The Jewish Angle

When Zohran Mamdani announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City in late 2024, he flew under the radar of voters and critics. But as his campaign gained steam—notably for arguably radical proposals such as free bus fares, municipally owned grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage—he wound up overtaking his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, and winning the Democratic candidacy for an election that will take place Nov. 4, 2025.

Some of New York City's Jews started to fret. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, is a vocal ally of Palestinians and a crit...

Hadley Freeman often goes back and forth, in her head, about Israel and Palestine. One the one hand, Israel has killed more than 57,000 Gazans; on the other hand, can you trust those figures when they come from Hamas? But what other number can you trust, if Israel refuses to allow in international reporters? Then again, can you even trust outsider news media anyway, or are they blatantly biased?

And on, and on.

This internal dialogue formed the basis for a compelling new article she wrote in The Times in the U.K, entitled, "A conversation...

On Mar. 3, Ellie Avishai hopped on a call with a senior colleague from the University of Austin in Texas. She was shocked when the colleague informed her a recent LinkedIn post of hers—an anodyne post of maybe 100 words, mostly a quotation and congratulation, which she had not given much thought to previously—had gotten her into big trouble with a university funder. In her post, which dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, she wrote that "we can have criticisms of DEI without wanting to tear down the whole concept of diversity and inclusion."

That ran...

The mainstream North American Jewish Diaspora is at a crossroads. Down one path lies U.S. President Donald Trump, American Evangelicals and legacy Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and American Israel Public Affairs Committee, staunchly defending Israel to the general public; down the other, small-L liberal Jews find themselves awkwardly situated between arguing for Israel's right to exist while not endorsing the government's actions, and lacking significant fundraising capabilities to plea their case more broadly.

In some ways, this schism is reminiscent of the early days of Zionism itself, where politics and money influence public opinion...

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump tried to revoke Harvard University's ability to enroll international students—a move that was soon blocked by a federal judge. So, instead, on May 26, Trump floated the idea of taking US$3 billion of grant money, earmarked for Harvard's scientific and engineering research deemed of national importance, and rerouting it to trade schools.

Nevermind the logistics—the Republican president has waged an all-out war on Ivy League education, and Jews are, once again, caught in the middle. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has said the White Hous...

Over the last year, odds are good that you've seen what's been dubbed "AI slop"—unhinged, nonsensical "art" generated by artificial intelligence tools. Maybe you've seen a bizarre cinematic animated mini-movie on Facebook, surreal pseudo-photographs on Instagram, or propagandistic images on what was once known as Twitter, now X. After seeing enough of this, a realization dawned on Jacob Silverman, a journalist in New York who covers technology and politics: if it's machines making this art, and bots who are showering them with likes, where do humans fit in?

The answer is that actual living people are be...

Yoel Inbar rose to prominence in the fall of 2023, when he was in the process of getting hired at the University of California, Los Angeles. He didn't end up getting the job—and it was transparently about a podcast episode he'd recorded a year earlier, in which he criticized "diversity statements". The mandated letters have become part of the academic hiring process, page-long essays explaining how the candidate would contribute to campus diversity. Inbar wrote one for UCLA—and has been involved in hiring processes, finding them useful tools—but has been outspoken of the concept as a blanket rule...

This month, the Federal Trade Commission in the United States finally brought a long-awaited antitrust court case against Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC is arguing that Meta has a monopoly on the social networking space, which has squandered competition in the market. Critics point out that this might have been the case a decade ago, before TikTok entered the scene, but is simply no longer true.

That Facebook no longer has a monopoly on digital friend networks is not the only erstwhile stereotype about social media. In the bygone era before "...

On the eve of Canada's federal election, U.S. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social, the little-used social media website he created, to recommend Canadians head to the polls and vote for... Donald Trump. "IT WAS MEANT TO BE," he typed, in all-caps, prompting the vast majority of Canadians to roll their eyes and remain in minimal voting lines, eagerly awaiting their election results to roll in well before bedtime.

In spite of Trump's demands, Canadians are prioritizing nationalism and sovereignty in this election, with a spotlight being shone on the distinctions between Canada and the...

The United States has historically been unusually resistant to antisemitism, for a number of reasons: some that speak well of America; others that are more the result of Americans preferring to pick on other marginalized minorities over Jews. But right-wing antisemitism has flourished in the age of social media and President Donald Trump's first term in office, and left-wing antisemitism has skyrocketed since Oct. 7.

Now the U.S. seems less apart from other countries vis-a-vis antisemitism. And with Donald Trump back in the White House, he's brandishing a shiny new executive order for combatting antisemitism. His administration...

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.