Culture

As autumn approaches, the rhythmic thud of wooden mallets pounding lamb echoes across courtyards and back lanes in Kashmir, where cooks prepare Wazwan – a lavish, multi-course mutton feast that remains central to traditional wedding celebrations.

Wazwan arrived in the valley from Central Asia in the 14th century, when rulers brought skilled chefs along with the carpet and shawl weavers that later defined the region’s craft heritage.

Today, the feast is both a marker of social status and a powerful symbol of Kashmiri identity.

Among its guardians is 74-year-old Ghulam Nabi Baba, a veteran Wazwan chef who traces his lineage to those early migrants. His forefathers settled in Srinagar’s old city as part of a community of cooks known as Wazpora.

“There were only seven mutton dishes at that time. Over the centuries we added more, and now there are around 20,” Baba said.

He explained how the number of dishes and the amount of meat often reflect a family’s wealth.

“Forty years ago in Delina [a village in north Kashmir] I cooked 4,500kg (9,920 pounds) of meat. That was a very big wedding. Normally, at an average marriage we cook 200kg (440 pounds),” he added.

Despite the expanding menu, the core techniques have changed little. Lightly spiced meat is still pounded by hand before being simmered slowly over wood fires – a labour-intensive process Baba has followed since joining his father as a cook at 15.

But the pressures of modern life are reshaping the tradition. Baba’s son has chosen to open a restaurant rather than work weddings, saying the round-the-clock demands are too exhausting.

He believes he is still carrying forward the family’s centuries-old culinary legacy – just in a different setting, as Wazwan adapts to contemporary tastes and lifestyles.

“Crunch, crunch.”

If the above sounds familiar, then you might already be a Wholigan — someone who routinely listens to the long-running celebrity podcast “Who? Weekly.” Part of the fun of listening to the thrice-weekly show (one being for Patreon members), aside from its hosts contextualizing a dizzying array of tabloid headlines, is learning its lexicon. For example, “Crunch, Crunch” spoofs a bit of sponsored content the pop singer Bebe Rexha did for Lay’s Potato Chips in 2019. Other popular phrases unique to the Who-verse: “Good form, Bella Thorne.” “Scar-Jo Yummy Pop.”

Launched in 2016 by pop culture journalists Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, “Who? Weekly” eagerly mines the growing world of lower-tier celebrity, with the two hosts categorizing trending names under two main umbrellas: the fame-hungry “Whos” (influencers, reality stars, a pre-royal Meghan Markle) and the instantly recognizable, likely critically acclaimed “Thems” (Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé). Rounding out the paradigm are the “Nahs,” or folks who aren’t well known enough to claim “Who” status.

“We came of age reading all the [gossip] bloggers, from Perez Hilton to Liz Smith,” Weber tells The Times of why she and Finger originally started “Who? Weekly,” which technically began as a newsletter before it morphed into a podcast.

Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger have co-written the newly released book, “I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

Finger also cites influence from “Oh No They Didn’t,” a 2000s-era LiveJournal page that aggregated celebrity headlines and invited users to comment (kind of like a proto-Subreddit). “You read the story just as you read the comments, which were integral to the story,” Finger says. “All of the inside jokes, the additional commentary. That’s what ‘Who? Weekly’ has become, especially in our Patreon Discord. [Listeners] are always chiming in and creating their own language and extensions of the ‘Who? Weekly’ universe.”

That universe is about to expand again: In conjunction with the pod turning 10 this year, Weber and Finger are releasing a new book, “I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity,” which looks at fame and celebrity through a historical lens while also exploring how the line between Whos and Thems got that much blurrier in the social media age. “I feel like we were always barreling towards a book,” Weber says. “Both of us are trained journalists. We were always kind of like, ‘When are we going to put our money where our mouth is?’”

To demonstrate how the binary is evolving into a spectrum, Weber and Finger revisit juicy pop cultural anecdotes (remember when Courtney Love threw her compact at Madonna at the VMAs? Or when Ariana Grande dated Pete Davidson? Or when Katy Perry flew into space on the Blue Origin?) while blanketing every chapter with an elucidation of why, no matter what decade we’re in, society just can never get enough gossip.

