Tapestries-63 | What I learned this year

Reflecting on what I learned in 2023.

Photo by Amadej Tauses on Unsplash

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Welcome to a bunch of new subscribers who joined in the last few weeks, it’s a pleasure to have you here! For those that have been around for a while, you may notice that I updated the numbers and naming convention to be more uniform, such that this “Tapestries-63” represents the 63rd piece I’ve published. For those that have only joined recently, this particular piece is one I write at the end of each year, and this is the 5th edition. I hope you enjoy the read.

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My year has been dominated by two events. The first was Ava’s birth in late May. I wrote four pieces (before and after her arrival) that described the different thoughts impending fatherhood had spurred in me. They broadly covered my emotional range, questions about male role models, and two pieces (here and here) about being present. The second event that dominated this year has been the situation in Israel and Gaza, which I wrote about at length here. I found writing in 2023 challenging because I had less time to write, and because I wrote about personal and complex topics (including a long piece about Australian property too). When I sat down to write this edition of what I learned this year, Israel and Ava’s birth both loomed large, and therefore dominate the lessons described below. So with that, here’s what I think I learned in 2023.

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#1 I need to write consistently

I wrote less in 2023 than I have in previous years. I didn’t have much energy or time to put into writing either side of Ava’s birth in May, but I’m glad I’ve ended the year with a decent publishing rhythm.

I’ve tinkered with the format of my writing over the years. I started with sending PDFs to friends over email, wrote for a while on Medium, and then shifted to Substack, where we happily find ourselves today. I started with long-form writing (sometimes very long-form), eventually added Tapestry as the publication’s name, and toyed around with different structures and sub-headings. In late 2021 I started writing a book, and have written ~2(ish) halfway completed first drafts that I don’t think are very good. I lost steam on the book earlier this year in the lead-up to Ava’s arrival, and while I haven’t returned to it yet, I’m looking forward to the daunting and exciting challenge of resuming the draft (or maybe starting again) when I get some time and space.

All this tinkering can sometimes lead me to focus too much on the form of my writing, which with limited time, can distract from a focus on its substance. So one thing I learned this year — perhaps because I wrote less — is that writing consistently is more important than finessing the format. Good things happen when I write. I feel good. It clarifies and calms my thinking. It keeps me accountable to my opinions and ideas. It is rich a channel for engagement with many of you who are spread across the world. It keeps me interested and hopefully interesting. It helps me develop a voice. It allows me to watch my views evolve over the years. And as a friend recently pointed out, it’s a body of work that Ava can reflect on in the future to learn more about her dad (assuming she cares).

It’s a long way of saying I’ve learned I should just keep writing, and that the best way to do so is to consistently get words down on a page. I’m grateful you’ve joined me along the way so far through the different versions of Tapestry, and thank you for being part of my accountability mechanism, whether you’re aware of it or not.

#2 The world is a relatively hostile place for Jews

The response to the terrorist attacks of October 7, and to the subsequent war in Gaza, have forced Jews to once again consider where it is they feel safe. It has forced Jews globally to reacquaint themselves with their personal histories, as well the history of our people.

I live in New York. I grew up in Melbourne, Australia. My parents were born in New Zealand and South Africa. Going back to my great-grandparents’ generation, I find both sides of my family in what was then the Russian Empire, and is now Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Belarus. I feel unbelievably fortunate to have grown up in Australia, but on reflection, my upbringing here was a wonderful accident driven by generations of Jewish persecution, namely the Russian pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Holocaust of the mid-20th century. My family left their homes in search of brighter futures and better opportunities, and because they no longer felt safe due to rising antisemitism. While we eventually ended up in Australia, other parts of the family ended up in Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, England, Sweden and Norway (where there’s a large, regular family reunion in Trondheim). And while my family’s ultimate destinations may be unique, there is nothing unique about our paths. It is the quintessential Jewish story.

Today’s surge in antisemitism is notionally driven by the conflict in Israel. In late October, I wrote the following: “The reaction to the October 7 massacre revealed that history’s oldest hatred is alive, flourishing and embedded in the fabric of the developed world. Unfortunately, it has been there for anyone willing to listen to the signs for several years. If one follows the logic that anti-Zionism and antisemitism aren’t the same thing, it’s curious (and scary) that conflict in Israel always leads to the targeting of Jews around the world.” Since October 7, I’ve spent time in New York (where I live), London (where I was visiting) and Australia (where my family is from). The Jewish communities in all three places are reeling (in particular in Australia and the UK), as they confront a growing sense of isolation in their workplaces, social spaces and political movements.

I’ve written eight Tapestry pieces about antisemitism. That means that 13% of the pieces I’ve ever published discuss the nature and forms of modern Jew hatred. Re-reading them, they tend to speak about antisemitism in the abstract, as if it was another Jew’s problem, either in a different place or a different time. But this year I learned that antisemitism is not just an historical artifact to be wary of, but a practical threat to plan around. When I reflect on my writing over the last few years about escalating antisemitism, and view it in parallel to my family’s history, I have the distinct and unnerving sensation of history crashing into the present.

