Not in Heaven

How much does motive matter when it comes to hate crimes? In recent years, Canadian Jews have been rocked by a series of attacks on their community institutions, including late-night shootings at schools and synagogues, attempted arson, and smashing community centres' windows. Many Jews have met the situation with a profound sense of dislocation and disbelief; a feeling that the country they once...

Canada Day and the Fourth of July are coming up, which means flags are popping up across North America like summer flowers. But Jewish Canadians — and Jewish Americans — have fair reason to be skeptical of nationalism. Jewish parents would be forgiven for feeling uneasy seeing their children pledge allegiance to a national flag — and that's even before getting into the extreme evolution of modern...

Too often, when people talk about Jewish life in Canada, they are really talking about Jewish life in Toronto and Montreal. But the truth is more than a quarter of Jewish Canadians live outside those cities. Yes, many still live in large cities, but Jews live in mid-sized and smaller communities, from the coasts of Nanaimo, B.C., to Sydney, N.S. These communities have a different texture, richness...

Two weekends, two parades, two attendance-taking exercises. On each of the past two Sundays, the United States and Canada each held their largest annual gatherings and celebration Jewish pride in their respective countries, in the form of a walk, parade or march for Israel. In New York, there was enormous community outcry over the refusal of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and some other political officials...

Adina Sash, known online to over 100,000 followers as Flatbush Girl , is an American Jewish social media influencer and activist based out of Brooklyn. Originally, her content focused on the comedic aspects of Orthodox female life, but in recent years, her activism has shifted to advocating for agunot , women who cannot get halachically divorced from their husbands for various reasons. For all int...

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV (an unusual place for us to start, but bear with us) released “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” a letter to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics on how to preserve human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence. Genesis’ story of the Tower of Babel is a touchstone throughout the document, outlining the Church’s desire to protect human dignity and agency as...

Ask most Jews what their favourite holiday is and you’ll hear Hannukah, Passover, Purim, Sukkot—maybe even Yom Kippur for some diehards. But despite being one of the big three holidays in the Hebrew Bible, the upcoming festival of Shavuot doesn’t usually make the cut. Which is a shame, because some of its themes feel more relevant than ever. Today, Shavuot is about nationhood, covenant and belongi...

Most parents share concerns about rising rates of depression, anxiety, and social disconnection among younger generations, especially how those issues intersect with increased time spent on smartphones and social media platforms. But what's the solution? Countries around the world, including Canada, are attempting various models of school cell phone bans. But evidence of their effectiveness has be...

Sitting on a bus surrounded by Jews carrying rifles was once an exotic quirk of visiting Israel. But that may be changing. Last month, the American National Rifle Association announced it was teaming up with Lox & Loaded, a national Jewish gun club, to help in the fight against antisemitism. It’s one of several Jewish gun groups serving a growing cohort of newly gun curious American Jews since...

This month, the province of Quebec passed Bill 9, a law that bans employees at publicly subsidized daycares from wearing religious symbols—including kippot, tzitzit, hijabs, turbans, and Stars of David—while also phasing out subsidies for religious private schools; banning prayer rooms in public institutions such as hospitals and universities; and compelling institutions like the Jewish General Ho...

Yom ha-Atzmaut is in the air: circle dancing, falafels, inexplicable inflatable squeaky plastic hammers and, of course, Israeli flags galore. But this year’s Israeli Independence Day may be the final time the old kachol v’lavan is hoisted up the flagpole in front of Toronto’s City Hall. Ceremonial flag raising began as a way for public institutions to spotlight local communities’ heritages and cel...

What moral lessons should we take from the Holocaust? In 1998, the late Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer told the Bundestag about the three additional commandments the world had learned in the wake of the Shoah: “Thou shalt not be a perpetrator; thou shalt not be a victim; and thou shalt never, but never, be a bystander.” The first, "never be a perpetrator," was embraced most str...

For some reason, the number "five" feels particularly weighty—and so it's with great pride that we bring you the fifth annual Great Canadian Seder. For those new to this tradition, every Passover, the team at The CJN collects stories, memories, musings, songs and reflections about the holiday from notable, fascinating and well-known Canadians. This year, you'll hear from: Jordi Mand, wri...

