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26/07/2024

Will kosher meat become cheaper now in Canada? A court ruling saves Shechita in Canada, for now. Our story.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ellin-bessner-0229b021_canadas-jewish-community-wins-court-reprieve-activity-7222593820540989440-EhMG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

25/07/2024

"Enough is enough." Meet the Thornhill woman taking on CUPE Ontario and its president, after her experience with years of anti-Israel and antisemitic policies from the public sector union she is forced to be a member of.
On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas terror attack on Israel, Fred Hahn—the president of Ontario’s chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)—wrote a tweet on his social media account: “I’m thankful for the power of workers, the power of resistance around the globe. Because is fruitful and no matter what some might say, brings progress, and for that, I’m thankful.”
It was a controversial post, due to the timing, though Hahn denies he was referring to Oct. 7—even though the longtime labour leader has a history of pro-Palestinian activism, and CUPE Ontario has long come under fire for years for harbouring antisemitic sentiments.
For Carrie Silverberg, it was the last straw. She decided to take Hahn and the union to court. The education worker is the lead plaintiff in a human rights complaint filed with Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal. Her case was also joined by nearly 80 other union members. For years, Silverberg has fought to change her union’s anti-Israel policies; it makes her sick that CUPE uses her mandatory membership dues to support anti-Israel boycotts, to fund UNRWA, and to help the recent encampments on university grounds. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Carrie Silverberg joins to explain why she’s in for a long legal fight.
https://pinecast.com/listen/3938ee71-cd0b-453e-91ee-9bae654c8c51.mp3

25/07/2024

"Enough is enough." Meet the Thornhill woman taking on CUPE Ontario, its fiery president, and her experience with years of anti-Israel and antisemitic policies from the public sector union she is forced to be a member of.
On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas terror attack on Israel, Fred Hahn—the president of Ontario’s chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)—wrote a tweet on his social media account: “I’m thankful for the power of workers, the power of resistance around the globe. Because is fruitful and no matter what some might say, brings progress, and for that, I’m thankful.”
It was a controversial post, due to the timing, though Hahn denies he was referring to Oct. 7—even though the longtime labour leader has a history of pro-Palestinian activism, and CUPE Ontario has long come under fire for years for harbouring antisemitic sentiments.
For Carrie Silverberg, it was the last straw. She decided to take Hahn and the union to court. The education worker is the lead plaintiff in a human rights complaint filed with Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal. Her case was also joined by nearly 80 other union members. For years, Silverberg has fought to change her union’s anti-Israel policies; it makes her sick that CUPE uses her mandatory membership dues to support anti-Israel boycotts, to fund UNRWA, and to help the recent encampments on university grounds. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Carrie Silverberg joins to explain why she’s in for a long legal fight.

https://pinecast.com/listen/3938ee71-cd0b-453e-91ee-9bae654c8c51.mp3

23/07/2024

The International Court of Justice in The Hague demanded on Friday that Israel leave the disputed territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem after occupying them since 1967. The UN’s high court also instructed Israel to repay Palestinian residents an untold sum for taking natural resources, segregating them, forcing Palestinian families to flee their homes due to settler violence, transferring Israeli Jews into the area illegally and unlawfully turning what was once a legal postwar military occupation into a de-facto civilian annexation.

The ruling was the first time the UN’s highest court has ruled on the legality of Israel’s control of the area, which it captured 57 years ago from Jordan, during the Six-Day War.

Israel immediately rejected the court’s non-binding ruling, asking how Jews could be occupying land that historically belong to the Jewish people. The Canadian government officially “took note” of the ruling but has said nothing further.

So today, we ask: Is the ICJ declaration a game-changer for the Palestinian cause? Or is it, as some of the dissenting judges and critics have said, just another one-sided, politically motivated attack by the UN on Israel as the Jewish state fights for its survival against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other nearby enemies?

On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we unpack the latest ICJ findings with two guests: Ben Murane, the executive director of the New Israel Fund of Canada, and Arsen Ostrovsky, who just wrapped a week of meetings in Canada as the CEO of the The International Legal Forum, an Israeli-based NGO that uses courts to defend Israel around the world.

https://pinecast.com/listen/666bea29-2d41-43f2-9b7e-8dd4c248ed82.mp3

22/07/2024

Fredericton’s annual LGBTQ Fierté Fredericton Pride parade wound its way through the New Brunswick capital on Sunday July 21—with the Fredericton Palestine Solidarity group leading the event as grand marshals. The march went ahead despite the mayor and provincial lieutenant-governor pulling out due to the event’s distinctly political tone.

