Yair Rosenberg

Yair Rosenberg is an American journalist and a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he launched his ''Deep Shtetl'' newsletter. He was formerly a senior writer at '' Tablet'' magazine, and is a regular speaker and commentator on antisemitism in the modern era and on strategies to combat abuse on online platforms.

Career

Rosenberg covered the U.S. elections beginning in 2012, as well as the Israeli elections from 2014 onward, and his work on these and other subjects has appeared in ''The New York Times'', ''Washington Post'', ''The Atlantic'', ''The Guardian'', and the ''Wall Street Journal'', among other outlets. He has interviewed and profiled multiple White House chiefs of staff and cabinet members. He also elicited a correction from the US Supreme Court on a point of Jewish history.

Until 2021, he was a senior writer at '' Tablet'' magazine, where he covered politics, culture, and religion, tackling topics ranging from American Jewish responses to modern critical scholarship of the Bible, to contemporary Islamophobia to the forgotten history of Mormon-Jewish relations. In particular, he has chronicled the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe and in America. He is also known for his parodies of antisemites on Twitter, and more serious efforts to combat abuse on online platforms, including a video series aimed at educating the uninitiated about the history, nuances, and dangers of modern-day antisemitism.

In November 2021, he moved to The Atlantic, and began a newsletter called ''Deep Shtetl,'' where he continued his coverage of politics, culture, antisemitism, and social media dynamics, including an exploration of how a Jewish character came to be on the cult classic sci-fi show '' Firefly,'' the story behind the Hanukkah menorah used by Vice President Kamala Harris, an interview with celebrated Jewish author Dara Horn, and a deep dive into Albert Einstein's little-known 20-year friendship with an Orthodox rabbi named Chaim Tchernowitz.

A frequent speaker and commentator on these topics, he has addressed audiences in New York, Seattle, Austin's South By Southwest, Jerusalem's Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, and the Limmud conference in Melbourne, Australia. Rosenberg has been interviewed and cited by ''The New York Times'', ''Washington Post'', Associated Press, CNN, Fast Company, CBC News, and ''The Rachel Maddow Show'', among others.

Rosenberg's writings have received awards from the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies and the Religion Newswriters Association. In 2017, he was named as one of "36 Under 36" by New York's ''Jewish Week'' newspaper.

Target of Antisemitism

In 2016, a report by the Anti-Defamation League's Task Force on Journalism and Harassment identified Rosenberg as the second-most targeted Jewish journalist receiving online antisemitic abuse due to his critical reporting on Donald Trump's candidacy, following conservative writer Ben Shapiro, and ahead of journalists Jeffrey Goldberg, Sally Kohn and Jake Tapper. "My parents didn't raise me to be number 2," he later wrote in ''The New York Times''. "Fortunately, there's always 2020."

Since the report's publication, Rosenberg has focused extensively on the issue of online harassment and antisemitism, including through the creation of the "Impostor Buster" Twitter bot that exposed neo-Nazi trolls masquerading as minorities on the platform, which received coverage from ''The New York Times'' and other global news outlets. Rosenberg also wrote about his experience and efforts to combat online abuse in the ''Times''.

Music

Rosenberg is a singer and composer of original Jewish music. In March 2020, he released his first two singles, ''Shalom Aleichem'' and ''Lecha Dodi'', and announced a forthcoming album. His collaborators include singers Arun Viswanath and Abbaleh Savitt, as well as producer Charles Newman. "Rosenberg is not the only musically inclined member of his family," reported ''Jewish Insider'', "his grandfather was a Hasidic composer who, as a young man, escaped Nazi Europe with the assistance of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who issued him a visa. In time, Rosenberg’s grandfather ended up in China, eventually making his way to the United States."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenberg, Yair
Living people
Jewish American writers
Writers from New York (state)
American magazine journalists
Harvard University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Jewish activists
21st-century American Jews