Hey, beloved tribe.

I hope you all had a better week than I did.

I went through the motions of doing the things I needed to do but I felt deeply spent and defeated.

I’d met the week before, as I mentioned then, with the leader of some local Democratic groups. I’ll call her T.

That was a good meeting and I was impressed by T’s understanding, sensibilities and goodwill.

Which brings us to this week.

It’s Jewish American Heritage Month, which you wouldn’t know since it feels as if no one is acknowledging it. But T. posted a very simple acknowledgement of this fact in one of her groups.

It said HAPPY JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH — I mean, it was literally that simple.

The way the comment section filled in response to this was honestly worse than anything I experience from politicians.

“As long as they are willing to hold the Israeli government accountable for genocide and war crimes, they’re A-OK in my book,” wrote a man I’ll call N.

T. tried hard to handle this in the best way. She responded:

“I think that comment is inappropriate here. Are you holding all Russian Americans accountable for Putin? Are you holding all Americans accountable for Trump? Both have caused enormous loss of life.”

N. was a wily one, wilier than most. He said: “Weird how you read that. I LITERALLY said “willing to hold the Israeli government accountable” just as I hold the US government accountable for atrocities against Iran and all over the world. Are you saying you’re NOT willing to hold that government accountable?”

T: “No! I’m saying that my support for our Jewish community members is not tied to anything.”

N: “So you LITERALLY support anyone just for being Jewish and not for the true contents of their character, got it.”

I highlight this response because it represents the most innocent-seeming position. Not antisemitic! Just anti-genocide.

Another woman posted this:

A few Jews took this question at face value and tried to assure her that Judaism and Zionism are separate things, which of course these people themselves insist whenever accused of being antisemitic. This is how that went:

Another Jew tried to provide a scrap of education regarding the fact that Jews don’t represent a religion but a people (even though there is of course a robust religious component to our peoplehood).

That woman did leave the group. The mere mention of a month celebrating the contributions of Jewish AMERICANS to the United States sent her flouncing off in a self-righteous huff.

The message is clear: The younger generation won’t tolerate a tolerance of Jews. Every grudging concession to the Jews as people — even when explicitly restricted to those of us in the diaspora — needs to come with an asterisk, a qualifier:

HAPPY JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH — that is, except to the overwhelming majority of Jews who are fucking scumbags.

Again, I post these because they present the most reasonable-seeming veneer: I just want to make it clear that I don’t hate Jews, just the overwhelming majority of them who support genocide. I feel exactly the same way about all minorities — they’re all capable of doing bad things.

So this sounds reasonable on the face of it. But we all know that during Arab American Heritage Month, these folks don’t fill comment sections with faux-innocent qualifiers like:

“Are they against jihadist terrorists? Child marriage? Genital mutilation? Murdering gay and trans people? Stoning a woman to death for accidentally exposing an ankle? Massacres all over the world? If so, then I’m happy to celebrate them.”

They don’t mar every honor of Arab-American contributions to the US with character aspersions.

In any event, this more than anything a politician has said or done made me feel deeply alienated from my own side.

A huge part of activism is the social nourishment it provides. It used to feel so good to attend anti-Trump rallies and marches and know I was surrounded by people who felt the way I did. It was an inexpressible comfort to know at least we were in it together.

These events are landmines for Jewish Americans now. Attending makes us feel worse, not better. It’s safer not to go. To just do the work in other ways, if we still feel committed to advancing the left’s agenda.

So in my despair, I posted this yesterday:

If the Democratic party needs evidence of this, they need look no further than my comment section which filled up with literally hundreds of responses affirming this trend.

There were a couple of people who didn’t respond with recognition, and I feel two are worth highlighting because of the clarity they required me to provide:

Let me be crystal clear here: I am still overwhelmingly left-leaning. Nothing in this world and I mean NOTHING could make me vote for a MAGA candidate.

I want Trump out of power as badly as I’ve ever wanted anything.

I’m not dropping out of the fight against him.

But I no longer feel I can defend the direction the left is going in. In my bone marrow, I feel it is going somewhere very bad, and eventually it will be as bad as the right.

But today I woke up with a certain clarity.

I realized I can’t stop or falter in regard to my mission.

Even if I can’t stop the Jexit, I can document what brought us here.

I can create a record of how the left is on the path to becoming as propaganda-blinkered, as uninterested in the truth, as prone to prioritizing rager-tainment over honest activist labor, as ravenous for scapegoats as a substitute for meaningful action, and as murderous as the right.

And that’s what I plan to do.

Please stay tuned.

✡️

A few quick things as we head into Shabbat:

Please save this coming Thursday evening (5:30 Pacific time, 8:30 Eastern) for an hour with Debbie Plawner and a first look at Illuminated Paths, a new set of contemplative tools rooted in Torah wisdom and brought to life through color.

She will do free card readings for two or three of you, so if you’d like an oracle deck session with her live during this event, please let me know in the comment section, which I will open to everyone for this purpose.

✡️

Second, please have a look at yesterday’s gorgeous poetry showcase in JUDITH, featuring the work of Yermiyahu Ahron Taub.

This is my blurb on the back of his book:

Taub’s poems are luminous and beautifully Jewish, glinting with tenderness, vulnerability, longing beyond endurance. They choked off my breath, made the roots of my hair tingle, left me frozen with my knuckles pressed hard against my mouth. With each startlingly vivid turn of phrase, Night Breaks In The Garret [in which four of the five poems below were included] reveals the staggering price too often exacted for being precisely who we are, while also reminding us of the spiritual imperative to pay it again and again. Searing and indelible.

Here is one of the poems featured:

figure prostrate on tishebov* stone

while the second temple burned,
while the jews huddled in lament,
mother stared into a smaller flame.
even in the narrow of the last august rain,
the flame soared persistent into beads of corn and careful salmon:
the feast after the fast.
its concentration refused to be touched by the
return of men who collapsed into sticky beds
and napped under the maps of their blank hunger.
and as the flames against the holy edifice grew more furious,
and the desecration more lurid—pigs and swastikas—
mother found she had to put the food aside,
to forego the solitary light.
she had to hurry to shelter by the side of the road,
under the kitchen table.
she needed to lie prostrate,
biting into the wooden columns,
in order to avoid the oncoming hooves of the terrified horses.

*tishebov: the Jewish calendar date of the destruction of both temples marked by mourning and fasting.
 

✡️

And finally, here’s one piece of truly excellent news, which I trust we all need like oxygen right now.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s soul-searing memoir about her son Hersh — who held as a hostage in the dungeons of Gaza for nearly an entire excruciating year before being killed along with the five other members of “The Beautiful Six” — is currently #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

I am overjoyed that Rachel is receiving the recognition that she so deeply deserves — but just as powerful as that joy is the proof of what we can do when we come together.

I started the Never Alone Book Club because I knew that we as American Jews have the power to send a Jewish author to the top of the NYT bestseller list every single month if we are organized and resolute about this.

Imagine how that would change our current position in publishing. And it would not be hard. It would just take the simplest commitment to click a button once a month and pay around $20 for the same book. If just 5,000 of the millions of us did that, we could put a Jewish name at the top of the list on an ongoing basis.

So please, if you haven’t yet, go to the Never Alone Book Club on Facebook and join.

✡️

Okay, fam — I’ll be back with you next week.

So much love and sustenance in the meantime.

We will outlive them — I promise we will.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

They say you should do something that scares you every day.

Well, yesterday I did something that scared me.

I finally spoke out about progressive darling, literary megastar and Pultizer-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen who is almost universally adored by the left.

He just announced his retirement from teaching (and his position as department chair at USC), and he posted the syllabus of the last class he taught, titled The Question of Palestine.

Of course it included all the usual pick-me Jews: Peter Beinart, Ilan Pappe, Gideon Levy, Judith Butler, M. Gessen.

But where I really hit the wall on my own longtime silence re: Nguyen was seeing Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd among the names — the former not only as required reading, but also invited as a special guest to address the class via Zoom, and thanked warmly for her willingness to do so afterward.

In case you’re unfamiliar with these fine folks, here is a recent tweet by Abulhawa, the most popular Palestinian writer alive:

And here is El-Kurd speaking at a terrorist rally in the UK after October 7, saying that “we have to normalize massacres as the status quo.”

Nguyen’s Facebook post came to my attention because a friend in a private Jewish group wrote that the fawning comments beneath this syllabus — many from friends of hers — filled her with despair.

And this of course is what induces fear.

Yes, it’s bad that such a formidable progressive figure could think nothing of platforming and elevating such violent eliminationist voices.

But it’s worse that so few of his friends and followers are troubled by that.

Often when I choose not to wade into a Jew-hating cesspit, I feel as if there’s an invisible elastic band constraining me.

But there are days when that band just snaps and yesterday was one of them.

Beneath his syllabus, I posted this response:

And here is what I posted on my own page:

Adam Louis-Klein posts often about the necessity of speaking up in such situations, but he cautions Jews to heed our own personal safety at the same time. He advises posting as part of a coordinated group action, and he recommends a burner account concealing one’s real identity to avoid doxxing and personal harassment.

I’m not disparaging this counsel, but it’s not for me. It’s very important to me to stand and be counted as my authentic self, and to assume the risks that come with that. On my best days, I’m willing to nail my flag to the mast and twist in the wind all by myself if I have to.

But here’s one redemptive aspect of that choice: to my profound gratitude, I find that in these situations, I’m rarely as alone as I think I’ll be, once I’ve stepped out on that limb.

I’ll never forget a similar decision to speak out in opposition to the left’s cancellation of Al Franken.

As I read over that post from nearly a decade ago, I can recall the fear in the most visceral way. As you can see, I wrote a million pleading and placating things before and after daring to write my real opinion. My stomach was roiling. My hands were shaking. I was so afraid of being a persona non grata by the following morning: hated, cancelled, dragged, my progressive card revoked.

No one was more surprised than me by what happened next. There was dead silence for a little while, then a tentative agreement, then another, and then a landslide. There were 442 positive emoticons. There were almost 200 (!!!) comments, almost all of them in agreement, including many famous names.

In a way, it was a formative experience. When one person dares to say the emperor has no clothes, it becomes easier and easier for others to say what they’re really thinking.

During the height of public cancellations, I was often struck by how fast and how far a person who’d seemed universally adored, mobbed by panting sycophants, would fall.

It was the dark side of the emperor’s clothes. Many secretly resented that person all along but were too afraid to say so. When one person finally flipped that switch and it became safe to follow, it suddenly emerged that countless people hated them all along.

I have to tell you: this spectacle was almost as depressing to me as the former silence of all those folks. Mob mentality is frightening and distressing on either side of the divide.

I understand staying silent when it’s frightening to speak up, and I understand the joy of piling on once it’s no longer dangerous.

I’ve done both of those things.

But I like myself much better when I speak out in spite of my fear.

And here’s the thing: it gets easier. Look at that skittish, scared post about Al Franken almost a decade ago: I’m not that person anymore.

I’m not saying I feel no fear. I do. I’m as afraid as anyone else of a formidable figure like Nguyen.

But what makes it easier is the knowledge that there is nothing, really, to lose. Anyone who could or would defend the inclusion of those figures, set in a positive light, in a college classroom is no friend of mine, to put it mildly. They’ve already signed my (and my children's) death warrant. So what does it matter to me what they say or do?

Yesterday I got several non-Jewish responses that surprised and gratified me.

Two were from non-Jewish friends of Nguyen. With no identifying details, I’m posting each below:

And one non-Jewish friend with whom I’ve experienced a lot of tension around the I/P conflict even commented publicly — which meant a lot to me because she’s a pretty high-profile literary figure herself. And she’s no fan of Israel but she is still appalled by the gleeful and murderous Jew hatred teeming on the progressive left.

So here’s the takeaway I’m hoping to leave you with, fam: I’m not saying to wade into every antisemitic swamp on the internet. None of us have the time, bandwidth or masochism for that, I devoutly hope.

I’m saying if the person endangering Jews is of consequence, if they have a lot of impressionable followers, if you think they aspire to be a decent human being (unlike, say, a Nick Fuentes or a Shaun King) and if they are actively putting regular Jewish citizens at risk, I believe it’s often worth taking a stand.

Especially if the issue is as cut-and-dried as platforming figures urging lethal violence on random citizens.

And courage is a muscle. Every time you stand up, you make it easier for yourself the next time and you make it easier for everyone else.

Okay, Yidden. I’ll be back with you very soon.

As always, I’m sending you love and fortitude in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

In my last newsletter, I described the high-profile defection of a local Jewish political figure, who went (literally) overnight from serving as the President of a local group of Democratic women to running for state legislature as a newly-minted member of the Republican party.

When local Democratic groups expressed their shock and dismay, I let them know yet again that they were alienating huge numbers of the Jews in their voting bloc.

As you can imagine, this led to non-stop wrangling and out-of-control comment threads with hundreds of responses, many of them defensive and dismissive.

But the upshot of it all is that a few Jewish friends and I are meeting with the leadership of some of those groups today, and I was asked by several people to create guidelines for how Democrats can oppose the current Israeli prime minister, administration, or policies (which is fine) without being antisemitic and alienating much of their Jewish base (which no one wants, least of all me).

