I’ve got a piece in here! First installment in a series of studies on the history of “Talmudic Philology.” Was a total pleasure working with Daniel and Greg, and it’s an honor to be part of this lineup!

It’s heeeeeeeere!

Education advocates should start framing “using public higher ed for workforce training” as a “subsidy.” It’s a subsidy, we’re taking the costs of training off company books and making the public pay for it. College is for learning how to inquire. You want a specific employee, YOU train them

A mere four months later he instead bestowed upon us an entirely fresh 16k words—offered, poignantly, in memory of Elizabeth Clark. Folks, you will not be surprised to hear that it's really good. Available now in advance access. brill.com/view/journal...

In August last year, @danielpicus.bsky.social and I reached out to Mark Vessey to ask if he'd consider revising his brief response to an SBL panel a few years back to offer it as an afterword to our special Issue of Philological Encounters, "The Critical Edition in the Infrastructure of Philology."

The best part of this is that the papal tiara he is wearing is based on a real one!!!! Tiara of Paul VI!!

when overworked pastry dough drives you to obscenities its a

Palmieri, Jacobs, Knust, and our introductory essay all now published on advance access! Palmieri is open access, but if anybody is itching for PDFs of the others, don't hesitate to be in touch. brill.com/view/journal...

New publication preview from Beth Berkowitz! Learn more of the vegan ethics that motivated What Animals Teach Us about Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature.

Besides everything else, James Van Der Beek was wonderful Don't Trust the B, a truly underrated sitcom

it's his day #SuperbOwl

proofs! thanks to @greggiven.bsky.social & @danielpicus.bsky.social for inviting me to their show!

imagining an ancient tiktoker writing the Name as "y*hw*h"

A recommendation: write with @greggiven.bsky.social, if you can! Truly, though, I can’t wait for this to be out in the world.

"There was a young woman who'd take bread to the poor in a pitcher so the people of Sodom wouldn't see it. The matter was revealed, so they smeared her with honey, put her on a wall, and hornets came and devoured her... a woman killed for an act of kindness." (Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b, Steinsaltz ed.)

we have this exotic thing here that maybe hasn’t made it ‘across the pond’ yet it’s called jewish people

attn: @danielpicus.bsky.social

It's also like - the whole idea that if a practice is at all influenced by another practice, it is therefore not real is extremely ahistorical

A cast iron skillet oven-heated to 400F will give you wok hei, and allowed me to create a phad see ew that actually tastes correct.

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!