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In PBS series ‘Little Bird,’ a Jewish woman uncovers her traumatic Indigenous past
(JTA) — When Jennifer Podemski’s Indigenous mother gave birth at 17, social workers removed Podemski from a Toronto hospital and put her into the foster care system. It was only through the efforts of one social worker, who was retiring, that she was reunited with her mother at three months old.
The social worker had saved Podemski from the infamous “Sixties Scoop,” a policy in Canada between the 1960s and 1980s that tore thousands of Indigenous children from their families and put them into the child welfare system.
Growing up in a Jewish area of Toronto, Podemski learned more about her Israeli father’s side of the family because of the Jewish stories she was surrounded by — including some imparted from her paternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor.
Now a filmmaker, Podemski has drawn heavily on her experience in co-creating “Little Bird,” a six-part series about the Sixties Scoop that debuted in Canada earlier this year and came to the United States on Oct. 12. Weekly episodes air on PBS through Nov. 16 and are available to stream on all PBS platforms, including PBS Masterpiece Prime Video.
“I wanted to humanize these experiences,” said Podemski, who is Indigenous to Saskatchewan on her mother’s side. “They haven’t yet been humanized because they haven’t been told.”
The show starts with Esther Rosenblum (played by Darla Contois) at her engagement party in 1985, enjoying almost-clichéd Jewish success — law school, a doctor fiancé named David and a large home shared with her tough-love adoptive mother. The mother, Polish-born Golda Rosenblum (Lisa Edelstein), survived the Holocaust and came to Canada as a teenager, having lost her entire family in Auschwitz.
Although Esther’s life looks pleasant, she tiptoes around a constant simmer of discrimination. She is shattered to overhear David’s mother fretting about him marrying “one of them,” referring to an Indigenous person adopted into a Jewish family. The future mother-in-law questions how their family is supposed to believe that Esther is a “regular Jew” who can become “a mother of her own — and that’s just going to go fine?” Another guest points out that David got “one of the good ones,” adding: “I have a cousin who adopted one of them and he’s into the drugs and all that stuff.”
A parallel storyline unfolds in 1968, when Esther was five years old and her name was Bezhig Little Bird. Bezhig was abducted along with her brother and sister by child welfare agents and police, who handcuffed their hysterical mother and beat their father, when he protested, to the brink of death. The series follows Esther/Bezhig on the journey to find her birth family and understand the roots she was torn from.
Like Esther, Podemski was raised in a Jewish community with a tenuous connection to her Indigenous ancestry. Her maternal grandparents were victims of the residential school system in Canada, which forcibly separated children from their families for long periods of time between the 1880s and the 1990s. The schools stripped children of their culture and native language, with the nominal objective of giving them a Euro-Canadian Christian education. The schools became notorious for physical, sexual and psychological abuse and high death rates.
Podemski had to seek out information on Indigenous history as a teenager, when she began studying the atrocities committed against her people. She chafed at discriminatory remarks within her childhood Jewish community, even when they were unintentional, and struggled to feel at home.
“I grew up in a Jewish reality, one that I didn’t really fit into, the way I look,” Podemski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I never felt really like I belonged in either [Jewish or Indigenous] places.”
Podemski’s 30-year career has spanned both acting and producing, with a break-out role in Bruce McDonald’s 1994 film “Dance Me Outside” and award-winning credits for the 2003-2006 series “Moccasin Flats” and the 2013 film “Empire of Dirt.” Frustrated with the representation of Indigenous people in film and TV, she founded Big Soul Productions and Redcloud Studios Inc. to amplify Indigenous perspectives. Between 2021 and 2023, she appeared opposite her sisters Tamara and Sarah Podemski in the acclaimed FX series “Reservation Dogs.”
Jennifer Podemski, left, with her sister Sarah at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards at Meridian Hall in Toronto, April 14, 2023. (Jeremy Chan/Getty Images)
“Little Bird” places a premium on representation, with Indigenous Canadian actors playing the Little Bird family and Edelstein, who starred in the popular medical drama “House,” as Esther’s Jewish mother. The creators consulted advisors from Raven Sinclair, a Sixties Scoop survivor and University of Regina professor, to rabbis who approved scenes of Jewish ceremonies.
Edelstein told JTA that she reached into her own family memories to play Golda Rosenblum, conjuring images of her Jewish grandparents who immigrated from Eastern Europe.
“I was really excited to get to play a Jewish woman and to represent that story with dignity,” said Edelstein. “She reminded me a lot of my grandparents, so I definitely was remembering the gestures and feelings that I got from them.”
At the time of Esther’s fictional adoption, middle-class parents were typically advised to erase the past of their adopted Indigenous children, who were presented as mistreated or abandoned. Golda is at first defensive of her decision to help obscure Esther’s origins, but her love for her daughter eventually makes her a hero of the story.
“When I first met you, you were all dressed up in a nice dress but you didn’t smile,” she tells Esther in the series. “I thought, she has lost everyone, I have lost everyone, this is a good match. But it wasn’t true — you had a family.”
Co-creator Hannah Moskovitch said she felt a heavy sense of responsibility, as a Jew, approaching a story about the near annihilation of a culture. Although the histories are entirely different, some elements of state-executed plans to destroy the Indigenous people in North America and the Jews in Europe looked similar to her — from the meticulous bureaucracy and dutifully law-abiding foot soldiers to the dehumanizing language of “solutions” to Indigenous “problems.”
Yet despite those parallels, Moskovitch had never heard of the Sixties Scoop before starting work on the series.
“It’s shameful that I didn’t know,” she told JTA. “I grew up with the injunction from my community, ‘Never forget.’ And then there was a genocide that had happened in my country that I didn’t know about.”
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The post In PBS series ‘Little Bird,’ a Jewish woman uncovers her traumatic Indigenous past appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.