Shai Secunda
@shaisecunda
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Semi-Nomadic Talmudist Professor at @bardcollege Contributing Editor at @JRBooks
Joined March 2015
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So my honeymoon period as a proud Jew in Berlin has come to a close. Was seig heil'ed walking back from shul on shabbes with my wife and kids by a bunch of young kids on scooters. Was sad because I naively thought we could wear yarmulkes without that nonsense. Alas.
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I came across this quote the other day about a feisty, teenage Hannah Arendt and I can't stop thinking (and LOLing) about it:
"On a later occasion, when Hannah proclaimed [to her rabbi] that she no longer believed in God, he replied: 'And who asked you'?"
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I still think that this is a remarkable place, and not only in the sense of it's terrible legacy. It's beautiful, complicated, dynamic, infuriating, etc
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The radio silence of *mainstream* Dati Leumi rabbis in the face of the moral rot we’ve been witnessing here further confirms how this community, which I once considered myself a proud member of, has entirely lost its moral standing
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After weeks walking around visibly Jewish (kipot et al) among tens of thousands of people in places like Manhattan, Hudson Valley, Six Flags etc, not a single untoward remark. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I am saying US AS isn’t pervasive as some here want you to believe
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Can't stop thinking about how the rabbi of my shul didn't give a derasha for the first weeks after 10/7. When he finally did, he apologized that he's been serving in the IDF reserves as part of the corp identifying attack victims' remains. He was literally rendered speechless.
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I'm just about to emerge from a sabbatical of Twitter semi-hibernation. In the meantime, I wanted to share this big review of books, podcasts, and music of Neo(Neo)-Hasidic vintage, with a quater-profile of the "rebbe" of Twitter,
@jorosenfeld
1/2
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There's a rabbinic teaching that if one is overcome by desire, he should dress in black and go to where he is unrecognized, to sin.
But then there's the soul who craves repentance, dresses in white, and on Yom Kippur goes to a shul where no one knows his name, and truly repents
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At the Vatican today, looking for a kosher vessel to wash my hands for bread like a Good Pharisee. Shver tsu zayn a yid.
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Some exciting personal news: I'm joining the
@JRBooks
as a Contributing Editor. That means my DM's are wide open for all your pitches on books (scholarly and non-), music, film, television, podcasts, and really anything worth lingering over and thinking / feeling deeply about.
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With Candace spouting insanity about Sabbateanism, Frankism, Herzl and Freud; and with all the antisemites frothing about the diabolical Talmud, one would this is a great time for academic Jewish Studies. Alas, by definition there is no way to educate conspiracy theory nut cases.
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Hillel Halkin is a prominent translator of Hebrew lit. He's also a well-known Zionist. JRB is publishing a surprisingly despairing essay about how he now sees things. We're releasing it ahead of Winter issue, with across-the-spectrum responses online soon.
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Came across a great homily about why the Talmud thinks Torah emerges from the poor: Unlike the wealthy, who avail themselves to vast commentarial libraries, the poor don't have that luxury, and need to work out their understanding on their own. (R. Ruderman's "Kedusha Levi")
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Just in time for parshas terumah.
New in NYC: A cube made from $11.7 million worth of solid gold is sitting in Central Park—and has its own security detail:
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Celebrated a birthday this weekend and woke up to this cake Shabbat morning. Not pictured, actual cans of rishus sold seltzer.
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The outpouring of Israeli civil society right now is incredible. But the fact that it is there to make up for utter failure on the part of the government and armed forces is enraging. Citizens shouldn't need to volunteer to do things the army and gov are supposed to do.
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Nothing quite like riding my bike through the rainy streets of Berlin at 2:00am after leibedike selichos at Chabad.
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One of the things that makes me happy in our polarized times is unexpected ideological scrambling, where you think someone will go one way and they go another, and then even that other direction is dynamic. It’s what I like most about
@joshualeifer
book, and also, this post…
@joshualeifer
@powerHouseBooks
We at Mizrahi Bookstore a few miles down in Brooklyn, would be delighted to host your event. Please reach out and we can confirm the details.
