Can We Hustle for Our Book Without Social Media?

A couple of years ago, after our San Quentin litigation ended, I left Twitter, an excellent decision that I do not regret one bit. The improvement in my quality of life was palpable and immediate. Occasionally I miss some kerfuffle that is relevant to my professional interests, in which case someone usually fills me in. Most of what I miss are pile-ups, tiresome at best and dreadful at worst, and I’m happy to be rid of it all. Occasionally someone wants to link to my stuff and emails to ask what my handle is. My career hasn’t gone down the drain; my “brand,” such as it is, hasn’t suffered from lack of cultivation; and I don’t feel like I’m lacking information or updates on important things.

The prospect of leaving Facebook is more complicated, because by contrast to Twitter, Facebook is populated by lots of distant friends and family with whom it would be difficult to stay in touch without the platform. The problem is that the platform has become worse to a point that it is impossible to deny or dissociate. Finding new posts from friends has become a Herculean task. I repeatedly see the same posts–old ones–and am not exposed to new ones. Some stuff gets prioritized, other stuff is hidden, and I have no say on the matter. Worst of all, the platform has become inundated in ads and reels that offer me absolutely nothing, and getting rid of them (through assiduous clicking and unclicking) is an abhorrent chore.

Plenty has been written about attention, mindfulness, and how destructive social media is to all these. Plenty has also been written about how we (more precisely, our eyeballs) are the product. It feels, though, that lately they’ve dropped the pretense of offering us a decent user experience in return for our attention; they’ve thrown the towel and now it’s all about unabashed marketing. Perhaps the price we have to pay for our connections and relationships has become steeper from the corporation’s loss-and-profit perspective. In any case, having now started full-time grad school on top of my full-time job and my very full-time kid, my time is limited and precious. I can’t afford to squander it by engaging in an Easter egg hunt for my friends’ words. At the same time, what is the alternative? It’s the only place that brings together people I can’t reach otherwise.

In addition to the personal cost of severing relationships that I care about and can realistically preserve only through Facebook, there’s the imminent publication of FESTER. Chad and I think this book is important; we wrote it because we wanted California’s COVID-19 correctional disaster remembered, and because we wanted to usher in the urgent conversation how to prevent the next plague from decimating the prison population and beyond. We want to bring first-hand accounts of the suffering to you, and we want you to follow the blow-by-blow account of the litigation so that you’ll know that courts (and politicians! and sheriffs!) are no good when it comes to emergency situations and lives on the line. We wrote it because we want people to witness the heroism of incarcerated people, their families, and their recently released friends, as well as countless advocates and activists, and to see what people can accomplish when they organize together against a tough, cruel system. For you to have this experience, we need you to read the book. And I’m now wondering whether it’s possible to get you to read the book without Facebook, Twitter, Insta, TikTok, and the like.

What would be good ways to promote our book without hustling online? We’re open to suggestions. If book promotion requires an online presence, I may have to do that, too, but I’m not looking forward to it and it will exact a psychological and cognitive price I’m not happy to pay. On the other hand, I’m happy to organize in-person events and parties, go on the radio and on TV, cold-contact bookstores and universities, and contact various organizations and activist hubs. Will the latter stuff be enough? I’m not sure, but I’ll certainly discuss it with my publicist and with those of you who have recent books out.

The Dream Is Over? Seasons in Fitness and Sports

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclestiastes 3:1-8

For many of us, this is an ordinary Friday; not so for the small subset of people interested in marathon swimming. Today, my friend Avishag Kofman-Turek, whom I met through our mutual interest in swimming the Sea of Galilee, completed an amazing athletic feat: swimming the North Channel from Ireland to Scotland.

Throughout the day, since the wee hours of the morning, I followed the GPS feed and rooted for Avishag’s safe and successful crossing. It is a huge endeavor. The water is frigid and required many months of difficult acclimation, not to mention a considerable increase in practice yardage (I should say, mileage.)

While witnessing this accomplishment, I was busy reading and completing assignments for four courses: Modern Jewish Thought, Intro to Buddhism and Buddhist Studies, How to Read the Book of Job, and Buddhism in the West. Recently, I’ve embarked on my own marathon swim, an intellectual one; I’m pursuing rabbinical ordination at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism and a masters degree at the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Jewish Studies. I’ve been keeping this on the down-low during the application process, but if you peek here you’ll see a familiar face. It’s a feat no less solitary than marathon swimming, nor is it going to be easy (I continue to work full time as a law professor and be a full-time devoted mom to my son – I just sleep a lot less and have eliminated idle Internet time from my schedule) but it looks a lot less heroic, as it entails nothing photogenic: just sitting in front of my laptop, reading and writing.

It’s been ages since I trained for, and participated in, a real marathon swim. I know exactly when the last time was: the Thames Marathon in 2016. It was beautiful and serene and a good way to go about semi-retirement from marathon swimming. I still swim in the bay once in a while, and I did crank out a 5k without much effort in Kona last year, but nothing like the distances I used to put in week after week when I was training for big things like the Sea of Galilee or the Tampa Bay Marathon. In the last year, I shifted my efforts into multisport and lifting, partly to combat perimenopause and its discontents, but in the four months since my dad’s illness everything came to a grinding halt and the grief has made it very hard to work out at all, let alone swim a meaningful distance. I’m experiencing a really rough somatic reaction to breathing while swimming, perhaps because dad died of a rare lung disease and struggled to breathe before he was intubated. The lack of exercise and some emotional eating resulted in putting on some weight, and while a couple of months of careful whole food/veg juice diet and vigorous exercise will do the trick, I’m just not feeling it as a pressing priority. I am making an effort to eat healthy things, take good supplements, and move every day (I commute by bicycle, lift in my garage, and take walks in the neighborhood). But it really is an effort.

I did feel a little melancholy today reflecting on Avishag’s amazing swim. Not a sense of envy at her success, but rather a bit of wistfulness about how I don’t seem to be able to muster the kind of gumption and perseverance I used to have about dramatic athletic feats. I take some comfort in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, echoed in this awesome Rich Roll podcast about periodizing one’s life. Now’s the time to take good care of myself without embarking on big health-and-fitness goals, make sure I’m well nourished when I go to teach and study, and invest in my new academic pursuits. Thing is, I’m not getting any younger, and while swimming is something you can continue to do and improve in throughout your life, I doubt I’ll be able to pull off big marathon swims out of the blue when I’m in my 60s and 70s without putting the requisite time now. But none of this matters if I just don’t have it in me at the moment.

