Alyssa Rosenheck, WHITE. BLONDE. JEW.: A Call to End Extremism, Speak Up, and Reclaim Center
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibi Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000
[0:06]authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself because when you talk about books, you're really
[0:14]talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors.
[0:18]The best-selling and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great
[0:22]read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy. Alyssa Rosenheck is the author of White Blonde Jew, a call to end
[0:31]extremism, speak up, and reclaim center. You may have seen my post
[0:35]about her on Instagram where I spoke about the event that had been
[0:41]cancelled in Nashville, which is a sign of a much bigger issue obviously
[0:45]with Jewish authors being cancelled and not given the platforms that they
[0:51]need to even talk about these types of issues.
[0:53]I will be hosting Alyssa on October 25th at Totally Booked Live in New York.
[0:59]I hope that you can join me for that. I would love it.
[1:03]The link is in my bio and hope that you can join.
[1:07]The link will be in the show notes and I hope that you can join us.
[1:11]In the meantime, here is my conversation with Alyssa, which was recorded
[1:15]before the controversy ensued. In case you don't know Alyssa,
[1:19]she is a best-selling author, advocate, and one of architectural
[1:23]digest top 50 interior and architectural photographers in the United States.
[1:27]Her first book, The New Southern Style, Reframed Creativity
[1:31]as a vehicle for resilience, courage, and connection, revealing how art has
[1:35]the power to humanize our differences and remind us of our shared humanity.
[1:39]White Blonde Jew is currently nominated for the Sophie Brody Medal by
[1:43]the American Library Association for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature.
[1:47]Alyssa's work is a testament to the belief that creativity is not
[1:51]just a personal pursuit. It is a collective responsibility for truth tellers,
[1:55]a tool for moral courage, and a force for building stronger bridges.
[1:59]By the way, Alyssa contributed an essay to my anthology on being Jewish now.
[2:03]Check out all of her work and here's our conversation.
[2:07]Welcome, Alyssa. Thank you so much for coming to talk about
[2:11]White Blonde Jew, a call to end extremism, speak up,
[2:15]and reclaim center. Congratulations.
[2:17]Thank you so much for having me and thank you for your voice and I'm so grateful.
[2:21]Alyssa, I know that the book is very raw.
[2:25]I know there is a lot in here that's quite personal.
[2:29]It's not easy to bring a book out into the world.
[2:33]And I'm sure you have a lot of emotions about the book.
[2:39]So we can go in any direction.
[2:42]Why don't we just start though by talking a little bit?
[2:46]Why don't I start by just saying that I think it's really cool
[2:49]how you divided the book into the three sections White Blonde Jew
[2:53]and how Jews are no longer considered white,
[2:57]which by the way, like through me for a loop
[2:59]when someone first told that to me,
[3:01]two that you're not really blonde, also a shocker.
[3:05]And three, the piece about your ex not winning Jewish children.
[3:10]Well, those were some big takeaways for me from the sections.
[3:15]I always, when I titled the book, I said,
[3:19]Hey, if the book's title offends you, I wrote it for you.
[3:23]And then if the book's title doesn't offend you and you feel seen by it,
[3:27]I also wrote it for you.
[3:29]I have received some push back.
[3:31]They're like, well, I hope you go into that Jews are not white
[3:34]because this is the first time in history that we're considered white.
[3:38]And so I was like, yes, chapter four is called Jews are not white.
[3:42]But there's so much, there's so much in this project.
[3:46]And prior to prior to writing it,
[3:50]I talk a lot about creativity.
[3:52]I'm an interior is architectural photographer.
[3:55]I focus on our personal home, how we live
[3:58]and we breathe and we grow and we heal, how we heal in our homes.
[4:02]And my first book was really about creativity,
[4:05]humanizing our differences.
[4:07]And so when that book came out,
[4:10]that was such an eye opener for me because it came out on the heels of George Floyd.
