Michigan’s closely contested Senate race between charismatic progressive — and fiercely antizionist — Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Trumpublican Mike Rogers has presented Jewish Democrats with an agonizing dilemma few have faced elsewhere in the country, made all the more difficult by the possibility that the outcome could determine which party controls the Senate.

Needless to say, the majority of Jewish Michiganders have not exactly felt welcomed by his campaign with his relentless focus on U.S. aid to Israel and lack of understanding about Jewish security concerns.

If elected, El-Sayed would make history as the first Muslim to serve in the Senate. In 2022, another Muslim physician nearly broke that barrier when Dr. Oz lost to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.

With less than three weeks until Election Day on November 3, El-Sayed holds a narrow lead. As of October 14, the RealClearPolling average puts him ahead by about 3 points; Polymarket gives him a 67% chance of winning.

Since the early 20th century, American Jews have been among the Democratic Party’s most dependable constituencies. Now, many Jewish Democrats are wondering whether the party still values their votes.

The Nonnegotiables

The growing frustration has inspired a coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders to launch a last-ditch effort called Nonnegotiable Michigan, calling on Democratic party leaders and candidates to affirm five basic principles:

1. Jewish safety — yes, including for Zionist Jews

2. Jewish self-definition — Jews get to decide what being Jewish means, not politicians and activist gatekeepers.

3. Jewish sovereignty in Israel — The Jewish majority in the world’s only Jewish state deserves the same legitimacy and respect afforded to other nations.

4. Full participation in American political life — Jews deserve a seat at the tables we helped build without having to renounce our Zionism or Jewish identity.

5. An affirmative vision for peace in the Middle East — Concrete plans, not catchy slogans. Calls for “one democratic state” between “the river and the sea” are often coded language for eliminating Israel’s existence as a Jewish state rather than offering a coherent, feasible plan for peace and resolution.

As the campaign site says, “The positions above are the floor.”

Notably, this movement is not endorsing a candidate.

Its message is simpler, and more important: “Support must be earned, not owed.”

El-Sayed’s strained relationship with Jewish Michiganders took a particularly ugly turn after the March terrorist attack on Temple Israel, where a gunman drove a truck loaded with gasoline and fireworks through the synagogue, past a nursery where infants slept and toward a gym where children played. Inside, 103 young children and nearly 50 teachers, clergy, and staff members narrowly escaped what could have been a massacre, thanks to the synagogue’s security team.

El-Sayed initially condemned the attack, but then invoked the deaths of the assailant’s family in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” For Jewish parents whose children had just fled a burning synagogue, it sounded less like solidarity with the victims than sympathy for the man who tried to murder them. Months later, El-Sayed apologized, but his explanation hardly reassured critics: he suggested the problem was his timing, insisting that “there is opportunity for context later on.” By then, the damage was already done. In September, a Temple Israel leader estimated that roughly 70% of congregants would vote for Republican Mike Rogers.

The attack transformed what might otherwise have remained an abstract argument about political rhetoric into a matter of life and death. For many Jewish Michiganders, this revealed Abdul’s callous disregard for Jewish vulnerability here in America.

In Olivia Reingold’s reporting for The Free Press, Eddie Rubin, a lifelong Democrat whose two children were inside the synagogue during the attack, described feeling politically homeless. He supports liberal causes but cannot bring himself to vote for El-Sayed. Nor does voting for Rogers, a Trump-backed Republican, sit comfortably with him.

“I feel like I have no home and no party,” he said.

Consider Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Jewish lesbian Democrat and longtime LGBTQ rights champion who made history as Michigan’s first openly gay statewide elected official.

In August, she told David Frum of The Atlantic that antisemitic hostility within her own party had become so troubling that she was skipping its state convention.

A month later, she endorsed El-Sayed anyway.

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It highlights the growing discrimination towards Jews in all facets of the arts.

Even Jerry Seinfeld has become the target of an organized campaign demanding the cancellation of his D.C. performances over his support for Israel.

Of the 40 major museums evaluated, nearly a third received failing marks for Jewish inclusion and representation.

The findings are disturbing, though they didn’t come as much of a surprise to me. I first noticed something unsettling about the treatment of Jewish art this summer while visiting London.

In July, I spent an afternoon at the British Museum, which, despite its name, is not a museum of British history but a sprawling gallery of human civilization. Its collection spans 2 million years, yet as I wandered through the exhibitions, I noticed something peculiar: Judaism was nowhere to be found. The lack of Jewish artifacts seemed strange for a museum that has eight million objects including two massive rooms dedicated to Islam.

Naturally, I did what any serious student of history would do in the year 2026 and asked ChatGPT where the Jews were.

It directed me to Room 46, Europe 1400–1800, on the upper floor, specifically Display Case 23.

Reader, I kid you not, the entire Jewish exhibit was reduced to a tiny glass case with a couple shofars and some forgettable Judaica. Basically, the jewish artifacts were an afterthought of scraps.

To their credit though, the fine print does offer some important historical context—if you could manage to read it.

The signage said:

Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 and were not permitted to return until 1656 under Oliver Cromwell. Jewish communities became established in London and in other towns and cities. The first community to settle in Britain were Sephardim, descended from Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal. Jews from central and eastern Europe, known as Ashkenazim, also settled.

The first Ashkenazi synagogue was established in Aldgate, in the City of London, in the 1690s.

The earliest purpose-built Sephardi synagogue in London, in Bevis Marks, was completed in 1701 and is still in use today.

Oddly enough, the British Museum does have an old Israeli credit card on display.

Now, on to the Islamic rooms which look like they’re out of the palace from Beauty and the Beast.

Crazy to think the minimization of Jewish culture is happening in London, home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world outside Israel and the United States.

I’m not suggesting some nefarious curator deliberately shoved the Jews into a corner, cackling maniacally as he flushed a dreidel down the toilet. But it’s unsettling how easily Jewish history can be erased.

And the fun didn't stop there!

Around the block from the museum I stopped by the London Review Bookshop, one of the city’s most celebrated independent bookstores, and found something equally bewildering. In its Middle East section, I counted exactly ZERO books offering an Israeli perspective on Israel’s history. Plenty about Palestine, though. Apparently, one side of the world’s most obsessively debated conflict had been granted exclusive rights to the bookshelf. I guess that’s what you call a one-shelf solution.

I completely understand a bookstore stocking more books about Palestine than Israel. It’s a business, after all, and Israel’s PR is somewhere in the seventh circle of hell. I get it. Supply and demand. Capitalism. Slay. But not a single Israeli perspective? To not even carry Eli Sharabi’s hostage memoir about surviving 491 days in Hamas captivity is a glaring omission. The man’s wife was British, for god’s sake.

I’m not calling for equal shelf space for Israeli books. There should at least be a couple though. Instead, the London bookshop doesn’t even offer a crumb of intellectual diversity. To have none is deliberate censorship. When a bookstore devoted to literature and intellectual inquiry presents a conflict almost entirely through one national narrative, readers aren’t being invited to understand its complexity.

Anyway, that’s enough of my rant. If you visit London, let me know if you encounter any other weird shit. Like Paddington Bear handing out Mein Kampf, or Mary Poppins explaining in song how the Jews caused Brexit.

For what it’s worth, Matilda would NEVER tolerate this literary censorship. We stan a book nerd with principles.

Thanks, as always, for being here.

It’s been three years since the Oct. 7 massacre in which thousands of Hamas terrorists and other armed civilians poured across Israel’s southern border and carried out the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, killing roughly 1,200 people from over 30 countries, including 33 Americans, and dragging 251 hostages into Gaza. Among the hostages were 12 Americans and dozens of foreign nationals, including 31 Thai farm workers. One of those killed was Bucks County native Carol Siman Tov, a 70-year-old grandmother who had later built her life in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Carol was murdered in her home that morning. Nearby, her 36-year-old son Johnny was killed, along with his 35-year-old wife Tamar, their 5½-year-old twin daughters Shahar and Arbel, and 2-year-old son Omer. According to Johnny’s sister, the family was shot through a window as the house was set on fire.

The scale of the attack is still almost incomprehensible in its cruelty. Families were burned alive in their homes, women were raped and mutilated, and 379 people were hunted down at the Nova music festival— billed as a celebration of peace and love. For perspective, Nova killed 6x as many people as the deadliest mass shooting in American history—also an attack on a music festival, in Las Vegas in 2017—which killed 60 people.