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True story: when I was 18 and studying in an Israeli yeshiva, I had an opportunity to learn with my Rebbe during Pesach break. He suggested we do arvei pesahim. I thought it would be lame, but it blew my mind. Among other things, it was first time I opened Tosefta kefshuta.
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A new
@JRBooks
is out and with it a truly excellent review (which I had the honor of editing) by
@yitzlandes
of the new Oxford Mishnah. Buckle up. It's a tour de force across the history of Mishnah translation from seventeenth century Amsterdam to today.
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Excited to be visiting
@BGU_Lit_Lab
tomorrow, where I'll be speaking on "Mapping the Marvelous: An Inventory of Talmudic Digressions." It will be my first time sharing my research since identifying *all* extensive Talmudic texts digressing from Mishnah and related matters.
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My favorite Jewish accessory: Better than streimels, tichels, and the yarmulke. I speak of the Shabbes belt. Unknown by Jews in Israel and large communities in North America, it remains a staple of observant Jewish life in great capitals the world over. So buckle up!
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It only dawned on me this year that, alongside mourning countless past tragedies of Jewish powerlessness, in an age of Jewish power we can again think of the tragedies of our own abuses of power, with corruption injustice, and hardened heart. A throwback to 9Av in Ancient times.
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It's pub day for
@Simcha_Gross
's much anticipated book. Having read it carefully, I can that it is one of the most exciting books published in Rabbinics in decades, and in a field (Babylonian Jewish history) that was considered DNR. Highly recommend!
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For me, fonts have the same uncanny ability to arouse long lost memories&states of being, just like old scents&smells. Pictured is a classic chumash, published in "ניו יארק" in 1980. It may not be pretty, but neither is that vague smell that suddenly restores you to 5th grade.
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Many years ago, during (another) time of (lesser) tension between Iran and Israel, I spent a week at a program in Germany that included Israel and Iranian students & professors. It was an unforgettable and eye-opening experience that I've never spoken of publicly. 1/
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David Weiss-Halivni has passed. One of the titans of twentieth century Talmud scholarship. Scholar, (holocaust) survivor, sage. His memory should be for a blessing.
We just lost a giant in learning + living.
I remember seeing him in the
@NLIsrael
, learning + working on his life’s work, a critical commentary on the Talmud.
He was kind + giving with time, bringing us to Mincha + answering our questions.
Will miss R. Dr. David Weiss Halivni.
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Pretty wild that in an age where Talmudic variants are finally at our fingertips (e.g. "Hachi Garsinan"), so that new readings are there for the finding, hard-core Talmudic philology has become a rare pursuit, even among academic Talmudists (at least outside of Israel).
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Spent part of Tisha B'Av watching Schindler's list... for the first time. Am I the last Jew of my generation who hadn't seen it?
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Thrilled to share the news that next year I'll be
@wiko_berlin
, researching how within the space of the Sasanian Empire, the Talmud become a single, massive anthological "sea" encompassing a great variety of traditions. Excited to connect with Berlin friends and colleagues!
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For the piece, I thoroughly immersed myself in the world of Neo-Hasidism by reading thousands of pages of new books on the topic, and logging hundreds of hours listening to new podcasts and music (
@zushamusic
). I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially Neo-Hasidic Twitter! 2/2
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A looker
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A little "gift" we made, in advance of Bibi's visit today to the Gleis 17 monument at Grunewald station - Flowers with quotes about justice, democracy, etc. My contribution: Deut 17:18.
