This week's abrupt resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland from cabinet has rocked the federal government. It happened the same day Sean Fraser, the minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, stepped down; both he and Freeland join a long and growing list of cabinet members and Liberal backbenchers either resigning their cabinet positions, deciding not to run again in the next election, or outright calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down.

They're not alone: all signs point to the federal Conservatives crushing the Liberals in next year's election. Multiple recent byelections, including the heavily Jewish Toronto-St. Paul's in midtown Toronto, have swung from red to blue in recent years. And it's against that backdrop that Hal Niedzviecki, the author and founder of the recently-in-the-news, now-defunct Broken Pencil magazine, posted on social media, "For the first time in my life I'll be voting Conservative."

One week after discussing the Israel-induced implosion at Broken Pencil on this very podcast, we invite Niedzviecki to discuss the changing political climate, how the progressive left is losing support, and his side of what happened at the indie publication he founded in 1995.

Credits

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

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This week, the New Israel Fund of Canada, JSpace Canada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now released a survey of 588 Jewish Canadians that aimed to figure out the community's relationship to Israel. In short: it's complicated.

The survey, managed by Leger, found that 94 percent of respondents agreed Israel "has the right to exist as a Jewish state"—yet only 51 percent self-identified as "Zionist". This startling contradiction could reveal how tarnished the brand of Zionism has become, regardless of Jewish Canadians' opinions on Israel itself, and dispels the myth of the Jewish community being monolithic about its opinions towards the Holy Land, its voting patterns and its values. Can Zionism be saved? Or should we all just ditch labels and talk about the issues?

To learn more about the key takeaways, we invited Ben Murane and Maytal Kowalski, the executive directors of the New Israel Fund of Canada and JSpace Canada, respectively, to come on Bonjour Chai and explain their motivations for commissioning the survey and how we can digest the data. Listen to that interview above.

After that, Avi and Phoebe dig into the anthology book On Being Jewish Now, which Phoebe had previously not read—then was called out for—and has since read every page of. Avi read it, too, and they dig into the politics of not paying Jewish writers for their work while purporting to support Jewish artists.

Credits

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

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to the Bonjour Chai Substack
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• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)

The war between Israel and Hamas has claimed yet another casualty in the Canadian arts world: Broken Pencil, an independent magazine that has covered zine culture since 1995, has been shut down. Founder and publisher Hal Niedzviecki wrote on their website that "the values of the zine and small press community have shifted," adding that "the relentless pursuit of ideological purity and identity politics has overshadowed the core mission of Broken Pencil." He cited calls for his resignation, a petition for the publication to join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, and pushes to cover what's happening in Gaza as reasons for his eventual decision.

This leads to a few obvious questions. Does a Canadian publication that covers the zine world have a responsibility to focus on Gaza? Can people not hold complex views on creators and the things they create—or must everything we enjoy be ideologically syncronized?

Avi and Phoebe discuss on the latest episode of Bonjour Chai. And before that, they dig into the role of activism in literature, pressures faced by Jewish fiction writers and the efficacy of antisemitism summits. Do they do anything—and do we really need another one?

Credits

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

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to the Bonjour Chai Substack
• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)