When Moses went up Mount Sinai, the Israelites grew restless and constructed a golden calf to worship. Every Jew and everyone with any theological literacy knows what happened next. So it came to pass that, last weekend at the annual…
The entire federal cabinet – save the foreign affairs minister – was absent Monday when the House of Commons unanimously voted to characterize the Chinese government’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the northwest part of…
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, in 2016, adopted a so-called Working Definition of Antisemitism. Given the complexity and pervasiveness of this ancient bigotry, the statement itself is remarkably succinct at a mere 38 words. It reads: “Antisemitism is a certain…
There is no perfection in human affairs. We are imperfect beings and our creations are always flawed. But this does not stop us from striving for perfection, knowing that our reach should exceed our grasp. The preamble to the United…
The violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (photo by Tyler Merbler/flickr) Elect a clown, expect a circus. That has been a recurring meme over the past four years. As the reality show that is the Donald Trump presidency…
The good diplomatic news keeps coming. Morocco and Israel have announced that they will begin normalizing bilateral relations. This comes on the heels of similar announcements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. There are rumours of…
Yad Vashem holds an almost sacred place in the Jewish world. The foremost repository of materials relating to the Holocaust, and Israel’s official memorial to the victims of Nazism, the centre is practically an obligatory destination for visiting diplomats and…
Scanning Israeli news this week has a feel of a sci-fi fantasy. Most eye-catching of all is the assertion by a Tel Aviv University researcher, in a peer-reviewed article, that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can “reverse aging” by lengthening telomeres, the…
It has been a particularly reflective and momentous week. The U.S. elected Joe Biden as its 46th president and Kamala Harris as vice-president, the first Black woman and first woman of Asian and Indian descent elected to that high office.…
It will take about two weeks to verify and count the mail-in ballots from Saturday’s B.C. provincial election. The province saw a 7,200% increase in voting by mail this year, a result of the pandemic and educational efforts to make…
