Comedian Bess Kalb Gets Real
JUSTINE: I want to ask, knowing it’s kind of a heavy sledgehammer: what’s it like being Jewish for you right now? How are you feeling these days making jokes and trying to get through, you know, the online sludge?
BESS: I feel lucky and safe—and I feel like it’s so important in times of grief to look outside our own grief. And to validate and understand our pain, but hopefully allow that to open into empathy—for suffering outside of ourselves. And so those are the two worlds that I live in. You know, this is not October 8th, this is March. This is not the day after. This is months and months thereafter. So much has happened since. And so while I’m still living in it—like most Jews are—I feel that duality of grief and empathy at the same time.
JUSTINE: It did feel, especially in the weeks and months after…that there was this extreme collapse of empathy into a black hole, where people were just shouting at each other and talking past each other. And it’s been difficult to climb out of that. I don’t know if we really have climbed out of it yet. It’s been tempting to just hide under a rock. But as you said, we have this obligation to look outside of ourselves.
BESS: I think the only responsibility that I feel is to not process it in public too much. I try to be very considerate about what I put out there and—and let venting and primary processing happen within my family and immediate community.
…That my writing has resonated with people, that my Grudge Report has quietly become a community for commenters and readers to write to me about their thoughts, is a chance for me to listen. To be clear, I’ve gotten some people who are very, very upset with things that I have written. I have gotten feedback that is definitely straight-up antisemitic… I wrote a piece for New York magazine that I really stand by every word of, but because of the headline that was chosen, I had people angry in my inbox for weeks. I have been called a Hamas sympathizer. You get literally every angle.
I think there’s twice as many opinions about Judaism as there are Jews in the world. Ditto for Israel.
JUSTINE: I know exactly what you mean.
BESS: It’s hard to be everything to everyone. If you want tohave an opinion about what’s happening, you need to talk to people who are reporting in Israel and in Gaza. I really admire the work of Standing Together. I really admire some of the columnists in Haaretz. There are so many wonderful writers intimately connected to this issue to read and listen to. I’m…writing as who I am, which is a Jewish mom in the United States.
And you know, my relationship to Judaism changed when I had kids. The nice lady at Cedars-Sinai who came in with the pamphlet about brit milah was like, you look gorgeous. And I was like—this, this is the religion. I was laughing but… it was important to me that my kids would be Jewish, right?
JUSTINE: Tell me more about how you felt your relationship to Judaism changed after you had kids.
BESS: I think I had my grandmother’s voice in my head. I had my children after my Grandma Bobby could meet them, it affected me in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. And I also think there is something very important about matrilineal religion. Whether or not they went to a Jewish preschool, these were 100% Jewish children, right? And it was my responsibility to make them aware of that in a way that made sense for our family. I also think I became much more anxious.
JUSTINE: I mean if you gave birth at Cedars Sinai, you were bringing them into the tribe immediately.
BESS: When the Jewish lady came in—I think that’s her title, the Official Jewish Lady of Cedars Sinai—she came in with this pamphlet called, like, “So You’re Having a Bris.” When she came into my room with this pamphlet about my son’s genitals, I was, at that precise moment, eating a ham and cheese sandwich.
JUSTINE: Of course. But she’s like, as long as you do the bris, it’s fine.
BESS: Right, eat whatever. Do the bris.
Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler interviews Bess Kalb, Lilith Online, April 2024. Read the full interview here.