So I put together a list of ten over-arching guidelines. I welcome responses to this list as I’m not averse to adjusting it, and if you find it helpful, I also welcome you to repost or share anywhere you’d like. Here it is:

✡️

A GUIDE FOR DEMOCRATS:

HOW TO OPPOSE THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT WITHOUT ALIENATING THE JEWS IN YOUR VOTER BASE

This is actually very simple.

It’s fine to criticize Israel. Jews do it all the time.

It’s fine to hate Netanyahu, the current Israeli government and current Israeli policies.

Oppose those. All you want.

It’s not hard to do this without being antisemitic. To avoid crossing that line, please heed the following 10 guidelines:

1. Don’t use “Zionist” as a slur and don’t make antizionism a personal ideology.

Saying that you’re “not antisemitic, just antizionist” is not the moral hack you think it is.

Again, it’s okay to hate Netanyahu and the current Israeli government. Most left-leaning Jews feel the same way. But that isn’t the same as being antizionist or anti-Israel.

Zionism is support for Jewish self-sovereignty in our ancestral homeland, the land to which we are indigenous, nothing more and nothing less.

If you would describe yourself as anti-Trump but not anti-America, then why in the world would you describe yourself as anti-Israel instead of anti-Netanyahu?

I assume you have no love for Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un or the Islamic Government of Iran. But I never hear progressives identifying themselves as anti-Russia, anti-North-Korea or anti-Iran, nor do they harbor an obsessive wish to wipe those or any other countries off the map.

Stop normalizing antizionism. If you have no ethnic tie to the region, it’s not normal to adopt antizionism as a personal and passionate ideology, especially if you don’t oppose any other indigenous movement or the self-sovereignty of any other nation.

2. Don’t water down definitions beyond recognition in order to accuse Jews of the worst crimes in human history.

The word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin to describe the systematic, mass-industrialized slaughter of 67% of Europe’s Jews for no reason other than their Jewishness. There is no possible angle from which the Gaza War fits that definition or is anywhere within the same universe. Pretending Israel is the new Nazi Germany is an obscene level of Holocaust inversion. Don’t do it.

3. Speak out against antisemitism as forcefully as you would on behalf of any other vulnerable minority.

None of us ever see any of that in any of these groups. All over the country, ordinary Jewish citizens are being bullied, harassed, attacked, and murdered while just going about their lives. Jews represent 2% of the US population and we are the victims of 70% of religious hate crimes. Yet progressives maintain a nearly complete silence about it all, and it is vanishingly rare that antisemites are ever called out by others when they fill the comment sections beneath these news items with celebratory responses.

4. Call out and refrain from aligning yourself with political figures or groups who have openly expressed support or admiration for jihadist terrorists.

This includes Hasan Piker, Amed Makled, Students For Justice In Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, Jewish Voice For Peace and anyone else who supports, condones or celebrates terrorist activity. It’s no different from supporting, condoning or celebrating the KKK.

5. Do not engage in endlessly trying to re-litigate Israel’s legitimacy on the world map.

Even if you very misguidedly believe the land in Israel was stolen and colonized, which it wasn’t, there is no getting around the fact that America was stolen and colonized. You’d be hard-pressed to find a nation on this globe that wasn’t founded or maintained by violence. You don’t obsessively attempt to de-legitimize your own or any other country’s right to exist. Stop making an exception for the world’s one and only Jewish nation.

6. Don’t apply any standards to Israel that you are not actively and publicly applying to America, which has done far worse in the last two years by any measure than Israel has done in her entire history.

Trump has killed nearly 800,000 people worldwide by cutting off USAID on a dime. A huge percentage of them children, by malnutrition or starvation among many other causes. Why does absolutely no one talk or think about those kids, killed by OUR government?

Don’t clog social media with accusations of genocide unless you’re visibly and vocally accusing America of the same. Don’t scream about rock stars playing in Israel if you’re fine with them playing in the U.S. Don’t try to exclude Israelis from international academic or cultural events unless you’re advocating for your own — and your American colleagues’ — exclusion from the same events. Don’t post supposedly starving kids in Gaza all over your news feed unless you’re also posting starving kids in the countries where Trump cut off USAID. Stop making the Jewish people the projection point for all your own guilt and complicity.

7. When your Jewish friends or peers tell you they’re experiencing antisemitism, don’t jump straight to telling us how much Israel sucks.

It is unequivocally the case that antisemitism is raging all over the country toward random Jewish civilians, and your opinion of Israel has no relevance in regard to that.

8. Don’t blame Israel for everything wrong with America and every scourge threatening humanity.

Israel is not responsible for all our own social ills, including police brutality, food insecurity, income inequality, our unaffordable healthcare, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, Covid, 9/11, our natural disasters, or the weather. Yes, I have heard all these allegations and too many more to count.

America is by far the most powerful nation in the world and it is responsible for its own decisions and problems.

9. If you’re told that something you’re saying or doing is antisemitic, don’t defend yourself by telling us about your 10% of Jewish DNA, your strain of Jewish ancestry, your Jewish in-laws or distant relatives, your Jewish friends or family members, or Jewish Voice for Peace.

Trump is married to an immigrant but that doesn’t mean he’s not sexist or xenophobic. Clarence Thomas is Black but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do continual harm to the Black community. If you’d be embarrassed to defend yourself against accusations of racism by saying some of your best friends are Black or that your grandmother was a Cherokee, then don’t play that pathetic card with us.

And please stop invoking Jewish Voice For Peace. JVP is not primarily Jewish and they’re not remotely in favor of peace. They are a violent eliminationist group seeking the dissolution of the Jewish nation.

10. If you’ve never once questioned why anti-Israel sentiment in the U.S. burns a thousand times hotter and with infinitely more passion than anti-Trump sentiment, consider the likelihood that you’re unconsciously comfortable scapegoating Jews for your own country’s evils.

Again, OUR PRESIDENT and his administration have killed far more people — including children — in less than two years than Israel has in her entire history. He is also killing OUR democracy. He is disappearing OUR friends and neighbors from off the street, and more than a few have died in US custody.

His ICE thugs have killed protestors on the street in broad daylight for no real reason. He has stripped gender-affirming care, civil rights and dignity from the trans community. He has stripped women of reproductive rights. He is hastening the end of the entire world by removing all measures against climate collapse. He is crippling science and medicine. He is destroying our democracy in plain sight. He tried to murder half of Congress.

Where are the campus takeovers from coast to coast? The occupied buildings? The municipal buildings and transportation hubs taken over and shut down? Roads closed? Property destroyed? Flags set on fire, mobs roving the streets?

Sure, every few months there’s a listless No Kings march and people come out in inflatable costumes and march peacefully and go home again. But there’s not a fraction of the passion or heat or rage toward our own government that there is toward a tiny country of Jews thousands of miles away. Why do you think that is?

✡️

Okay, fam. That’s what I’ll be handing my local Democratic reps. Again, I’m more than open to constructive suggestions.

I know these are very dark days, but I hope our Sabbath tonight and the weekend will offer you some measure of momentary escape or familial / social joy.

I’ll be back with you early next week, with a new initiative I’m hoping to launch on behalf of Jewish parents with kids in the K-12 education bracket.

Much love and fortitude in the meantime.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

A belated shavua tov.

We had a phenomenal conversation with Dr. Lynette Nusbacher on Sunday, and — as always when we have a precious chance to convene with her — she dazzled with the sheer depth, breadth and scope of her knowledge. If you weren’t able to be there, you can watch it here:

If you appreciate the profound and ongoing gift of her perspective, and you’re able, please consider choosing a paid subscription to her own substack General Offensive! General Uprising! and/or show your love with a contribution to Nusbacher Associates via PayPal.

Also, since we’re fortunate enough to have a special podcast of hers that’s dedicated solely to us, please send any questions you might have for her, because she is very guided by these when she creates a new episode.

✡️

So as is likely clear by now, I prefer whenever possible to summon positivity in Friday newsletters, but the reality is that I was struggling hard with the direction of the Democratic party even as I last wrote on other topics. I was less restrained on Facebook, where I wrote the following post toward the end of last week:

The GOP was hijacked and utterly taken over by violent radicals.

I see the same happening on the left. It’s not as full-blown.

Yet.

But to me, the trend is unmistakable.

It’s as if the left realized that in a sick society, they could not win with their boring reasonable moderate policies that excite no one’s bloodlust.

They have to match the right’s id-driven energy, they need a new, provocative and galvanizing style, so they’ve settled on Jihadist Chic.

And they’re all too ready to feed the Jews to the hate machine.

No, criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitic. But when you channel the overwhelming majority of your passion and energy and rage at Israel instead of at Trump, who is doing exponentially worse to the world and to the vulnerable than the Israeli government has ever done on their worst day, you’re indulging in the ancient escapist scapegoating that has fueled millenia of our persecution and murder.

No one ever thinks they’re the bad guy. Ordinary Germans during the Holocaust did not consider themselves terrible people. Everyone believes they’re on the right side of history, that they’re saving the world and acting for the great good of humanity when they go after the Jews.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that you hate the same people your ancestors hated?

This post was inspired by several current darlings of the left.

The first is Hasan Piker, a far-left influencer with the most popular channel on Twitch, who is becoming a fixture on the campaign trails of Democratic politicians.

Piker has millions of followers despite, or more likely because of, his avowed loyalty to Hamas over Israel and his statement that “America deserved 9/11.” He’s a dedicated Marxist who quotes Lenin and Mao and mourns the fall of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. It’s hard to imagine how rallying with him enhances anyone’s image as an aspiring American representative but this is where we are.

One of the candidates inviting him to rallies is Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, who has also claimed that the Israeli government is just as evil as Hamas.

Another Senate hopeful is Graham Platner, who’s running in Maine and who’s known for having had a Nazi tattoo on his chest, and words of praise for Hamas after its murder of Israeli soldiers in 2014. It’s difficult to imagine how these factors aren’t deal-breakers for supporters like Elizabeth Warren, but again, this seems to be where we are.

And then there’s Amir Makled, who just defeated Jewish contender Jordan Acker in the race for University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Makled is known for having tweeted his grief over the death of Hezbollah leader and “martyr” Nasrallah…

… as well as his support for the Islamic Regime of Iran, in a tweet cheering on the Iranian government in its “sacred war against the enemy” (America) — and implying that Iran has not been an aggressor all these decades.

As you can imagine, fam, these trends are causing a crisis in my work life.

For more than two years, I’ve made it the aim of my full-time work to keep Jews on the left side of the aisle. I’ve maintained — and I still maintain — that Trumpism is the ultimate evil. If there is a single thing in this world I know for sure, it’s that I will never, never, ever support him or any of his enablers or even just his apologists.

But I was on a walk with my son yesterday and deeply troubled by my inability to decisively answer his questions about what I would do if it came to choosing between a jihadist supporter vs. a MAGA candidate.

I told him I could only see myself writing in my own candidate in such a situation. He reminded me of my rage toward people who did that during the last election, rage I stand by because Biden was an exponentially superior candidate to Trump by any conceivable measure and an eminently decent human being (and incredible friend to Israel!) as well.

But I would do it myself in a hypothetical contest between, say, the likes of Hasan Piker and J.D. Vance.

“You’d throw your vote away even if you believed it would help MAGA win?” my son asked.

I told him in a situation that stark and extreme, I believed I would. While I think Trump is the worst possible leader of this country, no one should be forced to support someone who has celebrated the murder of their children and that’s a line I could not cross.

In the midst of these agonies, an item came across my news feed that felt like a momentary beacon of light.

A local acquaintance, a woman from my Torah class, is running for a seat in our state legislature. She and I have been very friendly and I was immensely cheered by this news, ready to hurl myself into supporting her campaign, as I knew her to be an informed and ardent supporter of Israel as well as the president of our local county’s organization of Democrats.

Imagine my shock and intense dismay, then, to see that she was running as a Republican.

I messaged her to ask if her brand-new Republican affiliation was accurate and not a misprint. She confirmed that it was, and then added that there was a lot to her story, that it had not been an easy decision, that she is still not a MAGA supporter and that she’d like to have coffee and talk about it.

I agreed to this in light of the fact that she is still not in Trump’s corner. I have long thought that we need a new Republican party. We need people with moral courage and integrity to curb the excesses of the left, never more so than now.

I have also long thought that maybe the moderates on the right and the left — the jihadism-rejecting Democrats and the Never Trumpers on the right — would form a new party of centrism, sanity and moderation while the two ends of the horseshoe unite fully and run as the science-rejecting, rage-baiting, Jew-hating extremists they are.

They’re practically there now; here is Exhibit A, wherein Nick Fuentes and Ana Kasparian broadcast virtually identical messages:

For now, though, I’m still resolved to fight as hard as I can for the Democratic party I belong to and the one I want to stay within. My next newsletter will include the perspective of a Jewish friend who's spent decades devoted to supporting the best Democrats and who continues to pour her heart into fighting for its better half to prevail.

Much love and fortitude to all of you in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I’m sorry this link is going out late — I wasn’t able to connect with Lynette last night and I was out this morning.

But we will be meeting with her at 1 pm Pacific time, 4 pm Eastern TODAY.

Bring your questions about the Iran War!

