When Dolly Parton passed away this week, my first thoughts were about Jolene, 9 to 5, her iconic voice and Southern accent, and the way she danced as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader at the age of 77. There might be no better representation of American culture than Dolly Parton.

Places where my mind didn’t go? Gaza, Israel, the U.S. military, and calling her evil.

Why? Because I’m not a psycho.

The same can’t be said of many people online who responded to Dolly’s passing with such lovely messages as these:

Trolls will always be trolls, but the instinct to connect absolutely everything to the political cause of the day is now everywhere. Fans want celebrities to chime in on every issue, while plenty of celebrities have become convinced the world desperately needs their opinions on subjects they just learned about ten minutes ago.

Entertainers used to serve an important role in society. They entertained us. Singers, actors and athletes brought people together. They were the things you talked about to avoid politics. Today, every celebrity is expected to choose a side. And if someone doesn’t, like Dolly, neutrality itself gets interpreted as choosing the wrong one.

Thanks to Mark Ruffalo’s obsession with demonizing Israel, I can barely watch The Avengers without cheering on Thanos. And just this week, country singer Jelly Roll guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! and made a joke about Trump, prompting outrage from fans who apparently assumed a country singer from the South must share their politics. He later clarified: “It is funny that before this week everybody thought I was MAGA. And now they think I’m some sort of liberal snowflake... Sure, I lean left on some things, but like most folks I’m pretty down the middle.”

I’m not saying entertainers shouldn’t be allowed to express themselves if they want to, or, as Laura Ingraham once said about LeBron James, that they should “shut up and dribble.” Celebrities can speak up whenever they want. But it shouldn’t be expected of them or forced upon them, as is often the case these days. There are entire conspiracies and Reddit pages built around the fact that “Taylor Swift hasn’t spoken about Gaza.” She also hasn’t spoken about many other things, and that might be why she’s the biggest star on the planet.

Not everything has to be political. And entertainers shouldn’t pretend that taking bold political stances is somehow the path of least resistance. The moment you turn part of your audience into villains, you run the risk of alienating them.

Choosing not to weigh in isn’t cowardice, it’s an understanding of what your role is, and of the value in creating something that can still belong to everyone. And here’s the thing: I don’t even want actors to speak up in support of Israel, or whatever other causes I care about, either. When I watch TV, sports, or movies, or listen to music, I want a break from the harshness of what’s happening out there.

Dolly understood that. For decades, she resisted attempts to enlist her in partisan politics. When Trump offered her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she declined because of her husband’s health issues during the pandemic. When Biden approached her years later, she declined as well because accepting it from him might look like she was picking sides.

That instinct helped her achieve something that feels almost impossible today: Everybody loved Dolly Parton. People on opposite ends of the political spectrum mourned her at the same time. Is there anything else that both Trump and the DSA agree on?

America worries endlessly about polarization while politicizing literally everything, until there is almost nowhere left for people who disagree to simply share something. Maybe part of solving that means ensuring shared culture survives.

There must be music that belongs to everyone, movies people can watch together, sports people can argue about instead of elections, and dinner tables where people can complain about the food instead of the mayor.

Dolly Parton knew that refusing to align with one political team didn’t mean she didn’t care about the world. Instead, it helped preserve one small part of it that everyone could still share.

I was in Miami this weekend for a wedding, and one of my favorite things about being there is getting to talk to Cubans. In addition to cortados, Cubans provide a refreshingly different perspective than most of what you hear in America these days. While Harvard and Columbia students rant about how the West is evil to its core and must be torn down through socialist revolution, Cubans actually lived through one of those. Their wisdom and experience shouldn’t be ignored.

On my way back from the wedding party, I got into a conversation with my Uber driver Ramses, who escaped Cuba as a child. We discussed whether his homeland has a chance to free itself from the oppressive regime, whether he’d ever go back to try and help, and how countries fall apart in the first place. He told me about Universe 25, a famous experiment where researchers placed mice in an enclosed environment with abundant food and water and no predators.

At first the population exploded. Then its social structure broke down. Some mice became aggressive, others withdrew, reproduction collapsed, and eventually the colony died out even though food remained plentiful.

Humans aren’t exactly mice, but one thing stuck with me: even a society that has everything it needs can still destroy itself. I keep thinking about that when I look at America. We live in one of the most successful countries in human history, without any serious external existential threat. Yet one of the fastest-growing political movements in the country seems more interested in dismantling the system than improving it.

People still don’t quite understand the Democratic Socialists of America. They’re not just Democrats who want Medicare for All and slightly higher taxes. Their platform calls for abolishing the Senate and Electoral College, replacing the presidency, dramatically remaking the Supreme Court, and eventually writing a new Constitution establishing what they call a “democratic socialist republic.”

“For the working class to govern,” their platform says, “we need a new political system.” That’s kind of a big deal. And if individual DSA politicians disagree with it, they’re free to say so, push to change the platform, or run as regular Democrats. But prominent DSA members like AOC, Mamdani, Tlaib, and others choose to remain affiliated with the movement. That’s a statement.

America obviously has real problems. Income inequality is real, healthcare and housing are too expensive, and plenty of institutions need reform. But there’s a big difference between fixing what’s broken and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A DSA takeover isn’t inevitable (yet), but its ascent is real. It now controls America’s largest city through Mayor Mamdani. AOC is one of the most prominent politicians in the country and a leading presidential candidate. DSA candidates are winning primaries across the country through disciplined organizing and a passionate base.

Last week, DSA national co-chair Megan Romer gave a stunning interview to The New Yorker’s David Remnick. She endorsed defunding the Pentagon and police, abolishing prisons, open borders, and public ownership of the largest corporations. She called the October 7th Hamas massacre “inevitable,” said she likely would have attended the October 8th anti-Israel rally in New York, opposed arming Ukraine, and suggested sending “huge teams of diplomats” to counter Russia’s invasion instead. And then she started praising Cuba.

And Romer isn’t the only one talking this way. Hasan Piker, one of the most influential political voices among young people, has called Mao Zedong “one of the great leaders of this world,” and recently said, “I love Lenin, I love Fidel Castro, and I love Che Guevara. They are genuinely fucking heroes.”

I prefer to listen to Ramses, who actually lived through communism (and whose mother is still stuck there), rather than Piker, a wealthy streamer living in a multimillion-dollar Los Angeles home.

It’s also a lot easier to cheer for a revolution when you have the means to stay afloat regardless of how it goes, or the ability to flee if you need to. NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo is a Yale graduate who lives in a $1.5 million Brooklyn home bought by his parents. People like him have never had to live through a country falling apart, so the whole thing can feel theoretical.

But to people like Ramses, revolution isn’t a way to piss off your parents or a campus slogan that’s fun to chant. He only managed to escape Cuba because of a technicality. He had a great-grandfather who was Spanish, which allowed his father to flee to Spain. Then his mother dropped him off at the Spanish embassy for asylum. Most Cubans are not so fortunate.

That’s what makes me nervous about the way people talk about American institutions now. We’ve had them for so long that we assume they’re permanent. They’re not. Whether it comes from the DSA left or the Groyper-adjacent right of Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, America is coming dangerously close to losing the values that made it such a great country.

Some may argue we’ve already passed that point. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “What about Trump?” Yes, he’s spent years trashing norms too. That doesn’t magically make the DSA harmless.

The point is, it’s much harder to rebuild institutions than it is to break them down. That’s why I don’t find it reassuring when people say about the DSA, “They don’t really intend to do all that stuff.” Then why’s it in their platform? And what if you’re wrong?

In history, you can rarely CTRL-Z your way out of trouble. Radical movements often rise by taking real grievances and promising, through charming, smiling politicians, that everything will improve once they’re in charge. The problem is what happens when they get enough power to start changing the rules themselves.

And changing the rules is exactly what the DSA says it wants to do. Abolish the Senate, replace the presidency, remake the courts, write a new Constitution. Maybe they never get close. But waiting until they do seems like a terrible plan. The arc of history is long. What will the DSA be in five years? 10? 20? If you told yourself ten years ago that this is where we’d be now, you probably wouldn’t believe it either.

If Cubans or Iranians could go back in time, I imagine plenty would have the same message Ramses was giving me: be careful. Things can get much worse than you think. Countries and empires that once seemed permanent have disappeared or declined. Spain once dominated the world. Britain controlled huge portions of it. All roads once led to Rome.

America doesn’t get some special exemption from history. People have predicted its decline for as long as I can remember. For the first time in my life, I can see the path.

I remember the first time I saw self-checkout at a CVS pharmacy. It was weirdly exciting, getting to do this thing usually reserved for professionals. It was almost as thrilling as the self-serve frozen yogurt machine at Souplantation1. There was something fun about being fully independent and not having to deal with a grumpy cashier. But looking back, I think that was the beginning of the end. The first step into this dystopian world we currently reside in.

What started as one self-checkout station and 4 human-operated registers has now shifted to 4 malfunctioning robots and one overwhelmed human. Self-checkout requires a level of trust, which was quickly abused by thieves, which eventually led to nearly every item in the store being protected behind a locked plexiglass window. Want some deodorant? Ring a bell, make an employee shuffle between a thousand keys on a keyring, and then make your selection while they breathe down your neck. The other day I had to bother the lone employee three times so I could get the right shampoo, and when I realized I needed something else, I genuinely considered going to a different CVS to avoid the shame of asking for help one more time.

Meanwhile, nearly every time I use the self-checkout, I need to flag over a human to cancel out some error and restart the whole process when a coupon isn’t properly activated. We were promised automation would eliminate friction. Instead, we got the worst of both worlds: fewer employees and machines that constantly require employees. Why can’t we have robots open up the locked cabinets and humans doing checkout? Has anyone thought this through?

I’m not done complaining. Today I went to the bank to get some quarters for laundry. There were of course six ATM machines and one human staffing an entire row of empty teller windows. There was one guy ahead of me being taken care of and I had to wait about 20 minutes just to get some freaking change. The other client and I looked at each other in shared frustration. “Nothing’s easy these days,” he lamented. When another employee walked by, I asked her if I could just get some quarters and be on my way. She said she wasn’t authorized to do that and I had to wait for the other guy. You’d think that everyone at the bank, whose main function is to hold my money and give it to me when I ask for it, would be authorized to give me my money when I ask for it. But that job is now reserved for the machines, and the machines don’t have quarters.

I often get nostalgic about a simpler past, but the truth is, frustration with ever-changing technology is nothing new. In the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times, the protagonist becomes so overwhelmed with the technology of his time — working at a factory assembly line — that he suffers a nervous breakdown, ends up in the hospital, and later prison, where he resists being released because he finds it preferable to world outside. Honestly, relatable.

Maybe if I wasn’t dealing with frustrating robots, I’d be dealing with frustrating people and my anger would be targeted at humankind, rather than amoral automatons. I must acknowledge that each of my headaches with machines led to bonding moments with people, commiserating with another annoyed customer, joking with an exasperated employee.

