Our family recently spent two weeks in the U.S. So, you’re probably wondering whether we experienced any of the post-October 7 surge in antisemitism that’s been extensively reported in the news, including in my own columns.

We were in fact accosted in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t from the pro-Hamas crowd. Rather, it was three young Chabad men dressed up as clowns who decided I needed to put on tefillin right then and there as I was walking purposefully towards an Apple Store.

I tried to stay focused on my goal – an appointment to try out the new Apple Vision Pro augmented reality goggles – but the Chabadniks followed me for blocks, their calls increasing in intensity.

“Come on,” the ringleader cajoled. “It’s Purim, after all. When was the last time you laid tefillin?”

I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to be late, as I tried to put some social distance between us.

I should have been happy it was fellow Jews doing the cajoling – I wasn’t looking forward to spending time on a long-delayed vacation (originally scheduled for October 10, canceled for obvious reasons) fighting off a bunch of antisemitic, Israel-as-colonial-apartheid state protesters at every turn.

Indeed, we had plenty of reason to worry that might be the case.

Our son, Aviv, is roommates with Jonathan Telsin, whose stories I’ve shared previously about the horrific events Israeli and Jewish students studying at The New School in Manhattan have been experiencing since the start of the war in Gaza. 

Aviv hasn’t been spared, either.

Just a week before we arrived, a group of pro-Hamas students essentially broke into The New School, attempting to shut down a talk by an IDF soldier who had been invited to relate what he had seen fighting in the Strip. The protesters proceeded to bang on the walls of the classroom where the lecture was taking place, screaming racist epithets while campus security stood by and did nothing.

When the Jewish students, including Aviv and Jonathan, eventually left the classroom, the antisemites were waiting for them in the hallway. In a scene that could have been lifted straight out of a script for Game of Thrones, the Jews were forced to pass a gauntlet of masked protesters yelling such slurs as, “How does it feel to be complicit in genocide?” and “How many did you murder today?”

As Aviv left the building, a protester followed him for a good five minutes, videotaping him while repeatedly taunting him as a “baby killer.” 

Would Aviv be “doxed” with his name shared across antisemitic networks?

So, when Aviv began publicizing his senior recital, which featured mostly Israeli jazz musicians with noticeably Hebrew names, I was concerned the protesters could have identified him and were now planning a new rally outside the concert hall.

They didn’t and the concert proceeded smoothly. Indeed, other than posters we saw on seemingly every corner bodega in Brooklyn calling to “Free Palestine,” we didn’t run into any haters ourselves.

Were we just lucky or has the rising antisemitism that’s stayed at the top of the Jewish headlines for the past six months been overstated?

The latter seems a stretch. 

Just last week, for example, a study conducted by the Online Hate Prevention Institute found that incidents of antisemitism between October 21, 2023, two weeks after the Hamas massacre, and February 8, 2024, increased to 145 a day, compared with just 27 a day in the same period the previous a year. 

Franklin Foer’s viral essay in The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending” further raised the alarm.

We actually thought we were in for a confrontation the week before when we were in California. A group of protesters stood outside the entrance to the Los Angeles Zoo with placards reading “Free…” 

I braced myself for the now familiar second part of the exclamation, but it read “Billy,” and the protesters’ ire was focused on the zookeepers who, they claimed, were refusing to repatriate an Asian elephant named Billy.

Indeed, California seemed as bucolic as ever, at least in the places where we visited family: La Jolla, Los Angeles and Santa Rosa, the latter where my 92-year-old mother lives. 

While family was curious about life in Israel, about politics, war and the fate of the hostages, they mostly refrained from peppering us with questions; our time was focused on introducing two-year-old Ilai and three-month-old Roni to their great-grandparents in California.

Aviv’s concert was fantastic (I know, I’m biased). He chose five original tunes and two covers. The closing number was an arrangement of Guy Mazig’s “If You Would Only Talk.” A young Israeli singer, also studying in the jazz program at The New School, Noa Havakook, joined Aviv’s ensemble on stage and began crooning – in Hebrew.

“It was important to me to include an Israeli song to symbolize my identity during this time,” Aviv told me afterward.

It was one of the few times I’d heard Hebrew on the trip. And I hadn’t heard any Israeli music since we flew out of Ben-Gurion airport. I was deeply moved, both from the beautiful melody, which was more pop than bop, and Noa’s soaring vocals, which reminded me why we live in Israel and how connected to this place I feel.

Afterward, my wife, Jody, commented that it was brave for Aviv to include a song in Hebrew, given the current environment. What a sad statement – that owning one’s Israeli identity abroad, rather than hiding outward Jewish symbols and language, has been transformed into an act of defiance rather than what it should be – a simple expression of pride.

I first wrote about our U.S. trip for The Jerusalem Post.

Picture from the Brooklyn bodega – credit: Brian Blum.

“Betrayal.” That’s how Shimrit Meir, who served as a senior advisor to prime minister Naftali Bennett, described her feelings following the surge of antisemitic speeches, letters, marches and violence that has erupted around the world in the aftermath of the October 7 “Black Sabbath” attack in Israel.

Meir, who was interviewed on the Unholy: Two Jews on the News podcast, was under no illusions that the empathy towards Israel displayed by the world immediately following Hamas’s atrocities would last once the IDF began pounding the Gaza Strip.

Still, she didn’t expect the embrace to be so brief.

Hamas’s attack was, after all, an attack unlike any other, with the terrorists documenting their pogrom on cell phones and GoPros and uploading it to the Internet in real time. If the Nazis had modern technology, I’m not sure they would have the audacity to live stream their atrocities; they worked hard to conceal their genocide. 

But there’s no denying what Hamas perpetrated on Simchat Torah – it’s all out there for anyone with a strong stomach to see.

But deny it is exactly what has been happening.

From Queen Rania of Jordan, who told CNN there’s “no evidence” that Hamas murdered babies and children, to pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S. and Europe who place the blame entirely on the Israeli side. 

