Category Opinion

The work is not solely ours

Music is an amazing tool for learning. When I was a kid, I learned a lot of Jewish music. It wasn’t choir music, or strictly for prayer. No, I learned “everything” Jewish through music. I sang parts of Pirkei Avot…

Some civil discourse basics

There should be a word for the phenomenon where an individual comes to mass public attention only when their reputations are imploding due to impolitic remarks on social media. Milo Yiannopoulos, a former editor of the far-right Breitbart news, was…

Active Jewish millennials

If the occupation is going to end with the help of North American Jews, it will be owing to the growing force of millennials who stand up not only for their own rights, but the rights of others. One of…

An opportunity lost

Mykhailo Chomiak edited a Ukrainian-language Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland. It happens that Chomiak was the maternal grandfather of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister. This fact is a matter of historical record, but apparently Russian operatives were shopping the story…

More crucial issues at hand

Islamophobia and antisemitism have again reared their ugly heads this year, including with mosque burnings and desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in the United States. In response to the attacks on the St. Louis cemetery, Muslim-American activist Linda Sarsour helped launch…

Hard to find humour

Purim is a time of deception and inebriation. The story we commemorate in the reading of the Megillah is one of hidden identities and near catastrophe. As is often humorously pointed out, the Purim story ends as most Jewish holidays…

We must be united

screenshot - More than 100 headstones were vandalized at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in University City, Missouri

More than 100 headstones were vandalized at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in University City, Missouri. (screenshot from cbc.ca video ) We do not need to delineate the full roster of antisemitic incidents that have made the news recently. Toppled…

These times call for solidarity

When a multicultural country like Canada faces a stark rise in hatred targeting one ethnic group, its social and ethical solidarity is put to the test. The question for Canada’s Jewish establishment is, how will it respond to the shocking…

Why not wait and see?

Things seem to be way out of control these days. So many of the things we used to take for granted in our lives now seem topsy-turvy. There used to be a right and a left, liberal, conservative, moral, immoral.…

Condemning bigotry

A group of people gathered outside a Toronto mosque last Friday carrying signs reading “Ban Islam” and “Muslims are terrorists.” The idea that a group of Canadians would stand outside a place of worship and call for an entire religion…