The Mob Ate the COVID-Conscious Lesbian Bar. Pick-Me Jews, Take Note.

A Massachusetts lesbian bar with a mandatory mask policy went mask-optional one night a week to keep the lights on. Its own community accused it of being complicit in a “mass disabling event.” The Jews who keep trying to prove themselves to the progressive left should be paying attention.

On August 31, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, posted a notice on Instagram: “It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional.” The bar is open five nights a week. On the other four, the masks stayed on.

The replies came from the bar’s own customers. “Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with.” “People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.” “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic].” Eleven days later the owner sat through a three-and-a-half-hour community meeting with her critics, and cried, and the crying became the next charge.

I have written before about a particular kind of Jew. The self-proclaimed anti-Zionist, or the liberal Zionist who has conceded nearly everything else. The one who signs the open letter “as a Jew,” calls the war a genocide on cue, keeps a Palestinian flag in the bio, and denounces whatever the progressive room hands over—on the theory that the room will then let them stay. The internet calls that person a pick-me. This post is for them.

Nobody in this story is Jewish. Israel is not the issue. And the mob still ate its own, because that is what it does. The goalposts move. The purity test never ends. The people who tried hardest to pass it go first. Consider the COVID-conscious lesbian bar a case study. Then consider what the same test does to a Jew, who fails it at birth.

One Rule, One Night a Week

The bar at issue is Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, and it opened in April 2025 with a rule the rest of the country had dropped years earlier: a well-fitted KN-95 or better on every patron, at all times. The house instruction for drinking, as the Free Press reported, was “Lower, sip, and lift!” Three housemates in their mid-twenties built it as a safe space for immunocompromised queer people, and they meant it. Two of the three have since left, and one of them, the Globe notes, is now in clown school. Jackie Matellian, 26, is the one still standing. She sleeps in her truck, works four jobs, and carries a $50,000 bank loan. The landlord wanted $3,900 in back rent.

The business problem was simple. The market for a bar where you have to lift your mask to sip a Negroni is small, even in western Massachusetts. So after consulting the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce and advisers she described as “queer, and marginalized, and people of color,” Matellian bent one rule, one night a week, to bring in enough money to keep the lights on. That is not betrayal. That is business. Four hundred forty-two comments, by the time the Globe counted, said otherwise.

The Apology Was the Second Offense

In response to the backlash, Matellian apologized. The bar’s next post was to say sorry for its “passive and dismissive tone.” That only made things worse. The critics read the apology and found a new count: the bar had posted it as an image without alt text for blind users. “This is not an accessible post,” one wrote. “It indicates the lack of care or interest in Disability intersectionality.” The apology for the ableism was ableist.

Then came the bar’s next monthly community meeting, and the mask policy was the agenda. Fewer than a dozen people in the room, about as many on Zoom, and each of them got two minutes to pile on. One moderator mentioned she was a licensed therapist; the Zoom chat wanted to know her race and whether she was a mandated reporter. A voice teacher led breathing exercises. A former performer at the bar announced that as a Black person he no longer felt safe “around the owner, Jackie,” then spent much of the evening on a fresh charge: Matellian had liked an Instagram reply from someone he called a racist. At about 10:30 at night she answered the question of why she changed the policy. They needed the money. “It was not my passion project,” she told the room. “I never really wanted to do this. I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.” She cried. The Zoom chat: “You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings. This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior.” Right after the meeting, the same performer went on Instagram and accused her of shedding “WHITE THEY THEM TEARS.”

The Boston Globe ran the story on September 22, and within a day it was a partisan football. I am not here for that fight. I am here to tell the Jews in our community who need to hear it what to take from this.

The Pick-Me Jews Ran the Same Experiment

Dr. Orli Peter, a psychologist, wrote in the Jewish Journal this week that movements like this one practice “moral cannibalism.” She is right about the diagnosis. I want to talk to the people on the menu. Two exhibits from this summer alone.

