Portnoy earned a
Master of Arts in Yiddish Studies from
Columbia University in 1997 with a master's thesis that explored the lives and work of
Zuni Maud and
Yosl Cutler. He earned his PhD in Jewish History from the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2008. His
dissertation explores cartoons in the early Yiddish press. For seven years, he taught part-time at
Rutgers University. He currently holds the position of Senior Researcher and Exhibition Curator at
YIVO, as well as YIVO’s Academic Advisor for the
Max Weinreich Center. and his articles on Jewish popular culture have been published in
The Drama Review and the
International Journal of Comic Art. Portnoy is the author of the bestselling book
Bad Rabbi And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (2017,
Stanford University Press), based on his doctoral dissertation. This book covers overlooked aspects of American and Polish Jewish society and culture, namely, the life of marginalized people, "the downwardly mobile Jews" based on the stories published in Yiddish newspapers of New York City and Warsaw. As Jack Fischel writes in his review, "He [Portnoy] admits that the stories are not representative of Jewry, but insists that in every society there is a group of people who are lowly, uncultured, uneducated, poor, and worthy of attention." ==References==