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A 21-year-old Jewish Inuit activist from Canada’s far north has spoken out about the similarities between her two backgrounds — and how it may affect Jewish dietary laws.

Killaq Enuaraq-Strauss grew up in Iqaluit, the capital of the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. Her father is Jewish and her mother is Inuk (the singular for Inuit). She told the CBC last week that she overcame bulling at her boarding school to gain a greater appreciation for her two backgrounds.

Enuaraq-Strauss pointed out that both of her cultures believe in treating animals humanely. For example, Inuit are supposed to provide water for any seals they catch, and Judaism also emphasizes minimizing pain for animals.

Enuaraq-Strauss argued that seals, a staple of Inuit diets and traditions, can be considered kosher.

“There’s a law called in Judaism called ‘pikuach nefesh’, which essentially says that your survival is more important than most other law in Judaism and therefore can be overridden in a case of necessity,” she said. “So to me, as an Indigenous person, that strongly means that seal, although is a marine mammal that is not at all considered kosher because it doesn’t follow in line with any of the laws of kosher…to me, it’s still kosher.”

Seals do not fit the traditional kosher criteria for mammals (they do not have split hooves or chew cud) or water creatures (they do not have scales).

Enuaraq-Strauss has previously spoken out about the importance of seals for Inuit people: As a 17-year-old in 2014, she started a viral campaign criticizing talk show host Ellen DeGeneres for donating to the Humane Society of the United States, which has long campaigned against Canadian seal hunts.

“We do not hunt seals, or any animal for that matter, for fashion,” Enuaraq-Strauss said in the video that started the campaign. “We hunt to survive. If Canada were to ban the seal hunt, so many families would suffer, would face harsher forms of malnutrition, and wouldn’t be able to afford proper clothing for the Arctic environment we live in. Even more so, another part of our culture would have been killed.”

As part of the campaign, activists posted “sealfies” — pictures of themselves wearing seal fur.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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A senior at Cornell University in upstate New York was found dead in a nearby gorge on Friday, two days before his graduation ceremony.

Avram “Avi” Pinals of Newton, Massachusetts, had planned to attend medical school at the University of Michigan, the Cornell Sun reported Sunday. He majored in biological sciences with a concentration in neurobiology and behavior, and minored in music.

Police told the Sun that the cause of death is not yet determined but foul play is not suspected. He is the third Cornell student to die in the Fall Creek Gorge in a little over a year.

Pinals played trumpet in the university’s jazz band and wind symphony, was a philanthropy chair in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, and often volunteered at a local community kitchen, the Sun reported. He had also worked as a field laboratory technician at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, a research trainee at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a research assistant at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

“Avi’s profound impact on others was undeniable,” the director of advising for Cornell’s Office of Undergraduate Biology, Beth Howland, wrote on Saturday night. “To say it is tragic for such a promising young life to be cut so short is an understatement.”

Pinals’s faculty advisor described him as “a young man with great intellect, a generosity of spirit, and a genuine interest in other humans their welfare,” according to an email from the dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, Gretchen Ritter.

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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(JTA) — Swastikas were spray-painted on between 150 and 200 gravestones at a cemetery in southwestern Illinois.

The vandalism at the Sunset Hill Cemetery in Glen Carbon, Illinois was discovered on Saturday morning.

Swastikas also were spray painted on the homes and garage doors of a nearby home subdivision, according to reports.

A 34-year-old man was arrested in connection with the cemetery vandalism.

The cemetery is nondenominational and there was no common denominator for the gravestones that were vandalized with swastikas.

More than 1,300 veterans are buried in the cemetery and officials rushed to have the gravestones power washed ahead of Memorial Day on Monday, when a public memorial ceremony is scheduled, CBS News reported.

Glen Carbon is located 15 miles northeast of St. Louis, Missouri.

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — An 8-month-old infant who died during clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops has been removed from the list of those killed during the violence.

The baby’s name, Layla al-Ghandour, was removed from the list last week, The Times of Israel reported, citing the British newspaper The Guardian. The decision about whether to include her later depends on the results of a pathology report.

The baby reportedly may not have been killed from tear gas shot by Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian protesters, part of a series of protests dubbed the “Great March of Return,” but rather died from a preexisting condition.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that “The Ghandour family acknowledged that Layla suffered from patent ductus arteriosus, a congenital heart disease commonly described as a hole in the heart.”

The Guardian also reported that the baby had “heart defects since birth.”  The Israel Defense Forces also claims to have “evidence that undermines the credibility of the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s announcement regarding the death of the baby.”

The baby was brought to the border by bus during the protests by her 11-year-old uncle.

The death of the baby inflamed Palestinian passions and led to a deluge of condemnation against Israel for its heavy-handed response to the border protests. At least 120 Palestinian protesters, including dozens of members of local terror groups, have been killed during the so-far eight weeks of protests, according to Gaza officials.

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NEW YORK (JTA) — Philip Roth forbade any Jewish rituals from being performed at his funeral.

The prolific Jewish-American author, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, will be buried on Monday at the Bard College Cemetery, his biographer, Blake Bailey, told JTA.

Roth had originally looked into being buried next to his parents at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey, Bailey said in a phone interview on Friday. However, the area surrounding the Jewish burial ground had in recent years become rife with crime, and Roth was unable to find a plot next to his parents, Bailey said.

Instead Roth decided about 10-15 years ago to be buried at the Bard College Cemetery, where he could be near his friend Norman Manea, a Romanian-Jewish author who works as a professor at the college, Bailey said. Roth was also friends with Bard College President Leon Botstein, who is also Jewish.

“He said he wants to be buried near Jews so he has someone to talk to,” Bailey said.

Jewish author and philosopher Hannah Arendt is also buried in the Bard College Cemetery, next to her husband Heinrich Blucher.

Roth “expressly forbade” any religious rituals from being part of his funeral, according to Bailey.

“There was no metaphysical dimension to Philip. He just flatly refused to believe in it. He thought it was fairy tales,” Bailey said.

Though Roth “was bored out of his mind when he had to attend Hebrew school as a boy,” he was happy to be Jewish, Bailey said.

“He liked Jews as human beings. He liked their warmth, he liked his male friends’ filial piety, which he made a lot of fun of too, in ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ especially,” Bailey said, referencing Roth’s 1969 novel that depicts the therapy sessions of a sexually frustrated Jewish man.