North Star with Ellin Bessner

The CJN Podcasts
The CJN Podcasts
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Newsmaker conversations from The Canadian Jewish News, hosted by Ellin Bessner, a veteran broadcaster, writer and journalist.

  1. 15h ago

    Israel’s new Toronto consul general says boycotts are not the solution

    Nadav Zysblat has just begun his posting as Israel’s new Consul General in Toronto and Western Canada at a particularly difficult moment in Canada-Israel relations. In the days surrounding his arrival, Canada announced it would bring forward measures to ban trade in goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while a boycott campaign targeted pro-Israel singer Boy George’s Vancouver concert. Zysblat, a career Israeli diplomat, says his job is to strengthen—not retreat from—the relationship. Pushing back against calls for boycotts, he wants to expand trade and business ties at the provincial level, restore direct flights between Canada and Israel, and support local Holocaust education initiatives. Zysblat has served previously in Washington and Shanghai. Two days before the Carney government’s West Bank announcement, Zysblat sat down with The CJN’s North Star podcast host Ellin Bessner to record his first Canadian interview. He told Bessner he wants to find new areas of cooperation with Ontario, the Prairies and B.C., particularly in sectors including natural resources, health care, AI, quantum computing and secure technology. They talked about how boycotts are not helpful to building relationships, how they hurt Canada’s interests rather than solve the problem in the Middle East, and why he feels Israel could actually be “an answer” to Canada’s current push to diversify its economy, amidst the economic trade war with the U.S. Related links Learn more about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent announcement on Sept 8 that Canada will cut off imports of products made in illegal West Bank settlements and also East Jerusalem, and go after companies and entities who finance the settlement movement, in The CJN, Discover the background to a protracted Canadian case brought by anti-Israel activists in 2017 over labelling of wines produced by Psagot and Shiloh wineries located in the West Bank, and the last development in 2022, in The CJN. Read the Israeli Embassy’s statement Sept. 8 condemning Canada pledging to join the U.K. and France in banning imports of products produced in West Bank settlements. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

  2. 3d ago

    Beth Tzedec, Canada’s largest synagogue, erecting perimeter fence for High Holidays

    Work crews affixed a row of black metal fence posts into cement around the front and along both sides of Beth Tzedec Congregation in midtown Toronto on Sept. 10, laying the foundation for a new permanent security fence at Canada’s largest synagogue. The unprecedented installation is happening just one day ahead of Rosh Hashanah and subsequent High Holidays, which begin on the evening of Sept. 11. Synagogue officials say the fence won’t be finished before the start of the holiday, but is being done to minimize the potential for a shooting from the street as large crowds gather over the next month. It’s also to prevent people gaining unauthorized access close to the building. The fence will cover the entire property, except for the rear of the building where fencing has long been in place around the parking lot and school playground. The installation comes two days after Toronto police and Mayor Olivia Chow held a media conference outlining stepped-up security plans for the Jewish community between the High Holidays and Oct. 7 commemorations. “Jews, Jewish institutions and even Jewish neighbourhoods are being targeted. It is despicable,” Chow told reporters on Sept. 8. At Beth Tzedec, the security budget has doubled since the spike in antisemitism following Oct. 7, 2023, and is now approaching $500,000 a year, according to Senior Rabbi Steven Wernick. He says the synagogue estimates it needs another $1.5-2 million to reach what he calls the “maximum reasonable safety” it can achieve. The growing security environment includes lockdown drills, bollards, reinforced doors and armed police. But Rabbi Wernick also laments the normalization of safety measures which Jewish people have come to expect, simply to enter a synagogue in Canada. On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner speaks with Rabbi Wernick about the difference between being safe and feeling safe—and why the new fence will be a striking sight for congregants arriving for services. Related Links Read what the Toronto Police Service and Mayor Olivia Chow said they will do to protect “despicable” targeting of Toronto Jews, between the High Holidays and the Oct. 7 commemorations, in The CJN. Rabbi Steven Wernick of Beth Tzedec describes why his heart broke earlier this year while his congregation did a lockdown drill with Toronto police, in The CJN. Hear Rabbi Wernick’s reaction to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech on antisemitism omitting anti-Zionism as one of the causes, on The CJN’s North Star, in June 2026. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