Local Jewish leaders and groups, meanwhile, tried to keep the parade apolitical and convince sponsors to boycott it. The parade has become the latest anti-Zionist flashpoint in Fredericton since Oct. 7, after at least three hate crimes against Jews have occurred in the past few months. A synagogue was vandalized before a Holocaust remembrance event; an Israeli high school girl was badly beaten by a Muslim classmate, with charges pending; and, most recently, a large rock was thrown through the apartment windows of an Israeli man studying at the University of New Brunswick.

And so, on today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we ask: What’s going on in Fredericton? To hear some answers, we’re joined by Ayten Kranat, a leader of the city’s Sgoolai Israel congregation, and by the Israeli UNB student who was targeted because he displayed his Israeli flag in the window of his off-campus apartment.
https://pinecast.com/listen/44e44bbd-2a7f-48e4-bbd9-1bee9e9518e3.mp3

18/07/2024

Six months have passed since the president of Harvard University was forced to resign after she refused to sanction pro-Palestinian protesters. Claudine Gay was one of several university leaders who came under fire at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., last December during an investigation into how America’s Ivy League schools were failing their Jewish students and staff.

In January, Harvard appointed a presidential task force to study antisemitism, and named Derek Penslar as co-chair. Penslar is a prominent Canadian scholar of Jewish history who runs Harvard’s Jewish studies centre. Just a few weeks ago, the team issued an interim report, saying it couldn’t wait until the Fall because they’d found a “dire” situation facing Harvard’s Israeli students, including derision and social exclusion. Harvard faculty and teaching assistants were also reportedly discriminating against and harassing pro-Israel students.

On Tuesday, the report was publicly slammed by 28 Republican lawmakers as weak and a “re-inventing of the wheel”, while some Harvard Jewish students and leaders are upset the antisemitism group is committed to working closely with Harvard’s other task force currently studying anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias.

Derek Penslar joins me on The CJN Daily from Toronto to respond to the criticism, and explain why he nearly quit in the face of allegations he wasn’t Zionist enough to do the job.

https://pinecast.com/listen/eb78a0e8-1369-42bd-adbb-e1b6a2d7f65a.mp3

17/07/2024

An update on the University of Windsor now offering an olive branch to the Jewish students and wider Jewish community, following backlash about wide concessions to pro-Palestinian encampment protesters last week. Read the university's unexpected statement for the Jewish stakeholders, issued Tuesday ahead of a meeting this afternoon with CIJA and the head of Windsor Jewish Federation & Community Centre, Stephen Cheifetz. My print story in The Canadian Jewish News (The CJN) can't be linked directly. But it is on LinkedIn now, and also X (Twitter). https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ellin-bessner-0229b021_the-university-of-windsor-offers-an-olive-activity-7219339761860194305-_UTJ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

16/07/2024

The head of Windsor’s Jewish community, Stephen Cheifetz, is calling in the big guns to fight back “significantly” against the University of Windsor, which agreed last week to accept a list of demands by its pro-Palestinian tent encampment protesters. In exchange, the protesters agreed to take down their two-month-old tent city peacefully.

The July 11 deal is being described by Jewish groups and even by the Windsor encampment students as the most far-reaching victory to date by campus protesters in Canada. It covers a request to divest from any Israel-related investments, boycott Israeli universities, bring in more Palestinian students and scholars in light of what the UN deems a “scholasticide” when Israel bombed Palestinian schools where Hamas operatives were thought to be hiding.

While the university itself insists it isn’t taking sides in the current Middle East conflict, school officials agreed to condemn what it terms “the illegal occupation of Palestine” and called for an immediate ceasefire. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we unpack the deal with law school graduate Sydney Greenspoon, as well as lawyer and former UWindsor law professor Stephen Cheifetz, who is now head of the Windsor Jewish Federation.

https://pinecast.com/listen/afb52d01-b8ee-497e-96ce-5cfa07eb487f.mp3

15/07/2024

Did Israel actually kill the Hamas mastermind of Oct. 7 on the weekend? The IDF announced its forces had targeted a zone in the Khan Younis area of Gaza where the senior Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif had been spotted. While international condemnation was quick to blame Israel for dozens of civilians killed in the bomb blast, a group of civilian Jewish public-relations whizzes were in a Tel Aviv studio going live with their own English-language briefings and social media posts.

