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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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New York Jews Don’t Need Rhetoric; They Need Equal Justice Under the Law
Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor of New York City at Old City Hall Station, New York, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: Amir Hamja/Pool via REUTERS
New York City’s new antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, has introduced herself with the language of inclusion: “expanding the communal table,” “pulling up additional chairs,” convening stakeholders, listening and learning.
But New York Jews do not need metaphors. They need clarity. They need enforcement. They need a city government willing to name antisemitism plainly and confront it without evasions — because the issue at stake is not communal symbolism. It is the most basic obligation of a liberal democracy: equal justice under the law.
Antisemitism in New York is not an abstract dialogue problem. It is not a misunderstanding that can be resolved through facilitated conversation. It is a civic emergency: assaults on visibly Jewish New Yorkers, threats against synagogues, harassment on public transit, and a permissive ideological environment — especially in elite progressive spaces — that treats Jewish identity as uniquely suspect.
The numbers alone should end any confusion. In 2025, the NYPD recorded 330 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City — more than all other bias categories combined, representing roughly 57 percent of all reported hate crimes. Jews make up about 10 percent of the city’s population but are targeted far more often than any other group. No other minority in New York is attacked so disproportionately and no other hatred is so often explained away.
And the crisis is accelerating. In January 2026 — Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month in office — the NYPD recorded 31 antisemitic hate crimes, a 182 percent increase over January 2025. Jews were targeted, on average, once per day.
And the threat is not theoretical.
Orthodox Jews have been punched, kicked, and harassed in broad daylight simply for looking Jewish — attacked on sidewalks, on buses, and in subway stations. New Yorkers have watched video after video of Jews being targeted in the one city that claims, more than any other, to be a capital of pluralism.
On January 28, 2026, a car was deliberately rammed into the Chabad–Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, one of the most significant Jewish religious sites in the city. The driver was arrested at the scene and charged with multiple hate crimes; security was increased around Jewish institutions across the city in its aftermath. No one was killed. But the message was unmistakable: even the most iconic Jewish spaces in New York are targets.
This is the environment the city’s antisemitism office must confront. Yet so far, the public has been offered almost nothing beyond process language: listening tours, bridge-building, stakeholder engagement.
That is not strategy. That is atmosphere.
And it raises a deeper concern: the modern “czar” is often less a leader than a buffer — a bureaucratic layer designed to absorb outrage, issue statements, and manage optics while avoiding the harder institutional decisions that real enforcement requires. Cities appoint “czars” when they want to signal seriousness without exercising it.
The first question for any antisemitism czar is not: How many chairs are at the table? It is: What counts as antisemitism?
If the office cannot answer that, it cannot enforce anything. It cannot uphold the law. It cannot even speak honestly about what is happening.
But this question is not hypothetical. On his first day in office, Mayor Mamdani revoked the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — the most widely adopted definitional framework for identifying when anti-Israel activism crosses into anti-Jewish hatred through demonization, double standards, or delegitimization. The definition has been adopted by over 1,200 entities worldwide, including 46 countries. And Wisdom herself has signaled agreement with Mamdani’s decision to discard it.
Without such a standard, the office is left without a diagnostic instrument. And the questions it must answer remain urgent:
Is “Globalize the Intifada” antisemitic? Is calling Zionists Nazis antisemitic? Is telling Jewish students they are foreign colonizers unless they renounce Israel antisemitic? Is treating the world’s only Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate antisemitic?
These are not academic puzzles. They are the daily realities of Jewish life in New York’s institutions.
To be clear: criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate in a free society. But the targeting of Jews as Jews — or the delegitimization of Jewish national existence — is not. A city that cannot draw that line is not combating antisemitism. It is managing it.
And here is the central danger of this moment: antisemitism is increasingly laundered through the language of justice. It does not always arrive wearing a swastika. It often arrives wearing the idiom of liberation, insisting that it cannot possibly be antisemitic because it locates itself on the “right side of history.” The most corrosive antisemitism today is the kind that insists it is morally impossible.
This is why definitional clarity matters.
The Jewish community has watched, again and again, as institutions respond swiftly to some forms of hatred while proceduralizing antisemitism into ambiguity. The result is moral incoherence: Jews are told they are protected, but only so long as they do not name what is happening too clearly.
That pattern is now visible on New York’s campuses.
At Columbia University, protest activity during the Gaza war escalated into harassment and intimidation so severe that a campus rabbi publicly warned Jewish students to leave campus for their own safety. That is not “difficult dialogue.” That is exclusion and fear, unfolding at one of America’s most prestigious universities.
Similar dynamics have appeared across parts of the CUNY system and other New York campuses: ideological litmus tests, demonization of Zionism as racism, and a climate in which Jewish students are told — implicitly or explicitly — that full belonging requires political renunciation.
A city serious about antisemitism cannot treat this as a mere communications challenge. It must confront the ideological ecosystem that makes antisemitism socially permissible again, especially among the educated classes.
