An artist retrospective: Montreal-born Jill Ciment’s memoir asks ‘Me Too?’ after the fact
The name Dominique Pelicot has been all over the news, all over social media. A 72-year-old French woman’s husband spent a decade drugging her and inviting dozens of men over to rape his unconscious spouse, something it’s apparently not difficult to find men willing and eager to do.
There are evil men in the world, getting away with things left, right, and centre, undeterred by #MeToo, the 2017 movement that fleetingly made women’s safety the thing everyone who cared cared about. The Taliban for all I know saw the hashtags yet proceeded, undeterred…
The messy fallout of a Brooklyn bookstore cancelling a ‘Zionist’ talk… with two progressive Jews
Joshua Leifer made headline last month when he was slated to do a public talk at a Brooklyn bookstore about his debut book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, and discovered, an hour before the event was scheduled to start, that the event had been unilaterally cancelled by an employee who didn’t want to host a Zionist onstage. (The Zionist in question wasn’t even Leifer—it was the Reform rabbi who would be interviewing Leifer, who, like Leifer, is quite progressive.) Leifer swiftly took to social media, and the story caught fire as the latest example of “cancel culture” silencing Jews in the real world.
To explain the real story of what happened and the fallout he’s faced, Leifer joins Bonjour Chai to discuss the messy middle he’s found himself in—how, despite writing a book that is critical of Israel, he’s suddenly found himself supported by pro-Israel organizations and the Jewish community writ large.
And after that, he sticks around to help explain the recent wave of mass protests in Israel that erupted after six hostages were found murdered in Hamas tunnels. While North American spectators on both pro- and anti-Israel sides would like to map their viewpoints onto Middle Eastern politics, the realities are quite different—and more nuanced.
More of what we’re reading…
Matti Friedman: When We Started to Lie [The Free Press]
The Angst and Sorrow of Jewish Currents [The New Yorker]
Meet the Jewish author who has written a pithier, punchier Project 2025 [JTA]
On AI, Jewish Thought Has Something Distinct to Say [David Zvi Kalman]
TIFF: Anti-Netanyahu Film Premiere Goes Forward in Toronto After Court Motion Fails [The Hollywood Reporter]
Love the what we're reading section.