The Jewish Angle

The CJN Podcasts
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Phoebe Maltz Bovy, a culture critic and opinion editor at The Canadian Jewish News, explores the wider world of modern Jewish life, stuck between dangerous political flanks on both left and right.

  1. 2025-12-15

    Lior Zaltzman: The evolution of Lena Dunham in Netflix's 'Too Much'

    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

    31 min

  2. 2025-12-08

    Bagel Emoji: What an Orthodox Jew learned while living as Reform for a week

    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

    21 min

  3. 2025-12-01

    Arno Rosenfeld: Indiana University and the conservativization of Jewish Studies

    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

    37 min

  4. 2025-11-24

    Chaya Lauer: Let Jewish writers write about whatever they want

    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

    32 min

  5. 2025-11-17

    Josh Yunis: How Jewish leftists are navigating a Zohran Mamdani world

    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

    28 min

  6. 2025-11-11

    Emily Tamkin: How Israel caused a 'civil war' within right-wing politics

    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

    31 min

  7. 2025-11-03

    Lahav Harkov: What's life like in post-ceasefire Israel?

    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

    33 min

  8. 2025-10-30

    David Polansky: Is free speech suddenly freer in Canada than the U.S.?

    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

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Phoebe Maltz Bovy, a culture critic and opinion editor at The Canadian Jewish News, explores the wider world of modern Jewish life, stuck between dangerous political flanks on both left and right.

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