The Dignity of Difference

I am a Jew. My duty is to tell the truth without fear. In my outward life, and in my inner life. If it offends you it’s okay. You misunderstand me in the way people have misunderstood us for generations. It’s proof of my existence in a way. So thank you. The great Jewish tradition is one of debate. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks spoke of “the dignity of difference”. What an incredible phrase: the dignity of difference. And there is real dignity in being able to have the hardest conversations, and in this current moment in America and the wider world, that is something incumbent upon all of us. Thomas Paine: “He who dares not offend can not be honest.” Education is where freedom lies. Without a pursuit for knowledge, however emotionally testing, we get tyranny.

What I have attempted to say this week, to borrow an old meme, is that if Britney survived 2007, you will survive a Trump presidency. Your life doesn’t depend on an election result. Bill Maher put it thus: “you’ve been dumped.” Move forward! The magnificence of human resiliency is only truly understood in the depths of personal hell. People don’t know the half of what even I have personally suffered in the last four years (all during the Biden Administration, for whatever it’s worth, although I am not reckless and I do not pinpoint blame on an individual or institution). My advice to those suffering still, almost a week after the news: tune out the noise and focus on yourself. And don’t make the mistake of avoiding the lessons to be learned. Ask the questions. Engage with the other side. Seek understanding. If you don’t, you are creating your own problems.

I had several profound experiences this weekend with friends of mine. I love my friends. It is incredible to be around people who have intellectual rigor and hearts to match their inquisitive minds. I feel safe around people like this. As a result of my cancellations and subsequent fallouts in the last few years, one of my greatest lessons has been that I feel most secure around people who are not afraid to have their sense of morality challenged. I’ll share one of the weekend’s experiences. Last night I had the pleasure of being a part of an evening honoring the legacy of a giant: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. To my pleasant surprise, the host was a very old friend of mine and recent Emmy Award winner, Alex Edelman (if you have yet to see his show Just For Us on HBO about a Jewish man who attends a meeting of Nazis in Queens, it is one that demonstrates how to turn the darkness of the Jewish experience into a comedy that applies universally). Alex told his favorite joke last night; a demonstration of how deep Jewish humor can be. I’ll try to do it justice:

A man dies and has a conversation with G-d at a [insert location: salloon bar / frozen yogurt joint / Starbucks drive-thru]. He sees G-d in line and says…

Man: “Oh wow, G-d, it’s you! I’m such a fan of your work.”
G-d: “Thank you, Mark. I don’t always meet people who appreciate it.”
Man: “Do you wanna hear a joke?”
G-d: “Please. I love comedy.”
Man: “It’s about the Holocaust.”
G-d: “I wouldn’t say there’s anything funny about that.”
Man: “Yeah I guess you had to be there.”

As Alex said last night: that joke is a whole book. This is the power of our capacity to tell stories. We must keep doing it. It is our obligation as a people who each carry the responsibility of telling the Jewish story to also comment on and narrate the world around us. We must lead.

An aquaintance DMs me on Saturday to ask if I have five minutes to discuss an observation he’s making. Jewish, gay, married with children. I gave him my number, and we talk for over 30 minutes. “Eve, why are all my non-Jewish friends, who are in a self-desribed state of terror about an election result, leaning on me for comfort, after ignoring everything that’s happend to us Jews, including Amsterdam, Sweden, New York City and Chicago this weekend (!)? Why is it all of a sudden incumbent on those of us who have had our very real suffering and existential dread overlooked by the people we thought were our friends to suddenly give them solace because the election didn’t go the way they wanted it to?”

Fortunately, I have been on a quest to understand our role in the world as Jews during this incredibly isolating few years that we’ve overcome, so I had thoughts. “Rafi,” I said. “They just hold us to a different standard.” It is as though we have made a rod for our own backs in our assimilated worlds. Whether they admit it or not, our non-Jewish friends see as a compass, as a light, as a source of strength and - sometimes - wisdom. They know that we are reasonable people who are capable of arguing and holding multiple truths at once.

At times this inspires jealousy, and at times it just inspires. They look at the history they know, ie, six million dead last century, and they take for granted that we’ll always be here. No need to stick your neck out for a people who have “got this!” They assume we don’t need their validation (and we don’t, by the way). They veer towards a toxic codependency with Jewish neighbors, in which we are either the pinnacle of everything they think good people should be, or we’re the worst example of deceit and betrayal and abadonment, because we have been put on such a high pedestal that the slightest of human error forces their anger and callous, unsubstantiated disappointment. They don’t see us as human. As mere mortals. But as these odd shape-shifting all powerful Jews. And so like teenagers seek parenting in times of crisis, they seek us out, even when they’ve spent years deriding us and blaming us for everything.

The Jewish people are trained generation by generation in the solitude of survival. That is why I personally relate so much to women who have survived their own private atrocities. There is a similar split in reality, where you exist in an assimilated world but your inner world is one very few can be trusted to understand. Our worlds, our families, our lives are repeatedly shattered by events outwith our control in a society we had mistakenly learned to trust, and despite all that carries on non-chalantly around us, we have to find the tools to survive it, and to thrive in it, starting and ending with us. Your non-Jewish friends know that you’ve survived a lot worse than an election result, even if they don’t say it. They want to know how.

I am still being screamed at by women who can only focus on Trump’s criminality. Is it so hard to see that he’s not the first man in power who has done bad things? Monica Lewinsky, anyone? I am certainly, rather obviously, against sexual violence. Rather than direct rage at me - a commentator - why not direct rage at a system that allows a convicted felon to run for President, instead of those of us who are highlighting the hypocrisy of people who weaponize rape - the most unspeakable thing to happen to women – to gain political power.

