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 not exclusive to Rosenfield, though it is a topic she has touched on often, both as a columnist with The Free Press and as a podcaster on Feminine Chaos, alongside The CJN's own Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Now the podcasting duo is hopping onto The CJN's network to talk about the role of Jews in this neverending conversation, particularly in light of controversies in Canada and Australia. The Art Gallery of Ontario declined work by acclaimed Jewish photographer Nan Goldin because of her anti-Zionist (antisemitic?) views, while in the Southern Hemisphere, a literary festival in Adelaide, Australia, was forced to cancel its entire program after it retracted an invitation to a Palestinian author—sparking the cancellations of 180 other writers in solidarity.

What do we risk when art becomes stringently political, and institutions only accept art from certain people on certain sides of the political spectrum? Rosenfield joins to discuss.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy

• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman

• Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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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 former columnist with The CJN, this is a good idea. It scraps offices—and excessive budgets—who were never equal to begin with, owing to the fact that only two minorities were represented. (What, no Special Envoy on Combatting Anti-Hindu Racism?) Further, Kay argues, these posts were vestiges of an old political world, the Justin Trudeau era of national repentance and bemoaning so-called "Canada" as nation founded upon racism and genocide. After the re-election of U.S. President Donald Trump, nationalism and civic pride have soared to new heights—and with it, a newfound sense of unity against a greater enemy.

Kay digs into the deep political history behind the rise and fall of anti-hate special envoys in the latest episode of The Jewish Angle with Phoebe Maltz Bovy.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: " Gypsy Waltz " by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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