With so much polarization and hatred among Americans these days, maybe we can turn down the heat by focusing our rage on the robots screwing us all over equally. I’m sure nothing bad could ever come from that…

In Obsession, the movie hit of the summer, a young man makes a wish on the One Wish Willow that causes his crush to fall madly in love with him. But, as the title implies, what develops is not love. It is a dangerous obsession.

Watching the movie, I kept thinking about American politics and its growing obsession with Israel. More and more, a remarkable number of politicians seem incapable of thinking about anything else. From DSA politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed to America First figures like Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, people from opposite ends of the political spectrum keep returning to the same tiny country on the other side of the world. And then there are immensely popular commentators like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Hasan Piker, and Piers Morgan, but that’s another story. These people’s opinions about Israel and AIPAC are often extreme. But what’s more concerning is the fixation itself.

I’ll admit, I hesitated to write about this because just last week I published a whole piece about Mamdani’s obsession with Israel, and I worried that I might start to look like the obsessed one. But there is an obvious difference between responding to politicians whose rhetoric directly affects you and blaming one small country and its supporters for every problem on Earth.

Consider Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Judging from his tweets and campaign appearances, you might assume AIPAC was the most urgent issue facing Michigan voters. Here’s a small sampling of his posts where he connects AIPAC to rising gas prices, rigged elections, and more:

Chill out, bro. Get a f*cking hobby or something.

For context, AIPAC is a bipartisan pro-Israel advocacy organization whose political operations support candidates aligned with its priorities, something that commonly exists in our political system. In this race, it is backing El-Sayed’s opponent, Haley Stevens. El-Sayed is perfectly entitled to criticize the money being spent against him. But when AIPAC seems like only thing he talks about? It gets a little creepy.

According to this worldview, AIPAC does not merely support candidates. It controls elections and it owns Congress. Politicians cannot sincerely disagree with El-Sayed, they must have been purchased. Every defeat proves the conspiracy is real, while every victory proves that he heroically overcame it.

He is hardly alone. Mamdani has repeatedly injected Israel into New York City politics, even when the subject lies far beyond a mayor’s jurisdiction. Like El-Sayed, he connects issues deemed “bad” to Israel, as when he famously said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” New Yorkers apparently cannot even discuss police misconduct without being rerouted through the Israeli military.

Thomas Massie has similarly made AIPAC and Israel central villains in his account of Washington. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests that opposing Trump’s Israel policy cost her her position in Congress, when the more plausible explanation may be that her constituents had grown tired of her endless conspiracy theories and obsession with Israel and their Jewish space lasers.

This week, when a migration crisis unfolded in Spain, commentators online quickly decided that Israel must somehow be behind that too, rather than actual policies of the Spanish government. Look at what this children’s book author and good friend of Mayor Mamdani’s wife had to say:

A Senate race in Michigan. A mayoral campaign in New York. A Republican revolt in Congress. A migration crisis involving Spain and Morocco. Somehow, according to all these conspiracy-minded people, all road leads back to the Jews, who make up 0.2% of the world, or the tiny Jewish state which is the size of New Jersey, and contains the same about of citizens as North Carolina.

If politicians connected every unrelated event to 5G towers, chemtrails, or vaccines, we would not praise their moral clarity. We would correctly conclude that their sense of proportion had collapsed. Yet when the fixation involves Israel, the same behavior is treated as legitimate, rather than cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

The danger is not merely that this mentality is ridiculous. Worse, it ensures that real problems remain unsolved because their actual causes are never addressed. When economic failure, political instability, or social unrest can always be blamed on Israel or Jews, the leaders responsible for corruption, repression, and disastrous policy escape accountability. Scapegoating does not explain failure. It just protects the people causing it and distracts the masses.

In Obsession, we see that when a person makes someone else the center of their entire existence, the results are disastrous for everyone. Political obsession works the same way. Let’s not let our world continue turning into a horror movie.

Yesterday, a notorious nepo-baby actor posted an audition tape online that drew a lot of attention. He appeared to be reading for the role of “Mayor of New York City,” and personally, I didn’t find his performance very convincing.

The slow zooms. The swelling background music. The grave pauses. It was all a little on the nose. The monologue didn’t make much sense either. If this character was supposed to be the mayor of New York, why was he obsessing over arresting the prime minister of a foreign democracy?

From my understanding, mayors are generally responsible for municipal matters: collecting garbage, keeping people safe, and serving the residents of their city. Arresting the leader of one of America’s closest allies, whose country was responding to the worst terrorist attack in its history, seemed a little outside the character’s jurisdiction. What kind of mayor would actually spread inflammatory lies about a country many of his constituents hold dear?

I haven’t read the full script of this movie, so perhaps he is playing the villain. In that case, the performance makes more sense. He did a good job embodying the energy of a slimy politician who will say anything to pander for votes. He got that part down with flying colors.

I watched a few of his other audition tapes to get a better sense of his range. There is one expression he seems particularly fond of: a wide, artificial smile that looks physically painful to maintain, as though his acting coach told him to show more warmth and he took the note too far. He often looks a bit like the Joker without the makeup. I respect the commitment to the craft.

Still, the overall production of his recent tape felt weak and corny, which was surprising considering his mother is a successful filmmaker. He should have asked her for notes. The actor’s name is Zohran Mamdani. His IMDB page includes a few screen credits, some videos from a failed rap career, and not much else.

Then I learned this wasn’t an audition tape. Zohran Mamdani is actually the mayor of New York City? Wait, what?!

Apparently, the video was an official announcement that he could not arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, a power that virtually nobody believed the mayor of New York possessed in the first place. Just days earlier, Mamdani had revived his campaign promise to arrest the Israeli prime minister, announcing that his lawyers were engaged in an “active conversation” about how it might be accomplished. Then came the somber video revealing that, after careful legal analysis, the administration had discovered that the mayor of New York does not control American foreign policy.

But this discovery was presented not as an embarrassment, or an admission that the original promise had been fraudulent, but as another heroic scene for Mamdani to perform. He could not arrest Netanyahu, he explained, but he really, really wanted to. He had tried everything. His hands were tied. The federal government would now have to finish the job.

It was a staged political production in three acts. First, perform the promise. Then, perform the effort. Finally, perform your disappointment that the performance could not become reality. Then collect your Oscar. Except Mamdani’s performance wasn’t Oscar-worthy. Instead, he came across as the entitled theater kid he is. Nothing happened. Nothing was ever going to happen. But Mamdani got his close-up and his viral video, which was probably the goal all along.

This summer, as the World Cup brought countless Europeans to the United States, my social media feeds filled with a new genre of travel literature: the TikTok Tocqueville. If you didn’t pay attention in history class, Alexis de Tocqueville was a French diplomat who in 1831 traveled extensively across the young American nation and documented his experience.

This time, Europeans wandered through American supermarkets, gas stations, airports, suburbs, stadiums, and drive-thrus, documenting their astonishment at the size of our drinks, the friendliness of our strangers, the absurdity of our tipping culture, the vastness of our highways, and the prevalence of ice water and air conditioning.

They came to America and, like Alexis de Tocqueville before them, tried to understand the country through its habits. While Europeans were observing America, I went the other way, spending several weeks moving through Europe. And I found myself doing my own version of the exercise. Noticing what Europe does beautifully, what it does better than we do, and what it seems unwilling to see about itself.

This wasn’t my first time in Europe, but with the World Cup cultural exchange on my mind, I paid attention to things through a more observational lens. Across Germany, Italy, Sweden, and England, one thing consistently stood out. They make shit work!

Public transit is efficient and affordable. Train stations and airports are modern and pleasant. Public spaces feel cared for. Environmentalism is built into daily life. There are trash cans everywhere. Nothing is made of plastic. Alcohol is way cheaper. You get the sense that the people running the cities take pride in making things work. In the U.S., it often feels like politicians are so focused on grand ideas and changing the world that they forget to take care of basic urban functionality. Why should anyone ever have to wait twelve minutes for a New York City subway train, only to board a car that feels like a traveling psych ward? Get it together, America.

The European Union is not just a convenience for tourists or a regulatory machine. It is an answer to the catastrophe of two world wars. Europe looked at the destruction of the twentieth century and decided to never again let nationalism run amok, never allow war between European powers, and by any means necessary, never permit fascism to reemerge.

And in one sense, it worked. It is now almost impossible to imagine France and Germany going to war. That is one of the great political achievements of modern history. But Europe may have remembered the war while forgetting the engine that helped drive it. Europe is alert to nationalism, authoritarianism, racism, and right-wing fascism. But it often seems less alert to antisemitic scapegoating, the habit of turning Jews (and in turn, the Jewish state) into the explanation for all of society’s problems.

All around Germany and Italy I saw Stolpersteine in the ground: brass stones naming Jewish victims who were deported and murdered by the Nazis. It’s jarring to walk through a beautiful street in Berlin or Venice, stunned by the architecture, and then suddenly be reminded that amidst such beauty, Jews were ripped from their homes and sent to death camps. Europe is very good at remembering murdered Jews. It seems far less committed to protecting living ones.

Florence is covered with antisemitic graffiti all around, including one depicting Jesus as a Palestinian and the IDF as the killers of God. Anti-Israel stickers adorn countless lamp posts in Berlin. And at the Venice Biennale, the foremost international art festival in the world, there’s an obsession with attacking Israel. At the main entrance there’s a giant placard about Gaza, yet interestingly nothing about Ukraine, where a war currently rages on.

Qatar, a country that shares no borders or has any direct reason for disputes with Israel, dedicated their artistic entry to a film comparing Gaza with the Holocaust and depicting a person vandalizing the Israeli pavilion at the festival. At Israel’s exhibition, the guest book was filled with people writing “Free Palestine,” as if the very act of entering an Israeli cultural space required a ritual denunciation.

But the Jew hate was not limited to objects and vandalism. My brother and I experienced some antisemitism directly too.

On Friday evening, my brother and I were walking through the winding streets and canals of Venice, looking for the historic Jewish Ghetto, where we had Shabbat dinner plans. We didn’t have our phones because of Shabbat, so we relied on directions from strangers. At one point we saw two young guys walking our direction and said, “Excuse me, do you know where the ghetto is? Synagogue?” One of them said “Kyke!” and the other kept uttering “Juden.” It took us a minute to register what was happening. They kept going. One of them made a “big nose” gesture with his hand and said “Go to the bank.”

While some European Jew-hatred cloaks itself in postmodern language about genocide and colonizers, these guys were a throwback to the vulgar old fashioned antisemitism of medieval peasants. After offering them a heartfelt “F*ck you,” we continued on our way. An older British couple who witnessed the incident told us that they’re so sorry about what’s happening and hate what they’re seeing in their home country too. It was reassuring to experience their decency, but also concerning that they did so in a hushed voice, while the bigots felt so confident to be loud in their hatred.