There is also a basic credibility test. The Mamdani administration has repeatedly elevated figures who have trafficked in extremist rhetoric. His initial director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned within 24 hours after posts surfaced in which she wrote about “money hungry Jews.” A transition adviser, Hassaan Chaudhary, was flagged for calling Israel a “barbaric” nation. Another appointee, Alvaro Lopez, described people tearing down Israeli hostage posters as “heroes.” The previous head of the Office to Combat Antisemitism, Rabbi Moshe Davis, was abruptly fired and replaced with Wisdom; he told reporters he believes the administration found his identity as a “proud Zionist” incompatible with its direction. And Tamika Mallory — forced out of the Women’s March for lionizing Louis Farrakhan and reportedly claiming Jews bore responsibility for the exploitation of Black Americans — was appointed to Mamdani’s Committee on Community Safety.
And just this week, a New York City Health Department staffer, Achmat Akkad, was exposed for posting that “1 Israeli left in this world would be one too many!” and that “Jews that don’t support apartheid are safe. Zionists aren’t!” This from a city employee tasked with community engagement. It follows revelations that the city’s Health Department convened a “Global Oppression Working Group” that accused Israel of genocide while making no mention of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The pattern is not incidental. It reflects an administration in which hostility toward Israel — and, increasingly, toward Jews who support or identify with Israel — is a background condition of employment rather than a disqualifying one. An administration that cannot vet its own staff for eliminationist rhetoric cannot plausibly present itself as the guardian against antisemitism.
New York does not need symbolic appointments designed to manage headlines. It needs leadership willing to draw bright lines — in hiring, in public language, and in enforcement — and to say clearly that those who flirt with eliminationist slogans have no place in city government.
New Yorkers do not need another figurative office. They need measurable commitments: a clear definition, explicit condemnation of eliminationist rhetoric, coordination with law enforcement and the Department of Education, and regular public reporting of incidents and prosecutions. Equal justice is not a metaphor. It is a duty.
Because antisemitism is not defeated through convenings.
It is defeated through moral seriousness: clear definitions, institutional backbone, consistent enforcement, and the courage to confront hatred even when it comes from one’s political allies.
That last part is crucial.
The most urgent antisemitism crisis in New York today is not a fringe rally in a distant borough. It is the normalization of anti-Jewish ideas inside the very institutions that claim the mantle of justice: universities, activist coalitions, cultural organizations, and parts of the political left that have decided that Jews — or at least Zionist Jews — are fair game.
If an antisemitism czar cannot confront that reality, then the office is emblematic by design and functionally useless.
New York City is the largest Jewish city in the world outside Israel. It should be setting the national standard for confronting antisemitism with seriousness and resolve.
Instead, it is offering rhetoric. The task is not to expand the table. The task is to ensure that Jewish New Yorkers receive what every citizen is owed in a constitutional republic: equal justice under the law.
A city that cannot define antisemitism cannot fight it — and a city that cannot fight it is telling its Jews that equal justice is no longer guaranteed.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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How We Should Respond to Attacks Against Jews: Be Ready to Respond with Strength
Arsonists heavily damaged the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Two Jewish men in California were recently attacked after being heard speaking Hebrew. A normal conversation in a native language suddenly became the trigger for violence.
For Jews, Hebrew carries far more than vocabulary. It holds memory, culture, prayer, and identity. It connects Jewish life today with thousands of years of history. When someone is attacked for speaking Hebrew, the attack is not about language. It is about the people speaking it.
I speak Hebrew every day. It is the language I grew up with and the language I use with my children. I speak it with friends and with members of the community. I do not lower my voice when I speak it in public spaces. Cultures survive because people carry them openly. A language that endured exile and persecution did not survive because Jews whispered it.
At the same time, reality requires clarity.
Jewish identity has again become visible in ways that sometimes attract hostility. Under those conditions, preparation is a responsibility.
I have been attacked more than once in my life. Those encounters did not end in tragedy because I had the ability to respond without losing control of the situation. Training changes how people behave under pressure. It allows a person to stay present and act with purpose.
That is the role of self defense training. It is one of the most basic life skills a person can develop. A person learns to swim in case they fall into deep water. A person learns to respond to medical emergencies in case someone collapses in front of them. Learning how to protect yourself serves the same purpose.
Jewish history has long understood this.
During the 1930s, Jewish communities in Europe faced violent attacks in the streets. Jewish athletes and community leaders began developing practical ways to defend themselves. Those efforts eventually became the foundation of Krav Maga, a system built to help ordinary people survive dangerous encounters.
The philosophy behind Krav Maga is straightforward. Avoid violence when possible. Respond decisively if violence becomes unavoidable. Return home safely.
Training produces another important effect that many people overlook. Individuals who feel capable of defending themselves often behave more calmly during confrontation. Awareness replaces panic. Confidence replaces impulsive reactions.
People who know how to fight often avoid fights.
My own willingness to protect myself and the people around me makes it harder to drag me into violence. Preparation allows restraint. The ability to act gives a person the freedom to choose when not to act.
Preparation is far safer than improvisation.
Jewish tradition often speaks about compassion and responsibility for others. These values are sometimes described as speaking the language of love. If we speak the language of love, we must also be able to speak the language of strength.
