There is something profoundly moving about watching a book leave your hands and find its way into the world.

After years of writing, researching, rewriting, fighting for this story, and believing in it even when it would have been easier not to, White. Blonde. Jew. officially releases on August 18. This book was never meant to live quietly on a shelf. It was always meant to spark conversations, challenge assumptions, and bring people together in rooms where important conversations can happen with honesty, curiosity, and courage.

This fall, I’ll be traveling across the country to do exactly that.

If I’m coming to your city, I’d love to meet you. Bring a friend. Bring your book club. The conversations and the community are the point.

Upcoming Events

📍 The Hamptons | 7.27.26

Join The Algemeiner in Westhampton Beach for a special J100 conversation as I sit down with David M. Cohen, CEO of The Algemeiner, to discuss White. Blonde. Jew., the ideas behind the book, and why these conversations matter now more than ever.

DATE + TIME | Monday, July 27th - 5:30pm - 7:30pm
RSVP | Rina@TheAJ.com (Venue provided upon RSVP)

📍 Nashville, TN | Book Launch | 8.20.26

This one is especially close to my heart. Nashville has been home through some of the most defining years of my life - the place where I built my career, found my voice, and wrote two books. If you'd like to celebrate the launch with me, I'd be honored to have you in the room. I'll be in conversation with my literary agent, Ami McConnell, sharing the story behind White. Blonde. Jew., reading an excerpt from the book, and opening the floor for an honest conversation and Q&A. I would truly love to celebrate this milestone with you.

DATE + TIME | Thursday, August 20, 2026 - 6:00pm - 8:30pm
LOCATION | Bell Bird Books - 37203
RSVP | Click For Tickets Here - Limited Seats

📍 Tulsa, OK | 8.26.26

Returning to Oklahoma always feels like coming home, because it is. It's where I grew up, where my values were shaped, and where the scaffolding for this book was first built. It was there that I learned what it meant to be a voice in rooms filled with silence. I'm especially looking forward to returning to Tulsa at a time when the community is pursuing thoughtful, creative ways to strengthen Jewish life and build an even safer, more connected future. We'll talk about those efforts, the ideas behind White. Blonde. Jew., and why local communities remain one of our greatest sources of resilience. I'm grateful to Jewish Tulsa and Congregation B'nai Emunah for hosting this conversation, and I hope you'll join us.

DATE + TIME | Wednesday, August 26, 2026 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm
LOCATION | Congregation B’nai Emunah - 74120
RSVP | Click TO RSVP

📍 Connecticut | September 2026

Date and venue coming soon.

📍 New York City | October 2026

Dates and venues coming soon.

📍 San Francisco | November 2026

Date and venue coming soon.

📍 Palo Alto | November 2026

Date and venue coming soon.

If you’d like to see White. Blonde. Jew. come to your city, let me know in the comments or send me an email. Reader interest truly helps shape where we go next.

If you haven’t preordered your copy yet, you can do that here: Preorder Link

I’ll continue updating this post as new events are confirmed, so bookmark it and check back often.

I can’t wait to meet you.

— Alyssa

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I know what it costs to lose someone you actually loved.

Not a contact. Not a connection. A real friend. The kind where you know her kids’ names without trying, asked about her mother, needed nothing from her, and assumed - without ever saying it out loud - that she knew the same was true of you.

I lost a few of those friends to someone I invited in myself.

That is the part that stays with you.

The betrayal from the woman you instinctively questioned and still welcomed anyway. The one who attended your book events, stood in the rooms you helped build, data minded every introduction you made - and then quietly, methodically, began turning those same rooms against the person who opened the door.

She didn’t steal money. She stole trust. Community. The friends that take years to build and one well-placed pretty predator shilling ‘light codes’ to dismantle.

And when she finished hollowing out the room, her husband came for what remained - inserting himself into my divorce, ignoring boundaries, and costing me what I no longer had left to spend in peace of mind.

The ‘friends’ I lost don’t see it yet.

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. That depends entirely on whether they value real relationships or relationships rooted in the ‘deal’.

This is what I know about how these ecosystems work - because I watched it happen from the inside, to people I care about, in a city rapidly becoming a corridor for exactly this kind of predator.

Nashville has spent the last several years transforming into the new capital of spiritual grifting, sisterhood scamartists, and online coaching shams - a mini Los Angeles overflowing with influencers in debt, self-appointed business coaches, abundance coaches, Divine Feminine mentors, spiritual hustlers, faux lightworkers, and wellness gurus selling reinvention, effortless wealth, magical thinking, and personal transformation to women searching for genuine community, purpose, or simply a fresh start.

But beneath the performance often sits something far less pretty: narcissism dressed as spirituality and opportunism wrapped in false light.

These ladies import the MLM playbook and use all the right buzz words - alignment, authenticity, abundance, nervous system regulation, feminine power, healing, accelerator, container - moved it to social media, wrapped it in viral branding, and repackaged the entire operation under one word:

Sisterhood with a capital S.

The only thing that needs to follow that ‘S’ is the smoke and mirrors trailing behind. It is toxic positivity with a payment plan. This has all been done before. It’s washed up and recycled under better lighting, softer language, artificially inflated content, hair extensions, filler, false eyelashes with a spray tan.

And it works because the conditions are already there.

The Deal Dressed as Real

Social scientist and Harvard Professor Dr. Arthur Brooks has spent years researching what actually makes people happy. One of his clearest observations came from a conversation with his eleven-year-old son.

After overhearing his father on the phone, his son asked who he was speaking to. Brooks casually responded: “Just handling a business deal with a friend.” A few weeks later, after another call, his son asked again - then followed with the question that stayed with him:

“Was that a deal friend or a real friend?”

The distinction is brutally clarifying.

‘Deal friends’ are built entirely around utility. Access. Proximity to power. Status. Opportunity. Shared audiences. Shared leverage. The minute the transaction disappears, so does the relationship. There are no roots growing underneath the conditions of the exchange. They don’t know your kids’ names. You don’t know birthdays. Conversations only scratch the surface. And when one of you leaves - the company, the online container, the room, the stage - there is no life built beyond the exchange itself.

A real friend is not measuring your usefulness while pretending to care about your life. The relationship exists beyond extraction. Beyond networking. Beyond social positioning. It is built around genuine affection, shared values, mutual history, and care that survives seasons where there is nothing to gain.

And research consistently shows the same thing: without real relationships like that, people do not thrive.

What the spiritual hustlers, self appointed female coaches, and online sisterhood grifters have mastered is manufacturing the feeling of real friendship while operating entirely within the strategy of the deal. She studies the markers of intimacy - attunement, fast vulnerability, your personal details, mirroring, knowing your name and your wound - and learns to perform them at scale. She creates the sensation of seeing you without knowing you at all.

The result feels like connection. In reality, it is an acquisition.

This is not friendship. It is love bombing.

Women are warned about love bombing in dating, yet somehow no one warns us about the women who study you - and your friendships - closely enough to mirror you back to yourself with predatory precision.

How Does It Begin?

It begins with performative bonding (and flattery).

You are a queen. A leader. A lightworker. You are more powerful than you have ever imagined. Already chosen. Already becoming the woman you were always meant to be. The praise arrives first because it lowers your defenses. It feels seen. It feels affirming. It feels good. It is manipulation.

Then comes the fracture.

You are powerful, but somehow still stuck. Successful, but somehow still misaligned. Accomplished, but not fully expressed. On a mission, but missing the impact. Showing up, but burned out. The message is subtle but relentless: there is another version of you waiting on the other side of this work, this retreat, this mastermind, this community.

Then an obstacle is named.

The toxic hustle culture. The patriarchy. Low-vibrational people. Anyone who questions the narrative. The people who don’t understand your expansion. The world outside becomes the thing standing between you and your highest self. The system you built within is suddenly reframed as the thing you must escape.

Once separation is established, desire is escalated. More wealth. More impact. More ease. More fulfillment. More alignment. Always MORE MORE and MORE.

Then the language drifts beyond verification entirely. Divine feminine. Vibration. Alchemize. Soul work. Starseed. Pleiadian. New Earth. Gaia. Concepts that sound profound or on another planet precisely because they are difficult to define and impossible to measure. The vaguer the promise, the easier it becomes to project your hopes onto it.

And then comes the landing.

Sister, let’s do this.

