Hey everyone,

Am I allowed to say “Happy Passover”? Is “Chag Sameach” a step too far? Can I talk about my favorite holiday without having to center Palestine or trigger someone else’s religious trauma? Instead of asking the four questions, should I just be apologizing the whole time? Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

It’s always such an awkward dance when it comes to discussing my favorite holiday. More presently, I’m in the midst of figuring out how it fits into my current stage of grief and the rituals I will maintain now that the matriarchs of my family have passed. But this year, I’m going to, and maybe you can understand what Passover means to me — a Jewish woman grieving the loss of her mother — and the rituals that bind us, rather than what this holiday means to Jewish people at large, the plight of Palestinians and the current political climate, or even the Tanakh itself.

As a journalist, it’s never supposed to be about me. Passover is personal, so I’m never talking about it. Lately, I can’t tell if not talking about it has been doing me any favors based on the visceral reactions and general lack of respect I receive for taking the time to observe any Jewish holiday without thinking about everyone else — if not especially Palestine.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that people who don’t understand the holiday, or feel culturally and/or politically (*cough* antisemitically *cough*) removed from Abrahamic religions (including, if not especially, Judaism) see it as “Bible stuff” and are therefore terrified of unwittingly being recruited into a religious cult. So, I just don’t talk about it lest I be accused of proselytizing.

When I had a home to go home to, I always tried for the Big 4 (Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah). Eventually, it became the Big 2 (Passover and Hanukkah) before consolidating holidays based on travel schedule convenience, until eventually realizing that Passover just might be my favorite holiday.

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah — also symbolic food holidays — used to be my favorites, so I was always relieved during the years that they were just close enough on the Gregorian calendar to avoid traveling twice. I could look forward to the anticipation of generous servings of my grandmother’s cooking, with an unhealthy side of my mother’s schizoaffective disorder.

Beyond this, I had my own internal system of cultural separation where Judaism existed as a private practice, and I was happy to be present and supportive for my friends who had other customs. But it was understood that I was pulled home during Passover and we just didn’t talk about it.

Passover is kind of a serious holiday, but my family does not consist of serious people. Prior to the past several years, our family, like many Jewish people, felt comfortably assimilated into a secular society where these rituals felt more culturally binding than religiously or existentially important. Antisemitism felt like a thing that died along with the Holocaust and Jewish-Americans could enjoy and celebrate the freedom of being a free Jew in America on Passover. That often meant rushing through our favorite parts of the Haggadah so we could get to the good part: my grandmother’s chicken soup with kneidls, brisket, Grammie potatoes, and sweet kugel.

Some of our family members don’t celebrate the holidays at all, having assimilated into loose secular interfaith or agnostic relationships where Judaism has taken a backseat entirely — a point of contention among certain Jewish circles concerned about the loss of Jewish preservation culturally and ethnically when these rituals are watered down, bastardized, or completely abandoned of being passed generationally. I kinda get it, but have found that I’m still searching for my own flavor of Judaism that doesn’t necessarily match anyone else’s, as well as a small sense of personal failure that I’m not passing these rituals down to anyone else.

To me, a fourth-generation American Jew, Passover was a time to dust off my grandma’s copies of the Maxwell House Haggadah — a Western relic of the past that you used to be able to pick up free of charge at the end cap of any grocery store, usually adjacent to the coffee aisle for marketing purposes to sell canisters of Maxwell House coffee — and my grandmother’s gorgeous brass Seder plate, lovingly aged into patina. My grandmother had beautiful taste in Judaica that was neither frum nor exaggerated. She never used that word — frum — and it’s only more recently some of these words have popped up in my vocabulary.

If you asked me several years ago, I’d consider American Jew and Jewish-American interchangeable terms, but now I have to consider the weight of their order and what my identity means to me and everyone else. I hate the pressure that I feel from all sides to fit myself neatly into a box with some fixed identity, which is a little ironic considering that one of my favorite parts about Judaism was the paradox of how anti-assimilationist it felt even while demanding certain levels of distinct assimilation.

While I have gone to many seders that were not my own, they never felt the same even when they all relied on mostly the same rituals. My immediate family is small, but my grandmother had more cousins than a Mormon commune, with many of those descendants dead and their offspring mostly as ambivalent as I was about reconnecting with someone who might as well be a complete stranger.

In many ways, the pressure I feel to assimilate into a label erases the lineage I was already seeking answers to over the past decade as I pressed into family members on both sides to better understand our roots, while often being too unimpressive for my own larger community.

There is also the internal matter of how other Jews perceive and react to your ancestral trajectory, including classist assumptions particularly from the East and West Coasts about my wandering Jew upbringing from Florida to the Midwest before making my way to New York and what a tremendous undertaking that journey was, often receiving an unimpressed “uh-huh” about the former while my stint in Prague elicits an “Oh!”, as if my entire life and intellectual merits can be reduced to where my community is by some flavorless Ashkenazi from Massachusetts who works in venture capital or a talent agent from Los Angeles.

It should not be hard to understand why I might feel resentful about being pigeonholed by people who can’t recognize that humans—including Jewish people—have complex, unique lives, especially with zero interest in understanding or respecting what these rituals mean to me while demanding that I understand theirs. Are we going to try to understand each other or not?

It is hard being lumped by outsiders into a one-note understanding of the diverse demographic of your own people without knowing where you fit within it — a problem that assimilated, multi-generational outsiders from other communities often struggle with, too.

Today, being Jewish feels like a judgment made entirely in relation to Zionism and Israel, and what that says about you — while claiming they either see some distinct separation between the two or that there can be none at all. On top of this, I also have to consider my American identity who is neither first-, second-, nor third-culture, but fourth, and never fully understood where “home” is.

For that reason, I am unapologetically selfish about the Jewish holidays because they are the only connective thread I have to my own past. Not to Judaism, not to Israel, but to my mother, my mother’s mother, and all of the mothers before that.

When I consider the crown jewels of our family, they live on paper in the recipe boxes rescued from my mom’s kitchen while she lay intubated in a hospital two months ago. My grandmother’s ruggelach recipe is worth its weight in gold, but I’d never sell it because it’s priceless to me. The last thing I need is another person disrespecting me by proxy of their view of Judaism, which feels like a disrespect to her. I’m certainly never sharing my most intimate recipe with a population of unappreciative people who refuse to understand what it means to me or how much labor it requires to make them.

It makes sense that Passover is now my favorite holiday if you’re Jewish because Passover is the most important and widely celebrated one among Jewish people due to the level of involvement. If you’re not Jewish, you might think they all look the same — particularly as chain stores often recycle products as a catch-all for any Jewish holiday, which has become a running joke among Jews. Still, it shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me as a food writer that Passover holds a special place in my heart because it is the quintessential Jewish food holiday.

All Jewish holidays are marked by some specific dishes — just like any other non-Jewish holiday — but the Seder is basically dinner theater. You’ve got this story that requires group participation to read through the Haggadah using a Seder plate filled with symbolic food items and matching rituals representing different parts of the story, including a fun game for the youngest to go find the afikomen — something I ended up doing every year into adulthood because I was somehow always the youngest at the table.

This year, I had to pay for the privilege to being part of a seder. My grandmother’s gorgeous patina-laced seder plate was tucked away in a TJ Maxx bag in my storage unit because my studio is not a home. A home should have a table for six, with leaves to pull out for extra guests. It should have a buffet and cabinet space for hundreds of plates and glassware that only get pulled out a few times per year.

I’ve gone to a lot of Seders that were not my family’s and have been grateful for every home I’ve been welcomed into. Not every Seder is one to remember, but I remember most of them anyway — including the many years I was always tasked to find the afikomen.

As I walked across the Village to the local Chabad, I couldn’t have talked to the least religious Jews along the way — a phone call to a cousin fourth-removed from my grandmother while I walked to the East Village to pick up my mail; an old friend I bumped into on Bleecker in the West Village who bicycling to her own seder along the way. I reminded myself I’m not religious, I’m spiritual, and I need these certain acts of ritual to connect me to my mother and my mother’s mother and her mother’s mother. I confessed both times that I was probably going to cry, then proceeded to anyway.

Around 7th Avenue, I realized I didn’t know what to wear even though what I was wearing was fine. I didn’t wax my armpits. I didn’t do my nails. I felt unmoored about my age and I was wearing something appropriate. Would my grandmother think I was wearing a schmatta? Would she tell me I look beautiful? Would she tell me not to worry about it?

I knew I was going to cry during Passover. It wasn’t going to feel the same. I was going because I didn’t want to be alone. I’m not one setting the table or making the brisket. The brisket would smell beautiful, but I wouldn’t help but compare it against every single Passover brisket I’ve ever had before that. Every matriarch has a recipe and it is sacrilegious to not love your mother. My mother was my Egypt and I will forever being the youngest plagued by asking the four questions: Why? Why? Why? Why?

I’m making the best of it and trying not to cry, but I’ll probably cry anyway. Something is going to trigger me from the Haggadah, I just know it. Maybe it will be when Moses asks God to let his people go. Maybe my salty tears will taste like the bitter herb. I’ll be asked to remember the plight of the Hebrews, but remember the plight of my mother that continued on for so many years. I asked God to let my mother go, even if I never will.

Maybe I’ll cry when I read about the King of the Universe. Are you there God? It’s me, Carly. Why, why, why, why? Maybe I’ll cry when I sing, “Dayenu.” It would have been enough.

I’ll cry at the Seder and they will probably think it is for Israel. I’ll have to admit it’s actually about my mother, which is such a terrible loss, and not because they skipped the gefilte fish and the shank bone and dipping the bitter herb and none of it tastes the same. Because the grief I feel is not for a place, but a person who was the always the center of my world but always suffering.

Do I want to come see a rabbi? What will the rabbi have to tell me that I haven’t had to tell myself for the past 40 years? This isn’t our rabbi, this isn’t our synagogue, this isn’t our local community. I’m just an orphan and a 41-year-old baby who misses her mom.

I miss my mom, but she was never there. She was there for Passover, when we drank wine and left a cup for Elijah. When we sat at the dining room table with the leaves and extra seats. When we read the Haggadah, tasted from the Seder plate, served the matzah, brisket, and Grammie potatoes. The gefilte fish and butter with horseradish on a cracker. The chicken soup with the kneidls.

I’m going to cry during Passover and everyone is going to have to deal with it, including me. No one blames me. How could anyone blame me? Am I blaming me?

Happy Passover and full Libra moon. I don’t want to know everything, I can’t know everything, I’ll never forget the past.

Hey everyone,

I know that I can blame it on grief right now, but I’ve been feeling like a bad feminist not reading Lindy West’s new memoir, “Adult Braces.” While that’s certainly part of it, the truth is that I was a little disappointed in everything I’ve heard so far and being really intellectually lazy about it (while secretly enjoying the salacious commentary a little more than I should that has now warranted several reactionary pieces about why this is triggering everyone so much).

In fact, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed its existence were it not for the Substack digest landing in my inbox featuring about a dozen instant critical hot takes as if it were 2013 all over again. I can’t help myself from judging a book by its excerpts, but it’s now starting to require some due diligence to form an honest opinion. So, everything I am about to say right now is half-dishonest.

The feminist in me wants Lindy to win feminism. I want her to be so good at winning feminism that we reinstate Planned Parenthood and don’t feel afraid to use the world “abortion” because this is the same person who engineered the “Shout Your Abortion” social campaign. If that means staying in a toxic poly relationship and convincing herself that it is healthy and sustainable, may it move all of them to become the first-ever successful queer poly fat-straight alliance commune to fix America. If that’s the takeaway I’m supposed to get from this as a reader beyond her need for a paycheck and scoring a win with publishers, then go for it.

I recognize that sounds super edgelord-y of me, but I think Lindy’s self-esteem has become so fucking bad that she has forgotten who she is to everyone else: a symbol now marking the end of an era. She needs to rewrite that narrative because it’s starting to piss me off and is truly unfair to herself.

From everything I’ve been seeing so far, the consensus among her Xennial feminist fanbase is not good. When other people start to rewrite your narrative, you lose control of your own story, and I don’t like seeing disempowered women — especially by other women.

I don’t think everyone’s goal is to necessarily disempower her, but it’s clear that she’s committed to a story that is no longer serving her and surrounding herself with company that is not being entirely honest with her. Most of the criticism doesn’t really seem to be about her or even polyamory, but rather feeling sorry for her and a little resentful about her tolerance for what seems like pretty terrible behavior from her spouse while positioning it as feminist.

Since Lindy was the queen of hot takes and has a doctorate, I think there’s a real overestimate from women who probably consider themselves girl’s girls of how much she can dish versus how much she can take, resulting in number of scathing reviews that seem to have contributed to recent cancellations on her book tour.

As a writer, this bums me out. There’s nothing worse than putting your most vulnerable self into print only to get dogpiled on. Memoirs are very personal, so I can’t see not taking that personally. At the same time, her extreme sensitivity seems to be the only explanation I can find as to why no one said, “Hey, love you, but this isn’t a good look.”

Lindy is only a few years older than me and we’ve never met, but as a columnist, her work was very pervasive and conversational in this way that made you feel like you knew her. She’s emblematic of a blog era that catapulted writers to fame through the production of quick, high-volume, irreverent comedic writing using aggregated journalism — a labor of love and hate that usually met its demise after some corporate acquisition or, in the case of Gawker, a giant lawsuit.

Even if I didn’t agree with her sometimes, she was always entertaining to read and amplified topics that were important to me. She had a voice relatable to women of all sizes and inspired to share their own — something that has become increasingly challenging as the publishing field has narrowed, women’s issues have been reduced to lifestyle, and the overall multi-channel distribution of content has descended into technocratic-controlled anarchy.

No disrespect to the current Jezebel staff, but you can’t deny that Lindy’s voice at that time was so distinctively hers. It was unpolished but that’s what made it real. Look at her goodbye letter from Jezebel in 2014:

Man, what am I even supposed to say? Goodbyes can sniff my dong.

When I started at Jezebel, early in 2012, I’d been writing professionally for years but was still mired in impostor syndrome. I knew I had ideas and a voice (no shortage of voice), but was I right? Did my ideas deserve to be heard? (YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ANSWER THAT, KINJA.) Jezebel is where I learned to trust myself, to push. It’s where I really grabbed ahold of satire, realized the power of disguising tough topics as entertainment so they go down easy. It’s where I crystallized my worldview.

This job rules. It’s been the most thrilling, terrifying, and rewarding experience of my professional life. I get to write about farts AND abortions AND comedy AND fat ladies AND animal attacks AND Jurassic Park AND USE AS MANY ALL-CAPS AS I WANT. I am inexpressibly grateful and proud of the work I’ve done here. I will miss my coworkers every single stupid day.

But, anyway, I have a book to write and a blog to run and some naps to take and another thing to do that will be announced next week (follow me on Twitter!) and also maybe I’m just one of those shiftless, stir-crazy millennials who can’t stay at any job for more than a couple of years. IDK.

HOLD ME CLOSE TO YOUR HEARTS:

Ricky Gervais Broke My Heart

How to Make a Rape Joke

I LOVE ALL CAPS AND I AM NEVER GOING TO STOP USING THEM

I Re-Watched Titanic So You Don’t Have To. You’re Welcome.

I Rewatched Love Actually and Am Here to Ruin It for All of You

It’s Hard Enough to Be a Fat Kid Without the Government Telling You You’re an Epidemic

Every Outfit Shelley Long Wears in Troop Beverly Hills, Ranked

Because I am something of an earnest goober, I want to leave you with some real shit: You don’t have to be the Cool Girl. You don’t have to pander. You can be funny and sharp and responsible and humane all at the same time. But don’t be afraid to defend your boundaries. Call a dick a dick. Stuff is changing. We’re winning. NOW GO OUT AND GET IT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF IT. EAT IT. BITE IT. IT’S YOUR FOOD. I LOVE YOU.

Granted, how could you possibly know that by looking at the current editorial graveyard at Jezebel? Some are now calling this the “Millennial goober feminism” (or more accurately, Xennial) in this extremely reductive way that erases her meaningful contributions and accomplishments — which, in turn, is erasing all of ours and being dubbed “The Death of Millennial Feminism.” It’s insulting AF and I’m not having it.

Having a voice that large and popular was meaningful, which she used to propel initiatives like “Shout Your Abortion” — a 2015 campaign on Twitter as a reaction to when the House decided to go hard on defunding Planned Parenthood. (Did you know there isn’t a single fucking Planned Parenthood in Manhattan anymore? NEW YORK CITY. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?!).

She bounced to make a name for herself just as the publishing industry was starting to crumble, leading to columns at The Guardian and New York Times followed by a book deal and Hulu television adaptation — basically the dream trajectory for any journalist or writer who wants to be a legacy maker. And she was fat, too!

I recognize that identity is important for her, but as mid-size who isn’t exclusively interested in reading about body issues (because body insecurity is a tool of patriarchy, no matter what size you are), the fact she could appeal to me beyond that spoke highly of her talent as a writer. Her voice was meaningful for women of all sizes because she offered something extremely important to the body positivity movement: confidence.

So, I couldn’t have been more disappointed to see that — after leaving Jezebel on a high note with a giant middle finger to imposter syndrome — she’s still suffering from very low self-esteem, and I can’t imagine the current reception is making her feel very good right now. While I appreciate her honesty addressing that, it’s not exactly an inspiring takeaway and strays from the type of feminism she used to preach that’s not sitting well with her audience.

Beyond the relationship itself, which does not make a compelling argument for polyamory, she seems to have very hostile projections towards skinny women. I hope she remembers what the point of body positivity was: creating less judgmental spaces and more community for women of all sizes, colors, capabilities, and so on. We understood this as an intersectional thing, even if some people have just turned resentment into a brand and unable to dig themselves out of the hole they’ve thrown themselves into. Not all skinny women are out to get fat women and the more that we reinforce these dynamics only serves to hold us back from moving forward.

I don’t begrudge her of getting everything off her chest and hope it provides some sense of relief, but I would love to see a little more of that fire from her that isn’t defined by this weird relationship and who she is/is not fucking and her size as a determination of her worth. Frankly, it seems to be pulling her down enough that her equally notable sister-in-law and friends are starting to feel uncomfortable with the attention. I imagine it puts everyone in an awkward position of trying to be supportive while also neglecting to be completely honest with her because she’s not honest with herself. Sometimes being a good friend means breaking some bad news.

Genuinely, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and not be shitty. After all, the unbearable vitriol of the internet has been holding me back from going to agents with some of my own writing. When we uplift voices, it often comes with bearing a certain amount of responsibility and owning that, which undoubtedly comes with critics. Somewhere along the way, maybe she convinced herself that it would be more positively received than it has been — and maybe we’re being less constructive with our criticisms having all come up during that same writing era, serving as a good reminder that karma is a bitch.

I would rather root for someone to do better than tear them down. I want someone to be better off after they met me than worse. I think Lindy deserves better and that includes presenting herself in a way that invites that energy. Everything I’ve read about her husband — including her own commentary — is terrible and her weakened self-esteem seems to be a byproduct of a marriage that has resorted to using a third wheel as a crutch than an equitable emotional support system, or simply a humiliation fetish kink.

(According to the girl’s girls, they think your husband is a real POS and should dump him, by the way. The fact he decided to brush off any sort of personal responsibility to the valid criticisms by flippantly saying “Free Palestine” seems bizarrely appropriate for a dynamic steeped in white guilt for this entire emotional gaslighting narrative).

On one hand, any press is good press when it comes to book sales. But I also feel saddened by the idea of hate-reading her book, so I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, as well as an exceptionally long lead time to develop a more empowering narrative that isn’t like “Please understand and accept my weird relationship to myself and these two people in my home that none of you were even judging until I asked you to.”

The discourse on the internet surrounding this novel has been a little chaotic to observe, depending on the social platform, but I imagine the book will do quite well given the buzz. Part of me hopes that it will give her confidence to either leave her shitty relationship or just turn being poly into a personality trait reserved for dinner conversation and get back to work on more pressing issues where her voice is needed.

On a final note: I just want to say that being poly disinterested is not polyphobic and also very few of your relationships work out and invite in too much drama, and no, I am not joining your polycule!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do people in the service industry know what the word “service” means anymore? Based on the commentary I’ve been reading from industry professionals online, I’m starting to wonder.

As those of you who have been reading this newsletter know, I’ve had a major beef with the food world since the pandemic. Yes, COVID wrecked the industry — no one is pretending otherwise — but at some point, trauma stopped being an explanation and became an excuse. The worker reckoning was overdue, but somewhere along the way, restaurants that used to feel like a second home started to feel like a negotiation (and I hate it!)

Now that critical industry coverage has largely been replaced by influencers, there’s a growing disconnect between lived realities, expectations and operational norms of what hospitality should be. We market restaurants as experiences to consume, not as places people might actually want to work. That gap between demand and dignity shows up in the quality service. In many ways, I think we’ve forgotten the plot.

Beyond normalizing poor service, many workers now treat their jobs and their customers like adversaries. This has been disheartening to me as someone who has patronized restaurants, worked in them, and covered the industry for over two decades. From dive bars to world-class restaurants, the standard of hospitality is fading. The industry needs to find its center again as a place, not a brand.

None of this is about nostalgia. It’s about trust. When a diner walks into a restaurant, there’s an unspoken agreement: they’re paying for care. It is one thing to push back on disrespectful customers who violate that agreement, but it’s another to stop establishing the warmth and care that hospitality is supposed to offer. Everyone shares responsibility here.

No one will criticize a restaurant harder than someone who used to work in one, so here are a few of my thoughts:

It’s never OK to lie to your customers about what you are serving them.

On a recent Instagram post reviving a Punch magazine article from 2022 about the enduring popularity of skinny margaritas, countless bartenders bragged about making regular margaritas for customers who order them “skinny.”

The reason? Some said customers “don’t really know what they want,” while others claimed they don’t carry stevia syrup. If they actually wanted one, they’d get a tequila soda, one commenter remarked. They want a fantasy of a margarita without the calories—as though that’s an impossible dream.

Deciding that for them isn’t your call. It’s a breach of trust. You don’t know your customer’s dietary preferences, allergies, or reasons for ordering that way. And frankly, it shouldn’t matter. If you don’t have the ingredients, say so. If you don’t have a variation, clarify it. But quietly overriding someone’s order because you think you know better isn’t hospitality — it’s contempt.

The cost difference of tossing an unwanted drink is negligible, but ethics aren’t. Maybe some people don’t want heavy-handed triple sec and pre-made mixes. Maybe they’re trying to make marginally better choices while still participating socially. Maybe they just prefer the taste. None of that is your business beyond making the drink you agreed to make.

This argument that “the customer doesn’t know best” is the same one chefs used for years to dismiss gluten-free requests and dietary modifications they perceived as unnecessary and fake. Never mind that food allergens can literally kill people — it’s inhospitable to ignore a request and unethical to lie about it.

Are we really championing worker exploitation? Especially now?!

The erosion of hospitality goes beyond the local bar to the highest levels of the industry. Food stylist and writer Namrata Hedge recently wrote an in-depth Substack about her experience working as an unpaid stage at Noma — one of the world’s most celebrated fine dining restaurants, where diners travel internationally to pay $1,500 per person for a meal built on foraged ingredients and storytelling.

What should have been a serious discussion about the normalization of unpaid labor instead drew chefs defending the practice. As someone who worked two unpaid college internships while sleeping on an unheated floor in Chicago in the middle of winter — only to be offered more unpaid internships — I have very little patience for the “I went through this, so you should go through this, too” argument.

While I recognize the value of discipline and humility in the pursuit of excellence, a restaurant of that caliber, charging that much per guest, can afford at minimum a modest stipend. Invisible labor has always existed in hospitality, but you can’t sell a sunny narrative about sustainability and hand-harvesting while pretending your success doesn’t hinge on invisible labor — particularly when so many kitchens rely on undocumented workers they rarely defend. It’s moral hypocrisy.

The worker reckoning exposed real exploitation. It needed to happen. But somewhere along the way, the sentiment shifted from fixing what was broken to burning down anything imperfect. Unpaid labor was exactly the kind of practice organizing was supposed to address and yet here we are, watching chefs frame the ways they were exploited early in their careers as badges of honor. If the top restaurant in the world won’t set an example, what does that say for the rest of the industry?

Fuck your $10 lattes.

Yes, everything is more expensive — rent, labor, ingredients — but are we really charging $10 for a latte now? When a business owner proudly announces he charges more for a latte just because he can without transparency about sourcing, roasting, or added value, you stop getting my business.

There are plenty of operators roasting their own beans, sourcing ethically, and trying to do right by their employees and customers. It’s not an unreasonable question to ask an owner why they feel entitled to another $3 mark-up. While it would be delusional to expect every coffee shop to operate ethically, the “because I said so” attitude left a stale taste in my mouth. Whatever happened to hospitality? Why does every interaction suddenly feel like extraction?

Hospitality has never been a get-rich industry. Margins have always been slim, operators have always had to do more with less, some chefs and owners and customers have always been difficult. Kitchens have always been toxic, workers have always been exploited, owners have always overcharged, and resentment has always existed. None of that is new. It was messy, sure, but beneath that everyone was part of a shared ecosystem — many of whom were working towards the same values. This is an industry that has always been built on hard work and community. What has shifted is the sentiment from pride to resentment, service to scrutiny, collaboration to contempt.

