It didn’t seem possible to make MTV’s inexplicable smash “Jersey Shore” look like “Masterpiece Theatre.” But a Canadian knockoff called “Lake Shore” — set to start production next spring — has done just that with a slur-laden “sizzle reel” aimed at building early-stage buzz, according to Canada’s National Post. The eight-minute promo includes gems like…
Michael Wex is best known for his acerbic, authoritative books on Yiddish language and culture, but in this fall’s “The Frumkiss Family Business,” he has turned his attention to fiction. The sprawling novel is a farcical family saga, following three generations of a Jewish clan in Toronto’s Bathurst Manor neighborhood and questioning, in Wex’s characteristically…
Canada is home to less than three percent of the world’s Jewish population, but every other year, Jewish artists from around the world congregate in Toronto for the Ashkenaz Festival, which returns this year from August 31 to September 6 at the city’s Harbourfront Centre. The festival was created in 1995 as a forum for…
First it was building materials, now it’s the mail. In the latest international Gaza blockade spat, Israel’s national mail carrier, Israel Post, told the Canada Post last week it would not deliver Canadian mail to the Strip, citing circumstances “beyond their control.” It’s not known what caused the mail stoppage. Just days after the embargo…
Erica Strange, like many of us, sees her therapist regularly — only hers helps her work through her problems by sending her to the past, the future and even to alternate existences. Our shrinks can’t pull off tricks like that, and we’re certainly not getting the same bang for our buck that Erica is. In…
With the recent rise in antisemitic violence in Montreal, Canada, such incidents are at an “all-time high” nationwide, according to B’nai Brith Canada. Even a century ago, however, Canada offered protection to Jews’ “households and rights,” to quote the French version of the Canadian national anthem. A reminder of such days recently appeared from Les…
As we saw with the Batsheva Dance Company in 2009 and the Jerusalem Quartet in March, when it comes to Israel, even the most straightforward arts organizations have the potential to become the subjects of political controversy. The most recent flare-up centered around Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who accepted the Dan David Prize for literature…
On February 7, the George London Foundation will present a special recital at the Morgan Library in New York, with pianist Jeffrey Cohen accompanying singers June Anderson and Sean Panikkar, as prelude to this year’s George London Competition Finals on March 19 also at the Morgan Library. The family of Canadian-Jewish baritone George London (born…
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