On the Nose

Jewish Currents
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On the Nose is a biweekly podcast by Jewish Currents, a magazine of the Jewish left founded in 1946. The editorial staff discusses the politics, culture, and questions that animate today’s Jewish left.

  1. 10 hr ago

    “Democracy and Asylum Rise and Fall Together”

    Last week, the Supreme Court ruled on several issues related to immigration policy. While the court narrowly preserved birthright citizenship, it issued other rulings that will put an untold number of people in danger. One ruling, Mullin v Al Otro Lado, upheld the federal government’s policy of turning back asylum seekers before they can reach the US-Mexico border—a policy also known as “metering”—hollowing out the right to asylum enshrined in both domestic and international law. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor referenced the St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany turned away from the US, whose passengers were mostly killed in the Holocaust: “Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the refugees on the M. S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto US soil,” she said. In another ruling, Mullin v Doe, the Supreme Court granted the president the power to end the Temporary Protected Status program, or TPS, which has allowed vetted and eligible immigrants to live and work legally in the US if they cannot return safely to their countries. Justice Samuel Alito, in his majority opinion, said courts do not have a say in what the president and the Department of Homeland Security decide; the president can end TPS for Haitians and Syrians without judicial review. He also rejected a separate claim brought by Haitians that the move to deport them was based in racial prejudice. TPS has been in effect since 1990. There are 350,000 Haitians who have been in the US legally under TPS, and whose lives have now been thrown into chaos. In our spring issue, we published a prescient piece by immigration reporter Tanvi Misra about the death of asylum, and the ways that its decline is a dire portent for democracy itself. Asylum, Misra reminds us, is a “place-based right” designed to prioritize human life over national borders: As soon as an endangered person steps foot onto a country’s soil, they “are entitled to that body’s protection,” regardless of whether they crossed with permission. This is exactly the principle that has been undermined with this recent ruling, which prevents people from arriving and making an application. As this ruling suggests, for as long as asylum has existed in the US, so have efforts to weaken it. It has been issued selectively and on racial grounds—much more easily been granted to German-speaking Protestants than to Jews escaping the Holocaust; readily offered to Cubans fleeing Castro but not to Haitians fleeing the US-supported Duvalier dictatorship. Misra’s essay tells us that this tactic of denying landfall to migrants as a way of denying them asylum has gone into overdrive in the past decades as border agents try to intercept asylum seekers earlier and earlier in their journeys. In the process, the US border has, Misra says, “not just hardened, but expanded”—into Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and beyond. Under Trump 2.0, the border has also spilled inward, into LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, and all the other places where border agents are chasing down asylum seekers and, increasingly, all migrants. In this episode of On the Nose, recorded in mid-June before the Supreme Court rulings, Misra speaks about these grievous attacks on asylum with John Washington, a staff reporter at Lookout and the author of the forthcoming book, How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention, as well as The Case for Open Borders and The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexico Border. This conversation was originally a live membership event. Become a member so you don’t miss the next one! Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading “The Death of Asylum,” Tanvi Misra, Jewish Currents How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by John Washington The Case for Open Borders by John Washington The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexico Border by John Washington The Suppliants by Aeschylus Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles “The principle of non-refoulement,” European Union Agency for Asylum 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol “A History of Haitian Discrimination by United States Immigration Policy,” US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants “‘Metering’ of Asylum Seekers Is Bad Policy, Bad Law, and Bad for the Border,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, American Immigration Council “US flight carrying deported migrants lands in Central African Republic,” France24 “What Are Third-Country Removals? Understanding Their Use In U.S. Immigration Policy,” American Immigration Council “Broader Crises,” Tanvi Misra, The Baffler “The Unraveling of Afghan Asylum,” Tanvi Misra, New York Review of Books Transcript forthcoming.

    41 min

  2. 25 Jun

    Nadav Lapid Faces “No”

