Annette Yoshiko Reed
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annetteyreed.bsky.social
Annette Yoshiko Reed
@annetteyreed.bsky.social
5.1K followers 2.1K following 880 posts
Stendahl Chair at Harvard Divinity School / studying demons, apocalypses, and ancient identities, between memory and forgetting
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annetteyreed.bsky.social
Ahem
Cute black cat with little blep
November 24, 2025 at 10:34 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Oh no, how to choose
Pretty Hate Machine . Nine Inch Nails, 1989 Doolittle . Pixies, 1989 Paul's Boutique
November 17, 2025 at 1:58 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings. (5/20)

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Andrea Mantegna, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, ca 1480 - painting of the body of Jesus as if seen from the foot of a bed, brilliantly deft foreshortening, with mourners off to the left corner
November 15, 2025 at 8:22 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings. (4/20)

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Is there a painting that digitization captures as poorly as this one? Whistler’s “Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge” from the 1870s, which in person breathes and glistens like nightfall
November 14, 2025 at 12:49 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings. (3/20)

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, 1882 - https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/13259 / dark room, musicians in the back, woman in white skirt dancing
November 13, 2025 at 7:49 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Open access! Special issue of Textual Reasoning, Vol. 16 No. 2 (2025): Elijiah Zvi Soloveitchik, The Jewish Jesus, and the Problem of Supercessionism journal.libraries.wm.edu/jtr?fbclid=I...
A Jew Who Loved Christianity As A Jew: The Strange Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Case of Elijiah Zvi Soloveitchik Shaul Magid From Volozhin to London: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Jewish-Christian Holy Spirit Shira Billet How Nice: On R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik and Christianity Martin Kavka Can God Reject the Jewish People?: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Supersessionism, and Modern Jewish Thought Elias Sacks Response to Shaul Magid’s the Bible, the Talmud and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Commentary on the Gospels Susannah Ticciati
November 13, 2025 at 10:26 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings. (2/20)

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
S Dali, “Fallen Angel,” 1960 - angel, head down, feet crossed, torso marked by lots of open drawers
November 12, 2025 at 1:33 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Choose 20 paintings that have stayed with you or influenced you — one painting per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just paintings.

