Marina Rustow belongs to a fairly new school of historians/sleuths who’ve revolutionized the field of medieval Middle Eastern Jewish history. A Princeton University professor, and one of the recipients of this year’s prestigious MacArthur fellowship, she’s a social historian who’s played a leading role in modernizing Cairo Geniza research. During the Fatimid caliphate, which stretched across […]
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party won a resounding victory in the Canadian federal election on October 19, winning 184 seats in the 338-seat House of Commons. The ruling Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats, the New Democrats to 44, with the Bloc Québécois at 10 and the Greens with one. This was a very long […]
The Iran nuclear agreement and the disintegration of Arab state structures pose significant security challenges for Israel, says one of Israel’s most prominent political analysts. Speaking at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs on October 19, Efraim Inbar said the accord curbing rather rolling back Iran’s nuclear program will have dire repercussions […]
Israel is a foreign body in the Middle East and the Jewish people have no historic connection or right to the land, Israel’s enemies claim. It’s a false and persistent allegation, used to delegitimize the Jewish state, and should be vigorously challenged. Gloria Greenfield’s one-hour documentary, Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation, […]
Leon Blum High School, named after the first Jewish prime minister of France, sits in a depressed suburb of Paris populated mainly by Muslims. The majority of the students in Anne Gueguen’s history and geography class are bored and unruly. It’s a wonder she’s able to teach them anything. This is the setting of Once […]
Sports and politics collided in 1936, when the winter and summer Olympic Games were held in Germany. Opponents of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime called for a boycott, believing that participation would be a validation of Germany’s openly antisemitic policies and practices. Critics blasted this approach, claiming the Olympics fostered national pride and unity as well […]
In parliamentary elections held in Turkey last June 7, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) received nearly 13 percent of the popular vote, giving it 80 seats in the 550-member National Assembly. It marked the first time that a primarily Kurdish party had cleared the 10 percent electoral threshold to enter parliament. […]
There is a nip in the air as autumn arrives incrementally in Toronto. The days are shorter and cooler and the nights are chilly. The sun shines less strongly, but you can feel its pleasant warmth on your skin. This is the time of the year when the green leaves on deciduous trees gradually turn […]
The timing of the latest outburst of Palestinian unrest in the West Bank and Israel is hardly surprising. With the peace process having shuddered to a screeching halt and the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank continuing apace, the probability of a Palestinian reaction was inevitable. I’m frankly surprised it didn’t happen much […]
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was won by the National Dialogue Quartet, a coalition of human rights activists, labor unions, lawyers and businesses which played a significant role in guiding Tunisia to the promised land of democracy after its political upheaval in 2010 and 2011. The uprising in Tunisia spread to the rest of the […]