Also please RSVP below if you can make it so we know roughly how many to expect.

The link is HERE:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81348612394?pwd=qfm0fqsiq4MkjqaonFoWM44okllbwx.1

I hope to see many of you there very soon!

Much love,

Elissa

Hey, beloved tribe.

I know that in many recent newsletters, I’ve gone into depth on all that’s terrible. But as we head into Shabbat, as is my practice, I’m hoping to share all the glimmers of light that have sustained me recently, and others I’m trying to spark myself.

Yesterday, JUDITH showcased the luminous poetry of Joy Gaines-Friedler. In the introduction to Secular Audacity, her most recent of six books of poems, Joy Gaines-Friedler asks a question that I would imagine no Jew in this community has left unasked during the last few years: How does one live in a world that’s turned against you?

Daughter of a Holocaust survivor, relative of residents under attack in Kibbutz Ner Oz on October 7th, and deep admirer of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Gaines-Friedler wrote of her poems that they “speak from a secular mysticism in conversation with Heschel’s pious views, but I believe, much to the same end.”

Justice, forgiveness, devotion, repair, awe, and our responsibility to each other are all themes that have found their way into her work, and her poems do indeed seem to speak from the intersection of the secular and the sacred, where one can believe “in none of it, and all of it” at once. Within them, I believe Gaines-Friedler answers her own question: we live in this compromised place by finding and cultivating and cherishing the divine sparks in every person, in every poem, in our collective legacy.

Here is one poem from the showcase:

JERUSALEM: AT THE MARKET IN THE OLD CITY

A small woman
In the clothes of Poland
Before the darkness
Before the heart tattooed
     with its grief
Schmatahs
My mother calls them.
Ragged, patched together,
Reclaimed.
She is wearing her exile,
Her lost mother's
Memory, her flag of 
Small comfort.

Whatever happened--
Keeps happening.

Keeps her from escaping
The night howl of train whistles.

Her smile keeps clean
The golden stone of Jerusalem.

She is holding
A single bill in one hand,
Buying macaroons,
Something sweet for the table.

You can read the rest of her featured poems HERE.

✡️

Next, let me alert you to some upcoming events:

In my last newsletter, I posted a poll to gauge interest in a panel event featuring 5 members of my own Righteous Among The Nations hall of fame.

I expected some interest — what I did not expect was that, by the time I went to sleep last night, nearly 100 people had responded and the interest rate was 100%.

This was a first in my experience — even when the response is enthusiastic, it has never before been 100%.

By this morning, it was 99%. That doesn’t diminish the unequivocal message you sent.

Rest assured the panel will be convened and a date announced.

✡️

The next event I want to mention is the return of Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, our Iran war correspondent. I have many questions I’m dying to ask her. Some of these questions are:

1. You were always skeptical about the possibility of a regime change in Iran, but do you think there’s any chance that this war will still yield some benefits to Israel? Do you believe Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities have been eroded and/or set back in any significant way, and if so, do you consider this worth the price of admission, so to speak?
   

2. I’ve heard many people say that Iran was an ever-increasing existential threat to the stability of the region, to Israel and to the West — and that if we didn’t deal with Iran now, we would still need to do so later, and it would only have become harder to do so the longer we waited. Do you agree with this, and if so, does that affect your evaluation of the US’s decision to strike now?
   

3. I’ve also heard high-profile speculation that the result of this war will be that the US is no longer a global superpower, but that Iran and Israel will be left as the dominant regional powers of the Middle East — and that there is an expectation that these two will settle into a chilly tolerance of each other. How realistic or not do you find this prediction?
   

4. The most optimistic assessments I’ve heard hint at the possibility that this war could herald the dawn of a new Middle East, where moderate values are ascendant and there’s widespread normalization with Israel. In your opinion, is this remotely likely? And if not likely — a long shot, but possible? Or sheer wishful thinking?

I have several other questions as well, and of course, you would be more than welcome to ask her questions of your own. She and I are thinking of reconvening as soon as this Sunday at 1 pm Pacific time, 4 pm NYC time. My only concern is that this might be too short notice for meaningful attendance. So if you’d indulge another poll, please weigh in below.

If there’s enough interest in a meeting this Sunday, I will send out the link on Saturday evening the moment Shabbat ends on the west coast!

✡️

Finally, we do have one event already scheduled with certainty. Please save Thursday May 14th at 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern for a virtual session with Debbie Plawner, author of Illuminated Paths and creator of the Torah-based Oracolor card deck, a tool for accessing your own inner wisdom and guidance.

I’ve done many readings with her and I’m always startled by what these sessions offer me. They don’t rely on any belief in the supernatural; they’re about our own intuition and relationship to color.

I’ve mentioned Debbie before, but to reiterate the overview of her current work, she spent years studying color theory, and one day on a hike, she had a vision of how that study could be applied to the Torah. In her words:

Twelve years ago, I taught myself how to chant Torah through color-coded cantillation. Seeing the words in color made the sounds easier to retain — and opened new layers of meaning.

There are moments when everything becomes clear. For me, that happened on a hike in 2020, when the vision of the Oracolor Wheel emerged. Since then, I’ve shared it as a guide for clarity, balance, and renewed energy.

Oracolor infuses 48 colors with specific meanings, offering a simple guide for living with more vibrancy and depth. Rooted in Torah wisdom, Oracolor invites alignment of mind, body, and heart, awakening the light within. Each color carries distinct energy you can draw on whenever you need support.

(“Greater is learning Torah than the priesthood and than royalty, for royalty is acquired by 30 steps, and the priesthood by 24, but the Torah by 48 ways.” —Pirkei Avot 6:6)

Debbie’s vision has taken several forms and offers the interested several ways in. What we’ll be doing in our virtual event is a few quick and free sessions for interested community members — a fun and interactive way to understand how it works. If you’d then like to go deeper, there will be many ways to do so, all of them laid out during our time with Debbie.

✡️

Okay, fam. I will have much more to share with you next week — including, believe it or not, some spots of light on the political landscape.

In the meantime, I’m wishing you a lovely weekend, a peaceful Sabbath, and a respite from the madness.

I’ll be back with you very soon.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

This week, an article in JUDITH titled The Great Betrayal resonated with a lot of people. In it, authors Teme Ring and Susan Blumberg-Kason relate an account of how a beloved local feminist bookstore became a hostile and unwelcoming environment for them.

It’s a hard piece to read, made harder by the knowledge that this story is just one of so many others like it, taking place across all walks of Western life.

Anywhere you look, you see it happening. In every facet of our society: professional and cultural and social.

I’ve written extensively about how antisemitism has pervaded every aspect of publishing, from agents and editors and publicists firing their Jewish clients with no explanation, to Zionist blacklists of authors circulating among millions, to literary awards ceremonies and festivals and bookstore events and author panels imploding for their inclusion of Zionists, to lit magazines adding “No Zionists” to their submission guidelines, and countless other discriminatory incidents.

And no one needs evidence of how thoroughly antizionist ideology and propaganda have infiltrated every facet of academia and popular culture and social justice spaces.

Nor does anyone need evidence of how often it emerges in sports, from Israeli teams inspiring Nazi salutes and chants at international games, to athletes refusing to compete against Israelis, to Zionist athletes like Deni Avdija receiving continual hate messages for being Israeli.

But I would feel confident speculating at this point that absolutely no avenues of life are free of it.

A recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Why Jewish Staff Are Quietly Leaving Progressive Nonprofits, reveals how pervasive the issue is within the non-profit sector:

A recent survey of Jewish staff at secular nonprofits conducted by my organization, Blue Compass, found the problem is widespread. Nearly one-third of respondents said they had considered leaving their jobs because of their experience as Jews in the workplace, and nearly 40 percent said they had witnessed antisemitic statements or behavior at work over the past year. Fully 41 percent reported feeling uncomfortable expressing their Jewish identity at professional events, with one-third saying they felt the same discomfort in their own organizations.

The NIH reports a similar environment in the world of healthcare in a PubMed article titled Antisemitism in Medicine: An International Perspective.

The International Federation of Social Workers just attempted to expel the Israeli Union of Social Workers from its umbrella.

The Legal Aid Attorneys Union just agreed to pay a $315,000 settlement to Jewish members it attempted to oust for their Zionism.

In the realm of anti-Trump activism, Israel has become the central obsession.

The policies and ideologies of local candidates are no longer the focus for voters. It’s all about whether they get money from AIPAC.

Cutting funding for Israel is a relentless priority.

Support for jihadist apologists like Hasan Piker is spiking.

In my own local groups (from the border of Oregon and Washington) — Indivisible Oregon, 50501 Movement Washington State, Southwest Washington Democrats — the anti-Israel monomania has alienated me and many of my local Jewish friends. I have heard similar sentiments from Jews across the country who no longer feel good about attending their local anti-Trump marches due to the proliferation of anti-Israel clothing, signs and chants.

It feels as if Israeli tourists can’t go anywhere in the world without nut jubs screaming and cursing and hounding them in public.

Here are just a few recent incidents:

And this doesn’t even get into the countless attacks on Jewish individuals, businesses and events. I don’t think I’ve attended a public Jewish event in years in which the location wasn’t concealed ahead of time, emailed to screened registrants only at the last minute. Jewish conference websites are the only such sites I’ve seen without an address of the venue made visible. I haven’t entered a Jewish space without metal detectors, armed guards, or other heightened security measures in just as long.

As you can imagine, because of the work I do, people send me these articles and videos and news items all day long, in a steady stream. Not that they’re hard to find. Not that anyone intellectually honest can fail to notice how all-pervasive antisemitic attacks, on every conceivable level, have become.

But they assume full-frame center-stage status in my working life, so it’s completely impossible for me to lose awareness of the way it’s metastasizing like a cancer.

It’s also impossible for me to lose awareness of what my own progressive non-Jewish community is doing in response.

So many social justice warriors around me who pride themselves on their activism, their bravery in speaking truth to power, their moral purity, are either piling on or ignoring antisemitism altogether.

A few longtime Jewish-adjacent folks might murmur about it from time to time. Posting something like: “This is awful” in response to, say, some high-profile murder of Jews in cold blood on the street. But there’s nowhere near the energy they bring to every other minority group under siege.

In another piece I published this week — this one in MAZL — my local friend Carolyn Fine recalled the antisemitism she and other aspiring anti-racist Jews experienced from a white instructor in an anti-racism workshop. Reading her account brought up so many memories for me. During the summer after George Floyd’s murder, when Trump’s thugs were attempting to terrorize Portland in order to shut down Black Lives Matter protests, these dynamics were inescapable.

I remember being fascinated by the way so many people who wanted to support anti-racist efforts were mocked, dragged, and bullied every time they opened their mouths.

More often than not, the attackers were other white self-appointed morality police officers.

In my local Wall Of Moms group, this dynamic raged night and day. Trump was doing epic harm, but the most passionate activist energy was directed not at him or his supporters but at other white people who wanted to fight him. Even the woman who had the brilliant idea of starting the Wall of Moms was ousted from her own org, because she mused aloud about WoM defending liberal protests of all kinds in other cities, which was seen as an “All Lives Matter”-esque affront to the original mission of supporting BLM.

But my overarching point is that there’s vanishingly little passion or energy for fighting anti-Jewish hate.

Which brings me to an idea I had recently, one I was hoping to gauge interest for here.

It is so easy to take a moral stand when all your friends and colleagues agree with you, when the social tide is overwhelmingly in your favor.

It is so hard to call out hatred when it’s being perpetrated by your own cohort.

But there are a few non-Jewish individuals who do.

And as time goes on, I’m only more impressed, more grateful and more intrigued by what opened their eyes to the need for their stance and how they find and maintain the fortitude to hold it in the face of nearly universal opposition.

I’m thinking of hosting an event where I gather a panel of five of these folks — members of what I like to call my own Righteous Among The Nations hall of fame — and interview them about how they came to hold and defend their views so valiantly and publicly.

If you’d let me know in the poll below whether this would be of interest to you, I’d appreciate that greatly. Of course, as is the usual way in Never Alone events, participants would also have the chance to speak directly to these heroes and ask them questions as well.

So please take a second to vote:

Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you on Friday, with good things I hope will serve as some measure of an antidote to all that’s going on.

Much love and strength to you in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

A belated shavua tov.

I’m sure I’m not the only one of us experiencing high-speed whiplash trying to follow the Iran War. There really is nothing more maddening than having so many primary sources feel so profoundly unreliable.

Needless to say, our Buffoon-in-Chief is worthless in terms of information. He hasn’t said a coherent sentence in years. He changes his mind hourly.

The Strait of Hormuz needs to be open by Friday, or else. Or wait, make that Monday. Okay, Tuesday. All right, no more Mr. Nice Guy: 48 hours from now, or an entire civilization will be wiped out, never to be seen again. Either then, or in two more weeks.

All right, the Strait is open. No, it’s closed. Actually it’s really open now, permanently open — and Iran has promised it will never be closed again. Big muscular men from the IRGC came up to him with tears in their eyes and said, Sir, we will never, ever close the Strait of Hormuz to anyone ever again. Or at least not until this evening.