שֹׁפְטִים וְשֹׁטְרִים תִּתֶּן־לְךָ בְּכׇל־שְׁעָרֶיךָ וְשָׁפְטוּ אֶת־הָעָם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶדֶק׃
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- Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "Hannah Arendt, For the Love of the World" p. 10
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Teaching Buber's "Tales of Hasidim" tomorrow in my Great Jewish Books course & it's one of the few cases where revisiting a book that utterly threw me as a 20 year old still has a weird kind of magnetic effect, and that's even knowing all the critiques of his Neo-romanticism etc
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The eulogies at Professor Halivni's funeral were some of the most moving hespedim I've ever heard. It was a window into his life as a father, husband, grandfather, and most of all, the holocaust survivor who wrote The Book & the Sword. And an old world talmid chochem to the end.
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Delbrückstraße 23, the site of the original villa of Walter Benjamin's family, about a 5 minute walk from where I am living this year, and one of the places of his suffering-though also where he wrote some of this most famous essays, including "The Task of the Translator".
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My 10th grade rebbe just passed. Had a profound influence on me. More than anything, he taught me to love learning with a passion. It all began with berachos. He worked his magic and got us, a class of 10th graders, to chazer the whole mesechta, with love, countless times. תנצה
We regret to inform you of the Petira of Harav Calman Weinreb, Klonimus Kalman ben Yisrael.
The Levaya will begin at 11am in the Yeshiva Bais Medrash,and will be streamed on
Bila HaMaves Lanetzach umacha Hashem dima mei'al kol ponim
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@emilyfoxkaplan
In the biographer's view, it's a bit more complicated. She suggests that given this rabbis' predilections, the point was that belief is immaterial, certainly in terms of the existential fact of being born Jewish.
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Love that Lower East Side Yidden are still into “Shliach Mitzvah Gelt” After mentioning my travel plans in the local bakery, I’m now the proud courier of some crumpled bills to hand out in Eretz Yisroel.
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Hit something like four Berlin book stores today. This one, the "Book Nook," is a keeper.
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Excited to hear that Galit Hasan-Rokem's Hebrew collection of articles, mainly on Leviticus Rabbah, has just been published. I've been privileged to watch some of these articles as they took shape and flight, and I can't wait to hold the book in my hands.
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Try that in Europe and let’s just say the results will be VERY different
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I've never experienced a Pesach like this, completely devoid of apparent redemption: the hostages still in Gaza, Israel deep in a quagmire, and no hope on the horizon. While not resolving the pain, for me at least, an Israel zoom-out and a Jewish zoom-in offers some solace. 1\
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👀
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Late night Shavuos learning was sublime. Studied a piece of Zohar with a regular study partner between around 2:00am-4:00am. We realized that it really helps to be in another state of consciousness (this time induced by exhaustion) to enter into Zoharic logic. Highly recommended.
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Love the old Jews who say the title of the shir shel yom as a question: Hayoym yom….revii?
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Teaching Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" today in class. I still remember the shock when I discovered it as a yeshiva bochur while (bizarrely) writing my first & only high-school paper on Beats. Not sure that anyone can be shocked anymore. But the memory of the shock is still there.
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Gave my talk
@wiko_berlin
. It was the 1st time I articulated all the features of my project which considers the Bavli synchronically, focusing on its significant material unrelated to the Mishnah and related discourse. The project could only have developed at this specal place!
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@ScholemTzadak
On the other hand, that's why I've tried to deepen my commitment to Yiddishkeit by untangling it from nationalism and its symbols.
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It has been gut-wrenching to see how painfully unsophisticated the discourse is in American academia re: Israel/Palestine. Watching the marching students and petition-signing professors who ignore or condone Hamas atrocities on October 7 is simply maddening. 1/2
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Happy to share that the latest issue of the
@JRBooks
is up. We tried to strike a balance between keeping things summer-y and recognizing the times. As for me, I wrote the text for a photo essay on Hasidic women. It’s online but best seen in print….
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A friend just dug up an ancient picture from my yeshiva days at
@KBY_Yeshiva
and...it's the ultimate
#throwbackthursday
. There's no Rabbenu Dovid in sight, but I'm glad to see the Rashba is putting on a show.