Join us.

Apply now.

Limited spots available……

The formula is consistent: elevate identity, introduce dissatisfaction, create an obstacle, escalate desire, spiritualize the solution, then sell belonging. It feels personal while remaining deliberately vague. It inflates identity while quietly undermining it. It promises transformation while removing the inconvenience of evidence. It turns uncertainty into meaning and longing into a sales funnel.

This is not accidental language. It is architecture.

Who She Targets:

She targets upward and toward wound. Every time.

The women she pursues are often newly successful - women carrying fresh momentum, visibility, and influence. Women rebuilding after divorce. Women who have relocated and are searching for belonging. Women emerging from illness, grief, betrayal, heartbreak, or loss. Women whose suffering has left them open-hearted rather than cynical. Women whose openness has outpaced their grounding.

She knows exactly where vulnerability and aspiration intersect.

And it works because the conditions are already there: loneliness, reinvention, disorientation, ambition without rooted community. In that gap, performance feels like care. Manufactured intimacy feels like friendship. And in a culture where emotional fluency is routinely mistaken for emotional integrity, manipulation rarely registers as manipulation.

It registers as alignment.

This is not an indictment of the women who enter these spaces sincerely. They are seeking the same things human beings have always sought: friendship, belonging, purpose, healing, and connection. It is an indictment of the female personalities manufacturing environments that makes extraction indistinguishable from growth and where sisterhood becomes a sales strategy.

What’s the Cost?

It is rarely inexpensive.

Two-thousand-dollar brand templates. Five-thousand-dollar courses. Fifteen-thousand-dollar VIP days. Thirty-thousand to fifty-thousand-dollar retreats. Fifty-thousand to seventy-five-thousand-dollar masterminds.

The numbers are staggering. What’s more staggering is how rarely anyone asks the obvious questions. What is her actual expertise? What has she built beyond her own personal brand? Has she led teams, scaled companies, created measurable outcomes, or produced results independent of her own marketing? Has she worked for or with Fortune 100’s? Does she possess relevant credentials and education? What evidence exists beyond testimonials, carefully curated social media content, and the perpetual promise of transformation?

Selling the dream and delivering the outcome are not the same skill.

The ability to market yourself is not proof of expertise. The ability to attract followers is not proof of wisdom. And the ability to sell a mastermind is not evidence that you have mastered anything beyond the art of self-promotion.

The best coaches, consultants, and advisors do not ask you to suspend critical thinking. Their expertise survives scrutiny. Their credentials are clear. Their results are measurable. Their value is not dependent on mystique, magical thinking, Egyptian gods, light codes, exclusivity, or the promise that the next retreat, the next container, or the next up-level will finally unlock the version of yourself that always seems just out of reach.

The ‘Sisterhood’ Scam:

Those selling sisterhood online are not your sisters. They are scam artists.

Real friendship does not operate this way. We cannot buy our way into real friendship. Real friendship is slow. Earned. Built over time rather than accelerated through proximity, access, or emotional performance. Real friendship exists at the highest level of Aristotle’s hierarchy - bonds that flourish in shared appreciation for something virtuous and meaningful beyond individual interests. It is not about what either person can extract. It protects your name when you are absent. It does not require a sales funnel for belonging. It remains consistent across seasons. It celebrates without competition. It tells the truth gently, even when it costs something. It respects boundaries. It is fiercely loyal. It does not treat vulnerability as currency, relationships as leverage, or access as content. Friendship is not a mastermind. It is not a retreat. It is not a membership tier. It is not something that can be purchased, packaged, or upgraded.

The Solution:

Discernment.

Discernment is not a reaction. It is a practice. It is not always about recognizing what is obviously wrong. It is about recognizing what appears ‘too’ right. It is the discipline of watching patterns instead of believing promises. Of observing behavior after need has been removed. Of noticing what remains when flattery, opportunity, access, and visibility disappear. It is the ability to separate charisma from character.

We are living in an era where identity itself has become a commodity. Everyone is curating. Everyone is performing. Everyone has a screen in front of their face and yours. Everyone is selling a version of themselves. That is why discernment matters.

Because not everyone speaking the language of light is operating from it. Some have simply learned how to market darkness beautifully.

If you are building a business, rebuilding a life, chasing a dream, or searching for guidance, seek out people whose work can withstand scrutiny. Find those who have actually built what you hope to build. Ask questions. Study their character as carefully as their accomplishments. You may be surprised how willing genuinely accomplished people are to mentor, teach, and open doors without requiring your enrollment in the next high-priced container.

The most valuable relationships in my life were never marketed to me. They are private, sacred, and deliberately kept out of public consumption.

I know their children’s names. I have never needed anything from them - but they were there for me when I needed support. And they know the same is true of me.

That is the only sisterhood worth protecting: built slowly, guarded fiercely, tested by time, and immune to monetization. Because women who cannot distinguish intimacy from acquisition will keep mistaking strategy for friendship until there is nothing real left to stand on.

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By day three, I understood why audiobook recording is described as a vocal marathon.

It is not reading. It is physical endurance.

The microphone hears everything: your breath catching, your stomach growling, a bracelet shifting against your wrist, the sound of uncrossing your legs after sitting still too long. Nothing stays hidden.

I started eating enormous breakfasts before sessions just to keep my body quiet. No jewelry. Hair pulled back. Throat Coat tea constantly within reach. You become oddly athletic about it. The body either cooperates with the work or interrupts it.

And then there’s the most unexpected part: hearing your producer’s voice in your ear while you read some of the most personal moments of your life out loud. A human you’ve only just met, suddenly guiding you through emotional territory you once wrote alone in silence.

I have never recorded an audiobook before. My first book never required this. The photographs carried the emotional weight. They were the language.

But this week taught me something entirely different: voice changes everything.

What I learned (that every author should know before stepping into the booth):

Your body becomes part of the storytelling -

Audiobook recording exposes how inseparable the body is from storytelling. Writing is cerebral. Recording is physiological. If you are anxious, dehydrated, emotional, excited, exhausted - the mic catches it immediately. There is no separation between the work and the person delivering it.

By the end of the week, I understood why so many authors struggle emotionally inside the booth. Reading vulnerable passages aloud collapses distance. You are no longer analyzing your story. You are back inside it.

Preparation becomes ritual: food, hydration, silence, sleep, even clothing. I lived in cozy tennis shoes and soft, quiet fabrics all week because anything stiff or noisy became part of the recording. You stop moving through the day casually. Everything starts revolving around protecting the voice and sustaining the nervous system long enough to stay emotionally present.

You hear your writing differently out loud -

The moment words leave the page and enter the air, they reveal themselves differently. Sentences you thought were clean suddenly feel heavy in the mouth. Others come alive with a precision you did not fully expect while writing them.

I have a dry sense of humor that reads clearly on the page, but speaking it introduced another level of awareness around tone. A line that feels clever internally can sound cold or sharp once spoken aloud.

Voice removes ambiguity. You stop editing for the eye and start editing for the nervous system.

You stop asking: “Does this work on the page?” And start asking:“Does this hold in the air?”

That shift changes everything.

Presence over performance -

There were moments I could hear genuine emotion rising in my throat while recording. I never stopped to smooth those moments over. Listeners do not connect to perfection. They connect to presence. And presence is harder than performance.

The mic exposes performance almost instantly. You can hear when someone is over-narrating, over-polishing, trying too hard to sound authoritative or composed. The strongest takes came when I stopped trying to sound like a narrator and simply returned to the truth of the sentence.

The closer you stay to the state you wrote from, the more dimensional the reading becomes.

That required more courage than I expected.

There were lines where I felt myself instinctively softening - not because the writing was wrong, but because taking up space can still feel uncomfortable. For many people. Sometimes for me, especially after moments where visibility has carried real consequences, including death threats.

The work was not to make the sentences safer. My work was to stay visible inside them.

Why Jewish authors should read their own stories -

This book was not a casual one for me to record. I wrote it for many reasons, including my response to the boycotts against Jewish authors and the broader attempt to silence Jewish creative work. My response is the same as it has always been:

I will continue to publish.
I will continue to create.

There is a heightened reality to being a Jewish author right now that cannot be separated from the work itself. According to the ADL, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. now average more than 17 per day, with a 39% year-over-year increase in violence, including weapons and fatal attacks. I do not move through public life casually anymore. None of us really do.

