Tag: Zohar Atkins

Rhythms of Others

May 26th, 2025

In 11th grade, I took AP Language and Composition. One of the strangest, most formative assignments we were given was to hand-copy essays by great writers. I transcribed Emerson’s Self-Reliance, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I wrote out JFK’s and FDR’s speeches. I copied Coleridge and De Quincey in longhand.

At the time, I was annoyed by the drudgery. There’s a difference between watching the Karate Kid, and actually having to do the menial labor so glorified in the film. My hand hurt from hours of handwriting. It felt archaic, even monastic.

But over time, something shifted. By copying the rhythms of others, I started to hear my own. I began to notice choice: in sentence length, in diction, in tone. Style was no longer invisible, it was architecture. And with that came freedom, the emergence of my own style. That class single-handedly taught me how to write.

– Zohar Atkins

We copy to learn.

Pair with the Art of Manliness’ How to Become a Better Writer? Copy the Work of Others! piece.

Also Zohar Atkins is writing some great stuff.

Atkins, Zohar. 2025. “The Signature and the Shadow from the Turing Test to the Picasso Test.” Second Voice, May 20, 2025. https://substack.com/home/post/p-164007090.
Zohar Atkins and Dorthy Sayers on new approaches to work

September 17th, 2023

Whatever the work is that you are doing, love it, and commit to it. – Zohar Atkins

“Love work” is different than “Love what you do”—for the injunction is less about finding the right work to love and more about finding any work to love. If romanticism suggests that there is only one thing that you can do and be happy, Shemaiah’s approach is closer to the logic behind arranged marriage: once you are prepared to love work your work becomes lovable. Meanwhile, the FOMO caused by wondering “Am I in the right line of work?” leads to restlessness. As the average time in any one job or company declines, one contributing factor may be the grass is always greener effect. A person who eschews status will not be as prone to this fallacy.
Atkins, Zohar. “Love The Work.” What Is Called Thinking?, 2023.
https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/love-the-work. Accessed 16 September 2023.

Read Zohar’s full piece here. And pair with Dorthy Sayers opening paragraph from her essay Why Work?

I have already, on a previous occasion, spoken at some length on the subject of Work and Vocation. What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our attitude to work. I asked that it should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.
Sayers, Dorothy. Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2004.

I think both Dorthy and Zohar would agree on the idea that work is a noble pursuit on its own. But Dorthy takes the idea a step further, proposing the argument that work shouldn’t be taken on for only the purpose of earning money, but rather as an essential part of bringing glory to God.

Challenging and encouraging throughout.
10 Rules for the Great Books: A thread by Rabbi Zohar Atkins

October 9th, 2022

Twitter isn’t all terrible. Recently rabbi, poet, and podcaster, Zohar Atkins posted a thread of his reflections on the Great Books.

He begins with the question: “What makes for a Great Book? And how should you approach one?”

A great list of the Great Books can be found on the St. John’s College Great Books curriculum page. Many of the titles are intimidating. Like Herodotus’ Histories, and Antoine Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry. But one shouldn’t avoid the intimidating.

There are surprises too. Works like Benjamin Franklin’s Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity” and Alfred Hitchcock, Selected movies.

Reading one intimidating text, and one surprising text, could be an optimal entry point.

Floodlights and Goalposts

Tag: Zohar Atkins

Rhythms of Others

Zohar Atkins and Dorthy Sayers on new approaches to work

Whatever the work is that you are doing, love it, and commit to it. – Zohar Atkins

10 Rules for the Great Books: A thread by Rabbi Zohar Atkins