North Star with Ellin Bessner

This episode originally aired on Not in Heaven on July 9, 2026. Subscribe to Not in Heaven here . How much does motive matter when it comes to hate crimes? In recent years, Canadian Jews have been rocked by a series of attacks on their community institutions, including late-night shootings at schools and synagogues, attempted arson, and smashing community centres' windows. Many Jews have met the s...

This episode originally aired Aug. 7, 2024. Sharon Chodirker and Chaim Bell consider themselves lucky: they were among the tens of thousands of tourists and residents in Jasper who were evacuated from the forest fires that devoured a third of the buildings in the iconic Rocky Mountain resort town on July 24. The Toronto couple, who were on a hiking trip, managed to escape Jasper while smoke and as...

Ellin Bessner is off on a well-deserved summer vacation, so we're bringing back some favourite episodes from the archives. This episode originally ran on May 31, 2021. Has there ever been a better home for Jews than Canada? That's the bold question being asked in a new collection of essays, No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging. The book's editor, David S. Koffman, joins to dis...

There’s been a major new development in the controversy surrounding the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ new Nakba exhibit. Canada’s Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Mark Miller, toured the exhibit before the show opened last weekend, and has now publicly criticized some of what he saw. In an interview published Monday June 29 by  The Canadian Press,  Miller said some wording “should be...

When people think of the Calgary Stampede, they probably picture rodeos, chuckwagon races, the famous parade, or perhaps deep-fried Mars bars on the midway. But how about kosher pancake breakfasts, Israeli tech entrepreneurs, and the Jewish businessman who created  Calgary’s iconic white cowboy hat  in 1949? For more than a century, Calgary’s Jewish community has woven its own traditions into Albe...

Over the past school year, The Canadian Jewish News' Local Journalism Initiative reporter, Mitch Consky, who covers education, has introduced readers to some exceptional students through his "Chai Achievers" series. He has profiled young Jewish Canadians making a difference on their post-secondary campuses or high schools, with leadership and community service. As exams come to an end th...

Mark Berlin initially supported the Canadian Museum for Human Rights creating a Nakba exhibit on the experiences of Palestinian Canadians displaced during the Israel War of Independence in 1948. But the Ottawa human rights lawyer and professor who served for years as the only Jewish member on the Winnipeg museum’s board of trustees, resigned abruptly on Monday June 22.  His letter  was sent just d...

A police officer and a Jewish civilian have been killed after a gunman opened fire in a deadly ambush that unfolded Monday mid-morning June 22 in one of Montreal’s busiest Jewish districts. The shooting appears not to have targeted Jews, although many community members initially worried it was antisemitic terrorism. Nevertheless, the “nightmare” event, as police have called it, has left the Jewish...

“I didn’t know there was a need.” Two years ago, Dr. Irv Siegel, a past president of Beit Rayim Synagogue in Vaughan, Ont., heard about growing food insecurity in York Region, one of Canada’s wealthiest suburbs, where one in five families faces food insecurity. He was surprised to learn that hundreds of public school kids in Thornhill and Richmond Hill often come to school without lunch. So for th...

Last month, during a ceremony to award the Jerusalem Unity Prize, Israeli President Isaac Herzog greeted the audience with a  warning  about “a terrible process of brutalization” that has been threatening Israeli society. He singled out extremist Jewish Israelis living in the West Bank, who he called an “anarchist mob,” and whose ongoing attacks against Palestinians “defiled every moral, legal, an...

On June 17, the suspect caught and charged in connection with breaking a window, then setting fire to Montreal’s Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, is scheduled to have his bail hearing. Court documents show the suspect, Steven Luu, 38, is from the Montreal borough of Saint-Leonard, about 20 kilometres away from the synagogue. He was caught on the scene by local Westmount public safety patrols. Subseque...

As Jonathan Levy prepares to preside over his final Grade 12 graduation ceremony as head of school on Wednesday June 17, the outgoing leader of TanenbaumCHAT says the mission of Jewish education has never been clearer. "We need an incredibly strong ark so that we can go out and be among the people," Levy told teachers, students, parents and staff during a speech at a recent farewell trib...