This year is more hopeful, as it will mark the first anniversary of the return of the remaining 20 living hostages who spent more than two years in Hamas captivity. Many of them were held in the squalor of underground tunnels for their entire capture.

Among those hostages released was Omri Miran, the brother-in-law of Moshe Lavi, who has become a friend I’ve made in NY. (You can find his newly launched Substack here.)

Moshe shared the following words with me:

For two years, October 7 never truly ended for our family, as our odyssey, and that of an entire nation, continued. Omri remained in Gaza, while my sister Lishay and their daughters Roni and Alma waited for him at home. This year, the grief and scars remain, but something fundamental has changed: Omri is home, our family is whole again, and after 738 days of fighting for his return, and 843 for the return of the last remaining hostage, we are finally learning how to live beyond October 7, rather than inside it.

While the release of the hostages closed one painful chapter, the political and humanitarian crisis left behind in Gaza remains an unresolved problem. What began on October 7 as an Israeli national catastrophe became a war that decimated Gaza and transformed the politics of the Middle East.

As we reflect on the third anniversary of this horrific tragedy, many will also rightly reckon with the scale of the response by Netanyahu’s Likud-led government and the devastation it has wrought in Gaza. More than 70,000 Gazans have been killed in the resulting war and nearly the entire population of its 2 million residents was displaced at some point, with more than 371,000 housing units damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding Gaza is now estimated to cost more than $71 billion over the next decade.

The political shockwave of this war has rippled across the Middle East and the Western world. American politics hasn’t been the same since. This has essentially become one of the defining political and moral fault lines of our time. Support for Israel—or opposition to it— has become a kind of ideological sorting mechanism. And for prominent Jewish politicians, it’s most glaring.

Since 2024, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania has been smeared by some antizionist activists as “Genocide Josh”, an especially stupid nickname when you consider the minor detail that the governor of Pennsylvania does not control the federal budget or, last I checked, the IDF. The insult isn’t supposed to make sense, though. It’s an explicitly antisemitic slur to demonize the Jewish governor as having dual loyalty – an old and cheap trope that treats Jews as inherently suspect to whatever country they belong to. Governor Shapiro has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu, calling him “one of the worst leaders of all time” in 2024 and in 2025, demanding more humanitarian aid for Gaza.

Those kinds of targeted slurs against Jewish leaders have ramifications. We saw that in 2025, when Shapiro’s official residence was firebombed on the first night of Passover. The arsonist did so in the name of Gaza. It bears repeating that an American governor has exactly zero authority over American foreign policy.

One can argue politics all day. What is much harder is to find the appropriate action moving forward.

As part of the 2025 negotiations to end the war in Gaza and return the hostages, President Trump proposed an ambitious 20-point plan backed by a ‘Board of Peace’ with over two dozen founding countries. This independent entity was meant to oversee Gaza’s postwar transition pairing a Palestinian technocratic government with an International Stabilization Force (ISF) with a phased Israeli withdrawal and plan for Hamas’s disarmament. This plan was later endorsed by the UN and formally launched at Davos in Jan 2026. Yet, here we are, a year later and most of that plan has not been implemented. Hamas has not disarmed and Israel has not withdrawn. Most of the technocrats have not stepped foot in Gaza and the ISF barely exists.

So, what exactly is being done?

The political incentives to make progress should be obvious for both Trump and Netanyahu ahead of the U.S. midterms in November and Israel’s October 27 election. Trump badly needs a foreign-policy win as the unpopular Iran war weighs on his presidency. And Netanyahu is fighting for his own political survival.

If Gaza is to have a future, Hamas cannot remain in power. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gazan American who has lost 33 immediate and extended family members in Israeli airstrikes, courageously made this case in the New York Times. Hamas has brought ruin to the people it claims to represent while silencing and killing Palestinian dissent.

Removing Hamas, however, only works if a credible political solution replaces it.

That is one lesson I learned from serving in Iraq. Destroying the old order is much easier than building the next one. If Gazans are left with rubble, unemployment, and no political future, another extremist movement will eventually fill the vacuum. Reconstruction therefore cannot be treated as charity handed out after the security questions are settled. It is part of the security strategy itself - much like the Marshall Plan after WWII, in which the U.S. paired European reconstruction with the broader goal of political stability and security.

Despite looking, at first glance, like some deeply cursed mashup of “Gaza” and “Nazi,” the film’s title, ‘Naza’, comes from Israeli military shorthand: nezek agavi, the Hebrew term for collateral damage.

Its filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, were already well known from No Other Land, the Israeli-Palestinian documentary about displacement in the West Bank that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2025. So Naza arrived with both anticipation and suspicion, especially among Jewish and pro-Israel audiences who had viewed No Other Land as selective and misleading in its presentation. I was one of those people.

Since premiering at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize and received a 25-minute standing ovation, Naza has been engulfed in a political firestorm. For starters, how does anyone clap for more than two minutes without their hands falling off? I don’t even think Mussolini ever got that.

The backlash has been so intense that the Israeli Culture Minister has threatened to revoke the citizenship of the two filmmakers. Ironically, some in the pro-Palestinian world have criticized the film for centering Israeli moral anguish over Palestinian voices. (You literally can please no one these days.)

On a recent episode of the For Heaven’s Sake podcast, Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi called the 25-minute ovation “profoundly totalitarian.” His co-host, Donniel Hartman, described it as “a declaration of disgust of Israel independent of the movie.”

They’re not wrong.

Oddly enough, though, almost nobody arguing about Naza has actually seen it.

But I have.

Naturally, I decided the sensible thing to do was to see it during a nor’easter, attending its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center.

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I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but if you don’t have the appetite for 10,000 words and just want the gist, I’ve distilled my biggest takeaways below.

(I’m also testing out a Substack series where I share worthwhile articles and offer my own mini book reports. Partly to encourage a more regular writing practice, partly to force myself to read more intelligent commentary instead of letting the internet spoon-feed me another steaming bowl of influencer vomit.)

***

Here’s the roughly 800 word version of The Atlantic piece:

Wood spent months interviewing Israeli generals, politicians, religious leaders, settlers, and civilians to get a sense of the current political climate. In short, it’s not great. The consensus among the security people is that contrary to what you may think, nobody’s really losing sleep over Iran. Apparently, nobody’s really losing sleep over Hamas, either.

Wood argues that Israel's deepest problems are actually the unresolved arguments over what Israel’s future is supposed to be.

One illuminating exchange came from Zohar Palti, who served as Mossad’s head of intelligence from 2011 to 2016:

“If you speak with the generals, the security people who invest their lives in this issue: What is the essential threat to Israel? No one will say, Something from the outside.”

They do not fret about Iran or Gaza or Syria, he said. The real problems lie within—negotiating the divide between the secular and the religious; incorporating into the state the one-fifth of the Israeli population that is non-Jewish and Arab; and figuring out how Israel will govern itself.

Essentially, Israel knows how to fight its enemies but has a much harder time figuring out how to live with itself.

So how did Israeli society end up in such a bleak place?

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Yom Kippur also makes for some great memes. Here are my greatest hits over the years.

G'mar chatimah tovah!

גמר חתימה טובה

My Jewish New Year had everything. Apples, honey, and the complete federal investigation into the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.

I had always heard the report “reads like a thriller,” so I started skimming the 567-page slab of federal trauma as one does.

Two things stood out to me right away.

1. The lead conspirators were not some ignorant wackadoodles. They came from stable, highly educated, well-to-do families.

2. They were antisemitic AF.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the commission’s findings:

I had always understood 9/11 as simply Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda hating America, which of course had the intellectual sophistication of pointing at the Titanic and saying boat, iceberg, sad.

What I hadn’t understood was how elaborate and explicitly antisemitic the worldview behind the attack actually was— and not from some withdrawn loons but from people with a strong western education.

Several of the central hijackers befriended each other not in Afghanistan but as young expats in Hamburg, Germany. Mohamed Atta was studying urban planning. Marwan al-Shehhi studied engineering. Ziad Jarrah studied aircraft engineering. Ramzi Binalshibh was a former bank clerk. Even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the attacks and one of bin Laden’s key co-conspirators, had a mechanical-engineering degree from an American university. These were not some uneducated mountain hermits.

It is almost obscenely ironic that the worldview of the core four took shape in a country that had spent the previous half-century reckoning with what can happen when grievance, conspiracy and antisemitism are assembled into a total explanation for why your people have been humiliated.

