Not in Heaven

Quick editorial announcement: after four years of weekly shows this will be the final regular episode of Bonjour Chai. After Passover, this podcast feed will be relaunching as Not in Heaven , a series focusing on the future of Jewish communal life in Canada and beyond. Avi Finegold will remain as host, and he'll be joined by a panel of bright, funny, critical Jewish minds. Phoebe Maltz Bovy is exc...

For years, Heeb was the Jewish hipster's answer to _Vice—_an early 2000s-era counter-cultural protest in print form, dripping with satirical comedy and anti-establishment sentiment. Sometimes, the editorial team would push the envelop too far—the magazine was famously criticized for publishing photos of Roseanne Barr dressed as Adolf Hitler, holding a tray of burnt cookies—but it encompassed a cul...

On March 13, nearly 100 protesters were arrested for storming Trump Tower in New York City. Their cause? Not government cuts, Medicaid, migrant rights or the cost of living. They were protesting in the name of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old pro-Palestinian student who became a lead organizer of the campus protests at Columbia University last spring. Even though Khalil is a legal permanent resident...

Two antisemitism summits occurred this week: one hosted by the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, and the other by the federal government in Ottawa . And while, in both countries, there is an understanding that these sorts of summits and conferences rarely lead to change—is the alternative any better? As the world backslides into populist-style illiberalism, can we safely assume that &qu...

For decades, it has been broadly accepted in the Jewish community that Meir Kahane—founder of the Jewish Defense League, accused terrorist in Israel and the United States, ultra-nationalist character—is an extremist outlier whose ideas are decidedly not mainstream. And yet, because ultra-nationalism is in vogue again, perhaps it was only a matter of time until Kahanism picked up steam on social me...

Last week, the Toronto District School Board held two virtual meetings that lasted seven hours each. In those 14 hours, trustees were set to vote on whether to receive a report on antisemitism in the county's biggest public school system—a report that offered 32 recommendations for confronting and mitigating antisemitism in public schools. Once again, this was to vote on whether to receive the rep...

Valentine's Day, for most people, is a day to celebrate love. For the more neurotic among us, we might be inclined to spend the day analytically dissecting our romantic lives and partnerships. There are conflicting truths about modern relationships: we have to accept that our partners are special, sacred and worth fighting for; and, at the same time, that modern marriage was never meant to be like...

U.S. President Trump's threats of tariffs and making Canada a 51st state has sparked a resurgent nationalism across Canada. In progressive neighbourhoods, Canadian flags have replaced Palestinian ones; in Conservative messaging, federal leader Pierre Poilievre has stopped claiming Canada is "broken" and started defending it from our southern neighbours. One tangible fallout from the schi...

Last week, billionaire internet troll Elon Musk made headlines (including several at this publication ) for making what appeared to be a Nazi salute at the inauguration of Donald Trump. When, in the following days, he was accused of being a Nazi by many people and organizations, he responded with a series of Nazi puns in a tweet, a la, "Some people will Goebbels anything down!" The post...

Donald Trump has wasted no time in his first days as president of the United States in signing executive orders to enforce mass deportations, gender laws and American expansionism. And within this new Republican omnicause, support for Israel has become a mainstay. In the inauguration, Rabbi Ari Berman delivered a presidential blessing that took a swipe at college campuses and advocated for releasi...

The world is sitting in suspense in anticipation of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which would end the 15-month war that has devastated Gaza and caused mass protests worldwide. Will it happen Sunday, as planned? Will it be delayed until Monday? Will the whole thing fall through? What are the ramifications for the key political leaders involved: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Joe Bid...

With Justin Trudeau's announced resignation as prime minister and Liberal leader this week, media pundits wasted no time in penning their reflections, looking back at nine years of how Trudeau changed the Canadian political landscape. One such pundit is Jonathan Kay, an editor at the online magazine Quillette, whose article, " Shame on Us for Ever Believing Him ", describes the evolution...

