LINEAGES & INFLUENCES

These thinkers, writers, and creative lineages form the symbolic, methodological, and psychocultural foundations of my work. They shape how I read meaning, decode representation, understand identity, and trace the emotional and symbolic infrastructures beneath personal, cultural, and political life.

Note on Intellectual Engagement:
Inclusion does not imply full agreement.¹ Where theoretical frameworks erase Jewish self-determination — particularly through anti-Zionist narratives, BDS advocacy, or reductive colonial paradigms — I diverge clearly and without compromise.

Cultural & Media Theory

Stuart Hall · Dick Hebdige · Raymond Williams · Paul Willis · Myria Georgiou · Angela McRobbie · Sadie Wearing · Richard Dyer · Michel de Certeau · David Harvey · Henri Lefebvre · Doreen Massey · Lev Manovich · Sara Ahmed¹ · Pierre Bourdieu · Michel Foucault · Jean Baudrillard · Anthony Giddens · Zygmunt Bauman · Manuel Castells · Benedict Anderson · Sarah Thornton · Andy Bennett · Michel Maffesoli

Foundational traditions shaping my approach to symbolic economies, representation, cultural production, mediated identity, and the social life of meaning.

Psychoanalysis, Archetypes & Inner Life

Donald Winnicott · Marion Milner · Adam Phillips · Nancy Chodorow · Jessica Benjamin · Patrick Casement · Thomas Ogden · Julia Kristeva · Jacques Lacan · James Hillman · Carl Jung · Clarissa Pinkola Estés · Karen Horney · Abraham Maslow · Erich Fromm · Alice Miller · Bessel van der Kolk · Stephen Porges · Tara Brach · Rebbe Nachman · Abraham Joshua Heschel · Avital Ronell · Gabor Maté¹ · Jean Laplanche

Theories of unconscious life, symbolic formation, repression, relationality, survival selves, and the psychic architectures through which identity is created and protected.

Social Psychology, Identity & Group Dynamics

Erving Goffman · Henri Tajfel · John Turner · Hazel Markus · Claude Steele · Susan Fiske · Philip Cushman · Jonathan Haidt · Muzafer Sherif · Sudhir Kakar · Mary Douglas

Frameworks illuminating how groups form, how identities stabilize or fracture, how meaning is negotiated intersubjectively, and how affective dynamics travel through social worlds.

Urbanism, Symbolic Economies & Place Identity

Sharon Zukin · Henri Lefebvre · Doreen Massey · Richard Florida · Justin O’Connor · Avery Gordon · Howard Becker

Influences on my analysis of place, atmosphere, creative labor, grassroots cultural infrastructure, and the symbolic economies that shape the life of cities.

Narrative, Myth & Symbolic Meaning

Victor Turner · Gloria Anzaldúa¹ · Carolyn Dinshaw · Aviva Zornberg · Jonathan Lear · Dan McAdams · Laurel Richardson · Hélène Cixous · Sylvia Wynter¹ · Anne Carson · Rachel Cusk · Clarice Lispector · James Baldwin · Susan Howe · Rainer Maria Rilke · Rebecca Solnit · Maggie Nelson · Elena Ferrante · Dani Shapiro · Hayden White

Writers and theorists who expand my understanding of narrative as a symbolic system — a structure for identity, rupture, reassembly, and the making of meaning.

Embodiment, Illness & Spiritual Inquiry

Arthur Frank · Susan Sontag · Rita Charon · Alison Kafer · Lennard J. Davis · Julie Livingston · Cheryl Mattingly · Tobin Siebers · Thomas Hübl · Johanna Hedva · Eli Clare · Gabor Maté¹ · Sharon Gillerman (z”l — my professor who shaped my understanding of antisemitism, cultural trauma, and the psychology of mass violence) · Emmanuel Levinas · Martin Buber · Annemarie Mol · Maurice Merleau-Ponty

These thinkers inform my interpretive approach to chronic illness, symbolic misrecognition, disability narratives, embodiment, trauma, and the spiritual dimensions of suffering.

Zionist Thinkers & Democratic Vision

Einat Wilf · Gadi Taub · Yossi Klein Halevi · Micah Goodman · Tal Becker · Shany Mor · Adi Schwartz · Daniel Gordis · Amichai Magen · Matti Friedman · Gidi Grinstein · Isaiah Berlin · Michael Walzer · Yehuda Reinharz

I hold that Israel’s existence as both a Jewish and democratic state is not only legitimate but vital — and that its sovereignty remains its core legal, moral, and political strength.
Attempts to frame Israel as a colonial project erase Jewish indigeneity, refugee histories, and collective self-determination, and in doing so, enact symbolic violence.

These thinkers offer rigorous, historically grounded frameworks for understanding Zionism, democratic pluralism, and the narrative struggle against global mischaracterization.

Adjacent Thinkers & Symbolic Counterpoints

Brian Massumi · Erin Manning · Eli Clare · Johanna Hedva · Avital Ronell · Lauren Berlant¹ · Judith Butler¹ · David Grossman · Dani Shapiro · Maggie Nelson · Hannah Arendt · John Fowles · Elena Ferrante · Susan Howe · Dani Karavan · Hadar Galron · Ruth Gavison · Eva Illouz · Rachel Elior · Rachel Adler · Tamar Hermann · Galia Golan · Shulamit Almog · Charles Taylor

Adjacent traditions that expand, complicate, or challenge my primary lineages — forming a symbolic counterpoint that enriches my interpretive lens.

¹ Divergence noted specifically around Israel, Zionism, and Jewish self-determination.