North Star with Ellin Bessner

"What Jews call antisemitism isn’t real." "Any Jew who calls them out [for antisemitism] is just racist and is lying in order to oppress Palestinians." "Anyone at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine who angers the Jews will have their career destroyed by the Jews.” These are just some examples from the litany of antisemitic comments and insults which Dr. Ayelet Kuper has encou...

Irwin Cotler, the renowned human rights lawyer who is now Canada's special envoy on antisemitism, has appeared on The CJN Daily more than once. But this time, he's not commenting on the news—he is the news. A new documentary about his life and work, First to Stand: The Cases and Causes of Irwin Cotler, is making its world debut this weekend in Montreal. It's not a biography—the film instead traces...

After a two-week conflict between Israel and Palestine in the summer of 2021 led to an unprecedented spike in antisemitism, Rabbi Philip Bregman knew he had to act. He began reaching out to other racialized groups who know what it's like to feel discrimination. Eventually, he assembled a sort of Justice League of seven community leaders, including himself: Tariq Tyab of the Muslim community, Terry...

He scoured the St. Lawrence River to find clues to how Jews helped the British conquer New France. He battled a hurricane off the coast of France and scuba dived to find a shipwreck linked to the mysterious first Jewish woman to set foot in Canada 250 years ago. No, these aren't scenes from the newest Indiana Jones movie—they're moments from the life of Len Pearl, a documentary filmmaker from Toro...

Benjamin Dichter rose to fame as a spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy that swarmed Ottawa earlier this year. Since then, the Toronto resident and part-time trucker has become a known quantity in conservative and right-wing media circles, appearing on Tucker Carlson's Fox News program and Steven Crowder's YouTube show. He's even earned an endorsement from Jordan Peterson for his new self-published...

One thing that unites all Jewish Canadians—from Victoria to Winnipeg to Halifax, across politics and religious denominations—is that we all came from somewhere else. Before there was here, there was there. And whether it’s a part of your recent or more distant memory, all of our families were once strangers in a strange land.  The idea of an organization to help Jewish immigrants from Europe began...

On Nov. 21, Rabbi Donniel Hartman spoke at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple in a frank conversation about the future of Israeli democracy with David Koffman, a professor of Jewish studies at York University. In an extensive interview, Hartman sat down with Avi Finegold, host of The CJN's weekly current affairs podcast, Bonjour Chai, to expand on his ideas about the state of Israel religious and polit...

Every weekday, Cst. Sean Shapiro slips on his headphones, flips on his microphone and goes live on his show, Ask a Traffic Cop, broadcasting from his studio inside Toronto's traffic unit headquarters. Shapiro answers questions about highway safety, speeding, cycling, U-turns and what qualifies as distracted driving—and then posts clips on his TikTok page, where he's amassed nearly 600,000 follower...

Naomi Seidman's father, Hillel, was a descendant of a Hasidic dynasty. Despite her family heritage and religious schooling in New York, Seidman eventually left her home and community, forging a new relationship with Judaism and enjoying a successful career in academia. She now teaches at the University of Toronto. She wants you to know that, while not often talked about, there is a sizeable commun...

This weekend, Jewish leaders from Canada and around the world will meet in Hamilton for a conference called #NoMoreAntisemitism. It's bringing together teachers and Holocaust experts including prominent speakers Elisha Wiesel and Dara Horn, author of the award-winning book People Love Dead Jews. Horn says she’s attending even though she's convinced the conference will not eliminate antisemitism. S...

As winter approaches and flu season begins, Canadians—especially children—are facing a significant health crisis. Top doctors in Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba have all urged people to wear masks in public, mostly because children's hospitals are overwhelmed, cancelling surgeries and scrambling to open new ICUs for kids to handle the flood of young patients. The triple threat is not just COVID...

On Nov. 15, Manitoba's first Jewish lieutenant governor, Anita Neville, will find herself in the spotlight as she reads the government’s speech from the throne to mark the start of a new session of the province's legislature. Neville admits she's facing a big learning curve as she figures out what's expected of her and how she can put her own stamp on the office—which includes installing a mezuzah...