It’s a job Eylon Levy used to do officially after Oct. 7 as international media spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Levy’s earnest and calm handling of Israel’s p.r. war made him a celebrity, especially his expressive dark eyebrows that became famous in their own right on social media. But after six months into the war, the British-born former journalist was suspended. The reasons are complicated. Levy has pivoted, assembling a team of p.r. pros to continue fighting the crucial information war for Israel. He’s come to Canada to drum up support for this new venture.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Eylon Levy joins to explain why the Israeli government’s in house public relations efforts to date have failed to counter the lies and propaganda from the Iran-backed Hamas organization, creating a situation which he believes has driven a wedge between Canada and the Jewish State, and also between Canadians and their non-Jewish neighbours.

https://pinecast.com/listen/258634c0-8dda-4e46-830c-a599094e8922.mp3

11/07/2024

At the end of June, a 2SLGBTQ artist group in Saskatoon was scheduled to celebrate Pride Month with a market event called Cheers for Qu**rs. The organizers had declared support for Palestine, and later laying down an umbrella ban on Zionists. Jews could come, they said—just not Zionist ones.

That’s when a local businesswoman recalled an interview she’d heard on The CJN Daily, in which a Montreal-based lawyer Neil Oberman pour Mont-Royal/Neil Oberman for Mount Royal discussed ways to combat antisemitism. She and other parents joined up to form a new grassroots organization to draw newfound attention to the problems faced by Jews in their Prairie city since Oct. 7—including a disturbing antisemitic drawing made on the blackboard of a Saskatoon public high school classroom.

The founders joins The CJN Daily, to explain how they successfully got the anti-Zionist market moved—for now—how a little divine intervention worked in their favour, and what they hope to do next.

https://pinecast.com/listen/2b1069a4-999b-43b9-8746-e84ee763f2b4.mp

09/07/2024

A few days ago, Israeli Knesset member Sharren Haskel שרן השכל, who was born in Canada, made headlines when she said her 88-year-old grandmother, who lives outside of Paris, had been badly beaten by two Arab suspects who noticed the visibly Jewish elderly woman wearing a Star of David necklace. The alleged attack is part of a series of antisemitic violence against French Jews that has sprung up since Oct. 7—and spiked even higher in the run-up to the recent French election.

Over the weekend, early ballot results proved a surge in popularity for the federal far-right party with Holocaust-denial roots, led by Marine Le Pen, but also tallied the shocking victory of a hastily assembled leftist coalition whose leader has sided with Palestinians, engaged in antisemitic tropes and downplayed the antisemitism problem sweeping France.

Haskel posted on social media that France has abandoned its responsibility to protect Jews, and argues it’s time for her grandmother—and other Diaspora Jews—to move to Israel for their own safety.

The Israeli politician warns that these same antisemitic currents in France are also at play here in Canada, and brought her message directly to this country’s lawmakers and Jewish leaders during a recent trip to Toronto and Ottawa, sponsored by the Exigent Foundation.

Haskel joined Canadian Jewish News (The CJN) Daily‘s Ellin Bessner to explain why she thinks Canada is seeing the growing influence of the forces of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and why Canada’s pro-Palestinian stance on the war—including support for UNRWA—is like “a knife in the back” that “will cost Israeli lives.”

