Local News
The CJN (Canadian Jewish News) responds to accusations by Jewish National Fund Canada that it has been unfair in its reporting on JNF Canada’s problems with the CRA
Back in August we printed a story titled “A detailed look at the awful predicament in which JNF Canada now finds itself since the CRA revoked its charitable status.” A large part of that story was taken from reporting done by Ellin Bessner for the CJN (Canadian Jewish News). Since then we have been asked by Bessner to give the CJN’s side of the story.
At the time we printed that story, and even up until the CJN approached us on Nov. 22, jewishpostandnews.ca did not contact the CJN for comment on JNF Canada’s’ accusations about their reporting. We regret our own lack of journalistic standards and have since removed that story from our website.
On November 22, we received an email from The CJN’s Bessner. She had come across the article we had on our website and reached out to us.
Bessner insisted that JNF Canada’s claims about The CJN’s reporting on the CRA story are false. Bessner adds that JNF Canada’s claim that the CJN never asked them for their views is also not true..
Following is Ellin Besser’s view of what happened between JNF Canada and the CJN:
After their Aug. 10 revocation, The CJN contacted the JNF to ask for an interview. They agreed to talk to The CJN, but asked us to wait to do the interview until Aug. 16, a full six days after the CRA revoked their charitable status. We waited because we wanted to give JNF enough time to speak to us fully. Also, there was Tisha B’av on Monday Aug. 12 so JNF’s staff was not available.
As JNF well knows, and the public knows because we put it into our reporting, The CJN team of Bessner and Jonathan Rothman conducted an hour-long, videotaped interview with JNF CEO Lance Davis by ZOOM, on Aug. 16. We even made sure that Davis made his own audio recording of the interview on his personal phone.
While other news organizations were quick off the mark after Aug. 10 to publish a JNF revocation story, these other outlets did not conduct a full journalistic investigation, and published only JNF’s side.
While waiting for our interview, we continued our reporting. We knew that under the Income Tax Act’s privacy rules, the CRA never comments on cases while the audits and negotiations are underway. In fact, by law, the CRA cannot divulge anything about its audit process to the public, until after a charity is revoked. Then, the public can ask for the CRA’s internal documents concerning the reasons why a charity was revoked. So we asked.
On Aug. 15, the day before our scheduled JNF interview, the CRA released to us 358 pages of internal documents regarding its dealings with JNF, including some documents dating back to 1967, when JNF Canada was officially granted charitable status in Canada.
No other news outlet in the world received the documents at this time; The CJN was the first. Our team read all the 358 pages the night before our interview.
During our interview with Lance Davis the next day, we told him that we had the CRA’s documents. During the interview, we went through the issues which the CRA documents had raised.
It was obvious that Davis had prepared talking points for his interview, as we had sent him the questions in advance, which they had requested. He was reading off another computer screen. Davis answered all our questions, including a list of issues raised in the CRA documents.
These ranged from missing paperwork, lack of oversight and direction, why documents were not provided in English or French but in Hebrew, why they were not kept in Canada but in Israel, why in-house travel expenses were not receipted the way CRA needed, why the donations to JNF from Canada went not to buying trees at all, until 2017, but to paying labour costs for workers in Israel.
We went back and forth with the JNF team over the next ten days by email, as we fact-checked issues. They also acknowledged this. They answered our fact-checking questions. We told them when our stories would likely be coming out, and we told them there would be print stories and a podcast or two.
In the meantime, to get our story as complete as possible, we consulted with financial experts and charity experts, with JNF donors and with our lawyers.
It became apparent that JNF was extremely careful about who we spoke to, as we learned they had vetted what one of the donor interviewees told us: JNF’s p.r. person told me he had heard the raw tape of our interview shortly after we had hung up after we conducted it, but long before it was published.
Only after all CJN’s due diligence, which was a full sixteen days after JNF’s revocation, did we publish our series of stories.
On the evening of Aug. 26, we reported on the contents of the CRA allegations, linking to the CRA documents, and that same evening, we also released our podcast containing JNF’s Davis’ interview. We also ran a lengthy print story early the next morning, again quoting Davis extensively.
The following day we ran another podcast with some donors’ views, and more JNF arguments.
Here are all the stories and articles which The CJN has published on the CRA/JNF story. https://thecjn.ca/news/jnf-canada/
JNF has been spinning things to attack our reporting, because they assume few people actually took the time to read The CJN’s work.
JNF is saying it was “blindsided” by the CRA’s revocation. But the truth is, and the documents which CRA released (and later JNF released and JNF told us) show JNF has been secretive about its own legal communications with the CRA dating back to 1967, and through four subsequent CRA audits. They received an amnesty from the new Revenue Minister in the 1990s.