Like, really? Germany? We are doing this shit again in Germany?

The report found that al-Qaeda had three central grievances behind the attacks:

1. Muslim humiliation. Bin Laden believed the Islamic world had been weakened by Western powers, namely American troops in Saudi Arabia. To bin Laden, this was basically sacrilege.

2. America. He saw the United States as most responsible through its military presence in Saudi Arabia and alliances with governments across the Middle East.

3. Israel. He treated Israel’s existence and America’s enormous support for it as both a cause and a symbol of that humiliation.

That was the basic pitch bin Laden used to recruit his co-conspirators. Islam had been humiliated, America was the evil empire, Israel was its big swinging dick, and violence was the answer.

Normal stuff!

The scary thing is that, 25 years later, some of bin Laden’s grievances have been sanitized for a younger generation.

You can hear versions of them all over TikTok. America is an evil empire. Its wars are not merely disastrous but proof of something rotten at the country’s core. Israel is even worse, and America’s support for it makes us complicit. The political system cannot fix any of this because the political system is the problem.

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Despite not exactly being a chipper beach-read, the book is surprisingly invigorating. Horn is funny and writes with a brilliant fury. Her previous book, People Love Dead Jews, explored why the world is often more comfortable talking about the trauma of Jewish history rather than dealing with living Jews who have agency and the ever-so-annoying habit of remaining alive. That book became a favorite of mine. If memory serves, Horn jokes at one point that people love dead Jews so much they built an entire religion around one.

Her new book makes an argument I found even more clarifying. Horn reframes antisemitism not as a hate or a social prejudice but as a lie. Horn’s definition is pretty simple. Antisemitism is a lie people use to gain or hold onto power. The lie changes depending on the time and place but the basic trick is the same. Find whatever people value most and blame the Jews for threatening it. Suddenly treating Jews badly can feel righteous.

Listening to the audiobook, you really hear how much that word infuriates her. Every time Horn says lie, you can practically hear the capital letters. She sounds pissed. It is the vocal equivalent of underlining a sentence three times in red ink.

The Big Lie changes with the fashions of the time. Antisemitism is good at changing costumes. As Horn says, antisemitism takes whatever a society values most and finds a way to put Jews on the wrong side of it. That is what makes the lie so effective. Most people do not usually think of themselves as bigots. If they are convinced Jews are standing in the way of something good, then treating Jews badly can start to feel justified.

Horn thinks part of the reason Jews often fail to recognize this pattern is because we get dragged into the mud of countering misinformation. Someone says something insane about Jews, and our first response is usually to dispute every falsehood.

No, Jews don’t control the banks. No, Israel isn’t a genocidal nation of “baby-killers.” Here are eleven historians and an Alan Dershowitz book to debunk you. #Fail

Horn’s point is that once Jews start answering every accusation on the accuser’s terms, we are already losing.

She also writes about assimilation during the post-war golden age of American Jewry. After World War II, Jews gained acceptance in institutions that had long kept us out. Horn argues, however, that some of that progress came at a cost. As Jews became more integrated into American life, Jewishness was increasingly explained in terms the broader culture already understood.

Jews became another religious group. Synagogue was Jewish church. A rabbi was a Jewish priest. Hanukkah was Jewish Christmas.

It kind of worked.

But it also flattened what Jewishness actually is.

Jews are so much more than just a religion. We’re a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. Compress all of that into the American checkbox marked RELIGION, and eventually even Jews forget who we are.

I was reminded of this recently on a date this past Friday with a guy who told me he was “Jewish, but not really.”

Naturally, I had questions.

He said that both of his parents are Jewish but that only his dad really cared.

“So I guess you’re not celebrating Rosh Hashanah.”

“Is that the one where you fast?” he asked.

Sir. You are from Long Island. WTF.

He also doesn’t celebrate Hanukkah, dislikes both Seinfeld and Curb, and somehow had never heard of Tel Aviv despite being a savvy world traveler, at which point his Jewishness became the least confusing part of the evening.

This whole exchange is funny in hindsight, but also illustrates Horn’s point. If Jewishness is reduced solely to religious observance, someone can have two Jewish parents and grow up around Jews thinking they’re not Jewish if they didn’t attend synagogue.

The problem goes beyond one confused guy from Long Island. Horn argues that when Jews are presented as simply “just like everybody else,” people lose sight of what has kept Jewish identity alive for thousands of years. That makes antisemitism harder to recognize, too.

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Voters will cast ballots for members of Congress, state legislators, judges, and a collection of offices you've never heard of despite paying for their salaries your entire adult life.

For this substack, I’ll just focus on the race attracting the most attention: the crowded Democratic primary in NY-12. AKA one of the wealthiest districts in America.

It stretches from Chelsea all the way to the tippy top of Central Park and up to Columbia University with one-bedroom apartments regularly going for $5,000 a month. It is the type of place where some of its richest residents dropped six figures on Knicks Finals tickets despite never having watched the team before two weeks ago. It’s a place where a golden retriever named Edmund may very well have a better healthcare plan than you.

In short, a very New York place. Arguably the most New York place.

Here’s a screenshot of my Google Maps roughly covering the district and all the pins I have for restaurants and random cultural stuff I want to go to but probably never will.

If you’re voting in the primary, you can find your polling place here. (Also, if you click that link, I earn $1.50 lol so just do it. I don't know if admitting that violates some sacred affiliate-marketing code, but while you’re at it, you can sign up for this platform too and say I sent you.)

Full disclosure: I don’t even live here. I live in Queens, so nothing I write below should be mistaken for an endorsement or sound electoral advice. Jack Schlossberg said, “That’s ok, we can still be friends.” I have met 3 of the top candidates over the last 6 months and will tell you about them here.

According to the Emerson Poll from May, the rankings look like:

🥇 Micah Lasher 22%
🥈 Alex Bores 20%
🥉 Jack Schlossberg 11%
George Conway 10%

Micah Lasher (44)

He’s been the frontrunner since he first announced his candidacy last fall, but things are getting close.

He’s got overall, nice-nerdy-Jewish dad-energy. Lasher has positioned himself as the adult in the race that includes younger, flashier personalities. He is the competent career politician’s career politician. Purely based on his résumé, he is by far the most experienced, and it’s not particularly close.

He was an aide to Nadler, Director of State Legislative Affairs under Bloomberg at 28, Chief of Staff to the State AG, Policy Director under Hochul, and now State Assemblyman. He has worked at every level of government short of Rat Czar.

He’s endorsed by Jerry Nadler —who is stepping down after serving this district for 34 years—!!— and Michael Bloomberg. He’s basically been knighted by the old guard. (literally. they’re both grandpas).

A lifelong Upper West Sider, he grew up ten blocks from where he currently lives, belongs to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, has three kids in public school, and goes to chess tournaments on weekends. He is as local a yokel as they come.

Who likes him: People who liked Nadler and value his experience. Upper West Side liberals who still read newspapers made of paper. Also, people over the age of 50. In this district, that could matter a lot.

He’s got an extensive policy platform which you can find here.

Top positions:

Economy/Affordability: Housing is his signature issue — he literally wrote New York’s big housing bill, the one the Times called the first serious attempt since the 1960s to fix exclusionary zoning. Wants to raise minimum wage, index it to inflation, massively expand child care funding, repeal Trump’s tax cuts for the rich.

Jewish stuff: He has introduced legislation to create buffer zones around houses of worship after anti-Israel protesters began showing up outside synagogues. His website talks about antisemitism extensively.

Trump/Democracy: This is actually where he's most fired up. He wrote New York's version of "fight back against Trump" legislation which gives the state AG stronger tools to take over consumer protection when federal agencies get gutted.

Fun facts:

• When he was 12 years old, he performed magic on David Letterman and at 14 published a book from Simon and Schuster titled: The Magic of Micah Lasher: More Than Fifty Tricks That Will Amaze & Delight Everyone Including You.

• Was roommates with Aziz Ansari for an NYU semester in London.

Alex Bores (35)

A software engineer turned two-term state assemblyman, Bores is the hot young candidate who has gained enormous clout being attacked by tech billionaires. That’s because he authored New York’s RAISE Act, one of the country’s most ambitious attempts to regulate AI.

He’s built his campaign around a simple argument: maybe Congress could use at least one person who understands the technology that’s about to completely eat the economy. He is betting that the district will decide that understanding technology (and let’s face it, being young and hot) will take him to the top. It just might.