Restaurants used to be a second home for me. It breaks my heart when I go now and feel like I’m paying money to take up space with someone who resents that I’m there. For its own sake, I hope the industry finds its center again. And if service no longer feels like it has a point, maybe we need to stop calling it hospitality at all.

Hey everyone,

Shana tova! In honor of the rapture/Rosh Hashanah, I decided to share a post-trip download on my Labor Day weekend in the Catskills where I took LSD and saw synthetic God.

Speaking of, content warning: I talk about God and drugs in this newsletter. Like, a lot. I use the word “God” a minimum of 70 times. Consider this the only time I will ever get fanatical about God (but through the lens as an eccentric travel writer reporting back after a drug-induced spiritual trip). Anyway, if God isn’t your cup of tea or you’re on not-so-good terms with God right now (no contact even!), consider this newsletter one to skip! But aren’t you even just a little curious what God looks like?

Legal disclaimer: I also need to underscore that nothing in here is a professional recommendation—medically or otherwise. I am not a doctor. I am just a woman who took LSD (and saw God). Seek a professional before attempting stunts at home; existential objects are closer than they appear.

On a final note, I want to thank my retreat host Simone Ver Eecke of Thyme Space. She is a brilliant kitchen witch with a focus on food and nutrition as intentional medicine and healing, and was the Event Manager for the Julia Child Foundation’s 10-Year Anniversary Award Series. I highly recommend booking with her! (Also, she did not provide the acid FYI).

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People are super touchy about God. And for good reason: Blood has been shed and people oppressed in God’s name century after century throughout history. People do fucked up shit ALL THE TIME in the name of God because God is scary and the scary people are made in God’s image, too. Religious fanaticism and drug-induced spirituality both carry baggage, and because of all this, talking about God can feel reckless. But being spiritual and being religious don’t always overlap and maybe that’s why I started wondering about alternate paths—like psychedelic Judaism.

Long story short: I know what I saw, and I saw God when I did LSD.

It wasn’t my first time doing LSD, but it was my first time finding God with it. It happened over Labor Day. As someone who was a child of working age reared in a post-Upton Sinclair, pre-apocalyptic unionized Chicago, Labor Day has become a spiritual American holiday for me to celebrate being completely unlabored and there was no better place to stick it to the man than touching grass in a mostly Wi-Fi-disabled environment on psychedelic drugs while trying to reconnect with meaning.

After a summer spent sick in July followed by a sprained ankle in August, by September I was overextended and mentally wrecked from a combination of FOMO, the current distress of existing on this planet, and the daily psychic assault of verbal and emotional abuse from strangers on the internet. With no relief in sight, the question kept coming up: what am I even fighting for, if not the will to live another day? Feeling directionless and unmotivated—symptoms that I now recognize as spiritual depletion—I was in need of some serious healing.

So, when I was invited last-minute to a femme-centered retreat in the Catskills for creative healers, I couldn’t have been more grateful to get the fuck out of Dodge and try to recharge my batteries. The invitation seemed both overdue and yet cosmically on time, as I was at my wits’ end and in existential turmoil. After all, how can I advise other people to go find a good time or live well when I feel so unhealed?

Obviously, other people working in creative healing spaces are feeling similarly strained to warrant such a gathering, and the whole experience of bonding with other women over a long weekend was so nourishing in ways I never could have imagined.

What I really wanted was permission to be completely fucking unlabored and self-absorbed. To reclaim my mental health and existential drive. That meant being disconnected from a bunch of bullshit and negative people making me want to die every day and instead rolling in a field, swimming in a pond, making watercolors of the mountains, and, unplanned, doing drugs that overpowered me with revelations of God.

This particular drug wasn’t part of the program, but came as a chance offering from a Burner with a penchant for pharmaceuticals and collective economic empowerment for women. Our Venn diagrams intersected on the chemical spectrum and I was given a golden ticket to embrace my spirituality and achieve enlightenment for a few hours as a reminder of why life is a gift. And it was there, under the clearest skies illuminating a glimpse of the limitless cosmos framed by the shadowy landscape of the Catskills mountains, that I bore witness to God.

I think I had been looking for God for a while but didn’t realize it. After all, I had been turned off by so many people telling me for years how and where to find God, what God looks like, what God wants for me, how I should talk about or spell God’s name—with a hyphen and a lowercase g, or God with a capital G, or by any other name. God can tell me Itself, can’t it?

Many feminists want to believe that God is a woman; others will argue God is trans. Mostly, that’s reclaiming God from patriarchy — or reasserting self-love after years of being labeled abominations. After witnessing God, I really don’t feel comfortable using pronouns to describe God at all because I am proud to announce that God is actually a giant pulsating tree organism thing with a million blinking eyes, so Its gender is kind of irrelevant.

I don’t think God cares how I spell Its name — but I do need to capitalize it because after all, God is the ruler of the universe: always there, always watching, but as a gigantic swirling pulsating tree organism thing with a billion eyes. It was everything: beautiful, terrifying, beyond human comprehension. I couldn’t look away then and I can’t stop thinking about it now.

The synthetic tree organism God deity is kind of monotheistic but also polytheistic because it’s a giant pulsating tree organism thing with a million blinking eyes blanketing the planet with power that transcends anything we could imagine. It is one, but made of many, in infinity.

Some might think that’s funny, I think, because they are not in touch with God. Or rather, they expect God to be something and are going to be very disappointed if God doesn’t show up the way they want. If God made us in Its image, am I just another one of the million eyeballs of the pulsating fractal tree organism thing?

I’ll tell you who God doesn’t look like: that image of Jesus plastered on the wall. I honestly blame Western religion for trying to make me believe that God is a person rather than a metaphor. There’s an arboreal octopus thing going on with God—which makes sense because I respect octopuses a lot and think they may be holy, particularly after watching all those escape videos where they squeeze through tiny holes and move between land and water. Besides, Octopuses are brilliant supernatural creatures that are probably messengers of God. (On that note, I couldn’t help but wonder if H.P. Lovecraft saw God, too, because there was something a little Cthulhu-esque about my pulsating fractal tree organism God encounter, but maybe a different kind of neutral-scary that was more beautiful and all-encompassing).

Judaism doesn’t tell you what God looks like, but I think references to “Lord our God, King of the universe” and the overall deference of male worship was a huge turnoff for me that I couldn’t really envision this higher power. Because Jews are a minority that do not proselytize, I’ve mostly heard the unsolicited word of God via Christians, who often will argue over whether Jesus had blond hair and blue eyes or was a Black man or a Palestinian, and expect me to think I’m going to be saved by this son of God as if I could ever rely on a man to show up for literally anything, including properly installing an air conditioner in my New York City apartment when being paid for it.

If anything, I was saved by morose Russian literature preparing me with a lifetime of disappointment with a certain sense of humor about it. Even then, those books acknowledged the confounding presence of God — even if 9 out of 10 times it was through the lens of Christianity, too.

At the same time, now that I know that God is a gigantic pulsating tree organism covered with billions of blinking eyes, technically, Jesus looks like God; we’re all made in the image of the gigantic pulsating tree organism. Honestly, this was the most enlightening revelation I’ve ever had about God, providing instant clarity about tree of life metaphors, a deeper understanding of why you shouldn’t stare at the sky, why head coverings are considered holy, why God is always watching, and, supporting my irrational rationale about why I can’t eat octopus anymore. I don’t think God cares that I’m neurotic.

Finding God mostly made me accept myself as I am. It made me grateful for the body I was born in and the complicated life I’ve led—for better or worse. Witnessing God renewed my sense of existentialism and ironically gave me more empathy towards religious people, even when they’re hateful adversaries acting out of ignorance. What a miserable waste of existence.

This isn’t a call to religion or prophecy, but an argument for taking a step back and asking yourself what exactly you’re fighting for if not faith in the human experience. In general, I’ve found that forgiveness is a real art that rewards the individual who can let go of the anger that eats them up inside and hurts long after whatever caused it. Seeing God made everything else feel so small and renewed my sense of gratitude for life.

God is just up there, looking down on all of us and watching us, but in this sort of non-interventionist yet deeply judgmental parental style of omnipresence rooted in extreme chaos. I fear God more than my parents. Like them, I have had an equally fair-weather relationship with few clear answers on an independent journey in accepting, forgiving, and learning to love anyway.

Regarding the drugs, doing LSD doesn’t guarantee bearing witness to God. The other person I did LSD with—the Burner who generously offered a tab as a kindness—did not find God and mostly found my report back kind of amusing but a little heavy with underlying trepidation and casual rationalizing citations from Johns Hopkins reports.

This is the same reception one might receive from those who consider themselves sane and “normal” because they’ve convinced themselves that being on pharmaceuticals and going to university is the key to social enlightenment—even if most of these people still look a little dead behind the eyes. I’m not arguing that medicine is bad—far from it. Some of these drugs are essential, even. But drugs aren’t a magic eraser for a life’s work, and they certainly don’t do the cleaning for you. I also suspect many drugs might tone down these experiences, which is why I have never done ayahuasca—a much more powerful psychedelic taken with intention and, usually by invitation, as part of spiritual ceremony.

I can’t stop thinking about my experience, and every time I do, I feel overcome with emotion. If you’ve been abused in the name of God, I know why you won’t trust this. History has plenty of atrocities committed under religious banners. Still, my experience left me with a complicated gratitude that felt worth naming.

From my own experience, finding God was a great reminder that we’re so lucky to be here and alive, even with all the messiness of the human experience that can feel so heavy, pointless, and helpless. For me, spiritual fulfillment looked like gratitude: an uneasy, humble recognition that being alive is a gift, even when nothing is certain.

Being here is a choice but it’s also a privilege, which includes the privilege of uncertainty and being terrified by what happens after death. If your suffering is structural or imposed, I can’t pretend prayer is a fix. But if your suffering is rooted in ego, small practices like gratitude or making amends can help.

Spiritual fulfillment renews your sense of gratitude, your capacity for forgiveness, your resolve to try. It made me accept myself more—despite years of outside voices telling me I was “fucked up” or “embarrassing.” God didn’t say those things; people did.

Many leftists are anti-God and believe this makes them more socially evolved and accepting. I’ve noticed that some progressives dismiss God-experiences as chemical hallucination, and maybe they’re right sometimes. But dismissing every outlier robs us of noticing how these moments can shift people’s lives.

Even after witnessing God, I still experience sadness, the perils of my own ego, and the depth of human emotion. That said, I’ll admit that most of my fear of looking for, accepting, or identifying with God was rooted in fear of social ridicule from secular friends who believe God is dead or irrelevant. The key for me is keeping an open mind and heart for whatever comes next.

Recent political trauma—especially around Israel—has made this conversation harder; I’ve had to explain my ethnoreligious identity in ways I never wanted to. (Though, this dilemma of struggling with God feels inherently Jewish). I’ve also been hesitant to share my half-formed views, worried they’d be judged or taken as representative of other Jews—but in the end, I don’t owe anyone my spiritual proof.

Everyone should find something that cracks them open; I found God with the help of LSD. God is greater than anything I could have ever imagined and renewed my gratitude for all our land, sky, and water. I wish we had abundance for all. That said, God’s presence doesn’t absolve us from environmental responsibility—the ash trees dying in the Catskills, climate change, and social unification are on us.

“Finding God” doesn’t necessarily restore reputational damage or absolve one of the problems they’ve created in their own life, even if it saves them from themselves to live another day (preferably a better one if they were enlightened).

Anyway, psychedelics are cool because they change your mind—but only if you want to change it. They allow you to be more open-minded, humble, and imaginative—but only if used responsibly. They’re not a daily habit. Integration work matters: therapy, rest, community—those are the things that translate a single trip into long-term change. I didn’t set to find God on drugs, but I’m so glad I did.

The worst part about achieving enlightenment over Labor Day weekend is that come Tuesday, you still have half-a-week to deal with—and all of it is stuff you just don’t care about it. By Tuesday, the inbox and chores return because life still needs to be lived; even the mundane moments. You can have my productivity; you can’t have my soul. I want to live another day and now I have more patience to try.

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Rachel Lichtman is a visual artist, comedy writer, and “conjurer of groovy worlds.” Her latest endeavor is the wall-to-wall carpeted world of Programme 4, local market television and radio transmitting from Golden Sands.

Programme 4 currently features an hour long broadcast of television, and three installments of the scripted comedy audio series Easy AM 66, a satirical Beautiful Music radio station, the third of which was released as a comedy album in 2024.

Her work has featured a cavalcade of notable actors, comics and musicians (including Tammy Fae Starlight, Michael McKean, the Sklar Brothers, Ted Leo, Aimee Mann, Patton Oswalt, and others), and she has produced, directed and written documentaries, live stage shows, full-length music shows, art installations, title sequences and over four billion music videos.

She is currently producing more deep-shag Programme 4 magic (and figuring out how to pay for lucite stairs that light up when you walk on them). Here, she answers five questions about what it takes to bypass traditional gatekeepers and gather your dream team together to bring a conceptual project to life.

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Q: Programme 4 feels like its own parallel universe, equal parts nostalgia trip, conceptual art piece, and inside joke for anyone who’s ever loved late-night public access or mid-century TV ephemera. Can you discuss the evolution of this project, including how it came about, the intention behind it, and what went into building it?

Around 2017, I started Network 77, a “channel” that had a glossier aesthetic —retro-futurism rooted in the proto-cable satellite stations and local bizarro shows of the early 80’s, with news magazine reports on “new wavers,” fake Scopitones, a music video in the style of Dutch pop TV. It was a beautiful attempt, a lot of fun to make, but an insane amount of work—and there was a self-imposed urgency attached to it, so I took on way too much, way too soon. So I pulled back, regrouped, and in hindsight I’m grateful that I had a minute to develop my voice and execution. If I was going to build something independently, I needed to change the scale. I still had so many ideas that I needed to see, so my design and technical skills evolved, and I did end up creating a number of fabulous projects under this umbrella.

Then the pandemic hit, which would change my perception and sense of self in many ways, and that extended to my professional ambitions. I’m certainly not alone in this, but there was a massive shift in my intention and priorities. First of all, I lost the urgency. I was forced to slow down and address what was and wasn’t working in my life. I felt fortunate that I had this creative outlet to play with, so I was inspired to keep at it, but stopped worrying so much about an end game.

I worked a lot during lockdown, directing creatively distanced music videos and producing/directing an entire Covid-era variety series (Ted Leo Presents), so many projects that called for an innovative approach to visualization. I worked on my own art and ideas, and would absolutely fetishize perfection, spending weeks on minutiae. These were projects that relied heavily on design, editing and animations that I could do from my studio. The financial and spatial limitations inspired creative workarounds that yielded superlative results, and intensively challenged me to get better at what I was doing. Some of the first pieces from this time period became A Man Named Brady and The William Joel Show. Beyond that, I had a lot of stuff still in the pre-Covid can, and I began to sift through things with more deliberation, connecting to myself and my work in a new way.

Then, while driving around listening to the easy listening station, which had become a daily therapeutic practice, I had a revelation to create a scripted comedy about the Beautiful Music format AM station in a fictional place called Golden Sands, a parallel universe outside of time and space where life was relaxed, and the news was as low stakes as a retirement community newsletter, announcements for Mah Jongg and the like. Making Easy AM 66 changed my entire approach to everything, my collaborations, my connection to the work, the kind of world I wanted to be in. Easy was everything I loved and remembered; I wanted it to sound like a hybrid of the now-defunct WJJD AM 1160 in Chicago, the backseat of my grandfather’s Lincoln Continental driving through West Palm Beach, and WEFM/WIMS, the local radio stations I grew up with in Michigan City, the ones that announced school lunches and snow days. It was a delightful place to immerse into, one that lacked the pervasive cynicism of now times.

After that experience, my continued shift into the lower budget style of local market television took a more intentional shape. I renamed the station, because it was different now. It became a world that was truly part of my DNA, that shaped my entire being — but infused with a surreal bent, like a fever dream, a transmission from another dimension. The feeling of being home sick from school in a medicinal haze, in and out of consciousness and not sure what you’re watching. It was less of a channel, more of a place, but I really wanted it to be more of a feeling: bits and pieces of an adult world through the eyes of a child who is not yet a part of it. The glamour of shitty restaurants, the importance of dry cleaning, the smell of cigarettes, the banality of local businesses, entertainers and lounges. I wanted to resurrect a dead world of leatherette upholstery and carpeting just under the surface. I luxuriated in its creation, enjoyed every second of not really worrying about who else would like it or even see it. It was my MGM musical, something to escape from the shitshow world-at-large. I never intended to do something nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake, I wanted to present an alternate dimension-at-large.

It really became an extremely personal, life-altering experience and a long process, and I can still see it now in every frame. It was soothing for me, and I have found that it has similarly connected with others. Someone messaged me today and said it reminded him of seeing his mom cry for the first time. That’s about as gratifying as it gets.

Q: So much of your work plays with the line between past and present, with retro aesthetics, analog textures, and faux archival material—but it’s also sharp and unmistakably your own. How have you developed your voice, integrated skills, and portfolio as an artist over the years?

I have always had a deep love of typography & design, particularly the aspirational quality of mid century advertising and packaging. A future where you want to be a better person, with a better hifi and a better scotch! I love when like, colored toilet paper packaging swings for the bleachers. Aspirational futurism is where it’s at, and what we should be doing more of: presenting utopian visions and possibilities. In terms of style, I never wanted to do something that looked intentionally shitty or “retro”—I wanted to create a timeless world that simply never stopped using this design, the world we were promised. I fully believe society’s collapse began when logos and signage and music started to infantilize public spaces. People used to make fun of Muzak, but I firmly believe that the world would be a much more civilized place if we brought that back. Amongst my earliest imprinting were surreal clips on Sesame Street where you’re just looking at circles animated to the sounds of Philip Glass. I think we’re missing that contemplative simplicity.

The most authentic and enjoyable way for me to build a world is creating a sort of decoupage using my own graphics with dead design that time forgot. I love thrifting for weird books and catalogs and pamphlets and crusty album covers, inspiration that isn’t on the internet anywhere. I am constantly on the lookout. I’m super fortunate that my friend Sean Tejaratchi (LiartownUSA) is the same way, and has shared an incredible library of clip art, catalogs and just countless resources. He’s also an actual graphic designer, and he has helped me develop my design skills beyond expectation. I’ve put countless hours into editing and animation as well, using that to my independent advantage. Most of the music videos I’ve directed, I’ve also edited. I’m really inspired by all-time greats like Maurice Binder and Sandy Dvore (whom I got to know via telephone before he passed, who had incredible stories about his ad agency days in Chicago), and of course Saul & Elaine Bass and Charles & Ray Eames and so many countless others I could name – it’s extremely gratifying to incorporate that inspiration in opening titles, logos, and the like, creating comedy with that level of design execution.

Q: The Easy AM 66 promo album brought together an incredible line up including Rich Koz, Tammy Faye Starlite, Michael McKean, the Sklar Brothers, Ted Leo, Aimee Mann, Patton Oswalt, and others to help round out this conceptual piece that feels fully formed without explanation. How did you sell this idea to such a range of talent, and what did collaboration look like across so many different styles and production values?

Considering that so much of what I do are jokes to make like three people laugh, somehow this has drawn brilliant and wonderfully talented people into my Rolodex over the years. I also need to mention the crackerjack core team of inspired geniuses that I can’t live without: Chris Murphy, Dag Juhlin, Dio Deltoro - incredibly, deeply funny talents and voice actors who provide such an incredible baseline of authenticity. Many, if not all of my collaborators are friends, and most everybody in this ever-expanding “company” knows everybody else from one backstage or another. They also know what kind of ridiculousness I peddle, and I rarely have to sell an idea, I just ask them and they commit to it fully. If I’m approaching someone new, it’s because I know that they’re a fan of previous work and that always leads to a “yes.”

I am absolutely honored to be able to work with every one of these literal geniuses, all incredible talents, whom I have revered as absolute heroes. It’s a murderer’s row of brilliance. Like I kind of can’t believe it. While it’s fairly intimidating to write for these legends, I am very specific about casting the right voices for the right bit, so I am able to write FOR those voices. They are my muses. Their comedic rhythms are embedded into my soul, so I try to channel that in the creation. I know when I have something for The Sklars vs Joel Murray, and it’s not interchangeable. I try to take into consideration how busy said person might be, careful not to overload them with too much, but I ended up pitching the lengthy Community Calendar piece to Michael McKean anyway, and not only did he agree to that, he composed his own music bed! Which is just an incredible feather in the cap.

On a technical level, I figured out how to integrate and refine a lot of different source material long ago, and I try to write material that is bulletproof for the talent, and produce it in a way that sounds cohesively from the same universe, if not the same studio. Audio engineering is yet another skill I’ve had to master, but I’ve also had the good fortune to have Ted Leo & Michael Penn help me to produce work at a superlative level.

Q: You have built an entire creative ecosystem outside the traditional gatekeepers, with no network executives or pressure to package yourself for an algorithm. What have been the biggest freedoms and challenges of making art entirely on your own terms?

The freedoms are why I stay in it. No one can tell me how to do it, no notes, no waiting in someone else’s line. As time goes on I am more resolved than ever to keep evolving this independent concern, to create an experience that taps into the desire for connection, for physical media, for non-corporate entertainment. Our collective culture could use some new pathways and platforms. The pendulum has to swing away from the internet and back into the shared experiences and word of mouth, which is how anyone finds out about anything cool, certainly how I did. It’s more powerful. Yes, it’s a slower burn, but also a slower rate of decay. I want to tap into the “Jingle Bells/Batman Smells” pipeline.

The art is all I care about, but I want it to be presented in an elevated context. I don’t want to spend all this time making a seven course meal and then watch the internet eat it in its car. I don’t love the flattening, especially alongside soulless AI which I do find to be upsetting but ultimately, fleeting. Artists will continue to differentiate themselves through more emotionally authentic work, to keep humans in touch with their humanity. It is radically important, especially right now, to express love and connection. It's a color that the evils out there cannot see, and ultimately their achilles heel. I’m focused on taking my whole shebang into the actual offline world, and I’m inspired to triple down and work harder to make that happen.

The main challenge, as always, is financial. Another is using a longform format in a time where people want things that are either 30 seconds or 10 consecutive binge hours. But as I have learned, every challenge, every limitation is a mitzvah that leads to a more creative idea and 100% of the time, a better idea.

Q: For someone looking to build their own self-contained creative world, whether it’s a YouTube series, a zine, or going full-scale into something big like you've managed to pull off, what is the first piece of advice you would give them? And what is the piece of advice you wish someone had given you before you started?

I would advise to stay connected to the work, stay authentic and away from what you think will do numbers. Love the process, kill your ego, do your ‘Hamburg’ time!

Also, learn how to do it all: the fucking ponderous file management, the website creation, etc. The most successful restaurant owners are former chefs who washed dishes and did every job and know the business from the inside out, including the not so glamorous stuff, the cake instead of the frosting. I know it’s a frosting world, but it’s more sustainable to be cake.

And to continue this cake analogy, don’t bite off more than you can chew, start with something manageable and see how it grows from the ground up. The greatest lie the internet ever told is that everyone is your audience. They’re not. Don’t equate numbers with value of work - go for quality vs. quantity every time. And YOU are your most important audience of all.

What's next for Rachel:

I am working on a new block of Programme 4 now, and I’m in talks with the good people at Browner Carpeting, planning some delightful presentations for the station in the new year. But with everything happening in the world, I’m going to stay as present as I can in the creation, as I’ve always done. The new stuff coming is all just so wonderful, so I would ask anyone reading to donate to Programme 4, or spread the groovy word to others, so I can keep the lights on at Centre 4000 Plaza!

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Nearly a decade ago, Sara Benincasa’s Real Artists Have Day Jobs landed during the height of the #GirlBoss era and hustle culture, offering an unvarnished take on what it really means to make art while paying the bills. Since then, the comedian, actress, mental health advocate and author (including her first three books D.C. TRIP, GREAT, AGORAFABULOUS!: DISPATCHES FROM MY BEDROOM) has gotten sober, swapped stand-up for hybrid creative work, and carved out a life that balances a steady day job with writing, performing, and producing.

Her next act? A presidential biography, Abraham F**ing Lincoln*, due from Grand Central Publishing. Here, she answers five questions about how her relationship to ambition has evolved, the privilege and reality of survival jobs, and why the “artistic magic” is always there if you love the work.

Q: Your book “Real Artists Have Day Jobs” came out nearly a decade ago during the height of the #GirlBoss era and hustle culture, making it both ahead of its time and right on time. So much has changed since then culturally, economically, technologically, spiritually. Looking back, what do you think your book captured about the moment, and what feels even more relevant to you now?

Well, I don't think I captured something specific to that moment, but I do think I was able to describe something that seems to have perpetually been a dilemma for artists: how do I do the work that I long to do while actually being able to lead a comfortable lifestyle? You know, with food and potable water and safe shelter and perhaps even some recreation now and again.

When I wrote the book in 2015 - it was published in April of 2016 - I wanted to highlight something seemingly eternal about artists: we usually need another source of income to pay all the bills, even if and when our art pays some of the bills.

Artists who hit it big and make all their money off their art forever and ever are few and far between. What's more common is that somebody makes all their money off their own art for a limited amount of time, and then has to take on other work in order to maintain their lifestyle. Why else do celebrities invest in outside brands, do so many endorsements, create makeup lines and branded merchandise, and so forth? More commonly, why do so many critically acclaimed authors also work as professors? Some of them love teaching and are indeed gifted teachers, but I'm sure a lot of them would say that they need the steady income and the benefits.