The dream is over,

What can I say?

The dream is over

Yesterday

I was the dream weaver, but now I’m reborn

I was the walrus, but now I’m John

And so, Dear Friends, we’ll just have to carry on;

The dream is over.

John Lennon, “God”

Self-Compassion for Disillusioned Activists

In the sixties, Todd Gitlin, then a young, passionate student, became involved in the fight against the Vietnam war and in the struggle for equality. Alongside his friends at Students for a Democratic society (he was the president in 1963-1964) he agitated, organized, protested, held movements, registered people to vote in the Deep South, and fought against orthodoxy in the Democratic party and for a New Left. Many years later, already a sociology professor and incisive critic of the movement he helped create, he evocatively wrote about how much activism had meant to him. The first half of his masterpiece The Sixties reads like a manifesto of hope; the second half, though, is rife with confusion. Plans for political action got muddled with self expression and individuality a-la diggers and the Mime Troupe (to read a different perspective on those, read Peter Coyote’s fantastic memoir Sleeping Where I Fall); people he admired and respected as leaders disappointed at best and disintegrated at worst; former comrades slid further and further to the left, established the Weather Report, and engaged in clumsy but frightening violent actions Gitlin could not condone or comprehend (learn more about those in the podcast Mother Country Radicals). Gitlin’s later books reveal an author and thinker who still very much believes in the ideals of socialism and peace, but resents the splintering and performativity of identity politics that he believes shattered the movement in the 1970s.

Today I found myself going back to one of my favorite books by Gitlin, Letters to a Young Activist, which evokes that deep ambivalence and wisdom that comes only from spending years in a movement you both admire and fiercely critique. Gitlin talks about the importance of passionate motivation but also reminds young activists not to “think with their blood”; highlights the crucial role of shining a light on the wrongs of your own side, but also the importance of letting self-flagellation by the wayside; and warns against the dangers of “marching on the English department”, as it were, while one’s opponents “march on Washington.”

What brought me back to Gitlin were a number of recent conversations with younger folks I like and admire a lot about their disillusionment with infighting and lack of integrity in radical movements and organizations with noble goals and true dedication. People admired and respected in positions of leadership turn out to behave in disappointing ways; serious issues get buried or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, debated to death, complete with public denunciations and humiliations; minute complaints turn into struggle sessions that sap everyone’s will to come back; and eventually people come to demonize their comrades and brothers in arms more than they do the bad guys they are fighting against.

Hearing about this stuff is always heartbreaking, especially when I see folks who I know put in countless, tireless, thankless energy, time and effort into organizing and activism express disillusionment and despair. I can offer very little solace in this sort of situation; dealing with big disappointment as an idealist is really hard, and calls for more than one self-compassion break.

Kristin Neff, who has written and spoken extensively about self compassion and mindfulness, offers a three-step formula for anyone who is struggling. The first step is to admit that this is, indeed, a moment of suffering, a low point in the person’s life. The second, which I’ll elaborate more on in a bit, is understanding that suffering is universal, a part of life, and that everyone suffers–sometimes intensely–from time to time. And the third is offering oneself some kindness, either through expressing it or through a gentle hand touching one’s own heart.

I like this exercise a lot, and find the second step especially important, because as Brené Brown explains, one of the traps of shame and self-pity (by contrast to self compassion) is to see one’s experience as unique and idiosyncratic. I see a lot of this horror in young, committed activists, who are so distraught by occurrences in their group or community that they believe it must be prey to some special variety of pathology. This is where I can offer some comfort. As regular readers know, I’ve written and spoken quite a bit about the sixties, and part of my work on Yesterday’s Monsters included learning about cults and movements that swirled around the California counterculture when Manson put together his “family.” When the murders occurred, and when Manson and his followers were identified as the culprits, they evoked a wave of horror because cults and their inner workings were not well known or understood at the time. Indeed, the idea of thought control and brainwashing was associated at the time only with Communist regimes such as China and Korea (see an example of this in The Manchurian Candidate.)

But while this group stood out in the heinousness of their crimes, they were by no means the only group led by charismatic leaders and/or a vision to be plagued by exploitation, violence, and oppression. In the mid-seventies, the California legislature held a hearing for family members of young adults who had joined cults, hearing testimony after testimony about how their loved ones fell in thrall to some charismatic leader or other, started believing some stranger things, dramatically changed their appearance or habits, isolated from them to the point of estrangement, and gave all their effort and resources to the cult. Witnesses testified about the Moonies and about a variety of Christian apocalyptic cults. The legislators at the hearing tiptoed between expressing deep concern and sympathy and reminding everyone that cult members were adults with the freedom of religion and expression.

To this day, whenever I see people criticize radical activist movements that fall prey to unsavory activity and conflict, the demonizing language compares the movement to a cult. This is not a scientific or easy process, because cults turn out to be quite a malleable category. But one need not go into the reeds to identify pathological cultish elements in pretty much every activist movement, including influential and notable ones. Three years ago I wrote a post about this stuff that identified a lot of the obvious issues: betrayals of the cause, identitarian splintering, sexual exploitation or perceived exploitation, financial malfeasance, etc. Having read a lot about movements in the 1960s and 1970s, I see situations where the FBI were infiltrating and persecuting organizations and cells and eventually didn’t have to do anything to hasten their demise: these outfits crumbled on their own, without the malignant interference of the feds, because they suffered from these inherent issues. Stanley Nelson’s fantastic documentary about the Black Panthers is a case in point: there’s nothing the FBI could have done to dissolve the Panthers that Huey Newton didn’t do himself. Larry Kramer’s acerbic account of ACT UP in The Normal Heart shows the awful indifference and demonization the activists were working against, but also how they sabotaged themselves through horrendous infighting. I see this stuff again and again.

