What I've been reading
As you know, this is (for the most part) a satirical newsletter. I write a lot of satire. In fact, I wrote a book of satire that comes out next week. But this week, a very hard week, I’m reading—not writing. So I figure I may as well share what I’ve been reading here with you.
I’ll start off with (surprised?) satire. This week I read The Onion’s consistently trenchant coverage—for instance, their slideshow called Americans Explain How They Are Ignoring The Israel-Hamas War. A powerful aspect of The Onion’s satire is its ability to comically prick the conscience of those of us who might otherwise turn away from the suffering of others. (That’s also the end of the satire on this list.)
This week I also read a deeply serious, important Q&A: Isaac Chotiner in conversation with Human Rights Watch program director Sari Bashi on “The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza” in The New Yorker. “One war crime doesn’t excuse another.”
I read Arielle Angel’s Letter From the Editor in Jewish Currents. “But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life.”
I read Rob Delaney’s piece “These New Ghosts” in the Tribune. “Can you kill anyone to fix this? Who? Where are they?”
I read Sarah Schulman’s “Explanations Are Not Excuses” in New York Magazine. “At the root of this erasure is the increasing insistence that understanding history, looking at the order of events and the consequences of previous actions to understand why the contemporary moment exists as it does, somehow endorses the present.”
I read David Klion’s “Have We Learned Nothing?” for n+1. “No one could rationally assert the premise of American innocence, but rationality was beside the point.”
And finally, I’ve been rereading and thinking constantly about the below poem, “Red Sea” by Aurora Levins Morales”:
This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.
The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.
The bread of affliction snaps in our hands like bones,
is dust in our mouths. This bitterness brings tears to our eyes.
The figs and apples are sour. We have many more
than four questions. We dip and dip,
salt stinging our fingers.
Unbearable griefs braided into a rope so tight
we can hardly breathe,
Whether we bless or curse,
this is captivity.
We would cross the water if we knew how.
Everyone blames everyone else for barring the way.
Listen, they say there is honey swelling in golden combs, over there,
dates as sweet and brown as lovers' cheekbones,
bread as fragrant as rest,
but the turbulent water will not part for us.
We've lost the trick of it.
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
Two action steps you can take
Email to demand a ceasefire
Donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
Less than one week
And of course, I’m also in the midst of my book’s publicity campaign. My debut satirical essay collection hits shelves October 24 (that’s less than a week away!), but you can preorder a copy right now! Unconvinced? Here’s what early readers of This Won’t Help are saying:
That’s all for today — thanks for subscribing. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. See you next time.
That poem got me. ❤️