My point is that there's nothing wrong with that. It needn't be hidden. I hoped the readers of my book would feel less shame and more excitement, passion and enthusiasm around making the things they love to make.

Given the inflated price of just about everything nowadays, as well as the slashing of funds for arts grants and fellowships, and the extraordinary price of healthcare (something most non-U.S. artists generally don’t have to worry about so much) I think the book's message remains quite relevant. Many of my fellow writers and actors have found themselves unable or unwilling to sustain themselves off creative earnings alone, particularly as the cost of living in LA and NYC has skyrocketed, the entertainment industry has shrunk and production jobs have moved to other cities.

I haven't re-read the book in quite a long time, but I remain grateful that it seems to reach those who need it.

Q: Once upon a time, creatives could moonlight their day jobs while maintaining some mystique about how they earned their living and fueled their success. But the internet has made it nearly impossible to compartmentalize these things. How do you navigate that tension between being honest about survival jobs and still preserving some of that artistic magic?

I didn't actually have a day job when I wrote the book, but as I said in the book, I'd had day jobs before and had every reason to believe I might have them again. In fact, I started applying for full-time gigs with benefits about six months after the book came out. I was in a lot of credit card debt to sustain the delusion that I was making a living only off my creative income. This was another addictive behavior on top of my robust and active alcoholism.

I realized that my WGA insurance wouldn't last forever if I didn't sell more scripts, and after applying for over 100 gigs (some of them in that very simple mass-application way that LinkedIn permitted), I did five interviews with one employer and got hired. I've been employed there for over eight years now, mainly working from home.

Because I did in fact get additional screenwriting work, I didn't need to buy into my employer's health plan for the first year, which was cool. But I enrolled in the employer plan for the second year, and was fortunate to be able to still see many of the providers I'd seen through the WGA insurance.

The funny thing is that I’m actually quite good at my day job and it’s a pretty neat career track of its own. I produce a lot of photoshoots and do a lot of copywriting. I also take on freelance gigs.

I want to add something that I think would be disingenuous not to acknowledge in the context of this discussion. I’m enormously fortunate to have benefited from my parents’ generosity during times of unemployment or low pay. That’s an undeniable privilege that has absolutely shaped my ability to do some of what I do in the way that I do it. When you don’t have to worry about getting something to eat or being able to go to the doctor, your entire life is made easier - even if you’re in pain and suffering - and there’s no two ways around it.

One may suffer enormously with mental illness and addiction, as I have. But being able to access good, consistent treatment in this country is extremely difficult unless you’ve got a supply of cash.

I do think I would’ve killed myself if I hadn’t gotten sober. And getting sober was free. Thank God for that. It didn’t fix everything, but I’ll tell you it made me see even more clearly the difference between me and somebody who is struggling under an enormous load of college debt, or somebody who has a disability that renders them unable to work.

When somebody is a single parent working several jobs to survive and trying to find the time to write or perform, it is a much more difficult position. I have a friend who is a quite successful actor and comedian, and when she was doing standup many years ago, she sometimes had to bring her baby with her to the comedy clubs, even on stage, because she didn’t have childcare.

Ideally, you use your privilege, whatever it may be, to enjoy life and help out those who don’t have as much. I’ve always tried to do that in different ways. But it can’t buy you talent, and it certainly can’t buy that artistic magic… Which brings me back to your original question.

The artistic magic is always there, I think, if you love your art and you're proud of what you do. I mean, we all make art that sucks sometimes, and there are definitely things I've created or worked on that I wouldn't do again. I’ve certainly grown and changed and matured in a lot of ways thanks in no small part to people who educated me or had patience while I educated myself.

There are people who will only reach out to you or engage with you when they see a notice in Publishers Weekly or Deadline or whatever, but those aren't your real friends. There are also friends who can only rock with you when you're working in obscurity, and can't stand anybody else getting a little attention. Those aren't your real friends, either.

Your art is your art, as long as you want it to be.

Q: The idea of “making it” feels more ambiguous than ever. How has your own relationship to creative ambition evolved in the last decade and how do you protect that definition from the outside noise?

Ooh, that's a great question. Well, in the past decade I've lived in four states, gotten sober, and made some other major changes. My creative goals have changed for sure. I used to do stand-up comedy, but had been slowing that down for a couple of years before Real Artists Have Day Jobs came out. It was my fourth published book and I had long realized that I love performing onstage and onscreen - storytelling, hosting weird comedy shows, giving speeches, interviewing and being interviewed, acting - but not doing stand-up. I love some of the people I met during my years in stand-up and I certainly have a respect for the art form, but I don’t feel drawn to doing stand-up myself - usually. Once in a while, the old itch comes back.

Writing has always been my first love, and stand-up was really a way to get my writing onstage. So it was a relief to recognize that I could go in the direction of my gut versus the brain that said, "But you could book this and this and this and make money this way and do these cities and..."

It was a fun time and a really educational time in standup, but I'm good with the weird hybrid direction in which my career has gone. I host a live pseudo-educational comedy show, CLASS!, once a month here in Chicago at Lincoln Lodge with Chad the Bird, who is far more famous than I, and it is a damn treat. I took some time off from book writing to get my mind in some sort of shape - what I'm really saying is, I didn't have any solid book ideas for many years but kept writing for magazines, Substack, Patreon, etc.

This year I sold an Abraham Lincoln biography to Grand Central/Hachette, which I'm working on in between the ol' day job stuff and having an actual personal life. I owe that entirely to being sober and to my agent, who has stuck with me for about 17 years now.

Q: In a time when so many creatives feel burned out, priced out, or questioning “why bother?” what keeps you going? Do you have any creative rituals or practices ground you?

I believe I have something worthwhile to say and that there are at least a few people who enjoy me saying it. But bigger than that is simply the urge to tell good stories. It’s always been there for me and perhaps it always will be.

I have never imagined that I would be the best and the most beloved, and the all-time greatest, and the one who received the most awards, so that’s actually been a huge benefit in keeping my head on straight about those kinds of things. I can still be really self critical, and I can feel wistful and even envious, but I’ve never labored under the delusion that I would win a Nobel prize for literature, for example. I definitely hope my work is well-received, and I have financial goals, but I like to think I’m fairly reasonable about it while still dreaming big.

Q: What advice would you give someone who feels like they’re starting over creatively mid-life or trying to start anything in this current economy?

Do what you need to do to take care of your basic human needs first. I’m going to include mental healthcare in that even though it’s so often is excluded from our American narrative about what makes one “healthy.” I support the Entertainment Community Fund, an incredible organization that helps anyone in entertainment in the U.S., regardless of union status or location. If you need help paying the rent or getting out of an unsafe home situation or getting healthcare, they are a fantastic resource and I encourage you to check out their website.

You may worry that you’ll make mediocre, art or bad art, but remember that you can’t make any art at all when you’re dead. So if you are suffering with suicidal ideation, addiction, and so on, I recommend the 988 Lifeline. You can call, text, or chat online, and they have options for Deaf and hard of hearing folks.

Do not be afraid to ask others to contribute to your work financially through a platform like Patreon, Kickstarter, Substack, etc. There are people with no outside income or help and people with lots of outside income and help who use these platforms and succeed beautifully. I contribute to a few creators in this way. I also use Patreon as well as Substack and they help me to be financially solvent. Just make sure you can fulfill your promises to supporters. Make it sustainable. This can take some experimenting.

With regard to projects, somebody told me not to worry about making it perfect, just to get it done. And that’s absolutely brilliant advice.

What’s next for Sara:

On Saturday, August 16th at 6 p.m. I'm doing Bootleg Safari with Aaron of Effin' Birds fame at FanExpo Chicago. CLASS! is back on September 17th with me and Chad the Bird at Lincoln Lodge right here in Chicago. Tickets are on sale for our September, October, November and December dates too!

I’ve got a newsletter called SARATONIN at SaraJBenincasa.Substack.com and a Patreon. I’m available for lectures and presentations on creative writing and mental health through Collective Speakers.

And please check out the Entertainment Community Fund as well as Miry’s List and RAICES Texas. These are three fantastic nonprofits helping people in need around the country.

Real Artists Have Day Jobs (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Tell You In School) is available at bookstores everywhere. Pick up your copy here.

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5 Questions with Carla Sosenko

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What happens when you turn your inner monologue into a memoir? For writer Carla Sosenko, it meant confronting her past, her body, and leaning hard on humor as a survival strategy.

She didn’t set out to write a body memoir. She just couldn’t not write it. Living with Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome—a rare genetic condition that causes port-wine stain, lymphatic malformations, and limbs of different sizes—meant a lifetime of never quite fitting in, and almost never seeing anyone like her reflected in the media.

In her new book, I’ll Look So Hot in a Coffin (Dial Press), Sosenko offers a funny, raw, and unflinchingly honest look at self-image, shame, and surviving your own brain. She’s candid about everything from getting liposuction at eight years old and working in lifestyle media to the cruelty of strangers and how the Ozempic craze fits into all of it. More importantly, by sharing her story, she hopes to make others feel less alone—and more empowered to tell their own.

After two decades, two agents, a stack of rejections, and a lot of persistence, the book was finally released in May—rolling in hot with a lot of hype (including early praise from Harper Bazaar’s “The 28 Most Highly Anticipated Books of 2025”). Here, she answers five questions about her process, finding her voice, and what she’d tell other writers ready to put pen to paper.

Q: Your book offers a very intimate look at the internal and external struggle of finding self-acceptance and joy with an unconventional body. What was your relationship to your reflection while writing this book? Did it shift in any way?

What a great question. I didn't notice any sort of shift while I was writing. I think even though my book is a memoir, I was sort of able to remove myself from the material and connect with it first and foremost as a writer. It almost felt like I was writing about a character, someone else, not me.

When you write a memoir you're in this weird position of being both the subject and the creator, and I think I sort of naturally gravitate much more toward caring about the writing itself. It just feels like material, so I'm able to live outside of it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing—for my writing or mental health.

I will say that since the book's release, I have felt much more conscious of my body. Not in a negative or positive way, just aware of it in a way I haven't been in a long time. I didn't see that coming, and it's very much not conscious. I can't easily point to an exact reason why, like, "Well, now that the book is out there, naturally there is more attention on my body, so it makes sense that my awareness would shift." I mean, that's true, but I haven't fully unpacked what's happening yet, or tried to figure out why it's happening. It's a bit disorienting.

Q: How long did it take to translate this idea into a finished book? What was the process like and is there anything you wish you'd known before starting?

Oh god, such a long time. The first time I had any inkling that I wanted to write about my body was in grad school, when I was working mostly on fiction and playwriting. I tried to do that thing where you write fiction that's not really fiction, but I was only 25 and hadn't worked through any of my body stuff yet—and I was also a baby writer, so didn't have most of the skills I needed—so there was no way I was going to writing anything meaningful or good.

In fact, I remember being in a novel workshop and mentally giving my protagonist K-T but not putting that on the page, so the character had all my insecurities but no discernible reason for them, so all my classmates found her perplexing. In my head I was thinking, "I know something about her that you don't." Then I tried to revise and gave her K-T, but I was absolutely not ready for that. I could go into a workshop and listen to people talk about the work and completely separate myself from it, but I remember one day after class somebody trying to talk to me about it and I was like, "Nope! Nope! Abort!"

After that it was really picking up the book and putting it down over and over. Signing with an agent, doing the book proposal, she couldn't sell it. Giving up for a couple of years, signing with another agent, she couldn't sell it. On and on. I honestly thought I was done with it but just couldn't let it go, and the stars finally aligned. I found the right agent, who understood the work—Lindsay Edgecombe, at Levine Greenberg Rostan, who is amazing—and then the right editor and team (Annie Chagnot and later Emma Caruso at Dial), and that was it. Just 20-plus years of trying and failing and trying again.

The moral of that story is to KEEP AT IT. Just keep writing. Take breaks, but then keep going. I think even in my most pessimistic moments I knew deep down somewhere that I would publish my book. I didn't know what that would look like—maybe I would self-publish—but I knew I didn't really have it in me to give up.

Q: Was there a point when you thought, ‘This is too much. I can’t publish this’? What helped you push past that moment and stay committed to telling the truth as you saw it?

Honestly, no. I find the act of revelation to be really liberating. It's a much healthier place for me to be than just sitting on all of it. I'm not someone who necessarily goes deep into my emotions with many people in my everyday life. I am very outgoing and open, and I have wonderful, close friendships, but I don't actually work through my feelings with other people very often. I do that through writing, so I sort of can't not do it.

Writing is too important to me—and I like the sound of my own voice enough—that unless I were worried about hurting people or doing harm in some way, then no, I never considered not going forward. Part of it is that I've had some practice, with personal essays I've published, but obviously I willingly wrote those essays, so I clearly gravitate toward airing things out. The only worry I had was whether anybody I love would feel bad reading the book—specifically my parents, who I adore—so I think it took me longer to write those parts. But once I had them down, no. I had to keep going.

Q: Did you ever worry about being too funny (or not funny enough) when writing vulnerably about things like shame or longing? How did you strike the balance?

I don't really consciously think about how I'm writing while I'm doing it. Writing may be the one thing I do in my life sort of mindlessly—and I mean that in a good way: without judgment or thought, I just...write. That probably sounds like a flex, but I'm actually much more impressed with writers who can consciously impact the way they write. Especially with the kind of writing I'm currently doing, I think the voice—and the balance of levity with shame—is a reflection of how I am in my real life. It goes back to that whole question of "do I reveal this or don't I?"

For me, hiding has never really gotten me anywhere; it just creates more anxiety. I keep thinking about trying to go back to fiction, and that scares the hell out of me. I want to be able to write a great novel, and it seems like the absolute hardest thing to do. With my book, you're really just hearing my personality and voice. So I never worry about being too funny and definitely don't worry about not being funny enough, because I am conceited when it comes to my sense of humor. I'm pretty confident that I have a good one and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.

In my real life or on the page, if there's a question of whether it's inappropriate to be funny in a certain situation, nine times out of ten I'm going to go for the joke and cross my fingers. I would much rather use humor when it's slightly inappropriate than look back on a missed opportunity.

Q: What would you say to someone who’s afraid to write their own mess onto the page?

JUST DO IT. It's your mess. For one thing, you can write it down and never show anyone. But let's say you decide you want to—you can. You just can. It's not as easy as I'm making it sound, and there are people with much more complicated stories than mine, who would face real repercussions for writing down, say, something potentially embarrassing for their family or something that could endanger their career. Those are real things to take into consideration. But that's certainly not something to worry about at the beginning.

When you're writing, you're just writing. You're not doing anything to anybody. When and if you decide to make that work public, you'll have to think about things and figure out how to want to handle them. Do you want to talk to your family first? Do you want to make a pros and cons list of reasons you should or should not try to publish?

I have a friend who passed this advice down to me that she heard from someone—it was in the context of flaking on plans, which is something I do often—and that is, "Given the choice between guilt and resentment, choose guilt." I think about that all the time, and I think it applies to writing too.

The other thing I would say—and this applies to all first drafts of anything—is don't worry too much about what the finished product is going to look like. Just write. Writing can be pretty thankless—it's so solitary, with no guaranteed publishing contract at the end—so if the thing you're writing is important to you, that's reason enough to just keep going. Write the mess and let it be messy. I think most of the real work comes in revision.

BONUS: What's next for you?! Are you working on another book or was there anything that didn't make it in that we can expect to see coming soon?

I have pie-in-the-sky aspirations. I would love to adapt my book into a one-woman show, and that's something I've started talking to a friend about collaborating on. I would love to see the book adapted for TV. I'm working on a proposal for a second nonfiction book right now, and like I said, I dream of writing a novel, I just have to buck up my self-confidence in that department. I may need to take my own advice there and just sit down and write, and not worry so much about how it's going to look in the end. Basically I just always want to be writing. I am my most joyous and fulfilled when I'm writing, so if I can find a way to keep doing that for the rest of my life, I will be a happy girl.

I’ll Look So Hot In A Coffin is available at bookstores everywhere now. Pick up your copy here.

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Jews across America were stunned to learn last week that NYC chose a Muslim socialist who doesn’t like Israel over a noted lech with a running tab of 13 claims against him. Meanwhile, the rest of America was stunned to realize that Jews don’t actually control the media, weather, or Hollywood—and that maybe they don’t care about identity politics as much as they thought they did.

(Also, some were stunned to figure out this is a local mayoral race, not a presidential or gubernatorial one, so it’s mostly a dog and pony show).

Between the BDS bros and the billionaires, where’s a Jew supposed to go?

On one hand, I get it. Who needs to harangue on individualism when there’s class solidarity: an opportunity to afford ourselves a different set of principles also based on lies. This is the political platform everyone is enthusiastically signing up for, mainly because it underscores how bad our education and health care systems are from years of buying into yet another unchecked class system that obviously has not benefitted everyone.

If Jews hadn’t sounded the alarm on hate crimes that still go unanswered or his refusal to distance himself from the problematic blanket statements amplifying it (while rapping, no less!), everyone would have just noticed that he’s kind of just your run-of-the-mill hipster and otherwise pretty wholesome. After all, his mother is the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated filmmaker behind “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding,” and his hot wife is an exceptionally talented multidisciplinary artist and frequent animator and illustrator for The New Yorker and Tate Modern. They’re a culturally dynastic couple with deep ties to American racial discourse and elite creative institutions—even though he’s vocally anti-classist (the paradox where most intellectuals suffer).

People really underestimate optics in a post-Vice world during an era where filters and AI dominate everything. If you’re not personally impacted by antisemitism, you’re probably not paying attention to it, or at least paying enough to recognize when it’s upsetting a bunch of Jews and hope that the ticket that finally frees Palestine (if only it was that easy).

It’s a lot easier to applaud someone for boldly trying something different and failing on delivering a bunch of things that no one even expects him to in hopes of dismantling the status quo. To be completely fair to him, Mamdani wasn’t (entirely) running on Jew hatred—though it helped.

Laughably and predictably, he is already being labeled a Zionist as a slur and flagellated by BDS leftists who believe any acknowledgment of Israel to exist is backing a watered down version of a genocidal colonialist project through Nazi inversion—many of whom are weighing in from air-conditioned podcast war rooms in occupied Los Angeles, as if anything we do in our city is any of their fucking business. And he hasn’t even won office yet!

Mamdani is really running on the collective hatred towards the unchecked billionaires who evade reasonable taxation, amplify class inequality, and supersede government power—the same issues Bernie and AOC have shouted from the rooftops while Democrats fail to act on them. Bernie, to his credit, has long prioritized economic populism over the rising antisemitism in his base (because that’s what makes you electable, even if it makes you expendable) and exactly how he pulled the vote from Hillary by ignoring all the sexism driving that, too. When I don’t think about myself, it turns out that everyone likes me a whole lot more (really no different from the average daily female experience).

Because some New York City Jews have generational wealth—the kind that funded the humanities and arts for decades—we are now collectively entangled in a problem no one wanted to pay attention to until the crisis in Israel. Obviously, not all of us are rich but our country has proven incapable about recognizing that Jewish people are not a monolith, so we’re all impacted by this unspoken caste system.

Simpletons have an easier time making a visual connection to a guy wearing payot using those helpful demarcations established by Hitler to wrangle some Hasid out of a few shekels as a target for their frustrations rather than trying to bum rush a golf course where there might be shot guns and pick up trucks filled with guys who know how to tie a noose and work with local police to get rid of a body. This is why I’ve been struggling about whether I can wear my Star of David necklace without fear of being cornered somewhere by people who feel triggered by ideological differences and emboldened by an administration that is willfully indifferent about it.

Personally, I’d love it if we could all stop looking at each other this way.

I think many Jews are still in denial that we can ever reclaim public favor among the majority of young people who simply do not recognize what any of this means to us or care. The only people taking classes on global Jewry are other Jews—to everyone else, it’s “Bible stuff.” Which is unfortunate because the Jewish lens has witnessed a lot of shit and has receipts to prove it.

Assimilation as a passive form of erasure is appealing because it eliminates any creeping reduction of church and state separation by getting rid of what they see as the aforementioned “Bible stuff.” I see it as hypocritical thought policing and selective weaponizing of identity that rubs me the wrong way.

That said, everyone has assured me that Israel is not actually going away even though they keep chanting it, so I guess if I really hate it, I can just apply for aliyah. It feels strange considering so many people are fleeing for safety, but it’s only fair that if my own community tokenizes me when it works in their favor that I should tokenize my “Zionist privilege” for front row seats at the apocalypse. There are worse places to die.

At the end of the day, I believe that I am a Jew. After having a handful of near-death experiences, it’s alwayas resulted in renewing my gratitude for life, instilling faith in a higher power, and wanting to be a better person—and that includes being born again a Jew each and every single time, even for all of its liabilities. I feel deep spiritual fulfillment reading Torah, even when I am only half-reading words I don’t understand. I don’t feel that way with other religious texts, even if I recognize and respect that is the feeling others get from those books. (The closest second was maybe Ba’hai, a peaceful non-hierarchical spiritual practice rooted in the idea of progressive revelation and community that I spent some time with when I was a teenager). I also never force this on anyone and appreciate the mutual respect there.

The left, indifferent to the struggles of the Jewish community, are not so different everyone turning a blind eye in a post-9/11 America when every brown person was subject to discriminatory and reductive Islamophobic policies shaping TSA and DHS. This has mostly allowed antisemitism to run rampant because defense of our people is seen as not being a team player in the collective fight against genocide.

Assimilation has always been key to Jewish survival, so Jews have a few options here:

1. Go back to assimilating and eating bacon cheeseburgers.

2. Go to Israel, where there are burgers but no cheese.

3. Learn Krav Maga and take your chances.

In the face of rising hostility and selective solidarity, many secular Jews may find themselves defaulting to the kind of covert survival our ancestors perfected by fitting in just enough to not get clocked. Historically, this meant changing your name or your nose; now it might mean keeping your Star of David tucked inside your shirt and avoiding the word “Zionist” altogether. I recognize the irony of a “have you thought about going back in the closet” argument during Pride weekend—but apparently some queers still haven’t.

Luckily, a lot of Jews are in tech, so they’re already poised to become the next generation of crypto Jews: anonymous, adaptable, and deeply aware of just how much visibility can cost you. Anti-Zionist Jews might notice the creeping feeling that they are only safe until they start being a little too Jewy or have to deal with a real-life encounter with antisemitism where none of their friends care—particularly without all the Big Jews to make them feel safe about it.

While it’s true this is only a primary (a mayoral primary, at that), it does indicate that New Yorkers are ushering in the socialist fantasy. What’s cool about socialism is that it makes an already expensive landscape even more expensive—but with the reward of all the social services that we should have been paying into with our tax dollars all along that will somehow still be shitty. That is why democratic socialiasm was not my first choice—but always happy to be proven wrong.

The good news is that if the rent is frozen and wages skyrocket to $30/hr, then everyone can afford $15 cups of coffee—something Gen Z is happy to do, with a sunnier outlook on what amounts to self-imposed povvo lines. I feel like alcoholism may have a comeback this year, which is never a good sign except for the alcohol industry. But maybe if we tax the liquor industry hard enough, it will make everyone just miserable enough to pay for all of this stuff.

While I personally think Zohran bit off more than he can chew, I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt to deliver on all the promises that were made and then some—even though I yet to meet a man that isn’t a future disappointment. And while he could very well be a Manchurian Candidate, I’m going to place faith that he’s not and will just disappoint us gently, like Brandon Johnson. At least his heart is in the right place, I guess.

Anyway, that said, if Mamdani wants to be a public servant, he can serve me my current wishlist to be considered for America’s Next DemSocialist Messiah:

1. Birth Control Baskets: So behind the baby baskets! Also, as someone who pays 3x the amount in taxes living in Manhattan, I want free birth control and abortion rights, too, seeing as we are among the last sanctuary cities holding out in a national crisis and will likely be pulling in a lot of medical tourism from desperate pregnant people soon who don’t want to become the next Adriana Smith. Why do city rats get free birth control and humans can’t? Please offer that as an option—better yet, a choice. (I didn’t like that this wasn’t on your campaign website).

2. Rent Freeze: Everyone tells me that DiBlasio did this, so I guess you can do it, too, and will be the first action item I expect. That said, I’ve also been told that DiBlasio used to go to the YMCA every single day in the middle of the afternoon to exercise and everyone hated him for this. Do yourself and all of us a favor by making sure to look at the rest of his administration and try not to do that.

3. Free Buses. The MTA—specifically the 1 line—was brutally impacted by the recent week’s heat wave. Are you replacing all that infrastructure now that it’s free? Also, don’t you have zero control over the MTA?! Aside from that one senator, how are you even promising any of this? There’s also that matter about the rise in unhinged behavior and violence on the subway. Again, all great ideas, can’t wait to see you deliver on them—still don’t understand how.

4. Increasing the Minimum Wage to $30/hr.: Sounds good, but how much does that make a cup of coffee now? Asking for the folks trying to pay their employees a living wage and keep their doors open—as well as myself, who doesn’t want to pay $15 for a cup of coffee. Are we just making the US dollar needlessly expensive now to compete with Sweden? Is this going to be setting the national standard or just enticing more people to become resentful or try to move here?

