North Star with Ellin Bessner

Cellist Denis Brott is about to kick off the annual Montreal Chamber Music Festival in his hometown of Montreal on June 4. It's the 28th edition of the festival he founded in the mid-1990s to make classical music more accessible to the general public. He'll also be performing—marking an incredible story of survival. Brott, the Juno-award-winning musician from a legendary Canadian classical music family, caught one of the country's earliest cases of COVID in March 2020. He nearly died. After weeks in a coma at a Montreal hospital, he had to relearn to do everything, including speak, walk and play his instrument. Brott credits the doctors at the Montreal University Hospital Centre (CHUM) for not only saving his life, but for using classical music in his treatment. Now, as he resumes his professional international career, Brott is also giving back to that hospital with a series of private concerts. It's been a tumultuous few years for the 72-year old Order of Canada recipient. A year ago, Brott's older brother, conductor Boris Brott, was killed by a careless driver in Hamilton. Dealing with the fallout from that, and with his own personal recovery, has made Brott introspective. He joins The CJN Daily for a wide-ranging conversation about his journey. What we talked about Read more about Denis Brott at his website Order discounted tickets to the Montreal Chamber Music Festival using the promo code mentioned in our podcast: CJN10 Watch a YouTube video of Denis Brott's COVID journey and the hospital that saved him 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 Vancouver Jewish Community Garden had its official ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 28, just after the Shavuot harvest festival: a fitting debut for the $200,000 initiative. Organizers hope the tubs of lettuce and apple trees will shortly become a hub for teaching about the environment, feeding the needy and hosting Jewish events. Located on the rooftop of a two-storey parking structure between Congregation Beth Israel and Vancouver Talmud Torah School, the garden is a collaboration between both communities and the clients of Jewish Family Services. And while you can find Jewish community gardens across the country, including Toronto’s Shoresh farms and the heart garden at Winnipeg’s Temple Shalom, the Vancouver initiative may be the only Jewish farm purposely built so close to heaven. On The CJN Daily, we’re joined by the organizers: Congregation Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld; Emily Greenberg, head of school at VTT; and Tanja Demajo, executive director of Jewish Family Services in Vancouver. What we talked about Watch a video of the construction of the Vancouver Jewish Community Garden on You Tube In Toronto, the Shoresh farming agency ran a community garden in peoples’ backyards, in The CJN. Read more about environmental programming gaining popularity in B.C. 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.

Nearly 90 years after Nazi Germany stripped art dealer Max Stern of his gallery in Dusseldorf and forced the German Jew to liquidate his large art collection to non-Jews, Stern’s heirs have agreed to sell one of the stolen paintings back to the City of Dusseldorf. The painting is called “Portrait of the Artist’s Children” (1860) by Dutch master Wilhelm von Schadow. It’s actually been hanging in the Dusseldorf mayor’s office for half a century. For years, Max Stern’s heirs have been tracking it down, as one of nearly 400 of his wartime paintings–worth an estimated $50 million today–that disappeared into the Nazi coffers in 1937, before Stern himself fled his native city for London. Eventually, Stern arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1941, and established a storied career as a prominent art dealer, promoting such Canadian artists as the Group of Seven and Emily Carr. After he died childless in 1987, Stern’s estate went to Concordia University, McGill and Hebrew University, which have been funding the Max Stern Art Restitution Project for about 20 years. The story of how this latest Dusseldorf deal was done, and why Germany gets to keep the painting, has been fraught with controversy. On The CJN Daily, we’re joined by Clarence Epstein, the Montreal art historian who oversaw the decades-long hunt for Stern’s lost art, and is just back from the symbolic handover ceremony in Dusseldorf. What we talked about Learn more about the Max Stern collection and efforts to repatriate the 400 works in The CJN. Visit the Max Stern Art Restitution Project website Buy Cantor Moshe Kraus’s 2023 memoir The Life of Moshele der Zinger at Indigo. 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 was a trip down memory lane this weekend for hundreds of former residents of Bathurst Manor, a Toronto neighbourhood that was built starting in 1954 on the northern limit of the city. The Manor, as it's fondly known, became home to scores of Holocaust survivors and also to Canadian-born Jewish families looking for space, greenery and safety in single family homes that cost under $25,0000. It's estimated that of the 9,000 people who moved in, 7,000 were Jewish. During the pandemic, the Ontario Jewish Archives collected stories and artifacts from the generation of Baby Boomers who grew up in Bathurst Manor. And on Sunday May 28, the archives threw a block party at the Prosserman JCC to launch their new exhibit. Visitors strolled past a series of panels showing the landmarks such as The Plaza where the Dominion grocery store was (later Sunnybrook), the nearby Wilmington Park with the playground and swimming pool and tennis courts, and the Forest Valley day camp, which attracted nearly a thousand kids every summer in the ravine south of Finch Avenue West and Bathurst. Organizers and former residents tell The CJN Daily why Bathurst Manor was unique: because nearly everyone was Jewish, many spoke Yiddish, it was cut off from the rest of the city by geography, and it felt like a safe shtetl for immigrants from wartime Europe to begin new lives. What we talked about Read more about the Bathurst Manor exhibition at the Ontario Jewish Archives website When the Bathurst Manor Plaza closed for good, in The CJN from 2016. Our CEO Yoni Goldstein’s memories of The Manor, from The CJN, in 2016. 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.

