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Feeling haunted by tariff talk? Take comfort in how Great Britian was once soothed by a bubbe’s ghost
These are strange times, but that much weirder if you happen to be a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. In one sense, it ought to mean being blasé about such questions as whether Canada becomes the 51st state, something President Trump keeps threatening to make happen. It would just mean easier taxes for people like me and better flavours of Häagen-Dazs, right?
But somehow, I care. I really am dually loyal here. I want the best for the United States, which includes it not imploding just because one president is particularly deranged. And I want the best for Canada—the place where I live and am raising a family—and that starts with its continued independent existence, but extends to it not being cowed in trade war by a tech-bro-helmed puppet regime.
It seems unlikely that we’re about to see the U.S. do to Canada what Russia has to Ukraine—and unclear if the tariffs themselves are even going to happen—but I’m not sure the alleged grownups in charge know what their plans are. I feel no sense of smug for having initially (as in, in 2016) been one of those people saying, yeah right, Donald Trump becoming president, and am not particularly interested, this time around, in cultivated a jaded, this-isn’t-going-to-be-anything stance.
And no, I’m not convinced that by dismantling DEI and deporting campus antisemites, the new administration has Jews’ back. (Insofar as such developments are unambiguously beneficial to Jews. I’d say ambiguously at best, at best.) Jews need to buy eggs too, right? And that’s not even getting into the implications for kosher food prices if tariffs proceed.
Or if you’re more into kosher-style, I highly recommend the Ukrainian potato-onion pierogies from the new Multicook on Roncesvalles. Unmistakably made in Canada as there are women in the window literally making them before your eyes.
But it’s easy to doomscroll, which is why I suggest that you offset some of your own jaw-drops at the state of intra-North American relations with a sitcom from a time when none of this nonsense was going on. (Other nonsense, but not this nonsense.)
***
Did you ever find yourself wondering, what if Midsomer Murders, but Jewish and a sitcom?
From 1992 to 1994, a British sitcom aired by the name of So Haunt Me. It’s about the Rokeby family, who’ve moved on down to a less-nice house on account of the father having lost his advertising job. Things are looking a bit grim, but also a bit… spooky. Why was that mug moving like that? It’s clear something is afoot, and that it can’t be burglars because they’ve nothing to burgle.
The supernatural force turns out to be Yetta Feldman, a Jewish mother who once lived in the house, and as far as she’s concerned it’s still hers. She freaked out and drove away more than a dozen families but has decided that the Rokebies are honorary Jews and is fine with them staying. She sits in the kitchen, visible only to some of the newly-arrived family members, and complains about her own adult daughter—Carole with an e she specifies—having taken up with an unsuccessful musician. She grimaces when she overhears her this-life counterparts saying they’re going to make bacon. Bacon! But hers is a Jewish house. This she insists upon.
It’s all done very theatrically, where it’s acting rather than wild special effects conveying that one of the people on the set is a ghost. It seems like it might not work, but it does.
So Haunt Me stars George Costigan and Tessa Peake-Jones, both of whom have had Midsomer roles, but do you know who plays their sullen teenage daughter? Cully! Yes, Laura Howard, who plays Inspector Tom Barnaby’s aspiring-actress daughter on Midsomer, apparently got her big break on So Haunt Me. Same actress but a very different character, which I understand is what actual television critics refer to as range.
And then there’s Yetta herself, played by Miriam Karlin, a prolific British-Jewish actress. Like Grandma Yetta on The Nanny, this Yetta plays a specific Jewish mother, stereotypical but not just. Like The Nanny, it’s a show unafraid of Othering non-Jews, of showing the world from the perspective
I am but one episode in—with 18 more to go—and already thinking about the dissertation that someone could write (won’t, but could) about what the show means about the idea of Jews as settlers. Yetta views herself as the original and only authentic inhabitant! That’s why she’s not budging.
Yes, as has been pointed out to me, the haunted-by-Jewish-mother thing is a bit like Oedipus Wrecks, Woody Allen’s contribution to the 1989 anthology film New York Stories. In it, an Allen alter-ego character’s mother hovers in the sky, as a kind of visible spectre, telling him—before an audience of ordinary New Yorkers—how to live his life. Did Mendelson get the idea from Allen?
Not necessarily!
I heard a podcast interview with show creator Paul Mendelson where he was explaining that he had pitched So Haunt Me first, but been told it was too ethnic, and that you couldn’t have a show with kids and a dog. This—the casual antisemitism, ageism, and dog-o-phobia of the television world of 1980s Britain—is why he instead made sitcom May to December, which first aired in… 1989. Once that show was a success, he was given license to do So Haunt Me.
Because this is how I spend my limited time on the planet, I had been wondering whether there was anything Jewish about May to December. Does Scottishness serve as a proxy for Jewishness? (Mendelson himself grew up partly in Glasgow so it might be that Scottishness is serving as a proxy for… Scottishness.) Is the sarcastic humour different from that of other Britcoms? (No, they’re all like that.)
