North Star with Ellin Bessner

Vancouver rabbis Dan Moskovitz and Carey Brown spent four days in Israel in December 2023 as part of a delegation of eight spiritual leaders from the city. They carried 21 duffel bags full of supplies, toured Kibbutz Be’eri and heard from survivors, met with mourners and visited the grave of Vancouver’s Ben Mizrachi, who was murdered at the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. Three months after the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 residents–sparking a war that shows no end in sight–tourism in the Holy Land has stalled. Many airlines have yet to resume full service to Israel; hotels are full of displaced residents from Israel’s frontline communities; lifestyle travellers have cancelled trips. In the midst of this bad economic news, however, one unique type of tourism has partly filled the void: volunteer missions. Wine tastings in the Galilee and mud baths at the Dead Sea are out, but picking avocados is in. And hundreds of Diaspora Jews have volunteered. On today’s The CJN Daily, we’ll hear why so many Jews are feeling compelled to “bear witness”. Rabbi Moskovitz will discuss his December visit; we’ll meet Yael Benarroch and Sherri Ettedgui, both Toronto residents, who volunteered on a “Mother to Mother” mission organized by U.S.-based Jewish organization Momentum. And Gal Hana, Israel’s consul for tourism in Toronto, describes what tourism will look like from now, until the fighting ends. What we talked about Learn more about the “Till They All Come Home” hostage bracelet fundraiser created by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, including how to order. Read more about how volunteers are preparing food for Israelis, in The CJN. Why Canadian cardiologist Dr. Brad Strauss flew to Israel to help a hospital after Oct. 7 on The CJN Daily. Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

After weeks of Palestinians staging anti-Israel protests on Canadian streets—even going so far as to take over highway overpasses in the Toronto area—on Jan. 6, uniformed Toronto police officers were filmed handing over a large Tim Hortons coffee container and cups and snacks to some protesters blockading a Jewish neighbourhood at Avenue Rd. and Wilson Ave. After the video went viral, the Toronto police later explained they did not provide the coffee to the protesters themselves, but were rather “managing a dynamic situation” by handing it over on behalf of some other protesters who had brought it but weren’t being permitted back inside the protest zone. Nevertheless, the gesture has touched off strong feelings, coming just days after a Jewish-owned deli in Toronto was set on fire—and after months ofhundreds of Palestinian protests: including taking over shopping malls, vandalizing bookstores and Jewish businesses, including setting fire at a Jewish grocery store. Community members want answers on why Toronto police are permitting these overpass protests— protests that even the Ontario solicitor general, who lives in the area, calls “intimidation and harassment”. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we try to find out why no one is stopping the protests, with guests Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, who is in charge of Ontario’s public safety and policing, and Toronto city councillor James Pasternak. Also with special guest Lila Sarick, The CJN’s News Editor. What we talked about: Read the petition circulating from residents of the Avenue Rd. and 401 neighbourhood in Toronto asking for the Palestinian overpass protests to be banned Watch the video clip of the coffee incident via Caryma Sa’d on X Learn more about the arson at the IDF grocery store in Toronto on Jan 3, in The CJN Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

Canada’s Jewish community wants the 119 remaining Israeli hostages to know that they are not forgotten—even though the letters they’re writing to them most likely will never arrive. For nearly three months now, in schools and synagogues and kitchen tables across Toronto, more than 1,000 volunteers have been penning letters to the hostages, filling care packages and mailing them—or, in some cases, delivering them in person—to the offices of the Canadian Red Cross. The letter-writing campaign, called “You Are Not Forgotten”, is supported by Toronto’s UJA Federation, which provides a suggested script and the address of the Canadian Red Cross president, Conrad Sauvé, in Ottawa. It’s also designed to keep the pressure on the Red Cross’s international head office in Switzerland to finally visit the hostages and demand their immediate release. Other local groups like Canadians for Israel have undertaken the same letter-writing project. Camp Gesher saw campers write to now-freed hostage Ofri Brodutch, 10, who attended the Jewish camp in the summer of 2023. On today’s The CJN Daily, we’ll hear from some of the letter-writers, including Eynat Katz, Sophie Giterman and bat mitzvah girls Ainsley Davidson and Halyn Freeman—and also from the Canadian Red Cross, to explain why they can’t deliver any of the notes. What we talked about Learn more about the letter-writing campaign in The CJN Volunteer to write letters via the UJA Genesis project Hear how Ofri Brodutch and her siblings and mother were released, on The CJN Daily Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me. Special thanks to Judith Guttman for the audio recording of Andrea Weinstein at the Saturday vigil.

