Don't Know Much About with Naya Lekht

In this episode of Don't Know Much About , Naya Lekht sits down with historian Dr. Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki to dismantle one of the most pervasive arguments used against the Jewish state: that Zionism is a 19th-century European settler-colonial project with no historical legitimacy. Drawing on her new book, a collection of essays examining nationalism, empire, and the intellectual roots of an...

In this episode of Don't Know Much About , Naya Lekht sits down with political commentator and writer Karys Rhea to examine one of the most alarming developments in contemporary American politics: the emergence of the "Woke Right." Long before it became a topic of mainstream conservative concern, Rhea was tracking the identitarian, conspiratorial, and antisemitic currents quietly ta...

In this episode of Don't Know Much About , Naya Lekht sits down with Eyal Yakoby: UPenn graduate, incoming MIT student, and one of the most prominent young voices documenting Jew hatred on campus and in the streets of America. Eyal was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania when, in the three weeks before October 7th, four antisemitic incidents struck his campus in rapid succession: a swa...

In this special segment of Don't Know Much About , Naya Lekht is joined by Ben Shapiro , co-founder of The Daily Wire, and Natasha Pein , Naya's partner and co-founder of Stop Antizionism, just one week before the inaugural World Symposium Against Antizionism , taking place in Toronto on May 17, 2026. Ben will deliver the keynote address. Tickets are still available at stopaz.org/symposi...

In this episode, Naya Lekht is joined by Ben Cohen, Director of Rapid Response at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), journalist, and one of the foremost researchers on global antisemitism and antizionism. Ben's work spans the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Tablet, the Jewish News Syndicate, and his book Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through 21st Century Antisemitism . Tog...

Dr. Judea Pearl is a Turing Award-winning computer scientist, UCLA professor, and father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He joins Naya for a sweeping conversation that moves from his 1936 childhood in B'nei Brak to the word he coined to fight back against the moral inversion on today's college campuses. Pearl was raised to be what early Zionists called "the New J...

What happened to Canada? Once known as one of the most peaceful, multicultural countries in the world, Canada has become the epicenter of a disturbing wave of anti-Jewish violence: weekly synagogue shootings, a Jewish girls' school in Toronto shot at three separate times, a Jewish grandmother stabbed in an Ottawa kosher supermarket, and 14 shots fired at a Jewish-owned restaurant on the secon...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht shifts the conversation from law to culture, arguing that while legal frameworks may lag behind, culture is where meaning is made, narratives are shaped, and ultimately, where battles over truth are won or lost. She is joined by journalist and columnist David C. Kaufman, whose work has appeared in Tablet, The New York Times, Commentary, The...

On this episode of Don't Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Professor Rona Kaufman, co-founder of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies. Naya opens with a case study: a campus speaker who deploys libels against Israel. Is that legal? “Oof,” says Professor Kaufman, “you started with a tough case.” From there, the conversation moves into the basics of anti-discrimination law and free...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht examines a troubling paradox: why is antizionism in the West more dangerous than in the Soviet Union, the regime that invented it? Beginning with a personal observation from her mother, the episode traces how Soviet antizionist propaganda, once widely recognized as cynical state messaging, was transformed in Western universities into a mora...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht traces how antizionism took root on American campuses, beginning with student activism in the early 2000s and becoming institutionalized through recurring campaigns such as Israel Apartheid Week and the BDS movement. By the time the campus encampments of 2023–2024 emerged, the movement had matured into something far more aggressive, raising...

Antizionism has been described as a hate movement, as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, and, as I argue, the third era of Jew-hatred. But it can also be understood as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Powerful not only in its reach, but in its ability to unify—cutting across political parties, generations, and national borders. So who better to explore antizionism as a social mov...

Journalist Kevin Deutch and founder of the Jewish watchdog Substack AFTER OCTOBER 7 , joins Naya Lekht for a conversation about what happened to journalism, and why it matters now more than ever. As antizionism exploded across American streets, college campuses, and even K–12 schools, Kevin began documenting the shift in real time. In this episode, he reflects on his career in the newsroom and ide...

What does it mean to live with conviction when the cost is prison, isolation, and the full weight of a totalitarian regime?  On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , I have the profound honor of speaking with Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident, Prisoner of Zion, Israeli statesman, and one of the great moral voices of our time. Born in Donetsk in the former Soviet Union, Sharansky became a...

With thousands of Iranian civilians killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in recent weeks, the will of the Iranian people is unmistakable: a nation seeking to liberate itself from an Islamic regime that devalues human life and has set Iran back decades. On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Naya sits down with Ali Siadatan, an Iranian who fled the country after the 1979 Islam...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Naya Lekht sits down with Professor of Jewish Literature Marat Grinberg to discuss his book The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines . The conversation explores Grinberg’s original study of Soviet Jewish life and how books, especially those on Jewish history, became a crucial vehicle for Jewish identity and self-awareness...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Michael. His story is gripping, urgent, and, quite frankly, one that must be told. Michael was born in the United States to a Coptic Christian family, but he struggled deeply with questions of identity and belonging. Feeling isolated, he found himself drawn to the Palestinian antizionist movement, where he remained for nearly...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht leads a critical conversation on how public condemnation of antisemitism often functions as cover for antizionism, the latest mutation of Jew-hatred. Drawing on her framework of the three eras of anti-Jewish movements, anti-Judaism, antisemitism, and antizionism, Naya argues that antizionism must be understood not as a break from the past,...

At the crossroads of expanding teachers’ unions, the infiltration of anti-American curricula, and the silencing of dissenting scientists and doctors lies a story that now feels distant but urgent: the closure of schools during COVID. On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Naya Lekht is joined by filmmaker Natalya Murakhver, whose recent film, 15 DAYS: The Real Story of the Pandemic School Closu...

As anti-Jewish violence continues to rise, Jews are increasingly forced to confront a troubling question: how effective are existing laws at protecting them when the community seeks protection and finds few willing to provide it? Against this backdrop, Dr. Naya Lekht is joined by Sarah Ettedgui, a senior corporate mergers and acquisitions lawyer based in Montréal, Québec. Their conversation took p...

In this episode, I sit down with Eylon Levy, former spokesman for the State of Israel, to ask, what is the role of a government spokesman, and does every country have one? We begin by examining the function of state advocacy, public diplomacy, and crisis communication, separating myth from reality in how nations speak for themselves on the world stage. From there, the conversation widens to the de...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht is joined by Samuel J. Hyde, a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a columnist for The Jerusalem Post . Born in South Africa, Sam recounts his firsthand encounters with what he calls institutional antizionism. It may sound unbelievable, but in South Africa, Hamas maintains official representation: an actual brick-and-mor...

Top-down history often fails to capture the lived experience of individuals, and Naya has long been committed to telling history through personal stories. On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Leyb Ejdelman, who shares his powerful story of growing up in post-Holocaust Poland. Leyb’s life offers a rare window into how two eras of Jew-hatred—antisemitism and antiz...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , award-winning journalist and storyteller Monica Osborne joins Naya to discuss the difficult decision she’s had to make: leaving Italy amid the alarming rise of antizionism. This conversation was inspired by Monica’s recent piece in the Times of Israel, "Italy's Jews are in Danger," in which she chronicles how quickly Italy has changed and h...

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About , Naya speaks with Israeli-American writer and award-winning journalist Benjamin Kerstein about his new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto . The thesis of the book can be summed up in a single declaration: “This far, no further.” It is a call for Jews to stop accepting abuse, to draw firm boundaries, and to look evil directly in the eye, without shame i...