5. PR Management and Human Decency: What’s going on with the whole Jew hate stuff? Are you going to tell people to stop hate crime-ing us since you’re the DemSocialist Messiah? Will I have to listen to shitty podcasts made in Brooklyn to know what’s happening with your administration? (I would consider voting Republican out of spite if you do that). Also, be ready to get dunked on. Politicians are open game to be dunked on all the time—unless you’re the ayatollah. I still have the choice to show my hair in public, right? Since we’re bringing ruthless international politics into the NYC mayoral office where we hold individuals accountable for the actions of foreign governments, figure we should put that on the table to keep things level.

But really, I hope I am proven wrong. I don’t know if the Middle East will ever fix their shit anymore than anywhere else—but I’m tired of fighting.

At this point, I don’t know where I belong politically. I don’t feel safe among the far left, and I absolutely do not want to be embraced by the right. I want community, but don’t want to have to disown part of myself to be included—even if I know how to blend into the background. Maybe that makes me politically orphaned. Or just honest. But as I’ve said before: honesty is the new irony.

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Because I moved so much as a kid, I’ve always had a loose relationship with entering established social dynamics. Sometimes there’s power in being the new kid, but more often, it’s a transitional, transactional experience and you learn not to get too comfortable. After all, some dynamics started before you and will outlast you.

I never saw myself as a loner—just realistic. I didn’t have a conventional face or body, a conventional family, or a conventional way of thinking and learning. But I lived in a conventional society and had to make do. Naturally, I gravitated toward art programs, because that’s where the misfits and non-conformists go to die.

It wasn’t that anyone was immune to conventional thought—especially when it came to shaping how we view ourselves and others. I just knew the system wasn’t built for me and was fine with that. I didn’t see a need to resist on principle when I could just work ten times harder to avoid being recognized and called an embarrassment. Fortunately, I also grew up with Girl Scouts, DIY culture, and riot grrls—the cheerleaders I needed to remind me that sometimes life requires carving your own path.

We didn’t have terms like “neurodivergent” or even “autistic” in everyday language—certainly not in any way that helped you make sense of your experience. These weren’t words of empowerment back then. And sometimes I wonder if the internet’s embrace of outsider identity has pushed people into their own bubbles, where the oppressed become gatekeepers and finally having power makes some folks a little sanctimonious, blurring the line between advocacy and alienation until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I could never quite tell which parts of how I saw the world were shaped by circumstance or by biology, but also never felt the need to separate them.

I wrestle with my own ego constantly, which I blame equally on art school and journalism. Both are disciplines that teach creative people to hate themselves before throwing them into a capitalist system that never valued them to begin with. The masterclass should’ve been called How to Remain Creatively Competitive in a System That Wasn’t Built for You, but instead it was something abstract like Why Neoliberalism Is the Tool of the Oppressor—and Other Theories You Can Think About While Mentally Clocking Out at Your Minimum-Wage Job.

By the time you graduate from an “enlightened” program, you should be spiritually broken and financially illiterate. You’ll enter the world to struggle like every artist before you, quietly assessed for long-term capital value while barely scraping by in your lifetime. Your heart will harden, not only from outside rejection but from the internal monologue that tears your work apart with precision. Ironically, the skill that will serve you best is bullshitting. That’s the one that can carry you for life.

Art school was more of a lifeline for me than a calling. I grew up in a volatile home with a mentally ill parent, dragged between school systems and courtrooms after each eviction or arrest. It was common to be woken in the middle of the night by my mother’s piercing screams, convinced we were being gassed or electrocuted. We’d drive for hours, then check into a motel two counties away, only to return in time for school where I got to listen to other girls talk about their eating disorders and how inadequate they felt.

Because we moved so much, I couldn’t join team sports—even though I always envied the soccer girls with their braces and uniforms. My teeth were overcrowded, and my schedule didn’t allow for practices or fees, but I could run, and sometimes I’d even win.

Eventually, I joined track, where I finally got to fit in and develop an eating disorder just like everyone else. I’d do hundreds of sit ups every night and drink so much water, barely eating anything else. I ran my best mile time that year—a casual 8 minute 24 seconds—during a practice session when I wasn’t even trying my hardest. I was a sprinter, though not as good as everyone else whose families did fun runs and Turkey Trots. I always came in fourth. My mile time was considered slow for a distance runner, most of clocked in under 7 minutes. In retrospect, I was punishing myself for no real reason beyond wanting to join in the collective misery of feeling inadequate.

Halfway through the indoor season, I got shin splints and passed out during a sprint series because I wasn’t eating. After that, I found the school radio station. I needed an extracurricular, and picked up smoking because everyone else did. I tried to get boys to have sex with me, but they said they “respected me too much.” (I still don’t know what that means). I kept trying to be normal, but normal just felt like disillusionment.

I worked three after school jobs and was still broke, a jack of all trades and a master of none, criticized by people who never once wondered how I was managing it all, but still expected me to think about everyone else. Maybe that’s why I volunteer more than they do—because I actually know what it’s like to go without. Part of that work isn’t just offering encouragement or feedback to kids—it’s being honest, so the next wave of creatives can enter with a little more clarity and a little less delusion.

It’s strange because I don’t think much about high school. Mostly because, even while I was in it, I wasn’t thinking about it. I just saw the future—the one where I wasn’t living with the psychotic mother, had a cool job, and maybe everyone (including myself) could see where I was underrated. I didn’t know how I’d get there or what it would look like—just that maybe I wasn’t doomed to a life of misery by default. Still, long after you leave, those are the survival skills that carry you.

Some peoples’ lives end at high school. For the rest of us, the long game matters. If you don’t fit in, maybe you never will. There’s no guaranteed payoff. Even at 40, you might still not know where your story is going (maybe especially then).

We devalue teachers and overvalue fame. There are plenty of people who are more famous than me for doing less—many of whom will never be recognized for more. If I keep measuring myself by that, I’ll never make anything. And I’d never want to tell a younger version of myself—or any other creative child—not to try just because the reward isn’t guaranteed. Still, there are strategies that can help. A lot of it just requires believing in yourself when you’re not exactly sure if anyone else does, too.

So before I go, I’ll recommend Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way again. I’m not the most consistent about my Morning Pages or Artist Dates, but I’ve been trying. I love that her book doesn’t point you toward a specific outcome—just an opportunity to change your own mind. Lately, I’ve seen it mentioned more by other writers on Substack, which makes me think it might actually be an underrated American classic.

You won’t always fit. You might never arrive. But if you remain curious, stay honest, and keep making something—that’s the long game. Keep running.

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Trans men are the quiet unsung heroes of the LGBTQ+ community. For years, I thought I hated straight men. But turns out that I actually just hated cis straight men—thanks to a few trans guys who made me realize I might’ve just been a little sexist all along!

Not all trans men are straight, of course. But every relationship with a trans man is, technically, queer. Still, I’ve rarely met a trans man I didn’t like. #notallmen

Cis guys are always asking how to be better men—then turn to other cis guys for answers. When really, I think watching and learning from the ones who had to fight like hell to be seen as men in the first place—and still manage to make space for everyone else while they’re busy spouting off on Twitter—offers a masterclass in real masculinity.

This isn’t to say every trans man is flawless or wonderful, but from my experience, trans men are consistently just better than cis men. They’re more in touch with their feminine side, or at the very least, they actually understand the female experience.

Often, they’re more empathetic and patient than the majority of cis men for this reason, who feel threatened by their inherent feminine qualities that they reject with passion. Femininity isn’t a mystery to trans men—they just happen to identify more with their masculine side and lean into that.

This isn’t to say there aren’t trans men who suffer from toxic masculinity or misogynistic attitudes, but by and large, that’s often not the case. They love women even if they don’t want to be one (or more correctly, are not one, because trans men are men).

Trans men know how to leave a bathroom properly without leaving a huge mess. I’d happily share a semi-unisex bathroom with trans people that specifically excludes cis men who are absolutely feral because society has allowed them to be.

If anything, trans men often tolerate these conditions for the sake of masculine assimilation—which is really unfair to them because masculinity doesn’t have to mean being a slob. And ultimately this still becomes a woman’s problem if they want to ever cohabitate as a couple and he has to be domesticated. This is why the fight to put the toilet seat down is still a fight in every other house. Trans men reduce female labor—and they usually don’t even make a thing about it.

Trans men could be horse whisperers to untamed cis men. I wish they were because cis men could learn so much from them, while also still being dude bros doing dude bro shit. There’s so much hysteria about whether trans people can do everything cis people can. Short of any actual limitations, it’s reductive to assume trans people can’t do everything cis people can.

I don’t always feel equipped to speak eloquently about every part of the trans experience—but I also hate making it sound like they’re always under threat. Looming danger shouldn’t be the centerpiece of their lives. (That said, I do watch a lot of Lifetime biopics, so maybe I’m just desensitized.)

I’ve been happy to see more positive representation of the trans experience and trans people doing comedy because watching Boys Don’t Cry traumatized me and I still get emotional thinking about Brandon Teena and that film.

It’s embarrassing how hard it is for mainstream culture to just treat trans people like human beings. I hate that for them because it just shows how out of touch so many people are with their humanity, even if they’re just ignorant.

It’s been over 20 years since I’ve stepped foot in a high school, so I don’t know what that experience is like for any modern teen growing in a much different world than I grew up in—let alone what that’s like through a trans teen’s lens. I’m like half-informed on puberty blockers and all of the hormonal drugs, and since I don’t have kids and am not trans, have considered it not my business beyond what is discussed between them and their doctors and their right to do so without government blockades—which is mostly just an extension of all the other ways I half-understand my own health as a woman because healthcare is defunded across the board and always hits women’s healthcare first.

That often includes trans health, which falls onto the backs of women’s healthcare, so I think trans people could give women a little grace for misunderstandings—without jumping straight to calling them TERFs given that many of us just learned that perimenopause is a thing like five years ago and barely know our own bodies.

I know that bullying is hard enough. Being authentic by embracing your full self is very brave and not many people will do that generally, even as cis people.

Admittedly I’ve been a little afraid of making generalizations about the trans experience to avoid potentially making any missteps, but didn’t want to be so stiff and serious about it because it’s already hard enough. It’s like why ruin Pride anymore than it has been over the past several years with everything going on?

I think brunch sounds nice, and I hope trans men and women have lots of great brunches where they don’t have to feel on edge, unwelcome, or targeted. It would be a lot easier to get many other things done if everyone just accepted trans people instead of making it such an issue. Yet conservatives keep putting this on the table as the most important issue in this country which is fucking insane considering how often school shootings happen and Flint still doesn’t have clean water.

The in-fighting within queer circles is bumming me out because it’s obviously about a division tactic by conservatives hell-bent on preserving patriarchal power. You’d think men’s rights activists would get on board with the rights of trans men but they obviously don’t (but I think trans men are usually fine with that because men’s rights activists suck anyway).

There’s a lot of trans people in cannabis—something I love because the queer spaces in cannabis are so much more welcoming than the cis straight ones dripping in aggro hedge fund bro energy. I want them to keep having their spaces safe from shitty energy from shitty people with bad bathroom manners.

The irony of these legislators and cis straight men asking women if they feel threatened by trans people in the bathroom is that they’re often completely ignoring and denying women who have noted that entitled cis straight men are usually the ones doing creepy shit and committing sexual assault in bathrooms—not trans people.

I’ve been cornered at least three times that I can clearly remember while in a shared bathroom space with a cis straight man. Meanwhile, trans people usually just use the bathroom. If anything, trans people are mostly at risk from the threat of insecure cis straight men (once again).

Anyway this is just a celebration for trans men because I feel like trans women usually get all the limelight in trans discussions as divas—which I don’t think they mind, but they deserve a little love, too. (Does this mean I still center men as a bisexual woman failing the Bechdel test? Shit. Sorry. I swear I de-center them 9 out of 10 times.)

Trans men tend to chill in the background—the exact kind of energy I wish more cis guys would embrace rather than unapologetically taking up like 3x the amount of space because they never had to learn how to watch out.

Happy Pride to all the trans people out there. 🏳️‍⚧️

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Hey everyone,

I had originally planned to share my Long Island weekender, but between getting called an edgelord on Friday and my date with a bisexual Israeli on Saturday, I felt like I should probably make sure I close out Pride month discussing the New York City mayoral primaries from the most countercultural POV of all: the bisexual Jew lens.

I’m not even going to say queer because apparently bisexuals are now the most hated letter in the alphabet, according to every discussion I’ve seen on Threads over the past month. If there’s anyone getting 86’d from an event, it’s probably going to be a bisexual Jewess with a nuanced opinion.

Yesterday, writer Haley Nahman added her two cents about Zohran Mamdani, the hopeful socialist candidate currently going toe-to-toe against noted sexual predator and former dynastic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. Young, charismatic, brown, Muslim, and an immigrant, Mamdani has become a media darling as a controversial symbol of resistance to the status quo.

Never mind that in the last mayoral race, a Black woman, a Latina, and an Asian American man all ran on equally progressive platforms and were largely ignored. Or that during the last two presidential cycles, leftists encouraged voters to abstain rather than support two qualified women who stood to make a far bigger impact on policy than this local figurehead.

Everyone, Nahman included, seems to have overlooked the six other candidates on the ballot, some of whom are arguably more qualified. Instead, she’s joined the now-familiar liberal pattern of backing a polarizing figure as a political messiah during a critical election cycle, even though that strategy has consistently blown up in the left’s face for the past decade.

True to form, she ended with a footnote that she would not be entertaining any messages about Mamdani being pro-Hamas, citing Jewish Currents and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as her sources for her political stance on the conflict. On one hand, I understand the defensiveness; some right-wing Jews weaponize rhetoric against other Jews with a hostility that mirrors how some anti-Zionists target Zionists. But it’s as if no one can fathom holding a neutral view of the guy, let alone assessing him objectively.

(See for yourself where you align with the candidate platform quiz!).

Mamdani, for his part, has been getting dragged for his noted associations as co-founder of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Bowdoin College where he graduated in 2014 and attending rallies held by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), whose protests included standing outside the Nova exhibit honoring the nearly 400 people who were killed, chanting: “Kill another Zionist now.”

Even when presented with a cross-endorsement opportunity with current NYC comptroller Brad Lander—who I genuinely believe is a stronger candidate—Mamdani made a giant gaffe by refusing to outright condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” while he was a guest on a podcast, comparing it to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings.

On the podcast, Mamdani was asked if the terms "globalize intifada" and "from the river to the sea" made him uncomfortable.

"The very word has been used by the Holocaust museum when translating the Warsaw ghetto uprising," Mamdani said. "What I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights."

EH—wrong answer! Meanwhile, the Holocaust Museum had no problem immediately condemning this comparison:

"Exploiting the museum and the Warsaw ghetto uprising to sanitize 'globalize the intifada' is outrageous."

It wouldn’t kill him to get some more media training. I get that being raw and unfiltered is trendy, but governing in the real world requires earning favor, building coalitions, and working with people you might not like. Otherwise, you’re not practicing democracy, you’re auditioning for an authoritarian regime (kinda like the one currently fucking up our country).

To be clear, I don’t think that’s his goal—I see that he’s trying. He’s incredibly charismatic, and that’s a big part of why he’s so likable. I believe his heart is in the right place, and it is satisfying to see him make Cuomo sweat. But he’s also green, has limited experience, and will need to work ten times harder to prove he can actually do the job.

And part of that means working with Jewish communities and we’re a complicated bunch. Every misstep will be judged because you can’t just get one synagogue to sign off and call it a day, especially at a time when antisemitism is surging and Jews make up 12% of New York City’s population. It’s not even just a misstep—it’s dangerous for these communities when words have meaning and consequences, and they’re right to be concerned.

While it’s easy to reduce the Jewish perspective as ancillary, it’s really the test case for how he handles vulnerable, diverse communities. It’s a question of political viability and whether symbolic ideology can hold under the weight of real-world governance. That matters for everyone. He’s just getting so much heat around Israel because it’s the only thing anybody is talking about and everyone hysterical about accountability.

As mayor, he needs to reel that in. He’s being tested, but so is everyone else. They just had a better stock answers, which is pissing off people who think Jews receive special treatment—while ignoring that the special treatment is often hostility, scapegoating, and hate crimes. DOJ hate crime statistics illustrate antisemitic hate crimes have outpaced every other hate crime exponentially each year in New York alone—many of the attacks being coordinated by individuals who don’t even live here.

I’m not buying the idea that ranking him is tantamount to Jewish suicide, though I understand where that panic comes from. There’s real fear driving that question. But demanding he give a yes-or-no answer on whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state is really unfair as a litmus test in a mayoral race. I can’t help but feel for him because that’s kind of a bullshit question and not the right one that needs to be asked about how he plans to protect Jewish New Yorkers against threats and discrimination.

Still, the way he keeps dodging the question isn’t calming anyone down. (Have you ever tried telling a Jewish person to calm down? If there’s one thing that Jews and Arabs have in common, it’s that they’re both crazy and won’t be told to calm down. I know he’s not Arab, but this is a challenge he’s faced with).

This isn’t some random small-town race. He’s vying for one of the most visible mayoral positions on the planet and he needs to be able to play hardball. If you really wanted to go full counterculture-for-the-people, Deirdre Levy—a passionate special ed teacher—ran for mayor with no political experience beyond a desire to make a difference. Turns out, a lot of voters do prefer a seasoned politician; they just want one who’s charismatic and tells them what they want to hear.

Here’s the thing: I don’t believe Zohran is willfully antisemitic. He has vocally condemned antisemitism and tried to meet with certain Jewish leaders (revealing the overall dysfunction of what “Jewish community,” representation, and “the Jewish vote” mean in a place as diverse as New York City among a population that can never agree on anything). His platform is undeniably progressive, and there’s a lot on it I support. Free buses, childcare, and rent freezes—all sound great.

But nearly identical policies appear on the platforms of at least five other candidates—candidates who’ve done a better job addressing concerns, which is how they built broader coalitions. Yet they’ve barely registered a blip in the conversation. Mamdani has the aesthetic advantage: branding, buzz, outsider mystique. But charisma without political fluency and diplomacy is a dangerous game and I can’t help but feel skeptical.

So it’s worth asking: what would it actually look like if he won? Realistically, it’s not going to be the socialist utopia people are projecting onto him. Being mayor of New York City is really more about managing dysfunction—the ability to negotiate with entrenched city agencies, a combative City Council, state oversight, budgetary issues, and public scrutiny from all directions. None of that gets solved by moral clarity alone, but I guess a lot of people seem to know and be OK with that.

Even his most ambitious goals—free public transit, universal childcare, rent freezes—require serious coalition-building and budget maneuvering. When your entire political brand hinges on being an industry outsider shaking things up, anything short of utopia starts to look like a betrayal. The question is whether he has the political agility and humility to implement his bold ideas in a city that eats idealists alive.

• Scenario 1: The Optimistic One
  He becomes a symbolic figurehead of progressive ideals with limited executive power. NYC is a massive bureaucracy, so he’d likely face pushback from city agencies, governor's office and state legislature, budgetary constraints and public-private gridlock. Even if he makes headway in his ambitious goals, the city wouldn’t become some socialist utopia. He’d be forced to learn diplomacy fast or risk internal revolt and burnout—still a real possibility.

• Scenario 2: The Learning Curve
  More realistically, his first term would be a series of harsh lessons. Between media scrutiny, opposition from within City Council and NYPD, and dealing with the everyday shitstorm of governing this city (e.g., MTA meltdowns, asylum seeker housing, school budget issues), he’d have to pivot hard to crisis management. Likely, he’d face backlash from both moderates and far-left critics for compromises he’ll have to make, resulting in a chaotic but not catastrophic administration, likely plagued by communications missteps, morale issues, and a city that feels exhausted by perpetual culture war cycles.

• Scenario 3: The Worst-Case One
  If he governs like he’s still an activist with no adjustment for scale, responsibility, or nuance, he could alienate every key voting bloc except the DSA core and lose the support of Black and Brown working-class communities who feel abandoned in favor of performative leftism, triggering backlash from the press, unions, business community, and outer borough voters. This would pave the way for a reactionary moderate or conservative mayor next cycle, using his tenure as a warning sign (“Look what happens when you experiment with ideology!”). This has already happened in San Francisco and LA to a degree.

  ---

Let’s be honest: Even the Squad is losing favor with their own base, accused of being ‘counterfeit anti-imperialists’ and ‘war hawks’ (LOL). If even they can’t hold the trust of their most ardent supporters, what makes anyone think this strategy will win over skeptics? After all, they’ve never been favored by many Jews for their inability to discuss Israel with finesse, ignoring the hostages, or make Jewish constituents feel protected as our communities are under attack—but think that taking the time to wish us a Happy Hanukkah on social media makes everything OK.

They started the revolution but don’t know how to handle it—which is unfortunately is severely weakened and practically useless under the authoritarian political climate in which we now find ourselves. (Perhaps they shouldn’t have kicked out all of those Jewish feminists from their “intersectional” movement, huh?)

Socialism has always been a hard sell—ironic considering Israel was founded mostly on utopian socialist principles, including the idea of kibbutzism, a place where peace activists were brutally murdered on October 7 as a result of a rise in extremism on both sides. Zionism, too, wasn’t always the monolith people imagine today: it was once Labor Zionism/Socialist Zionism—at odds with Jewish Marxists, religious orthodoxy, and other factions within global Jewry. Today, most Jews see the term as a shorthand that Israel should exist because they feel unsafe elsewhere (I wonder why).

While I’m not about to do an entire political theory in global Jewry thread in a mayoral race newsletter (especially not online, where half the discourse comes from someone who just listened to a guy ramble on a podcast for two hours), it does underscore how easily words get distorted and weaponized. Politicians need to handle that with clarity, even if they’re full of shit. (For what it’s worth, no one in my family has ever used the word “Zionism” in my entire life.)

Maybe in a less volatile political era, symbolic stances and purity tests could rally progressives without blowing everything up. But we’re not living in that era. This country has never liked socialists and it’s always been willing to show that with force. Honestly, that might be the strongest case yet for investing in public education because a lot of people are out here making incredibly bad decisions and doubling down with confidence. People may be fed up, but they can’t keep pinning all hope for change on messiahs.

I understand why many Jewish voters are wary of him, why his vagueness plays well with antisemitic audiences, and why his inability to navigate the topic of Israel is a liability not just to his campaign, but to the broader causes he claims to champion. The media has decided to frame this primary as a two-pronged battle where he’s the only candidate worth watching and it’s a disservice to everyone.

On one hand, Israel really shouldn’t be a central issue in a local mayoral race. On the other, this is how he’s generating press and doing a poor job of mitigating that. The same voters who think he is being unfairly made the target of Zionist propaganda are specifically ranking him number one because of it. Either way, it obscures what the job entails and the possibility of handing it to someone who can actually get it done.

Anyone who dares raise even mild questions about inconsistencies or failures in communication is immediately met with hostility—not unlike in 2016, when Hillary supporters were screamed at by Bernie Bros for being neoliberal shills. And no, it’s not lost on me that Bernie has endorsed Mamdani.

The plea to rank Mamdani to oust Cuomo feels especially rich coming from people who proudly opted out of voting against literal fascism in the last election, claiming they were “voting with their conscience.” I’m not exactly eager to help them sleep better at night over a mayoral primary after spending years showing up to vote for these wildcard candidates who never win while getting screamed at for being a tool of the system and a thorn in the side of collective liberation. Oh yes, it’s totally me that’s the problem, and not your racist Republican dad.

This is the problem with liberal idealism: it ignores reality that requires strategic thinking. You can’t walk into a chess match with a bunch of checkers, but this keeps happening. The Republican ticket has one guy: Curtis Sliwa, a conservative radio talk show host and recurring ballot runner best known for his ‘80s movie vilian beret and sharing his studio apartment with 16 cats. Meanwhile, this makes Cuomo the de facto bipartisan option for anyone trying to hedge their bets. Checkmate.

Mamdani looks good on paper with his cool graphics and appeals to disillusioned young voters eager for fresh talent, but like many rising progressives before him, he underestimates just how much of New York City politics run on murky handshake deals, backroom negotiations, and entrenched competing interests. Ideological purity doesn’t mean you can actually get things done. I say this as someone who lived in Chicago, a union-backed city in a state that’s logged nearly 2,000 public corruption convictions since the 1970s, including 4 of its past 10 governors who went to prison.

Nothing surprises me. I don’t blindly romanticize grassroots movements that treat unions as a beacon of hope in a capitalist hellscape. Everyone is complicit. Politicians are politicians. New York isn’t exceptional, it just has more international baggage and messier factions to juggle. Someone had the nerve to tell me “dare to dream,” as if this country isn’t being steamrolled by fascism and electing Mamdani will suddenly mean everyone gets a local co-op. Turnout was roughly 26% for the mayoral primary in 2021, which is why we currently have Eric Adams—what’s the excuse there?

I don’t co-sign Netanyahu’s cabinet, their reckless handling of the hostage negotiations, or the way diplomacy has been all but obliterated on every front. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: the trauma is generational on both sides. It’s horrific and heartbreaking. Drawing new borders or trading ceasefires won’t fix that if everyone still raises their kids on revenge.