Well, now it’s at least partially open. Open to some. Now closed again, and Iran is scrapping talks and promising retaliation for the cargo ship seized by the US. Except under the radar, it seems an Iranian delegation is in fact quietly on its way to Islamabad.

But the unreliability is many layers deep. I no longer trust the left-leaning western media to keep its own biases out of the news. Something I’ve noticed is that every left-leaning American outlet has characterized this war as a total clusterfuck right out of the gate: needless, baseless, lacking any strategy or coherent goals, lacking any chance of any measure of equivocal success, driven by Israel’s conniving and manipulations.

The Israeli media has been much slower to go there. According to them, in general, the war has already accomplished much and the jury’s still out on how much more can be done, but there’s reason to think the entire Middle East is being overhauled, and the result could be wholesale normalization of Israel with huge swaths of the region.

Here’s one thing I can say with certainty: you will get a much more nuanced picture of the possibilities, and the interpretation of what’s happened to date, if you get your perspectives straight from geopolitical and military experts who don’t loathe Israel.

I listen to many different podcasts, dipping into new ones from time to time, but the ones that have my most faithful, longtime and serious attention are Call Me Back by Dan Senor, Ask Haviv Anything by Haviv Rettig Gur, and General Offensive, General Uprising by Lynette Nusbacher.

Both Dan and Haviv don’t just offer their own very informed opinions — they continually bring on a very wide range of serious military and geopolitical analysts and strategists. These folks don’t always agree with each other, and sometimes a debate is happening within a single podcast, but one thing I can rely on is that they came by their perspectives honestly, with intellectual integrity, and they’re not focused on partisan activism over straight reportage.

I’m so often enraged by the coverage of Israel by outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker and NPR that I’ve turned away from them entirely when it comes to this topic. And the people I listen to are often furious at the Israeli government, which is absolutely fine with me — I’m very often furious at the Israeli government too. But they don’t demonize or delegitimize Israel, nor do they whitewash the genocidal aims of Israel’s many enemies, and they don’t leave out the context in which Israel is choosing to strike, making it seem that she engages in violence for the sheer barbaric joy of it.

All this is to say: when I’m asked (with regularity) about which news outlets I read and trust, the short answer is none when it comes to the Jewish nation, and I get my information almost exclusively through a range of expert sources, and resources, instead.

✡️

Here’s the second thing I wanted to offer you today:

In my recent newsletter I See How You've Set Yourself Free, I recalled a coffee date with a local friend I called C., during which she’d related a story of experiencing antisemitism in an anti-racism workshop. She recognized herself in the anecdote and reached out afterward, letting me know she’d written that story in her forthcoming memoir and I was welcome to share it with my readers, along with her identity.

This morning that account — taken as an excerpt from that manuscript — ran in MAZL, my Magazine of the American Zionist Left.

(If to date you’re not a MAZL subscriber, I hope you’ll consider signing up. Like all my content, it is free, no access restricted, with support deeply appreciated but totally optional.

MAZL is the place where I’ve gathered other left-leaning Zionists and proud Jews who aren’t willing to sell out other vulnerable communities in a misguided quest to buy safety from Trump and his ilk, and aren’t willing to sell out our own in a misguided quest to buy safety from our haters on the left.)

Here is the opening of Carolyn’s story:

At the beginning of 2021, I signed up to take an expensive, year-long ‘Somatic Abolitionism’ training with Resmaa Menakem.

Menakem is a Black trauma therapist teaching white people that there’s trauma residing in our bodies, and that we can’t be embodied anti-racists until we heal it. This felt compassionate and humanizing to me. I had read his book, My Grandmother’s Hands, and I’d come to idolize him.

Resmaa was working with a white woman named Carlin Quinn. She ran the organization that hosted the training, and functioned as a kind of human shield—absorbing and intercepting what was framed as “toxic whiteness” so Resmaa wouldn’t have to. Whenever she would catch a whiff of white fragility or something that could be clocked as problematic in any way—even just a look on someone’s face—she would bring the participant up on the screen to confront them about the offense in front of the group of 400.

This wasn’t my first training with Resmaa. The previous year he’d had us watch the nine-minute video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. We were told to watch quietly, stay out of the chat, and just be with whatever came up for us in our bodies as we witnessed the violence.

As I watched, it became clear that the video wasn’t working properly. I could hear the audio but the video was frozen — it was just a still of Chauvin looking dead-eyed into the camera. I stared at the image, waiting for it to move. It didn’t. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I thought the problem might be my own internet connection.

A woman typed into the chat: “It’s not moving.”

When the video ended, Carlin reappeared on the screen.

“Before we go on, I need to address something that just came up,” she said.

She then brought the woman from the chat onto the screen.

“I need to really slow this down because I’m noticing how activated I’m feeling in my body. I’m having a hard time understanding why you’d share that you didn’t find the video moving, and I’m wondering how you think that’s landing on the Black bodies in this space,” Carlin said.

“No! Sorry! I meant that the video wasn’t moving. It was frozen,” the woman said, her voice tight. She looked terrified.

It took a few moments for Carlin to understand what had happened, and then there was a collective exhale.

Still, the message had been sent and received: Stay quiet. She’s looking for reasons to come after us.

I told myself it was fine, that I could handle the discomfort. Above all, I wanted to learn from Resmaa, and this was obviously the price of admission. And so I came back for more.

You can read the rest of Carolyn’s account HERE. I appreciated it deeply for its candor, and for its exploration of the pitfalls in play when Ashkenazic Jews are labeled and treated as merely White.

✡️

Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you soon. I have some very exciting events in the pipeline and I so look forward to telling you about those.

In the meantime, love and strength as we press on.

Chazak, chazak.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

This morning a letter from a total stranger appeared in my Facebook inbox. It came straight to the point:

Good morning. I disagree with almost every sentence you write.

Would you believe me if I said this opening made me grin like a wolf? God help me, I was charmed. I’m not being sarcastic. I actually perked up a little bit. Fortune favors the bold.

He went on to give a thumbnail bio:

(Long-time anti-Zionist, ex-Zionist who gave Israel a 15-month try as a young person, joyful and well-educated Jew, child of SS St Louis passenger, parent of a very Jewish, very anti-supremacist teen, learning and writing about Palestine, antisemitism, trauma, and immigration for 35 years = plenty of standing).

A child of a St. Louis passenger. I hadn’t known there were any St. Louis survivors. Can you imagine having a parent who was on the St. Louis and identifying as an antizionist?

Why is all of your writing one way only?

Well, that’s a new one. I often think of what a liability it’s been to be a passionate Zionist and Never Trumper. I feel I’d almost certainly have exponentially more readers if I just picked a side, but as it is, I have countless experiences with people who love my columns day in and day out, right up until the moment I bash Trump or express appreciation for, say, Ahmad Fouad Alkhatib, who often criticizes Israel. And just like that, they take off, expressing a sense of bitter betrayal on their way out the door.

If one way only refers to always Zionist and always anti-Trump, it’s because I’m one person only and this is where I stand on both those fronts. Here I’m reminded of that joke about the cop pulling a woman over to tell her she’s on a one-way street.

“But I was going one way, officer!”

I write from my own singular perspective — and I’m not sure how it’s humanly possible to do otherwise.

You broadcast nearly-daily with humor and passion and, I believe, a harmful analysis. Yet, I cannot comment on your FB posts and would need to pay you for the privilege of doing so on Substack. Why prevent exchange?

My assumption is you have made it impossible to respond to what you write because you have been subject to significant abuse online. The digital space is ugly. Adults on here act like disgusting middle-school bullies and I have no doubt you have experienced some of the worst people have to offer.

I have no interest in base harassment or cheap insults. Nor do I value polite dialogue; the stakes are far too high and the time for ‘tough conversation’ circles has long passed. I share your affinity for telling fuckers to fuck off when they overstep.

The long-term impact of this protective behavior is that your ideas are not interrogated in any meaningful way. I am sure I am not the only person who feels your writing is powerful enough to merit a challenge and would appreciate the opportunity to publicly question your propositions.

Is the reason everything is closed because of previous time-wasting and harassment? Would you consider allowing me to respond?

He went on to share his own substack with me.

When I share reader feedback here, it’s because I suspect it might be emblematic of what others are thinking but not saying to me. And I believe I do try hard to own my shortcomings here — as when I shared the feedback from an Israeli in her bomb shelter, who told me that she was genuinely happy that I, as an American Jew, could go to a niggun retreat and escape the hardships of this moment for a brief interlude, but Israelis didn’t have that option and my diaspora-based perspective had left her feeling more alone, not less.

So I wanted to share my response to him, in case it helps to clarify my position to anyone else.

Hi, thanks for reaching out. Your note actually delighted me.

Any Facebook friend can comment freely on my page. If you ever sent me a friend request, I haven’t seen it.

My substacks are free with no content restricted ever, but only paid subcribers can comment so the site isn’t overrun by trolls.

You are most certainly free to respond to anything I say via Messenger.

If you think I don’t tolerate disagreement on my Facebook page, you haven’t been reading it very long. I have received a tsunami of public pushback about Israel over many, many years. But I draw the line at engaging publicly with people who want to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state. I don’t host explicitly anti-Zionist content on my page and I’m unwilling to have long, tiresome, endlessly rehashed arguments about Israel’s right to exist every day.

I’m honored that you read me consistently despite deep disagreement. I’m happy to engage privately if that’s enough for you.

Nothing I wrote to him was disingenuous. What higher honor is there, really, than being consistently read by someone who considers you their ideological opposite?

I look forward to corresponding with him in more depth. Nothing ever pleases me more than either keeping a Jew on the left side of the aisle, or getting an avowed anti-Zionist to reconsider their renouncement of our homeland. I’m very happy to be able to report that I have experienced both many times — and of course, others have moved my needle as well, inspired me to think differently about any number of issues.

Because I believe in the Jewish value of embracing dissent. Of getting to what Rabbi Angela Buchdahl calls “the third opinion”. And this label comes from another joke, the one that says for every two Jews, there are three opinions. She didn’t understand that joke when she first heard it. If the point was that Jews argue about everything, then why wasn’t the expression: “two Jews, two opinions”?

The third opinion emerges only after in-depth dialogue, after two Jews talk for long enough that the matter becomes clear to both of them.

This sermon is probably my all-time favorite from her. I’ve listened to it in its entirety at least a dozen times over the years. You can watch it directly below if you’re so inclined.

✡️

Okay, fam, finally I wanted to include a reminder about Never Alone Book Club’s event tomorrow night, at 5 pm Pacific time and 8 pm Eastern.

We will be talking about the very entertaining, poignant and beautiful memoir Troika by Irena Smith.

I have always moderated these events, and I will still be an active participant tomorrow, but as it happens, my cherished real life friend — the brilliant poet Elyse Fenton — has a very intimate knowledge of this book, as she is also a real life friend of Irena’s who witnessed the entire process of its creation. For this reason, I thought that letting her lead the author interview would yield an especially rich conversation.

Please feel free to invite anyone you trust.

THE LINK IS HERE:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81370349161

I very much hope to see you there!

If you’d like to ask Irena a question, please let me know and I will put you on the list.

In any event, I’ll be back with you Friday, with good things to share.

Much love in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I spent the weekend visiting my daughter at her college, an interlude that included my husband, son and parents. Whenever I take any little trip, even a weekend road trip to another city within a few hours of mine, the geopolitical world recedes a little bit. Anytime I travel, I’m drawn to the same aspects of wherever I am: the local farmers’ markets, the local art scene, the town’s natural beauty: parks, gardens, waterfronts.

I steep in the immediacy of the colors and textures and culture around me and I feel temporarily restored.

I have to admit, it’s always hard to re-enter real life, no matter how much I love my home and work.

And this time was no exception as I confronted the tidal wave of antizionism and antisemitism permeating the internet and every corner of my social media.

This past week, an open letter to the Jewish Book Council from a group of self-identified antizionist or nonzionist Jews went into wide circulation on my newsfeed.

Here is the wildly ironic opening paragraph to its intro:

Below is an open letter from a group of Jewish authors to the Jewish Book Council (JBC). A group of us—consisting of writers with books eligible for the 2025 National Jewish Book Awards and those who have written for their magazine, had our books reviewed in their pages, or had some connection to the JBC—came together because we felt that the JBC, the pre-eminent US organization for Jewish writers and literature, did not represent or value us, as non- and anti-Zionist Jewish writers. Further, we were—and remain—concerned that the institution’s apparent bias toward centering Israeli and Zionist voices is not only exclusionary but harmful, contributing to the dehumanization of Palestinians and advancing a system of cultural apartheid.

So in the very first sentence, these writers acknowledge that the Jewish Book Council has platformed them in some way. It explicitly says the JBC has featured their articles in the org’s magazine, reviewed its books, or supported / amplified them via some other conduit.

And in the very next breath, they complain of being excluded and unrepresented.

In a private Jewish group where this letter was being discussed, I couldn’t contain my frustration.

Goddammit. We are absolutely never, in any context, allowed to be for ourselves. We're supposed to exist only as allies to everyone else. What other minority advocacy groups are expected not to focus on their own, even within organizations founded solely for that purpose?