Here are some factors–and this is by no means an exhaustive list–that are part of this malignant cocktail. Oftentimes, radical organizing draws people who seek the type of camaraderie and belonging that membership in a close-knit group of likeminded people working for an important cause can provide. Some young folks get swept in this energy because home life is rife with trauma or neglect, or because their school or employment networks haven’t improved their lot socially. I’m not saying their commitment to the goal is not genuine; all I’m saying is that excitement about a common vision is infectious and promises an embrace that is very difficult to resist if one feels lonely or traumatized. The fact that a lot of radical movements strive toward ideological purity is also part of this. It isolated people and drives them further into the insular experience of the group, with no reality checks and balances on the outside. I’ve spoken to mixed-race couples that broke up on account of a commitment to racial justice that was so strong that it eclipsed years of love and commitment. I know of people who took the Liberation Pledge (not to eat where animals are served) and ended up unable to eat with anyone from their family or friend group outside vegan movements. Not only does this mean all of one’s social efforts are invested in a relatively small group of people, but that group ends up being an echo chamber and it’s very difficult to test ideas in the real world. And moreover, anytime purity and adherence to principles are the yardstick for worthiness, people turn on each other and compete over who is a more zealous advocate for social change. This process of eating each other seems to accelerate as shit starts hitting the fan, because people who are afraid and fighting for their own survival are sure to lash out at the people standing closest to them.

The fact that crappy things are happening to committed activists throughout the social justice field is not cause for cheer, but I think that anyone who thinks their organization is uniquely pathological might derive some comfort from knowing that, apparently, homo sapiens seems to find a way to ruin communities centered on ideals and struggles pretty much all the time. I don’t think we’ve found a way to organize and seek social change that doesn’t end up marred in these kinds of self destructive crap. I wish we could, but I’m in my late forties, have organized and agitated plenty, and I’m just not seeing it. The one that came closest to being a healthy organizing container, for me, was the #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition; it wasn’t without its warts, but it was highly effective and overall a really positive, supportive environment. I suspect the magic had something to do with the fact that, in addition to the long-term decarceration vision, we had tangible, short-term emergency goals, and thus no time for faffing. Perhaps human nature, like nature in general, abhors a vacuum, and will fill any available space with infighting and oneupmanship.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I do think that understanding we’re talking about universal phenomena that radical movements go through can be helpful to people who think they’re stuck in a uniquely dysfunctional scenario. Every unhappy family, as Tolstoy famously wrote, is unhappy in its own unique way, but they are still all unhappy. And that means that any person who believes in an ideal, a vision, a blueprint for far-reaching social change, and is committed enough to put a lot of work into it, will experience heartbreak from time to time. If this is you now, then it’s simply your turn. Offer yourself all the kindness you need to get through the rough patch, and then see if there’s another path for you to change the world or bring about your values in a way that supports your heart better.

Book Review: Zohar Gazit’s A Struggle to the Death

Following the tragic passing of my father, I spent a lot of time thinking about mourning rituals, and particularly about the invaluable work of Menuha Nekhona (“A Righteous Rest”), the all-volunteer organization that runs the secular-civil cemetery in my parents’ town. I was so impressed with them that I started drafting a book proposal about secular burials in Israel, but a few days later found out that someone has already written a book about alternatives to religiously sanctioned deaths: Zohar Gazit’s A Struggle to the Death (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016) (Hebrew.) The original title, “Osim et HaMavet” (“making death”) is a double entendre: it’s a figure of speech meaning “haranguing someone” and also, in this context, implies the creative remaking of a hegemonic ritual in a way that fits the needs and concerns of deeply underserved populations.

Gazit’s book, which is based on his doctoral dissertation, examines three alternative death initiatives: in addition to Menuha Nekhona, he looks at Path to Life, an organization devoted to the healing and welfare of family survivors of suicide and to the destigmatizing of these deaths, and at Lilach, an organization promoting death with dignity (passive euthanasia) for terminally ill patients. Gazit’s theoretical framework heavily relies on Bordieu’s “field” concept (what sociological work doesn’t?) and shows the complicated relationship that each of these organizations has with the death “field.” All three of these organizations struggle against the hegemonic death rituals and perceptions in Israeli society: the religious concept of suicide (and any other actively chosen form of death, including some forms of euthanasia) as defying halakhic rules; the aggressive and greedy religious monopoly on burials in Israel, run by Orthodox Hevre Kadisha organizations who perform alienated, antiquated rituals, discriminate in plot allocations, and humiliate the dead and their loved ones; and the Israeli hierarchy of death, which glorifies military casualties and features a constant contest among other groups about their relative prestige, access to services, and differential stigma.

Gazit’s analysis is incisive and sensitive. His ethnography (participation in meetings and rituals, plenty of interviews, clever media analysis) shows internal conflicts and contradictions within the organizations he examines. What they want to highlight, and who they want to associate themselves with, is a delicate and carefully strategic dance of courting legitimacy and support. For example, Path to Life activists fiercely oppose efforts to downgrade the status of soldiers who committed suicide beneath that of supposedly legitimate military casualties; at the same time, they assiduously avoid even the semblance of supporting suicide as a legitimate option. They also contest professional opinions that discourage open talk of suicide as potential encouragement, arguing that open conversation can invite attention, help, and saving lives. Similarly, Lilach activists try to disengage from suicide organizations and stick to passive euthanasia, so as not to invite displeasure. And Menuha Nekhona have faced a complicated relationship with the very few people in Israel who sought cremation, an option associated with deeply negative stigma in Israel due to the legacy of the holocaust; at the same time, they’ve had to partner sometimes with Hevre Kadisha for burial services, among other surprising disclosures in procuring coffins: traditional Jewish burials are in shrouds, with no coffin, but bodies flown in from abroad arrive in coffins and Hevre Kadisha sell these to Menuha Nekhona.

Gazit’s book is full of fascinating information for anyone interested in social movements, sociology of religion, political theory, and constitutional law. I learned a lot. There is plenty I’m interested in that I didn’t find in the book (such as the negotiations of individual burial styles, headstones, and maintenance), but there’s only so much one can include in one work. My only quibble–a minor one, and by no means limited to Gazit’s book–is that he repeatedly relies on the terms “good death” and “bad death” for, respectively, the hegemonically sanctioned death and the alternatives. I know these are both well-established sociological terms of art and Gazit is correctly using them. But terms of art in sociological theory can sometimes sound jargony and, in this case, given that these organizations fight deep injustices, come off a bit precious and more than a bit jarring in their aesthetic and moral removal. I would have preferred “hegemonic” and “alternative.”