Activists who keep pushing the term “intifada” and expect Jews to just trust that it doesn’t mean bombing random buses and grocery stores need to accept that is not going to happen and can’t be surprised about pushback. Artists have faced public backlash and attempted cancellations for using that word precisely because neither they nor their JVP counterparts seem to grasp how their rhetoric lands with the very people they claim to stand in solidarity with. This is the term Mamdani would not denounce and why he is getting so much shit for it.

When people call for ‘any means necessary,’ they often forget it works both ways. The blowback usually falls hardest on the people they claim to protect, making it harder to get anything done—unless you go full radical and think this is not a pattern. That includes impeding Mamdani, who’s running to work with the messy factions of New York City politics, not to be crowned King of New York.

Reactionary politics aren’t efficient. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall when there’s a door right next to it. Today, that door now has a ton of unchecked power blocking it, which anyone could have seen coming from a mile away.

I don’t even mind having a DSA candidate in office. Political diversity is essential. It’s just that they always seem to show up at the most critical, high-stakes moment—and then wonder why no one wants to gamble. This is how we got a conservative majority and all the fascist countries laugh at us while the people we spent the last century trying to advance are once again being pushed into second-class status. Call me cynical; I’m just being realistic.

Mamdani’s refusal to address this tactfully while his leftist fanbase insults the intelligence and humanity of those they seek solidarity from is where many Jewish voters lose confidence, and honestly, I can’t blame them. Even a UJA insider I recently spoke with doesn’t believe he’s antisemitic, just deeply frustrating in his refusal to use his words. Seriously, man. We could root for you if you weren’t being so obtuse.

I truly do not care that he doesn’t want to visit Israel. I don’t understand why Israel is as heavily involved in U.S. politics as it is and completely understand why tax payers don’t want to fund or fight this. I struggle tremendously with how the right wing administration has created such an unsafe environment for the entire Jewish diaspora while being in bed with the evangelical Christian Zionist agenda for years—and in doing so, somehow remains the only safe space for Jews protected by entities invested in our demise. His criticism does not bother me, but the language he uses to explain that does—as well as many other Jews who are taking it a lot harder than I am.

It should go without saying, but it’s not that difficult to understand why Jews are especially sensitive about sanitizing the second intifada with a Holocaust comparison—especially while people are being shot in real time by extremists chanting that same phrase. If you can’t grasp that as a baseline level of diplomacy…I don’t know what to tell you. There were so many other ways Mamdani could have criticized Netanyahu (who has an epically low approval rating) or made a compelling case for distancing from Israel’s current government without that. But he didn’t and doesn’t seem very concerned. (To be clear, I do not believe he deserves threats in retaliation for this).

A lot of leftists are either in denial or deeply uninformed about how the intifada shaped policy, which is why I couldn’t stop face palming student activists last year with the fucking encampments and faculty blockades. I don’t have an issue with student activism. Young people organizing around injustice deserve to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean every tactic is above critique. And some of these tactics that collapse complexity into slogans and refuse dissent are torching bridges.

Screaming “there is only one solution/intifada revolution” while blocking faculty and students from entrances with a thumbs up from the ayatollah is absolutely unhinged. This is the same regime whose morality police throw women into vans to hang alongside queer people for singing in public or showing their hair. Not only was it a terrible strategy, it alienated the very people who could have helped and wanted to. Peace activists doing the actual work on the ground were ignored, disinvited, then turned into scapegoats. None of it improved the image of Palestinian advocacy.

While it's easy to block people online and pretend they don’t exist, it’s painfully clear in hindsight that surrounding yourself with ideological clones builds echo chambers ripe for disappointment at the polls. Some people voted to burn down the country by unapologetically abstaining. Let them clean it up.

Many Israel peace activists—not just Jews, but Arab, Druze, and other Israelis—have been completely barred from these spaces, even though this is their struggle, too, and they are invested in change. JVP Jews, pushing a position of moral superiority from their self-imposed alienation as activists, have only deepened the divide by insisting there’s no antisemitism problem and refusing to address it. If they did, they’d probably notice some of these people are not their friends, just like the rest of us.

While businesses were being tagged with antisemitic graffiti, others had the gall to hang signs in their windows reading “Zionists not welcome here.” Hostage awareness posters have been torn down, defaced, or destroyed. Bathrooms are littered with swastikas and Holocaust inversion rhetoric. Not to mention all of the physical hate crimes that have resulted being harassed, threatened, maimed, and murdered. There are no intersectional marches against antisemitism, just a lot of unified comments saying, “Well, can you blame them? They deserve it.”

Just yesterday, anti-Jewish protestors disrupted The Great Nosh—a Jewish food festival hosted by the Jewish Food Society—with signs claiming all Jewish food across the diaspora is fake. A grotesque, absurd, and deeply revealing example of how this isn’t some abstract ideological debate. It’s happening constantly, in intimate and disorienting ways. And still, we’re told to stay calm, not overreact, let it shape how we vote or who we trust.

I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? When this kind of hate repackaged as activism is happening every single day, it’s not unreasonable to ask a mayoral candidate where he stands. If Mamdani can’t—or won’t—clearly distance himself from rhetoric that emboldens this kind of daily degradation, how exactly are Jewish voters supposed to trust that he can govern with all of us in mind?

Activism has become so extreme, so singularly focused on Gaza as the epicenter of global injustice, that a disturbing fringe subset of extreme leftists online are now unironically cheering on the ayatollah. There is a growing mainstream conflation of Iranians and Arabs and outright refusal to listen to Iranians. It’s embarrassing. Aligning yourself politically with these people does not help when trying to appeal to an entire city of constituents. This is why I don’t have confidence in him, no matter how many people try to paint a utopian image of a socialist New York City (LOL, as if).

Every piece of information is labeled hasbara before it’s even considered. That’s why this movement keeps running into the same dead ends and cycles that others were already trying to break. Believe it or not, some of us are sentient beings—not propaganda-regurgitating Mossad agents.

What we’re seeing now isn’t just a crisis of policy, it’s a crisis of trust, narrative, and lived experience. Marginalized identities are being weaponized as symbols, cast as either resistance or oppression, instead of being listened to as people.

Which brings me back to my sexy little forbidden queer date. Unfortunately, geopolitics is there, too. For Pride, I decided to engage with the most illicit corner of the queer shame galaxy: Jewish bisexuals. Truly the most reviled subgroup. Accused of being genocide-loving, men-centering, STI-carrying, hasbara agents of chaos—and yet we persist.

I haven’t been dating lately, in part because dating apps have been extra stressful over the past few years, amplified by antisemitic rhetoric introducing so many potential love un-matches. “Firmly leftist. No Zionists, TERFs or SWERFS” followed by a stream of watermelon, rainbow, and snarky little smiley face emojis—as if these are all mutually exclusive labels. It’s almost like it doesn’t matter how many times Jews try to explain that the Jewish definition of Zionism is not the Christian one, people would rather shut down a conversation before they have the chance to think differently.

Oddly, queer spaces that claim to be inclusive have become more hostile and antisemitic than cis straight spaces. Organizations like Shalom Dykes, Queers Against Antisemitism, and A Wider Bridge have all had to create their own separate events, often sharing location details only a few hours before to prevent guests from being doxxed and harassed. For my part, I found myself filtering my search settings to Jews for the first time in my entire life because I was tired of the hassle.

Recently, I matched with a gorgeous Israeli bisexual working in sustainability and labor—areas where my own work overlapped. We chatted briefly and I invited her out for a sunset date along the Hudson with a bottle of rose (organic, of course!) and a little nosh. It was a breath of fresh air having this disarming date, where we could center ourselves as Jewish women and discuss our perspectives—hers being from the Middle East and mine from the Middle West—as we met in the center of it all in New York City (where neither of us understands New Jersey). (Take that, lesbians on the internet who claim bisexuals only center men!)

While Israel may be more progressive in some ways by permitting queer relationships and women in the military, it’s still deeply sexist and homophobic like everywhere else. If anything, the fragmentation within liberal circles where Jews are routinely alienated only adds more layers of labor for Jewish progressives who were already doing the work within our own communities, all while being expected to offer one-sided allyship to everyone else.

Because she has the lived perspective of someone attuned to the things that can’t be said and the things no one sees on the internet, I learned a lot. Some of it I already knew: the Israeli government has become increasingly right-wing, especially in the wake of October 7. That day ripped open generations of shared ancestral trauma, pushing the country even further to the right, heightening security, and making cross-cultural exchange—efforts that were already fragile—even harder to sustain.

Today, Israel currently operates under a culture of surveillance, bolstered by government tech and intelligence, where posting online can pose a risk for phone inspections at the airport and being denied entry. Ironically, in a country that once offered refuge to so many fleeing the USSR, this new social repression mirrors what’s unfolding in the U.S.—where leftists have taken their rights for granted, only to hand them over to conservatives through a series of absolutely terrible electoral decisions. And as always, there's a convenient scapegoat: Jews.

Similarly, I spent most of my life downplaying my background and Jewish identity here in the U.S. after years of enduring antisemitic moments that no one wanted to talk about before October 7 and who immediately distanced themselves after. My fears around the Christian fetishization of apocalyptic fantasies—ones that have been financially underwriting this entire situation—come from that lived experience.

Despite coming from entirely different parts of the world, we shared a mutual understanding: not knowing where we fit within the second-largest Jewish population outside Israel, still reduced by everyone outside of us.

Either way, we knew we were both fucked, and watched the sunset while she checked her family’s WhatsApp chat for updates on the latest rockets fired since this spiraled into open conflict with Iran. In the scheme of things, the Mamdani martyr complex felt like a sad reminder that so many people still don’t get it, and worse, don’t care.

It might surprise some people to know that she said if she could vote, she probably would rank him. I am still on the fence, but would probably rank him three or four because, again, I think Lander and Myrie objectively have stronger platforms with more detailed, implementable plans and broader coalition support. But I can understand why many don’t care. After all, I am obviously a genocide-enabling asshole and hasbara-guzzling robot who takes glee in the murder of 50 million babies, etc., etc.

I hate how FUBAR everything feels right now. Even now, plenty of leftists still insist things would be the same, as if Kamala Harris would’ve just bypassed Congress to bomb Iran by executive order like the situation we’re currently dealing with—and they keep doubling down on that. In response, they’ve uplifted Zohran as a savior and symbol, fully aware he can’t deliver on most of his promises, especially compared to the guy with an actual plan and experience as comptroller. It’s nihilistic.

At some point, we all have to reckon with how much certain words actually mean. I knew, even before Israel retaliated, that we were fucked, and that a whole new generation was about to inherit another layer of ancestral trauma on both sides that probably won’t be resolved in our lifetime. But at least now, everyone has someone to blame (and it’s never themselves).

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Embracing My Edgelord Era

Last September, I had the pleasure and honor of attending the first-ever consumer-facing Hall of Flowers event—a landmark moment for the B2B cannabis trade show long known as the place to be for insiders. Historically hosted in Santa Rosa (NorCal) and Ventura (SoCal), Hall of Flowers took a major step by opening its doors to the public, signaling its shift from niche to near-mainstream.

Nearly a decade after California’s Prop 64 opened the doors to adult-use cannabis—and a few years since New York and Canada followed suit—the event has already expanded to Toronto and will debut in New York City this October.

The geographic expansion cements the normalization of a complex subculture as it transforms into a multi-billion-dollar mainstream industry. It’s a shift that’s pushing legislators to acknowledge broad consumer demand—not to mention the tax revenue it generates. But it also presents a rare opportunity to think beyond policy and profit, and reconsider how we educate the public about what cannabis consumption actually means—beyond just making bong hits a little smoother.

From experienced smokers to first-timers, today’s cannabis landscape demands that we think critically about product quality, quantity, sourcing, and experience. And yet, there’s little middle ground: cannabis trade publications speak to insiders, lifestyle publications avoid the topic altogether, and mainstream platforms often can’t (or won’t) touch it. That’s part of why I make a point to integrate my POV here whenever I can.

Until last year, Hall of Flowers was more of an aspirational fantasy—one of those stoner bucket list items I figured I’d eventually cross off, but felt weirdly cautious about. Mixing business with pleasure in the weed world doesn’t always go well (just ask anyone who’s made it to the chorizo fest at Spannabis). It’s one thing to have a smoke with your legacy dealer after a hand-off; it’s another to kill your buzz by prolonging a conversation with a boring suit where the only thing you have in common is weed and barely that.

That said, I’d had a banner year and was invited by Sonoma Hills Farm to join a panel on cannabis hospitality and tourism. Not only was it a chance to plug my Wine Enthusiast piece on Northern California’s cannatourism trail, but it was a long-overdue moment to meet the West Coast trailblazers shaping and elevating the future of the plant experience. Can’t really turn that down.

As someone who’s long worked at the intersection of lifestyle and cannabis, this felt natural—but also meaningful. California holds a place in my heart, not just for the family I have out West, but for the hospitality family I came to know, learn from, and love as a journalist. That family has grown to include cannabis farmers, makers, advocates, and experts. Sometimes, they even overlap all three.

My foodservice career gave me unforgettable experiences and countless educational opportunities: seminars at the Culinary Institute of America, backroad winery visits arranged with a handshake, meals at restaurants that strive to be known for how well they take care of people. That’s the kind of sparkle that draws many into hospitality—even if the work behind it is grueling to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Some of that was business. But a lot of it was personal. These weren’t just business contacts—they were relationships built on mutual respect, shared values, and a love for creating something meaningful. Sure, some were toxic or problematic. But there was still a sense that what we were doing mattered. And a lot of these folks used cannabis, too.

One reason I took the gig as the edibles columnist for Snoop Dogg’s Merry Jane was to cover professionals who brought real craft to the space. No disrespect to the original pot brownie and Rice Krispie pioneers, but downing edibles wasn’t always a great experience. Between the grassy flavor and unpredictable dosage, it often felt like a setup for the worst night of your life.

Medical users may need a heavy dose, but for recreational users, edibles can be a liability. In fact, I swore off edibles for years until a friend turned me on to a local maker called the Green Fairy. Her glitter-covered mint dark chocolate truffles—basically a luxe take on Andes mints—were a revelation, earning deserved recognition in Vogue. In 2019, she let me profile her and I learned she was making her own compound butters in a witchy East Village kitchen. There was a lot of intention there—something I recognized from the chefs and artisans I’d worked with who spent years testing ingredients and refining their techniques.

California, of course, was already miles ahead. Makers like Kristi Palmer of Kiva, Stephanie Hua of Mellows, and Rachel King of Kaneh Co. were leading a Renaissance. Women were driving the evolution, elevating a male-dominated industry that had long been obsessed with the bottom line rather than the finer points, and inspiring television shows like Bong Appetit and hit trend pieces in Marie Claire about the rise of stiletto stoners. Finally, something that spoke to me.

As cannabis culture shifted, I started looking to people reimagining its future—especially those blending cannabis with hospitality. Bartenders know when to cut someone off, but could they handle the service flow of a dosed dinner? Meanwhile, most cannabis pros know their flower but couldn’t plate a cohesive meal if their lives depended on it. Both of these experiences are often siloed and consumers suffer because of it.

Shared education only strengthens cannabis, hospitality, and tourism—offering a safer, more welcoming way for people to learn their limits and preferences. Cannabis hospitality doesn’t need lower its expectations or efforts from any bar or restaurant experience. Trade schools and forward-thinking communities are starting to see this by embracing professional certification programs and slowly lifting the red tape for those with a solid business plan that adds local value. The alternative is what we already have: a soulless, laissez-faire cash grab.

That vision was coming into focus. And then, the pandemic hit.

I watched the restaurant industry collapse overnight from my trauma-laced perch in NYC. I wiped down takeout boxes with hand sanitizer, walked past refrigerated trucks storing bodies, and clapped from my apartment window at 7 p.m. as I watched death counts rise to 23,000 in three months. And I was gaslit by the rest of the country into thinking it wasn’t real. That’s just the world now. My first post-lockdown meal was take-out from Pies ‘n’ Thighs eaten in a car passenger seat, which I deemed “pretty good” as a possible last meal.

While others fled the city or flaunted cheap lockdown flights, I stayed. I didn’t have a backup plan. No job. No partner. No parental lifeline. I was $12K in debt with a ruined credit score after finishing a travel book that hit the market just as everything shut down. So I begged old editors for assignments. Anything.

I really wanted to check in on the mental health of these employees, but instead I was asked to pay attention to service touches like QR coded plastic menus and ways that restaurant owners were rising to the challenge and adapting to meet the customer experience. In Tucson or Iowa City, that was less of an issue, but we were dissociating en masse in New York City. After one last service story, I parted ways with the publication. That may have been my final restaurant article.

Divorcing myself from an industry I covered for nearly two decades nearly broke me. You don’t just lose all the knowledge embedded in your body from tastings, interviews, and years of reporting. But you do lose your footing. And while New York’s cannabis market had just gone legal, the publications I could’ve pitched were folding. I didn’t know where I fit anymore.

The pandemic shook everything, but it also made space for change. Some quietly admit they loved lockdown for the break from hustle culture it gave them. And from the ashes, new seeds are sprouting—even among a field of GMOs. That’s not unique to cannabis. Food and hospitality professionals have fought this uphill battle for years.

The people I respected most weren’t just technically skilled. They had purpose, passion, and a willingness to care. That’s what made them inspiring. These are the people who see the world differently and continue to try, even when all the odds seem stacked against them.

Even now, places like Sonoma Hills Farm—helmed by former French Laundry gardener Aaron Keefer who brings regenerative farming and terroir to craft cannabis—get pushback from dispensaries who say consumers don’t care and their products don’t sell. I hate that. That’s not a product problem, it’s an education and ethics problem. And it’s why small, conscious producers in emerging markets need more support—not less.

Hall of Flowers is a powerful reminder of what’s possible. Yes, there were major sponsors and mass-market players. But it was also a moment to celebrate legacy growers from the POET (Producers of the Emerald Triangle), thank Fog City Farms for turning me onto their Santa Cruz Dream, and spend a night at The Madrones in Anderson Valley where I could shop on-site at The Bohemian Chemist for rare heirloom strains.

Doing the right thing isn’t easy. That’s why storytelling matters. For me, it’s about pushing toward a more thoughtful, ethical, and hospitality-rooted future. And no one understands that better than Californians—a place so ahead on sustainability it became a punchline: granola.

As Hall of Flowers heads to New York, I’m excited to see how our young market grows. I’m rooting for the farmers, makers, dispensaries, and small businesses who are carving new paths—and pushing us all toward something better. Not just about the cannabis industry, but about how we can create more intentional, ethical, and inspiring experiences around it—ones that uplift the culture-shapers who believe in something deeper. This is the future I want to help tell stories about.

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Happy Jewish American History Month. Not a day goes by without seeing my identity in the news, and nearly all of it framed in hatred. Who exactly do I call to free Palestine?

Somewhere between Harvard releasing the hottest read of summer—a 311-page report on antisemitism on campus that will probably only be read by Jews, bureaucrats, and academics—and the next round of demonstrations, I decided to take a beat. The whole situation makes me physically ill, particularly stomaching the misdirected anger coming from all directions. The actions of a few have landed on the shoulders of all, and it is a heavy burden.

Even if you spent the rest of your life tallying up who did what to whom, it wouldn’t matter. Both sides are suffering under poor leadership, and U.S. taxpayers—uninterested in playing “Whose Biblical Land Grab Is It Anyway?”—are tired of footing the bill. Call it ‘both sideisms’ all you want. It’s just a fact.

To many Jews, the chronic looming fear of annihilation makes it unfathomable that no one would want to protect us. Meanwhile, many outsiders just see violent settlers overstepping their boundaries—enabled by the Israeli government with weapons of mass destruction. If it was simply about the hostages, they would be returned by now, Smotrich wouldn’t be insisting Israelis get used to the term “occupation” and Netanyahu wouldn’t be facing re-election. It almost makes me want to make aliyah just to vote against this shit.

The complexity of the situation tugs at me as a Jewish American, especially the way it has placed a chokehold on the diaspora—a minority that is a little touchy about its collective existential dread after having 6 million wiped out and still needing to defend that it actually happened.

I’ve been to Israel. On Birthright. Not because I was dying to make aliyah or find my bashert. I went a few years after college with the full awareness that I was being paraded around by a tourism board with an agenda and while I was the only person who didn’t hook up with anyone, I was probably the only one who came home and got fired by her Jewish employer. Still, the trip meant something.

What struck me most wasn’t the political messaging, but how sad it is that American kids of other backgrounds don’t get that same opportunity to connect with their cultural heritage. I met individuals of every background—Ethiopian, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Druze, Bedouin, Russian, Arab—and saw a complex, messy country. But it was also the only place I’ve ever felt uniquely safe as a Jew. And it reminded me: you can’t flatten a people or a place you’ve never actually known.

It doesn’t help when Hollywood anti-Zionist Jews like Hannah Einbinder and Ilana Glazer try to wipe their hands clean of Israel while doing fuck all to acknowledge the hostages or address any actual antisemitism impacting everyday American Jews—many of whom would probably agree settler violence is disgusting and support land back and right of return. Their half-informed truth-telling often ends up enabling more harm than help.

On the flip side, you’ve got AIPAC/ADL Hollywood Jews doing cheesy PSAs that sidestep valid criticisms about settler violence and instead deliver a flat, embarrassing defense of Israel that alienates everyone further. Either way, we’re screwed.

Today, addressing antisemitism feels like a full-time job I never signed up for. Remaining silent would be easier, but antisemitism wasn’t part of the inclusion section in DEI programs. The alternative is letting everyone else speak on my behalf, so now I’m the one explaining why sweeping generalizations about Jews and a place most people have never visited are unhelpful, and why antisemites come in every color and tax bracket. Thank god I have so many allies looking out for me; I’ve never felt so safe and privileged right now (that was sarcastic, by the way).

Coming out as a Jew with opinions has been a weird journey. Friends and readers aren’t sure how to feel about having an opinion that doesn’t neatly check a bunch of boxes without sounding like "genocide apologist" or veering too close to anything they’d dismiss as “Bible stuff.” But if we’re not collectively aligned, how can we achieve success? Just ask any social justice movement ever.

So, where do we go from here?

First, let’s clarify what antisemitism is. That includes calling out the non-Jewish antisemites who keep trying to redefine the term as a way to erase and delegitimize us. I get that to some, this feels small in the face of children being bombed. But those of us facing legitimate threats of being beaten or killed for something you have no direct involvement in, your perspective shifts. And that perspective sees a whole lot of daily online harassment directed indiscriminately at the first Jew or mention of Judaism that can be found with very little room for discourse or nuance.

This extends to college campuses, where some pro-Palestinian activists have used harassment, intimidation, and alienation against Israeli students and faculty—including Israeli Arabs and Muslims—as documented in the aforementioned Harvard report while others turned a blind eye because it inconveniently detracted from their messaging (though technically on point as the Iranian government gave it a thumbs up). Harvard even ran ‘privilege trainings’ that labeled working class Jewish students as more privileged than their wealthier peers and I guess no one thought, “You know, that might be a touch antisemitic.” The problem, as the report itself makes clear, isn’t criticism of the Israeli government. It’s how some people went about it.

Same story with Kneecap. The ask to “Please stop promoting actual antisemitic texts from Hezbollah while disrespecting Nova Festival victims at Coachella” was immediately dismissed as a Zionist conspiracy theory to destroy free speech rather than reasonable request to stop fist bumping literature with a whole chapter called “On Jews” referring to us as “descendants of apes and dogs” to a fan base who thinks, “Well, maybe they have a point.” For people who claim to be deeply intersectional, it’s stunning how many feel zero urgency to address antisemitism—or worse, think it’s justified.

Jews are also pretty touchy about the phrase “globalize the intifada,” given that some survived routine suicide bombings and aren’t crazy about the idea of joining forces on bringing those back, hence why R&B star Kehlani keeps getting her shows canceled but seems genuinely confused about it. Personally, I don’t think canceling her concerts is helping us in terms of public optics, reducing these threats, or enlightening anyone who has already put us on mute/block—and I’m going to give her the very generous benefit of the doubt that she, like many other pro-Palestinian activists, is just misusing the term. But then again, BDS is known for doing this exact same shit to Israeli and Israeli-adjacent artists, so I guess the solution is that everyone has to shut the fuck up.

Of course, Zionists with bigoted views exist and abuse the term antisemitism to shut down valid criticism. Fundamentalist Religious Zionism as a political force is a very different beast from the secular interpretation of Zionism. And yes, there are Jewish assholes—because that’s not unique to Jews. Every demographic has them. Defending those people against discrimination based on an ethnic identity I share doesn’t mean I’m endorsing their views. Just like many Palestinians likely feel impossibly torn between condemning Hamas and simply trying to survive.

I grew up during a much more optimistic period when a post-Holocaust world meant a post-antisemitic one, and where we could all agree that genocide is a bad thing. Yet here I am: explaining to young people on the internet that yes, it happened—and no, the current Israeli administration being led by destructive whack jobs doesn’t change that.

As someone who spent years fighting for abortion rights, safe clinics, and secular choice, it really trips my shit up watching my identity get tossed under the bus by the same organizations I supported after deciding to martyr themselves over Palestine weeks before the last election—and then predictably getting defunded. And now they’re mad the government didn’t bail them out, as if any of that aid would have gone towards abortions. Please.

