Yeshiva bochur gets a care package from his parents and as he opens it, all the guys gather round to see what they can scavenge. He pulls out a hard salami, the good kind from Romanian, and grabs for a knife...
Slices it as thin as possible so he can share with everyone. Hands out slices to bochur after bochur until everyone has, and they're all savoring it. It's delicious, such a treat, to have some Romanian on a weeknight. One bochur realizes...
...that the guy who got the care package is the only one who didn't get a slice. "Yehuda," he says. "It was your care package and you didn't get one. We all got to try the hard salami, except you!"...
Yehuda smiles and says, "Don't worry. I love to see you all enjoying yourselves. And besides," he reaches into the care package and lifts something out. "I still have this cheesecake."
Beanie as Monica is so good. You can really get how vulnerable she was. I was a teenager at the time and the way they presented her as the criminal, this young Jewish woman who looked like my cousin, really affected my own self-perception and behavior.
When I say she looked like my cousin, I mean she truly looked like a few of my actual first cousins. I judged her in comparison to them. They were pure and she was a sl*t. That was what I took in.
I was one of many vulnerable teenage girls who internalized this message.
It was a tough decade. We wanted to take back the night, but also we were told Monica was the one at fault.
We wanted to riotgrrl, but also were told to be good girls. Printed purity tests were slipped into lockers.