Strength protects the values that communities hold dear. Self-defense begins with protecting oneself, but it quickly expands to protecting family, friends, and neighbors. I cannot imagine watching another Jew or someone I love being attacked and doing nothing. That instinct is not about heroism. It is about responsibility.
Courage in those moments rarely comes from fearlessness. It comes from understanding that action and inaction both carry consequences.
Fear exists in those moments. I feel it when I see attacks like the one that happened in California. I think about my children. I think about Jewish communities that once believed they were fully secure in the societies around them.
What motivates me is not the absence of fear. It is the awareness that silence and hesitation often carry a higher cost over time.
For my children and for the Jewish community around them, shrinking our identity is not an option. Jews should be able to walk through any city and speak Hebrew freely.
Preparation makes that possible.
Self-defense does not encourage violence. It allows people to live openly without surrendering their dignity.
Speaking Hebrew should never require courage.
Until that reality exists everywhere, Jews must remain ready to protect what they love.
Do something amazing.
Tsahi Shemesh is an Israeli-American IDF veteran and the founder of Krav Maga Experts in NYC. A father and educator, he writes about Jewish identity, resilience, moral courage, and the ethics of strength in a time of rising antisemitism.
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I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour
Lately, the internet hasn’t been able to stop talking about Timothée Chalamet. First, an account clipped a dismissive statement he made during a town hall event about opera and ballet. The next was a video of him, in China, playing an elderly woman in ping-pong. Then, there was a clip of him serving tofu from a street stand using a ping-pong paddle.
All of these moments were absurd elements of his press tour for Marty Supreme. And every piece of this has been so fitting for Chalamet’s louche and chaotic ping-pong star, Marty Mauser that it almost feels as though he is still doing some sort of Method acting.
Fittingly, a lot of this press tour has made people mad.
Take the opera and ballet comment, in which Chalamet said that “no one cares” about those art forms. In context, he was stating an objectively true fact — indeed, opera and ballet are not popular mass entertainment. Out of context, however, he sounded like an anti-intellectual who hates the fine arts. Yes, Chalamet, who went to the renowned Manhattan performing arts school LaGuardia, and who comes from a family steeped in ballet.
“I’m just taking shots for no reason,” he laughed after dissing ballet.
This kicked off a truly absurd news cycle in which operas and ballets across the country projected “We Care” across their stages in response to Chalamet’s comments, used his name as a discount code for tickets to their performances or otherwise threw shade.
As this was unfolding, Chalamet was ignoring the drama to focus on what really matters. Which is to say he was in China playing ping-pong against elderly people who seemed to generally be kicking his ass. People presented him with gifts emblazoned with “Sweet Tea,” his nickname in China. In honor of that nickname, he drank some sweet tea. He cut tofu with a ping-pong paddle.
It’s just so pitch perfect. Mauser, in the movie, is charming, yes, but wildly arrogant. He also leaves a trail of injuries — both physical and emotional — in his wake all in the name of pursuing greatness. Chalamet is pursuing an Oscar. Potato, po-tah-to.
This year, the complaints about the opera and ballet comment are not the only things that have plagued the Marty Supreme Oscars bid. The movie has been catching strays in the general discourse that has grown since Oct. 7, with a whole host of viral posts accusing the film, which is very Jewish in feel but makes basically no mention of Israel, of being Zionist propaganda.
One could rail against this, point out all the ways it is both stupid and antisemitic. Like that Marty is a fairly despicable character so as far as propaganda goes, it wouldn’t be very effective. Or that making a movie by and about Jews doesn’t mean anything about a movie’s political message. Have people totally lost the ability to watch and interpret movies? Maybe Jewish stories are in just as much trouble as opera and ballet, though obviously in a different way. They are so constantly read as a metaphor for or commentary on Israel that people can no longer appreciate them for their own merits.
Chalamet, however, has simply been ignoring the noise and having fun. The actor has become somewhat famous for his oddball press appearances. Before Marty Supreme even came out, he dropped a nearly 20-minute long surreal parody of his own marketing tour, in which he spent a video call pitching his team on ideas such as dyeing the Statue of Liberty orange.
It’s an unusual strategy in an era of constant statements, apologies and explanations. Whether or not it will be successful we will find out this weekend at the Academy Awards. It wasn’t last year, when he made sports predictions during his press tour for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic; Adrien Brody ultimately won for The Brutalist, a movie I still have not seen. (I want to, truly, but it is just so long.) Brody had a much more traditional press tour, giving interviews about the importance of his role, of the Holocaust, of art. He generally took himself very seriously in both his defense of his art, and of his Jewish identity and Jewish movie.
That’s all well and good, and probably appropriate for The Brutalist. But it’s far more fun to watch Chalamet play ping-pong against China’s elderly. And I think it’s a better way to handle the criticism, whether it’s about Zionism, Judaism or um, anti-opera-ism. Chalamet refuses to dignify his critics; he simply carries on enjoying himself. And I, for one, have enjoyed watching him do it. I’ll miss him when this press tour ends.
The post I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour appeared first on The Forward.