The fifth audit, started in 2014 and has been the source of the agency’s latest problem over the last 10 years.
Unlike the CRA, JNF was always able to publicly release their legal communications and letters back and forth with CRA. They did not do this back in 1989, when they were told they were not in compliance. They did not do so in August 2019, when they received the official Notice of Intention to Revoke, from when the clock to revocation started ticking. And they did not do so in June 2023, even after JNF received a letter saying the NITR notice was confirmed.
Even during our interview, JNF did not disclose it had its own documents that could better show the context of its challenges dealing with the CRA. JNF chose to release these only in September on their website. But they selectively released a document here and there to a “friendly” columnist for the National Post. These documents would have shown the fact that JNF’s detractors in the anti-Zionist advocacy world of Independent Jewish Voices, had their letter writing campaigns and media statements and briefing reports taken into consideration by CRA communications staff.
JNF also did not disclose on its website their annual audit documents for the years between 2018 and 2023, where the auditors’ reports stated the CRA had informed JNF it was going to lose its charitable status.
This is a lack of transparency on JNF’s part, thus hiding this knowledge from their donors, supporters, and the wider public. They also did not file these with the CRA, as they were legally required to do.
Only after our stories came out, did JNF upload the missing paperwork to its own website and posted on the CRA’s.
Two things can be true at the same time: JNF was facing compliance problems with CRA rules for years and hid this from its donors and the Canadian public and JNF acknowledged to us and to the CRA that it wanted to keep this issue quiet.
It is also possible that JNF was treated unfairly by the CRA, who may have been influenced by anti-Israel groups, or anti-Israel staff. The CRA denies this, but only time and Access to Information requests for Cabinet documents and internal CRA communications will tell.
During the pandemic, JNF had requested and obtained some documents from the CRA through access to information requests, showing internal reports that outline the media campaigns/internal pressure on the department from anti-JNF groups including Independent Jewish Voices, who wanted to have the charity shut down.
JNF could have released these important documents to the CJN and to the wider public immediately, but chose not to do so. We only found them on the JNF website, in September. And we reported on this, too.
Likely this will all be decided by the Federal Court of Appeal.
Local News
GrowWinnipeg celebrates 25th anniversary
By MYRON LOVE On Wednesday, June 25, about 250 Jewish Winnipeggers – comprising lifelong residents as well as newer arrivals, came together at the Asper campus to celebrate the 25th anniversary of GrowWinnipeg, an initiative that has revitalized our Jewish community – in our camps, school, synagogues and other institutions and given our community a much more international flavour.
Our community’s population peaked in terms of population in 1961 when Winnipeg Jewry numbered around 20,000. The years after had been a period of steady decline. By 1961, most of the Jews living in smaller communities in the Prairie provinces – the source of much of our ongoing population replenishment up to that point – had largely disappeared.
A s Bob Freedman, the former CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg (and its predecessor, the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council), noted in his remarks at the 25th anniversary party, by 1986, community leaders recognized that ours was an aging and shrinking community with aging infrastructure.
“We recognized that something had to be done,” he recalled.
The first stage, he pointed out, was the planning and construction of the Asper Campus, which brought our major institutions and organizations under one roof in an attractive new building.
The next challenge was to attract more people to our community. GrowWinnipeg was created to take on the challenge. GrowWinnipeg is unique in its efforts to reach out to young Jewish families throughout the Western world .
The genesis was a chance meeting on an airplane almost 30 years ago between former Manitoba Lieutenant-Governor Janice Filmon – at that time the wife of then-Manitoba premier Gary Filmon, and a Jewish businessman from Argentina who was contemplating moving to Toronto. Filmon persuaded him to consider Winnipeg instead. He was impressed by what he saw and suggested that the community send representatives to Buenos Aires to meet with other Argentinian Jewish families who were considering leaving.
That planted the seed.
Shortly thereafter – in 1998 – Larry Hurtig – then the president of the Federation, his son, Jack, and a representative of the provincial government, made an exploratory visit to Buenos Aires to gauge what interest there might be among young Jewish families to consider moving to Winnipeg.
GrowWinnipeg was officially launched in 2000. Our community opened its arms in welcome to the new arrivals who began to arrive, hosting them in our homes and helping them become acclimatized to their new surroundings.
Evelyn Hecht became the principal contact for the newcomers. “I was lucky that I happened to be working for the Federation when we opened the campus and turned our energies to repopulating our community,” Hecht noted in her remarks at the recent celebration. “Fortunately, the pieces fell into place at just the right time.”