[4:14]We had, we were all living through so much tension as a society,
[4:19]racial tension, the culpable past of this country.
[4:23]And there was certainly a reckoning.
[4:26]However, I was silenced with that project in the media for immutable characteristics.
[4:32]So that's what really originally got my wheels turning about whiteness.
[4:36]And then in 2021 was when my light bulb moment happened.
[4:44]Israel was being barraged with over 3,000 rockets from Gaza targeting densely populated civilian areas.
[4:52]And I saw two things happen.
[4:54]I saw legacy media and my peers with millions of followers online,
[5:00]conflate race with two political issues that had nothing to do with race.
[5:04]And so I started to connect the dots and that led me to the BDS movement.
[5:09]And so I still was very curious.
[5:13]Curiosity means that we care.
[5:15]It's a strong through line of this project.
[5:18]But unfortunately when October 7th happened, I shifted my focus from our personal home to our collective home.
[5:26]And I immediately knew on October 8th the misinformation and the disinformation.
[5:33]That particular war that 8th front would ensue.
[5:38]And I immediately went into education against anti-Semitism advocacy for the safety and security of the state of Israel.
[5:45]And about 10-ish days later, I was working on a really important book for me about creativity.
[5:54]And I lost that book opportunity. It disappeared poof in thin air.
[5:59]And as you well know with what we have all been living through over these past three years, it has been a team sport.
[6:08]You've certainly been such an inspiring voice.
[6:11]And as have you, as have you, I mean, seriously.
[6:16]I mean, I saw you on the panel at ADL and you are just such a badass.
[6:21]You have figured out how to wrestle all the local and state municipalities and advocacy and how everyone in their community can make a difference in a very tangible, actionable way.
[6:37]And you rally people. I mean, I know I'm jumping around here, but you are making such a difference from the local to the collective.
[6:45]And now the book is just like blowing this up out of the water like so you know with a much wider reach for all of the things that you're doing.
[6:54]Thank you. But did you ever even think that you would be in this position?
[6:58]I never thought I would be speaking with local and state legislators and trying to navigate how we can continue to safeguard our community, not only at a city level, but at a state level.
[7:08]And then federally as well. I never thought that would, that is that was so outside my purview.
[7:14]And I think that that is the biggest takeaway from this project is that we all have a voice and it's really important when we are in rooms filled with silence.
[7:23]And I think that we are there that voice and I hope this project gives people the vernacular, the courage, the speaking points, the questions, the curiosity and the care to dive in and start using using our voice.
[7:37]Well, I really liked in the book how you give us a little more context and insight into you as you as child, you as daughter and your relationship with your father and how people assume a life of privilege when they see you,
[7:51]a full blonde woman and, and yet that's not exactly how things look growing up. Can you speak to that a little bit?
[7:57]Yeah, my parents were married. They came from two different cultural backgrounds.
[8:02]My mom's Catholic and Italian converted to Judaism before she married and had children put my bobby in the hospital.
[8:10]My dad comes from this very long line of Eastern European Jews very strong, strong will verbal verbose.
[8:17]And there were, I mean, there are some issues, but my father's an unrecovered alcoholic and growing up was so much financial instability to some insecurity around safety and what was going to happen next, not having that stable ground beneath you.
[8:38]I spent the first 32 years of my life chasing that security through the corporate world through making sure that I was always on the tight road ahead.
[8:51]I didn't really have room for error because I wanted that financial security for myself.
[8:56]And I didn't come from an intact family home. I feel like we talk about privilege, privilege is having two intact parents underneath the same roof that really care about you thriving and providing security in a roadmap ahead.
[9:12]And I had parents who are really trying to heal their own wounds and not not really concerned with our future. And it was really up to us.
[9:23]And that's a blessing and disguise.
[9:26]It made me really hyper vigilant for better or for worse to it really taught me how to use my voice and really fight for my agency and three like really really hone in on my own self worth growing up with parents, your primary caregiver having addiction issues.