Which makes voice matter even more.

For years, media psychology researchers have studied how voice changes human perception. Hearing someone speak creates a sense of relational closeness that text alone rarely achieves.

A written book can communicate an idea. A voice allows someone to encounter the person carrying it.

And that matters deeply in a moment where Jews are increasingly flattened into abstractions - headlines, politics, projections, scapegoats - rather than experienced as human beings with humor, grief, warmth, contradiction, memory, fear, intelligence, family, and interior lives.

Voice restores dimension. When someone spends hours listening to another human being breathe, pause, laugh softly at their own line, struggle through a sentence, gather themselves, emotionally continue - something shifts.

The listener is no longer consuming a position. They are sitting with a person and that is not a small distinction. It is human. It is powerful.

What surprised me most

I thought I was going into a studio to simply record a manuscript.

Instead, I spent the week learning how much storytelling lives in the body. How silence becomes part of a narrative. How even egg white and spinach tacos can determine whether your stomach interrupts a sentence mid-thought. How exhausting it is to remain emotionally honest for hours at a time. How imperfection is sometimes the most generous thing you can offer a listener.

It was far harder than I expected. And far more meaningful.

Every day, I left deeply grateful for the experience.

You do not just read your book aloud. You meet it again - in real time, in your own voice, with nowhere to hide.

I wrote White. Blonde. Jew. for you.

And I dedicated it to the lights that were taken from us too soon.

Click To Preorder | White. Blonde. Jew.

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His name was Basil.

Something inside me told me to stay off my phone and pay attention.

So I asked my Uber driver where he was from.

“Palestine,” he said.

I paused - understanding there were a few different paths I could take in that moment. I chose curiosity over combat. Listening over performance. Not because I didn’t know better. Because I did.

I asked where his family was specifically from. He mentioned a small Arab city outside of Netanya.

Israel.

Not “Palestine.” Not a slogan. Not an Instagram infographic. Israel. He’s from Israel, by the way - right outside of Netanya, which happens to be my Hebrew name (Netanya Tikva).

He asked if I had ever been and I nodded and smiled. I know the streets, the people, the texture of the land in a way that can’t be downloaded from a protest flyer. Then he asked if I had ever been to the Dome of the Rock. I kindly explained that Jews are not allowed to enter there. He paused before blurting out:

“THEY ALL LIVE TOGETHER.”

“Yes,” I said. “They do.”

Arabs, Jews, Christians, Druze. Imperfectly. Complicatedly. Humanly. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I asked if his family was safe. He shared a story about nephews disappearing - almost as though it happened out of thin air. I asked if they had served in the war. Israeli Arabs can volunteer and serve in the IDF. He didn’t answer. My mind went to the places it goes when you've spent years observing and traveling to this conflict - whether his young nephews were connected to terrorism, to radicalization, to the uncomfortable truths so many Americans flatten into hashtags because they've never had to live with the consequences of what they romanticize.

He mentioned checkpoints. I didn’t just nod. I asked if he understood why they existed - and then shared stories from the second Intifada. Buses exploding. Cafes shattered. Civilians murdered in ordinary moments. The kind of violence that forces a nation to choose between inconvenience and survival. He listened.

We were rounding the corner into the airport when I asked:

“Do you think we will ever see peace in the region?”

“Only if we remove politics,” he said. “When there are politics, there’s no peace.”

It’s a simple answer from someone living inside a complicated reality. The desire for peace is rarely the missing ingredient when I am in rooms with survivors, diplomats and military. Peace comes when there is a willingness to be honest about what stands in the way of it.

When we arrived, he opened my door and helped me with my bags. He was warm. Gentle. Before I walked away he smiled and said:

“Have a safe flight, my cousin.”

I shook his hand and held his arm for just a moment longer than a stranger would.

And somehow that word stayed with me the entire trip.

Cousin.

Not enemy. Not colonizer. Not oppressor.

Human.

It wasn’t lost on me what this 24-hour trip symbolized.

I flew to Connecticut to speak at a women’s auxiliary luncheon supporting Jewish seniors for Mosaic Senior Life. In Judaism, caring for our elders is covenantal. Sacred. They are living libraries - carrying memory, warning, resilience, survival, and the kind of wisdom that only comes from having outlasted the thing that was supposed to destroy you.

I spent the morning and afternoon speaking about humanity. About protecting life. About creating forward in a culture increasingly addicted to destruction, division, and identity as currency. About the recent research showing that when you teach people to sort the world through the binary of oppressors and victims, you do not create justice - you create a buffet for dehumanization. A framework where complexity dies, accountability disappears, and entire groups of people become morally disposable. I shared the personal wars behind the very public one and how I am rebuilding.

After the event, my dear friend Jamie (owner of my favorite JL Rocks) and fabulous host grabbed lunch with me before I headed back.

A turn and burn trip. Bags checked. Phone in hand. Mind still soft from the day - grateful, full, a little worn.

Then I heard it.

“Inshallah.”

He looked at me. Then he looked at my neck. He saw my Magen David.

He got louder.

He was maybe fifteen years younger than me, wearing a Deloitte backpack, standing beside a girl who didn’t notice me. Just the three of us in the elevator at LaGuardia before getting on a slow-moving conveyor. They were casually discussing attending a pro-Palestinian protest the way people make brunch plans on a Sunday.

And suddenly every conversation from that morning came rushing back.

The conversations about memory. About protecting life. About how war never fully disappears - it simply retreats beneath the surface long enough for people to forget what’s at stake. Then it returns. Different decade. Same story. I've watched it happen. I've studied it. I've stood in the places where it happened and talked to the people who survived it.

Because this war is no longer confined to the Middle East.

It’s in elevators at LaGuardia airport. In universities. In corporations. In our backyards. In the language people are too afraid to correct. Somewhere along the way, telling the truth became the controversial position.

Israel exists and it is not going anywhere.

And there is something deeply dangerous about raising generations of young Americans to emotionally invest themselves in a delusion while remaining historically illiterate about the reality.

Somewhere between Basil calling me cousin and two American twenty-somethings parroting slogans they don’t understand, something crystalized.

Basil was rooted in something real. In family. In complexity. In consequence. In humanity. When I spoke, he listened - and when he spoke, I listened to even the space between his words.

The kids in the elevator were rooted in ideology they inherited from people who were never there.

One understood the cost of war. The other romanticized it.

One conversation was grounded in lived reality. The other was performance.

One called me cousin. The other saw a Magen David and got louder.

And that - not the conflict overseas, but that - may be the most dangerous divide of all.

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I packed the wrong shoes for Venice.

Everyone does. You see the influencers on cobblestones in photographs and think you understand the ground beneath your feet, but you don’t - not until you’re being lifted out of a boat in stilettos, in the air, in the rain, in a rising canal, in a fancy dress, laughing at yourself, holding onto the arms of the man you love. Wear your tennis shoes, ladies (I lived in these). Leave the heels at home. I have linked my packing list for you HERE because Venice will humble you beautifully.

We stayed in a 16th century palace off the Grand Canal - protected frescos on the ceilings, Baroque and Byzantine architecture woven together over centuries, and then you step into your room and it exhales into something almost Japanese in its restraint and clarity. That’s the Aman brand. Just enough of everything. Never more. It anchors peace and service. It honors where it is while knowing exactly what it is, and I find that quality rare and worth paying attention to - in places and in people.

Venice is one of the most beautiful places I have ever stood inside of. I want to say that plainly and clearly before I say everything else. The light on the water. The way everything slows when you replace roads with water. The history of a city that has been stunning for so long it has stopped trying to impress you and simply is. To move through that with my partner beside me was when reality exceeded the dream.

What surprised me - what I wasn’t prepared for - were the flags.

Palestinian flags in windows. In planters. Draped across doorways like declarations. I lost count. And I looked, because once I saw the first one I couldn’t stop looking, the way you can’t stop pressing a bruise.

I did not see one Israeli flag. Not one.

I want to be careful here because I believe in nuance and I believe in conversation and I believe that most people who hang a flag in a window are acting from feeling - not from studied history. Not from having stood at borders with their own feet, not from traveling to the land they advocate for, not from having looked at former hostage, Iair Horn in the eyes and asked him personally: did anyone show you humanity during the 498 days they hid and starved you in a tunnel? His answer to me was a resolute no.