Meanwhile, unlike the podcast, “I Want to Be Famous” gives the hosts ample room to go deeper into the cultural framework of modern celebrity than they normally have time for. Each week, Weber and Finger dedicate one episode to unpacking a prepared list of Who-y headlines, and a follow-up episode, titled “Who’s There?,” is dedicated to listener calls. Which is to say, Weber and Finger usually spend more time explaining and trading jokes about what each micro-celeb is known for rather than how celebrity itself has evolved.

Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger are celebrating the 10th year of their podcast “Who? Weekly.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

“The pod is on the surface funny, [but] if you are a real fan, you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s actually some interesting stuff beneath the funny,’” Finger says. “We wanted this book to be the opposite, where it’s actually outwardly interesting and smart, and then inwardly funny when it can be.”

The writers’ tone might lean more academic within “I Want To Be Famous,” but longtime fans of the pod will recognize dozens of niche names, stories and extremely online subjects that were at one point or another discussed on the show. The authors present their grand theory of Whos and Thems by opening with the story of how former Who Meghan Markle shot to Them-dom after marrying Prince Harry. Other chapters observe what happens when Thems date or marry Whos. There’s a history of how celebrities say sorry (where there were once press releases there are now Notes app apologies) and a conversation about how nepo babies fit into the framework. As the book moves across history and demonstrates how the internet has completely upended the binary, they also show what hasn’t changed about the way fans relate to their favorites. “What we want most in a celebrity is authenticity,” Weber theorizes.

For Weber and Finger, the chance to tie the disparate threads they discuss on “Who? Weekly” was a major incentive to work on their book. “I kept being like, ‘Is this the first time anyone’s ever written about this in a book?’” Weber says with a laugh. “Because some of it was so stupid — these references to fandoms and Club Chalamet and niche things that are newer … I’m like, ‘Oh my God, are we doing this thing where now people have to read about Club Chalamet in 100 years?’ Obviously that would be incredible.”

“There’s a temporality to our show that is not the case with this book, which is very exciting,” Finger adds. “Because our show kind of exists to go in one ear and out the other. And I say that because it goes in one of our ears and out the other too, as the creators.”

Woven into the conversations around Whos, Thems, Thems behaving like Whos (see: brand deals), and Whos aspiring to be Thems is the authors’ palpable anxiety about the decaying role of entertainment journalism in an age in which celebrities can simply promote themselves via social media — or host their own podcasts. The authors are also painfully aware that most audiences have less of an appetite for reading, period. A chapter titled “The 2010s Killed the Cover Star” looks back what is thought to be the greatest piece of celebrity journalism ever written (Gay Talese’s 1966 Esquire classic, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”) and contrasts it with today’s style of uncritical, PR-friendly celebrity Q&As that boast nothingburger headlines that don’t tell us much of anything.

Conversations about media and journalism itself run through the podcast too, and that’s by design. “Sometimes we go so niche that it’s like, ‘Are we just making a podcast for our friends that work in media?’ And sometimes the answer is yes,” Weber says. “We can only speak from our experience. … But the most shocking thing about ‘Who? Weekly’ is that [media discourse] is actually quite interesting for lots of people.”

Finger adds, “Our past in media and our abundance of friendships with people who are still in media is like a crucial part of our show. It’s an industry we respect so much, you know, and we’re obsessed with the way it evolves. If we didn’t have that background, I don’t think the show would exist the way it does at this current moment.”

Even with a massive archive of episodes and no plans to stop, Weber and Finger are thrilled to have cemented their legacy with a book that could (and really should) be taught in media and communications classes. “Bobby and I both obviously love celebrities,” Weber says. “But we love media more.”

Brodsky is an L.A. culture and music writer. Her biography of Stevie Nicks, “Lessons & Lace,” published by Penguin Random House, is out now.

Perhaps no one genre of music screams “Mexican” more than mariachi music.

Yet a close second is probably the melodic sound of British rock band the Smiths.

Many have pondered why Mexicans and Mexican Americans have such an affinity for those blokes from across the pond. Maybe it’s that lead singer Morrissey’s outsider mentality and melancholic words resonate with the demographic — or there’s something acutely relatable about the melodramatic musings of a romantic yearner.

