North Star with Ellin Bessner

After weeks of Palestinians staging anti-Israel protests on Canadian streets—even going so far as to take over highway overpasses in the Toronto area—on Jan. 6, uniformed Toronto police officers were filmed handing over a large Tim Hortons coffee container and cups and snacks to some protesters blockading a Jewish neighbourhood at Avenue Rd. and Wilson Ave. After the video went viral, the Toronto...

Canada’s Jewish community wants the 119 remaining Israeli hostages to know that they are not forgotten—even though the letters they’re writing to them most likely will never arrive. For nearly three months now, in schools and synagogues and kitchen tables across Toronto, more than 1,000 volunteers have been penning letters to the hostages, filling care packages and mailing them—or, in some cases,...

Israel’s government says 45,000 new immigrants came to live in the Holy Land in 2023, including over 720 alone who landed since Oct. 7–when Hamas terrorists attacked and slaughtered 1,200 Israeli residents and took 240 others hostage. Among the newcomers is Irving Matlow, 96, a well-known member of Toronto’s Jewish community, who may be among the oldest people ever to make Aliyah. Matlow has been...

Nearly three-and-a-half years after Shai DeLuca felt he had been defamed by the owner of the now-closed Foodbenders restaurant—who suggested on social media that the Toronto interior designer was a “racist” Israeli “terrorist” who had killed Palestinian babies—an Ontario court has found in his favour. The Superior Court of Justice judgement, which was released on Dec. 22, said DeLuca was entitled...

As 2023 comes to a close, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has sat down for a lot of year-end interviews with major Canadian journalists, and  The CJN Daily  has been asking for one with him, too–for months. But to no avail (we will keep trying). Canada’s Jewish community (and The CJN) have a lot of questions to ask about this government’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war since Oct. 7, including...

The latest hate crime figures released by the Toronto police show they are at their highest level in a decade–with 147 reported hate crimes targeting Jews in Canada’s largest city to date in 2023. That’s more than double 2022’s total. Most of these have occurred since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel’s retaliation. Nearly 50 people have been arrested, and charged with everything f...

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has also been playing out in one of Canada’s smaller Jewish communities: Victoria, B.C.—where a city councillor sided with Hamas and wore a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, and where 400 Jewish students at the University of Victoria reported being spit on, and they and their Jewish professors have to run the gauntlet of anti-Israel protests on campus. Although the...

David Hofmann has seen it before. Hofmann, a terrorism expert and professor at the University of New Brunswick, has spent years researching extremist hate groups operating in Canada, including neo-Nazis but also homegrown Islamic terror sympathizers. He’s published widely, particularly about the case of the “Toronto 18”, a large group of mainly young Muslim men arrested in 2006 in a foiled plot to...

It appears there’s more to the story about why Calgary’s mayor, Jyoti Gondek, abruptly cancelled her participation in the Jewish community’s 35th annual Hanukkah menorah lighting ceremony on Dec. 7. Organizers of the now-infamous ceremony at City Hall acknowledge they had actually wanted the event to be an even stronger show of support for Israel, and let city officials know this in meetings durin...

Canada’s ambassador to Israel, Lisa Stadelbauer, has offered this country’s help to Israeli law enforcement teams who are now piecing together evidence of systematic sexual violence against women and girls by Hamas during and after the terrorist attack on Oct. 7. Stadelbauer officially reached out to the Israeli police, to women’s groups and the chair of Israel’s civil commission on sex crimes by...

For the past eight weeks, Canada has welcomed at least 900 Israelis who’ve arrived looking for a temporary respite from the rockets and warfare in the Middle East. While many stayed only briefly and have already returned home, some are giving up on Israel after Oct. 7, hoping to make the move permanent. They are all enormously grateful for the support they’ve received from the Jewish communities i...

An estimated 20,000 people, mostly members of Canada’s Jewish community, gathered in Ottawa on Dec. 4 to rally in support of Israel, call for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and fight back against antisemitism. The event was, by far, the largest single demonstration of unity held by Canada’s Jewish community since the terrorist attack that happened on Oct. 7 in Israel, in whic...

The City of Moncton’s abrupt decision to quietly halt the display of all religious symbols on municipal property—including the Hanukkah menorah it owns—came as a shock to the New Brunswick city’s Jewish community. The decision was made on Nov. 30 during a closed-door council session. It came one week before the community was expecting to participate in the annual lighting of the menorah, a traditi...

