Jess Olson

Jess Olson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University in New York. Dr. Olson serves also associate director of the YU Center for Israel Studies. Interested in questions of nationalism, religion, and Jewish identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, his areas of research include the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, history of Zionism and Jewish nationalism, and the intersection between Jewish Orthodoxy and political engagement. His manuscript on early Zionist, later Yiddishist, and finally executive in the Agudat Yisrael, Dr. Nathan Birnbaum, "Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity" was released in December, 2012 by Stanford University Press. His publications also include: “Nathan Birnbaum and Tuvia Horowitz: Friendship and the Origins of an Orthodox Ideologue,” "Nation, Peoplehood and Religion in the Life and Thought of Nathan Birnbaum," and “The Late Zionism of Nathan Birnbaum: The Herzl Controversy Reconsidered.”