These were always under threat. Just ask Cecile Richards and RBG (RIP, just like our rights). It wasn’t Jews taking away your reproductive rights—and many of us had automatic monthly donations to help hold the line. Now we’re being cast as oppressive monsters? WTF. If every girl making up the nearly 200,000 members in "Are We Dating the Same Guy NYC" put $20/month into NNAF, abortion providers would be flush with nearly $4MM per month alone. If you’re divesting from "Israhell" orgs, then surely you’re ready to pick up the slack, right?

Adding insult to injury, some of my favorite so-called feminist icons have said absolutely nothing about Israeli women brutalized on Oct. 7. Nothing. And I watched some of my friends and lovers openly celebrate those atrocities in real-time. That will never sit right with me. Ever. Last I checked, feminism isn’t about being selective on who deserves to be sexually assaulted or believing survivors based on their passport.

Einbinder, who decided to throw on a “Fund Abortions, Not War” shirt this week featuring the highly contested inverted red triangle and a red keffiyah (that is actually Jordanian) and effectively pat herself on the back while scapegoating Jewish donors in the wake of all of this, deserves all the flack she’s getting for that bullshit. (Her skin looks great, though!)

Antisemitism has gotten so bad in the past two years that it’s impossible to ignore. Yet, I’ve heard more people defending themselves against being labeled antisemitic than speaking out against it. Here’s a hard truth: leftists can be antisemitic. Assimilation won’t save you from that realization. And if you’re not willing to do the hard work of explaining antisemitism to your friends, someone else will fill in the blanks (and it won’t be pretty!). Get ready: you might be surprised and deeply disappointed to learn which of your friends really don’t give a shit!

More than one thing can be true: the devastation in Gaza is horrifying. So is the settler violence that fuels it. So is Hamas. So is the way the diaspora has been abandoned by people who used to call themselves allies. The ultra-right Orthodox weaponization of the word "Zionist" has obviously overcomplicated things for people who can’t seem to grasp that the mainstream Jewish interpretation of Zionism is a shorthand that the state of Israel should continue to exist—versus the Evangelical Christian interpretation calling for a Zionist majority state to usher in the Rapture and second coming of Christ. It’s all patriarchy at work.

I don’t like deportations—not just because they’re morally wrong, but because I really hope I don’t get deported to the Rapture, seeing as Evangelical Christians are hoping that’s the Final Solution. I like Israel fine, but this is my first home. I believe in Jewish self-determination and safety, and also that Palestinians deserve land and return. I believe violent settlers should be removed. I believe everyone deserves elections. I also believe that if peace was that simple, it would’ve happened already. I would like to get back to fixing our planet and creating a better world and stuff.

What I won’t do is disappear and be gaslit into silence while the right-wing twists our pain and the left ignores it. If your liberation doesn’t include Jews, it’s not liberation. It’s just a different form of erasure.

In the meantime, the rest of us are out here smiling nervously while wondering, “OMFG is this over yet?”

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Reflections and Resolutions

Hey everyone,

Exciting news: cigarettes are officially back in style in New York City! Aside from the cancer, emphysema, heart disease, stroke, bad skin, bad teeth, bad breath, phlegm, chronic cough, pungent smell of stale smoke that never leaves your clothes, wrinkles, yellowed fingers, heavy bags under your eyes, fatigue, irritability, lack of taste and diminishing sense of smell, withdrawal shakes, and the fact a pack costs $20 now, there is just so much to love about cigarettes and I, for one, am so glad Gen Z has decided to ignore the pleas from David Lynch’s deathbed begging them to never start because they look so cool. Fran Lebowitz must be so proud right now.

Technically, cigarette usage is at its lowest as Elf Bars and other vapes have become the norm. But that isn’t stopping the multiple people I saw lighting up just this afternoon as I left my dentist appointment in Chelsea (with terrible news that I need to start an aggressive teeth cleaning regimen to prevent periodontal disease, by the way—ugh! Go schedule your cleaning!), nor the unabashed celebrity cig lovers like Lily-Rose Depp, Jeremy Allen White, Rosalia, Paul Mescal, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Anya-Taylor Joy and all of these other people who have recently been snapped with their super cool cigcessories.

Good for you! You all look so cool and I hope that every time you light up, it makes you a little less stressed out (until one day you realize that it’s probably contributing to it more than relieving it—but at least you’ll have some cool photos and memories). Nothing says “I’m a tormented creative and intellectual” like sucking down the heaviest breath of carcinogens while praying for death (preferably over a Diet Coke). That’s why you should only maintain a cigarette habit until 35. After that, who are you really proving anything to?

As someone who started smoking in high school before eventually trading loosies for joints, I absolutely understand the appeal. In fact, I have full eras of cigarettes:

• Marlboro Greens

• Marlboro Milds

• Marlboro Lights

• Marlboro 27s

• Parliament Lights ("Tobacco tastes best when the filter's recessed!”)

• Virginia Slims

• Misty

• Capri

• Camel Lights (multiple eras throughout this list, and probably the go-to for me)

• American Spirits Yellow (The milkshakes of cigarettes)

• American Spirits Orange

• American Spirit Light Blues (rolling tobacco, but also packs)

• Lucky Strikes

• Marlboro Reds

• Gauloises Blue (I bought a carton as I arrived for my semester abroad in Prague and have no regrets)

• Gauloises Red (I buy these every time I’m in France, but usually kind of regret it)

• Gauloises Blonde

• Davidoff

• Dutch Shag

• Fortunas

• Ducados

• Clove cigarettes (Did you even go to art school if you didn’t smoke cloves?)

• California Dreams

• Camel Crush (I wasn’t really into these, but everyone else was, so I was by proxy)

• Newports (These don’t really count because they’re absolutely disgusting and the only time I would smoke them was when I was drunk or it was the only option available—but that also happened more times than I can remember, so I guess it counts).

• JUUL (Mango. That delicious, delicious mango)

That’s a lot of cigarettes! And I’ve only written one book, can you believe it? Maybe I should pick up the habit again!

I can’t specifically remember when I quit cigarettes for real-real (again), but was probably around 2019. At first, I tried keeping a pack in my freezer for some non-emergency situation, like a nice day or a not-so-nice day or drinking a Diet Coke (who doesn’t love a Coke ‘n’ smoke?), but it turns out that smoking a half-thawed stale cigarette isn’t actually that satisfying. Eventually, I cut back to the rare loosie from the corner store, a place where beggars can’t be choosers for only $1 each, until stopping altogether.

Quitting wasn’t so hard because there was no one to tempt me. Smoking has become so obsolete and socially unacceptable that there’s almost never anyone to bum from—not to mention that it’s a little presumptuous, if not totally passe, to ask a stranger for a free cigarette in this economy. Ultimately, my lungs thanked me and I no longer craved them, so cigarettes mostly became a symbol from a life I no longer lived.

That is until last week when I experienced the sweet taste of bad-for-you nostalgia in the most fitting place for regrettable decisions: Bushwick. I met up with a friend for a ‘Y2K Skate Night’ at Xanadu, a newer-ish roller rink that is also the only roller rink in New York City (delightful, by the way). Seeing how I spent most of 2000 wearing ironic t-shirts and flannels, and also didn’t save my Mudd jeans from high school, I had to ask the internet how kids who are 15 years younger than me are interpreting this era.

Those of us who lived through it remember Y2K as shorthand for a moment of collective digital hysteria: when everyone wondered whether Windows 99 could evolve with the times or just self-implode at midnight, sending banks into chaos and rendering Minesweeper and Solitaire unplayable (scary!). For Gen Z, Y2K is more of an aesthetic and excuse to wear butterfly clips and low-rise jeans having never experienced what it was like to receive a Delia’s catalog in the mail or beg your mom to go to LimitedToo at the mall.

Sticking to theme, I threw on a crop top because I had no interest in buying a Juicy Couture velvet tracksuit, even ironically, and hit the rink. After three hours of skating, including face planting about 30 seconds after skating onto the floor (safety is cool!), we decided to head towards her car where she informed me that she was toting a pack of Camels—a habit she decided to pick up again because staying sober during the Trump administration is hard enough; somehow, cigarettes feel like a reasonable vice.

I bummed a smoke and lit up, hitting me with a delicious wave of nostalgia from so many eras of cigarettes I had known before—the hours spent downing bottomless cups of coffee and slices of pie at Greek diners that still sold cigarettes from self-serve machines and had smoking sections, looking disaffected at punk concerts, putting coasters on my drinks to step outside, staying up way too late on stoops and rooftops, long drives to nowhere. Yummy.

The thing is, it just doesn’t do it for me anymore. About halfway through, I forgot I was even smoking it, stuck with this tedious little privilege until kindly offered a half-drunk Diet Pepsi to ash in. My throat felt a little raw, my hands a little stale. My legs ached and my body begged for water. For a moment, I wondered if that cigarette was about to fuck up my 200-step skincare routine. Am I old?

Anyway, this is one trend I won’t be picking back up. But I get it. Some things just taste better when you know they’re bad for you. I’ll probably stick to joints and coconut water. But thanks for the flashback, Camel Lights. My gums may never forgive me, but my therapist will be thrilled.

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A Handy Map For Everywhere You Can Buy Legal Weed in NYC

Hey everyone,

Writing you from the couch, horizontal as usual, avoiding finishing my taxes while streaming Ally McBeal and asking ChatGPT whether the dancing baby could be considered Dadaist. (Verdict: not technically, but might as well be). I don’t think nearly enough people understand how special it is to have seen that show live when it actually aired on television and people thought it was “edgy”—Millennials, we remember it all! (Even if it aged like milk.)

Watching it again at 40, I realize: I’ve always been more spiritually aligned with Gen X women than my own generation. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a multigenerational, all-female household. Maybe it’s because I’m part of the last pre-internet generation that remembers an analog world. Or maybe Gen X women just knew something the rest of us weren’t ready to hear (the second puberty known as “perimenopause”).

I’ve been thinking about them even more after attending the book launch for Amy Shearn’s new novel Animal Instinct at P&T Knitwear, moderated by the brilliant Gen X voice Ada Calhoun (plus, how cool that she brought shortbread cookies branded with her book cover?!). Shearn’s novel follows a recently divorced Brooklynite mother of three using an AI chatbot to dip her toes into online dating (during the pandemic, no less!). Lo and behold, here I am—an “elder Millennial” trying to multitask my leisure across the past, present, and future of media: streaming sexually charged ’90s television, reflecting on a Gen X novel about AI, and literally using AI to discuss both. #zeitgeist!

Brooklyn in spring 2020 lockdown is a very specific IYKYK trauma, so I’m thrilled to see this era finally surfacing in fiction—especially through a Gen X lens. Fittingly, Shearn finished most of the book before ChatGPT, just skirting the inevitable AI discourse. A classic Gen X move—just enough to be ahead of the curve without ever getting your hands dirty.

But what I admire most is the perspective and curiosity of a generation that lived so much of life before the internet dictated everything, a time when possibilities still felt expansive. No one ever uses the word "neurotic" anymore, and honesty is the new irony—but maybe that’s why I always felt culturally closer to Gen X: they suffer from keepin’ it a lil’ too real.

And that’s why I’m watching Ally McBeal. Does the face of a forever-27, Gen X attorney (played by a 32-year-old) still hold up now that I’m 40—clueless about the future, disengaged from the present, and fully immersed in watching a program about inappropriate consensual work dynamics, creepy digital dancing babies as biological clock metaphors, and convoluted, cringey female dynamics vying for the attention of mediocre men while wearing too-short skirts? Am I still young and fun, or is this just another absurdist reaction to the horrors of war? (Am I trending?). The answers to all three questions are: no.

I’ve noticed a creeping fear among some Gen X women I admire—that their contributions are being quietly downplayed or forgotten. To be fair, some of that fear is justified. But Gen X still shaped me more than they probably realize. It’s not to say that all older people are wise or self-actualized, but I hate how quickly our increasingly ageist society dismisses the importance of lived wisdom and perspective for anyone over 30. And now, as I find myself reading more books by women on the Gen X/Millennial cusp, I realize they’ve been shaping me all along.

So, to Gen X women: Thank you. You deserve more credit. I thought it was cool to be an angsty, unapologetic, messy-hot-sexy-crazy-cool-ambitious bitch because of you. I didn’t run for office but was really mad about how the world turned out anyway because of you. I know about perimenopause because of you. I wasn’t afraid of failing a biological clock or dying alone because of you (but also knew love can happen at any age! Or not! Whatever! Choose your own adventure!). I am watching Ally McBeal in 2025 because of you—even though I know you hated that show (honestly, rewatching it now? Fair.)—and why no one can ever tell if I’m being serious (also, because of you). And now I’m going to celebrate you—and you’re going to love-hate it. Just like that song Because of You by Kelly Clarkson, a Millennial you can’t help but love-hate.

Boomers love to remind everyone that they were hippies and Civil Rights activists. Millennials overshare everything in a way that ensures we will never run for office. But Gen X? Too cool to participate. For years, Gen X avoided politics like the plague—so much so that we barely had any politicians until recently. Now they’re finally stepping up, but let’s be real: it took a while. So much so that there’s now a weird gap between the geriatric holdouts and the inexperienced up-and-comers. Why? Because Gen X was above it and because Boomers kept their thumbs on them for too long. (“But we were a smaller generation!” Uh huh. Sure.)

That said, Gen X shaped me in ways that were both ahead of their time and perfectly on time—especially the women—and that’s why this letter is dedicated to them (and the people who like to love them and be like them). Over the last year, I’ve realized that almost all of the books I’ve been drawn to are written by Gen X women or just-on-the-edge Gen X/Millennials. Not just new books—older ones, too. Because printed matter should last a lifetime, if not for eternity.

In recent years, I’ve observed a certain sadness and anger from Gen X women about AI, finally catching up with the commodification and erasure of content that has always plagued Millennials. Gen X women saw AI coming and already hated it before it could even disappoint them. Millennials, meanwhile, spent years feeding the algorithm before realizing we were just working ourselves out of jobs.

Millennials are just struggling with their midlife crises a little differently. The existential dread and acceptance crept in a little faster, but no one owns property or has health insurance. Millennials are still treated like kids—even as we inch toward 50. Not our fault we got the worst generational branding in history. We’re now you, but empowered with the lessons you continue to leave us, so thank you. They have not gone unnoticed.

I haven’t dug into Shearn’s novel yet, but Jeanette Winterson is a Boomer writer with Gen X leanings who frequently approaches offbeat AI and queer topics in her writing that still resonates with me as a print reader from another generation. Gender may be dead but patriarchy still rules. And Gen X women might be among the last of the badasses unafraid to lean into girl power and fearlessly confront trauma, even though we’ve cut off the wings that were supposed to smash us through a glass ceiling instead of crashing directly into it. Your move, Gen Z!

Gen X women: you’re more relevant than ever, even if no one says it enough. You embraced the imperfections of the human experience and wore them like a badge of honor because it meant you were undeniably real, and maybe that’s why you struggle with accepting the superficialities of digital culture (you’re not a poser!).

My advice? Embrace what’s in front of you instead of resisting it. Make friends with it instead of antagonizing it. And stop worrying about erasure—so many of you have cemented your legacies into print, and they’re permanently on my shelf. (Unless you burn me, then I’m throwing it in the trash and won’t even recycle it out of spite). Thanks for everything <3

Anyway, in the spirit of Gen X women, I’ve been consciously removing myself from social media because it’s making me too cynical—even as a benchmark for nihilistic Gen X women—and making a more conscious effort to catch up with the analog world and my favorite Gen X writers.

Subscribe and bookmark some of my favorite Gen X cultural relics of late below. Or don’t. I’m not your mom. I don’t tell Gen X what to do. But I do own a DVD player because I never trusted streaming to begin with and that should count for something. And if you do want to see how much you still matter, just look at my bookshelf.

Gen X-y Substacks:

• The Midst – A mid-life publication that says #fckmiddleage from my former mentor, Amy Schroeder, founder of Venus Zine.

• Oldster Magazine — The many facets of aging from people who make getting older look cool from Sari Botton.

• TueNight — Was just tipped off about this Gen X social from founder Margit Detweiler, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Shearn’s reading the other night.

• Ask Polly — Heather Havrilesky is Gen X and that’s why her advice is so real.

• Bitches Gotta Eat — Is there anything more Gen X than writing about anything other than being Gen X? You don’t need to twist my arm to read Sam Irby’s blog!

• Craft Talk — The greatest gift from a Gen X writer: the discipline to manifest words into ready-to-sell works.

• Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar — Cheryl Strayed writes like your toughest, wisest, slightly unhinged older sister—equal parts grit, heartbreak, and radical tenderness.

Essential Gen X Cultural Canon, According to an Elder Millennial

• Ada Calhoun, Why We Can’t Sleep – The midlife crisis book you probably aren’t ready to read, but should anyway.

• Melissa Febos, Girlhood – This book is like if Gen X wrote self-help, but self-help was actually good.

• Taffy Brodesser-Akner, pretty much anything she’s ever written — Because nobody writes a spiraling, self-aware midlife woman quite like her. And that’s a compliment.

• Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad — Who doesn’t love a multi-layered, interwoven narrative about self-destructive misfits doing the best they can?

• The Craft – “We are the weirdos, Mister.” Witches, Catholic school rebellion, ‘90s fashion. Say no more.

• Before Sunrise – Proof that Gen X was so good at romanticizing their own alienation and why I wasted so many years chasing fleeting moments of philosophical serendipity instead of the guy with a 401K plan.

• My So-Called Life – When you were raised on the raw, unfiltered angst of being 15 before TikTok ruined brooding or want to know what that must have been like. Also: Jordan Catalano.

• Daria – If Gen X had a face, it would be an eye-roll.

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First, shout out to legendary American actor and comedian Jim Belushi for these Majical Ice Teaz, a low-calorie, Delta-9 THC-infused drink in collaboration with HighBridge Premium. Seems kind of appropriate that I’m drinking the “Chai-cago” chai black tea blend, seeing as it’s my old stomping grounds and the brand is on its way to launching in both Illinois and New York very soon, as well as about a dozen other states that could probably chill the fuck out right now.

I’ve actually been stone cold sober the past week recovering from some kind of mystery illness that is not COVID, SARS, RSV, the flu, or hepatitis. Maybe it’s a common cold, maybe some other unknown pathogen. Whatever it is packed a punch, so I’ve been horizontal and out of commission. I mean, how many plagues must we realistically endure? This is relentless! Let me live! (Coincidentally, Passover ends on 4/20 this year! We got stuck with a bad pharoah!).

But let’s get to why we’re really here: to discuss my 200-step skincare routine that keeps this freshly-turned 40-year-old body looking like a glowed-up 27-year-old playing a high school student on 90210. And no, it’s not just the monthly blood sacrifices—there’s a little Sephora and CVS involved, too.

After spending the past year stuck in existential crisis, I finally accepted last month that I am 40. Celebrated it, even. Insisted people acknowledge it, look it in the face, and say: “Holy shit. Millennials are middle-aged. It even happened to Carly—can you believe it? What does that say about me?”

Gen Z is about to struggle with their own ageism as they get edged out in their 30s, while Millennials are too busy freaking out about perimenopause. (I won’t speak to Gen X’s struggles out of respect for my elders.) No one is going to have Social Security, and none of us can afford to retire, so what even is middle age? We’re two unneeded reboots of ‘90s teen movies away from getting thrown in a pit marked Millennials and old iPhones and erased from existence. Happy birthday!

Good news: once you hit 40, you stop caring. Yes, you’re now the go-to advice person for people younger than you, but the existential dread fades into a sort of bemused acceptance. How lucky to be alive!

I thought about hosting a birthday party for myself for this incredible milestone, but was too stricken with the fear that no one would show up like a bad dream, or that it just would be too fucking depressing given that the first three months of 2025 have been such a suckfest. No, this wasn’t going to be a repeat of my 21st birthday at Auschwitz1, damn it! This wasn’t even going to be a repeat of the only time I went to Maui and it happened to be during Brett Kavanaugh’s trial while I was surrounded entirely by white Christian cattlemen conducting prayer service before their surf-and-turf dinner2. No! I was going to have A GOOD FUCKING TIME because there is never “a good time.” So, I did the logical thing and went to Mexico because America is ghetto.

I met up with my childhood friend in Puerto Vallarta, a dumpy little gay beach town everyone forgets about unless they’re a leather mommy with a timeshare. Vallarta lacks the cultural cachet of Mexico City, the culinary clout of Oaxaca, or the Instagram buzz of Tulum and Cabo, and maybe that’s why I liked it. It’s non-problematically problematic. It doesn’t try to be more than it is—even though it has its own hidden gems, history, and struggles with identity and sustainability like everywhere else.

This would be hard enough without the Trump administration sullying our global relationships, but I did my part: I bought a Fuck Trump—From, Puerto Vallarta t-shirt. Consider it a gesture of goodwill toward diplomatic relations.

I thought about telling everyone I was an Italian-Canadian, but the only person who asked me if “Jewish or Lebanese” was a borderline unhoused South African eccentric expat I met in Yelapa at Sirena Morena who told me he’s going to become President of the World and King of the Drugs.“Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked. “I mean, I guess it’s ambitious.” He asked me on a date and promised he would shave. (I politely declined.) The untouched indigenous pre-Spanish colonial paradise is only accessible by boat ride about an hour outside Vallarta, so the majority of local characters include conspiracy theorists, people living under new assumed identities, and people who still engage in cock fights.

On the north end of the bay is Punta Mita—a private peninsula home to gated luxury resorts from the St. Regis, Four Seasons, and Conrad Hilton. Since this was a milestone occasion, my friend and I agreed to do a fancy stay at the W Punta de Mita, a stunning beachside property with oceanside villas and jungle bungalows featuring amenities like private plunge pools, sundecks, and two-seater bathtubs. Some places claim to be “luxury” but aren’t—this hotel is worth every penny (and there are a lot of them because this is a very expensive resort).

The hotel generously gave us a media rate that afforded us the opportunity to extend our stay a couple nights and upgraded accommodations, including one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my whole life at Rubra—the buzzy new restaurant from Chef Daniela Soto-Innes, the youngest female chef ever awarded The World’s 50 Best. (The fact she was given Best Female Chef instead of just Best Chef is an injustice, but we’ll get into that another time.)

Channeling the fierce bitch energy of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, I strutted into that resort letting everyone know I was 40. “I’m 40. Did you hear? I’m 40. Today. Yep! 4-0! Over 40 and feelin’ foxy!” No one believed me. “Girl, you don’t need to tell anyone.” “Wait, what’s your skincare routine and why do you look 27?” Maybe she is born with it!

As a woman living in a society that has trained her since birth that she is never going to be enough and always needs some kind of product or surgery or person to make it a little bit better, I’ve spent most of my life under the assumption that I’ll never win—so what’s the point in getting hung up about it? But I also work within the lifestyle industry, so I’ve become accustomed to the joys of self-care and treating my body like a temple after so many years of treating it like a human guinea pig. I tasted all the wines, tried all the skincare products, bought 10 different shades of red lipstick because there was always some magazine selling me something new and must-have until eventually figuring out what I like and just sticking to it. Consistency really is key.

I don’t have kids or a man, and prioritize my mental health after years of chaos. Any interest in sloppy bar hopping or reckless behavior died in the pandemic, and miraculously, I lost weight and my skin improved. Voilà.

I don’t put a number on success anymore. Managing stress is the greatest flex you can have. That includes making just enough money that no one is mad at me about it because mo’ money, mo’ problems. And these are stressful times. “Not being stressed out” is actually a lot of work, particularly when you live in New York City—the global capital of stress.

It’s not just about creating boundaries with other people; it’s about creating them with yourself. Some people genuinely don’t know how to relax, even when they’re paying a small fortune for help—be it a therapist, a wellness retreat, or a five-star resort staffed with hospitality professionals. (See also: the entire premise of all three seasons of The White Lotus.) Have you ever tried to relax, on purpose?

So, how does she do it? Even with all the variables working in my favor, I do have a skincare routine. Part of that is what I put inside my body. I eat a mostly consciously omnivorous diet and regularly exercise. I cook at home but keep it simple—no dishwasher, a tiny fridge, and no interest in five-hour cooking and cleaning for one. I live alone, buy what I need, and prioritize whole foods based on cost, freshness, and convenience. I try to drink enough water, but probably don’t. I lean toward collagen-rich foods, avoid processed junk, and take vitamins when I remember. I take melatonin gummies and aim for eight hours of sleep. It’s habitual, so it doesn’t feel stressful.

When you have no one to worry about except yourself—but you’re also mature enough to avoid the self-destructive tendencies of a self-involved teenager—it’s much easier to achieve the look of a woman who is completely unbothered. It’s a privilege, sure, but one I worked very, very hard for. I’m just sharing the wealth of knowledge on achieving the fountain of youth (even on a budget). Here’s what

Morning Skincare Routine

• Wash face with water (no soap, unless I’m going to the gym)

• Apply sunscreen (if heading out within the hour)

• Drink coffee and go about my day

*If I go to the gym:

• Wash face using either Trader Joe’s Spa Face Wash with Tea Tree Oil or Elemis Pro-Collagen Energising Marine Cleanser. 9 out of 10 times, I’ll use the former rather than the latter, and the only reason I have it is because I got it on sample sale, otherwise I wouldn’t have paid full price. It’s not that it’s not good, I just don’t like spending $68 on product going down the drain.

