In Spring 2019, the Olamot Center welcomes Dr. Tamir Karkason as its visiting scholar from Israel. Dr. Karkason is completing his dissertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the Jewish enlightenment movement in the Ottoman Empire. The work is entitled: “The Ottoman-Jewish Haskalah (Enlightenment), 1839-1908: A Transformation in Western Anatolia, the Southern Balkans and Jerusalem Jewish Communities.” He is also currently writing a monograph on the connections between Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Sephardic community in Jerusalem. While at Indiana University, Dr. Karkason will be teaching two undergraduate classes, “Zionism and the State of Israel” and “Israel: History, Society, Culture,” and giving a talk on “Haskalah, Jewish Nationalism, and the Multi-National Middle Class in the Late Ottoman Balkans” .