  3. 5d ago

    New Israeli Oct. 7 film about to premiere at TIFF, amid boycott calls

    This week, the Toronto International Film Festival will take over the city’s downtown. Among the many films slated for red-carpet premieres is Our Loves, the latest by award-winning Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher, which will receive its worldwide debut on Sept. 13.– the second day of Rosh Hashana. The film follows ordinary people navigating troubled relationships when Hamas’s massacre unfolds on Oct. 7—but the plot stays focused on how it affects their personal lives, rather than digging into the graphic horrors of that day. Some anti-Israel activists have called for the film to be boycotted from TIFF, and some Israeli media outlets report that there will be protests. Last year’s festival was mired in controversy over Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us, a Canadian documentary about one Israeli man’s journey to save his son during Oct. 7, which was scheduled for a debut, then cancelled abruptly—and ultimately reinstated, with an apology from TIFF’s CEO. But Nesher told Ellin Bessner, host of The CJN’s North Star podcast, that he sees his film’s global debut here in Canada as a victory against the growing international boycott of Israeli art and artists. Listen to the full episode to hear why he still believes TIFF is not a political festival, and how he feels about fictionalizing stories surrounding Oct. 7 only three years after the tragedy. Related links Learn more about Avi Nesher’s Oct. 7 -themed film Our Loves premiering at TIFF on Sept. 13 at the TIFF Lightbox. Watch the trailer for the film. Read more about TIFF CEO’s apology to the Jewish community in 2025 after cancelling, then uncancelling, Barry Avrich’s Oct. 7 film, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

  4. Sep 4

    Federal court orders Carney government to release more Nazi war criminal documents

    The Federal Court has ordered Canada to release another group of Nazi war criminal documents from the 1985 Deschênes report laying bare the government's controversial immigration policies that allowed several thousand collaborators into Canada after the Second World War. The federal Library and Archives Canada has fought the release for years citing privacy laws protecting longstanding diplomatic intelligence agreements with allies including Ukraine, Russia and even the United States to keep the information secret. Much of the Deschênes report has been made public, albeit with redactions, but the second part, with the list of names, has not. For decades, B'nai Brith Canada and others have lobbied and used court challenges to force the government to be more transparent about the chapter in Canadian history. In his ruling ordering the release, issued Sept. 1, the Federal Court justice Simon Fothergill described almost all the information on the eight disputed pages as "innocuous", citing the passage of time. However, B'nai Brith Canada's lawyers weren't successful in winning the release of one other page, which deals with a secret pact between U.S. post-war intelligence and Canada's RCMP. Government lawyers argued releasing it would heighten current tensions between Canada and the American government during this period of great tension over tariffs. The judge rejected Ottawa's "bald" statement, writing it was "not a sufficient basis to refuse disclosure of very specific information related to efforts by the United States to resettle suspected Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada following World War II." B'nai Brith Canada's director of research Richard Robertson told The CJN in an interview Sept. 3 that the trade war argument was "incredibly frustrating" but the human rights organization views the latest court win as "all part of moving the needle". "All Canadians, should know that the parts of the [Deschenes] report that have been released indicate that our government colluded or even went as far as working at the direction of the United States to allow Nazi war criminals to enter Canada, "Robertson said. "And this is something that the government has seemingly tried to withhold from Canadians, and so decisions like this bring us just that little bit closer to understanding this whole story and enabling us as a society to learn from our mistakes and to heal from some of the trauma that they caused." The documents have not yet been released to B'nai Brith Canada, and the judge did not set a timeline for this to be done. On today's episode of The CJN's North Star podcast, hear the background to this case, in an encore presentation of an interview host Ellin Bessner did in February 2025, with historian Howard Margolian, who worked with the Justice Department to investigate Nazi war crimes, and with Sam Goldstein, a former legal director for B'nai Brith Canada. Related links: Read B'nai Brith Canada's statement on the latest legal battle, and read the judge's written decision issued Sept. 1, 2026. Read why Canada was reluctant to prosecute known Nazi war criminals, in The CJN from Feb. 2024.