A poll conducted by CAPS/Harris found that 32% of young adults 18-to-24-years-old do not believe Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis. Nearly half of the same age group remain convinced that it was an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Ahli Hospital, despite evidence from multiple sources pointing to a misfired rocket from Gaza itself.

The result has been quick and heartbreaking: On campuses across the U.S., Jews are feeling unsafe.

Israeli poet Maya Tenet Dayan was in San Diego for a teaching residency. 

“I don’t like being an Israeli in California right now,” she wrote in Haaretz. “I feel an existential threat. I’m frightened to say where I come from. I’m frightened that someone will hear my children speaking Hebrew in the street. Most of the time, I’m helpless, because how do you even begin to explain? I talk with people who have no idea where Israel is on the map yet their opinion on it is unshakable.”

“What shocked me,” political commentator Andrew Sullivan added, “was the vivid and genuine expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers — even as their atrocities were in front of our eyes. That requires real ideological commitment, to repress every human impulse of empathy.”

What has happened to humanity’s moral compass? Why is it so hard for people to condemn outright evil when it comes to the Jews, to say clearly, as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris did, “There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.”

The explanation lies in “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” Shany Mor, a lecturer at Reichman University in Herzliya, wrote in The Wall Street Journal. 

Cognitive dissonance occurs when what one experiences in the real-world conflicts with a long-held internal belief. It’s unpleasant, so people try to minimize it, Mor explained.

Cognitive dissonance reduction, then, is “the process by which people reconcile new information that contradicts their firmly held priors. The result is an ostensibly coherent system of thought.”

By applying cognitive dissonance reduction, politicians, journalists and everyday antisemites are able to ignore the fact “that Hamas’s belligerence is the cause [not the consequence] of Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” Mor wrote.

So, if missiles are being fired and innocent civilians are abducted, if Israel is, according to anti-Zionist activists, the epitome of evil, then the attacks must be Israel’s fault, not the Palestinians’, who are denied even a modicum of agency.

“Hamas’s gruesome attack poses a threat to this worldview, and the only way to resolve it is by heightening Israel’s imagined malevolence. The terrorist atrocities don’t trigger a recoiling from the cause in whose name they were carried out; they lead to an even greater revulsion at the victim,” Mor explained.

Moreover, Mor continued, “If the only thing that can explain a Palestinian action is Israeli ‘evil,’ then Israel’s opponents have to imagine a level of Jewish evil commensurate with what Hamas did—shooting children in front of their parents, setting houses on fire with residents inside, raping women.

When it is forbidden to criticize murderers or the society that created them, Mor concluded, “all that is left is to defame the victims.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid wants to ask the terrorist-supporting global far-left, “Do your feelings exempt you from knowing the facts? Do you know, for example, that Hamas doesn’t support a two-state solution? They don’t even want to free Palestine. And what about LGBT people? Do you really not care that the people you’re supporting hang gays?”

Logic, it seems, is unable to counter the intense urgency to reduce cognitive dissonance. 

Shalom Hartman Institute fellow Dr. Micah Goodman says that Israelis’ burning desire for acceptance helps fuel the problem. 

“We want love and we want fear,” Goodman explained. “We want love from the West. We want fear from the Middle East” to restore deterrence against our enemies. 

The problem is that it’s a zero-sum game. “Everything that we are going to do to restore the fear is going to erode the love,” Goodman noted.

What will happen next? Will Israel prevail? Who will govern Gaza once Hamas is gone? Will this lead to a massive shake-up of the governments on both sides – and beyond? 

One thing that is, sadly, all too known is that the theme of Dara Horn’s latest book, The World Loves Dead Jews, is no longer just a catchy title. It’s a reality we tried to ignore, one which we cannot – and should not – have to endure, and yet which the Jewish people, betrayed once again, will continue to bear for eternity.

I first wrote about my feelings of betrayal for The Jerusalem Post.

Image from Shimrit Meir’s profile on X.

“You People” is a disturbing film that hews close to the memes of modern-day woke culture. 

The Netflix movie, which began airing in January, has been savaged by reviewers. Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com called it “a stunning misfire, an assemblage of talent in search of an actual movie.” Wendy Ide at The Guardian called it “frequently excruciating.”

My own take away after subjecting myself to two hours of cinematic torture: This movie plays like a primer on how to be a self-hating Jew in America today.

“You People” depicts a romance between Jewish 35-year-old Ezra, played by Jonah Hill, and Lauren London’s Amira, the Muslim Black woman he initially mistakes for his Uber driver. Their parents, Shelley (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and David Duchovny as Arnold for the Jews, Eddie Murphy (Akbar) and Nia Long (Fatima) for the African-American side, are caricatures who straddle the line between tone-deaf and hateful.

It’s mostly played for laughs and there were a few decent chuckles in the film. But while Murphy’s Louis Farrakhan-worshipping Akbar doesn’t pull any punches in his contention that his daughter should not be going out with a white man (ironically, Lauren London has a Black mother and an Ashkenazi Jewish father), Ezra’sparents are just clueless. It’s not only their awkward attempts at being more woke than their potential machatunim, but about their Jewishness in general.

Which is to say that, other than an opening scene in a synagogue (actually the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles) for Yom Kippur, there are no positive depictments of what it means to be Jewish. Beyond saying,”We’re Jewish,” any actual Jewish content in the form of rituals, holidays or discussions of contemporary Jewish issues are simply missing. Suffice it to say the words “Israel” or “Zionism” are never uttered.

What there is instead is a steady stream of pandering by the Jewish protagonists to position themselves as cool and acceptable to Amira’s family. As Andrew Lapin writes in JTA, “In a modern-day twist, the white liberal family, rather than expressing anxiety over the race of their child’s partner, fetishizes her family instead.” 

The one redeeming scene in “You People” takes place during the initial cringe-worthy meet-cute between thetwo families. When Akbar asks Shelley if she’s “familiar with the work” of Farrakhan, a notorious antisemite, Shelley briefly drops her solicitous smile and quips “Well, I’m familiar with what he said about the Jews.” 

