On the Nose

Over an election night that brought big wins for Democrats across the country, Abdul El-Sayed comfortably won his Michigan Senate race against Mike Rogers, despite prognostications that many Jewish Democrats would flip to Rogers because of El-Sayed’s unapologetic pro-Palestine stance and the eleventh-hour endorsement of Rogers by the staunchly pro-Israel Democrat Haley Stevens, who lost to El-Saye...

From the Shoah to McCarthyism to the failures of the New Left, it has been a long 20th century for radical Jews. Each new iteration of the Jewish left finds itself building on a legacy that has been largely buried, learning from a history of defeat at the hands of much more powerful forces. Given those losses, what do we inherit from both our movement ancestors and our actual kin? How does their e...

Seasons of Fury, a new book by the journalist Rozina Ali, tells a sweeping history of American Islamophobia through narrative reporting on four American Muslim families with varied backgrounds. The book reveals that American Zionism is integral to the story of anti-Muslim bias in the US. The legal structures for surveilling and criminalizing Muslims originated in US officials’ preoccupation with P...

On July 9th, PEN America published an article called “ A Silent Moratorium ,” which asserts that Jewish and Israeli writers face “blatant hostility, discrimination, and hate” and attempts to chart the “impact on their freedom of expression.” The PEN article affirms a narrative advanced across Jewish media and mainstream press alike that—as the headline of a piece by James Kirchick in The New York...

Naza , a film by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, features interviews with 24 members of elite intelligence units in the Israeli military describing the mechanics of carrying out remote, indiscriminate mass killing in Gaza. Since news spread of a 25-minute standing ovation for the film at the Venice Film Festival, it has provoked intense debate, with some Palestinians expressing c...

Slam Frank —the satirical play about a Latina “Anita Franco” stuck in the attic with a colorblind cast (à la Hamilton ) of daft identitarians—reopened last week Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in Manhattan. While some audience members have reportedly been shocked by its irreverent take on a child hero of the Holocaust, some viewers on both the left and the right are convinced that the play ref...

As we make our way through the Days of Awe, On the Nose is turning over our feed to an episode of Ways of Awe , an exploration of the high holiday liturgy written by artist and educator Maia Brown and writer and organizer Shelby Handler, and based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA. This episode explores the “Kol Nidre” prayer recited on Er...

On September 8th, the UK announced sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including an import trade ban, sanctions on companies and individuals, bans on advertising the sale of stolen land, and restrictions on arms export licensing. They were joined in the adoption of these policies by France and Canada, and nine other European countries released a statement announcing intentions...

Organizing is hard, not just for the ways we are knocked down by our opponents, but also for the ways we often turn on our comrades in anger and despair. In the recently published book For Louder Days , Yotam Marom—a veteran of Occupy Wall Street, co-founder of IfNotNow, and movement facilitator who has worked with Sunrise, Dream Defenders, Uncommitted, and more—diagnoses how the left’s ambivalenc...

This episode of On the Nose is for subscribers and members only. Subscribe for $4/month here . If you’re already a subscriber, check your email for instructions on accessing this episode. A recent article in Haaretz announced that a left-wing youth group called Hamahanot Haolim, part of the socialist Zionist movement, is planning a kibbutz-style settlement in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied Wes...

After a few years of seeing Jewish plays “debating” Israel/Palestine, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Arielle Angel and theater critic Alisa Solomon explored the phenomenon through an exchange of letters, which were published this week . On this episode of On the Nose , they discuss the plays that fall into this category: most recently, the critically acclaimed Birthright by Jonathan Spector, but...

Progressive outsider candidate Abdul El-Sayed narrowly prevailed over establishment pick Haley Stevens to win the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat, though AIPAC spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him. The narrative that has emerged before and after the primary is one that stresses El-Sayed’s weakness with Black and Jewish voters. As Jewish Currents senior reporter Ale...

In early June 2024, the Holocaust historian Raz Segal was offered a job directing the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota after roundly impressing an academic search committee. But as soon as the offer was extended, donors, politicians, and Jewish advocacy groups mobilized against his hire due to his public advocacy against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which incl...

