Professor Raanan Rein of Tel Aviv University will join the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies as the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies in August 2025. A leading historian who has published some fifty books, Rein is the world’s foremost authority on Jewish experiences in Latin America. At the University of Florida, he will teach courses for the Shorstein Center, as well as for the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of History.
“I am thrilled about joining the University of Florida at Gainesville, to a large extent because of the excellent colleagues in the Shorstein Center and in the History Department and at the Center for Latin American Studies,” says Rein.
“Having Raanan join the Shorstein Center as the Alexander Grass Chair is a major step forward for us,” says Center director Norman Goda. “The holder of the Alexander Grass Chair should be a highly productive senior scholar who is known globally. Raanan practically invented the field of Jewish Latin American Studies and he has won numerous awards for his scholarship. There is also a growing Jewish population in Florida that comes from South American and the Caribbean which will have great interest in Raanan’s work. It is an excellent match.”
Rein was born in Givatayim in Israel and began his career as a journalist in the Israeli media. He then completed his academic studies at Tel Aviv University and graduated in 1986 with a BA in Political Science and History. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the alliance between Francisco Franco’s Spain and Juan Perón’s Argentina after World War II. He later became the Elias Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History at Tel Aviv University and has garnered honors from the Spanish and Argentine governments.
“Argentina has always had a large and vibrant Jewish community,” says Rein. “My wife was born in Argentina, and this also strengthened my ties to Argentina in general, and to the Jewish community of Argentina in particular.”
Now, Rein, who is a member of Argentina’s National Academy of History, will work with the Shorstein Center, as well as the Latin American Studies and Department of History, to advance his work. “I think working with faculty members in these three different units will be a huge opportunity for me to develop both my research and my teaching at the University of Florida.”
Rein will teach courses at UF that have not been available before, and that both undergraduate and graduate students can take. “This fall there will be one undergraduate course called “The Other Promised Land,” about Jewish experiences in Argentina,” says Rein. “And during the Spring term an undergraduate class devoted to Nazi fugitives in Latin America, as well as a graduate seminar devoted to ethnic minorities in Latin America, including Jews, Arabs, and Asians.”
During his time at UF, Rein hopes to expand the UF Jewish Latin American Studies program.
“I’m excited and thrilled to join the faculty,” says Rein. “I think that the University of Florida can certainly become one of the top universities for students interested in Jewish Studies as well as in Jewish Latin American Studies.”