Good for you, Mom, but then Ezra immediately changes the subject – to no avail. The disagreement comes back again in a rip-roaring shriek fest on which community – Black or Jewish – has suffered more oppression. 

“Are you trying to compare the Holocaust with slavery?” Akbar asks menacingly over dinner. 

“Oh, I would never do that,” Shelley recoils, before adding, “Although the Blacks and the Jews have a similar struggle.” 

“Jews were the OG slaves,” Duchovny’s Arnold offers sheepishly, which Murphy’s Akbar dismisses as being 3,500 years too far in the past. 

Arnold doubles down. 

“I don’t have to go back to Egypt. I just go back 75 years. Jews only make up one half of one percent of the world’s population because we were systematically annihilated,” he says. 

That small percentage “seems to be doing pretty good right now,” Akbar shoots back, employing a classic antisemitic trope that jettisons any trauma Jews have suffered for a transactional approach that defines us as no different than the white majority.

“Our people came here with nothing, like everybody else,” Shelley responds, to which Fatima, Amira’s mother, lets loose the conspiracy screed that the Jews came to America “with the money [they] made from the slave trade.”

That inflammatory indictment is never addressed further due to some slapstick hijinks involving a flaming kufi (cap) Akbar received from Farrakhan himself. The denigration is dropped like a hot knish, mustard-side down. 

And then the film reverts to its main message: Jewish apologetics and attempts to prove who’s the most woke. No one defends the Jews again over the next hour and a half. At one point near the film’s end, Shelley asks for forgiveness from Amira and her family “on behalf of all Jewish people.”

“Louis Farrakhan is actually the hero of this movie,” writes Allison Josephs on the Jew in the City website.

As this is a rom-com, we all know that the couple will hit rocky times before the inevitable happy ending. 

I didn’t buy it. 

After so much vitriol has been spilled on screen, and so much ignorance is left unrefuted, the idea of any of these unself-critical leopards changing their spots is as ludicrous as the making of this movie was. 

The film never acknowledges the partnership between Jewish and Black activists marching for civil rights together in the 1960s. Rather, in its ill-conceived attempt at showing how two very different communities could conceivably come together, it achieves the opposite. 

In that sense, “You People” is the ultimate anti-assimilation comedy. Perhaps representatives of the Jewish Agency should show this as an aliyah inducement?

The Jewish Internet has also been up in arms.

“There’s much Jewish apologizing for racism. None for antisemitism,” tweeted David Baddiel, author of “Jews Don’t Count.”

“It’s shameful when the groveling, oblivious, over-woke Jew is the best we can do,” added Israeli media consultant Linda Lovitch.

I’m not saying that all films must have an uplifting moral about loving the other unconditionally – strife and conflict are the propellant for much art – but I disagree with producer Kevin Misher’s assessment that “detailed discussions of antisemitism would have distracted” from the film being a character-driven comedy.

There were certainly characters in “You People.” Comedy, I’m not so sure about.

I first “reviewed” You People in The Jerusalem Post.

The posts in my Facebook feed following the November 1 Israeli election quickly turned apocalyptic – and that’s putting it kindly. 

“Pack your bags, it’s time to go,” wrote one heartbroken friend.

“If you can, leave,” opined another.

I, along with some half the country, was devastated with the results of our fifth election in four years. But there are, in fact, several reasons to be optimistic. 

1. Everything is temporary. Other than a terror attack leading to a loss of life, just about anything in politics can be undone. 

Money for full-time yeshiva learning reduced? Wait, it’s back. Nope, gone again. 

Kashrut reform – we got it. Um, well probably not anymore. 

The Supreme Court is neutered by a Knesset “override clause?” For now, perhaps. But just wait another four years (or less) and, with a new coalition, the law will be reversed.

2. We are in the midst of a Trumpian backlash in Israel. The rise of Donald Trump was a clear backlash to the Barack Obama years, just as Joe Biden’s election was a response to four years of Trump. The ascendency of the far right in Israel today is, similarly, a backlash to the now defunct “government of change.” 

Did voters lurch further to the Right because they agreed with everything Benjamin Netanyahu and his presumed political partners had to say? No. But with the demise of Yamina, moderate religious voters had nowhere else to turn and so, as Carrie Keller-Lynn wrote in The Times of Israel, opted “to hold their noses” and vote for the Religious Zionist Party. 

Has Israel transformed overnight into a racist, homophobic nation? While there are certainly some rotten apples, most Israelis are still kind, helpful and moderate. As Martin Luther King Jr. once quipped, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” 

3. Israel is not alone in its swing to the Right. France, Sweden, the U.K., Hungary, Italy – all over the world, voters have moved steadily to the Right. When Trump was elected president, pundits predicted Americans would emigrate in droves. That didn’t happen, whether out of complacency or a desire to fight.

Frankly, where would you even go at this point? If the backlash hypothesis is true, the United States could be facing its own post-Biden Republican reaction in 2024 (although the results from last week’s midterm elections showed Democrats have more staying power than pollsters forecast).

France’s Emmanuel Macron beat rightist firebrand Marine Le Pen this time, but she still received 41% of the vote (far more than the 11% the Religious Zionist Party got in Israel). Budapest may be one of the world’s most beautiful cities, but Prime Minister Victor Orban’s branding Hungary as “an illiberal democracy” hardly makes it a place to move to.

4. A bogeyman can be a useful foil. Bibi hedges his language in ways only an accomplished politician learns to sublimate. Religious Zionist Party leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, on the other hand, say exactly what they mean. “If they are throwing stones, shoot them,” Ben-Gvir told police officers in Sheikh Jarrah while brandishing his own handgun. But, as Vladimir Lenin once said, “the worse, the better” – that is, it’s only when things seem exceptionally dire that a meaningful uprising can take place. 

If the anti-Bibi block ever wants to win, a polarizing figure might be just what’s needed to scare it into motion. If enough policies are implemented that citizens can’t stomach, a fighting opposition will return to protests outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, stronger than ever. We can’t have the left constantly crying “gevalt” every single election. 

