Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine: Presentation
It’s been quite a year and for many completely prosaic reasons I have not kept up this blog as I should have. This is not to say that I have not been busy (even if, at time, languishing under the...
View ArticleThe Rabbinic Citation Network
Some months ago I wrote about my work with Michael Sperling analyzing and graphing the rabbinic citation network in the Babylonian Talmud (see here). Our full academic paper on this remains...
View ArticleThe Rabbinic Network, in italiano
My recent piece in Tablet on my work with Michael Sperling on the rabbinic network was just picked up by an Italian website. It also contains a short interview with me about the project.
View ArticleGreat Jewish Books, Yet Again
Did someone mention teaching? It seems like ages since I’ve been inside an undergraduate classroom. Yet here we go again, and although my first class is still a couple of weeks away, I am already...
View ArticleSo You’re Going to College…
I originally published this in 2015, but am re-upping it as the new college year begins. Over the years, I have offered scores of first-year students advice. I have encouraged them to clarify their...
View ArticleSacred Time: A First Stab
I have not posted very much over the period of COVID. This was due in part due to the predictable psychological effects of living under COVID (maybe a mild case of “languishing,” as the press has...
View ArticleReading Recommendation Letters
As longtime readers of this blog know, I have been thinking for a long time about issues of evaluation: How do we know if we, as individuals and collectives, are doing a good job? Within the academy,...
View ArticleRace, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Study of Antiquity
This semester I am teaching a substantially revamped course on “Race, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Study of Antiquity.” One of my new goals for this course is to explore the ethical implications of...
View ArticleThe Second Degree
Many years ago I created a profile on LinkedIn, not because I had any vision of what I wanted to do on it, but because that is what people did. I soon discovered, as I suspected, that LinkedIn does...
View ArticleNew Essay: The Meaning and Function of Torah
In what seems like a lifetime ago (2017), I went to a wonderful conference sponsored by the Enoch Seminar on the meaning and function of “Torah.” I reported on that conference, and my own paper,...
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