Bonjour Chai The Jewish Living Lab and The CJN Podcast Network

You may not know who Joe Roberts is. But some people online, who may or may not have ever met the man face-to-face, claim to know him extremely well—to the point that they are posting photos of his grandmothers' graves, scouring the web for his tweets and published articles, and making bold statements about whether he's really who he says he is. Whether, for example, he's even Jewish.

The former the chair of the JSpace Canada board, Roberts has found himself at the centre of this Extremely Online controversy largely because he (a self-described political left-winger) began more vocally supporting Israel post-Oct. 7, sparking many left-leaning Twitter users to turn on him.

Rather than dive into the veracity of Joe Roberts's Judaism, on today's episode of Bonjour Chai, we're looking at the gatekeepers themselves: who feels they have the right to determine someone else's Jewish identity and why. Plus, Phoebe discusses a new viral Zionist blacklist spreadsheet, and Avi struggles to figure out whether tacky Jewish graphic tees are worthy of a nachas or broigus.

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Zachary Kauffman is the producer and editor. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast's Substack.

College campuses have been heated spaces for Jewish students for a long time. The rapid spread of tent-in protests that began at Columbia University last month has only exacerbated the issue, giving an international platform to pro-Palestinian (and anti-Zionist) students and faculty members grounded in our post-secondary institutions.

Jewish and non-Jewish protesters, both faculty and students, have been outspoken on these campus quads. But one cohort has been relatively silent: professors of Jewish studies. While Zionism is not inherent to Judaism, most Jews do support Israel, and rather than advocating for Jews on campus, these professors—who are generally more left-leaning—are often either siding with the pro-Palestinian protesters or simply keeping quiet.

This is the thesis that sparked an in-depth piece published this week in Mosaic, a journal of Jewish ideas, called "Jewish Studies against the Jews". The author, Andrew Koss, joins Avi and Phoebe to explain his research and turn a critical lens on the state of Jewish academia in the United States, Canada and beyond.

And before that, the hosts have a few questions about Jewish Heritage Month. Why does it exist? Does it actually do anything? And how does teaching kids the hora celebrate "diversity and equity", as our public school boards suggest?

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Zachary Kauffman is the producer and editor. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast's Substack.

As pro-Palestinian encampments pop up across Canadian campuses this week, protesting against university ties to Israel and threatening to keep their tents pitched until the war in Gaza ends, it helps to understand the broader context of how this all began. And if you ask the Columbia University students at ground zero of this movement how they feel about the media circus they've created, they'll tell you frankly: they didn't ask for it.

That's what many of them told Justin Ling, a Montreal-based freelance reporter who visited the New York university to see the original tent city firsthand. But that deflection belies an inescapable paradox. Maybe they didn't want all this media attention, but they've made themselves the main characters of this story, shifting the focus from a faraway foreign war to North America's culture wars. Now the movement has snowballed into something far greater.

Ling joins Bonjour Chai to explain what he saw, share his takeaways and debate with the hosts about the merits of student activism—and whether it should be allowed at all.

What we talked about


Subscribe to Justin Ling's Substack, Bug Eyed and Shameless
Read his dispatch from Columbia at The Line
Hear The CJN Daily report on the Canadian campus protests

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Zachary Kauffman is the producer and editor. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast's Substack.

For the third year in a row, Bonjour Chai is proud to present the Great Canadian Seder, a coming-together of notable and insightful Canadian Jews from across different demographics and denominations.

Why is this year different from all other years? Because seders across Canada will likely be marred, like any good family gathering, by some kind of political argument over Israel. How should you navigate these murky waters and keep the peace while leaning back in your chair over a few cups of wine? And as haggadah-writers co-opt the Passover story for myriad unrequested adaptations, does this change whether the stories we tell should be universalized for broader audiences?

To hear answers, stories, musings, anecdotes and teachings, we're joined by prominent seder guests from around the country:


Emil Sher, author and playwright
Dahlia Kurtz, radio host
Zachary Paikin, foreign policy researcher
Gila Munster, drag performer
Marsha Lederman, author and Globe and Mail columnist
Michael Weisdorf, CEO, The CJN
Jonathan L. Milevsky, author and educator; and Raphi Zaionz, founder of mygoals Inc.
Naomi Harris, photographer
Lissa Skitolsky, editor-in-chief, Cannabis Jew Magazine
Jamie Golombek, tax expert
The children and teachers at Gray Academy of Jewish Education

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. The show is produced by Michael Fraiman and edited by Zachary Kauffman. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast’s Substack.

This week, the editor of Guernica resigned in protest of her own staff and publisher. The respected literary journal had recently published of an essay by an Israeli writer and translator, Joanna Chen, called "From the Edges of a Broken World". In the piece, Chen conveys Israelis, like their Palestinian neighbours, as human and worthy of compassion. The resulting backlash from left-leaning writers was swift, and Guernica ended up retracting the piece and apologizing for running it, after more than a dozen volunteer staff members quit in protest.

Except Jina Moore, the editor-in-chief, did not want to apologize. She stood by the piece. So she stepped down, and it sparked deeper conversations about safe spaces for Jewish authors and artists—such as the one on this week's episode of Bonjour Chai.

Writer Erika Dreifus joins to discuss her own work in searching out publications still friendly to Jewish and Israeli Jewish writers and the broader ramifications of an ever-more-restrictive literary environment.

What we talked about


Browse Erika Dreifus's list of literary publications and organizations that made public statements about Gaza, "Writers, Beware"
Read her blog post, "Where to Read (and Publish) Writing on Jewish Themes"

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Zachary Kauffman is the producer and editor. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast's Substack.

Do your young kids have a smartphone? Most do. And parents have been witnessing the repercussions firsthand for years. This week, the subject came to the forefront when Jonathan Haidt, a Jewish writer, penned a piece in The Atlantic warning of the "terrible costs" of raising children with phones. A new mental health crisis, higher suicide rates, ever-more screen time: much of the ailments of modern youth can be attributed to smartphone use. Jewish kids are no exception, as this week's guest, Rabbi Eric Grossman, knows well; he is the head of the Akiva School in Montreal and agrees with much of Haidt's thesis.

Before that, we're joined by Ronit Novak, art director for The CJN, to discuss the ethics of a gruesome photograph of the corpse of Shani Louk, who was murdered on Oct. 7, winning a prestigious photography award. As you'll hear, even Shani's family and friends are split on whether the now-infamous image is a good thing or not.

What we talked about


Read Jonathan Haidt's piece in The Atlantic, "End the Phone-Based Childhood Now"
See the award-winning photos of the Israel-Hamas war, including one of Shani Louk

Credits

Bonjour Chai is hosted by Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Zachary Kauffman is the producer and editor. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Socalled. The show is a co-production from The Jewish Learning Lab and The CJN, and is distributed by The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast, donating to The CJN and subscribing to the podcast's Substack.