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How bathroom graffiti inspired this Jewish comedian and singer
(New York Jewish Week) — The graffiti scrawled on public bathroom walls may not seem like the highest form of art. But for Jewish comedian and musician Caitlin Cook, a particular phrase she saw on a bathroom stall became the catalyst for a decade of creative inventiveness.
“Since writing on bathroom walls is neither for critical acclaim nor financial reward,” it read, “it is the purest form of art. Discuss.”
“I just knew that this was something I did want to discuss,” Cook told the New York Jewish Week. “I love art history, I love found art, and I loved the way that [graffiti] broke down the idea of what art is and can be. So, I started photographing bathroom graffiti all over the place.”
A few years later, Cook realized she could turn her extensive collection of found phrases into lyrics for songs. And then, after a few more years, she figured out a way to project the original bathroom images behind her as she sang her songs. The project then developed into a one-person musical, “The Writing on the Stall,” which is playing at the Soho Playhouse through Sept. 23. As implied by the title, the musical takes place entirely in a public bathroom; the song’ lyrics are almost entirely quotes from actual graffiti Cook found in restrooms across the globe.
“I think everyone has seen something funny or sad written in the bathroom stall when they’ve sat down,” said Cook, adding that the show “really hits this universal human experience.”
Cook, 33, who moved to New York in 2016, grew up in Los Angeles, where she was raised by her parents and grandparents in a culturally Jewish but atheist home. “Both my grandparents were from very large families who escaped Poland and Belarus and grew up very poor in the Jewish tenements and in the Bronx, then moved to L.A. and made something of themselves,” she said. “My grandma would always say, ‘We’re Jewish, it’s very important that you know that, but we don’t believe in God because [the Holocaust] happened.’”
“I think that was a very common attitude for Jews in L.A.,” she continued. “As a result, I never went to Hebrew school and sometimes I feel like I’m not Jewish enough to be Jewish. Then, other times, I feel I am very Jewish.”
Cook addresses her complicated Jewish identity head-on in “The Writing on the Stall.” Early in the musical — after the show opens with Cook sitting on a toilet, asking the audience for some toilet paper — she talks about being a “Jewish atheist,” and the seemingly inherent contradiction therein.
“I come from a wonderful, creative family that really prioritized education, intellectualism and thinking beyond the surface level of things,” she told the New York Jewish Week, “That search for deep meaning feels very inherent to the way I experience Jewish identity.”
To Cook, this Jewish instinct to sense a deeper message in something seemingly mundane is, essentially, how she came to find graffiti to be so profound in the first place. As an example, she cites a message — “Do what scares you, even if it’s everything” — she found in a stall. It became “part of my life philosophy,” Cook told the New York Jewish Week. “Putting myself outside of my comfort zone, exploring why I am the way that I am, dealing with fears and anxiety … of growing up as a Jewish person who’s always thinking beyond the surface level.”
The short musical (approximately 60 to 75 minutes, depending on audience participation) features songs like “The Difference,” which explores the types of graffiti found in men’s, women’s and non-gendered restrooms. “Girl, keep ya head up,” and “ Love like you’ve never been ghosted,” the women write, while men’s stalls feature lines like, “roses are tits, violets are tits,” and many, many drawings of genitalia.
Another song, called “Conversations With Strangers,” depicts the unique interactions created when strangers answer one another’s contributions to bathroom graffiti. “Follow ur dreams,” one person scratched into a stall. Below it, in Sharpie, someone answers, “I literally only have nightmares.”
“There’s a song about confessional bathroom graffiti [in which] I confess some things about myself and get the audience to confess some secrets, while talking about how intimate bathrooms can be,” Cook said. “[The show also goes into] graffiti that bullies and the beautiful, poetic, sad, wonderful things that people have written.”
Cook, whose previous credits include New York Comedy Festival and SF Sketchfest, alongside iconic venues like The Comedy Cellar, crafted this version of “The Writing on the Stall” with the aid of two chief collaborators: Director A.J. Holmes, best known for his performance as Elder Cunningham in “The Book of Mormon,” and Ali Gordon, actor and alumna of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade.
Cook and Holmes met at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where the two were performing at nearby theaters. (Cook was performing an earlier version of “The Writing on the Stall.”) “My immediate impression was that the songs crush,” Holmes told the New York Jewish Week.
The duo brought Gordon on board, and they developed “The Writing on the Stall” so it touches on a larger message about finding beauty and meaning in the everyday.
“It feels like everyone wants to hide in the friggin’ bathroom right now,” Gordon said. “Whether it’s on a political level or a personal level, everything has become too much of a mess, the desire to bury our heads in the sand is stronger than ever.”
“In the show, that’s what we find our hero doing — hiding from the party outside,” she continued. “But the audience gets to see how she finds her way out … instead of staying in a shame spiral and beating herself up, she finds beauty in the darkest corners. She uses that to shine a light for the rest of us.”
