Jonathan Boyarin

Jonathan Boyarin is the Diann G. and Thomas Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Cornell University. He is an ethnographer, cultural theorist and translator. His "permanent" home is the Lower East Side, where he has spent decades both learning and studying. He is currently working on an ethnography of Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem on East Broadway.

Review

A Few Points About Two Points

Zaritt calls for scholarship that starts from the premise not of the fundamental integrity of the language and culture, but rather from the assumption that what we have grown used to designating by the term “Yiddish” more accurately (though one might suggest in Zaritt’s spirit, never “properly”) names a set of contingent interactions, and that the constitution of that set, even if always incomplete, is the task of scholarship to come.

Jan 08, 2025