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Here’s what Jewish New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s dreams are made of
(New York Jewish Week) — Cartoonist and writer Roz Chast is best known for her work at The New Yorker, where she’s been a contributor since 1978. But the Brooklyn native is also famously associated with the city from which the prestigious publication takes its name.
Chast’s cartoons often explore the mundane hilarity of everyday life in the city, from the vagaries of the subway system to the anxieties of everyday New Yorkers. “I love living in Manhattan because everything is close together,” Chast told the New York Jewish Week. “There’s a kind of density and you don’t need a car — the city is so walkable. Even as an older person, you can have a rich life.”
As a creator, Chast said that New York City offers unlimited material. “There’s always so much going on,” she said. “It’s hard not to find something interesting or funny. Or aggravating.”
And yet, Chast’s focus is decidedly inward in her latest book: “I Must Be Dreaming” takes readers on a nighttime tour of her phantasmagorical mind. In its nearly 200 pages, Chast unpacks her dreams in all their technicolor glory — featuring birds in hats, animated fruits, human distortion (which she categorizes as “body horror”) and celebrity encounters — and includes dream theories from the likes of Carl Jung and Kabbalah.
“I didn’t research it to come to conclusions,” Chast said of the book, which was published last month. “I’m interested in what others make of dreams.”
After all, in a city where a movie ticket can cost $25, dreams provide “free entertainment,” she added.
Rosalind Chast, 68, grew up in a Jewish family in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. Her parents, children of immigrants from Ukraine, Poland and Russia, spoke Yiddish to each other, their siblings and friends — but Chast never picked it up, she said, despite the occasional word or phrase that pops up in her cartoons.
Her parents worked in the NYC school system: her mother, an assistant principal, and her dad, a Spanish/French teacher. The anxious pair would become well-known thanks to her award-winning 2014 graphic memoir, “Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” which the New York Times describes as “an instant classic of eldercare literature.”
Roz Chast’s latest graphic memoir unpacks her dreams. (Courtesy Bloomsbury)
An only child, Chast said she grew up fairly isolated, not maintaining much of a social life. In an interview with the New York Jewish Week, she recalls fondly how her parents would host friends and they would take turns telling jokes. They had a small apartment and she was not permitted to make a lot of noise, so she would retreat to her room, where her options were limited to reading, writing or drawing.
As it happens, to this day Chast still locks herself in her room alone for hours as she works. “Pretty solitary” is how she describes the life of a cartoonist, adding, “if you spend your childhood doing that, it feels more natural.”
Although she does not consider herself at all religious, Chast’s work typically reflects a Jewish sensibility, exploring Jewish mother stereotypes, for example, or feelings about gefilte fish. Growing up, her family celebrated Hanukkah and Passover, and her mother lit candles on Friday nights and she would return home from college to share Shabbat dinner with her family.
Chast graduated Midwood High School and attended Kirkland College (sister school of Hamilton College) until she transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1977 with a BFA in painting. She did some cartooning at RISD, but her feelings ranged from “indifference to actual dislike” of the quality of her own work. She found her classmates’ artistic abilities daunting, describing them as “the most incredibly talented people.”
“Any sense that I had that I was talented or special, by the time I left RISD, I knew that not to be the case,” she said.
Chast’s feelings of inadequacy kept her from getting her hopes up when she submitted a cartoon to The New Yorker for the first time in 1978. Although she had been contributing to the Village Voice and National Lampoon, she had no expectation of having any work accepted by the prestigious publication, especially as she was a 23-year-old non-male, and her style was very different.
“My cartoons didn’t look anything like New Yorker cartoons,” she said.
Chast said she was flabbergasted when they accepted her “Little Things” cartoon — a black-and-white diagram of 10 fanciful household objects straight from Chast’s imagination, including a pipe-like “kellat” and a “hackeb,” which vaguely resembles a shish kebab.
The New Yorker ultimately hired Chast, and the magazine was where she met her husband of 39 years, writer Bill Franzen. The pair bonded over shared childhood memories of joke books and a love of pet birds. Chast had a series of parakeets as a child, “because on the pet ladder it’s the highest rung I could go,” she said. Nonetheless, Chast’s love for birds has endured: Her current avian residents are Eli, an 18-year-old African grey parrot, who was presumed male until she laid an egg, and Jacky, a younger female Caique, who snuggles in her hair as evidence of her affection. Chast is proud of Eli’s vocal abilities and doesn’t seem to mind when she exclaims “vanilla ice cream!” whenever she opens the freezer for a late night snack.