The most moving thing I saw in Europe was not antisemitism. It was Jewish life. The Jews I met were not museum pieces or remnants of a vanished world. They were eating, laughing, singing, hosting, and celebrating life. I had beautiful Shabbat dinners, ate at kosher restaurants, and visited historic synagogues. The problem is not that Jewish life in Europe is weak. It’s that European societies do not seem particularly concerned with preserving it.

The task of the European project cannot be merely to prevent another war between Europeans. It must be to prevent the habits of thought that made Europe’s greatest crimes possible: scapegoating, cowardice, and the abandonment of Jews.

Imagine if, after allowing two-thirds of Europe’s Jews to be murdered, Europe had made the protection of Jewish life one of its central postwar missions, not just with more security but by fighting the incitement that cultivates antisemitic hate. Imagine if the safety and flourishing of living Jews carried a fraction of the urgency Europe brings to environmental regulation, plastic reduction, and making sure there are eight different types of trash bins. European leaders are obsessed with condemning every policy of the Israeli government, while ignoring their own failing policies that allow Jewish citizens to be harassed, threatened, isolated, and attacked.

Europe has become very good at placing stones where Jews once lived. Its mission now should be to ensure that Jews can continue living beside them.

During the Spanish Inquisition, the Jews of Spain were given a choice that was not really a choice: leave, convert, or suffer. And even conversion did not guarantee safety. Converts could still be investigated, humiliated, tortured, or killed if they were suspected of secretly clinging to the Jewish practices they had supposedly renounced.

That was the deeper cruelty. Jews were forced to purchase safety through public self-erasure. Say the words. Perform the ritual. Prove that you are not one of those Jews. Today, a similar structure has emerged in the latest form of antisemitism: antizionism.

Its practitioners almost never say they hate Jews. In fact, they insist on the opposite. They have Jewish friends. They love Jewish culture. They oppose antisemitism in all its forms. There is only one condition.

Jews must renounce the Jewish liberation movement, Zionism. They must deny themselves self-determination in their historic homeland. They must recite the magic words that bring temporary safety: “genocide,” “apartheid,” “baby killers.” They must agree that Jewish sovereignty is uniquely illegitimate, uniquely monstrous, uniquely undeserving of defense.

Once they do, they are welcomed. They are elevated. They are paraded around as proof that the movement cannot possibly be antisemitic. They become the “good Jews,” the ones who know how to behave. Once they demonize and boycott Israel, they can walk the red carpet like Hannah Einbinder. When they clarify that they’re “not a Zio,” like Odessa A’zion, the online harassment stops and they can continue getting roles.

But if you are a Jew who refuses the ritual humiliation, the inquisition comes for you.

Consider Dan Goldman. By any normal Democratic standard, Goldman should be a party star. He was lead counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. He is progressive on nearly every domestic issue. He represents a deep-blue New York district. But Goldman supports Israel’s right to exist. He believes the Hamas massacres of October 7 were evil. He does not perform the required denunciations with sufficient enthusiasm. And so, suddenly, none of the rest matters.

He was not merely opposed politically. He was treated as contaminated. Earlier this week, a coffee shop, Poetica, publicly announced that if they had recognized him, they would have turned him away because they don’t serve “racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers, or anyone in between.” Goldman is none of those things. He’s just an American Jewish man who has done the bare minimum to stand with his people after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But his coffee had to be refunded. His presence had to be purged. That is the logic of an inquisition.

And then there is Brad Lander, the person who took Goldman’s seat. Lander is Jewish, which makes him especially useful to the movement. Every inquisition needs its model convert. In Spain and Portugal, Jews who converted to Christianity could be used as examples to the others. See what you could become if you would only stop clinging to this stubborn, suspect identity. Today, the antizionist movement has its own version of this performance.

The “good Jew” is the one who validates the accusation against the bad Jews. The good Jew says Israel is committing genocide. The good Jew stands beside people who would never tolerate a Zionist Jew in their coalition. The good Jew reassures everyone that their obsession with the world’s only Jewish state is not antisemitism at all, because look, here is a Jew saying it too.

This is the antizionist inquisition. It does not ask, “Are you Jewish?” It asks, “What kind of Jew are you?” Are you the kind we can use, or the kind we must punish? Are you the kind who will renounce Jewish sovereignty, or the kind who insists that Jews, like every other people, have the right to live freely in their ancestral home?

The same purist logic helped defeat a Jewish ally, Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th congressional district. Espaillat is not some right-wing hawk. He is a super progressive Democrat: pro-immigrant, pro-labor, pro-social spending, and historic as the first Dominican American in Congress. But after October 7th, he committed the unforgivable sin: he stood by Israel. Against him rose Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA-backed anti-Israel activist who had joined a pro-Palestinian rally one day after the Hamas attacks and later struggled to unequivocally condemn Hamas. In another political era, that might have been disqualifying. In this one, it helped make her a hero.

The fervor is spreading, and people feel it. Many Jews now understand that support for Israel, even cautious or complicated support, can cost them friendships, jobs, invitations, reputations, and political futures. So they keep quiet. Or they leave.

In Spain and Portugal, religious fanaticism helped drive out a population that had contributed immeasurably to Iberian civilization. The expulsion of the Jews impoverished Spain morally, culturally, intellectually, and economically. A society convinced it is cleansing itself often discovers too late that it’s bringing about its own downfall.

Will America learn that lesson before it repeats it?

Already, several friends of mine have moved to Israel because of rising antisemitism in New York. Smart, successful, kind people with a lot to contribute to society. Now, those contributions will go elsewhere, likely to be replaced by unemployed Hamas-supporting hipsters who only bring division, vandalism, and hate to the city.

Five years ago, it would have sounded absurd that Jews were fleeing hatred in America. Move to Israel to feel safer? Under missile fire? Surrounded by enemies? And yet for some, the calculation has changed. Better to live in a Jewish state that is physically threatened than in a supposedly tolerant society where Jewish belonging is conditional on Jewish self-erasure.

The way out is not despair. It is action and organizing. The antizionist inquisition must become politically unsuccessful. It has to lose elections, not win them. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie recently lost their seats in Congress for being conspiracy minded extremists, obsessed more with Epstein than their constituents’ concerns. The antizionist movement needs to similarly lose prestige, as being obsessed with demonizing a country across the globe doesn’t help their constituents either. It has to become embarrassing, not fashionable, to deny Jewish self-determination.

The recent success of DSA candidates is disappointing for sure. But elections happen every two years. Coalitions can shift, voters can be organized, and movements can be exposed. Just as things have gotten worse, they can also get better.

The first step is to stop accepting the premise of the inquisition. We do not need to purchase acceptance by renouncing other Jews. We do not need to say the magic words. We do not need to beg for conditional belonging. And most of all, we need to stop apologizing for existing.

This past week we’ve witnessed a stunning 180 degree turn in the Middle East war with Iran. Just six months ago, millions of Iranians courageously marched to the streets, demanding an end to 47 years of authoritarian rule by an Islamic regime that killed women for showing their hair, hung homosexuals, and wreaked havoc across the region through their terrorist proxies. Trump told them “Help is on the way!” and for the first time in half a century, there was hope for a new Iran and a new Middle East. The ayatollah and his top military leaders were eliminated by joint strikes by the U.S. and Israeli air forces. It was like Top Gun, but real life. And then, in the blink of an eye, this dream-like scenario appears to be just that — a dream we’ve woken up from.

This week, Trump signed a deal (technically a Memorandum of Understanding that would lead to a deal) that according to most reports gives the Iranian regime almost everything they wanted. An end to hostilities, an end to the blockade, sanctions relief, and as much as 300 billion dollars in “reconstruction” funds. In exchange, they’ll re-open the Strait of Hormuz and “promise” to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. It sure looks like the U.S. is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and in doing so, betraying the Iranian people as well as the Israeli allies who partnered in this mission and stand to lose a lot from a strengthened regime.

It’s hard not to be profoundly disappointed in this outcome. The battle with Iran wasn’t about a land dispute or something that could be compromised on. It was about human civilization itself, as clear a battle of good vs evil as there ever has been. The regime in Iran just murdered 40,000 of its own people last February, and tortured many others. They fund terrorism against civilians all around the world. And their pursuit of nuclear weapons is intended to destroy the free world and keep the fanatical mullahs in power forever. You don’t meet halfway with enemies like this. You do whatever it takes to remove them from power, especially when they’re already against the ropes.

But real life isn’t like the movies. When World War I and II were happening, they weren’t called World Wars. And along the way, it wasn’t clear which side would win. Only in hindsight are we able to see the clear-cut narratives that occur in the arcs of history. So my advice to those who are shocked and confused (myself included) by this latest turn: Wait and see.

It’s very possible that this deal itself is a huge mistake. From what I’ve observed, it seems that economic concerns were the main engine behind this abrupt change of strategy. If the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, the economy could crash, and being close to the midterm elections, this wasn’t a price Trump was willing to pay. So he gave into the Iranian extortion. But it doesn’t mean the story ends here.

The IRGC, much like Hamas, derives benefits from being at war. It provides a distraction from having to actually govern, and it allows them to present themselves as “resistance” fighters against an external enemy. Once you take that away, they must actually confront their own people. And unlike last time, when they massacred countless protestors, this time under the auspices of a deal, there’s more pressure on them to behave if they want to get their money. So if the people rise up again and the regime can’t resort to violence, maybe there could be a fall of the regime at the hands of the Iranian people rather than outside forces.

That’s just one possible scenario. The point is, history isn’t always linear. A wrong move can inadvertently cause a positive outcome. If, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, perhaps the converse is true too. America lost the Vietnam War, but ultimately won the Cold War. Israel overwhelmingly won the 6 Day War, but didn’t get peace from it. Rather, it was after Israel was humbled in the Yom Kippur that Egypt eventually dropped its decades long pursuit of destroying the Jewish state and signed a peace treaty.

In today’s attention deficit TikTok world, we want instant gratification out of everything. But the arc of history is long (at least until the sun burns out). So for our own sake, and the world’s, it behooves us to practice something that has almost gone extinct: Patience. If it doesn’t feel like a happy ending right now, that just means it isn’t the ending.

The United States of America contains more than 340 million people, making it the third most populous country on the planet. As a country of immigrants, it also has some of the best minds and talents from every corner of the world. Considering all of this, why does it so often feel like the absolute worst people are the ones running for office?

As we go through primary season, it seems like every Tuesday, in one state after another, some person who wouldn’t be trusted to work the cash register at McDonald’s or babysit a child is selected by his or her party to help legislate the most powerful nation in the world. It’s nuts.

Politics has always attracted unsavory people. The very act of running for office requires a level of ambition, ego, and appetite for attention that filters out many normal, well-adjusted people. But there was once at least something noble about the idea of becoming a public servant. The language of politics still gestured toward sacrifice, leadership, duty, and service.

These days? Not so much.