This minor issue aside, Gazit’s book is an important and worthy addition to other texts investigating national-religious hegemonies in Israel and those who try to contest them, such as Daphne Barak-Erez’s Outlawed Pigs and Michal Kravel-Tovi’s When the State Winks. I’ll end with my favorite passage (in my own translation from Hebrew):

All three organizations have emblazoned death on their flag, but they carry a message of life. Better, safer, richer, more mindful life, achieved through dealing with the “bad death.” From an event that happens to us, death is shaped as an event that we are active in. Passive social isolation, leaving decisionmaking to the medical establishment and later to Hevre Kadisha with no input from the individual and their loved ones, are replaced by decisions, choices, and action. Addressing “bad death” is framed as an empowering resource in the activists’ lives–an expression of courage, principled stance, and a struggle against injustice.

A “Shloshim” (“Thirty”) Ceremony for my Dad

Today, my family will observe the “shloshim” (“thirty”) ritual for my dad, a little over a month from his death. This Chabad resource explains the ceremonial significance of the passage of the first month of mourning. It is customary for family and friends to visit the grave and witness the unveiling of the new headstone (“giluy matzevah.”)

Headstones are placed on graves for various historical, practical, and cultural reasons. I see dual symbolism in a heavy, sturdy stone. First, there is the idea of finality, of coming to terms with the loss, which reflects the complicated psychological process of grief after the shock and confusion that characterize the time of the funeral. The grief is far from dulled, but it begins to transform as loved ones try to adjust to their bereavement. And second, there is the idea of the stone not as an end, but as a beginning–as a cornerstone for what will eventually become a memory palace for the person we grieve.

The concept of a “memory palace” comes from memory science, where it is also known as the “method of loci.” It is an ancient mnemonic device which uses the visualization of familiar spatial environments–or the detailed imaginary construction of spatial environments–in order to enhance the recall of information. I think that the idea of spatially constructing memory during bereavement is hugely important. Events immediately preceding death, as well as death itself, tend to loom very large in the loved ones’ consciousness, which I think is true in cases of a sudden, shocking passing as well as when a prolonged period of suffering and caregiving overshadows a lifetime of happy memories. This understanding transforms the meaning of a headstone from something final to a new beginning–a freeing process by which having the dying process and the death settle into the memory makes room for preceding memories to emerge and populate the palace.

In light of this understanding, I choose to interpret my dad’s headstone as a cornerstone for the memory palace I’m building for him in my heart. The ceremony I’m officiating today is therefore designed to ceremonially and emotionally place this cornerstone, through sharing memories and through special prayers and texts crafted to move along the memory-building project.

The central prayer of the ceremony is my version of the traditional Jewish “El Maleh Rakhameem” (“God full of mercy”) recitation, which is a deeply spiritual call to find a proper resting place (“menukhah nekhonah”) for the soul of the deceased. The original prayer is full of flight, bird, and wing imagery, which reminds me a lot of one of my dad’s favorite songs, El Cóndor Pasa:

My version of the prayer retains the flight motif and invites the memory to soar (English translation follows the Hebrew original):

חברים אהובים, מלאי רחמים, חברים עצובים והמומים, המציאו מנוחה נכונה על כנפי זכרונותיכם הטובים במעלות קדושים וטהורים, כזהר הרקיע מזהירים, לנשמת חיים אבירם בן שרה ושמואל יוסף שהלך לעולמו. רננו לכבודו, הללו את זכרו בכינור ובנבל עשור. שירו לו שיר חדש. היטיבו נגן בתרועה. זכרו את הווייתו הזכה, את חכמתו הרבה, ליבו הגדול והחומל, צחוקו הטוב, מעשיו הנאצלים, ועשו מעשים טובים בשמו ולעילוי זכרו. את הציווי לחיות חיים מוסריים, טובים ומשפרי עולם שמרו – אל נא תעזבום בשמו. בכל לבכם דירשו את צרכי תיקון עולם – אל נסטה ממצווה זו כשם שהוא הגשימה בכל נשימה מנשמות אפו. הנה תאבנו לדעת איך לרפא תבל – בצדקת מעשינו נחיה כשם שחי הוא את חייו הטובים והראויים.

על כן ברחמיכם הגדולים תסתירוהו בסתר כנפיכם לעולמים, ותצררו בצרור זכרונותיכם היקרים מפז את נשמתו. ליבותיכם האוהבים הם נחלתו, וינוח לשלום בנשמות כולנו, ונאמר שלום.

Dear friends, full of compassion, shocked and saddened friends, find proper rest on the wings of your good memories in holy and pure realms, like the shining stars that sparkle in the skies, for the soul of Haim Aviram, son of Sarah and Shmuel Yosef, who has passed away. Sing praises in his honor, glorify his memory with a ten-stringed harp. Sing a new song for him. Let your trumpets ring. Recall his righteous being, his abundant wisdom, his big and compassionate heart, his hearty laughter, his noble deeds, and do good in his name and for the elevation of his memory. Preserve the commandment to live a moral life, good and world-improving – do not abandon it in his name. Seek with all your heart the needs of repairing the world – do not neglect this commandment, as he fulfilled it with every breath he took. Indeed, we desire to know how to heal the world – through the righteousness of our deeds, we will live just as he lived his good and worthy life.

Therefore, in your great compassion, hide him under your wings for eternity, and gather tightly the dear memories of his soul as a precious treasure. Your loving hearts are his legacy, and may he rest in peace within all our souls, and let us say, peace.

Film Review: Holding It In

Filmmaker Omer Yefman and I went to school together and, after wanting to see his films for years, yesterday I finally had an opportunity to attend a screening of Holding It In (2020), his film with his partner Chen Rotem, an honest, no-barred-holds window into their surrogacy journey.

I’ve been interested in Omer’s work since hearing about All Happy Mornings (2012), in which he and Chen opened up about Omer’s bisexuality and their complicated journey into nonmonogamy (something I had written about from a legal and sociological perspective.) I remembered him vividly from our school days as an authentic, real person, who met the world around him with humility and curiosity, and it was a pleasant discovery (though not at all a surprise) that Chen is also a fantastic and openminded person. I especially appreciated the film’s entry into a fraught conversation in Israel about surrogacy. Israel’s limited adoption market, a product of its decided natalism, means that people aggressively pursue IVF treatments with enormous social backing, and that queer couples and people for whom IVF is not an option pursue surrogacy. This has produced a ferocious debate in the queer community about the power differential and exploitative potential of surrogacy, as well as legislation that excluded same-sex couples from surrogacy in Israel (surrogacy is still an option for opposite-sex couples and single women.) Some surrogates have spoken up against the assumption that they are exploited or powerless in the relationship, while other commentators have dismissed their perspective as privileged and not representative of the overall population of surrogates.