Those pieces, Hecht related, included: the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program – which allowed community support groups to recruit specific immigrants; the arrival of a small number of Jewish families from Buenos Aires who encouraged community leaders to look to their former home as a potential source of Jewish immigrants; and the availability of email and the internet.
The initiative – led by Hecht – recruited a group of local Jewish families who were prepared to host potential immigrants who had begun to come for exploratory visits. The connections made by the new arrivals and their local hosts resulted in many long–lasting friendships, Hccht noted.
She praised Jewish Child and Family Service for helping the new arrivals to become established here and integrate into the community.
Efforts were also made to build a data basis of potential employers for the newcomers.
GrowWinnpeg was kicked off by two visits to Buenos Aires – visits Hecht describes as “exciting and exhausting” – in the early 2000s, when Hecht and other Winnipeg representatives met with potential immigrants and heard their concerns about life and personal safety in Argentina and hopes for the future that Winnipeg might be able to give them.
“I remember,” she said, “the numerous meeting I held in my office on the third floor here listening to people’s excitement and concerns and answering questions about life in Winnipeg, our Jewish identity, schools, synagogues, employment, housing and especially, safety. I always emphasized that they would encounter struggles, disappointment and possibly, crises – but I assured them that we would be here to help.
“And I remember feeling so much happiness when people would show up at my door to share good news about babies born, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations and new jobs – and the numerous times I was in Citizen Court where so many were so proud to receive their citizenship certificates. “
And they are still coming. Dalia Szpiro, Hecht’s successor, reports that, over the past 25 years just under 7,000 people have come here under the aegis of GrowWinnipeg – and not just from Argentina. We have had families from Brazil, Uruguay and other South American countries, Mexico, Europe, and, in more recent years, especially from Israel.
For former Israelis I spoke with on the 25th, such as Slava and Karina Pustilnikov, Irena Oz and Marina Shapiro and her 19-year-old son, Adam, all of whom have been here for 10 to 15 years, the primary motivation was being in a safer environment.
For Ori Rahima and his wife, Anna Shapiro, who have been here for seven years and have three children under six, the pull was greater opportunity and a better standard of living.
Then there is Esther Barna, a teacher by training, newly arrived from Budapest. “Hungary is not a good place to be a Jew,” she says. “There is a lot of antisemitism. I was looking online for a better place to go and came across the GrowWinnipeg website. I love it here.”
In her concluding remarks, Dalia Szpiro, herself an immigrant from Uruguay about 20 years ago, thanked the many Jewish organizations and individuals in the community who have helped to make GrowWinnipeg the success that it is.
“Over 250 volunteers each year meet with our exploratory visitors – opening their homes, their hearts, their time, their insights and their networks,” she noted. “There is something very special about our community and our province. Every exploratory visitor who comes here as part of their immigration journey discovers it.
“This 25-year milestone is a reason for pride and celebration – and a renewed commitment to the future. We are already working on new strategies – to strengthen what we have built, support immigration, foster inclusion and create more opportunities for newcomers to grow and prosper.”
Local News
Long time community members Bryan Schwartz, Myriam Saitman receive rabbinic ordination
By MYRON LOVE On June 21, Bryan Schwartz and Myriam Saitman received their rabbinical ordination through the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute (JSLI) Rabbinical School – bringing the number of JSLI rabbinic graduates in our community to seven.
“I felt a calling,” says Saitman, who is the new spiritual leader of Temple Shalom, our community’s roughly 60-year-old Reform Congregation. Saitman notes that she is Temple Shalom’s fourth female rabbi.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Saitman and her family answered our community’s call for new young Jewish families that began with the Federation’s GrowWinnipeg campaign. They arrived here in 2003.
“We were attracted by a community that offered a safer environment for raising a family and better economic opportunities,” she recalls.
Although raised in a secular family, she notes that, as a young adult she was drawn to learning more about Judaism. “I took Hebrew classes in Argentina and started on a spiritual path,” she recalls.
Soon after coming to Winnipeg, she found her spiritual home at Temple Shalom. Over the last many years, she has served as a volunteer in several capacities at the synagogue – both at the school and as a long time member of the board. Since 2016, she was also one of the lay service leaders, often leading Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday evenings.
When her predecessor, Allan Finkel – also a JSLI grad – let it be known that he was planning to retire after six years as the congregation’s spiritual leader, Saitman put her name forward as a potential successor.
“Judith (Huebner) and Ruth (Livingston) (Temple Shalom’s president and past president respectively) were really supportive as were the board and the congregation,” Saitman says. “I began leading services.”
