Advertise on podcast: The Jewish Angle

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-Jews and how many come to see themselves. It seeped into pop culture, embodying mid-1990s sitcom characters like Fran Fine and Janice from Friends, and has been reclaimed at times, like in Rachel Bloom's JAP rap battle. But is all this just dressing around an inherently misogynistic and antisemitic caricature? Becky Aizen has thought intensely about this subject, having written her PhD on Jewish identity in pop culture and focusing largely on the JAP stereotype. She joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on this week's episode of The Jewish Angle to dig into the messy history and modern-day implications of the phrase. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

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 scapegoating Israel in broadly conspiratorial ways. The consequences ripple outward. Some anti-Zionists end up sidelining Muslim and Palestinian voices that don’t fit a rigid ideological script, diverting attention from corruption and repression elsewhere in the Middle East. It also reshapes identity politics, excluding Jews from multicultural events, and turning “Zionist” into a charged label that Jews are pressured either to renounce or wear as provocation. On this week's episode of The Jewish Angle, Phoebe Maltz Bovy sits down with Adam Louis-Klein, a writer and academic currently completing his PhD in Anthropology at McGill University. He is the founder of the Movement Against Antizionism and a pundit who covers this topic in the media. As he explains, by creating an activist organization with academic roots, Louis-Klein is on a mission to help Zionists prepare responses to public anti-Zionist claims while reframing the discussion entirely. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

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 editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, has high praise for the show, which sees a young Jewish woman (Megan Stalter) tumultuously break up with her Jewish boyfriend (Michael Zegen), only to take a job posting in London, U.K, where she gets to live out her Brit-com and Jane Austen fantasies with a new love interest (Will Sharpe). The show is fast-paced and funny, and drew mostly positive reviews, with critics complaining that Dunham—who famously writes autobiographically navel-gazing characters—falls into her same old habits with her lead character. But if you ask Lior Zaltzman, the deputy managing editor at Kveller, Too Much is just right, hitting the right notes both in terms of Jewish representation and assertive female storytelling. Ahead of the winter holiday season, Zaltzman joins The Jewish Angle to explain why the short-lived series is worth binging over Hanukkah. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

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 denomination in more depth for a blog post that contextualizes Orthodox suspicions and breaks down real life in a Reform synagogue. In his essay, "I spent a week as a Reform Jew, and this is what happened", Bagel Emoji (who says he lives between traditional and modern Orthodox) describes with an outsider's comedic eye the details many Reform Jews take for granted: the penchant for singing, the pink tallits, the old age of nearly every congregant. He joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to explain his weeklong immersion on this week's episode of The Jewish Angle. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

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 Zoom and shunting a pro-Palestinian student into an “independent study” that morphed into a planned lecture titled “In the Mind of a Pro-Hamas Student”. Faculty and students saw it as a breach of basic academic ethics—a sign that personal politics were bleeding directly into pedagogy. What’s playing out in Bloomington mirrors a broader reckoning across American campuses, where Jewish Studies programs are wrestling with questions of identity, ideology, and the edges of academic freedom. To explore this more, Phoebe Maltz Bovy is joined by Arno Rosenfeld, a reporter at the Forward who covered this story. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

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 it conflates broad critiques of American Jewry with literature. To help unpack what it means to write Jewishly in a publishing world that often feels hostile to Jews, we're joined by Chaya Lauer, who brings a reader’s perspective to the debate and maps a lineage from Philip Roth to contemporary voices to show how Jewish literature is plural, not prescriptive. She pushes back on the idea that Jewish writers must answer for actions done “in their name,” calling out the dangerous stereotype of collective culpability. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

Zohran Mamdani, while running to be mayor of New York City, initially refused to disavow the slogan “Globalize the Intifada”. Once he did eventually reverse course on that, it came off more as politically expedient than a genuine act of bridge-building or moral leadership. That's how it struck Josh Yunis, a Jewish leftist who writes a Substack called The Diaspora. The incident felt part of a broader trend of alienation leftist Jews are feeling, finding themselves caught between right-wing ethnonationalism and left-wing selective empathy. This lack of principled universalism seems to justify Jewish skepticism, especially given historical precedents of anti-Zionism leading to Jewish marginalization. Yunis joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on the latest episode of The Jewish Angle to expand on these arguments and give a balanced take on what many try to paint as a black-and-white issue. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, other right-wing commentators are pushing their way into a more mainstream spotlight. To that end, Tucker Carlson recently hosted Nick Fuentes, a Christian nationalist and Holocaust denier, consequently enraging American Republicans who felt that his sort of extremist voice should be kept outside of the party's public dialogue. But Carlson platformed Fuentes anyway, under the presense of Fuentes being a right-wing thinker who dares to go against the establishment and criticize Israel. Writer Emily Tamkin believes that the two sides of the party have come at odds over Jews, Israel and antisemitism. One side, she argues, comfortably claims to fight against antisemitism—even while using antisemitic dog whistles—while the other side has simply taken the mask off entirely. That's an argument she makes in a [new column](https://forward.com/opinion/782002/nick-fuentes-tucker-carlson-heritage-foundation-antisemitism/) in Forward, "The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis"—and also to Phoebe Maltz Bovy on this week's episode of The Jewish Angle. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

Israelis breathed a collective sigh of relief after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire that included the return of the remaining hostages and and end to the fighting in Gaza. But the question remains: What comes next? What does the future look like for embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heading into next year's elections? How are Western political figures like U.S. President Trump perceived in the region after this fragile peace deal? To get an inside view of life this month in the Holy Land, we bring on Lahav Harkov, a senior political correspondent for Jewish Insider and co-host of the Misgav Mideast Horizons podcast, who is based in Israel but writes for a Western audience. She sits down with Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle for a discussion of Israeli political polling, Israeli views on Canada and what are the ramifications of a possible Zohran Mamdani mayoralty in New York City. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

