“OK, but what is it that ‘nobody wants’?” by Caroline Rothstein

Essay

OK, I’m chiming in. But know that I’m not the first one to say something. There was Elizabeth Karpen in Hey Alma, who rocked an excellent breakdown of “the Jewish witch vs. the shiksa goddess” trope; Rabbi Denise Handlarski—also Hey Alma—who tenderly shared her own experience as a rabbi in an interfaith marriage, and says, while she “appreciated this realistic portrayal…it also saddened” her; and Jessica Grose wrote in the New York Times that, “The show seems to have been beamed in from the past century in both its depiction of Jew-gentile relations and also its gender politics.” And, if your group chats or IRL convos with your favs have been like mine the past weeks, your comms are also...

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“Beyond Your Peripheral Vision” by Caroline Rothstein

Essay

There’s a lot of shit I didn’t have on my 2024 Bingo card. In every regard. On the personal tip, one was reconnecting with a friend I never thought I’d talk to again. But we’ll get to that. First, a close second, was finding myself at 10:00 p.m. on a Monday in early June, days after my 41st birthday, listening to Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors” on repeat. This shouldn’t seem surprising since I once sat at my desk in my dorm room at boarding school in Switzerland my senior year of high school listening to the track on CD over and over on my miniature boombox in a pale blue tube top from Bebe. And then again, many, many more...

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“Driving Home” (Chapter 1) by Caroline Rothstein

Book excerpt

Chapter 1. Augusta. I have never known church. Church is what the Christians and the Catholics do. Church is what is allegedly separated from the state. Church is the overarching metaphor for what it means to feel and see god. But I have known god. I have long felt some semblance of divinity scorching through my veins. I know I have a soul. I know I have felt the presence of the dead. I know that it was god—or G-d, as I like to call it—who had something to do with my making it back to Chicago from Philadelphia on a Sunday evening the day my brother was dying in a hospital bed. My father taught me this when I...

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“Surrendering to the Flow” by Caroline Rothstein

Essay

Set I: For the past 20 years, whenever I hear Phish’s “Wading in the Velvet Sea”—whether live or listening on my own—I am immediately brought back to August 15, 2004, when Phish—an American rock band with a maniacal following, of which I am a part—played a weekend festival in Coventry, Vermont. It was supposed to be their last show of all time having announced their break-up that May (spoiler alert: they got back together in 2009 and have been raging since). But this summer Sunday in 2004, when we still think we are at the end of our journey, after the first song of the second of three sets, keyboardist Page McConnell begins the opening chords of “Wading in a...

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“Surviving Survival” by Caroline Rothstein

Essay

I have been thinking about anti-carceral feminism. About how I am a survivor of multiple accounts of sexual assault. About how I am a Jew. How in these two seemingly unrelated things, they are still interconnected, not only because both things are happening within my same body, but because both involve and include an experience of being fractured and disembodied. So I have been thinking—especially of late—about this anti-carceral approach to accountability. As a survivor of sexual assault, my body has been many times disembodied without my consent. As a Jew—even before I was born—my body was set to inherit from generation to generation—l’dor v’dor—a plethora of disembodiment also without my consent, since anti-Jewish oppression and anti-Jewish antisemitism, like any...

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“Both/And” by Caroline Rothstein

Essay

Let’s start by getting this out of the way: I have never identified as a Zionist. Nor do I identify as an anti-Zionist. I suppose you could call me a non-Zionist, but really I find that unnecessary—to center my Jewishness around Zionism at all. Because really, I am just a Jew. Better yet, a Hebrew. Since Jew is a particular kind of Jew descended from the Tribe of Judah, and it is the Hebrews, really, where our story as ancient Israelites begins. Hebrew—ivri, one who crosses over or passes through. A nomad. In the in between. A participant in the both/and. Because really—more than anything—that’s what I feel my birthright to be: liminality. One whose rituals deal with the liminality...

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