Decades ago, The Times’ own Gustavo Arellano explored the Smiths and Morrissey’s appeal to Latinos and Mexicans, specifically.

He noted that Morrissey’s malaise mirrors the sentiment of many ranchera songs, also citing that his effeminate onstage persona is a perfect subversion of Mexican machismo. These elements make the singer an anglophone mash-up of Pedro Infante and Juan Gabriel, Arellano added.

Both the Smiths and mariachi music can drive even the most macho Mexican man to tears with their poetic lyrics and layered instrumentals.

To celebrate the special choke hold these musical stylings have on Mexican Americans in Southern California, the L.A.-based group Mariachi Tierra Mia is putting on a “Mariachi Meets the Smiths” show at the Ford amphitheater on Sunday. The show will merge not only the cultural resonance of the two in Mexican American culture, but also unite the sounds.

The idea to incorporate elements of mariachi music into a cover of a Smiths tune happened by happenstance in December 2024.

Members of Mariachi Tierra Mia were performing at a Christmas party when an attendee requested that the group perform the 1984 Smiths track “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.”

Members of rock band The Last Line of Defense who will perform at The Ford as part of “Mariachi Meets The Smiths.”

(Mariachi Tierra Mia)

The ensemble’s leader, Maira Solis, didn’t know the song — but her husband and fellow bandmate Ivan Peña signaled that he did. Later on in the night, he performed the song alongside two dancing, masked luchadors.

The video of Peña belting out the song while outfitted in his mariachi regalia struck a chord with audiences online after the group posted it on social media.

“The relationship between Mexicanos and the Smiths needs to be studied,” Peña told The Times. “[The video] seemed like a very innocuous thing, but days later, it had 3 million views. That was the first time that ever happened to us, and to me, personally.”

The overwhelmingly positive response to Peña’s rendition of the Morrissey-penned tune let him know that people had an appetite to see the Smiths and mariachi blended together.

Born in 1991, Peña was born years after the Smiths broke up, but was introduced to the group’s catalog at age 5, while his uncle drove him around in a lowrider. The first tracks he heard from the band were “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “Ask.”

“I don’t think the music has aged a wink. It’s just gotten better with time,” he said. “It’s clearly resonated across generations. Now you even see Gen Z getting in on it too and realizing music of the past is so substantial.”

But the fandom surrounding the Smiths, and more specifically Morrissey, has entered more complex territory in light of the Smiths frontman’s past political commentary.

In recent decades, the crooner has grown increasingly sympathetic toward far-right political stances, voicing anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments, as well as his allegiance to white nationalist party For Britain in the U.K.

Despite this, many fans, like Peña, don’t see a problem with continuing to listen to the Smiths and Morrissey’s solo work.

“I get that he’s a polarizing guy. I know he’s notorious,” Peña said. “I [say], separate the art from the people behind it … because the piece itself is not at fault for the shortcomings or views of the people who made it.”

Sunday night’s concert will be split in two acts, with the first being a bilingual mariachi set by Mariachi Tierra Mia composed of genre standards and more modern covers. For the second act, Peña’s rock group the Last Line of Defense will perform songs by the Smiths and be joined by the mariachi group to merge the sounds.

Incorporating the mariachi to create straightforward covers of the Smiths’ material proved challenging as Peña did not want to put a spin on the songs’ composition — no added notes and no new harmonies were allowed.

“You could task a mariachi band with doing a one-for-one adaptation of the Smiths’ songs, [but] most of the tracks do not work on the mariachi setting,” he said. “Whereas the guitar is leading the charge in a rock band. The guitar and the vihuela are essentially the rhythm section, so you have to translate guitar riffs to the melody section of the mariachi, [which is the] trumpets and violins.”

According to the 34-year-old musician, very few of the English band’s song fit into that mold.

He knows that fans love the original material and he wants to respect the essence of the time-tested songs. Out of that reverence for the group’s music, Peña noted that all the Smiths covers will be performed only in English.

Peña’s final take on why Mexicans are so infatuated with the Smiths?

“Mexicans love catchy music,” he said. “It’s all of the feels. It’s the good, the bad, and a bit of longing. The lyrics aren’t lying to you. [We can all relate to] Morrissey’s angst, his rebellion, his malaise, and, on the other side of that, his optimism.”