Who likes him: The native Upper East Sider has developed perhaps the most oddball coalition ever assembled. His supporters include pro-Israel rabbis, anti-Israel socialists, tech nerds, drag queens, and people who watched those congressional hearings with Mark Zuckerberg and thought, "Dear God, somebody needs to know how the internet works."

Fun facts:

• Time magazine put him on their 100 Most Influential People in AI list.

• His wife is Jewish. Like “Weird Al,” many seem to think he is too, but alas, he’s #NotAJew.

Jack Schlossberg (33)

He has nearly 2 million social media followers, a Yale degree in Japanese history, a Harvard JD/MBA, and the singular distinction of being the only grandson of JFK.

He grew up on Park Avenue and is now running as the race's progressive insurgent. This has created a small branding problem.

To the establishment crowd, he has no experience.

To the activist left, he’s too privileged.

He has spent the campaign trapped in an unusual political no-man's-land: too famous to be a true outsider, too untested to be an insider.

"No PAC Jack" as he calls himself has taken no corporate PAC money while his opponents have benefited from tens of millions of dollars in outside spending.

On Israel, he supports funding Iron Dome while opposing funding offensive weapons. That has earned him the ire of the anti-Israel crowd for not going far enough. The comments on his posts the past month have been particularly ugly.

Who likes him: Voters who believe taking no PAC money should actually count for something. People who were fans of his Instagram Reels from the past couple of years. And people who would like to see the Kennedy dynasty continue.

George Conway (62)

The former Republican is famous for being one of Trump's most relentless critics while simultaneously being married to one of Trump's closest advisors, Kellyanne Conway, until their divorce in 2023.

His whole schtick is vowing to serve just two terms while doing everything in his power to bust Trump's balls. That's not exactly a novel position in a Democratic primary, but few candidates can claim they've been doing it professionally for nearly a decade.

Who likes him: ‘Never Trump’ conservatives who are registered as Democrats and probably older law nerds who like his elite legal background. He’s a real lawyer’s lawyer.

That’s all I’ve got. If you live in New York and can vote, please do. And if you live anywhere else and read all of this just for shits and gigs, thank you. I hope you enjoyed and maybe learned a thing or three. Also, if you haven’t already, please click this link so I earn a dollar fifty. That’s like 3 bananas.

Her bio on the back cover flap is equally spare. It simply says, “Rachel Goldberg-Polin, born and raised in Chicago, is an educator who lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Jon. They are the parents of three children.”

Anyone else with her same profile would’ve mentioned that she was one of Time 100’s most influential people of 2024 and one of USA Today’s Women of the Year for 2026.

That she chooses none of that tells you the kind of person she is.

To understand how singular Rachel Goldberg-Polin's place in the Jewish world has become since October 7th, you have to first accept that there is really almost no one like her who has ever existed. She’s both a symbol of collective grief and a figure akin to the world’s Jewish mother. And because she speaks with such poetic composure in her interviews and speeches, she often registers more like a spiritual figure. Remarkably poised and apolitical, her message has always been about the love for her son and never strayed into the frayed territory of the conflict itself. The empathy she shared for Palestinian loss of life in Gaza is notable given the level of anguish she’s endured. It would be easy to have rage, yet she has none.

My friend calls her the “Jewish Mother Teresa.”

Perhaps the closest parallel to her is Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till’s horrific murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement. Like Till’s mother, Rachel has never stopped speaking out. They both understood that their grief was not only theirs. By sharing the stories of their sons, they belonged, in some way, to everyone who cared to listen. Rachel says Hersh proves that you don’t need to know someone to love them. That is true. Much of the Jewish world was in shock and grief when news of his death was announced in 2024.

On Monday night, I went to her book launch at Temple Emanu-El, joined by over 2,000 people in the main sanctuary. Even Jerry Seinfeld was there. It was so packed it felt like Yom Kippur. It felt like Yom Kippur in other ways, too.

When I got home from the event, I stayed up until 2 am reading half the book, which for me is saying something. I'm usually asleep before midnight without much question. I finished the rest over the next two days. It is the kind of book that just unfolds before you.

With this book we get a fuller picture of who Rachel and Hersh are. She describes it as a “love story wrapped in pain” or maybe a “pain story wrapped in love.”

For the past two and a half years, Rachel has been one of the most recognizable faces of the hostage crisis — a mother who showed up at every rally with a piece of tape over her heart that bore the number of days of captivity. She somehow remained a figure that people across the political divide could point to. Somehow, impossibly, she has remained untouched by the gravitational pull of politics.

People who agree on nothing else agree on Rachel.

She speaks of her life as divided into two parts: The Before and The After. Dan Senor, who moderated her book launch, called her one of the most illuminating voices in modern Jewish history, akin to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. He’s not wrong. But it doesn’t fully capture what we’re actually witnessing.

She describes herself as not being fully part of this world anymore. She’s not being metaphorical.

There is a mystical, spiritual quality to her that is difficult to explain without sounding too woo-woo. Her trauma and loss have jolted her into a different relationship with reality than most of us will ever understand. She lives, as she puts it, in The After. And The After, it turns out, is basically a different plane of existence entirely.

She says the moment she buried Hersh, a part of her got buried too. I did some Googling. In Judaism, there’s a concept that supports this idea: karet — being “cut off.” When a child dies, a piece of the parent’s soul goes with them. The parent is literally incomplete in a metaphysical sense, not just emotionally. They are a partial soul walking around.

When she speaks, you feel the distance between where she is and where the rest of us are standing. It’s like we’re not on the same planet. She’s been cracked open so deeply, a certain light shines through her that most of us will never grasp. Her pain and wisdom are linked, and despite everything, she remains incredibly grounded in her beliefs— or as she says, what she knows.

She became mythologized as this strong, resilient person. But she doesn’t view herself that way. In the book, she writes, “People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever-present, constant. Gnawing. Circular, not linear.”

One can only wonder what this book would’ve been like had Hersh come home alive and they co-authored one together. What their speaking tour would’ve been like. A celebratory hero’s welcome. Both of them explaining what it felt like from their respective sides of the same impossible situation. The version where the story has a feel-good ending.

Rachel believes strongly in fate. She believes, that for whatever reason, Hersh was always going to die in those tunnels on day 328. That it was destined. That no amount of advocacy or prayer or negotiation was ever going to change the ending, because the ending was already written from the day he was born.

She says, “You cannot outrun your destiny.”

I had to re-read that section twice to make sure I wasn't misreading her. I wasn't. She doesn't merely believe this. She says she knows this with the same certainty as looking at a glass of water and knowing water is wet. She doesn’t know why— she’s on a quest to find that out— but she knows that it was meant to be.

It’s a hard concept to wrestle with. If everything is fated from birth, then human choice is an illusion. This philosophy would almost make you seem passive, but Rachel was the opposite: she spent 328 days fighting, advocating, traveling, and pleading, as if her actions could change the outcome. If it was always fated, why fight? Her answer, implicitly, seems to be: because the fight was also fated. Because “hope is mandatory” regardless of outcome.

She also writes that the 4 am knock on the door from the “messengers of death” who delivered the news was the closest she ever felt to god.

She’s certainly not at peace, and she makes clear in her writing that she’s much more wrecked than people even realize. She describes herself as an actor in public. But she has also mastered the art of “yes, and.” She carries her grief as a badge of loving honor and says it doesn’t mean there aren’t still moments of joy and humor. It’s just that every moment is seared with pain like a chronic condition she will live with for the rest of her life. She's spoken to other parents who have lost children, and they have all told her the same thing: it will never get better. She finds comfort in that even if the American Psychiatric Association would classify her as disordered. The DSM was updated in 2022 to include Prolonged Grief Disorder as grief lasting more than 12 months. Rachel finds this fitting, actually. A child dying before their parent is, by definition, out of order. Of course the grief that follows is disordered. What else would it be?

She has no interest in being healed or moving on. She accepts, fully and without apology, the label of being broken.

Surprising New Details

One of the most extraordinary discoveries to emerge since Hersh's murder was Rachel's meeting with Or Levy, a fellow hostage who had spent parts of the first 54 days with Hersh in the tunnels. When Or was released, he sought out Rachel immediately. He had things to tell her that he needed her to know.

The first was this: Hersh knew his parents were fighting for him. He knew because one of his captors had a radio, and one day he heard his mom talking about meeting with the Secretary of State. The level of miraculous that is. And the miracle that Rachel now knows that Hersh knew because of a surviving hostage. That gives me chills.

