Everywhere and Nowhere

Phoebe Maltz Bovy has an interesting column up on yet another "another anti-Zionist Jewish literary manifesto" that's circulating in Canadian literary spaces. 

The theme of the manifesto is a familiar one: that there is "no room in the Jewish literary establishment for work that sees Palestinians as human, their grievances as legitimate, their oppression horrific, their resistance justified." The writer presents the world as drowning in a particular sort of novel about Jews, one "lamenting the antisemitism on university campuses when that antisemitism is actually just pro-Palestinian sentiment," a superindulgence that is choking off other (better, more important) stories about Palestinian rights.

On this point, Maltz Bovy notes that the manifesto author doesn't actually cite examples of the offending books he has in mind (despite the fact that they are apparently so omnipresent that they deserve an "enough is enough" jeremiad). And then she makes an important observation, one that I want to pick up on:

In thinking ahead to future books coverage, I recently found myself combing all summer 2026 publications available to Canadian readers, in search of Jewish content, preferably but not necessarily Canadian. Search terms came up short, as they will so I went for full, painstaking combing. And there was almost nothing Jewish, along with nothing-nothing Canadian Jewish. (I have since learned I may have missed a children’s picture book that ticks both boxes. My apologies.)

The books that are everywhere are actually nowhere.

This is reflective of a point I've observed before -- a mismatch between a widespread perception (even among many Jews) that Jews are everywhere in our culture, to the point where we are dominating the space and sucking out the oxygen, and a reality that Jews are frequently nowhere -- not represented in the places they supposedly dominate, not especially heard at all. Even if you think about Hollywood, there are of course a ton of Jewish writers and actor ... but a lot fewer Jewish stories than one might think. In my White Jews article, I wrote that

the politics of Jewish invisibility is predicated on a presumption of Jewish omnipresence. Jews are not heard from because everyone assumes they have already heard from Jews—heard enough, perhaps heard too much, perhaps it is time to allow others to talk. Because Jews are thought to be everywhere, the possibility that there is in fact a gap or quietude around Jews becomes almost inconceivable. After all, if there is one thing Jews are not, it's "quiet."

If you're Jewish, everyone is going to think you're centering yourself if you say anything at all. There's no escaping it.