Yesterday in Maine, Graham Platner won the Democratic nomination for Senate. He is now one closely contested election away from becoming one of only 100 people serving in the United States Senate. If you haven’t been following the race, you might be wondering: Who is Graham Platner?

The answer is: by most accounts, one of the worst people in the country and a candidate who would have been politically radioactive in almost any previous era.1

Platner had a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo on his chest for 18 years.2 He has been accused by multiple former girlfriends of physically and emotionally abusive behavior. He has faced allegations involving infidelity and disturbing online behavior. He’s lied about having a working-class upbringing, when in fact he attended a $75k a year prep school. He also has a long Reddit history filled with inflammatory messages, including comments mocking wounded U.S. soldiers, and admiring a Hamas raid in which 10 Israeli soldiers were killed, where he wrote, “That was a damn fine looking and successful raid against a superior opponent, I dig it.”

Since launching his campaign, Platner has also made anti-Israel politics central to his identity as a candidate, accusing Israel of genocide and calling Israel a “terrorist state.” Combine that with the Nazi tattoo and I’m starting to think he might have a problem with Jews!

All of which raises a simple question: Was there really nobody better available?

And beyond that, how do mainstream political leaders like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, and Hakeem Jeffries look at a candidate with this much baggage and still decide to endorse him? The answer, increasingly, is tribalism. Many voters and leaders seem to approach democracy simply as a binary team sport. Beat the other side at all costs. Or as some are saying to defend their Platner vote, “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” What a depressing way to approach democracy, especially when there was a primary that could have given them someone else blue to vote for.

Platner is not the only problematic person running for office. In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed denies Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, suggested the Israeli government and Hamas are equally “evil,” and, after an attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, was unable to condemn it without also explaining away the attacker’s violence as “displaced rage.” He has a right to think and say what he wants. But voters also have a right to ask whether a person who speaks with such moral confusion is fit to serve in the Senate.3

On the Republican side in Texas, Senate nominee Ken Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 over allegations including bribery and abuse of office. He also faced years of securities-fraud charges. They say everything is bigger in Texas, but apparently that does not include a bigger pool of solid candidates. Every time a low quality, low ethics person is elevated, it sends the message that standards no longer matter.

And in Los Angeles, we now have a mayoral election between Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. Nobody who has spent serious time in L.A. would deny that the city is in a dark place: homelessness, crime, cost of living, and poor wildfire response have made one of the most beautiful cities in the world feel increasingly unlivable. Many longtime Angelenos, myself included, eventually left after concluding that nothing was going to change.

And now residents are being asked to choose between the incumbent who presided over the mess and a council member who was chair of the city's Housing and Homelessness Committee and clearly didn’t succeed in addressing the city’s current crisis. It says a lot about people’s lack of faith in Bass and Raman that a former reality star with no political experience was able to generate so much buzz. But for many, Pratt was the only candidate of change, which is what so many are craving in LA. After Raman surged past him when the mail-in ballots were counted, Pratt is now seemingly out of the picture. With Bass and Raman as the only options, what is supposed to give anyone confidence that Los Angeles can turn itself around?

The list goes on and on. In city after city and state after state, the people emerging as the next generation of politicians are not just inexperienced or flawed. Instead, many of them seem radical, corrupt, incompetent, and in many cases lacking any sense of moral clarity.4

Why won’t more smart, successful, decent people run for office? I was discussing this with a friend recently, who made the point that people who are focused on family and professional success simply don’t have the time or desire to get involved in politics. The cost is too high and the benefit is too low. What does a normal person get from running for office? A lower salary, public humiliation, attacks on their family, and in some cases actual violence.

In a way, the system is set up so that only people with nothing to lose are willing to enter the arena. And that is not good. The people in local, state, and federal government make very important decisions that affect all of us. They decide how cities function, how taxes are spent, how schools operate, how laws are enforced, and how America presents itself to the world. Ideally our leaders should represent the best of us. But if not that, they should at least have a track record of success in their pre-political life, not failure and scandals.

In this age of idiocracy, it often feels like our political culture is a race to the bottom. But I feel like there are two ways out of this tangled mess. First, we need leaders who actually treat politics as public service, not a get-rich-and-famous-quick scheme or a job that mostly exists on social media.5 In short — dignity! Sometimes, all it takes is one person to set this trend, and the rest will follow. Second, people need to decide who to vote for based on the candidate, not the party. If you identify as a party member above all, then why even exist? You’re basically a bot at that point. So break free from tribalist affiliation and use your brain on a case-by-case basis. It won’t be easy, but if people can adopt these measures, we just might have hope for politicians who inspire, rather than bring shame.

A year ago, I decided to throw caution to the wind and start a weekly Substack. In my very first post, I laid out my reasons for doing so, which can be briefly summed up by the following:

• Insert my voice into the marketplace of ideas, with the hope of being a nuanced commentator in a world where extremists seem to take up all the space.

• Encourage critical thinking by not just following popular opinions but generating perspectives based on independent thought, rather than regurgitated memes

• Have some fun creating consistent output.

I’m pleased to say that after 52 weeks of essays, I’ve managed to achieve these goals, and some unexpected ones too. I’ve learned a lot about myself, the writing process, and the world of discourse. So in honor of this One-Year Yoniversary, I’d like to share some of those lessons with my readers that will hopefully resonate in your lives as well.

Consistency is Everything

This is one of those things that everyone knows in theory. If you want results, go to the gym every day, take your vitamins every day, blah blah blah. But as annoying as it is to hear, it’s true. You don’t wake up one day feeling perfectly inspired to write or create. You become inspired by the intoxicating feeling of accomplishing your goals.

Cranking out an essay every week gave me the motivation to keep going, even when I wasn’t feeling like it. It even caused me to approach life differently. If there was an experience that I was on the fence about, the fact that it might give me good material to write about incentivized me to say yes. Some people “Do it for the plot.” I did it for the Yoniverse content.

Speaking Your Mind Opens (Not Closes) Doors

The minute you share an opinion, people try to put you in a box. This was one of my main hesitations about putting myself out there with essays on occasionally controversial topics. What if people disagreed with my takes and dismissed me as a person or a friend? What if — heaven forbid — they unfollowed me! But once I started putting my ideas out there, I found that the opposite happened. Sure, some people might have disengaged, but far more often, my audience expanded. It turned out that my words often resonated with many others, who in turn reshared them, and as happens in the age of social media, certain posts took on a life of their own. This led me to connect with complete strangers. On a few occasions at social gatherings, I even had people come up to me and tell me they read my articles. In our short attention span world, I didn’t think anyone would have the patience to read long form essays, but alas, I was fortunately wrong!

Building up a portfolio of essays also opened the door to getting a piece published in Tablet Magazine, one of my proudest accomplishments. The point is, don’t be shy to give the world a piece of your mind. There’s likely more upside than downside, and if someone doesn’t appreciate your authentic self? Who needs ‘em anyway!

There’s An Appetite For Moderation

While some of my essays have been light-hearted, a majority of them have dealt with what I feel is a defining issue of our time: increased polarization and extremism.

Social media and algorithms have accelerated this trend, but the deeper problem is our growing appetite for certainty, outrage, and enemies. It seems like, as a society, we just keep passively advancing along this assembly line of madness into an abyss of fiery destruction. We’ve all seen this movie before and we all know how badly it can end. But we all have the power to not go down the same path that led to the death and destruction in past eras.

The answer is moderation. It’s not as sexy and exciting as the revolutionary fervor of communism and fascism, but it leads to the best quality of life for all. Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the unraveling of societies. When people begin scapegoating a tiny minority and blaming all their problems on them, it means that they’re not addressing the actual issues at hand. I think it’s essential that America wholeheartedly reject the extremists that are destroying us from within, and it’s my mission to continue holding them to account.

I don’t claim to have the answer about which path is the best one for the prosperity of America, or the West. So I’ll never tell you who to vote for or what to believe. I’m more interested in calling out people and ideologies that are motivated by hate and extremism.

What Now?

I intend to keep pursuing this endeavor with continued weekly content and I’d love to have you along for the ride. I also plan to expand the Yoniverse in ways I’m excited to share soon. If you’re a new reader, check out my archive of past articles for some moderately spicy takes (mild salsa with a few jalepeños mixed in). And if you already follow, stay engaged, like, share, subscribe, etc. Most of all, I’m grateful to everyone who has read, shared, argued with, encouraged, or even silently lurked along the way. A weekly essay only becomes a conversation because people show up to read it. I look forward to continuing to explore ideas together… all Across The Yoniverse.

People are often surprised to hear that I’m a huge fan of the TV show Survivor. Either they’re shocked it’s still on the air (25 years and running) or that I, a screenwriter whose life depends on the written word, would be so enamored with an unscripted reality show featuring people competing in obstacle course challenges on a beach. But my interest in the show isn’t based on any of that. Rather, it’s because the show offers one of the most fascinating social experiments our world has to offer.

What happens when you take twenty people from different races, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds and give them a month (with no real food or shelter) to vote each other off and decide who gets the million dollar prize? There are other variables at play (immunity idols, alliances, and food rewards) but the heart of the matter is this: What Survivor demonstrates more than anything else is that people rarely vote for the best resume. They vote for the best story.1

Last week, the show’s 50th season concluded and a winner took home a two million dollar prize. SPOILERS AHEAD! This season was unique in that it was composed entirely of people who have been on the show before, which meant that players had backstories to consider, and previous relationships with each other. In the end, the jury of players who had been voted out had to choose between two players who couldn’t be more opposite (technically three, but one guy never had a chance). It was a fascinating test case of logic vs emotion.

On the one hand, you have Jonathan, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real life Marvel superhero. He’s huge, strong, and regularly performed superhuman feats of strength that almost look like AI. His main competition in the finale? A small, neurotic marketing consultant named Aubry who had played and lost on three previous seasons.

Jonathan spent the years since his last appearance getting into peak physical shape and practicing making fire, setting himself up for victory in every way possible. Aubry… just kinda showed up again and didn’t even seem so happy to be there.

But in the end, when it mattered most, Aubry made her case by telling a more compelling story about why she deserved to win. She explained all the personal growth she achieved, the challenges she overcame, the lessons she learned each time she lost on previous seasons. She was vulnerable and human and made people root for her, even if she didn’t play a perfect game. Jonathan, meanwhile, simply told the jury how he perfected every skill and why he did everything right, as if it were a math equation to be solved. Aubry realized the power of a good narrative, and that simple recognition was worth two million dollars.

Simply put, narrative is often more important than facts. In politics we’ve seen it countless times. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton were two of the most overqualified presidential candidates in history, with way more years of experience and knowledge than their counterparts. But they were so sure that they deserved the job because they checked all the boxes, and this rubbed people the wrong way. People always prefer an underdog, and even if you’re not an underdog, it sure helps to present yourself as one.

