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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.)
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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.
The post Feeling haunted by tariff talk? Take comfort in how Great Britian was once soothed by a bubbe’s ghost appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.