Or (whose name is Hebrew for ‘light’) also told her something else. In the tunnels, Hersh had convinced his captors to bring him something to read. Rachel describes him as a voracious reader incapable of existing without a book.

He was given Shadow and Bone, a YA fantasy novel by Leigh Bardugo, popular primarily with young girls on TikTok. Bardugo is Jewish, by the way. A Jewish author's fantasy novel circulating in a Hamas tunnel is its own remarkable detail. Make of that what you will.

Hersh read it. Then he read it again. Then he read it aloud, creating a kind of book club in the tunnels. On day 54, he was moved to another location — he, Ori, and Almog were told they were being freed, which was a lie. Before he left, he gave the book to Or. Or left it on day 491 for Eliya. Eliya left it for Alon, who was released on day 505. Alon had been the last of that original group remaining underground until day 738.

Hersh was also quoting Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in the tunnels: “He who has a why can bear with any how” became the mantra for the other hostages. Or Levy got it tattooed on his arm after he was released.

Other Details That Floored Me

• Rachel recently discovered a journal entry Hersh wrote in October 2015 when he was in 9th grade. In it, he speaks of being in life’s “tunnel.” He uses that word 12 times. Here’s part of it: “To every person there is a tunnel that belongs to them. Some have small tunnels and some have long tunnels. What is certain is there is an end…Who knows how many more tunnels I will encounter…But whatever comes my way, it won’t stop me…What is sure is that I am walking to the end of the tunnel.”

• Rachel read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five to Hersh when he was in 5th grade. You know, the one about a prisoner of war who becomes unstuck in time. The book is equally about what the mind does when it has witnessed something it cannot process in linear sequence. It is about a man who is present and absent simultaneously, here and somewhere else at once, alive and already knowing how he will die.

• Since October 7, Rachel had not seen either of her parents until they arrived for Hersh’s funeral in Jerusalem.

• The last book Hersh read before Oct 7 was The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.

• Hersh’s birthday is Oct 3. Rachel’s Oct 12. I didn’t know that until reading the book and somehow the proximity of celebration with horror adds an extra layer to this story.

Other Random Details That Were Interesting

• She describes Hersh as “the only vegetarian I know who ate no vegetables or fruit. People used to say, “what about corn? What about potatoes? What about grapes?” No, I said. No vegetables or fruit.”

• Hersh had a photographic memory and by age 6 knew all of the Presidents and their wives and other random minutiae.

• She takes inspiration from The Shawshank Redemption, saying Andy Dufresne “uses the tiniest of tools to scratch at the wall that stands between him and his freedom. It takes years, but he finally succeeds…I have never been strong. I’m not being humble. I’m being truthful. Now it’s all I want. I’ll get there. Like Andy Dufresne.”

• At age 4, she took her first solo flight to visit her grandparents, flying about 45 min from Chicago to Detroit.

• In the summer of 2023 Hersh had travelled Europe on a “mini-trip” visiting music festivals to prepare for his “big trip,” a 2-year solo adventure to India he had planned since his Bar Mitzvah. He already had a one-way ticket booked for December 27th to Goa — the jewel of the Indian coastline, a sun-drenched beach city of palm trees and turquoise water that draws young travelers from around the world the way Miami draws everyone else.

There’s lots of other rich details here. I’ll leave you with a personal one that shows how interconnected we all are.

I had known that before Rachel and Jon moved their family to Israel, they lived in Richmond, VA for a few years. My family lived there too, from 2005-2008. A few years ago, my mom had mentioned that she felt like she had met Rachel before. Well, it is confirmed in the book that Rachel worked at the Richmond JCC as an adult educator from 2004-2008. Given how small the Jewish community of Richmond is, that pretty much confirms my mom had likely seen Rachel at the gym and in the halls on multiple occasions.

Our lives are so interwoven without even knowing it.

Former Prince Andrew — yes, former, because when your brand becomes Jeffrey Epstein’s BFF, the palace revokes the title — was arrested and then released yesterday.

Consider him royally screwed.

He’s the first senior royal arrested in nearly 400 years, which is quite the achievement in a family tree that has seen their share of shenanigans.

Police are reviewing whether he shared sensitive info with Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew denies everything, of course. But we’ve all seen that photo of him on all fours over a redacted girl on the floor.

Vatican Will Not Join the Board of Peace

The Vatican has officially RSVP’d “no ❤️” to Trump’s self-appointed “Board of Peace,” which he plans to chair indefinitely.

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, declined, suggesting that maybe the United Nations should handle international crises like it’s literally designed to do.

Are We Going to War with Iran?

Amidst the Iranian protests in which roughly 30,000 civilians have been killed by the regime, Trump has said he’ll decide on military action within “10 to 15 days.” That is the diplomatic equivalent of “lemme circle back.” Meanwhile, sources say the US could strike as early as right now.

Love the suspense!

South Korea’s Ex-Prez Gets Life for 2024 Martial Law Stunt

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol just got life in prison for the martial law stunt he pulled in December 2024 when he tried to override his political opponents by sending soldiers in helicopters to storm parliament. It lasted six chaotic hours.

Turns out “I was just trying to make a point” doesn’t really fly when the point involves an insurrection.

It’s wild how in some countries, that comes with prison time, and in ours it comes with a reelection and a $70m vanity documentary of your wife produced by Amazon.

Maybe you’ve heard there’s a new Wuthering Heights movie. It debuted at #1 at the box office last weekend, proving once again that people will always pay to watch hot people ruin their own lives on the big screen.

I was one of them. Naturally, I saw it opening night in IMAX. Because if I’m going to see a toxic meltdown, I want to watch it in surround sound on the biggest screen possible.

Apparently, this is a tale as old as time, because there’s been over 25 major adaptations, including:

• 1920 (silent)

• 1939 (the Laurence Olivier one)

• Multiple Indian adaptations (1950, 1951, 1966, etc.)

• 1992 (Ralph Fiennes / Juliette Binoche)

• 2009 (TV version with Tom Hardy)

• 2011 (Andrea Arnold)

• 2026 (And now Emerald Fennell’s film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi)

It’s based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, which many people call “the greatest love story of all time.” That is a lie. It’s like calling Jaws a beach comedy.

In this version, Margot Robbie plays Catherine Earnshaw, who in the book is 17. Robbie is 35, which in Hollywood years apparently still qualifies as an emotionally immature teen.

If you’re cool with me spoiling most of the plot, please continue. (I’ll spare you just the ending).

Basically, it’s about this dusty, wind-slapped house on a hill in 1800s England called Wuthering Heights. It’s a gothic estate on the Yorkshire moors where everyone looks like they bathe in mud.

One day, Mr. Earnshaw, who is an abrasive alcoholic, brings home a random orphan boy from Liverpool and announces he’s Cathy’s “pet.”

This is not even the first WTF moment. The movie starts with a town hanging.

Cathy immediately becomes possessive and names him Heathcliff.

Heathcliff does not speak. He barely emotes.

Over time, he opens up, though. Catherine teaches him to read and talk and they grow up running around the moors like wild Victorian children.

I suppose this is the part people call romantic. Which is already sus since they’re more like siblings at this point. But it’s technically kosher.

Catherine loves Heathcliff. Heathcliff loves Catherine. But also they kind of hate each other for no reason whatsoever. There is lingering resentment Heathcliff has for Cathy’s family because the dad, despite taking him off the streets, treats him like literal dog shit.

As they grow up, Cathy realizes she should probably level up and get married.
Running barefoot across the moors with your emotionally stunted step-brother is thrilling at 16, but it does not scream stable long-term plan.

Enter Edgar Linton, who is basically a Disney prince with generational wealth. He lives in a lush palace called Thrushcross Grange, which you can kind of see from the gigantic hillside Cathy goes to masturbate (yes, really).

Edgar is handsome, polite, and everything Heathcliff is not in British society. He offers Catherine things she’s never had before, like silk gowns, stability, and indoor plumbing.

The bar is on the literal barn floor and he clears it easily.

So naturally, she marries him for status and comfort, and tea that doesn’t taste like barn dust.

BUT before she does, she confesses to the housekeeper, Nelly, played by the always excellent Hong Chau, that marrying Heathcliff would “degrade” her because he is broke AF. Then, in the same breath, she’s like, but also our souls are literally the same being.

Girl. Pick a lane.

