Today in class it came up that it would be very cool if Spike Lee paired two Genizah fragments together and then it would be “A Spike Lee Join”

This is going to be one of the wildest congressional primaries we have ever seen www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/u...

I am pleased to announce that John Penniman, Emanuel Fiano, and I are launching a new book series for the study of religion in late antiquity with Fordham University Press. If you have a book-in-progress looking for a home, please reach out to discuss your project! fordhampress.com/theoria

Lot of great stuff in the RLC section at SBL this year! Attend, ask questions, say hi, spread the word!

Think the marriage of convenience between the historically antisemitic far-right and the Israeli right has been bad for Diaspora Jews? Wait until you see the divorce.

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

Remarkably brilliant, experienced, and—other than Khan—surprisingly mainstream group of transition co-chairs for Mamdani. www.transition2025.com

One of my main takeaways from this election night is: I want some of whatever the @hellgateny.com livestream hosts are smoking

If only someone could have possibly predicted this might happen.

Can we at least give Canada a break on the tariffs now?

Co-sign

sure, you might not be able to eat or go to the doctor, but check out how nice Trump's new marble shitter is

This is a response to a post I made about a white man who was arrested yesterday with guns and ammo, planning to attack multiple synagogues across the US South. Personally, I think it is bad that a growing portion of the left now dismisses actual antisemitism as just being pro-Israel propaganda.

Lmao what (from today's Breaker newsletter)

Once again, the main day of Tea Party protests had about 300,000 nationwide, but saw endless coverage. The No Kings protests had about 7,000,000 nationwide, and many media outlets reacted with a yawn. No Kings was nearly 25x as big as the Tea Party but the Tea Party got 25x the attention.

A take for this first Sunday of early voting: Much of the Jewish pushback against Mamdani is in effect a reaction to the unstated realization that liberal democracy is in decline (or has failed)—and instead of doubling down on democracy, some have decided to push for more tribalism.

You sought to access her private gynecological records,” Mamdani said, re: what Cuomo's legal team did as part of the defense... “She cannot speak up for herself because you lodged a defamation case against her. I, however, can speak. What do you say to the 13 women that you sexually harassed?”

Dry run for stealing 2026 midterms.

I’m not being pejorative. Donald Trump isn’t an all powerful dictator, but he is effectively America’s king. He does not exist outside the law, he exists above the law *and* is the lawgiver. He doesn’t just have impunity, he has immunity. He is a king. This is what having a king looks like.

Suzanne Schneider: “Taken as a whole, the grant attempts to shore up the beleaguered concept of the “Judeo-Christian,” instilling the dangerous idea that antisemitism is best combatted by leaning upon supposed bonds of civilizational kinship.” jewishcurrents.org/the-meaning-...

Alright I’ve seen enough: Mike Brown for mayor of New York.

political instincts on fire, yucking it up with the incumbent mayor who stunk so bad he basically got booted from his party and then dropped out of the race

Brown’s coaching of the Knicks is night and day compared to that of Thibs. And—while acknowledging how much this team owes Thibs—I love to see it.

Chris Murphy: "There's a lot of history that has taken place in the East Wing & it was just destroyed without any conversation in the public, without any consent of Congress. It's absolutely illegal. That visual is powerful b/c you're watching destruction of the rule of law as those walls come down"

Scheduling a mayoral debate for the same time as the Knicks opener is ridiculous

How many classes today were canceled because a whole suite of EdTech services are built atop AWS? You know what platform never crashes?

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

you'd think a prominent news outlet like the New York Times might mention that "antifa" isn't an actual organization in a long story about antifa, but nope! and the subhead helps props up a false claim this professor was up to something seedy as something up for debate

Bray is a historian at Rutgers who received death threats after landing on Turning Points USA's Professor Watchlist. As a result, he announced he was moving to Europe. And then this happened. This kind of harassment and abuse of scholars is Charlie Kirk's legacy and it's only getting worse.

Increasingly feels like the “End of the Golden Age of American Jews” discourse is actually people upset with the end of *a certain kind* of Jewish politics and cultural visibility www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

Excited to share my review of Jodi Magness’ ‘Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Re-evaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik’s Schweich Lectures’ in the recent issue of The Jewish Review of Books! jewishreviewofbooks.com/contemporary...

If a government tells you that you can’t call it authoritarian, it’s authoritarian.

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

ah, well

The Trump administration giving the largest grant in the history of the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to the Tikvah Fund represents an attempt to construct a parallel infrastructure for the academic study of Judaism, explicitly allied with ethnonationalist, Christian nationalist forces.

Kash Patel fired the 'legendary' special agent in charge of Utah's FBI division a month ago. Her colleagues say she was “absolutely the best” agent in the bureau but she was a woman of color so she had to go: www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...

He could not be less interested in finding out who killed him or why — and his message to his apparatus is clear that that is not a priority — when the killing creates such an opportune pretext to stoke attacks on whoever he feels like.

I am not aware of any gun violence that happened when I was a kid. by RFK Jr.

Also can we have more Times articles that end with plugs for postdoc support

Great to see Jewish libraries, rabbinical seminaries, and provenance studies in the news! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/a...

Excited to announce my book that is forthcoming in January. I’m looking forward to sharing more soon. Let me know if your faculty, students, or community would be interested in a talk or class. Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt | Princeton University Press. Description at: bit.ly/PerrySlavery

In the last campaign filing, Cuomo had 171 donors max out at $2100. Of those 94 were from outside of NYC. This guy is running to be mayor of where exactly?

Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined

Happy to share my just-published Oxford Bibliography on "Early Transmission of Rabbinic Literature." It was helpful for me to think through this topic, and I hope that the resulting annotated bibliography will be helpful to others! www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...

Democrats keep electing toothless lawyers to federal office and this is the result. People who simply cannot say “the light is red” when sitting in front of a red light. Instead Democrats rhetorically ask if anyone can explain why the light appears red and “urge” a hearing on “the red light issue.”

Luttig is communicating vastly more clearly and honestly about Roberts and Scotus than most Democratic officials are. It’s absolutely flabbergasting.

Roberts an all-time villain of American history

John Deere laying off workers. Pepsi hiking prices. Sony raising PS5 costs. Electric bills up 10%. Welcome to the Trump economy. All going really well, right?

Cool new Google Maps feature for subway trips in NYC: It tells you where on the train you should be to exit fastest…

Can’t say that Apple TV’s adaptation of Foundation is very good. But all the faults are worth it if the show helps get folks to Stop. Asking. Us. About. Gloves.