https://pinecast.com/listen/acf0d234-771b-4604-931f-677bd62d1108.mp3

08/07/2024

Montreal-area Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said he is grateful to have been officially appointed, on Friday July 5, as a special adviser to the prime minister and cabinet on Canada’s Jewish community and on antisemitism. Housefather’s new title also comes with a budget for travel and one extra staffer to help with files he'si already working on, in the wake of the unprecedented spike in antisemitism that erupted after Oct. 7.
To be clear, Housefather is not the country’s new special envoy on combatting antisemitism and promoting Holocaust remembrance—Deborah Lyons took over that post last year from Irwin Cotler. Rather, Housefather will continue working closely with her office, as he has been doing for the past three months, and will enjoy “an added level of respect,” as he put it, when he knocks on the doors of politicians, university presidents and the police.
In late March, Housefather told The CJN Daily he was deeply unsure whether to remain in the Liberal party following a motion in Parliament on the Israel-Hamas war, supported by all but three Liberals MPs, which initially proposed Canada unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. But after a tete-a-tete with Justin Trudeau that resulted in the offer to take on this new role, Housefather chose to remain in government.
Housefather returns to The CJN Daily to explain why the announcement took 13 weeks to make, what he can do about campus encampments, what he wants to happen after the hiring of a controversial new Canadian human rights commissioner, and how he hopes to help keep Jewish institutions safe from protests and attacks.
https://pinecast.com/listen/f6b47643-78cc-48b0-85bf-0c39f1a65928.mp3

04/07/2024

An estimated 500 people turned out on Sunday, June 23, to march through the streets of Kitchener, Ont., carrying Israeli flags and raising funds to help victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war. The number might not sound like a lot, but to organizer Jeff Budd—whose family has sponsored this Walk for Israel for generations, and who expected maybe 150 people might turn up—it was astounding.

The turnout was especially noteworthy against a backdrop of rampant antisemitism and anti-Zionism that’s washed across the country. The region has been no exception: Kitchener’s Beth Jacob Kitchener-Waterloo synagogue was vandalized last month, and the University of Waterloo has been struggling with a vibrant pro-Palestinian encampment for the past six weeks. But the unexpected show of solidarity, including neighbours applauding from their porches, galvanized the city’s small Jewish community of 2,400 people.

Budd joins The CJN Daily together with Rabbi Moishy Goldman of Chabad Waterloo to explain how the walk came together and why they’re feeling optimistic about Jewish allyship in Canada .

https://pinecast.com/listen/41b7240f-7fb7-4bf0-aa54-f6f63e20b590.mp3

03/07/2024

Birju Dattani is a Canadian human rights lawyer who worked in the Yukon and also in his home province of Alberta before being catapulted into the highest-profile human rights job in the country a few weeks ago. In mid-June, Canada’s justice minster announced Dattani’s appointment for a five-year term as chief commissioner at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. But the ink was hardly dry on the Order-in-Council before disturbing allegations began surfacing about some anti-Israel social media posts and lectures he made a decade ago while a university student in England. Jewish groups and other researchers discovered he’d shared a panel with a virulent Islamic terrorist, protested outside the Israeli embassy and once shared an article that compared Israelis to N***s.
Now the federal justice minister, Arif Virani, has launched an investigation—although he isn’t rescinding the job offer, despite calls to do so from CIJA, B’nai Brith, Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal and the federal Conservatives. Dattani denies he is antisemitic, saying he didn’t do the things he is accused of, has apologized if the revelations caused harm to the Jewish community, and is confident he will be vindicated.
But as we’ll hear on today’s episode of The CJN Daily, at least one prominent Jewish outfit has a hard message for Dattani: “Apology not accepted.” Shimon Koffler Fogel, the CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, joins from Ottawa to explain his position.

https://pinecast.com/listen/75b15d08-0f84-4627-b40c-c0bfbf48e8fd.mp3

02/07/2024

UofT wins court injunction vs Pro-Palestinian encampment protest tent city . Tents have to come down w/in 24 hrs, police can be called. Judge finds no evidence "idealistic" defendants were antisemitic, vandals or engaged in hate speech. The CCanadian Jewish News (The CJN)is on the scene.

30/06/2024

Canada Day is usually a holiday of patriotism and pride. But this year, nine months after Oct. 7 sparked new waves of antisemitism across the country, many Jewish Canadians continue to feel isolated, vulnerable and anxious. It seems like every few weeks, a new synagogue is attacked or vandalized; Jewish and Israeli children are being routinely bullied; open supporters of Israel can find themselves doxxed online, their businesses boycotted or alienated from their industries.

To reflect on what’s changed, Canadian Jewish News (The CJN) Daily gathered together some of the country’s leading intellectuals and newsmakers on a panel about the state of Jewish life in Canada. Their message: yes, life feels difficult. But don’t give up just yet.