Hartley Garshowitz went to England this past week to represent his family at the 80th anniversary ceremonies for the famous Dambusters Raid on Hitler’s Germany in 1943. His uncle, Warrant Officer Albert Garshowitz, of Hamilton, was a wireless operator and air gunner on board one of the Lancaster bombers tasked with a top-secret raid that had never been tried before: to bomb three hydroelectric dams deep inside German territory. It’s an operation that many historians today say changed the course of the Second World War. They also say it was a suicide mission. Albert Garshowitz was one of 133 hand-picked airmen from Canada, the U.K. and other parts of the Commonwealth who trained for two months in England with the RAF’s #617 Squadron. They weren’t told their target until just hours before the raid began on the night of May 16, 1943. The 19 heavy Lancaster bombers each carried a newly devised 9,000-pound “bouncing bomb” that had to be dropped precisely on the water near the dams. The crews had to fly low and without lights to avoid detection. Nearly half the men didn’t come back, including Albert Garshowitz. His plane crashed en route, the bomb exploded, and all seven men on board were lost. He was 22. Hartley Garshowitz, an insurance broker in Toronto, has spent decades researching his uncle’s life and honouring his memory. Garshowitz joined The CJN Daily from England, where he met with other Dambusters descendants at the 80th anniversary memorial service. What we talked about Read more about the Dambusters Raid and Warrant Officer Albert Garshowitz of Hamilton, in The CJN from 2018 The Garshowitz family traces its roots in Canada back over 115 years, in The CJN. Watch a scene from the 1955 The Dam Busters film on YouTube 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.

On May 29, Albertans will go to the polls in an election that will either return sitting Premier Danielle Smith of the United Conservative Party for a full second term, or turf her in favour of former premier Rachel Notley, who ran Alberta under an NDP government from 2015 to 2019. Smith was sworn in just seven months ago in October 2022, after the resignation of her predecessor, Jason Kenney. She’d already been in politics for years, but even outside of that realm, she has never shied away from voicing her opinions, writing columns for the Calgary Herald before her political career and hosting a talk radio show since 2015. In recent years, some of Smith’s comments have outraged Jewish groups, especially the Calgary Jewish Federation, B’nai Brith and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. She has posted links from her blog to antisemitic websites and has likened people who took COVID vaccines to the followers of Hitler. Smith has apologized for those remarks, but the impact still reverberates. She’s also been dogged by a slew of other controversies: a UCP candidate compared transgender people to feces; a Muslim multiculturalism advisor was found to have posted antisemitic comments on social media; and, on May 18, Smith herself was found to have breached the government’s conflict of interest ethics. She tried to influence criminal proceedings against an anti-COVID protestor convicted of blockading the Canadian border at Coutts during the truckers’ convoy in February 2022. Observers feel the election is too close to call because the outcome depends heavily on which party wins key ridings in and around Calgary and Edmonton. So The CJN Daily assembled a trio of commentators to weigh in on the 31st Albertan election: in Calgary, Maxine Fischbein, a Jewish community leader and journalist; from Edmonton, Abe Silverman, a Holocaust survivor who is also B’nai Brith’s regional representative; and Laurence Abbott, a former Beth Shalom synagogue president who is a professor at the University of Alberta. What we talked about Read Josh Lieblein on Danielle Smith’s comparing COVID-vaccinated Albertans to followers of the Nazis, in The CJN Why a member of Danielle Smith’s new multicultural council had to resign over antisemitic social media posts, in The CJN B’nai Brith wants Alberta man charged with hate crimes over anti-Semitic articles, 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.