Israel’s government says 45,000 new immigrants came to live in the Holy Land in 2023, including over 720 alone who landed since Oct. 7–when Hamas terrorists attacked and slaughtered 1,200 Israeli residents and took 240 others hostage. Among the newcomers is Irving Matlow, 96, a well-known member of Toronto’s Jewish community, who may be among the oldest people ever to make Aliyah. Matlow has been deeply attached to the State of Israel since he grew up in a Zionist home in Toronto, the son of Jewish immigrants from Belarus. In 1948, while studying for his business degree at the University of Toronto, he left Canada and snuck into Israel to fight for a year in the Israel War of Independence. Now, 75 years later, the widower's personal gesture of support for the country he helped found comes as Israel is engaged in a similar existential war of survival, although Matlow is long past the days of putting on a uniform. On today’s episode, we’ll speak to Matlow just before his plane lands in Tel Aviv, plus you’ll meet other Canadians who’ve permanently moved to Israel in recent weeks–despite the war, or maybe, even partly because of it: Montreal schoolteacher Laurence Ittah, and Victoria B.C. bakers Moshe and Leah Appel and their children. What we talked about Learn more about Irving Matlow’s service in the Israel War of Independence in 1948, in The CJN. Moshe and Leah Appel ran the only kosher bakery on Vancouver Island until a few months ago, in The CJN. How the Canadian parents of Israeli lone soldiers are surviving the war after Oct. 7, in The CJN. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

Nearly three-and-a-half years after Shai DeLuca felt he had been defamed by the owner of the now-closed Foodbenders restaurant—who suggested on social media that the Toronto interior designer was a “racist” Israeli “terrorist” who had killed Palestinian babies—an Ontario court has found in his favour. The Superior Court of Justice judgement, which was released on Dec. 22, said DeLuca was entitled to $85,000 in damages because he was defamed by Kimberly Hawkins back in the summer of 2020. The judge found Hawkins acted with malice, was irresponsible, and had tried to not only ruin DeLuca’s public reputation but his professional career as well: she had hoped to get him fired by Citytv, where the Israeli-Canadian designer has been an on-air expert in decor and style for over a decade. DeLuca says the whole ordeal was very stressful, especially because he even received death threats at the time. But now, he says with this court victory, he hopes it will serve as an example to the Jewish community to fight back against the current explosion of antisemitism at play in Canada after Oct. 7. Shai DeLuca joins The CJN Daily today to talk about what he went through, and what will happen next. What we talked about Read more about the Foodbenders lawsuit in The CJN. Learn more about Shai DeLuca in The CJN. Last chance to donate to The CJN for 2023, to support our work, get a tax receipt, and receive our sparkling CJN magazines 4x per year. Hear why The CJN is important to me, in this short message. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

As 2023 comes to a close, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has sat down for a lot of year-end interviews with major Canadian journalists, and The CJN Daily has been asking for one with him, too–for months. But to no avail (we will keep trying). Canada’s Jewish community (and The CJN) have a lot of questions to ask about this government’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war since Oct. 7, including why it continues funding for UNRWA, why Canada’s initial strong support for Israel has now changed with a recent UN vote calling for a ceasefire, why it took Canada’s foreign affairs minister so long to say she believes Hamas terrorists raped and murdered Israeli women, and why CBC News continues to be permitted not to call Hamas ‘terrorists’. So we’ll ask the next best thing: our panel of experts to evaluate how well or in many cases how poorly Canada’s elected leaders have handled these big issues, especially from the Jewish community’s perspective. And we’ll get them to make their predictions for the New Year.  Ellin is joined from Toronto by Stephen Adler, a former Conservative insider now a senior director with National Public Relations; by Emma Cunningham, a former NDP riding president in Pickering, Ont. who quit her provincial party over antisemitism–she is now a trustee with the Durham District School Board but is speaking on her own behalf; and by David Birnbaum, in Montreal, a former Liberal member of the Quebec National Assembly for the riding of D’Arcy McGee, retired in 2022. What we talked about Last chance to donate to The CJN for 2023, to support our work, get a tax receipt, and receive our sparkling CJN magazines 4x per year. Hear why The CJN is important to me, in this short message. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.

