I never thought I would become a night owl. I was never one to pull an all-nighter, and I refuse to let a sleep deficit build up. But, here I am, staying up past 4 a.m. and sleeping past noon every day of the week. I've seen the sunrise before heading to bed more times than I'd like to admit. This crazy schedule allows me to balance doctoral studies with the moments of married life I value most. The life of a PhD candidate can be hard, but almost no other job or position would allow me this kind of flexibility.

That there is an AAR conversation on work-life balance reminds me of a very funny and too-close-to home tweet from the Twitter account called Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay): “Yes, I've heard of work-life balance. I gave a workshop on it last week and am co-editing a related special issue to which I'm contributing.” More beautifully, the poet Adrienne Rich asks in Twenty One Love Poems: “What kind of beast would turn its life into words? What atonement is this all about?” We might consider what kind of worker turns her words into her life, and back again, so that the lines between speech and writing and work and life blur?

Many American Jews have felt uneasy during the current presidential campaign, largely because of how Judaism has been the object of campaign rhetoric—from various candidates and the media, and in ways that are neither flattering nor representative. Some of the rhetoric—seeming indifference to Jewish sensitivities, the deployment of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and even rhetorical threats of physical harm—is not unheard of in American politics. What seems new is the way this rhetoric has revealed a significant difference in how non-Jews and Jews understand “religion,” particularly with regard to Jewish identity.