In exactly the same spirit, earlier this month I was bombarded with posts about antizionist seders — whether they were being held here in my own city, sought by people all over the world, or spearheaded by orgs like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In fact, I listened to an extensive breakdown of JVP’s 2026 haggadah that reported that the Israelites were mentioned 4 times therein, while Palestine was mentioned 52 times, Gaza was mentioned 70 times, and Palestinians 90 times.

You can hear the morbid details here:

In another Hagaddah generated by Moment Magazine, where the intro states they “reached out to brilliant and thoughtful observers—poets, artists, rabbis and others—and asked what they would add to the Haggadah today”, we find this gem by one of the signatories of the open letter to the Jewish Book Council, poet Joy Ladin.

A moment of comic relief came from my beloved friend Vanessa Hidary — the brilliant spoken word artist who has held fast to her Jewish pride and Zionism at tremendous personal cost — when she posted this hilarious exchange on Instagram, along with the observation that “The comedy writes itself.”

Fam, this push toward total erasure, “de-centering”, or universalization within our own stories, holidays and history is a sickness, shared by no other minority group as far as I can tell.

This impulse leads to nothing but our own dissolution into a vague humanism, indistinguishable from garden-variety liberalism (and equally prone to its frequent journeys down the well-intentioned road to hell). It strips our rituals and traditions of our own fierce specificity, heart and soul.

When I was last in NYC, I watched the controversial — and, in my opinion, widely misunderstood — play Slam Frank, which is an utterly brilliant send-up of this trend.

I held back on writing about it at the time because I sensed that I needed to see it again before doing so, but I’ll say here that creator Andrew Fox reveals where this Jewish erasure within our own stories inexorably leads.

In this play within a play, a progressive theater company has reimagined Anne Frank and the heroine of the story is now the pansexual Latina Anita Franco. The entire play as reinterpreted by this troupe now focuses on xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and every other imaginable form of oppression — except, of course, antisemitism. The sole Jewish character — Anne’s sister Margot — is all but completely silent during the show. The climax of the play is her realization that in order to save future Gazans, Jews like her need to commit suicide.

When people question my passionate embrace of Judaism as my own spiritual path despite the fact that I don’t believe in God, I return again and again to the fact that our tradition’s wisdom and richness is an unparalleled spiritual blueprint even without a literal interpretation of our texts.

Over and over, I’m amazed by the way our sages offered us guidance that perfectly applies to our current-day lives.

And on this front, I continually come back to Hillel’s three questions:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

If not now, when?

The very secret to life itself is in those three questions.

If you can articulate it better in a thousand words, you’re a genius.

Hillel knew that we could not effectively work or fight on behalf of anyone else if we lacked our own inner core, from which all strength, endurance and integrity flow.

You hear all the time now, from any self-help guru around, that we can’t truly love others unless or until we first love ourselves.

But Hillel said it first. He said it thousands of years ago.

There’s a reason “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” is the first question, and the equally resonant and essential “If I am only for myself, what am I?” is the second.

Compassion and advocacy don’t require martyrdom or self-immolation.

We must not listen to or be swayed by anyone who implies it does.

Our Exodus story is extraordinarily potent in its original form, which is the source of its staying power, and Passover (the oldest known human ritual) — like so many other Jewish holidays, like Judaism itself — is inextricably linked to our eternal, abiding and indelible connection to our homeland.

We must not surrender to the pressure to disavow that.

Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you on Wednesday. Please remember that the Never Alone Book Club’s conversation with Troika author Irena Smith is this coming Thursday at 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern.

And though I hope and believe the Jewish Book Council won’t allow itself to be bullied away from its mission by antizionist writers, you have my own guarantee that the Never Alone Book Club never, ever will.

As always, love and fortitude to you.

Chazak, chazak, v'nitchazek: be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

This won’t be a full-blown newsletter, but I just wanted to bring your attention to a few quick things.

I usually talk about exciting upcoming events in my Shabbat newsletter, but I’m leaving town for the weekend this afternoon so this will be my last missive for the week and I wanted to send the info that would have gone out tomorrow.

One week from today, on the evening on April 16 — 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern — the Never Alone Book Club will feature a conversation between author Irena Smith and poet Elyse Fenton, about the former’s debut memoir Troika.

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

When three generations of women—a Gen X narrator, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—set out for a quick trip to California's Central Coast, what begins as a road trip soon transforms into something far richer: a modern-day Odyssey. Over the course of three days, the three women brave a severe winter storm, encounter ravenous ostriches, walk through an enchanted light exhibit, binge-watch White Lotus, hunt for coffee with plant-based milk, bicker, reconcile, and share stories.

Troika braids the narrative of a three-day road trip with the longer strands of migration, memory, and motherhood, creating a layered meditation on distance traveled—geographic, generational, and emotional. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that traverses the landscapes of identity and family history and stretches from the horrors of the second world war and an escape from Soviet Russia to adolescence and motherhood in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. As the narrative swerves from heartbreak to hilarity, from Homeric detours and Russian proverbs to internet memes, it weaves together an intimate, poignant, and darkly funny meditation on how we get from where we were to where we are—and what we carry with us along the way.

And for an introduction to Troika, you can read an excerpt HERE.

I know these events are usually publicized with more notice, but the book was not published until this week! You do not have to have finished or even begun the book to attend.

Irena was on the admissions committee for Stanford and her first book was about how to write the most effective college essay during the application process. This is to say: she knows very well how to write compelling creative nonfiction.

And Elyse is a poet of extraordinary gifts and sensibilities.

These are two utterly brilliant women, and I guarantee a fantastic conversation. I really hope to see you there!

Please let us know if you’d like to attend by taking a second to respond to the poll below. No need to respond if you can’t come — we just need a count for the zoom package.

✡️

We also have a gorgeous poetry feature up on JUDITH today.

Here is one of them:

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST COMPANY


                  —Emma, aged 16


I do fine work, my stitches delicate

as an eyelash. This earns


me a spot by the window. Dirty

as it is, some light filters


through. Rosie’s clumsy, her fingers

thick and fit only for rough


cloth stitched by gas lamp.

We buy our own needles, pay


the electric for our machines.

We rent the backless stools


we sit on. The bosses lock us in

and we’re searched


when we leave. Some girls

do steal—buttons, ribbons,


even whole shirts. But not Rosie

and me. Now all I have left


of her is the famous photo.

She stands unsmiling


beneath hand-lettered signs

tacked to the wall—


No back-talk, no stalling in the Ladies.

Don’t come late. Don’t leave early.


If you’re not here Sunday,

don’t come back on Monday—


beside her, and taller than she,

towering stacks of unfinished cloth,


her day’s quota, endless as the straw

the miller’s daughter had to spin.

You can read the rest of the showcase HERE.

✡️

Okay, fam. I’m so sorry I won’t be with you tomorrow but I wish you a heartfelt Shabbat shalom in advance.

I’ll be back with you Monday. Much love in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I must say I’m relieved that yesterday was TACO Tuesday, with Trump postponing the execution of his threat to bomb all the civilian infrastructure in Iran for the third or fourth time.

And I’m also livid about the near-universal response to yesterday’s New York Times article, How Trump Took The U.S. To War With Iran.

It feels as if nearly every non-Jew in my newsfeed is treating that piece as proof that Trump’s decision to enter the war is Israel’s fault.

I’ve read that Netanyahu “maneuvered and cajoled and convinced” Trump into doing his bidding.

That Israel was the tail wagging the American dog.

That the prime minister lied and misled and deceived the president.

That the Jewish nation dictates our foreign policy.

And every other conceivable antisemitic trope implying nefarious, scheming, all-powerful Jewish control over an exponentially bigger and more powerful nation.

I don’t fault the article itself. Even in its title, it places the responsibility squarely where it belongs: with our pedophile-in-chief.

Then it goes on to detail how Netanyahu flew to Washington and made a persuasive pitch for a joint war against the IRGC. And it reports on how Trump’s advisers responded to this presentation.

For a brief summary of the four-part plan laid out by Bibi and the response of Trump’s own intelligence experts, here is an excerpt of the article:

The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.S. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation — killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country.

The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable with American intelligence and military power. They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s pitch, which included the possibility of the Kurds mounting a ground invasion of Iran, were detached from reality.

When Mr. Trump joined the meeting, Mr. Ratcliffe briefed him on the assessment. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.”

The article goes on to elaborate how much skepticism was expressed at this meeting by nearly everyone in Trump’s inner circle.

Vice President J.D. Vance made the most forceful case against going to war, but assured Trump that he would support the decision to do so.

General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed grave concerns about this course of action and repeatedly cited its risks. But, the article goes on to say, he was so careful not to take a stand, repeating that it was not his role to tell the president what to do, that he could appear to some to argue all sides simultaneously. Mr. Trump, in turn, would often seem to hear only what he wanted to hear.

Marco Rubio, too, voiced his preference not to go to war. But then the article goes on to say:

Mr. Rubio, however, did not try to talk Mr. Trump out of the operation, and after the war began he delivered the administration’s justification with full conviction.

Advisers raised the likelihood that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump dismissed this possibility.

He could not be convinced that taking out the regime in Iran would not be as quick and easy as taking out Maduro in Venezuela.

The article focuses on how thoroughly Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men. It reveals how deferent they are to his gut instincts, no matter how much those impulses fly in the face of expert assessment. It notes his greed for foreign policy-related notches in his belt and his expectation that these will come as easily to him as most everything else — and that he will be as shielded from the attendant consequences as surely as he almost always is.

And yet the overarching takeaway from this piece that I’ve seen every freaking place I look is the triumphant declaration that yes, Israel dragged the US into war.

And this sentiment is favored by the whole horseshoe of far left to far right, in a way it never is in any other scenario.

In case the public hasn’t noticed, every politican at every level — local, state, national, and global — makes pitches for their agendas all day every day.

Candidates create the most persuasive pitch they can for why they should be elected — and once elected, why they should be kept in office.

Lobbyists create the most persuasive pitch they can for why their high-paying clients should get what they want from the government.

Legislators create the most persuasive pitch they can for the bills they hope to convert into legislation, the measures they want to pass, the projects they want to execute on behalf of their constituents.

Every country creates the most persuasive pitch for the collaborations they hope to enact with other countries.

That’s their job. That’s what they’re elected and paid to do. It’s what all of them do.

The president fields persuasive pitches all day long. It’s his responsibility to determine whether they’re credible and how to respond.

I have never seen another entity blamed for Trump’s decisions in the past.

In 2016, US intelligence agencies determined that Russia had a hand in turning the presidential election against Hillary Clinton, with a state-authorized campaign of cyber attacks and false news items circulated on social media. When asked about this assessment in a news conference in Helsinki two years later, Trump stated that Putin had assured him otherwise and he believed the Russian dictator.

I didn’t see anyone posting that Russia dragged Trump into turning on the FBI.

When Trump accepted a $400,000,000 plane from Qatar, I didn’t see anyone accusing the latter of dragging Trump into taking a bribe.

When Trump declared of dictator Kim Jong Un: “He wrote me beautiful letters and they're great letters. And then we fell in love,” no one accused North Korea of seducing the president.

In every case up until this moment, whenever Trump has been susceptible to the manipulations of any other heads of state, the disgust has been aimed at him: for his corruption, his insatiable ego, his admiration for thugs, his greed, his folly.

Except when it’s the Jewish nation.

Then Trump’s decisions are all the Jews’ fault, just like absolutely everything else: 9/11, Covid, police violence, American food insecurity, wealth inequality, oligarchy, natural disasters, the weather, and literally every other scourge in the world.

Fam, there’s not a thing we can do about the global wildfire of antisemitism except refuse to internalize it. Refuse to co-sign it. Refuse to bow to it. Refuse to be cowed by it.

We have each other, and that is everything.

We will outlive them. We always have.

That’s all I’ve got — that and my fierce and abiding love for our people, which burns hotter every day.

For now, it will have to be enough.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I swore I wouldn’t do this again.

When Trump took the Oval Office for the second time, I swore I wouldn’t become the person I was in his first term: sleepless, pacing, crazed, enraged, sweating through multiple shirts every day.

I swore that this time, I would stay sane and focus above all on being effective. Focus on the work, not drown in the emotions.

And yet here I am. Wide-eyed, tossing and turning until 4 am most nights. Clutching my head in agony. Spending much of the day steeped in cold dread.

I wake up in the morning and I feel afraid. I feel the bodily symptoms of fear from the moment I open my eyes. Black squid ink squirting all over my insides. Heart pounding. The urge to curl into a fetal position and not move.

About an hour ago, I wrote this post on Facebook:

If Trump takes out all the bridges and power plants in Iran, he will be hurting the Iranian citizens as much as, if not more than, the regime.

There will be widespread starvation, disease and death and his contemptible supporters will no longer be able to pretend he’s in this to “free the people of Iran.”

Israel is fighting a just and necessary war. I don’t trust the US as a partner with Trump at the helm, to put it very mildly.

I have deeply and viscerally feared and loathed Trump for more than a decade at this point. I have never been more afraid than now.

Of course, pushback came from several different quarters.

A few people said Israel was not justified in fighting this war either.