It’s quite ironic that the candidates who defeated Gore and Clinton — George W. Bush and Donald Trump — both came from extraordinarily wealthy and privileged backgrounds, but still managed to portray themselves as mavericks or outsiders. Bush as a cowboy you’d want to have a beer with and Trump by speaking in an unfiltered way that no career politician ever would. And it worked for them both. Gore and Clinton came to the campaign with impressive resumes. Their opponents came with identifiable characters.

More recently, Zohran Mamdani played the same trick, painting himself as a socialist man of the people, despite being the son of a tenured Ivy League professor and a very successful millionaire filmmaker. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative!

You can also see this in people’s perceptions of Israel. In its early years, when it was tiny and weak, most people in the West cheered it on. They even made big Hollywood movies with Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman about the founding of the state. But after pulling off a miraculous victory in the 1967 war, the narrative changed. As Israel’s military became more and more advanced and its economy and tech sector more powerful, it no longer was seen as an underdog, and many around the world began rooting for its demise. The problem for Israel is that weakness is admired in the West, but strength is respected in the Middle East. Israel is punished rhetorically when it looks strong, but endangered physically when it looks weak. It must constantly make tradeoffs while appealing to two different audiences, as if it’s making its case to two separate juries at once. A much harder task than anything on Survivor!

Perhaps now you can see why I love Survivor. It leads to observations about the world that no history book could provide. It’s a living, breathing, ever-changing microcosm of our society, because ultimately human nature is the same, whether it’s happening in politics, in your community, on the world stage, or an island in Fiji televised on CBS.

I can’t get this image out of my mind. A grown man shining a bright flashlight into the eyes of a young Orthodox Jewish boy. The boy maintains his dignity, unflinching. Meanwhile, others stand around, doing nothing.

The scene took place during a “protest” last Monday in Brooklyn, when a mob of anti-Israel thugs marched through a residential Jewish neighborhood. They claimed it was to protest an Israeli real estate event at a local synagogue, but their calls for intifada and the presence of terrorist organization flags show that this was just an unconvincing excuse to target Jews. The year is 2026, but I keep having flashbacks to 1940s Europe.

The image of the young Jewish boy being targeted by hateful antisemites reminded me of this famously chilling photo from the Warsaw ghetto.

Thankfully, the circumstances are different, but the level of dehumanization it takes to target a child like this feels disturbingly familiar.

In another shocking moment, a man proudly marched down the street waving the flag of Hezbollah, an internationally recognized terrorist organization. He had confidence that he could do so unbothered, in a city where his terrorist sympathies are seemingly now tolerated. I can’t help but think of Nazis marching down the streets of Berlin in the 30s, showing that this once-marginalized group could now display their hateful ideology proudly.

There is a time and place for political protests, and I respect everyone’s right to engage in them, no matter how ugly their viewpoints are. But in this country, we do such things at public places like parks or outside government buildings or embassies. What these people did crosses every line. They targeted a synagogue, and they went into a Jewish neighborhood and marched down residential streets, where children were forced to experience their hate.

Here you can see children and their parents standing on their stoops as masked protesters hurl accusations at them. These are people in their homes who have nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East.

Ironically, these hateful marchers are only making a stronger case for Zionism, as they send the message that Jews aren’t safe living outside of Israel.

In another moment, a group performed Muslim prayer outside a synagogue, in front of a banner accusing Israel of killing children, chanting “Allah-hu Akbar” on a loudspeaker. You can pray wherever you want, but this is provocation, not spiritual practice. The woman shrieking angrily makes this clear.

Is this acceptable behavior in America? I thought not, but since there’s been no pushback outside the Jewish community, I have to assume it’s condoned.

Here, a protester runs after and pulls the hair of a young Jewish girl. Again, I ask: Is this an acceptable form of political “protest”? Do city leaders have anything to say about it?

In the recent past, when groups like the KKK performed such acts of intimidation, one could at least take solace in the fact that such people were too extreme to have political power. KKK leader David Duke was soundly defeated in his attempt to run for governor of Louisiana in 1991. But here in New York, a person who in the past has marched with people like those in Brooklyn, is currently the mayor. How can we expect condemnation or accountability? Thus far, Mayor Mamdani has said nothing about these horrific scenes. Nothing.

In 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville gripped the nation, and rightfully so. To see hundreds of white supremacists shamelessly chant things like “Jews will not replace us” while waving Confederate flags seemed unthinkable, until it happened.

The response against them was strong. Many of the original organizers became publicly toxic, faced lawsuits and suffered professional consequences. And while many people quote President Trump as saying that there were “fine people on both sides,” he actually added the following right after: “I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” He should have been more clear and unequivocal, but the overwhelming national rejection of these neo-Nazis showed Americans what the boundaries of acceptable protest were.

But now, under the “Free Palestine” flag, we have hate-filled rallies happening nearly every week, with open declarations of violent intent towards Jews, and nobody bats an eye. It’s just an accepted part of our reality, “Because Gaza.”

On Saturday night I was walking home when something caught my attention outside the iconic Greenwich Village spot Caffe Reggio. A girl wearing a keffiyeh was screaming “Free Palestine!” and “Allah-hu Akbar” and other Arabic phrases at a car passing by. I took a closer look and noticed that her face was completely painted in clown makeup. How fitting.

After the car passed she turned to some hipster-looking guys sitting near her and said, “I can’t fucking stand Zionists.” The guys showed their support. A young man and woman were sitting at a table nearby and couldn’t help but notice the commotion, so they turned and looked over. One of the hipster guys called out to them, “What? Are you Zionists?” They froze in silence. He repeated himself, “Are you Zionists?” They shook their heads, trying to get out of the interaction. I felt myself flash back to the 40s again. I imagined these guys in Nazi uniforms calling out to a terrified couple, “Are you Jews?”

What would I do in that scenario? And what would I do right now? I stepped towards the college guys and said, “I’m a Zionist.” He let out a laugh. “Come on, dude.” I felt adrenaline start to rush through my body. “I believe Jews should have a homeland.” The clown-faced woman started shouting at me, yelling “Free Palestine, motherfucker!” She went on and on, hurling a mix of Arabic and English slogans in my face, and at some points started barking like a dog.

These weren’t sane people interested in a discussion, so I kept walking. As I turned the corner I heard continued chanting and then a loud cheer from what sounded like a large crowd. Perhaps the rest of the cafe decided that it was easier to join the mob than try to mind their own business.

I had a restless sleep that night. I kept imagining different things I could have said or done, which probably wouldn’t have made any difference. I kept telling myself, “Most people aren’t like that. Most people see them as the crazy ones.” But I wasn’t sure if I believed these attempts at self-soothing. Most people in Germany weren’t Nazis. Most people in Gaza don’t support Hamas. Most people in Iran don’t support the IRGC regime.

But history teaches us that the beliefs of the majority matter less when extremists grow emboldened and everyone else grows passive. That is the fear many Jews are struggling with right now. Not simply that hateful people exist, but that increasingly nobody seems interested in drawing clear moral lines against them anymore.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my incredible experience spending Shabbat in Antwerp, after my Hasidic friend Sruli hooked me up with multiple wonderful families who hosted me, a total stranger, for several meals. There was one condition for all of Sruli’s assistance: when I got back to New York, I’d spend a Shabbat with him and his family at their home in Monsey. This is that story.

Last Friday afternoon, I rushed to 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan to catch a bus. Not just any bus, but Monsey Trails, the Hasidic bus line connecting the city to Rockland County. I waited in line with passengers wearing different types of Orthodox garb. An hour and a half later, I stepped off into what felt like an alternate universe.

Everyone wished the driver a Good Shabbos as they stepped off the bus. This was the first sign I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.1 I had some time to kill before my host for the weekend, Sruli Adler, could come pick me up, so I wandered around the shopping center by the drop-off point. It was a mall like any other, except exclusively populated by Hasidic Jews, doing crucial last minute shopping before Shabbat. The speakers on the sound system played traditional Jewish songs, bringing in the Shabbat mood.

Growing up as a member of a tiny Jewish minority in America2, I’m used to not being represented in the dominant culture. When I think of mall music, I think of Christmas tunes, so it felt surreal to hear Hebrew instead of Jingle Bells. Then I entered Evergreen, the Kosher supermarket of your dreams. Endless piles of rugelach. A literal cholent3 station. Barrels of pickles. An aisle of gummy candies that I could actually eat, since none of them contained gelatin4. Small things like this might seem silly, but when you’ve spent your whole life feeling othered, they become surprisingly meaningful.

In the vitamins section, I saw items that felt almost like parody. Things like Uncle Moishy brand Vitamin C, and special drops that supposedly soothe anger and frustration, “restoring composure.” I couldn’t help but laugh at these uniquely Jewish supplements.

After helping myself to a bowl of cholent, I went next door to the wine shop to buy a bottle for my host. The guy running the store was Latino and not Jewish, but he knew every detail about the different levels of Kosher certification and wished every customer a Good Shabbos on their way out, with perfect pronunciation and warmth.

I was overcome by a sensation I usually only get when I’m in Israel: the strange feeling of not being a minority for once. If you’re unfamiliar, Monsey and the surrounding towns have a rapidly growing population of Orthodox Jews,5 especially Hasidim, and some estimates say 41% of the population speaks Yiddish at home. If you ever wondered what it’s like to live in the shtetl from Fiddler on the Roof, go to Monsey.

What makes Monsey such a unique environment is that unlike the crowded Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Monsey is full of nature. I’d never seen a sidewalk populated by both Hasidim and deer before, but now I can cross that off my list.

I had a lovely dinner that evening with Sruli and his family. His wife Malky made a delicious meal: warm challah, chicken soup, gefilte fish, brisket, and more. The next day, I went to synagogue with him and after the service, I received an unexpected comment. A guy approached me and said, “I read your Substack!” It turns out Sruli shared my Antwerp essay on his WhatsApp status the week before, and now I’ve got fans in Monsey!

Everyone I met was incredibly friendly, and several people invited me to come back another weekend and stay with them. The rest of the day involved more meals, long conversations, and one of Judaism’s greatest inventions: the Shabbos nap.

But before the weekend ended, I had one more fascinating experience: a tisch with the Rebbe of New Square. New Square is a neighboring village that is completely populated by a sect of Hasidim called Skver. On Saturday evenings, the men of the community gather to sing and pray and receive blessings from their chief rabbi and leader, who sits at a head table (tisch is Yiddish for table).

Sruli had some business to tend to, so he dropped me off to experience it on my own. I entered a massive building, unsure of what to expect. Inside I found thousands of men, all dressed in matching black coats and furry shtreimels (hats), sitting on rows and rows of bleachers. They were rocking back and forth in song. In the distance I saw the rebbe, a white-bearded man in his 80s, with kind eyes.

It was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. I noticed people staring at me. Not suspiciously, just curiously. What was a guy like me doing there? Before long, a man walked over, welcomed me warmly, and invited me to come back and stay with him for a future Shabbat.