Speaking of which…

5. Losing Meretz may not be such a bad thing. I have nothing against Meretz. Many of my friends and family voted for them. But it seems the party has long since lost relevance, and the annual game of begging the nation to save them, such that they squeak by the electoral threshold, isn’t healthy. 

When a new left-wing party comes to replace the old Meretz, it will need to do more than represent an increasingly small slice of the Israeli population. As Haviv Rettig Gur wrote in The Times of Israel, “the left that just collapsed, in terms of raw political strategy, doesn’t deserve to exist.”

6. A Jewish state comes before a democratic one. Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, noted on Substack that the Left in general tends to eschew terms such as “Jewish” and “Zionist.” Indeed, in one of Yair Lapid’s final campaign videos as prime minister, he used neither term.

“The problem, for me, is that if you translated this video into French and substituted ‘France’ for Israel, Emmanuel Macron could use it in his next campaign,” Gordis wrote. “It’s a lovely video that would work for any modern liberal democracy. But here’s the rub. I never intended to move to any old modern liberal democracy…I came here to live in a Jewish state, a state that, while not imposing religiously on anyone, would be Jewish in manifold ways – culturally, educationally, in values and much more.”

Many moderate Israelis, who are “without question appalled by some things that Ben-Gvir says… just want to know that there is someone in the room reminding everyone that they are in the business of leading a Jewish state,” Gordis added. These voters may or may not want public transportation on Shabbat, but they want “a Jewish voice in government meetings.”

I do, too, although I disagree with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Netanyahu and the haredi parties about the best way to get there. But that day is coming, which is why I insist on remaining optimistic. 

It’s our job now to hasten its arrival.

I first wrote about finding the silver linings in an uncomfortable situation for The Jerusalem Post.

When did we lose the ability to laugh at the linguistic changes coming at us at an ever-increasing pace? 

I had intended to write a column on how some of the language we use these days can be difficult for older folks like me to assimilate. I recall how, in the 1970s, we all could have a chuckle over “political correctness,”whether we were coming from the left, right or somewhere in between.

But when I asked on Facebook for examples of “modern-day euphemisms” that readers felt had perhaps gone too far, I opened a spigot of social media venom that has yet to be closed. To which I feel obligated to say: 

“Guys, you’re taking this all too seriously! I just wanted to have a spot of fun.” 

The trigger for my latest lexical exploration came when I was listening to a podcast during which, in the course of an episode discussing various aspects of parenting, the host never once used the word “mother.” Instead, it was “birthing person.” 

I understand the reasoning: In an age when a trans man may still have the physical equipment to give birth, “mother” may not be an inclusive enough term.

It seems, however, that my age may finally be catching up with me. I’m finding it difficult to close the generation gap. 

I’m not alone in my perturbation.

“What about women who cannot give birth, or who have adopted, fostered or used a surrogate? ‘Birthing person’ excludes them,” wrote several similarly “mature” commentators to my Facebook query.

“It’s best not to label someone at all. Refer to them by function,” another person helpfully offered. So, rather than use “male” or “man,” instead say, “a person who could get testicular cancer.” 

Isn’t this all really a form of kindness, asked Josh, “seeing people as they are and not using labels that render them invisible?” 

Perhaps I protest too much?

But then I read about several developments that had me stretching my euphemistically befuddled brain. Such as the latest pronouncement from WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, that there’s a new gender identity that must be supported – the eunuch – complete with freely chosen castration. 

Or as Andrew Sullivan, host of the popular Dishcast radio program, points out, look at the latest statement from the Human Rights Campaign that one should feel free to identify however one wishes, even if that’s as a “tree” or a “fish.”

Whether you’re sniggering sympathetically or stifling simmering outrage, politically correct euphemisms have always been designed to obfuscate the uncomfortable realities lurking underneath. 

That’s how “double mastectomy” becomes “top surgery” or a “chest-masculinization” procedure. It’s how what was once called a “sex change” is now a “gender-confirming” operation.

Modern age euphemisms are not exclusive to gender issues. 

“War” gets repositioned as a “campaign or an “intervention.” (Russia is particularly guilty of weaponizing this euphemism, although Israel doesn’t escape notice, either.)

“Healthy” could be construed a microaggression for someone who’s not. So, let’s replace it, some suggest, with “temporarily abled.” (Being “temporarily cancer free” isn’t particularly reassuring.)

“Cultural appropriation” may be the grandfather of 21st century newspeak. What was once a laudable goal – the melting pot, where a heady mix of cultures leads to all kinds of delightful instances of “fusion,” from food to art – has been transformed into an approbation. 

In 2016 I wrote about an Oberlin College student who criticized campus food services for preparing a Vietnamese banh mi sandwich with ciabatta bread instead of a baguette and coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables. 

There was also the the cancelation of a longstanding yoga class taught by a non-Indian woman at the University of Ottawa. The instructor, Jennifer Scharf, who had been offering the class for free for seven years, offered to rename it “mindful stretching.” 

Her proposal was rejected.

U.S. college campuses have seen their share of anti-Israel protests over the years. But don’t call it antisemitism. Anti-Zionism is now the “kosher” alternative for Jew haters who don’t want to be called out on their bigotry and racism.

To wit: a number of student groups at UC Berkeley’s School of Law passed a bylaw banning “Zionist” speakers from its events on campus. Beyond the quad, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib warned that support for Israel is antithetical to being “progressive.” To which Representative Ritchie Torres of New York tweeted, “There is nothing progressive about advocating the end of Israel.”

Find “pedophiles” upsetting? Don’t worry, that’s been cleaned up – they’re now “minor attracted persons.”

A program for older adults was once phased out due to “natural disenrollment.” That is, the participants died.

To be fair, I’ve not been immune to political correctness. I once posed for a picture in front of a poster that read “Power to the Sandinistas” during my own studies at Oberlin. I doubt I had any knowledge of what the Sandinistas were all about (they were the socialist rulers of Nicaragua who battled the U.S.-backed Contras in the early 1980s).

