Lapsed historian of science. Educator, amateur sociologist of Orthodoxy, tweeter in the early morning. US history/politics, race, feminism, SAR HS Color War, 🏒
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Oct 15, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I once wrote on here about teaching my A.P. European History students W.G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction. I can't find those threads, so either Elon Musk did a bang-up job breaking Twitter, or I deleted them in some clean-up.
It's a short little book, about the "strategic bombing" of German cities by the Allies during World War II, the enormous civilian death and destruction it wrought, and the extent to which this devastation was not discussed in Germany after the war.
My mother was horrified.
Aug 17, 2023 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
I'm supposed to be packing up to leave Stanley. So instead, of course:
On hiking, and Talmud study, and Australian beach lifeguarding, a thread:
I have become a fairly serious hiker in the past few years. By that, I mean that I hike fairly long distances (12-14 mi./day) on very strenuous hikes.
I am not, by any measure, a "great" hiker. I don't go into the backcountry, I don't hike where I don't have GPS guidance, (2/n)
Aug 15, 2023 • 33 tweets • 5 min read
Why are you tweeting about American politics while you're in Stanley, Idaho?
Well, I can't go out onto the trail yet, because I have an 8 AM phone call, it's too light to see stars, and the coffee shop overlooking the river doesn't open until 7:30.
(I'm on Mountain time, which I'm discovering many New Yorkers don't know is a thing. Chicago time, LA time, and an hour hole in the middle. Poor Denver.)
Aug 11, 2023 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
Last (I think) in a short series of reactions to Oppenheimer:
Different people's responses to the decision to use the atomic/nuclear bomb, and pursue the Super/hydrogen/thermonuclear bomb, are central to the film. Oppenheimer, Truman, Szilard (Franck memo) Groves, Teller, etc.
Everyone had the story or stories they told. About the decision; about their immediate responses and their feelings after. But here's the thing that historians want you to understand: everyone is telling a story for a purpose. Those stories, and purposes, change over time. (2/n)
Aug 8, 2023 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
Okay, Rivka, you've convinced us. The Manhattan Project was a lot more than Los Alamos and Oppenheimer. So why is that place and that man what everyone talks about? Why do I keep hearing about whiz-kid physicists and I never heard of Glenn Seaborg?
I'm so glad you asked. (1/n)
The Manhattan Project was top secret. Like, can't talk to anyone about what you know, compartmentalization, censoring newspapers, the whole business top secret. But then they were going to use it in combat. And everyone was going to want to know what this new weapon was. (2/n)
Aug 6, 2023 • 35 tweets • 6 min read
Reactions to the Oppenheimer movie, a thread (more to follow over the next few days):
First, a disclaimer. I am not paskening about the permissibility of seeing an R-rated movie. Follow your conscience, or your da'as Torah. I did, and am sharing my thoughts. (1/n)
If one watched this movie, centering J. Robert Oppenheimer and the work at Los Alamos, one would be forgiven for thinking that that was all of the work of the Manhattan Project. (And that General Leslie Groves, who oversaw it, spent all of his time hanging out there.) (2/n)
Jun 26, 2023 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
This one has been percolating for a long time. (It was supposed to be submitted to Tradition in 2021--Rabbi Saks, I think it's finally ripe and will be coming soon.)
So: on the people you meet in Chumash Bemidbar, and the gold-star leadership-industrial complex, and a box of cockroaches hanging behind him, a thread: (1/n)
Apr 21, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Me: Here is a fairly specific diagnosis of an issue with the "demand" for women's Gemara learning in a specific community, replete with specific evidence.
Frum men: Nuh-uh, because as a man in a yeshivish community, things aren't like that *at all*.
#NotAllFrumMen, of course.
Of course I can be wrong. I'm wrong all the time. I never went to Stern or learned in GPATS or did any women's Gemara learning in a formal setting until last year.
But how is men's experience learning Gemara in the yeshivish world at all apposite here?
