Culturally Jewish

Daniel Pelton hadn't felt much of a musical connection to his Jewish heritage before Oct. 7. But after reality changed for Jews around the world—including his hometown of Calgary—Pelton decided to learn more about both the Holocaust and its artistic representations. He read The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which inspired him to adapt the tattoo numbers used in the book—34902-32407—into musical notes, using their 12-tone counterparts.

T...

When Adam Wolfond was in his primary school years, the public education system wasn't giving him the support he needed as a nonverbal autistic student. So his mother, Estée Klar, along with other educators and allies, created their own kind of classroom, where neurodivergent kids could feel more free to learn in their own ways, pacing around the room or sitting in bean bag chairs. For Wolfond, using a text-to-speech device, he was ...

Erez Zobary spent a long time downplaying her Jewish identity in her music career. Her earlier work—a blend of R&B, pop, soul and jazz—dealt with issues relevant to her audience of largely twentysomethings: love lives, quarter-life crises, feeling stuck and aimless. It may not be surprising, then, that a woman whose songs so often looked inward would eventually turn to her heritage. As she tells Culturally Jewish, The CJN's art...

After Wendy Litner's mother passed away, Litner was surprised that she still heard her voice—felt her presence, even, looking over her shoulder... often judging her. The feeling inspired Litner to write a new web series called My Dead Mom, released on Crave earlier this month.

The show gives a modern, distinctly feminist twist to the stereotype of a Jewish mother ceaselessly nagging her daughter. And, as Litner explains on the late...

This podcast is a proud media partner of Jewish Futures, a day-long arts and culture salon for Jewish arts workers, hosted by the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto on Nov. 24. The 2024 program emphasizes networking, communal learning and the exploration of Jewish artistic identity, providing a foundation for building resilience and leadership for Toronto’s Jewish cultural community. Learn more and get your tickets here.

Joseph Lan...

Last month, The CJN Podcast Network debuted its first original fiction podcast, Justice: A Holocaust Zombie Story. The seven-part audio drama is a work of subversive Holocaust education designed for the digital age, with many of its gruesome facts grounded in truth. Any shock value from merging zombies with Holocaust education was a deliberate attempt at turning heads, particularly among younger, non-Jewish audiences.

That's accor...

Jacob Samuel has a couple references to his Judaism in his stand-up routine. In the past, whenever he brought it up, it usually created a moment of tension before a laugh. But in the year since Oct. 7, especially in his hometown of Vancouver, he's noticed a shift. It's harder to talk about his Jewish identity onstage. He brings it up later, or takes out a couple jokes if the laugh isn't big enough.

Yet Samuel, who won a Juno award ...

Arnie Lipsey has spent decades working in animation. But on the side, years ago, he began painting on canvas, using archival family photos for inspiration. He began colourizing and adapting them, eventually reinterpreting them entirely through a modern lens. That often resulted in jarring, traumatic scenes quietly unfolding behind his smiling family members: spiralling tornados, fiery trains, even the barbed-wire fences of a concen...

When Tuesdays with Morrie was first published in 1997, it elevated Jewish author Mitch Albom to a level of literary stardom that reverberated beyond the book world. The story—which detailed Albom's frequent visits with his former professor, Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of ALS—has since been adapted into a TV movie and an off-Broadway production in 2002 before a New York City revival earlier this year.

And now, a new staging is b...

You may have heard Talia Schlanger's voice on CBC Radio or NPR, where she has spent years hosting music programs and interviewing artists. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she was taking notes, planning for her own eventual leap into the music industry—a leap she finally took this past February, with the release of her debut album, Grace for the Going.

But while she credits her years as a broadcaster as helping with her creative...

At the onset of the Holocaust, after Maxwell Smart's family began being targeted and killed in Nazi-occupied Europe, he became separated from his mother, who made one final request of her young son: "Please run away." He did as he was told. He ended up spending one and a half years living in the cold, desolate woods of Eastern Europe, meeting and making friends with other young Jews until liberation.

As one of Canada's be...

Danila Botha wants you to know something about her writing: it's not autobiographical. She pulls ideas and themes from real life, from the media and history, from current affairs and what she sees in the world. She is not personally a glitter-strewn closeted lesbian Orthodox woman, nor is she a drug addict who once met Anne Frank in a dream. But these are the kinds of concepts—distinctly Jewish stories with shades of halachic heter...

When Jaclyn Grossman was an 18-year-old opera student, her teacher heard her soprano voice and informed her she'd sing the music of Richard Wagner. Grossman didn't know much about the German composer, but quickly fell in love with his music. She was not particularly phased by the fact that Wagner was infamously antisemitic, included offensive Jewish stereotypes in his works, and is even de facto banned in Israel.

Years later, she...

During the pandemic, David Sklar—an actor, playwright and co-host of The CJN's arts podcast Culturally Jewish—wrote a theatre script called Vial. The plot focuses on a college professor who feels conflicted when one of her far-left-wing Jewish students writes an extreme essay about Israel; the professor, who starts off adamantly pro–free speech, begins to reconsider her stance when the essay sparks wider outrage and fierce debates ...

On December 1, 2023, Charles Officer passed away at age 48. The award-winning filmmaker was revered in the national arts community, having directed documentaries such as Invisible Essence, about the cultural impact of The Little Prince, and The Skin We're In, a film adaptation of author Desmond Cole's popular essay on racism in Canada. His movies were purposeful and personal, tackling topical issues with incisive commentary and dee...

Irena Gut Opdyke was a Polish nurse who, during the Second World War, was forced to become a housekeeper for a high-ranking German officer. At some point, she was offered the chance to save a dozen Jewish lives. She agreed, hiding them in a space nobody would think to look—in the German officer's basement.

Later honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations, Irena's story is not very well known. But a group of Quebecois filmmakers is...

When a member of the Jewish community in London, Ont., recently decided to go through with medical assistance in dying (MAiD), it sent shockwaves through the tight-knit community. Some were angry and confused, others were sympathetic and supportive—and others felt mixed emotions, including the father of Jordi Mand, a playwright and screenwriter. Mand discussed the topic extensively with her father (and then her brother, and others)...

On March 5, the biggest comedy festival in the world, Just for Laughs, announced it was cancelling this year's events in its hometown of Montreal and filing for bankruptcy protection. The news shocked international comics and local Montrealers—but Andy Nulman, who co-founded the festival in 1985 and spearheaded its expansion through the 1990s, wasn't entirely surprised. Though he took a step back from the company in 1999 and left e...

Eric and Erin Warner's grandfather lived to the admirable age of 103. And in that time, the Jewish immigrant to Canada saw Toronto change in innumerable ways, from the migration of Jews out of the Ward and Kensington Market to mass communication shifting from the radio to the internet. It's a life's story that Eric, who's worked in music promotion and production since he was a teenager, wanted to tap into—in part to help his own yo...