Hayley Williams is speaking out days after her ex-husband, Chad Gilbert, the founding guitarist of pop-punk band New Found Glory, died at 45 following a battle with cancer.

Williams posted the statement on her Instagram Stories on Wednesday, writing that she hasn’t known what to say or “if it’s appropriate” but that she wants to address her former husband’s death because “life is made of the paths we cross and the reasons we cross them are infinite.”

“Chad is indeed a legend in the scene and my time connected to him taught me a lot,” she wrote. “He introduced me to people that continue to shape my life in beautiful ways, and to music and culture that has made life a lot richer.

“There isn’t much that hasn’t already been said about what he contributed to the musical world a lot of us grew up in. His influence and attitude guided the genre forward. His passion for fostering the community was inspiring and sticks with me.

“I will forever be grateful that from him I gained a deeper understanding and a reverence for the community and the culture of hardcore.”

Musician Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory and singer Hayley Williams of Paramore arrive at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards.

(Christopher Polk / Getty Images for PCA)

Williams concluded her statement by sending her love and sympathies to Gilbert’s family, friends and his New Found Glory bandmates Jordan Pundik, Cyrus Bolooki and Ian Grushka.

Gilbert died Sunday morning “peacefully in his sleep,” the band and his wife, musician Lisa Cimorelli, announced on social media. No cause of death was given, but the musician had been candid about his battle with cancer in recent years.

“He left this world surrounded by friends and family and took his final breaths with his wife and mother by his side, just as he wished,” the joint statement posted Sunday to Instagram read.

Williams and Gilbert were married in February 2016 after nearly a decade of dating but split the following year in July 2017, saying at the time that marriage wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Gilbert later married Cimorelli in October 2020, and the two welcomed a daughter, Lily, in 2021.

Billy Bush, the veteran on-air host whose career was derailed by a crude off-camera conversation he had with President Trump in 2005, has signed on as a contributor to Fox News.

Bush will comment on cultural issues across Fox News Media platforms. He made his first appearance Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

“I’m excited to join Fox News Media and its loyal audience to share my perspective on the people, ideas and moments shaping today’s culture as well as the ones trying to undo it!” Bush, 54, said Tuesday in a statement.

The longtime media personality is the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and cousin to the 43rd president George W. Bush. He made his own mark on political history when audio of a 2005 conversation he had with Trump, then host of the NBC reality series “The Apprentice,” surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In the tape, made while Bush was co-host of NBC’s syndicated entertainment news show “Access Hollywood,” Trump boasted about his ability to kiss women and grope their genitals with impunity because he is a celebrity. Bush is heard chuckling and encouraging Trump’s coarse chatter as the future president crudely talked about how he tried to have sex with Nancy O’Dell, then a co-host on “Access.”

Bush is also seen on camera telling “Days of Our Lives” soap opera actress Arianne Zucker to embrace Trump just after the exchange.

Trump’s presidential campaign survived the scandal as he went on to defeat Hillary Clinton that November. Bush did not fare as well.

Bush’s career was on the ascent at the time that the tape made news, having been named co-host of the third hour of NBC’s “Today” in August 2016. He was part of the network’s coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics coverage in Rio and Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton.

But the tape drew outrage from Bush’s female colleagues at NBC News. He apologized for his role in the conversation, saying he “was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along.” He was suspended from “Today” in October 2016 and did not return to the program as the network chose to pay out his contract.

Bush landed at the syndicated show “Extra” in 2019 and hosted for five seasons. He currently hosts a digital show, “Hot Mics with Billy Bush,” that covers sports, politics, entertainment, tech and pop culture.

The UK needs a “culture shift” in how it does business, Andy Burnham has said ahead of a meeting with some of Britain’s biggest bosses.

The prime minister said those who take risks in business should be backed by government and local leaders should have the power to work with companies.

The Labour government has been criticised for increasing costs for firms, such as with the employer national insurance and minimum wage changes under Burnham’s predecessor Sir Keir Starmer.

The meeting comes as Chancellor John Healey prepares for his first Budget next month, with rising borrowing costs in recent weeks adding to the pressure on government finances.

