In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Canada's broadly left-wing literary community took aim at the Giller Prize, Canada's foremost award for fiction, for its title sponsorship coming from Scotiabank. The financial institution, they have argued, has millions of dollars invested in an Israeli arms dealer—leading to backlash from pro-Palestinian writers who began boycotting the Giller for taking $100,000 as prize money, withdrawing as entrants and judges.

The controversy has taken a lengthy, convoluted road since then, involving past winners speaking out critically of the Giller Prize; Elana Rabinovitch—the executive director of the prize and daughter of its founder—taking to traditional and social media to defend her organization's actions; and various half-measures by Scotiabank and Giller that have decreased (but not eliminated) their association with the Middle East conflict. Meanwhile, the competition is still going on, with a winner set to be announced on Nov. 18.

With Avi Finegold in Canada this week, he joins his Bonjour Chai co-host, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, in her living room to unpack this mess and discuss whether the criticism is legitimate or yet another example of antisemitism, framing big-money Jews as string-pulling villains.

They're joined by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and writer of the newsletter Speak Now Regret Later, who also happens to live in Phoebe's neighbourhood of Roncesvalles. Their community has seen a surge of pro-Palestinian signs in storefront windows over the past year, prompting the question: What do you do when controversial geopolitics come to your local coffee shop?

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

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With the U.S. election less than a week away, the hosts of Bonjour Chai are turning their attention south with a comprehensive pre-election primer. Pollsters tend to lump Jewish voters together in a bloc, but there are different priorities for Jewish communities across the United States—and Jewish residents of certain swing states, namely Pennsylvania, are seeing the brightest spotlight this year.

Besides, there are issues on the ballot beyond antisemitism and relations with Israel. Affordability, the economy and religious issues such as abortion rights all figure into Jewish voting patterns. Does Vice-President Kamala Harris's Jewish husband tip the scales? Do former president Donald Trump's Jewish daughter and son-in-law? How did Oct. 7 change things? Or does none of that matter in a presidential election that could be won more on vibes than facts?

To answer some of these questions, we're joined by William D. Adler, an associate professor at Northeastern Illinois University who specializes in American political development and the presidency.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

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During our extended break for the High Holidays, we're bringing Bonjour Chai subscribers something different.

Sukkot is described as the holiday of joy—a time when the Israelites would gather together as one people in the temple to worship and to rejoice. The easy thing this year would be to say that we hope that we will be able to rejoice with everyone in sukkot, including all the returned hostages and all the soldiers home from the front. The truth is obviously more complicated, and one of things Avi keeps returning to is the complicated composition of world Jewry today.

That complicated relationship was what prompted him to write an extended piece in The CJN Magazine about the nature of Zionism and Jews' relationship to Israel and Zionism today, entitled, "What Do We Mean by Zion?" Today's podcast is an audio version of that article. Hopefully the joy this Sukkot is one of unity among Jews who once saw themselves far apart from those who they disagree with.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

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Whenever there's a new mainstream TV show with a Jewish bent, Jewish audiences share a familiar reaction: excitement over representation, followed by dread over how bad that representation will be. The latest example is Nobody Wants This, the new Netflix rom-com series about a sex-advice podcast host (Kristen Bell) who, despite not being Jewish, falls for a hot young rabbi (Adam Brody). Gasp!

One key theme in the show is the nuance and viability of interfaith relationships, which, for Bonjour Chai co-host Phoebe Maltz Bovy, brought to mind the writer Meghan Daum. A prolific writer, Daum once penned a 1996 GQ piece called "American Shiksa", which appears in her 2001 collection of essays, My Misspent Youth, and which describes the common Jewish-guy-meets-non-Jewish-girl love story from the female perspective. On this week's episode, Daum joins to recall the origins of that article and helps dissects Netflix's new take on the age-old trope.

And after that, the hosts turn south to examine how Donald Trump spent the one-year Oct. 7 anniversary... by visiting the grave of Lubavitcher Rebbe and allegedly offering to sign siddurs.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

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The cover illustration of the fall issue of The Canadian Jewish News Magazine drew hundreds of responses from readers across the country.

