Have you heard of the World Zionist Congress before? Until relatively recently, a lot of people hadn't—including two hosts of The CJN's Not in Heaven podcast.

Yet, perhaps owing to the impact of Oct. 7 and the wide-reaching effects of the Israeli government's actions on the Jewish Diaspora, Jews around the world have found themselves not only suddenly attentive to the existence of the World Zionist Congress, but actively vying for a voice at the table. (For more on what's at stake, listen to a recent episode of our sister podcast, North Star.)

And so get-out-the-vote campaigns are in full swing for Zionists to fight over who gets to control a billion-dollar fund. In the U.S., WZC elections set a new turnout record, nearly doubling participation since the last election in 2020. Meanwhile, Canada is holding its first election for the WZC in decades.

This week on Not in Heaven, our rabbinic hosts cast a skeptical eye towards the whole enterprise—while one reveals they are actually a delegate on one of the electoral slates, and explains what that entails.

Elsewhere in this episode, co-host Matthew Leibl reports from his home province of Manitoba, where wildfires coninue to ravage the province, and we discuss Swedish activist Greta Thunberg's flotilla stunt, as she was swiftly deported after trying to float into Gaza to deliver aid.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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The world feels increasingly unsafe for Jews. Digital spaces are riddled with antisemitic rhetoric. Israel recently issued a travel warning for Jews visiting Canada. And, last week, threats turned real when Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., shouting about a free Palestine during his arrest.

One of the hosts of our Not in Heaven podcast, Yedida Eisenstat, lives in the U.S. capital with her family. Another host, Avi Finegold, lives in Chicago—where the suspected killer lived. When danger lurks so close, it becomes an unavoidable topic of conversation across generations.

All three hosts of this show have multiple children, ranging in age from four to 19. In this episode, each shares how they approached the topic with their family: how to speak frankly about world politics to teenagers, how to explainer to grade-schoolers about security guards with bulletproof vests, how to explain your presence at a rally for the hostages when your kids can't grasp what Hamas even is.

They also discuss reactions to the murders, both their own and those who believe the murders were "100 percent justified", and Israel's travel advisory for Canada. Do the words of warning feel justified for Jews actually living here, or is the Jewish State just playing politics?

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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Recently, Congregation Dorshei Emet—the only Reconstructionist synagogue in Quebec, and the oldest in Canada—took a major vote on whether to secede from the official Reconstructing Judaism movement. A microcosm of the province in which it resides, the "remain" faction won. But the results could not mask the increasing schism, which, in turn, has revealed yet another crack in the foundational organizing structure of Jewish life in North America—denominations, otherwise known as movements.

Synagogues vote to change or abandon denominations all the time, and many rabbis—including all three hosts of Not in Heaven—have received, or are receiving, ordination from outside the three main pillars of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Chabad, the most popular rising religious establishment in Judaism, is clearly part of the Haredi community, but proudly does outreach to Jews outside the Orthodox world.

And yet, while the old-school labels may fall away, Jews will always want to know what kind of service they're walking into. Is seating mixed? Will Shabbat services include musical instruments? New labels may well rise to replace the old ones.

Hear the full discussion on this week's episode of Not in Heaven.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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A new study on Canadian Jewry was recently published by Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton in Canadian Jewish Studies, an academic journal out of York University. The numbers show that intermarriage is no longer as rare as it used to be in Canada, with 30 percent of Canadian Jews marrying outside their faith.

Some key takeaways: younger Jews are more likely to intermarry than older ones, and men are more likely to do so than women. There is a strong inverse correlation between Jewish community size and intermarriage rates, too: intermarriage rates are lower in large Jewish communities than they are in smaller ones. Globally, Canada's rate is in line with fellow commonwealth countries the United Kingdom and Australia, but roughly half the rate of the United States.

So what do we make of this? Doomsayers have called intermarriage a "second Holocaust", but the unavoidable reality of young people moving away from religion can't be fought. Should Jewish institutions and community leaders expand their outreach, or do they tighten their grip on what it means to be a Jew? Special guest host Phoebe Maltz Bovy, host of The Jewish Angle, joins to discuss.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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Mainstream Jewish communal leaders have, for ages, been talking about "skewing younger" with programming. But none of them would dare come near Sinners' Shabbat, a sexy, raunchy burlesque show, ripe with bondage ropes, leather skirts, cleavage and kippot and queer couples. Helmed by Tova Sterling, a chef and influencer in New York City, the events were born out of her feeling not at home in conventional Jewish spaces—and finding a community on the fringes.