Issues of money and power are not at the center of Chen and Omer’s journey–they are frank and vulnerable about conversations of partnership, giving, children, family time, and camaraderie before and during Chen’s pregnancy–but they are not far from the surface. In one scene, Chen and Omer’s two young kids are asleep in the back seat of the car while the parents discuss Omer’s discomfort using “surrogacy money” to go on a family vacation abroad. Earlier in the film, discussing their decision with friends, Chen is adamant that she would insist on paying for surrogacy, and there’s an agreement that payment is fair and important given the sacrifice and risk. “It’s our money,” Chen says. “I’m still uncomfortable,” Omer replies.

Surrogacy and adoption are distinguishable in important ways: by contrast to surrogacy, which is a service from the get-go (in one touching scene, Chen explains to her young kids that the baby is “a guest in our family” who “will return to his parents” after he is born), the decision to place a child for adoption can only be made after the child is born, no matter what theoretical agreements birthparents and adoptive parents reach before the birth, and therefore there is no compensation, as such, beforehand, which could be constituted as bribe. But to say this is to some extent hypocritical. I’ve written before about the fact that, like surrogacy, adoption is a situation in which a baby usually passes from poorer hands to wealthier hands, while money changes hands in the opposite direction. The meticulous limitations on what is, and is not, remunerable, obscure this important point–an effort to quantify the unquantifiable. Regardless of the legal or ethical taxonomy of payments (support? compensation?) the quantification of such a fundamental and immense human process is at the heart of the discomfort.

Because of this deep truth, people on both sides of either adoption or surrogacy relationships would do well to remember that there are some things that this money should not buy. One of the most stunning moments in the film, for me, was when Chen returned from a medical checkup and told Omer that the prospective parents discussed a C-section with the doctor–without having discussed it with her first. Here’s the scene:

I felt rage bubbling in me while watching this scene. I’ve been in a similar situation from the opposite side, I thought. Someone else gave birth to my child. And it would never occur to me to make any demands, requests, suggestions anything at all about the birth. I feel very strongly that the only person who should be entitled to make decisions about a birth (what form it would take and who would be in the room, to name just two factors) is the person giving birth. As the scene progressed, Omer’s resentment toward the parents was palpable, while Chen explained that she did not want him to be angry on her behalf and that she was listening and trying to see things from their perspective (in the conversation we had after the movie, some details emerged that somewhat ameliorated, though did by no means eliminate, my deep concerns about the parents’ stance.) I had to actively remind myself that it was also Chen’s choice whether to feel resentful or not, and that adoption was fundamentally different from surrogacy. A birthmom gives birth to her own child and therefore makes her own decisions. A surrogate gives birth to someone else’s child. But a birth is a birth, I thought. What can be more personal than giving birth, regardless of the genetics of the child? The greatness of the film is that it is willing to ask these difficult questions without giving pat answers that rely on definitions and self righteousness.

And this is at the heart of my deep appreciation for the film: more than a film about an unusual, deeply stirring journey, it was a film about two incredibly brave and honest people, who are willing to confront not only complicated social and psychological questions, but their own demons, and to do so authentically in front of a camera. Their struggles and epiphanies are never self-serving, and never take the form of the all-too-common “lived experience” narrative one encounters all around us, where people marinate in their own goodness publicly. We’re flawed, just like everyone else, they seemed to say, and we want to share our process with you. In our conversation after the show, the filmmakers mentioned that, while documenting their experience, they weren’t thinking “people will be seeing this later”, but I think that there is a profound act of service in making this film that parallels the profound service of surrogacy. By opening a window into their personal life, far from generalizing their experience or making ethical proclamations, Chen and Omer are offering me and you an opportunity to engage with our own sense of ethics and question even the assumptions we clutch most tightly. What more can one possibly want from a film?

Family and Predisposition in the Age of 23andMe: The Cat Is Out of the Bag

Just a few days ago, I did the hardest thing I had ever done: I officiated my father’s funeral. Hundreds of friends, colleagues, and students of my dad came, many of whom remembered me only as a very young child. Many of these people commented, to my mom or to me, what a shock it was for them to see me: I am a dead ringer for my father, especially in my now short haircut that resembles his own haircut when he was in the army. The striking resemblance is hard to ignore. I took a lot of pride in these comments. It is wonderful to resemble my precious dad, who was the best person on Earth, and if I ever live up to be a tenth of the person he was, I’ll be very proud of myself.

Sleepless and weeping, I just read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s column in the New York Times from 2022, in which he applies an ethical lens to two letters written by adopted adults who want to contact their birth families. At the time these people were adopted, it was customary to keep their provenance secret from them, with a possible revelation (or not) when they came of age. Consequently, people who now, thanks to 23andMe and similar platforms have access to their genetic makeup, can now more easily find their birth families, which opens up lots of complicated moral dilemmas.

As regular readers know, I’m an adoptive mother. My wonderful son is the light of my life and the best thing that ever happened to me and my partner, as well as to our parents. I’ve written about our adoption journey and its implications for my worldview here, here, here, and here. The gold standard in current adoptions is open adoption, in which the child and the adoptive family know the birth family and vice versa. Some birth parents choose to be in touch and involved. Some do not. How people handle the immense pain of placing a child for adoption is profoundly individualized and should be respected as such. But at least one’s biological origins are never a shameful secret that needs to be hidden from them, awaiting a big revelation.

This newer adoption regime is not without its complications, and works differently for different families, but current science widely considers it significantly superior to closed adoption. The main argument for it is this: people are naturally drawn to their biological provenance. It is deeply important to them. In the first few days we spent with our son as a newborn, during the long, exhausting, and yet precious nights of hourly feedings, I was drawn to reading Charles Dickens novels, and remember being struck by the centrality of the mystery of provenance in so many of them: Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit. Dickens himself had great interest in this issue, as one of the key founders and benefactors of the Foundlings Hospital. He published an article about it in 1853 titled Received, A Blank Child. The psychological distress of not knowing who one is, where one came from–especially in the rigidly stratified Victorian era–permeates Dickens’ writing. At the time, I also encountered many adult adoptees who so deeply resented the secrecy of their own adoption that they came to oppose adoption altogether, alongside many birth mothers who feel that the secrecy and shame surrounding the process created sickening opportunities for pressuring them to place their children for adoption. While anyone is entitled to their opinions, which are naturally shaped by one’s own life experiences, I wonder if the distressing legacy of unscrupulous closed adoptions is unfairly skewing these folks’ view of a much-transformed (and for the better) adoption landscape.

