The Jewish Angle

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Society & Culture
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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.

9 hr ago

Aliza Luft: How the Catholic Church reassured French Jews before the Holocaust—and failed them

Before Nazi Germany invaded France, Catholic leaders had publicly condemned racist ideology. Jews felt reassured by this, and the fact that they enjoyed deep roots in the republic and reason to believe their institutions would defend them from the Nazis. Under Vichy, that confidence became misguided: bishops offered sympathy in private, but the Church often remained publicly silent as anti-Jewish laws hardened and deportations began. Aliza Luft, a Montreal-born sociologist, joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to discuss her findings about this difficult Jewish-Catholic relationship in her new book, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust. They unpack how French Jewish leaders navigated assimilation, patriotism and the divide between long-established French Jews and more recent Jewish immigrants; how bishops balanced moral claims against institutional interests; and why reassurances from clergy and Vichy officials could make the threat harder to read. 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)
8 Sept

David Polansky: Can Jewish New York survive the age of ‘Habibi City’?

Over the summer, New York Magazine’s “Habibi City” issue set out to celebrate the city’s SWANA scene— Southwest Asia and North Africa, a term meant to replace "Middle East". But to David Polansky, a political theorist and writer living in Toronto, the whole piece read more like a hyper-online obituary for Jewish New York. On this episode of The Jewish Angle, Polansky joins host Phoebe Maltz Bovy to discuss this needlessly controversial article and the foodie politics surrounding it. In the broader context, the United States is the only country in the world, outside of Israel, where Jews still outnumber Muslims; that will almost certainly change over the next two decades. Should Jewish Americans be worried about their culture being shunted aside as a result of widespread anti-Zionist public sentiment? 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)
25 Aug

Meg Keene: In search of Jewish authors to publish

Back in April, bestselling author Meg Keene came on The Jewish Angle—with some reluctance—to talk about what she saw as a growing problem for Jewish writers in mainstream publishing. She spoke about being quietly pressured from agents, publishers and industry insiders to change Jewish characters' names and hide Israeli backgrounds or connections. But rather than be excommunicated from the publishing world, her inbox filled up with messages from writers and publishers in the same situation. She's since worked with the Anti-Defamation League and an offer from the publishers at Wicked Son to start her own imprint, Meg Keene Books. Now Keene is on a mission to publish around four Jewish fiction books over the next year, from romance to thriller. As she tells Phoebe Maltz Bovy on the latest episode of The Jewish Angle, the calibre of submissions landing in her inbox has convinced her that quality of the supply isn't the issue; she just hopes the demand is there, too. 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)
10 Aug

Marnie Salsky: Documenting Toronto's Jewish community before, and after, Oct. 7

Between 2018 and 2022, Marnie Salsky travelled around Toronto, taking photographs of her Jewish community. The project was meant to capture the diversity and reality of Jewish life in a rapidly changing world. But then Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the entire tenor of her project shifted. She continued snapping photos, but this time captured images of police guarding synagogues, anti-Israel posters around her neighbourhood and defiant Jewish community members showing their pride. The final book project, A Peoplehood | Amiut Yehudi, was released June 2026. Salsky now joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to discuss why the work and her sensitive editorial decisions, including why she left interview subjects anonymous, how photographs of ordinary Jewish life sit alongside images of security and hostility, and how creatives can make Jewish art about anything other than antisemitism in a post-Oct. 7 world. 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)
27 Jul

Broken Pencil, Broken PEN: Hal Niedzviecki on the PEN America scandal

In a move the editor certainly knew would be unpopular among the organization's core audience, PEN America, earlier this month, published an article about the isolation and exclusion of Jewish and Israeli writers. Shortly afterwards, the organization's president resigned, and PEN America issued a statement standing by the piece while reminding everyone that it has also repeatedly condemned Israel—a sequence of events that likely pleased no one. Being ostricized from the publishing world is familiar territory for Toronto writer and cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki, the founding editor of Broken Pencil, a Canadian magazine about zines. After Niedzviecki faced repeated threats of boycotts unless he condemned Israel, he shut down Broken Pencil entirely in 2024. He now joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to discuss how the publishing industry has imposed a not-so-silent moratorium on Jewish writers, and what the possible solutions are, including kickstarting a new community-driven grant. 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) https://pnc.st/s/jewish-angle
13 Jul

Arno Rosenfeld: Why Democrats could excuse Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo, but not his alleged abuse of women

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner was, for a moment, a Democratic golden boy—an oyster farmer and Marine veteran whose rough-hewn authenticity thrilled progressive strategists. Then came the Reddit posts, the Nazi-linked chest tattoo he claimed not to understand, and finally the rape allegation that collapsed his campaign. But what does it say that a Nazi tattoo and edgelord posting weren't disqualifying, while an accusation of sexual misconduct was? Arno Rosenfeld, who covers antisemitism for the Forward (but is soon joining Haaretz as its Washington correspondent), joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to unpack the strange dynamics of the Platner saga: how anti-Israel positioning became a permission slip to wave away scandal, why he became the target of two mutually exclusive antisemitic conspiracy theories at once, how "authenticity" got tangled up with a certain kind of white male gentileness, and what Platner's rise and fall reveals about antisemitism's shifting place in the Democratic Party—and whether it's still disqualifying at all. 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
30 Jun

Virginia Karnstein: The straight woman's feminist identity crisis

In May, The CJN's opinion editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, published her latest book, The Last Straight Woman. One of the most incisive reviews (from a Jewish writer, no less) was Virginia Karnstein, a PhD candidate whose research crosses feminism, antisemitism and vampires—and, sometimes, the middle of that unique Venn diagram. The Last Straight Woman does not focus on vampires, but it does look at the evolution of feminism and its intersection with sexual orientation and gender identity. So we invited Karnstein onto The Jewish Angle podcast to discuss Maltz Bovy's book, the history of second- and third-wave feminism, separatism, MeToo, tradwives, femcels, the changing cultural status of heterosexual women... and a little bit of vampirism. 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
16 Jun

Kara Jesella: How feminism turned against Jews

For decades, Jewish women played a central role in building feminist movements, shaping ideas about equality, activism, and social justice. Yet as of the last 30 years, they find themselves cast as symbols of privilege, whiteness, and oppression within the very spaces they helped create. How did that happen? Writer and scholar Kara Jesella joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy to discuss her new book, Feminist Antisemitism: An Intellectual History. They explore the evolution of feminist theory, the rise of identity politics and queer theory, the emergence of the “as a Jew” phenomenon, and the ways Jewish women became uniquely positioned within debates over race, power, Zionism, and belonging. The conversation traces a decades-long intellectual history that helps explain some of today's fiercest conflicts over Jewish identity, feminism, and Israel. 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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Trailer

Trailer: The Jewish Angle with Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Join Phoebe Maltz Bovy, a culture critic and opinion editor at The Canadian Jewish News, as she explores the modern world of Jewish life — with Jews stuck in between dangerous political flanks on both the left and right.

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.