I’m really glad I did not promise you readers that this newsletter would be written on any specific schedule, because lately I have not been sticking to the personal schedule I was previously holding myself to (I’m not telling you what it was, but you can probably figure it out). I’m trying to get done a lot of writing for work this summer, which I guess is leaving me with less excess writing energy to go around. So, maybe you’ll hear from me again here before the fall semester starts, and maybe not! In the meantime, I’ll tell you very briefly what I’m working on and thinking about this summer, and I’ll also provide you with some links of stuff I like to read/watch/listen to since that seems to be a thing people do on these here newsletters.
What is Sarah working on this summer?
A short piece on gender and Jewish learning, basically arguing that people over the last 2000 years have repeatedly constructed a narrative of a male-oriented and text-focused Jewish intellectualism as more “authentic.”
An article on the reception of the term “kin’ah” (usually translated as “jealousy”) in rabbinic literature, focusing on the rise of the belief that kin’ah is a negative emotion and how that influences its role in the ritual for suspected adulterous wives.
A conference paper, which I think will also be an article, on blindness in rabbinic literature and how it gets connected to ideas about shame and the public.
An article for a special issue of a journal on the reception of the Bible in the Babylonian Talmud (!)
Thinking ahead towards my fall teaching schedule: how to best design assessments for a skills-heavy class to accommodate multiple different levels.
Recs
Newsletters I subscribe to: I think a lot of you would like Haley Najman’s substack if you don’t already subscribe to it. I also just love reading Emily Gould’s blogs and always have. Alison Roman is still putting out good recipe content on her newsletter. Samantha Irby is a genius of comedy. Avigayil Halperin’s parsha newsletter for excellent weekly feminist Torah content.
My Covid novel habit has definitely tapered a bit since getting vaccinated, but here are some favorites from 2021 so far: The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon, Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey (I mostly read this because I thought the author was intimidatingly cool in college so I was curious, but I genuinely liked it), Real Life by Brandon Taylor, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (warning: you may find it too soon to read a dystopian pandemic novel), Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adele Waldman. I’m thinking of branching out from my very-recently-published-novels run next and going for some Wallace Stegner.
We’ve mostly been watching basketball but I’m looking forward to watching the following things once the playoffs are over: The Underground Railroad; Season 2 of Tuca and Bertie; Mare of Easttown which maybe is old news by now; truly cannot wait for Season 3 of Succession in the fall. I also kind of want to watch the reboot of Gossip Girl?? I’ve never seen the first one but maybe I should watch that too?
If you want to see the writing when it is done, I finally made a personal website where everything will appear once it’s in its final published form. In the meantime, if you have thoughts on any of these topics, either writing or recs, I’d love to hear them!
I wrote about jealousy a little in my MA thesis and if I ever do a PhD I'd like it to be the topic of my dissertation, I think it's complex and under-researched. Coming at it from the rabbinic angle will be super interesting!