Now, before you “OK Boomer me” for being hopelessly out of touch, can we accept that the pace and breadth of these changes in language are coming too fast for my and many of my peers’ set-in-our-ways, middle aged brains to grok?

We want to be upstanding, woke citizens of the world, but maybe we’ll have to settle for something more achievable: To simply be a good person struggling to make sense of a rapidly radicalizing world, with mild chortles where appropriate.

Here’s one change I think we can all get behind: Renaming “mail man” as “person person.” (OK, seriously, that would be “postal carrier.”)

It’s at least worth a sly grin.

I first wrote about woke euphemisms for The Jerusalem Post.

Saturday Night Live took on “woke jeans” in this bit.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

El Rancho Navarro is an unlikely name for a Jewish summer camp. It’s not a well-known brand like Ramah, but it’s nevertheless where I spent several formative Julys in the early 1970s. In many ways, I attribute the Zionism I came to embrace later in life to my summers at El Rancho.

I hadn’t been back to my camp, located outside the tiny town of Philo, Calif. in picturesque Mendocino County, for nearly 50 years until a recent visit to the United States when I was invited by Bob Wilms to learn more about The Land, the latest incarnation of the El Rancho property.

Instead of bunk beds in rickety cabins, arts and crafts in the afternoon, and horseback riding on good ‘ol Fred through the lush redwoods, Wilms has transformed El Rancho into a 162-acre rustic meditation, yoga and ecological retreat center.

There are no more horses at The Land; the barn has been turned into a hybrid co-working space and yoga studio with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the old paddock. 

The main dining hall, where the counselors forced us to take oversized salt pills with our oatmeal for breakfast, looks mostly the same with the addition of an impressive brick fireplace. 

The flagpole where we gathered every morning to pledge allegiance is gone, as is the small room where Audrey, the nurse’s daughter who I had a fifth-grade crush on, and I used to play top-40 records while working on the camp newspaper – it’s now a tasteful gym stocked with exercise equipment. 

I wasn’t able to enter any of the cabins (they were fully occupied when I visited), but photos on The Land’s website reveal luxurious beds with nary a bunk in sight. 

The transformation of bucolic El Rancho to opulent environmentalism was jarring at first to my nostalgic eyes but, as Bob showed me around, I began to see the logic of repurposing a no-longer-used space. 

It’s something we see in Israel as well. Indeed, in the spirit of the current season of physical and spiritual renewal, here are a few of my favorite such projects in my hometown of Jerusalem. (This is by no means an exhaustive list and there are similar projects outside of the city. Feel free to add your own repurposings in the comments online or write a letter to the editor.)

Train Track Park. When the train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem stopped running in 1998 to the former station in the German Colony, the tracks from there to the new station in Malcha were fenced off, becoming an eyesore of trash, weeds and stray cats. The tracks are now a seven-kilometer, wonderfully landscaped park, similar to the High Line in New York City, with a popular parallel bike path. The old station has become the Tahana HaRishona – a shopping, dining and entertainment complex. Take the train to the other end, and you’ll find the original station near Jaffa has been similarly transformed, as have some of the nearby tracks.

The Clal Building. Intended to be Jerusalem’s most state-of-the-art mall when it was built in the early 1970s, the Clal Building instead gained an unsavory reputation with its incomprehensible Escher-like layout, a miserable lack of heating in the winter, and a skylight that collected grime and bird droppings. It’s still an ugly monstrosity – except for the top floor, which has been transformed by the Muslala organization into an eco-friendly center teaching visitors about urban farming, sustainability, and renewal. Concerts and events are held on Muslala’s spacious outdoor patio. You can even pitch a tent. There are plans afoot to convert the rest of the Clal Building into “The Jerusalem Home for NGOs.”

Hansen House. Would you visit a leper asylum to see an exhibit of modern art? Put aside your misgivings, as Jerusalem’s Hansen House, a former home for lepers established in 1897, is now an interdisciplinary cultural center and branch of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. A variety of permanent and changing exhibits dot the space; a two-story multi-screen video installation is on display until November. There’s a small museum depicting the original asylum, as well as the scrumptious Offaimme Café which spotlights sustainable organic food.

HaMiffal. The Lorenzo-Serafin House on central Jerusalem’s Agron Street was abandoned and dilapidated when the art collective “Empty House” essentially squatted inside the building. The Jerusalem Foundation got behind the group and, today, HaMiffal – “the factory” in Hebrew” – is a cultural and arts center which also offers a trendy co-working space and café. The Foundation describes the whole space “as a massive work of art” which, while still quite rough around the edges, provides opportunities for over 200 local artists.

Gazelle Valley. This urban oasis was almost lost to real estate developers, who at one point surreptitiously moved tractors and other equipment into the area. The environmental activists eventually prevailed, quashing plans to build 1,400 apartments, and transforming what was once agricultural land belonging to two nearby kibbutzim into a preserve for a family of Jerusalem gazelles. In 2015, the lovely 64-acre Gazelle Valley opened, complete with bird watching huts, picnic areas and guided tours for local school children. The only downside: You can’t come with your dog as they could scare – and chase – the gazelles, who roam freely (this is no zoo). 

I’m glad that Bob Wilms has taken such good care of El Rancho Navarro and preserved its historical cabins and lands rather than constructing fancy condos. And now, all that could be yours, too: Wilms is in the process of selling the property in order to expand the ecological principles he and his staff have refined to rehabilitating inmates in prison. (More at https://unconditionalfreedom.org/)

I first wrote about The Land and El Rancho Navarro in The Jerusalem Post.

When I was a teenager growing up in the 1970s, every New Year’s Day, my father, my brother and I would gather together in our suburban San Francisco Bay Area home to make predictions about what the coming year might bring. We did this on the secular New Year. However, just prior to this year’s Rosh Hashana, I discovered, sequestered in my diary, two envelopes with predictions for 1973 and 1974.

As I dove deep into my formative years, I was surprised by how prescient we were (at times) and how off base we were (most of the time). 

