The Jewish Angle

After the federal Canadian government quietly adjusted its public-facing language to include anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism, Britain’s Green Party took the opposite route: they formally adopted a policy declaring Zionism as racism. The decision has caused a loud rift within the party, with the Jewish Greens chair openly mulling over whether she'd leave the party over this, party leader Zac...

Rachel “Archie” Matlow spent years feeling more at home in Toronto’s queer, progressive left than in organized Jewish life. They're trans, didn't fit in at Jewish summer camp, and ultimately found refuge among their fellow left-wing creatives, podcasters and journalists. But after Oct. 7, 2023, things started to change. Years of confusion, soul-searching, political research and social isolation le...

Before Nazi Germany invaded France, Catholic leaders had publicly condemned racist ideology. Jews felt reassured by this, and the fact that they enjoyed deep roots in the republic and reason to believe their institutions would defend them from the Nazis. Under Vichy, that confidence became misguided: bishops offered sympathy in private, but the Church often remained publicly silent as anti-Jewish...

Over the summer, New York Magazine ’s “Habibi City” issue set out to celebrate the city’s SWANA scene— Southwest Asia and North Africa, a term meant to replace "Middle East". But to David Polansky, a political theorist and writer living in Toronto, the whole piece read more like a hyper-online obituary for Jewish New York. On this episode of The Jewish Angle , Polansky joins host Phoebe...

Back in April, bestselling author Meg Keene came on The Jewish Angle —with some reluctance—to talk about what she saw as a growing problem for Jewish writers in mainstream publishing. She spoke about being quietly pressured from agents, publishers and industry insiders to change Jewish characters' names and hide Israeli backgrounds or connections. But rather than be excommunicated from the publish...

Between 2018 and 2022, Marnie Salsky travelled around Toronto, taking photographs of her Jewish community. The project was meant to capture the diversity and reality of Jewish life in a rapidly changing world. But then Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the entire tenor of her project shifted. She continued snapping photos, but this time captured images of police guarding synago...

In a move the editor certainly knew would be unpopular among the organization's core audience, PEN America, earlier this month, published an article about the isolation and exclusion of Jewish and Israeli writers. Shortly afterwards, the organization's president resigned , and PEN America issued a statement standing by the piece while reminding everyone that it has also repeatedly condemned Israel...

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner was, for a moment, a Democratic golden boy—an oyster farmer and Marine veteran whose rough-hewn authenticity thrilled progressive strategists. Then came the Reddit posts, the Nazi-linked chest tattoo he claimed not to understand, and finally the rape allegation that collapsed his campaign. But what does it say that a Nazi tattoo and edgelord posting weren't di...

In May, The CJN's opinion editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, published her latest book, The Last Straight Woman . One of the most incisive reviews (from a Jewish writer, no less) was Virginia Karnstein, a PhD candidate whose research crosses feminism, antisemitism and vampires—and, sometimes, the middle of that unique Venn diagram. The Last Straight Woman does not focus on vampires, but it does look at th...

For decades, Jewish women played a central role in building feminist movements, shaping ideas about equality, activism, and social justice. Yet as of the last 30 years, they find themselves cast as symbols of privilege, whiteness, and oppression within the very spaces they helped create. How did that happen? Writer and scholar Kara Jesella joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to discuss her new book, Feminist...

As the Western world grows more hostile to Jewish life—as exemplified by rising attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools, bullying and boycotts—one would think this strengthens the case for Israel's right to exist as a safe homeland for Jews. But Israel's existence, many anti-Zionists argue, is the very reason for so much antisemitism right now. On the flip side, several of those same anti-Zionist...

Hasan Piker, a left-wing provocateur with millions of digital subscribers, injected himself back into the news cycle after appearing alongside writer Jia Tolentino to discuss the ethics of stealing food from big-box grocery stores in the New York Times . Those who keep tabs on the world's most vocal anti-Zionists will recognize Piker's name—he's been called out by the ADL and other Jewish activist...

In the 1970s, in the wake of an emerging second-wave feminism, women's magazines were expanding rapidly with a unique style. Their focus, however, tended to exclude minorities. Jewish women were seen as privileged "others", not facing the same constraints as their gentile peers. That's why the Winnipeg-born Susan Weidman Schneider founded Lilith , a Jewish feminist magazine, out of New Y...

