The UK is NOT OK! Zoe Buckman on Jew-Hate From The Left & Turning Grief Into Art

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one of the social phenomena I've become most fascinated by is something I'll call false validity it's when we as a society perpetuate a behavior or idea as being totally valid and acceptable when it is in fact absolutely invalid by any reasonable or moral standard and we know it's invalid but for whatever reason we all agree to ignore this reality and allow the unacceptable Behavior to continue it's like we've all been hypnotized to cluck like chickens except we haven't been but we're clucking anyway and we could just you know stop as it pertains to the Jewish world I see this phenomenon most manifest as the false and harmful belief that it is somehow moral or mandatory or admirable even to conflate a person's Jewish identity with one's own negative feelings about Israel's role in the Middle East put another way it's the idea held by millions of people out there that simply being a Jew is somehow controvers or political well needless to say that's [ ] it's not true it's contrived it's wrong and we cannot tolerate it anymore you can debate an idea but you can't debate a person's existence do you know what you call someone who makes aggressively negative assumptions about an individual based purely on morally bankrupt misunderstandings of their group a bigot a racist now I've heard the counter to my assertion of bigotry many times on social media and it too is a sham something like it's not racist to not support the genocide of children okay first of all no decent human being supports acts of genocide or the killing of children we know this to pretend otherwise is to be knowingly disingenuous because the real goal is just to spread this 21st century blood liel and demonize Jews I say 21st century because Jews have been dealing with this a long time the original blood liel was the grotesque accusation during the Middle Ages that Jews were murdering Christian children in order to use their blood to bake Passover matzah this horrific lie was widely believed and used for centuries as an excuse to persecute the Demonic Jews sound familiar it should because like all other elements of anti-jew hate blood Lial continues to morph over time into whatever disgusting accusation will most rally the mass against the Jewish minority that's right we're demonized so often and so consistently we have our own term for it back to bigotry drawing a link of causational responsibility between any random Jewish person and whatever has or hasn't happened in Israel is racist does anyone blame random Chinese Americans for the very real Chinese imprisonment and torture and sterilization of over a million weager Muslims of course not that would be racist and most people don't even know who weer Muslims are because this whole posture is just about hating Jews not about a sincere globally applied principle also simply displaying some part of one's Jewish identity is in no way an indicator of one's feelings about the Middle East lighting Shabbat candles has nothing to do with the war in Gaza wearing aagen David has nothing to do with the war in Gaza a bagel shop in Brooklyn has nothing to do with the war in Gaza a social media clip about Jews and Tattoos has nothing to do with the war in Gaza we know this and yet those who harass Jews in the name of being anti-zionist continue to get off scot-free so why is this obviously Hollow and terrible Behavior allowed to thrive why is it so pervasive that many if not most Jews believe that to openly identify with their own natural self is something how sensitive or political or making a statement why are we clucking like chickens when we could just not we could just not do that we could make a choice and in an instant we could be not clucking I'll tell you why because we allow it we take the path of least resistance we allow the anti-ub bigots to dictate the rules of the game when we should be rejecting the entire premise of the game itself but we're too afraid most Jews I talk to don't even really know specifically what it is they're afraid of just that they are it's some vague fear of maybe losing social media acceptance or career opportunities or maybe physical violence I know Standing Tall as a Jewish person today can seem hard or scary but we can't allow ourselves to succumb to fear can you think of any major Jewish figures whose lives have been ruined because they identified publicly as Jewish is Jerry Seinfeld suddenly not selling out every theater he walks into is scooter braa suddenly not worth billions of dollars is Amy Schumer not starring in her own TV series sure Jerry gets heckled like he hasn't been handling hecklers for 40 years sure they get smoke on social media we all do but who cares it has no bearing on real life I understand there is a psychological toll I have experienced it but what do you think is actually more damaging the fleeting comments of random hateful internet strangers or being so afraid of random hateful internet strangers that you're repressing part of your own identity and going through life as less than your full authentic self and as far as career and relationships go yes you might lose some friends or some jobs but if those people are going to turn on you because you're a Jew these are not the friends or the jobs you want you deserve better than to work for someone who doesn't respect your Humanity you deserve better friends than a bigot who puts their own misguided beliefs about a recent geopolitical conflict they are not in any way involved with over your own personal relationship Believe Me by shedding these people from your lives even if it's painful now you're doing yourself a favor trim the fat baby call the haters and in the words of mam moral from Wicked the movie of which comes out this weekend by the way it's going to blow your freaking Minds as one door closes another one opens to a person everyone who has come out of the closet as a Jew ends up with new job opportunities they wouldn't have imagined new friends and supporters and allies they'd never have met and man I'm telling you this from experience pairing all that positivity and goodness and solidarity with a complete sense of self is a total level up in every way possible and as for fear of violence We All Fall prey to What's called the availability heuristic which is when we judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily we're able to recall recent examples of it with no thought given to actual statistics or data how many people public figures or everyday folks have been physically attacked around the world for being Jewish since October 7th I don't know the answer but it's not a lot let's generously say it's a thousand people that's 0.00001 % of the Jewish population and I don't say this to minimize the absolute horror of these attacks or the very real fear they Inspire but your odds of being in that 0.00001% are obviously quite low when in doubt that the immutability of math put you at ease so the whole experience of coming out as Jewish is really kind of like walking through the wall at Platform 9 and 3/4 to get to the Hogwarts Express you think you're looking at a painful smash into a brick wall but the rest of your life is waiting for you on the other side and it's more than you could have ever dreamed of and this goes for any identity being who you are and feeling connected to that or proud of it or loving it is not political do not allow anyone to pretend that it is if someone has a problem with you loving yourself that is their problem not yours when I snap my fingers you will all stop clucking this is the 10th episode of being Jewish with me Jonah plat [Music] [Music] though she hails from Hackney and lives in Brooklyn I first met today's guest in Israel when we both participated in an influencer lab under the amazing Tel Aviv Institute I would wear sunglasses indoors to mask my inability to stay awake during the long presentations while she responded enthusiastically to every single prompt and would basically not stop talking well today boy am I glad she hasn't stopped talking she is a museum and gallery represented artist whose unique multidisciplinary practice incorporates sculpture textile Ceramics photography and largescale public installations she is a hardcore feminist a hardcore Mama a hardcore Hebrew advocating tirelessly for the Jewish people online in her art and throughout the art world I'm so happy to be sitting down with her today please welcome my friend Zoe Buckman thank you thanks for being here I really appreciate it thanks for having me I love your intro oh thank you so you're from Hackney East London unfamiliar terrain to probably a lot of the people who are listening to this show what's what's the vibe in Hackney and and what was the Jewish Community like there when you were living there okay yeah there was no Jewish Community growing up it was really really rough there was famously a street that was called Murder mile was inck I know so I'm so proud I I grew up there um our house growing up was broken into and robbed six seven times it was six seven times that's terrifying I know I know so yeah so you get the picture super rough why did you move was there are other places now they could yeah my my parents couldn't really afford to move anywhere better it would just be like like uprooting us and exchanging it for just another set of problems and you know they liked the schools that we went to it was also kind of amazing you know and it taught me a lot it taught me a lot it taught me things that you can't learn in schools and University and what street smarts exactly it was a Turkish and Kurdish neighborhood so very very Muslim but also loads of West African Bangladeshi Pakistani and very very Caribbean as well was there anywhere you could go outside your house where you could feel Jewish or was it really just inside no it was it was very much a private thing and I don't think I actually realized how how there was that kind of in congruence with my Jewish ident identi and and who I was outside of the home until I was older so basically my my Jewish identity was something that although existed always it was really like galvanized at the weekend cuz my mom would take us to our grandparents house and there it was all the great aunties and all the great uncles the Jewish jokes the slang crazy food and so a very Jewish Saturday and then we would come back into the week and there wasn't that kind of outside of the home there wasn't that reminder and you know what's so different about growing up in London to now living in New York where I've lived for 17 years is that you know the UK is a England's a Christian state right and I didn't even really realize what a big impact that has you don't have yam kapor off you don't have rashash shov so those words aren't even in the public vernacular I didn't actually know what these holidays were until I come to America and I see it's on the calendar and everyone goes home on you know what I mean yeah absolutely that's so interesting there's a lot of anti-jewish sentiment on display these days in the UK did you feel that when you were there or does that feel like a new phenomenon I did feel it growing up I felt it in that like you know there were not Jewish jokes like are Jewish jokes they were they were like Jews are the butt of the joke exactly I didn't realize actually that my brother told me recently that he was beaten up um on the way to school like every morning because he was the Jewish kid I grew up in operating and I'm immersed in leftwing spaces yeah like we all do I felt it from both sides where there would be like little microaggressions I was I worked as a cocktail waitress for like 5 years in London and so I was serving very wealthy sort of aristocratic White English people and so would hear and you know be adjacent to some anti-Semitism from that crowd but where I would really experience it that you that you would like over here or directed towards you no that I would over here yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know like oh oh yeah this club's run by a Jew it was funny isn't it typical Jew at the end of the night counting up his money right and you're like that's all club Owners counting up that money at the end of that's when you do that do you know what I mean stuff like that but I would I really started to feel it um you know as a teenager and becoming a young woman in London I I would really see it in the left big time what a shame I know what are your friends and family back home saying now about what's going on there friends is really really good you know do I do I have friends in London anymore um no I I do have friends in London a lot of my best friends have cut me out of their life post October 7th so that's been a whole like kind of big almost like Paradigm shifting event when all of us everyone who has any skin in the game is connected in any way to this horrible horrible conflict and War for all of us it's just been really really difficult and that's been like an added layer on top of that it it makes you love your your true right or di even more I get a lot of messages from Jews in London who feel very um at see right now and unsafe like yeah some of us feel physically unsafe and some just feel like I can't in the workplace just be myself and talk about things fre right and then what does that do in in in like in the in the long term if you know you're speaking in coded language which I don't know if if you if you do this but I've like literally I'll just be like like I I'll say something like um let's say I'm in an Uber and I'm on my own I'm on the phone and I'll be like oh yeah so are you going to that um you know that thing that we do on the Friday night something I'll be like Shabbat and I'm like yeah that one or I'll be like oh you know so and so is visiting from um from the from the motherland it's like you don't feel comfortable letting people know that like you're Jewish or that you're connected to Judaism or the motherland in any way like so you feel that way in New York that you can't say that out loud yeah and a lot of that is also to do with like being in a woman's body and just being like all right I'm on the train like listen I'm not going to the read it up bab I got my highs and all of these things looking good love it we love the thank you having said that I'm not an idiot so like often when I'm on the subway and I'm on my own which getting on the subway you have to like almost like get right with God anyway just to like it's already a dicey Enterprise you know I I tuck things in often when I'm on the train on on my own in London I think that there is even less of a um robust Jewish community and so yeah I I feel really really awful for my londoners right now it's hard yeah I want to go back to something you mentioned you're you said best friends have cut you out yes people that you like truly felt were your best friends like sisters like I'm the Godmother to one of their babies to what do you attribute like a political what to them is sort of a political thing happening a geopolitics thing coming before a sister like where does that how does that happen it's it's beyond I think the only way to make sense of it is to understand that there is a deep deep anti-semitism like ingrained in people in the case I'm thinking of this one bestie who um who made me the Godmother of her child so I know that she loved me at one point enough to be like I want you in my kids life forever um absolutely a sister of mine and then the week of October 7th at some point she um followed me on Instagram and I never heard from her ever again right and it's like I feel that my exhibiting any Jewish pain in that moment um any Jewish Pride ever like I feel like it suddenly became so like unpalatable that she was like I can't had the the Jewish part of you been in conversation with her before October 7th yeah absolutely that's that's what's so interesting because I'm like there's there should be no surprise that I am upset that this thing happened she already knows that's a big part of your identity exactly and I've you know I've always said from day one and and and October 7th like my prayer is for peace and sovereignty and safety for the people of Palestine and for the people of Israel but was I angry and upset yes like I know a lot of people who who that day lost their loved ones I know people who are still missing loved ones and praying for their return so like this does affect me and and you know the huge instant spike in anti-Semitism affects me and so you know it's almost like counterintuitive to what being friends are and it's it's very I think emblematic of where we are at right now like ultimately we can disagree in friendships about anything and politics will do that right of course yeah exactly if I see a sister of mine and she is in pain and she doesn't feel safe like there is literally nothing that would make me run away from her like I will run towards her even if I'm like babe I don't I don't agree with what you're saying right now and we can get into that later are you okay yeah I mean that to me is is natural right and so seeing that that happened with three of my friends in London wow in unison I guess then I'm like well we have a massive massive problem of anti-Semitism in the UK and and in the left in that it's become so tribal and so cult-like that it would make three like rational beautiful women yeah who are like good women in in in all other ways like act so incredibly um anti-semitic very reminiscent of you know 1930s Germany what I've really come to realize is that the rise of the nzis it was like this kind of like drip drip effect of of anti-Semitism and it started with pushing Jews to the margins and boycotting them and like a bit of broken glass here a bit of vandalism there oops this person's been fired oh this person's an untouchable now socially in kah and then that drip drip effect if allowed to grow will end in violence will then develop into violence Hitler didn't make everyone in Germany anti-semitic he just allowed them to be like they already were right so that's what I'm realizing about these former friends of mine it's not that they suddenly woke up and were like it's just socially acceptable now it was there it was always there in America it started on the right with the rise of Donald Trump sort of normalizing basically whoever you hate you're allowed to hate them out loud now on that side and then in the past couple we're seeing now on the left via this you know fake progressiveness that you're allowed to to hate on jeice from the left too and that's totally okay as long as you call them zos instead of juice yeah man is [ ] crazy so I want to transition now away from terrible anti-Semitism things should we talk about some Jolly things uh no this is not Jolly either well it's half Jolly I want to talk about your mom okay so there is some Jolly but there's also some some sadness do you call her mom yeah M okay M so s about your mom um so she died in 2019 after nine years with cancer yes you have spoken about her a lot and and expressed your feelings for her a lot through your art now well both your parents are Jewish you once said in an interview your Jewish identity you get from your mother yeah what what do you mean by that so what I mean by that is that you know my dad he grew up atheist agnostic and there's Jewish there's Jewish roots there like the family name was Salomon but that comes from Solomon and so at one point that was changed we really don't know the contexts of that uh but my mom was Jewish with a capital J and really like instilled in us we are Jews like we might not you know practice and my children like you guys aren't going to know the prayers don't ask me about that I can't be bothered I'm busy kind of thing but um but the Jewish identity and culture that was like very like rooted in in in who she was that's that's beautiful did you have any source of like Jewish Education or was just whatever came from your family no absolutely zero Z I mean it was literally Jewish jokes babe like that that was it and like a Jewish sensibility a generosity a kind of extending out to people in the community come in you need to eat you must eat let me feed you let me roll you a spliff I'm going to get you a cab home do you know what I mean like all of that kind of thing and an awareness of our otherness an awareness of the history of suffering but an an awareness of our resilience and and choosing joy and choosing humor and the questioning the debating oh my God the debating in my family was like pretty extra at times but I feel like CU I've I've watched your podcast obviously and I've listened to all of these amazing conversations so grateful that you're doing this oh thank you and I remember you saying something which agree with and I don't agree with oh great yeah yeah yeah you said you know everyone who comes on this show or most people come on this show say I'm Jewish but and what I thought of when you explain that is like first of all you're absolutely right there's who's the Arbiter of of of how Jewish one is or isn't like [ ] that right totally and I thought about this Leonard Cohen um quote where he's like yeah I'm Jewish and in the way you can't be a little bit pregnant you can't be a little bit Jewish love that I love that and I really agree with it but that's not my experience at all my experience first of all to use his analogy of being pregnant is that there's this daily growing reminder in your tummy in your breast in in in your mood in your ability to formulate thought you are very very aware every day that you are pregnant and for me with my Jewish upbringing and the lack of Jewish Community it has been an active choice for me and in a way I find that quite exciting and hopeful because I know that like for people like me like they they can choose to step into it more than they have been and and it can be this kind of like it can be an action I actually don't think that's disagreeing with me at all I wanted to fight I want to baate I know me too but I I agree with you and I think the the line I like to say is you're as Jewish as you feel and I think that is I mean what you're saying in the sense that if you want to be more connected you should be and you can be and you need to take steps in order to do that but what I just don't want anyone to feel like oh I'm not Jewish because I don't know this holiday I'm not Jewish enough because I don't do what you do yeah agreed and that's that's exciting because there's something that we can all do I I think something I personally feel quite a lot of fear about is that if I look back at my family all of my aunties and uncles married non-jews which is beautiful beautiful thing and we have like a very very diverse family we're like a school it's beautiful um every single one of my cousins and my siblings also did not marry Jews and so what I want to do what what I want to do is I want to get butm for myself me amazing you never have as exactly grown I'm trying to get my wife to do it weekly shout out to Courtney yes yes Courtney maybe me and her will do it together I think it's so cool I would you should totally so meaningful andaz and like anything in life like you'll appreciate it more as a grownup than you would at 13 yeah so true so true but I I kind of want to do it for my nieces and nephews like I want I want to save up and then fly them out and I want them to see that like even you know as a 39 years young woman like you guys can do this you can step into this at any point tot what about your own kid is there going to be a the name mitah in the future no my my kid doesn't want to my kid's there and um you know me and their dad have like we haven't really instilled the religious aspect enough but I think this will also be a kind of like yeah but Mom's doing this so just know you could do it together that you can exactly that could be special how special would that that would be amazing that would be very unique I know listen I'm trying the Jewish guilt I'm definitely doing it like oh you're going to make me do it love getting back to mum yes you wrote a beautiful article about her for British oh yeah um oh yeah it's beautiful a year after her passing we'll put it in the show notes so you all can check it out there's this is actually going to be really good show notes episode there's going to be a lot of of Zoe Buckman things to check out you had a line in it that really struck me you said um when your mother and best friend dies you have to die too and then rebirth yourself very simple but poignant way of framing that process of carrying on I think cuz you're not just saying goodbye to the person you lost you're saying goodbye to life as you knew it forever yeah how is your rebirth going 5 years out it still sucks so much it's still like hands down the worst thing that has happened to me the worst thing I've experienced and actually nothing for me nothing and that's actually quite a long list of shitty things I feel like you know trauma any trauma but especially a grief like that like it really does take something out of you and you do you do die this whole side of you dies and then you realize that like it will never be filled first of all like that is there now and that is part of you and it's about kind of like living around that do you know what I mean and like you try to put things back together but you have to put things back together around this gaping hole that's missing and and you do and you know and and no one can tell you from the outside you look normal but inside it's always going to be there I think and that's UNT how I feel about grief and I I wish I had you know more optimistic things to say about it some people are like oh yeah you know it's really just how much you grieve is how how much you grieve a loss is about how strong that love was and that's absolutely true but it's so shitty yeah it still sucks yeah yeah sorry yeah thank you thank you thank you also in this article There Was You know I I detect expected a bit of bitterness from you about the way people around you were treating you in your grief yeah not really giving you what it felt like you needed at least that was my takeaway has that changed at all I think I've learned a lot since then and then of course we had a pandemic and then we had October 7th and I've learned to do a lot of radical Acceptance in that like okay I see you and I see who you are and that's not me that's not how I show up for people but I accept you and then it's my choice it's my choice of like do I still want to Fox with you or do I not want to Fox with you British people avoid and don't want to talk about pain right they're like move on haha carry on B um and American people would be like oh my God so like when you next see a butterfly that's your mom have you seen any butterflies this week cuz that's your mom and I'm like that's not my [ ] mom I love your American accent by the way that is really fun okay they're like that plan in your room like she's in that plan I'm like that's so creepy don't say these things to me I can relate to the piece of having to adjust expectations for people I I'm a very active friend yeah and like so I'm the one who's making the plans I'm the one who's calling on the birthday all that stuff and it took me you know like 37 years to be like it's okay if other people don't do what I'm doing they I can still be friends with them and not feel horribly betrayed every time they don't do the exact thing that I would be doing a constant practice keep working the muscle yeah man' so you and your and your mother have complimentary tattoos yes so she has F blank blank blank d o m and you have the r e e of Freedom tell tell me the story behind that so we were in the garden um my mom was a big crossword woman like totally loved language and and things that were naughty and silly and whatnot and I was like we knew that she was dying we knew that you know we had a finite amount of time left and I was like you know what do you want to do and she was like quite like to get a tattoo I was like sick yes let's go what do you what do you think you want to get and she's like freedom and I'm thinking like this is an old woman still in chemo like that shit's going to hurt I really wasn't sure if like is that okay used to so I was like Mom you know that's a great idea that's a that's a lot of letters though you know and she was like no yeah you're right could do fom and um which of course is like you know a it's a abbreviation of like female domination and F fdom you know fuckum is also and then I was like okay so what will I get and she was like re I was like Mom this is brilliant yala let's go that's so nice I like I want to steal that idea some I absolutely can I don't know if it'll be freedom but I love the idea of sort of interlocking tattoos like that yeah what role if any did any kind of Jewish tradition or spirituality play in your mother's final days or through her passing my mom as as I've explained there wasn't really any religion and she really didn't have like a relationship to the idea of God and I did and so that was something that I I think was it's not that there was tension but we were just very different in that way but her last passover she I had never seen her commit to like really really doing it right and it was interesting to see because my mom was super irreverent and like everything there was an opportunity to find like silliness in it right and that's what I expected that's how I showed up in the spirit of my mother her last s got to my parents living room and suddenly she was like zie you got to take this seriously and I was like oh right [ ] yeah [ ] okay Mom yeah we're doing something different here all right let's go and that was really interesting cuz I think that evening I got this sense I was like maybe there was this awareness of like I want to get this right CU this is my last shot like I want to get right with them upstairs her upstairs him upstairs whomever upstairs do you know what I mean yeah totally yeah has that had any lasting impact on you do you think yeah I think about it a lot I think about it um every Passover but I I think about so i' I've started to light um Shabbat candles on on a Friday evening nice pretty much cry every time I why what's that what is that about well I when I do it uh whether I I'm doing it alone or whether it's the week that my kids with me and we do it together I can't help but think about the women that came before me and see see [ ] Jonah that's okay I think about what it took for them to continue this tradition what it took for any of us to be Jewish yeah is that someone really really had to want to pass this on it wasn't easy it was never been easy like you it would have been so much easier iier to put it down and to hide that part of yourself right you'd literally be physically safer but our ancestors didn't time and time again they kept doing it and so on a weekly basis to do this very small ritual connects me back and it's typically done by the women yeah it connects me back to to the women who I've come from and I also can't help but think about sadly um the female hostages is like that also comes in into mind you know where are they do they know that it's Shabbat and and you know I think about what's going on right now um on both sides of the conflict over there and it just yeah it just brings me to tears pretty much every week so jolly in my house but no that's so meaningful you know and I and I love hearing you express that because people lose sight of that perspective a lot that you know we didn't get here by accident we got here by being incredibly defiant for thousands of years and sort of refusing to go quietly into the night yeah exactly but to answer your question I feel like once a week I I invoke a little bit of the spirit that my mom approached that last seder with do you know what I mean yeah giving it real weight and significance and taking it seriously for a couple minutes yeah and binding back to this ancient tradition and this lineage I love that if you do how do you talk to your child about what's happening now for Jews in Israel like how much are you divulging what are you trying to instill it's been a difficult balance throughout the past year I think that um last year right after October 7th I was so [ ] distra and in it and I was consuming so much so so much media right and yeah I was a little obsessed and I don't think that that was a good example for my kid hard hard to resist I think we all were I mean what a what a moment in history and you want to know what's going on you want to feel connected was all happening in real time yeah so I mean I think that's understandable yeah and I I also you know I feel like one of my approaches to to being a parent is that like look I'm human babe like I'm human so I can I'm I'm messy sometimes I'm distraught sometimes and like like that's hard for you to see that and be around it but I'd rather you see me in all my shades than I'm like doing that kind of like very English stiff upper lip Mommy Mommy it's fine wait till the door's closed exactly and then I break you know right now I'm trying to instill like Jewish pride and also like a kind of I guess the understanding that like knowing our history and knowing where we come from and and choosing to step into that in In Our Lifetime and I'm trying to show my kids you can do this and like you should be doing this and I think we all it in in whatever way we can in that article you attribute so many positive aspects of your personality to having gotten them from your mom yeah but I I would be remiss if we didn't show some love to Pops oh um you know my dad would be pissed if I didn't show so like tell me a little bit about your dad and and and what you feel like you've inherited from him it's a good question J why are you doing this to me you know I I I go for the real stuff um my dad the the thing that made things difficult to be completely honest and he knows this so hopefully he won't have a problem with me sharing this publicly but my dad grieved really really really hard for three months and then was like yeah no [ ] that and um got a girlfriend who he married very quickly and that came with what we his children felt like was this kind of like real like almost that chapter of my life that involved your mother that's done come and get your things that you want of hers you know i' I've moved on now kind of thing and we were like I'm still wearing black bro like wait what yeah like I'm barely starting to eat again and I'm supposed to accept this new your new like I I wish that he had kind of kept his new enthusiastic feelings of love towards a new person I kind of wish that he had kept that a little bit quiet um that was really hard for this is not the first example of this that I have heard about or seen up close you were saying earlier when you were talking about grief I actually thought about it then you're like there's this hole that you can't refill yeah when it's your spouse you sort of can replace it in a way right right right that's so interesting but if it's not your spouse it's Irreplaceable like you can't replace your mom you can't replace a sibling you can't replace your best friend but you can remarry you can have love again so it's I think it's a different kind of grief that I don't think we like think about enough as we're going through these things that if I'm the person who's remarrying the other people around me cannot they can't Remar they can't re get a mom that's exactly it and and as as much as those people deserve to move on and build a new chapter and whatever it's very painful for the other people who can't move on in that way yeah absolutely I think you know obviously we want my dad to be happy we absolutely do and he is which is fantastic and she's great and that's cool thank God but it was just really really [ ] hard totally that's very fast so you are now singles that right that is right you're single but your ex-husband is a Jew yes has marrying a Jewish man always been important to you was that was that a factor I think Jewish men are so sexy yeah it wasn't like a a deal breaker right and it's still not a deal breaker but it's like you would have to be a real Ally right now for me to want to date someone who wasn't Jewish um I think my experience of being married to a jewi Jewish man and obviously like I'm talking in like absolute generalizations but I see this with so many Jewish men is that they're [ ] incredible husbands and wonderful father is like second to none and so co-parenting with my ex-husband is kind of a dream great yeah and thank God man one one thing off your plate brao and like we really got each other's back we're very very aligned spiritually and politically in this moment so like it's really beautiful to have that support but yeah dating like he kind of probably does need to be Jewish yeah yeah nothing wrong with that yeah no absolutely I'm I care a great deal about it myself okay so let's get into your art a little bit okay um I loved looking at all your art as I Was preparing for this cuz you know i' I've looked at it here and there but I really like did a little bit of a deep dive from my like macro overview of your work um it was it was fascinating to see your Evolution uh from sort of broader themes and ideas to much more personal raw Zoey stories it was also interesting to see it sort of mirrored in the materials you used like you start it with more synthetic more impersonal materials plastic glass absolutely and and then you know you're moving to boxing gloves with embroidery and lace and flowers and now you've got these you know fullon natural textile colorful ornate like 3D things yeah it's no surprise to me that the piece of yours that now hangs in the Whitney is from tended the your 2023 art show you did here in New York first of all mlto for having a piece in Whitney it's a huge deal tell me about the piece itself and how you found out that they were putting it in the permanent collection there's this photo that we've we've had for years and my brother took it with a film camera it's it's a black and white photo of me and my now sister-in-law and we're sat on my bed and I'm drawing on her she's my absolute bestie so it's really meaningful to me that a depiction of us is going to live in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American art I would never have imagined this when I was 17 and high and drawing on her back and making very very bad art like it was for a photography project that was like so basic 101 what a million you know teenagers have made in the past but anyway my brother captured what I felt was this like really unique intimate moment because she's she's not clothed and we're there and we're you know and I'm sort of like I'm I'm facing her back and I'm creating something and so I used that photo as like the source material painted it onto this large tablecloth in my studio and then did a shitload of hand embroidery and a bunch of applique and stained with ink and whatnot and so the finished piece I hope shows not just this intimate moment but this idea of like all of this like growth and Wilderness and potential because I think about who we were then as women and who we are today and I I think about our different Awakenings at different points and like our kind of expansion as women what's the piece called songs leak from my bedroom walls imagine if I didn't remember at all that would be really took a second Len Welly cuz your your titles are not easy to grab on to Poetic phrases yeah yeah do you project it when you paint never tried to make photo real art you know and there's plenty artists out there who use projection and create these things that you look at them and you're like that's a photograph oh my God that's not a photograph what the [ ] yeah that's never been what I've tried to make like I always want to show our mess our toil our imperfections which is why there's a lot of threads which is why I use ink cuz when you use ink on fabric it obviously bleeds out it's quite hard to manipulate and so there is always this kind of like something's a bit wrong there and off and that's like that's what I think is interesting about life actually and then the embroidery like people have asked me you know like why don't you just get other people to do that for you and I'm like because then it would turn out perfect and then it wouldn't be about what I'm trying to say is it imperfect because you're an imperfect SE exactly it's not like you're like oh I need to mess up this line right now no no it's imperfect because I'm a [ ] mess okay and it's not like I'm a professional you can't get better at it you can't do it too much that you improve not I must not I want to bring up one piece from your 2015 show present life which was all about motherhood and pregnancy where you actually turned your plasticized placenta into a piece yes what was the reaction to that and and what does your kiddo think about it now the reaction was wait who's put who's put a placenta on the Bowery I guess we need to go see that um my kids that's good that's a good thing right I mean it did it bring a lot of attention yeah was it was my first show and it kind of like put me on the map in the New York art world and a woman a a really big um art collector who's been a wonderful support asked to buy it cuz she's smart and she was like that's the piece that I want and I had to explain to her as an artist who had never sold a piece before this was my first show I'd never ever sold anything desperately wanted her approval and to be in her collection and I had to be like I'm so sorry that's not for sale you can have the kneeon one yeah you have the KNE neon one exactly the reaction you know I think my kid has grown up with crazy artist mom who's like bringing things into the home and turning it into art and like putting our stories out there and I'm sure that my kid is going to be incredibly embarrassed at times in their life and hopefully proud at other times too one thread through your work pun intended is femininity yes uh which has already come up a lot in this convers ation whatever you're tackling in your art it's about women it's by a woman it is for women this past year as you've alluded to we've seen horrible violence kidnapping sexual violence towards Israeli women we've seen terrible oppression of women in Iran uh has any of that trauma made its way into your art over the past year we saw the um testimonies from the people who handled the bodies we saw the testimonies from the Survivor we all know everyone knows or should know what happened and the denial that is still out there after a year that has affected me in a way that like I I will never get over that actually like seeing what is pretty much the the most widely documented cases of rape I've I've ever known about in that the atrocities were filmed by those committing them hello like why are we debating this and then seeing how there was so many voices online and in the left and in communities that I used to be a part of actually denying it and saying this is this is a lie this is made up in the context of Holocaust denial where you've also got like what is it 30% or more than 30% of New Yorkers who deny or think deny the Holocaust or think that we're over exaggerating it and whatnot then we know there's there's a phenomenon going on which is that the nor that the Jewish people survival experience is made up they're making it up why because they are an inherently suspicious nefarious people that is definitely coming into my work um I've been doing some some writing I use text in my work quite a lot in titles but also like I embroider text a lot and so there will be some pieces that address this unfortunate phenomenon is the the way you're tackling those issues in the art just through the words or some of the pieces specifically you know uh visualizing it yeah that's a good question so at first the first pieces that I was making and again like I was as I'm like I was paralyzing in terms of the studio I didn't make anything for a while and then when I first did I was painting violent scenes and I started cuz I paint and then I do the sewing afterwards and so and I started even embroidering this one um piece and I was like this isn't us this isn't like I'm glad that I did this I got it out and let me put that away in a drawer and that's that's not what your next body of work is going to be I don't want to live in that world in my studio every day that's not what I want to put out into the world and so I'm much more interested visually in speaking to though yes our our trauma but also like our resilience our resistance our joy and I I do that through color and through textures but also you know I'm I'm doing these portraits of my Jewish Family and community and so I get to like choose moments of of what I feel like a like empowering moments or soft tender moments ni but the text is where I'm really addressing this the rape denialism which I think I can't not bring that into the work you posted on Instagram August 11th of this of this year that you have been put on lists had a solo Show cancelled had people tell you they shouldn't work with you you've been stalked and harassed online and generally dealt with a lot of ostracism from people you've been working with for over a decade that sucks how are you dealing with this new reality I don't really go to art events anymore um do you find the whole Community is basically an unsafe place to be it's not that the whole Community is unsafe and the whole Community is hostile cuz it's definitely not it's just that I don't know in any given room in the art world I don't know which one of these people like I I know because people have told me categorically Zoe a lot of people trying to ruin you right now a lot a lot of people chatting [ ] about you and like you know passing your name around to try and essentially get you cancelled I know also overtly cuz a friend told me he was like Hey like this person I follow suddenly started making a bunch of posts like directly and in no UNC certain terms about you and she changed her bio to I'm Zoe Bachman's number one hater um I know and and but a har I know and like a bunch of people that I know continue to follow her and someone I know was like engaging in in you know person no I don't know who this woman is I've never met her but great yeah awesome but this is this is the thing where it's like I I don't know in any space in the art world I don't know who hates me and and is trying to ruin my career so therefore I just kind of rather stay home which also sucks CU I'm like I letting them win you know and it's like some weeks I feel way more like I can and I do and and and I'll go someplace and I'll be like actually that was really nice and lovely and you know I get a lot of people now in the art world coming up to me and in in hushed tones being like thanks so much for your advocacy yeah I imagine that's the case I feel like a lot of people people experienced that and that sort of leads to another question I want to ask you which is have new opportunities Arisen for you because of you being outspoken and being so proudly Jewish that wouldn't have before I'm glad you asked that because I don't want people to think that you know speaking out against anti-Semitism is a career Ruiner and not only do I not want them to think that because I want them to join me I do want them to join me I am tired of of being like one of the only voices in as an artist in the art world who is consistently speaking up about these things I'm [ ] tired of it Jonah so I do want people to to feel empowered to do it but also the truth is is that like I've kind of career-wise and sales wise I've had like a really great year in in a time where you know the market is really bad right now A lot of people are not buying art always happens when there's uncertainty and an election and