Instead of just going to therapy, which didn’t exist, or writing in a journal, she says, like a literal sociopath, “I am Heathcliff.”

Ma’am. You are not Heathcliff. You are barely functioning as Catherine.

Meanwhile, Heathcliff has been lurking outside and overhears only the first half. He does not stay for nuance. He immediately leaves on horseback in a fit of wounded masculinity. Men selectively listening since the 18th century, smh.

And yet. Despite Edgar being handsome, polite, rich, emotionally available, and not actively plotting revenge in a barn somewhere… it’s still not enough for her. Nothing ever is for Cathy.

When she moves into the palace, she brings Nelly with her (have we mentioned that the new husband is a SAINT). And Nelly is like, “This is good.” Yeah, no shit, Nelly. Compared to Wuthering Heights, which looked like it was one gust away from collapse, this place is Versailles. Edgar’s place has doors that actually close. A treehouse would be better than that haunted shit-box you called a home for 2 decades.

Any way.

Remember how I mentioned that Heathcliff stole the family horse and galloped away?

Well, five years later he returns and comes back mysteriously rich. And instead of the feral Jesus look he was going for earlier, he’s now clean-shaven. He kept the mutton-chops, tho.

He immediately buys Wuthering Heights and, more importantly, buys revenge.

He then spends the rest of the story psychologically terrorizing everyone within a ten-mile radius.

Reminder: this is the “greatest love story of all time.”

We do get some intimacy, though.

The new movie leans into the sex in a way the book only hinted at. There’s a lot more grabbing, gasping, and intense eye contact. Jacob Elordi constantly has his finger down Margot Robbie’s throat and in other places, too.

Also, because I was curious, I decided to check out the original source material. Can we discuss how in the book, people are constantly described as “ejaculating” when they mean “exclaiming”? Like: “Heathcliff ejaculated at the dinner table.” Olde English was brutal.

Anyway, I won’t ruin the final scene in case you actually want to see this movie. This version only covers the first half of the book, by the way.

I still think trying to reframe emotional instability, infidelity, and grotesque abuse as epic romance is an odd choice, but somehow this IP has been a banger for centuries, so who am I to judge?

Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer resigns after Epstein files drop

Kathy Ruemmler, Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer and former Obama White House counsel, resigned on Feb 12th after the Justice Department released millions of pages of Epstein files showing she called him “sweetie,” “Uncle Jeffrey,” and wrote “Well, I adore him. It’s like having another older brother!” Way to degrade your older brother.

She’s now joining a fun club: Brad Karp, chairman of Paul Weiss (one of the most prestigious law firms in the world), stepped down Feb 4th over his Epstein emails, and Britain’s ambassador to the US got fired in September for the same reason. At least half a dozen top Trump officials are also in the files.

Totally normal stuff.

Netanyahu met with Trump while annexing the West Bank

Before arriving in DC, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved measures to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank and buy Palestinian land. His Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the quiet part out loud, bragging they're working to "extinguish the idea of a Palestinian state."

Back home, Netanyahu's got a corruption trial hanging over him and elections coming by October. His coalition might collapse by March 31st if he can't pass a budget because the ultra-Orthodox parties want to keep their military draft exemption. Trump also called Israel's president "disgraceful" for not pardoning Netanyahu.

Nothing weird about that.

Japan's heavy metal biker grandma just became the most powerful conservative on the planet

Japan elected its first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, in its biggest landslide since 1955, which sounds like progress until you read literally anything else about her.

Her platform includes opposing same-sex marriage, forcing women to surrender their maiden names, and installing patriotic education in schools (aka nationalistic propaganda).

She plans to meet with Trump in March, presumably to compare notes.

Thanks for reading. I’m experimenting with making this a weekly series.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one who woke up early Monday to the miraculous news of the final 20 living hostages returning safely home to Israel. I was up at 4 AM, light as a feather. It’s like my body knew.

Somehow, against all odds, Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The same man who once stared directly at a solar eclipse and suggested bleach could fight COVID has now freed the 20 remaining living hostages from two years in Hamas captivity. You honestly can’t make this stuff up.

We often hear the phrase, “You don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Well, tell that to Jared Kushner. How in the actual hell did he negotiate face-to-face with Hamas to pull this off? Like, did he and Steve Witkoff show up with laminated charts and PowerPoint slides? Did he open with an icebreaker? Did he bring snacks? #Respect

There was an Instagram post I saw from Amanda Markowitz that stopped me in my tracks. It said:

Today is Day 738.

7+3+8 = 18

18. The number that means chai, life, in Judaism. A number that embodies life, blessing, and hope.

The poetic arc can be felt.

Divine timing was also on the side of Noa Argamani, whose birthday fell on the day of the release. She reunited with her partner Avinatan Or, who spent two full years in total isolation, never meeting any other hostages until his return.

There are so many things I’m thinking about.

I’m thinking again about Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who manages to keep showing up for the hostages, despite her son, Hersh, being murdered last year in the tunnels. In her latest speech, she said, “There is a time to sob, and there is a time to dance, and we have to do both right now.”

I think about how strong these people are. How their survival defies every law of reason. Think back to your lowest moments. Now magnify that times infinity. It was hard enough for most people to stay sane during COVID lockdowns. People started going stir-crazy after months of banana bread and taking Zoom calls in isolation. We were all largely confined to our homes for two years, and that was pretty bad. Now those problems are a luxury compared to being confined to a Hamas terror dungeon for two years. How does one survive two years with no external stimulation, communication, or food other than a stale piece of Pita a day? I truly don’t comprehend how it’s possible to not only survive being in the Hamas tunnels for two years with decrepit living conditions but also the mental fortitude needed to not lose your sanity.

I have so many questions.

What is it like to spend two years of your life in a tunnel 150 ft underground?

What happens to your body when you barely move for two years? Do your legs forget they belong to you? Do you start to feel like you’re floating outside of yourself, watching a body that no longer feels like your own?

I can’t begin to fathom the kind of strength it takes to endure that. To breathe the same putrid air every day. To live without sunlight, without sanitation, without any certainty that you’ll ever make it out. No space to stretch your arms without hitting a wall.

How do you measure time when the days all blur into one endless night?

How do you know when to sleep when all there is is darkness? Or do you constantly sleep just to make time disappear faster and numb the pain? Then again, it must be hard to sleep when the air feels wet and the ground is alive with worms and sewage creatures.

At a certain point, do you start hallucinating?

What happens when you go two years without real conversation? When you finally speak again, does your own voice sound strange to you?

It must’ve smelled like the most rancid swamp down there. The human waste, mold, dirt floors and walls. No real showering in two years.

I could go on. It sounds like the most deranged nightmare.

***

We’re still waiting for Hamas to return the remains of the 24 murdered hostages because of course, they’ve already violated the terms of the agreement. That’s who they are.

Back in the U.S., the “Ceasefire Now” crowd is suddenly quiet. You’d think they’d be celebrating, right? They got exactly what they asked for. But I guess when your whole worldview is Team Palestine vs. Team Israel, it kinda ruins the vibe to admit the ceasefire wasn’t inspired by protest signs, but by Israelis marching for peace and the release of hostages. None of this is surprising.

Meanwhile, Hamas is back to their bull-sh*t, killing 33 of their own people accused of treason—but hey, at least it’s not Israel doing it, right? Priorities! Gaza could receive a billion-dollar aid package, and the internet would still call it “Western imperialist crumbs.” And, of course, this crowd is extra salty that the whole deal was brokered by Trump. Life is messy that way.

On the side of the hostages, though, there’s gratitude and joy. If these past few years have taught us anything, it’s to embrace the complexity of life and not overthink a good thing.

For two years, the world has lived in the long shadow of October 7. Now, for the first time, we’re waking up in a post–October 7 world. And it’s a beautiful feeling.

Two years since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—and the ongoing devastation in Gaza— I’ve run out of meaningful things to say. Consuming non-stop horror on our screens, every day, for two years will do that to you. It has definitely snapped something in our brains.

There are still 48 hostages in Hamas captivity. Their families who speak out have a strength that humbles anyone paying attention.

You have Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who still continues to speak out for the hostages even after her own son, Hersh, was murdered in the tunnels along with five others known as the “Beautiful 6.”

I’m in awe of all the hostages and their families who have the strength and emotional fortitude to share their stories after all they’ve suffered and lost.

