Yakir Englander

Dr. Yakir Englander is a former Shalom Hartman Institute research fellow and the regional director of Kids4Peace International . Yakir was a visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School (2015) and a Fulbright scholar at Northwestern University in Chicago (2012-2014).

He served as the Director of Kids4Peace in Israel and Palestine from 2007,and in 2012 became Vice President of Kids4Peace International, a grassroots interfaith youth movement dedicated to ending conflict and inspiring hope among Jewish and Arab families in the Jerusalem region and in multi-cultural Kids4Peace chapters in North America.

Englander is a specialist in modern Jewish philosophy, with a focus on gender issues. His PhD, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2012), was adopted for a book “The Perception of the Male Body in Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodox Society During the Last Sixty Years” (Magnes Press – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Forthcoming). During his years as a PhD student, Englander was part of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “Hadarim” program and served as an assistant for scholars in the institute.

He has authored articles on sexuality in Judaism, on the role of the body as a mnemonic in the work of post-Holocaust writer Aharon Appelfeld, on “shame” in the Talmud, the Theology of Elie Wiesel and on contemporary Jewish identities. His book “Sexuality and the Body in the New Religious Zionist Discourse” (coauthored with Prof. Avi Sagi) examines aspects of the religious-Zionist image of the body and sexuality during the last decade and was published in Hebrew (Hartman Institute Press, 2013) and in English (Academic Press, 2015).

His new project deals with Ultra-Orthodox thought concerning the role of human beings in the world. The book focus on Ultra-Orthodox narrative during the Holocaust and the “Musar movement” ideas about their place in the world.

Englander is interested interfaith dialogue, as well as theory and practice of nonviolent social change. He has been developing understanding of these issues through his work with Kids4Peace. In 2011, he received the Berlinsky-Sheinfeld Award for Change in Israeli Society from the Israel Council of Higher Education, for his work in Kids4Peace.