Shows / On the Nose
On the Nose
On the Nose is a biweekly podcast by Jewish Currents, a magazine of the Jewish left founded in 1946. The editorial staff discusses the politics, culture, and questions that animate today’s Jewish left.
Episodes
- On the Nose
Understanding the Immigration Crackdown
From the ICE arrest and detention of pro-Palestinian organizers to the mass revocation of student visas to the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El…
- On the Nose
Zohran Mamdani’s Moral Stand
In October 2024, Zohran Mamdani launched his New York City mayoral campaign in relative obscurity. Half a year later, excitement about the state assemblymember…
- On the Nose
Debating Zionist Realism
In a recent article in Jewish Currents, Jon Danforth-Appell proposes that the Jewish left is operating under a paradigm of what he calls “Zionist realism.”…
- On the Nose
Higher Ed Under Attack
Last week, Columbia capitulated to Trump’s extensive demands on the university, in hopes of recovering $400 million in government funding that was revoked by…
- On the Nose
The Jewish Institutional Reaction to Mahmoud Khalil's Abduction
On March 8th, federal immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, in his New York home and moved…
- On the Nose
Assessing Trump’s Gaza Expulsion Fantasy
On February 4th, President Donald Trump said that all Palestinians in Gaza should leave the coastal enclave and go to other Arab countries such as Egypt or…
- On the Nose
An Unproductive Ambiguity
Brady Corbet’s epic Academy Award-nominated film, The Brutalist, traces the career and personal life of fictional architect and Holocaust survivor László Toth…
- On the Nose
Israel’s Ever-Expanding War on the West Bank
Israeli warplanes have stopped dropping bombs on Gaza, at least for now, but there’s no ceasefire in the occupied West Bank. Since October 2023, and especially…
- On the Nose
Scrutinizing the Gaza Ceasefire Deal
On Sunday, Israel and Hamas entered into the first phase of what could become a permanent ceasefire. Under the agreement that led to the pause, Israel will…
- On the Nose
Voices from Gaza
On this episode of On the Nose—a recording of an online event for Jewish Currents members, co-sponsored by the Beinart Notebook—editor-at-large Peter Beinart…
- On the Nose
Preparing for Trump’s Repression
Since October 2023, Palestine solidarity activists have faced a climate of McCarthyist repression, and all signs point to the incoming Trump administration…
- On the Nose
Jesse Eisenberg's Holocaust Road Trip
A Real Pain is a film starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Kulkin as two American Jewish cousins who take a trip to Poland to visit the childhood home of their…
- On the Nose
Volatile Emotions
On this episode of On the Nose—recorded at an online event on October 30th—editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with author Naomi Klein and writer and clinical…
- On the Nose
Bipartisan Empire: Foreign Policy, Regional War, and the 2024 Election
On this special episode of On the Nose—recorded live on November 4th at McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan—Jewish Currents senior reporter Alex Kane hosts a…
- On the Nose
The Other ADLs
In 2003, a group of Indian Americans deeply involved in India's Hindu supremacist, or Hindutva, movement established the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), an…
- On the Nose
What Ta-Nehisi Coates Saw
Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the most celebrated American political writers of our time, devotes much of his new book, The Message, to a withering and deeply…
- On the Nose
Palestinian Liberation After the Destruction of Gaza
On this episode of On the Nose—recorded live at Jewish Currents’s daylong event on September 15th—editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with a panel of authors…
- On the Nose
"Between the Covers" Live: Dionne Brand and Adania Shibli
For this live taping of the literary podcast Between the Covers—recorded at Jewish Currents’s daylong event on September 15th and presented in partnership with…
- On the Nose
"The Dig" Live: Internationalism After Third Worldism
In this live taping of Jacobin’s podcast The Dig—recorded at Jewish Currents’s recent daylong event and presented in partnership with On the Nose—host Daniel…
- On the Nose
Talking About Antisemitism
Recently, far-right figures like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have hitched their anti-Israel politics to blatant antisemitism, platforming Holocaust denial…
- On the Nose
The Killing of Ismail Haniyeh
On July 31st, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top political leader, was killed in Iran. Haniyeh came to the capital city of Tehran for the presidential inauguration…
- On the Nose
The Escalating Regional War
Since October 7th, a low-grade regional war has played out across the Middle East, pitting Israel and its Western allies against various Iran-backed forces…
- On the Nose
Chevruta: Voting
Should leftists vote for the Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election? Many have balked at supporting an administration that has funded and armed…
- On the Nose
J.D. Vance’s Foreign Policy Vision
Donald Trump’s decision to tap Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate marks the culmination of a Republican foreign policy transformation. While some…
- On the Nose
The Fraught Promise of Arab-Jewish Identity
Until 1948, around 800,000 Jews lived as an organic and inseparable part of the Arab Middle East and North Africa. But political shifts in the mid-20th century…
- On the Nose
Jamaal Bowman’s Primary Loss
On June 25th, New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his primary election to George Latimer, a longtime Democratic Westchester County politician. The race…
- On the Nose
“Beyond the Capacity of English to See”
In May 2021, Palestinian American poet, physician, translator, and essayist Fady Joudah wrote two poems engaged with the violence of Israeli apartheid…
- On the Nose
Synagogue Struggles
Since October 7th, American Jews have been sharply divided over Israel’s war on Gaza—a fracture that has been manifest within all manner of institutions…
- On the Nose
Religion, Secularism, and the Jewish Left
On March 29th, Jewish Currents began publishing a short commentary on the parshah—the portion of the Torah that Jews traditionally read each week—in the…
- On the Nose
The End of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
