Though I’ve been steeped in the minutiae of Jewish history since I was a child, I wasn’t always aware, growing up in an immigrant household in Toronto, that there was even a category such as that applied to the stories and sagas of Jewish communities in North America, more specifically J…
Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast, as I often do while I’m driving. The podcaster was the incredibly articulate Jonah Platt, son of recent Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) Board Chair Julie Platt, who championed the LiveSecure initiative which helped fund our own security i…
“The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.” RL Collingwood
At the conclusion of the recent movie Nuremberg this quote flashed across the screen. It reminded me of a related concept, an idea shared by the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno - “After Auschwitz no fur…
Every modern generation of Jews measures Israel through two lenses: Its strength, and its spirit. At times, these two move in perfect alignment. At other times, they strain against one another—each demanding attention, each requiring care. Today, we are living in such a moment, a moment of…
I often see, around the middle of May, an argument of sorts unfolding. It surrounds the celebration of Mother’s Day, and the appropriateness of the designation of a day exclusively to celebrate and appreciate everything about our mothers and our relationships with them from our first days …
Many of my close family members, and many of my cousins live in Israel, including my brother, my aunt and uncle, cousins who I grew up with, their kids and grandkids. An even greater proportion of my wife’s family live there as well. We are blessed when we have opportunities to share famil…
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence with the help of Franklin and Adams, he used an interesting turn of phrase. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” he wrote, when describing the natural state of equality the framers believed underpinned the act of revolut…
It is particularly apt just before Passover to consider that every generation of Jews asks the same question.
Is this moment different? Is it an echo? Or is it something completely unknown?
History teaches something more important than the answer itself: the question must always be asked.
…I’d like to share a personal, not organizational perspective this week.
We woke up last Shabbat, and within a short time, we all knew that the war had started.
That sounds like a statement of fact, but the truth is, it is incorrect.
“I am a Jew, part of the Jewish people, and only after that am I an Israeli - Because the State, as I understand it, was created for the entirety of the Jewish people and in their merit. The thing that sustained the Jewish people throughout all of the generations, and brought forth the sha…
This week, many in the Jewish community, especially those in the advocacy space, were up in arms over a Superbowl ad created by Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance and its campaign to #EndJewishHate.
I’ve since seen and heard a tremendous amount of comment and criticism of the piece. I…
This week’s Haftarah, from the book of Isaiah’s sixth chapter, has a dialogue between the prophet, the Seraphim (angels) and the Almighty. I am fascinated by the fourth pasuk (sentence) which says “And the doorposts shook from the voice of He who called, and the house (the Temple in Je…
This week many of us took off our yellow ribbons and removed our hostage dog tags. The last of the captives, Sgt-Major Ran Gvili, of blessed memory, who fell defending his community (he fought to the last bullet, with a broken arm!) on October 7th, 2023, was located, and he finally came home…
Last week, I shared an explanation of why I don’t write critically about contentious issues in Israel in this forum. Today, I’m going to partially break that self-imposed rule. I apologize for the contradiction, not the criticism.
Last week, a lone IDF soldier who had spent more than 74…
Almost as long as I’ve been writing these messages - give or take three years now - many readers have emailed or messaged me asking me to weigh in or take sides on some of the critical and sometimes contentious issues being debated and even fought over in Israel and among the Jewish people…
