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Yoni Brander Profile picture
Yoni Brander
@yonibrander
Dad, Husband, Learner, Teacher, & Ph.D. Candidate @HebrewU. Tweets abt Life, History, IR, & Jewish Studies
Oct 3, 2022 • 38 tweets • 9 min read
Over the past few weeks, I've thought a bunch more about Amnon of Mainz.

While he didn't write ונתנה תוקף, I think there was a R'Amnon of Mainz & the name helps prove it.

So, respectfully, this 🧵 is a defense of the presumption of the historicity of R' Amnon of Mainz 2. This was inspired by recent tweets by @MisfitTorah, @rabbimargulies, @benzgreenfield, and others

And some conversations with @AriLamm, @StartUpRabbi, @DBashIdeas, @levidmorrow, and lots of other ppl

(Now I'm gonna remove you all from the convo)
Sep 19, 2022 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
1/ The Kitzur Shelah was a popular Kabbalistic-Halachic guide in the 18th & 19th centuries

However, the author, R’ Yehiel Michel Epstein (d. 1706) was secretly a Sabbatean.

This short 🧵 offers new (!!!) & truly 🤯🤯🤯evidence of Sabbateanism in this work 2/ For more of the background:

Check out my previous 🧵 on: Kitzur Shelah, the controversy over it in the 1700s, & previously published evidence of Sabbateanism in Epstein's writings.

👇threadreaderapp.com/thread/1569999…

👇
Sep 18, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Beyond the more obvious fundamental questions.

If this is the tactic YU selected in response to a case important enough to demand SCOTUS (!!!) attention, it shouldn't have been an unsigned message coming from a Student Life account: 2. "Yeshiva University President Rabbi Ari Berman declined to comment Friday afternoon."

If you want to be seen as taking a principled stand, take that stand...don't let anonymous dictates, unsigned messages, and tactical schemes do the talking.
Sep 14, 2022 • 69 tweets • 15 min read
1. This 🧵, I want to devote to some remarkable examples of Sabbatianism in R’ Yehiel Michel b. Abraham Epstein (d. around 1706)'s extremely popular קיצור של״ה that goes well beyond the comments of Emden or published scholarship on the topic

It gets really 🤯🤯🤯 2. PSA if you want some background on what this is all about check this out:
Sep 13, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Also tomorrow, I return to dropping #Sabbatean news from the 17th-18th century.

Taking a break from R’ Zerah

Going to look at the Kitzur Shelah, R’ David Lida, & other pious Sabbateans in that era

Do real detective work & go beyond any published material on the topic 2. In this thread, I’m not going to talk about R’ Zerah Eidlitz but instead about several other earlier pious #Sabbateans.

Over the next few days, I will use this as the intro and the thread-of-threads for sub-threads on each book.
Sep 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I have some more lines I removed from the research summary (and I'll add more to this thread as I finish it up): 1. Just gonna add this PSA here again:
Sep 13, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I love space and exploration- I think we underestimate the chance that probing for alien life could end up in conflict & disaster

Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it...but we shld think seriously about it

Let me explain what I call the logic of the interstellar security dilemma: 2/ In IR theory there is an idea called the security dilemma and it is rooted in the notion that states fear each other and have a hard time telling whether another actor has hostile intentions or not.
Sep 6, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
1. One last note about Kissinger's trip to Israel in 1960-1961 from his papers.

He tells us that when he arrived, he was not convinced that the founding of Israel had been a good thing for the Jewish people: 2. Not only did he feel that the idea of the nation-state was losing relevance, but more importantly that it was courting disaster trying to hold off "33 million hostile neighbors."

Kissinger- who had earned his fame as a strategist- feared a defeat and a massacre.
Sep 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1/ This next story, from those same papers about that 1960-1961 trip, was about an insight Kissinger had into Israel's survival during his first visit there. 2/ He interacted with Mr. Avitar, Bar-Yaakov's assistant, who told him that he was originally from Germany but came to Israel from England in 1947.
Sep 6, 2022 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
1/ This year marks the 60th anniversary of the execution of Adolf Eichmann by the State of Israel.