Some inconvenient realities about Trump in the last 48 hours. Trump has hired a woman, Susie Wiles, as chief of staff. He has nominated Elise Stefanik, the House Representative who wiped the floor with the Deans of MIT, Harvard and UPenn for antisemitism on campus last November, as US ambassador to the UN. The exit polls showed Trump was voted in by the same Latinos that liberals were very sure would suffer racism as a result of Trump’s meer existence. As I’ve said before America is inherently a racist society, mired in a rape culture, and everyone who is a victim of such crimes knows that it doesn’t make a different who is in office. Do you think women are going to no longer be cat-called if a woman becomes President? As Douglas Murray wrote in The Telegraph this morning “America has abandoned student politics and got serious again”. For the hundredth time, friends, you must lose the savior attitude. You are not here to save those you deem to be lesser or more marginalized than you. You are here to allow them the opportunity to exercise their own rights. Maybe, just maybe, a marginalized person knows better about what the greater threats are to their lives.

Leftists have been trying to encourage me to kill myself for four years. I am finished placating the Trump Derangement Syndrome that is currently taking hold of people I expected a lot more from. The hysteria. The call to adopt South Korea’s 4B movement: no marriage, no dating, no sex, no children (let’s see how long that lasts). It is not as severe as it was in 2016, but it’s still here. On Saturday, they marched in New York City to protest the election result. And these are the people fearing that Trump’s election will result in an end to democracy?!

I’d like to share a few things that I have personally experienced during the Biden Administration. In 2021, I was completely cancelled and blacklisted after a 13+ year incredible career as a music and film journalist in mainstream media for calling out antisemitism in social justice movements. Still in 2021, as the cancellation escalated during the Israel-Gaza conflict in May, I became an international meme and had a #2 trending hate name in the USA. Again, for calling out antisemitism in social justice movements. I was harassed and abused by the likes of Seth Rogen, and YouTuber Hasan Piker, who profited from and poured fuel on the fire of my cancellation. The ADL minimized what happened to me.

In 2022, my hate name trended every day online for several months, and the public shaming multiplied once more, as I received more death threats than I have ever received in my life. In 2023, on October 7, when the worst massacre to happen to Jewish people since the Holocaust took place, there was still not a single ally or apology among those who attempted to take away my power of speech by blacklisting me. Days after October 7, I was chased down by a car in my local neighborhood. Months after October 7, I could count on both hands the numbers of times I’d been physically accosted in the street, or in the gym, spat on, or screamed at. I slept with the lights on for months, changed my name on my travel and food delivery apps, and heightened my personal security. Online, I was further vilified, meme’d and trolled. We were ignored by the powers that be, gaslit to infinity and back, and lost even more friends and work opportunities.

In 2024, despite these four years, I gained strength as a leading independent voice, and decided that my breath was not worth wasting over divisive politics but on uniting Jews and non-Jews who want to find solutions. I have accepted the election result because I respect democracy. And still today either way, my heart is in Israel and my feet directed towards the sands of Tel Aviv, never fully entrenched in the soil I stand in, because Jews know we are not fully safe in America. So after all of these events, I remain standing. I am stronger than ever. I have not “killed myself” or “left the country!”. Every day, I get up with the best of intentions and live my life to the fullest. To everyone having a meltdown currently who couldn’t bring themselves to show up in a vocal full-throttled manner that would have helped both us and ultimately all of you, you are going to get through the next four years whatever happens to you. You have no idea what some of us have managed to survive while you were too busy overlooking our suffering. Maybe it will inspire you.

They cry about the war on women. But they have put themselves in severe danger of crying wolf. Because how can they talk about a war on women when the world saw Shani Louk dead, her legs maimed and broken into the shape of a Swastika, hiked onto the back of a pick-up track and driven thru the streets of Gaza as a trophy by Hamas, spat on by Palestinian men, and turned a blind eye.

How can they talk about a war on women when the world saw Naama Levy, her pants bloodied, her Achilles tendon slashed, hauled into a Jeep by a group of terrorist men, and said NOTHING. And still nothing 400+ days into her captivity and the captivity of over a dozen other female hostages.

Instead, these women took sides with our common enemies. Terrorists, incels, misogynists. They belong to an organization called Hamas.

Did they protest about this news over the weekend? Of course not. Where is the encampment for this? It’s nowhere. How can we be led by faux “feminists” and so-called progressives any more? We can’t. They would lead us into hell.

Grown American adults have been teaching their very young children that Donald Trump is the epitome of all evil, in the world we currently live in, for years. This weekend I heard about eight-year-olds that are perpetually terrified now because their parents have not got a hold of themselves. And here on display is the sickness. California Representative Katie Porter said her 12 year old daughter came home crying after Trump won, and was afraid of not being able to get an abortion if she got raped. Here is a woman trying to escalate her own political agenda by using the pain of her daughter live on television. Your children deserve better, America.

The following is from May of this year.

In May, Trump said:

“Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights. My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land — in this case, the law of the state.”

And to be clear, I am not denying the concerns around the Supreme Court and the election of justices that could do damage over the coming years. I am providing discourse and tempering the fearmongering.

And mainly I am taking my lead from Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sachs’ “the dignity of difference”. Let’s practise it with full commitment. Our culture’s capacity for it is on life support, and we must continue to speak in reality, no matter the cost. I learned last night about the word Israel, which we know means, “to wrestle with G-d”. The Hebrew letters can also be reoriented into the words “Shir El”: “G-d’s song”. It’s a beautiful reminder that sometimes when there are no more words to say, we have art and we have music. So if nothing I have said has managed to heal your pain or give you hope, then allow me to do what I love doing the most: providing a gift of music. For a great who left us last week, just before the country was taken by a discord that is ripping this country apart. Quincy Jones.