Don't Know Much About with Naya Lekht

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht shifts the conversation from law to culture, arguing that while legal frameworks may lag behind, culture is where meaning is made, narratives are shaped, and ultimately, where battles over truth are won or lost.She is joined by journalist and columnist David C. Kaufman, whose work has appeared in Tablet, The New York Times, Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, and Telegraph. Together, they confront the alarming normalization of anti-Jewish rhetoric in public discourse—from the use of “Zionist” as a slur to the growing acceptance of October 7 denialism and justification.They explore why antizionism is increasingly functioning as a socially acceptable form of Jew-hatred, the difficulties of Jewish leadership to clearly name and confront ideological threats, the role identity politics may play in distorting reality, and how the embrace of Palestinianism within parts of the African American community has had serious consequences for its well-being.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

On this episode of Don't Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Professor Rona Kaufman, co-founder of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies.Naya opens with a case study: a campus speaker who deploys libels against Israel. Is that legal? “Oof,” says Professor Kaufman, “you started with a tough case.” From there, the conversation moves into the basics of anti-discrimination law and free speech protections.To explain the difficulty of securing Jewish civil rights, Rona takes listeners and viewers on a historical journey, showing how women fought to define and expose discrimination in the workplace—and how naming what discrimination looks like was itself a crucial step in gaining legal protection.Throughout the episode, Naya presents a series of real-world scenarios for Rona to analyze, leading to a deeper question: what ultimately drives change—law or culture? Many behaviors we now recognize as unacceptable were once entirely legal. Did the law lead cultural change, or did culture push the law to evolve?This and more in a thought-provoking episode of Don't Know Much About.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht examines a troubling paradox: why is antizionism in the West more dangerous than in the Soviet Union, the regime that invented it? Beginning with a personal observation from her mother, the episode traces how Soviet antizionist propaganda, once widely recognized as cynical state messaging, was transformed in Western universities into a moral cause. While the Soviet Union imposed antizionism from above through state propaganda, in the West, the same framework was repackaged through postcolonial theory, anti-imperialism, and academic scholarship, eventually embedding itself within university departments and activist culture.The episode explores how this transformation, from propaganda no one believed to an ideology many now embrace as virtue, creates a far more dangerous dynamic. When antizionism becomes framed as a moral duty rather than a political claim, dissent is treated as immorality and violence can appear justified in the name of justice. The result, Dr. Lekht argues, is a disturbing irony: ideas that required authoritarian enforcement in the Soviet Union now thrive organically within free societies.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht traces how antizionism took root on American campuses, beginning with student activism in the early 2000s and becoming institutionalized through recurring campaigns such as Israel Apartheid Week and the BDS movement. By the time the campus encampments of 2023–2024 emerged, the movement had matured into something far more aggressive, raising urgent questions about how this ideological framework spread so widely across universities.The episode then turns to a deeper question: how did Jewish institutions respond as this movement developed? For years, antizionism was largely treated as political criticism rather than as an organized ideological campaign targeting Jewish collective legitimacy. Campus organizations often encouraged avoidance rather than confrontation, while major institutions framed the issue cautiously, focusing on when criticism of Israel might “cross the line” into antisemitism. Dr. Lekht argues that this conceptual hesitation limited the communal response and left antizionism largely unchallenged for years—raising the strategic question of whether confronting the movement will ultimately require grassroots mobilization before institutions fully recognize the scale of the challenge.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

Antizionism has been described as a hate movement, as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, and, as I argue, the third era of Jew-hatred. But it can also be understood as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Powerful not only in its reach, but in its ability to unify—cutting across political parties, generations, and national borders.So who better to explore antizionism as a social movement than my guest today, Professor Shaul Kelner of Vanderbilt University, a scholar of Jewish Studies and Sociology who specializes in contemporary Jewish life. His latest book, A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, won a National Jewish Book Award and examines how American Jews organized across ideological divides for a shared cause.I invited Professor Kelner because he recently authored what I consider one of the most important papers on the subject: American Antizionism. The title itself is telling. While many scholars trace antizionism’s Soviet genealogy, Shaul pushes us to examine how it has taken root and evolved in the United States. What does antizionism look like in the American context? How has it embedded itself in civic, academic, and Jewish institutional spaces? And why has there been so little education or clarity about it within American Jewish institutions themselves?We begin with Shaul’s research on the Soviet Jewry movement and then turn to a striking contrast: how antizionism, once engineered as state propaganda in the Soviet Union, has become more socially powerful and more normalized here in the United States than in the very system that produced it. Find out why. Listen. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

