In the early hours of Monday, June 16, Alana Ruben Free was sheltering in a friend’s safe room—with her friend, several other women and three cats—when they heard the loudest boom any of them had ever experienced. The six-storey apartment building in a popular Tel Aviv district was one of many that was destroyed or badly damaged by a powerful Iranian missile in the barrage that morning; in this case, the missile exploded in the parking lot directly across the street right smack in the neighbourhood’s central plaza. The playwright and visual artist, who is originally from Fredericton, N.B., does not even live in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem. She was spending a weekend visiting friends and family, including several who had come from Canada for the city’s famous Pride parade.and was staying as a guest in a friend’s apartment. We aren’t saying where it was, following the Israeli military’s current censorship protocols. It took Israeli emergency crews a long time to free the four shaken survivors, but except for a cut knee from broken glass, they and their feline friends were fine. Now Ruben Free is crediting her miraculous story to reciting prayers and to reflecting on the story Queen Esther of Persia, her personal Jewish heroine. Alana Ruben Free explains why on today’s episode of The CJN_‘s_ flagship news podcast, North Star.

Related links

• Hear more about how Canadians in Israel are being impacted by the Iranian missiles, on the North Star podcast of The CJN.
• Learn more about Alana Ruben Free.
• Read more about Alana Ruben Free’s art show in Israel, in the archives of The CJN.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)

Eva Kuper, a Holocaust survivor from Montreal, spent the first five years of her life hiding from the Nazis in German-occupied Poland. Now, the well-known Holocaust educator is stranded in Israel together with a group of university and CEGEP students on the “Journey of Hope”, a trip supported by Montreal’s Federation CJA. After visiting Auschwitz with the students two weeks ago, and taking them to see the sites in Poland where Kuper grew up between 1940 and 1945, the delegation landed in Israel a week ago—just before Israel launched its surprise air raids on Iran on June 13. Since then, Iran has been retaliating with nightly barrages of missiles and drones that have now killed 24 people and injured more than 600 others. The action curtailed the Canadians’ trip, and the group is now spending its time confined to their hotel, rushing down to bomb shelters when the air raid sirens go off. While the students—and their worried parents—have been anxious, Kuper has been impressed by the scenes of resilience she has observed. She joins _North Star _host Ellin Bessner from Israel. In this episode, you’ll also hear from Yair Szlak, the CEO of Federation CJA of Montreal, who explains what his organization is doing to help bring people home, and from Glenn Nashen, a parent of a teenager now on Birthright who is also stranded in Israel.

Related links

• Read more about Eva Kuper, a prolific Holocaust educator, in The CJN.
• Order a copy of Eva Kuper’s autobiography A Beacon of Light, from the Azrieli Foundation survivors memoirs.
• Learn about the Journey for Hope sponsored by Montreal’s Federation CJA.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)

For the last three nights in a row, ever since Israel's military and the Mossad began the ongoing strikes on Iran's nuclear program, Maddy Eisenberg and Dave Heilbron—two Canadian tourists in the Holy Land—have been spending hours sheltering in a safe zone beneath a beachfront hotel in Tel Aviv.

The two only met this week, while participating in a government-sponsored trip for Jewish LGBTQ leaders who were meant to attend Tel Aviv's famous Pride parade. That was supposed to take place on June 13—but the parade was hurriedly cancelled, and their itinerary curtailed, as news of the initial strikes broke. Since then, every time air raid sirens go off, or their phones alert them to incoming Iranian rockets and missiles, they rush down to the bomb shelter and ride out the anxious hours, together with other tourists and Israelis alike.

While the death toll of Israelis killed and wounded continues to climb, and first responders try to dig out those still missing from direct hits on Bat Yam and other Israeli cities, the Pride delegates—who are required to stay within 100 metres of the hotel—are now also worrying about how they will get home, since all flights in and out of the country have been cancelled until further notice.

Maddy Eisenberg, a broadcaster and communications strategist in Ottawa, and Dave Heilbron, a human resources executive and Jewish leader now living in the Netherlands, join North Star podcast host Ellin Bessner to describe what they're seeing on the ground.

