Join us for our virtual FL JCC Author Series with Ilan Troen, Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land?.

A lead­ing schol­ar in Israel stud­ies, S. Ilan Troen has writ­ten an intro­duc­tion to the reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance of Israel, updat­ed and reded­i­cat­ed in mem­o­ry of the hor­rif­ic events of Octo­ber 7, 2023. His work reminds us that there are com­pet­ing the­olo­gies defin­ing the con­flict. This com­plex­i­ty is mag­ni­fied by the fact that three faith com­mu­ni­ties, as opposed to two in oth­er con­test­ed areas like Cyprus, Ire­land, and the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent, under­stand the Land of Israel to be cen­tral to their iden­ti­ty. Troen, the found­ing direc­tor of the Israel stud­ies depart­ments at both Ben Guri­on and Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, sug­gests that reli­gious jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for own­er­ship of the Land of Israel have not dis­ap­peared, despite the ris­ing sec­u­lar­ism of the mod­ern age. He claims that the sec­u­lar and reli­gious com­po­nents “may be main­tained simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and are often interwoven.”

S. Ilan Troen is Lopin Pro­fes­sor of Mod­ern His­to­ry, emer­i­tus at Ben-Guri­on Uni­ver­si­ty of the Negev, Israel, Stoll Fam­i­ly Pro­fes­sor in Israel Stud­ies, emer­i­tus at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, and found­ing direc­tor of the Israel Stud­ies cen­ters at both insti­tu­tions. He is Found­ing Edi­tor of the jour­nal Israel Stud­ies, and 2023 recip­i­ent of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Israel Stud­ies “Life­time Achieve­ment Award.”