[9:47]It's not great. And unfortunately, it can be the gift that keeps giving in generations to come unless you stop it and you heal that pattern. And so I really tried to set myself up financially.
[10:00]in my 20s and early 30s and then cancer really broke me open and
[10:06]reconnected me to what I what I was feeling inside and trying to, you know,
[10:12]expand more in alignment to what I wanted from my life.
[10:17]So no longer arbitrary levels of success.
[10:20]I really wanted that fulfillment and that that came to me through creativity,
[10:23]which I feel like is our birthright.
[10:25]And then when things are when outside forces external forces are
[10:30]really challenging your own personal freedoms and agency and telling you,
[10:34]no, you you push back and you save absolutely not.
[10:38]This is not what we're doing.
[10:39]I've felt like hell to get here.
[10:41]My my guidance counselor, even in high school said that I would have made
[10:45]a really great stripper like had no, no belief in me and any capacity.
[10:50]And I was like, no, that is just going to be the chip on my shoulder
[10:53]or that's going to prove everybody wrong.
[10:55]I mean, better than having a guidance counselor who said you'd be a really bad stripper.
[10:58]I know.
[10:59]I'm like, not I'm like, thank you.
[11:01]Maybe I don't know.
[11:03]Like, oh, by the way,
[11:05]I can always be a backup.
[11:06]I guess.
[11:07]I think I would be a very bad story.
[11:10]But I know.
[11:11]Like, I know.
[11:12]I was like, and how does he still have a job?
[11:14]I mean, I was ridiculous.
[11:16]He would be canceled in two seconds.
[11:18]Right.
[11:19]Oh, my gosh.
[11:20]I have never heard the term un recovered alcoholic.
[11:23]Is that a thing?
[11:24]Do people say that about alcoholic now?
[11:26]Or is that a you?
[11:27]I don't know.
[11:28]I mean, it's a it's a fact.
[11:31]Yeah.
[11:32]Normally you hear like recovered alcoholic.
[11:34]He's like, and he's just he's an un recovered alcoholic.
[11:37]He's in like that.
[11:38]Yeah.
[11:39]Yeah.
[11:40]Yeah.
[11:41]And speak a little more to the cancer if you don't mind.
[11:43]Yeah.
[11:44]I was diagnosed and I always say that it I was diagnosed in 2014.
[11:51]I'm healthy, clear.
[11:53]I had thyroid cancer.
[11:55]It puts things into perspective.
[11:57]I always say that it gave me so much more than it took away.
[12:00]It woke me up.
[12:01]Just like so many of us,
[12:03]I think woke up needed to on October 7th.
[12:07]Then I don't think that you need to have cancer or a the second largest
[12:11]massacre of Jewish bodies to wake people up.
[12:14]I think that there's a chapter in the book where I talk about the beauty
[12:17]of Shama and listening and how important it is to not only like listen to yourself
[12:23]but listen to the world around you and really try to hone in and
[12:27]fine tune the direction that you need to be moving in.
[12:30]The things that you're not happy with,
[12:33]the things that scare you or have fear of and move towards them
[12:38]because there's the solutions often on the other side of that.
[12:41]And cancer was very much that it was it was a corporate wake-up call for me.
[12:46]And it reconnected me to parts of myself that I never knew were there.
[12:51]And it was such a gift.
[12:53]Well, I am sorry you had to get through that.
[12:56]But I am of course you have managed to find something positive about it as you can do with almost anything.
[13:03]You talk in the book about your trips going to Israel and what that was like
[13:08]and encountering so much post October 7th stuff for like a better word.
[13:13]And then returning after that and of course how can you not feel changed?
[13:17]Talk a little bit about that and how that experience made you look at the world
[13:23]and your relationships and everything else.
[13:25]Absolutely.
[13:26]When I lost the book opportunity,
[13:30]I took a few weeks to really sit on the couch and just eat ice cream
[13:36]and just like tuck my tail between my legs.