Journalist Kevin Deutch and founder of the Jewish watchdog Substack AFTER OCTOBER 7, joins Naya Lekht for a conversation about what happened to journalism, and why it matters now more than ever.As antizionism exploded across American streets, college campuses, and even K–12 schools, Kevin began documenting the shift in real time. In this episode, he reflects on his career in the newsroom and identifies a critical turning point: 2020. Between the social upheaval of the BLM movement and the COVID-19 pandemic, journalism fundamentally changed.An award-winning reporter and digital creator, Kevin covers general assignment news and Jewish communities for Talk Media in South Florida. He also writes for the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle and the St. Louis Jewish Light, and previously served as a senior staff writer at The Miami Times, a historic Black newspaper in Miami.In this candid discussion, Kevin shares stories that reveal what he describes as an anti-Israel shift, not only in media coverage, but in cultural institutions and the arts. One striking example: longtime quilter AJ Grossman’s work commemorating the October 7 hostages was rejected by QuiltCon 2026. Kevin digs into that story and many others, exposing the fault lines shaping today’s media landscape.Follow Kevin's work: https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=U523DF&PC=U523&q=Substack%2C+AFTER+OCTOBER+7&PC=U316&FORM=CHROMNClarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

What does it mean to live with conviction when the cost is prison, isolation, and the full weight of a totalitarian regime? On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, I have the profound honor of speaking with Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident, Prisoner of Zion, Israeli statesman, and one of the great moral voices of our time.Born in Donetsk in the former Soviet Union, Sharansky became a leading spokesman for the human rights movement and the struggle of Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. After applying to make aliyah, he was arrested on fabricated charges of treason and espionage and sentenced to years in the Gulag, including long stretches in brutal punishment cells. His eventual release in 1986, following international pressure from Israel, world Jewry, and leaders of the free world,  became a defining moment in the history of the Cold War and the Jewish freedom movement.But Sharansky’s story did not end with freedom. In Israel, he went on to found political movements to help Soviet olim integrate into Israeli society, served in multiple Israeli governments, and became a global advocate for democracy, Jewish identity, and the fight against antisemitism.In our conversation, we go back to the beginning: What drew a young mathematician into the underground Zionist movement? What did it mean to organize Jews under a regime that criminalized Jewish nationalism? How did Soviet Jews, and even many non-Jews, understand with clarity that antizionism was simply another word for hostility to Jews, and why do Jews in America lack this clarity? We conclude by finding out who Natan Sharansky's heroes are. You don't want to miss this candid conversation.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

With thousands of Iranian civilians killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in recent weeks, the will of the Iranian people is unmistakable: a nation seeking to liberate itself from an Islamic regime that devalues human life and has set Iran back decades.On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Naya sits down with Ali Siadatan, an Iranian who fled the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Drawing on both his personal experience and deep regional expertise, Ali helps make sense of this pivotal moment—and explains why earlier episodes of unrest in Iran, including the Green Movement of 2009, may not have constituted a true revolution at all.One of Ali’s most compelling arguments is that both Western observers and many Iranians lack literacy in Islamic religious doctrine. As a result, they often misread the intentions of Islamic clerics, projecting secular assumptions onto a fundamentally theological system of power. This and more on this episode.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with Professor of Jewish Literature Marat Grinberg to discuss his book The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines. The conversation explores Grinberg’s original study of Soviet Jewish life and how books, especially those on Jewish history, became a crucial vehicle for Jewish identity and self-awareness.Central to the discussion is Grinberg’s effort to reclaim Soviet Jewish life from a rigid binary that has long dominated how it is remembered: Jews who remained quiet and hidden versus those who were loud, defiant, and ultimately became refuseniks. Grinberg argues that this framework misses a vast middle ground, a different, often overlooked way of being Jewish in the Soviet Union, one rooted not in overt resistance or assimilation, but in cultural transmission, private study, and shared texts.Sharing her own perspective on how Soviet Jewish life can be remembered, Naya joins Marat in a deeper exploration of how Jews lived and expressed Jewish identity under a totalitarian regime. In a state where access to Jewish religious sources was severely restricted, a striking and consistent phenomenon emerged: Jews across the Soviet Union, regardless of where they lived, often owned the same books. Why did this happen? And which specific texts did Russian-speaking Jews turn to in order to learn about their heritage?Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom. 

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Michael. His story is gripping, urgent, and, quite frankly, one that must be told. Michael was born in the United States to a Coptic Christian family, but he struggled deeply with questions of identity and belonging. Feeling isolated, he found himself drawn to the Palestinian antizionist movement, where he remained for nearly twenty years. Over time, that involvement came at an immense personal cost. Michael describes reaching a point where he felt he had nearly sacrificed his humanity, and arrived at what he calls a point of no return.After years of research, self-examination, and reflection, Michael ultimately left the anti-Israel movement. Today, he identifies as a proud Zionist, committed to confronting disinformation and advocating for the victims of a cause he once supported.In our conversation, I explore how Michael came to embrace the anti-Israel cause, not only through what the movement appeared to offer, but through what he himself felt he lacked. This distinction matters, as many young people drawn into this destructive hate movement are searching for something deeper: a sense of belonging, purpose, and collective story.We also discuss Michael’s journey into Islam, what he learned along the way, and how those experiences shaped his worldview. Michael has only recently stepped away from the anti-Israel cause, and his reflections are raw, honest, and often uncomfortable.My hope in sharing Michael’s story is precisely that, to illuminate what is uncomfortable. Avoiding difficult truths is a form of complacency, and complacency serves no one.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.