North Star with Ellin Bessner

Work crews affixed a row of black metal fence posts into cement around the front and along both sides of Beth Tzedec Congregation in midtown Toronto on Sept. 10, laying the foundation for a new permanent security fence at Canada’s largest synagogue.

The unprecedented installation is happening just one day ahead of Rosh Hashanah and subsequent High Holidays, which begin on the evening of Sept. 11.

Synagogue officials say the ...

This week, the Toronto International Film Festival will take over the city’s downtown. Among the many films slated for red-carpet premieres is Our Loves, the latest by award-winning Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher, which will receive its worldwide debut on Sept. 13.– the second day of Rosh Hashana. The film follows ordinary people navigating troubled relationships when Hamas’s massacre unfolds on Oct. 7—bu...

The Federal Court has ordered Canada to release another group of Nazi war criminal documents from the 1985 Deschênes report laying bare the government's controversial immigration policies that allowed several thousand collaborators into Canada after the Second World War.

The federal Library and Archives Canada has fought the release for years citing privacy laws protecting longstanding diplomatic intelligence agreements with allies...

A landmark letter on MAID, approved recently by Toronto's main Orthodox rabbinical council—also called the Vaad HaRabbanim—is sounding the alarm about what the group notes is the increasing prevalence of medically assisted death making "inroads" into the local Jewish community. Citing the figure of 5,000 patients in Ontario in 2023 who the council describes as being "euthanized by medical practitioners", the leading Ort...

A leaked memo to CBC journalists last week ordered them not to call the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks "terrorism" in forthcoming coverage of next month's 25th anniversary. It prompted backlash within Canada and beyond.

Not long after Toronto Sun journalist Warren Kinsella broke the story on Aug. 27, the head of the FBI, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, CSIS, two Canadian cabinet ministers and several politicians all condemned the CBC's inter...

Earlier this week, on Aug. 24, Montreal’s City Council adopted a motion expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and all civilians affected, and supporting international investigations into genocide claims and human rights violations, acknowledging that International Criminal Court arrest warrants have been issued for for Israeli leaders, and that Canada placed sanctions on Israel.

But three “divisive” and &ldq...

When trade negotiations between Canada and the United States broke off Aug. 19, mere weeks before Rosh Hashanah, Prime Minister Mark Carney described the situation as being “at war”. Farmers are now finding themselves caught in the crosshairs; among them are Jewish producers of festive staples this upcoming High Holidays season: milk and honey.

Canadian milk products and natural honey are among the $28 billion of export...

This fall, two well-known Canadian Jewish schools will introduce new heads of school—and both leaders share similar visions for what students and parents and staff can expect when classes begin the first week of September.

TanenbaumCHAT, Canada’s largest pluralistic Jewish high school, in Toronto, is welcoming Dr. Amy Platt, who joins after nearly a decade leading one of the city’s elementary/middle schools, Paul ...

The late Holocaust survivor and speaker Eva Olsson died Aug. 4 in Port Carling, Ont. She was 101. She once estimated that she had given 4,300 presentations over the years. Her family says she likely reached over 1.5 million people with her story of resilience and courage. Although she only started speaking about her life in her 70s, 15,000 people wrote her letters saying how moved they were.

The Order of Canada winner and auth...

One of Peter Cohen’s favourite gelato shops in the world is San Crispino, in Rome, Italy. It’s among the nearly 2,000 pins on the Montrealer’s personal online World Gelato Map, which he’s been curating as part of his passion—some may call it an obsession—with the frozen treat. For the last 15 years, Cohen has been travelling the world, visiting hundreds of shops, tasting and looking for the ...

On Aug. 7, Todd Shapiro was just finishing dinner in Summerland, B.C., when a wildfire outside the town “exploded” and prompted an immediate provincial emergency evacuation order. The former Montrealer, who had just moved to the Okanagan area last summer, grabbed his passport, a jar of peanut butter and some toilet paper, rounded up his teenage son and family dog, and fled the region.

Shapiro is one of 20,000 residents ...

On Aug. 5, a new national study of antisemitism on Canadian university campuses revealed a startling reality: 95.7 per cent of Jewish students surveyed said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the past year.

The report received wide coverage, including in The CJN, but there’s more to this story than that disturbing number. The 1,200 anecdotes submitted by students paint a vivid picture of being ta...

In May, Jewish residents in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island were invited to celebrate the festival of Lag BaOmer around a bonfire. On Aug. 6, a kayak paddling excursion on Burnaby’s Deer Lake attracted 30 members of that city’s Jewish community. Coming up on Aug. 23, Jewish residents of Squamish and Whistler are planning a boat cruise to spot wildlife, followed by a brunch.

These different events around British Col...

When Canadian First World War soldier Pvt. Albert Detmold was killed by German shelling on Aug. 15, 1917, while digging communication trenches on the front lines in northern France, he could never have imagined that more than a century later, both a Chabad rabbi from Toronto and a Ukrainian Catholic priest from Saskatoon would preside over his formal military burial.

Detmold’s remains were discovered by construction workers i...

For the past week, Canada has played host to more than 2,000 Jewish teen athletes from around the world, who competed at the 2026 JCC Maccabi Games. Competitors and their families came from 75 communities across Canada, the U.S.A, Israel, Europe and South America.

Due to tight security, Monday night’s opening ceremony—with 10,000 guests and Israeli entertainers Yuval Rafael and Nissim Black—was staged far outside ...

More than 135 descendants of Moncton, N.B.'s founding Jewish families returned over the August long weekend for a sold-out centennial reunion at Tiferes Israel Synagogue, sharing memories, meals and hopes for the future of one of Canada’s oldest Jewish communities.

The reunion, dubbed “Kum A Heim“, filled the historic Orthodox synagogue on Steadman St., which served as a central hub for the events—including ...

Last week, if you were in Toronto, you may have spotted a striking yellow-and-black Tesla Cybertruck cruising around the city. Behind the wheel was Shloime Zionce, the Toronto-raised White House correspondent for Ami Magazine and YouTube creator. He grew up in Toronto’s Orthodox Jewish community before moving to the U.S. to attend yeshiva.

While visiting his parents and extended family in his native city, Zionce lau...

Canada’s largest public Jewish construction project, the JWest campus in Vancouver, has reached a significant milestone. About two weeks ago, on July 16, Vancouver’s city council approved an updated rezoning proposal for the $235 million redevelopment that will build a new Jewish community centre, with a revamped Holocaust museum and a day care, a theatre and space for 20 Jewish agencies, and also a larger King David Hi...

“Everything I did was about making my parents proud,” said retired Ontario Court of Justice judge Harvey Brownstone, summing up his lifetime struggle for acceptance. Rejected and cut off at age 19 when he told his parents he was gay, Hamilton native Harvey Brownstone went on to succeed in school, in the legal profession, and now in the world of show business. But his new book, “Without Prejudice: My Life as a...