An Ontario court judge has sided with former Conservative senator Linda Frum and dismissed a $2.5-million defamation lawsuit brought against her by a Montreal-area newspaper, the Journal Sada Al Mashrek. The judge ruled on May 15 that the lawsuit violated Ontario’s anti-SLAPP laws, which are designed to protect people from long and expensive court cases that would effectively gag them from commenting on matters of public interest. The lawsuit dates back to the summer of 2022, during the federal Conservative leadership campaign. Frum posted two tweets calling out then-candidate Patrick Brown for comments he reportedly made about Israel and Palestine during his interview with the Montreal newspaper, which were later published online. Frum—whose husband, Howard Sokolowski, is one of the key supporters of the politician who won the leadership, Pierre Poilievre—accused the newspaper of being an organ of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization. The defamation lawsuit was thrown out because the judge ruled it was a blatant attempt to silence Frum. She now joins The CJN Daily to describe why she fought back, why she had to consult personal security experts while the court proceedings were underway, and what may come next. What we talked about Read why Frum resigned her seat in the Senate of Canada in August 2021 to focus on fighting antisemitism in the Jewish community of Toronto, in The CJN Learn more about Frum calling out a newly appointed colleague for being anti-Israel, in The CJN from 2021 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.

On May 16, the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs and International Development Committee adopted a motion introduced by the NDP’s Heather McPherson, a vocal critic of the Israeli government. Her motion—which passed with the support of four Liberal MPs, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois—will now see the committee hold hearings on how Canada can foster peace between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, in light of the recent upswing in violence that has killed at least 89 Palestinians and 14 Israelis this year. McPherson’s views have sparked deep concern from some Jewish MPs and Jewish advocacy organizations, who fear the hearings will give a platform to Israel-bashing and pound a wedge between Jewish and Muslim groups in Canada. The Canadian government hasn’t held hearings on its policies on Israel and the Palestinian crisis for years. (Ottawa still supports a two-state solution and sends millions in financial support to the region, mostly earmarked for Palestinians.) On today’s The CJN Daily, we get the behind-the-scenes story of how this motion came about and hear reaction from Ya’ara Saks, Liberal MP for York Centre and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development; Melissa Lantsman, MP for Thornhill and deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada; and Shimon Koffler Fogel, the CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. What we talked about Read the original NDP statement from April 20 from MP Heather McPherson calling on Canada to study the Israel-Palestine question Read her statement on Israel extremism from January 2023. Find us on May 22 at the Walk with Israel in Toronto: come by our CJN booth 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 group is calling itself the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics, or NECA, and its founders are two professors from Ottawa: Deidre Butler, director of the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University and Cary Kogan, a clinical psychology professor at Ottawa U. Each has personally experienced anti-Israel or antisemitic incidents in recent years at their workplaces: Butler was not permitted to fundraise to help her religion students accompany her on a study trip to Israel this semester, while Kogan’s faculty association voted to oppose the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The pair say it’s about academic freedom because they are finding that there is no room on campuses anymore for professors who are pro-Israel; only for those who condemn the Jewish State, including many of their Jewish colleagues who are in that camp. And so while there are plenty of existing groups that support Jewish students on university campuses, academics like them also need help to better face the widespread normalization of anti-Zionism in higher education. The co-chairs join The CJN Daily to reveal they have already signed up 100 members and are looking to expand across the country. What we talked about Learn more about the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics in their mission statement. Read why an anti-IHRA network of Jewish faculty was formed in 2021 in The CJN Find us on May 22 at the Walk with Israel in Toronto: come by our CJN booth. 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.

Cindy Seni is one of the cast members looking to find true love on the popular new Netflix series Jewish Matchmaking, which debuted on May 3. The show ranks among the streaming service’s most-watched programs in several countries, including in Canada and in Israel. But to Seni’s disappointment, you won’t hear anything on the eight episodes about her Canadian identity and upbringing—including growing up in Thornhill, Ont., and living there until she made aliyah in 2018—because the producers cut all that out. The Netflix series follows Seni, now 28, and a cast of eligible singles from all parts of the Jewish world, who have diverse connections to Judaism. They try to solve their dating problems by using the services of a professional Orthodox matchmaker, Aleeza Ben Shalom, who sets them up with one goal in mind: marriage. Seni joins The CJN Daily to dish about what it was like filming the show, how the experience has helped her love life and we ask whether she really did find her bashert. What we talked about Watch _Jewish Matchmaking _on Netflix Follow Cindy Seni on Instagram, her website and Tiktok Find The CJN in person at the Walk with Israel in Toronto on May 22 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.