[13:39]And then after about week two I was like enough.
[13:42]I want to go to Israel and I want to use my lens.
[13:44]Photography is so powerful for me.
[13:46]It's been in my life.
[13:48]It is such a, it translates a universal language.
[13:51]And I really wanted to share my lens and what I was seeing
[13:54]and the truth of what I was seeing that my community wasn't receiving from our legacy media.
[14:00]And so I went soon after the war began in end of January, early February of 2024.
[14:08]And I was with a small group of tech entrepreneurs and professors.
[14:13]And just those who were there to bear witness.
[14:17]And we had about 20-ish meetings in four and a half days.
[14:22]And my takeaway is this.
[14:26]In the diaspora, it is our job to of course fight this misinformation,
[14:31]disinformation, disinformation war.
[14:33]But there are 18, 19, 20-year-olds who are safeguarding the physical safety of a sovereign nation.
[14:41]And the responsibility I saw from 18, 19, and 20-year-olds was so profound.
[14:48]It changed me.
[14:50]And I love Rabbi Jonathan Sachs.
[14:52]I quote him often in this project.
[14:54]And he said that if leadership is the ultimate solution, right?
[14:59]If leadership is the solution, what is the problem in a society?
[15:03]It's responsibility, the lack of responsibility we have to ourselves,
[15:08]to one another, to our communities.
[15:10]And I saw the maturity, the responsibility, the sovereignty
[15:15]within these young individuals.
[15:18]And that is the strength of their nation.
[15:22]And that is the takeaway that I try to live by every day.
[15:26]It is amazing that not only them, but also the families that have to put their 8-day,
[15:32]and I have it to 19-year-olds.
[15:34]And I'm like, oh, be careful, you know, driving 10 minutes.
[15:38]And these parents are putting their kids into battle.
[15:41]I mean, I should be ashamed of myself.
[15:44]No.
[15:45]It's so easy in America.
[15:46]Really.
[15:47]No.
[15:48]I think the bearing witness part is both healing for them
[15:50]and important for us, allowing that expanded perspective.
[15:55]Right now they are going through a tsunami of a mental health crisis.
[15:59]Because this has been a, in the history of war,
[16:03]it's relatively very short, but it's been chronic for three years.
[16:08]And we're talking about funerals consistently,
[16:12]the loss of death, but also the celebration of life, marriages, births,
[16:17]really trying to build and create forward.
[16:20]And most recently, I tried to go to Israel every five to six months now.
[16:25]And so the temperature now is how can we continue to create and build forward
[16:31]and safeguard this country in with agriculture, tech, health care, security,
[16:39]all of these issues.
[16:40]So it's interesting to see the energy of each trip I've been.
[16:46]Amazing.
[16:47]In the book, you have work sheets, so to speak, at the end of every chapter.
[16:52]You have questions and things to ponder and lists.
[16:56]And what do you want people?
[16:58]How active should we be with this book?
[17:01]And who do you want to be filling it out and like really diving deep?
[17:05]I wrote this book for book clubs.
[17:07]My personal demographic are women.
[17:10]I would like to expand that.
[17:12]But it's really for the younger generation.
[17:15]And those who are really interested in understanding being curious right now.
[17:23]It's really about if you're concerned about how ideologies,
[17:28]how identity, how DEI, how foreign policy, how race are being weaponized.
[17:35]This is really a great project to start with if you're not Jewish even.
[17:40]If you are Jewish and you're interested in looking into getting more involved in local civic advocacy.
[17:48]It's a really great roadmap where to start.
[17:51]What questions to be asking if your state has codified the IRA definition.
[17:57]If you have codified anti-BDS laws, also to thank your legislators.
[18:04]If those are implemented to thank them for implementing them and see what else they're working on.
[18:09]There are a lot of best practices that we've been doing here in Nashville.
[18:13]And we've created monthly Zoom calls with our local leaders and business leaders.
