Research
My research agenda is divided between two primary programs. The first, which grows out of my doctoral work on Zionist national identity and the Jewish diaspora, examines how Hebraic national culture shaped American Jewry’s diaspora-homeland relations with Israel and the U.S.–Israel relationship. This program now extends to explore how cultural diplomacy more broadly can influence transnational networks and political relationships, with a focus on Israel, the U.S., and states across the MENA region. My second research program investigates Arab states’ shifting engagement with Israel, the U.S., and the Arab-Israeli peace process since the 1970s, providing an analytical framework for understanding both the persistent challenges and the emergent opportunities facing regional diplomacy.
Dispora Jewry, Zionism, and Israeli National Culture
My first book, Singing the Land: Hebrew Music and Early Zionism in America (University of Michigan Press, 2024), contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the origins of transnational Zionist identity among American Jewry and its implications for the U.S.–Israel relationship. The book—described by renowned social scientist Edwin Seroussi as a “pioneering monograph [that] opens unexpected new vistas for the understanding of contemporary American Jewry during its critical formative stages in the period between the two World Wars”—explains how and why American Jewish identity, religious practices, institutions, and political behavior became enmeshed with support for Zionist national interests and institutions prior to Israeli statehood in 1948. These concerns inform my new article project, “The Sounds of Statehood: Israeli Music and Jewish-American Zionist Identity, 1948–1953,” and my next single-authored book project, Improvised Roots: Transnational Culture, Cold War Politics, and the Evolution of Israeli Jazz.
The Arab-Israeli Peace Process
My research on the Arab-Israeli peace process examines the domestic politics, identity-based norms, political motivations, and engagements of Arab states with Israel since the 1970s. This work not only sheds light on shifting patterns of regional alignment and resistance but also on the unique, novel ways in which Israel, Israelis, and novel presentations of Judaism have been integrated into the region since the Arab Spring. This work has yielded four article manuscripts: "Reviving Israeli-Palestinian Medical Collaboration For A Post-War Future" (Health Affairs Forefront, 2025), “Can Bilateralism Endure? The 2023–25 Gaza War and the Abraham Accords Framework” (Strategic Security, 2025), as well as “Building Trust through Healthcare Diplomacy: A Literature Review and Case Study Analysis of the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and its Arab Neighbors” and “From the Arab Peace Initiative to the Abraham Accords,” which are both currently under review. These concerns also serve as the basis for my new article project, “Between Normalization and Resistance: Israeli-Moroccan Relations and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process”