Ethan Schachter was born with a rare genetic disease, nemaline myopathy type 2—a type of muscular dystrophy—that disproportionately affects Ashkenazi Jews. It's not always fatal, but Ethan, at 20 months, needs round-the-clock care, including a machine to help him breathe and a tube for nutrition. He can't walk or talk because his muscles are too weak. Currently, there is no cure. Doctors have only...

On Sept. 13, 2022, at the Holten Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, an early Remembrance Day memorial service was held to honour the more than 1,000 Canadian soldiers buried there. They fell in battle in the spring of 1945, shortly before the Second World War ended, liberating the area from Nazi occupation. Elliott and Jonathan Shiff were the only Jews on the trip. They were commemorating t...

Robbie Waisman was the youngest of six children growing up in Poland, having just turned eight years old when the Nazis invaded. While his whole family was killed except for him and one sister, Waisman survived a ghetto, a slave labour camp, typhus and the Buchenwald concentration camp. After moving to Canada to start a new life, Waisman kept quiet about his time in Europe until prominent Holocaus...

Today, Americans head to the polls in their midterm elections, choosing all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, plus one-third of all elected senators, various governors and other high-ranking state legislators. Analysts are predicting high voter turnout given what's at stake. Americans are mad about the rising cost of living, rampant inflation and a troubled economy—but also climate change...

At a recent Ottawa Redblacks football game, the team presented Suzi Shore Sauve with their "Wood Cookie" award. The distinction is given out at each home game to a community member making a difference; on this day, they honoured Shore Sauve for her multifaith volunteer initiative, From House to Home Ottawa. It all started two summers ago, after her father, David Shore, died. To honour hi...

Nearly 40 years ago, Hart Snider was a camper at Camp BB Riback in Pine Lake, Alta., the summer after Jim Keegstra, an infamous teacher from the nearby town of Eckville, got fired for brainwashing his high school students against Jews. For years, Keegstra, who taught social sciences, told his teenagers that Jews were evil, Hitler was right and the Holocaust was fake. While he was later convicted o...

Welcome to the fourth episode of The CJN Daily Dead Beat—which we're now calling the Honourable Mention, as we pay tribute to honourable menschen and women who passed away in recent months. As always, we're joined by The CJN's reporter emeritus Ron Csillag. In today's edition, we're focusing on four high-profile Canadian women and their contribution to society: Corinne Bronfman, 74, an artist turn...

On Oct. 27, 2022, El Al flew its last direct flight from Canada for the foreseeable future. Leaving Toronto's Pearson airport at 7 p.m., the direct red-eye was packed with passengers both optimistic about their travel plans and sad about El Al's decision to cease operations in the Great White North. The milestone marked the end of nearly four decades of direct flights between the two countries on...

As the world prepares to mark the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Nov. 9, a new play on Broadway, Leopoldstadt , is reminding audiences what can happen to Jews when nationalism and antisemitism turn into genocide. The production is deemed by many to be possibly the last written by legendary British playwright Tom Stoppard, now 85. The script is loosely autobiographical, as Stoppard's family f...

When The CJN Daily launched in May 2021, one of our first stories was about Jewish organizations urging community members to fill out their census forms. It was important, they said, because the 2016 census was so poorly designed that it didn't ask about religion—only ethnic origins—which left out Judaism, halving the number of Jews living in Canada. The latest census was different. Having taken t...

The book Hana's Suitcase by Canadian author Karen Levine has been translated into 40 languages, won over a dozen literary prizes, adapted into a stage play and been the subject of a documentary. The book tells the story of how a wartime suitcase belonging to a Czech Holocaust victim, 13-year-old Hana Brady, wound up in a Japanese museum in 1999. The curator's search for Hana's identity would revea...

For more than 40 years, Efrem "Eppy" Rappaport has run Omnitsky Kosher—first at the original deli and store in Winnipeg; then, for the past 25 years, in Vancouver. He also operates a meat processing plant that has become Western Canada's only fresh kosher meat supplier. But the Omnitsky's deli building on Oak Street is not long for this world. A massive redevelopment project in the area,...

Israelis are heading to the polls on Nov. 1 for the fifth time in four years. And while former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes this will mark his political comeback with a coalition comprising several far-right and extremist religious parties, his main opponent, Yair Lapid, is looking to capitalize on Netanyahu's criminal indictments and secure another term in office. On Netanyahu's side i...