As we look ahead to the Hebrew year 5783, I present this nostalgic blast from the past that also serves as a small window into the issues that interested me long ago. Keep in mind that this was from before I had developed a solid Zionist identity. Still, there were a couple of Israel and Jewish nuggets in there.

Vietnam. With the war still raging and with me nearly a teenager already anticipating turning 18, we were all understandably concerned about the draft. I predicted selective service would end in 1973. (Wishful thinking?) My brother, who had a few more years to go before he too hit 18, didn’t agree. The U.S. army did in fact go volunteer in June 1973, although the Vietnam War didn’t end until 1975. (And then we moved to Israel in 1994 where all three kids of ours were eventually drafted!)

Presidential troubles. We all predicted bad things for then-President Nixon. Two of us said he’d resign, while one of us added he’d be impeached before he resigned (and then would be pardoned). I guess we all got points for that one.

Not so happy days. TV occupied an inordinate amount of our thinking (we were ‘70s pre-teens, after all.) When Happy Days was announced, my brother and I both thought it would flop. It was, as we now know, a massive hit; the turning point episode where Fonzie water skis over a shark – serving as the basis for the pop culture idiom “that show jumped the shark” – wouldn’t air until 1976.

Pop culture prediction. My brother was a rabid Hobbit fan and he predicted that J.R.R. Tolkien would come out with a new book in 1973. My father said Tolkien would die. They were both right, sort of: Tolkien passed away in September that year but his book, Bilbo’s Last Song, was published posthumously in 1974. And with the new Rings of Power series on Amazon Prime, Tolkien is very much with us today.

Assassinations. Turning from the mundane to the morbid: I predicted there would be two political assassinations in 1973, but I didn’t specify where and who. Basque separatists murdered Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco that year, although I probably wasn’t worldly enough back then to have taken notice of such international intrigue. More in our wheelbarrow: 1973 was also the year that Israeli forces snuck into Beirut and killed three PFLP operatives.

Yom Kippur War. We didn’t know there would be war in the Middle East when we sat down in January 1973 to work on our list. But in our predictions for 1974, my father, brother and I all posited there would be another war. (Thankfully, this time we were wrong.)

Problems at the pump. The price of gas was soaring even before the Arab oil embargo was launched in October 1973. I predicted gas would hit a whopping 41 cents a gallon in 1973 and 75 cents a gallon in 1974. (Ah, we were so innocent back then.) In our 1974 predictions, I went out on a limb and predicted the embargo would ultimately lead to prices jumping to $5.65 a gallon. I was right…just 40 years too early!

Inflation. The cost of gas prompted further worry about rising prices, which were creeping up fast in the years before 1973, with all of us predicting inflation would continue. And continue it did, reaching 8.8% in 1973, which, coincidentally, is pretty much the same as it is in the U.S. now.

Terror in the skies. It was easy in the early 1970s to glom onto doom and gloom. My brother and I predicted a stupendous plane hijacking with many dead. (Sadly, this time we were correct: Palestinian terrorists attacked a Pan Am flight at Rome’s main airport; 30 people perished.) 

Wankel say what? We were strangely obsessed with Mazda’s Wankel Rotary Engine, an alternative to standard piston engines, and were convinced that another carmaker would adopt the technology. But only Mazda got behind the Wankel and the spunky design met a sputtering end in 2012.

Famous deaths. My father imagined that China’s Mao Zedung would die in 1973. He hung on until 1976. We were even farther off about Frank Sinatra, whose death we predicted – he lived another 25 years. 

Beatles reunion. I desperately wanted to see the Fab Four reunited and predicted at least three of the Beatles would get back together and record an album that year. It took John Lennon’s death in 1980 to propel the remaining Beatles to record and release “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in 1996. 

Pimple popper. This prediction was about as pedestrian as you can get, although it must have been pretty important to me at the time: 1973 would be the year my acne would finally clear up, I confidently proclaimed. Unfortunately, it would take another five years for my pimples to turn into plowhshares.

Battle of the bulge. Finally, in a moment of pure preteen snark, I predicted my brother would gain five pounds that year. My brother’s terse rejoinder: “Brian is wrong.” 

I first shared my predictions at The Jerusalem Post.

On the day we took our youngest son, Aviv, to Ben-Gurion Airport to begin his new life as a music student in New York, we couldn’t stop crying. 

It’s not that we think he’s making some mistake. On the contrary: This is an amazing opportunity to advance his career, made possible by a generous 82% scholarship from the school.

Still, we are grappling with perhaps the most substantial change in our marriage since we started having kids: We are now officially empty nesters. The parenting part of our journey together is now over.

Well, hardly.

We still have our other two kids, their partners and our nine-month-old grandson living nearby. And heading to an out-of-town college is not like it was when we left home some 40 years ago.

Back then, there were no cell phones, no WhatsApp or FaceTime or Zoom. Once you were out of the house – usually at age 18 – you were gone. Maybe you’d talk to your family once every few weeks or see them a couple times a year. 

Today we’re in touch daily. 

Aviv needs advice on a mattress to order? Send a screenshot from the Casper website. 

Do those new Hokas look snazzy? WhatsApp a photo while still in the shoe store.

Still, it’s not the same. Aviv lived at home for his entire 24 years, even commuting to Tel Aviv for the army, school and gigs.

Our time together was intensified when Covid came calling and we stopped having guests. We probably had hundreds of Shabbat meals just the three of us. 

Aviv also had the opportunity to “witness” my wife, Jody, and me at our best…and our worst. If we got into a tiff, he was there to contain us, even if it was just the fact that he was present in the house.

What would it be like now without him at home?

“I tell couples that nowadays most people have at least three marriages – sometimes to the same person, sometimes not,” my therapist told me. “There’s the initial short marriage; the young couple on honeymoon. Then there are the many years of raising children. Now there’s the empty-nest period. For each, you need to renegotiate your relationship.” 