    Over the last couple weeks, there has been an enormous amount written—from The New York Times to Le Monde to Haaretz, among other places—about a controversy centered on Nadav Lapid, an Israeli filmmaker living in France. Lapid has made several critically acclaimed films, including Synonyms, Ahed’s Knee, and, most recently, Yes, and his work has taken home jury prizes at the Berlinale and Cannes. The recent controversy was focused on the FIDMarseille international film festival. There was a planned retrospective of Palestinian films at the festival this year. Meanwhile, Lapid was invited to head the jury. It was also decided that there would be an event honoring him, and that he would teach a master class. When a dozen filmmakers threatened to pull their films from the festival, Lapid withdrew as head of the jury. When that did not quell the protests, he decided to cancel the event and the master class, as well. The response from many in the film world has largely been to rally around Lapid, with two letters published in Le Monde, one of them garnering over 350 signatures of high-profile figures in the industry. The letters allege that Lapid is being boycotted solely because of his identity. One of them declares, “Nothing justifies the silencing of an artist . . . the cultural boycott is an intellectual dead end that we must collectively overcome.” Meanwhile, Film Workers for Palestine, allied with PACBI, which coordinates the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, published a translation of a statement by Palestine Will Save Cinema, pointing to the fact that Nadav Lapid’s latest film, Yes, received support from the Israeli Film Fund, was presented at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as an Israeli co‑production, and competed for the Ophir Awards (akin to Israel’s Academy Awards). “States have always invested in cinema, literature, the arts, and festivals as instruments of influence and legitimacy. Cultural production does not circulate in a political vacuum. It contributes to the representation of nations, the construction of their international image, and the dissemination of their narratives,” they wrote. “This is precisely why cultural boycott exists. Not because artists are responsible for the crimes committed by their governments, nor because certain works should be prohibited, but because cultural institutions, funding systems, and distribution policies play a concrete role in states’ strategies of legitimation.” There can be no mistaking the content of Yes, which seeks to depict the depravity of Israeli society during the genocide. But it does open with the icon of Israel’s Ministry of Culture, due to the support it took from the Israeli Film Fund, which accounted for 13% of the film’s funding. On this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel talks to Nadav Lapid about the recent controversy, and the two hash out some of their disagreements about cultural boycott. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading “‘Guilty by Virtue of My Identity,’” Nirit Anderman, Haaretz Two letters in support of Nadav Lapid, published in Le Monde Film Workers for Palestine translation of Palestine Will Save Cinema statement on FID Marseillle Film Workers for Palestine Pledge to End Complicity “What the NY Knicks Mania Reveals About Israelis and Collective Blame for Gaza,” Libby Lenkinski, Haaretz “Thank You for Boycotting Me: As an Israeli Filmmaker, Here’s Why Global Pressure Amid Gaza Matters,” Avigail Sperber, Haaretz “Paul Simon’s Graceland: the acclaim and the outrage,” Robin Denselow, The Guardian “Non,” Catherine Haas, lundimatin “Is the cultural boycott of Israel an effective political tool for the Palestinian cause?” on Radio France “Israeli Grotesque,” Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents Transcript forthcoming.

    39 min

  3. 18 Jun

    Politics and the Jewish Body

    In the latest issue of Jewish Currents, we published a piece called “Does the Jewish Body Keep the Score?” by Jon Danforth-Appell, which looks at three recent left-wing books about the relationship between Jewish trauma and Zionism, and challenges the view that Zionism in Jewish communities constitutes a trauma response that will need to be healed in order to be fought. On this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel speaks with the author of one of those books, Wendy Elisheva Somerson, known as Wes, a somatic healer who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and published An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing last year. Angel and Somerson discuss the risk of essentializing about “Jewish bodies,” whether implanted or prosthetic trauma still needs to be “healed,” and what it means to claim Jewish ritual as somatic practice. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing by Wendy Elisheva Somerson Ruach healing groups “Western Philosophy as White Supremacism,” Crispin Sartwell, The Philosophical Salon Power-Under: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change by Steven Wineman “Prosthetic Trauma at the Nova Exhibition: Holocaust Memory, Reenactment, and the Affective Reproduction of Genocidal Nightmares,” Ben Ratskoff, Journal of Genocide Research “Picturing Power,” Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents Wounds Into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma by Tirzah Firestone Taking the State Out of the Body: A Guide to Embodied Resistance to Zionism by Eliana Rubin Transcript forthcoming.

    53 min

  4. 4 Jun

    The Israel Day Parade Debacle

    Last Sunday, New York City officials took part in the annual Israel Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was notably absent, insisting that this was not a “Jewish pride parade,” as it is often styled, but a celebration of a country committing genocide, and saying he did not need to be present to “ensure the safety” of the parade. His resolve proved prudent, as New York officials found themselves scrambling to distance themselves from the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is responsible for the creeping annexation and violent ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and who took part in the march along with a rogues gallery of openly genocidal Israeli government officials. On this episode of On the Nose, host Arielle Angel, senior reporter Alex Kane, and news director Josh Nathan-Kazis discuss the history and makeup of the Israel Day Parade, parse the responses from New York officials facing criticism for marching with extremists, and debate the feasibility of an actual “Jewish pride parade” in New York City. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading “A Litmus Test Backfires,” Josh Nathan-Kazis, Jewish Currents “NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani missed the Israel Day Parade. Many who went didn’t miss him.” Grace Gilson, The Forward “Progressive Zionists Choose a Side,” Mari Cohen, Jewish Currents Documentation of abuses in Hebron on B’Tselem “Meet the U.S. Nonprofit That Funds the Israeli Guards Who Terrorize Palestinians,” Alex Kane, In These Times “Universal Jurisdiction in Action: Peru Investigates Israeli Soldier for Genocide and War Crimes after HRF Complaint,” The Hind Rajab Foundation Nerdeen Kiswani tweet about protesting the Israel Day Parade “Bitter Rift Over Israel Hits LGBTQ Jews Hard After Controversial Protest At Celebrate Israel Parade,” Ari Feldman, The Forward “Jewish New York deserves a parade as diverse as its communities,” Jill Jacobs, JTA Transcript forthcoming.