Feeling without history is just noise. And that noise, when it becomes a door draped in a flag, starts to look like a door that’s been decided - closed before anyone knocks, and reminiscent of the time not so long ago when the Germans brought the Holocaust to this very city. Those doors, I’ll tell you plainly, will not open a movement. They will stay shut behind a worldview that has yet to reckon with what it is actually endorsing. That reckoning is necessary. It is overdue. But I didn’t go to Venice to argue with a window. We went for love. We went to build forward. We went for vision. We went to plant seeds.

We went to find something older and truer than a flag and on this particular day, we went to find the ghetto.

Venice invented the word.

In 1516, the Republic of Venice ordered its Jewish residents onto a small island in the Cannaregio district - a former metals foundry, geto in the Venetian dialect. The gates closed at sunset. A guard watched from a window. Jews paid for their own imprisonment, funding the Christian guards who locked them in each night and let them out each morning to conduct the business the city needed but refused to dignify.

They built upward because they couldn’t build outward. The buildings in the Venetian Ghetto are among the tallest in the city - six, seven, eight stories - because when you are told your world has edges, you find the dimension no one thought to restrict.

And they hid their synagogues in plain sight.

The buildings facing the square look like ordinary residential structures. They were meant to. But if you know what you’re looking for - five windows across the top of a facade (the number five symbolizing the five books of the Torah), a particular grouping that means we are here, come worship, you are safe -

We found Gam Gam on our last night in the city.

It sits at the edge of the ghetto, facing the canal - and if you arrive when the weather is kind, the light on the water will stop you mid-sentence. The shawarma is extraordinary. The schnitzel rivals anything I’ve had in Israel, and I don’t say that lightly. We broke bread with new friends, with the Chabad Rabbi and Rebbetzin, and somewhere between the food and the laughter and the canal reflecting everything back at us, I felt that specific kind of joy that only exists when a place exceeds what you came looking for.

It wasn’t until I was leaving that the Rebbetzin touched my arm and pointed.

On the side of the building where you enter - bars still hang over a single window. Still there. The iron is old. The stone around it is worn. Those bars once framed the face of a guard whose job was to watch Jews cross a threshold they did not choose. The remnants of the gate are still visible if you look for them. And now, in that same threshold, there is a restaurant. A Jewish-owned, kosher restaurant, feeding people from everywhere, open to anyone who’s hungry.

I couldn’t move.

There are no words adequate to the distance between what that window once meant and what it means now - but I’ll try: we outlasted it. Not without devastating loss. The Jewish community in Venice numbers somewhere around 300 to 470 people today, and the Rabbi told us quietly that even that figure runs generous. The community has never recovered its prewar numbers and likely never will. That grief is real and it deserves to be named - not as a wound, but as a witness.

But Gam Gam is open. The gate is gone. The tables are full. The window that once surveilled Jewish people entering and leaving their own neighborhood now looks out over a table where the Shabbat candles are lit and the wine is poured and someone’s child is asking for more schnitzel.

That is not a small thing. That is everything.

I’ve been thinking since I got home about what it means to build forward - a phrase I keep returning to, keep turning over.

It doesn’t mean forgetting. The bars on the window stay. The history stays. You don’t renovate over the remnants of a gate, you let them stand, because memory is not the same thing as wound.

It asks something of you.

To build like they did. To find the dimension no one thought to restrict. To create meaning where constraint once lived. To let beauty be beautiful without requiring it to be simple.

The flags in those windows are not neutral - they are declarations, and they carry danger. Political symbols, lifted far from the complexity they claim to represent and reduced to something immediate, something easy to display and easier to misunderstand. Not unlike the way propaganda has always moved: reshaping reality into something more palatable, more persuasive. The Venice Film Festival itself was once used as a stage for propaganda under fascism. The objective isn’t new. The mechanism is the same.

The alliance is not new either. Adolf Hitler sought it, and Amin al-Husseini carried a stated commitment to continue that work in the Islamic world. The year changes, but the story does not. As civilization advances, so too does this colonizing strain of extremism- carrying the same hatred, repackaged in new symbols.

I understand that people in confusion or pain reach for easy symbols. They reach for what feels like clarity, even when it lives only on the surface.

But the symbol I couldn’t stop thinking about - the one that will stay with me - is quieter.

A set of iron bars over a window, where a guard once stood.

Once, the iron meant confinement. Now, they mean something else entirely: we are still here. We endured. We adapted. We created life anyway. There is food on the table. There is light in the room. Come in. Sit down. Stay a while.

That is the symbol I want to carry.
That is a life worth fighting for and protecting.

That is the one worth hanging in the window.

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I left Tulsa when I was eighteen. I recently returned to drop a ceremonial puck.

Life has a way of bringing you full circle — not simply to remember who you were, but to see what is possible. To witness a community shifting from defense to design.

For too long, we as a people have lived in defense mode.
Defending our history. Defending our right to exist. Defending Israel. Defending truth. Defending life.

Defense is necessary.
But defense alone does not build a future.

In Tulsa, I witnessed something different. I witnessed design.

It felt familiar - like the proactive energy I experience in Israel. The refusal to simply respond to pressure, and instead create within it. The instinct to pivot, to build, to generate something new rather than recycle what once was.

From Defense to Design: What Israel Teaches the Diaspora

Israel does not merely survive under pressure - it innovates inside it.

Even amid ongoing conflict, Israel’s high-tech sector contributes roughly 20% of its GDP and more than half of its exports. In 2025 alone, Israeli tech firms drew $15.6 billion in investment, including Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz - a global vote of confidence in innovation born under existential threat.

But Israel’s genius does not end in cyber or code. With more than 1,600 life sciences companies, it has become a global force in oncology, immunotherapy, and AI-driven diagnostics. Researchers at Sheba Medical Center have pioneered more affordable CAR-T cancer therapies, expanding access to treatments that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars elsewhere. Innovations refined in trauma units and on battlefields now shape emergency medicine worldwide.

Under existential threat, Israel creates. It builds systems that strengthen not only itself, but the free world.

Israel’s innovation expands America’s imagination.

There is something profoundly Jewish about that instinct: not merely guarding the gates, but planting vineyards beside them - and inside them.

I harnessed that ancestral energy in my own life.

When I lost my second book deal in the wake of literary boycotts targeting Jewish authors and Israeli publishers after the war began, I was handed a choice: shrink or build.

I chose to build.

I refined my craft. I doubled down in truth. I refused to let someone else’s fear determine the size of my voice.

And I wrote a new book: White. Blonde. Jew.: A Call to End Extremism, Speak Up, and Reclaim Center.

Not from bitterness, but from clarity.
Not from reaction, but from conviction.

I ‘titled’ the very words meant to silence me - and from them, education blooms, dialogue ignites, and community rises.

That is our inheritance.

We are a people who build in the shadow of exclusion. Who create under constraint. Who ignite under fire. Pressure has never ended our story. It has refined it. That is the difference between defense and design.

Too often in the Diaspora, we live in reaction mode - waiting for the next headline, the next incident, the next wave. We mobilize when attacked. We issue statements. We fact-check. We defend.

Necessary? Yes.
Sustainable? No.

Israel models something else: creativity as strategy.

Tulsa felt like that.

Under the leadership of Joe Roberts and Michael Sachs, the Jewish Federation of Tulsa is thinking expansively about how to strengthen the entire community - not simply how to respond when times are hard. Jewish Heritage jerseys were worn publicly in an American professional sports arena - not hidden, not apologetic - honored as a historic first.

Dropping the puck wasn’t ceremonial.
It was directional.

Defense protects space.
Design defines the future.

The Tulsa Model: A Blueprint for Safe Havens

Tulsa did not stop at symbolism.

The partnership between the Tulsa Jewish Federation, Tulsa Tomorrow, and Lech L’Tulsa is not theoretical - it is strategic.

“Lech L’Tulsa” - a Hebrew-inspired name meaning “Go to Tulsa” - carries both a literal and biblical resonance: a call to move with purpose toward safety, opportunity, and covenantal belonging.

In the 2024 annual audit of antisemitism incidents, despite representing roughly one percent of the Canadian population, Jews were the target of nearly 70 percent of religion-motivated hate crimes in Canada. Lech L’Tulsa is creating a proactive corridor for Canadian Jews seeking security - offering legal guidance, fiscal incentives, exploratory visits, and immediate community integration.