Moreover, for every growth, there is a “necessary loss,” writes Judith Viorst in her book of the same name. Becoming a parent means you lose a certain amount of intimacy. Getting married implies giving up on the ability to play the field (if that’s something you in fact wanted). 

Aviv’s New York sojourn will be a period of incredible growth, too, but we can’t deny the feelings of loss and longing.

My friend Fern Reiss wrote about the strangeness of her own empty-nest status in the Huffington Post. Fern notes that, while she anticipated the day when the house would be quieter and “we could count on the brie cheese still being in the refrigerator when we looked,” the quiet was too intense. “It permeated everything. When I saw the brie cheese still untouched, it made me feel wistful, rather than victorious.”

Fern touches on something empty nesters frequently fret about: Would conversations with her husband “wither into feeble reminisces about [their] children’s past?”

I’d been thinking about that, too. 

Would Jody and I have what to talk about? Or would silence consume our Shabbat meals when the kids weren’t around?

That was clearly coming more from fear than reality. 

After all, Jody and I cherish our alone time together, whether that’s in town, eating at a new restaurant, hiking or visiting an art exhibit, or on an exotic vacation overseas. We have the skills and tools to handle the empty nest. 

There are positive changes, as well.

The house is already tidier, there are less clothes to wash, we can talk loudly without worrying we’ll wake our sleeping son, there are no fights over who finished off the last rice milk. We can have sex with the bedroom door open.

There are renovations to do, painting that’s gone neglected for years. Maybe we’ll entertain more, even have overnight guests.

And then, of course, there’s travel, which becomes easier when there’s no one at home to take care of. Unless a particularly virulent new Covid variant shuts the world down again, there are so many places on our bucket list – including Manhattan to visit Aviv.

“The motto for the current generation of empty nesters is carpe diem,” writes Andrea Petersen in The Wall Street Journal. “Some empty nesters are treating this period as a fleeting window of freedom before…health issues arise [or] the kids move back in.”

Petersen cites Karen Fingerman, a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, who notes that, after they get through the transition, “a couple’s shared connection gets stronger, relationships with adult children improve and parents develop new interests.”

Christie Mellor, author of Fun Without Dick and Jane: Your Guide to a Delightfully Empty Nest advises parents to revel in their new role, watching movies until 4 am or eating cereal for dinner. “You need to embrace your empty nest and not wallow in your misery.” 

As I write this, it’s only been a week since Aviv left but we’re already starting to come out of our “grief.” I mean, it’s not like someone died. Aviv is off on the adventure of his life and, even if we can’t always witness it in person, we eagerly look forward to every new WhatsApp, every jam session video, and all the personal and professional growth that will undoubtedly come his way.

I first wrote about becoming an empty nester for The Jerusalem Post.

Twenty years ago, on July 31, 2002, our cousin Marla Bennett was killed in a suicide bombing at Hebrew University. Marla had just sat down to lunch following her Hebrew ulpan studies when a terrorist detonated the bomb he had planted in a backpack at an adjoining table. Seven people were killed in the blast. Marla was just 24.

Marla and our family became very close during the years she lived in Israel. Telling our children about her death was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do.

I wanted to write something to commemorate Marla’s death on this grim milestone. I could have written about her funeral, which attracted 1,500 people in San Diego. Or the coverage in the San Diego Jewish Press Heritage, which ran for 13 painful pages.

I could have spoken about how Marla and her fiancé Michael fell in love at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, just like my wife, Jody, and I did many years earlier. 

But perhaps the most powerful part of Marla’s story is not the past but the future – specifically, all the babies who have been named after her. Linda Bennett, Marla’s mother, told me that there have been at least 25 children with some version of an “M” name.

Marla was Amanda Pogany’s best friend in Israel (although there were many who claimed Marla as their best friend). “It was a rare kind of friendship; the kind that, as soon as you meet, you can’t actually remember what your life was like before,” Amanda recalled.

When Amanda and her husband Aaron’s first daughter was born, they named her Meira (Maisie in English). “Meira means one who illuminates, a perfect reflection of who Marla was,” Amanda told me.

Eileen Katz named her daughter Ellie Miriam. (Marla’s Hebrew name was Miriam.). Marla and Eileen knew each other from the USY youth movement. Like Marla, seven-year-old Miriam today “is kind, empathetic, an eager participant and a good friend to everyone,” Eileen said. 

Rebecca Birken Yussman lived with Marla in the “Berkeley Bayit” in the late 1990s and also named her daughter Miriam after Marla, “one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met.” As for her own Miriam, “if she’s your friend, she’ll do anything for you – just like Marla.”

Adam Arenson knew Marla from as far back as pre-school. Adam referred to Marla as “a professional friend,” someone who was cherished “because you know she would take your call or respond to your email, whenever, wherever.”

Adam named his daughter Maddie, which is derived from “migdal or tower. Marla was a towering presence among all who knew her – for her openness, her dedication, her sense of loving life.”

Barri Worth Girvan’s four-year-old daughter Mila was named after Marla, who was Barri’s camp counselor and was “like an older sister to me, someone I always looked up to, so much so that one summer I earned the nickname M.I.T. (Marla in Training),” Barri joked. “Marla had a radiant smile [and Mila] already lights up our lives – and my camera photo stream!”

Jessica Rosenberg shared with me about her 14-year-old daughter Molly who, like Marla, “is intellectually curious, conscientious, generous and silly. She also makes a pretty excellent rainbow challah – much like Marla did!” Jessica reminded me that Marla’s email was marlaann@cheerful.com, a fitting address given that she was “always up, always positive and with a laugh that was contagious.”

Marla’s namesakes are not all girls. 

Deborah Bock Schuldenfrei wrote to tell me that her oldest son, Heshel Max, was named after Marla. What reminds Deborah most about Marla is that Max “is so remarkably kind. He cares so much about his cosmic connection to Mar and internalizes the blessing of her name in his own identity.”

Justin Radell also has a son named Max. Justin and Marla met during Marla’s freshman year. “We would walk to Hillel together on Friday nights,” Justin said. “I became more connected to Judaism during college and Marla was a big part of that.”