Eli Sharabi (53) survived 491 days in Hamas captivity — chained underground, starved, and beaten in Gaza’s tunnels. He lost over 66 pounds, dropping to just 97 pounds, and spent months in near-total darkness, shackled to other hostages, including while using the toilet. Surviving that is hard enough. To be freed and learn his wife Lian and daughters Noya (16) and Yahel (13) were murdered on October 7, along with his brother Yossi, who was killed in captivity, is a cruel welcome home. Yet, somehow, he’s standing tall again — publishing a memoir, Hostage, which is out in the U.S. today.

“I’m very positive the life I’m going to rebuild,” Sharabi told CBS News. “I love life.”

It’s almost impossible to understand how someone who endured what he did could say those words.

While a hostage, he had his ribs broken, leaving him unable to breathe properly for two or three months.

His interview feels almost supernatural to watch — a man who has lived through the worst hell imaginable, expressing something close to grace. Where his inner resolve comes from, I don’t know. He’s clearly built differently.

Peace Deal In the Making?

Somehow, against all odds, Donald Trump might be able to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The same man who once stared directly at a solar eclipse and suggested drinking bleach could fight COVID is now, in his own words, “pretty sure” he’s going to end the war. And he just might.

If he can bring a close to this horribly painful chapter in human history, he may even win a Nobel Peace Prize. For real. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum sent a letter to the Nobel nominating committee urging them to award him. If the vanity of a Nobel Prize is the motivation Trump needs to pressure Hamas and Netanyahu to strike a deal, then by all means.

Trump says Hamas has been “fine” to work with, which in Trump-speak is one adjective away from “great guys, tremendous people.”

If you ignore his incoherent nonsense, like him saying “They’ve been trying to have a deal with Gaza literally for centuries”(sir… are we talking about Moses??), there might be a sliver of hope.

If Trump is successful, it might just be because of what a bully he is. Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic writes:

In short, Trump successfully bullied Netanyahu—and if this latest round of talks is going to get results, he’ll need to do more of it. That’s because despite the president’s confident proclamations of peace for our time, a deal is far from assured. Hamas can easily blow up the fragile process by refusing to release all of the hostages, or otherwise reneging on its hazy commitments to Trump and the mediating states. The terrorist group is reportedly divided between its leaders abroad who want to agree to Trump’s terms and its leaders in Gaza who do not. At the same time, Netanyahu is already facing a mutiny among the far-right members of his coalition, who want to ethnically cleanse and resettle Gaza, and are threatening to bring down his government if the war ends. Today, Trump is the only actor who can provide a counterweight to these radicals and compel Netanyahu to make different choices by changing his incentives. As he showed this weekend, the president holds incredible leverage over the Israeli leader—he just needs to use it.

Here is Trump’s 20 Point Plan for Gaza. Honestly, it seems very reasonable, even aspirational. It’s been embraced by Qatar—which hosts Hamas’ top leadership—and the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, among several other countries in the Middle East. Judge for yourself.

1. Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.

2. Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.

3. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

4. Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

5. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

6. Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.

7. Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.

8. Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025 agreement.

9. Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.

10. A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.

11. A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.

12. No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.

13. Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.

14. A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people.

15. The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The ISF will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A deconfliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties.

16. Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the Unites States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the IDF will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.

17. In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF.

18. An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence to try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.

19. While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.

20. The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence.

It’s hard to see Hamas agreeing to surrender and hand over control of Gaza after two decades of terror, but this roadmap is the kind of aspiration worth believing in.

I’ve written on this topic twice before, first in 2021 for Newsweek, where I wrote that “Yom Kippur is the Antidote to Cancel Culture.”

At its core, Yom Kippur teaches that you are more than the worst thing you’ve ever done, if you accept the call for change.

It’s a message that’s sadly missing from much of America today, which can be deeply unforgiving; all too often, the importance of self-growth and personal development is dismissed in favor of a slash and burn mentality.

The current social climate is sometimes described in religious terminology; our reflexive tribalism makes us evangelize some as “good faith” and demonize others as “bad faith.” We’re quick to dig into shame, but much less willing to extend the same grace toward those seeking redemption or forgiveness, or creating a culture of positive reinforcement that gives meaning to our failures.

I came to this understanding from a personal point of view. In 2019, I was formally diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum at 25 just a few weeks shy of Yom Kippur. The diagnosis helped me understand why I so often feel like a walking social blunder, and why I so often misjudge where irreverence fits within social codes. It’s also made me keenly aware of the dangers of transgressing in a world that places little value in forgiveness.

The intense experience of Yom Kippur the year I was diagnosed brought clarity to my many foibles. It gave me the headspace to contextualize some challenging aspects of myself more graciously.

It was then I realized Yom Kippur is a holiday about seeking resolve and renewal; at its best, it’s about transcending pain.

In 2023, I took that theme a step forward, spending a weekend at the country’s longest-running western-led silent meditation center, Insight Meditation Society. I wrote about my experience for The Forward and interviewed two of the founders, authors, and meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein.

As these themes marinated in my mind, heightened by two years of a global pandemic, I drew a connection to another group that shares the cherished tradition of focusing on suffering: Buddhists.

At the Insight Meditation Society, mornings started at 5:30 a.m., which was surprisingly not difficult — It’s amazing how refreshed you can feel when you haven’t fried your brain with bright screens all day.

In the meditation hall, we were led in the Metta practice of ‘lovingkindness’ in which we silently repeated phrases like “May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be free.” You start with offering these words to yourself, then to another person in your mind, and ultimately to all beings.

This practice isn’t all too different from the Mi Sheberach, the Jewish prayer for healing an individual or group of people.

Much like the retreat, Yom Kippur is a day for adjusting our relationship with the past to be a better version of ourselves in the present. Just like in meditation, this change in perspective is achieved through cultivating a more compassionate mindset.

If Yom Kippur is a time you’re typically zoning out on auto-pilot, maybe this reframing of the day can activate your sense of purpose. It’s not called the “days of awe” for nothing.

Gmar Chatima Tova — May you be sealed for good [in the Book of Life].

The murder of Charlie Kirk is disturbing for several reasons.

Not just because someone was killed in broad daylight at a political event from 200 yards away (!!)—which is insane—but because it reveals the state of American dissent.

You don’t have to agree with Kirk or even like him to see this for what it is: a literal attack on free speech, open debate, and the idea that we settle differences with words, not weapons.

His murder has shaken me in a way I didn’t expect—not because of who he was, but because of what he represents: a public villain.

What’s unsettling about the murder of Charlie Kirk is how clear it is that if you’re branded a villain for having the wrong views, you’re no longer just annoying or problematic or even a menace to society; you’re a target for murder.

Political violence isn’t new, but this one feels different because Kirk wasn’t a politician. He was best known as an influencer who people either adored or abhorred. For over a decade, people developed a parasocial relationship with him through his vast online presence.

Political violence has ramped up over the last decade. And it has no allegiance.
Let me lay it out for you like the world’s worst CVS receipt:

• Shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords (2011)

• Shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (2017)

• Plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (2020)

• Pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC (2021)

• Jan 6 (2021)

• Attack on Paul Pelosi (2022)

• Attempted assassinations of Donald Trump (2024)

• Murder of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO by Luigi Mangione (2024) (people celebrated this bc Luigi is hot and big pharma is not)

• Arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence, on the 1st night of Passover, dubbed “genocide josh” because he’s a pro-Israel Jew (April 2025)

• D.C. Jewish Museum shooting of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky (May 2025)

• Assassination of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife (Jun 2025)

This is obviously an incomplete list, but you get the gist. Like, WHAT the actual 🦊 America? Are we okay? (No. No, we are not.) This is not the behavior of a stable nation.

In my neighborhood, this has been up for months ↓↓↓

History is a cruel teacher, and we seem determined to ignore its lessons.

Once you legitimize violence against those with the “wrong” views, it never stops with just them. The definition of “wrong” keeps expanding.

The Death of Debate

The test of a healthy society isn’t whether it protects the people you like. It’s whether it protects the people you don’t.

That’s why Kirk’s murder is so shocking. If your opponent deserves to be killed for their convictions, then it is only a matter of time before someone decides you do too.

Label someone a villain, and suddenly the morality becomes easy: if they disappear, the world improves.

The First Amendment wasn’t written to protect bland, agreeable speech; it was written to protect the sh*t that makes you want to throw your laptop across the room.

We often hear about people being “silenced” or “canceled.” But in Charlie Kirk’s case, that rhetorical abstraction became reality. He was permanently silenced for holding views that someone found objectionable.

