North Star with Ellin Bessner

The Maccabiah Games—sometimes called the Jewish Olympics, since they also happen every four years—are due to start July 12 in Israel. Organizers estimate 10,000 Jewish athletes from around the world will travel to Israel to compete in arenas across Jerusalem, Haifa and Netanya. Among that massive crowd will be a sizable delegation of 600 Canadians, competing in badminton and baseball, karate and c...

On today's episode of The CJN Daily , we're taking a look at the life of Irving Abella, the acclaimed historian who died on July 3, 2022, at 82, after battling a long illness. His funeral was held two days later at Beth Tzedec synagogue in Toronto. Abella was a history professor who taught for decades at York University, though he may best be remembered for co-authoring None Is Too Many with Harol...

For decades, Jewish philanthropy has been sustained by wealthy donors who believed in supporting the community with their dollars. But some of those philanthropists worry their children and grandchildren won't feel the same commitment to supporting Jewish institutions—that's how American businessman Mike Leven felt, and it's the reason he started the Jewish Future Pledge in 2020. The initiative, i...

Camp Kadimah was founded in the 1940s to give Jewish kids from small, disparate Maritime communities the chance to meet each other. Its creation resulted in many lifelong friendships and even a few marriages—including the Conters, who have just sent a fourth-generation family member to the camp. On July 3, Karen Conter saw off her six-year-old grandson for his first summer at the historic Jewish s...

El Al customers received emails this week confirming what we reported earlier: Israel's flagship carrier is halting direct service between Tel Aviv and Toronto this fall. According to the airline, it's readjusting its schedule to handle demand after COVID-19 threw the entire travel industry into turmoil. But this may not be the end of El Al in Canada. Fred Lazar is an aviation expert who teaches a...

After two years of lockdowns, Canadians are starting to head back to movie theatres with increasing frequency. For Ellis Jacob, the CEO of Cineplex, Canada's largest theatre chain, that means coming up with new ways to lure audiences into his 170 brick-and-mortar cinemas around the country. It's a challenge he's been tackling since he became president and CEO of Cineplex Galaxy back in 2003. But w...

In January 2021, Roman Baber—then a rookie Progressive Conservative MPP—was booted from caucus by Doug Ford after opposing his government's COVID-19 vaccine mandates and provincial lockdowns. Fast-forward just over a year, and Baber, who continued to sit as an independent in Ontario's legislature after that ejection, announced he would seek the leadership of the federal Conservative party. He's so...

Joseph Segal, a billionaire businessman and real estate magnate; Louise Glatt, an Ottawa-based musician and entrepreneur; Shirley Granovsky, a philanthropist in Toronto; broadcast veteran Arthur Weinthal; and Yehudi Lindeman, a Holocaust survivor who became a documentarian of his fellow survivors' stories in Montreal. These are some of the most notable Canadian Jews to pass away in the last few mo...

Yesterday, The CJN confirmed that El Al, Israel's largest airline, will stop servicing Canada directly by the end of October 2022. The company will stop flying out of Toronto after the high holidays following a half-century of operations in the country. Many in the Canadian Jewish community were stunned, shocked and saddened by the abrupt announcement. But one man isn't letting the airline go with...

Last Sunday, 115 teenagers in Ottawa celebrated their b’nai mitzvah—together—in a long-awaited, pent-up party after pandemic postponements. The celebrants got to enjoy all the trimmings a pre-COVID simcha would have had, including a DJ, glow sticks, a photo booth and swag. The teens were part of a "COVID cohort" event put on by Kehillat Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Ottawa, fo...

Four years ago, Harley Finkelstein, the president of Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify, along with his wife, Lindsay Taub, donated half a million dollars to help open a Chabad student centre in downtown Ottawa. The gift was in thanks to an energetic rabbi who helped Finkelstein when he was a poor law student studying at the University of Ottawa. Since then, Finkelstein and his family have decided...

For the past 20 years, Ari Sitnik has taken small acting gigs on the side in Toronto. But nothing compared to two weeks ago, when he got a call to show up at the Royal York Hotel for the top-secret filming of Drake’s new music video, “Falling Back”. The video shows a lavish wedding featuring Drake getting married to 23 Instagram models. Sitnik, as the officiant, appears right at the beginning, cla...