In his sensitive responses to the adult adoptees, I noticed that Appiah, who is characteristically careful with his terminology, does not use the terms “right” or “birthright” to know one’s biological origins. I’m not super versed in the jargon of philosophical rights theory, and the word “right” means different things to different people. But it does strike me that knowing who your birth family was is deeply important to many people and it makes a lot of sense to me that it does. Regular readers know I’m very far from a biology determinist, and even I was surprised by how gratifying I found it to be physically compared to my beloved father. It was deeply meaningful and brought me unexpected comfort in this devastating time. At the same time, It’s clear to me that even though people have a “right” to know their provenance, as they do other aspects of their biology, these discoveries do not necessarily make things better for them. A 2017 study by Lebowitz et al. highlights some significant downsides: today’s technologies, which give people access to a plethora of information about their genetics, make them overestimate the impact of their predisposed genetic properties and thus makes them pessimistic about their physical and mental health–despite what we know about epigenetics and the considerable impact of environment.

All these threads boil down to this: knowing things about your own genetic makeup, including about your birth family, has advantages and drawbacks, and plays out differently for different people. Thing is: good or bad, simple or fraught, freeing or burdensome–knowledge about your DNA is now easily available and secrets are near impossible to keep. Law and policy in a variety of areas–including family law and criminal law, two fields I’m deeply interested in–must be shaped with the understanding that the cat is out of the bag.

I think the idea that our deepest and most unsavory secrets will come to light–and living with the inevitability of discovery–looms large in our collective nightmares. In Clarissa Pinkola Estés book Women Who Run with the Wolves (now experiencing a well-deserved renaissance), she tells the story of a golden-haired woman murdered by a spurned lover and buried near a river. In time, reeds resembling her beautiful tresses grow over her grave and sing the song of her murder and her killer’s name. It’s no coincidence that many cultures feature similar stories. The wonderful Argentinian film noir Los Tallos Amargos is based on the same plot point. The new, democratized access to DNA testing has ushered an age in which these deeply embedded cultural fears are here.

In the adoption field, this means that birthparents and adoptive parents have to be very clearly apprised of the fact that their child will have access to information about their provenance. This is true for closed adoptions, open adoptions, and even kin adoptions to hide all kinds of unsavory family secrets. DNA testing services are here and in wide usage, and so whatever you think you are hiding about a child’s biology–to protect them, to protect yourself, whatever the reason–will come to light. Whatever role you play in the adoption triangle, you have to play it with the understanding that you have no control over whether, or when, the facts will come to light. This can cause a lot of distress and fear, but it is nonetheless true.

In the criminal justice field, it means that much of the concern about invasive DNA testing methods is now moot, whether positive or not, given their increasing availability and sophistication and decreasing costs. I see these concerns raised by privacy advocates and racial justice advocates. Honestly, it seems a bit ridiculous to resent the role that private DNA testing services and familial DNA testing played in unveiling and prosecuting California’s most heinous murderer and rapist, or to begrudge the relief that the current wave of cracking cold cases through novel uses of DNA technology brings to families even decades after the crime. In 2013, Charles MacLean called for accelerating another helpful DNA-based tool: producing an artist’s rendering of a perpetrator’s face based on an ancestry analysis of their DNA, which raised concerns about AI-generated over-racialized portrayals of perpetrators. Regardless of where you stand on the range between enthusiasm and concern about these technologies, they are here now and have helped crack at least one horrendous cold case.

This also means that some arguments about rehabilitation-versus-retribution are going to be skewed by our increased knowledge about whether and how people can change. In 2005, the field of juvenile justice was rocked by new insights from neuroimaging and developmental psychology about the malleability of the adolescent brain, leading to many welcome enlightened developments regarding the sentencing of people for crimes they committed at a young age. But what about kids who, from a very young age, present symptoms of what might later be diagnosed as psychopathy? In this piece, Angela Lashbrook looks at a difficult paradox we face now: on one hand, we want to exercise extreme caution before labeling children as psychopaths, opting instead for the still scary, but perhaps less so, diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder. On the other hand, it now turns out that the earlier the psychopathy diagnosis, the easier it is to do something about it, both clinically and through environmental redirection; adult psychopaths are notoriously resistant to any treatment or remediation. But talking about the advantages and drawbacks of labeling people with a diagnosis we now have the scientific means to determine they actually have is moot in an era of accelerated discovery and decreasing costs.

I would like to see more scholarship and policymaking in these areas leave behind the “pros and cons” discussions about disclosures, and move toward the more important question: how are we to shape our personal lives and public policies knowing that, whether we like it or not, genetic knowledge is widely available? How do we shift the conversation from talking about the virtues of keeping secrets that are impossible to keep toward framing the validity and immutability of these revelations in a scientifically valid way? Rather than trembling in fear of discoveries that will shake up our self perceptions and our families, wouldn’t it be better if we thought about the extent to which these discoveries have the power to shape our lives, and the varying degrees of freedom to shape our futures even as we know more about our pasts and presents?

A Secular Kaddish Yatom for My Father

Today we held my father’s funeral, which was heartbreaking and moving. Hundreds of people whose lives he touched came to help us say goodbye and many spoke of him with such love and admiration. I officiated the funeral and said the final kaddish, which I based on Tally Ornan’s secualr kaddish:

יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ בֶּן הָאָדָם עַל שֶׁיָּדַע כִּי מִן הֶעָפָר הוּא וְאֶל הֶעָפָר יָשׁוּב, וְעַל אַף זֹאת בָּחַר בַּחַיִּים וְשָׂמַח, וְעָלַץ, וְרָגַשׁ, וְאָהַב.

