I met Vladimir Mukhotaev, 28, at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, where he helps low-income New Yorkers access food stamps. After he provided translation for an article I was reporting, I asked him about his path from Russia to the United States. He explained that he had followed his husband to New York and had never planned to leave Russia. I was intrigued: how could he feel so warmly towards his homeland as a gay man? And what had led him to Jewish social work after he was raised Eastern Orthodox? Vladimir’s story is below in his own words.

I was born in Russia in 1989. My native city is Orenburg, which is very close to the Kazakhstan border, but I moved to Moscow when I was 10.

My father, he left our family when I was three. My mother, she used to be a mother and father as well. She was very strong. She had her own business and gave a nice education to me and to my older brother, who didn’t live with us.

Around seven or eight years old, I realized that I like more boys than girls. I didn’t question myself. I was just like, “OK, it’s fine.” It was very natural, very organic. I never struggled with that. Maybe my mom noticed something at some point, but she never asked me.

At age 12, I got my first computer, and I started to chat people online. When I was 17 or 18, I started to go out, but I hid that. I just said, “I went with my friends.” So I never said, “Mom, I’m going with gay people to a gay bar or a gay club.” I don’t think I used to hide that because she would never understand. I did that to make sure she was not getting nervous.

When I started to date this guy, Nikolay, he showed me the first bars and clubs I went to. You have to understand, the gay scene in Russia, it’s so open-minded inside, and so cool and amazing, but outside there are no symbols, or the name of the bar or club. It’s just doors.

Nikolay was my first love, and when we broke up, I couldn’t struggle with my feelings alone, and I had to reveal the situation. So that’s why my mom knew that I am gay. Even at the very emotional moment when I said it, she was very supportive. She said, “It doesn’t matter. I still love you, and it doesn’t matter.” It only took her one or two days to get over that.

During my third year of university, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a tough time, not just because I had to say goodbye, but because she and I had such a strong and close connection. At one point, I needed a specific medicine for my mom, and one of my friends said, “I have an oncologist who can maybe help you.” So I got connected with him, and he got me the pills for free.

I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, but this doctor, Sergey, and I got to know each other through our souls. When I began dating him, my mom was already back in Orenburg, where she had decided to die. But she talked to Sergey a lot on the phone, and she said, “Please take care of Vladimir.” He really seemed very reliable to her.

After my mom passed away, I tried to find answers to existential questions: why do we exist, why do we love, why do we die? Priests at the Russian Orthodox Church, where I went growing up, couldn’t answer me. They just told me, “Please read the second part of the Bible.” And I did for a few months, but it didn’t help me.

Sergey had been going to a Chabad synagogue in Moscow for a while, and he said, “If you want, you can join me, and take a look.” I started to go, and from the beginning, it really impressed me. The atmosphere of discussing and trying to find answers is so different from Christianity, and there’s not so much distance between you and the rabbi. I really like that, and I was able to ask so many questions.

Judaism gave me hope. It gave me the structure of this life, how it works and why it was created. I was pretty frustrated after my mom’s death; I lost a source of love. And now, in this kind of tough world, I have a manual. I have instruction. So it was very, very powerful to me, and I might convert in the future.

In 2014, Sergey won a green card through the lottery. He’s my family, so I was like, “OK, we have to move.” We got connected with the U.S. Embassy in Russia and asked them what to do, because after the Defense of Marriage Act was repealed, I could apply for a green card with Sergey. They said, “If you get married right now and provide us proof that you’ve been together, we can extend the green card to Vladimir as well.”

We had to be very quick, because the final day the second green card could be issued was in two or three weeks. Only Iceland said we could be married in a few days, so we went with Sergey’s parents, who were our witnesses. It was very sweet.

We moved to New York in 2016. I had never thought about immigration to the United States or anywhere else. I was maybe not a patriot, but I really felt at home in Russia, and I loved my country. And part of that was my law degree, because it makes you feel that you are in service to the people or government. I knew that I had only one motherland.

In Russia, people are more connected to each other, even to someone you don’t know in the street. And here in the U.S., we’re pretty far from each other, and it was very surprising to me. Because life is supposed to be the same, right? You eat, you go out; it’s kind of the same. But the details are so different.     

In a train here, I can’t imagine someone would come up to me and say I’m wearing something that is not appropriate. And over there, a grandmother might come up to a girl and say, “You know what? Your skirt is pretty short.” Because they feel not just that there’s no border between you, but they believe they care about you, and they’re like, “You know what? It would be better for you do that.”  I think the problem of homophobia in Russia comes from that closeness.

Russians also don’t ask “How are you?” to make fun or just to fill up the atmosphere. And we do not smile just to show that we’re not aggressive right now, or you’re fine passing by. The Russian smile is always sincere; it’s if we really have a reason. Saying that these are cultural differences, we forget that they’re very important.