To which I said:

Hard disagree. Iran has been the chief financier, architect and exporter of anti-Israel terror for decades. It was behind October 7. If it was allowed to build a nuke, it would nuke Israel just as Hamas would if it had the capability, even if it took all of Gaza out too. Apocalyptic jihadists are not rational or self-preserving. They can't be negotiated with; they can only be disabled.

A few others said there was no credible evidence that Iran was near having nuclear weapons.

I don’t believe this either. As I asked one woman: if Iran wasn't close to having nukes, why did Obama exchange HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS for their ostensible agreement to stop producing them?

And I said to another:

It's not true that it wasn't anybody's credible assessment [that Iran was close to having nuclear weapons], and Israel's long-standing policy per the Begin Doctrine is to pre-emptively prevent her mortal enemies from having them. She destroyed the nuclear capabilities in Iraq and Syria. A nation that tiny -- in a neighborhood as huge and lethal as all the surrounding countries that have tried to wipe her out -- has not survived all these decades because they don't know what they're doing.

I believe this is the right war fought by the wrong people in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons.

By the wrong ways for the wrong reasons, I essentially mean the US’s part.

I don’t trust Trump to care about Iranian civilians.

I don’t trust Trump to care about the consequences for America or the rest of the West.

I think that if Trump were a Russian asset, he would behave no differently than he is behaving now.

I don’t trust Trump to make wise and measured decisions.

I don’t trust Trump to speak or act with credibility or consistency.

I don’t trust Trump to listen to expert assessments.

I’m repulsed by his unhinged tweets.

I’m repulsed by his threats to hit Kharg Island several more times “just for fun”.

I’m repulsed by his bullying and blustering.

I’m repulsed by his self-reversals hour to hour.

I’m beside myself over the fact that Israel is forced to partner with him and trust him.

I’m afraid for the Iranian people, for Israelis and for us.

Even as I type all this, I’m telling myself it’s not productive or helpful but I literally have nothing else I can say at this moment. These are my all-consuming thoughts right now.

On a more dispassionate note, our favorite military analyst Lynette Nusbacher lays out a very persuasive case in our MAZL podcast that not only is World War III underway, but that this has been true for several years now.

She sees these Middle Eastern wars as tied directly to the ones in Eastern Europe and the Pacific theater.

She sees North Korea, Russia and Iran as a triangular alliance of autocratic countries waging perpetual ideological war on the West. She sees this triangle as aligned with China.

On the other side are the democracies of Israel, the US, Canada and the European Union.

You can listen to it HERE and I hope you’ll consider subscribing to MAZL (it’s free!) if you haven’t already, to Lynette’s own excellent substack General Offensive! General Uprising! (which includes much more content than just the episodes she creates for us) or to both.

I shudder to think of all the utterly needless ways Trump has disparaged, insulted and alienated our allies in Europe and Canada. He has showed them monstrous disrespect and contempt for absolutely no reason (and in fact he has shown much more deference and regard to Kim Jong Un and Putin), to the point where neither Europe nor Canada is inclined to stand with us now.

And I shudder to think of the looming reality of World War III. Millions die in world wars and afterward, the world is remade according to the vision of the victors.

I know we all cling to the distant dream of the Middle East being remade in a way that leaves Israel with normalized relationships with many more countries, and the Iranian regime ousted, her people free.

And yet I’m not naive about the odds of that happening, nor the cost.

Maybe something can still avert an apocalypse unleashed tomorrow evening. I devoutly hope so. I plan to fast tomorrow, starting at sundown tonight (however uselessly), as the Jews did in the Purim story before Esther approached the King.

I am genuinely sorry to write such a fraught and frightened newsletter. But it’s always meant the world to me that this community holds space for me when I experience days like these.

I’ll be back with you on Wednesday whatever happens.

May the moral arc of this moment somehow bend toward justice.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I hope your Passover holiday so far has been meaningful and comforting.

We attended seders in the homes of two different friends. Both were beautiful and they gave us very different things.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, the first was in the home of a friend who’d broken her ankle and was very debilitated. She and I belong to a group of four local Jewish families who spend many different Jewish holidays together. In the past, we have either had our seder in one of our homes or we have gone together to the community seder hosted by Chabad. The latter was the plan this year, but after the friend I’ll call K. broke her ankle just before the holiday, that was off the table for her.

I realized that without intervention, she would likely not be able to participate in any seder at all, so I called another friend in the group — L. — and proposed making dinner and bringing it to K’s home, along with all the ritual objects we needed, and having the seder there. All K. would need to do was ask her college-aged daughter to set the table beforehand.

L. readily agreed and that’s what we did. Cooking the elaborate dinner, transporting it all, and then restoring K’s house afterward, with the table cleared, the kitchen tidied and the dishes done was a labor-intensive proposition but it felt so good to do this mitzvah.

The second night was spent with Judith’s extended family — both her daughters and both her grandchildren. Judith was the child survivor of Auschwitz who took care of me when I was a very young kid and both my parents were at work. She’s the one for whom my magazine is named, and she’s the one I credit the most for lighting the Jewish fire within me, a fire that burns much hotter within me than it does within the rest of my immediate family of origin. Wanting to be a source of pride and joy for her has driven much of my Jewish identity and I so often wish she had lived to see the incredibly vibrant magazine that bears her name and has attracted so much staggering Jewish talent.

I love the seder hosted by her family, which is low on reverence and doctrinaire adherence, and high on Pesach-related conversation and meaning. Last year my daughter told me that theirs was the best seder she’d ever been to and made her much more excited not only about Pesach but about being Jewish. And I, who — of course — has striven for two decades to make my kids excited about being Jewish, could not have felt more grateful or gratified. You can do a hundred different things on this front, but I’ve learned there’s no telling what will penetrate, what will stick. I’m just glad when anything does.

✡️

There is so much to say on the political front. About Trump’s address to the nation on the first night of Passover — timing I can’t regard as a coincidence.

About the strife generated by Mamdani’s seder attendance and the response of other planned guests to his appearance.

About the progress of the war.

About the recent New Yorker article on the way Jewish communities have been ripped apart since October 7.

I promise to touch on all these things next week, along with a counterpart to my last column, about internal freedom. In Wednesday’s newsletter, I opened with the story of a local friend who’d encountered antisemitism in an anti-racism workshop. It had been five or six years, and while I knew the basic contours of the story, I no longer remembered all the details.

That local friend contacted me after reading Wednesday’s column and she sent me the entire story, along with permission to share it. I found it fascinating, especially for the ways it highlights the tensions inherent in the age-old debate about whether Ashkenazi Jews are white. I will share that next week as well.

For today, in honor of both Pesach and Shabbat, I want to stick to the beauty of this moment.

✡️

Yesterday, an absolutely gorgeous Pesach poetry folio was published in JUDITH, curated by the brilliant Susan Comninos, with whom I share curation of the poetry section (we each publish showcases on alternating weeks).

I was especially struck by a poem titled Weight, by Dan Bellm, and wanted to share it here in case it speaks just as deeply and directly to you.

THE WEIGHT


You must prepare to carry nothing
where you walk,

a God who cannot be seen,
a name you cannot speak—

therefore gather
the most precious of what you have,

and build me something heavy you can carry,
heavy as you want.

I will be weightless in it,

an idea, a promise,
among you, within you—

I will be unbearable. You can bear it.

Over and over you will pick it up
and set it down,

and as you wander
you will lose what you brought forth,

the ark will collapse in your hands,
the stones of the law will break.

Then you will carry me in your minds,
in your mouths—

unbearable as you want. You can bear it.

✡️

Finally, I wanted to share an exquisite guide to counting the Omer that was just created by a Facebook friend — Jewish homesteader Hunter Rook, who is currently attending rabbinical school.

Hunter’s home is the most beautiful farm in Mendocino, which he shares with another Facebook friend of mine — Gowan — along with a third partner and gorgeous child.

I really have no words for how much joy I get from witnessing this family. I’ve never seen people live with more beauty, intention, integrity, soul, or kavanah. So many Jewish holidays and traditions revolve around the agricultural calendar, and for most of us, that’s an ancient and abstract influence, but for them, it’s the living, breathing fabric of their lives. They actually sow and reap and harvest and thresh and do all the things our ancestors did, and their Jewish practice is directly informed by the reality of all of it.

So Hunter just created this guide to Counting The Omer, which I’ll be doing for the first time this year. I can only talk about this practice as a rank beginner.

But I’m grateful beyond words for the gift of this guide, which is very beginner-friendly! It includes Hebrew, English and transliteration as well as both Gregorian and Hebrew dates, so that it’s accessible to absolutely anyone. And in this spirit, they generously made available to anyone free of charge as well.

The spiritual practice of Counting The Omer takes place across seven weeks, which embody a range of Sefirot, attributes that our Kabbalah regards as divine channels.

There are ten, but Counting The Omer involve the final seven of them. These are:

Chesed: lovingkindness

Gevurah: strength, judgment

Tiferet: beauty, splendor

Netzach: endurance, tenacity

Hod: humility, gratitude, surrender

Yesod: foundation, roots, growing

Malkhut: sovereignty

Hunter spent a long time contemplating which plants of the Pacific Northwest most embodied the intersection of sefirot represented by each of the 49 days we count the omer.

With inks they created from local oak galls, and a feather quill that came from the raven family that lives just outside their home, they meticulously rendered each of these on parchment to serve as a meditative focus.

The artist statement at the back provides a supplementary overview:

And here is a sample page to give you an idea of what each daily offering includes:

In this age of AI and ChatGPT and bots and every other kind of artificiality, what could represent a more potent antidote to our screen-saturated lives?

Here is Gowan’s description of this stunning guide:

The Omer is a period of 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot that counts the time between the barley and wheat harvest. The ancient sages anchored this time; a time of vulnerability protected by prayer and intention; by exploring the intersection of 7 houses of prayer in aspects of holiness, and how they intersect. Each week explores an aspect of holiness, and how each other aspect comes into it. Plants as botanical teachers are a brilliant door that Hunter imagined into this process. What could embody the Chesed (loving kindness) of Chesed more than the sacred Chish Kale, the tan oak? It’s so special to open the Omer counting with the staple tree of the people Native to the place we live. What could better embody the Netzach (endurance) of Netzach better than a redwood tree? When the week of Gevurah (strength, judgement) intersects with the day of Hod (humility, gratitude) the humble, low growing plantain that so strongly heals our wounds stands in that place. In the week of Gevurah, on the day of Chesed (loving kindness) the plant that holds boundaries with generosity is represented by the stinging nettle that feeds, makes fiber and dye and medicine… but only on its terms.

These paintings of plant allies as representations of core values invites the meditator into contemplation- to learn more about these specific plants, to think of their own associations, to expand on the concepts out from human perception.

Hunter has been painting through this exploration with the beauty, tenacity, and thoughtfulness they bring into everything they do. If you’re counting the Omer and would like a digital copy of this guide, there is a drop box link in the comments- it’s free, please share widely.

Chag Sameach!

The link to download is HERE.

✡️

Okay, fam! I’ll be back with you Monday. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful and nourishing weekend.

Chag sameach.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I imagine most of us are short on time and even longer on stress than usual this week. We’re not hosting either seder this year, but our first-night seder hostess broke her ankle, so we and other friends are bringing the seder dinner and ritual objects, etc. to her house tonight.

As with all other Jewish holidays, Passover seems to mean something at least slightly different to me every year. Anti-racism was a huge theme for a long time, and then the plight of the hostages preoccupied most of us for the past two years. Many of us left an empty chair, sometimes designated for a specific captive.

When it comes to the theme of freedom from Egypt, there are so many competing applications this year. There’s our decreasing freedom as Americans under an authoritarian regime seizing ever more dictatorial power as time goes along. There are our Israeli siblings spending much of their time in bomb shelters at this moment. There are so many vulnerable minorities in our immediate midst right now, fearing random seizure, detainment, internment. There are moderate Muslims all over the Middle East, waiting to see if our World War III will remake the region into a place where extremism and Islamist tyranny no longer prevail.

There’s also the moment we’re in as diaspora Jews and the ways we’re being socially ghettoized, driven into hiding in many ways, intimidated into silence or complicity with our own status as scapegoats.

It’s this last facet I wanted to touch on here today, because I’ve been thinking about a coffee date I had recently with a local Jewish friend, one in which she expressed something to me that felt like pure magic in the midst of so much distress.

Talking about this requires a quick backstory.

This friend (I’ll call her C.) and I met for coffee for the first time around 5 years ago. We were Facebook friends and we realized we both lived in Portland and shared a lot of the same Jewish angst around the same topics.

The day we met, she had just attended an in-depth anti-racism workshop that had left her shaken.

The leader of the workshop had said some very antisemitic things, and nearly everyone in the room had nodded along or murmured in agreement.

C., in the meantime, felt paralyzed by indecision.

She knew if she tried to argue, it would be seen as any or all of a number of social crimes that were incurring fanatical censure at that cultural moment. Her pushing back would be seen as white resistance. Her distress would be seen as white fragility, white tears. She would be accused of centering herself and her own feelings. She would likely incur the group’s permanent dislike, and she had to spend hours if not another couple of days with these people or sacrifice all the money she’d spent.

I remember being struck by her predicament. I remember not knowing what I thought she should do. I remember not knowing what I would do.

