Letter to NYT by Elizabeth Castelli & Hilary Callahan (via the former FB) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on 22 September. Here is the ram caught by its horns. Bodleian Library MS. Michael 619; Maḥzor for the High Holidays (Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kipur), Western Ashkenazi rite (Tripartite Maḥzor, volume 3); 1320–1330 CE; f.5v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on 22 September 2025. Here is the initial-word panel for 'Melekh Amon' (Steadfast King). Bodleian Library MS. Michael 619; Maḥzor for the High Holidays, Western Ashkenazi rite (Tripartite Maḥzor, volume 3); 1320–1330 CE; f.53r @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Just out & FREE to read for 2 weeks!! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Pro tip: Don't use AI to write your PhD inquiries

I’ve been getting some PhD inquiry emails that struck me as v odd so I asked ChatGPT to list my books. It came up w/four—all COMPLETELY made up, including on topics I’ve never written on. And these are the only ones listed! Lesson = please don’t use AI/LLMs when writing grad apps and inquiries &c

Anyone interested in medieval fakes should plan a trip to Paris. The Musée Cluny has a show from 7 Oct. to 11 Jan., www.musee-moyenage.fr/activites/pr... and the Archives nationales has one from 15 Oct. to 2 Feb.:

Shaul’s post includes re-up/revisit of his piece for our forum on Cynthia Baker’s Jew—which also includes pieces by Susannah Heschel, Daniel Boyarin, Naomi Seidman, Matt Chalmers, Michael Pregill, Baker, & me. From 2017 but even more timely now.... www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/cynthia...

So, a university president fired a professor because they taught a course that discussed there being more than two genders, and now the university president is being fired for not having fired the professor quickly enough, is where we're at. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on 22nd September 2025. Here we see a man blowing a shofar. #RoshHashana BL Or 10641; Maḥzor for the entire year, Western-Ashkenazi rite (Worms); 1650 CE-1651 CE; Germany (Worms); f.22v

"Anyone who works in manuscript studies or philology knows that these are thoroughly digital disciplines. ... Accusations of technophobia ... would therefore be completely inappropriate. It is precisely our technical literacy ... that must make us critical." @dehypotheses.bsky.social

“In 1863… two Baton Rouge photographers captured an image of a former slave's horrifically scarred back that shocked white Americans across the Union. Now that photo is among dozens of exhibits about slavery… reportedly been ordered removed” www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

this is tomorrow and i am so excited for my first VECSS!!

“Syracuse University paused admission to 20 majors in the College of Arts and Sciences without faculty input” dailyorange.com/2025/09/coll...

Penn Press and @katzcenterupenn.bsky.social are delighted to announce that @thejqr.bsky.social will become fully Open Access beginning with the winter 2026 issue (coming in January)! www.pennpress.org/blog/jewish-...

What this really means is that they're going to sell their website's entire contents as training data for AI. Legally risky, since most stuff uploaded to academia.edu probably doesn't have proper copyright clearance for them to sell it.

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

and the podcast is up! sorry I'm in such dim light it's, uh, the mystery of biblical conspiracy surrounding me www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9o1...

Jewish/Christian relations, Jewish scholarship on Jesus, Harry Austryn Wolfson meets JFK, and more tidbits from the Harvard archives... humanhistoriesofkn.substack.com/p/from-the-a...

just did a fun podcast interview about GOSPEL THRILLERS so I thought i'd remind blooskie: i wrote a book! GOSPEL THRILLERS! it's a fun, somewhat quirky dive into fiction, conspiracy, and the Bible in (mainly) US culture! available wherever you like to get books! www.google.com/books/editio...

Anyone got any ideas here?

A decade of learning about fundamental attribution error, context collapse, & social media under conditions of hyperpolarization that tell us why nothing good comes of processing certain kinds of moments and events through social media— poof! Disappeared, just like that, as if it never happened.

We are looking for a one-year full-time Research Associate to work on Coptic manuscripts in Manchester as part of a wonderful project that connects mss with local communities. Requires strong skills in Coptic, English, & Arabic. Deadline 31/10. Please share! www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Update: The President of Texas A&M, the largest public university in the US, removed the Dean of the College and Chair of the English Dept just hours after coming under right-wing political pressure because a student recorded herself interrupting a lecture’s class that included topics on gender.