The Gay Pride Parade in New York has been very powerful for me, a moment when you are all together and you don’t feel that it’s wrong. Still, this feeling that I’m not at home… I’m just afraid it will never go away. And it really bothers me that my kids—which I really want to have in the future—will lose my Russian heritage, even though I will do my best. Like in the second generation, they will probably say, “Yeah, we had a father, Vladimir, who used to make Russian dumplings,” but they will be total Americans. So I’m still thinking about whether I want to stay.

The one thing I have to remember is that there is no better or worse place. Russia is a place to live in; it’s not that it’s worse or better. And the same in New York or America. I used to think that it was worse here. But once I tried to connect with people, I understood that this is just another reality.

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The holiday season is rife with engagements, and Gwyneth Paltrow, actress, vegan, writer, blogger, mother and recent ex-wife of Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin is next down the aisle (or headed towards the chuppah) with a winter engagement. Settling the rumors, the announcement of the couple’s union comes by way of a black and white cover on the latest cover of Goop, and shows a radiant Paltrow with TV writer and producer Brad Falchuk of Glee and American Horror Story nestled behind her. The newly engaged couple wears jeans and white t-shirts.

The couple met during Paltrow’s tenure as a guest star on Glee and have been dating for three years. Although both bring two children (How could anyone forget Apple?) from their prior marriages to the equation, Paltrow posted a photo of Martin and Falchuk brunching together in November with the hashtag “modernfamily,” so perhaps the fence has been mended. Anyways, Paltrow and Martin didn’t actually get divorced, it was a “conscious uncoupling.” (Don’t worry, everyone is trying to decipher what that term means.)

A sharp eye caught the appearance of Israeli chocolate product (pesek zman anyone?) on the table between Martin and Falchuk either as a physical barrier between the two men or the proverbial olive branch of friendship. Does this mean our Gwyneth is thinking of converting? Will Goop soon expand to include best practice for fish pickling? The lifestyle blogger seems nothing if not vigilant about what she does and does not eat, so only time will tell if kugel and chocolate babka start making appearances at the family table.

Falchuck, who has an impressive head of hair and seems totally smitten, is the son of of former national Hadassah President Nancy Falchuk. Paltrow, a reported follower of Kabbalah, is the daughter of Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. Although Paltrow’s father is Jewish, it’s unclear how strongly Gwyneth identifies as Jewish, and the internet shows no consistency in reports about an alleged conversion prior to her relationship with Falchuk.

No doubt if Paltrow does make the move, her conversion will easily eclipse Charlotte’s famed act of love on Sex In The City. Poor Charlotte. Always second fiddle to a more glamorous blonde.  

We wish the new couple all the joy and sufganiyot they can eat.

Image from Instagram

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Here’s an early Chanukah present: Jenny Slate and Chris Evans are officially back together! Slate Magazine reported that Slate (how fun is that to say?) is resuming her relationship with Captain America, after the pair met on the set of Gifted and dated for 10 months last year.

Jenny Slate is possibly the nicest and funniest Jewish comedian on the scene, known for her starring role in the “abortion comedy” Obvious Child and her stint on Parks and Recreation as the insufferable Mona Lisa Saperstein. She and Chris Evans, an Avengers actor with superhero abs and a shortage of upper lip, have been flirting over Twitter since early November, sparking rumors that the two were dating again.

Aside from the obvious thrill of having one of the “Four Hot Chrisses” potentially join the Tribe, there are several reasons to cheer on this couple. For starters, Slate makes Evans sound like a real mensch in this Vulture interview:

“Chris is truly one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, to the point where sometimes I would look at him and it would kind of break my heart,” she says. “He’s really vulnerable, and he’s really straightforward. He’s like primary colors. He has beautiful, big, strong emotions, and he’s really sure of them. It’s just wonderful to be around. His heart is probably golden-colored, if you could paint it.”

If anyone deserves the company of the multitalented, kickass feminist Jenny Slate, it’s an earnest 36 year-old who organizes board game nights, owns a singing dog, and appreciates her taste in turtlenecks.

Evans is also helping Slate move on from her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp, an editor-director whose main accomplishment is co-creating “Marcel the Shell” with Slate. In my (potentially unpopular) opinion, it’s time for the talking clam to retire, and Evans may prove distraction enough for Slate and Fleischer-Camp’s collaborative energy to ebb.

Either way, if you have even a shred of support for the “Slevans” romance, please devote yourself to the cause of coming up with a new moniker for the couple. The nickname for these delightful people sounds like a sewer creature or a nose-picking bully, and I’m confident the Jewish community can improve on it. Captain Obvious, perhaps?

Photos via Wikimedia

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Cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein, 27, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the illustrator of the graphic novel Camp Midnight. He graduated from Wesleyan University and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he plays in the band Wet Leather.

