Research Fields
- Transnationalism,
- diplomacy, agricultural history,
- modern Jewish history,
- Russian Imperial History,
- Soviet History,
- International Relations,
- Migration,
- Applied Humanities,
- Public History
About
Jonathan Dekel-Chen is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current research and publications deal with transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration. In 2014, Dekel-Cohen co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts, which provides world-class artistic training for under-served high school students from throughout Israel.
Selected Publications
Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1923-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Editor (with David Gaunt, Natan Meir, Israel Bartal), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Editor (with Eugene Avrutin and Robert Weinberg), Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe and Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.
“Between Myths, Memories, History and Politics: Creating Content for Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.” The Public Historian 40, no. 4 (2018): 91-106.
“Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past.” Featured article in: Agricultural History 94, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 512-544.
Selected Awards
2005-2008 Israel Science Foundation Award, “A World of Good: Jewish Philanthropy and Politics
in Russia and the USSR, 1890s-1990s”.
Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines, Hebrew University, 2007.
Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2008-2009.
Rose and Isidore Drench Memorial Fellowship, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2008-2009.
Israel Institute Visiting Professor at Columbia University, N.Y., 2015-2016
Bildner Visiting Scholar at the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers University.
Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award for the best article in Agricultural History from the Agricultural History Society for “Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past” (Issue 94, no. 4 [2020]: 512-544).
Teaching
“From Revolution to Crisis: Russia, 1789-1855.”
“From Crisis to Revolution: Russia, 1856-1917.”
“Russian Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Israel”
“From Bukhara to Brooklyn: Modern East European Jewry”
“The Jewish Farmer in Modern Times.” (M.A.)
"Jewish Politics and Philanthropy in the 20th Century" (M.A.)
"The Global Campaign for Soviet Jewry: Moscow, Washington, London, Jerusalem” (M.A.)
"Diplomacy and Philanthropy in the Modern Jewish World" (M.A.)
"Jewish and Non-Jewish Migration in the Modern World: Theory and Practice" (M.A.)
“Kibbutz: Beginnings, Glory, the End?” (M.A.)