Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem gave us delightful fables about the shtetl, the overcrowded villages of Eastern Europe, with endearing characters that contended with abysmal poverty, deadly pogroms and false messiahs. However, life in the shtetl was not always…
(photo from Ashernet) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu awards this year’s Genesis Prize to violinist Itzhak Perlman at a June 23 ceremony in Jerusalem. The annual prize of $1 million is given to “an exceptional human being who has attained outstanding…
סטארט אפ קנדה עומדת לסיים את הליך ההתמודדות לבחירת אישה יזמית של סטארט אפ לתחרות הבינלאומית ‘סטארט תל אביב’, שתערך בחודש ספטמבר הקרוב. אישה ממציאה: מסתיים הליך ההתמודדות לבחירת אישה יזמית של סטארט אפ לתחרות בינלאומית בתל אביב סטארט אפ…
Yosef Wosk with his collection of circus memorabilia, some of which can be seen in the Museum of Vancouver exhibit All Together Now: Vancouver Collectors and Their Worlds. (photo by Rebecca Blissett) Prosthetics. Menus. Corsets. Artificial eyes. Seeds. Public transit…
Jonathan Kallner, event speaker and managing partner, KPMG, talks with Eli Joseph, senior account manager, business and personal, RBC Royal Bank, at Schara Tzedeck’s LinkYid networking event June 3. (photo by Baila Lazarus) There is a theory that you are…
The cover of Outlook magazine’s final issue features a painting by Lithuanian artist Yehuda Pen (1854-1937). The newspaper in the image, explains the caption, is Der fraynd (The Friend), which, “founded in 1903, was one of the major Yiddish newspapers…
A new handbook published by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights provides a resource for the Jewish community to press for change around the problem of mass incarceration in the United States. “We are here to uphold ideas of…
The Anti-Defamation League, one of North America’s most prominent Jewish advocacy agencies, has taken a stand that is at odds with the consensus position of almost all other local, national and international Jewish and Zionist organizations. Responding to the BDS…
The Jewish community is seeing mud being slung again. B’nai Brith Canada has come down hard on Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). The latest salvo, which came via email blast as the Jewish Independent was going to press, contended that IJV…
A concert at Deer Lake Park gets Matty Flader thinking about social media. (photo from deerlakepark.org) King David High School’s creative writing course, taught by Aron Rosenberg, partnered with the Jewish Independent for their final unit of the school year.…
During the seven weeks of the counting of the Omer to Shavuot, Temple Sholom’s religious school students bring donations of cereal for the Jewish Food Bank. (photo from Sara Ciacci) For a number of years, during the seven weeks of…
Linda Frimer was honored earlier this month by the University of the Fraser Valley for her artistic, humanitarian and philanthropic contributions and accomplishments. (photo from UFV) For Linda Frimer, art is a form of reconciliation, and creativity a means of…
Aaron Friedland’s Walking School Bus garnered the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s 2016 Next Einstein award. (photo from Aaron Friedland) When Vancouverite Aaron Friedland, 23, heard his Walking School Bus digital reading program was the recipient of…
Rami Katz (photo from Rami Katz) Fish Soup, a 10-minute documentary by Vancouver-based filmmaker Rami Katz, screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival last month. The film is an exploration of Katz’s family and their cultural traditions through the making…
Lana Shahar-Kulik (back right) with some of her skating students. (photo from Lana Shahar-Kulik) Lana Shahar-Kulik approaches life creatively. “In any situation, I like to imagine, What else could I do? How could I make it more interesting? And then…
If you have ever wondered what will happen after your death – when your soul leaves your body but you have not yet been buried – a new film by Saul Henteleff walks you through precisely that experience. The 30-minute…
The author and fellow servicemen at a moral leadership course in Fayid, Egypt, in 1951. (photo from Alan Tapper) It was the spring of 1951 and I was serving in the British Royal Air Force in the Suez Canal Zone of…
(photo by Israel Antiquities Authority via Ashernet) Inspectors of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery during a June 14 raid on a store in Jerusalem’s Mamilla Mall. Bronze arrowheads, coins bearing the names of the…
National Council of Jewish Women, 1965. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.13971) 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…
suleiThe above display at the Tower of David Museum shows a variety of characters typical of Jerusalem in the 19th century in front of a fountain. Jerusalem’s water system was restored during the rule of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent; fountains…
המרכז לענייני ישראל והיהודים בקנדה יוצא בקמפיין חדש לבקש מהממשלה הפדרלית להגדיל את תקציב הביטחון להגנה על הקהילה היהודית המרכז לענייני ישראל והיהודים בקנדה יוצא בימים אלה בקמפיין חדש וחשוב, בניסיון להגדיל את תקציב הביטחון להגנה על הקהילה היהודית ברחבי…
Zack Gross on the way to see some fair trade sugar cane in Peru. (photo from Zack Gross) According to Zack Gross, there is child labor and slavery associated with the production of chocolate, sugar and coffee – as well…
Ira Hoffecker’s Berlin Identities is at Zack Gallery until July 3. (photo from Ira Hoffecker) Rarely does the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver present exclusively a non-Jewish artist. This month, however, the…
Earlier this year, Winnipeg’s Jewish Child and Family Services (JCFS) premièred the short film Not in My Family, to raise awareness on the topic of elder abuse. JCFS executive director Al Benarroch greeted the approximately 150 attendees that filled the…
Vigils, like this one in Minneapolis, were held across North America to express grief and solidarity with the victims of the shooting in Orlando. (photo by Fibonacci Blue) Still reeling from the latest gun attack in Tel Aviv, which killed four people…
Anyone who has visited a synagogue in continental Europe or South America can attest that – even in liberal democracies welcoming of diversity – the Jewish community is an at-risk minority requiring extensive security measures. While Canada is relatively safe…
Dr. Marc Gopin of George Mason University and Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan of Vancouver School of Theology at the VST event Encountering the Other: An Inter-Religious Conference. (photo from Laura Duhan Kaplan) Encountering the Other: An Inter-Religious Conference took…
It was a life-changing day for Sei Mang Khong Sai, a 35-year-old man from Sazal, India. Inside the mud and bamboo hut on stilts with him were community leaders, his family and guests. They chanted tribal prayers to the beat…
Calof family festive meal, spring 1942. This is but one of the thousands of photos that have been collected and preserved by the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. (photo by Cyril Leonoff; JWB fonds, JMABC L.13866) The Jewish…
Born to Ukrainian Orthodox survivors of the Holocaust, Dr. Eva Pip knows all too well the long-lasting effects of war. Her parents were imprisoned in labor and concentration camps as punishment by the Nazis for harboring Jews on their farm.…