  5. Sep 2

    Why Toronto’s Orthodox Rabbis won’t officiate at MAID funerals, or provide burial plots

    A landmark letter on MAID, approved recently by Toronto's main Orthodox rabbinical council—also called the Vaad HaRabbanim—is sounding the alarm about what the group notes is the increasing prevalence of medically assisted death making "inroads" into the local Jewish community. Citing the figure of 5,000 patients in Ontario in 2023 who the council describes as being "euthanized by medical practitioners", the leading Orthodox rabbis said they need to take steps to "curb this disturbing trend": going forward, they will not officiate at the funerals of MAID patients and will refuse to permit MAID patients to be buried in plots in their synagogues' cemetery sections. The letter was adopted a while ago, but had not been made public. The CJN received a copy of it in the summer of 2026. On August 28, one of the Vaad's presidents, Rabbi Yacov Felder, sent the MAID statement out in an email blast to his own congregation, Shomrai Shabbos Chevrah Mishnayos. On today's episode of The CJN's North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner unpacks the Vaad HaRabbanim's MAID policy on funeral rites. She hears their wider concerns about the proliferation of MAID over the past decade and discusses the reaction to the statement coming from other rabbinical leaders, starting with Rabbi Jennifer Gorman, the current president of the Toronto Board of Rabbis. Gorman's group of 56 rabbis has now issued its own new statement in response to what she called the Vaad's "surprising" and "harsh" approach to Jews and their families, whom her board feels are entitled to be treated with compassion—even though their statement does not endorse medically assisted death. We also hear from Montreal Orthodox leader Rabbi Reuben Poupko, who explains why – despite his own strong opposition to MAID – he believes the Toronto Vaad’s approach stigmatizes people who choose MAiD and penalizes their families. Related links: Read our full-length print feature on this controversial Vaad HaRabbanim of Toronto statement on MAID burials, in The CJN . Listen to Rabbi Louis Sachs, now of Beth Sholom Congregation in Toronto, and Dr. Karen Devon, a surgeon at Women's College Hospital, discuss Jewish approaches to MAID and whether Ottawa should expand it for mental illness, on The CJN’s North Star from 2024 . Read more about how Jewish nursing homes are or are not permitting residents to undergo MAID, which has led to a court case in Vancouver, in The CJN from 2020. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins https://www.youtube.com/@TheCJN https://www.brethiggins.com/ Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) [Ed. note: An earlier version of the podcast incorrectly identified Rabbi Green as a member of the Toronto Vaad]

  6. Aug 31

    CBC changed its terrorism policy for 9/11—but still not for Hamas

    A leaked memo to CBC journalists last week ordered them not to call the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks "terrorism" in forthcoming coverage of next month's 25th anniversary. It prompted backlash within Canada and beyond. Not long after Toronto Sun journalist Warren Kinsella broke the story on Aug. 27, the head of the FBI, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, CSIS, two Canadian cabinet ministers and several politicians all condemned the CBC's internal journalistic guidelines for 9/11 coverage, especially since 24 Canadians were among the 2,977 people who were murdered in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania by the Islamic terrorist attacks. It didn't take long for the CBC to issue a clarification. On Aug. 28, the CBC issued an update to its policy, but just for 9/11: journalists can now call what happened on that historic day "terrorism" and they can call the hijackers "terrorists". But the rules still remain for newer conflicts: journalists have to attribute the T-word designation to governments, experts or other sources, rather than using the label themselves. Since Oct. 7, 2023, many Jewish viewers and groups have been lobbying the CBC; its oversight body, the CRTC; and the federal government to allow journalists to call Hamas "terrorists", and what they did on Oct. 7 as "terrorism". After all, Canada designated Hamas a banned terrorist group in 2002. But the federally funded broadcaster insists it needs to use neutral language in covering modern conflicts. CBC News' editor-in-chief and general manager, Brodie Fenlon, came on The CJN's North Star podcast on Oct. 19, 2023, to explain why their policy exists. On today's episode, we're bringing you that conversation with host Ellin Bessner. Related stories Read the CBC’s clarification Aug 28, 2026, of the use of “terrorism” in 25th anniversary stories about Sept. 11, after uproar over an internal memo which was leaked to journalist Warren Kinsella last week. Hear why Toronto businessman Evan Kosiner complained to CBC’s ombudsman and the CRTC in 2023, for not calling Hamas “terrorists” after Oct. 7, on North Star. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

