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Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
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18 Nov, 5 tweets, 3 min read
My latest: 18 years ago, a religious Jewish character appeared in the cult classic sci-fi show Firefly. He had a yarmulke and tzitzit—and the series gave no explanation for how he got there or why.
Did the showrunners decide to cast a Jewish character? Or did the actor bring Judaism to the part? I spent 8 years digging into these questions. Today, I can finally reveal the answers. They were more remarkable, and more poignant, than I ever expected: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Also, this is far from the point of the story, but I did my first ever photo-illustration for this one! Do check it out: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
For the many who have been asking: this is from the episode "The Message," which is season 1, episode 11, according to the show's intended order. imdb.com/title/tt057953…
Finally, if you like substantively Jewish sci-fi, let me introduce you to the amazing short story satire, "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!" One of my crowning career achievements was getting the rights to republish this. It's slow burn, but well worth it: tabletmag.com/sections/arts-…

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More from @Yair_Rosenberg

Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
17 Nov
97% of all US tweets come from less than 6% of American adults. If you're treating this platform as representative of the broader population, rather than those particular users, you will draw many wrong conclusions. Yet many elites—from pundits to politicians—continue to do this.
Previous Pew studies have shown that Twitter users are younger, richer, and more educated than the general population. In other words, very similar to the cloistered elite we see off Twitter, just a little younger.
pewresearch.org/internet/2019/…
My general rule is that social media platforms are representative of the most active users on them—no more, no less. Facebook represents active Facebook users. Twitter represents Twitter users. Understand that and you can learn something. Generalize beyond it, you get in trouble.
Read 4 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
16 Nov
My latest piece tackles an old question: Why are social media platforms so bad at moderating antisemitic content? Today in Deep Shtetl, I offer three reasons you probably haven't heard, but explain a lot: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Why is this obviously antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and so many others like him, still on Twitter? I explain in my latest @TheAtlantic newsletter: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61… ImageImageImage
1) Social media companies lack the cultural competency to even identify most antisemitism. Because they don't know what the prejudice looks like, they are terrible at fighting it. newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61… Image
Read 6 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
2 Nov
Some professional news: I'm joining @TheAtlantic to write a new newsletter about the potent but often misunderstood forces that shape our world, from social media to religious faith to popular culture. It's called DEEP SHTETL. Sign up to get it here! newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/
@TheAtlantic "Deep Shtetl is the stories behind the stories; the people off the beaten track who don’t appear on all your podcasts; the things & communities we think we understand but don’t. We won't avoid big items but will try to ask different questions about them." newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
@TheAtlantic "We’ll explore what religious traditions can tell us about forgiveness in the social-media age; what Albert Einstein’s intervention in a 1944 Hebrew University controversy can teach us about today’s debates over academic freedom..." newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Read 6 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
20 Oct
Some pretty straightforward "Jews killed Christ" antisemitism from Gab's official account.
My favorite thing about Gab is that they changed their web site from gab.ai to gab.com after their own members got paranoid that it was a Jewish front because "gabai" is the traditional Jewish word for a synagogue overseer. tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
You've got this all wrong. If they banned the Gab account, I wouldn't get to have nearly as much fun making fun of them. One of the few joys of this depressing web site.
Read 4 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
1 Sep
Powerful pro-vaccination PSA today from Orthodox rabbis in New York: "The ribono shel olam [creator of the world] has given us a precious gift. It's called the covid-19 vaccine." "Unvaccinated people die! They die." "What's the shaylah [question] over here? Are we playing games?"
"When we take the vaccine, we're helping everybody, and that's a double mitzvah."
My favorite part of this is the one rabbi who is doing his part in full sermon voice.
Read 5 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
22 Aug
Some good corona news you may not have heard amid all the noise: An Israeli study found that the 3rd vaccine dose they gave to people over 60 was 86% effected against Delta *infection*. In other words, we can supercharge our societal immunity w/ boosters. reuters.com/business/healt…
Israel's experience (early mass vaccination, followed by recent Delta breakthrough cases) suggests that much of what we're seeing now is just prior vaccine doses wearing off, which can be fixed with another dose. We get a new flu shot every year, could do same for this.
"According to [Israeli] Health Ministry figures, the results are very promising. Third-dose recipients appear to be 2.5 times more protected from infection than those who only received the first two doses of the Pfizer vaccine." timesofisrael.com/a-million-isra…
Read 4 tweets

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