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Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
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13 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
This happened: Jewish mom in California wanted to set up a menorah at her kid's public school's PTA Christmas tree lighting. School refused, saying she could only bring a *menorah ornament for the Christmas tree.* CA district court just backed the school. religionclause.blogspot.com/2021/12/mom-lo…
I'm actually familiar with the case law cited here, and while this ruling may sound bizarre, it's not an unreasonable reading of the precedent! It's just an illustration of how utterly messed up American case law is on the subject of religious displays in public spaces.
Basically, the law says you can't have a religious display on public grounds. So to get around this, you need to recast religious items as somehow secular. This is how we get "secular" Christmas trees and "secular" Santas. It is dumb! Just let all religions put up their stuff.
This is a niche joke but there has never been a more aptly named judicial principle than "the Lemon test."

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More from @Yair_Rosenberg

Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
14 Dec
My latest: To get beyond the typical talking points of the Latinx debate, I spoke to a Palestinian scholar in Israel about his community's experience and about how minority identities evolve over time. newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
1. There's been much debate over "Latinx," which most Latinos do not use, but many media outlets and some politicians do. In Israel, there's a similar debate over the identity of Arab citizens, who are often dubbed simply "Palestinians," but call themselves many other things. ImageImage
2. Growing Arab citizen identification with Israel is actually not new, but you probably haven't heard much about it, because it hasn't gotten much attention in elite discourse:
newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61… Image
Read 7 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
10 Dec
It's understandable to chuckle at Trump turning on Netanyahu, as he inevitably turns on everyone but himself. But there's now a non-zero chance that Netanyahu becomes a public 2020 election truther in order to try and get back in Trump's good graces, which would be really bad.
Netanyahu absolutely thinks Trump might win again. And Bibi has already repeatedly bet his and Israel's future entirely on the Republican party. He can't afford to lose its current leader, whether he's president right now or not.
Netanyahu is very smart and he has seen in the US how being an election truther has become Trump's litmus test for being part of his team (see Georgia gov race). Now he and everyone else knows that he's on the wrong side of that. Question is where Bibi ultimately goes from there.
Read 4 tweets
Yair Rosenberg Profile picture
18 Nov
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…
Read 5 tweets
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

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