Filtered By - Jewish Issues

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  Who Stole My Religion? Thursday September 21st, 2017
  Revitalizing Judaism and applying Jewish values to help heal our imperiled planet by Richard H. Schwartz with Rabbi Yonassan Gershom and Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz Barbara Kay is a public affairs columnist for The National Post, of Toronto, Canada. Reviewed by Barbara Kay   Richard Schwartz, principal author of Who Stole My Religion?, is a rather odd polemi...
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  Psychiatry's Chosen People Tuesday January 24th, 2017
  Jews have always had a special fascination with Freud’s theories—no one more so than my own mother   “The Jewish psychiatry of the communists is . . . a Godless criminal athiest doctrine of Frankenstein medicine that will condemn a man for having faith in God. How stupid and perverted are our medical people to base a medical system o...
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  Across North America, seeds of a religious rebound Tuesday December 20th, 2016
  My grandparents, immigrants from Poland and Romania, were Orthodox Jews and deeply observant. My parents, born here, joined a Conservative shul (mixed seating), and kept a traditionally Jewish home. My husband and I joined a Reconstructionist synagogue (liturgically traditional, theologically agnostic, anchored in Jewish “peoplehood”), and mainly express ourselves Jewishly th...
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  UNESCO vs. Israel Tuesday October 18th, 2016
  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was founded at the end of the Second World War on the understanding that economic and military treaties would not by themselves bring about peace. UNESCO’s mandate is to promote “humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity” through universal education for children, “intercultural understan...
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  Review puts to bed activist-inspired case on circumcision Tuesday October 18th, 2016
  A new review of circumcision published in the Canadian Journal of Urology is receiving keen attention. The lead author is Dr. Brian Morris, a professor emeritus on the University of Sydney’s school of medical science. The study finds not only a lower risk for urinary tract infections (UTI) among circumcised males, a benefit long acknowledged that can preclude UTI-caused kidne...
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  The indigenous tribes of Israel Tuesday June 28th, 2016
  Two stories this week turn on a misunderstanding of the word “indigenous.” On June 21, Conservative MP Jason Kenney tweeted: “On Aboriginal Day we honour those who first settled in Canada, and their generations of descendants.” The word “settled” whistled up the identity police. One twitterer responded: “Oh puleeze. Calling Indigenous...
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  Kay vs. Kay – Round 2 Thursday June 2nd, 2016
  The recent coalition agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Liberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party, has made waves inside Israel. Some Diaspora Jews have also openly spoken against Netanyahu and Liberman; many more, however, are keeping quiet, possibly due to the longstanding position in the Diaspora that Israelis &ndas...
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  Attack of the poutine separatists Tuesday December 8th, 2015
  Languages! Here today, gone tomorrow. Not English, of course, here forever (although I bet the Romans said the same thing about Latin). Unofficial languages spoken by small populations are fragile, though. Take, for example, a Croatian language, Dalmatian. Well, you can’t actually; it’s officially dead. See what I mean? Yiddish is allegedly a dying language, though it&r...
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  Jewish Defence League & Montreal’s chilly welcome Friday February 20th, 2015
  Having established a successful base in Toronto seven years ago, the Jewish Defence League of Canada (JDL) is opening a branch in Montreal, announced at a launch Feb 16 attended by about 180 members of the Jewish community and others. At the launch a certain tension prevailed. Everyone there was well aware that the arrival of the JDL in Montreal had fomented much-publicized hostility to the ...
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  AMCHA’s valiant defence of Israel Friday November 7th, 2014
  Global anti-Semitism is on the rise. Ground zero for the propagation of anti-Semitism is the university. On campuses everywhere, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement is allegedly directed at Israel, not Jews. But to rational observers, the disclaimer has become increasingly untenable. Hammering multiple nails into the canard’s coffin is a new book of essays on the im...
• A Macleans columnist’s selective nausea trigger Monday July 28th, 2014
  Emma Teitel, a columnist of progressive views for Macleans magazine, recently walked into a north Toronto camping stores serving a largely Jewish clientele. There she saw something “that made my stomach turn.” Pundit stomachs don’t “turn” lightly, so I braced myself for the answer. Was it a big, slimy rat poking its head out of a sleeping bag? A d...
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  Israeli surgeons save the lives Palestinian children as Hamas continues its rocket assault on Israel Wednesday July 16th, 2014
  Yesterday, 13 Palestinian children from Gaza and the West Bank arrived at Israel’s Wolfson Medical Center in Holon (near Tel Aviv) to undergo life-saving heart operations. After their surgeries, they will recover in the nearby Children’s Home. By now, when the sirens announcing in-coming rockets blow, the toddlers there instinctively raise their arms for the volunteers t...
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  Set Orthodox women free Wednesday November 13th, 2013
  New Jersey resident Gitel Dodelson is a 25-year old Orthodox Jewish woman and new mother. Recently separated from her husband of 10 months, she wrote candidly about her marriage breakdown in the New York Post. In Gitel’s tightly knit community, exposing such “dirty laundry” is almost unheard of. But her decision to go public was an act of desperation. Jewishly, a ...
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  An educated approach to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox dilemma Wednesday August 1st, 2012
  Today, August 1, marks the implementation of Israel’s new draft law that will end 60 years of sanctioned draft-dodging for thousands of Ultra-Orthodox men in the Haredi community. The exemption of the Haredim from military service has long been a sticking point with secular and mainstream Orthodox Israelis. But the political clout of the escalating Haredi population, now estimated ...
• Israel’s worst enemies often come from within Wednesday February 29th, 2012
  The Vladimir Schreiber Institute of Mathematics at Tel-Aviv University. George Orwell once said, “England is the only great nation whose intellectuals are ashamed of their country.” Orwell never met Israeli intellectuals. As the Post noted in its Saturday editorial, Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is declining in vigour on North American campuses. But at Israel’s fo...
• Judaism's fifth column Wednesday September 28th, 2011
   Barbara Kay, National Post · Sept. 28, 2011 | Last Updated: Sept. 28, 2011 3:06 AM ET Every year a few weeks before Rosh Hashana, the celebration of the Jewish New Year that begins this evening, I have a freewheeling conversation with my longtime rabbi - and friend - about potential themes for his Rosh Hashana sermons. I tell him what's Jewishly on my...
• The fanatics within Wednesday July 28th, 2010
  Barbara Kay, National Post · Wednesday, Jul. 28, 2010 "Strange times to be a Jew." That's the master theme, voiced early and demonstrated often, in a haunting 2007 novel about Jewish messianism, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Michael Chabon's darkly brilliant achievement in alternate history sprang to mind last week, when news broke that i...
• Holy Post: Beyond race and religion, Judaism is a civilization Monday February 8th, 2010
  In the Post’s Feb. 4 excerpt from Benjamin Errett’s book, Jew and Improved: How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man, the usual riddle-style question is posed as to whether the Jews constitute “a nation, a race, a culture or a religion.” The Feb. 3 excerpt had raised the equally thorny question as to whether a Jew can be a good Jew without believing in God. ...