North Star with Ellin Bessner

Cindy Seni is one of the cast members looking to find true love on the popular new Netflix series  Jewish Matchmaking , which debuted on May 3. The show ranks among the streaming service’s most-watched programs in several countries, including in Canada and in Israel. But to Seni’s disappointment, you won’t hear anything on the eight episodes about her Canadian identity and upbringing—including gro...

Michael Kerzner is the highest-ranking Jewish member of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government. Kerzner was appointed as solicitor general last June, shortly after being elected in the York Centre riding—his first successful foray into politics—as part of the Progressive Conservatives’ sweep back to power in 2022. Now Kerzner is taking it upon himself to speak out for the Jewish community. Later t...

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador will hold a news conference today, May 9, to officially announce its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. The move will be done by proclamation and unveiled at the Confederation Building in St. John’s. “We remain unwavering in our commitment to always challenge antisemitism, wherever and whenever it o...

When millions of people around the world tuned in to watch Saturday’s broadcast of the coronation ceremony of King Charles, one of them was Manitoba’s lieutenant governor, the Hon. Anita Neville. Neville felt a particular attachment to the new sovereign—and not just because her job is to represent the King in her province. Neville had, just weeks earlier, flown to London for an in person tete-a-te...

Canadians of a certain age will remember listening to the comedy duo of Wayne and Shuster on the radio—and, later, watching them on television from the 1950s well into the 1980s. The duo met in high school in Toronto’s prewar Jewish neighbourhood around Harbord Collegiate, where they began writing and performing sketch comedy. After returning from entertaining the troops overseas during the Second...

A new documentary is giving viewers unprecedented access to the unconventional life of the Hon. Rosalie Abella, the first Jewish woman—and first refugee—to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The film,  Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella , had its world premiere this week at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival. The film follows Abella, a child of Holocaust survivors, durin...

She’s not even 15 years old, but this Israeli immigrant to Canada is blessed with a powerful singing voice that belies her years. Now Maya Gamzu is hoping that her current success on this season’s reality TV show  Canada’s Got Talent  (airing on Citytv) will be her ticket to stardom. Gamzu and her family moved from Tel Aviv to Richmond Hill, Ont. four years ago. She was already performing in Hebre...

When B’nai Brith released its annual antisemitism report on April 17, documenting 2,769 incidents of Jew hatred in Canada last year, we wondered why the numbers were so high. After all, the Canadian government’s own data on police-reported hate crimes against Jews accounted for a fraction of that number. In France, whose Jewish population is bigger than Canada’s, there were just 469 cases in 2022—...

Hadassa Kingstone’s parents escaped Hitler’s Europe, snuck through the British blockade of Mandatory Palestine and settled in pre-State Haifa, where she was born in 1936. Her memories include hiding Haganah weapons in her father’s factory while their apartment was used as a clandestine radio station in the lead up to the 1948 War of Independence. But after serving in the first Arab-Israeli War at...

What does  Jeopardy  co-host (and former  Big Bang Theory  star) Mayim Bialik have to do with Israel’s 75th birthday? Why does the winner of the Tour de France bicycle race wear a yellow jersey? What year did the Dead Sea Scrolls leave Israel and go on display in Montreal? Here’s your chance to test your own knowledge. To celebrate Israel’s 75th birthday,  The CJN Daily  has teamed up with David M...

As Israel mourns its 24,213 fallen soldiers (and 4,255 civilians killed by terror) this Yom Hazikaron, Canada’s Jewish community also recently lost a war hero who fought for the State of Israel. Bill Novick of Montreal was the second-last surviving Canadian Machalnik—a nickname for volunteers from abroad—who snuck into Israel in 1948 to help the badly outnumbered Israeli military fight their War o...

Ofir Sofer is the first member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to visit Canada since pro-democracy protests began in Israel four months ago. Sofer spent a whirlwind day in Toronto last week, as part of a higher-profile trip to New York’s Jewish community, where his first stop was at the Chabad world headquarters. The cabinet minister is a member of Netanyahu’s coalition partner,...

