I truly admire my grandpa's unwavering belief that countries that do not recognize Israeli passports -- our conversation was about a hypothetical conference in Tunisia -- would let me, personally, in if I asked them. 'They'll probably even arrange the trip for you!'

My taxi driver, suspecting that I was not really from Bosnia (as my mother insists I tell foreigners instead of revealing being Israeli), apparently had a ready-made test for impostors and asked me 'how to say uphill and downhill in Bosnian.'

(uzbrdo/nizbrdo)

Happy Passover from Tbilisi, 1924!
לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין.
[(May we be) free people next year.]

As an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University, we had such a limited access to books new and not so new that I read many monographs in dissertation form or patched together all reviews. Trying to read books by potential advisors, I often had to read their dissertations instead…

I am lucky and grateful to have a 4-year postdoc lined up but I really do miss the classroom: writing is great, but it feels awfully lacking without teaching.

One of the best books I've read recently.

The first time I was asked if my Arabic was from the IDF or the Mossad, I was 15. A bit too young to be a conscript, perhaps not the characteristic occupation for a child soldier.

In 2018, a research paper I wrote as an undergrad on 18th-century Russian queenship appeared as a book chapter. Academia-edu tells me that a Ph.D. student in the UK is writing a dissertation on the topic and refuting my argument. Exciting! Eager to read the outcome, Charlotte!

Why does this door in my go-to writing cafe seem to lead not the toilet but to a secret night club? Am I missing a secret handle inside?

המשפחה הישראלית שאצלי במלון טסה לפה לליל סדר תלת-דורי, וכעת הסבא והסבתא פרשו לארוחת בוקר בשולחן נפרד שפונה עם הגב לשאר; אחת הבנות עצבנית כי הזמינו טיול להרים ואין פה אאוטלט; הנכדה הפעוטה נזכרה שאתמול בגדו בה ונתנו לאחיה לשמור על המפתח ופרשה גם היא לשולחן נפרד עם הדודה הלא מטיילת.

An Armenian priest, trying to explain my interest in their language to a suspicious visitor:

'You see, Orel wants to be a historian of everywhere. And what do you have everywhere? Armenians!'

Now that Taylor Swift advertised my favorite decade (product placement, really) in her new album, I imagine that my next seminar on the 1830s will have a waiting list. A whole new demographic for nineteenth-century history!

The only thing I remember from 10th-grade literature is that our teacher consistently referred to Gabriel García Márquez as Marx.

The Data Science Revolution is complete. Now you can have your kebab in Tbilisi with a good dataset on the side.

This is hilarious. For all sorts of reasons. But also because the word Ben Gvir choice is so peculiar I am not sure that “feeble” captures it — I hope they commissioned a Hebrew linguist to explain it in the article!

The Armenian word for longing is կարոտ (karot), which in Old Armenian really captures both parts of the longing: it can mean both 'indigent/destitute' and 'desirous/eager' – so both the pain of deprivation and the horizon of hope.

An interesting proposal from Ankara, 1950: An organization called 'The Happiness Bureau,' which will keep files on its young members to facilitate their marriages. Bureaucratizing the good old matchmaker!

The easiest way to get books from Iran is seemingly to befriend Iranian tourists in Georgia: within hours, they found relatives/friends/acquaintances coming at one point or another with room in their luggage for books. If each one brought one book, I can set up a library by June.

Spent the evening teaching my favorite Iranian toddler my favorite Brazillian lullaby:
If this street, / If this street were mine / I would order, / I would order it tiled / With pebbles, / With diamond pebbles / Just to see, / Just to see my love pass by.
youtube.com/watch?v=pgjw1F…

Azeri meets Hebrew — the same word for kitchen/cuisine.

Also: so many wonderful resources for learning Persian — if you speak Georgian and Azeri. An entire Persianist’s library must have been thrown onto this second-hand bookshop…