When best-selling author Meg Keene tried to pitch her latest novel, she was told—outright, by multiple people in the industry—that her book wouldn't sell. Not because it was too controversial, or violent, or suggestive, but because Keene herself is openly Zionist, and her book included authentic, lived-in Jewish and Israeli references and personalities. Keene isn't the only one facing this. In the...

Graham Platner is a progressive populist running to unseat longtime Republican Susan Collins in Maine. The military veteran's campaign has been fiery, to say the least, riddled with attacks about his past online comments and—notably for Jews—a tattoo that bore a resemblance to a Nazi symbol, which he's since covered up. But his Nazi-adjacent imagery didn't damage his reputation in the way people e...

Earlier this month, British vandals defaced a new location of Gail's, a bakery chain with 170 locations across the U.K. They smashed the store's windows, splattered it with red paint, and left pro‑Palestinian and anti-Zionist messages on its doors. One such message: "F*** Bain Capital." It refererred to an investment firm that manages USD$215 billion in global assets, including investmen...

Judy Blume, the acclaimed author of young people's novels, saw resurged interest in her work in 2023. One of her most famous books, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret , hit the big screen as an acclaimed feature-length film; that same year, Amazon released a documentary about her, Judy Blume Forever . Meanwhile, Mark Oppenheimer—a writer, podcaster, editor and teacher at the John C. Danforth Cen...

Kat Rosenfield doesn't write Jewish fiction. Her forthcoming book, How to Survive in the Woods , is a thriller set in the wilderness of Maine—not very Jewish. But that hasn't stopped random internet users from noticing her surname and making the link, sometimes with prejudice. The idea that an artist must be inextricably linked to their identity politics—and that Jews are inherently Zionists—is no...

Earlier this month, the federal Canadian government announced it would dissolve the offices of two anti-hate envoys: one for combatting antisemitism, and the other for combatting Islamophobia. In their place, the Heritage ministry said it would fold both into a new advisory council on equal rights reporting to the minister of cultural identity. If you ask Jonathan Kay, an editor at Quillette and f...

In Canada, Jewish girls seen as uppity and privileged have a nickname: the JAP, which stands for Jewish American Princess. Meanwhile, around the world, the stereotype persists, even if the name changes: spoiled Jewish girls have been called JPs and Becks in the U.K., or even Kugels in South Africa. Having lingered for decades, the stereotype has shaped both how Jewish women are perceived by non-Je...

Anti-Zionism is often presented as simply a political critique of Israel. But in reality, it frames Zionists as a hostile, genocidal group, while often collapsing Jews and Israelis into the same stereotype due to their support for the Jewish State. From that perspective, anti-Zionists can quickly fall into racist tropes against Israelis, flattening identities into caricatures and seeing scapegoati...

Lena Dunham’s latest Netflix rom-com series, Too Much, hasn't gained much traction since debuting in July 2025. In November, Netflix announced it was not renewing the series for a second season; the following month, it was ignored at the Golden Globes, despite strong casting and clever writing from Dunham, the Jewish showrunner behind the seminal HBO shows Girls. Nonetheless, The CJN's opinion edi...

In certain Orthodox Jewish circles, Reform Judaism is synonymous with far-left, queer, antifa-aligned eco-protesters—and, if your only information about such things comes from the internet, that perception may go unchallenged. Jesse—who does not publicize his last name, but writes a Substack under the pseudonym " Bagel Emoji "—wanted to see things for himself. He decided to explore the d...

Indiana University’s Jewish Studies program was thrown into turmoil after the quiet removal of its longtime director, Holocaust historian Mark Roseman. In his place, the administration installed Günther Jikeli, a non-Jewish academic with a reputation for a more combative, pro-Israel posture. Jikeli quickly attracted controversy, barring a student from using a "Free Palestine" avatar on Z...

Earlier this month, the New York Magazine cultural spinoff Vulture published an article by Andrew Ridker, "A New Jewish Plotline", asking whether Jewish writers should tackle different stories after what happened in Gaza—stop portraying themselves as victims, and address the fact that Jews are broadly affluent and powerful. But Phoebe Maltz Bovy questions the logic of this article , as i...