Effectively, no, there is nothing obviously Jewish about May to December, unless you take law offices as inherently Jewish environments. There are the jokes about middle aged soliciter Alec’s adult daughter Simone being a Nazi, but this is meant as, she’s uptight and conservative, not that she is rounding up Jews. Mendelson has said that every episode includes people having cake and coffee, and that this is a Jewish quality, but there is also the thing where Alec pours himself (or is poured) a Scotch when he gets home, which seems gentile-coded.
The only thing I can think of is that the age-gap relationship at the core of the show is played a bit like an intermarriage plot. It’s all about whether others approve or disapprove. The couple’s always surrounded by some mix of disapproving killjoy women and approving, would-if-I-could-saying men. Is Alec’s wife Zoë’s youth a stand-in for non-Jewishness? Is it, deep down, a shiksa plot?
These are all questions I would like nothing more than to ask Paul Mendelson, should he wish to discuss his earlier works on a podcast produced by The Canadian Jewish News. Just putting this out there into the universe. If you will Britcom legends as podcast guests it’s no fairytale.
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour Chai. For more opinions about Jewish culture wars, subscribe to the free Bonjour Chai newsletter on Substack.
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Israeli Arms Firm Threatens to Sue France Over Blocked Off Booths at Paris Air Show
View of the closed IAI stand at the 55th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport on June 16, 2025. Photo: Facebook/Israel Ministry of Defense
The Israeli weapons company Rafael said it will sue the French government for closing off its stand at the 55th Paris Air Show this week because of “offensive” items on display amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Since the start of the world’s biggest aviation trade show on Monday in Le Bourget Airport, four of the nine Israeli companies presenting at the event — Rafael, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and UVision — have been completely blocked off behind black walls, which were erected by event organizers on behalf of the French government. French authorities claimed Israel was displaying “offensive” weapons systems in violation of an agreement with the Israeli government.
“Offensive weapons equipment marketed by the firms could not be exhibited, given the situation in Gaza,” said French authorities.
“France considers that this is a terrible situation for the Gazans, a situation from a human and humanitarian point of view, from a security point of view, extremely heavy,” French Prime Minister François Bayrou said during a visit to the air show. “France wanted to demonstrate that offensive weapons should not be present in this show.”
When the four Israeli firms refused to remove the equipment from display, exhibition organizers blocked off the booths in the middle of the night on Sunday, leading into the show’s opening on Monday morning. More barricades were added to close off the entrance to the booths, as shown in videos shared on Facebook by the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD).
“I assure you that we will sue the French government for what they have done to us,” Rafael’s Executive Vice President Shlomo Toaff told Euronews. “We are going to sue them for causing financial damage, for not giving us access to the property that we had rented. We think this is an unjust decision. We’re not getting equal rights like the other exhibitors.”
Israeli defense companies petitioned to a French court earlier this week to reverse the ban on its display of weapons and the blocking of Israeli pavilions at the Paris Air Show, but the court ruled that it does not have the authority to intervene in the decision made by the French government, the IMOD said on Tuesday.
IMOD Director General, Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amir Baram condemned the “absolutely, bluntly antisemitic” decision by the French government to block Israeli pavilions at the show. He accused France of “commercial exclusion to prevent successful Israeli industries from competing with French ones.”
“It’s regrettable and immoral to see discrimination based on extraneous considerations that mask French economic interests aimed at undermining the competition from the Israeli industry,” Baram said. “The scandalous French decision will achieve the opposite result. Despite the French attempt to harm us, visitors, including heads of state and military leaders from around the world, flocked to the Israeli industry pavilions, proving that Israeli defense systems are more sought-after and attractive than ever. The entire world sees the exceptional achievements of Israeli systems in Iran and other arenas. Battlefield performance speaks for our products far better than any exhibition on French soil.”
Toaff told Euronews that his company rented a booth at the Paris Air Show a year prior, submitted blueprints to event organizers months ago, and the equipment cleared French customs. “We invested a lot of money in getting this booth and a lot of effort in preparing for it. I can’t tell you the exact cost, but we’re talking millions of euros,” said Toaff.
“I was totally disappointed,” Sasson Meshar, senior vice president for Airborne Electro-Optics Systems at Elbit, told Euronews. “We invested a lot of money in the exhibition.”
“We don’t understand the logic of the decision, because from our perspective, it’s discrimination, because everybody around is showing the same systems,” he added. “It’s a defense, military system, and that’s what we are showing. We are not all here for some kind of flower exhibition.”
In a statement on Monday, Israel’s Ministry of Defense accused the French government of “hiding behind supposedly political considerations to exclude Israeli offensive weapons from an international exhibition — weapons that compete with French industries.”
“This is particularly striking given Israeli technologies’ impressive and precise performance in Iran,” the ministry stated, alluding to the Israel-Iran war that started mere days before the Air Show.
US Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders condemned the move by the French government as “pretty absurd,” according to Reuters.
Earlier this month, a court in Paris rejected a request by several companies to ban Israel from this year’s Paris Air Show.
The 55th Paris Air Show runs from Monday through Thursday for trade visitors only, but will open to the general public from Friday through Sunday. The event is organized by SIAE, a subsidiary of the French Aerospace Industries Association (GIFAS). This year’s show included 2,500 exhibitors from 48 countries.
