I am Program Fellow for Jewish Legal Studies at @Harvard_Law; Associate Editor at @TabletMag; Publisher of @ShikeyPress; and President of @TheIJRPub
Cambridge, MA
Joined March 2013
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Menachem Butler retweeted
RIP. “Empire at Bay” remains one of the most important books of twentieth-century global history, on the fate of the British empire and U.S. policymaking as the country embraced global hegemony. liberalarts.utexas.edu/plan2…
Menachem Butler retweeted
By the way, after months of perusing microfilm as part of some other research projects, I think I finally tracked down who’s responsible for coining and then repeatedly using the OTD designation in the late 1990s. Working on a @TabletMag piece about it now, @a_a_viswanath!
Menachem Butler retweeted
I have often wondered if the 21st-century stream of OTDs will bring an explosion of Jewish cultural and especially literary creativity like that of the late 19th, or whether that was a one-time deal.
An impressively low attrition rate for them tbh. But these derech drop-outs could matter a lot more than their numbers suggest, considering how much of modernity is the result of Jews leaving the shtetl xitter.cf/b_judah/status/2110354…
Menachem Butler retweeted
Reading Frumspeak’s translation of the Gettysburg Address’s final sentence, I imagined @JYuter’s friend arriving for his interview:
“Where do you study?”
“By YU.”
“Where do you want to work?”
“By you.”
“How did you hear about us?”
“By a friend.”
Menachem Butler retweeted
I am particularly interested in whether there was a self-awareness of the non-lexical aspects of Yeshivish. Can you give an example of a sort of sentence that might have been uttered in an interview if not for this guidance?
Menachem Butler retweeted
Was there awareness of more subtle Yeshivish syntax, vocabulary, intonation? Or was it just focused on Yiddish and Hebrew words?
Menachem Butler retweeted
#TrueStory: In the late 90s, Yeshiva University's job placement office specifically instructed candidates to avoid speaking yeshivish on interviews and in the office, even to frum colleagues.
my latest article with Aviad Hacohen in memory of Prof. Uriel Simon, published today in @MakorRishon.
Menachem Butler retweeted
and then a decade later, amidst his own scandal that led to his own exit from denominational Orthodoxy, The Jewish Spectator reprinted “Organic Growth vs. Petrification.”
Menachem Butler retweeted
and defending Alexander Altmann, see the important early essay by Louis Jacobs, “Organic Growth vs. Petrification,” The Jewish Spectator, vol. 17, no. 10 (November 1952): 9-11, @Eli_Rubin.
Menachem Butler retweeted
If you're mad about musical Hallel now, wait until the Beit HaMikdash gets rebuilt.
Menachem Butler retweeted
At Entebbe, Israeli commandos rescued Anne Neuberger’s parents. Fifty years later, her father remembers a miracle sustained by the prayers of the Jewish people; she sees a debt to protect others. For one family, deliverance became obligation.
@MyShtender
tabletmag.com/sections/belie…
Menachem Butler retweeted
“Nothing ever happens,” half the Internet tells you. “The world is changing faster and more radically than your tiny human brain can even comprehend,” the other half says.
These are just two different marketing slogans for the same basic idea — nothing you do will change anything! — and it’s designed to get you to check out.
The truth is, nearly everything is changeable; it’s just hard.
Menachem Butler retweeted
Tanchum Portnoy’s melody for “Etz Chaim Hi” became an anonymous tradition. Yet his focus was to recover his father’s story.
@MyShtender:
tabletmag.com/sections/belie…
In Memory of Tanchum Portnoy, Composer of Etz Chaim Hi
at @TabletMag
tabletmag.com/sections/belie…
Menachem Butler retweeted
See also beyond the pages of @TheJQR for Prof. Solomon Zeitlin’s campaign on this subject, which remains a scholarly desideratum. In a January 1959 letter to The Jewish Spectator, for example, Prof. Zeitlin drew an intriguing distinction: “I never contended that the Dead Sea Scrolls are a hoax.” Rather, he maintained that the scrolls themselves were medieval, while “the so-called discovery” might have been a hoax.