Until July 3, a new exhibit is running in Calgary's Glenbow Museum featuring intimate black-and-white portraits and cross-generational shots of 161 Holocaust survivors who have ties to the city. The project took years to make, shooting during the pandemic and resulting in an accompanying coffee table book and documentary film. The project is the brainchild of Marnie Bondar and Dahlia Libin, whose...

There's one movie theatre in the city of Val-d'Or, Quebec—a city of about 32,000, about a five-hour drive north of Ottawa. The Capitol Theatre opened in 1937 with more than 600 seats, an orchestra pit and a snack bar. Its founder, Abe Kaplan, was one of the pioneering Jewish residents who set up businesses in the region to capitalize on the burgeoning gold rush of the time. Kaplan and his wife rai...

Zane and Baden Colt got engaged in 2018, with a wedding planned for June 2020. But the world had other plans in 2020. So what was meant to be a two-year wait to get married turned into three, then four. With each passing trip around the sun, they optimistically scheduled another date, only to have to cancel yet again. Now on their fifth try, the Colts—who got legally married in a civil ceremony wh...

Rabbi Shlomo Leib Mund, formerly of Montreal, was arrested on April 13 at Toronto's Pearson airport while flying in from Israel to visit family for Passover. He was promptly charged with sexual assault, sexual interference with a victim under 16 years of age, and incest. The reason behind the arrest was a warrant issued by Montreal's police force. The accusations against Mund, now 79, date back 25...

One year ago, on June 13, 2021, a new Israeli government was sworn in, ushering a new era of Israeli politics after more than a decade of Benjamin Netanyahu's rule, which culminated in four elections in three years. The new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, promised stability and change. But he's presiding over a fragile coalition government comprising eight different parties—and cracks are beginni...

Many Jewish immigrants, when arriving in Canada, choose to settle in the Toronto area. But Toronto is prohibitively expensive for many people, and newcomers face even more hurdles involving work visas, new schools and social connections on top of the financial stress. That's where the Welcome Home project comes in. The brainchild of three mid-sized Jewish communities in Ontario—Hamilton, London an...

Just before Passover, Dori Ekstein was taking part in a webinar held by the March of the Living program. She heard a speech by a British/Israeli aid worker about the work his group is doing in Ukraine, helping the roughly 18 Righteous Among the Nations who were still alive. That news prompted Ekstein to bring up that her mother and grandparents had been hidden by a Ukrainian family in their barn i...

On Wednesday, a plane carrying 180 eager Ethiopian Jews arrived at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. For many, their immigration to the Holy Land has been a long time coming—some have been waiting decades to join their families, who already made aliyah. The flight is part of Operation Tzur Israel, and marks a restart for the long-running operations that have already brought thousands of Ethiopian Jew...

Premier Doug Ford is widely expected to win a strong minority, if not an outright majority, in Ontario's provincial election tomorrow. The CJN's political columnist, Josh Lieblein, agrees with the consensus—but there are still plenty of Jewish stories to watch. Dianne Saxe, a high-profile Jewish candidate, will try and break ground for the Greens in downdown Toronto; parents of Jewish day school s...

This year, a new coffee table book came out called Sephardi Voices , based on the long-running preservation project that collects stories of Sephardic Jews' accomplishments and survival worldwide. As part of the project, two Canadian researchers have spent the last few years collecting video testimonies from hundreds of survivors of the mass expulsion of nearly a million Jews from Arab lands after...

Last Tuesday, Quebec's legislature passed Bill 96, a new bill that forces small businesses to operate exclusively in French; caps enrollment at English-language CEGEPs; and allows language inspectors to raid businesses, without a warrant, to make sure employees are following the rules. It also compels new immigrants to learn French within six months and introduces other language-enforcement rules....

Last week, Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, took a stroll through Ottawa’s Byward Market. They spent the day in the Canadian capital as part of a brief visit to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. And though Charles has been to Canada nearly 20 times before, this was the first time the future King of England had a Jewish butcher as his tour guide. John Diener’s family has run Saslove’s Meat Ma...

Today, Canadian politicians, Israeli diplomats and the leaders of Canada's largest Jewish organizations are quietly convening in Ottawa to host an off-the-record conference called the "Canadian Summit of Israeli-Jewish Affairs". Set up by the Israeli embassy to Canada, the conference will include talks on bilateral relations, fostering positive narratives on social media, encouraging Jew...