The night I saw Good Night, and Good Luck on Broadway last week, George Clooney was on stage—but I was there for Ilana Glazer. (Sorry, George. You're doing great.)
Glazer was luminous as Shirley Wershba—sharp, slightly anxious, and grounded in care. A different energy than the chaotic sparkle of Broad City Ilana (though if Shirley had said “yaaas queen” while standing up to censorship, I wouldn’t have complained). But you could feel the same core in both: a deep well of humor, heart, and righteous indignation.
Watching her—a Jewish woman standing on a Broadway stage, telling the story of Americans punished not just for what they believed, but for who they were—I felt a quiet ache in my seat. Milo Radulovich, a U.S. Air Force member featured in the play, was tried for the “crime” of being related to communist sympathizers. The lines between guilt and identity blurred until they disappeared.
Good Night, and Good Luck isn’t just about McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s.
It’s about now.
I kept thinking about that old, uneasy triangle: communists, Jews, and paranoia. About how people weren’t punished for what they did, but for who they refused to stop being. The play doesn’t feel like a period piece—it feels like a pattern; a feature of American life. And the curtain keeps rising.
We’ve seen it before: minority groups in America (not just Jews) accused of double loyalty. Of secretly pulling the strings. Of being too capitalist, or not capitalist enough, depending on the outrage of the week. And this year alone, I’ve felt the consequences ripple—on the subway, in my social feeds, on graffiti, and just last week, walking through Washington Square Park.
There, three students were tabling under a giant sign that read:
“The ZIONISTS did this. See for yourself”
I winced and walked past, clutching my books and my emotional support water bottle like armor. One of the young people smiled as I walked past and called out:
“Hey, wanna come see this for yourself?” — gesturing toward a laptop playing a gory video with Arabic subtitles; a free trial of “Anti-Zionism” that he was only too happy to bestow upon strangers.
I froze.
Did he not see the Star of David around my neck? Or maybe he did—and hoped I wasn’t one of those Jews. (Statistically speaking, not great odds.)
I blushed, shook my head, and kept walking. Because sometimes, continuing to walk is the only protest we have left.
Fully herself. An unapologetically complex woman. Fully Jewish. Refusing to flatten her identity to make anyone more comfortable.
I felt seen by Ilana. And reminded: We are still here.
On the Subway, at the Seder, in the Seat Next to You
That same week, my fiancé and I were at a Stephen Sondheim tribute when we were the only two people to stand up for an older woman trying to reach her seat. Her daughter seated behind us, seeing Daniel’s kippah, tapped me gently on the shoulder and whispered, in soft Hebrew: todah rabbah. Thank you.
Later, on the subway home, a drunk man started shouting slurs the moment he spotted that very same kippah.
I was mid-sentence, flipping through my pocket-sized Taryag Mitzvot (because apparently this is who I am now), when we heard:
“Look at this f*cking finance bro, this Jew in his f*cking yarmulke, dude,” “Probably needs to make a f*cking minyan at his office.”
(Honestly? A little shocked he even knew the word minyan.)
And then, something unexpected: A visibly Muslim man and a queer person—both strangers—stood up for us. No hesitation. No questions. Just presence. They escorted the drunk idiots off the train, and talked them down once everyone was safe.
It was a tense but touching moment—a reminder that you are not alone isn’t always spoken in English, or Hebrew, or Arabic. Sometimes it’s spoken in kindness. In courage. In showing up for one another.
When the train cleared, I turned to one of them, met his eyes, and said:
“Thank you. Have a good night. Stay safe.”
We live in uneasy times.
But moments like these—standing in a theater row, or a subway car, or on a Broadway stage with a presence that refuses to shrink—remind me that hope still lives in these times, too.
So to those two strangers who stood up for us that night,
To George and Ilana for reminding us that truth still matters,
And to every human being still choosing to be visible, joyful, and impossibly alive in this moment—
Thank you.
Good night. And good luck.
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☮️❤️🌎🙏🏻 Thanks for your thoughts. We are Homo sapiens sapiens, but not often enough.