When the singing ended, people lined up to greet the Rebbe. Kids shoved toward the front, eager for a moment with their leader. I figured I might as well get the full experience while I was there, so I joined the line. When I reached him, I followed everyone else and wished him “Gut Vach,” a good week in Yiddish. I did it with extra intention, making direct eye contact, hoping to glean a bit of Hasidic magic off this holy man.

The next morning I headed back to Manhattan. And while I quickly got back into my regular routine, a lot of Monsey stayed with me. What makes Hasidic communities special is the intense devotion to the values they believe in. Constant study and learning. Acts of kindness to those in need. Deep care for family and friends. Appreciation for everything you eat and drink. You don’t have to be Hasidic to embody these values, just a thoughtful and intentional human being.

And the care didn’t stop once I left. This week, multiple people I met followed up to invite me back for Shabbat. Their offers weren’t empty gestures; they really meant it. And Sruli, who repeatedly emphasized to me the importance of getting married and having kids, checked in with me on Wednesday to ask if I had made any progress. I told him that in the three days since I’d seen him, I still wasn’t married, but I was working on it.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I was never the type to talk to strangers. Not just because of stranger danger, but because it’s just not really part of the culture. As a driving city, you don’t see people out and about in public very much. The parks are made for hiking, not hanging out. At coffee shops, everyone’s working on a screenplay, often with headphones on, not exactly an invitation to chat. I used to joke that my favorite night club was Whole Foods, because the one near me actually had a DJ spinning records and it was the best place to people watch. But saying words to a human being you don’t know? Unheard of.

I always assumed that meant I was an introvert and incapable of such bold behavior. But then, many years ago, I went on a solo trip to Europe and when I had no other choice, I found myself talking to strangers. I found that not only is it ok to just say something to somebody, but the results can be amazing. I’d ask someone for directions or for bar recommendations, which sometimes turned into a discussion about where I was from, and before I knew it, I was on a picnic with a group of new friends in Paris.

It turned out that all it took to cross the invisible barrier was a permission structure. I was a foreigner, without internet access on my phone, needing help from locals. Or I was a traveler meeting another traveler who was equally interested in meeting new people. These “excuses” opened the door for connection.

I became addicted to traveling alone because it presented me the opportunity to be this version of myself. Whenever I’d come back home, I’d tell myself that I can keep that vibe going and just pretend I’m still traveling. But inevitably, it never worked. Whether in LA, or upon moving to New York, I couldn’t legitimately ask people for directions or recommendations. I knew my way around and I had a smartphone, so I didn’t feel a sincere need. There have been a few exceptions where I’ve become good friends with people I met randomly at a coffee shop or a park, but those moments are few and far between.

That’s why I was intrigued when I heard about TimeLeft, 222, and this new wave of apps designed for bringing strangers together for group hangs. I’m not new in town and I’m fortunate to already have a community of many amazing friends. But most of my friends are connected to each other in one way or another. There’s a safety and comfort in always being a degree or two away from familiarity. What was interesting to me about this new concept was the vulnerability that it required. It created a permission structure similar to being at a backpacker hostel, where everyone is on equal ground in their interest in meeting new people.

I signed up, filled out a profile, picked a Thursday drinks event, and let the algorithm assign me to a table of strangers. That morning, I got the location and a few cryptic clues about my future companions: industries, countries of origin, little hints of the people I’d soon spend an evening with.

While I attend social events all the time (especially ones in the Jewish community), there was something liberating about going somewhere with complete strangers, zero expectations, an open mind, and a pre-existing filter that everyone else there was with a similar mindset. Plus, the fact that each person was courageous enough to show up alone in a vulnerable situation already told me they were my type of people.

In most social situations I feel a bit of pressure to carry the conversation, but this time I enjoyed sitting back and letting things unfold. One of the guests at the table had a natural ability to play host and he started asking the group questions. Little by little, personalities emerged, stories were told, and a group dynamic started to form. I spent an enjoyable couple of hours, exchanged info with some, and left the evening feeling quite positive about the experience. Unlike with a date or a networking event, it wasn’t necessary to deem the evening a success or a failure, since there’s no real metric to measure it by. It was a new experience and just showing up and breaking my routine felt like a win.

Afterwards, the app asks you to rate the experience and hand out “impressions” to the people in your group. I received “You just know how to tell a good story” from one participant, which was meaningful because that’s kinda my job.

I went to a morning coffee meet up the following week, and it was a similarly good experience. There were even a couple returnees from the drinks event, which created a sense of continuity. And at both events, what I found most interesting was the variety of nationalities I got to interact with, which really replicated the feeling of being at a hostel abroad. I connected with people from Mauritius, South Korea, India, and Israel, among others.

I know what some of you might be thinking: Why do you need an app to talk to people at a bar or a cafe when you can just, you know, TALK TO PEOPLE. The truth is, I wish we lived in a world where casual, spontaneous interactions were more common. But the reality is, as smartphones have dominated our lives, human nature has changed. People prefer clarity of intentions, probably as a way to avoid unwanted advances or awkward situations. And while it’s easy to debate whether things were better in the old days or now, I ultimately don’t think it really matters. At the end of the day, humans are social creatures and we need to be around each other. Social media tricks the brain into thinking you’re interacting with others, but it’s a simulation, not the real thing.

The point isn’t that every stranger becomes a friend. It’s remembering that they could. For one night (or morning), your own city starts to feel foreign again, in the best possible way. It’s like being a solo traveler in your own town.

When I got off the train in Antwerp last Friday I encountered a sight I hadn’t seen before: Hasidim on bikes. Buzzing past me left and right, payos dangling in the wind, black hats somehow staying in place. I’d never seen that before. For a community so uniform wherever you find it (same clothes, same language, same customs) this felt like Antwerp seeping in. It was surreal to see a people so rooted in ancient tradition doing something so urban and modern.

When I decided to spend a weekend in Antwerp, I knew I needed a place for Shabbat. The local Chabad wasn’t doing a communal meal, and I didn’t know anyone personally in the city. That’s when the Hasidic network came to the rescue. Years ago in Los Angeles, my brother met Sruli Adler, who grew up in the Belz Hasidic community of Antwerp and currently resides in Monsey, New York. Sruli has sons and friends all over the world. I’ve eaten by one of his sons in Montreal, and visiting another’s shtreimel (big furry hat) shop in London. In an alternate Yoniverse, I think I was a Hasid.

I texted Sruli on Wednesday. Within minutes, I was totally set up. Friday afternoon kugel with Naftali, Friday night dinner at the Konigs, Saturday lunch at the Bergers. To the average person, it sounds insane. A complete stranger arriving in a city he’s never been to before and is immediately welcomed into three homes for homecooked meals. For Hasidim, it’s second nature. The root of the word Hasid is hesed, the Hebrew word for loving-kindness. And over the next 24 hours, I experienced plenty of it.

Before I tell you more, I know what some of you might be thinking. You’ve seen the shows that portray the Hasidic world in a negative light (don’t believe everything you see on TV). And you might imagine it’s hard to connect with people who live so differently. I’ll admit that sometimes before I enter a Hasidic space, I get a little anxious. What if I do or say something wrong? What if we have nothing in common? But every time, their warmth and kindness puts all these thoughts to rest.

Friday afternoon, I walked a couple blocks from my Airbnb to Naftali’s place, where his wife served me a plate of three different kinds of kugel. Kugel is a traditional Ashkenazi dish, a casserole made of noodles or potatoes. I meant to take a picture, but I finished it too quickly, so here’s some I found on Google. Some Google Kugel, if you will.

Naftali and I started talking. Within minutes, we had more in common than I expected. When I mentioned I work in TV, his eyes lit up. He’d been a consultant and Yiddish teacher on the Netflix series Rough Diamonds, set in Hasidic Antwerp. He told stories from the set and mentioned he’d love to do more of that work in the future (hit me up if you want to hire him).

That evening, I went to synagogue and waded through a sea of black hats until I found my host, Chaim. After the service, we walked to his apartment, where I met his lovely wife, four daughters, and two sons-in-law, one studying to be a CBT therapist for the community.

The meal unfolded in courses: challah and dips, fish, chicken soup, chicken, sorbet. Everything was amazing. I felt at home in a city I’d just arrived in hours earlier. For a moment, I even forgot I was in Belgium. Shabbat dinner occupies a dimension beyond space and time.

The next day, I met Aron for lunch. Aron is truly a magical character, like a Hasidic wizard. A twinkle in his eye, a constant smile. As we walked towards his home, children on the street kept approaching and waving at him, sticking their hands out to receive the candy he carries in his pockets just for these moments. He explained that one of his many jobs is giving swimming lessons, which is why he’s so famous among the neighborhood kids. His other gigs? A small role in the aforementioned Rough Diamonds, pest control, and, until recently, a kosher chicken business that he had to shut down when Belgium outlawed kosher slaughter, an antisemitic policy he mentioned casually, without bitterness.

His home was full. Sons, daughters, in-laws, grandchildren. Another multi-course meal, with a standout cholent and, in a very Belgian touch, high-quality local beer. We talked, ate, drank, said l’chaim.

Then the singing started. Aron began, his voice filling the room. Then his sons joined in, perfectly in harmony. Then a grandson, maybe seven or eight, stepped in as a soloist with an angelic voice. Then another, perhaps three years old, joined in the chorus. Then a little granddaughter.

At some point, I stopped trying to follow what was happening and just took it in. It felt like a performance, an opera, a Broadway musical. Or maybe something more profound than that. A room full of people, across generations, completely in sync.

For a few minutes, everything else fell away. The issues of the outside world, of politics and hatred and violence, felt so irrelevant. I asked several Hasidim if they faced antisemitism in Antwerp, and they mentioned that people sometimes yell “Free Palestine!” at them on the streets. But they all seemed quite unbothered by it, and I could understand why. When you’re so rooted in your own community and you have everything you need from each other, who cares what random people think of you? There’s a lot to learn from them in this regard.

My Shabbat with the Hasidic community of Antwerp felt restorative in a way I didn’t expect. It felt like a spa for my soul. Every host told me the same thing before I left: come back anytime, bring your friends, bring your family. And they meant it.

I spent the next day exploring Antwerp on my own, but I didn’t feel alone. I felt the embrace of the community that took me in like one of their own, on such short notice. And I realized that the Hasidim on bikes were not actually such a strange sight after all. When you’re so committed to the values that matter, like family, community, and connection, you can afford to adapt to your surroundings without losing your sense of self. We should all carry a bit of that Hasidic magic with us as we go into Shabbat this week. Shabbat Shalom!

NOTE: The Yoniverse has not been swallowed by a black hole. I just took a brief hiatus during the Passover holiday. Weekly posts will resume…now.

There are a lot of obvious places to spend Passover: your grandparents’ home, an overpriced resort program, or Israel (when there isn’t a war). Anything to liberate yourself from the bondage of cleaning out every last crumb of chametz in your home.

Well, I’m here to let you in on a little secret about the incredible place I spent the holiday with my family this year: Provence.

