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Prof. Dr. Johannes Becke

Foto: Universität Heidelberg, Kommunikation und Marketing
Foto: Universität Heidelberg, Kommunikation und Marketing

Chair of Israel and Middle East Studies
Dean of Studies

Phone: +49 0 62 21 54 192 - 61

E-Mail: johannes.becke(at)hfjs.eu

Office hours: by appointment

Career

Since 1.10.2020 Professor of Israel and Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion Chair, Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
In summer semester 2025 Parental leave
Since 1.10.2023 Principal Investigator and Deputy Spokesperson of the DFG Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity. Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East"
Since 1.6.2022 Co-opted member of the Faculty of Philosophy, Heidelberg University
Since 1.3.2022 Supervisor of the project "Jenseits von Konflikt und Kooperation: Eine Verflechtungsgeschichte der jüdisch-arabischen Beziehungen" (Heidelberg University, supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research; research network with Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
2020-2022 Head of the research group "Gathering the Dispersed: State Evasion and State-Making in Modern Jewish, Kurdish, and Amazigh History" (Heidelberg University, supported by the Volkswagen Foundation)
2019-2022 Head of the project "Mecca and Jerusalem. A Podcast on Jewish-Muslim Relations" (with Frederek Musall, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation)
2015-2020 Junior Professor of Israel and Middle Eastern Studies, Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
2014 PhD in Political Science (Freie Universität Berlin)
2013-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford (supported by the Israel Institute)
2012-2013 Minerva Fellow, Tel Aviv University (Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies)
2008-2009 Study abroad at Cairo University
2002-2008 Study of Political Science and Romance Studies, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, study abroad at the University of Illinois

Field of research

I am a political scientist with research interests in modern Israeli society, Arab-Israeli relations, and state formation and statelessness in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Recently I have been working on theories of enmity and ambivalence.

Main research interests are:

  • State and society in Israel

  • Irredentism and territorial expansion

  • Statehood and statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa

  • Transculturation in Jewish-Arab relations

  • History of Israel Studies

Projects

Current projects:

Ambivalent Enmity. Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East (DFG)

Beyond Conflict and Cooperation: An Intertwined History of Jewish-Arab Relations (BMBF)

Completed projects:

Gathering the Dispersed: State Evasion and State-Making in Modern Jewish, Kurdish, and Amazigh History (Volkswagen Foundation)

Mecca and Jerusalem. A Podcast on Jewish-Muslim Relations" (with Frederek Musall, Volkswagen Foundation)

Enemy and Role Model: Israel Studies in the Arab World (Baden-Württemberg)

Publications

Monographs:

  1. Becke, Johannes: The Land Beyond the Border. State Formation and Territorial Expansion in Syria, Morocco, and Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.

Editorships:

  1. (with Viktor Golinets and Annette Weber) Israel-Studien in Deutschland / Israel Studies in Germany. Trumah 23 (2016).

  2. (with Michael Brenner and Daniel Mahla) Israel-Studien. History, methods, paradigms. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020.

  3. (with Roland Gruschka) Sprachheimaten und Grenzgänge.Festschrift for Anat Feinberg. Heidelberg: Winter, 2021.

  4. (with Joachim Kurtz) Ambivalent Enmity(Journal of Transcultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 1-2, 2023)

  5. (with Derek Penslar) Israel Studies as a global discipline (Journal of Israeli History, vol. 41, no.2, 2023)

  6. (with Janis Detert, Samuel Stern and Tom Würdemann), "Which River and Which Sea? A classification of the myths and points of contention of the Israel-Palestine conflict"

Article:

  1. "Towards A De-Occidentalist Perspective On Israel: The Case of The Occupation." Journal of Israeli History 33, no. 1 (2014): 1-23.

  2. "Land and Redemption: The Zionist Project in Comparative Perspective." Trumah 23 (2016): 1-13.