    43 min

  5. 28 May

    Sally Rooney in Hebrew

    In 2021, famed Irish author Sally Rooney declined to publish her book in Israel because there was no BDS-compliant publisher. At the time, she said she would be “pleased and proud” to have her books translated into Hebrew, as long as it was done in a way that respected the principles of the boycott. Last week, Rooney announced that she was publishing a Hebrew translation of her latest book, Intermezzo, with November Books and +972 Magazine. The publishers had been vetted by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and deemed BDS compliant. This means November Books does not operate in Israeli settlements, receives no state funding, and explicitly recognizes the Palestinian right of return. In The Guardian, Rooney said she “kept in touch with PACBI along the way to try to ensure that I was upholding both the letter and the spirit of the institutional boycott.” Immediately, there was backlash. Some Palestinian writers, including Mohammed El Kurd and Susan Abulhawa, questioned the decision to use this “loophole” in BDS guidelines to bring the book to Israeli audiences. Why now? And why this? Even if it adheres to the letter of the boycott, does it capture the spirit, as Rooney says? On this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel speaks with Ahmed Moor, a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace; Maya Rosen, assistant editor at Jewish Currents; and Muhammad Shehada, a writer from Gaza and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, about this tempest in a teapot surrounding the Hebrew translation of Intermezzo. They discuss whether this action hit its strategic marks, and what the response says about the Palestine movement’s relationship to both the Israeli left and the prospect of changing Israeli society. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading BDS Guidelines “On +972 Magazine, Sally Rooney, and the centering of Israelis in an anti-colonial movement,” Susan Abulhawa, Mondoweiss The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé “Yuval Noah Harari on Donald Trump’s Core Delusion,” The Ezra Klein Show Perfect Victims by Mohammed El Kurd “We’re publishing Sally Rooney in Hebrew, in line with BDS. Here’s how and why,” Haggai Matar, +972 Magazine Salma Shawa discussing Hebrew on Instagram “In the Middle of Our Palestinian Neighborhood, My Daughter Started Yelling in Hebrew,” Sari Bashi, Haaretz PACBI’s Position on No Other Land “Did Zionism Go Wrong or Was It Always Wrong?,” Peter Beinart with Omer Bartov and Gideon Levy on the Beinart Notebook on Substack Transcript forthcoming.

    46 min

  6. 21 May

    Hasan Piker’s Politics of Appeal

    Over the last eight years, streamer and leftist political commentator Hasan Piker has built a following of millions on Twitch, where he streams seven to ten hours a day, discussing current events and interacting with followers in a rapid-fire chat. Lately, Piker, who has hit the campaign trail for Democratic candidates like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has become the object of a raging debate about the direction of the Democratic Party. For many progressives, establishment attacks on Piker and the candidates he supports are evidence that the party is out of touch with its base, especially young people. For the establishment, embrace of Piker by Israel-critical candidates is evidence that the party is becoming too radical. A recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by leaders of the centrist think tank Third Way labeled Piker a “Jew hater,” and urged Democrats to denounce him. The irony is that Piker, who appeals to exactly the sorts of young men who are being lured to the right in large numbers by the “manosphere,” is unique in how often he speaks about the principled fight against antisemitism. As figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes become more prominent in the pro-Palestine digital ecosystem, Piker may be one of the most important figures on the left countering a simplistic narrative of Jewish control and American innocence. On this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel speaks with Piker about keeping the nuance in a media environment that wants easy answers, using electoral politics to build class consciousness, and why he keeps talking about antisemitism. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading Hasan Piker on Twitch “Hasan Piker Has a Few Choice Words for His Bad-Faith Critics,” Aaron Regunberg, The New Republic “The Right Is Capturing the Online Palestine Conversation,” On the Nose “Charlie Kirk and American Innocence,” On the Nose “Where Cenk Uygur and I Disagree,” Beinart Notebook on Substack “The Many Equivocations of Curt Mills,” Will Alden, Jewish Currents “Ocasio-Cortez warns against associating with Greene, calling her a ‘proven bigot,’” Ryan Mancini, The Hill “AOC vs. MTG on Palestine: the voting records don't lie,” Mehdi Hassan on Zeteo “This Is Why There’s No Liberal Joe Rogan,” Ezra Klein, The New York Times “Democrats Are Too Cozy With Hasan Piker,” Jonathan Cowan and Lily Cohen, The Wall Street Journal “Some Democrats Shun Him, but Young Voters Want a Selfie,” Nathan Taylor Pemberton, The New York Times “House Democratic leaders condemn Texas candidate for antisemitic comments,” Ben Kamisar, NBC News Transcript forthcoming.

