What Sets Us Free

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I hope everyone’s having a good week. A lot of you took me up on my invitation to ping me a second time if you’d written to me already without hearing back. I am truly grateful for that slew of second chances! Thanks so much to everyone who gave me an opportunity to do better.

I had an interesting experience yesterday — interesting because of what it revealed to me about my own state of mind since October 7th of 2023.

Before I say more, here’s a brief shred of backstory: before I started this newsletter, I did a lot of emotional processing on Facebook. I would weigh in on all kinds of controversial issues. I considered myself — and still do — very much a part of the progressive left, but I was still out of step with them over various issues like, say, the cancellation of Al Franken or Sherman Alexie.

Whenever I dared to post against the overwhelmingly popular opinion, I very vividly remember the fear. I remember my hands shaking as I typed. I remember the perilous feeling of hitting the “post” button. I remember choosing every word with so much care and reading an impending post over and over to make sure I sounded as well-intentioned as possible.

And then I remember the need I had to anxiously monitor such posts for hours after publishing, defending against attacks and clarifying my position again and again no matter how insistently it was misstated in the comment section. The whole proposition really felt like a catch-22 to me. I could post and devote hours on end to the time sink, or I could not post and feel like a coward.

I also just feared the censure of the pitchfork-wielding crowd. I feared really getting something wrong, saying something wrong, and not only being dragged but feeling exposed as a bad person.

The way I felt reminds me of a passage in an Alice Munro story. Alice Munro has always been my favorite author and I still love her work with all my heart (I know, I know; you see — it’s dangerous even to say this now).

But in this story, the protagonist Rose — who’s teaching at a local university — is insulted at a party by a drunk student in response to some imagined slight. She is wildly humiliated; she “felt smashed, under the skin.”

Later she’s talking about this incident with her lover, Simon, and she confesses to him, referring to students like that boy:

“I’m a coward about that lot. I hate their disapproval. They are so virtuous.”

“They are not virtuous at all,” said Simon. “That is just their style. They are not much to be feared, they are as stupid as anybody. They want a chunk of the power. Naturally.”

“But would you get such venemous” — Rose had to stop and start the word again — “such venomousness, simply from ambition?”

“What else?”

I always liked this passage a lot, but never before this past year did I feel the truth of Simon's response so deep in my bone marrow.

They are not virtuous at all. They are not much to be feared, they are as stupid as anybody.

So yesterday I posted about something totally unrelated to Israel or Jews, but I’ll share it because the overarching point of the story is about us. I wrote:

We're in such a weird cultural moment where the whole world is going into ecstasies over 57-year-old Pamela Anderson for daring to look like a 57-year-old woman, because authenticity and self-acceptance are beautiful and powerful, and also going into ecstacies over 62-year-old Demi Moore for looking like a perfect black-haired Barbie doll after who knows how many surgeries and dye jobs and countless other interventions and a diet of no hot food ever because damn, she is so freakishly ageless and amazing.

Which is it?

And early in the comment section, I clarified the thrust of the post:

I guess it's those stratospherically expensive interventions and full-time sacrifices on display as she wins an award for a movie about... wait for it... the insanity and despair of women feeling forced to pursue eternal youth at any cost, coupled with headlines like "Demi Moore is done with the male gaze."

I mean what the fuck did we do to deserve being gaslit to this surreal extent?

So there were well over a hundred comments beneath this post. Many were very thoughtful, candid, interesting responses where people were actually willing to grapple with what this moment represents to the national conversation and to the girls who are listening to it.

And then there were also at least a dozen of the absolutely predictable responses endemic to the left, where I was told it’s offensive and wrong to ever comment on any woman’s appearance ever, that I was being anti-feminist, policing women, hurting women, tearing women down. Of course I was told that I’m part of the problem, that I’m upholding the patriarchy, guilty of every kind of misogyny. People who don’t talk to me the other 364 days of the year came out of the woodwork to scold and berate me at length, because many people only feel engaged when they have an opportunity to school everyone else.

Here was the departure from all past experiences like this one, though: I didn’t care. At all. I knew what my post was about, which was not condemning Demi Moore but the level of gaslighting coming out of Hollywood and the media. But for the first time ever, I felt no need to say that over and over. I felt no need to respond to those comments at all. I engaged with a few of the Facebook friends who’d gotten my point and didn’t worry about it for the rest of the day.

It felt so different. So odd. To truly not care. To not invest the thought police with any moral authority or power. To not feel any need to justify any aspect of what’d written. And I realized that the left’s response to October 7th has been, in its own way, so strangely freeing.

The extent to which the left is wrong about Israel — and the extent to which they not-so-secretly hate us — is actually liberating. We aren’t losing friends when they were no friends of ours to begin with. So there’s no reason not to be 100% who we are, or to say what we think, in any situation.

Now, since I’m an equal opportunity pain in the ass, it’s not like the right is looking any better.

As I type, huge swaths of Los Angeles are burning to the ground and it’s not even wildfire season. The footage is breathtakingly awful, apocalyptic. Even worse is the sure knowledge that the incoming administration will exponentially hasten climate collapse and we will be seeing many, many more of these disasters.

Here is our batshit president-elect railing against Biden’s energy policies, claiming that windmills are killing whales:

Here he is taking a page from his hero Putin’s playbook, saying Mexico is ours and we’re going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America:

He is also fantasizing publicly about making Canada the 51st state.

But just as alarming are posts like this one by Trump on Truth Social, blaming Israel for our wars in Iraq and Syria. You can watch that video clip here.

Or this post by Elon Musk on the first day of Hanukkah:

For the Trump voters who read this newsletter, I’m genuinely asking: how do you rationalize posts like the two directly above?

Truly, if I weren’t so consumed with all the Jewish initiatives I’m working on, I don’t think I could endure this political moment. So if, like me, you’re glaze-eyed with dread, please just keep helping me build our Zionist home on the left side of the aisle. It’s a true hole in the fabric of our Jewish life right now. We need to grow our community, take safety in our numbers, and not be afraid to be vocal and visible.

Okay, fam. I will be back with you on Friday with much more uplifting content for Shabbat.

Until then, much love to you all. Chazak v’ematz. Am Yisrael Chai.