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Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined

Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined

December 10, 2015

Social Sciences & Humanities

The Jewish Exponent — Prof. Emeritus Ilan Troen, former dean of BGU’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and current Stroll Family Chair in Israel Studies at Brandeis University, will be speaking at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Bensalem, Pennsylvania on December 11 about one of his books, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined.

This event is presented in cooperation with Americans for Ben-Gurion University’s Mid-Atlantic Region.

jews-and-muslims-bookProf. Troen’s book highlights the effects of historical memory on the Arab-Israeli conflict, demonstrating that both Jews and Arabs use stories of the distant past to create their identities and shape their politics.

Whether real or imagined, the book argues, the past filtered through their collective memories has had and will continue to have enormous influence on how Jews and Arabs perceive themselves and each other.

A particularly timely topic considering the current tensions wracking the Middle East, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World stresses the impact of historical imagination on the current political cultures.

In his tenure at BGU, Prof. Troen has served as director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism and the Ben-Gurion Archives at BGU’s Sde Boker Campus. He is the founding editor of Israel Studies, the leading journal in the field, and the author or editor of 10 books on American, Jewish and Israeli history.

Read more on The Jewish Exponent website >>

See event information here >>