Matanel Fellows: The Jewish Maghreb

Vision

The Jewish Maghreb research group at the Ben-Zvi Institute will promote innovative scholarship on Jewish culture, community identities, and the current state of Jewish life in the Maghreb and its diasporas.

Activity

While North African Jewry represents one of the richest and most diverse chapters in Jewish history, its heritage has been understudied and often relegated to the margins of scholarship. The absence of a dedicated, multidisciplinary framework in Israel, alongside growing public interest in this heritage, makes such an initiative both timely and necessary. A cohort of 15 international scholars will be selected to meet in-person once a year alternating the meeting place between Israel and Europe in addition to monthly online colloquia. The program is designed to foster new perspectives on underexplored regions and sub-communities, combining a community-centered approach (focused on the formation and identity of distinct Jewish communities) with a spatial-cultural perspective (highlighting the Jewish experience within the broader Maghrebi context). Activities will include an opening three-day residential seminar with peer presentations, thematic workshops, and guest lectures; monthly online meetings; and a closing conference. The proceedings will culminate in a peer-reviewed thematic volume. By creating a space for sustained, collaborative scholarship, the project seeks not only to deepen academic understanding of the Jewish Maghreb but also to make its history and culture more visible to a wider audience in Israel and internationally.

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From the Rising of the Sun

- Psalm 113

Netta Schramm

Netta Schramm serves as the Deputy Director of the Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. She is also a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism. Her research employs performance theory and narratology to engage with audio-visual archival materials of modern and contemporary Jewish thinkers. She is the founder and head of the interdisciplinary research group “I’m Not Text”.

She completed her Ph.D. in Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where her dissertation, “Sound Beliefs,” offered a performative approach to the thought of Irving Greenberg, Ovadia Yosef, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz. During her doctoral studies, she conducted research as a Minerva Fellow at Ludwig Maximillians Universität in Munich.

Dr. Schramm is currently under contract with Princeton University Press for her forthcoming book, Icon as Iconoclast: An Intellectual Biography of Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Her work has appeared in journals such as Modern Judaism, Israel Studies, and Teoria Uvikoret.