Spring is a great time to go to Europe. It’s not the high season, so places aren’t super crowded and overpriced. But the big cities are not ideal for spending Passover. If you’re not eating at restaurants in observance of the holiday, you’re surrounded by everything you can’t eat: baguettes in Paris, pizza in Rome, and…well, you’re not really missing anything in London.

Lately, there’s also another uncomfortable reality: many of the major European cities are rife with antisemitism, with synagogues and kosher restaurants being attacked by terrorists and angry mobs, especially on Jewish holidays.

But the South of France provides a refuge from many of these problems. First, there’s a strong existing Jewish community, made up mostly of North African Jews who are very proud and visible. This means that there are plenty of kosher restaurants, supermarkets, and butchers1, something not to be taken for granted in Europe. We spent the first night of Passover at a communal seder in the synagogue of Aix-en-Provence, with excellent food and a large, welcoming crowd. While many Jewish communities in Europe feel like they are shrinking, the Jews of southern France feel grounded and at home. Part of this may be related to the region’s extensive Jewish history.

One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the ancient synagogue in Cavaillon, where a Jewish community existed as far back as the 13th century. You can walk down Rue Hébraïque and step into a synagogue that once sat at the center of a tightly packed ghetto, where Jews were forced to live within a single enclosed street.

Inside, the limited space led to a design you will not see anywhere else. The ark sits at the front, as expected, but the prayer leader’s platform is elevated above on a balcony, creating a layered, almost vertical structure.

The beauty of the space contrasts sharply with the conditions people lived under. The entire community, around 150 people, was confined to a tiny alley with gates at both ends. In the Middle Ages, Jews here were required to wear yellow badges and distinctive pointy hats, and were restricted to a narrow set of professions.

And yet, they endured. After the French Revolution, they were granted citizenship and allowed to disperse. Standing there, it was hard not to consider that, as hard as things may feel today, our ancestors went through so much more. And yet, they preserved their identities anyway, against all odds. The story of Jewish bondage and liberation was not one that ended with the Exodus, but rather has kept repeating over and over ever since.

But Provence is not just about its (occasionally depressing) Jewish history. The produce alone makes a strong case for spending Passover in the region.

Seriously, it’s on another level. Every village has its own farmers market on different days, and the fruits and vegetables are so good that you stop thinking about the croissants you’re missing.

I know it’s obnoxious when people say things like, “You haven’t tasted a [insert fruit or vegetable] until you’ve tasted one in [insert country],” but I’m gonna say it anyway. You haven’t tasted a strawberry until you’ve tasted one in Provence. They literally taste like Fruit Roll-Ups or Jolly Ranchers. I mean, look at these:

Imagine eating them every day. You can almost forgive the whole pointy hat thing. You’ll never be more excited to eat asparagus. Even the matzah was delicious. And only in France can you buy kosher foie gras to spread on it (sorry, geese). Eating on Passover is typically a frustrating ordeal, but not in Provence. By the time Passover ended and we could eat at restaurants again, it was almost disappointing.

Beyond all that, Provence is simply one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. The little villages are each picturesque in their own way, blending in seamlessly with the surrounding nature. It’s no wonder that impressionist artists like Paul Cézanne made such amazing art here.

So while we end each seder with “Next year in Jerusalem,” if you can’t make it to the Holy Land, I recommend considering “next year in Provence” as well.

Something deeper than politics has shifted in American culture. In a war with Iran where the U.S. is, by most measurable standards, dominating, with minimal casualties, superior technology, and clear tactical success, the national mood feels strangely bleak.

Instead of confidence, there’s anxiety. Instead of unity, there’s suspicion. Instead of asking how to win, people are asking whether winning is even possible or desirable. Some commentators don’t just question the strategy. They seem almost eager for it to fail. This isn’t how a healthy country behaves in a moment of strength. It’s how a country behaves when it has internalized a kind of loser mentality.

First, let’s go over the basics. In 1979, an extremist, anti-American regime took power in Iran and, in one of its first acts, took 66 American civilians hostage at the U.S. embassy, holding 52 of them for 444 days. In the decades since, the regime and its proxies have murdered hundreds of U.S. service members, plotted kidnappings and assassinations targeting American officials and dissidents, and consistently targeted both Americans and allies like Israel. It has also brutally repressed its own people.

There’s no real ambiguity here. The Iranian regime is an active enemy of the United States (can’t ignore the whole “Death to America” thing) and a destabilizing force far beyond its borders. So it would follow that degrading this regime’s capacity for violence, and potentially creating an opening for the Iranian people to reclaim their country, would be a good thing, right?

Well, not according to many in the press these days, like this guy:

You read that right. Winning, according to him, would be worse than losing. We’re only a few weeks into this conflict, and already the language of “quagmire” and “forever war” is everywhere. There has to be some measurement of time between a few weeks and “forever,” but I guess it’s not in the dictionary.

Thus far, the operation has been a success by most observable measures. Key leadership has been taken out. Military infrastructure has been severely degraded. The U.S. and Israeli air forces have established overwhelming air space dominance. There have been 13 American service members killed, and every loss is tragic. But looking at the scorecard on the Iranian leadership side shows an unprecedented level of achievement.

If you believe in any notion of justice, this is something to recognize. The world is better off when violent actors lose the ability to terrorize both their own people and others. Let’s see how The Economist, a respected world affairs journal, interprets the state of the war:

What world are they living in?

Of course there are risks. There always are, and things can always turn sideways. But the inability to acknowledge positive developments as they happen is its own kind of distortion.

I understand where some of this pessimism comes from. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan traumatized an entire generation and instilled a deep skepticism of foreign intervention. But it’s not rational to apply that same framework to literally everything. Some basic critical thinking shows that this situation, at least so far, bears little resemblance to those drawn-out ground wars. And yet, the reflex is the same. Assume failure, expect the worst, and dismiss any evidence to the contrary.

What I’m focused on here isn’t the specifics of the operation. It’s the seeming inability of many to feel any sense of support, pride, or even cautious optimism in the face of a morally clear fight against a regime that openly calls for America’s and Israel’s destruction.

We’re talking about a regime that tortures and murders women for showing their hair. A regime that hangs homosexuals, even though their new Ayatollah allegedly is one himself. A regime whose forces recently gang raped two nurses who were treating injured protesters, so violently that one of them had to have her uterus and part of her intestines removed. A regime that is firing missiles directly at civilians in Israel and the Gulf. For taking on that regime, we can’t show some pride and solidarity?

What are Americans being asked to sacrifice? We have a fully volunteer military. There’s no conscription. Daily life for most people remains unchanged. Gas prices have risen somewhat, which matters, but it is still a far cry from the kind of shared hardship that defined previous wars.

Meanwhile, Israelis are on the front lines, living in bomb shelters, watching their homes get destroyed, absorbing the direct consequences of this conflict. And yet, the prevailing mood there isn’t one of defeatism. It is a belief that temporary hardship is worth enduring for a better long term outcome. While Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent complain about being “dragged” into the conflict by Israel from the comfort of their podcast studios, look at the courage of this Israeli hero, emerging from his destroyed house, holding a gun and a beer:

After the picture went viral, the man posted an upbeat follow up video telling people not to worry, he’s doing fine, and he will rebuild his house stronger and better. No complaining, no victim mentality, just optimism in the face of difficulty.

That contrast is hard to ignore. One society is experiencing real sacrifice and maintaining a sense of purpose. The other is experiencing very little and struggling to believe in the possibility of success. That kind of spirit, resilience, and optimism once defined America. It is what drove the country to take risks, to build, to lead, to go to the moon.

Lately, it feels like we’ve lost some of that. Maybe it’s because people are no longer asked to make real sacrifices for their country or even their communities. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so accustomed to comfort that even small disruptions feel intolerable. Maybe it’s because we’ve internalized a narrative that everything we do is doomed to fail. Or maybe it’s that hipster mentality that it’s cringe to believe in anything and better to be a downer because then you won’t get disappointed.

Whatever the case, it’s not good for our society. You don’t need to blindly support every action your government takes. But allow yourself to see that taking action against evil can be a source of pride, not pessimism.

Last Friday, after hearing the news of the attempted terror attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Michigan, and the subsequent reaction by many in the news blaming Israel for motivating the attacker, I found myself overcome with one emotion: RAGE.

It brought me back to the feeling I had on October 7th, when something unquestionably evil and easily condemnable occurred, a moment that many of us thought, “Surely this time the world will be with us.” Yet then, like last week, people twisted themselves into knots to somehow make everyone culpable for the terrorist act except for the terrorist. One astonishingly ignorant newscaster suggested that the synagogue being named Temple Israel made it a legitimate target. Just typing that sentence out makes my body tighten with fury.

On Friday, I felt too upset to write a whole article about what happened, so I decided to try something new: I posted a two-sentence “Note” on Substack, their version of a Tweet:

It wasn’t an explanation or an analysis, it was just a simple expression of how mad I was. I even threw in an F-bomb. And ever since I posted it, my phone hasn’t stopped buzzing with notifications. At the time of this publication, it’s approaching 1000 likes, almost entirely from strangers. I was shocked at first by the overwhelming response, but then I realized something: Anger is relatable. Anger is cathartic. Anger is human. But oddly, it has been largely absent from the Jewish conversation about antisemitism.

Historically, that makes sense. Anger is not an emotion typically associated with Jews. Not because we haven’t had reason to feel it, but because for most of our history, expressing it wasn’t an option. For over 2000 years, Jews have lived in exile, scattered across societies where the people in power were often hostile to their very existence. After a group of Cossacks raped and pillaged a Jewish community during the Russian pogroms, who exactly were Jews supposed to rage to? The police who took part in it? The Czar who condoned it? The same was true in Nazi Germany, Inquisition-era Spain, and countless other places where Jews were persecuted by those in power.

Anger is only productive if it can move someone to action, but in places where antisemitism is baked into the fabric of society and leadership, Jews found that it was usually safer not to make a fuss.

But the anger didn’t disappear. It just found other outlets. In some cases, it became creativity: comedy, music, literature. In others, it turned inward, transformed into mysticism, philosophy, or neurosis. Some Jews assimilated or abandoned their identity entirely. And some channeled that anger into something profoundly productive: Zionism, a movement that turned centuries of persecution into the building of a sovereign state.

Here in America, it seems like many Jews feel lost and confused about how to deal with what has been an enraging experience.

We’ve seen people celebrate our dead.
We’ve seen institutions sanitize our murderers.
We’ve seen celebrities distort, ignore, and invert our pain.
We’ve seen friends betray us.
We’ve seen thought leaders turn into conspiracy theorists.
We’ve seen artists we love boycott us.

We just want to be treated like humans. But ironically, it feels like we’ve forgotten the most human reaction to all we’ve experienced: anger.

We’ve been shocked, disappointed, and indignant. We’ve complained, we’ve written op-eds, we’ve turned to our fellow Jews and said, “Can you believe this?” But I don’t feel like we’ve properly learned how to express the anger that we feel inside.