To be Jewish is to acknowledge that upheaval and change is the common thread in our history, and that history itself is not a relic of the past, but a predictor of the future. After groups of people chanted “Fuck the Jews, Gas the Jews” in Sydney in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack of October 7, a non-Jewish Australian friend texted me in horror and solidarity saying “I’m not sure why you’d want to move back here”. I thanked him for the love and support, but then asked myself, where else would I go? In that moment, I felt a strange kinship with Jews that came before me that have asked themselves the same question across time. And while I don’t think we’re in the same situation just yet, this year I learned that the fact that we’re beginning to pose the question, speaks to the gravity of the moment Jews around the world are confronting. To my non-Jewish friends, take our word for it. Things have changed.

#3 Large parts of the progressive movement are infantile and nihilistic

I’ve been critical of the progressive movement for several years in a range of Tapestry pieces, to the extent that in last year’s version of “What I learned this year”, I had to caution myself from using it as a regular punching bag. And while that counsel last year was necessary at the time, the progressive movement’s reaction in parts to the terrorist attack of October 7 in Israel, and the resulting war in Gaza, have only validated my view that it’s a dangerous movement worthy of broader and deeper condemnation. Said another way, this year I unfortunately learned that the progressive movement is exactly who I thought it was, and I was right to criticize it over the last few years.

The movement’s reaction to the conflict in Israel was predictable, because it’s consistent with parts of the movement’s response to other issues we’ve witnessed in the immediate past, namely police brutality and climate change. “Free Palestine”, “Defund the Police” and “Just Stop Oil” are the rallying cries that to a degree capture the response of loud portions of the progressive movement to three complex issues. I’m broadly aligned with the end goals of these sentiments: sign me up for (a) a state for the Palestinian people, (b) a reformed style of policing in the US, and (c) a global economy that’s less dependent on fossil fuels. But one doesn’t have to dig that deeply to see that many of these people have no real plan to address these complex issues beyond their performative outrage, arrogant moralizing and childish tantrums.

The responses to these complex issues are nihilistic in the truest sense of the word, because their energies are focused on tearing down existing structures, without any coherent plan for the future. We are living through the sequel to Kony 2012 for a generation of people that never fully grasped the self-centeredness of their worldview and the vacuousness of their well-intentioned but empty attempts at finding meaning. It’s a morality cosplay for a generation that lives an increasingly atomized lifestyle, with fewer and fewer experiences of “community” outside of zealous fealty to an ideology centered around identity and oppression. And for a movement built on secularism, it smacks of a religious need to repent for what its adherents deem to be their original sin of being born into privilege.

The progressive movement’s response to Israel revealed the depths of its hypocrisy to those who still wanted to remain willfully blind to its brokenness, despite years of evidence of moral inversion. Silence is violence unless calls for genocide are directed at Jews. We must believe all women when it comes to sexual violence, except when it comes to Israeli women raped by Hamas. We must spend weeks demanding mountains of sensitive forensic evidence of baby decapitation when it comes to proving atrocities committed against Israeli children, but roundly (and wrongly) condemn Israel for bombing a Gazan hospital within hours of a Hamas press release when any responsible person would have understood the minimally prudent thing to do was to wait for more facts.

We must protest at the undeniably tragic loss of life in Gaza, but remain ambivalent when literally 100x the number of people have died (and continue to die) in aggregate across Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan and other conflicts in the last few years. To be clear, I am also deeply disturbed by the death and destruction in Gaza, and believe every version of Israel’s future must create one for Palestinians too. But many of the hypocritical and nihilistic children protesting and raging on the streets of western capitals will not be part of, and have no actual appetite for, the complex work of building that future.

It’s probably simplistic and lazy to paint an entire movement with the broad strokes of some of its more objectionable segments. But at this point, the evidence is overwhelming that the progressive movement in its current form is a dangerous, morally inverted and infantile ideological movement. It’s an indictment on the movement in its entirety that it’s allowed a nihilistic and infantile cancer to grow at the core of its platform. In a few weeks’ time, certain members of the progressive movement will go back to throwing paint at Rembrandt’s — literally and figuratively. And when they do, I hope you’ll join me in seeing these people for who they really are.

#4 Temperament is everything

This year affirmed to me the importance of temperament. It reinforced the lesson that to be successful and the best version of ourselves in all the different facets of our lives, we must find a way to maintain a healthy, balanced and constructive temperament.

Temperament is critical in work and investing. Investing is really just an exercise in taking and managing risks. If you’re in the business of taking and managing risk, there will be situations in which risks materialize, despite your best efforts, and the last two years in financial markets have provided plenty of opportunities for volatility and downside risk to materialize. However, volatility in outcomes must not lead to volatility in emotions. Success depends on making more good decisions than bad decisions, and the only way to do so consistently is to maintain a balanced temperament.