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New issue of
@JRBooks
just dropped - my first as a contributing editor. Some truly excellent pieces in the issue. I'll highlight a fav each day and tag someone on here who might enjoy it.
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Today I had the closest thing I'll ever have to a boozy editorial lunch. Actually, it was neither lunch nor boozy, rather dinner, yet definitely editorial and a lot of fun. For desert, I got an early copy of the first issue of the
@JRBooks
that I helped edit. It's a great issue.
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On selichos night, you just want to be where people know your name, the singing is sweet, and the vibes are right.
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As my year of magical thinking
@wiko_berlin
concludes, the most personal essay I've ever written for
@JRBooks
is out. It explores Agnon's underrated novel 'To This Day,' considering a central aspect of his poetics 1/3
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Driving Erev RH Av in Prague. We chance upon the New Jewish cemetery. I hang a sharp right, get excited when I see the sign for Kafka's grave. Next thing I know, cops pull us over for driving in bus zone, and we find ourselves in a Kafkaesque situation. Their license number: 9AV.
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@Malka_Simkovich
With all due respect, the so-called disengagement, which had no coordination with Palestinians and was done in exchange for nothing, was not to generate a peace deal. It was to just to not deal with Gaza any more. We're still paying the price.
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@zweisinger
@DBashIdeas
I show up at a shul, see in the announcements that it's Mookies bas mitzvah, yet they call me up for maftir and give me musaf?! Turns out, Mookie's a dog, who shows up for kiddush in a doggie tutu. There's even a sheetcake with her cute canine visage printed on it.
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Prof DW Halivni's blessing at inauguration of Columbia's 18th pres (
@NLIsrael
archive)
"May God grant you the wisdom to distinguish between free speech legitimately exercised as an inalienable human right and speech with is inciteful, intended to saw discord." Plus ça change...
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When I was a kid at the Boston’s Purim Seuda I remember the Rebbe saying that we dress up on Purim as we really wish to be. A chassid dressed as a clown and drunk as a sailor fell down on the floor laughing. A few years later I dressed as a prof for Purim. Later, I became one.
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I'm happy to announce that this paper is now out with Oqimta. It looks at the rise of Babylonian rabbinic learning as a distinct entity, and rereads a famous tradition about it "mixing Scripture, Mishnah, and talmud." Would love to hear your thoughts!
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I hope I never take for granted the possibility of doing this kind of philological work from the sweet comfort of my office. If you stop and think about it, it's breathtaking.
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Kicked off a small workshop ("Rethinking Rabbinic Textuality") today
@wiko_berlin
. Not lectures or papers, but an actual workshop, where we learn and discuss rabbinic texts according to various theoretical models. In short, it's a chaburah.
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This morning I walked onto my street, lined with hundreds of neighbors saying farewell to one of our neighbors, a 19 year old who served at the border and was killed in Nahal Oz on 10/7. Shira worked at the hair-salon down the block. She took our appointments. She washed our hair
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We will return to you, Ulysses, and you will return to us.
What a ride.
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In the years leading up to renewal of
@NLIsrael
, many loyal scholars who sat in its reading rooms voiced concerns about their place in a new, "cool" library. I pushed back, because I knew of libraries that managed to open up *and* preserve their scholars. I fear I was wrong 1/
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The exquisite Spring issue of the JRB is live. In it Robert Alter looks at the Kafka diaries,
@ashkenazthree
reviews Chajes' The Kabbalistic Tree, Adam Kirsch talks Freud and the Talmudic dreambook while Sarah Abrevaya Stein reviews Graver's 'Kantika' 1/2
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I guess I'm in the minority here when I say that I was happy that the shul I davened in this morning said yotzros. Some beautiful poetry. To be fair, when they took out a fourth Torah (to read the first of the gifts of the nesiim) it was too much, even for me.
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