Category Opinion

A yearly reminder to return

Family friends in their 80s just came over to visit. It was perhaps their first time at our house in a year or so. They’ve been busy. They had a family member move back to Winnipeg, there’s been a pandemic…

To give up is un-Israeli

Israelis might be among the world’s most resilient people. Across 75 years of constant war or threats of war, terrorism, geopolitical isolation and global political assault, the Israeli people have built one of the world’s strongest democracies and most powerful…

The first step is the to-do list

Yesterday, I shared my to-do list with a friend via email. She responded with “Ahh! I’m tired just reading this!” What I didn’t mention is that I had to do all this plus other chores, thrown in, which I had…

Pill-popping for peace?

Antisemitism, dubbed “the longest hatred,” has seemed impervious to challenge. It is a social problem that shifts to meet demand, allowing perpetrators to tailor it to fit their “need.” What if there were a pill you could prescribe to “cure”…

IDF incursion into Jenin

As in the instance of many complicated issues, we cannot begin a discussion of specific issues without providing background and context. Earlier this month, the Israel Defence Forces entered Jenin, located in what many Jews call Judea and Samaria. This…

Sharing the load as a team

The greatest triumph of our summer so far is moving 10 cubic yards of gravel. Obviously, there’s a story in this! When we moved to our present house, we knew that the landscaping (along with the plumbing, electricity, insulation, boiler…

Artificial just got real

Jews have been called “the people of the book.” It was the power of and devotion to the received and unfolding written word that ensured the Jewish people’s unity (and diversity) across almost 2,000 years of exile. But who reads…

A life of light and of shade

The quality of our lives seems to contain alternating waves of good and bad, hard and soft, light and shade. If we are lucky enough to appreciate that this is the nature of existence, we can bear much better with…

Eating locally and Jewishly

My family enthusiastically eats huge salads at dinnertime in the summer. We love to celebrate the fresh local lettuce and other vegetables we receive from our community-supported agriculture (CSA) share. A CSA is a membership/subscription service that allows farms to…

An unwelcome precedent

An Israeli cabinet minister visited Canada recently and, with due respect, some of our journalistic colleagues buried the lede. In journo parlance, the “lede” is the most important and, therefore, first item mentioned in a conventional news story. To “bury…