Much of Chast’s work is loosely autobiographical, drawing upon her experiences as a daughter, wife and mother. “When I started, graphic storytelling was not a thing,” Chast said, describing how graphic novels and memoirs evolved into an innovative “way to tell stories.”
“They weren’t just, ‘here are the words and now I’m illustrating the words,’” she said. “It was this other different art form, and that was a real breakthrough for people, for cartoonists, for publishing and now it’s kind of exploded.”
Her unique style has become recognizable to many — so much so that on the back cover of “I Must Be Dreaming,” fellow acclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel (“Fun Home”) describes the book as “Roz Chast at her Chastiest.”
Her drawing has been described as “scratchy” or deploying “shaky, anxious lines.” Chast maintains that that is just how she draws — whether it’s classically acceptable or not, adding she’s not good at all at uniformity. “One thing I like about cartooning is there’s no strict rule,” she said.
When she isn’t working, Chast loves to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, Zabar’s and the various trimming stores in the Garment District. “I just like walking around,” she said.
Chast and her husband lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when their oldest child, Ian, was young. At 2 ½, he explained to his mother how her job worked, telling her “you go on the train and show your pictures to men.” Soon thereafter they moved to the suburban oasis of Ridgefield, Connecticut.
These days, Ian, 36, is a web developer, and Peter, 32, is a therapist. Chast and Franzen maintain a pied-a-terre on the Upper West Side, not far from where she lived as a young writer for nine years, when she cooked using a hot plate.
“When you live out of New York and hate to drive there’s a bit of a handicapped feeling,” she said of her time in the suburbs, adding she has “a feeling of being a complete person” when she’s back in the city.
In recent years, she has pursued her love of painting Ukrainian pysanky eggs, and working on hook rugs, embroidery and book binding. But sharp-witted Chast gives no indication she will be putting her feet up anytime soon.
“I do feel that things are OK right now, but I think it’s a combination of actually being realistic and maybe just an anxious person, that’s all I can commit to,” she said. “I imagine this tall stack of chairs: One thing goes wrong and the whole thing falls to the ground.”
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Israeli Military Expert: Doha Strike Was Backed by US and Qatar Coup, Will Bring Hostage Deal Closer
A damaged building, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, according to an Israeli official, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Israel’s unprecedented strike on Hamas leaders in Doha this week was not a rogue act of military aggression, but rather the outcome of quiet coordination between Qatar and the US that could bring a hostage deal closer, Israeli intelligence expert Eyal Pinko said on Wednesday.
The strike, which officials have said was planned months ago, came a day after 10 Israelis were killed by Hamas in Gaza and Jerusalem. Four were soldiers who died in an attack on an Israeli tank in northern Gaza. The separate shooting attack in Jerusalem, in which six Israelis were killed and several more wounded, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Pinko, a national security expert who served in Israeli intelligence for more than three decades, said in a press briefing.
Pinko contended that while Qatar publicly condemned the attacks, it also enabled them. “I am sure they were involved and the attack was coordinated with the [Qataris],” Pinko later told The Algemeiner.
The most recent round of negotiations to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal were nothing more than a “deception” by the US and Israel designed to gather Hamas leaders in one place “in order to set the timing to eliminate them,” he said.
Pinko said the strike should also be seen in light of US President Donald Trump’s impatience with the stalled hostage talks, arguing it showed Trump was on board with assassinations of Hamas leaders despite public declarations that he was “very unhappy” with the attack. He also pointed to Trump’s comments from last month, in which the US president predicted the Gaza conflict would reach a “conclusive ending” within two or three weeks.
Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas’s exiled leadership, benefits strategically from replacing the terrorist group’s leaders loyal to Iran with figures it can trust, Pinko maintained. Doha holds billions of dollars belonging to Hamas officials and has no interest in letting Ankara or Tehran displace it as the group’s patron. The timing of the attack is also significant, Pinko said, coming in the wake of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program over the summer. “Iran is in a very bad situation. Qatar can easily overcome Iran,” he said.
