New York Magazine

The Spaces Between Us

Some of my best friends own country houses. This is not a new discovery. One of the things I have loved best about my life in New York is exactly this, the wide diversity in the affluence of my friends — if you can call a group of mostly white, mostly college-educated, striving people living […]

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Our Way of Holding You

A Brooklyn rabbi on what it’s like to officiate a funeral over Zoom. Two weeks ago, Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, New York (where I am a member), performed her first virtual burial service. A member of her congregation had died at home of COVID-19, and because they were quarantined, his

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A Joyful Testament to Middle Age

When did Elinor Carucci enter my apartment and take photos of my life? This was exactly how I felt looking at her new book, Midlife, a gorgeous documentary account of domesticity, 20 years in. There is the messy kitchen counter, unpicturesque. There is the couple (at the same counter) paying bills and unpacking groceries, each frame a frozen section of time, implying decades of repetition of household chores.

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