What happened in the past 12 months? Rather a lot! So to pare it down, I’m limiting this end-of-year recap to things that kept popping up on my own finite radar, with an emphasis on those with relevance to Jewish Canadians. I will not ask whether I missed anything; assume that I have missed—or skipped over—a ton. These are just a handful of the stories about our society I see as relevant going into 2025 and beyond.
The encampment trend that took hold at Columbia University and wound up all over the place—including at numerous Canadian schools—became the big story of 2024 for Jewish media and points beyond, the bold, in-your-face sign that the next generation of cultural elites had made Palestine their cause. Or a sign of something else? Not all the student protesters were students; some were professors, others unaffiliated. And the students not on board with the goings-on were very possibly more likely to demonstrate this by going to class than by organizing a counter-demonstration, although the Jewish professor currently banned by Columbia showed up at the University of Toronto.
Columbia University temporarily banned Jewish Israeli professor-turned-activist Shai Davidai from campus.
Here, he speaks at the University of Toronto rally about antisemitism in academia and beyond.
His presence was denounced by local pro-Palestine groups.#cdnpoli #Toronto… pic.twitter.com/GjwoyWgsf9
First, a small magazine called Guernica had a meltdown when an Israeli writer, Joanna Chen, wrote an arguably pro-Palestinian essay, but did so while being, you know, Israeli. Chen had refused to serve in the IDF, but she was still too Zionistic for the pages in question. Next up, author Joshua Leifer tried to do a book event for his Tablets Shattered, but a Brooklyn bookstore employee cancelled it just as it was about to start.
Less than an hour before the launch event for my book Tablets Shattered, a conversation with Rabbi Andy Bachman, @powerHouseBooks in Brooklyn told me they were unwilling to host the conversation with Andy because they would not permit a Zionist on the premises.
Why was this critical-of-Israel book a problem? The interlocutor was going to be a liberal Zionist and one can’t be having that. The books-and-essays world, once a place where........