יִתְבָּרַךְ וְיִשְׁתַּבַּח בֶּן הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר מִן הַחֹמֶר בָּא וְאֶל הַחֹמֶר שָׁב, וְעַל אַף שֶׁיּוֹדֵעַ הוּא כִּי סְפוּרִים יָמָיו עַל הָאֲדָמָה, הָיָה חַי וְשׁוֹקֵק, תְּאֵב דַּעַת וְשִׂמְחָה, צוֹחֵק וְדוֹמֵעַ , אוֹהֵב וְאָהוּב עַל כִּי אָדָם הוּא.

יִתְפָּאַר וְיִתְרוֹמַם בֶּן הָאָדָם עַל כִּי יָדַע שֶׁעָמֹק הַבּוֹר הוּא וְרָחָב וְלֹא יִמְתְּקוּ לוֹ שָׁם הָרְגָבִים. עַל כִּי יָדַע שֶׁאֵין בִּפְנֵי מִי וְאֵין עַל מָה לָתֵת אֶת הַדִּין כִּי אֵין אַחֲרִית בַּשַּׁחַת. רִיק וַאֲבַדּוֹן יִשְׁכְּנוּ שָׁם לְעוֹלָם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא.

וְעַל אַף זֹאת דָּבַק בַּחַיִּים, וְלָחַם עֲלֵיהֶם בְּפִכָּחוֹן, בְּאֹמֶץ, בִּגְבוּרָה, וּלְלֹא מוֹרָא.

יִתְנַשֵּׂא וְיִתְהַדָּר בֶּן הָאָדָם עַל כִּי יָדַע כִּי רַק בּוֹ מְצוּיָה מִדַּת הָרַחֲמִים. עַל כִּי קִוָּה, הֶאֱמִין, וְשָׁאַף לָשִׁית שָׁלוֹם עַל הָאָרֶץ בְּיוֹדְעוֹ שֶׁרַק עָלָיו וְעַל שֶׁכְּמוֹתוֹ מוּטֶלֶת מִצְוָה זוֹ וְאֵין אַחֵר זוּלָתָם שֶׁיָּשִׂימוּ שָׁלוֹם עַל הָאָרֶץ וְעַל כָּל יוֹשְׁבֶיהָ.

עַל כָּל אֵלֶּה וְעוֹד יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ, יִתְבָּרַךְ וְיִשְׁתַּבַּח, יִתְנַשֵּׂא וְיִתְהַדָּר, וְיִתְעַלֶּה בֶּן הָאָדָם, חיים בן שרה ושמואל יוסף, בעלה של אמי יעל אהבת חייו, אבי הנהדר והמסור, חותנו האוהב והחם של אישי צ׳אד, סבו המאושר של בני ריו בבת עינו, אח וגיס למיכל, עודד, אתי, נוני ואסתר, דוד לטל, דן, אנאבל, שרון, שי, שחף, ילדיהם של אחותו אסתר ואחיו דוד ז״ל, חתן מופלא לשמואליק ז״ל ואביבה, חבר שלא יסולא בפז ועמית תומך לאלפי אנשים ברחבי העולם, מורה נערץ, מרצה בחסד וחוקר דגול שהעמיד דורות תלמידים, מהנדס, כלכלן, ומתכנן תחבורה מחונן, סופר מוכשר, רב לעת מצוא בקהילות ברחבי העולם, הראשון להתנדב לכל מטרה ראויה, לוחם עשוי לבלי חת לשלום, לשוויון ולזכויות אדם ואזרח, איש דעת מבריק רב תחומי, ברוך כשרונות כשם שהיה צנוע הליכות, איש שנשמתו זהב טהור ופיו וליבו תמיד שווים, שצחוקו הגדול ועיניו הטובות שימחו כל לב עצוב, ושכשרונותיו הגדולים האירו באור יקרות של קידמה ופיתוח אפילו את הפינות החשוכות, הנידחות והנחשלות ביותר בעולם. יתגדל ויתקדש ויתברך וישתבח ויִתְנַשֵּׂא וְיִתְהַדָּר, וְיִתְעַלֶּה שמו של אבא היקר מפז לְנֶצַח נְצָחִים, לְעוֹלָם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא.

וְאָנוּ כָּאן, הַנּוֹתָרִות: נִדְהָמִות, המומות, כאובות, נְטוּשִׁות, וְגַלְמוּדִות, ומתנת חייו עמנו צרי ללבבותינו השבורים. וימצא זכרו הנפלא מכל מנוחה נכונה, בעגלא ובזמן קריב, בנשמותינו האוהבות והבוכיות. וכל אשר נזכר, חי.

English translation:

May the human being be magnified and sanctified, knowing that they come from dust and shall return to dust. Yet, despite this, they have chosen life and found joy, delight, emotion, and love.

Blessed and praised be the human being who knows that they come from clay and shall return to clay. Although aware that their days are numbered on the earth, they lived and yearned, thirsted for knowledge and joy, laughed and wept, loved and were loved because they were human.

May the human being be glorified and exalted, for they knew the depth of the pit and its vastness, and the bitter taste of its earth. For they knew that there is no one to be judged by and nothing to face judgment for as there is no future in destruction. Emptiness and oblivion dwell there forever and ever.

Yet, despite this, they clung to life, fought for it fiercely, with courage, bravery, and without fear.

May the human being be elevated and adorned because they knew that only in them resides the measure of mercy. Because they hoped, believed, and aspired to establish peace on earth, knowing that only they and their kind can bring peace to the earth and its inhabitants.

For all these reasons and more, may the human being be magnified and sanctified, blessed and praised, elevated and adorned. May the human being, Haim son of Sarah and Shmuel Yosef, beloved husband of my mother, Yael, my noble and devoted father, the loving and warm father-in-law of my partner Chad, the doting grandfather of my son Rio, the apple of his eye, the brother and brother-in-law of Michal, Oded, Eti, Nuni, and Esther, the loving uncle of Tal, Dan, Annabelle, Sharon, Shai, and Shahaf, and the children of his sister Esther and his brother David (may he rest in peace), the wonderful son-in-law of Shmuelik (may he rest in peace) and Aviva, a friend and colleague more precious than gold to people around the globe, a beloved teacher, gifted lecturer, and distinguished researcher who has educated generations of students, an accomplished engineer, economist, and transportation planner, a talented writer, a beloved ersatz rabbi in communities worldwide, the first to volunteer for any worthy cause, a fearless warrior for peace, equality, and human rights, a renaissance man of brilliant and versatile intellect, blessed with talents and yet modest in his ways, a person with a pure soul whose inner thoughts and outer words were one and the same, whose big laughter and kind eyes brought joy to every saddened heart, and whose immense talents shone a bright light of progress and development even upon the darkest, neglected, and most decrepit corners of the world. May his name be magnified and sanctified, blessed and praised, elevated and adorned, and may his name, brighter than gold, live on in eternity, forever and ever.