The resounding success of Here Where We Live Is Our Country , Molly Crabapple’s vividly told and extensively researched history of the Jewish Labor Bund—a socialist group founded at the end of the 19th century on principles of internationalist solidarity, doikayt (or hereness), and Jewish national-cultural autonomy—has improbably brought the Bund, decimated in the Holocaust, into the 21st century....

A strange fire has consumed the land between the river and the sea. Fiction by Henry Bean from our Fall 2025 issue. " The Event " was written by Henry Bean and edited for the page by Arielle Angel and Nathan Goldman. It was narrated by the author, with sound design and music by Amber Devereux at Tin Can Audio "The Event" was recorded in New York City by Will Coley, with additional recording by Ann...

This episode of On the Nose is for subscribers and members only. Subscribe for $4/month here . If you're already a subscriber, check your email for instructions on accessing this episode. Last week, two videos of constituents aggressively confronting California State Senator Scott Wiener on his stance on Israel/Palestine went viral—one from a World Cup watch party and one from a trans march during...

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled on several issues related to immigration policy. While the court narrowly preserved birthright citizenship, it issued other rulings that will put an untold number of people in danger. One ruling, Mullin v Al Otro Lado , upheld the federal government’s policy of turning back asylum seekers before they can reach the US-Mexico border—a policy also known as “metering...

Over the last couple weeks, there has been an enormous amount written—from The New York Times to Le Monde to Haaretz , among other places—about a controversy centered on Nadav Lapid, an Israeli filmmaker living in France. Lapid has made several critically acclaimed films, including Synonyms , Ahed’s Knee , and, most recently, Yes , and his work has taken home jury prizes at the Berlinale and Canne...

In the latest issue of Jewish Currents , we published a piece called “ Does the Jewish Body Keep the Score? ” by Jon Danforth-Appell, which looks at three recent left-wing books about the relationship between Jewish trauma and Zionism, and challenges the view that Zionism in Jewish communities constitutes a trauma response that will need to be healed in order to be fought. On this episode of On th...

Last Sunday, New York City officials took part in the annual Israel Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was notably absent, insisting that this was not a “Jewish pride parade,” as it is often styled, but a celebration of a country committing genocide, and saying he did not need to be present to “ensure the safety” of the parade. His resolve proved prudent, as New York officials found...

In 2021, famed Irish author Sally Rooney declined to publish her book in Israel because there was no BDS-compliant publisher. At the time, she said she would be “pleased and proud” to have her books translated into Hebrew, as long as it was done in a way that respected the principles of the boycott. Last week, Rooney announced that she was publishing a Hebrew translation of her latest book, Interm...

Over the last eight years, streamer and leftist political commentator Hasan Piker has built a following of millions on Twitch, where he streams seven to ten hours a day, discussing current events and interacting with followers in a rapid-fire chat. Lately, Piker, who has hit the campaign trail for Democratic candidates like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has become the object of a ragin...

On April 29th in London, an attacker stabbed a Muslim acquaintance before traveling to the largely Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green and stabbing two Jewish men at random. This was only the latest in a string of attacks on Jews, synagogues, or other communal infrastructure in the UK since mid-March; other instances have included arson attacks on three synagogues as well as Hatzola ambulances ....

Harriet Clark comes from a long line of radicals. Her ancestors were gun runners in Minsk. Her grandparents were active members of the Communist Party USA, and the family moved to Moscow for a time, where her grandfather wrote for the Daily Worker . Her mother is Judith Clark, a former member of the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization, who was given a life sentence for her...

After more than ten years as the rabbi of the anti-Zionist synagogue Tzedek Chicago, Rabbi Brant Rosen is stepping down. On this episode of On the Nose , Rosen speaks with editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents , Arielle Angel—who after eight years is also leaving her post—about what has changed in the building of anti-Zionist institutions over the last decade, what it means to do Jewish left communal...