Joining the show today are Selina Robinson, an independent MLA in the British Columbia legislature who was ousted from the NDP caucus because of the Middle East conflict; David Weinfeld, a Canadian professor of Jewish history and former CJN contributor now living in Philadelphia; Artur Wilczynski, Canada’s former ambassador to Norway, just appointed the new antisemitism advisor to the University of Ottawa, in the nation’s capital; and Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, the spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal.

https://pinecast.com/listen/7b689169-d79f-40f7-bc3c-785938ea988d.mp3

27/06/2024

Author Robert Rotenberg never imagined that his newest police crime novel, written against the backdrop of European fascism, would come out at the same time that far-right political leaders are sweeping into office across that continent. Nor did he plan that "What We Buried" would be published in the aftermath of one of the most embarrassing moments in recent Canadian history, when lawmakers from all parties stood in the House of Commons last fall to give a standing ovation to an elderly guest who, it turned out, had been a former N**i soldier.

Rotenberg’s newest novel, his seventh, is a departure from his trademark police procedural material based on real-life Toronto headlines. Instead, this story has a more international scope as it revolves around a true N**i war crime that took place 80 years ago this month in Gubbio, a small hilltop town in Italy, where the Germans massacred 40 innocent civilians on June 22, 1944.

Rotenberg joins The CJN Daily to talk about why he’s hoping the book resonates with readers in Canada, where Jewish groups have long felt the country’s never really come clean about its own dark legacy of allowing thousands of former N**i soldiers to make new lives here.

25/06/2024

Are you travelling to Israel? Like the Taylor Swift song about her ex-boyfriend, EL AL אל על airlines is likely “never, ever getting back together” with Canada—at least in the form of nonstop El Al branded flights. Two years ago, on June 21, 2022, the Israeli carrier announced it was shuttering the direct route to Toronto after 40 years of service in Canada. The airline closed its office in Toronto, fired 30 employees and abandoned its domestic airport infrastructure.
But El Al’s new senior vice president for the Americas, Simon Newton-Smith, claims the company hasn’t forgotten about the Canadian market, which he calls “a huge contributor to our overall sales.”
Newton-Smith came to Toronto on June 5, his first Canadian visit since being appointed shortly after Oct. 7, 2023. His first weeks on the job coincided with the war in Gaza, which, alongside broader geopolitical tensions with Lebanon and Iran, decimated foreign tourism to Israel. El Al, however, has reported record profits so far this year—because other international carriers stopped servicing the country, including Air Canada.
Now, as the summer travel season kicks into high gear, Newton-Smith joins The CJN Daily to describe how El Al is hoping to make it more attractive for North American travellers to fly the blue and white.

24/06/2024

An Ontario court judge is expected to rule as early as this week on whether the seven-week-old pro-Palestinian tent city at the University of Toronto will be allowed to remain, or whether it must be dismantled immediately—with police help, if necessary. Lawyers for the university were in court last week arguing the encampment is illegal and has done irreparable harm to UofT’s international reputation, while also violating the rights of Jewish and pro-Israel students and staff. Lawyers for the student protestors countered in court that their right to free speech and free assembly trumps any concerns the school may have.

The Toronto encampment is one of about a half-dozen still up on Canadian university campuses since a wave of pro-Palestinian tent cities began in the United States in April.

The Canadian Jewish News (The CJN)'s Jonathan Rothman has been covering the UofT encampment since it went up, writing numerous pieces for us and conducting interviews inside. He joins The CJN Daily to describe what the tent city is like and predict what might happen next.

https://pinecast.com/listen/26863b6c-8bbb-40c6-b291-f9f94fc42e72.mp3

20/06/2024

Why making challah is both an act of Jewish continuity and comfort during these turbulent times for the Jewish people. Award-winning Canadian author Sidura Ludwig' s new children’s book "Rising", tells the story of a Jewish child and their mother preparing homemade challah bread for Shabbat. Ludwig wrote the book four years ago, during the pandemic lockdown.

Now, releasing in a post-Oct. 7 world, Ludwig realizes the activity can serve a similar purpose: baking challah by hand has become a touchstone of hope for many people dealing with grief, despair and anxiety about worldwide antisemitism.

