The CJN Daily with Ellin Bessner

On the evening of June 1, a synagogue in Mississauga, Ont., will officially welcome nine new members of the Jewish faith, during Shavuot services. The conversion candidates have been studying for months, having undergone ritual baths and—in some cases—symbolic circumcisions, all to join the Tribe. The timing of the ceremony for these “Jews by choice” harkens back to the Biblical story we read on Shavuot about Ruth, a Moabite woman ...

Vitaly Beckman, a Vancouver-based illusionist, recently accomplished something only four other performers have ever done: stump famed American magicians Penn and Teller with an illusion… for the third time. Beckman wowed the legendary duo in an episode of their long-running reality TV series, Penn & Teller: Fool Us, at the Las Vegas theatre bearing their name. They awarded him a trophy before inviting him back to perform on Apr...

Last year, the 2024 UJA Walk With Israel was tinged with pain, coming just months after the Oct. 7 massacres and being marred by intimidating anti-Israel protesters. But participants at this year’s event, held on May 25, felt a strong sense of Jewish pride and confidence, and refused to allow protesters to spoil the day—raising $1.4 million along the way, $200,000 more than last year. The 56th annual fundraiser was held under heavy...

It’s been a tumultuous week in diplomatic relations between Israel and Canada.

The most shocking news, of course, has been the recent murder of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C., who were gunned down on May 21 by a man calling for “Free Palestine”. Amid the international condemnations, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “devastated and appalled” by the attack, calling it “a violent act of antisemitism.”

Bu...

While many Canadians were enjoying a long weekend for Victoria Day, Canada’s new Liberal government issued what many observers feel is this country’s strongest criticism since Oct. 7, 2023, of how the Israeli government is carrying out its military operations in Gaza. Canada joined the leaders of the United Kingdom and France in issuing a joint statement on May 19 demanding Israel immediately stop its renewed assaults on Gaza and a...

Tilda Roll usually carries a can of coyote repellent with her when she walks around her neighbourhood in Vaughan, Ont. But ever since she was the target of an antisemitic incident while leaving her synagogue after Shabbat services on Jan. 6, 2024, the lawyer says she has been more afraid of running into the antisemitic attacker again, since he lives in her neighbourhood.

At the time, police quickly located the suspect, and charged ...

A report from city staff is expected to be released May 14 on whether Toronto should adopt a new “bubble” bylaw that would help protect Jewish buildings from raucous, sometimes violent, anti-Israel and antisemitic protests. The bill would cover all vulnerable communities and faith-based groups, but Jews are the ones most often targeted by hate crimes. The decision marks one of two upcoming key tests for the city’s mayor, Olivia Cho...

Sammy and Leo Marcus, of Winnipeg, have turned their own sensitivities to the startlingly loud automatic toilets in public washrooms, into a prize-winning science project that’s shedding a light on the plight of young kids and also people who wear hearing aids. The teens, who are 13 year old twins, measured hundreds of devices in hundreds of bathrooms across the Manitoba capitol, to document just how loud are those whirring automat...

Since Oct. 7, 2023, many progressive Canadian Jews have found themselves increasingly unwelcome by mainstream community members and organizations. But instead of keeping quiet, they have, over the past nearly two years, created their own spaces to have open and honest dialogues about Israel-Palestine, and their own relationship to Judaism. Recently, hundreds of these progressive Jews gathered for a series of peace summits in Toront...

Just in time for Jewish Heritage Month, the team behind the iconic Heritage Minutes—60-second short films about notable Canadians throughout history—is spotlighting Bora Laskin, the first Jewish justice appointed to the country’s Supreme Court. Laskin became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court soon after. He served from 1970 until his untimely death from pneumonia in 1984 at the age of 71.

The son of Jewish immigrants to Fort Willia...

About 200 Canadian students, their chaperones and nearly a dozen Holocaust survivors were going through airport security at Ben Gurion International when they heard the blast. It happened on Sunday May 4, as the group was returning from a March of the Living trip–which took them to Poland and Israel–when a Houthi missile launched by Islamic terrorists from Yemen evaded Israel’s air defences and exploded on the airport’s access road...

Friday May 2 has been declared an official day of remembrance and mourning in British Columbia after last weekend’s horrific attack on a Filipino cultural festival in Vancouver. To date, 11 people died and dozens more remain wounded after a 30-year-old man drove an SUV into a crowd at the city’s Lapu Lapu festival on April 26. The suspect has been charged with multiple counts of second-degree murder, but the investigation continues...

It will be a very different kind of Yom ha-Zikaron in Israel for the family of Ben Brown. In July 2024, a Hezbollah rocket injured the 20-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., while he was on duty with the Israel Defense Forces’ Golani army unit at a strategic base overlooking the Lebanese border. No one else was hurt, or killed. Now, as the Jewish State remembers more than 25,000 soldiers and also victims of terrorism who’ve fallen throu...

It’s Election Day in Canada. By last count, there are at least 26 Jewish candidates running in the 2025 federal election for all major parties, including the Conservatives (10), Liberals (7), NDP (5), People’s Party of Canada (2), Green (2). Despite polls pointing to a Liberal victory, several Jewish candidates are running in ridings deemed too close to call. On today’s show, we’re zooming into a few of those ridings, to take a bet...

With just a few days left in Canada’s federal election campaign, U.S. president Donald Trump has once again inserted himself onto the ballot question: the American leader repeated on Wednesday that Canada would “cease to exist” without the United States. Trump also threatened to further increase tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts. The sabre-rattling about Canada’s future, on economic independence and our status on the world st...

Eighty years after a Holocaust survivor from Canada saved a wounded, young Jewish orphan by hiding him in his crawl space underneath a washroom in Warsaw, a ceremony in Israel this week will honour the late Peter Jablonski’s wartime heroism. But it won’t be part of the official annual state Yom HaShoah ceremony run by Yad Vashem, the organization in charge of Holocaust Remembrance for the State of Israel. They confer Righteous Amon...

With just a week left in the 2025 federal election, it remains unclear which way Jewish voters will lean. Will they give stock to the parties’ promises on the economy, housing and sovereignty? Or will they be single-issue voters and focus on security within their own community? And how will they decide which party’s stance is more aligned with their views on Israel and the ongoing conflict with Hamas? Although Canadian Jews make up...

Fresh from a hectic Passover weekend of assisting in conducting services at his Beth Sholom Synagogue in Toronto, and also leading a community seder there, Rabbi Louis J. Sachs says he has been trying to ignore the “noise” of the surprise lawsuit brought against him late last month by his previous congregation. Sachs’ former synagogue, Beth Torah congregation–about a ten-minute drive north from his new job–filed a lawsuit March 27 ...

Eighty years ago, on April 15, 1945, the notorious Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen, in Germany, was liberated by Allied troops. To their horror, British artillery crews discovered about 60,000 starving and deathly ill survivors, as well as 10,000 corpses lying, unburied, on the ground.

It was a sight and smell that the late Jack Marcovitch never forgot. The Ottawa veteran had only turned 22 when he arrived there as an army private in...