Related links

• What Global Affairs Canada is telling Canadians in Israel to do, in The CJN.
• Follow the IDF's official website account on “Operation Rising Lion”.
• How Canadian Dave Heilbron, a leader of a pro-Israel lobby organization based in Amsterdam, experienced the “pogrom” against Israeli soccer fans in his adopted country, in November 2024.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)

Political observers are describing Canada’s move as “unprecedented” after foreign minister Anita Anand announced on June 10 the country has joined 4 other allied nations in imposing travel and economic sanctions against two extreme-right wing, Israeli politicians for being part of West Bank settler violence against Palestinians. Canada has slapped similar sanctions on several civilian Israeli settlers three times already since 2024, accusing them of fomenting attacks on Palestinians and their villages–attacks which largely go unpunished. But the listing of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, sitting members of a democratic, Western government that is a long-time ally of Canada, is being seen as an important diplomatic “signalling its extreme displeasure with the Israeli government”. Smotrich is Israel’s current finance minister, while Ben Gvir is in charge of national security. Both men live in settlements on the West Bank, and both have made highly controversial remarks about Palestinians, about wanting to annex the West Bank and Gaza for Israel, even that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. The International Court of Justice is now hearing a case about incitement to genocide because of some of these remarks. While progressive Jewish leaders in Canada have praised the sanctions on the two men, in practise, experts say Canada rarely enforces them. To explain the strategy behind Canada’s team approach to the new sanctions on Israeli politicians and what message they’re meant to send, on today’s episode of North Star, host Ellin Bessner speaks with Thomas Juneau. He is a professor of political science and an expert in Middle East studies at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.

Related links

• How Canada, France and the U.K. rebuked Israel’s renewed military campaign in Gaza and threatened sanctions about expanding settlements, on May 19, in a joint statement.
• How Canadian Jewish leaders express concerns about Carney’s threat of sanctions on Israel.
• Here is Canada’s announcement of sanctions against extremist settlers, published June 10 2025.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)

Now into their third week as officially-sworn in members of Canada’s 45th Parliament, newly elected Conservative MPs Tamara Kronis and Roman Baber are getting used to their new seats in the backbenches of the House of Commons. They have plenty in common: both trained as lawyers, grew up in Toronto, and, in the 2025 federal election, managed to flip their ridings blue for the first time in a decade. And on top of all that, both are the offspring of Jewish immigrant families, although Baber’s Canadian passport is much more recent. This is Kronis’s first time in political office, although she ran unsuccessfully for the Tories in the same Vancouver Island riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith in the 2021 election. She comes from a prominent Conservative political family: her late father, Jules, was a party operative dating back to the days of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Roman Baber represented the heavily Jewish Toronto riding of York Centre provincially from 2018 to 2022, during the first Doug Ford government in Ontario. Before throwing his hat into the ring federally, he ran unsuccessfully for the federal Conservative leadership, losing to his current boss, Pierre Poilievre. With Parliament having resumed May 26, these two newcomers have been learning the ropes of their new roles while navigating some historic moments. They met King Charles during his recent visit and dove headfirst into speaking up about housing affordability, the national drug-overdose crisis and important Jewish issues including antisemitism and the recent desecration of the national Holocaust monument. On today’s episode of North Star (formerly The CJN Daily), Tamara Kronis and Roman Baber join to share what their first whirlwind weeks have been like.

Related links

• Read more about Roman Baber’s political career, including running for the leadership of the federal Conservative party in the election which Pierre Poilievre ultimately won in 2022
• Hear Tamara Kronis explaining the International Court of Justice’s 2024 hearing brought by South Africa against Israel for genocide.
• How the April 28, 202 federal election brought longtime Conservative politician Roman Baber and candidate Tamara Kronis to Ottawa, this time as rookie Opposition MPs.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here)

For five weeks after Oct. 7, 2023, the two sons of Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver thought she was among the hostages from Kibbutz Be’eri who had been kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas terrorists. But after her house was destroyed that day, and they received no further word about her fate, her sons Chen, an archeologist based in Connecticut, and Yonatan, an Israeli social worker, threw themselves into campaigning for their mother’s release, while also channelling her spirit in advocating for a non-violent solution to the war. In late November 2023, Israeli forensic experts notified Silver’s family that her remains had been identified in the rubble of her burned-out kibbutz neighbourhood. She had been killed on the first day of the attack. Growing up, they had watched their mother’s tireless efforts to build bridges between Jews and Palestinians, while they pursued their own, different lives and career paths. Now, as the two-year anniversary of their mother’s murder approaches, Vivian Silver’s sons are still mourning their mother, but also curating her legacy as “Vivian”, an internationally-renowned political anti-war symbol. On today’s episode of The CJN’s newly-rebranded North Star podcast (formerly The CJN Daily), host Ellin Bessner sits down with Chen and Yonatan Zeigen to explore how having a purpose helps with their grief, rather than seeking vengeance for past trauma.

