Beth Ain

And She Was: this Substack could have been a mixtape (essays + stories + hyper-specific 80’s references)

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

Because I saw @brandicarlile at the @capitoltheatre last night, you all have to read about it on a Saturday afternoon. https://t.co/jCLr7fQNf8

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@AlanaAinpoet @RetroCoast @amandafortini Snackwells chemicals as Gen X miracle serum might be the discourse that re-engages me on here

[Kristen Arnett @Kristen_Arnett]

once again, really urging people to get a library card if you haven't already - and not just that, i'm begging you to USE your library resources. show up. though they're important, we do way more than just books. libraries are spaces that allow community building and care.

[Elamin Abdelmahmoud @elamin88]

if you’re in bed stay in bed

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

This is excellent. Read it. @RitchieTorres is the real deal.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Last week, I had the privilege of meeting Congressman @RitchieTorres. I learned a lot of small things and one very big thing.

I expected to meet, well, a politician, a run-of-the-mill progressive who, for whatever reason, broke from the pack on Israel, who grasped the basic point that until Hamas is removed from Gaza, no peace is possible, no rebuilding, no end to the war, because Hamas won’t let there be.

I was wrong about him. And it was the most optimistic experience I’ve had in America in recent memory.

It began with Ritchie‘s insistence that we meet in the Bronx, in his district. I figured it was a convenience, and since he’s the congressman, I trekked up to the Bronx.

Half an half into our dinner I realized that the Bronx wasn’t the location, it was the point. His support for Jews, I discovered, isn’t about Israel but about the Bronx.

We met over dinner at a little Italian place nestled among a profusion of immigrant eateries on Arthur Street - Mexican, Albanian, Italian. He talked about the astonishing diversity of the district.

The Bronx has the highest concentration of small businesses owned by multiple generations of a single family in the country. He took me to one Jewish-owned store that had etched the Star of David into the concrete at the entrance. When in the 1930s, friends warned the owners not to broadcast their Jewishness out of fear of antisemitism, they responded by carving their Jewishness indelibly into the entryway. Their current congressman - the same family still owns the place - beams with pride at a brazenness he believes defines the borough.

I think of Jews as my people. He thinks of the entire dizzying array of cultures and religions and social classes that make up the district, including a Jewish community he knows intimately and the first Catholic Church I’d ever seen in New York that was actually bustling with worshippers, as his people.

As we talked, I came to understand why he thinks so much about the Jewish experience, why he fights the anti-Israel campaign so fiercely, far beyond what might be explained by his constituents or donors. He could do a quarter of what he does and still find the same grateful Jewish donors at every turn.

But for Ritchie, it’s bigger than the Jews. It’s about the future of progressivism, and thus of America. In his mind, his Jewish community embodies progressive values, and the illiberal turn in large parts of the progressive political world are a war on those values.

He has questions and criticisms of Israel, smart ones, ones I share, and he asked about them. But he sees in the wild hatred and rage against Israel a larger war on Western liberalism. The same activist who rails at Israel’s existence, he says, also thinks America is a standing crime and calls its great promise and ethic of liberty a lie. It’s the same activist who denies that America has made massive progress in race relations over the past century.

Progressives, he told me, have to get back to believing that progress is possible.

He learned to connect these dots from Dr. Martin Luther King, who steadfastly refused to go down the left’s anti-Zionist rabbithole, saw the Jews as great allies and viewed the hatred of them as a bellwether of decline. Ritchie is close to Dr. King’s 93-year-old speechwriter Clarence Jones. I’d met a man who knew his history and defended it with gusto.

He also knew the Bronx down to the minutiae of individual family histories. Our dinner was interrupted by a patron thanking him for something (I didn’t catch what). It was slow going leaving the restaurant because every waiter knew him and wanted to shake his hand (and then got stuck also shaking mine).

And he reads. He knew more Israeli-Palestinian history than most Jews or Palestinians. His one ask of me as we parted: book recommendations.

There is another kind of progressivism, alive and kicking in working-class and immigrant spaces, and starting to fight back. Ritchie is its vanguard.

[Edward-Isaac Dovere @IsaacDovere]

Bill Clinton when I asked if he thought America could survive 4 more years of Trump:

“I think you have to look at what the definition of ‘survive’ is. You can put me on a breathing tube tonight, but it wouldn’t be surviving like I’m surviving now."
https://t.co/t4y95CwXXQ

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

Yesterday, just before noon, The Washington Post, through CEO William Lewis, announced it would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

It was shocking for two immediate reasons.

(thread)

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

💔

[Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar]

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a lioness for her son.

“Hersh, we are working day and night, and we will never stop. I need you to know that I am giving you now the blessing I give you every single morning when I pray for you, and every Friday night, I go out on the porch and put my hands up toward Gaza and give you the Kohanic blessing.

May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up His face toward you, and may God give you peace and bring you home now. I love you. Stay strong. Survive.”

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@jilltalbot https://t.co/GXKVvMurjl

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@aimeefriedman Indeed. Chag Sameach, Aimee. 🙏💙

[Yoni Appelbaum @YAppelbaum]

Of all the stories I've read or heard the past few days, @amirtibon's is the most remarkable—capturing the horror, the failures, the heroics, the hope, and the despair of this moment in Israel. https://t.co/dTf4yJEw72

[Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman]

I wrote for @thenation about why the @WGAEast and @WGAWest are on strike. But also about conflict and fairness and solidarity (and spoilers). https://t.co/tTcmqMl1UP

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@jswatz @lindaholmes Yes! Or any book at all by Kevin Wilson. His latest, Now Is Not the Time to Panic is just excellent.

[Jon Stewart @jonstewart]

If you watch only one video today….make it a monkey washing a cat…

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@jamiattenberg Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. Brilliant.

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

What a fun day at @BooksofWonder celebrating the debut of @miya_t_beck and wow what a great turnout for this special book. Book events are back!

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@miya_t_beck @BooksofWonder @HGLiterary @BalzerandBray I could be in conversation about this book for hours on end! Loved every minute of celebrating with you and sharing this remarkable debut! Thank you for having me!

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@jamiattenberg ‘s Hitting Reset piece today from her Craft Talk newsletter is one her best. Grateful for her absolute commitment to showing us the guts of this thing always. So generous and clear and excellent.

[Beth Ain @BethAin]

@AlanaJoblin Oh heyyyyy