An estimated 30,000 copies of Ludwig’s 40-page book, illustrated by Sophia Vincent Guy, are making their way this month into the homes of many young Jewish families, courtesy of the free PJ Library program. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, I visited Ludwig in her home in Thornhill, Ont., to learn more and get personal about what challah means for each of us.

https://pinecast.com/listen/4f91de46-e929-4b9d-b3fe-8b8aaf557751.mp3

19/06/2024

Vancouver's Schara Tzedeck was the eighth synagogue in Canada to be attacked since Oct. 7 - but not the last. Two weeks ago, a masked suspect set fire to the front doors of the shul while people were inside attending a late-night meeting. A passerby saw the flames and called the police while a shul member used his jacket to douse the flames.
No one was hurt, but the incident left one of the building’s ornate silver doors blackened—and the community shaken. Vancouver police tasked the Major Crimes Unit to investigate, but to date have not released any updates.
While politicians in B.C. made a point to attend Shabbat services after the Vancouver attack, Schara Tzedeck’s rabbi has a message for them: this isn’t surprising. In his words, when you permit hate speech against Jews to go unchecked, and when you gloss over chants at university encampments that glorify Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, don’t be surprised when hateful or ignorant people take it a step further. On The CJN Daily, Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt tells us what’s happened since the attack—and why the damaged spot has not been fixed.
https://pinecast.com/listen/111f8ba1-9bb2-4421-b997-59ec15670491.mp3

17/06/2024

Since Oct. 8, Hezbollah—the Iranian-backed Shia militia in southern Lebanon—has launched thousands of rockets into northern Israeli communities, including Metula and Kiryat Shmona, which for decades have been financially supported by Canada’s Jewish community.
But Israeli air strikes that killed a senior Hezbollah commander last week have escalated the situation. Hezbollah militants subsequently launched more rockets in a single day than at any point so far during the Israel-Hamas war. Yet there have only been 28 casualties, including 18 soldiers, because for the past eight months, the border towns have sat largely empty. After Oct. 7, an estimated 60,000 Israeli residents fled or were ordered to evacuate their homes. Whole communities are now living scattered across Israel in hotels and other temporary accommodations.
While the world has focused on southern Israel and Gaza, residents of the north wonder if they will ever be able to return home, and many worry an all-out war with Hezbollah is needed in order to make it safe.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we hear from locals Meytal Novidomsky of Metula, whose Canadian husband coaches one of Israel’s most successful hockey schools; Sarah Mali, director of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA office in Israel; and philanthropist Barbara Crook, from Ottawa, chair of the Partnership2Gether twinning program between northern Israel and six Canadian Jewish communities.

https://pinecast.com/listen/c975af66-d24f-4184-857a-4edb006b42dc.mp3

11/06/2024

Alexandria Fanjoy Silver enjoys being a proud and loud advocate for Canada's Jewish community, even though she only became an “official” Jew in 2009. Her Christian parents brought her up as a member of the Anglican Church; yet, while growing up, she always felt an “obsession” and a pull towards Judaism. And so, as a university student in 2007, after visiting the N**i death camps in Poland, she decided to go through the conversion process. (There wouldn’t be a Jewish man in her personal life until several years later.)

Tuesday night, as Jews around the world mark the annual harvest festival of Shavuot, the theme of conversion is part of synagogue observances: the Book of Ruth is read, which tells the Bible story of a non-Jewish widow who chose to remain part of her late husband’s Jewish family, and is widely considered the religion’s first recorded “convert”.

While it is usually not considered good manners to ask a convert why they converted, Alexandria Fanjoy Silver agreed to join me on The CJN Daily to share her journey and explain what it’s been like to live as a Jew—especially now, after Oct. 7, when her choice also directly impacts her non-Jewish family members.
https://pinecast.com/listen/a7c539f2-e2c8-4070-a44f-ecae916d6267.mp3