It’s a few days out from Toronto’s 2026 Walk with Israel, and volunteers and walkers are still sharing their impressions and experiences of participating in the largest Jewish pride event in Canadian history, Sunday’s Walk was noteworthy because it had a record turnout of 60,000 people. It required a massive police presence that successfully kept most of the anti-Israel protests farther away than...

As tens of thousands of people prepare for Sunday’s 57th edition of the “Walk With Israel”, Toronto’s Jewish community finds itself in a very different place than it was a year ago. The 251 hostages whose fate hung over last year’s event have now all been returned, either alive or for burial. While the regional landscape has changed dramatically since last year’s walk—as wars fought against Hamas,...

Prime Minister Mark Carney chose to deliver his highly anticipated speech to Canadians about “the scourge of antisemitism” from inside a storied Toronto synagogue, Holy Blossom. It’s a spot where, for weeks this spring, heavily armed police SWAT teams were dispatched so worshippers could feel safe. Carney’s speech — which was broadcast live nationally — follows years of increased violent attacks o...

With less than a month until a controversial Nakba exhibit opens at Canada’s national human rights museum in Winnipeg, some Jewish leaders are making a final push to have the contents reviewed first. Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present  is scheduled to open on June 27 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The federal museum was founded by the late media executive and philanthropist Israe...

As Niagara Falls glowed blue against the night sky on Thursday May 20, it became the most visible symbol yet of a one-man, grassroots campaign to ensure that this year, Canadian Jewish Heritage Month was not completely forgotten. For the past seven days, from Halifax to Toronto and Montreal to Alberta, nearly a dozen iconic landmarks, bridges and legislatures across Canada agreed to illuminate in...

The acclaimed off-Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof”—in Yiddish, with English and Russian supertitles—opens in Canada this week, during Jewish Heritage Month. This is the stage musical’s first international tour since its rousing success in New York under Oscar-winning actor and director Joel Grey. The dialogue showcases the original language in which Sholem Aleichem wrote his stories ab...

As the official Toronto police Level 1 search for missing Toronto teen Esther (“Esti”) entered its second week, hundreds of community members ignored rainy weekend weather to help a Jewish safety patrol group spread updated posters across the city. The growing grassroots response behind the search effort now includes Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers who are spending hours canvassing bus stops, sub...

Stephen Lewis , who once made  Time  magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, was a humanitarian and ambassador who led Ontario’s NDP before pushing the world to help millions of HIV/AIDS patients in Africa obtain life-saving medicine. His passing on Mar. 31 prompted an outpouring of tributes from global leaders and African grandmothers alike. Hours before Lewis died, at the age...

Anat Ishai, who was born in Israel but grew up in Canada, started baking braided Challah loaves in her Thornhill kitchen during the COVID pandemic to help her break out of the isolation of lockdown. She started posting social media videos of herself baking and dancing. Her moves, with snippets of Jewish pride and shots of her Orthodox Jewish lifestyle caught on. Today Ishai has a devoted following...

Jewish residents and organizations in Vancouver say a relentless anti-Israel campaign of “chalking”—writing hateful slogans with sidewalk chalk in public, accompanied by and waving a large Palestinian flag outside a hospital in their neighbourhood—has reshaped daily life in Vancouver’s historically Jewish neighbourhood. For over two years, anti-Israel graffiti and stickers have appeared daily on s...

A little over two years ago, on April 15, 2024, David Sachs of Ottawa’s Jewish Federation was leaving an interfaith iftar event near Parliament Hill. He was wearing a kippah. Outside the government building, anti-Israel protesters were waiting. In his victim impact statement earlier this week, Sachs told the court he feared for his life during those “absolutely horrific” moments when he was swarme...

The CJN’s flagship news podcast,  North Star , first aired five years ago this week, on May 3, 2021. Originally called  The CJN Daily , it filled a gap in the COVID-era news ecosystem, airing new episodes uniquely focused on the Canadian Jewish community every morning from Monday to Friday. But from its very first episode, breaking news changed the plan. The Lag b’Omer stampede at Israel’s Mount M...

Canada’s Jewish community is growing—but also becoming more diverse, more intermarried and older. As the 2026 census gets underway this month, Canadian sociologist Rachel Margolis explains why filling it out—especially the long form questionnaire—matters, and what it will reveal about Jewish life in Canada today. The census gathers data on religion, ethnic origin, languages spoken at home and hous...