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Alona Bach

@bachwards.bsky.social

430 followers 190 following 54 posts

Archive haunter (where history of technology + Yiddish meet); theatre/-er-maker; rogue illustrator. PhD candidate in MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, & Society (HASTS). she/her | 📷: Der praktisher elektrotekhniker (1925)

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Nov 11

LA-based folks, join me and Sophia Shoulson on December 3 to talk about the intersections of technology and American Judaism in the early 20th century—ft. typesetting, electric lights, timers, printing infrastructure, Yiddish, modernit(ies), and more. 📚💡

www.skirball.org/programs/how...

Howard I. Friedman Memorial Graduate Essay Prize: Electric Yiddishkeit | Skirball Cultural Center

Gain new perspectives on the American Jewish experience as the Skirball awards the 2023–24 Friedman Prize to Alona Bach, author of the essay “Electric Yiddishkeit.”

www.skirball.org

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jun 6

"Incomplete mourning, being unable to fully talk about what was lost, means that you’re perpetually haunted."

— @rokhl.bsky.social on ghosts, IRB forms, Purim shpiels, perfume, and her new play Shtumer Shabes.

In geveb @ingeveb.bsky.social · Jun 5

Jonathan L. Green speaks with Rokhl Kafrissen about Shtumer Shabes, her new play about the complications and contradictions in the last century of Yiddish theatre and Jewish life.

ingeveb.org/blog/incompl...

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Apr 28

Raboysay (/robotsay 🤖)!

One more week to send us your Yiddish sci-fi submissions. We're especially keen for pitches for the blog and pedagogy sections — on incorporating Yiddish sci-fi into the classroom, interviews, reviews, blog-length thoughts on techno-messianism or dys/utopia, and more!

In geveb @ingeveb.bsky.social · Apr 28

We have extended the deadline for submissions to our special issue on "Yiddish Science Fiction" to Monday, May 5th. We seek submissions for our blog, pedagogy, and translation sections, as well as a special section of minyaturn.

More information: ingeveb.org/blog/call-fo...

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Reposted by Alona Bach

Haim Gottschalk @hgot.bsky.social · Apr 27

#PosenLibrary is introducing a new initiative - Posen Library Digital Curriculum Development Fellowship, to help create educational materials for Posen Library digital platform.

For more info:
www.posenlibrary.com/fellowship

#DHJewish #JewishEducation #CurriculumDevelopment

Fellowship

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, curated by leading Jewish studies scholars, is an anthology of texts and images containing thousands of sources—and growing.

www.posenlibrary.com

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Apr 22

Send us your airships, your dystopias, your wired masses yearning to breathe free—af yidish!

Submissions for our @ingeveb.bsky.social special issue on Yiddish sci-fi are due Mon, 28 April.

In geveb @ingeveb.bsky.social · Apr 21

You have *ONE WEEK* to send your submissions on science fiction in Yiddish:

— Blog (reviews, short essays, interviews, etc.)

— Pedagogy (teaching guides)

— Texts & Translations, including miniyaturn (100-250 word narratives in Yiddish, with English translations).

ingeveb.org/blog/call-fo...

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Apr 1

(Of course the real Kundes cartoon of the moment is still: bsky.app/profile/bach...)

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 22

"Aroysgeshtelt."

—Cartoon from April 23, 1920, by Lola (Leon Israel) in Der groyser kundes, a #Yiddish biweekly humor magazine, p. 3.

Yiddish cartoon showing Uncle Sam sitting dejectedly, head in hands, on the steps of a grand building labelled "American Institutions, American Traditions." A copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are lying by his side.

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Apr 1

(The cartoon in question, printed on the back of the grey box, one page later in the magazine)

—Der groyser kundes [March 31, 1911], p. 12.

The cartoon from the back of the page: a Jewish jester (the Kundes mascot) and a devil, laughing and pointing at the reader. The caption reads (with backwards English letters, so it would appear forwards when held up to the light from the other side) "April Fool".

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Apr 1

A Yiddish prank of yore: "Take 2 tsp of cold milk, mix w/ 2 tsp of cold water, squeeze in 4 drops of lemon juice & mix well. Dip a clean handkerchief in the fluid & lightly dampen empty area. Hold it against the sun & you'll see a cartoon."

—Der groyser kundes (March 31, 1911), p. 11.

Scan of old magazine clipping. A grey box. Underneath, a caption in Yiddish: Take two teaspoons of cold milk, mix with two teaspoons of cold water, squeeze in four drops of lemon juice and mix well. Then dip a clean handkerchief in the fluid and lightly dampen this empty area. Then hold it against the sun and you'll see a cartoon.

