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Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies

• Fields of Study

  • Politics of Eastern Europe
  • Race, Ethnicity and Politics
  • Judaic Studies

• About

  Zvi Gitelman studies ethnicity and politics, especially in former Communist countries, as well as Israeli politics, East European politics, and Jewish political thought and behavior. His most recent book is Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine: An Uncertain Ethnicity, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. It draws on two large surveys at the beginning and end of the 1990s that he conducted with two colleagues in Russia. Professor Gitelman’s current project is on ethnic relations in the Soviet armed forces during the war and Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust. It is based on hundreds of oral testimonies of Soviet Jewish veterans of World War Two, and on Soviet archives. Gitelman’s most recent edited volume is Religion or Ethnicity? The Evolution of Jewish Identities. Two projected edited volumes will deal with the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora, which is now four to five times as large as the Jewish population of the Former Soviet Union, and on Jews and political life.

  Selected Publications

  • Religion or Ethnicity? The Evolution of Jewish Identities (Rutgers University Press, 2009)
  • New Jewish Identities: Contemporary Europe and Beyond (Central European University Press, 2003).
  • Jewish Life After the USSR (Indiana University Press, 2003).

• Education

  • Columbia University, Ph.D
  • Columbia University, M.A. and Russian Institute Certificate
  • Columbia College, A.B.
  • Jewish Theological Seminary, B. Heb. Lit.

• Awards

  • Ethnic relations in the Soviet armed forces during the World War II
  • Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust
  • The role of ethnicity in the Soviet secret police during the “Great Purge”

• Grants

  • National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Grant (2009-2011)
  • Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (2010)

• Courses Taught

  • Ethnicity and Politics
  • Jewish Political Thought and Experiences: Eastern Europe, America and Israel
  • Israeli Politics and Society
  • The Politics and Culture of Modern East European Jewry

• Selected Publications:

• Books

  • (2009) Religion or Ethnicity?
  • (2003) Jewish Life After the USSR
  • (2003) New Jewish Identities