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…
A group of Montreal citizens is using square yellow badges to protest the presence of private Jewish school buses in their neighborhood, sparking outrage in the city, the Times-Colonist reported. Ginette Chartre, a representative for the protesting Montrealers, refused to stop wearing the badges even after being told they evoked the yellow stars the Nazis…
MONTREAL (JTA) — A McGill University internal investigation absolved students involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel of outright anti-Semitism on campus but decried Jew hatred, triggering mixed reactions from the Jewish community. The report written by retired McGill ombudsman Spencer Boudreau, which was released on Tuesday, asserted that anti-Semitism played no…
A Mona Lisa grin became one of Leonard Cohen’s signature facial expressions. For a poet of self-mocking intimacy, it made a perfect mask. As I walked through “A Crack in Everything,” the new exhibit about Cohen’s life and work at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, I imagined Cohen appraising the show with that half-smile….
MONTREAL (JTA) — Quebec prosecutors will not file hate crimes charges against an imam for saying at a Montreal mosque that he prayed for Allah to “destroy the accursed Jews.” In a November 2014 video seen on YouTube, Sayyed Al-Ghitawi said at the Al-Andalous Islamic Center that Allah will kill Jews “one by one.” B’nai Brith…
Canadian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Palestinian-Jordanian imam who made anti-Semitic statements at a mosque in Montreal last year, the Montreal Gazette reported Sunday. Sheikh Muhammad ibn Musa Al Nasr is being charged with willful promotion of hatred. In his guest lecture in December 2016 at the Dar Al-Araqm mosque, he called…
Leonard Cohen’s getting a gigantic tribute in Montreal. But at least one prominent local thinks the late cultural icon would have cringed at his 28,000-square-foot, 20-story likeness plastered on a downtown building. Writing for the Montreal Gazette, writer Bill Brownstein called the massive mural an “ill-fitting tribute… that feels so wrong.” “The fact of the…
MONTREAL (JTA) — Montreal’s first Jewish mayor was handed a one-year prison term and two years probation following his January conviction on eight counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud. “I can guarantee you and my family that I will be a better person when I come out,” Michael Applebaum said in provincial court…
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