I’m enjoying a local bar the way I like it- nearly empty, quiet but for the band in the next room that I’ll shortly go in to support, and just me and the bartender discussing books. They have to bus tables, I need to write and wait for my food order. It’s a genial end to the conversation.

Leikam Brewing is Jewish woman-owned brewery in Southeast Portland that embodies what I want to be myself- unapologetically and openly itself and also a hub of its community. It’s a Jewish space that’s not just for Jews. If you’re part of the community, you don’t need to be part of the Tribe.

I’ve knocked back two beers over the course of my conversation with the bartender about the virtues and flaws of various fantasy series. One was a French Toast-inspired ale called “Ain’t No Challah-Back Girl” and the other a stout called “Mob Barley.” If it’s not Jewish puns, it’s music- or both- and I’m not mad about it. Going here tonight felt needed, and not just because I knew a particularly good skewer truck was going to be selling their wares and I have an unhealthy need for their black sesame flatbread with roasted garlic toum spread.

The first month of 2026 in the US was not fantastic. An activist mother of three, Renee Good, was murdered- shot three times at point blank range- by an agent of the state who proceeded to brag about it, and the government unabashedly bullshit the public about how the woman was a “domestic terrorist” and “tried to run/ran the agent over” when their own camera shows otherwise. They did it again to a VA nurse- Alex Pretti- whose last words were “Are you okay?” to a woman these same agents had just pepper-sprayed and pushed to the pavement.

While still processing this, I got treated to reports of leftists- the guys meant to oppose this kind of fascist, Big Brother crap- lined up outside at New York synagogue chanting about how much they love Hamas. Later, I’d see tweets asking if the VA nurse was a Zionist, and I’ve grown too used to them showing up to every protest or event with their flags and keffiyehs yelling “collective liberation!” as they attempt to hijack someone else’s efforts to organize.

After over two years of feeling chased out of leftist spaces by these ignorant shmucks who are- at best- useful idiots parroting slogans, I think I’m well within my moral rights to wish a plague on both their houses, wait for both parties to beat the tar out of each other, and rebuild better once they’ve burned each other out.

It can never be that simple though. The fact that it goes against every bone in my body to look at people suffering and say “not my problem” is only part of it. It’s that I once again get to watch my identity be made convenient.

You’ve seen it. You might have even done it- no doubt good-naturedly- and Godwin’s Law be damned. It’s happening now as the news in the US unfolds- callbacks to the Third Reich, the Nuremberg Laws, and the lead-up to the Holocaust.

“It didn’t start with gas chambers!”
“This is what the Gestapo did!”
“If you think you would have hid Jews from Nazis, what are you doing now?!”
“If you are silent now, you would have been silent then too!”

The fact that the people hurling this rhetoric into the airwaves are the same crowd who called us “Zionazis” and used Nazi gestures, imagery, and talking points specifically to hurt us would be laughable if the toll being taken wasn’t so real on yet another abused and marginalized group they don’t belong to. All the same, it makes abundantly clear that regardless of political stripe, Jews are a people of convenience.

Our generational trauma can be farmed irony-free for pity points or rhetorical heft, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. Our identities and our bodies can be tokenized for your politics, and we are- as always- the perfectly alien scapegoat. We can be your colonists, your globalists, your communists, your capitalists, your genocidal maniacs, and your helpless victims of state violence all at the exact same time. We’re convenient.

That’s why I wanted to come to this particular bar tonight. It’s a place where I know that I don’t need to be convenient to some other faction. I can be afforded the same dignity as any other fashionable group or bloc and be allowed to just be- and being a Jew is fucking HARD right now.

A friend of mine who is a leftist activist that hasn’t gone down the hashtag rabbit hole and I talk frequently. They have very few Jewish friends, and their own experiences with Jews growing up were colored by conservative politics and not especially great. I can believe that- I grew up with the exact kind of Jewish kids they described in my own community. No one group has a monopoly on assholes or raising them, unfortunately.

This friend of mine mentioned that knowing and talking to me is helpful not just for their curiosity, but for informing their approaches when dealing with Jews in leftist spaces- the kind of spaces that we’ve been pushed out of, especially lately. It is one situation where I don’t mind being convenient. First of all, they are kind, asking in good faith, and they ask good questions. Secondly, I’m vain enough to think I’m fascinating.

