David H.—I’m delighted to welcome Lahav Harkov and Kara Jesella as adjunct fellows at the Z3 Institute of Jewish Priorities.
Both will be developing books on urgent questions for Jewish life today. Lahav’s work takes a new look at the Temple Mount from a political and historical perspective. Kara is editing an anthology of Zionist women writing for a new post-October 7 world.
Their projects are very different, but both reflect the Institute’s mission: to cultivate serious Jewish ideas and bring them into the public square.
Lahav Harkov: Reclaiming the Temple Mount
Lahav Harkov is the Senior Political Correspondent for Jewish Insider, covering Israel’s domestic and international politics. Previously Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post and the Post’s Diplomatic Correspondent, and before that, the Post’s top analyst and reporter in the Knesset for over eight years. Lahav also provided insights and analysis to international news outlets, such as the BBC, MSNBC and France 24, and published articles in Hebrew and in English in publications like The New York Post, The Free Press, Commentary, Tablet, The Wasington Examiner and more. Lahav was recognized for her social media reporting by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which named her the 5th-most influential person on “Jewish Twitter.” Lahav holds a degree in Political Science and Communications at Bar-Ilan University, and lives in central Israel with her husband and three children.
Lahav Harkov will be speaking at the Z3 Conference in Palo Alto on Nov. 1. Click here for tickets.
Kara Jesella: The Zionist Woman—An Anthology
Kara Jesella is a feminist scholar and the author of Feminist Antisemitism: An Intellectual History (Routledge, 2026), a book that tracks how, as different versions of feminism have competed through the decades, a feminism that does not seek mainstream feminist goals, like equal rights or protection from violence, has become predominant, to the detriment of Jews, Jewish women, and Israel.
A fellow of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Jesella has lectured on antisemitism and sexual violence at Harvard University and on the history of feminist antisemitism and antizionism at the ISGAP (the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy) summer institute at the University of Cambridge and many other venues. Her essays have been anthologized in Responses to 7 October: Universities and the forthcoming Necessary Dissent: Essays on Israel, Hamas, and October 7.
Jesella has a PhD and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, where she was the Managing Editor of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and a BA in Women’s Studies and English from Vassar College. A former journalist, she has written and edited for the New York Times, Quillette, Tablet, and many other publications, and authored a cultural history of Sassy magazine that was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She lives in New York City.
We are proud to give both projects an intellectual home and look forward to sharing Lahav’s and Kara’s work as it develops.
Please join me in welcoming them to the Z3 Institute.
Tickets Available: Z3 Conference 2026
The Z3 Conference is returning to Palo Alto on November 1, 2026. I’ll be there as well as most of the writers and scholars associated with the Z3 Institute. For registration and details, click here: