Novelty

A few months into social isolation, while everyone was baking, I decided to learn visual storytelling. Inspired by Ariel Aberg-Riger, I downloaded Procreate and Photoshop and set to work learning how to use handwriting, drawing, and collage to tell stories.

My husband and I always joke that his headstone should read “If you could get him to throw it, it would go in,” while mine should say “She was proud of the things she was bad at.” And I’m proud of this novice effort. I have loved experimenting with different illustration techniques while I’ve been learning to draw, and that’s very much reflected in this first story. It’s stylistically incoherent, but I’m ok with that. I knew a lot more by the time I illustrated the eighth and final panel.

So, without further ado, a story from my COVID experience.

It is a Tree of Life to All Who Hold Fast to It

I wrote this in early 2019 to process my grief and confusion about the morning of October 27, 2018. It was originally published in Brisket, and I am re-publishing it on my blog for the one-year anniversary.

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On Saturdays, Jews from Jerusalem to Jacksonville, Florida, gather for morning prayers. “Jew” is a broad category, encompassing strict observers of Judaism as well as completely secular but self-identified ethnic Jews. Not all Jews practice the religion of Judaism, and those who do may choose to practice rituals, rules, and traditions in very different ways. But some number of Jews throughout the world leave their homes on Shabbat morning, a day of rest set apart from the rest of the week, to pray together with fellow Jews.

This does not look the same everywhere. Some go to Orthodox synagogues and others attend Reform temples. Some meet in large buildings and others in rented rooms. Some are organized into a congregation, others are more informal. Some affiliate with a movement like Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox Judaism, and others simply call themselves a community. There are services where prayer is led in Hebrew, others that prefer English, and many that use both. Some congregations will not begin without a minyan, the quorum of ten adults needed to sanctify the ritual, while others begin with optimism that people will trickle in a few minutes late. But regardless of where it happens and what traditions a group does (or does not) follow, these Jews have come together on Shabbat to read the Old Testament from the Torah’s scrolls. 

On Shabbat mornings, services at Congregation B’nai Israel in Gainesville, Florida, begin at 9:30 AM. The congregation rarely begins with a minyan, but a congregant will be there to lead shacharit, the morning prayer service, and they stand at the front of the sanctuary. They begin with the Mah Tovu prayer. “Mah tovu ohalecha yaakov, mishkenotechah yisrael,” they sing. “How lovely are your sanctuaries, people of Jacob, your study houses, descendants of Israel.” This prayer acknowledges the interconnected modes of revelation, the revelation that comes through study and learning and the revelation that is God. The congregation joins, singing in Hebrew, “Your great love inspires me to enter Your house, to worship in Your holy sanctuary, filled with awe for You.” 

If you visit B’nai Israel today, you enter a serene lobby, but if you had visited the synagogue in the early 2000s, back when I was a teenager, you would have entered through a set of nondescript glass doors into a small foyer. Wall-to-wall blue carpet dominated the space.  You could have passed through it in five strides—into the social hall if you walked straight forward and into the sanctuary if you went right—grabbing a kippah from the yarmulke holder built into the wall as you went along your way.

A few years ago the congregation decided to enlarge the entry space to make the synagogue more welcoming and give a better first impression. They pulled up the blue carpet and laid tile. They pushed out the frontage of the building so congregants could mill about after services and meals. The blonde stone that used to be the facade of the building but now serves as an interior wall glows in the Florida sunshine, brightening the space. It is inviting.

By the time the leader recites the Shema Yisrael—the central prayer of the service, and one of the most important prayers in Judaism for its affirmation of monotheism, which concisely declares, “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one”—a few more congregants will have passed through the entryway and into the sanctuary. They file into their preferred pews, pick up prayer books, and rifle through the pages to catch up with the service. The head of the ritual committee—who has been filling that role since before my bat mitzvah—sits in his regular spot, and six or seven regular attendees who happen to arrive on the early side that morning will dot the pews. The rabbi is there, or will be there soon. Some of them are parents who have first deposited their young kids in childcare. But most are older, in age and tenure in the synagogue.  

On Shabbat morning, October 27, 2018, Jews gathered to worship in the holy spaces of a synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Three congregations—two Conservative and one Reconstructionist—held services together but apart in the same building. Early-arriving congregants walked from their homes or their parking spots up the inclining slopes of Wilkins Avenue or Shady Avenue, arriving with cheeks flushed by the exertion and brisk air. Crossing through the buildings entryway, members of New Light headed downstairs to the basement, while Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha gathered in the chapel and Dor Hadash’s Torah study service assembled in the sanctuary. Already by 9:45 AM, 75 people bustled within the building. 

Not everyone was there early to pray—or solely to pray. Richard Gottfried and Daniel Stein, members of New Light, were in the kitchen preparing for a congregational breakfast. Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Leger, and another Dor Hadash member set up for the morning’s services as they did every Shabbat. With a bris scheduled, they put out a table in the foyer with glasses for wine and whiskey. Cecil and David Rosenthal were there arranging the siddurim and talitot—prayer books and prayer shawls—and greeting fellow Tree of Life members as they entered the synagogue’s doors. At promptly 9:45 AM, with just two other New Light congregants assembled, Melvin Wax began chanting the first words of shacharit: “Mah tovu ohalecha yaakov, mishkenotechah yisrael.”

Five minutes later, an armed man walked into Tree of Life’s foyer where Cecil Rosenthal stood, ready to welcome him to Tree of Life.  

That was the morning I learned a new term: stochastic terrorism. This expression describes how mass communication can be used to motivate random actors to violence. [1] The violence itself is predictable, because it has been incited by public calls to take action, but no single violent action or event can be predicted. [2] For example, it was not random that a man with a gun decided to punish Jews on a Saturday morning in October because of their support for immigrants and refugees. The President tweeted on October 22 that “Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.” He described it as a “National Emerg[ency],” and three days later he deployed troops to the border. [3] So it was random that it was a man in Western Pennsylvania who packed up his car and drove to Pittsburgh on the 27th. But it could have been any number of gun-owning white nationalists fearing that immigrant criminals were infiltrating their country.

Just as the perpetrator was not entirely random, neither were the victims. It was not random that Jews were killed that Shabbat—it was random which Jews were killed. There are other synagogue buildings in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, and the region that could have been targeted. And there are other congregants who could have, indeed might have, been in Tree of Life’s building that morning. A weekend with a bar or bat mitzvah, for example, would have increased attendance, even at that early hour. 

There are, however, factors that even the stochastic nature of this violence would not have changed: the aging populations of Jewish congregations, and the burden of care that older members of communities overwhelmingly shoulder while younger members labor to meet the demands of late-stage capitalism. It is the loss of these communal caretakers, as much as the loss of life and the fear inculcated by terrorism, that made these murders a  tragedy. 

It was me who was in Pittsburgh on October 27, not my parents, but they were at greater risk than I was on that morning. They are regular synagogue attendees, not me. Had this stochastic event struck in North Central Florida instead of Pittsburgh, perhaps my parents would have been among the 11 killed.

If violence entered B’nai Israel at 9:50 AM and walked through the sunlit lobby, it would find at least 25 people in the building—fewer than 75, certainly, but for a single congregation and not three. Violence would find the handful of congregants who take turns leading the earliest part of the morning service, and the members who arrive early to make up the minyan. Violence would find the synagogue’s leadership, including several officers and board members as well as the rabbi and the executive director. The congregation’s leadership capacity—in prayer and governance—would be significantly depleted in just a few minutes. Someone new would have to step up to manage the relentless coordination of Torah and Haftorah readers and leaders for Shabbat services. There would be fewer people to ask to read and lead. Members would have to be elected to the Board, to serve without access to valuable wells of institutional memory. 

This would be true at many  Conservative or Reform synagogues in the United States. [4] Congregations are aging because the American Jewish community is older compared to the broader adult population; 26 percent of Jews are older than 65, compared to 19 percent nationally. (The exception to this demographic trend is in Orthodox communities, which have younger median ages as a result of higher birthrates). [5] In 2010, the FACT-Synagogue 3000 survey of 946 Conservative and Reform congregations found that “young people between the ages of 18 and 34 represent a scant 8 percent” of membership, compared to 24 percent aged 65 and older. [6] The latter figure is even more pronounced in smaller congregations (less than 250 families), where 30 percent of members are older than 65. Consequently, congregations are shrinking. The same survey found that “Saturday morning services in Conservative synagogues drew an average of 24 worshipers for every 100-member families. Friday evening services at Reform temples drew an average of 17 worshipers for every 100 families.” [8]

Although Pittsburgh is currently the 32nd largest Jewish community in the United States, with a population of 50,000, it is still subject to these same trends. [8] Congregations are merging, selling buildings, and consolidating resources. Tree of Life, the second-oldest congregation in Pittsburgh and one of the oldest synagogues in the United States, merged with upstart congregation Or L’Simcha in 2010 after several years of renting them space in their capacious building, which was constructed in the 1950s at a time when Tree of Life was a much larger congregation. This infused over 100 members into Tree of Life’s declining congregation, which was losing people to aging and to suburban synagogues. In the same year, Dor Hadash became a tenant in the building. New Light Congregation, like Tree of Life, was founded in the nineteenth century and experienced growth throughout the mid-twentieth century, but they too found themselves with a shrinking membership by the early twenty-first. In 2017 they also moved in with Tree of Life after selling their own building to Chabad’s rapidly expanding Yeshiva Schools, holding their services in the basement while the other two congregations used the main sanctuary and the chapel. [9]

Most synagogues could use an infusion of youth into their leadership. But there are structural reasons why these roles tend to be filled by older congregants. They are established in careers, or perhaps even retired. If they have children, they are older and more independent. They have time to volunteer to do the hard work of sustaining a community. 

If ethnographic or sociological studies have been done of synagogue lay leadership, they are not easily found. When I asked Rabbi David Kaiman of B’nai Israel why he thinks synagogue leadership is dominated by older folks, he noted that the synagogue increasingly becomes a place for routine socializing as people age. As older adults age out of the social orbits around schools and workplaces, religious spaces continue to offer connection and engagement. 

I do not bemoan the aging and shrinking of American congregations, because I do not see anything wrong with secular Jewish identity and because I am optimistic that these institutions will give way to new ways of practicing Judaism. But there is great anxiety within the Jewish community about their loss, and the question of how to attract younger Jews to synagogue has been the subject of much debate, experimentation, and investment. [10] Congregations have lowered their dues, renovated their spaces, revamped their programming, and placed greater emphasis on social justice—welcoming in Jews who previously felt excluded because of their class, race, or politics, or because they converted, or because they lack proficiency with Judaism or Hebrew. Synagogues have been so eager to invite people in and make their sanctuaries more welcoming—to Jews, of course, but also to communities of other faiths, immigrants, and other minority communities—that they inadvertently became a threat to white nationalism. With their lobbies and greeters and come-one-come-all enthusiasm, synagogues became targets, and vulnerable ones at that. 

Had this stochastic event struck in North Central Florida on October 27, my parents likely would not have been in synagogue as early as 9:50 AM. If my mom is not leading shacharit or volunteering in the kitchen to help prepare the lunch that follows services, they tend to arrive around 10:15 AM, when the congregation begins to read from the Torah. Would that have spared my parents from being among the victims? 

Possibly, but likely not. To read through the list of victims is to read through the archetypes that make up many American Jewish congregations. [11] Rose Mallinger, Melvin Wax, and the Rosenthal brothers attended synagogue every week without fail. Mallinger helped prepare breakfast for the congregation for many years. Joyce Feinberg and Irving Younger liked to greet fellow attendees as they entered the building on Shabbat mornings. A co-president of New Light, Stephen Cohen, told the New York Times that Wax, Daniel Stein, and Richard Gottfried were “the people who conducted our services, they did Torah readings.” [12] Every synagogue has their own Rose, Melvin, Cecil, David, Joyce, and Irving, as well as other archetypes. My brother, who spent two years working at a Conservative synagogue, claims that every congregation has “a Gary”—an older malcontent who complains about children. Rabbi Kaiman told me a story about his brother, who returned from visiting Conservative synagogues around the country and swore that every single one had a life insurance salesman responsible for getting together ten people for a minyan three times a week. 

My parents are among “the regulars” at Shabbat services. My mother has served on the synagogue’s Board of Directors and is the long-time president of the Sisterhood. Their social lives revolve around B’nai Israel, and their closest friends are all fellow congregants.  They are both in their 60s. 

It was the day after the shooting, at the vigil held on Sunday afternoon, that I heard Rabbi Meyers of Tree of Life describe what he witnessed the previous morning. I stood outside the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in the rain with the hundreds of other people who arrived too late to find a seat inside. We listened as the speeches were broadcast over loudspeakers. “There were 12 of us in the sanctuary at that time,” Rabbi Meyers said, “And as is customary in the Jewish faith—and I’ve also seen it in other faiths—all the early people come and sit in the back.” [13] The image he conjured with those words squeezed tight around my heart and shortened my breath and drew tears from my eyes. All of Tree of Life’s leaders, praying together, standing in a row. 

Amidst all of the heterogeneity of global Jewry—our diverse rituals, traditions, politics, and spaces of worship—I was struck by this fundamental similarity. The older people come early and join their friends in the back row. I thought of my parents and their friends, sitting together in the same three back rows every week.  

“The three people who died are the heart of our congregation,” Cohen told the Times. “It’s a stab in the heart.” [14] This is the underlying tragedy of these murders. Whether or not you believe in the preservation of organized religion, or the traditional American synagogue, these members did. They found immense value and comfort and community in belonging to their synagogues, and they helped create and sustain their congregations for others who felt similarly. Their murders meant a loss of invaluable human capital and of the capacity needed to maintain communities. And that’s the real tragedy at the heart of this story: their killer was more successful than he even realized. 

Yet in the end he did not meet his objective. Today, Tree of Life, Dor Hadash, and New Light continue to meet every Shabbat. Two other local congregations with grand buildings host them in their chapels and classrooms. With painful resilience, their members have resumed Sisterhood and Men’s Club activities, planned Purim celebrations, held committee meetings, and strategized about their futures. In the coming months, each congregation will receive an allocation from the donations made in the wake of the tragedy--money I imagine they would rather not have, considering the circumstances, but that nonetheless will help sustain their operations. [15] Their endurance does not belie the tragedy—it is a refusal to let white nationalism win. 

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 1. Thank you to my friend Phil Rocco, a political scientist and native Pittsburgher, for teaching me this term and thereby providing the framing for this essay

2.  Jared Keller, “To Discuss the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, We Have to Discuss Trump,” Pacific Standard, October 29, 2018.

 3. Opheli Garcia Lawler, “What’s Important to Know About the Migrant Caravan,” The Cut, October 30, 2018.

4.  It is difficult to find data on the Reconstructionist movement.

5. “Jewish Population in the US,” Steinhardt Social Research Institute at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University. Consulted February, 2019.  

6.  Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Jonathon Ament, and Ron Miller, “Conservative and Reform Congregations in the United States Today: Findings from the FACT-Synagogue 3000 Survey of 2010,” 2011.

7.  S3K Synagogue Studies Institute, “Reform and Conservative Congregations: Different Strengths, Different Challenges,” S3K Report, March 2012.

8.  As of 2018. Berman Jewish DataBank, “Pocket Demographics 2.0: US Jewish Population,” 2018.

9.  Adam Reinherz, “Yeshiva Schools purchases former home of New Light Congregation,” Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, December 20, 2017. 

10.  For example: Rabbi Michael Knopf, “What’s Driving Jews Away from Synagogues? Not Dues, but ‘Membership,’” Haaretz, May 26, 2016; Ben Sales, “More synagogues are getting rid of their mandatory dues,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 30, 2017.

11.  Moriah Balingit, Kristine Phillips, Amy B. Wang, Deanna Paul, Wesley Lowery, and Kellie B. Gormley, “The Lives Lost in the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” The Washington Post, October 28, 2018.

12.  Campbell Robertson, Sabrina Tavernise, and Sandra E. Garcia, “Quiet Day at Pittsburgh Synagogue Becomes a Battle to Survive,” The New York Times, October 28, 2018.

13.  Rabbi Hazzan Jeffery Meyers, “Rabbi Hazzan Jeffery Meyers Addresses Pittsburgh Vigil," Cantors Assembly, October 30, 2018.

14.  Robertson, Tavernise, and Garcia, “Quiet Day at Pittsburgh Synagogue Becomes a Battle to Survive.” 

15.  Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Victims of Terror Fund, “Independent Committee Report,” March 5, 2019.

The Cornerstone

I’m excited to announce the launch of a much-delayed, long-in-progress project. The Cornerstone is a podcast about Pittsburgh’s Jewish history. In season one, each episode focuses on a specific site in the city’s Hill District neighborhood and tells a story that illuminates Jewish migration, settlement, commercial activity, religious life, and communal organization between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. Each episode is accompanied by a StoryMap that re-tells the story using the rich archival materials of the Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center.  

My involvement in this project began in early 2018, when I reached out to Eric Lidji, the director of the Rauh, about possibly doing a StoryMaps workshop with the archive’s patrons. I had been working with the platform for my own research and loved how I could pull together maps, images, videos, and text to tell a story about the past that was grounded in place, transparent about archival sources, and vividly illustrated. Despite all this functionality, the interface was also user friendly and did not require too much technical expertise. 

Eric quickly but kindly shot down the workshop idea, because he realized the platform was a solution to a different problem that he was having. Eric had already conceived of a podcast about Pittsburgh’s Jewish history and was writing a grant for the SteelTree Fund of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, but he was faced with the challenge of how to feature archival documents in an audio medium. StoryMaps was the perfect way to share the sources for each story with listeners – as well as a good way to steer readers who found the stories online towards the more sensorial and intimate podcast episodes.

We found out in March that the grant was funded, and after a period of brainstorming, trial, and error we began working on the podcast scripts and StoryMaps in earnest. By October, Eric had completed drafts of the first three episodes and I had completed rough drafts of the first two StoryMaps. We were on track to finish the first season by the end of the year – or so we thought. 

The shooting at Tree of Life on October 27 upended Pittsburgh, but it particularly affected Eric. As the custodian of the city’s Jewish history, the responsibility fell to him to preserve the community’s response to the tragedy. For weeks, Eric gathered materials – programs from vigils and funerals, pieces of the altars that sprung up outside Tree of Life, song sheets and kriah ribbons from marches – and conducted oral histories with those whose lives were deeply affected by the shooting. Creating this brand-new archival collection (at a moment’s notice) took precedence over everything else. 

We picked back up, slowly but surely, in the new year. I can’t speak for Eric, but for me the project of celebrating Pittsburgh’s long Jewish history felt especially meaningful in the wake of Tree of Life. Each of the five stories in season one describe a flourishing Jewish neighborhood in the Hill District. There was the Workman’s Circle and The Forward, Jewish merchants and their bank, a modern Hebrew school, multiple synagogues, and a YMHA. By the 1930s, this community had all but melted away as Squirrel Hill became Pittsburgh’s new Jewish hub--but many of the city’s Jews can trace their family’s history back to the Hill District.

 I’m not from one of these families, but after eight years in Pittsburgh I do feel like I’m slowly becoming part of the community—and working on The Cornerstoneis a big reason why. The industriousness with which Jews built new institutions from the ground up in the 19thand early 20thcenturies is inspiring, and all the more so because many of them still exist. In fact, I’m privileged to workfor two of them: the Rauh and the Jewish Community Center (formerly known as the YM-YWHA).  

I hope you will take a few minutes to subscribe to the podcast, download the episodes, and explore the StoryMaps. You can listen to the podcast and view the StoryMap separately, or enjoy them simultaneously. Whichever way you do it, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. This first season had a long learning curve, but we are well on our way to completing the second season, which will focus on other neighborhoods in Pittsburgh with little-known Jewish histories.

I would be remiss to finish this without acknowledging and thanking Eric Lidji for being a thoughtful, patient collaborator and friend. Gratitude is also due to the SteelTree Fund of the Jewish Federation and to the Heinz History Center for their support. And finally, thanks to Shelly Parver Lenkner for sending me in the right direction at just the right time. 

Binging Purging: Why Are Decluttering Videos So Popular?

One year ago, I launched a writing project on Patreon called Brisket. It was a home for essays I was writing that needed to be written “low and slow.” I recently sunset Brisket, and will be sharing the essays here on my blog throughout the coming months. This was the second piece, published in May 2018.

A few months ago, I was watching YouTube before bed when a new video by one of my favorite beauty vloggers, Shaaanxo, popped into my subscription feed. Shaanxo usually posts makeup tutorials and product reviews, videos that are about 10-20 minutes in length. Recording in a room of her New Zealand home that is entirely dedicated to storing her massive makeup collection, Shannon Harris turns on the camera and begins applying her makeup, chattily telling her 3.1 million subscribed viewers why she has chosen each primer, foundation, eyeshadow palette, bronzer, contour, powder, and lipstick to accomplish that specific look and giving her first impression on products she is using for the first time. She also does monthly roundups of her favorite new items, unboxing videos showing her viewers what the PR departments of makeup companies have sent her to try out, and vlogs about fashion, decor, and fitness.

This video, however, was different. First of all, it was almost an hour long. In it, Harris opened one of the massive drawers of what is best described as a custom-designed bureau—each drawer contains dividers specifically constructed to store lipsticks, or eyeshadow palettes, or pans of powder and blush and bronzer—and showed her viewers how overstuffed each one was. Then, after pulling out every item and piling it on the floor, she went through each one and selected what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away. The keepers were lovingly rearranged back in the drawer, the rest relegated to a cardboard box to be taken to a local women’s shelter.

A decluttering video sounds like the most boring content that the social media ecosystem could ever create, like what reality TV would be if it was true to its name. But this new genre of programming is as alluring and popular as some of the smaller reality TV franchises, if not the Kardashians. A search for “decluttering” on YouTube in April 2018 returns 581,000 videos, though the videos are diversified across the categories of home design (organization and storage solutions) and fashion (closet purges) as well as beauty. Like this unreal, soapy genre, to watch a decluttering video requires no intellectual engagement whatsoever. They’re the perfect digestivo after a mentally and physically taxing day. Both mediums also prize beauty. Whether it’s the tanned, glam talent and elegant homes on TV or YouTube videos of colorful makeup in decorative packaging, the emphasis is placed on aesthetics. If they’re so alike, however, why wouldn’t viewers just defer to HGTV and Bravo? Why are they flocking to YouTube, and why to decluttering videos in particular?

While some of us were off watching Mad Men, The Americans, Game of Thrones, and the other premier shows that have characterized this “golden age of television,” YouTube quietly grew. From its founding in 2005, the site developed multitudinous ecosystems devoted to every interest and hobby as users uploaded new videos and learned how to build (and monetize) communities of like-minded enthusiasts. This became the hallmark of YouTube: consistent new and niche content. In just twelve years, the platform has grown to 1.5 billion global viewers—and it’s projected to reach 1.86 billion by 2021. By comparison, Netflix reported a record 117.6 million subscribers at the end of 2017. One billion hours of YouTube are watched daily.

Many of those hours have accrued to Shaanxo’s makeup decluttering videos. She has the most-viewed decluttering video on YouTube, with 2.3 million views for the video in which she sorts through 1,000 lipsticks. In fact, of the 10 most-watched decluttering videos, five of them are from Shaanxo’s channel. [1] While other beauty YouTubers have created their own copycat content—trying to take advantage of how YouTube’s “suggested videos” algorithm rewards content tagged with trending keywords—the other five videos reflect the variety of the genre. Three focus on decluttering homes more generally, and three are by women who market themselves as experts in the field: Marie Kondo, Melissa Maker (@cleanmyspace), and Alejandra Costello (@alejandra.tv). [2] Focusing on the most- viewed videos, however, obscures the many content creators with fewer (but loyal) subscribers.

Clutterbug is one of the mid-size players on YouTube, with only 278,000 subscribers, but the channel has three videos that have garnered over one million views (and three more with over half a million views). [3] Like Melissa Maker and Alejandra Costello, Cassandra Aarssen also built a business around decluttering. She has published books and produces a podcast, in addition to blogging and running her YouTube channel. The Canadian mother of three developed a system to categorize everyone into “bugs” according to how much visual clutter they can tolerate and how devoted they are to organizing systems—“crickets,” for example, hate visual clutter and love organizing systems, whereas “butterflies” like to be able to see all of their stuff and can’t really deal with complex organization systems. Her videos make reference to this variety in people’s styles, and she rejects out of hand that there is any one “right” way to keep your home organized.

Regardless, decluttering is a priority, and in October 2017 she did a 30-day decluttering challenge on her channel where she went through her entire home purging unnecessary items. These very short videos tackled one small space at a time, such as underneath the kitchen sink, and Aarssen offered suggestions for what to do with old flower vases (repurpose them to hold plastic bags until the next time you buy flowers) and the best type of storage containers to use in this particular cabinet (flexible ones that can fit between pipes). Aarssen ends her videos with personal stories, freely admitting her imperfections. Her followers’ comments alternate between references to her stories and remarks about home organization; it’s not uncommon to see a comment like "You have the best, crazy stories!” right above a solution for organizing leftovers (“I put a small post it note on the front of the left over bin with contents and date, a little clear tape over”). Her subscribers tell her that they find her “motivational” and an “inspiration.” “Awe, thank you for being so supportive,” Aarssen wrote in response to one such comment.

So while channels like Clutterbug’s have pragmatic value, fans of decluttering also use the comment threads of YouTube channels to connect with the creator and with one another, building the kind of differentiated, unique community made possible by social media. Unlike celebrities that fans can only connect with on the stars’ terms, content creators on YouTube, Instagram, and SnapChat in particular interact with fans in order to build their audiences. This intimacy fosters loyalty between subscribers and channels, to the point where we will even watch our favorite beauty vloggers sort through old bottles of face wash.

We are undeniably in a period obsessed with minimalism, organization, and cleaning. While women’s magazines likeGood Housekeeping and Real Simple have long specialized in articles about how to creatively store gift wrap in guest room closets, organization and minimalism have become a mainstream concern (albeit still a gendered one). On HGTV shows like Love it or List It and Tiny House Hunters, organization and storage is routinely the primary concern for designers and home buyers. Several of the design overhauls featured in the new Netflix season of Queer Eye centered on organizational solutions; the Fab Five also preach minimalism to their mentee-men, purging old clothes and possessions in favor of carefully curated closets. Americans watch Hoarders with fascination and disgust; it’s relieving to know that your house isn’t that bad, even if every closet is filled with sentimental junk.

Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Marie Kondo, creator of the KonMari method of decluttering. Kondo has sold 8 million books worldwide about how to purge the objects in your life that fail to “spark joy.” She published her first book, The Life- Changing Magic of Tidying Up, in Japan in 2011 and in the United States in 2014—where it spent 143 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Through her books, consulting company, and now an upcoming Netflix series, Kondo attempts to fundamentally change people’s relationship to their possessions. To “KonMari” is to deploy her distinctive method, a prescribed set of steps for how to evaluate each object in your home and decide whether it adds value to your life or contributes to your happiness. What makes the KonMari method so attractive is this union of prescription and promise. Kondo recognizes that you’re overwhelmed, assures you that you will be happier with less, and then commands you to start sorting through your clothes (then books, paper, and miscellany, before finally tackling the sentimental).

Why have organization and minimalism become a mainstream concern now? What is it about the 2010s that inspired this efflorescence of tidying? The recession tightened Americans’ belts—specifically, it left millennials with student debt, smaller incomes, and a preference for experiences over stuff. That explains why some Americans are buying less, buying more mindfully, and living in smaller homes with fewer things. It is an unsatisfying answer, however, for why people feel compelled to purge belongings they already own.

Since the recession, paid work has become more precarious and insecure. [4] According to a Marketplace Edison Research poll conducted in February 2018, although economic anxiety is on the decline generally, certain segments of the American workforce remain wary of the future. The poll found that workers in the gig economy, as well as “African-Americans, women and 25-34 year-olds are the most anxious about their personal economic situations.” [5] Eleven percent of Americans now work full-time as independent contractors and a quarter of the American workforce participates in the gig economy. For these workers especially, control is something that can more readily be exercised at home than at work. A woman I am friendly with, who runs a communications consulting business, told me that decluttering “feels like the one thing I can and should be in control of with everything else out of control. I don’t know when I will get paid next, if I will have work next week/month/year, I don’t know how much the pay will be if I get it, I can’t plan for my future, I can’t control my health, I can’t control my pets’ health, nothing.”

And that’s what Marie Kondo promises: the chaos of clutter can be controlled. You may be losing sleep over whether you’ll lose your job, or the country will go through another recession, or you’ll land a new contract and if so when you’ll next get paid, but most of this is beyond your immediate control. You can, however, control your closet. By taking control of the chaos of your home, Kondo argues you will have more time to spend using the things you love, ultimately making you happier. Fewer possessions means fewer items going missing and less guilt over expensive purchases sitting there unused (a guitar for me, an elliptical for you). Consequently, taking time to declutter is an act of self-care.

Minimalism—an unselfish, ethical approach to consumerism—feels virtuous and altruistic in comparison to other forms of self-care, such as spa days or retail therapy, that seem to only benefit yourself. Despite a booming market for health, wellness, and beauty products and services, I regularly hear people justifying the time and money they spend on themselves—there needs to be a reason that one “deserves” self care. [6] A close friend describes how, at a weekly meeting where snack is served, the women in the office routinely say a variation of “I worked hard today,” or “I’ve been eating really healthy,” as they pick up small pieces of chocolate and place them on their plate next to cut vegetables and gluten-free pretzels.

In his 2005 book Born Losers, historian Scott Sandage explained how Americans’ understanding of failure evolved over the course of the nineteenth century; whereas in 1800 failure meant your business went broke, by 1900 it described your own personal failing to be ambitious and strive for something bigger. “Ours is an ideology of achieved identity,” Sandage wrote, “obligatory striving is its method, and failure and success are its outcomes.” He explains:

We do this because a century and a half ago we embraced business as the dominant model for our outer and inner lives. ... We reckon our incomes once a year but audit ourselves daily, by standards of long forgotten origin. Who thinks of the old counting house when we take stock of how we “spend” our lives, take “credit” for our gains, or try not to end up “third rate” or “good for nothing”? Someday, we hope, the “bottom line” will show that we “amount to something.” By this kind of talk we “balance” our whole lives, not just our accounts. [7]

There is no “obligatory striving” when you sit in a spa luxuriating. Although your muscles may relax, it cannot calm the anxiety that the time could be better spent pursuing grander ambitions. So we gravitate towards activities like decluttering, a form of self care that needs no justification—it’s hard work that demonstrates our striving towards the big goals of “zero distraction,” “maximum efficiency,” and “minimal waste.”

But it’s one thing to declutter your own home, and another to watch someone else do it. If we accept that people are obsessed with decluttering, it makes sense that they would be interested in watching people do it well. That explains the rising popularity of HGTV, and the general obsession with competence porn. Certainly there are some tips and tricks to be learned from observing how other people clean. Another explanation might be that people vicariously feel virtuous after watching someone else clean. If after a long workday you cannot muster the energy to reorganize a closet, but still feel a compulsive need to exercise control over disorder in a way you could not while at work, isn’t the next best thing to watch someone else do it? But these factors alone cannot explain why 581,000 videos on the subject have been created. Clearly, YouTubers have realized that a large audience exists and that these viewers are willing to watch multiple videos of people purging their possessions.

Over half a million decluttering videos exist partly because viewers use them to relax and fall asleep. Viewers commenting on Shaanxo’s decluttering videos describe them as “soothing,” “satisfying,” and “relaxing,” and I personally share this assessment. After watching Shannon purge liquid lipsticks from a giant drawer for 40 minutes, I feel purged of shpilkes (a great Yiddish word meaning nervous energy or restlessness). There is actually a phenomenological explanation for why these videos relax people: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR. For those unfamiliar with ASMR, it describes a sensation of tingling that radiates from the scalp down the neck and arms that is triggered by sounds like whispering, tapping, and swishing water. Not everyone experiences “the tingles,” as they are referred to in internet parlance, and not everyone experiences them in the same way and as the result of the same stimuli. Even for people who do not experience the tingling sensation, however, these triggers induce relaxation.

If ASMR sounds made up, that’s because to some extent it is. The term was coined in 2010 by an active participant in online forums about the phenomena (after earlier proposals didn’t stick, including Attention Induced Head Orgasm and Attention Induced Observant Euphoria). According to Dr. Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences and author-creator of ASMR University, discussion of the phenomenon originated in an online forum in 2007 when a commenter asked for an explanation of the sensation she had “as a child while watching a puppet show and when i was being read a story to” and “as a teenager when a classmate did me a favor and when a friend drew on the palm of my hand with markers.” Subsequent commenters could not explain it, but shared their own experiences with what would come to be called ASMR. Between 2008 and 2011, a subculture developed on Yahoo Groups, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and blogs as people, searching for explanations, found one another and began to share sources for “the tingles”—old episodes of Bob Ross, random videos on YouTube of people whispering, makeup tutorials, and unboxing videos. In 2009 the first YouTube channel dedicated to ASMR was created, but it took another three years for the genre to really blow up on the platform; Richards estimates that at least 60 new ASMR YouTube channels were established in 2012, eclipsing the 40 ASMR channels that existed in 2011. A search in mid-April of 2018 reveals that there are currently over 12 million ASMR videos on YouTube.

Unsurprisingly considering its grassroots origins, little scientific research has been done on ASMR; there’s scarce evidence to contradict the prevalent perceptions that ASMR is fake, exaggerated, or sexual in nature. According to a cursory search of PubMed, only five peer-reviewed studies attempting to explain ASMR have been published since 2015, though on ASMR University Richards also catalogues several studies that are in progress. When read together, the findings from these few research projects seem to indicate that the relaxing sensation of ASMR is the product of a heightened ability to imagine connecting with another person. Recent survey findings from a British team confirmed that those who experience ASMR are consistent in how they describe the sensation, about when and why they watch (at night, to relax and fall asleep), and their preferred triggers (whispering, personal attention, and slow, repetitive movements). A Canadian fMRI study comparing 11 people who experience ASMR to 11 controls found that the ASMR group had lower functional connectivity in certain areas of the brain as compared to the controls—the same areas of the brain were active in both groups, but in the control group those areas talked to each other more. This structural difference, the researchers hypothesize, may mean that people who experience ASMR have a “reduced ability to inhibit sensory-emotional experiences that are suppressed in most individuals.” This finding jibes with two other survey- based studies that found that participants who experience ASMR scored higher than control groups on the personality trait of “openness to experience” and the empathy trait of “fantasizing,” or the ease with which one becomes immersed in a story.

Finally, Richards has put forward the hypothesis (but not in a peer-reviewed publication) that, “Triggers that stimulate ASMR in individuals may actually be activating the biological pathways of inter-personal bonding. ... Some of the basic biology of bonding is well established and this involves specific behaviors which stimulate the release of endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. These bonding behaviors and molecules may provide a good explanation for most of the triggers and responses associated with ASMR.” This is consistent with the centrality of personal attention in ASMR audio and videos (“ASMR art”), which is done to evoke the tingles and relaxation. One ASMR artist (ASMRtist) on YouTube describes first discovering ASMR as a young child. While watching a classmate coloring she was overwhelmed with a feeling of relaxation and felt the tingles because she felt certain the drawing was being made for her. Most ASMR videos are a form of role play, where the ASMRtist pretends to give you a haircut, or a spa treatment, or draw your portrait. They can get pretty out there, such as the Yeti Hair Salon video by ASMR Latte—a Korean ASMRtist who generally films more conventional videos but must be running out of generic concepts. You feel silly watching it, playing along as a yeti who needs its full-body coat of hair detangled, but the effect of the brushing sounds and the whispering is undeniably relaxing. I have always loved having my hair washed and brushed before getting a haircut, and it’s amazing how you can have the same physical response from simply imagining the sensation.

Decluttering videos include many traditional ASMR triggers— personal attention, tapping, soft voices and non-stimulating conversation—and so viewers are watching these videos to help them fall asleep. In the makeup decluttering videos on Shaanxo’s channel, Shannon positions the camera so you feel like you are sitting on the floor with her—a supportive friend willing to listen to why one color or formula is more favorable than another. The tapping sounds are made when Shannon empties her drawers and, post purge, reorganizes the items she keeps. When sped up—because usually these slower parts are fast-fowarded in the editing phase, to prevent the videos from being hours long—the clicks and clacks of the makeup bottles and tubes knocking into one another produces a tapping noise that reminds me of rain sticks or speed skates hitting the ice.

Fans of Shaaanxo’s channel, who come for beauty content not ASMR, comment with surprise that they’ve found the videos relaxing; without intending to do so, Shannon created videos that people were watching to relax. While not the most popular of her content—only one video of the 19 from her decluttering series, a lipstick purge that garnered 2.3 million views, is in the top 12 most-watched videos on her channel— decluttering videos are popular enough to encourage her, and many other beauty YouTubers, to keep making them.

The large and active communities and subcultures on YouTube put to bed the myth that the internet and smartphones have reshaped us into a society of unsociable, disengaged, and egocentric people—though internet subcultures certainly underscore that social bubbles and vacuums are strong. But YouTube also reveals that demand exists for a media ecosystem devoted to quelling anxiety, asserting control, and feeling virtuous. That’s what decluttering videos offer that reality TV does not. They’re as unintellectual and aesthetically- minded as the Kardashians, but they also offer connection to the content creator and a community of commenters, a way to engage in decluttering vicariously and find catharsis in someone else’s ability to control their environment, and, finally, a sensation of calm.

Ultimately, in watching these videos, people are doing themselves a kindness. No one is really learning anything from them (or rarely). There’s really very little to analyze, even if you have strong opinions about the items being decluttered. It reminds me of vacationing at a friend’s house, when they have some minimal obligation to keep up with the demands of their own life but you have the luxury of sitting on the couch without responsibilities, enjoying and providing company to a dear person. In those moments, you’ll happily listen to them prattle on about how they can never find anything in their kitchen junk drawer or watch them spend five minutes trying to find new batteries for the remote. Your job is to relax and not get in the way, to provide conversation while making yourself usefully useless. Watching a decluttering video takes this luxury one step further—you get to listen but never have the pressure of responding.

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[1] Using the search term “decluttering.”

[2] Unsurprisingly, the creators and viewers of these videos are overwhelmingly women. A search for “decluttering men” returns only 8,000 videos. A quick scan reveals that many of these videos are made by wives decluttering their husbands’ closets.

[3] She is equally in the decoration and home organization space, which is why her most-viewed videos do not appear in the top 10 decluttering videos.

[4] Between 2005 and 2015, the number of Americans with “alternative work arrangements” or engaged in contingent work grew by 50%, from 10.5 to 15.8 percent.

[5] An anecdotal perspective.

[6] Case in point: In the “Pawnee Rangers” episode of the NBC comedy Parks and Rec, which originally aired on October 13, 2011, municipal workers Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) and Donna Meagle (Retta) devote a whole day to “treat yo self,” their annual tradition of taking the day off to buy thing for themselves without justifying why, so long as it makes them happy.

[7] Scott Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 264-5.

Passover: A Holiday of Love and Liberation

Earlier this morning, my husband and my mother were in the kitchen strategizing about how to cook a brisket and bake almond macaroons at the same time. My husband patiently reviewed the detailed timeline he outlined two days ago--the gefilte fish out of the oven by 10 so the macaroons can get in and out by 11:30, when the vegetables go in, followed by the brisket and then the meatballs at 4:30. A few minutes later a storm rolled in, knocking out the power and forcing them to figure out how to continue without a functioning oven.  

Over the past week, Kevin has read through recipes, consulted with my mom, written and revised shopping lists, visited two grocery stores and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, helped switch out the normal dishes for the Passover dishes, cleaned out the fridge and pantry, and cooked. This is what true love is: taking on the most labor-intensive holiday of your wife’s religion despite being an atheist. My family does this to feel connected to an ancestral tradition and to a global community. Kevin does this to feel connected to us. 

* * *

Last night, we went out to Los Pollos for dinner with my parents. We sat at a picnic table on the restaurant’s porch, enjoying our last rice and beans before a week without bread, grains or legumes. My father fumbled with the ribs we had ordered, struggling to remove a serving for himself.

“Have you ever had ribs before?” Kevin asked.

“We had Chinese spareribs on our first date,” my mom recalled, “which almost didn’t happen because your father told me the wrong corner to meet him on, the southeast instead of the northeast. Then we saw Yentl, which your father hated.”

My father nodded in agreement.

“Abba,” I said, “tell me your version of how you and mom met. I’ve only heard the story from her perspective.”

“It was in December of 1983, at a Hanukkah party organized by and for Israelis at NYU. It was held at HUC [Hebrew Union College] in the West Village. I went with my friend Shaul…”

“Describe Shaul to them, Ido.”

“Shaul was also at NYU, writing a dissertation on dreams in the Hebrew bible. He was diminutive and dressed slickly.”

My mother interrupted. “I went with a friend, an occupational therapy student, who was short and I was tall. I convinced her that we should go over and dance and she started dancing with Shaul and I started dancing with your tall father.”

“Yes. We danced and then I asked her for her number. I didn’t have my cell phone so she couldn’t just type in her number. She had to write it down on paper.”

“Show them, Ido.”

I gasped. I had heard this story from mother so many times and never once did she indicate that any evidence remained. 

“It’s practically disintegrated.” Nevertheless, my father pulled out his wallet. Out of one of the smallest compartments he extracted the 35-year-old scrap of paper, in two pieces. In her familiar handwriting, but in Hebrew, she had written her name—Jodi Barkin—and two phone numbers, the one for her apartment and for her parent’s house on Long Island where she often spent the weekends. I flipped it over and found course listings for HUC seminars. They must have picked up whatever was on hand in the room. 

My father called a few days later and asked my mother out to a Chinese restaurant at 97th and Broadway. By New Years they were living together in my mom’s studio apartment at 71st and Columbus. In December of 1984, one year after they met, my father proposed. 

* * *

A few years ago I invited a friend to have lunch with me and my parents in Georgetown—I can’t remember why we were in D.C., but this friend lived there. It was her first time meeting my folks, and as we were leaving she turned to me and said, “your parents are so in love.” It took me by surprise, because although I knew my parents had a happy marriage and that they loved each other, I did not realize that it was evident (or of interest) to other people. It’s only now that I am older, having seen many unhappy and dysfunctional relationships, that I realize how lucky I am to have been able to take love like my parents’ for granted. 

* * *

Love may seem like an awkward topic of reflection for a holiday that’s about freedom from the bondage of slavery, but I would argue that it’s the crux of freedom’s goodness. There is an anecdote in Te-Nehisi Coates’ Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations,” which I assign to my undergraduate students, that describes an enslaved man watching his wife and children sold away.

Every time I read this article, this line makes my chest squeeze and my breath hiccup. The image is so vivid, and if the situation is not relatable the sorrow of loss certainly is. Students always bring this anecdote up in discussion. Whereas the labor and economy of slavery is abstract to them, family, and love, is not. Liberation from slavery (whether in Egypt or the Americas) was not only motivated by love—the need for agency, autonomy, safety, equality, and power were also essential drivers—but it is my students’ visceral understanding of the former and their uneven experiences of the latter that provokes their empathy. Reading this anecdote, students come to understand that slavery is more than just a “bad” thing to do to other people; slavery is a personal terrorism of separation from, loss of, and grief for the people you love.

* * *

So I feel fortunate, on this holiday, for my freedom and the love that surrounds me. It is not to be taken for granted. It is a reminder to fight for a just world in which everyone shares the same freedom. For once we were slaves in Egypt.