Pinko further argued that the strike may serve to bring forward the release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza since Hamas itself was no longer a coherent negotiating partner. The terrorist group operating in Gaza had become fragmented, “divided into five families that are fighting each other” and sometimes giving the impression that “they hate each other more than they hate Israel,” Pinko said. Recent talks proved “there was no longer a decisionmaker in Hamas,” and this disarray had allowed Hamas leaders to drag out the process with unrealistic demands. Removing those figures, he argued, would leave room for Qatar to install leaders who could cut a deal. “This will make the negotiation process much faster,” he said.
Pinko’s assessment stands in stark contrast to the fears of some of the families of the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza, who said in a statement they had “grave fear” the Doha strike could sabotage the chances of bringing their loved ones home.
He placed the operation in a wider context, linking it to the revival of the Abraham Accords and US efforts to build a trade corridor from India through the Gulf to Israel and Europe as a counterweight to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, ending with Gaza as a key trade hub. “Trump is very serious in making the northern part of the Gaza Strip as [having] US autonomy. That will be the end of the American belt and road initiative to compete with the Chinese,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Qatar, which “gives safe haven [and] harbors terrorists,” to expel them or bring them to justice, adding that if they don’t, “we will.”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for his part said his country would retaliate over the strike, and accused Netanyahu of “wasting” Qatar’s time in negotiations and “leading the Middle East to chaos.”
Pinko called out Doha for its “duplicity” in pretending to be a peacemaker on the one hand, while “fueling Hamas and hatred” in the US and Europe, on the other.
“They are against Israel in their DNA. They don’t want Israel to exist,” he said. “So Gaza and Hamas are a very important asset for them.”
Some critics have denounced the Doha strike as a violation of international law, but international law experts note that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes a state’s inherent right to self-defense and that this right is not confined by geography if attacks are directed from outside its borders. The so-called “unwilling or unable” doctrine holds that if a host country does not act against militants on its soil, the victim state may use proportionate force.
The US relied on this doctrine when it killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in a 2011 operation that was widely hailed by Western governments and the UN, whose then secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said at the time that he was “very much relieved by news that justice has been done” and called it “a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”
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Germany Presses Main Mosque Network to Distance Itself From Erdogan Ally Over Antisemitism
Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, speaks at a press conference following an August 2025 gathering in Istanbul, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance and a boycott against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Amid a rising wave of anti-Jewish hate crimes, the German government is pressing the country’s main mosque association over its close ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging it to publicly distance itself from his antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
According to local reports, German authorities have told the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) — the country’s largest mosque network — to formally break with Erdogan’s hateful statements or risk losing government support and cooperation.
“We expect the federal government’s cooperation partners to clearly distance themselves from organizations and individuals who spread antisemitic messages or promote Islamist agendas,” a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Ministry of Interior said in a statement to German media.
For years, the German government has supported DITIB in training imams, as well as helping to foster community programs and religious initiatives.
In 2023, then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser signed an agreement with the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and DITIB for a new imam training program.
By sending imams from Turkey and paying their salaries, the Diyanet oversees DITIB and its hundreds of communities across Germany, shaping the ideological direction of more than 900 mosques and influencing the training of their imams.
Under a new program, however, the Diyanet no longer sends imams directly from Turkey. Instead, Turkish students are trained in Germany in cooperation with the German Islam Conference (IKD).
Since March 1 of this year, the Interior Ministry has designated €465,000 in support for the program, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
With this new agreement, imams live permanently in German communities and have no formal ties to the Turkish government. Still, experts doubt that this alone would curb the Diyanet’s political influence.
In the past, DITIB has faced multiple controversies, with some members making antisemitic remarks and spreading hateful messages.
“The continuation of measures adopted for this purpose, such as the training initiative, will largely depend on DITIB’s conduct and the success of the process,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
The German government’s latest warning came after a conference in Istanbul last month, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance against Israel, a boycott against the country, and “global jihad.”
Among those attending was Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, with whom the German government signed the new agreement in 2023.