Related links

• Read more about the sons of the late Vivian Silver, fresh from their June 4 Toronto fundraiser/celebration of their mother’s life, in The CJN.
• To learn about the Vivian Silver Impact award and to donate.
• Hear how Silver’s family and friends gathered in November 2023 in Israel for her private funeral and then for a separate public memorial service, on The CJN Daily.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)

Two years and eight months into her term on the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, a high-profile advocate for the Jewish community and other marginalized groups, announced her resignation during a school board meeting on June 3. She was the only Jewish trustee on the school board. Kaplan-Myrth’s tenure has been challenging, to say the least. When she advocated for mandatory masking during the COVID pandemic, she received countless antisemitic insults—even death threats—via social media and email, for which the police did lay charges against some of her critics. The school board has tried to censure her several times, prevented her from coming to meetings or speaking, and she has been in a running battle with a rival trustee over what she considers was racism against her because she is a white, Jewish Israeli-Canadian. But things came to a head recently after an email campaign by the National Council of Canadian Muslims to the board, accusing her of anti-Palestinian racism. Kaplan-Myrth said the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is so “toxic” and “dysfunctional” that she had to quit, for her own mental health and for the safety of her family. She joins Ellin Bessner of The CJN Daily to explain how she hopes her resignation is a wake-up call to what’s going on in school boards across North America—and why her problems may not be over.

Related links

• Watch Dr. Nili-Kaplan Myrth’s resignation speech at the June 3, 2025 OCDSB meeting: she begins at the 4 hour mark.
• Learn about the disgusting threats sent by an Ontario man to Dr. Nili Kaplan Myrth that resulted in his recent conviction in 2025, in The CJN.
• Hear a previous interview with Dr. Kaplan-Myrth when she was initially sanctioned by the Ottawa public school board in 2024, on The CJN Daily.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Dov Beck-Levine

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)

While Israel’s government is still engaged externally in a nearly 19-month long war with Hamas in Gaza, crucial elections are underway for Jews around the world–including beginning June 5, for Canada–for control of Israel’s four main national Zionist bodies: the Keren Kayemeth/Jewish National Fund, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Keren HaYesod/United Israel Appeal, and the World Zionist Organization. These historic non-governmental institutions take direction from the World Zionist Congress, based in Jerusalem, and described by founder Theodore Herzl over a century ago as the unofficial “Parliament of the Jewish People”. This election will choose the 500+ official Congress members for a five-year term, which begins this fall. Organizers say there is much at stake. This election is being described as a battle for the soul of Israel, as it pits centrist and progressive Jewish slates against an increasingly powerful coalition of Orthodox and Haredi groups, who are campaigning for Torah values including supporting more settlement building on the West Bank. The Zionist Congress controls not only the policies but who gets appointed to run these major Israeli agencies, and, as a result, where and how their multi-billion dollar budgets are spent. (A tiny fraction of the money comes back to Canada to fund Zionist programming here.) While Israel and the United States are allocated most of the seats, the rest of the Jewish Diaspora including Canada makes up the rest. Canadian Jews are being asked to vote until June 15 through an online ballot. So who is running in Canada’s WJC elections this month? And how can you cast your vote?

On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, host Ellin Bessner speaks with vote organizer Stan Greenspan, the president of the Canadian Zionist Federation, and himself a candidate. Plus you’ll meet candidates Jacob Kates Rose with the progressive Hatikvah Canada slate, and also Dr. Yizhar Hess, a high-ranking Jerusalem-based diplomat who came to Canada recently to drum up support for his slate known as Mercaz-Canada, which represents Conservative-Masorti Jewish values.

Related links

• How Canadian Jews can vote in the WZO’s elections from June 5-15, 2025.
• What is the World Zionist Congress anyway? Read Ron Csillag’s 2020 feature in The CJN.
• Why the American Jewish community was split over voting in the WZO elections, in The CJN.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Dov Beck-Levine

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)