On the Nose

By Jewish Currents

Society & Culture Religion & Spirituality Judaism

What's On the Nose about?

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.

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On the Nose episodes:

05.02.2024
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 were accepted into the show identified themselves openly in the application as...
04.26.2024
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, Jewish Currents will match leftist thinkers and organizers with a rabbi or Torah scholar....
04.25.2024
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 encampment on a lawn in the center of campus. The group of students was subsequently suspended, and...
04.11.2024
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, heralds the end of the “golden age of American Jews,” while another, by Theo Baker,...
03.28.2024
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 decision to support a Black student seeking justice for the police murder of...
03.14.2024
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 like “apartheid” and “settler colonialism,” or “the right to exist” and “human shields,” usually offering...
02.22.2024
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 that marked the most consequential victory for the Hindu nationalist movement in its 100-year...
02.08.2024
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 Religious Zionism is on the rise, and it’s often seen as unusual to be both religious and left-wing....
02.01.2024
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 found South Africa’s argument to be “plausible”—meaning it will allow the case to go...
01.03.2024
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 to Starbucks to Harvard. Perhaps most critically, legacy unions are experiencing a democratic...
12.28.2023
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 from the serious (Torah study) to the relatively frivolous (HBO’s Girls). We planned to release the episode...
12.21.2023
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. Sayegh and Shehada discuss what it was like growing up under Hamas rule, how Hamas governs, the motivations...
12.08.2023
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 same question: What do we do with our families? How do...
11.16.2023
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 collective, whether adopted or imposed—shapes the politics of our time. Klein’s frequent confusion with...
11.09.2023
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 Israelis and proclaimed support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Far fewer have expressed sorrow...
10.31.2023
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 expressed alienation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government have mostly united around a pro-Israel...
10.26.2023
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 Israeli civilians, and Israeli society itself, which is largely supportive of the state’s campaign of vengeance...
10.19.2023
"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 Israeli hostages, most of whom are still captive in the Gaza Strip. Israel responded to...
09.28.2023
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) in response to the group’s attempts, along with several other advocacy organizations, to encourage an advertiser boycott of X....
09.14.2023
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 halakha (Jewish religious law). These pieces speak to questions of Jewish life and practice for trans...
08.31.2023
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 film who also stars as Bernstein—wearing a prosthetic nose, intended to resemble Bernstein’s own formidable schnoz. Because...
08.17.2023
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 that depicts the complexities of the US left during and after World War II. As the movie...
08.03.2023
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 children with an escape from the city. The camp, which was founded with a commitment to...
07.20.2023
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, Jewish Currents will match leftist thinkers and organizers with a rabbi or Torah scholar....
07.06.2023
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 political groups fashioned after AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee; these organizations have...
06.22.2023
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 neighborhoods—to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the largest militarized police training center in the US. In...
06.08.2023
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 rural hamlets in the south of the occupied West Bank. Israel had previously designated...
05.25.2023
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 Jewish singles find their beshert, or soulmate. While Indian Matchmaking documents contemporary approaches to an ancient custom,...
05.11.2023
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 killing. Now, a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) finds that the...
04.27.2023
Fighting Anti-Trans Legislation in Missouri
Trans youth are under severe attack around the country. Sixteen states have enacted laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for young people. At least 15 others are considering similar laws. Missouri is one of those states: State Republicans are pushing...
04.13.2023
The Politics of "The Last of Us"
Despite the progressive politics of early zombie films like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, modern narratives about zombies are often strikingly conservative, displaying a world that rewards rugged individualism and presents a pessimistic view of human nature. The...
03.30.2023
Unpacking Israel’s Political Crisis
After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed his defense minister for calling for a halt to government plans to gut the power of Israel’s judiciary, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, participating in spontaneous mass protests and...
03.23.2023
Two Paths for the Jewish Bachelor Contestant
On episode 8, season 27 of The Bachelor, contestant Ariel Frenkel, who hails from a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant family in New York, is seen leading all-American Bachelor Zach Shallcross around New York City, feeding him cow tongue sandwiches and gefilte...
03.09.2023
The Trouble with Germany, Part II
In recent years, German state officials and media outlets have cracked down on Palestinian speech and activism. In 2019, the German parliament passed a nonbinding resolution declaring the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement antisemitic, and comparing it to Nazi...
02.23.2023
Representation and Exclusion at Israel’s Anti-Government Protests
Since early January, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have participated in weekly protests against the right-wing Israeli government’s proposals to weaken the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. The protesters have framed their efforts as a bid to save “Israeli democracy”—rhetoric...
02.09.2023
You People
A new Netflix-produced romcom by Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris tells the story of Ezra, a white Jew, and Amira, a Black Muslim, whose love affair is challenged by the patronizing, casual racism of Ezra’s progressive mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and...
01.26.2023
Fables and Lies
Last month saw the release of two autobiographical films, now both Oscar nominees, about young artists growing up in complicated, 20th-century American Jewish families. In The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg follows a precocious child filmmaker, Sammy Fabelman, as he turns his...
01.11.2023
Chevruta: Debt
Chevruta is a new column named for the traditional method of Jewish study, in which a pair of students analyzes a religious text together. In each installment, Jewish Currents will match leftist thinkers and organizers with a rabbi or Torah...
12.21.2022
Who Is Tom Stoppard’s “Jewish Play” For?
Tom Stoppard, perhaps the most famous living British playwright, learned only in his fifties that his mother’s family was Jewish and that nearly all her relatives were killed in the Holocaust—a fate his own immediate family narrowly escaped. Now in...
12.08.2022
The Meaning of Apartheid
In the last two years, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have begun using the word “apartheid” to describe Israeli rule over Palestinians, marking a significant shift within the human rights establishment. But Palestinian intellectuals have been critiquing Israeli apartheid...
11.23.2022
“The Jews”
Dave Chappelle’s controversial monologue on the November 12th episode of Saturday Night Live, which found much to laugh at in Kanye West’s and Kyrie Irving’s recent antisemitic remarks, set off a new round of discourse about blackness, Jewishness, power, and...
11.08.2022
Victory for Netanyahu’s Far-Right Alliance
In last Tuesday’s Knesset elections, the Israeli electorate delivered a big win to Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition in the fifth Israeli election since 2019. The right-wing bloc won 64 Knesset seats, which will likely give Netanayhu and allied...
10.20.2022
Ye
In the last week and a half, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, been photographed with far-right provocateur Candace Owens wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, and tweeted that...
10.13.2022
Gaza Under Blockade
For 15 years, Israel has imposed an air, land, and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, barring most Palestinians in the coastal enclave from leaving the area under any circumstances. Fishermen who venture out past an Israeli-imposed limit are shot at and...
09.29.2022
Yeshiva Education
In the wake of the recent extensive New York Times investigation into Hasidic yeshivas, a fierce and often acrimonious debate has emerged about the ethics of covering the Hasidic world from the outside, how private institutions that receive government funds...
09.15.2022
Mom Save America
On this episode, Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel talks with her mother, Jeri Cohen, co-founder of the Women’s Emergency Network, the first abortion fund in South Florida. Cohen, who spent 28 years as a judge in child abuse and dependency...
08.25.2022
Documenting the Struggle
On this episode, Jewish Currents Contributing Editor Joshua Leifer talks with Oren Ziv—co-founder of the award-winning photojournalist collective Activestills and reporter for +972 Magazine and its Hebrew sister site, Local Call—about Oren’s decade-plus experience documenting protest and resistance in Israel/Palestine....
08.11.2022
The Scream Clarifies an Elsewhere
Last week, Graywolf Press released Civil Service, the debut poetry collection by Jewish Currents Culture Editor Claire Schwartz. The book is a daring study of the violence woven into our world, from everyday encounters to the material of language itself....
07.28.2022
The Trouble with Germany, Part 1
On this episode, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with two Germany-based writers and organizers, Emily Dische-Becker and Michael Sappir, about the bizarre and worrisome ways that Germany’s understandably zealous Holocaust memory culture is playing out among Jews, Palestinians, and...
07.14.2022
¡Inquilinos Unidos, Jamás Serán Vencidos!
Late last month, the Autonomous Tenants Union Network—a collaboration of tenant unions from cities across North America—held its first-ever in-person convention in Los Angeles. ATUN formed in 2018 to consolidate the energies of a movement that has exploded in scope...

