Conscious Uncoupling

Quick editorial announcement: after four years of weekly shows this will be the final regular episode of Bonjour Chai. After Passover, this podcast feed will be relaunching as Not in Heaven, a series focusing on the future of Jewish communal life in Canada and beyond. Avi Finegold will remain as host, and he'll be joined by a panel of bright, funny, critical Jewish minds. Phoebe Maltz Bovy is excited to launch a new series with The CJN: The Jewish Angle. Hear the trailer and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the past month, two works of documentary activism have been put into duelling positions in the box office. No Other Land, which documents the destruction of a Palestinian village in the West Bank, and which won the Oscar for best documentary, has been getting North American cinema owners in hot water: the mayor of Miami threatened to evict a theatre that screened it, while Jewish communities across Canada and the U.S. have held protests with similar outrage. The industry counterargument is Oct. 8, which details the emergence of campus antisemitism after the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and features interviews with Bari Weiss, Michael Rapaport, and Sheryl Sandberg, among other pro-Israel voices.

Paying to see either film—or supporting one while calling to ban the other—has made movie theatres the latest venue in the broader divide between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities. Avi Finegold saw No Other Land in theatres, and came away with many thoughts.

After that, Phoebe Maltz Bovy dives into the Jewish Yale professors ostensibly "fleeing" the U.S. for Canada in the wake of Trump's election... even though the reality may not be as drastic as it seems.

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