We’re Never Going Back Again

The End of an Era and the Start of Something New

(The Monk by the Sea, Caspar David Friedrich, 1810)

After celebrating the ancient holiday of Sukkot and the two year anniversary of October 7th, I turned my phone on to learn that, yet again, another batch of artists decided to boycott Israelis.

This time, they banned Israelis from streaming their music on Spotify, effectively making it impossible for most Israelis to listen.

This boycott particularly hurt because of its bitter irony.

One of the bands involved is Paramore, a band I got into after hearing a particularly moving rendition of “Still into You,” at Ballenby, my favorite karaoke bar in Tel Aviv.

That was the first time I encountered Paramore, listening to a young Israeli belt it out in the middle of Tel Aviv, in the middle of a war.

Ballenby was destroyed a few weeks later – it was hit by a hypersonic missile from Iran.

But no missile can kill the music.

At least, that’s what the musicians I grew up on used to say.

There was a time when music was an endeavor of peace, a time when musicians dreamed of uniting people through melody and harmony rather than malice and hate, but that time is over.

As much as these musicians will tell you they’re pro-peace, it is obvious that they are, in fact, just anti-Us.

I say “us” and not Israel because these boycotts are much bigger than Israel. These boycotts hurt millions of young people, most of whom do not live in Israel.

It is not as though Bibi and all of the demonic warlords they imagine fill his cabinet are listening to Paramore and Lorde – these bands are for young people.

The group of people who would probably have been the most affected by these boycotts are the innocent teenagers and young people who were massacred at NOVA.

How many of those kids listened to these artists? How many of the hostages were fans? How many cars had Paramore and Lorde bumper stickers that were torched that day?

This war started with an assault on young people, an assault on peace activists, and an assault on music itself.

And now, the world over, young people, peace activists, and musicians have sided with their own enemy.

Many people would like to believe that all of these people are just stupid. That they have been brainwashed by the internet and their thinking capacity has rotted away to nothing.

But the truth is that antizionism has become the most important cause in the world.

It has become so big that it has replaced youth, peace, and music as the most defining aspiration for young people.

Antizionism is no longer a surging issue; it is the issue.

Every other issue is secondary to antizionism. Issues only matter insofar as they are related to antizionism.

Even the existential threat of climate change has taken a backseat.

In a choice between saving the world and destroying Israel, the latter comes first.

If such a situation feels impossible to imagine, that is because it is.

It is impossible to imagine human beings, as we understood them, would be so bitterly vindictive and small.

But this is a new kind of human being.

Antizionism has changed our entire conception of what it means to be a person.

For the first time since 1945, antizionism reintroduced the idea that one’s human status was based on one’s race.

The entire race of Israelis was declared “unhuman,” but not directly. By labeling the unhumans “zionists” instead of Israelis or Jews, antizionists were able to make it appear that Zionists lost their human status not by nature of their birth but by nature of their behavior.

In the way that a criminal cedes his freedom with his own actions, the Zionist loses his humanity for his beliefs.

This idea has been reinforced so constantly that now it is frankly a given.

However, this constant dehumanization of Zionists has had an unintended effect – it has dehumanized everything.

Music and art, the most human of endeavors, are now devoid of any real humanity. There is no individuality there, only conformity. Who are the rebellious artists going against the tide and standing with Israel? There is no creativity there, only repetitiveness.

Our art is dying along with our humanity. Our respect for individuals is disappearing along with the individuality in the art we consume.

By painting the world in such clear blacks and whites, antizionism has blotted out all nuance. There are no shadows on a black canvas, and there is no depth on a white one. Art and humanity live in the messy in between, in the world of spilled ink and mixed colors.

But a world that can sustain no nuance can sustain no art.

As more and more artists give themselves over to the draconian dictates of antizionism, the quality of our art will continue to decline.

We are never going back to 2022, when it was only a handful of your favorite artists who said cruel things about Israel. We are never going back to 2007, when you could assume that any artist who said or did anything antisemitic would be cancelled. We are never going back.

The curtain has fallen on Act One of the 21st century. The gears are in motion, the actors have their stage directions, and it is time to begin Act Two. What will the next 25 years hold?

I do not know, but I can safely assume that there will be far fewer musical artists I can listen to, far fewer cities I can visit, and far fewer people I can trust.

Somewhere in the world to come, I know that my ancestors are laughing. Those of us who grew up in the unlimited prosperity of American Judaism are all lamenting a return to the way things always were.

Feeling hated, isolated, and unwanted – that is the Jewish historical condition, and that is the condition we are heading towards again.

While all of this can feel terrifying and disheartening, it is important to remember why we celebrate Sukkot.

We celebrate Sukkot, “The festival of booths,” or, as Andrew Cuomo once called it, “That f*cking treehouse holiday,” to remind us about the transitoriness of our history.

We received the Torah in the desert, we took the Torah into exile, and we have brought the Torah with us everywhere we go. Every nation we have lived in during the diaspora has been a Sukkah, not a house, a temporary dwelling, not a home.

There is one eternal home for the one eternal people – everything else is temporary, even the agony of antizionism.

The relative prosperity of American Judaism is over, and the relative pain of this era has begun, but this, like all things, will end one day.

So hold fast. Tie your courage to the sticking place. Take faith in the eternal people.

And, as always,

Spread Love, Spread Light,

Am Yisrael Chai