Dr David Borabeck
David Borabeck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and St. Antony's College, where he examines the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, religion, and ethnicity. His dissertation examined the distinctive role of religion in consolidating the Jewish-Israeli national collective and Zionist nation-building, with a focus on the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs during the state's formative decades.
Borabeck's current research examines the relationship between sovereignty and sanctity in Israel/Palestine, investigating how religion, ethnicity, and nationalism intersect through the recontextualization of sacred places within the framework of the sovereign state. His work employs spatial analysis of Jewish and Muslim sacred sites across Israel and the West Bank.
Borabeck completed his graduate studies in Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, where he received several prestigious awards, including the Rottenstreich Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Students from the Council for Higher Education of Israel, a stipend from the Study of Modern Jewish Culture I-Core research group, and a faculty scholarship.He also served as a doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters at Ben-Gurion University and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies at the University of Haifa. Lately, Borabeck received the Werblowsky Prize for outstanding doctoral dissertations in religious studies, awarded by the Israeli Association for the Study of Religions.
Research Disciplines:
- History
Research Keywords:
- Israel/Palestine
- Religion
- Nationalism
- Ethnicity
- Sovereignty
- Sanctity
- Space
- Bureaucracy
Countries:
- Israel
- Palestine
Research Cluster:
Email: david.borabeck@area.ox.ac.il
Telephone: 01865 613826
Articles
- David Borabeck, "Every new synagogue is both a religious and a security fortress": Synagogues in Israeli Urban Internal Frontiers as Symbols of Sovereignty, Palestine/Israel Review 2(2): 2025.
- David Borabeck, "Although they are Religious at the other Mitzvot": Observant Orientalism at the Religious-Zionist Bnei-Akiva Youth Movement, 1948-1967, Israel 31-32 (2024), pp. 323-346. [Hebrew]
Other publications
- Pnina Shuker and David Borabeck, Introduction: Sacred Spaces in the Middle East - Catalysts of Conflict and Coexistence, Nexus: A Review of Middle Eastern Religions and Politics.
- David Borabeck, Between the Normal and the Messianic: Post-October 7th Thoughts, Yashar (5.12.2023) [Hebrew]
- David Borabeck, Habitus, Reflection, and the Destruction of the Sovereign Limits of the Jewish Theological-Political Imagination, Yashar (9.8.2023) [Hebrew]