#blueskyartchallenge #art #painting
Lee Krasner, The Seasons - https://whitney.org/collection/works/6153 - a big painting, fluid lines of green and pink abstraction reminding one of fruits, flowers, and the flow of dancing bodies
November 11, 2025 at 7:13 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Needs more cats though
Two cats sitting on chair in a room with many books
November 10, 2025 at 8:48 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Describe your cat's personality with one photo
Black cat, paws crossed daintily, judging
November 9, 2025 at 4:21 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
….I submitted the book!!
Two print pages with ToC of full draft MS
November 4, 2025 at 2:45 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
The top of my desk is visible. Those who know me know this can only mean one thing…
Office with flowers, books, and a clean desk
November 4, 2025 at 2:06 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
As HDS’s post on my piece inadvertently demonstrated why this work is so difficult in practice; most prefer easy path of self-congratulating a majority & imposing one perspective VS hard work of understanding across majority/minoritized perspectives. But this is arguably why the work is important +
To engage in such work, we may well need to set aside our yearning for peace at any price. Such work requires making space for tensions to stand without resolution, accepting that honest and inclusive conversations can’t always avoid conflict, and letting multiple stories from multiple perspectives stand as true without assimilating them into one narrative, polarizing them into “two sides,” or otherwise effacing multivocality in the name of harmony. It is not a goal quite as lofty as peace, let alone “Religion and Just Peace.” But it is perhaps a place to begin.
October 5, 2025 at 12:05 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
When I speak of hope, it pertains to this friendship across difference—precisely the opposite, thus, of the suggestion just to laud the *Christian* Harvard prof in isolation from his Jewish colleague and friend +
Yet I must confess that I felt some hope when working in the Harvard University Archives and finding those little notes. I found some hope in this smaller story, this local story, which resounds with the reminder that empires may proclaim peace and glorify war and erase difference, but sometimes between individuals, it can be possible to take up the harder, slower, and far more humbling work of talking and listening across difference.
October 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
The point of my piece, and how it ends, though, is with the part of the story that’s NOT told—Wolfson’s parallel work on the Church Fathers and their friendship as one glimpses in his archives +
Wolfson lauds Moore’s 1927 Judaism for precisely this, including in a talk at Harvard Divinity School where he credits Moore’s efforts with inspiring him to write—as a Jew—a book on philosophy that takes the Church Fathers seriously.48 Within Wolfson’s ample archives at Harvard, one can also glimpse the little story behind this bigger one. His files include tiny pieces of papers, scraps and stray receipts, onto which are written notes between the two.49 Tiny but nevertheless kept. Notes that speak to their friendship.
October 5, 2025 at 11:57 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Moore is rightly lauded, not least for his commitment to taking post-Christian Judaism seriously at a time other Christian scholars of Judaism didn’t +
Moore was one of Wolfson’s teachers and played a part in Wolfson’s hiring at Harvard. His efforts thus contributed to the establishment of the very first chair dedicated specifically to Jewish Studies in the United States.46 In addition, Moore—as a Christian—famously wrote a history of Judaism that takes Jewish perspectives and Rabbinic sources seriously.47
October 5, 2025 at 11:55 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
When we tell the history of research on ancient Judaism, it is conventional to just celebrate those *Christians* who spoke against anti-Judaism; this is how Moore is usually understood, but the habit reinscribes the denial of Jewish agency—inaccurately in this case +
I have read Moore’s “Christian Writers on Judaism” more times than I can count. One of my teachers, John G. Gager (himself a Harvard PhD), always assigned it in his classes. I’ve assigned it in many of my own classes. But I didn’t connect it to the context of the debate here at Harvard about limiting Jewish enrollments until I was working through the archives of his Jewish colleague, Harry Austryn Wolfson, and encountered a 1922 letter in which Wolfson adduces the article in this context.
October 5, 2025 at 11:53 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
My discussion of Moore is not lauding him for his understanding—it’s about his friendship with Harry Austryn Wolfson, and the hope that I found seeing how this friendship rooted real conversations across difference +
“Moore was a brilliant scholar. It is tempting to credit his rigor and erudition with enabling him to see beyond centuries of erasures, but also to see and name the erasures. What I suspect, however, is that his insights may also pertain to something far more quotidian, but arguably much more powerful—namely: friendship.”
October 5, 2025 at 11:48 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Hmm… I wrote a piece about the epistemic erasure of Jews & my institution posted about it in a manner that doesn’t mention Jews—should I be happy they proved my point or upset…? 🤔
October 5, 2025 at 11:36 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
“Poll: Public Confidence in Higher Ed Growing” www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...
Despite the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on colleges and universities, American confidence in higher education is growing. According to a poll the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy published Thursday, 47 percent of 1,030 Americans surveyed said they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education institutions, with a net positive rating of 33—up 13 percentage points since 2023. Survey respondents reported more confidence in higher education than in the police (44 percent), the medical system (38 percent) and large tech companies (25 percent)
September 26, 2025 at 3:17 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
Elizabeth Castelli & Hilary Callahan
on behalf of Barnard A.A.U.P.:
Last spring, the faculty overwhelmingly voted to ratify freedom-of-expression principles that truly support real differences of opinion and perspective. The administration and the board of trustees have thus far blocked their adoption. All this comes at a time when higher education’s crucial role in cultivating critical thought and inquiry and producing knowledge is under political attack. Ours is a cautionary tale about what happens when rhetoric substitutes for material protections of free speech. Rather than unilateral decisions by administrators about what constitutes acceptable conversation, colleges and universities must have policies that involve the faculty, students and the staff in the robust protection of debate and inquiry. Elizabeth Castelli Hilary Callahan New York Dr. Castelli is the president of Barnard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors; Dr. Callahan is the vice president. This letter was submitted on behalf of Barnard A.A.U.P.
September 23, 2025 at 6:02 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
I’ve been getting some PhD inquiry emails that struck me as v odd so I asked ChatGPT to list my books. It came up w/four—all COMPLETELY made up, including on topics I’ve never written on. And these are the only ones listed! Lesson = please don’t use AI/LLMs when writing grad apps and inquiries &c
ChatGPT hallucination, pt 1: Annette Yoshiko Reed is a scholar known for her work on early Christianity, religious history, and ancient Judaism. Here are some notable books authored by her: 1. The Birth of the Church: The Acts of the Apostles as the Earliest History of Christianity (2014) * This book examines the Acts of the Apostles as a foundational text for understanding the early history and development of Christianity, focusing on how the book reflects the formation of Christian identity. 2. The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins: A Study of the Saying Source (The "Thomasine Tradition")(2000) * A scholarly study of the Gospel of Thomas, exploring its potential role in early Christian history and its connections to the so-called "Thomasine tradition." ChatGPT hallucination, pt 2: 3. Theories of the Body in the Ancient World (2017) (Co-edited with others) * This volume brings together contributions from various scholars exploring how the body was understood in ancient religious and philosophical contexts, including early Christianity. 4. Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Perspective (2014) * Though not directly authored by her, Annette Yoshiko Reed contributes to the ongoing discourse on Jewish-Christian relations, specifically focusing on the intersections of religious thought in antiquity.
September 21, 2025 at 10:18 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
“Paused” majors at Syracuse include Classics, Modern Jewish Studies, and Religion, as well as French, German, Italian, Russian
The following eighteen majors were put on “pause”: African American Studies Applied Mathematics B.A. Chemistry B.A. Classical Civilization Classics (Greek and Latin) Digital Humanities Fine Arts French and Francophone Studies German Language, Literature, and Culture B.A. History of Architecture Italian Language, Literature, and Culture B.A. Latino-Latin American Studies Middle Eastern Studies Modern Jewish Studies Music History and Cultures Religion Russian Language, Literature, and Culture B.A. Statistics B.A.
September 19, 2025 at 2:20 AM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
“ …Trump’s most controversial education decisions mirror Heritage’s policy… [&] self-understanding… as “Judeo-Chr” [which] best aligns w conservative styles of Christianity…. Heritage also insists tht Jews need to line up w its goals to be considered credibly Jewish” therevealer.org/the-attacks-...
The Revealer: The Attacks on Higher Education Have Religious Roots by Andrew Monteith
September 7, 2025 at 4:32 PM
annetteyreed.bsky.social
It’s a pretty short piece but this quote is the only one that signals in that direction
At Oregon, for example, some students come from Christian fundamentalist communities, said Bonnie Mann, a philosophy professor there who shares that background. Religion courses are often students’ first exposure to a different way of thinking. “Many Oregon students come from families and churches where they’ve never had exposure to other religions and an understanding what religion is and how it does its work,” she said. Philosophy students, she added, also often take religious-studies courses.
September 5, 2025 at 12:30 AM