The way we respond to the situation in Israel also provides a lesson in temperament. It’s a highly personal and emotive situation, where fear and rage have understandably driven our responses. My wish is for a strong Israel, and a vibrant and safe Jewish diaspora. To achieve this, we have to channel our finite energy into productive efforts, and avoid the temptation to (a) lash out at those who don’t aren’t in lockstep with our own views and emotions, or (b) try to educate and debate people who have no interest in good faith engagement. The only way to effectively support Israel, empower our friends and allies, and win in this most consequential of battles, is to maintain a balanced temperament and a level head when those around you are losing theirs.

Finally, Ava’s arrival provided another context in which to learn the importance of temperament. I like control, and don’t deal particularly well with situations where life gets in the way of my plans. Having a baby is a great way to poke that need for control in the eye, especially in New York where Talya and I don’t have the benefit of family support to provide slack and a safety net in the unpredictable first few months of dealing with a newborn. My impulse in situations where I lose control of my plans (because Ava didn’t sleep much, or because I spent an afternoon settling her instead of getting to the gym, or because I just ran out of hours in the day) is to go full woe is me, and rail against the unfairness of my plans being scuttled. But to do so — to not maintain a balanced temperament and to keep my cool — is to by definition be a worse husband and father.

Indulging the impulse to lose one’s cool is dumb, childish, and unproductive. If I want to be the best version of myself as a professional, Jew/Zionist, and husband/father, I must maintain a balanced and calm temperament, and this year provided fertile conditions for reinforcing this lesson.

#5 I’ve now got skin in the game

Ava is almost 7 months’ old. I’ve had an absolute ball with her and Talya to this early point in her life. It’s been hard starting the journey largely on our own in New York (with the help of visiting family and our friends in the city), but it’s been incredibly rewarding, and most of all, unbelievably fun.

A friend responded to my recent piece about Israel with the following question: how has the experience of the hatred and violence been different given your new roles and responsibilities for the next generation? He asked me, “how do you feel now that you’ve got skin in the game?” The question gave me pause, because until that point, I hadn’t yet internalized the idea that my opinions and beliefs about the world weren’t just matters for intellectual exploration, but instead formed the basis of the reality my daughter will eventually walk into as she grows and matures. I learned that for the first time, the implications of my ideas about the world have to be viewed through the prism of their impact on Ava. In the Israel and antisemitism example, it's one thing to deal with hatred and threats to Israel (and Jewish people) as an adult with agency, but it's another to extrapolate where this could possibly lead, and how their trajectories collide with Ava's childhood or young adolescence.

As the world changes, Ava may be forced to live and make decisions in a reality different from mine, which then challenges me in turn to figure out how best to prepare her for that future. In this sense, I learned that my opinions are not just ideas, but also calls to action, to either try and change the conditions that Ava will confront as she gets older, and/or to figure out how to effectively prepare her for them.

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A note about Tapestry

As we close out 2023, I thought it would be cool to tell you a little more about Tapestry.

I’ve now been writing regularly for almost five years, and this is the 63rd piece I’ve published. Over 400 of you subscribe to Tapestry, and almost 70% of you open and read each piece. Half of you are in Australia, 37% of you are from the US, 4% are in the UK, and the remainder are split across another 13 countries (including several European countries, Singapore, India, Kenya and a few others). Within the US, you’re spread out across 16 states, with half in New York, a large chunk in California, and the rest distributed across the other 14. Just over 20% of you became Tapestry subscribers when I added you directly to the distribution list, but the rest of you came by yourself, whether after reading a piece you were forwarded or saw posted, or from Substack’s platform recommendations. When I read the subscriber list, I can’t recognize half of you, which I find really rewarding.

I’m sharing this because it’s epic for me to reflect upon. I’m really proud that there’s a diverse group of people around the world that read this publication. I don’t really know if I have a specific angle in my writing. I write about things I’m thinking about. I try to do so with humility and self-awareness, and with integrity and good faith as guiding principles. In a world where people are constantly told to find a niche and target an audience, I think it’s really cool that you’re here for the broad and disparate range of topics I cover, and I hope you feel the writing is a journey of exploration we’re on together. I write Tapestry by myself in my spare time, but I don’t publish anything before getting Talya and David (my brother) to review the writing and challenge the thinking. Whatever I publish is infinitely better as a result of their input, so consider this a shoutout to both of them.

I don’t know where Tapestry is going. As I described in #1 above, I just want to keep writing, and I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve got an audience to share the pursuit with. I’ll return to writing the book eventually, and in the meantime, I’ve taken to compiling each year’s writing in a physical book. As you can see from the below, I’m a little behind, but it’s rewarding to see something sitting on the shelf as a tangible output of each year’s work.

So for now, I wish you all well into the holidays, and look forward to continuing the journey together next year.