Cook agrees. “It’s a show about shared humanity and finding meaning in unexpected places,” she said. “It’s about sharing vulnerable stories and connecting with strangers unexpectedly, whether it’s writing something in conversation on the wall of a bathroom, or meeting in a bathroom line, or just sharing a little bit about who you are with someone at a bar.”
“The Writing on the Stall” can be silly or salacious at times, but amid the projected images of crude drawings of genitals and cheery, if oversimplified, “you go, girl!” scrawls, Cook is trying to find answers to life’s big questions. She’s inviting audiences to connect with themselves and with one another by reaching out past the edge of the stage. She’s interested in who she is, certainly, but also in who we are to each other as members of a society that so often seems torn beyond repair.
“The Writing on the Stall” is playing at Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam St.) Wednesdays through Saturdays through Sept. 23. Click here for tickets and info.
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The post How bathroom graffiti inspired this Jewish comedian and singer appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.
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Jewish Family Fears London Doctor’s Antisemitism Influenced Their Disabled Son’s Treatment
Dr. Ellen Kriesels at an anti-Israel rally. Photo: Screenshot
In London, an investigation has started into a doctor after the family of a disabled Jewish boy uncovered her long trail of antisemitic social media writings, another expression of an ongoing trend of antisemitic bigotry manifesting in medical settings.
Dr. Ellen Kriesels works as a consultant pediatrician at Whittington Health NHS Trust and serves as clinical lead for community pediatrics. She has been suspended pending a formal inquiry, according to British media reports. The family — who remains unnamed — cares for a son who lives with cerebral palsy and multiple other conditions. Members of the boy’s family told The Times they were “horrified” that a physician treating him had publicly claimed that “virtually every Jew has some feelings of supremacy” and that “world Jewry” was complicit in “slaughtering Palestinians.”
An example of the online postings of Dr. Ellen Kriesels, a consultant pediatrician at Whittington Health NHS Trust. Photo: Screenshot
Kriesels attended an anti-Israel rally in London on Sept. 6 carrying a placard that paired the Star of David with words such as “rape,” “steal,” and “kill.” On her X account she alleged that Israel’s actions in Gaza proved Jews “slaughter Palestinians precisely because they are not Jewish,” while writing that one should understand the Hamas terrorists killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as “oppressed resistance fighters.”
The boy’s parents had already grown apprehensive after confronting Kriesels about her choice to wear a pro-Palestinian lanyard during an appointment. They filed a fresh complaint when they discovered she had failed to refer their son for specialist treatment as part of his transition to adult care. They argued the lapse, coupled with her public antisemitism, raised urgent questions about the safety of the patients under her care.
The child’s father identified himself as “Brian” but chose not to reveal his last name to The Times.
“I am horrified that according to the logic of this doctor, set out in public statements, that because my paraplegic, non-verbal son is brought up in a Jewish household that he harbors genocidal intentions and believes himself superior,” he said. “This is factually impossible and profoundly discriminatory. A professional who publicly expresses such views cannot be regarded as safe to work with vulnerable children or adults. It is deeply concerning that she was permitted to be involved in my son’s care.”
Whittington Health apologized to the family, saying the doctor was not currently scheduled to work, while the General Medical Council confirmed it had started to review the case. “Antisemitism has no place in health care,” a spokesperson said. Britain’s health department also condemned the remarks, promising zero tolerance for hate inside the National Health Service.
The United Kingdom has seen similar controversies around antisemitism’s invasions into health-care settings.
At University College London Hospitals (UCLH), posters appeared on walls with the claim that “Zionism is poison” and the accusation that the Jewish state had been “slaughtering children in Gaza.” The hospital apologized and promised it would crack down on enforcing policies intended to prevent the promotion of political ideologies to patients.
Another high-profile case involved midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after UK Lawyers for Israel exposed a series of anti-Israel posts — including an Oct. 8, 2023, message celebrating “Palestinians’ right to resist” the day after the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust. Mohamied has since filed a lawsuit claiming her supervisors illegally suppressed her pro-advocacy.
The antisemitic incidents in the UK’s hospitals parallel those in other countries.
In the Netherlands, police investigated a nurse accused of threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
In Australia, two nurses filmed themselves bragging online about refusing to treat Israelis, making throat-slitting gestures, and boasting of killing Jews. Both lost their licenses and now face criminal charges.
In Belgium, a hospital suspended one of its physicians after discovering antisemitic cartoons on his social media accounts. The posts included a cartoon showing several babies decapitated by the tip of a Star of David, along with an AI-generated image portraying Hasidic Jews as vampires poised to devour a sleeping baby. The doctor came under fire after he recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report.
A December survey by the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs found 40 percent of Jewish health-care professionals in the US had faced antisemitism at work; in Canada, the number reached 80 percent.
Kriesels’ decision to showcase her antisemitic ideology on X aligns with a notable cohort of users who feel compelled to broadcast their bigotry on the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who currently reigns as the world’s wealthiest man.
A recent study by the Combat Antisemitism Movement shows the scale of the problem: in a random 10-minute window surveying X on Sept. 6, analysts found that 82 percent of posts using the word “Jew” promoted antisemitism.