One of the most disgraceful incidents in modern Poland took place in Kielce on July 4, 1946, when a mob murdered 42 Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The pogrom, a watershed event signifying the persistence of antisemitism in Poland, prompted tens of thousands of Jews to emigrate. During the Communist era, this murderous incident […]
An award-winning Israeli television series is coming to Toronto. The first season of Your Honor, a 12-part crime drama, is being presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies on November 5 and November 12 at 2 p.m. at Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto. Created by Shlomo Mashiach and […]
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, something is rotten at McGill University in Montreal. McGill, one of the world’s finest institutions of higher learning, is being dragged through the mud by a cabal of toxic students who can’t tolerate free speech and diversity of opinion, the very qualities a university should uphold and encourage. Last week, three students […]
Women in Switzerland did not win the right to vote in federal elections until a 1971 referendum finally settled the issue. Petra Volpe’s exceptionally fine feature film, The Divine Order, which opens in Canada on November 3, examines this socially-charged topic through the eyes of several courageous women in a remote Swiss village in the […]
Conditions are not yet ripe for Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a peace agreement, but in the meantime, the Israeli government should adopt pragmatic measures to ensure that final-status talks will be possible in the future, says Amnon Reshef, the founder of Commanders for Israel’s Security, a non-partisan Israeli organization that promotes a two-state […]
As improbable as it may sound, the Caribbean island of Jamaica was a wartime haven for European Jewish refugees fleeing fascism and antisemitism. Jamaica, then a British colony, began admitting imperilled Jews in 1938 and continued welcoming them through the early 1940s. This little-known footnote in the annals of the Holocaust could easily have fallen […]
The shock of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995 has worn off, but his presence is still keenly felt in Israeli politics. Twice prime minister, Rabin paid dearly for his moderate beliefs. Murdered by Yigal Amir, an acolyte of the right-wing national religious camp, Rabin was a taciturn, shy, reflective person who made the […]
The ultra-Orthodox Hassidic community is extremely tight-knit and takes care of its own in a cradle-to-grave arrangement. Conformists who abide by the rules and obey the commandments of the rebbes can expect a reasonably stable, fairly predictable life. Rebels who opt out for the secular world are treated as outcasts and often pay a price […]
The recent fall of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa is one more indicator that the days of the Islamic State’s caliphate in Syria are numbered. Raqqa, its self-proclaimed capital since 2014, was captured by U.S.-backed Arab and Kurdish forces on October 17 after four months of intense battles, which reduced much of it to rubble […]
Nazi Germany, in the greatest theft in modern history, plundered Europe of priceless paintings, drawings, etchings, tapestries, sculptures, rare books and priceless furniture. The collections of Jews, in particular, were targeted. To this day, hundreds of thousands of stolen pieces remain unaccounted for. Where they might be could be anyone’s guess. Hunting Nazi Treasures, an […]