10/06/2024

I was admittedly nervous ahead of Sunday’s 55th annual Walk with Israel, held by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. For weeks, pro-Palestinian protest groups in the city had been threatening to disrupt the important Jewish solidarity march—the first one since the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
It was stunning watching the record turnout of an estimated 50,000 people—and also seeing the massive police presence that kept a lid on trouble.
But by the time my family and I completed the nearly five-kilometre walk, my anxiety over the Middle Eastern war and rampant domestic antisemitism fell to the wayside and joy took over, even if only for a short time.
On today’s special feature episode of The CJN Daily, I invite listeners to join me on the walk and meet some of the people I met along the way: Israeli visitors Rami and Vered Gold, who survived the Hamas massacre at Rebuilding Kibbutz Be’erii; Michael Gilmore of Kehillat Shaarei Torah, the Toronto synagogue targeted by two recent hate crime attacks; David Fingrut, a public school teacher in Millbrook, Ontario; Noah Shack, UJA’s head of combating antisemitism, and others. Plus, you’ll hear directly from some of the pro-Palestinian protestors when I ask them why they came.
https://pinecast.com/listen/a46e782e-9c65-4316-8c5f-4fa34a4fdf02.mp3

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Videos

Did you know that #Theodor #Herzl required delegates to the first #Zionist Congress to wear tuxedos? Or that people stood on chairs and applauded for an hour when he outlined his vision for a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Today is the 125th anniversary of that meeting in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. Our CJN Treasure Trove collector, @David Matlow, pulled some artifacts out of his collection to mark the occasion. (P.S. David is in Basel, now.) Watch the full video on our The CJN YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/jjKytCeoV_0 Video editing by YuZhu Mou/The CJN Daily.

At nearly 80 years old, Gary Averbach's on a 1000 km trek across Western Canada for cancer research

Gary Averbach is a 79-year-old real estate mogul, based in Vancouver, who is currently trekking through 40-degree heat waves across the Rockies from Calgary to his home city to raise money for cancer research. He’s about three-quarters of the way there—his goal is to arrive in Vancouver by mid-August, just shy of his 80th birthday, and to have raised $500,000 in the process. The project stemmed from a promise Averbach made last summer to his late cousin and business partner, Robert Golden, who passed away from bone cancer. Averbach spoke to @The CJNDaily from Boston Bar, B.C., around 45 kilometres south of Lytton, where he stopped after completing another daily 24-km hike. By the way, don't compare him to #TerryFox or #SteveFonyo: he says they are "the real heroes". Listen to the interview here: https://bit.ly/3Bovucv Donate here: @bobswalkforcancer #cancer #cancerresearch #bonecancer #rockymountains Video by: Bart Lutz

Why is this Toronto girl blowing #shofar on #Passover? It's a long story spanning three countries, and involving Canadian wildlife inspectors and her mother's search for her Jewish roots. On today's @TheCJN Daily podcast, meet the Toronto family who credit the Passover story for reuniting them with a shipment of #Judaica from Israel. #Letmyshofarsgo https://thecjn.ca/podcasts/let-my-shofars-go-how-the-passover-story-saved-one-womans-judaica-from-canadian-border-control/

The life and legacy of partisan photographer Faye Schulman

Faye Schulman lost most of her family in the Holocaust—her parents, aunts, uncles, two brothers and two sisters. But Schulman herself was spared because she was a photographer and had worked in her brother’s studio. She ended up living a life worthy of a Hollywood film, joining and living with a band of Russian partisan fighters in the woods. Schulman died at the end of April in Toronto at the age of 101. This week, her children are marking the traditional 30-day anniversary of her death, called shloshim. On today's episode of The CJN Daily, we hear from two writers about Schulman's life and legacy. Ron Csillag, a reporter for The CJN, wrote her obituary and had met her briefly years ago; and Judy Batalion is a Montreal-born writer whose latest book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, features Schulman among many other courageous women. What we talked about: Wartime photographer Faye Schulman captured lives of the partisan resistance (thecjn.ca (https://thecjn.ca/faye-schulman-partisan-photographer/)) Learn more about Judy Batalion and find her books at judybatalion.com (https://www.judybatalion.com/) Judy Batalion is speaking on the evening of May 27 via Zoom to the Congregation Dorshei Emet synagogue congregation in Montreal. Get the access code at dorsheiemet.com (https://www.dorsheiemet.com/event/a-talk-with-montreal-born-author-judy-batalion-who-will-discuss-her-latest-book-the-light-of-days-the-untold-story-of-women-resistance-fighters-in-hitlers-ghettos.html) The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner (https://twitter.com/ebessner) on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine (https://www.dovbecklevine.com/). Our title sponsor is Metropia (https://metropia.ca/). Find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca (https://www.thecjn.ca).

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The life and legacy of partisan photographer Faye Schulman

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