This week's abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland from cabinet has rocked the federal government. It happened the same day Sean Fraser, the minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, stepped down; both he and Freeland join a long and growing list of cabinet members and Liberal backbenchers either resigning their cabinet positions, deciding not to run again in the next...

This week, the New Israel Fund of Canada, JSpace Canada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now released a survey of 588 Jewish Canadians that aimed to figure out the community's relationship to Israel. In short: it's complicated. The survey , managed by Leger, found that 94 percent of respondents agreed Israel "has the right to exist as a Jewish state"—yet only 51 percent self-identified as &...

The war between Israel and Hamas has claimed yet another casualty in the Canadian arts world: Broken Pencil , an independent magazine that has covered zine culture since 1995, has been shut down. Founder and publisher Hal Niedzviecki wrote on their website that "the values of the zine and small press community have shifted," adding that "the relentless pursuit of ideological purity...

Shortly after Anne Michaels won the Giller Prize, Canada's foremost literary fiction award, on Nov. 18, she posted a lengthy letter on social media. "I write in solidarity with the moral purpose of every writer bearing witness," she wrote. "I write because the dead can read. Every reader throughout the decades who has written and spoken to me, whose gaze has met mine on the page, ha...

Recently, a Canadian women's magazine, Chatelaine, removed an article from the digital version of its website for including a photo of the author sporting a red triangle—which is only a subtle gesture if you didn't know that the red triangle is a symbol of Hamas. The author, a pro-Palestinian chef and activist in Nova Scotia, describes baking challah to connect with her Jewish heritage. But the en...

This week, president-elect Donald Trump has confirmed several planned appointments for next year. Aside from numerous cabinet members was the incoming ambassador to Israel: Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former governor of Arkansas. While there's no rule that American ambassadors have to be Jewish, it's unusual for a president to nominate one so evangelical in their Christian beliefs. Trump...

In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Canada's broadly left-wing literary community took aim at the Giller Prize, Canada's foremost award for fiction, for its title sponsorship coming from Scotiabank. The financial institution, they have argued, has millions of dollars invested in an Israeli arms dealer—leading to backlash from pro-Palestinian writers who began boycotting the Giller for taking $100,000 as p...

With the U.S. election less than a week away, the hosts of Bonjour Chai are turning their attention south with a comprehensive pre-election primer. Pollsters tend to lump Jewish voters together in a bloc, but there are different priorities for Jewish communities across the United States—and Jewish residents of certain swing states, namely Pennsylvania, are seeing the brightest spotlight this year....

During our extended break for the High Holidays, we're bringing Bonjour Chai subscribers something different. Sukkot is described as the holiday of joy—a time when the Israelites would gather together as one people in the temple to worship and to rejoice. The easy thing this year would be to say that we hope that we will be able to rejoice with everyone in sukkot, including all the returned hostag...

Whenever there's a new mainstream TV show with a Jewish bent, Jewish audiences share a familiar reaction: excitement over representation, followed by dread over how bad that representation will be. The latest example is Nobody Wants This , the new Netflix rom-com series about a sex-advice podcast host (Kristen Bell) who, despite not being Jewish, falls for a hot young rabbi (Adam Brody). Gasp! One...

The cover illustration of the fall issue of The Canadian Jewish News Magazine drew hundreds of responses from readers across the country. The image depicted a fictional family gathered for Rosh Hashanah. This family included a matronly woman in an apron wearing a yellow ribbon in support of bringing the hostages home; a young girl with a dog tag necklace in support of the Israel Defense Forces; tw...

Last week, Toronto's public school board came under fire after footage emerged on social media showing students partaking in a public protest for Indigenous water rights... that also happened to feature pro-Palestinian chants and signs. A provincial investigation ensued to learn how it happened and why teachers allegedly encouraged students to get involved in the demonstrations, but while those sl...

On a recent trip to Poland, the writer Tanya Gold visited the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial site. In her lengthy travel essay on the visit, " My Auschwitz Vacation ", published in the September 2024 edition of Harper's Magazine , she details the numerous absurdities of the Disneyfied extermination camp, from its notable lack of Jews to the oft-overlooked nearby castle, waterfall...