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 25

We publish:
+ long-form pieces (~3–4k words/equivalent, flexible genre);
+ “BroadcaSTS” (<300 words);
+ “From the Source” (showcasing & contextualizing a primary source, ideally with suggestions for how it might be used in classrooms).

We'd love to hear from you! contrastsmagazine.github.io

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 25

We invite submissions on "portals" from emerging scholars both within academia (undergrads through early-career scholars) and without (including artists & designers). We are keen to feature STS-adjacent work in a wide range of forms & genres—narrative nonfiction, visual essays, interviews, & beyond.

Screenshot of three bullet-point paragraphs of text from the CFP, reading:

Entrances and Exits: If portals are entryways into other worlds, timelines, and relationalities, what does it mean to open a portal—and to close it? How do discourses, representations, and architectures of openings (and closings) inspire and confine access to other possibilities for life?

Travel, Space, and Time: How do portals compress, interrupt, and transmute space and time? How do these transmutations generate or foreclose opportunities to remake their very fabric? How do particular technologies/documents/objects/media modulate movement between and through spacetime?

Liminality, Thresholds, and Borderlands: How does attention to portals reveal the politics and potentialities of spaces and states in-between, and what does the state of liminality reveal about worlds that it shuffles between? What portals (have) enable(d) entry into worlds so radically different than their “before” that they preclude any return? What are the social, emotional, spiritual, political, or technological preconditions for crossing through a portal? What are the stories of science, technology, or medicine on the cusp of possibility?

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 25

CFP for ContraSTS / Issue: "Portals" / due March 1

ContraSTS is an online magazine run by MIT graduate students, featuring public-facing #STS and #histSTM works at the intersections of science, technology, and society.

More info & pitch: contrastsmagazine.github.io

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 20

The image in the CFP comes from Der groyser kundes 1, no. 20 (September 25, 1909), p. 5. Alt text below! buff.ly/416QaB1

Rainbow-ified scan of a cartoon and poem from an old Yiddish magazine, titled Ven mashiekh vet kumen. The illustration shows an old-timey airship, with a tzitzit flag and a menora at the front, carrying two religious Jews into the sky while a crowd below waves.

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 20

I'm excited to be co-editing this issue with Dalia Wolfson & Sebastian Schulman. We're looking for: short essays, reviews, interviews, pedagogical materials, and translations (including miniyaturn—original 100-250־word Yiddish mini-sci-fi narratives)—on the themes below, and beyond!

Screenshot of CFP listing:
The geographies and empires of Yiddish science fiction worlds.
Time-travel in contemporary Haredi Yiddish writing.
Utopia, dystopia and heterotopia.
Histories and politics of Yiddish science fiction publishing.
Intersections of Yiddish techno-imaginaries with Jewish futurities (prophesy, mysticism, messianism).
Theorizations of the Yiddish/Jewish science fiction anthology.
Yiddish inflections in contemporary non-Yiddish-language science fiction.
Material/visual expressions of Yiddish futures.

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 20

What other social and technological futures have we imagined, feared, hoped for—af yidish? Help us imagine, remember, and consider alternative possibilities by submitting to @ingeveb.bsky.social 's special issue on #Yiddish #scifi.

Full CFP: ingeveb.org/blog/call-fo...

In geveb @ingeveb.bsky.social · Feb 20

Call for Submissions: Yiddish Science Fiction!!

We invite submissions to a special issue of In geveb on “Yiddish Science Fiction" with guest editors Alona Bach, Sebastian Schulman, and Dalia Wolfson.

Submissions are due April 28. See the link for further details.

https://buff.ly/416QaB1

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Reposted by Alona Bach

Ceryl @politicdormouse.bsky.social · Feb 14

Margaret Partridge bit.ly/3anO3yg & Margaret Rowbotham en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margare... Partners in life & #engineering 1962 wrote joint letter of grandmotherly advice on joys of retirement: designing sports pavilion, converting stately home in2 boys school. Buried together #LGBTHM24 #ValentinesDay

Margaret Partridge (left) Margaret Rowbotham (right) in black and white headshots from late 1920s/early 1930s.

In Praise of Retirement by the Margarets R&P

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 5

מוראדיק הײַנטצײַטיק
מיטן טראָפּ אויף מוראדיק

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 22

"Aroysgeshtelt."

—Cartoon from April 23, 1920, by Lola (Leon Israel) in Der groyser kundes, a #Yiddish biweekly humor magazine, p. 3.

