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Guest Voices

Turkey A Month After The Failed Coup

A month has passed since the July 15 failed coup in Turkey, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consolidated his power like never before. Indeed, not since the days of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish Republic, has any figure dominated the country for as long as Erdogan has. Fethullah Gulen, a […]

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Commentary

Spirit Of The Olympic Games Compromised

Ever since the ancient Olympic Games were revived in 1896 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, they’ve been organized around the exemplary principles of mutual understanding, tolerance, friendship and fair play. As 11,000 athletes from around the world converged on Rio de Janeiro for this summer’s games, I gamely hoped that these hallowed principles […]

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Arts

Trouble In The Tribe

The place Israel occupies in the consciousness of the American Jewish community has, alas, become a contentious issue. It is not exactly what early Zionist ideologues had in mind when they dreamed of a Jewish state in Palestine, the ancestral home of the Jewish people. Dov Waxman, an American academic, advances this thesis in his […]

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Jewish Affairs

The Rift Between Israel and the Diaspora Widens

Sadly enough, Israel seems to be the only country in the world where a pre-modern Orthodox rabbinate, in collusion with the government, delegitimizes the Conservative and Reform streams of Judaism. It’s not only scandalous and shameful, but bound to widen the already growing rift between Israel and the Diaspora. In recent years, the government of […]

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Arts

The Archive Thief

Zosa Szajkowski was one of the strangest, most tragic figures in the annals of academia. A devoted collector of French Judaica and a pioneer in the field of French Jewish history, he moonlighted as a thief, stealing priceless documents from state archives, synagogues and private Jewish libraries and selling them to institutions such as Columbia […]

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Middle East

Aid Diversion In Gaza Must Stop

Allegations by Israel that the manager of a Christian aid organization in the Gaza Strip funnelled millions of dollars to the military wing of Hamas are extremely serious. This flagrant misuse of charitable funds raises hard and uncomfortable questions whether World Vision — an international Christian aid group with headquarters in the United States and […]

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Middle East

Canada’s Green Party Sets A Disturbing Precedent

The Green Party of Canada set a disturbing precedent at its biennial convention in Ottawa on August 7 when it voted to adopt the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) platform. Seven months after the Canadian parliament strongly condemned the BDS movement, the Greens became the first political party in Canada to embrace it. It’s a somber […]

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Guest Voices

Pier 21 Was A Gateway to Canada

On July 28, 1948, my parents and I arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax as displaced persons following World War II. I had turned three years old during the voyage. We travelled on a Greek ship, the Nea Hellas, which departed from Genoa, Italy, earlier that month. My parents were Polish Jews whose families had […]

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Jewish Affairs

Ukraine’s Crooked Path

Ukraine, subjugated and brutalized by communism and fascism, seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991 and finally achieved its independence and freedom. But since then, in its attempts to break with its past as a servile Soviet republic and embrace a modern European identity, Ukraine has embarked on a crooked path and taken to whitewashing its […]

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Arts

The Infiltrator

Bryan Cranston is back in the drug business. In the popular Netflix series, Breaking Bad, he played a high school chemistry teacher who moonlights as a methamphetamine manufacturer and distributor. Now, in Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator, which opens in Canada on August 12, he portrays a U.S. federal agent posing as a money launderer in […]