Yehupetzville with Ralph Benmergui The CJN Podcast Network

In recent months, the small nation of Azerbaijan has been making a big push to show off their Jews. The leader of the local Jewish community, Rabbi Zamir Isayev, has gone around the world promoting Azerbaijani-Jewish life, making his pitch to Canadians during a visit in November 2022. Here at The CJN, we've received numerous pitches and press opportunities to go on free trips to visit the country's "Mountain Jews". (We haven't taken them up on any.)

There may be grander geopolitical logic behind all this. Sandwiched in the mountainous Caucasus region between Russia and Iran, the dominantly Muslim country has emerged as an important strategic ally for Israel, who threw its support behind Azerbaijan in the last decade during Azerbaijan's ongoing conflict with Armenia. The culmination of all this has been Azerbaijan opening its first embassy in Tel Aviv in late March 2023.

To get a clearer picture about why Azerbaijan is making this push, and to understand the on-the-ground human element underscoring these international trends, we're joined by Rabbi Isayev in Baku, who paints a very glowing picture of Jewish life in his home country.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast or donating to The CJN.

Ralph Benmergui has been hosting Yehupetzville, The CJN's podcast about small-town Jewish life in Canada and around the world, since its debut on Mar. 17, 2021. Since then, we've virtually visited Jews from Glace Bay to North Bay, Jamaica to Jasper, Little Rock to Lethbridge and beyond.

To mark the second anniversary of his successful show, we decided not to look outward, but to turn home—and home, for Ralph, is Hamilton, Ont.

Hamilton is not a small city, nor is its community of 5,000 Jews unimpressive. But its makeup is changing. The long-overlooked industrial city is now exploding with new developments, condos and gentrification, expanding with Toronto expats and new immigrants attracted by a vibrant urban life and (relatively) affordable housing. Local Jewish organizations have been trying to capitalize on this opportunity for years now, and the results speak to how the face of the city is evolving.

On today's episode of Yehupetzville, Ralph sits down with two community leaders who've been at the forefront of Hamilton's transition: Gustavo Rymberg is the CEO of the Hamilton Jewish Federation, and Laura Wolfson leads the Federation's "Welcome Home Hamilton" initiative, which helps newcomers transition smoothly into the city.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast or donating to The CJN.

Oklahoma is know for lots of things—country music, Native American history, tornadoes, Black Wall Street—none of which are particularly Jewish. But if you look into Tulsa, a thriving city of 400,000 people, you'll find a vibrant surge of new developments, incredible infrastructure and an active community of 2,600 Jews. Thanks to its numerous synagogues and organizations like Tulsa Tomorrow, the city is a surprising hotbed of Jewish life.

Rabbi Lillian Kowalski joins to discuss the years she spent in Tulsa during the pandemic, what life is like for a nomadic rabbi, and how she's finding her transition north of the border to Montreal.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. Support the show by subscribing to this podcast or donating to The CJN.

Kingston's Jewish community is unique in Canada, doubling in size—from approximately 1,500 year-round to 3,000—with the influx of students studying at Queen's University each year. The result is a stable patchwork. The main synagogue transitioned from Orthodox to conservative; the Reform synagogue has no building; Chabad and Hillel dominate the campus space. Meanwhile, Jewish South Africans and Israelis have moved there in droves, finding jobs around the university, an affordable cost of living and burgeoning immigrant communities.

With so much transience, what's the roadmap for growth? How do you create a stable sense of identity when half the Jewish population leaves every four years? Who chooses to stay—and why? Ralph Benmergui is joined by Richard Kizell, a lifelong Kingstonian, to learn more about this one-of-a-kind community sitting at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, watch this video.

When Heidi Coleman moved to Kamloops from Montreal in 2012, she had to deliberately seek out its Jewish members—asking around, searching for information that was not widely available. Once she found them, however, they welcomed her warmly... and then quickly asked her to become their president.

A charismatic natural leader who is the CEO of the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation, Coleman has remained the community's president ever since, mostly because, as she says, nobody else wants to do the job. On this episode of Yehupetzville, Coleman joins to describe the beauty of their faraway Jewish enclave, the struggle of being more visible for newcomers, and how Kamloops Jews interact with their neighbours—including the Indigenous Canadians who infamously stood at ground zero of the unearthed mass graves sitting under residential schools.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, watch this video.

Canadian-born Rabbi Mark Biller has moved around a lot. But his latest adventure has taken him on his biggest leap so far: in the fall of 2021, he headed south to become the rabbi of Agudath Achim, one of a few synagogues in Arkansas, a state home to just 2,500 Jews. The community is so tight-knit that part of his job interview process was sitting down with rabbis from the local Chabad and Reform congregations for an hour to make sure they'd get along. (They did.)

In this episode of Yehupetzville, The CJN's podcast about Jews in small communities, Biller describes what he's found as striking similarities between Southerners and Canadians—politeness reigns supreme—and how local Jews interact with the overhwelming Christian majority.

Credits

Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, watch this video.