This is not panic.
This is preparation.

Tulsa is making a quiet but unmistakable statement: If you need safety, we are building space for you.

In its own American way - grounded, pragmatic, rooted in Zionist and Judeo-Christian values - Tulsa is demonstrating that moral clarity does not require noise. It requires leadership.

Small Jewish communities are often underestimated. They may not dominate headlines. But they know how to move quickly. They know how to build. They know how to live their values without performance.

Tulsa is not reacting to fear.
It is architecting a future.

Creativity is not a luxury reserved for moments of calm. It is how safety is secured. It is how courage is sustained. It is how legacy is built.

The question is not whether we can afford to design. It is whether we can afford not to.

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Physical wars end long before the emotional ones. The body may leave the battlefield, but the nervous system often does not. It lingers in hypervigilance, in fractured sleep, in the echo of missions that replay in the dark hours before dawn. In the questions that refuse to loosen their grip — What could I have done differently? Who did I fail? Why did I survive? Who am I? In the constant internal negotiation to remain human in the aftermath of inhumanity. This is where the real war begins. And this is where creativity becomes not a luxury, but a lifeline.

I have witnessed the healing capacity of creativity not as theory, but as survival. During my cancer journey, creativity became my oxygen. It was how I metabolized fear, uncertainty, grief, and hope when language collapsed under its weight. It gave shape to emotions too complex and overwhelming to articulate. It restored a sense of authorship over my own story at a time when my body no longer felt like it belonged to me. Creativity gave my nervous system permission to exhale. It reminded me that I was still alive, still choosing, still becoming. And now, as a tidal wave of PTSD blankets an entire nation, this truth has never felt more urgent.

A few nights ago, we gathered inside Tomer Peretz’s studio in New York — a space that feels less like a gallery and more like a sanctuary. A place that holds stories, heroes, grief, courage, memory, and extraordinary healing. A studio with a mission: to support the emotional rehabilitation of soldiers and hostages. Hostages we have fought for. Hostages whose families I have sat beside in their unbearable waiting. Lives now forever divided into before and after. Every piece in Tomer’s studio carries a pulse behind it. Nothing is decorative. Nothing is abstract. Each work is a living artifact layered with testimony, resilience, and reclamation.

As Tomer walked us through one of his deeply evoking works, Angels Within Us, we moved slowly toward a powerful portrait of Russian-Israeli Andre Kozlov. I stood in front of it, suddenly back in Israel — remembering hugging his mother, fighting for his return, praying through the long months of his captivity. Andre had been held hostage by Hamas for 245 days. The weight of those memories pressed into my chest. And then, almost impossibly, I felt myself pulled back into the room. Andre had walked out of the studio behind us. He was standing there. Alive. Healthy. Sharing his story now through art. We said hello and I whispered thank you to G-d.

This is where trauma is not hidden. It is metabolized. This is where survival begins to transform into meaning.

The 8 Project exhibit was not built from symbolism. It was built from truth — the kind most people instinctively turn away from because it demands something of us. Tomer created this body of work alongside more than 1,500 survivors whose lives were ruptured in ways no human being should ever have to endure. These are the voices of hostages buried for months in dark tunnels, soldiers dragged back from clinical death, neighbors forced to witness rape and murder, and children who survived by lying motionless beside their parents’ bodies. There is also a towering tree constructed from body bags — created by those from ZAKA who were tasked with recovering the dead and placing physical remains inside them. Those who carried what no human being should ever have to carry. Tomer worked directly with stories most humans cannot stand to hear, let alone hold. But this artwork does not exist to document horror. It exists to illuminate resilience. In The 8 Project’s healing-through-art programs, each piece becomes a victory — a reclamation of identity, a refusal to surrender spirit, a declaration that even after atrocity, the human soul can still choose life. These works do not exist to tell you what happened. They exist because it did. And because those who lived through it deserve not only to survive, but to be seen.

One of the most powerful aspects of Tomer’s model is that healing does not happen in isolation. For soldiers experiencing PTSD, The 8 Project brings together veteran peers who fought in the same war, alongside trauma-trained therapists — opening the first essential door: shared experience and clinical safety. The second door is creativity itself.

Under the guidance of a lifelong artist and believer in the human spirit, survivors are invited back into authorship, meaning, and agency. This peer-based, creativity-centered approach is deeply supported by psychological research, showing that trauma heals most effectively in environments of shared experience, emotional safety, and embodied understanding. There is a profound regulation that occurs when someone sits across from you who does not require explanation. Someone who understands the language of war without words. Healing accelerates when survivors feel witnessed rather than examined, when pain is honored rather than interrogated, when identity is rebuilt rather than pathologized. This is nervous system repair. This is trauma-informed care at its highest expression. This is community as medicine.

Tomer himself embodies this transformation. A former special forces soldier and officer, he has long relied on art as a grounding force — a way to reconnect with humanity, emotional truth, and meaning after combat. In October 2023, while visiting Israel, he volunteered in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, assisting in the recovery and dignified handling of more than 200 victims. That experience shattered and reshaped him. It stripped away abstraction and replaced it with responsibility. From that moment, The 8 Project was born — a nonprofit devoted to rebuilding lives through creativity, community, and shared resilience. His art is not separate from his service. It is its continuation. A refusal to allow trauma to have the final word.

Physical wars end. Emotional wars echo. If trauma is not metabolized, it becomes inheritance. It settles into families, into partners, into children, into communities, into generations yet unborn. This work is not only about healing soldiers and survivors. It is about protecting the moral and emotional architecture of an entire society. It is about ensuring that warriors return as humans, not ghosts. It is about preventing suffering from calcifying into rage, despair, isolation, or silence. It is about choosing healing before destruction becomes a cycle.

Creativity does not erase pain. But it allows pain to move. It allows grief to breathe. It allows the nervous system to soften. It allows identity to reassemble. I have lived this truth in my own body. And now, I am watching it unfold across a wounded nation. This is what real rebuilding looks like — not just infrastructure, but souls. Not just policy, but presence. Not just survival, but meaning.

And this is why Tomer’s work, and The 8 Project, are not simply beautiful.

They are essential.

Ways to support:

1. Click to support to a therapeutic residency program for Israeli soldiers.

2. Click to support the 8 Project.

3. Click to support Tomer Peretz.

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I didn’t have the year I wanted. I had the year I needed. And those two things are rarely the same.

If you’ve ever heard that a beautiful garden requires rain - real rain, the kind that soaks the soil and snaps weak branches - then you already understand this year.

It didn’t mist. It poured.

This was the kind of year that stripped you down to the studs. Not metaphorically - structurally. The kind of year that removes what’s decorative, unnecessary, and hollow until all that’s left is what can actually hold weight. It isn’t a year you post about. It’s a year you quietly build your footing. A year where you stop asking how things look from the outside and start asking how to make it through the day.

And somehow, you do. You make it.

This was the year I learned that to move forward, you have to fully release the past - not revisit it, not negotiate with it, not re‑litigate it, but loosen your grip and let it go. I learned that the bigger the experiences get - the louder, shinier, more impressive they appear from the outside - the more you crave the simplest things: peace, family, steadiness, and those who stay.

It was the year I learned that when you are truly on your own, partnership stops being an idea, and your best friend becomes everything. It was a year I returned to my creativity and photography to balance out my advocacy. And it was the year I began prioritizing joy - not because it came easily, but because choosing it became an act of self‑leadership.

This was also the year I stopped pretending.

I stopped smoothing the edges and performing strength for other people’s comfort. I stopped saying “I’m fine” when I wasn’t. I lived from my heart. I verbalized my needs - clearly, unapologetically. And I didn’t care who that made uncomfortable.

Some people only know how to love you when you’re easy. When you’re quiet. When you carry things without asking for help.

Those who stayed - I love you. Those who didn’t - be well.

Growth is not gentle. Growth is demanding. Growth is a storm. It takes chutzpah and grit, and it doesn’t always feel like progress while you’re inside it. More often than not, it feels like loss and grief before it feels like becoming.

But somewhere in the dismantling, something unexpected happened.

I found myself - not the curated version, but the one underneath. I found G‑d, not in the dramatic, but in the quiet rebuilding. And I found a strength that wasn’t loud or impressive, but earned - beam by beam, from the studs up.