The latest hate crime figures released by the Toronto police show they are at their highest level in a decade–with 147 reported hate crimes targeting Jews in Canada’s largest city to date in 2023. That’s more than double 2022’s total. Most of these have occurred since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel’s retaliation. Nearly 50 people have been arrested, and charged with everything from mischief to assault. There have been 111 cases of verified antisemitic graffiti this fall, compared with 27 anti-Muslim cases. Meanwhile Toronto police are coping with what the chief described as a “staggering” number of 248 protests in the past 10 weeks. These new numbers show the unprecedented spike in antisemitism facing the Jewish community in Toronto–a spike that some Holocaust survivors and others have said reminds them of 1939 all over again. Yet, despite disturbing sightings of posters with swastikas equating Israel with Nazis, and the targeting of Jewish businesses such as Indigo books, plus a terrorist bomb plot in Ottawa and Molotov cocktails thrown at Montreal Jewish schools, we’ve also seen six Canadian provinces recently announce mandatory Holocaust education in school, and in some cases, expanding it into even younger grades. So how can both things be true at the same time? Will Holocaust education need to change in order to help what’s happening right now? On today’s The CJN Daily, we speak to Nina Krieger, director of Vancouver’s Holocaust Education Centre, and to Dara Solomon, head of the Toronto Holocaust Museum. What we talked about Read the hate crime statistics released Tuesday, Dec. 19, by the Toronto police chief, Myron Demkiw and Jonathan Rothman's print story in The CJN. Learn more about the provinces that brought in mandatory Holocaust education this year, in The CJN. Hear why Ontario’s education minister, Stephen Lecce, was inspired by his Italian heritage to make Holocaust education mandatory, on The CJN Daily. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has also been playing out in one of Canada’s smaller Jewish communities: Victoria, B.C.—where a city councillor sided with Hamas and wore a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, and where 400 Jewish students at the University of Victoria reported being spit on, and they and their Jewish professors have to run the gauntlet of anti-Israel protests on campus. Although the B.C. premier, David Eby, and other provincial politicians have thrown their support behind the Jewish community by announcing mandatory Holocaust education in Grade 10 by 2025, and have condemned antisemitism–as has the university president–the anti-Israel climate in the B.C. capital now is, as one Jewish leader put it, making Jews feel unsafe to go downtown on weekends. To learn more, we’re joined by Sharon Fitch, president of the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, and Noa Arama, a student at UVic who is co-president of the campus Hillel club. What we talked about Read more about the controversy surrounding Victoria city councillor Susan Kim, and calls for her to resign, in The CJN. Learn more about the situation for profs and students at the UVic, in The CJN. Victoria is the fastest growing Jewish community in Canada, according to the latest census figures, on The CJN Daily. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.

David Hofmann has seen it before. Hofmann, a terrorism expert and professor at the University of New Brunswick, has spent years researching extremist hate groups operating in Canada, including neo-Nazis but also homegrown Islamic terror sympathizers. He’s published widely, particularly about the case of the “Toronto 18”, a large group of mainly young Muslim men arrested in 2006 in a foiled plot to blow up several Canadian landmarks, storm Parliament, take hostages and behead then-prime minister Stephen Harper. Hofmann wasn’t directly involved in the RCMP’s arrest on Friday, Dec. 15 of an Ottawa teenager who was charged with two counts of terrorism: instructing someone to carry out an attack against Ottawa’s Jewish community, and giving them material on how to use explosive material. The teen has been held in custody all weekend and is set to appear in court today Monday Dec. 18. But while the youth’s young age means the RCMP won’t release his name or any identifying information, Hofmann believes that the kind of charges laid, plus other details, point to something involving a young Muslim man who likely became radicalized online after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. We have extensive coverage of the story, including Ellin Bessner's story in print on The CJN.ca, and also on today’s The CJN Daily, where she's joined by professor David Hofmann for his take. We also we hear from Sarah Beutel, the interim-CEO of Ottawa’s Jewish Federation. What we talked about Read reaction from the Canadian Jewish community to the terror charges, in The CJN_._ See the RCMP media release about the suspect’s arrest and charges, and the force’s concerns about online radicalization Read one of professor David Hofmann’s scholarly articles about the Toronto 18 and continued threats to Canadian security. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.

It appears there’s more to the story about why Calgary’s mayor, Jyoti Gondek, abruptly cancelled her participation in the Jewish community’s 35th annual Hanukkah menorah lighting ceremony on Dec. 7. Organizers of the now-infamous ceremony at City Hall acknowledge they had actually wanted the event to be an even stronger show of support for Israel, and let city officials know this in meetings during the days leading up to Hanukkah. Here were some of the original requests: let guests and dignitaries hold up posters of the Israeli hostages now captives of Hamas. Play a video of a Hebrew prayer for the hostages, called “Acheinu”. Stage a pro-Israel demonstration outside the City Hall after the candles were lit. Bring Israeli flags into the building. The city turned these down. Rabbi Menachem Matusof of Chabad of Alberta in Calgary said his committee reluctantly agreed to follow the restrictions, although he balked at the flag veto. The city also frowned on two slogans on the publicity posters: “Support for Israel” and “Israel Bonds raffle”. The rabbi promised them the evening would be a celebration of Hanukkah, and not a demonstration. But mayor cancelled anyway, claiming the organizers “repositioned” the traditional lighting ceremony “as an event to support Israel.” The move has been felt as a slap in the face to the Jewish community in Canada’s fourth-largest city, especially during this time of rampant antisemitism in Canada and the world. On today’s The CJN Daily, host Ellin Bessner goes behind the scenes of Calgary’s chanukkiah debacle with event organizer Nelson Halpern; Rabbi Mark Glickman of Temple B’nai Tikvah and journalist Jen Gerson, who slammed the mayor for not doing her job. What we talked about Watch the Calgary city council menorah-lighting ceremony, presented by Chabad of Alberta Why Calgary’s mayor pulled out of the official menorah ceremony, in The CJN Read Jen Gerson’s opinion piece on Mayor Gondek’s misstep in The Line Read about the anti-Israel protests in Calgary and why the police dropped hate-motivated charges against one of the leaders, in The CJN Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.