wars and whatnot but I think that a lot of people Jewish collectors are in a place where like they want to engage with their stories they want to engage with their histories that they probably haven't either in the past or or for a while they've been collecting art that speaks about other things and they're feeling vulnerable understandably and they want to they want to own something that feels familiar to them and that makes them feel like it's speaking to them or about them or or or whatnot so actually this whole horrible ugly moment though it's been it's definitely had it's definitely closed a lot of doors for me it's also opened a bunch as well so like thank God I think that's you know important for people to hear I think there's really this and I've talked about it before on the show there's a very vague fear yeah about being proudly Jewish people aren't quite sure what it is they're afraid of they're afraid of as van Jones said on my show smoke yeah it's like what is it and you might get you might have somebody me mean to you online and say that you're a number one hater you might this that and the other but like here you are you're making money you're still doing your thing it's like you didn't disappear into the abyss it's like you're going to be okay yeah yeah it will open you up to a different audience or different Co and then you'll find people who love you and support you and that feels better than you know having closet haters buying your stuff anyway yeah exactly do you think it's possible to salvage the relationship between the social justice Progressive world and the Jewish Community you you've been very involved in social justice for a number of different causes and you know very famously over this past year a lot of those people have disappeared when it comes to standing with Jews and so do you feel like there's any hope there if I look back at like our people and our history I think we have to recognize that we've engaged in a shitload of forgiveness right because like you know if you look at the the attempts to wipe us off of the map over and over again like obviously we are people who when we regroup are like okay let's let's move let's go forward shall we so I think anything is possible and I hope that there can be um Bridges and and that there can be like restorative experiences right now the thing that I feel that it would take would be like a really huge paradigm shift and a movement for those who have engaged in so much anti-semitic rhetoric they would have to like make us feel safe again and seen again in order for there to be like a true um repairing and I don't know if I think that's going to happen at least not anytime soon unfortunately yeah what do you think the one constant is changed right if something's up here sooner or later it's going to be down there and and vice versa and you know this isn't 1930s Germany there are people speaking and and I feel like there will be a return to sanity um it just it it depends a little bit on um how the next couple years go but I remain optimistic good I like that yeah speaking of optimism what's what's up next for you in the art world yeah so I have um I have some work in a few different group shows right now one is um SF Moma very cool and that will then travel to the Perez art museum in Miami and Crystal Bridges which is in Arkansas I have some work in the Norton Museum which is in Florida and then um I heard I I heard that the National Portrait Gallery who also acquired a piece of mine a year or so ago they're going to be hanging that piece finally which that'll be [ ] cool for me on a personal level CU I'll get to go home to London to a museum that obviously I went to get to see something that I made that's so cool but my next solo show please um it's it's not for a while so I've got some time to really let the work percolate but it's going to be very much about you know our community and our community's relationship to the concept of the home and that will take place next Miami art basil um at a gallery called Mindy Solomon so that will be during Miami Art Basel 2025 we'll get you know we'll get on our hovercrafts and we'll go sounds good to me I better hurry when when is our bowel what part of the year it's in December December 25 November January yeah exactly it was some time amazing yeah all right let's do a quick little lightning round all right do dumper Mary London La New York wait do is [ ] yeah [ ] Mary kill [ ] kill but like the the PG version PG vers wait say it again so do dump or marry London La New York you marry New York you [ ] London you dump La sorry babes I'm sorry I'm sorry it's fine it's fine uh also also like when I say you [ ] London also [ ] London sometimes [ ] London you angry [ ] London there you go there it is okay favorite Jewish holiday I'm really getting into Hanukah right now because I didn't grow up with that and I'm like this is awesome and it's an extended one and we get to eat all those donuts yeah like a lot of good stuff yeah favorite Jewish food lab Lab yeah delicious yeah I want I want to like I that's where I want to go after I've died I want to go inside what's your favorite Jewish food I don't love Jewish food to be honest uh same girl but you ask you no I'm I'm going to say chicken noodle soup with kala to dip in the soup and like matab Bal soup oh yeah yeah yeah those are fa yeah okay last we're going to do our social media questions that people have for you from our Instagram audience which remember you can do every week we announce our guests before they come on you can go on and post your questions and we're going to we're going to read them to so gold for bean asks uh my sister-in-law called me in October 8th Jew based on me starting to wear a star of David on October 8th am I not a real Jew you are so a real Jew and thank you absolutely we we need everybody yeah let's let's have way more Unity lemore got hi lemore what can we do to help Jewish and Israeli artists who are being boycotted right now we can buy their art like we can buy their art we can if we have connections to exhibit share their Art Online like these it's really really important that we do this Tina J gatan asks what advice would you give to your younger self I am quite a sort of like no regrets person in that I feel like all our mistakes and the difficult things that we experience in our lives are there to teach us something right um so therefore it's it's hard for me to think of advice to give to my younger self who's about to make a whole bunch of fuckups I think though it would be about one's instincts I think it would be to to just trust your instincts because you know that voice inside of you like just always connect back to that cuz she knows that's so important and so so easy to let the the noise and other people's opinions and ideas filter in there and got to trust your gut yeah love it