Episode Six: Sad Witch

It's Been A Year. It's Been Six Months.

I.              News

Dear Subscriber Fam, thank you for still being here! I know I have fallen off sending these out with any kind of regularity. I have a few in the pipeline I’ll be dropping soon. I’m also going to record some of these episodes so you can listen to them and/or possibly watch them. A very good suggestion I’ve gotten from a few people and something this app has added as a feature. So stay tuned (please don’t leave me!)

In other news, a comedy special I recorded at the end of June 2023 is out on YouTube. It’s called “Sad Witch” and was produced by 800 Pound Gorilla. It’s also out as an album on Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you listen to music.

It took me sometime to release this hour. In this case, maybe a first, it wasn’t because I didn’t love it. I actually do. It was other stuff. That’s what this episode is about.

But first!

Link to Sad Witch

Link to my YouTube

It would mean a lot if you watched / shared my special and subscribed to my YouTube. I’ll be adding more content to it soon. If you’ve already watched Sad Witch, thank you! It’s at over 25k views which is not embarrassing! (my forever goal).

Lastly, I have a show called Sandwich at Union Hall in Brooklyn, I co-host with Gastor Almonte. We book great comics and always giveaway a delicious sandwich. The next one is TONIGHT October 19^th at 10pm.

Link to TICKETS

Ok, let’s get into it. Deep breath …

II.              It’s Been a Year. It’s Been Six Months.

Mostly I’ve been measuring time according to how many months of genocide we’ve been witnessing. When I find the strength to watch Bisan’s reporting from Gaza, it’s measured in days.

This last year has been one of heartbreak mixed with a lot of anger and sometimes utter despair. I’ve written about the paralysis of it and the difficulty of relating to people who aren’t bearing witness in the same way. Like many of you, it’s been hard for me to think about literally anything else. This is one reason putting out my special felt impossible. I kept thinking, I’ll get back to my comedy career and promoting this soon. I never imagined we’d be here a year later, in an even worse place.

It's also been six months since my wife moved out.

Six months into a separation and divorce process. Six months into learning to be alone. Six months into letting time do its thing. Six months into surrendering and learning acceptance and other therapy words.

This has been its own kind of incapacitating grief.

When I recorded “Sad Witch” in June of 2023, my predominant thought was: my marriage could end at any moment; I should really get these marriage jokes committed to tape. It might be the most comedian thing I have ever done. She’s a big part of my act and our marriage was a big part of my identity on stage and off. If I couldn’t save us, the least I could do was save the jokes.

That’s the vibe of the special. A slightly manic person whose life may or may not be about to fall apart spending one possibly last night telling all her best jokes BEFORE SHE NEVER LAUGHS AGAIN.

And then, it happened. We separated.

I took the Barbie movie pretty hard.

I got the jokes down. The taping was as close to perfect as these things can be. I remember almost crying at the end of the first show from the release. All the emotion and relief of having managed to get it “in the can” during a difficult period. Looking back at the tape, I can see it on my face.

What I hadn’t considered was how hard it would be to re-watch and edit, never mind promote the special, if my life did indeed fall apart. I didn’t know how to address the fact we weren’t married anymore. I needed time to make that funny. Or at least not cry on someone’s podcast if asked about her. I was getting there by the beginning of October.

Then October 7^th happened.

I lost a lot of people (not dead, just dead to me). I put all my energy into doing what I could online to debunk Zionist talking points for people less familiar with them. I offered support, both research and otherwise to people in the DMs. Many people also offered me love and support. I tried to explain international law in slide form. I grew a new community there and to a small extent in real life too.

My wife and I got back together. Our issues suddenly seemed insignificant by comparison. It was easy to empathize with what the other one was going through in a way we had struggled to do with other stuff. Ultimately though, a genocide can only bring you back together for so long before the unresolved issues re-surface.

In early April, she left.

III.              Life, Am I right? Ladies???

Before that happened, there was a long period of trying. Trying to repair the fabric of a marriage that had been worn too thin to salvage. Trying to accept, there was nothing more I could do. Not easy for a Taurus.

And before all of that, there was a much longer period, many years, of a storybook kind of love and life. The kind you could never predict. And not just because she was straight, as far as either of us knew!

It’s a miracle anyone finds each other, honestly. I had a line where I’d say “if not for Saddam invading Kuwait, my wife and her family would have never fled to Canada. We would have never met, fallen in love, and gotten married.” It’s so wild to think about all the circumstances, all the decisions, everything that happens to lead you to this person you want to spend your life with, and who unbelievably also wants to spend their life with you.

I’m grateful for all of it. Even the hard parts.