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US Military Ready to Carry Out Any Trump Decisions on Iran, Hegseth Says
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The US military is ready to carry out any decision that President Donald Trump may make on Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday, suggesting that the US direction could become clearer in the coming days.
Testifying before a Senate committee, Hegseth was very cautious in his public testimony, declining to say whether the Pentagon had prepared strike options against Iran.
But when pressed by lawmakers, he acknowledged being ready to carry out any orders on Iran and cautioned that Tehran should have heeded Trump’s calls for it to make a deal on its nuclear program prior to the start of Israel‘s strikes on Friday.
“They should have made a deal, President Trump’s word means something. The world understands that. And at the Defense Department, our job is to stand ready and prepared with options and that’s precisely what we’re doing,” Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hegseth was then asked whether the Trump administration was moving to re-establish deterrence, a term used to describe actions meant to constrain an adversary from taking hostile action.
He responded: “I think we already have in many ways in this environment re-established deterrence. The question is, in the coming days, exactly what direction that goes.”
Trump on Wednesday declined to answer reporters’ questions on whether the US was planning to strike Iran or its nuclear facilities, and said the Iranians had reached out but he feels “it’s very late to be talking.”
“There’s a big difference between now and a week ago,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
Trump said that Iran had proposed to come for talks at the White House. He did not provide details. He described Iran as totally defenseless, with no air defense whatsoever, as Israel‘s strikes entered a sixth day.
A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering options that included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
Still, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender.
Iranians jammed the highways out of the capital Tehran, fleeing from intensified Israeli airstrikes.
In the latest bombing, Israel said its air force destroyed the headquarters of Iran’s internal security service.
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Israel Launches Airlift to Bring Home Stranded Citizens After Iran Strikes
Passengers, who had left Israel on June 17, 2025, aboard the Crown Iris cruise ship due to the closure of Israel’s airspace amid the Israel-Iran war, board a bus after their arrival at the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, June 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
Israel on Wednesday launched a phased airlift operation to bring home its citizens, after the country’s military strike on Iran closed air space across the Middle East, leaving tens of thousands of Israelis stuck overseas.
The first rescue flight, operated by national carrier El Al, touched down at Tel Aviv Airport early Wednesday morning, returning passengers from Larnaca, Cyprus.
Worldwide, Israel‘s transport ministry estimates that more than 50,000 Israelis, stranded after airlines halted flights to the country, are trying to come home.
Foreign citizens have also been fleeing Iran overland. China started evacuating its citizens from Tehran to Turkmenistan by overland bus on Tuesday. Hundreds of other foreign nationals fled to neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan.
El Al has said repatriation flights are already scheduled from Athens, Rome, Milan, Paris, Budapest, and London. Smaller carriers Arkia and Israir are also taking part.
“We are very emotional about receiving the first rescue flight as part of ‘Safe Return,’” Transportation Minister Miri Regev told the captain of the arriving El Al flight.
While many Israelis want to come back, around 38,000 tourists are stranded in Israel, with much of the country in lockdown, and all the museums and holy sites closed.
The US embassy in Jerusalem said on Wednesday it was organizing evacuation flights and ship departures for US citizens who wanted to leave, while the Tourism Ministry said it would start coordinating flights out for foreigners.
Around 1,500 Americans on a Jewish heritage program were evacuated overnight to Cyprus via a cruise ship, which will now sail back with Israeli citizens aboard.
“We didn’t sleep for nights on end. We are all very exhausted and it’s a sigh of relief,” said Dorian, 20, from New York, after he had disembarked.
“In Israel, I was very afraid. I was never used to anything like that. Sirens, missiles, or anything like that. New York is pretty much very safe, and this was new to me.”
Iran has fired more than 400 ballistic missiles at Israel since Friday, triggering air raid sirens and a rush to bunkers. At least 24 people, all civilians, have died so far in the strikes, according to Israeli authorities.
Iranian officials have reported at least 224 deaths, mostly civilians, though that toll has not been updated for days.
CYPRUS HUB
Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport has been closed to passenger traffic since Israel launched its pre-dawn attack on Friday and commercial aircraft are sitting out the war in foreign airfields.
The Airports Authority reinforced staffing on Wednesday to ensure arriving passengers left the airport quickly. Relatives were advised to avoid travelling to pick up family members for security reasons.
The airlift is being carried out in stages, based on risk levels and security assessments, a spokesperson for the Airports Authority said.
Large numbers of Israelis seeking to get home have converged on Cyprus, the European Union member state closest to Israel. Flights from the coastal city of Larnaca to Tel Aviv take 50 minutes.
Nine flights were expected to depart Cyprus on Wednesday for Haifa, and four for Tel Aviv, carrying about 1,000 people, sources at Cypriot airport operator Hermes said.
The carrier Arkia asked customers abroad to remain patient. “Tens of thousands of Israelis are still waiting to return home, and we are doing everything we can to bring them back quickly and safely,” it said in a statement.
Cruise operator Mano Maritime, whose “Crown Iris” ship carries 2,000 passengers, has said it will make two crossings from Cyprus to Israel‘s Mediterranean port city of Haifa.
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