  7. Aug 28

    Jewish groups 'relieved' after Montreal softens controversial anti-Israel vote

    Earlier this week, on Aug. 24, Montreal’s City Council adopted a motion expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and all civilians affected, and supporting international investigations into genocide claims and human rights violations, acknowledging that International Criminal Court arrest warrants have been issued for for Israeli leaders, and that Canada placed sanctions on Israel. But three “divisive” and “irresponsible” parts of the original motion – put forward in June by the opposition party Projet Montreal – accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid, and forcing the city to cut ties with Israel – were removed. But three “divisive” and “irresponsible” parts of the original motion – put forward in June by the opposition party Projet Montreal – accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid, and forcing the city to cut ties with Israel – were removed. The 54-6 vote came after six weeks of campaigning by Jewish groups and allies in the city’s Hellenic, Christian and Italian communities of Montreal, and business leaders, who sent letters and petitions with hundreds of names to the lawmakers, opposing the anti-Israel rhetoric. Ahead of Monday’s council meeting, mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada and her team worked behind the scenes to cut those parts out of the motion and negotiate a final version. And while during the debate, she said the city stands in solidarity with Palestinians and an eventual Palestinian State and recognizes the grave humanitarian crisis, she urged the politicians to focus on issues that unite residents of their city. Some Jewish leaders are calling the final wording “a win”, but unease remains that the issue won’t go away. On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner speaks with Paola Samuel, the regional director of B’nai Brith Canada, who was in the council chamber and heavily involved in the campaign to block the original anti-Israel motion. Related links Read more about the controversy surrounding the Projet Montreal motion, and what happened at city council on Aug. 24,, in The CJN. See B’nai Brith Canada’s statement issued following the 54-6 vote on the amended motion. Find out why a kosher restaurant was burned to the ground in Montreal’s Jewish neighbourhood in early August, 2026, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

  8. Aug 26

    Canadian Jewish milk and honey farmers on Trump’s trade war: 'You can’t concede on sovereignty'

    When trade negotiations between Canada and the United States broke off Aug. 19, mere weeks before Rosh Hashanah, Prime Minister Mark Carney described the situation as being “at war”. Farmers are now finding themselves caught in the crosshairs; among them are Jewish producers of festive staples this upcoming High Holidays season: milk and honey. Canadian milk products and natural honey are among the $28 billion of exports now subject to a new 50 per cent American import tariff. On our side of the border, on Aug. 25, Canada announced it will follow up with dollar-for-dollar tariffs, charging American milk and honey producers exactly the same extra dues in reverse, effective Sept. 8. Natural raw honey producer Yoav Sasportas is directly affected by all of this. His company, Urban Dvash—which manages hives of 10 million honey bees throughout the Montreal area—exports some honey to customers south of the border. Sasportas admits he’s already scaled back expansion plans. Despite this, he says Canada should go further and bar all foreign honey from coming into our country—and foreign live bee imports, too. Meanwhile, 600 km away, on their historic dairy farm west of Hamilton, Ont., the Loewith family is also feeling the pinch. They don’t sell milk outside of Canada, but their business is facing rising prices for equipment and flavourings. But both the farm families firmly support Canada’s tough stance against U.S. President Donald Trump in the renewed cross-border trade war, even if it will bring pain and layoffs in many sectors of the Canadian economy—including theirs. On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner learns about the Jewish front of this tariff war from Dave Loewith and his nephew Ben Loewith, and from Yoav Sasportas, who is deep in the middle of his annual honey harvest, right before the Jewish New Year. Related links Learn more about Yoav Sasportas and his wife Dana Sitbon, who run Urban Dvash and find out where to access their kosher honey and bee-related products in Montreal. Find out more about the historic Loewith’s dairy farm Summitholm Holsteins (Joe Loewith and Sons) and their milk and cheese products, or visit their retail store near Hamilton, Ont. Read how Canadian kosher food distributor Altra Foods in Montreal was preparing to weather the earlier tariffs storm in April 2025, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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Newsmaker conversations from The Canadian Jewish News, hosted by Ellin Bessner, a veteran broadcaster, writer and journalist.

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