We agreed that it was a no-win situation; we agreed on the temptation to stay quiet and get what we could out of the workshop, however compromised we felt.

I remember the terror of being dragged or cancelled in those years. I remember the very frightening awareness of how fast one could lose all the goodwill and relationships they’d built on the progressive left.

In any event, fast forward five or six years, to our much more recent coffee not long ago.

We recalled our conversation of half a decade earlier, and I marveled over how different I felt.

“I don’t care anymore,” I told her. “I would never shut up and stand down in a situation like that now. I don’t care who hates me; I don’t care who drags me; I don’t care who cancels me. I need nothing from the publishing industry anymore. And I need nothing from the Jew-hating far left. Those people are no friends of mine and never really were and the loss of their goodwill is no loss at all. It’s amazing to me how little I care.”

She told me she wasn’t in the same place, but in the next breath she said something I hold so close to me. Of all the words of affirmation I’ve received since starting this work, I can truthfully say that none of them mean more to me than what she said next.

“I know,” she said. “I see the transformation in you. I see how you’ve set yourself free.”

It’s this freedom that’s been preoccupying me in the days leading up to Passover.

External freedom is of inexpressible value. It means everything to be accorded human rights and civil liberties. It means everything to be sheltered and safe and autonomous, instead of being in prison, or detention, or Auschwitz, or CECOT, or in hiding, or in Iran.

But internal freedom is everything. It’s how some people can go through the most unspeakable hell and emerge upright, or even behave bravely and beautifully as they go to their deaths.

And the import of this facet of freedom is emphasized throughout the entire Hagaddah, as much if not more so than our physical exodus.

Before ever coming near the promised land or even the Red Sea, Moses awakened to his true identity when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite slave.

Nachshon was held back by nothing as he walked straight into the sea while everyone else stood back in fear.

In the Hagaddah, we are reminded of the danger of worshipping any golden calf, whether it’s proximity to power, the safety of assimilation, Trumpism, leftism, progressivism or any other entity demanding we subsume our most authentic selves or what we know to be right.

And this is my most essential consolation in the midst of all that is so terribly wrong right now.

The sociopath in the White House is taking a wrecking ball to the whole world.

Israel is undeniably and maybe irreversibly an international pariah.

Jews are hated and in mortal danger all over the globe.

We are public enemy #1 to huge swaths of the left and right alike.

But I set myself free and nothing can touch that.

I stand with my people and can’t be torn away.

I’m a proud Jew and a proud Zionist and I will die as both.

And that freedom truly is available to all of us, whatever else may come.

I’m wishing you all a delicious and meaningful seder if you’re attending.

I’ll be back with you on Friday.

Pesach Sameach.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

A belated shavua tov.

I trust most of us are in the throes of Pesach prep. My matza crack factory is OPEN and running! I make many pans over many days because people invariably pounce on these treats and devour them like jackals, and they make a really nice gift.

I’ve been baking these for many years. And while it’s the simplest recipe in the world, it’s also very possible for it to go wrong in all kinds of ways.

The caramel can go thin and transparent and dark on the stovetop, and if this happens, it will taste tinny and the texture will suck.

The same thing can happen once inside the oven.

The underside of the matza can get coated with spillage which ruins the satisfying snap and crunch.

Here’s my best advice after getting it down to a science:

IGNORE THE TIMES on the recipe, which is HERE.

Boil the caramel until it’s bubbling, thick and LIGHT brown (if it turns dark, it’s gone too far).

Don’t pour the pot over the matza -- spoon into the middle of each piece and then spread toward edges without letting it spill off the matza.

I bake at 325, not 350.

I used salted butter, because non-salted butter is an abomination, and it’s perfect.

Sit on the floor outside the oven with the oven light on and watch it like a hawk -- it doesn’t take long. The second ALL the caramel is golden and bubbly, take it out, cut it into pieces and put in in the refrigerator until it’s totally set.

Seriously, again: ignore the times on the recipe. I boil the caramel for 30 seconds, not 3-4 minutes. I bake for around 5 minutes, not 15. Faithfully following the recipe has ruined many a pan. Benefit from my trials and errors.

Oh, and also: I halve the recipe for each individual pan of matza.

As you’ll see in the recipe, you can add chocolate, which is also good, but I happen to be a one-layer caramel purist and I only add crushed almonds or cashews.

If you try this at home for the first time, let me know how it goes!

✡️

On a more political note: I could not be more excited to bring you Dr. Lynette Nusbacher’s inaugural podcast for MAZL.

In it, she addresses a question from community member Cindy Rizzo, who asked what I myself (and likely all of us) have fearfully wondered, which is:

Does Israel have the offensive and defensive weaponry as well as the amount of military personnel to sustain wars / conflicts with Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, while still dealing with what’s going on in Gaza?

It is, as Lynette noted, a very complex question, and Lynette provided a wonderfully thorough answer, touching on all facets of military readiness. As with JUDITH and this newsletter, no content at MAZL is restricted for anyone, whether a paying subscriber or not, so please check out the podcast and subscribe if you haven’t yet.

Also please send your own question(s) to Lynette! Her clip of today inspired one of my own. She remarked that while Israel might seem to be fighting separate wars with Hamas, Hezbollahs, the Houthis and Iran, in actuality, it’s all the same single war, since those terrorist groups are all Iranian proxies.

But then she added — which was less obvious to me — that the war in Ukraine as well as the low-simmering hostilities between the Koreas and other burgeoning tensions in the Pacific are part of that same war.

Though people all around me are wondering if we’re on the edge of World War III, Lynette has mentioned in other conversations with us that in her estimation, WW III began quite some time ago.

So I sent her my own request for our next podcast:

Can I ask a question for next time? You've said WWIII started some time ago without many people realizing it. There are so many ways to think about the political chessboard right now but I'm very interested in your biggest-picture framing, which you touched on in this podcast. I totally get how Israel vs. the IRGC, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas are all fronts of the same war. but where does Ukraine, the Koreas, etc. fit in? Can you give us the broadest way to look at this composite calculus?

She has graciously agreed to talk about this, so stay tuned for that breakdown.

✡️

Okay, onto the final topic I want to touch on in this missive: The New York Times regularly leaves me livid but today it seriously outdid itself.

In an article headlined ‘I Think That MAGA Is Dying’: Inside the Youth Movement at CPAC, the NYT reports on a generational trend within the conservative movement away from Trump and toward the likes of Nick Fuentes (though arguably the two are very much on the same continuum).

For those fortunate enough not to be deeply informed about the Groyper movement and its leader Fuentes, it’s a far-right utterly Nazified cohort and Fuentes is as openly Jew-hating as they come.

During a 2021 debate, Fuentes stated bluntly that Jews “have no place in Western civilization”.

He has called for a “holy war” against Jews.

He’s said that “Talmudic Jews” need to either leave the country or convert to Christianity.

He made a demand that Jewish people “get the f**k out of America”. He very literally wants all Jews to convert to Christianity or be deported.

He previously called for the “globalists... that run CNN” to be “deported or hanged.”

His followers, the Groypers, often speak of being J-pilled, or Jew-pilled, and by this they mean they've awakened to the realization that a cabal of Jews are in control of everything.

The Groypers aren’t afraid of being labeled anti-Semitic; they’re proud of it. Notice they don’t bother with any smokescreen of being Zionist-pilled or Z-pilled; their vendetta is explicitly against Jews.

So the article I’ve linked to above includes this paragraph:

Just outside the hall, 20-somethings in rumpled suits were gathered in clusters, debating the merits of a ground invasion in Iran, the conservative backlash against those who were “J-pilled” (far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence), the backbreaking costs of American life, and what they saw as the slow demise of the Trump era.

After years of reading every kind of whitewashing and sanewashing by the NYT of Trump, MAGA, the GOP, jihadists, antizionists and antisemites of every stripe, I feel like they’ve finally reached the apex of gaslighting and gone over the edge.

Being Jew-pilled means skepticism of Israeli influence?

Sometimes, when I’m out of words, an image says it all.

Yes, I still read the NYT. No, even now I’m not going to unsubscribe. I feel it’s important to be aware of what the most prestigious media is saying and doing.

Just don’t let them be your actual source for news, especially when it comes to Israel. Read the Israeli papers, listen to the widest possible range of experts you can manage, and pay special attention to reports from people on the ground.

I’ll be back with you on Wednesday.

I hope readying for your seders isn’t overly stressful.

Much love and strength as we gear up to celebrate our liberation in mind and spirit (which I hope to make the topic of the next Never Alone newsletter).

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

It’s been a very strange week. Rarely have I felt so confused or conflicted about a war the U.S. is involved in.

What fascinates me endlessly is the abyss between the east and the west on this one.

If you listen to the Western media, this is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Trump has bumbled into a situation — or been DRAGGED INTO IT BY ISRAEL — in which he is completely out of his depth and sinking fast, taking the world along with him. The Iranians are winning. An air campaign can’t stop them. They have a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz and therefore they have the upper hand. Nothing short of American boots on the ground will be able to touch their dominance. And Iran was no imminent threat to us. We’re in this for the wrong reasons, or no reason. Trump hasn’t made a case to the American people for why we’re where we are, and the overwhelming likelihood is that he has no idea himself.

If you listen to Israelis, other Arab countries in the Gulf, or even other Persians on the ground, there is — much more often than not — unequivocal support for the effort to take down the Islamic Republic.

Iran is understood to represent the deadliest of threats — an existential threat — not only to Israel but to a sane and functional version of Islam. It is understood to be the foremost financier and exporter of terror in the region and the world. It is understood to be fanatical and sociopathic.

In the east, this war is seen as a glorious opportunity to turn the tide, once and for all, against radical Islamism. To remake the region. To normalize Israel’s place within it. To end the reign of terror that’s been wreaking havoc in every direction for more than seven decades.

Now, even Israelis acknowledge that this opportunity could be squandered. And that adds to the level of stress I know we’re all feeling. The stakes could not be higher, and Israel is absorbing the lion’s share of the sacrifices and hardship involved in this gambit. Trump is an unreliable partner at best, a catastrophic liability at worst.

Where does that leave us? I can only speak for myself when I say I’m white-knuckled and cringing, with the sense of being on a runaway train I have no hope of controlling, holding on for dear life, wincing at every innocent death, with no trust in our driver and yet daring to hope that Israel can carry the day.

But at the same time, we’re going into Shabbat and I promised you some good things to take with us, and I’m a woman of my word.

First, the poetry showcase in JUDITH this week is a knockout.

As I wrote in the intro: I experience Richard Michelson’s poems as the deepest balm. To me, they feel familial, intimate, abiding and wise — at once plainspoken and erudite, soulful and worldly. Whether he’s writing from the mean streets of his childhood or his curated domain in Northampton — as child or elder, vulnerable youth or empowered adult, father or son, husband or patriarch — every line shimmers with generosity, tenderness, Jewish beauty and our cherished inheritance. I read each poem in his three collections multiple times, and I have no doubt I’ll return to them again and again over many years to come.

Here are the first two and I hope you’ll check out the rest if you haven’t yet:

NEIGHBORHOOD VILLANELLE

In this neighborhood you’d better learn to fight,
my father says. Real schooling’s from hard knocks.                       
Books won’t save your life. He knows I’d rather write     

and read. I don’t talk back. His love is no birthright.
Instead, I bluff, act tough. He teaches me to box.    
In this neighborhood you’d better learn to fight,   

he says, or you’ll be prey; better tough Israelite                
than studious Black Hat, defenseless Orthodox.
Books won’t save your life. I know you’d rather write.                

Next day was Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.               
“Hey Jew-Boy,” some kids jeered (as if I wore ear-locks).                      
I was no Maccabee. Bluff called, I could not fight.  

I came to battered, bruised, but had no appetite                 
for bloodshed or revenge. Instead, I walked for blocks,
prayed books would save my life. I swore someday I’d write      

these lines. And now I have. We never kissed goodnight
yet every poem I wrote, he saved. The paradox:  
a bullet stopped his life; lead plug he could not fight.         
I escape the neighborhood with every word I write.                    

PRAYER BEFORE THE BREAKING OF THE MATZO

And if we must be broken, let us be broken
like the afikoman, that hidden shard of matzo
cherished above the whole. Let us be wrapped
in the soft linen napkin of the Lord’s silence
like pilgrims kneeling on smooth stones
in a Jerusalem gutter, oblivious to the clatter
of the market. Let our children, searching
beneath cushions, call out to claim lost quarters.
Let them ransom us back to the table.

To read the rest, the link is HERE.

✡️

In addition, here’s a piece of very exciting news:

Renowned military analyst and Never Alone favorite Dr. Lynette Nusbacher — who has her own substack devoted to said military analysis (General Offensive! General Uprising!) — has ever so graciously agreed to create a regular podcast just for us.

I told her I had a pipe dream of her briefing us regularly with her very informed take on the Iran War and other regional conflicts, with a Jewy angle which would set this facet of her analysis apart from what she provides to the general public. I trust most of us are wildly concerned with what these conflagrations mean for Jews, in addition to what’s at stake for the world at large. Lynette regularly appears on venues like BBC Arabic, and while she does not hide her Jewish identity, nor does she make a special point of highlighting it in a professional capacity, as I trust we can all understand.