If I can offer one thing to anyone still walking through it as we enter a new year, it’s this:

Invest in taking action.

Not when you feel ready. Not when you can see the full plan.

Because action isn’t the reward for faith. Action is the faith.

Miracles follow movement.

I experienced this daily - through quiet blessings, unexpected doors opening, and unmistakable G‑d winks that met me exactly where I stood while I rebuilt myself from the inside out.

There’s an ancient story that captures this better than anything else.

At the edge of the Red Sea, the people panic. Moses prays. Nothing happens. And then G‑d responds - not with reassurance or spectacle, but with a command:

“Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the people to go forward.”

Forward into what? Into water. Into danger. Into the unknown.

And then there is Nachshon ben Aminadav.

Before the sea splits, before there is proof or safety, Nachshon steps in. The water rises to his ankles, then his knees, then his chest, then his neck - until it reaches his nose.

Only then does the sea part.

That is what this year taught me.

Faith is not passive. Healing is not theoretical. Redemption does not arrive while we stand frozen at the edge.

You move first - even trembling, even unsure - and then, sometimes only then, the path appears.

As we close 2025 and step into 2026, this is my blessing for you - for us:

May you trust the step you are being asked to take, even when the water hasn’t moved yet. May you be met with strength you didn’t know you had, and signs that remind you that you are not walking alone. And may the year ahead part not because you waited for certainty - but because you were brave enough to move forward anyway.

If this essay resonated with you, my book continues this conversation.

White. Blonde. Jew. is about what happens when truth-tellers refuse to stay quiet - about reclaiming language, choosing action over comfort, and standing upright when words are used as weapons.

The preorder is 25% off today, and your support helps bring this work into the world.

…..Because movement is how paths appear.

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I’m ending this year the way it began: returning to Israel - the land that taught me how to hear Him.

Creativity taught me how to listen.
Israel taught me how to hear.
One opened my inner world.
The other opened my soul.

People say to listen twice as much as you speak. That has always been the quiet foundation of my work. I listen. It’s what makes me a decent creative, a present human, and someone who sees beneath the surface. Creativity, for me, has always been a fancy word for listening - paying attention to what others overlook, hearing truth beneath noise, honoring the soft signals and sharing honestly.

Choosing Israel wasn’t a decision I made two years ago - it was a truth that revealed itself. I’ve been fighting the undercurrent my entire life, from childhood until the moment the world finally exposed what had always been simmering beneath the surface.

Two years ago, everything that had been whispered became shouted.

I listened to the pain.
I listened to the denial, the lies, the distortions.
I listened to the suffering that kept getting minimized or dismissed.
And in the noise, I heard something unmistakable: the call to go.

Not to run away - but to return.

Two years ago was not the beginning.
It was the reckoning.

She was in shock. Jews everywhere were grieving, trying to metabolize the unthinkable. And while the nation mourned collectively, so many of us were facing private wars - endings that were inevitable, separations, deaths, divorce, the kind of personal unraveling that forces you to meet yourself again.

But now, as I prepare my fourth return, I’m looking through a different lens. I’ve witnessed a people stripped down to their studs, choosing - again and again - to rebuild, to repair, to renew, to thrive. That’s the human story, isn’t it? We break, we release, and somehow, in the quiet after the shattering, we hear His still, soft voice calling us home.

I’m a proud American - it is my physical home.
But Israel is where I return to my soul.

She holds her people with steadiness. A land that carries memory and miracle in the same breath. And while I’m returning to be of service - to support, to learn, to help hold the healers - I’m also returning to exhale, to settle, to say thank you. Thank you for the light she continues to inspire in so many of us.

Israel is so much more than a conflict.
She is a compass. She is a miracle.
She is a mirror.
A reminder that light doesn’t disappear - it expands under pressure.

What I’m Carrying Into the New Year: How You Know Something Is From G-d

After two years of listening - truly listening - here is what I know to be true about divine alignment:

• There is clarity, not chaos.

• Your nervous system softens, even before your circumstances do.

• The door opens without contortion or self-betrayal.

• It strengthens you more than it drains you.

• Truth is present, especially when it’s hard.

• You expand - honestly, unmistakably, gently in the unraveling.

• You feel guided rather than pushed.

• Your spirit recognizes the path before your mind catches up.

• Peace becomes the undertone, even in uncertainty.

• What is meant for you doesn’t require shrinking, hardening, or disappearing.

• And maybe the most important sign: you can hear yourself again.

This is what I want to carry with me into the new year - a steadier trust in the signals, the openings, the quiet guidance.

The Story of David: A Path for the Year Ahead

I recently finished House of David (watch it - it’s incredible). It felt less like entertainment and more like a spiritual reminder. David didn’t begin in power; he was underestimated. His true strength lay in his listening. A shepherd boy attuned to G‑d’s whisper, not His thunder - not to force, not to his own agenda. A man who learned - again and again - that greatness is not born from power, but from returning after every fall and showing up.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote:
“Faith is not certainty; it is the courage to live with uncertainty.”

David embodied that. So do we.
And Israel - the land I am flying to - embodies it with a radiance that calls us all higher.

King David’s own words feel like the perfect bridge between this year and the next:
“From the depths I called You, O Lord. Hear my voice.”
(Psalm 130)

As the year closes, we are invited back to the places that restore our listening. Israel is where mine was rewoven, thread by thread. And as the new year begins, the commitment remains the same:

• To listen.

• To be present.

• To hear.

• To serve.

• To build stronger.

• To be a light in the darkness.

May you listen first, deeply and without hurry. May you find the courage to be the one voice in rooms filled with silence, to speak truth when it matters, and to carry light even when it feels unseen.

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Last week, I listened to the daughter of a Hamas sheikh. Her story is a warning for New York’s mayoral election.

For her safety, I’m withholding her name.

Her mother was Jewish and escaped their Arab village in Israel soon after giving birth. Her father was a wealthy, devout Muslim sheikh with multiple wives. At 14, his daughter chose to live with him, hoping for family and belonging. What she found instead was indoctrination and abuse.

Her father woke her routinely in the middle of the night to test her on the Quran. Beatings were justified because, in the Quran, women are only capable of reaching heaven if the men around them are satisfied. At 15, he forced her to marry her 22-year-old cousin. She became pregnant immediately. At six months, her husband beat her in the street for stepping outside her home without permission. She lost the baby at his hands. Her father blamed her—and made her thank her husband for not killing her.

Her father was embedded in Yasser Arafat’s inner circle—the leader of the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and architect of the Second Intifada. The men around her spoke of Israel as a meal to devour “bite by bite”—relentless, incremental, unending. In conversations she overheard, the goal was never compromise. The hate was endless.

Read more

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Writing a book was always a bucket-list dream for me—mostly because I never thought I could do it. Every dream I’ve pursued is a conversation with fear—one that ends with, I’m still here.

My first book, The New Southern Style, became a masterclass in self visualization and creative agency. I knew exactly how I wanted it to look and feel. I knew the message I wanted it to send. And somehow, it was the little engine that could and it gave me the courage to pursue a brand new genre—accidentally.

For nearly a year in 2023, I worked with an editor at a major publishing house developing a book proposal about creativity. We were so close—a deal was in sight. There was optimism in the air and hours of late-night edits behind every line.

Then the war began on October 7th, 2023.

Overnight, my content shifted (from Homes to Hamas). I couldn’t stay silent while my community was under attack. I used my voice, my words, and my platform to fight antisemitism and misinformation like I had in 2021 and through the years.

I soon learned, the publishing world is not immune to bias. It’s filled with people who are openly—and quietly—antizionist. Like so many Jewish authors and Israeli publishers over the past two years, I was part of the boycott. The deal disappeared.

And I was devastated.

After drowning myself in ice cream (as one does), I booked a flight to Israel. A few months after the war began, I went—and that decision changed everything. It wasn’t a trip; it was a calling. It marked the first of many beginnings, endings, and quiet resurrections. For the first time, I could feel my ancestors—not as a story I’d inherited, but as a pulse moving through me. Their strength anchored me. Their faith steadied me. In a land still trembling from loss, I found something unshakable: a reason to begin again.

