I am currently at the convention of the National Collegiate Honors Council. As you can imagine, when a group of educators get together we tend to talk about educational and therefore social concerns. Last night was our annual dinner with our CIC colleagues and I again shared my thoughts on […]
Academics
253 posts
The Economist has a short article on a new edition of the Talmud. I haven’t spent much time with this so I am not sure how it is revolutionizing Talmud study… For Orthodox Jews, lifelong study of the Talmud is the supreme religious precept. But for many earnest students through […]
Stephen Cook has a great series of discussions going on over at Biblishe Ausbildung regarding the above mentioned topic. I am working my way through it now and I think I am in agreement with Cook against Wrong. I have some thoughts on this topic and hope to share them […]
From our beloved IOTS President Willem Smelik: Dear members of the IOTS and other interested parties, The IOTS has long discussed the desirability of new editions of (most of) the Targums. A first task, the collection of data on targumic manuscripts, has already started and has come to a promising, […]
Who made these up? Why is it that biblical book abbreviations do not have periods and are not italicized but rabbinic works are? E.g., “We find in Exod 3:15 that… whereas in Exod. Rab. we find….” My current frustration (the hobgoblin of this little mind) is what to do with […]
Jeremy Shipper just sent me the call for the 2009 MAR regional SBL. It is my pleasure to repost it here. You can also go to the official MAR-SBL site. (Hmm. Apparently we in PA are actually part of the Eastern Great Lake Region. I am enough of a Penn […]
(Note the placement of the question mark in the title.) I am working on my triennual speech for the honors college medal ceremony and trying to be a little different while still presenting my basic theme that “honor” is fundamentally about knowing what is right and having the strength and […]
This is a little essay I wrote back in 2003 after I attended the School for Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, my alma mater. Various discussions recently brought the incident back to mind. I had thought of submitting this to something like Harper’s but never did, so now I […]
I (finally!) have the wiki set up at the Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies. The idea is to have scholars contribute articles on Aramaic, Syriac, Targum, Peshitta, and other related subjects so that the site can become a reliable resource. The Newlsetter itself already has some targumic texts available […]
You will all be familiar with the reports that major Iraqi sites had been destroyed by looters and US troops (see the U Chicago OI’s “Lost Treasures from Iraq” site). Well, apparently that may not be quite true. Melik Kaylan reports for the Wall Street Journal: A recent mission to […]