But for us, she will show up as a Jew and speak to us as Jews, and I am deeply confident that her counsel and perspective will prove invaluable.

Most important: if you have questions about the war or any other regional issue, send them to me!!! Leave them in the comments or message them to me through substack, or even at my own email address for now, at elissa_karen at msn.com (if you email me, please put QUESTION(S) FOR LYNETTE in the subject heading). She will make our questions the springboard for each podcast. I genuinely can’t imagine a more generous gift from her.

✡️

Finally, after a little bit of a breather, we have a book event scheduled for mid-April!

Irena Smith will join us along with gorgeous poet Elyse Fenton to talk about Troika, her beautiful and deeply moving memoir of an intergenerational road trip she took with her mother and daughter.

Here is the official description of Irena’s memoir from Simon & Schuster:

When three generations of women—a Gen X narrator, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—set out for a quick trip to California's Central Coast, what begins as a road trip soon transforms into something far richer: a modern-day Odyssey. Over the course of three days, the three women brave a severe winter storm, encounter ravenous ostriches, walk through an enchanted light exhibit, binge-watch White Lotus, hunt for coffee with plant-based milk, bicker, reconcile, and share stories.

Troika braids the narrative of a three-day road trip with the longer strands of migration, memory, and motherhood, creating a layered meditation on distance traveled—geographic, generational, and emotional. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that traverses the landscapes of identity and family history and stretches from the horrors of the second world war and an escape from Soviet Russia to adolescence and motherhood in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. As the narrative swerves from heartbreak to hilarity, from Homeric detours and Russian proverbs to internet memes, it weaves together an intimate, poignant, and darkly funny meditation on how we get from where we were to where we are—and what we carry with us along the way.

We’ll talk about Troika on the evening of April 16th, at 5 PM Pacific time and 8 PM Eastern. Zoom link to come! Please save the date.

✡️

Okay, fam, I hope in spite of every shade of unrest, we can somehow, against all odds, have a peaceful and restorative Sabbath. I’ll be back with you early next week, and as always, much love to you all in the meantime.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

I hope you’re feeling less existential dread mid-week than I am.

But let me open with a mea culpa. In trying to dig out from under a week away, I feel that the content of my last newsletter was spread too thin and missing an important piece of depth.

After sending it out, I got a reproachful message in my inbox from a reader, one I instantly recognized as painfully on the mark.

Here is what it said:

Hi Elissa, I love your writing, but I felt very alone when I read your last post. It is wonderful that you an American Jew can unplug from the news for three days and I am sincerely happy for you and even for me. But, as a Jew living in Israel amidst days and nights of missile bombardments, I don’t have that possibility. And I guess, that all I would have liked, in order to feel less alone, is acknowledgement of that those of us on the front lines, don’t get to have a full night’s sleep, and reality intrudes even when we try to take a few minutes… I can tell you more about reality for us in Israel if you like, but I am sure you know other Israelis. All I would like is that while this war is going on at least, that you are aware that there are many, many Jews in Israel suffering daily.

I was instantly stricken and wrote back right away.

Dear [redacted],

First I can’t tell you how grateful I feel for your honesty. And you’re absolutely right -- it was a terrible oversight and I’m so sorry. I came out of this very immersive experience and was hit with so much awful news at once. I actually intended, and meant, to write about Iranian cluster missiles falling on residential areas in Israel. But as you can imagine, given the bias against Israel in the Western media, the top news stories were Palestinian areas ablaze in the West Bank. Coming out of this protected space, I felt slapped with a war spinning out of control, the West Bank on fire, and people all around me celebrating Jewish pain.

I wanted to briefly acknowledge all that awfulness but to focus on offering the niggun-related riches and I didn’t go nearly deep enough into what was happening in Israel. Also, I didn’t mention this, but halfway through my time in Boston, I became incredibly sick with a known exposure to Covid and I was also traveling cross-country and doped up on meds and just not operating at a full level of perception and sensitivity (despite writing at length about how much I admire these qualities in Joey W).

Again, I am sorry, and I will do better, and I will acknowledge this in tomorrow’s newsletter. The last thing in the whole world I want is for readers to feel more alone, not less. What a failure on my part, and again, I will do my best to address it.

Fam, I have to tell you that while constructive criticism, constructively offered, is rarely easy to hear, I deeply appreciate the trust and candor involved when people take the time to tell me these things.

One other point I took from this reader’s note, though it wasn’t explicitly expressed, is what a different set of struggles we Jews have in the diaspora vs. in Israel.

One very striking disparity on the Iran front is that, according to several trusted sources I listen to, this war is overwhelmingly supported in Israel, from the far right to the far left. The statistic I heard is that 90% of Israelis recognize the necessity of fighting it, from across the political spectrum.

Whereas here it’s so complicated for Jews like me, because we hate and fear the Iranian regime, and yet we have less than no trust in Trump to be competent, discerning, honest, protective of the innocent, or even to hold a coherent thought in his skull from one moment to the next.

So the war here is deeply unpopular, and of course the word on the street is that we’re to blame, and we are a very beleaguered minority within our own home country, hated from every side — and with every attack on a random Jewish civilian anywhere in the world, we have a front-row seat to our own neighbors’ savage joy.

And yet.

And yet.

I do not compare our pain to the pain that Israelis are in. I don’t compare our hardship to the hardships Israelis are suffering. As the writer of that note said, I do know many Israelis, and I have heard firsthand how life has shut down for them, how they can’t go anywhere or do anything but run back and forth to bomb shelters, and pray their homes aren’t blown to smithereens by cluster munitions.

Israelis are the ones whose children fight these battles. Israelis are the ones who have lost far too many loved ones to terror and bloodshed. Israelis are the ones on the front lines, absorbing all the worst blows for us — and we often repay them with obscene ingratitude.

Israelis are the ones who haven’t known normal life since Covid began.

Israelis are the ones with population-wide PTSD.

Israelis are the ones ensuring we have a place, however imperfect, to run to when the whole diaspora becomes unbearably hostile.

And maybe this is the key to climbing out of this latest paralyzing bout of dread and despair: to think less about my own emotions and more about supporting them in any way I can imagine.

As I’ve said countless times before and will doubtless say countless times again: I have no love for Bibi Netanyahu. I loathe this right-wing government. I’m appalled and crushed by the Jewish extremist violence in the West Bank. I live in fear of the Israeli Haredi hijacking the country in service of their own Messianic obsession.

But I love Israel. I love Israelis. I love Jerusalem, I love Tel Aviv, I love Haifa and Tsfat and every other place in that embattled little strip of earth. I love the Jewish nation. I know she’s bigger than this administration, bigger than her PTSD, bigger than her traumatized swing to the right.

And for better or for worse, I’m going to die a Zionist and I don’t even rule out the possibility of dying an Israeli. And if I die with no one but Jews left in my life because no one else can understand or tolerate my devotion to her, then so be it, I will die among family.

I’ll be back with you Friday and I will have, in spite of everything, good things to tell you then.

Much love and strength in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Hey, beloved tribe.

It’s great to be back with you and it’s hard to be back in the world.

Joey Weisenberg, the renowned niggunist, created an incredibly special experience in Boston and if you ever have an opportunity to participate in an event of his, I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

For those three days, I really did feel as if I were on a retreat, and I tried to regard it that way, even though no food or lodging were provided and we only met for around 6 to 7 hours a day.

I felt a sharp need to shut out the outside world for just a brief interlude. I didn’t look at the news and I barely glanced at social media.

It is astonishing how different life feels without those things. It felt magical and spiritual and beautiful.

After 3 days in that sacred space, I remember so clearly the first items I saw upon returning to my phone.

The first was a fake news item saying Bibi had been replaced by an interim prime minister.

The second was a proud post from a Jewish Facebook friend, featuring a photo of Tucker Carlson next to Trump in the Oval Office, both of them grinning like idiots. This post went on to say what a brilliant strategic mastermind Trump is and how he used Tucker to fake out Iran. Knowing Tucker is an Iranian spy, he fed Tucker false info and lulled Iran into believing one thing before doing another.

Experienced in this way after three days away, the lurid artificiality and stupidity was like a full frontal assault, almost surreal in its ludicrous awfulness.

I vividly remember having the thought: this is the toxic swamp you swim in every day of your life.

And that was just the surface. The awful depths were still there too:

We’re still in the highest-stakes-imaginable third world war with a demented child at the helm — a demented child with the nuclear codes, who’s intent above all on hoarding all the toys and smashing everything else in sight.

There are still daily attacks on Jews everywhere in the world, while the rest of the world reacts with satisfaction, even glee.

Jewish terrorists in Israel are still waging soul-crushing attacks on their Palestinian neighbors with seeming full impunity from the government. Here I have to say that this is worse for me than everything else put together. It makes me feel that the day might come when I can no longer do what I do, if Israel succumbs to the worst forces within her own population.

Climate collapse is still underway. Lake Tahoe was just told by its utility company that it can no longer supply electricity to the region due to the demand posed on its reserves by data centers. I saw a meme recently that perfectly encapsulated the way I feel. It showed energy reserves on fire with more explosions happening all around. The caption said: Me drinking from a soggy paper straw to save the planet while our leaders are like…

As of this morning, our blusterer-in-chief has blinked. He told Iran that they had 48 hours to fully re-open the Strait of Hormuz or he’d blow up their power plants. They didn’t open the Strait and he’s announcing he’s “postponing” the destruction of the plants because the two countries are in “very good negotiation talks”. Iran denies that any such talks are in progress.

God help me, it’s almost gratifying to hear someone, anyone — even Iran — tell that monstrosity to go fuck himself. But I don’t know what’s going to get us out of this quicksand. Iran is not going to open the Strait and Trump seems trapped and it feels like there’s no off-ramp.

But I don’t want to cut straight to the resumption of the terrible without passing on to you what I can of what I took in last week.

I want to bring you some of the restorative energy that Joey offered me.

First, his presence — in and of itself — feels very intentionally cultivated to be the ideal vehicle for his teaching. He’s understated, soft-spoken, gentle, completely present, and highly attuned to all the dynamics in the room.

He plays so many different instruments that he’s lost count of how many, but he told us his favorite instrument is the communal Jewish voice.

He said so many other wonderful things that I couldn’t write them down fast enough and in some cases I can’t read my own handwriting, but I will quote all that I can recover.

He said the Jewish sages believe that life is song — that when we are living an enlightened life — “when we stand at the full height of our being, ensconced in meaning, giving all we can give” — we are living our song.

He said we know every person has infinite value.

He said most of us contain multitudes within us that we’re not at all aware of.

He said our souls’ original language in the primordial womb is the niggun.

We sang a niggun inspired by Psalm 116: 12-19, Mah Ashiv, which revolves around the question: How can I repay G-d for all the bounties given to me? Joey remarked, as if it were a given: This is the main question we all have.

Something interesting that he did from time to time, after our group of 50 had sung a long niggun, was just to remain in silence with his eyes closed for several long minutes while the rest of us waited.

During one of many Q&A periods, I asked about this. I said I noticed that he was building periods of silence into the retreat and I wondered where he went during those interludes and whether they were an integral part of the meditative experience.

This led to a long conversation about the power of silences. He told us that in part, during these stretches of silence, he’s readying himself for the rest of our time together. He said: I’m waiting for the mask to fall off, waiting for the point where I don’t feel any need to perform, not even for myself.

He said: Just getting a group of Jews to be quiet feels like a Messianic undertaking. Our need for verbiosity is a cultural superpower. But he also said that the most precise translation of tefillah — prayer — is to look deeply inward. That we’re all constantly getting lost if we’re actually honest. That going into our own unowned desert is the way to wisdom.

He told us he kept his eyes closed during these silences, and sometimes during the singing as well, so other people wouldn’t feel he was watching or judging them. He mentioned his 17-year-old son, saying that sometimes, during an emotionally fraught time for him, he wants to talk but he doesn’t want me to watch him. This made me think about how the most yielding conversations between myself and my children when they were growing up had often come in the car, when I was driving and they were in the backseat. It’s why psychoanalysis involved a patient lying on a couch while the doctor sat behind them, out of sight.

He brought this sensitivity to everything he said or did. It was a master class in human attunement. And part of that has to do with being a conductor of human instruments.

He said that when faced with polarizing questions from a polarized community — questions of: is the truth this, or is it that? — the answer is almost always yes.

This became a kind of communal in-joke at the retreat. Joey would pose a question like: Does inspiration make us break into song, or do we start to sing and then get inspired in the process?

And the group of 50 Jews would answer, almost with one voice: yes.

It left me feeling that when the world is unrelentingly bleak, and we control nothing, and we can avert no disaster, and things are almost definitely going to keep getting worse, the antidote — the only antidote — is to go within. To seek out Jewish spaces and create our own imperfect safety and beauty and rejuvenation there. It’s what we’ve always done. It’s likely what we’ll always need to do.

I’ll have much more to tell you in the next newsletter — I could only scratch the surface here, but this is long enough for today.

I’ll be back with on Wednesday. If this has been at all inspiring to you, find Joey Weisenberg online — on his website and on YouTube — and let him sing to you.

Am Yisrael Chai.