Temple Sholom is hosting Inspired to Act. The event will feature the comedy of Yuk Yuk’s co-founder Mark Breslin, plus the music of young local artists Liel Amdour and Adrienne Robles, and will honour the winners of the 2018 Tikkun…
Chabad Lubavitch BC’s 40th Annual Gold Plate Celebration raised $10,000 for the Jewish Food Bank. (photo courtesy) Lubavitch BC held its 40th Annual Gold Plate Celebration on March 15, 2018. The dinner celebrated 43 years of Chabad Lubavitch service to…
Left to right, Rabbi Yerachmiel Benjaminson, executive director of Tzivos Hashem, philanthropist George Rohr, Grade 7 gold trophy winner Mendel Bitton and his father, Rabbi Binyomin Bitton. (photo courtesy) Out of some 4,000 kids from 96 schools worldwide, four B.C.…
Daniel Meron (photo courtesy) In his first Olympic-distance triathlon, Daniel Meron placed first in the men’s 30-34-year age category. He topped his category in the University of British Columbia Triathlon March 10. Olympic triathlons see participants swim one-and-a-half kilometres, cycle…
B’nai B’rith, circa 1970. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.09551) If you know someone in this photo, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C.…
Pigeon bones from 1,500 years ago. (photo from University of Haifa via Ashernet) Israel’s Negev Desert has not always been a dusty, almost treeless place – 1,500 years ago, many parts of the Negev were green and produced basic foods.…
שגרירת קנדה בישראל, דברה לאיונס. (צילום: Twitter) שגרירת קנדה בישראל, דברה לאיונס, נפגשה לאחרונה עם ראשי הפדרציה היהודית של ונקובר, נציגים של ארגונים יהודים ואנשי עסקים בוונקובר. השגרירה לאיונס כתבה בעקבות הביקור מכתב לפדרציה ובו אמרה בין היתר: “קנדה מאמינה…
Maung Zarni, right, with a 67-year-old Rohingya man from Maungdaw, who had been a leader at a township level in former prime minister Ne Win’s early days, when Rohingyas were recognized as an ethnic community with full citizenship rights. (photo…
Portrait of Dave Barrett by photographer Fred Schiffer, June 9, 1975. (photo from Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia) More than four decades after he led British Columbia through one of the most tumultuous and consequential epochs in the…
As Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman writes (in this week’s issue), the Exodus story is not one in which humankind is the protagonist. It is the hand of God that creates the circumstances that permit the Hebrew people to escape bondage…
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last for which the first was made …” begins the poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning. Meanwhile, his wife, Elizabeth, immortalized their relationship in her poem, “How…
While based on the above photo of my niece Fae at a seder several years ago, the cover art is inspired by all my nieces and nephews: Hannah, 24, Zac, almost 22, Caleb, 17, Fae, 6, and Charlotte, 4. I…
On Feb. 20, students at Vancouver Hebrew Academy packaged more than 200 mishloach manot bags full of non-perishable food items donated by the Marine Drive and Grandview Superstore locations. (photo from VHA) The atmosphere at the Jewish Food Bank on…
Kids on the Block uses a puppet show to teach kids about juvenile arthritis. (photo from Cassie and Friends) Juvenile arthritis (JA) affects three in 1,000 kids in Canada, making it one of the most common chronic conditions affecting children…
Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Svara, in Chicago, taught Talmud at Congregation Or Shalom earlier this month. (photo from Or Shalom) “For all you straight folks, let me tell you – you’re all queer. Your job is…
This year’s Limmud Vancouver takes place April 14-15 at Beth Israel. (photo from Limmud Vancouver) Limmud Vancouver will be holding its fourth conference April 14-15 at Congregation Beth Israel. The Vancouver program is one of 80 Limmud gatherings around the…
Back in university, Jeff Jacobson started working in the career he loves – being a talent agent. (photo from Jeff Jacobson) “When I was a kid, my favourite movie was Jerry Maguire. He was an agent, and I wanted to…
Dr. Mike Teschuk created this image to illustrate how a teen brain prioritizes. “First thing you’ll notice is the largest lobe is the love lobe,” said Dr. Mike Teschuk, showing an image of how a teen brain prioritizes. “For teenagers,…
Cara Rosenbloom is trying to educate people about nutrition. In 2016, she co-authored the cookbook Nourish. (photo from Cara Rosenbloom) When grocery shopping, how do you decide what to get when you are looking at items not familiar to you?…
“I remember the deep pleasure I had as a child when I first began reading,” author Méira Cook told the Independent. “It was like climbing into a book and pulling the covers down over my head. When I write, I…
(photo from jaegerreidmusic.com) An unexpected kindness reignites a passion for music, which offers an outlet for grief, as well as a new career path. A chance meeting turns into a mutually supportive, productive and enduring musical collaboration. We often forget…
Left to right, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Sean Spicer and Ron DeSantis, at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York on March 8. (photo by Dave Gordon) What do an American soldier, a former…
Prof. Roger Frie’s Not in My Family rises above the merely personal (image from cenes.ubc.ca) Forty-three years ago, at Vancouver’s first Holocaust Symposium, for which I was the chair, the keynote speaker was the Lithuanian partisan fighter Leon Kahn. His presentation to…
Albert Londres was a Parisian journalist born in 1884. He became an international reporter who chose to chronicle human suffering and expose injustice and cruelty. He denounced inhuman conditions in mental asylums, the ordeals of black workers, conditions in a…
The Upper Galilee’s Mizpe Hayamim is a beautiful place. (photo by Karen Ginsberg) Unless you are one of the lucky Canadians who lives in the Okanagan Valley or the Niagara Peninsula, chances are that most of the “fresh food” that you…
Nidhe Israel Synagogue is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (photo by Tasha Nathanson) One of the oldest synagogues in the Western Hemisphere is in Barbados. I was living in Barbados, working on a Canadian agricultural development project, when I tripped…
Gerrer Chassidim consider the burial place of Rebbe Avraham Mordechai Alter and his son, Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Alter, a holy site in Jerusalem. (photo by Gil Zohar) Among the many events this spring marking 70 years of Israel’s independence is…
In 2016, under the supervision of Prof. Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, archeologists excavating at the fifth-century CE Huqoq synagogue found a mosaic floor on which there is an image of an Egyptian soldier…
Study brings hope for improving our health. The question of nature versus nurture extends to our microbiome – the personal complement of mostly friendly bacteria we carry around with us. Study after study has found that our microbiome affects nearly…
“Israel in Egypt” by Edward Poynter, 1867. (photo from Wikimedia Commons) There is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom and its association with the holiday of Pesach. One of the essential features of the…
