Bill 21, Quebec’s law that forbids most public employees from displaying any religious symbols like a turban, a Magen David or a hijab, may become an issue in the federal election. On CBC Radio’s political program The House last weekend,…
It is the season of new beginnings: new school year, newly turning leaves and a new Jewish year. On a leisurely drive on Labour Day Monday in suburban Vancouver, bright orange pumpkins that weren’t there last time we passed had…
The sentencing of a notorious hate promoter in Toronto last week is, in some ways, evidence that our country’s laws and norms against targeting identifiable groups are working. James Sears, editor of Your Ward News, a propaganda sheet distributed periodically…
In a story that is positive and uplifting, Rabbi Adam Stein, associate rabbi of Vancouver’s Congregation Beth Israel, wrote a piece in Canada’s Anglican Journal, which describes itself as the largest faith-based publication in North America. In the article, Stein…
The U.S. president accused Representative Rashida Tlaib of a political stunt when the American politician of Palestinian descent rejected Israel’s offer of permission to visit the West Bank on humanitarian grounds. Israel’s government had first announced that it would permit…
In a world where Israel is accused of being an “apartheid state” and Zionism is equated with racism, it is understandable that we would recoil from accusations of actual racism in Israel, but we can’t afford to do so. On…
Summertime and the living is easy! Of all the seasons, probably summer is most closely associated with happiness. Vacation, camping, family time, celebrations, picnics: these are activities that we associate with happiness. In Western culture, individual happiness is often considered…
A recent study indicates that Americans are increasingly tolerant of the idea that businesses should be able to refuse service to customers based on the customer’s identity. Of those polled, 19% said that a business should be able to refuse…
Concentration camps are in the news this week. The term, which was first used in the context of Jews in the Holocaust, is being invoked by opponents of the U.S. government’s detention of migrants from Latin America. Appallingly, those detained…
The deed is finally done. For years, Quebec politicians have been talking about secularism, or laïcité, proposing a range of actions to ban the presence of visible religious symbols among government employees. On Sunday, following a weekend of almost round-the-clock…
