However… I’ll eat first.

I don’t wanna die on an empty stomach, you know what I’m saying? Priorities, mother flowers.

New York’s still the greatest city on earth where you can be a complete anxious disaster and people just think you’re “quirky.” Everywhere else they call the doctor. Here they just hand you a podcast mic and say “tell us more, king.”

Yesterday I’m out chasing a perfect pastrami sandwich — that’s basically the only Jewish tradition that survived the pyramids, the Cossacks, three bad relationships, and my mother’s passive-aggressive voicemails. I’m dragging my creaky knees through the city, already pondering death because I’m in my forties and every flight of stairs sounds like two raccoons fighting in a garbage bag. Then I run into this crowd outside the Jewish community center chanting “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada.”

These kids have energy, man. I get winded tying my shoes and they’re out here trying to overthrow Western civilization before their boba tea even gets warm. One guy’s yelling about “settler-colonialism” like his parents didn’t just pay for his four years at a fancy liberal arts college and a minor in “angry poetry.” When I was a kid, a colonizer was my Uncle Marty who showed up for dinner and vacuumed up every leftover like a human Shop-Vac. Now it’s apparently a secret code for “Jews having a country.”

Antisemitism got so fancy these days, it’s ridiculous. Used to be simple — some loudmouth with bad breath and worse ideas. Now it’s trust-fund revolutionaries in designer sneakers quoting fancy French philosophers while explaining why my bagel is a form of oppression. At least the old-school bigots were honest about being idiots. These ones want a participation trophy and a TED Talk.

Then this girl hits me with, “We’re anti-Zionist, not antisemitic.” Classic. That’s the same move my ex used: “It’s not you, it’s just your jokes, your haircut, your snoring, and the way you chew.” Translation: I hate everything about you but I wanna sound enlightened while I say it.

Somebody screams “Israel is committing genocide!” and I swear I heard my grandfather do a full Olympic spin in his grave. That man snuck through Europe during the actual nightmare with fake papers and a prayer, hiding in attics that smelled like regret and mothballs. His idea of trauma wasn’t a bad Wi-Fi connection. Now some 22-year-old whose biggest struggle is deciding between oat milk or almond milk is lecturing me on suffering? Come on.

I get home, turn on the TV like a genius when I’m already spiraling, and there’s some faded celebrity explaining how everything is Israel’s fault again. Back in the day the crazy people at least looked the part — wild hair, talking to pigeons. Now they’ve got ring lights and managers.

Politicians keep saying “the situation is nuanced.” Nuanced is trying to explain to your Jewish mother why you’re almost forty and still dating women who think “commitment” is a dirty word. This? This is the same old hate wearing a fresh coat of paint and filming everything vertically.

What really gets me isn’t even the loud mob. I survived New York in the nineties — radicals back then just wore too much patchouli and thought the government was controlling us with dental floss. It’s how fast normal people just shrug and go back to doom-scrolling. Jewish kid gets jumped, old lady gets her wig yanked off on the subway, and half the timeline’s like “well both sides make good points.” Humans can get used to anything. Wars, chaos, $18 avocado toast that tastes like sadness. That last one might actually end us.

So if these characters show up again tomorrow yelling death to the Jews, I’ll probably drag my tired self out there. Not because I’m brave — I once fainted watching a cooking show when they described rare steak — but because Jewish history taught us that hoping the crazy just blows over is a terrible strategy. It never does. It just gets a student loan, a blue check, and a book deal.

But first… pastrami. My ancestors didn’t survive all that mess so I could face an angry crowd on an empty stomach. A man’s gotta have standards, mother flowers.