On the last day of the trip, I stood on the rooftop of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum in Tel Aviv—surrounded by a circle of purpose-driven souls who came to bear witness and make a difference. We had just finished more than twenty meetings in four and a half days. One by one, everyone shared their takeaways. I went last.

What I said wasn’t a statement—it was a promise. My ancestors never had that chance. They were silenced for using their voices, murdered for their identity. I said that we have two homes: the one we live in, and the one that lives in us. Even in the Diaspora, it is our collective responsibility to defend our Indigenous home.

I didn’t know how or when, but I felt it in my bones—a deep, embodied certainty that my purpose had found me. My next book would not be about creativity or design. I would use every resource, every connection, and every ounce of strength to dedicate this work—in spite of the hate, the bias, and the ignorance—to the lives and lights taken from us too soon.

I would use my voice to educate, to illuminate, and to remind the world what resilience looks like.

There are too many holes in my family tree—names that will never be spoken again. When I looked at the records from Auschwitz, the page was filled with Rosenhecks—women I was named after. Their lives were erased by the same hatred that continues to morph but never disappears.

October 7th was a rupture—and a reckoning. The same forces that sought to erase us then are alive today, masked by new language but fueled by the same ancient hate. And I refuse to be silent.

This book is for those who crave spirituality, substance, and truth—for those who seek history, humanity, and healing through story. It is an act of remembrance and resistance. A promise to those who came before us and a warning to those who come after: we will not be erased again.

This is for them.
This is for truth.
This is the power of using our voices when our ancestors could not.

And so, here we are.

White. Blonde. Jew.

A call to end extremism, speak up, and reclaim center.

Think David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count meets Douglas Murray’s The War on the West—with a touch of Legally Blonde.

Yes, it will make you laugh. Yes, it will make you cry. And it’s meant to be read in community—with book club prompts at the end of each chapter.

This is the first time I’m sharing the cover.

Every detail is intentional.
I wanted it to timestamp a moment in history—a moment of distortion, resilience, and reclamation.

I placed WHITE over my eyes.
BLONDE over my mouth.
JEW over my throat.

These are the three words that were thrown at me the most—meant to blind, to suffocate, and to silence.

The words they used against me are now my book title.

The colors tell their own story. I was intentional in giving a nod to Israeli blue—our thread of continuity, our pulse of sky and spirit. I used a sky-blue paper backdrop and wore an electric-blue sweatshirt. Together, they carry both loyalty, serenity and strength.

The lack of detail in the image was deliberate. The past two years have been a season of death and rebirth—of closings and new beginnings. You’ll see this theme woven throughout the book.

When living with meaning—without a blueprint—life can often feel like a blur, and I wanted that sensation to live within the image itself. My form is both clear and obscured—a woman in motion, a mirror, and an outline—representing the many individuals who might see themselves in this photo. Because this story is so much greater than you or me.

The result is a visual act of reclaiming—a symbol of resilience and creative courage for anyone searching for the tools to be the one voice in a room filled with silence. This is a book for you.

This is the second book cover I’ve art directed and created myself. And if there’s one message I want to leave fellow creatives and authors with, it’s this:

Take creative control. Courage comes before confidence—so start with a vision and bring it to life. No one will ever understand the heartbeat of your work as intimately as you do. Others may wear fancier suits and sit in bigger boardrooms, but your unwavering commitment to your creative agency is what will set your project apart.

Fight for it.

Here’s what this journey taught me about creating fearlessly—and what I hope it inspires in you.

For Creatives and Authors: How to Take Creative Control

If you’re writing, designing, or building something deeply personal—here’s what I’ve learned through creating two books from the ground up:

1. See the full vision early.

Before you write a single word, visualize how it feels.
The tone, the light, the texture, the palette—and most importantly, the community and reader you’re creating for. Your message begins visually, long before it ever lives on the page.

2. Own the process, not just the product.

Publishers, agents, and editors are collaborators—not gatekeepers. When you see yourself as the creative director of your own vision, you stop waiting for permission.

Marketing a book is just as important as writing it. When your design carries its own standalone story—when it’s authentic and aligned—it adds depth, meaning, and an entire new layer to your project.

3. Let meaning lead design.

Every element should serve your story. The placement of every word, every color, every blur on my cover was chosen with purpose—not perfection.

I selected my favorite team to help me execute this vision. So many people get lost in the numbers and the metrics—I say stop. Focus on genuine connections of support. Pour into the relationships that share your values and your heartbeat. That’s how the dream comes to life.

4. Turn loss into liberation.

Losing that second book was deeply disappointing. Witnessing the loss my community faced—and the challenges we continue to face—has been what keeps me going. Yet that loss also freed me to create without compromise—to make something unfiltered, unafraid, and fully freeing.

Writing this book felt like working with a best friend. It held my hand through pain and victory, through public battles, a private divorce, and a renewal. Within these pages, you’ll recognize seasons that mirror your own regardless of your background—and the strength it takes to rise again.

5. Build in public.

Share your process. Your failures. Your drafts. Creative control grows stronger when your audience becomes part of your journey—not just the end result.

You and I are meant to be in community. Period. Life is too hard to do alone. That’s why I set the tone for this book to be read in community—with book club prompts at the end of each chapter.

All you have to do is host it—or find a host—and start navigating these conversations together. Hopefully, new friends will be made by the final page.

Because when we own our stories, we reclaim our power.

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We stand at a fragile crossroads between reality and hope. Political Islam continues to exploit the cracks in our society, spreading lies that seek to divide us. What happens far away doesn’t stay there. It filters into our neighoods, our campuses, our faith communities, and even our media — shaping how America talks about Jews, about Israel, and about truth itself.

Even in the shadow of uncertainty, we hold onto fierce hope. On Monday, the remaining hostages are expected to return home at 12 p.m. Israeli time. President Trump will arrive in Israel simultaneously, having brokered Phase One of the Peace Plan — a plan that includes the return of twenty living hostages, the release of roughly 2,000 terrorists from Israeli jails, the implementation of a withdrawal line, and the continued flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. These steps are monumental, but they are not the end of the story.

The first phase of the peace plan begins with something deeply human — the return of twenty living hostages and the bodies of those who were murdered. These are not just numbers or diplomatic milestones; they are names, families, and souls. And when the cameras are off, they will continue to wake from the hell they just endured.

In Judaism, returning a body to the ground is sacred. It allows the soul to begin its final spiritual journey and the family to begin the process of mourning. In a war defined by dehumanization, restoring this basic dignity is both a moral and national imperative. For two years, Israeli families have lived in suspended anguish — waking each morning with the same prayer: bring them home. The return of even one hostage represents the restoration of humanity against an enemy that sought to erase it. This moment, while laced with unbearable grief, is a sacred beginning — a sign that the Jewish spirit remains unbroken.

Israel today is a nation under the weight of collective trauma. From the survivors of the massacre to the families of the fallen, from the soldiers defending the borders to the civilians who carry on daily life amid constant alerts, there is not a single person untouched by October 7th. A tsunami of PTSD has swept through Israeli society. Therapists on the front lines are treating an entire population in shock. The trauma of captivity, of witnessing barbaric acts livestreamed to the world, cannot be undone by politics. Healing will take time, patience, and truth — truth that rejects the propaganda attempting to rewrite the events of that dark day.

Even as Phase One of the plan unfolds, many questions remain — questions that Israel, as a sovereign nation, is navigating with care. Experts, diplomats, and military leaders are working through the complex realities of governance, security, and disarmament, while analysts around the world rush to comment and predict outcomes. These questions are about more than policy; they are about doing what is right. Real peace requires accountability.

In this moment, I return to basic truths:

• The cycle of violence must end, not merely pause.

• Standing for life is never extremism; it is moral leadership.

• Clarity is not division — it is the foundation of unity.

• We must safeguard our communities here in the West, because this war has breathed new life into forces determined to fracture our nation from within.

This is not the end.

The real work begins now — to hold leaders accountable, to prevent bad actors like Zohran Mamdani from gaining political access, to dismantle the BDS movement and its NGOs of hate, depoliticize children’s curriculums, build broader coalitions grounded in truth, and to transform hope into lasting peace.

