In 2018, the Environics Institute for Survey Research conducted the first ever survey of Canadian Jewry, inspired by the 2013 Pew Study of American Jews. On March 4, 2020, OrH and the Soloway JCC hosted an event featuring an overview of the report’s six themes by one of the project’s principals, ORH member Keith Neuman. […]
In anticipation of our annual Tu B’shevat seder taking place on Sunday, February 9, we are reprinting a Words of the Spirit column written in January 2016. What is the most awesome, inspiring, jaw-dropping moment of all? This may be as close to a universal accord as one can find. Surely the answer must be: the birth moment. The […]
Vehayyei olam nat’a betochenu … letaken ‘olam bemalkhut shaddai – endless potential lies within us to repair the world through the power of malkhut. These phrases are embedded in each and every prayer service, in the words of the Aleynu prayer. We don’t just say it, we sing Aleynu – it is up to us, through malkhut – sovereignty. It was during their interpretive […]
On December 9th, 1948 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and on December 10th voted to pass the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These landmark documents, created in direct response to the Holocaust, fundamentally transformed the ways in which the world thinks about responsibilities to every individual […]
Should we be surprised that a parasha entitled Hayey Sarah, “the life of Sarah”, in fact opens with the death of Sarah, and encompasses nothing of her life story? Torah is full of round-about tales and messages. Here is one that is perhaps more significant for being less straightforward. It is about Sarah, and yet not about one […]
And now, for something completely … regular. We say farewell to Tishrey 5780 the same week that we welcome (regard with annoyance? celebrate? ignore?) Halloween. Because nothing says the Jewish fall festivals are over more clearly than the proliferation of skeletons, ghosts, and the creepy spray stuff that covers doorways and shrubs. My view of […]
As a young Jewish Canadian kid, Thanksgiving was, well, nonexistent. I vaguely knew that it was a Big Thing in the United States, mainly because we had relatives there. And because it often overlapped with Sukkot, which I only celebrated at school or shul, the fall harvest festival season didn’t really have an impact in […]
For some of us, this time of year evokes memories of new school items, perhaps a lunch box, sharp pencils with erasers that work, snazzy fresh outfits. For others, it’s the weather and its changes, from the hot-cool-warm-hot-cold pendulum swings to the changing colours. Early in the week before Rosh Hashanah 2019/5779-5780 the fall equinox […]
Right in the middle of Labour Day weekend 2019, Rosh Hodesh Elul – the first day of the month of preparation for the Jewish New Year – fell on September 1st. For one month, the Jewish calendar numbers will completely align with the Gregorian dates. The High Holy Days, paradoxically, line up pretty well with […]
[To mark the opening of Capital Pride Week we are reprinting a Words of the Spirit column from August 9, 2016] In the early 1980s, when the AIDS crisis had already begun to cut its wide swath of devastation in the United States, the epidemic was just emerging in Canada. After my dearest high school friend died […]