Exhibit A. Scott Wiener, the California state senator, called it genocide, swore off AIPAC’s money, pledged to vote against military aid, and stepped down as co-chair of the Jewish caucus. In June, a crowd ran him out of San Francisco’s Trans March, which he had walked in every year since it began in 2004, chanting about his Israeli handlers.

Exhibit B. Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller and a Jewish ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calls the war a genocide, calls Israel an apartheid state, and opposes more military aid. He won a congressional primary in June on those positions. He still calls himself a liberal Zionist, and that is the word the crowd heard. On August 29, two days before the bar’s Instagram post, he stood outside Madison Square Garden at a protest organized by a group called Hindus for Human Rights against an appearance by the head of the RSS, an Indian political organization. Protesters at the same rally screamed: “F*** you, ballsack Zionist.” “He’s another paid Zionist.” “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”

Both men gave the room every position it asked for. The room took the positions, wrote “Zionist” across the top, and handed them back. They conceded nearly everything, and the one thing no statement can concede is being Jewish.

The Purity Test Has No Finish Line

Count Matellian’s concessions. Sixteen months of full compliance. Four of five nights still masked. An apology. Three and a half hours in a chair. Tears. Now count what each one bought her. Nothing got banked. Every concession produced the next charge—and even the tears became one.

The progressive mob is not running an entrance exam you can pass. It is running a purity test with no finish line, and the goalposts move every time someone reaches them. A masked bar was not masked enough. A genocide charge was not anti-Zionist enough. An apology is read as a confession. A concession is read as an opening. The pick-me Jew is usually the first one tested, because the pick-me is standing closest, trying hardest, and carrying the one thing no concession can remove—but nobody is immune, and a queer bar owner who never pretended to be anyone found that out in a room full of her own regulars.

I know what a hostile reader does with this. If the mob eats its own over masks, then what happened to Wiener and Lander was ordinary purity politics, and Jews get no special treatment. Fine. Then explain the one moment in the COVID-conscious lesbian bar story where Israel comes up. The night after the meeting, with the bar nearly empty, a regular suggested a Lady Gaga night. The bartender: “Gaga is canceled. Gaga is Zionist.” The community that spent three and a half hours fighting over masks, alt text, and whether the owner’s tears were racist did not need a meeting for this one. It took the bartender one sentence. The movement fights itself over everything. There is one question where it does not fight at all. Lady Gaga is not Jewish, so for her the charge attaches to a position, and a position can in theory be recanted. A Jew does not get that option. Wiener swore off AIPAC and the crowd still chanted about his Israeli handlers. Lander called it genocide and still heard that the only good Zionist is a dead one. The pick-me Jew has spent three years answering the one question the way the room wants, hoping to be the exception. The room will keep you exactly as long as you are useful. It does not matter how a Jew answers. The room hears a Jew.

And if you think the answer can be tuned until it passes, look at what the bar proves. Matellian was the real thing, a queer bar owner with every credential the room respects, and the real thing could not buy one Saturday night. A performance of it buys less.

Be the One Who Says No

The Free Press read the COVID-conscious lesbian bar debacle as a story about a missing boss: nobody in the building whose job was to say no. Fair enough. For a Jew, the person whose job that is turns out to be you.

Sooner or later, the Jew who keeps trying to pass the test ends up saying some version of what Matellian said in that chair: I never wanted this. I did everything they asked. I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.

You do not have to wait for the chair. You can stop trading pieces of yourself for a seat that stays warm only while the performance runs. You can be a Jew who loves Israel out loud, criticizes its government out loud, and asks nobody’s permission for either. You can be the one who says no. You are not locked out of anything. Your people are right where you left them, and they never asked you to be anyone else.

Jackie Matellian named her bar Last Ditch. Then she ran it that way: one more concession, one more apology, one more night in the chair, and the mob still unsatisfied. That is where capitulation ends. It does not have to be where you do.