Meanwhile, not far away, in Manhattan, Chabad debuted Fins and Scales, a pay-what-you-can kosher omakase dining experience at a Chabad house in Greenwich Village. Diners enjoyed lightly charred madai, sea bream and fresh sashimi, happy to take part in a luxurious fine-dining experience if all it cost was a donation and signing up to Chabad's mailing list.

So what's going on here? Are these sorts of ultra-modern shticks the future of Judaism, or just passing gimmicks? And are they even "Jewish" events if they're totally divorced from religion and tradition? The hosts of Not in Heaven share their thoughts and disagreements.

Plus, the hosts recap the tumultuous trauma felt by hundreds of Canadian teenagers on a recent March of the Living trip: they silently recreated the death march from Aushewitz to Birkenau in a walk led by former hostages and survivors of Oct. 7; they felt the heat from forest fires that decimated swaths of the hills surrounding Jerusalem; and on their way out, in Ben Gurion airport, they witnessed a Houthi missile explode on a runway right outside the building. Have the emotional intensity of these trips gone too far? Are we traumatizing future generations in the hopes of having an impact? Our rabbinic hosts weigh in.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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Most Jewish holidays date back thousands of years. We commemorate the time when an ancient Persian with a triangle hat tried to kill the Jews, when the Maccabees rededicated the temple in Jerusalem, when we escaped slavery in Egypt and the seas parted ways. But in the past century, Jews have added three new holidays, all of which fall in the span of a week.

We're now at the tail end of the trilogy of "memory days": Yom HaShoah, Yom ha-Zikaron and Yom ha-Atzmaut. And, perhaps because they're recent additions, the way in which we mark them is susceptible to shifting, particularly after Oct. 7. Just this week, former hostages and survivors of Oct. 7 marched in the March of the Living in Poland. The USC Shoah Foundation is expanding its mission beyond the Shoah, collecting testimonies of antisemitism in the modern world.

It begs the question: How do you memorialize events when you're still living through them?

That's the topic for this week's episode of Not in Heaven, a podcast about the future of communal Judaism. Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat and Matthew Leibl join to discuss these traditions, memory engineering, and how the stories we tell about the past shape our present—and our future.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Marc Weisblott (editorial director), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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It's election season in Canada, with a record-breaking 7.3 million voters having already cast their ballots ahead of April 28. And between Passover seders and weekly Shabbat sermons, there's been no shortage of opportunities for Jewish communal leaders to weigh in on federal affairs during this high-stakes election cycle.

But should they?

An Israeli think tank recently used AI to analyze 4,400 sermons from 2021 to 2024. Across denominations, about half of all sermons focused on politics—with a clear jump to roughly two-thirds post-Oct. 7, including 80 percent of modern Orthodox sermons.

Rabbis are divided. Some see it as their duty to guide their community and stand up for values they believe to be in the best interest of the Jewish people; others prefer to keep divisive topics out of synagogues, focusing instead on what binds us together.

It's a ripe topic for our first-ever episode of Not in Heaven, The CJN's new podcast about the future of communal Judaism, taking over our previous weekly debate program, Bonjour Chai. Avi Finegold returns with a new panel of rabbinic voices: Yedida Eisenstat is a scholar, writer and associate editor at the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization in Washington, D.C.; and Matthew Leibl is a freelance rabbi in Winnipeg with a background in sports radio.

"How should your Jewish values affect your vote?": Read the new On One Foot column by Avi Finegold in the Spring 2025 premiere issue of Scribe Quarterly

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Marc Weisblott (editorial director), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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• Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here)

It's that time of year again, when all of us at Bonjour Chai reach out to noteworthy, interesting, prominent Canadian Jews to share their thoughts, stories and memories of Passover. This is the fourth annual Great Canadian Seder, featuring political musings on national borders, Donald Trump and Israeli hostages; nostalgia for a bygone Canada; and one very unique love letter to Moses.

Plus, to kick things off, we're sitting down with the new hosts of this soon-to-be-rebranded podcast, Rabbi Matthew Leibl and Yedida Eisenstat,. Stay tuned later this month for the launch of Not in Heaven, a podcast discussing the future of Jewish communal life, right in this same podcast feed.

In this year's seder, you'll hear from:

• Jonathan Rothman, staff reporter at The CJN
• Jacob Samuel, comedian
• Diane Flacks, actor and writer
• Mike Wilner, sports columnist and broadcaster
• Maya Ben David, performance artist
• Rabbi Susan Tendler, Beth Tikvah Congregation
• Talia Schlanger, singer and radio host
• Rabbi Sean Gorman, executive director of Mercaz
• Gary Topp, countercultural promoter
• Bryan Borzykowski, chair of The CJN board

Credits

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

Support The CJN

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• Subscribe to Bonjour Chai (Not sure how? Click here)