I am now more than halfway through my second semester here at Columbia—a full seven months since I first left my home in Berkeley, California—and somehow I still find myself pulling out my Metrocard when leaving a subway station, as if I’m still riding the BART—the Bay Area’s transit system—instead of the 1. This was far from the most obvious of my Californian tendencies...

The man waiting to place his order at the register taps his fingers on the counter to the beat of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” which is playing over the ambient din of the restaurant. He is tan and wearing a circle scarf—dad-age, but the kind of dad who knows the difference between Kobe and Wagyu beef and who has been on the receiving end of a manicure. He looks a bit like what I imagine Barbie’s boyfriend would look like at 50...

Dear readers,

“Enjoy your neighbors, bring out your art, music, ideas,” one speech bubble reads on a black-and-white poster. The announcement for the festival features an aerial shot of a two-way street with a fire truck passing between apartment buildings stacked on both sides. “Tenants Rights Info,” another bubble proclaims, “No biolabs #3, no displacement.”..

It was what William Safran once called “a sort of Jewishness of defiance” that put me on that chair on Rosh Hashana evening, a yarmulke pinned to my head, surrounded by strangers in the closest synagogue I could find...

Sometimes, before I go to bed, I like to take a walk.