IV.              It Wasn’t Israel That Did Us In. Or Was It?

We never argued about the Middle East. The real issue, my wife would say, is that she’s a Leo and I’m a Taurus. Sometimes when someone assumes it was politics that broke us up, I’ll explain that it was actually astrology.

In reality, it was more mundane. I mean, maybe it was written in the stars? But it was also all the small stuff that adds up. The grievances that pile up so high you can no longer see the person on the other side. Your narratives become so ingrained, so immovable, that every little action, every comment, is seen through that lens. Your biases constantly confirmed. At some point the stories you’ve been telling yourselves become so much a part of you, letting them go would feel like losing a piece of your identity and maybe your sanity.

I have a joke in my special where, after talking about Eman going to a mental health facility, I say “I know my wife’s mental health issues aren’t all my fault. She’s Palestinian … there were obviously some deeper-seated traumas there. So, it wasn’t all my fault. It was also my people’s fault.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. How despite being of the same mind on Israel / Palestine (once I deprogrammed), it was possibly always there taking a toll on us, even if I didn’t realize it. Even if we weren’t exactly arguing about that.

V.            You know what, I’m blaming Israel

I’ve been thinking about the efforts and compromises my wife was making every day for me and just by virtue of existing as a Palestinian in the Western world and often in a Zionist world.

Spending time with my family and in my Jewish world. Not being free to talk about what was happening in Palestine. Making conversation about anything else. Taking an interest in people, being charming. Trying to make people comfortable.

Most people do this – spend time with the in-laws – because they love their spouse. Even if it’s not a chore, it’s not most people’s top choice activity. Most people though aren’t expending this energy with people who knowingly or as a result of willful ignorance, support a state that oppresses your people through systems of apartheid and occupation.

There was also the constant negotiating that comes with being a Palestinian in the West. I got glimpses of it. How people interacted with her. Peripheral people in my world. I saw things through her eyes I would never have seen otherwise. Who was kind to her. Who wouldn’t make eye contact. Who felt the need to pepper her with Zionist talking points out of nowhere. There was the radio host who when she simply referred to herself as Palestinian said, “ohhh that’s edgy”. There were all the assumptions of antisemitism simply because she is Palestinian.

Eman used humour and her natural ability to connect with people to build bridges for YEARS. She was often the only Palestinian most people had ever met, never mind seen at a comedy club. She produced a very successful show called “Kosher Jokes for the Halaladays” that brought Jews and Muslims together at Christmas. And with me, she showed a lot of patience as I came to realize, I actually didn’t know anything about Palestinian people. Thirteen or so years ago, as I deprogrammed I’d share stuff I was shocked to learn that she naturally had known her whole life. She knew Zionism and Judaism were not one and the same. I did not. She was always gracious about my ignorance.

VI.          Masks Off

It’s clichéd at this point to observe all the ways the world, and in particular, the West has come into focus since October 7^th. There is so much so many of us didn’t know, couldn’t see, didn’t understand. And while it’s encouraging and important, this awakening has come at an incredible cost. It’s come much too late. That this genocide is still happening (and escalating) with the full support of the US and a significant majority of the diaspora Jewish community is crazy-making.

I simply cannot be around Zionists. I’m physically incapable of it. It feels harmful. I now feel something in my body that has made me realize the toll this must have taken on my now ex-wife over the course of our thirteen years together. The effect on her mental health. What it would feel like to have acted as this ambassador, to have tip toed around people’s discomfort, to have tried gently to open people’s eyes. And then to see some of these very same people support the extermination of Palestinians. To see the dehumanization of her people to such an extent, no image, not hundreds of images of babies torn to shreds, children taken out by sniper shots to the head and chest, people burned alive and on and on, would elicit even a single consequence for Israel.

I myself, a privileged and healthy person who has not experienced trauma, have been ready to check into an asylum this past year several times because of how destabilized I’ve felt. And then I think about what this must feel like for Palestinians. What it must feel like for her.

She doesn’t mince words anymore. Neither do I really. But she did for a long, long time.  I’m only just now appreciating how much of herself she gave. In some ways, I think a deficit was created between us, that I could never fully make up for. I’m not sure. What I do know is, this awakening also came too late and at an enormous cost.

VII.           In Conclusion 

In a recent Jewish Currents newsletter, Arielle Angel talks about Nietzschian nihilism. Applying active nihilism to the current moment she says:

“We cannot raise the dead, we cannot repair what has been obliterated, but we may still take from this leveling a clear vantage point, a ground prepared for the next world. What will exist going forward is what we create.”

Sometimes we can’t resurrect a home, a life, a marriage we once loved and found comfort in. But we can carry it with us, inside the person we are today. And from a clear vantage point, eyes opened, lessons learned, we prepare the ground to create something new.

In conclusion, fuck Israel for running my life and ruining so many people I love.