Outside of orthodox communities, there’s a trend of boys and men increasingly disengaging from Jewish institutional life. A new article in the winter 2026  Sapir Journal  called “Boyz II Mensches” by Adam Teitelbaum sparks the question: does the retreat of boys and men from Jewish communal life mirror a broader societal pattern of male disengagement from civic and religious institutions? On today’...

Last week, three Toronto synagogues were hit with gunfire in overnight shootings. Shocked and exasperated, the city’s Jewish community demanded that action must be taken to keep them safe. They’re angry at public officials for not offering sufficient protection, and many have voiced their frustration with community institutions for what they perceive as an ineffective use of community security fun...

The story of Purim is well known: in ancient Persia, a wicked royal vizier plots to wipe out the Jewish people — but he didn't count on Queen Esther, a courageous Jewish woman who revealed the plot to the king. The tables were turned for the Jews as the powerful are victimized by their intended victims; those who were once low are brought high, those who were once high are brought low. When Israel...

A handwritten letter by a Jewish luminary of the 18th century, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, also known as the Ramchal, hit the auction block earlier this year. The event grabbed headlines both because of the nearly $400,000 US sale price, but also because, until recently, many believed that the letter was safely among the hundreds of other handwritten pages that make up the Ramchal collection at Th...

Taglit-Birthright Israel was founded just over 25 years ago, with the aim of strengthening Jewish identity among young adults through a 10-day, free of charge trip to Israel. The program has brought over 900,000 young adults from 70 countries to Israel. The ambitious program began as a grand solution to solve a crisis of Jewish continuity and unity as the world entered the new millennium, spearhea...

This cold week in February has been dominated by two major sporting events: the 2026 Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl. Jews played roles in both; the Olympics regularly see a handful of Jewish athletes competing on the world stage, including nine Israeli delegates and a smattering of Americans in mainstream sports like curling and hockey. While no Jewish football players played in the Super Bowl...

With the return of Ran Gvili’s body, many Jewish leaders are publicly inviting community members to stand up from their proverbial shivas and re-engage with normal life. Federations across North America are welcoming—even memorializing—the return of ceremonial dog tags and yellow pins. But it's been two and a half years of incorporating these thoughts into Jewish ritual life, adding prayers for th...

OneTable is a non-profit organization with two goals: make Shabbat a regular part of young people's Jewish lives, and combat the epidemic of loneliness among that same demographic. Hosts can receive a small stipend for every guest who attends their Friday night dinner, and the broader Jewish community benefits from higher levels of Shabbat engagement. But despite hundreds of thousands of young Jew...

With the release of Wicked: For Good , Jewish audiences have been asking online: Are the munchkins supposed to be Jews? What about Elphaba—the vilified, bookish, green-skinned witch? Is she Jewish-coded? It's a question asked by some Jewish culture critics seemingly every time a movie with goblins, elves or hook-nosed monsters comes out. Are J.R.R. Tolkien's dwarves Jewish? Is Nosferatu Jewish? Ar...

Antisemitic acts don’t all mean the same thing, even if they provoke the same fear. A swastika sprayed on a synagogue door in Winnipeg is not the same as a fire set at a synagogue in Mississippi. And while community members understand this, when violence and intimidation come to their own neighbourhood, it's easy to fall into a maximalist trap that treats all threats as equal. On this week's episo...

The winter holiday season is upon us, which means binging TV shows and comfort movies is one of the only ways to pass the time while temperatures plummet outside. With this annual tradition, in the Jewish media world, come annual think pieces about Jewish onscreen representation. And while our rabbinic podcasters have delved into this subject already with the ever-popular sitcom Nobody Wants This...

A recent, landmark study of current and future rabbis was met simultaneously with celebration, skepticism, and concern by groups across the Jewish community. The survey by Atra – Center for Rabbinic Innovation, indicated significant upward trends in rabbis choosing community positions rather than leading congregations from the pulpit, rabbinical students who identify as LGBTQ+ (51 percent), and th...