For those who wish to support the survivors and families affected by this war, there are Israeli organizations on the front lines providing mental health care and PTSD treatment. Contributing to these outlets is a tangible way to honor the hostages’ return and invest in the long road of healing:

1. NATAL – Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center: A leading nonprofit specializing in trauma treatment and resilience for victims of terror and war. NATAL offers multidisciplinary treatment and support to direct and indirect victims of trauma.
   Donate to NATAL

2. Metiv – The Israel Psychotrauma Center: Israel’s leading expert in trauma, providing treatment, training mental health professionals, and supporting communities to help children and adults cope with varying levels of trauma.
   Donate to Metiv

3. Enosh – The Israeli Mental Health Association: The largest mental health organization in Israel, providing critical support to tens of thousands of individuals and families affected by trauma.
   Donate to Enosh

4. Brothers For Life: Founded by injured Israeli veterans, BFL empowers wounded soldiers through peer support, medical assistance, financial aid, and community engagement. Their PTSD Project offers tailored support for those struggling with the invisible wounds of war.
   Donate to Brothers For Life

The real work begins now. - AR

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It’s a privilege to not know this acronym: D.A.R.V.O.
It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

I hope most of you never have to understand it. I have — for my own personal growth and healing. DARVO is a psychological tactic perpetrators use to deflect responsibility onto their victims. They deny the harm they’ve done, attack the credibility of those they’ve harmed, and reverse the roles of victim and offender to confuse and manipulate.

Now, imagine scaling that up. What happens when this same abusive tactic is used, not in a relationship, but on the world stage? When nations deploy DARVO to distort moral clarity and weaponize public opinion?

That’s what I call Political DARVO (learn more in my forthcoming book).

And it’s happening right now.

Since October 7th, when Hamas launched its genocidal attack on Israeli civilians, the world has watched this inversion of truth unfold in real time. The perpetrators of the massacre have worked tirelessly to deny their actions, attack Israel for defending itself, and reverse the roles of victim and offender — turning global compassion into confusion. Their vehicle? Social media, mainstream media, and our emotions.

Political DARVO: A Global Example

Deny

Immediately after October 7th, Hamas and its supporters denied the atrocities despite overwhelming video evidence, eyewitness accounts, and even their own livestreams:

• Denial of mass rape, mutilation, and torture of Israeli civilians.

• Denial of hostage-taking of babies and Holocaust survivors.

• Denial that the invasion was premeditated — reframed as a “resistance operation.”

This denial was amplified by influencers, student groups, celebrities and sympathetic journalists on mainstream networks.

Attack

When denial could no longer hold, the focus shifted to attacking the victim — Israel:

• Israel was accused of “genocide” for defending itself.

• Protests erupted worldwide not to condemn Hamas, but to vilify the nation trying to rescue its people.

• Jewish students and institutions became targets of harassment.

• Jewish authors, creatives, artists, designers and Israeli publishers faced boycotts.

DARVO turns accountability into aggression — Israel’s act of self-defense is reframed as the original crime and Jews globally paid the price.

Reverse Victim and Offender

Perhaps the most insidious move: Hamas and Gazan’s repositioned themselves as victims:

• Terrorists who filmed murders became celebrated heroes in Gaza.

• Innocent hostages became “prisoners.”

• The massacre of October 7th was eclipsed by emotional visual manipulation — images of Gaza stripped of context to evoke guilt, not truth.

• Palestinians intentionally starved hostages while no nation has delivered more aid to its enemy during wartime than Israel — over 109,000 trucks carrying 2.1 million tons of aid have entered Gaza.

This reversal works because Western institutions — from academia to media — allow it.

Political DARVO: A Local Example

Tonight, I will speak before Nashville’s Metro Council, where Resolution RS2025-1547, sponsored by Council member Ginny Welsch, is a textbook example of performative theater disguised as policy. Since October 7th, the lie of “genocide” has been resurrected purely for political propaganda. Thousands of miles from Israel, this resolution mirrors the predictable pattern: it denies the massacre Israel endured and Hamas’s goal to destroy the Jewish state, attacks Israel for defending its citizens, and reverses victim and offender, portraying Hamas and Gaza as the victims while Israel is cast as the aggressor.

Victims do not start wars. Victims do not hold hostages. Victims do not rape.

The resolution cites that over 248 journalists have been killed, yet it omits that some were complicit in the October 7th attacks — members of Hamas who held or filmed hostages. Freelance journalist Muthana al-Najjar filmed the abduction of Shiri Bibas and her two babies. Al Jazeera’s Abdallah al-Jamal was found holding three Israeli hostages in his home. These were not neutral observers. They were collaborators.

The claim of ‘genocide’ collapses under law and fact. Genocide requires intent and action to destroy a people — something Israel does not meet. Its intent is clear: to return the hostages and defeat Hamas. War is hell, but it is judged by intent and adherence to the laws of war, not by statistics supplied by Hamas, which controls Gaza’s Health Ministry and provides the numbers cited in this resolution.

This resolution mirrors one pulled last year in Nashville and was sourced from the largest BDS arm in North America — a campaign designed to isolate and ultimately eliminate Israel. Hamas wages physical war; BDS wages political war through local councils and communities.

When abusers rewrite the story, silence is not neutral. DARVO thrives in confusion, hesitation, and doubt, but truth cannot be intimidated.

I have learned that truth demands clarity, and leadership demands courage. Tonight, in Nashville, I will stand for both. I will speak plainly, and I will urge the council to withdraw Resolution RS2025-1547.

The world’s oldest hatred has been rebranded through hashtags, but the antidote to lies — lies that travel faster than truth — is not hoping they disappear. It is using your voice in a room filled with silence: loudly, locally, with action, and without fear. - AR

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We are living in a moment most people refuse to see.

Beneath the masks of “justice” and “resistance,” old ideologies that once tore Europe apart are rising again. Have you heard of The Red-Green alliance?

It’s where political Islam and Marxist socialism merge—draped in the language of progress and liberation. But strip away the slogans, and the same familiar symbols of fascism stare back at us.

As someone who once aligned with the left and still embraces our classic liberal values, I can say with growing concern that the left has left me behind.

Fascism is alive and well, and it is thriving.

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His weathered hands took the validated parking ticket from mine through my car window and in a thick accent said, “No, you don’t need it, it is trash.”

“But I want to keep—” I started to say, but before I could finish, he tossed it into a dirty can. I shut my mouth.

I was leaving the divorce attorney’s office downtown. It is done.

We have been separated for years, and I wanted to hold on to that ticket. Not because of the divorce, but because of how much G-d was threaded through this specific week.

The holiest week in the Jewish year.
A week where I lost love, I lost weight, I released a marriage.
A week where a synagogue was violated by violence.
A week where Jews around the world atoned, released, and renewed.
A week where I am still birthing a book.
A week where I refuse to be broken.
A week where I remain centered in the eye of a storm.

This was a week where G-d was inextricably linked to renewal.
This was a week where my cracks intensified and so did my light.

I recall a conversation with an Algerian rebbe not too long ago. He told me specifically to stay home for Yom Kippur. “Give your day to G-d,” he said.

And I did.

When was the last time you gave your day to something greater than yourself?
Detached from the material world long enough—fasting the body to connect with the soul, loosening your grip on pain long enough to reflect and repair?

What This Week Taught Me (and Might Teach You)

1. Release is Renewal.
I wanted to hold on to that parking ticket. But sometimes, the very thing you cling to is keeping you stuck. Renewal begins in the release.
➡️ Ask yourself: What is one object, old story, fear or thought I can let go of today?

2. Sacred Time Matters.
Yom Kippur is designed for pause—for stepping away from the material and remembering the eternal. You don’t need to be Jewish to carve sacred time.
➡️ Try giving an hour (or a day) to something beyond yourself. No screens. No sounds. No striving. Just silence, reflection, or prayer.

3. Cracks Carry Light.
My cracks—A public war, a private divorce, the grief of waiting, the emptiness of longing, broken hearted abandonment, and betrayal—became places where light could enter. Pain does not mean you are broken; it means something holy might be pressing its way in.
➡️ When life feels cracked, ask: What light is trying to break through here?

The rebbe was right. I gave my day to G-d.
And in return, G-d gave me something back: renewal in the middle of the storm.

Sometimes a trash can holds the beginning of freedom. Sometimes the cracks hold your brightest light.

If this story resonated, you’ll find more in my upcoming book, White. Blonde. Jew. — A Call to End Extremism, Speak Up, and Reclaim Center.

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With love - AR