North Star with Ellin Bessner

In less than two months on the job for Noah Shack, the interim CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) has had to speak out after someone shot at a Jewish girls' school in Toronto; decry a repeated arson attack on a Montreal-area synagogue; and oversee the response in Winnipeg after five swastikas were spray-painted on a community centre in a Jewish area during the final days of Han...

Monday Jan. 27 was a busy day for Canadian politicians pledging to remember the Holocaust, fight antisemitism, and, in some cases, stand by the embattled State of Israel. The historic day—80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz—also provided a convenient ramp for some early campaign pledges as the country heads into a federal election later this year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made one of h...

Pinchas Gutter, 92, and Mariette Doduck, 89, were both children when they survived the Holocaust. But now something else unites them: when a government representative called them a few months ago to inform them they would be receiving the Order of Canada, both thought it was a prank call. Eventually, the two renowned speakers realized it was for real. They are among 88 Canadians recently named to...

Hamilton’s Jewish community agencies—including synagogues, schools and camps—spent the evening of Jan. 20 learning new security protocols to handle antisemitic protests, vandalism and terrorist attacks. The “Guardian Training” session was part of Hamilton’s new membership in the U.S.-based Secure Community Network (SCN) program, run by the New York-based Jewish Federations of North America. Hamilt...

Some Toronto residents have more reason than most Canadians to be overjoyed with the release of the three Israeli women hostages on Sunday Jan. 19, as part of the first stage of an agreed upon “cease-fire for hostages” deal with Hamas that is expected to last six weeks. Maureen Leshem’s younger cousin Romi Gonen, 24, was one of the trio to come out first after 471 days in captivity. Gonen was shot...

The Israeli government has begun preparations to ratify a deal that would begin releasing some of the remaining 98 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. In exchange, they plan to enact a ceasefire with Hamas and free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Already, lists are circulating around the media of which hostages will be released first—women, children and seniors are taking priority—while Israeli...

Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, is actively monitoring the hourly reports coming out of the Middle East and Washington about negotiations for a deal that would usher in a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, paving the way for a gradual release of dozens of Israeli hostages (in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody). According to U.S. and Israeli news...

'Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not Far Away' opened Jan. 10 in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum, marking the only Canadian stop for the eight-year-old travelling show. The exhibit originally launched in Spain in 2017, and the Toronto version is a smaller edition due to space restrictions: showcasing some 500 artifacts and photos from the actual site of Auschwitz, the modern world’s most notorious ge...

This week on  The CJN Daily , we brought you an interview with human rights advocate  Judy Feld Carr about her decades of work to rescue Syrian Jews. But her husband, Donald Carr, didn’t know the full extent of it—it was only weeks before he died, in November 2024, that she felt safe enough to disclose to him the full extent of her clandestine Syrian missions over the past fifty years. Donald Carr...

For several months now, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather has been calling for his boss to resign. The Montreal-area politician first broke publicly with his party in March 2024, over its positions on the Israel-Hamas war—yet he ultimately decided to remain in the Liberal caucus. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later appointed Housefather as special advisor on the Jewish community and antisemitism, but...

This week marks one month since Islamist rebels overthrew the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and took control of the country, forcing the former president to flee for his life to Russia on Dec. 8.  Jews around the world, including in Canada, might breathe a sigh of relief at some of the new regime’s stated attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Their leader has made promising comments about not...

Over the past 12 months, The CJN team has produced more than 700 podcast episodes, news stories, opinion pieces and foreign dispatches. The overwhelming theme has been the reverberation of Oct. 7: firebombed synagogues, gunshots at schools, anti-Zionist campus encampments, cancelled Jewish artists, a crackdown on Jewish charities—and more. But we always make sure our coverage balances heartache an...

Just in time for Hanukkah, comes a century-old-tale of a young Jewish boy’s courage to take on an adult’s responsibilities as chief light keeper in his Russian shtetl. It’s the true story of Ottawa’s Samuel Saslove, who stepped up to keep his community's brand new electric street lights working, at the tender age of ten. Saslove arrived in Canada in the 1920s and while he didn’t divulge much about...