[18:19]With the local federation, certain state legislators, our Holocaust Commission, business leaders.
[18:26]And we share what we're seeing our best practices, certain pieces of legislation that is also coming up to be supported.
[18:33]We challenge, we question, and we help also fill in the blanks when we see some blind spots.
[18:39]So those are best practices to help mobilize and organize that.
[18:43]And in really strengthening community, this book is not meant to be read alone.
[18:47]It's meant to be read in community and it's certainly not a conversation stopper.
[18:51]It's a starter. And it's also like a pick your own adventure. You could read it chronologically, or you could jump towards the chapter that calls to you.
[19:00]And I tried to be witty with the chapter titles.
[19:06]What did you have sitting Shiva for DEI?
[19:09]Yeah, bye bye.
[19:10]Like that one.
[19:11]Yes.
[19:12]Bye bye.
[19:13]Bye bye.
[19:14]That was funny.
[19:15]It is funny.
[19:16]I got a kick out of that.
[19:18]That was a good one.
[19:19]Yeah.
[19:20]Are you scared to put this book out in the world?
[19:22]I know you've already been a front and center and dedicated your identity now towards fighting for the Jewish people.
[19:32]But having a book come out is a whole opening up to a whole new realm of criticism, feedback from an industry that's not always so welcoming and positive towards the Jewish people.
[19:47]How do you feel about this?
[19:48]Before you and I started this conversation, I had a little bit of an emotional moment because I wrote this book during such a sensitive time in my own personal life.
[19:59]However,
[20:00]being it out in the world.
[20:02]Yes, you're nervous about putting any creative project
[20:05]out to the world, but I'm not in this capacity
[20:08]because I do feel like this is historical insurance
[20:13]at least for me.
[20:15]This project, when everything was happening,
[20:19]even in 2021, there have been parts of my life
[20:24]where I feel like I am trying to yell under water
[20:27]and nobody is hearing me.
[20:29]And this book was my best friend when I was writing it.
[20:33]I was writing it through a divorce.
[20:35]I was writing it through a very public war.
[20:38]And, oh, that is the gift in and of itself
[20:41]was just to be able to write the book.
[20:44]It makes me emotional.
[20:46]And for me to dedicate it to the lights and the lives
[20:50]that were taken from us way too soon,
[20:52]this was also a promise fulfilled.
[20:54]On that first trip, I share in the forward
[20:57]when I was in Israel.
[20:59]It was the last day.
[21:00]And we were on the rooftop of the hostage forum
[21:03]and we formed a circle.
[21:04]And everybody went around the circle.
[21:07]I went last sharing what their takeaway was
[21:10]and what their action item moving forward was.
[21:13]And I shared that if I ever had the opportunity
[21:17]to write another book again,
[21:20]I would dedicate it to what happened.
[21:22]It needed to be done.
[21:24]And so if I could use my lens and my platform to do so,
[21:28]that is our responsibility.
[21:30]That is our moral courage and our spiritual promise
[21:35]to one another, to do so and to be truth tellers.
[21:39]You're doing a great job and a great job.
[21:44]And the book is important and brave and honest
[21:48]and full of facts and full of information
[21:53]that people will be able to use to learn,
[21:56]to remember.
[21:58]And that is all we can hope to do
[21:59]when we put books out into the world.
[22:01]Thank you.
[22:02]Help ourselves, help the people who read them,
[22:05]try to make the world a little bit of a better place.
[22:07]Yeah, I agree.
[22:09]Thank you.
[22:10]I always say that if legally blonde got married
[22:13]to war on the West, it would be this book.
[22:16]Yeah.
[22:16]Thank you for your voice, your platform, your advocacy.
[22:24]And for being who you are, thank you for coming in.
[22:28]Thank you for having me.
[22:29]I appreciate it.
[22:30]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[22:33]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[22:36]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[22:38]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[22:42]and spread the word.
[22:43]Thanks so much.
[22:44]Oh, and bye the books.