Downing Street said Burnham will meet the chief executives of BP, Shell, HSBC, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, BT, Vodafone, Rolls-Royce and several others at Number 10.

Ahead of the meeting, Burnham said he would give people “the confidence that if they have a great idea, they’ll get all the support they need to bring it to life”.

“When local leaders have the tools to get things done and government works in partnership with business, you can pull in investment, create jobs and transform communities,” he said.

He added the government would be “a partner for growth to make every part of Britain better off”.

Burnham will host a reception for the business community where local leaders are invited before a private engagement with senior chief executives at Downing Street on Monday evening.

The meeting comes as higher borrowing costs in the UK and other countries present problems for governments looking to spend money on business support or investment.

Separately, hundreds of hospitality businesses have written to the prime minister, calling on him to cut VAT for the sector.

More than 800 pub, restaurant and hotel bosses – include celebrity chefs Heston Blumenthal and Tom Kerridge – signed the letter asking for the hospitality VAT rate to be reduced from 20% to 10%.

When he was still Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham said he would argue for the tax to be in line with the lower rates seen in other European countries.

Art as propaganda

Chavez’s eyes still gaze from walls across Caracas. So too do the eyes of other figures, like Maduro and independence leader Simon Bolivar. Some images are faded. Others are accompanied by slogans like “To doubt is treason”.

Forastero has worked on government projects, including under Rodriguez. But he is critical of some of the newer images. He remembers a time when he painted murals of Chavez playing with children or riding a bicycle, not slogans.

“When Chavez was alive, people painted Chavez because we loved him very much. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

In recent decades, he argues that Venezuela’s public art has fallen increasingly under government control, with murals commissioned to carry explicitly political messages.

“Muralism is a story told on a wall,” Forastero said. “What we really see on the walls now are propaganda posters. I’m a chavista, and I’m disgusted by it.”

Still, the removal of the artwork is another form of propaganda, in Forastero’s eyes. He believes the Rodriguez government is seeking to project a more “neutral” appearance to better appeal to the US.

He also accuses Rodriguez of abandoning ideals key to the chavismo movement: namely, anti-imperialism and revolution. He pointed to the US’s role in shaping Venezuelan policy.

“The United States is forcing our government to behave this way,” Forastero said.

Rafael Araujo, a Venezuelan activist, has a different view of the changing landscape.

To him, there was something “jarring” about seeing chavista figures plastered across city walls, especially the leaders who have caused the country so much pain.

During their time in power, Chavez and Maduro both faced allegations of overseeing human rights abuses, including through the violent suppression of dissent. Venezuela’s last two presidential elections have been widely denounced as illegitimate.

Known in Caracas as Senor Papagayo, Araujo has used colourful, handmade kites to protest against government violence and economic policy.

He sees the Chavez murals as a form of oppression, an ever-visible reminder of a repressive government apparatus.

His kites are a way of sending a different message. His favourite carries aloft a single word: “Freedom”.

“Freedom is what all countries need. Democracy is the most balanced system a citizen can live under,” Araujo said.

California is poised to be the first state in the nation to allow people to identify their Jewish heritage on state forms, sparking debate within the community about identity and the merits of being singled out.

Some Jews believe the move would help people understand the community better, particularly on issues such as health and hate crimes. But some are wary about providing too much information given the history of government-sanctioned persecutions against Jewish people.

The state recognizes nearly 50 racial and ethnic identities for data collection, but it considers Jewish identity only as a religion, not an ethnicity.

Senate Bill 1387, which lawmakers passed Aug. 31, seeks to require state agencies to include a box for Jewish ethnicity on all demographic data forms, ranging from public assistance programs to college applications.

The goal is to improve the accuracy of state data to better understand the needs of Jewish communities, according to the bill’s author, state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles). The bill, which received broad support in the Assembly and Senate, will head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk in the coming weeks for a signature or veto.

The proposed law has gone beyond data collection within the Jewish community, prompting discussions and disagreements over whether being Jewish is religious, cultural or a blend of many things. For some, it’s evoked anxiety about the historical dangers of tracking Jews.

Stern doesn’t mind the debate. In fact, he says, it speaks to a core part of Jewish identity.