    41 min

  7. 14 May

    The Wrong Way to Fight Antisemitism in Britain

    On April 29th in London, an attacker stabbed a Muslim acquaintance before traveling to the largely Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green and stabbing two Jewish men at random. This was only the latest in a string of attacks on Jews, synagogues, or other communal infrastructure in the UK since mid-March; other instances have included arson attacks on three synagogues as well as Hatzola ambulances. The British Jewish community—already on edge since the Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue that killed two and injured three—is in a state of rising alarm. Predictably, Jewish communal leaders, politicians, and the police have baselessly sought to tie the attacks to the Palestine solidarity movement, justifying crackdowns in civil liberties and proposing increased police budgets. The backdrop to these attacks is a local election cycle in which the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, lost substantial ground to tertiary parties on their wings: Reform on the right, and the Green Party on the left. Though newly elected members of the Reform Party include avowed racists and Holocaust deniers, much of the media attention has been on candidates whom the Green Party has removed from contention because of charges of antisemitism. There is particular focus on the head of the Green Party, 43-year-old Zack Polanski, whose Jewish identity and pro-Palestine stance has shattered some of the received wisdom about who British Jews are, announcing a new era in UK Jewish left politics. To discuss the London attacks and their political fallout, Arielle Angel speaks with Brendan McGeever, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London, and Em Hilton, co-founder of Na’amod, an organization of British Jews opposing Israeli occupation and apartheid. They parse what we do and don’t know about these attacks, and critique the government’s response, which casts Jews as special wards of the state at the expense of civil liberties and the safety of other minority groups. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Articles Mentioned and Further Reading Brendan McGeever in the Jewish Currents newsletter Jewish Policy Research survey on UK Jews’ feelings about antisemitism, UK Jewish voters voting Green, and UK Jewish identification with Zionism “The present crisis,” editors of Vashti “Good Jews, Bad Jews,” Barnaby Raine interviewed by Gavin Jacobson, Equator “The difficult truth about antisemitism in the UK,” Brendan McGeever, Ben Gidley, David Feldman, Prospect “Anti-terrorist programme Prevent ‘outdated and inadequately prepared’, report finds,” Rajeev Syal, The Guardian David Cameron’s 2015 speech at the Community Security Trust Keir Starmer echoing Enoch Powell “U.K. Vows Crackdown on Pro-Palestinian Protests After Latest Antisemitic Attack,” David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal “Five members of biggest British Jewish body suspended after Israel criticisms,” Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian “Processing the Attack at Bondi Beach,” On the Nose, Jewish Currents Ashok Kumar on Julia Hartley-Brewer “Over 2,000 U.K. Jews Sign Petition Against Nigel Farage Attending Antisemitism Rally,” Hagar Shezaf, Haaretz “How Palestine Action put the justice system on trial,” Rikki Blue, Declassified UK “Zack Polanski’s Jewish identity is being erased because he is leftwing,” Owen Jones, The Guardian Zack Polanski on Sky News “Green Party candidate arrested over antisemitic social media posts,” Athena...

    49 min

  8. 7 May

    The Hill

    Harriet Clark comes from a long line of radicals. Her ancestors were gun runners in Minsk. Her grandparents were active members of the Communist Party USA, and the family moved to Moscow for a time, where her grandfather wrote for the Daily Worker. Her mother is Judith Clark, a former member of the Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization, who was given a life sentence for her participation in the Brinks robbery in 1981 that killed three people. (Judith was paroled in 2019.) Harriet Clark’s debut novel, The Hill, tells the story of a girl who vows to visit her mother every week in the upstate New York prison where she is being held. In this episode of On the Nose, Arielle Angel speaks with Harriet about her stunning new book, what comes after failure in radical movements, and the heroism of trying to keep families affected by incarceration together. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading The Hill by Harriet Clark “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic “Photos of the migrant caravan and the Trump military response tell different stories,” Johnny Simon, Quartz Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey “Judith Clark’s Radical Transformation,” Tom Robbins, The New York Times House and Fire by Maria Hummel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson “To a Student” by Diane Di Prima

    1hr 2min
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About

On the Nose is a biweekly podcast by Jewish Currents, a magazine of the Jewish left founded in 1946. The editorial staff discusses the politics, culture, and questions that animate today’s Jewish left.

Information

  • Creator
    Jewish Currents
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    149
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Jewish Currents

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