JCC Book Festival

Join the JCC for their 2021 Book Festival. 

Speaker: Daniel Sokatch
Moderator: Jonathan Trobe

Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted

NON­FIC­TION

A primer on Israel and the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian issue.

​“Can’t you just explain the Israel sit­u­a­tion to me? In, like, 10 min­utes or less?” This is the ques­tion Daniel Sokatch is used to answer­ing on an almost dai­ly basis. As the head of the New Israel Fund, which is ded­i­cat­ed to equal­i­ty and democ­ra­cy for all Israelis, not just Jews, Sokatch is supreme­ly well-versed on the Israeli con­flict.

Can We Talk About Israel? is the sto­ry of that con­flict, and of why so many peo­ple feel so strong­ly about it with­out actu­al­ly under­stand­ing it very well at all. It is an attempt to grap­ple with a cen­tu­ry-long strug­gle between two peo­ples that both per­ceive them­selves as (and indeed are) vic­tims. And it’s an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict) inspires such extreme feel­ings‚ why it seems like Israel is the answer to ​“what is wrong with the world” for half the peo­ple in it, and ​“what is right with the world” for the oth­er half.

Daniel Sokatch is the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of the New Israel Fund (NIF). He served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Fed­er­a­tion of San Fran­cis­co, the Penin­su­la, Marin and Sono­ma Coun­ties, and as the found­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Los Ange­les-based Pro­gres­sive Jew­ish Alliance. Sokatch has an MA from the Fletch­er School at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty, a JD from Boston Col­lege Law School, and a BA from Bran­deis University.