Welcoming Mark Oppenheimer

Dear Tablet Readers,

I’m having a baby, which turns out to be very good news—for you.

From July to September, Mark Oppenheimer, longtime contributor to and friend of Tablet Magazine, will serve as guest editor-in-chief while I take my maternity leave. I’m sure you all know and read Mark, but his biography is enough of its own delight that it warrants repeating. Mark writes a biweekly column about religion for the New York Times and a monthly column about fatherhood for The New Republic, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Salon, Slate, Mother Jones, The Nation, and elsewhere. He is also, not irrelevantly, the former editor of the New Haven Advocate—so he knows something about running a journalistic staff.

Mark is also the author of three recent books: Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate, published in 2010; Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture and Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America. He has a Ph.D. in American religious history from Yale, where he teaches.

Please join me in welcoming him aboard. He’ll be reachable at [email protected]. Send him your story ideas, your compliments, and your complaints. (And if you want to keep sending him your complaints even after I return, please go right ahead.)

Sincerely,
Alana