Tomorrow—hope to see you there! Tues Sept 16 7pm ET www.circle.org/events/criti...

Looking forward to my upcoming conversation with @emilyctamkin.bsky.social in the second installment of our 2-part @workerscircle.bsky.social interview, CRITICAL CROSSROADS:

Looking forward to my @workerscircle.bsky.social interview tomorrow, CRITICAL CROSSROADS with journalist and author @emilyctamkin.bsky.social, Tues 7pm ET!

There are so many things I’m dying to share with you about this book, mainly: that the stories, backgrounds, social & cultural phenomena that formed every American Jew I’ve had the pleasure (and even occasionally displeasure) of knowing is accounted for here, in straightforward and engaging prose.

I'm finally back from Limmud South Africa, and just in time, too, because I've some fascinating places and spaces to be stateside in the coming weeks:

VERY pleased to announce CRITICAL CROSSROADS, my 2-part @workerscircle.bsky.social interview with contributing @forward.com columnist and regular contributor at @slate.com and @washingtonpost.com—Emily Tamkin [email protected]!

Pleased to announce my participation in this year's Limmud South Africa, marking both my first time on the African continent and my first time in a primarily Litvish milieu...

I am so looking forward to having these conversations with @mordkhetzvi.bsky.social next month. Join us! www.circle.org/events/criti...

for some reason I can't recall the attendant movie, but I *very* distinctly remember seeing the trailer to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that preceded it and let me tell you, 4th grade Anthony was SCANDALIZED

l'après-midi dune faune

muting "grok" as there are privileges to no longer being on twitter and I intend to enforce them

RIP Mahler, you would've loved the pre-concert lecture I gave about you at the Atlanta Symphony last month

say anything ::says something antisemitic:: say something else

yet my poor country Shall have more vices than it had before, More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever

I’m starting to think that some of the people saying “stop antisemitism” mean it with the same inflection as: “Stop…Hammer Time!” Like, take a little break from what you’re doing and enjoy some antisemitism.

looking forward to the avalanche of explanations how the designation of "shylocks and bad people" is simultaneously misunderstood and an explicit indicator of jewish safety

Pleased and honored to be the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies University of Toronto 2025-26 inaugural Mitchell J. Gerstein Distinguished Visiting Artist in Residence in Social Justice and Jewish Life. www.jewishstudies.utoronto.ca/news/atcjs-w...

only now that I’m leaving Atlanta do I hear about JD, a Black worker who was employed by the kosher shekhter (butcher) during the week, poured drinks on Shabes and apparently did both in Yiddish

HBO’s The Gilded Age

greetings from Vienna

18 years ago. First date with @mordkhetzvi.bsky.social at Shea Stadium. (Unlike last night's Mets, I held on for the win.)

Pleased to announce that I'll be joining Shtetl Fest Berlin next week in conversation with Alan Bern about how historical parallels of Black and Jewish experience combined to create culture of enigmatic richness, dynamism and influence—and how that history has informed my own work.

Happy Pride!

Shavuot is not going to observe itself...gut yontef!

NEXT WEEK I’m giving the Breman Museum Night pre-concert talk Thurs June 5 on the intersection of Mahler & Jewish identity for the last program of the ASO season—Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 + Mahler Symphony No. 7 feat. guest conductor Peter Oundjian & piano virtuoso Inon Barnatan:

Here's a sampler from Borscht Beat's prodigious and diverse catalog of new Jewish music releases, including "Mayn Heym" from my 2022 album Tsvey Brider album, KOSMOPOLITN. Have a listen:

"You read books, eh?" A 1949 red scare Herblock cartoon about pressures on teachers that hits hard once again.

...more of an Abbé Prévost guy myself, tbqh

a deep dish pope, interesting choice

Pleased to announce I’m giving the Breman Museum Night pre-concert talk Thurs June 5 on the intersection of Mahler & Jewish identity for the last program of the ASO season—Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 + Mahler Symphony No. 7 feat. guest conductor Peter Oundjian & piano virtuoso Inon Barnatan:

Finally saw Sinners—what a ride! It occurred to me while watching it, in consideration of the history of American film and Klan violence, that this would be the *last* film screened at the White House as it is presently occupied

when zoomers say no cap they mean no capitalism

the average american has three friends (in theory)

“First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral…Archbishop of Titipu, Lord Mayor and Lord High Everything Else.”

די אַרבעטערסרעכט זײַנען די מענטשנרעכט

In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet states, “A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.” A fortnight, in this passage, is: ⚪️ a video game ⚪️ a Taylor Swift single ⚪️ two weeks

well, I certainly have no desire to discuss with strangers on the internet whether or not I have a desire to have a discussion with strangers on a plane

i’m in the middle of reading this “new pamphlet” and there’s a mini-rant about the rothschilds who [checks notes] weren’t even musicians, immediately followed by a disquisition on the physical repulsiveness of jews…perfectly cracked it certainly is

I think about this often; it is like a complex equation in which each variable is an enigma

if it ain't broke, don't netflix it

:::sigh::: the only thing that's had more comebacks than Cher

after some consideration this seems to me to be a most astute manner in which to assure one doesn’t have to meet jd vance ever again

Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit” represents a phenomenon in 30s Yiddish poetics translated into the English language—literary engagement w/ the visceral realties of Black life in the Jim Crow South, covered in Amelia Glaser’s “Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine”.

gut yontif, pontif

“Shabes Queen??? What do they call you all the other days of the week?” gut shabes/buen shabat/shabbat shalom

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.

a note I wrote to myself, 7/24/19: "jewish knowledge—there are those who know and those who don't know; there are those who know but don't know that they know and there are those who don't know but would have it generally known that they do know."

a couple of years ago I wrote a nifty little article about der driter seder, the third seder, a tradition I encountered in my earliest days as a performer of Yiddish, here at the Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors' Club in the East Village in 2012: