Role: Researcher
Email: alexvaldman@tauex.tau.ac.il
Scope of Research:
Modern East European History, Jewish History, Russian History
Academic Background:
A social historian of modern Eastern Europe, focusing on questions of social and geographical mobility, patterns of imperial socialization, the history of the Russian-speaking Jews, and history of education.
His current project, titled "Railroads, Locality and Modernity in East European Jewish History" focuses on the Jews' interactions with the emerging railroad network in Late Imperial Russia. Utilizing new primary sources from Ukrainian and other East European archives, it provides a new grassroot perspective on the interrelations between social mobility, traditionalism, modernization and imperial integration.
Selected Publications
Forthcoming Book:
Alex Valdman, Problems of Discipline: Secondary Education, Activism and the Origins of the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Russian Empire. Accepted for publication at Magnes Press.
Articles:
Alex Valdman, “Zionist Future in Revolutionary Russia: The Weekly “Ha’am” in February-April 1917” (accepted for publicaton; invited article for Imagining the Future in Russia´s February Revolution. Instant Voices in the Press Across the Empire, a collective volume edited by Franziska Schedewie and Dennis Dierks, University of Jena).
Alex Valdman, “Israelis and Soviet Jews, 1953-1967: Towards a Dialogic Analysis,” in: Tanya Zion-Waldox and Ofir Abu (eds.), World Jewry – Views from Israel, Sde Boker: Ben-Gurion Research Institute and Ben-Gurion University, 2020, pp. 382-400 (in Hebrew).
Alex Valdman, “A Miracle in Minsk: Secondary Education and Social Mobility in the Pale of Settlement before 1887,” Jewish Social Studies 24, 2, 2019, pp. 135-156.
Alex Valdman, “Usable Past for an Uncertain Future: On the Historiographical Impulse of the Jewish Intelligentsia in Post-1905 Imperial Russia,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 16, 2017, pp. 15-34.
Alex Valdman, “Jewish Acculturation in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia: The Case of Yonah Berkhin,” East European Jewish Affairs 47, 1, 2017, pp. 28-44.
Alex Valdman, “Sha'ul Ginsburg and the Non-Radical Pattern in Jewish-Russian Historiography,” Zion 80, 4, 2015, pp. 521-549 (in Hebrew).
Alex Valdman, “The East vs. West Question in Berl Katsenelson's Lectures to the 'Socialist Youth' 1928,” Israelim 2, 2009, pp. 49-71 (in Hebrew).