• Toner: The Face Shop Rice & Ceramide Moisturizing Toner

• Serum: Lancome Advanced Génifique Radiance-Boosting Hydrating Serum OR Caudalie Vinoperfect Brightening Dark Spot Serum Vitamin C Alternative

• Eye cream: Wander Beauty Baggage Claim Everyday Eye Cream

• Moisturizer: Either Elemis Pro-Collagen Marine Cream Day Cream OR Solawave’s Solabiome Nourishing Moisturizer with a sunscreen like:

• Sunscreen: Any of the following are fine: Murad Correct & Protect Face Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 45, Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen Invisible Broad Spectrum SPF 50, Paula’s Choice RESIST Youth-Extending Daily Hydrating Fluid SPF 50, Shiseido Urban Environment Oil-Free SPF 42 Face Sunscreen w/ Hyaluronic Acid, or Dermalogica Dynamic Skin Recovery Moisturizer Sunscreen SPF 50.

Evening Skincare Routine

After spending several hours watching TV stoned on the couch while quadruple-tasking a game of Palia on my Nintendo Switch, maintaining my Duolingo streak, finishing the New York Times crossword, and screaming at strangers on the internet, I remember that I should probably wash my face, pop a mood stabilizer, and go to bed.

• Face wash/Micellar water: Usually I’d start with removing my makeup using micellar water (Bioderma Sensibio H2O Micellar Water) followed by face wash (Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser), but recently I’ve been doing the reverse of ending with micellar water (which does not need to be washed off) and it’s somehow been removing my makeup better than the other way around. I also recommend investing in some reusable makeup remover pads, which can be thrown in the wash and help reduce financial and physical waste.

• Serum/Exfoliant: This where I start cycling products and gets a little complicated. I never use all three of these together, but will use one of these per day. Paula’s Choice 2% BHA Lotion Exfoliant, CeraVe Skin Renewing Retinol Serum, Anti-Aging Face Serum for All Skin Types, Lancome Advanced Génifique Radiance-Boosting Hydrating Serum OR Caudalie Vinoperfect Brightening Dark Spot Serum Vitamin C Alternative.

• Eye cream: Wander Beauty Baggage Claim Everyday Eye Cream

• Nightcream: Elemis Pro-Collagen Definition Night Cream (got it on sample sale) or Elizabeth Arden Good Night Sleep Face Cream.

This is my New York City, at home, skincare routine—and it’s always subject to change based on when I run out of something or something is on sale. Neutrogena Triple Age Repair Anti-Aging Moisturizer and Hydro Boost Water Cream Fragrance Free are both excellent drugstore daycream options, as well as L'Oreal Paris Revitalift Triple Power Anti-Aging Cream for night cream. When I travel, the water and air quality will dictate how I adjust the routine—but honestly, I’m usually less fussy about it anyway and just using whatever stockpile of skincare samples I have on hand.

Aging isn’t a curse; it’s a flex. I don’t know what 40 is supposed to look like, but I do know I’m living my own version of it. My hair still isn’t gray, but someday it will be. The lines in my face will deepen, but that’s just proof of a life lived. Maybe I’ll fight it, maybe I won’t. For now, I gave myself the gift of a vacation where I left my emotional baggage at home and let myself be fully present. That, more than anything, might just be the best beauty secret of all.

Anyway, send me your best I can’t believe I’m X years old crisis stories. Or your favorite drugstore skincare recs. Or whatever’s keeping you looking suspiciously youthful these days.

Hey guys,

I know you’re probably like, “Wait, didn’t you just give this whole tearful drama queen goodbye and bounce like a month ago?” Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint you: I’m still here. I didn’t die—even if all of Southern California did for the past month. (Holy shit, L.A., I don’t even know what to tell you. I just threw some money randomly your way and a lot of psychic well-wishes to my friends. I don’t really have any particularly memorable former lovers there, otherwise I’d acknowledge them, too. Please take some of our rain <3).

It's the Jewish tree lover holiday Tu BiShvat, the reassigned martyr-for-love St. Valentine’s holiday, and National Cream-Filled Chocolate Day (!!!), and I’ve been dry as a bone down there for the past six months. I can’t even love myself because I’m that stressed out. Thanks, Republicans. Total cockblocks, as always. I’ve never been much of a romcom fan (which I chalk up to having a Venus in Aries and an Aquarius Moon), so I decided to make it a Bisexual BiShvat by watching Disobedience—the 2017 chaotic Orthodox romantic drama starring Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, and Alessandro Nivola. (Bet you didn’t see me connecting all those dots, did you?).

Honestly, it wasn’t even intentional; I was hoping I’d feel something, and a romcom just wasn’t gonna cut it. Plus, I wasn’t watching Babygirl again since the internet decided to remind me of that scene with Harris Dickinson dancing to “Father Figure” with whiskey swagger in hand—a detail that I had conveniently chosen to forget when I left the theater while flirting with the idea of working in an office again. But no, the internet insisted I never forget. It’s like no one wants me to experience pleasure again, and I hate it. None of us are free when Carly is oppressed.

Anyway, the real reason that I’m breaking my superficial and completely untenable vow of silence is because I just gave myself my first bikini wax, and I just had to tell you all about it. I did it on the floor of my bathroom in the middle of a Monday afternoon—begrudgingly, but enthusiastically, like many of the things that I do in the name of living life to the fullest while transcending the limitations of time and space. Somehow, in this lifetime, a DIY bikini wax also happened.

As a feminist raised entirely within an all-female household of women who could give a shit, getting into bikini waxes was an entirely societally formed idea rooted in patriarchy that was completely very foreign to me. No one in my family does it and would probably laugh at me for admitting such a ridiculous thing in casual conversation. But as always, when curiosity gets the best of me, I do it in the name of journalism.

This was my inner monologue: I’m going to write about this. Maybe I can pitch it as a “Trauma Rama” to a women’s lifestyle magazine. Surely, I’m not the only one who has thought about this and needs someone real and relatable that isn’t Reddit—but from the perspective of someone who took the time to read Reddit before embarking on this journey. This is journalism. Give me the Pulitzer.

Bikini waxes are a weird form of self-torture, so I have a pretty complicated relationship with them. They’re kind of traumatizing, if we’re being perfectly honest. Most people who wax don’t think twice about it because it does feel nice after, and it gets easier the more you do it. It’s a lot of personal upkeep, so you essentially become high-maintenance by default. Still, getting to that point is a real sacrifice and act of self-violence in the name of beauty, which is honestly a lot of beauty: pain.

Like everything I learned about womanhood, I learned from other women because I was convinced that my household was full of freaks. Lovable freaks, but freaks, nonetheless. If I wanted to be “normal” I certainly wasn’t going to learn it there, and that included learning how to suffer in uniquely modern ways—such as going to strip mall tanning salons to play Russian Roulette with cancer and premature aging (which I’ll obsess over for the rest of my life) and getting my genitals waxed. Waxing is intersectional self-torture: anyone can do it, no matter your age, gender, or identity—you just have to want to try.

So it was other women who brought me to waxing. This was not a home-grown value. Certainly, no one I dated would dare insist on any type of pubic hair preference—this was something I was doing for myself simply out of principle: I wanted to enjoy my own body and was willing to suffer for it. (Interestingly, many of the younger women I spoke with on this topic swear by lasering and using Groupons to do it).

I don’t know what I was expecting by doing this myself. After all, each experience is so unique traumatizing in its own special way. You’re opening your entire world to a complete stranger to commit a consensual violent act in the name of beauty, then paying for it. The experience really matters here, so I prefer to keep it comfortable. The goal is to look and feel beautiful, and if I’m paying for it, then I’m not going to feel that way sitting in a cheap shithole with halogen lights that’s probably a front for some nefarious business just because it saves me $10.

Still, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten waxed over the course of my whole life. My bathroom floor for a DIY experience? Totally different thing. Obviously, this was a pretty once-in-a-lifetime experience that needed to be documented, so I did it mid-day on a regular workday. Is there a better time than that?

I picked up a waxing kit from KoluaWax after reading several ratings among the thousands of people who decided to torture themselves at home.

“You can do this,” I told myself, simulating a quick rip across my overgrown bikini line while envisioning a million different hairs being pulled from the root at once just as I had done the handful of times before. My brain starts fighting with itself, trying not to psyche itself out:

“What in the actual fuck? Why are you doing this?”

“Well, I’m going on vacation and it’s going to be so much better than shaving.”

“Yeah, that’s true…”

“I mean, waxing really is a game-changer once you get into it. No more razor burn, takes a while to grow back, grows back naturally…”

“Ugh, yeah. OK, you’re right. I can do this.”

By the time the kit showed up, I was actually kind of excited and in a DIY spirit. I had just finished putting up some new wallpaper and installing some shelves, getting a new throw blanket—really freshening up my space. What’s ripping a few hairs out by the root before skipping off to celebrate my 40^th south of the border?

Pro-tip: Should you decide to follow my lead, get hard wax, not soft. Always use the provided cleaner and post-wax liquid treatments. I also suggest baby powder to help dry everything, making it easier to pick up and avoid redoing it a billion times while wasting wax—which is not very cheap, by the way.

My bathroom is tiny, and the cord for the wax heater wasn’t very long, so I found myself contorting into a pretzel like a Cirque du Soleil attraction on the tile floor, wedging my neck against the sink basin while slathering thick smears of dark blue wax across my most sensitive areas.

Even though it was awkward and painful, doing it at home was weirdly more rewarding. It became another way to feel intentionally connected with my own body, on my own time. It felt brand new to me, even as I approach 40 next week and should know myself better by now.

Forty almost feels like a second puberty. My body is changing, and I’m appreciating it in new ways—like the euphoria of self-torment in the name of beauty. Some people will never fully self-actualize, while others have self-examined so tediously that they now need to learn how to love themselves after a lifetime of self-hatred.

I did an OK job all things considered. It’s perfectly imperfect, just like me. But it was worth it for all the things I was promised: no razor burn, no statement bush, and soft skin that’s only mine to touch and love. What a gift.

Love, C

P.S. - Next week is my birthday, so I’ll try to send a postcard from Puerto Vallarta. Also, if you Google “Gulf of Mexico,” it will automatically take you to “Gulf of America,” the most idiotic waste of taxpayer dollars I have ever heard in my life and does not improve my image of Gulf Coast residents, even though I keep trying so fucking hard to give them the benefit of the doubt time and again lest being labeled a snobby fuckin’ New Yorker—which they continuously call me anyway, even after I throw money at them time and again to fix their own fucking problems that they created themselves. (I’m not rich just because I live in New York, guys. Sorry).

Anyway, if you click the three little dots next to “Gulf of America,” and click “Send Feedback” you can click on the “Gulf of America” portion of the page and select “Inaccurate Content” and “Incorrect” and write “This is the Gulf of Mexico” that should let Google know that they’re spineless morons.

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Hey everyone,

Continuing my 8 Days of Kidman celebration, I ended up watching To Die For this morning, followed by an afternoon Nosferatu delight. While I don’t have much to add culturally about Nosferatu, I can’t help but note that To Die For somehow gets funnier with each viewing. (Also, I’m glad that Lily-Rose Depp is finally getting some theatrical vindication for that monstrosity known as The Idol and able to show off her acting chops in Nosferatu).

As I was marinating on Babygirl last night, it struck me how the film’s May-December dynamics reflect something I’ve been avoiding discussing, partly out of fear of sounding old and out of touch: the generational tension and anxieties between Millennials and Gen Z. This isn’t just about cultural differences—it’s about Gen Z’s subtle erasure of Millennials, which I believe may not be intentional but stems from their generational self-centeredness and fear of aging, irrelevance, and ultimately, becoming us.

I’ve always cringed at the term “Millennial.” It’s infantilizing, not to mention reductive—like a cheap marketing gimmick meant to sell our struggles back to us, because that’s basically what it was. No wonder no one takes Millennials seriously—who would, with a name like that? This dismissal feels even more pointed as Gen Z rises to cultural dominance, reducing our contributions to caricatures while confidently claiming their own innovations as wholly original (hello, DIY culture, my old friend).

While Millennials grew up with the internet, Gen Z grew fully immersed. Their perspective on time and technology is wildly different from ours. Millennials remember a time without smartphones when everyone had reasonable attention spans; Gen Z blocks or deletes anything that doesn’t align with their curated feeds—including us. Start-up culture exploited Millennials as creative workhorses, always chasing the next trend—which explains a lot about Gen Z’s youth-obsessed culture and anxieties about hitting the 30-year mark without landing on a Forbes “30 Under 30” list.

I think about this contrast every time I reflect on Facebook’s early days, back when it was just “The Face Book” and you needed a college email to join. My school was among the first ten included in Zuckerberg’s social experiment. There were no walls, no one had smartphones or filters, and the platform felt like a digital extension of campus life—a hub for drunk party photos and inside jokes that mirrored our real-world connections.

That sense of safety didn’t last. When Facebook expanded to community colleges and, eventually, parents, no one was ready. Some deleted their accounts outright, but the damage was done. For Millennials, this was our first taste of the internet’s permanence—a stark contrast to Gen Z, who’ve always known the internet remembers everything. This awareness led them to create private accounts and Finstas early on, avoiding the public-facing oversharing that defined us. But they also now live in an image-driven culture they’ve created with ideals and pressures that they can barely live up to. Different internet, different problems.

This dynamic of navigating life—online and off—has become messy and disconnected. Millennials, disillusioned after years of burnout and false promises, struggle to reconcile with Gen Z, who seem equally anxious about their future but dismissive of our experiences.

Take the workplace: Millennials slogged through 60-hour weeks tethered to laptops, only to watch entire careers and portfolios dissolve with 48 hours’ notice. Meanwhile, Gen Z has AI. They don’t even have to write or care where their information comes from. They often bypass in-depth research for quick, digestible content on TikTok.

While TikTok democratizes creativity and AI streamlines work, their reliance on speed and surface-level engagement often sacrifices depth and accuracy—and this is why they get mocked relentlessly for it. It also reflects a lack of appreciation for the enduring challenges Millennials faced: two decades of content production that rarely led to meaningful upward mobility—something Gen Z seems to think they are both uniquely exempt from and entitled to.

At a press event earlier this year, I witnessed this generational disconnect firsthand. A young Gen Z social media tastemaker with a following that dwarfs my own by the thousands boldly declared, “Why are so many Millennials and Gen X sitting on that stage? Gen Z is the future.” The three panelists—journalists grappling with the collapse of food media—struggled to comment without sounding pretentious or irate at the audacity. Meanwhile, a Zennial attendee expressed frustration about her post-pandemic media stagnation, seemingly unaware that she wasn’t alone. She was working hard, not getting ahead, and taking it personally—as if this hadn’t been happening to everyone in the room for decades. Who’s going to tell her?

This kind of generational disconnect is everywhere. Millennials, tired and disillusioned, know better than to expect upward mobility in traditional systems, while Gen Z, desperate to avoid the same fate, clings to new strategies that often dismiss the lessons of the past. It’s a cycle we’ve all seen before, but hits harder living in a world that moves faster and forgets even quicker.

Maybe that’s why Babygirl feels so relevant. It captures the tension between generations—full of contradictions—and Millennials conspicuously absent, likely busy working from home. I found myself both amused and annoyed by the Gen Z characters trying to navigate the workspace, especially in a film that’s one explicit scene away from being labeled porn.

Young men, captivated by the allure of older women—confident, experienced, and sexually adventurous—often find themselves disoriented by the reality of their depth, independence, and emotional nuance, highlighting a clash between fantasy and lived complexity. Older women, conditioned to question their own relevance, find themselves both empowered and unsettled by the attention.

This tension plays out in a different way professionally, however, in Romy’s mentorship dynamic with Esme, the young, ambitious, polished intern played by Sophie Wilde. Esme is eager to learn and climb the professional ladder—something Romy might have embraced wholeheartedly if her brain weren’t preoccupied with Samuel’s you-know-what. Unbeknownst to Romy, Samuel is also canoodling with Esme, adding a layer of generational tension and betrayal to the mix.

As Romy and Samuel’s passionate affair becomes office fodder, Esme seizes the moment to assert herself within the company. Calculated moves, cloaked in language about “mentorship” and “setting an example” as a trailblazing woman in STEM, reveal an ambition that is both admirable and unsettling (mainly because they’re both screwing the same guy and everyone is confused about the power dynamics and their shared responsibilities—but it also speaks to the larger cultural shift). While her actions reflect ambition, they also underscore the generational disconnect between these women. Romy, caught off guard, ultimately ships Samuel off to an internship on the other side of the world, allowing for a return to professionalism and intersectional Girl Power.

The resolution feels pragmatic but anticlimactic, highlighting the messy intersections of power, age, and ambition, and reflecting a quiet pragmatism that Millennials are just beginning to internalize as a midlife crisis: that relevance actually isn’t about keeping up with trends. It’s about knowing when to step back, recalibrate, and move forward with purpose. It’s an explosive existential dynamic that offers clarity to one side (Millennials) and confusion to the other (Gen Z). It’s also a perfect metaphor for the broader generational tension: the fear of irrelevance, the longing for connection, and the struggle to reconcile fantasy with reality.

I couldn’t help but feel the pull of my own existential questions. Sitting here, on the cusp of 40, unmarried, unattached, and sometimes consumed with thoughts of what could have been, I realized my ambivalence toward Gen Z’s coming-of-age dilemma might stem from a deeper place. Part of me resents their optimism and innovation because it reminds me of the hope I used to feel before the grind of adulthood set in. Another part feels mildly resentful, like they’ve sidestepped a set of struggles we were forced to endure. The pandemic didn’t do anyone any favors either, erasing a few years from our prime 30s.

Then it hit me: Gen Z is scared of what they’re doing to us right now. Millennials aren’t inspiring to them. We’re tired. They know it. They’re going to be tired. Another generation will make them feel irrelevant, and it’s a trap. They’re afraid of turning 30 and want reassurance they’re not going to die. Meanwhile, we’re at the precipice of 40, looking to our Gen X elders to explain shit like perimenopause and reassure us that “40 is the new 30.” We’re all failing each other by not just “adulting” and making a generational connection with these unapologetically self-assured kids.

I started noticing Gen Z’s quirks, like their fascination with lines. In New York City, it’s a running joke—90% of any line is Gen Z. No one waits in a fucking line because people have jobs, but for Gen Z, waiting in line feels like a rare analog experience in an increasingly digital world. It’s their way of finding community and creating moments of purpose by taking the online experience offline. While I would rather stick needles in my eyes than queue up for overpriced bagels, I begrudgingly understand the appeal. We just took photos of our food before going about our day.

For Millennials, the idea of spending hours in line feels absurd because we’ve already seen behind the curtain. We know the Wizard of Oz is just an old guy pulling levers. We’re disillusioned, fatigued by overwork, and still grappling with the fallout of a system that promised upward mobility and delivered burnout and years of fleeting “exposure” instead.

Gen Z, on the other hand, is still living in the hopeful part of the cycle, albeit tinged with anxiety about whether the clock is ticking faster for them than it did for us. They are growing up in a much different world than us, even though we’re only a decade or so apart. They’re disillusioned after years of facing lockdown drills at school, increasingly fatigued by the onslaught of information at their fingertips they struggle to properly distill, and deeply concerned about the future but unsure what to do about it. Gen Z may be unintentionally erasing Millennials, but Millennials are all too happy to erase themselves and let them fight it out.

Gen Z might be scared of turning 30, but so was I—and so was every generation before us. The fear of irrelevance is universal; it just looks different depending on the tools, trends, and cultural scripts we’ve been handed. Every generation has to navigate that fear in their own way. For Millennials, maybe that means letting go of the idea that we have to prove ourselves to anyone. For Gen Z, it might mean learning that erasure isn’t a solution—it’s just a shortcut to repeating the same mistakes.

And here’s the thing: the movie boldly asserts that older generations are not dead or irrelevant. In fact, some of them are having the best sex of their lives—an idea that remains largely subversive but suggests it’s becoming the norm. We’re living longer, looking better, and learning together.

None of us are as far apart as we think. Maybe Babygirl isn’t just about power plays or office politics or really hot sex (though it’s mostly that for sure)—it’s about the shared experience of trying to find connectivity in a world that’s always moving too fast. It’s a reminder that creating space for nuance, complexity, and connection isn’t just nice; it’s more necessary than ever. Because even when things feel messy or uncomfortable, those moments of understanding are what make us human, no matter our generation.

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Is ‘Babygirl’ RTO Propaganda?

Why Do People Still Think They Can "Make It" in Food and Travel Writing?

I Used Chat GPT To Write an Essay About Weed Witches and This is What it Produced

Hey everyone,

If you read my last review of The Brutalist, you might recall it was labeled as “Zionist propaganda”—a claim I found ridiculous given how much I, Carly, Queen of Jews, absolutely hated that movie. (No co-sign here, just a major boner killer).

However, I did come across a different type of propaganda messaging that no one is talking about in Babygirl: the inevitable return to office (RTO). But this movie just may have you double checking your company’s HR policy after the holiday season!

This week unintentionally became 8 Days of Kidman: a celebration of Nicole Kidman—the hardest working actress in Hollywood. It started by accident. I’d bought a ticket to see Eyes Wide Shut on Christmas Eve, and shortly after, I saw promos for a May-December erotic thriller starring Kidman and Harris Dickinson. Both are extremely hot, and honestly, anytime Kidman looks like she’s enjoying herself (after surviving her marriage to Tom Cruise), I’m sold. And since it came out on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, it felt only right to dub it: 8 Days of Kidman.

Realizing I was now two Kidman movies deep, I committed to a full honorary cinema week just before Criterion Channel’s Kidman Month. And honestly, it’s not too challenging to find at least six other movies or television shows starring Nicole Kidman that I actually like and would have watched anyway. (At least I’m not watching Love, Actually. I’ve never seen it, actually).

My recommendation is to watch Eyes Wide Shut first because Babygirl is a dramatic departure from that. You’d think it would be hard to match the freak of Kubrick’s covert ritualistic orgy in a mansion on Long Island, but Babygirl start-to-finish is what 50 Shades of Gray wishes it had been. The movie delivers a series of nonstop, super kinky, and very graphic orgasms that center female pleasure while exploring consensual and unconventional power dynamics inside and outside the bedroom.

Listen, Nicole Kidman is one of the greatest character actresses on the planet, and that’s why she’s doing a real service letting some women know that they could be cumming buckets right now and aren’t. At 57-years-old, she is doing this for the future of all women, and we have writer and filmmaker Halina Reijn to thank for this. (Eat your heart out, Greta Gerwig!)

In the movie, Kidman plays Romy, a founder of an Amazon-esque shipping start-up, who gives off real Girlboss vibes. Our first few moments with Romy are riding the dick of her husband, Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas—which goes on for way longer than you think it is going to. We later learn that Jacob is a very successful and brilliant theater director, making them the perfect Central Park West “power couple.”

And yet, her husband does not take his power seriously—at least in the bedroom. The opening scene orgasm takes about 5 minutes of screen time to achieve, followed by a tender moment—the familiar and well-worn touch of the same lover she’s had for nearly two decades. However, because she is post-menopausal, she’s still horny given that she’s in her sexual prime, so she sneaks off to secretly get herself off to porn while grinding on the floor because her husband never wants to role-play in any narrative that empowers her vulnerability by disempowering her. I start to wonder when this will be on home streaming.

We’re along for the ride in the audience, which might be OK if the guy sitting next to me hadn’t been like 100-years-old because someone thought it would be a good idea to bring their parents to see this movie. I wonder if they regretted that decision as I watched that scene, struggling between it being objectively hot and also totally turned off by the company.

Maybe because I was influenced by the trailers, but I had ordered a plate of hot cookies, which landed in my lap right before we launched into this now 10-minute orgasm scene (the post-coital porn fapping adds another 5 minutes onto the first one) while I sit next to grandpa, wondering when a break will come up so I can eat the cookies without looking like a total perv. At least when I ordered the champagne and cookies for Caligula, it was camp! What? I like to stay on theme!

Which is why it was completely hilarious that just at that moment, Harris Dickinson enters the scene as Samuel, a young intern at Romy’s corporation, who miraculously saves her from an aggressive dog attack by taming it with a cookie. They exchange a flirty, innuendo-laden conversation about cookies, making it even harder for me to decide whether eating mine would feel oddly suggestive or just awkward. Ultimately, I scarfed them down in record time to get it over with. Sorry, back to the movie:

This adrenaline rush from a brush with trauma coupled with this unexpected demonstration of power piques her interest in this young man, who somehow seamlessly flip flops between looking younger and older in the same role as he comes into his sense of masculine power (I thought that was a nice touch because he looks so infantilized in the office by contrast).

Let’s pause here, because this is where the film starts to feel like RTO propaganda—using exploration of power, attraction, and generational divides to subtly reflect the tensions of returning to physical workplaces in a post-pandemic world.

Between Romy and Jacob being the two oldest people, and this introductory run-in with college intern, Samuel, there is a noticeable age gap everywhere—especially in the office. If Nicole is playing her age, she’s somewhere around 57. Harris Dickinson is 28-years-old, playing someone who is still in college in their early 20s. So, where are the 30- and 40-year-olds? And is this movie reflecting the reality of what offices may look like if they continue maintaining this current dynamic of work from home?

By the way, please don’t share this on LinkedIn. The idea of participating in a LinkedIn conversation about the BDSM RTO policies makes me want to throw myself off a building.