  3. "Historicizing the Settler-Colonial Paradigm." Medaon - Magazine for Jewish Life in Research and Education 12, no. 22 (2018).

  4. "Beyond Allozionism: Exceptionalizing and De-Exceptionalizing the Zionist Project." Israel Studies 23, no. 2 (2018): 168-93.

  5. "Dismantling the Villa in the Jungle: Matzpen, Zochrot, and the Whitening of Israel." Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 21, no. 6 (2019): 874-91.

  6. "Varieties of Expansionism: A Comparative-Historical Approach to the Study of State Expansion and State Contraction." Political Geography 72 (2019): 64-75.

  7. "Saharan Zion: State Evasion and State-Making in Modern Jewish and Sahrawi History." Journal of Israeli History 37, no. 2 (2019): 227-47.

  8. "Triumph and Failure: The Myths of the Israeli Settlement Project." In Perspectives on Jewish Education II, edited by Doron Kiesel. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2019.

  9. "Methodological Canaanism. The Case for a Rupture Between Jewish Studies and Israel Studies." In Intersections Between Jewish Studies and Israel Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Carsten Schapkow and Klaus Hoedl, 199-214. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019.

  10. "German Guilt and Hebrew Redemption: Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste and the Legacy of Left-Wing Protestant Philozionism." In 500 Years of Reformation: Jews and Protestants, Judaism and Protestantism, edited by Aya Elyada, Moshe Sluhovsky, Christian Wiese, and Irene Aue-Ben-David, 241-56. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2020.

  11. "German Guilt, White Guilt: The Politics of Reforestation and the Return of the Gardening State." Jewish Studies Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2020): 225-39.

  12. "Israel as a Middle Eastern State." In Israel Studies. History, Methods, Paradigms, edited by Johannes Becke, Michael Brenner, and Michael Mahla, 213-40. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020.

  13. "Res Publica Historicissima: The Politics of History in Israel." In National History and New Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Thomas Maissen and Niels F. May, 270-87. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.

  14. (with Jenny Hestermann) "Israel Studies." In Handbook of Jewish Studies, edited by Christina von Braun and Micha Brumlik, 403-18. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2021.

  15. (with Avi Shilon) "Caribbean Zion: A Creolization Perspective on Jewish-Israeli Cultures." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2022.

  16. "Post-Zionism and Israel." In The Palgrave International Handbook of Israel, edited by P.R. Kumaraswamy, 1-12. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

  17. "Between Monumentalism and Miniaturization: Israel's Settlement Project and the Question of Third World Colonialism." In Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Studies and the Historiography of Zionism, edited by Stefan Vogt, Derek Penslar, and Arieh Saposnik. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2023, 215-232.

  18. (with Jenny Hestermann) "Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Limits of Normalization: On the History and Politics of Israel Studies in Germany." Journal of Israeli History 41, no. 2 (2023): 171-202.

  19. (with Nikolas Jaspert and Joachim Kurtz) "Ambivalent Enmity: Making the Case for a Transcultural Turn in Enmity Studies." Journal for Transcultural Studies 14, no. 1-2 (2023): 1-26.

  20. (with Joachim Kurtz) "Cultural Revivalism in Israel and China: Imagining Lives Against the Present." Journal for Transcultural Studies 14, no. 1-2 (2023): 96-138.

Reviews

  1. "Dan Diner: Ritual distance. Israel's German Question." Journal of Historical Studies 64, no. 1 (2016): 102-4.

  2. "Handbook of Israel: Major Debates, Edited by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Julius H. Schoeps, Yitzhak Sternberg, and Olaf Glöckner." Trumah 24 (2018): 232-33.

  3. "Undeclared Wars with Israel. East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989, Jeffrey Herf." Journal of Israeli History 37, no. 1 (2018): 135-53.

  4. "Oren Barak. State Expansion and Conflict: In and between Israel/Palestine and Lebanon." H-Net Reviews, 2019. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53999.

