How Jewish is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah?’
A Forward investigation in 9 verses
Montreal
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Culture Why Leonard Cohen’s final album features the cantor from his home synagogue
In January 2018, after the late Leonard Cohen received his last, but not final, Grammy nomination, a representative from his hometown attended the ceremony: The cantor from the synagogue he grew up in. He wasn’t just there as an observer — he was a contributor. “My greatest sources of pride is that the choir and…
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Fast Forward Torah scrolls cut up, prayer shawls stuffed in toilets at Montreal synagogue
MONTREAL (JTA)—Vandals ransacked a small Montreal synagogue sometime after it closed weeks ago due to the COVID-19 pandemic in what was described as one of the worst local synagogue desecrations in memory. The damage at the Kol Yehouda Sephardic congregation included tallitot, or prayer shawls, and tefillin stuffed in toilets; Torah scrolls cut up and…
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Fast Forward COVID outbreak in Canadian Jewish community caused by people fleeing America
MONTREAL (JTA) — Jewish Canadians streaming from Florida to outrun the coronavirus and beat the pre-Passover rush unwittingly helped stoke one of the highest virus-positive rates in Quebec province. Cote St. Luc, a Montreal suburb with the densest and most elderly Jewish population in Quebec, reported some of earliest cases and has declared a state…
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Fast Forward Jewish Man Wearing Kippah Assaulted By Taxi Driver In Montreal
(JTA) — A Jewish man wearing a yarmulke was assaulted by a taxi driver in Montreal. The taxi driver was blocking the door to an underground garage at a condo building Sunday in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal. When the driver of a car honked to signal that he should move away from the door,…
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Food A Historian’s Cafe In Montreal’s Jewish Museum Re-Defines What Jewish Food Means
90,780 Jews live in Montreal. That’s 2.4% of Montreal entire population, according to a 2011 household survey. As a result, Jewish food has played a significant role in Montreal’s food culture, with the Montreal versus New York bagel debate perpetually rearing its head and the smoked meats Jewish immigrants brought to Montreal becoming the stuff…
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Life One Of Quebec’s Best-Known Political Commentators Is A Jewish Convert Fighting Anti-Semitism
Born into a French-Canadian family and educated by nuns, Lise Ravary makes an unlikely Jewish voice. But since converting to Judaism nearly two decades ago, Ravary’s widely read opinion columns have brought a singular perspective to Quebec’s complex politics. By pulling no punches — in a place where sensitivities around language and identity run deep…
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Culture Jewish Montreal Is More Than Just Leonard Cohen And Bagels
Leonard Cohen. Mordecai Richler. Bagels. To the outside world, Jewish Montreal’s achievements often get reduced to sound bites and caricatures. But as a new exhibition at downtown Montreal’s McCord Museum makes clear, Jews have had a hand in nearly every aspect of civic, social, cultural and business life in Canada’s second-largest city. Even the organizers…
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