My most boring personality trait is that I am extremely grinchy about Christmas, and I love this.

RIP Martin Luther, you would have loved Papal Audience Black Friday deals.

Puff pastry by yours truly 😇

The soft launch of our house cider, “Goodman’s Own A to J ‘Proper Scrumpy’” was very successful.

At the bargaining table with @haw-uaw.bsky.social, the Harvard administration has repeatedly refused to agree to any contractual protections against discrimination or harassment. Their rationale? Harvard already has comprehensive policies and procedures for such things that work perfectly well!

I am very honored that my book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity won the National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship!! Cheaper paperback version now slated to appear in just a few months, but for now the book is available here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

For the past year I’ve spoken against instrumentalizing charges of antisemitism and attacks on free speech and academic freedom, and for justice & peace in Israel-Palestine. I’ve seen colleagues & students targeted for harassment because of their identities or their politics. 🧵1/

My new essay comic, Antisemitism in a Time of Genocide, is now up at Le Monde Diplomatique in France. I’ll thread the 8 panels in English here, and link to the French at the end.

“fix your hearts or die” is as about as good a life philosophy as one can get, RIP to David Lynch for fixing mine

the spread of misinformation on bluesky is really quite harrowing. always feed your cat every time he meows. he has never been fed. he is starving.

2ar2oyle already climbing the charts. true gargoyles are saying, water

Thoguhts Of Life—Ive replaced evero screen in my goon cave w/ a diff. translation of the Epic Of Gilgamesh. My mind has become rather Honed

Still a newcomer to Gilgamesh but these guys arrest me every reading - the text is so intensely focused on the human that somehow I am startled to remember there are giants, scorpion men, things of that nature in the world

Refusal, abolition, complete noncompliance—if you think otherwise you’re getting paid by somebody, somehow

it is exaustin being so hansome all day

DUNE (dir. Villeneuve, 2021)

A little joy for the day because Ancient Jew Review is 10 Years Old! Advisory Board member Andrew Jacobs reflects upon AJR's founders and the past decade.

10 years ago we had an idea to make an online space to feature academic work about Jews and their neighbors in the ancient world. Feels like such a lifetime ago!

Six months later, I have finally, I think, figured out this coffee cake. One more test bake.

Going to the hospital TO GIVE BIRTH TO HIM, I should clarify.

My grandfather passed last week, and I returned from the funeral in Los Angeles with his mother's coffee cake recipe which, according to family lore, she made and took a bite of right before going to the hospital (in 1926 Madison, WI).

Tiny and Dainty

I was one of those Americans, and the sequel to this is that so many of us had a lot of fun, and kept on asking Andrew and Robyn why they didn’t have another Super Bowl party. It was a while before they told us the truth

Meet and greet

Some personal news

Baking thread 2024. Beer bread with honey and rosemary.

Five years of Cecil, who only grows sweeter and more perfect

Highlights of AJS: phenomenal papers, new friends, an impromptu SF MOMA visit, and a roommate who brought homemade pastry (shout out @danielpicus.bsky.social).

Best bakeries in/near Union Square, SF? 🙏🙏🫡

Same!

for a 1st-yr seminar I put together a series of "how to read" guides andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2es... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2th... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2bo... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2do... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2de... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2pr... andrewjacobs.org/core2/how2pr...

"I am dumb as shit." www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/o...

Finally: Monday afternoon at 4:00 PM we convene a panel reflecting on Hindy Najman's Seconding Sinai @ 20 years. @kelsbot.bsky.social, Molly Zahn, and yours truly each putting Seconding Sinai in conversation with another book/thinker; Hindy Najman offering a response. 3/3

Next: Sun 9:00 AM: "The Critical Edition as Infrastructure." Come hear theoretical intro from Sonia Hazard, @drewjakeprof.bsky.social on Simonides & the vulnerable Bible; Yitz Landes on J. N. Epstein, Zionism, & editing the Mishnah; Kristine Palmieri on Wolf & Plato; and Jenny Knust responding! 2/3

For your consideration as you finalize your SBL/AAR schedule: The Book History and Biblical Literatures program unit has three panels this year! First up: Sat 9:00 AM, come nerd out on NT MSS w/ @drkimfowler.bsky.social & @garrickvallen.bsky.social, Timothy B. Sailors, and Martina Vercesi. 1/3

Pretty proud of this one.

jewishcurrents.org/we-cannot-cr... "We need to imagine a movement for liberation better even than the Exodus—an exodus where neither people has to leave. Where people stay to pick up the pieces, rearranging themselves not just as Jews or Palestinians but as antifascists and workers and artists."

No, YOU have two caramels going at once, and it's excessive!!!!!!!!!!!!

Extremely hard to control myself from reply guying all the arch of Titus takes so I’ll just say it here: the people carrying the menorah and temple spoils are Roman soldiers. It is a triumph. There are no Judaeans depicted on the arch.

baked goods from whole foods taste like photographs of the actual pastries theyre supposed to be

A fun and weird fact about me is that I was born on Hoshana Rabbah, and for some reason that meant that I always got to beat the willow branches on the family lulav

What if we stopped using the word “grace” in letters of recommendation

Seems appropriate that this week, during the Days of Awe, I have escalated several "issues" at work. The hour is late, the gates are closing, etc.

"Dead Words and Haunting Melody," Seth Sanders shares how music, and in particular Yom Kippur liturgy, inspired his thinking about ancient texts. www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2023/9/...

Just in time for Kol Nidre, tomorrow in @ancientjewreview.bsky.social's "Unexpected Influences"-- normally you get a respectable Jewish Studies scholar discussing how an interesting book from outside the field affected them. With me you get this:

And I should say, for those who don't know: We're *very* committed to publishing late stage graduate students and junior scholars, and have a reasonably robust editorial process. If you're not sure, please, *do* get in contact!

If anyone wants to write a book review for @ancientjewreview.bsky.social, do get in touch!!

“Retreat” began with us introducing ourselves by sharing a “challenge.” Mine was having to finish preparing for Rosh Hashanah when my morning was given over to this event.