You grew up in the Los Angeles area. What’s your favorite fictional representation of your hometown?

Bojack Horseman’s been pretty great. I consider it to be one of the more realistic interpretations of LA that I’ve seen, just because LA feels like a surreal animal land.

I think E.T. takes place in Encino, which is where I grew up. There’s that shot where he first lands, and you see the city, which is a view that I sometimes would have driving to school.

Was it always your dream to be a cartoonist?

It was almost always my dream to be a cartoonist. I wanted to be an astronaut— I don’t know how I reconciled that with my fear of flying. But I guess I just thought that space was different. Then I saw the play Taps with my family, and I wanted to be a professional tap dancer. Then I wanted to be in the NBA.

Then I started drawing basketball players and drawing everything, and I was not very athletic or tall. And so my backup dream was to be a comic book artist.

A lot of dreams had to be crushed for you to be a cartoonist!

Yeah. My NBA dream was deferred, but pretty much from nine or 10 onward, I was reading MAD Magazine and Spider-man and dreaming of being a cartoonist.

I was bar mitzvahed, and my theme was superheroes. So that’s how long I’ve wanted to do this.

What was the Torah portion at your bar mitzvah?

It was Sukkot. I went to Jewish day school, so I learned Hebrew… I read seven times from the Torah. I had all this energy and ambition when I was 12, and that’s where I put it.

There were giant inflatable crayons at the party. And I don’t really like sweets, so there was a fake cake. It was a cake you couldn’t eat, with superheroes on it, that I just kept. It was at my family friend’s restaurant, so there was a lot of food. But in retrospect, yeah, I was kind of a jerk to have this fake cake in front of people.

You’ve contributed to both The New Yorker and MAD Magazine. Which had the greater influence on you growing up?

I didn’t read The New Yorker until my senior year of high school. Laurie Lew, our A.P. Language professor, had us get a subscription.

MAD was pretty formative early on. I actually recognized some of the New Yorker cartoonists because they also contributed to MAD… And then I worked for MAD when I was in college, but I was also reading The New Yorker.

They occupy two different places in my life, and I think that MAD really warped my sensibility early on, and really informs the work that I do for The New Yorker.

Shortly after graduating from Wesleyan, you illustrated the graphic novel Camp Midnight. How did you and author Steven Seagle connect?

We had a mutual friend, a guy named Daryl Sabara. He’s an actor; he was the little boy in the Spy Kids movies… He does voices on Steve’s television show, and Steve has a weekly spa day with all the writers, in LA, where they do the pools in the morning and then in the afternoon they write scripts. And Daryl invited me one time.

What was it like networking in a spa?

Well, it was… intimidating. Steve is very established in the comics world, and he leads this group, and everybody seemed to know each other, and I was shy. And I met Steve. He said, “You make comics. Are you good?” And I said, “Yes!” And then he saw my work, and he said, “Let’s do a book together.”

As I remember, you came up with your first New Yorker cartoon at a Passover seder.

I think it was Rosh Hashanah. It definitely was, because it was in September.

What led you to draw a cartoon at that particular Rosh Hashanah?

It was more that Rosh Hashanah was beginning, and I needed to finish my batch [for The New Yorker]. And so that was one of the last cartoons I was doing in the batch. And I didn’t have any time, so I didn’t have time to stress about what a New Yorker cartoon should be about or what it should look like. So I just did something quickly, kind of stream-of-consciousness.

Jews have a long history with comics, from the Superman creators to New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. What makes cartooning the Chosen medium?

For Jews in general, I think, it’s a long and meandering answer that I couldn’t touch on as well as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay… That book has a lot to say about comics and Judaism and Superman as a Moses allegory. [Superman], who was created by Jews: Stan Lee was Stanley Lieber, Jack Kirby was Jacob Kurtzberg. All these Jewish creators making these superheroes with names like Peter Parker, Clark Kent, but these were all their secret identities, these very goyish names. But Superman was Kal-El, which is “All That Is God.”

[For me], I think there was something about the Jewish comedy sensibility that I recognized in MAD Magazine. I mean, they would use a lot of Yiddish terms. I went to Jewish day school; I heard all the old Jewish jokes. So there was something very familiar in MAD.

Something about the Spider-man story, too, about that particular brand of guilt that he always felt, felt familiar to me. There’s a kind of Jewish je ne sais quoi about a lot of the comics I grew up with.

You’ve drawn a number of comics about anxiety and OCD. At this point, would you say mental illness is more of a demon or a muse for you?

I don’t know that those two are mutually exclusive, that it’s a muse and a demon. All of the work that I make is about what I’m preoccupied with, so when I’m trying to find a joke—and I do feel like I’m finding these things, not creating them out of thin air—I sort of go through what’s on my mind. And this is what’s on my mind… It’s an intrusive thought, but it’s a thought nonetheless, and that becomes the foundation of what I’m working on.