When Campus Reform and Turning point came after professors and created the professor watchlist, administrators didn't pay attention..Now they are being fired and attacked. Maybe institutions should have done more to protect academic freedom....

University of California Berkeley - Assistant Professor -Modern Southeast Asian Humanities: memorients.com/news/univers...

The University of Oregon retreats from its threat to fire 20-30 tenured and tenure-track faculty. However, there will still be layoffs, unfortunately. lookouteugene-springfield.com/story/univer...

"Fueling Jewish studies on the fumes of the Trump administration’s attack on higher education is not a win. It’s a trap, and one we fear will bring ill consequences to our field, our universities, and American Jews." Me, @ronitstahl.bsky.social, and Kate Rosenblatt. www.chronicle.com/article/jewi...

This article makes clear just how much of the current right-wing attack on higher education is rooted in beliefs about "cultural Marxism" - a conspiracy that, as I've described, traces back to beliefs about the Frankfurt School and German Jewish émigré intellectuals. forward.com/opinion/4502...

Highest level of support since Gallup started asking this question a quarter century ago

interesting that only toward the end do they point out how much of this channel is actually produced by human labor; leaning into the "AI-ness" is part of the appeal (might also have been nice if they'd talked to biblical studies folks at secular universities)

It is important to recognise this abuse of both technology & history for what it is: the projection of contemporary attitudes onto the past, which serves in turn to legitimise those who push those attitudes in the present, & give them the gravitas of age & of the association with historical figures.

@annetteyreed.bsky.social , and when the record comes largely, in scant morsels, from the colonizer: www.college-de-france.fr/fr/agenda/co... .

@annetteyreed.bsky.social, not the issue adressed but makes me think of the question of who controls archive access. Much of the record of the Mitterand gov's actions during the Ruanda genocide is contained in the Mitterand archives, the key to which is held by...Mitterand's then secretary, Vedrine

The rhetorical ploy at the heart of this employment of AI is to give legitimacy to a contemporary figure by putting their words into the pixelated mouths of venerated historical person. This is akin to how writers would sometimes attribute their own attitudes in speeches by historical protagonists.

Delighted to learn that this book by Siân Echard, which I had the pleasure of reading & blurbing, is now out in the world. One of those books that takes a scholar w a hyper particular blend of skills, knowledge of different fields, & intellectual flair to write. www.pennpress.org/978151282705...

“ …Trump’s most controversial education decisions mirror Heritage’s policy… [&] self-understanding… as “Judeo-Chr” [which] best aligns w conservative styles of Christianity…. Heritage also insists tht Jews need to line up w its goals to be considered credibly Jewish” therevealer.org/the-attacks-...

Let's not beat around the bush here. In order to meet budget-cutting quotas, the provost handed the deans the power to rearrange unliaterally the research and teaching agendas of their schools. #Edusky #WarOnEducation #signalboost www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2025...

With the caveat that I've been the editor for all of three minutes, here's a thread about the goings on at the Journal of Early Christian Studies---far rosier, for reasons that I think have to do with size

JEWISH STUDIES VISITING POSITION! Boston College - 2026-2027 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations www.bc.edu/content/bc-w...

FEATURED JOB: Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania - 2026–27 Fellowship: War and Peace in Jewish Thought and History katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr... Applications will be due November 10, 2025.

Imagine someone breaks into your house, steals all your shit, and then the judge goes "they shall pay you $1 for each item stolen, and no you're not getting the stuff back"

“AI-generated videos can sometimes blur the line between reality and fiction. In one video, an artificially generated John Adams says, ‘Facts do not care about your feelings’— a phrase often used by conservative commentator and PragerU presenter Ben Shapiro.”

The AI authorship issue is real. We've caught papers that looked OK but had references to works by the *journal editors* that *do not exist*. Like, don't send us papers citing papers we know we didn't write, right?

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

This is such an important thread, but this post really made me sad, because the broader scholarly infrastructure has (been) eroded to the point that knowledge exchange simply can't exist in the way it used to and there's little that journals can do about it. Because that infrastructure was people.