Apr 20, 2023 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
@DBashIdeas, my brother, there's a very big "yes, AND" here. (Maybe so big that it becomes a "yes, BUT"):
The demand-side problem is not only--not even primarily--that not enough women at Stern want to study Gemara.
The demand-side problem is whether our *community* wants women who are talmidot chachamim, and what it does, or doesn't do, to convey that message--in word, deed, and putting-money-where-mouth-is--before, during, and after college/GPATS.
Mar 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Here's a thought experiment: would anyone get up and say, "The reason Orthodox Jews go to the mikvah after their menstrual periods is...." or "Haircovering is a very important mitzvah for married Jewish people...."?
How is that at all different than "The reason Jews wear tzitzit" or "getting an aliyah is an important marker of communal participation"?
Hint: it isn't.
It's only our differential comfort with treating women vs. men as default Orthodox Jews.
Mar 8, 2023 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I stopped listening to this episode of the Orthodox Conundrum @JewishCoffeeH podcast after fewer than ten minutes, and I will not start again. jewishcoffeehouse.com/lgbtq-jewish-l…
Scott Kahn is a thoughtful person who is trying to bring important conversations into the Orthodox community, and Rav Yoni is a leading voice on mental health issues in Orthodoxy. But the first 8 minutes made clear that this is not something I choose to subject myself to.
Nov 20, 2022 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
R' Feivel Cohen was niftar today. Most of the frum world's mourning is for the author of the Badei HaShulchan, an indispensable work for those studying halakha.
But I and my siblings, individually and together, are remembering and mourning him as our shul rav growing up. Being in his shul, with everything that meant, watching our father's interactions with Rav Feivel and Rav Feivel's interactions with us, profoundly shaped who were are.
Oct 27, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Yesterday, my school held a combination Rosh Chodesh chagiga/Simcha Leiner concert/Hachnasat Sefer Torah.
It was beautiful, it was a lot, the school smelled like a locker room for the rest of the day.
The family dedicating the Torah danced with the Torah--the father and sons, the mother and the daughter.
Students and teachers on the men's side danced with the Torah, as did students and teachers on the women's side.
Oct 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
At Yankee Stadium, because I'm a good mother and Rabid Yankees Fan is a rabid Yankees fan.
It is cold and gray out here, and we're heading towards a rain delay. Judge better hit 62 and make it worth it.
Sep 21, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Least-anonymous anonymous item ever:
A Jewish publication asked me to write a short blurb on the word "counting" during the sefirah period. Here is what I wrote:
Aug 31, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My totally unscientific one-person's-experience:
At one point, I got drafted to substitute as the faculty member in the Sephardic minyan in my school. It was during selichot.
It's an entirely different experience than regular Ashkenazi selichot in a high school.
Ashkenazi selichot in high school are painful, full stop. (I've said enough selichot in enough shuls to know that it's not a matter of their being more inspired/inspiring, it's just a matter of people's buy-in to saying the words notwithstanding. In high school, not so much.)
Aug 30, 2022 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
Back to work means two things:
It means that I come home from work, start to daven mincha, and then remember that I already davened with a minyan and
It means tweeting in the early morning and then having to step away just as things get lively. So, in that vein:
About YU's emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, and what that might say about American Modern Orthodoxy, and how much we underappreciated Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, a thread:
Win of the day: Convinced the TSA agent at Newark to let me keep the coconut curry chickpeas with pumpkin and lime that I brought to eat after the fast. They were just gloopy enough to arouse suspicion.
Situation was resolved with deployment of the "fasting for religious reasons" card followed by submitting the container to swabbing for explosives.
Hey, whatever works. I'll take the W.
Best stuff ever, btw. We eat it by the barrelfull.
I thought it was awesome. I'm trying again next year, with two classes this time.
I'm going to be getting some professional development support from people with more experience with that than I have, so I'm less making-it-up-as-I-go, and that's exciting.
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