The absence of these age groups feels deliberate, as if the film is reflecting the current reality of generational divides due to remote work. Every Gen-Z caricature—from the interns to her two teen kids—is spot on. Romy’s kid appears to be nonbinary and queer without needing a discussion about it, but somehow also has a shorter age gap from Samuel, who is supposed to be in his early 20s (Gen-Z is inclusive but also super ageist, so the age-gap parallel contrast is a little interesting just on that note).

The first time the audience really notices the age gap is at the holiday party. If I was her age and tenure as a CEO at a corporate start-up, I would not be caught dead “hanging out” with interns and my family at my company’s holiday party. And yet, Romy is there, even going as far as to down an entire glass of milk that he’s sent over.

Obviously we wouldn’t have a plot if this corporate mixer didn’t happen—but it’s also where we start to see her own ageist jealousies as she watches him flirt with someone more age-appropriate while making the carnal fuck eyes at her. There is no way he is fucking that Gen Z girl in the same way, and they both know it!

Here’s the thing: there’s no one there to distract her from this interaction. She’s often standing alone, not knowing what to do with her hands, because she’s surrounded almost entirely by young people where she sticks out like a sore thumb. There’s no age diversity, amplifying her isolation. But the audience is too fixated on the hot sex part to notice. And that’s why it feels understandable that she would go completely apeshit later when she realizes he’s screwing another intern vying for a job at the company after getting down on her hands and knees.

Apparently, this is a thing now because Gen Z wants jobs and needs to figure out how to operate like professionals after spending most of their high school and college years distanced during the pandemic. But when they come back to the office, it’s this really antisocial experience because everyone lives online now.

Millennials and young Gen X people have been the most hostile post-pandemic about returning to work. No one wants to do it. There are countless articles about this—in fact, a lot of writers were getting really tired of reproducing the same articles over and over again: “How to get people back in the office.”

So, how do you get people back in the office? By presenting office dynamics so charged with taboo—borderline illegal!—sexual tension and power struggles that metaphorically reflect the tensions between remote and in-office work. Sex sells!

Kidman’s character takes this to the extreme, risking everything for the hot young guy in the back office. Her actions blur the line between fantasy and reality, illustrating how unspoken power struggles and generational divides can manifest in messy, deeply personal ways in the digital era. (Not to brag, but I’ve been there—where a hot young guy asks you to ruin his life, and you somehow end up ruining your own instead. No regrets, though; highly recommend).

The sexual tension is undeniably electric, boundary-breaking, and completely irresistible—but he’s still an emotional man child, so the power struggle is really complicated for both of them. And maybe that’s what makes it so hot and toxic: not only is she jeopardizing her marriage, her relationship with her children, and her career, but also her future image and legacy. She’s completely dickmatized and loving every minute of it because she finally doesn’t have to figure anything out for a change.

The entire movie is a mind-fuck for everyone—them, us, the characters that we forgot about who decided to pop in and remind us about the importance of being a good role model even though all you want is to get fucked seven ways to Sunday by a guy with bad tattoos who looks like a reprint of at least a handful of guys I had sex with in Greenpoint circa 2016-2018. She even goes to a rave, where she is once again the oldest person there among a sea of Gen-Z because this is the post-pandemic world: we’re just living in it.

Millennials love nostalgia, and they can experience that by having sex with the hot, woke Gen-Z guy in their office (or maybe on a dating app, provided you adjust your settings and have a therapist ready for the inevitable fallout)! He’s super interested in consensual power dynamics but is too emotionally immature to have the tact to navigate double-timing an affair with an age-appropriate co-worker while hooking up with the CEO. But the sex is so just hot that no one knows what to do!!! A messy fantasy that highlights how reality often falls short.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not looking for a girlfriend. You have kids and I’m just not into that.” #zeitgeist

The fact she’s even giving him this power is the turn on—something that’s actually fairly common for high-performing individuals in positions of power: for someone else to tell them what to do. And that imbalance of power becomes only more complicated and sexier and intense throughout the movie.

But here’s why I think it’s RTO propaganda: sex sells. And the movie uses sex to sell us a ticket to a feminist lecture on the importance of female pleasure, determining consensual power dynamics through solid communication (inside and outside the bedroom), putting a lot of consideration into whether it’s really worth it to fuck your coworker when there’s a major power imbalance between roles and responsibilities (even if it’s hot. Like, really, really hot), and not letting your vices control you to the point of self-destruction is key to being a good role model. But it also sells us an office.

That’s why the final takeaway was: yes, you want to fuck the hot guy at the office but you should probably check your HR policy first or try to fuck a guy that doesn’t work in your office.

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Three and a Half Hours of Brutal Assimilation

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Hey everyone,

Last Friday, I decided to go see The Brutalist—Brady Corbet’s nearly four-hour post-Holocaust epic about Bauhaus design, antisemitism, assimilation, and the American Dream—and was ready to grab the popcorn. And I did, for $15 at matinee price, at the East Village Angelika Theater. But then I got norovirus and was down for the count, so consider this a Chrismukwanzukah miracle. Oh, where to start.

On that note, spoilers ahead with probably some triggering references. But honestly, it’s a real commitment of a movie and I wish someone had spoiled it for me.

First, let’s talk about how I heard about the movie, which was via John Waters’ “Best Movies of 2024” list on Vulture and not from any other Jews. Notably, his review mentions nothing about Judaism or antisemitism, even though this basically what the entire film is about more so than “design,” and gives me a tremendous amount of pause and deep disappointment about why he would omit that—as well as all the other reviews that keep labeling this as an “immigrant story” rather than a Jewish one.

I was wondering how I missed this movie that was good enough to win instant unanimous critical acclaim—including from Jewish writers and film organizations—only to discover that it premiered during NYFF and this happened to be opening weekend. Lucky me! On 70mm—and conveniently on Shabbat, too, so that many Jews who partake would probably not be there.

Knowing full well I was going to sit for a long ass time, I opted for the 3:15 p.m. matinee show, just narrowly making it out for Shabbat after 7 p.m.—which I only observe when I feel like it on principle—because the movie started 15 minutes late and there was a half-hour intermission, while flying blind for this whole experience.

Without any context, here is the emotional cadence of the first ten minutes of film: Anxiety, fear, violence, trauma, depression, sex, hope, design, anxiety, fear, violence, trauma, hope, design, sex. Rinse and repeat.

It’s nearly four hours of this, so I couldn’t help but think, “We really could have cut about 20 minutes here” several times during the film. Even Schindler’s List wasn’t that long. Fortunately, there’s that 30-minute bathroom break—I didn’t even expect that after Oppenheimer!

Here’s the gist: Laszlo Toth, a fictitious Hungarian-born Jew and prolific architect, miraculously escapes the Holocaust, arriving on a boat to Ellis Island where he embarks on a Fifel Goes West journey of the American Dream. His first stop: a blowie at a FiDi whorehouse, where we learn that he is definitely straight because the madam makes sure to let him know that there are plenty of other options if he wants to fuck someone else and he says, “Nope! No, siree. Not for me! I’m good!” I think this is supposed to be the introduction of Laszlo’s descent into the godlessness of the new post-war American landscape as a Jew, but who is to say what his proclivities were before this moment (among the numerous creative choices that gave me an eye-raise on second glance).

Moments later, we are reminded that he has no way of knowing if his wife survived the Holocaust. But good news: the wife is not dead, making the back-alley blowjob more of a “We were on a break!” technical indiscretion, which we learn from a cousin (played by Alessandro Nivola) who picks him up from New York City to whisk him away to Pennsylvania to kickstart this new chapter of This American Jew Life. He cries tears of joy at this tremendous news, grateful that he’s finally found safety and hopeful that he and his wife will be reunited soon. However, upon arriving in Pennsylvania, he faces the usual dilemma that Jews have faced time and again for millennia: to assimilate or not to assimilate to survive and be left the fuck alone in hopes of living “a normal life.”

Assimilation has been crucial to Jewish survival throughout the centuries from Greco-Roman persecutions to the Spanish Inquisition to the Bolsheviks to last week and probably next week—but not without a certain amount of resentment for it. If you assimilate, you’re still a Jew; if you don’t, you somehow think you’re different or special. Chosen, even. “One of us, one of us, but also never one of us.”

This is the irony of Jewish culture—we’re firmly anti-assimilationist with a loosely assimilated internal culture—and also the beauty of it. It’s among the infinite reasons I’d never convert, even though many have had the audacity to try: the encouragement to maintain complexity, ask questions, and remain part of a diverse culture filled with differing perspectives that shares certain practices, values, and histories. Also, I just do not have faith in a man ever returning, so that narrative is a little lost on me.

(On that note, if I die for refusing to convert, never ever ever ever uplift me as a martyr. Jews do not martyr people; we mourn them—hence why I struggle to get behind society’s current obsession with bloodlust and retribution. Martyrdom is precisely how Jews have been persecuted for centuries, so I’m not particularly interested in maintaining that dynamic post-mortem. Figure I might as well make that crystal clear now since people seem to have a real reading comprehension problem, including a major misread on who I am as a person).

And that is probably the most salient thing on most Jews’ minds post-October 7: how much does our Jewish identity mean to us? Enough to go back to Israel? And should we all return to Israel, are all Evangelicals and Muslims alike waiting with crossed fingers that we all die so they can fight it out over who gets Jerusalem, and everyone lives happily ever after? We didn’t write that story, but people keep trying to stop us on the street to ask us if we’ve heard about it so we can continue to survive by becoming just like them. Even as Qassam rockets are shot over the fence every week, somehow Israel is still a safer environment for Jews than most of the planet.

Notably, in the film, every single Jewish character except Laszlo has converted as part of their new life in America. Historically, this conversion pattern falls into the following categories: Crypto-Jews (publicly living as Catholics but privately maintaining Judaism), full conversion, Holocaust conversion followed by retraction, converting to Reform Judaism, or being poached by the Catholic church.

Laszlo eventually just stops attending synagogue and picks up a heroin habit (alcoholism would actually be the more relevant minority post-Holocaust addiction here), which overlooks the fact he seems to be Orthodox and extremely well-read, but somehow didn’t know about post-Holocaust resettlement services from the United Service for New Americans (USNA) and New York Association for New Americans (NYANA)—a detail that only a non-Jew would have overlooked or intentionally did so because it would ruin this entire plot. But I digress—this is about assimilation!

His cousin, now leading a very assimilated life that includes adopting a gentile furniture store named “Miller & Sons”—as neither a Miller or without any sons—has married a blond Catholic woman (Emma Laird) who lacks any sort of emotional tact when asking him personal questions about escaping the Shoah and letting him know that if he “ever wants to do something about that nose,” she’s got a guy (check and check). “I was kind of hoping no one would notice,” Laszlo says, which everyone laughs at because how could you not notice a schnoz like Brody’s after the Nazis made sure to detail every single type of Semitic nose as a human flaw?

That part is actually pretty spot on, given the enduring popularity of rhinoplasty, particularly among Orthodox women imposing this on their young daughters—even though many people express “buyer’s remorse” later in life, including actress Jennifer Grey, who did so to improve her casting opportunities but mostly erased herself by assimilating into basicness. For my own part, I endured bullying throughout childhood and teen years, and later even as an adult from a child calling me “big nose” then making fun of my teeth. Personally, I like my nose, and if anything, it made me more defiantly Jewish over the years because of this.

Later, the cousin forces him into a weird cuck threesome he has no interest in partaking in but does so anyway because he literally has nowhere to go, then receives a tight-lipped refusal of housing for the rest of his family should they arrive. This scene essentially marks the temptation of evils in the garden of earthly delights of the new world, a more liberated future of under the farce of “freedom of religion” that is not without its continued reminders of history repeating itself.

His cousin gives him a cot in the back, for which he is eternally grateful to not be on the streets after everything he’s been through, and delighted to offer his services in exchange to help his cousin’s cheap, shitty custom furniture store for the kindness. With the understated and meticulous vision of Marcel Breuer, Eames, and Frank Lloyd Wright, he starts designing avant-garde furniture that would make any Midcentury Modern obsessive weep—the under-appreciated value of a man ahead of his time (while conveniently right on time, historically).

That’s when it catches the eye of a wealthy WASP financier, Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), who wants to design a modern reading room for his father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, Sr. (Guy Pearce), as a nice surprise. Laszlo assesses the project, full of inspiration and entranced by the subtle details of possibility, and quotes him a fair price for materials and labor. His cousin congratulates him because he thinks he just fleeced the guy since he was already planning on just exploiting labor to charge half the price, but nope, Laszlo is a Jew of integrity! That just what it costs, and is probably undervalued, even.

Transforming this dark and outdated gothic lair into a stunning modernist library that captures the movement of the sun while smartly protecting this millionaire’s prized collection of first-edition literature, the audience oohs and aahs because it is hard to not be captivated by the design (this is an A24 film after all). Which is why it is so jarring and yet completely expected that the father is livid by this change and the unexpected mess as he arrives home early with his sick and dying mother, screaming at them and running them out of the house.

Laszlo soon learns that the son has decided he’s not paying after all (look who got Jewed out of their money, ya dumb Jew!), and obviously there’s not much he can do to fight it because he doesn’t have a leg to stand on as a guy who just escaped the Holocaust and is now living on a cot in the back of a furniture store. His cousin tells him that between this and making a pass at his wife (something that did not happen, beyond the forced cuck threesome), that he’s gotta scram. He writes to his wife, desperate to see her, and asks how he can provide for her.

We rejoin Laszlo, now apparently a disheveled heroin addict living in a Catholic shelter (I guess he didn’t know about the Hebrew Young Men's Literary Association) where he befriends a Black man (played by Isaach de Bankolé), also a smack addict, and his young son, and starts toiling away in manual labor. Ashamed for taking a handout, he keeps his head down, until one day, the cranky old father returns with an offer to take him to lunch.

At lunch, we learn the library has received acclaim as a forward-thinking vision for a modern man, which checks because it’s revealed that Laszlo is actually a brilliant and renowned architect trained at Bauhaus whose portfolio includes mostly synagogues, libraries, and institutions. His humility and intellect charm the old millionaire who suffers from a limited emotional vocabulary. He offers him the money he was owed and invites him to dinner, where he learns the real intent of the visit: a job offer for a community center, dedicated to his late wife, and that he will be compensated generously for this project, including housing for himself and the rest of his family upon their arrival.

However, not minutes later, the son pulls him aside to let him know they’ll work out those financial details without dad, and oh, by the way, this will be for the local Protestant community. It will be called “The Margaret Lee Van Buren Center for Creation and Activity,” which will include Protestant chapel, library, and gymnasium. Laszlo doesn’t care—even though the entire ask is kind of a backhanded move to impose this on a person who has not only just escaped the Holocaust, but whose entire cultural history is intertwined in antisemitic hatred and forced conversion—because money is money, and gets to work to earn the bid on merit.

And what does he design? A brutalist masterpiece showcasing the infinite light of Jesus Christ in all its divine glory at all hours of the day. Naturally, the community hates it, and everyone is pissed about the price—even as Laszlo offers to pick up the tab himself. For the church. Because “design.” (Later on, when Laszlo brings Henry Sr. to an Italian quarry where he has a mystical experience with the majesty of pure marble to justify the expense, it is not lost on me that his Italian cohort is both a convert and labels himself as “part of the resistance”).

In an impassioned speech, Laszlo insists that he, a mere “visitor,” wants to create a space part of the future for all, while conveniently avoiding any mention of word, “Jew.” “I am new, but I am part of the new whole,” he says. Eventually people accept this disarming answer because that future is Protestant and he’s not too Jewy about it. He soon learns that all the Jews in the community are actually converts and that’s the American Dream: everyone is free to be a Christian.

Well-compensated and with renewed dignity, he learns his wife (played by Felicity Jones) will soon return home, arriving paralyzed below the waist and aided by their mostly mute niece (Raffey Cassidy), and that’s the first hour of the movie. Then there are like three more hours after that. I know, it was exhausting to recap just that part, too. We didn’t even get to the implied antisemitic sexual assault scene and the actual graphic antisemitic rape scene.

What’s confusing is that the director’s intent is incredibly nebulous, including his implications about making aliyah. When I later learned that almost everyone involved except Adrien Brody—one of the Jew-iest looking Jews with the most religious ambivalence unless it’s grabbing an Oscar for a Holocaust role and a higher paycheck—was not Jewish, a lot of these creative choices started to make more sense. Kind of like the New Testament.

This movie, put together entirely by non-Jews while still being labeled “Zionist propaganda” (lol), really rubs me the wrong way because I don’t get what he’s trying to say, and nobody is asking him because they’re too busy praising him and asking him how he made it under $10 mil. The transitional scenes between the end and the epilogue, for example, centers a giant sunlit crucifix before heading into a 1980s Venice Biennale retrospective celebrating this brutalist church as his ultimate masterpiece—as though the synagogues, libraries, and other projects he completed before and after were nothing (for the record, the exterior of this imaginary brutalist church is objectively ugly, even by brutalist standards).

Brody, to his credit, delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, not unlike the other Holocaust movie he earned an Oscar for in 2002, The Pianist. But while Roman Polanski might be a noted child rapist in exile, he at least had some direct contact with the subject matter he was directing as a descendent of Holocaust survivors; I am still unclear about Corbet’s relationship or interest with Judaism and antisemitism. In part, because no one is asking him.

From what I’ve gathered, a lot of the perspective seems to be coming someone with a deeper understanding of why people hate Jews, and maybe that’s why I wanted to throw up during the triggering antisemitic rape scene I was unprepared for after two hours of non-stop antisemitism, where Guy Pearce whispers in Brody’s ear, “You think you’re so special. You’re wasting your potential.” The gentile misinterpretation of Jewish exceptionalism being among “The Chosen” is both fetishized and hated, which nobody ever wants to talk about, acknowledge, or prevent because it’s “negative” or makes people feel uncomfy, so they keep letting it happen to us—but are surprised and disappointed in us when we stand up for ourselves or fight back because no one else does it.

Within my community and the greater mainstream non-Jewish culture, I was already an outlier as a fourth generation, highly assimilated, American Jew. I’ve never quite fit in my own culture or outside of it. I’m not a Gold Star Jew by any means. In fact, I might even be considered a “bad” one. I don’t have any dietary restrictions beyond the ones I’ve set for myself, and I traveled with the National Pork Board more than once. I never had a bat mitzvah, don’t speak Hebrew, am not part of a synagogue, have tattoos (though the rabbi at my grandma’s funeral assured me that I shouldn’t worry so much because that’s becoming less of a thing re: burials), and dated mostly non-Jews. I’m not even a good Jew stoner that anyone would want to amplify because I do not give a fuck about Phish. Assimilated AF.

And yet, I am still a Jew, with two Jewish parents, and a baseline understanding of my ancestry, history, and cultural attachments. According to many communities that make up Judaism, that’s more of a technicality because of how assimilated I am—but still a Jew. To outsiders, I’m still a Jew, but “not like those other Jews,” which has mostly pushed me to surround myself with more Jews in response. Good work!

My experiences with antisemitism—particularly over the past year and a half—have felt amplified as I find myself at a crossroads about my identity and what that means within the larger context of cultural, historical, and existential preservation of Jewry.

This past week, actor Liev Schreiber gave a powerful speech at the Magen David Adom gala that really resonated with me because he talks about how he never really considered himself “a big Jew” and how life and perspective about our culture, traditions, and identity changed for him after October 7. Like him, I also grew up in diverse neighborhoods among other cultures where Jewish life was not the center of my existence but was not removed from it, and October 7 changed a lot for me, too.

@meaningfulminuteLiev Schreiber, American actor, writer and director, spoke at the Magen David Adom America Fundraiser Gala about his Jewish identity. Liev Schreiber fondly remembers the Passover Seder nights in his grandfather’s small apartment in New York, while fighting with his brothers about the Afikoman.

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In fact, October 7 forced almost every Jew to do a little self-examination. Our identity suddenly became a litmus test not only for our own relationship with spirituality, religion, and identity, but our relationships with our friends, colleagues, and associates.

We all watched as countless people started celebrating the massacre of civilians at music festival and a kibbutz, then gaslit us as it became apparent that feminism does not apply to Israeli women and antisemitism is to be tolerated—if not defended—American Jewish-owned businesses and public institutions were defaced with antisemitic graffiti, students were physically and verbally assaulted, and then spent the next year and a half serving as dehumanized political pawns, blamed for things we had no part in, and then expected to provide the emotional labor to defend and explain abstract concepts to people who won’t use the gift of Google and couldn’t even ask “Are you OK?” but think we still want to get lunch with them.

For others, I can only assume they were in such denial about the antisemitic backlash in the U.S. and operating under the delusion that by being a “good Jew” to the non-Jews by diminishing our own pain that it somehow alleviates the suffering of others. Or I guess that they were incapable of advocating for more than one person because why else would you shoot yourself in the foot?

From the very beginning, I have said that I completely support Palestinian self-determination, just like I support Jewish self-determination, and that I will absolutely never join any organization that uses the rhetoric “from the River to the Sea” because if they want unwavering Jewish support, they should probably come up with a new slogan that doesn’t align with terrorist organizations that start the day shouting “Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!” This is a complex issue for me, not a reductive concept, otherwise it would have only taken a paragraph and I’m sure more people would have read this far—which is unfortunate because the majority of Jews feel this way and just want the hostages back and the violence to stop.

Naturally, when you can’t trust the people outside, you start to reach within. The silver lining is that I did make so many new Jewish friends. Some of those relationships dissolved because that’s the nature of relationships, but I’d still have any one of their backs if anyone tried to fuck with them for being Jewish. Again, that's the problem with antisemitism and the beauty of Judaism: we often side with people that we may not even like or agree with simply because our collective identities recognize nuance and that if we don’t stand up for Jews, no one else will.

The fact people don’t get that tells you everything you need to know about their passive antisemitism rooted in indifference, and why so many Jews cannot handle the hypocrisy after how many years of DEI training—many of those sessions we were involved with because if the Holocaust taught us anything, it’s about showing up for people.

I lost so many non-Jewish friends in the past year who seem completely unbothered that they allegedly want to live in a diverse society as long as everyone thinks and acts the same way, and are fine with learning about every single culture except yours. Everyone loves a bagel and a polio vaccine, but no one wants anyone to be too Jewy about it, and this is why everyone made us even more Jewish in response. I’m not even going to touch on the complexity of addressing the generational problems with intermarriage assimilation and the cherrypicking of cultural attributes because it would take too long.

In some ways, assimilation has been helpful in exposing me to diversity—among my favorite parts of Judaism that unfortunately a lot of people don’t get because they take one part and make a sweeping judgment on the whole. On the other hand, it made me turn a blind eye to a lifetime of constant antisemitism, which no one wants to talk about because requires effort—mostly on my end to explain things to people who are uninterested in the minimum amount of legwork to Google something where there are countless resources that have been written for them.

More so, it puts people on the defense so that you must delicately consider these fragile feelings, and the emotional labor inevitably falls on us to make people stop hating us who genuinely do not give a shit. “Allies” become mostly useless with their hands in their pockets and mouths shut, followed by the excessive guilt and shame for their “ignorance” that we’re expected to absolve, even though many of these people happily adopted Nazi inversion theory, blindly co-opted hate symbols, participated in the spread of antisemitic misinformation, and think we can just shake hands and go about business as usual.

Likewise, I lost several friends because I expressed frustration about being bothered on Yom Kippur or Passover—both clearly marked on most U.S. calendars—even though it would be unacceptable to do this to someone on Christmas. As someone assimilated in a Christian-based society, I recognize that social norm and simply wanted to illuminate friends on how important those days are for me and why—especially post-October 7. In both cases, it was instantly dismissed as “religion,” even though I’ve never forced Torah on anyone ever, and by that point I no longer gave a shit. It’s not surprising that I’m fed up, and so are a lot of Jews. We’re not your saviors, and that’s why we hate getting lumped into “whiteness” because we don’t participate in “white saviorism” even if we sometimes benefit from perceived whiteness and assimilation.

It dawned on me that the downside of assimilation is reducing your Jewish identity so much that it’s non-existent, and this is why Orthodox communities are pissed about the threat of assimilation. What’s the point of breaking down the nuances of Jewish culture and identity to people who can’t do the bare minimum to understand why I want to be left the fuck alone a couple calendar days a year?

And the answer is this: the rest of the performative world does not give a shit about “listening. learning, and unlearning” on this particular subject that is as old as time, nor understanding why horseshoe theory always fucks over Jews from the left and right alike. If you are Jewish, that is the lesson and why we learn it over and over and over and over again: “They tried to kill us, but we survived.” Everyone else sees it as a victimization narrative rather than one of resiliency.

I kept going back and forth about whether I should really address my perspective as part of the ongoing cultural conversation about Judaism, Zionism, antisemitism, assimilation, culture, and identity. But this week was particularly trying for me between dealing with discord within my “community” (I really hate that term) over the fear of assimilation, while simultaneously being shoved right back into it as swastikas were painted around the Hamptons (not a new issue), Jewish authors had to deal with antisemitic (cough “anti-Zionist”) graffiti in the bathrooms at Los Angeles bookstores being run by intellectual frauds while they’re having a book launch (also not a new issue), and closer to home, I sat through this three and a half hour epic leaving me with a lot to think about.

I recognize very few people made it this far, but still might sit through a non-Jewish production goysplaining antisemitism that reduces it to an “immigrant story about design,” and ironically, that’s also why antisemitism continues to prevail: when we assimilate so hard that no one even notices when Jews aren’t the ones speaking for themselves.

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