Yitz Landes
@yitzl.bsky.social
580 followers 610 following 110 posts
Book History, medieval Hebrew manuscripts, TV, and the New York Knickerbockers
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Reposted by Yitz Landes
karlbode.com
you'd think a prominent news outlet like the New York Times might mention that "antifa" isn't an actual organization in a long story about antifa, but nope!

and the subhead helps props up a false claim this professor was up to something seedy as something up for debate
NYT headline: "Rutgers Expert on Antifa Tries to Flee to Spain After Death Threats"

subheadline: "Mark Bray was teaching courses on antifascism. Turning Point USA accused him of belonging to antifa, which he denies. His flight to Spain was canceled abruptly on Wednesday night."
Reposted by Yitz Landes
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Bray is a historian at Rutgers who received death threats after landing on Turning Points USA's Professor Watchlist. As a result, he announced he was moving to Europe. And then this happened.

This kind of harassment and abuse of scholars is Charlie Kirk's legacy and it's only getting worse.
mark-bray.bsky.social
“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’
yitzl.bsky.social
Increasingly feels like the “End of the Golden Age of American Jews” discourse is actually people upset with the end of *a certain kind* of Jewish politics and cultural visibility

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...
How Bari Weiss Won
www.nytimes.com
yitzl.bsky.social
With that, there is still some evidence he wrote for different communities (actually his Rosh haShana compositions are key here—timely!)
yitzl.bsky.social
She has mainly settled now on the theory that his aesthetic changed over time, perhaps in reaction to changing community tastes, and less that he adapted it for different contemporary communities.
yitzl.bsky.social
I agree entirely. Lee Levine has written to this effect in several publications, and is one of the Israeli scholars most comfortable with dating Galilean type synagogues later into the Byzantine period.
yitzl.bsky.social
It’s always a pleasure to work with the JRB team. And this issue is chock full of great stuff—it’s an honor to be included in this lineup.
yitzl.bsky.social
Excited to share my review of Jodi Magness’ ‘Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Re-evaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik’s Schweich Lectures’ in the recent issue of The Jewish Review of Books!

jewishreviewofbooks.com/contemporary...
Monuments and Mosaics: 
The Ancient Synagogues of the Galilee - Jewish Review of Books
Mosaics, elephants, and the problem of archeology.
jewishreviewofbooks.com
Reposted by Yitz Landes
kenwhite.bsky.social
If a government tells you that you can’t call it authoritarian, it’s authoritarian.
Reposted by Yitz Landes
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.
Reposted by Yitz Landes
sharonk.bsky.social
ah, well
sharonk.bsky.social
a good arbiter of how close we are to bad hybrid regime shit is if the political comedy shows start getting pulled for whatever reason
Reposted by Yitz Landes
joelhs.bsky.social
The Trump administration giving the largest grant in the history of the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to the Tikvah Fund represents an attempt to construct a parallel infrastructure for the academic study of Judaism, explicitly allied with ethnonationalist, Christian nationalist forces.
theradr.bsky.social
Let us all be clear that taking all the money away from real work and giving it to the Tikvah Fund is a fucking disaster that will cause worse things to happen

and all the Jewish spaces I inhabit understand it and are framing it as such.

These are bad times.
Reposted by Yitz Landes
mollyknight.bsky.social
Kash Patel fired the 'legendary' special agent in charge of Utah's FBI division a month ago. Her colleagues say she was “absolutely the best” agent in the bureau but she was a woman of color so she had to go:

www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...
Reposted by Yitz Landes
pgourevitch.bsky.social
He could not be less interested in finding out who killed him or why — and his message to his apparatus is clear that that is not a priority — when the killing creates such an opportune pretext to stoke attacks on whoever he feels like.
Reposted by Yitz Landes
nytpitchbot.bsky.social
I am not aware of any gun violence that happened when I was a kid.

by RFK Jr.
factpostnews.bsky.social
RFK Jr: We had lots of guns when we were kids. Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so. And nobody was walking into schools and shooting people. There are many things that could explain this. One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs.
yitzl.bsky.social
Also can we have more Times articles that end with plugs for postdoc support
The next goal, Tamasi said, is to recruit a postgraduate researcher to study the pre-1944 inventories and compile a complete list.

“A lot of 16th-century works are missing,” he said. “We can see the losses, but we don’t yet have a comprehensive overview.”
yitzl.bsky.social
Great to see Jewish libraries, rabbinical seminaries, and provenance studies in the news!

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/a...
Rebuilding a Historic Jewish Library, Book by Book
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Yitz Landes
caperry.bsky.social
Excited to announce my book that is forthcoming in January. I’m looking forward to sharing more soon. Let me know if your faculty, students, or community would be interested in a talk or class.
Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt | Princeton University Press. Description at: bit.ly/PerrySlavery
This is the front cover for the book Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt.
yitzl.bsky.social
This looks amazing! Congrats 🎉
Reposted by Yitz Landes
2avesag.as
In the last campaign filing, Cuomo had 171 donors max out at $2100. Of those 94 were from outside of NYC. This guy is running to be mayor of where exactly?
Reposted by Yitz Landes
brandonfriedman.bsky.social
Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined
gregjaffe.bsky.social
The Pentagon is restoring a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which includes a slave guiding the Confederate general’s horse in the background, to the West Point library three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed, officials said.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/u...
Pentagon Is Reinstalling Portrait of Confederate General at West Point Library
www.nytimes.com
yitzl.bsky.social
Happy to share my just-published Oxford Bibliography on "Early Transmission of Rabbinic Literature." It was helpful for me to think through this topic, and I hope that the resulting annotated bibliography will be helpful to others!

www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...
Reposted by Yitz Landes
owillis.bsky.social
Democrats keep electing toothless lawyers to federal office and this is the result. People who simply cannot say “the light is red” when sitting in front of a red light. Instead Democrats rhetorically ask if anyone can explain why the light appears red and “urge” a hearing on “the red light issue.”
senategabe.bsky.social
Why do these people do this and not call for Trump's removal? Such delusional thinking.
macfarlanenews.bsky.social
Sen Patty Murray (D-WA):

“If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality… We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired.”
Reposted by Yitz Landes
matthewstiegler.bsky.social
Luttig is communicating vastly more clearly and honestly about Roberts and Scotus than most Democratic officials are. It’s absolutely flabbergasting.