The image depicted a fictional family gathered for Rosh Hashanah. This family included a matronly woman in an apron wearing a yellow ribbon in support of bringing the hostages home; a young girl with a dog tag necklace in support of the Israel Defense Forces; two bearded men in a heated discussion; someone looking at footage of an explosion posted to Instagram on their smartphone; one woman clutching her forehead in apparent disappointment or frustration; and, most controversially, a young woman sporting a keffiyeh and watermelon earrings—a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Hamutal Dotan, joined Rabbi Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy for a robust discussion of the logic behind the drawing. After that, they discuss Phoebe's and Avi's articles inside: one on what Judaism has to say about Zion as a historic homeland for Jewish people, and one on the new philosemitism that's arisen since Oct. 7.

Read a condensed transcript of this conversation here.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

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Last week, Toronto's public school board came under fire after footage emerged on social media showing students partaking in a public protest for Indigenous water rights... that also happened to feature pro-Palestinian chants and signs. A provincial investigation ensued to learn how it happened and why teachers allegedly encouraged students to get involved in the demonstrations, but while those slow bureaucratic gears turn, parents—especially Jewish ones—are unhappy. Bonjour Chai hosts Avi and Phoebe ask: should students ever be taken to a public protest as part of a school curriculum, even if parents agree with the cause?

After that, they dig into the Indigo boycott/buycott fiasco, sparked after Indigo mounted a legal challenge against a grassroots movement claiming they kill kids. The movement began because Indigo CEO Heather Reisman operates a separate charity that supports Israelis without families (who are in all likelihood lone soldiers), but has spiralled into Jews and allies proudly supporting Canada's singular monolithic bookstore entity as a badge of honour. Remember when people used to proudly support their local indie bookstore?

Finally, Ta Nehisi Coates has re-entered the public discourse, years after breaking ground with his argument for reparations for Black Americans. His topic this time? Israel-Palestine, something that's being marketed as a "taboo" subject for discussion by a public intellectual. Except... it really isn't. Everyone's talking about it. So what's going on?

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

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On a recent trip to Poland, the writer Tanya Gold visited the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial site. In her lengthy travel essay on the visit, "My Auschwitz Vacation", published in the September 2024 edition of Harper's Magazine, she details the numerous absurdities of the Disneyfied extermination camp, from its notable lack of Jews to the oft-overlooked nearby castle, waterfall and theme park.

On today's episode of Bonjour Chai, Tanya Gold joins to discuss her deeply personal journey, intermingled with the shifting lens of Holocaust memory in Poland, rising antisemitism in Europe, and the trap of focusing Holocaust education on death instead of life.

After that, hosts Avi and Phoebe discuss exploding Hezbollah pagers (are the jokes and memes hypocritical?) and the swift implosion of the storied British publication, the Jewish Chronicle.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

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The Toronto International Film Festival is going on, and while it only has a handful of Jewish-themed or Israeli-produced films, those films have drawn some of the biggest spotlights. Chiefly among them has been The Bibi Files, a new work-in-progress documentary that received its world debut this week, and which shows never-before-seen leaked footage of people admitting to bribing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister himself amplified the film's popularity even more when he tried to block the Toronto screening in Israeli courts mere days before the event itself. (It remains unclear how, even if the Israeli court agreed with Netanyahu, they would have prevented an American film by an Australian director from screening in a Canadian festival.)

Yet while The Bibi Files got the most press attention, it didn't face the largest crowd of protests—that honour may go to Bliss, an actual Israeli film that is apolitical in nature, which debuted on the night of Sept. 11. That happened to be the same night Bari Weiss delivered a keynote address at the campaign launch of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto—an event which also received an ample crowd of angry protesters.

Podcast producer Michael Fraiman joins Avi and Phoebe on Bonjour Chai to talk about these issues and more, including the minor political controversy that erupted when an NDP candidate in Montreal distributed leaflets depicting his smiling face before a Palestinian flag.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
• Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

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• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)