It was the only time that the Israeli justice system imposed the death penalty.

Henry Kissinger visited Israel for the first time in the months between sentencing & the execution 2/ At some point, I want to write something longer about his trip to the country in December 1961-January 1962.

In the meantime, I want to mention a remarkable conversation he had with Nathan Bar-Yaakov, the director of N. American desk @IsraelMFA about the pending execution https://www.gov.il/he/Depar...
Sep 4, 2022 • 43 tweets • 8 min read
Ok, to continue with the deep dive into the sources on several classic Sabbatean themes as they appear in אור לישרים, note interesting allusions as they come up, and get a more comprehensive picture of the moderate Sabbateans, the broader movement, & that era. 2. But, before we do, I will tell you where we are going
Sep 2, 2022 • 26 tweets • 6 min read
1/I keep writing, deleting, and starting new threads on #Eidlitz and #Sabbateanism.

This is likely annoying to anyone that is following the discussion. I apologize.

But I got it right here.

And I think it is very interesting: 1a/ Disclaimer (again): I'm not a heresy-hunter.

I don't see moderate Sabbateanism as anything more than a belief that didn't pan out. We shouldn't lose an iota of respect for them.

I'm a researcher. I'm not here to pass judgment. I'm being descriptive. That is all.
Aug 30, 2022 • 70 tweets • 21 min read
1. This sub-thread will be more 🌶️:

For over a century, scholars- including Scholem- dismissed Emden's accusations that Zerah Eidlitz, the top pupil of Eibeschuetz and a leading Prague Rabbi, was secretly a Sabbatean.

However, does an investigation vindicate Emden?

Yes... 2. I am going to assume a bit of background knowledge here on the controversies surrounding R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz's Sabbateanism and other allegations of heresy against him.
Aug 28, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
1. I’m not sure how I feel about the new Iran deal (I- like pretty much everyone else- don’t know the terms), but there are some lessons from history that opponents of the deal can use to try to force its collapse.

Here are those lessons: 2/ in the 1970s, Senator Henry Scoop Jackson orchestrated a pressure campaign on the US-Soviet Trade Agreement that brought the Russians to the table for more concessions, but ultimately resulted in the collapse of the deal and of the promise of economic detente.
Aug 24, 2022 • 27 tweets • 12 min read
1/ R. #ZerahEidlitz is an excellent place to start for this bc @AriLamm's whole push was to share idiosyncratic truths & show just how much more there is to learn & think abt.

For a century, great scholars painted him based on errors in texts, bad assumptions, & mistakes. 2/ If there is interest, tomorrow, I will show:
- Eidlitz's role in Emden-Eib controversy
- Emden's accusation that Eidlitz was a #Sabbatean
- Why scholars from Ortho. defenders of Eib. to Scholem dismissed Emden's allegation against Eidlitz
- Clear proof he was a Sabbatean
Aug 24, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Ok. @AriLamm and @DBashIdeas let's do this...

I'll just say I plan to cover these 18th-century Rabbinic #Sabbateans over a longer time and several different threads (depending on interest) that I'll thread into one. 2/ A quick disclaimer. I'm not trying to restart the Emden-Eibescheutz controversy here. But I believe the evidence shows there were many rabbis- including several great rabbis- that thought Sabbatai Zevi was the messiah even after his apostasy and death.
Aug 23, 2022 • 55 tweets • 12 min read
1/ Ok @DBashIdeas and @AriLamm, let's do this on Twitter 🧵. I'll bring the conspiracy[ish] theory. You bring the masses and boost the follows (I figure that's kind of like journal impact factor?)

I'll begin by saying the theory concerns the prayer Untanneh Tokef & is wild 2/ I'll also say that there is a lot of good scholarship on the Untanneh Tokef (UT) & its history. But this isn't anything I've seen raised in it.

Cool theory- sometimes I don't totally buy it either- but I think it is worth considering