Erbas has repeatedly made public antisemitic statements, defended the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023, and called for the mobilization of “all forms of jihad.”
“The Zionist regime is committing outright genocide in Gaza. We believe it is haram, or forbidden, to remain silent in the face of oppression. Therefore, everyone can take action. The boycott of Zionist occupiers’ goods must continue,” Erbas reportedly said during the conference.
“We firmly affirm that the Palestinian people have all legitimate forms of resistance against the Zionist occupation, including armed resistance. We also consider it necessary to mobilize the Ummah [Islamic community] for all forms of jihad in the way of Allah,” he continued.
“Bir avuç azgın topluluk, tüm dünyayı felakete sürüklüyor”https://t.co/ieip8gNvkt pic.twitter.com/jZn5Tgc1Ah
— Diyanet (@diyanetbasin) August 29, 2025
The German government strongly condemned Erbas’s comments, questioning DITIB’s relationship with a public figure whose statements and antisemitic ideology contradict their cooperation agreement.
“These events underscore, once again, the problematic structural and personal links between DITIB and the Turkish religious authority,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
“Cooperation with DITIB requires a clear commitment to the values of the Basic Law, to international understanding, to Israel’s right to exist, and to a firm opposition to both Islamism and antisemitism,” the statement read.
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EU Targets Israel With Sanctions and Partial Trade Suspension, Von der Leyen Calls for Ceasefire Amid Gaza War
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers the State of the European Union address to the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
The executive body of the European Union will propose sanctions against certain Israeli ministers and partially suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel, in one of its latest efforts to pressure Jerusalem over the war in Gaza.
On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled new measures targeting the 25-year-old pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with Israel, in one of the latest attempts to curb the Jewish state’s defensive campaign against Hamas.
“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” von der Leyen said in a State of the Union speech to the European Parliament in France.
“People killed while begging for food. Mothers holding lifeless babies,” she continued. “Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war. For the sake of the children, for the sake of humanity. This must stop.”
This latest move is part of an increasingly hostile campaign by some European countries against the Jewish state, building on previous efforts to undermine Israel internationally.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced von der Leyen’s comments as “regrettable,” adding that some of her remarks were “tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.”
“Israel, the world’s only Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East, is fighting a war of existence against extremist enemies working to eliminate it. The international community must back Israel in this struggle,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
“Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East,” he continued. “Anyone who seeks an end to the war knows very well how to end it: the release of the hostages, the disarmament of Hamas, a new future for Gaza.”
Saar added, “Hurting Israel will not bring this about; on the contrary, it entrenches Hamas and Israel’s enemies in their refusal.”
The President of the European Commission’s comments this morning are regrettable. Some of them are also tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.
Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East.…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) September 10, 2025
Von der Leyen’s announcement came just a day after Jerusalem carried out strikes against Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar, which has supported the Palestinian terrorist group for years.
In her speech, von der Leyen denounced Israel’s actions, accusing the country of causing starvation in the war-torn enclave of Gaza and undermining ceasefire negotiations.
She also condemned the expansion of settlements in parts of the West Bank and denounced comments from some government ministers that she said incite violence.
“All of this points to a clear attempt to undermine the two-state solution, to undermine the vision of a viable Palestinian state. And we must not let this happen,” von der Leyen said.
Israel has vehemently denied any accusations of causing starvation in Gaza, noting that it has provided and facilitated significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout much of the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Jerusalem has also argued it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Under the new proposed measures, the EU would partially suspend its trade pact with Israel, removing preferential treatment for Israeli goods that make up nearly a third of the country’s total international trade.
Von der Leyen also announced that the EU will suspend its bilateral support for Israel, while maintaining engagement with Israeli civil society and Yad Vashem, the country’s main Holocaust memorial center.
In addition, the European Commission “will propose sanctions on the extremist ministers and on violent settlers” and plans to set up a “Palestine donor group” next month, with a dedicated mechanism to support Gaza’s reconstruction following the war.
At the end of her speech, von der Leyen called for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, the “unrestrained” entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and “an immediate ceasefire.”
“There can never be any place for Hamas, neither now nor in future because they are terrorists who want to destroy Israel,” the European Commission head said.
“They are also inflicting terror on their own people, keeping their future hostage.”