NOTE: Due to a technical error from our host server, this episode of The Jewish Angle did not release as scheduled in RSS feeds on Oct. 23. We are publishing it today instead. We apologize for anyone sincerely irritated by missing their weekly dose of Phoebe Maltz Bovy's opinion—but, hey, at least you get two this week. The U.S. government has, in recent weeks, began cracking down on controversial speech within its borders—especially for non-citizens speaking out against Israel. It's a surprising turn of events for a country whose right to free speech has been codified into the First Amendment, putting into question whether the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the Western world when it comes to speech protection. But according to David Polansky, a political theorist and senior fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, countries like Canada and the United Kingdom are still far more restrictive with their speech laws, cracking down on in-person and online hateful comments with legal force. Yet the 2020s are still being marked by what Polansky has dubbed the "woke right", whereby American right-wing activists and politicians are dictating what is permissible public speech, much like the "woke left" did years ago. And at the centre of this debate are Jews, Israel and Palestine. Polansky explains more on this week's episode of The Jewish Angle. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

The Western world has never "defeated" bigotry in the way it hoped. Try as some might to stamp out racism in all its forms, there are still plenty of prejudices, from grade school hallways to the highest offices of government officials. Why would antisemitism be any different? It's a question posed by Ari Y. Kelman, a professor at Stanford's Taube Center for Jewish Studies. In a recent article published in Arc magazine, titled "More Than Zero", Kelman argues that, in a post-Oct. 7 landscape, "Jews must be content to flourish with a certain amount of antisemitism" existing out there in the world, and that it is a fantasy to expect anti-Jewish hatred to be legislated or educated into submission. Kelman joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to discuss his pragmatic essay, including the central question it poses: if we are to accept that antisemitism will forever exist, how much can we expect from a country like the United States? (Or, we might add, in Canada?) Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

The latest novel by British author Emma Forrest, Father Figure, is arguably the greatest work of Jewish literature in decades—at least, that's according to The CJN's opinion editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, who gave a glowing review to the new release on Sept. 29. But across the pond, the book has received a muted reaction. It hasn't been spotlit in any British book fairs; it's been largely ignored by domestic literary awards; professional friends who've helped promote, and even written forwards for, her past works have largely ignored this one. What makes this latest book different? It is unmistakably, idiosyncratically Jewish. Combine that with the growing antisemitism that's erupted in the United Kingdom since Oct. 7—which culminated in a lethal terror attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur—and it's hard for Forrest not to think her apolitical work of fiction has suffered from her personal cultural identity and a broader political climate. Forrest joins Maltz Bovy on the latest episode of The Jewish Angle to discuss her novel, along with its deep inception and quiet reception. Forrest describes the real-life inspirations behind her boarding school setting, including her own encounters with Harvey Weinstein how they influenced her characters, before discussing the recent tragedy in Manchester and how her country's small Jewish community is reacting. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

Canadian patriotism has surged since U.S. President Donald Trump took office and waged a trade war with his country's northern neighbour. But while this flavour of patriotism has largely manifested in opposition to the United States ("Elbows up," etc.), one Jewish social psychologist, neuroscientist and writer wonders if Canadians could change that perspective. What if, instead of defining itself as "not America", Canadian patriotism celebrated its culture and achievements on their own merits? That's the thesis from Montreal-born Michael Inzlicht, who now teaches in the psychology department at the University of Toronto. Earlier this year, he wrote a post on his Substack, "How Quebec Taught Me to Love Canada", outlining how Canadian pride has, in a few short months, seemingly caught up to what Quebec has been doing for decades. To discuss this shift—especially from a Jewish perspective—Inzlicht joins his neighbour in Toronto's Roncesvalles Village, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, for a discussion about the shift in politics and perception, from their own neighbourhood to the international border. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

You may have new year's resolutions. But do you have Jewish new year's resolutions? Erin Beser, a Jewish educator and rebbetzin, does one each year with her family—sometimes just for the year, sometimes forever. First they gave up meat. Then they gave up screens. This year? Shopping—no more impulse buys, extra clothes or excessive gifts. In 5786, they're only buying what they need. Beser drew attention to this cause by outlining her plan in a recent JTA article, in which she outlined the steps, logic and limits of paring down her family purchases. ("I’m not canceling Hanukkah," she writes, "because I am not a monster.") She hopes to guide her family toward community connection, self-reflection and appreciation for what one has, while learning about the role of Jewish women in the evolution of 20th-century capitalism. She joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to explain more. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, Marsha Lederman wasn't sure if she wanted to write about Hamas' historic terror attack for her regular column in the Globe and Mail. Should she recuse herself because she was Jewish, or because she had family in Israel? Did even she want to step into the minefield of publishing an opinion on Middle Eastern politics? In the end, she did weigh in—repeatedly—and has just published a collection of those columns, October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle, published by Penguin Random House in Aug. 2025. In the book, she outlines her desire to carve out an apolitical centrist stance that balances her Zionist beliefs as the child of Holocaust survivors with her support for Palestinian human rights. It's a glimpse into the micro-eras of that fraught year, with opinions and perspectives shifting with every new report and revelation. Lederman joins her fellow Globe and Mail columnist (who is also The CJN's opinion editor and podcaster) Phoebe Maltz Bovy for an in-depth discussion about the tightrope she walked in the opinion pages of a national newspaper. Credits Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to The Jewish Angle