On April 7th, Larry David’s sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm—which debuted in 2000 and ran on and off for 24 years—concluded its twelfth and final season. For many…
- On the Nose
On Zionism and Anti-Zionism
The recent wave of anti-Zionist Gaza solidarity protest encampments on college campuses has reignited a longstanding public debate over how to define…
- On the Nose
Controversy at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Last fall, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco put out an open call for artists to apply for the California Jewish Open. Some of the artists that…
- On the Nose
Chevruta: Understanding Aaron Bushnell’s Sacrifice
Chevruta is a column named for the traditional method of Jewish study, in which a pair of students analyzes a religious text together. In each installment…
- On the Nose
Jewish Organizing at Columbia’s Encampment
Last week, the NYPD—called in by Columbia University president Minouche Shafik—arrested 108 Columbia and Barnard students, who had set up a Gaza solidarity…
- On the Nose
Unpacking the Campus Antisemitism Narrative
In recent months, a buzzy new pair of articles on the specter of rising “Israel-related” antisemitism have arrived in The Atlantic. One, by Franklin Foer…
- On the Nose
Campus Politics Takes the Stage in "The Ally"
In The Ally—a new play at the Public Theater by Itamar Moses—an Israeli American adjunct professor is forced to confront the limits of his solidarity when his…
- On the Nose
Language, the Media, and Palestine
In the public sphere, the discursive battle over Israel and Palestine often comes down to language, with one’s willingness to use individual words and phrases…
- On the Nose
Hindu Nationalism’s New Temple
On January 22nd, India’s far-right prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram Mandir, a gargantuan new temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram, in an event…
- On the Nose
Israel’s Emerging Religious Left
In recent years, religious Jewish communities around the world have turned increasingly toward the right. In Israel, the overwhelmingly right-wing ideology of…
- On the Nose
Charging Israel with Genocide
On January 26th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an interim ruling on South Africa’s charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The ICJ…
- On the Nose
Labor’s Palestine Paradox
The US labor movement has had an exciting few years. Labor unions are gaining popularity among the general public as workers organize at new shops from Amazon…
- On the Nose
Bonus Episode: Mailbag
Many months ago, we solicited questions from you, our listeners, for our first-ever mailbag episode. The result was a wide-ranging conversation that wandered…
- On the Nose
Hamas: Past, Present, and Future
In this episode, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart speaks with two political analysts from Gaza living abroad, Khalil Sayegh and Muhammad Shehada…
- On the Nose
Talking to Our Families
In late October, we received a letter: “In almost every conversation I have with young Jews on the left, I find that we are all currently struggling with the…
- On the Nose
Naomi Klein on Israel’s “Doppelganger Politics”
In her new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, leftist public intellectual Naomi Klein argues that the phenomenon of “doubling”—of the self or a…
- On the Nose
Cori Bush’s Ceasefire Plea
Since October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel began its ongoing bombardment of Gaza, almost every member of Congress has denounced the killings of…
- On the Nose
A Surge in American Jewish Left Organizing
In the weeks since October 7th, when Hamas attacked the south of Israel and Israel began bombing Gaza, American Jewish institutions that had previously…
- On the Nose
The Loneliness of the Israeli Left
Since Hamas’s October 7th attack, Israeli leftists have felt squeezed between a global left response that has sometimes justified or downplayed the deaths of…
- On the Nose
"Unsettled" After October 7th
On Saturday, October 7th, Hamas launched a surprise attack across the Gaza border, killing more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and taking at least 150…
- On the Nose
Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL, with "Know Your Enemy"
Throughout September, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—has targeted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)…
- On the Nose
Trans Halakha
Earlier this year, the Trans Halakha Project—an initiative of SVARA, a queer and trans yeshiva—published a series of teshuvot, or answers to questions about…
- On the Nose
Nosegate
Two weeks ago, a trailer was released for the new Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. Immediately, controversy surfaced about Bradley Cooper—the director of the…
- On the Nose
The Jewishness of “Oppenheimer”
Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed new biopic about the physicist who oversaw the invention of the atomic bomb, is the rare mass-market feature film…
- On the Nose
Camp Kinderland at 100
In 1923, Jewish union activists affiliated with the Workmen’s Circle bought a plot of land in Hopewell Junction, New York, aiming to provide working-class…
- On the Nose
Chevruta: Be Fruitful and Multiply?
Chevruta is a column named for the traditional method of Jewish study, in which a pair of students analyzes a religious text together. In each installment…
- On the Nose
What Indian Ethnonationalists Learned From Israel Advocates
For decades, diaspora Hindus have looked to American Jews as role models for attaining political power in the United States. Hindu Americans have established…
- On the Nose
The Struggle to Stop Cop City
In September 2021, the Atlanta City Council approved a proposal to lease 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest—stolen Muscogee land surrounded by majority-Black…
- On the Nose
The Plight of Masafer Yatta
In May 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition against the forced transfer of more than 1,000 Palestinians who live in Masafer Yatta, a region of…
- On the Nose
The Agony and the Ecstasy of "Jewish Matchmaking"
Netflix’s new reality show Jewish Matchmaking, a follow-up to its hit series Indian Matchmaking, follows Orthodox matchmaker Aleeza Ben Shalom as she helps…
- On the Nose
Still No Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh
One year ago, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. To this day, no Israeli soldier has been indicted for the…