  5. "Hebrew without Zionism and Judaism. A review of the textbook Ivrit Le-Kulan by Hila Amit." In Sprachheimaten und Grenzgänge. Festschrift for Anat Feinberg, edited by Johannes Becke and Roland Gruschka, 301-4. Heidelberg: Winter, 2021.

Media contributions

"The Israeli attack destroys Iran's self-image as a regional power" (FAZ,17.06.2025)

"Herzl is dead, long live Herzl!" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 01.12.2024)

"Which river and which sea?" (Brochure for the Anne Frank Educational Center, October 2024, with Tom Khaled Würdemann, Janis Detert and Samuel Stern)

"Away with the templates" (FAZ, 4.8.24)

"Daring to know more about the Middle East" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 10.7. 2024)

"Since when are Israeli Jews white settlers?" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 21.2. 2024)

"Scandalously normal: The German discourse on Israel" (taz, 28.5. 2024)

"How about ... Middle East studies?" (heiPOD, January 2024)

"Enmity as a research gap" (FAZ, 26.11. 2023, with Tom Würdemann)

"There can be no agreement without a Palestinian state" (Mannheimer Morgen, 14.11. 2023)

"Without deterrence there is no Jewish-Israeli life (FAZ, 13.10. 2023)

"Israel and the Orientals" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 8.4. 2023, with Tom Würdemann)

"How do you carry out a postmodern coup?" (Ha-Sman Ha-Seh, April 2023)

"Enmity is a close relationship" (Jüdische Allgemeine, May 31, 2023)

"West Berlin under palm trees" (FAZ, 7.7. 2022)

"Secret role model" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 30.11. 2022)

"Ambivalent role model" (Jüdische Allgemeine, 29.1. 2022)

"If you want to understand Israel, you have to look at Jamaica" (Ha'aretz, 15.10. 2022, with Avi Shilon)

"The Left and the Historians' Dispute" (July 25, 2021, with Jenny Hestermann)

"Middle East Studies in Heidelberg" (Research Magazine of the University of Heidelberg, July 2021, with Henning Sievert)

Conference organization

  1. "Beyond Orient and Occident: Israel and the Middle East" (Junior Conference at the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, October 18-19, 2015, with Shelley Harten, Daniel Mahla and Michael Brenner)

  2. "Promised Lands: Israel-Diaspora Relations and Beyond" (Young Scholars Conference of the European Association of Israel Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, May 23-25, 2016, with Michael Brenner and Daniel Mahla)

  3. "Israel Studies as a Global Discipline" (University of Oxford, School of Global and Area Studies, May 28-29, 2017, with Derek Penslar)

  4. "Grey Areas: Two Centuries of Wissenschaft des Judentums" (Conference at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, June 16-19, 2019, with Johannes Heil)

  5. "The Politics of Jewish Studies" (Workshop at the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, March 2-4, 2022, with Hannah Tzuberi and Miriam Rürup)

  6. "Theorizing Jewish-Arab Transculturation " (workshop in cooperation between the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies and the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, 7-9 February 2023, with Assaf David, Nimrod Lin and Menna Abukhadra)

  7. "Diaspora and Indigeneity. Intersections of Modern Jewish, Kurdish, and Amazigh History" (conference in cooperation between the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies and the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, March 27-29, 2023, with Bareez Majid and Alessia Colonnelli)

  8. "Debates on Antisemitism in Scholarship and the Arts" (workshop in cooperation between the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies and the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, October 28, 2024, with Monica Juneja)

  9. "Knowing the Enemy. Perspectives from Art, Politics, and Science in the Modern Era" (organized by Research Field I of the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity")

  10. "Friends, Enemies, Frenemies: Ambivalence of Jewish-Muslim Relations" (GIF Young Scientists' Workshop, with the support of the German-Israeli-Foundation, with Oren Barak, Assaf David, Uri Rosenberg and Lily Eilan)