What's On the Nose about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

On the Nose episodes:

Controversy at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

Chevruta: Understanding Aaron Bushnell’s Sacrifice

Jewish Organizing at Columbia’s Encampment

Unpacking the Campus Antisemitism Narrative

Campus Politics Takes the Stage in "The Ally"

Language, the Media, and Palestine

Hindu Nationalism’s New Temple

Israel’s Emerging Religious Left

Charging Israel with Genocide

Labor’s Palestine Paradox

Bonus Episode: Mailbag

Hamas: Past, Present, and Future

Talking to Our Families

Naomi Klein on Israel’s “Doppelganger Politics”

Cori Bush’s Ceasefire Plea

A Surge in American Jewish Left Organizing

The Loneliness of the Israeli Left

"Unsettled" After October 7th

Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL, with "Know Your Enemy"

Trans Halakha

Nosegate

The Jewishness of “Oppenheimer”

Camp Kinderland at 100

Chevruta: Be Fruitful and Multiply?

What Indian Ethnonationalists Learned From Israel Advocates

The Struggle to Stop Cop City

The Plight of Masafer Yatta

The Agony and the Ecstasy of "Jewish Matchmaking"

Still No Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh

Fighting Anti-Trans Legislation in Missouri

The Politics of "The Last of Us"

Unpacking Israel’s Political Crisis

Two Paths for the Jewish Bachelor Contestant

The Trouble with Germany, Part II

Representation and Exclusion at Israel’s Anti-Government Protests

You People

Fables and Lies

Chevruta: Debt

Who Is Tom Stoppard’s “Jewish Play” For?

The Meaning of Apartheid

“The Jews”

Victory for Netanyahu’s Far-Right Alliance

Ye

Gaza Under Blockade

Yeshiva Education

Mom Save America

Documenting the Struggle

The Scream Clarifies an Elsewhere

The Trouble with Germany, Part 1

¡Inquilinos Unidos, Jamás Serán Vencidos!