An orphaned polar bear named Steve with not enough fish to eat meets a lonely electric vehicle named Eve who ran away to the North Pole to escape being bullied by gas-guzzling cars. That’s the plot of a new graphic novel for young readers by award-winning B.C. authors Paul Shore and Deborah Katz Henriquez. Launched at a book reading in March 2023, Steve and Eve Save the Planet: I Can Hear Your Hea...

The Rosenstrasse Protest – which occurred in Berlin in 1943 just weeks before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which we remember today – was the only demonstration by thousands of German citizens against the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Second World War. Eighty years ago this spring, non-Jewish German women stood their ground for a week near the Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo. They won the r...

As ceremonies are held across Canada for Yom ha-Shoah, the commemoration of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, we bring you the little-known story of a Montreal father of four who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although Harry Cohen had been born in Poland, he’d immigrated to Canada in 1919 and lived for decades in Montreal with his wife and the couple’s four child...

As the world prepares to mark Yom ha-Shoah on Monday night, April 17, thousands of Jewish visitors have descended on Poland for the annual March of the Living. On Tuesday morning, more than 150 Canadian students and adults—including seven Holocaust survivors—will be taking part in the large silent march between Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps near Krakow. The commemoration comes amidst a heated...

With the yizkor memorial service fast approaching on the last day of Passover, April 13, The CJN Daily felt it appropriate to shine a light on the cemetery project undertaken by Montreal’s Jewish Genealogical Society. For years, the group’s main researchers, now led by Gary Perlman, have been lovingly cleaning, photographing and investigating nearly 80,000 people buried in Jewish cemeteries in his...

The CJN Daily returns Tuesday April 11, 2023 with regular programming but for today, Monday, April 10, we are offering a bonus – for subscribers only: the chance to sit down for the Great Canadian Seder, second edition, brought to you by our colleagues at The CJN podcast Bonjour Chai . Politicians and proletarians, cantors and comics, all coming together to share stories, songs, wisdom and musings...

As Jewish people around the world sit down for Passover seders this week, they may be using treasured ritual objects such as seder plates and wine goblets. But taking a more careful look at the tableware might reveal these items were made not by Jews, but rather in factories in industrial cities in China or India. These plants churn out orders of kippot, mezzuzot, Stars of David necklaces—and defi...

Later this week, David and Jenny Spigelman will attend a traditional Passover seder at his parents’ Winnipeg home, along with the couple’s three young sons. Then, on Saturday, the Spigelmans will drive out to spend Easter with Jenny’s grandmother at her farm, and the boys—who are being raised Jewish—get to hunt for Easter eggs. It’s a compromise that’s taking place in many interfaith homes around...

Three hundred Canadian Jewish leaders have put their names to a full-page letter that appeared in several prominent newspapers to express their concerns about what’s happening in Israel and about the threats to democracy there. The first ad ran in the Saturday edition of the  National Post . A slightly different version—using more conciliatory language and supporting the “aspiration to find a rene...

With just days to go until Passover begins on April 5, the Atlantic Jewish Council sent out an emergency email to all its members advising of a shortage of matzah at the main grocery stores in Halifax. “Please note that there is no longer any matzah in any store in Halifax,” the note read, and advised the Jewish community that Rabbi Yakov Kerzner, of the city’s Orthodox Beth Israel Synagogue, is t...

As Jews around the world prepare for Passover, beginning April 5, one retired teacher is proposing a new way to welcome young people into the Seder ritual. Pearl Richman is particularly concerned that many traditional haggadot books start the reciting of the Passover story by referring to four types of curious children: wise, evil, simple and the child who doesn’t know how to ask. Richman and her...

The CJN Daily is publishing a special breaking-news podcast due to the momentous events happening on the ground in Israel. A labour strike called by the Histadrut over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s slate of reforms shut down much of Israel on Monday. That means Ben Gurion airport, stores, buses, universities and schools were all abruptly closed—along with Israeli embassies and consulates aro...

Jewish social services agencies across the country say their Passover food boxes are going out to more needy clients this holiday season than ever before—and they’re pointing a finger at inflation. From Ottawa to Toronto to Calgary and beyond, volunteers are seeing significant increases in demand over last year. On Sunday March 26, the National Council of Jewish Women of Canada’s Toronto branch ma...