There’s a famous line from the 1976 film Network: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" If we want our voices to be heard we need to tap into this sensation. Not in a performative way, but with authenticity. There’s a lot to be mad about! Let it out!

Our Talmudic tendencies often lead us to elevate intellectual argument in favor of emotions. Ben Shapiro built a media empire around the phrase “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” And while there might be a time and place for that, the truth is that feelings don’t care about facts. For better or worse, feelings are what move the world, not information.

This week I attended an ADL conference about fighting antisemitism and I observed something interesting. The most effective speakers weren’t even Jewish. And they moved the audience not with statistics but by being emotionally honest.

Actor Jerry O’Connell spoke with raw emotion about how watching footage from the October 7th massacre changed him forever. Arab-Israeli newscaster Lucy Aharish spoke lovingly about the Holocaust survivor neighbor Menachem she grew up with who instilled in her a belief in peace and coexistence. Iranian activist Masih Alinejad expressed righteous fury towards the IRGC regime that tried to assassinate her (now her assassins are dead instead).

It’s time for Jews to match the energy of our allies who defend us. Not by abandoning truth. Not by becoming reckless or destructive. Not by imitating the worst behaviors of our adversaries. But by getting past the instinct to soften, to internalize, to over-explain.

For most of our history, anger wasn’t safe. But we are not powerless anymore. Anger, when it’s grounded in reality, isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s clarity. It’s a refusal to accept the unacceptable. And it can be a powerful fuel for action. The question is: What will we do with ours?

In the span of a single week, I watched two different versions of reality get manufactured in real time.

Headlines framed a bombing attempt as an attack on a mayor who was never actually the target. Meanwhile, millions of people online watched AI videos of Tel Aviv being destroyed by missiles that never even landed.

At moments like this, it’s hard not to think about George Orwell’s 1984. In Orwell’s novel, the Ministry of Truth controls information in the fictional state of Oceania, constantly rewriting history to align with the ruling Party’s doctrine. The protagonist, Winston, works there, and part of his job is literally rewriting past newspaper headlines whenever the government decides a new narrative is required.

For most of my life, that idea felt like dystopian fiction. Now it’s just another day on the internet.

The Attack at Gracie Mansion

First, the attempted terror attack outside the mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion. Before getting into what actually happened, what version of the story did you? If you only saw the headlines (which most people do), you probably encountered something like the NBC story reshared by New York congressional candidate and Mamdani ally Brad Lander.

Both the NBC headline and Lander’s commentary tell a very clear story: Violent Islamophobes tried to bomb Mayor Mamdani’s home.

Except that’s not what happened. Jake Lang, a far-right extremist influencer and provocateur, staged an anti-Islam protest outside Gracie Mansion with about 20 of his followers. A much larger counter-protest then surrounded them, beating drums and chanting loudly. Tensions flared and then two young men from Pennsylvania, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Nikk, attempted to detonate nail bombs at the site of the protest. Here’s some footage of what went down:

Anyone with eyes can draw their own conclusions about the chaos of the moment. But the narrative that quickly took hold in the media told a very different story. Headline after headline framed the incident as though the mayor himself had been the target of the attack, when he quite simply wasn’t.

There was one person who could have cleared that up immediately: Mamdani himself. Did he? Judge for yourself:

Notice the sleight of hand. He begins by condemning Lang, then pivots directly to discussing the bomb, conveniently omitting that someone else threw it. That kind of framing isn’t accidental. It takes real effort to construct a statement that suggests something without ever explicitly saying it.

The deluge of fake narratives kept coming. In one of the strangest angles of all, CNN framed the suspects as a couple of innocent kids enjoying an unseasonably warm day, using the most passive voice imaginable.

After receiving a ton of backlash, CNN deleted the tweet, and Mamdani issued further statements identifying the actual terrorists. But by then it didn’t really matter. The first version of the story is the one most people remember, even if it’s wrong.

What scares me about all this isn’t just the specifics of the event — and it certainly is scary that ISIS-inspired terrorists are throwing homemade bombs in NYC — but the weird insistence of mainstream news agencies to blatantly misreport the news. It’s nothing new, of course. We saw plenty of this with reporting of the Israel-Hamas war, like when the New York Times rushed to falsely accuse Israel of bombing a hospital, before repeatedly adjusting the headline, forgetting that they always had the option to gather the facts before, instead of after, reporting on them.

How are we supposed to function as a society if news organizations can’t report basic facts and instead bend them to fit predetermined narratives? It’s okay for people to have different interpretations and opinions, but we first need a basic set of facts to agree on. With everyone living in their own echo-chambered algorithm, people seem to prefer receiving comfortable falsehoods rather than uncomfortable truths.

The AI War

If the first example shows how narratives can distort reality, the second reveals something even stranger: reality itself can now be fabricated.

News bias has been an issue for some time now, but there was always one way to bypass human subjectivity: raw video footage. If you could just see what happened with your own eyes, no reporter or news anchor could stand between you and reality. But with the fast evolving abilities of AI, that safeguard is now gone too.

What I’ve seen this past week surpasses anything Orwell imagined. Since the war began, Iran has launched thousands of missiles at Israel. Most have been intercepted by systems like Iron Dome and Iron Beam laser defense. But that’s not the narrative some online activists want. Instead, AI-generated videos have been circulating widely, depicting Tel Aviv being bombed into rubble.

One such video was viewed more than four million times and reshared by several “reporters”:

Maybe this alternate reality makes Jew-haters feel good, but it quite simply didn’t happen. Does that even matter anymore? Perception is often stronger than reality. Will future wars be determined by who makes better fake videos of the other side losing? If it avoids actual fighting, maybe it’s a good thing. But it’s more likely that bad actors will use it to justify violence rather than replace it.

The Skepticism Muscle

Back to 1984. In Orwell’s world, Winston maintains his humanity by clinging to a quiet feeling inside that something is wrong, even when he cannot safely express it. That instinct could be described as skepticism. And skepticism may be the most important defense we have against the spread of fake narratives.

Before accepting any piece of information, ask yourself a simple question: does this add up? If it doesn’t, dig deeper. Look for other sources, compare perspectives.

And if it adds up a little too perfectly, if the story aligns exactly with what you already believe, that might be worth questioning too.

Fake news and AI slop are only going to become more common by the day, and increasingly harder to distinguish from reality. If we don’t start exercising that skepticism now, we may lose the ability to recognize truth altogether.

It is not an understatement to say that the Israeli-American strike on Iran that took out Ayatollah Khamenei on Saturday may prove to be one of the most consequential moments in modern political history. In our time of hyper-polarized rhetoric, everybody gets called Hitler. From politicians you don’t like to the barista that made your latte with oat milk instead of almond. It seems that this kind of extreme language has blunted people’s ability to recognize the actual heir to Hitler’s genocidal fascistic ideology - the Supreme Leader of Iran.

This is a guy whose motto was “Death To America, Death To Israel” and who made it his life’s mission to wipe Israel off the map and terrorize his own people. He tortured and executed young women who dared to show their hair in public. He hung homosexuals from cranes. He funded and supported terrorist attacks against civilians all over the Middle East, including the brutal rapes and massacres of October 7th. And last month he ordered his forces to murder tens of thousands of protesters in just 2 days. Now, he’s gone.

One of the greatest adversaries of Western civilization is dead and Iranians are literally singing and dancing in the streets. Those inside the country and spread across the diaspora feel hope for the first time in decades. So why are so many in the West not seeing this as the moral victory that it is?

No doubt, many are scarred by the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And being cautious and prudent can be wise. But it’s absurd to say that because past interventions were mistakes, that any act of American military force is by definition wrong too. Was joining WWII and defeating the Nazis a mistake too? Is doing something always irresponsible? Or is doing nothing sometimes worse?

It seems that in our era where everyone can be a critic in the comments section online, rhetoric has replaced action. Condemning things is easy and safe from behind your phone. Young people in the West pat themselves on the back for posting a righteous infographic on Instagram, and then ignore Iranian protestors who risk their actual lives, not just their follower count, for freedom.

The American far left and far right both seem to have lost their moral compasses and it’s on full display in their reactions to the news. For example, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani had a truly strange take, both condemning the strikes against one of the worst terrorists in history, and then telling Iranian New Yorkers — who couldn’t be happier about the news — that he’ll keep them safe.

I’m sorry, what? Does he really not know that Iranians have been begging for American help against their oppressive dictator? And is he implying that the U.S. Air Force might next drop bombs on Persians in Great Neck?1 This war isn’t against the Iranian people, it is FOR them. America just took out the greatest mass murderer of Iranians in history. Does he not know one Iranian refugee he could check in with? Even if he has concerns about the war2, he could still acknowledge that freeing Iranians from the tyranny of Khamenei is a good thing. But he must simply not believe that.

Interestingly (though not surprising), he said nothing on X when the regime killed at least 40,000 protestors this past January. Literally nothing! Imagine being silent about so many innocent civilians being massacred, but suddenly finding your words when the perpetrator of the massacre is brought to justice. Actually, this is very in line with his attitude towards Hamas as well, so at least he’s consistent. Iranian freedom activist Masih Alinejad put him in his place during an incredible news segment you shouldn’t miss (starting at 3:05):

Meanwhile, on the far right, “America First” activists like Matt Walsh don’t recognize that defeating those who wish to destroy us is putting America first. When a guy is willing to kill tens of thousands of his own people, imagine what he’d do to his adversaries? Especially with a nuclear weapon. When did inaction become the default policy of the world’s foremost superpower?

“America First” is not isolation. It is the defense of Americans from those who openly vow their destruction. The danger of the Iranian regime isn’t limited by its borders. They have unleashed violence and terror on the entire world, including Americans on many occasions. A free Iran will lead to fewer Middle East wars in the future, saving countless American (and other) lives.

Nobody can predict what will follow, but the idea that simply doing nothing, letting the murder of tens of thousands of protestors, as well as thousands of Americans, Israelis, and others during the past several decades, go unanswered is not just passive, it’s immoral. For 47 years, the world tried the diplomatic route. Economic sanctions, resolutions, deals, etc. And throughout it all, Iran continued to wage constant violence on the region, while developing a nuclear program that could destroy the planet. American strikes on Iran aren’t launching a war, they’re aiming to finish a war that has been ongoing for decades.

Innocents have gotten caught in the fray and there will tragically be casualties, both civilian and military. Israelis are paying a price already, with nearly a dozen already killed by Iranian missiles. But while action contains risk, so does inaction. It’s naive to suggest otherwise.

The world is a better place without Ayatollah Khamenei in it. And the region will have its best chance at true peace if the IRGC regime falls. History rarely presents clean moral choices. This may not lead to immediate peace. It may unleash new instability. But there are moments when removing tyranny is not reckless, it is necessary. And pretending otherwise is its own form of moral blindness.