Thanks for reading this blog, by the way.

The other day, after a close encounter of their own with CPB and ICE trying to raid a neighboring family’s house, they asked a question that really drove the idea of “Jews are convenient” home. It made me put into words some of the complicated feelings I’ve been dealing with while watching America descend into authoritarianism and knowing that some people chose their ego and self-righteousness over harm reduction for their neighbors and just… let all this happen.

“I wonder what it’s been like for you to have to re-evaluate the people in your life based on their actions, and how vulnerable they are to ignorance or to being swayed by propaganda.”

Here’s what it’s been like:

It feels like being alone, constantly questioning your own sanity.

It feels like watching friends choose their opinions on something they don’t fully understand, informed by strangers on the other side of the world, over your safety and your presence in their lives. I can’t help but think of the reactions of Trump-supporting individuals whose LGBTQ, Muslim, or BIPOC connections cut them off “over politics.” No one likes finding out that they came in behind “promises and propaganda” on your list of priorities.

It makes you question you value and worth in the world.

It makes you feel foolish, because you see them disregarding or going against what they said they believed in because they can’t see it applying to you and people like you, and you wonder if you can ever trust yourself to find good people again.

It also forces you to confront a black, hard, hurt part of yourself. It looks at everything happening and says “Let them deal with it. They thought they knew better. They were okay with this happening instead of just listening to people like me.”

You hate yourself for having this part of you. You hold on to it because it’s partly right and will help you survive- but you never ever want to identify with it or listen to it too much because you know it leads to isolation. Isolation will only make it stronger and darker- a self-fulfilling prophecy for your view of the world.

There is something so utterly seductive in giving in to that grievance and pain, though. Mine tells me to watch the news and say “See, THAT is what it’s like. Have fun dealing with it, assholes.” It tells me to remind them when they talk about “mutual aid in the community” that they spent the last couple years telling me that I wasn’t part of that community.

That kind of spite won’t help anyone, though. Overwhelmingly, it won’t even hurt them just yet. Sulking, nursing my anger, and saying “told you so” will only leave innocent people open to pain that these so-called “activists” will be protected from for the time being. It’s a hobby for them. It’s a costume they can take off or put on to fit in at their “clubhouse” and maybe score/get laid at the next protest. I’m sure most only wish they were getting paid for it.

So while we are hurting and aggrieved, we can’t let it all go to hell out of spite. We can’t let monstrous times and monstrous actions by monstrous people make monsters of us.

A catchphrase in recent years has been “being on the right side of history.” The hubris of assuming that the future will vindicate them, that the Ends justify the Means, and that anything they do will be approved of because History will show that they were “the good guys.”

Actual historians will tell you very quickly that history is way more nebulous and murky than “Heroes vs. Villains”, and that while history may be written by the “winners” it is always written by the survivors. If Jewish history tells me anything, it’s that we are very very good at surviving, and that we will survive today’s “convenient” definitions of us- hashtags, posters, spraypaint and all- and the very best of us will do so without turning into the monsters we have been painted to be. We’ll take the pain, swallow it, take mental notes of who to trust in the future, and continue living our lives the best we can.

Not long ago, Leikam Brewing got broken into. The burglars swiped some petty cash and tech, and the owners were obviously upset, but they noticed something that other entrepreneurs in their position may have missed. None of their booze was stolen, unsecured or otherwise- but every single sweatshirt and hoodie they’d just had printed for merch was. December had some bitterly cold nights and desperation makes people do things that maybe they’d prefer not to do otherwise.

While the owners fixed the window, called the insurance company and replaced the tech, they cut a deal with the person printing their merch. For every new sweatshirt ordered, they’d donate a blank one to a homeless shelter- because wanting to stay warm is not a crime.

Again, it’s the kind of place I want to belong to, and the kind of Jew I want to be.

Get past you, your cause, your opinions, your pain and hurt, and see the human. Then you- and I- can act from heart rather than hurt and empathy rather than ego. It’ll be inconvenient, yeah- but I’m pretty done with being convenient to anyone.

Stay Classy,