethnographic exploration of how Jews and non-Jews learn about Jewishness through museums, online performances, social media, music, and theater, and how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped Jewish cultural production and its audiences.