Toronto businessman Evan Kosiner lodged a complaint with the CBC’s ombudsman last month concerning why the news organization won’t let its journalists describe the Oct. 7 Hamas attack by using the word “terrorism”. Kosiner felt that CBC News—in choosing to refer to Hamas as militants, despite the Canadian government’s own official designation—is biased against Israel. He also accused the CBC of pu...

This past weekend, Canadian physicist Aharon Brodutch enjoyed an emotional reunion in an Israeli hospital with his kidnapped sister-in-law, Hagar, and her three children, all of whom were taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. The Israelis from Kibbutz Aza were set free on Sunday, Nov. 26 as part of the ongoing hostage deal reached between Israel and Hamas. They'd been held for more than seven weeks since the...

Nearly 500 episodes. Nearly 10,000 hours of programming. It's "what Jewish Canada sounds like." For more than two and a half years, Ellin Bessner and The CJN Daily podcast have been bringing the voices and sounds of Canadian Jewish newsmakers to listeners from coast to coast—and around the world. And since Oct. 7, it's never been more important to provide you with authoritative, trustwor...

As Shye Klein Weinstein was fleeing from Hamas terrorists who attacked the Supernova music festival in Israel on the weekend of Oct. 7, his camera was clicking constantly, capturing photos and videos of their escape. Except, he says, he doesn’t remember photographing anything. The Canadian photographer—who had just immigrated to Israel in the spring—bought last-minute tickets to the festival, only...

In the last few weeks in Montreal, anonymous gunmen have targeted Jewish schools; vandals threw molotov cocktails at Jewish buildings; and pro-Palestinian supporters are boycotting Jewish businesses. With this intense backdrop, it's not surprising that Montreal's Jewish community is afraid. Ever since Hamas's attack on Israel on Oct. 7, leaders in Canada's second-largest Jewish city have been deal...

On Oct. 16, 2023, Deborah Lyons was officially named Canada’s new special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism. She takes over from the inaugural envoy, Irwin Cotler, at a time when Jews in Canada are facing frightening waves of antisemitism on the streets of this country, stemming from Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war. Lyons, 73, is not Jewish herself...

There has been an outpouring of love and support from around the world for the late Vivian Silver, the Canadian-born peace activist whose remains were identified last week, five weeks after she was murdered by Hamas terrorists in the safe room of her home in Kibbutz Be'eri on Oct. 7, 2023. Silver was buried in a private ceremony on Nov. 17 at her kibbutz, with just her two sons and her siblings an...

The historic March for Israel in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14 is already being described as the largest public rally by Jewish people in American history, with an estimated crowd of 300,000 people gathering at the capital’s National Mall. Among them were at least 2,000 Canadians. Some were driven in on buses from Jewish high schools, such as Yeshivat Or Chaim and TanenbaumCHAT; some flew from Mont...

Show notes Police in Montreal are redeploying their squad cars in different locations this week in an effort to better protect the city’s Jewish community. The move comes a week after bullets were fired through the doors of two Jewish schools; Molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue and a Jewish office; and three people were injured in a fracas over the Israel-Hamas war at Concordia Universit...

In the summer of 2022, coin expert Brian Iseman stumbled on a trove of long-forgotten personal military possessions belonging to the family of Lt. Myer Tutzer Cohen. Cohen, from Toronto, was the first Canadian Jewish soldier to win the Military Cross for bravery in the Great War—and possibly the first in Canadian history to do so. Iseman quickly realized he needed to buy the collection to save it...

Being a Jewish post-secondary student on Canadian campuses this semester has become an uncomfortable experience in the past month. Students have received death threats; mezuzot have been ripped down; professors have injected anti-Israel rhetoric into their lectures; and student councils—even entire departments—have issued declarations condemning Israel. All this while Jewish students, wanting to s...

Toronto police have arrested and charged a 32-year-old Toronto man after he allegedly tried to stop someone from putting up posters of missing Israeli hostages along Yonge Street. Police say further hate-related charges could be laid. Meanwhile late Monday, Ottawa police announced they have laid various charges against a 29-year-old man after death threats were made during a phone call with Rabbi...