And we, who are left behind: stunned, shocked, grieving, abandoned, and bewildered, the gift of his life a healing salve for our broken hearts. May his wondrous memory find a proper resting place, quickly and soon, in our loving and tearful souls. And whoever is remembered, lives.

Dad Is Gone

It is with a heart full of shock and grief that I announce the untimely death of my beloved, wise, good, and precious father, Haim Aviram, after a brutal battle with a rare lung disease. Dad leaves behind the love of his life – my mother Yael – me, my spouse Chad, our son and his beloved grandson Rio, his siblings in blood and in law Michal, Oded, Nuni, and Ettie, his nephews Tal, Dan, Annabelle, Sharon, Shai, Shahaf and many others, hundreds of dear friends and colleagues from all over the world, and many generations of adoring students. Dad was a very special, one-of-a-kind man, and we are heartbroken.

The funeral will be held at the civilian-secular cemetery Menucha Nechona in Kiryat Tivon on Monday, June 12, at 6pm. We will hold no shiv’a and we ask for no condolence visits.

Miriam’s Tambourine: Women and Liturgical Music

Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing.
Miriam sang to them: Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.

Exodus 15: 20-21

Caring for my dad in hospital is a labor of love, dedication, optimism, in the face of fear, grief, and shock. It’s been quite the thing to be here, spend every day at the hospital, and keep up my spirits and my mom’s as much as possible. This has not been made easy given the surrounding political context. The volatile cocktail of religious, ethnic, and national differences here is so close to blowing up that everyone is on edge. Among the many loathsome trends all around us is a religious push to marginalize and silence women, which my friend and colleague Yofi Tirosh is fighting with everything she’s got.

A few days ago, I was horrified to learn that the mom of 13-year old Eliana, who was invited to sing at an event in her community and practiced long hours for her performance, was told at the last minute that she would not be allowed on stage because an Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi was in attendance. Her mom, Abigail, recounted that she couldn’t even begin to explain to her daughter that women’s singing was disallowed. Eliana is now invited to sing the national anthem at each anti-government protest, and may her voice ring loud and clear. But the problem runs much deeper. The prohibition on women’s voices has reached pathological levels: rabbis are opining on the age that girls are not allowed to sing in the presence of their brothers. I was under the impression that much of the recent craziness goes far beyond what was regarded reasonable in religious communities until not long ago; my dad vividly remembers going to his religious youth movement, B’nei Akivah, and singing and dancing with girls. But it turns out that the nutty silencing of women from song has deep historical roots, and beyond the famous “kol ba’ishah ervah” (hearing the voice of a woman is akin to watching her display her genitals) from Tractate Brakhot, there’s a whole discussion in Tractate Sotah page 48 about the practices of liturgical singing during the days of the Second Temple. On that page, Rav Yosef Bar Hiah, a chap I would have probably enjoyed ferociously debating on this, opines that “men singing and women answering invites promiscuity; women singing and men answering is like setting fire to bramble.” Essentially, allowing women to open their mouths at all is horrendous, but having women initiate, rather than follow, is by far the worse transgression.

So how does this learned group of pious men (duh) explain away Miriam, Moses’ sister, who, per Exodus, vocally and musically participated in perhaps the most memorable victory song in the Tanakh? Here the Talmud does what it does best, which is engage in breathtaking interpretive gymnastics so that there’s no contradiction. The less impressive commenters argue that Miriam’s singing was only audible to the women. The more sophisticated commenters say that the moments immediately following the marvelous miracle of parting the Red Sea (evocatively visible in Judy Chicago’s feminist illustration for the Haggadah, see above) were of such unique spiritual quality–the rapture before such an otherworldly occurrence, the release from bondage, the vivid connection with, literally, Deus-ex-Machina coming to the aid of his people–that they merited an exception to the prohibition on women’s singing. If you read Hebrew, here’s a lecture by Admiel Kosman that walks you through the whole thing.

I got thinking about Miriam and her singing, and Eliana and the small-minded men who wanted to keep her from singing, because I came across an interesting study. Starting in the 1970s, many symphony orchestras hold “blind” auditions: musicians play behind a screen and are thus judged on the quality of their music, not who they are. A Harvard study showed that the “blind” auditions were successful: after their introduction–between 1970 and 1993–the percentage of women in the five highest-ranked U.S. orchestras increased from 6 to 21 percent. Now, however–in the name of representation/diversity initiatives–there are calls to remove the screen so as to increase diversity, primarily along racial lines.

Pretty much every classical musician I know, of all genders and ethnicities, thinks that removing the screen is a profoundly idiotic and unfair idea, which will stymie true integration and inclusion of folks from disadvantaged backgrounds in classical music–because, if the idea is that diversity increases quality, wouldn’t you assume that the behind-the-screen musicians the orchestra hired would be diverse? Wouldn’t you immediately hire Jessye Norman, Reggie Mobley, Wynton Marsalis, and countless amazing others, whether or not they sang or played behind a screen? And if we removed the screen, what would that say about the qualities of the people we hired, and how would it feel to have been hired under those circumstances?

What we need is to strongly enhance and enrich and provide opportunities for musical education and musical education for kids–even very young kids–of all backgrounds, so that class/race/gender will not be a hindrance to anyone who wants a classical music career at its inception. If we invest our effort in fostering, supporting, and nurturing musical excellence from infancy, then of course we can keep the screen up to prevent the Yosef Bar Hiahs of the world from sabotaging people they disdain out of bias and bigotry, and we can ensure that everyone has a fair shake from the start, resulting in their excellence sparkling through the screen. But investing in early-age education and artistic development in disadvantaged neighborhoods is challenging, expensive work, whereas posturing and bloviating about diversity is lazy and cheap. I really hope we invest in raising generations of musical Miriams who don’t need any special favors for their beautiful voices to ring even from behind a screen; when their prodigious talents and hard work get them to the finish line, appreciate their voices; and then remove the screen, so we can amplify their music a thousandfold.