The last person I spoke with for this piece was Maytal Lefkowitz – not a parent but one of the children who was named after Marla by her parents Emma and Eric. Bearing an “M” name “comes with huge responsibility,” she told me. “I was named after someone who had tremendous impact on so many people’s lives.”

There were four pillars to Marla’s life, Maytal explained. “Marla believed in Israel. She believed in education. She believed in the Jewish people. And she believed in her friends and family.”

Maytal has lived up to Marla’s ideals in many ways. She is the Far West Regional Social Action and Tikkun Olam vice president for her USY chapter. She regularly volunteers at a local food bank and, like Marla, is committed to Jewish summer camp – indeed, when we spoke, Maytal was in Israel at the Ramah summer seminar. 

Before she died, Marla wrote an essay for the Avi Chai Foundation.

“I’ve been living in Israel for over a year and a half now and my favorite thing to do here is go to the grocery store,” she shared. “I know, not the most exciting response, but going shopping, as well as picking up my dry cleaning, standing in long lines at the bank, and waiting with the hungry mob at the bakery, means that I live here. I am not a tourist. I deal with Israel and all of its complexities, confusion, joy and pain every single day. And I love it.”

We love you, Marla. We will never forget you – and neither will all the Miriams, Maytals, Meiras, Maddies and Maxes who carry on your legacy.

Thanks to the members of the “Missing Marla” Facebook group for your many contributions to this article.

The legacy of Marla’s babies first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

American social psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University Jonathan Haidt published an alarming article in the Atlantic magazine earlier this year that has since gone viral. 

In the piece, Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, he asked provocatively: Is social media compatible with democracy? His somber conclusion: Probably not.

Dr. Micah Goodman, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and author most recently of The Wondering Jew, thinks he has a solution. And it’s taken straight out of Jewish tradition. 

We all need to do a better job at “living Talmudically,” he said during a webinar discussion with Haidt sponsored by Hartman.

In his Atlantic article, Haidt described the impact of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on democracy by invoking the metaphor of the Tower of Babel. 

Hubris! God declared, before destroying the tower and “confusing their language so that they may not understand each other.”

“That’s the curse of Babel,” Haidt explained during the webinar. “You live in this modern city, the tower comes down, and you can’t even talk to the people next to you. In the world today, our technology has fragmented our ability to communicate. Ironically, the more connected we are, the more difficult it becomes to share a common story.”

The issue really took hold in 2009 when Facebook added the “like” button and Twitter debuted “retweets.” If, before then, social media was about sharing pictures of your kids, after that it was “all about ‘performing’ to get more engagement,” Haidt said.

And what gets the most engagement? Anger. Fights. Entrenched positions

Social media users have become adept “at putting on performances and managing their personal brand—activities that might impress others but that do not deepen friendships,” Haidt lamented.

By 2014, college campus culture was in the throes of change, “so that we became afraid of saying anything, lest you be publicly shamed and maybe fired,” Haidt noted. When Gen Z began to graduate, “they took those norms into journalism and the arts. So, you see the use of social media to destroy people. We call that cancel culture.” 

The result is “a political and moral homogeneity that leads to structural stupidity,” he concluded. “If people are afraid to say, ‘wait a second, I think that’s wrong’ or ‘here’s some evidence against this or that view,’ then we lose dissent and stupid ideas get elevated. When our institutions also become structurally stupid, our society collapses. We cannot have a liberal democracy without strong institutions.”

Responding to Haidt in the webinar, Goodman blamed our contemporary social pickle on “the law of unintended consequences where, instead of being radically connected, we’ve become radically separated.”

Goodman compared what’s happening today in the “digital revolution” with a previous revolution. “If you were able to ask the entrepreneurs living in London during the industrial revolution if building a steam engine was a good idea, they’d have no clue that, 200 years later, the unintended consequences would lead to global warming and climate change.”

Fast food is a similar story. “French fries are very tasty. They’re cheap and fast,” Goodman exuded. “And now you see a crisis in health in the U.S., with rates of diabetes and obesity soaring.”

What are the unintended consequences of the digital revolution? “Political polarization,” Goodman said. “The only difference is that, because everything is so fast these days, it’s only taken us 10 years to see we’re all going crazy.”

The answers, according to Goodman, lie in the Talmud.

“The Talmud is an ongoing argument,” Goodman said. Unlike most other legal codes which focus on the finalized law, “the Talmud erased the conclusions and canonized the arguments!”

This can be seen most evocatively in the inclusion of opinions from both the houses of Hillel and Shamai. “When we study Talmud, we’re obligated to learn about ideas we don’t live by,” Goodman explained. 

In that sense, the Talmud is essentially a metaphor for dialogue, for hearing opinions we may not agree with, for the sake of unity. 

“Jews are expected to know the opinion of Abaye, but to uphold the opinion of Rava; to study the positions of Shammai but live according to the positions of Hillel,” Goodman wrote in the article, Our Technology Sickness and How to Heal it.

The problem with social media,” Goodman said, is that “it is shrinking our mind to the size of our opinions. And that is an anti-Talmudic world.”

I experienced a dose of social media-powered toxic discourse firsthand recently when reading through the hundreds of comments on my article about puberty blocks and trans teens. Half the posts praised my arguments; the rest were largely vitriolic.

The comment that upset me most was the insinuation that I had no right to write about this topic because I had no skin in the game.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

The inability – on both sides – to seriously entertain an opposing viewpoint, or to express an opinion without resorting to insults, is exactly what’s tearing society apart. 

Unfortunately, this is not one of those columns where I end with a bit of feel-good advice on how to solve a vexing problem. Yes, we would do better if we could all “live Talmudically,” as Goodman exhorts. I’m just not sure how we get there – or if we even can. 

Let’s just hope, if there’s another flood, metaphorical or real, the survivors on the next “ark” will have the foresight to pack a copy of the Talmud with them.

I first wrote about structural stupidity and the Talmud in The Jerusalem Post.