Research

Dr. Tom Navon

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Affiliated Researcher

tomnavon(at)mishol.org.il

Senior lecturer at the School for Regional and Historical Studies at the University of Haifa and affiliated researcher at the Dubnow Institute. Worked at the Dubnow Institute as a Fellow, funded by the Minerva Foundation from August 2020 to September 2022; from October 2022 to September 2023 funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation.

Studied Jewish History at the University of Haifa and completed his MA degree in 2015. Title of Master’s thesis: »The Recession, 1964–1967: A Chapter in Israel's Political-Economic History«. Doctoral Candidate between 2015 and 2020 at the University of Haifa; subject of PhD thesis: »Marxist Jewish Historiography«. In recent years taught in Beit-Berl College of Education, guided student tours in Poland for Derech Center of Education (Hamahanot Haolim) and worked as a researcher in Hashomer Hatzair Department of History in Givat Haviva.

Research Project

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Reappraisal from the Margins: Communists in the Jewish Fighting Organization, the (Revisionist) Jewish Military Union, and Independent Group

Research Interests

  • Jews and Labor Movements
  • Jewish Historiography
  • Marxism and the Jewish Question
  • History of Zionism
  • Martin Buber
  • Holocaust
  • Economic History of Israel
  • Kibbutz Movement

Publications

Monographs

Radical Assimilation in the Face of the Holocaust: Otto Heller, 1897–1945, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2024.

Marxist Interpretations of Jewish History, Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2023 (Hebrew).

Essays and Articles

At the Crossroads between Communism and Jewish Nationalism. Ber Mark as a Historian of Premodern Jewish Society, in: East European Jewish Affairs, 52 (2022) nr. 2/3, 235–248.  

Handelsvolk: Marx’s View of the Jews as a Trading-People and its Implications, Critique: Journal of Socialist Thought, 51 (2023) H. 1, 19–36.

News from Auschwitz: The International Undergroundʼs Secret Reports and the Jewish Holocaust, Yad Vashem Studies, 51 (2023) 1, 53–87.

Otto Heller: Communism and the Jewish Question in the Weimar Republic, in: Daniel Meis (ed.), Die Heterogenität des Judentums in der Weimarer Republik. Biographische Zugänge, Berlin  2022, 167–199.

A Ghetto Fighter with a German Accent. Adolf Hochberg, 1921–1943, in: Mimeo. Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut [Weblog], 2. April 2023.

The Jew Is to Be Burned: A Turning Point in the Communist Approach to the »Jewish Question« on the Eve of Catastrophe, Jewish History (2021), 18 June 2021.

»On the Frontline of Jewish Historiography«: A Marxist View of Jewish History, in: Chidushim. Studies in the History of German and Central-European Jewry, 22 (2020), 20–58 (Heb.).

The Recession, 1964–1967: A Landmark in Israel's Political-Economic History, in: Iyunim Bitkumat Israel, 26 (2016), 386–429 (Heb.).

Payn un Gvure: The Ideological Roots of Dror Movement Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in: Yalkut Moreshet. Holocaust documentation and research, 91(2012), no.8, 95–108 (Heb.).

Reviews

Jan Rybak, Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe: Nation-Building in War and Revolution, 1914–1920, Oxford University Press 2021, in: Zion, 88, 3 (2023), 475–477 (Heb.).

James Horrox, Gelebte Revolution. Anarchismus in der Kibbutzbewegung, Heidelberg 2021, in: Ne znam: Zeitschrift für Anarchismusforschung, 13 (autumn 2022), 182–186.

Uri Ram, The Return of Martin Buber: National and Social Thought in Israel from Martin Buber to the Neo-Buberians, Tel Aviv 2015, in: Kivunim Chadashim, 34 (May 2016), 83–91 (Heb.).