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 5

This sounds like a wonderful project — Haslett's correspondence is fascinating, lively, and a crucial part of UK engineering/electric history (with the WES, EAW, and beyond!). #histSTM

Graeme Gooday @graemegooday.bsky.social · Feb 4

Collaborative PhD history of science/technology studentship now available at University of Leeds on the marvellous Caroline Haslett and her international networks wrocah.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

wrocah.ac.uk

Reposted by Alona Bach

Sarah Biskowitz @sarahbiskowitz.bsky.social · Feb 4

It was such an amazing time organizing @farbindungen.bsky.social 2026 with these incredible people!

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 2

A "Bad Yiddish" keynote @farbindungen.bsky.social , ft. Saul Zaritt on shund and cultural porousness & Natan M. Meir on minhag and the everyday histories "hidden in plain sight". #Farbindungen25

Notes and sketches under the heading "Bad Yiddish". Featuring portraits of two men, speech bubbles, scrawled notes, a shund-y border.

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Feb 2

#Farbindungen25 panel 1 — underworlds, shund, and disappointments.

A sketch with notes in Yiddish letters, titled Farbindungen panel 1, with yellow and teal details, a streetscape, a hasty Freud and a mini-Bashevis.

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 26

הוראַ!!! אין אַ גוטער שעה, װי מע זאָגט!

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 26

Really looking forward to this #Farbindungen25 panel on Yiddish theater, featuring Rebecca Turner on Jane Rose's NIT MIT ALEMEN (a favorite play!), @bluma.bsky.social on Leivick (!!), and Yael Horowitz on reviving a Polish Yiddish cabaret tune/dance, with @ruthieabeliovich.bsky.social moderating.

Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference @farbindungen.bsky.social · Jan 26

Introducing! מיר שטעלן פֿאָר!
The fifth panel of #Farbindungen25 is "Mitn linkn fus: Stigma on the Yiddish Stage." Featuring Rebecca Turner, Bluma Lange, and Yael Horowitz, with Ruthie Abeliovich. Register today, link in bio!

A picture of Rebecca Turner, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

A picture of Bluma Lange, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

A picture of Yael Horowitz, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

A picture of Ruthie Abeliovich, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 23

Fan studies, Crisco recipes, Yiddish lesboerotica — what more could you ask for in a #Farbindungen25 panel on "Practice as Method"? And with the eyn-un-eyntsike @evejochnowitz.bsky.social moderating, at that! Join us virtually by registering here: bit.ly/registerfarb...

Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference @farbindungen.bsky.social · Jan 23

Introducing! מיר שטעלן פֿאָר! The third panel of #Farbindungen25 is "Doing (not so) Badly: Practice as Method." Featuring Rachel Greiner, Grisha Leyfer, and Hinde Ena Burstin, with Eve Jochnowitz. Register today, link in bio!

A picture of Rachel Greiner, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in reply.

A picture of Grisha Leyfer, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in reply.

A substitute image for Hinde Ena Burstin, which reads "daykele" in Yiddish, as well as a bio and panel details. Long description linked in reply.

A picture of Eve Jochnowitz, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in reply.

Reposted by Alona Bach

Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference @farbindungen.bsky.social · Jan 22

Introducing! מיר שטעלן פֿאָר!
The second panel of #Farbindungen25 is "Dos heyst taytsh? Unfaithful Translation." Featuring Rebecca Weingart, Uri Horesh, and Pamela Brenner, with Sunny Yudkoff. Register today, link in bio!

A picture of Rebecca Weingart, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in reply.

A picture of Uri Horesh, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

A picture of Pamela Brenner, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

A picture of Sunny Yudkoff, with a bio and panel details. Long description linked in the reply.

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Alona Bach @bachwards.bsky.social · Jan 22

"Aroysgeshtelt."

—Cartoon from April 23, 1920, by Lola (Leon Israel) in Der groyser kundes, a #Yiddish biweekly humor magazine, p. 3.

Reposted by Alona Bach

Sonia Gollance @sgollance.bsky.social · Jan 21

This is such a helpful and long overdue piece that demonstrates @annsplaining.bsky.social’s meticulous research about women’s spirituality and spiritual leadership in Jewish Eastern Europe.

Annie Gottfried Cohen @annsplaining.bsky.social · Jan 21

Excited to see this published in the @jwaonline.bsky.social Encyclopedia. jwa.org/encyclopedia... Sharing with one of the photos featured in the article, from the YIVO archives: a group of professional klogerins (mourning women) in Brody 1920s-1930s

A black and white photo of a group of people gathered in a cemetery. Three women, professional mourning women, wearing shawls on their heads, one of them leads prayers from a prayer book

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