12/03/2025
Join us on Sunday, December 7 at 2pm when we host Ethan Katz at Temple Beth Torah.
Ethan Katz is Associate Professor of History at UC-Berkeley, where is also the Helen Diller Family Faculty Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. He was educated at Amherst College (B.A., History and French) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD, History). Katz's research interests include Jewish-Muslim relations, Jews in colonial societies, Holocaust studies, and the interplay between religious and secular in modern Jewish life. His first monograph, The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard, 2015), received a number of prizes, including a National Jewish Book Award and the J. Russell Major Prize of the American Historical Association. Katz has co-edited three other books, including Colonialism and the Jews, and When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash. His newest book, currently entitled Indigenous Settlers: Zionism and Colonialism Reconsidered, marshals new historical perspectives on Israel, Palestine, Algeria, and other colonial and decolonial contexts to rethink the current moment in Jewish history. Katz has taken a major leadership role in contemporary discussions of antisemitism and debates around Israel and Palestine on college campuses. Since 2021, he has been the Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life at Berkeley. He is also co-founder of two pioneering programs at Berkeley that have helped to inspire other educators around the country: (1) the Antisemitism Education Initiative, a program designed to improve the conversation about antisemitism on the Berkeley campus through thoughtful education and engagement; and (2) The Berkeley Bridging Fellowship, a year-long program that brings together a diverse group of students for engaged discussions about Israel, Palestine, the conflict, and interconnected histories.