“I love that the Jewish tradition is us arguing with each other,” he said. “It is such a beautiful part of our heritage to debate these kinds of things and what it means to be Jewish, and I love making space for that.”

California has broadened the list of racial and ethnic categories people can select in recent years. Newsom last year signed a similar bill that created a category for Middle East and North African individuals separate from the “white” designation that had previously encompassed those ethnicities.

California is home to an estimated 1.2 million Jewish people, representing the second-largest Jewish population in the United States after New York. And for most American Jews, Jewish identity is not one size fits all.

“The difficulty here, I think, is that Jewishness doesn’t fit neatly into the categories Americans normally use,” said Jeffrey Kopstein, the chancellor’s professor of political science at UC Irvine. “So, of course, to non-Jews, Jews are often thought of as a religion, but Jewish identity also has historically involved ancestry, culture and peoplehood.

“Many people who are entirely secular nevertheless understand themselves and are understood by others as Jews,” he added.

A Pew Research study published in 2021 found that about 1 in 5 Jews in the United States — roughly 19% of respondents — said that being Jewish is about a combination of religion, ancestry and culture. About 22% said being Jewish is a matter of culture, while 21% said it was a matter of ancestry. About half as many — roughly 11% — said being Jewish is mainly about religion.

The study found that religion is not central to the lives of most Jews living in the United States. Still, identifying as Jewish matters greatly to them, with three-quarters of Jewish Americans saying that “being Jewish” is very important or somewhat important to them, according to Pew.

Jewish California, a Jewish advocacy group that sponsored the bill, wrote in a statement that when Jewish ethnicity is absent from data, disparities in healthcare, education and discrimination are less likely to be identified or addressed. Data collection, it says, “signals to the public how communities are understood.”

“When California recognizes Jews only as a religion, it reinforces a narrow and incomplete understanding of Jewish identity, encouraging the misconception that Jews are defined solely by belief or worship rather than by a rich and distinct culture, history, peoplehood, and shared experience. That misunderstanding leads to generalizations, creating fertile ground for bias and discrimination,” the group wrote in a statement.

But opponents argue that the bill oversimplifies Jewish identity and could potentially make people more of a target for antisemitism, which saw a nationwide surge after the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023.

In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League tallied 6,274 incidents of antisemitism in the United States, down from 9,354 incidents the year prior. Last year’s numbers were still about five times higher than a decade ago, according to the ADL.

Cat Zavis, a rabbi at Beyt Tikkun, told the California Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in June that the bill erases the diversity of Jewish people whose families come from a variety of places including the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Europe.

“Jews are not a single ethnicity. Judaism is a religion,” she said. “Many Middle Eastern and North African Jews have spent years working to have their distinct histories recognized. Their stories are not the same as those of Ashkenazi Jews. They have different experiences of displacement, discrimination, privilege and identity. By collapsing all Jews into a single ethnic category, this bill makes those communities invisible.”

Stern says people will still be able to check multiple racial and ethnic identification boxes on forms to encompass all the ways they identify.

Groups have also raised concerns about the government maintaining records on Jews, which is reminiscent for some of the trauma of the Holocaust. In the 1930s, the Nazi government used a variety of forms of public data including tax returns and census records to help identify Jews who would be rounded up and sent to concentration camps where millions were killed.

“History offers a clear warning: when Jewish identity is officially distinguished from that of all other ethnic groups, the results have too often been catastrophic,” the Bay Area chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, an advocacy organization that bills itself as the largest Jewish group supporting Palestine, wrote in a statement.

Supporters of the bill say identifying as Jewish under the law is strictly voluntary. For Stern, the root of the bill is empowerment.

As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, Stern wasn’t as religious as he is now, but he was still singled out for being Jewish. Other students drew swastikas on his backpack. Antisemitic cartoons appeared in his school newspaper.

“Some stuff happened where I went from being a normal kid blending in to suddenly realizing I had an identity and it was one that was sort of defined by being called out for it,” he said. “Back then, there were no forms on campus, or applying for college, that had an opportunity for me to identify as Jewish, even though I was being identified by other people that way.”

He hopes the proposed law will give people the chance to own their Jewish identity on their terms.

“Maybe this is one place where people who are excellent at disagreeing with each other can all kind of agree that there ought to be a space for us,” he said.