Languages, Yiddish “In Yiddish’s arsenal of gently mocking dismissal, no single feature is quite as interesting as the “shm-” replacement” Author Drew Kaplan Date 5 September 2021 In Yiddish’s arsenal of gently mocking dismissal, no single feature is quite as interesting...
Jewish Languages How to pronounce כלאים and פתאים Author Drew Kaplan Date 30 August 2021 The word is pronounced kil’ayim and not kilayim, as there is a sheva under...
Psychology “despite the lasting hold of brainwashing on the public imagination, the scientific community has always regarded the term with some skepticism” Author Drew Kaplan Date 3 August 2021 The term “brainwashing” was originally used to describe the thought-reform techniques developed by the...
America, Work “Burnout may be our contemporary condition, but it has very particular historical origins” Author Drew Kaplan Date 27 May 2021 Burnout may be our contemporary condition, but it has very particular historical origins. In...
Jewish “The Torah is warning against twisting our basic moral code on behalf of the oppressed” Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 May 2021 The oft-quoted maxim tzedek tzedek tirdof (Deuteronomy 16:20) — usually translated as “justice, justice shall you...
Rabbinic Literature “Why did the rabbis in the early period (for the most part) divide people based on righteousness and virtue, and in the later period based on ethnicity?” Author Drew Kaplan Date 25 April 2021 Why did the rabbis in the early period (for the most part) divide people...
America, Politics in America “Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of government itself” Author Drew Kaplan Date 21 April 2021 Every impeachment reinvents what impeachment is for, and what it means, a theory of...
America, Politics in America “Because impeachment happens so infrequently, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what it does, or even how it works, and, on each occasion, people spend a lot of time fighting over the meaning of the words and the nature of the crimes” Author Drew Kaplan Date 21 April 2021 The U.S. Senate has held only eighteen impeachment trials in two hundred and thirty...
America, Politics in America “To believe that Presidents can do anything they like is to give up on self-government” Author Drew Kaplan Date 21 April 2021 In 1787, the delegates in Philadelphia narrowed their list down to “Treason & bribery,...
America, England, Politics in America “The ‘high’ in ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ has its origins in phrases that include the ‘certain high treasons and offenses and misprisons’ invoked in the impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk” Author Drew Kaplan Date 21 April 2021 The “high” in “high crimes and misdemeanors” has its origins in phrases that include...