The erosion of dissent

America’s culture of pluralism is eroding. And it’s eroding from both sides.

On the right, violence is dressed up in the distorted name of patriotism: storming the Capitol, attacking lawmakers, plotting kidnappings.

On the left, violence is rationalized in the name of justice and liberation: supporting intifadas, excusing murder as “resistance,” framing terrorism as freedom-fighting, and targeting anyone deemed complicit in the vast web of capitalism, imperialism, or settler colonialism—however loosely defined.

Both are corrosive. Both are dangerous. Both are tearing at the fabric of democracy.

We can keep going down this road. Or we can make a different choice.

For decades, Jeff Ross has been best known as the “Roastmaster General,” for his gift of turning celebrity insult comedy into an art form. His Comedy Central roasts became cultural events, and in 2024, he roasted Tom Brady so hard it became Netflix’s most-watched live broadcast. Part of his appeal is that he’s got the charm of a teddy bear with claws that leave a mark.

So, when I was gifted comp tickets to see his Broadway debut solo show, I was both intrigued and a little puzzled.

I’ll admit: my expectations were low walking into the theater. It sounded like a gimmick for a stand-up set dressed up with Broadway marketing. Fun, sure. Groundbreaking? Probably not.

But I was wrong. “Take a Banana for the Ride” isn’t just a comedy show. It’s 80 minutes of tightly-crafted transformation that earns its Broadway spectacle. Ross offers a raw meditation on love, loss, and the resilience that comes with surviving more than your share of tsuris. What emerges is deeply moving, surprisingly tender, and yes, very funny.

***

For my full review, read it here on Unpacked, where I’ll be covering more Jewish arts and culture pieces.

(I also have this fun author bio now. Maybe I should tack this on to all my Substacks.)

If you’ve opened the internet this week, you’re probably losing your mind a little bit.

I certainly am. No matter how many articles I read on the crisis in Gaza, every post seems to contradict the one before it. Never in my life have I seen more contradictory information dumped into the discourse blender.

Something is off. Like, eating sushi from a gas station off.

Gaza is facing a famine, this much we know. But why did it get to this? Most of the news would have you think Israel is hoarding humanitarian aid like it’s Beanie Babies circa 1997. We know now that’s not true because nearly 1,000 trucks of aid are literally sitting in Gaza.

The aid is there. It’s just not being delivered. It’s like the food is on the shelf, but nobody’s able to take it to check out.

So… what’s going on?

Here’s how aid delivery worked up until two months ago:

1. Aid trucks get cleared through Israel.

2. Aid gets passed to UN agencies like UNRWA or WFP.

3. UNRWA hands it to local actors (who may or may not moonlight as members of Hamas).

4. Hamas may or may not intercept the aid and resell flour and baby formula at black market prices.

5. Civilians get whatever scraps are left over.

It was a broken system, sure. But at least it was a semi-functioning broken system.

The problem seems to stem from political infighting within Gaza over a new aid group formed in May between Israel and the U.S.

Back in May, Israel rolled out a brand-new system that replaced the U.N. with a U.S.-backed private contractor called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), led by a former CIA officer. Because if there’s one thing the region was missing, it was a startup NGO with a black-ops origin story.

Key Problems with the New System:

• The GHF replaced 400 UN‑run distribution points with just 4 GHF hubs, forcing people into militarized zones to receive aid

• The UN has decades of experience coordinating humanitarian aid in war zones. GHF started 2 months ago.

• Israel’s new system forces civilians to walk through dangerous militarized zones to access food as if they’re contestants on Squid Game.

• The UN says Israel is obstructing aid with red tape and unsafe routes.

• Israel says the UN is inefficient and complicit with Hamas.

• Meanwhile, people are starving.

The idea behind GHF, in theory, wasn’t terrible. The goal may have been to cut Hamas out of the process and force a ceasefire hostage-release deal. But the result is a collapsing aid system that has neither legitimacy nor coordination.

Since the change:

• According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, around 1,000 people have been killed near these aid sites. Take that number with a grain of salt—this is the same source that’s been caught inflating stats before—but even if it’s a tiny bit true, it’s horrific.

• Aid convoys are sitting idle, not because they can't enter Gaza, but because no one will safely deliver them.

We’re watching a famine unfold not because there isn’t food, but because of political infighting within Gaza.

GHF is like, "We’ve got trucks. We’ve got partners. Can we maybe feed people now?
And the UN is like, “Nah, we only do warlord delivery.”

Well.

Instead of adapting to this new operation, the UN has just stopped doing its job.
UNRWA can’t secure convoys. WFP convoys sometimes get looted.
So instead of working together, everyone’s just pointing fingers at Israel while aid literally sits inside Gaza.

If you're confused, you're not alone.
I’m confused too.

This isn’t just about who lets aid in. It’s about who gets to deliver it, distribute it, and control the narrative around it.

Add to the pile of contradictions:

• Israel says Hamas steals UN aid.

• Israeli military now says: actually, they didn’t. Not routinely. (via The NY Times)

• Hamas did steal from smaller NGOs, but there’s apparently no conclusive proof they raided the UN pipeline. “Routinely,” that is. Maybe just sometimes.

• Meanwhile, the Israeli government blocked aid for 2 months based on that assumption.

• And now the people are starving.

Why is the U.N. Refusing to Deliver Aid?

In a July 25th Wall Street Journal op-ed, the exec chairman of GHF, Rev Johnnie Moore, makes clear his organization has repeatedly called for the U.N. and its affiliate agencies to combine efforts to feed the people of Gaza. Instead, he says, they’ve been met with silence and “smears.”

He says

Rather than acknowledging the broader systemic failures affecting all aid groups, U.N. spokespeople and U.N.-aligned organizations have attacked the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for its association with Israel.

He goes on to say

It is unacceptable that these thousands of tons of aid remain undistributed or delayed while civilians continue to go without food. This wasn’t an inevitable outcome, it resulted from a lack of adaptability and an unwillingness to collaborate.

To not distribute what is already there is outrageous and a tragedy.

Read more

Naturally, the posts were deleted, but the internet never forgets.

In a statement that was written a WHOLE TWO DAYS later by a team of probably twelve lawyers, Sesame Street says the account was hacked and called the posts “abhorrent.”

Notably, Sesame Street’s statement never uses the word “sorry” or “apologize.” Now, I don’t mean to be a petty b, but last I checked, it’s not an apology unless you say ‘sorry.’ That seems like something Elmo would probably teach on the show.

Because this is the internet, dozens of people chimed in to tell me I’m wrong lol.

Here’s the thing: I don’t personally care that Elmo went on an antisemitic bender because obviously that wasn’t Elmo. Duh.

But what does piss me off is how weak the response was.

Had Elmo called for the death of literally anyone else, there would likely be a stronger demand for more affirmative language taking a stand with said community.

When it comes to Jews, though, the best they can do is point a finger and say, “it wasn’t us.” Like, yeah. no shit. We know it wasn’t you. But that’s it? That’s the best you can do? The resposne could’ve been a little more loving and practice what they preach on the show.

Sesame Street taught generations of kids how to be kind, brave, and inclusive. So maybe try living up to your own values when someone uses your brand to spread hate.

Here’s how Sesame Street should’ve apologized:

On Sunday night, Elmo’s X account was hacked by a malicious actor. We are appalled that someone would take a beloved children's character to spread a message of hate.

To our Jewish viewers, families, friends, and colleagues: we are sorry for the hurt and confusion this has caused. The fact that these abhorrent words came through a character meant to bring joy and safety to children makes it all the more appalling.

At a time when antisemitism is rising, this is all the more disturbing and unnaceptable. Know that we stand with you

Jewish children, families, and communities have always had a home on Sesame Street. And you always will.

The. fucking. End. (not that hard)

(p.s. I am available for hire for your communications needs ;)

Like, I get that lawyers (many of whom were probably Jewish themselves tbh) went full lawyer here, but couldn’t they infuse some love, creativity, and empathy? It all just feels so cold.

Anyway, this cyber-nightmare comes right after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok ALSO went full Mein Kampf this, spewing praise for Hitler and parroting white nationalist talking points because apparently the algorithm is just a Nazi now?

All of this is unfolding while real-world antisemitism is on the rise—like, actual Jews being firebombed, shot, and killed in the U.S.—and somehow it’s the puppets and robots making headlines.

Somebody please unplug us from this simulation.

***