High drama continues in Ottawa, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces loud calls from his own MPs and opposition leaders to step down, following the surprising resignation of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, from cabinet. Trudeau has so far withstood the criticism, shuffling his cabinet on Dec. 20—the same day that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh confirmed he would make a no-confidence vote as s...

Some Canadians might be excited about this season’s federal tax break—an initiative that makes certain items GST/HST-free from Dec. 14, 2024, until Feb. 15, 2025. You’ll find prepared meals, books, video games and kids’ clothing on the list. “Christmas and similar decorative trees” are also included, which includes an unexpected nod to the Jewish community: “Hanukkah trees or bushes”. The tax depa...

On Dec. 17, Toronto's city council will consider a report on a new package of measures aimed at better protecting vulnerable community spaces—including schools, houses of worship, hospitals and community centres—that have become targeted by hateful demonstrations in the last year. And while the report doesn't specifically mention the Jewish community, the package does include $2.5 million to insta...

Targeted by official complaints to their professional bodies. Doxxed on social media. Harassed for their pro-Israel views. Getting negative reviews from antisemitic or anti-Israel medical students. Being asked where their horns are. Having to hide their Jewish identities. These are just some of the hundreds of stories shared by Canadian Jewish doctors and doctors-in-training as part of a new surve...

When Canada’s first emergency summit on antisemitism was held virtually on July 21, 2021, none of the attendees could have imagined that, just a couple of years later, antisemitism would reach new heights in this country and around the world. Back then, in the aftermath of a brief conflict between Israel and Hamas, the emergency summit convened federal politicians and anti-racism officials to hear...

An estimated 360,000 Canadian holiday postage stamps depicting a rare, ornate Hanukkah menorah (hanukkiah lamp) rescued from the Holocaust, are among the latest casualties of the weeks-old strike by Canada Post workers. It was a two-year effort to showcase the silver-plated hanukkiah in the shape of a peacock. The post office worked with Montreal Rabbi Lisa Gruschow of Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom...

With the synagogue firebombing in Australia, Israeli soccer fans being beaten in Amsterdam, and antisemitic incidents now a daily occurrence impacting Canadian schools, houses of worship, the workplace, social media, and the streets, you might wonder why anyone who isn't already Jewish would want to join "the tribe". Yet from coast to coast, since Oct. 7, rabbis of all denominations are...

It’s been nearly five months since officials at the University of Windsor signed what many observers describe as the most far-reaching agreement by any post-secondary school in Canada to meet the demands of pro-Palestinian students who erected protest encampments in the spring. In return, the Windsor student council and the so-called Liberation Zone protesters agreed in July to dismantle their enc...

Please consider donating to our #GivingTuesday campaign so that we can continue bringing you these important stories… Rabbi Adam Scheier says what happened to him in downtown Montreal on Sunday, Nov. 24—when a police officer saw the full-time kippah wearer silently watching and filming a nearby pro-Palestinian march, and ordered him to move along to avoid igniting any problems—shows “unacceptable...

For the 61st week since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish Canadians–and increasingly, some of their non-Jewish allies–came out to stand for two hours in the cold on Sunday Dec. 1 at a Toronto street corner in support of Israel, to call for the release of the 101 remaining hostages held in Gaza, and to pray for Israel’s soldiers. For over a year now, a similar scene also takes place every S...

Donna Blackburn, a long-serving trustee on the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, has been formally censured by her peers and must take antisemitism training. The vote came on Nov. 26, following an official complaint accusing Blackburn of using slurs about Jews being powerful bullies. While the OCDSB stopped short of suspending Blackburn outright, as others in similar situations have been, Jew...

It lasted just over 10 minutes, but on Nov. 22, Henry Wolfond became an astronaut. The Canadian business executive is still processing what it means to have fulfilled his lifelong dream, having flown out as a paying tourist aboard a commercial spaceship operated by Blue Origin, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. During this journey—which took Wolfond and five others roughly 106 kilometres int...