Bob Mankoff has a great section in one of his books on cartooning about where different artists get their ideas. Where do yours come from?

When I was a little kid, I had a bunk bed, and I would look up at the wood above my head and all the patterns, and they would turn into these pictures. So I try and stimulate that for myself now. So I’ll take a blank page and make marks across the page until they look like images and turn into jokes.

Now that you’re a freelance cartoonist, what does a typical day look like? How often do you leave the house?

Not as often as I should. I went on a jog today, patted myself on the back. What did I do today? I draw for Amazon’s lit journal called Day One, so I did their cover this morning. And I did two Camp Midnight pages for the sequel. Now I’m working on a render of a New Yorker cartoon I sold. And tonight I will see my friend’s band play.

The New Yorker has published a few themed collections of cartoons, such as The Big New Yorker Book of Cats. If they made a book of your work, what would it be called?

I’ve always wanted to make something that I called a “neuromcomic.”

Neuroses plus romantic comedy? That sounds good.

Thanks, I’ve thought about it too much… There are a lot of breakup cartoons. I think breakups are funny. There are a lot of anxiety cartoons.

My first [New Yorker] cartoon is about somebody in a relationship revealing that they’ve been deceptive about who they really are. So I’d say that from cartoon number one the “neuromcom” theme was established.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Photo courtesy of Jason Adam Katzenstein. Comics by Katzenstein.

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Even though it’s Jewishly-founded, the period startup HelloFlo first marketed itself as “Santa for your vagina,” earning praise for its funny, no-frills approach to menstruation. But four years after the release of the company’s viral video “The Camp Gyno” (filmed at Jewish sleep-away camp Surprise Lake), it’s even harder to tell the difference between the advertising and the advocacy. Instead of selling its monthly care packages, HelloFlo’s website now offers content designed to “educate, inspire, and entertain.” The bright colors and uplifting headlines are corporate feminism at its finest, with only a Kotex sponsorship to give it away.

HelloFlo’s creator, Naama Bloom, the daughter of Israeli parents based in Brooklyn, has moved on to brand management at Zulily, but she’s found a new way to monetize menstruation: HelloFlo: The Guide, Period. Co-written with journalist Glynnis MacNicol, Bloom’s book discusses puberty with the frankness that made HelloFlo famous. In nine chapters, it provides in-depth information on pubic hair, brain and breast development, and periods, along with earnest asides such as “I feel most confident when I stop worrying about what other people want me to be or look like.”

While Bloom’s refusal to body-shame is admirable, her cheerful tone can’t conceal the guide’s consumerist bent. My review copy was delivered with free pads, and the section on periods encourages readers to “take a stroll down the feminine care aisle in a drugstore or supermarket.” Likewise, the two chapters on hair removal seem excessive, as if deciding between waxing and shaving were as important as self-administering breast exams.

Bloom’s commercialism is particularly disappointing in light of the book’s oversights. Although she’s targeting teenage girls, she never mentions birth control or masturbation, topics that are arguably far more taboo than periods. She also implies that menstruation is a necessary evil, one that unites young women with “Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Emma Watson, Malala, and every female Olympian.” Recent science suggests quite the opposite: not only it is possible to stop your period through contraception, it may even be preferable. (Personally, I’m delighted to no longer be dealing with what HelloFlo calls the “Red Badge of Courage.”)

So if you’re searching for a puberty guide that touches on “everything that’s useful,” as Bloom claims, look elsewhere. HelloFlo’s latest release has moments of genuine humor, but it’s neither all-inclusive nor as transparent as its author insists.

Photo of Naama Bloom by Sam Khan

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Marji, my one year-old rescue cat, was less enthusiastic about the idea. She tolerates most of my obsessive cat parenting—the baby sling, the harness and leash, the automatic feeder—but made clear during this project that she has certain limits.

Menswear Dog she is not. I discovered that Marji hates sleeves even more than loud noises (which is a lot) and prefers sleeping on clothes to wearing them. Dressing her up required plenty of wrestling and a bag and a half of treats.

Still, with a few modifications to the outfits, both Marji and I survived the photo shoot. We also succeeded in paying tribute to some of my favorite Jewish women on TV, which made every minute of cat wrangling worth it.

Abbi Jacobson, Broad City, Season 1: Episode 10

This sexy dress is actually a beanie from the dollar store. Somehow I know the crafty Abbi Abrams would approve!

Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, “JAP Rap”

Much to my relief, few stores sell plunging necklines in toddler sizes. This floral number originally had a keyhole at the top.

Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer, “Sexting”

I would never, ever sexualize my cat, unless it involves an adorable onesie. Thank God she can’t read.

Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show

Okay, I realize that she identifies as Catholic. But she has a Jewish grandfather… and how cute is my cat in a blazer?!

Images by Emma Davis.

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