As for the JSLI program, Saitman notes that it is intensive. “It meets a need,” she observes. “It prepares us well for all the requirements of being a congregational rabbi.
“We at Temple Shalom want people to know that we are here and we welcome interfaith families,” she adds. “Our motto is that we follow tradition and embrace modernity. Our services (on Friday evenings) reflect the essence of Reform Judaism where we allow for individual choices. I’d like to stress that individual choices are informed by an educated interpretation based on knowledge of the laws and customs.”
Unlike Saitman, Rabbi Bryan Schwartz was not considering a career as a congregational rabbi when embarking on the JSLI program. For Schwartz, “rabbi” is the latest title in a lifetime of achievement. As this writer noted in a story in the Post about Schwartz last year, he “is the very model of a modern-day, Jewish, Renaissance scholar.”.A long-time professor at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law, he is also a passionate Zionist, student of the Holocaust and an in demand commentator on modern legal and constitutional issues. He has written or contributed to 34 books and over 300 publications in all – in a legal and teaching career that stretches back more than 40 years. His works within a Jewish context encompass the gamut of Jewish life from ancient times to the Holocaust to the current Jewish situation. In addition, he is a poet, playwright and songwriter.
“My main purpose in taking the JSLI course,” he observes, “is to be better positioned to help deal with the challenge of Jewish survival. I want to be able to pass on Jewish tradition to the younger generation and impress upon younger Jews – who have grown up in largely secular homes – the value of our 2,500-year-old literature, culture and religious traditions.”
He observes that there is something for everyone in Jewish tradition. “There are many people who are looking for a spiritual community. I believe that Judaism provides us with a sense of our place in the universe.”
Schwartz – a lifelong student himself – notes that he has been building to this moment for a long time. In his early 20s, he notes, he audited a few courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In his 50s and 60s, he learned Hebrew at different ulpans.
“I had been looking around for a while for a rabbinic program,” he says. “JSLI seemed to be the best one. It was hard work – but well worth it. I learned a tremendous amount.”
So what is Schwartz – who is a member of the Shaarey Zedek – planning on doing as a rabbi?
“I would like to be able to offer weekly dvar Torahs,” he says.
He would like , among other things, to do creative and educational projects for the community, like his weekly dvar torah in the Times of Israel. The commentary that he gave on the weekend of his Smicha ceremony is called “From Burning Synagogue to Rising Lyon,” and can be found at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-burning-synagogue-to-rising-lion/
“I have also been writing books and musicals inspired by the Tradition, and hope to find forums to share them in the years ahead,” he adds. “My mission is to share in the radiance of our Tradition and help inspire the next generations to see its warmth and illumination”
Local News
Winnipeg Fringe performer Melanie Gall subjected to antisemitic attack – for second year in a row
By BERNIE BELLAN (July 20, 2025)
Melanie Gall is a talented performer who is a veteran of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival – having appeared here many times.
Last year Melanie found herself being subjected to antisemitic attacks that were initiated by a site supervisor for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, someone by the name of Eric Rae.
As I wrote on my story about Melanie’s experience, “…on the third day (of the Fringe Festival), she said, ‘the site supervisor (Rae) came and was wearing a pro-Palestinian symbol’ and told Melanie that he was wearing that deliberately because he was coming to Melanie’s venue.
“He told her, ‘that stance you’re taking (on social media) is a political symbol.
Rae also posted on social media: “We have a Zionist in our midst harassing pro-Palestinians.”
There was a concerted effort on social media last summer to boycott Melanie’s shows (She had three different shows altogether.)
As Melanie said during a phone conversation we had last summer about what happened to her, “This is so ridiculous. I’m being harassed and bullied because I’m Jewish…it’s not about Israel.”
Eric Rae was relieved from his duties after Melanie complained to the Fringe office staff, Melanie noted during our conversation.
She adds that other Fringe employees also complained about Eric Rae’s behaviour: “I wasn’t the only one who complained last year,” she wrote in an email sent today. “Several staff members complained, as Eric was not adhering to the Fringe policy that did not allow political symbols to be worn by staff. From what I heard, he refused to stop wearing it, and he did publicly target me. The Winnipeg Fringe upheld their safe spaces policy, and they were wonderful in the way they handled it.”
Further, Melanie was the target of an organized campaign on pro-Palestine social media calling for her shows to be boycotted.
(You can read the full story about what happened to Melanie, also to her mother during last year’s Edmonton Fringe Festival, at Melanie Gall.)
Just today we received another email from Melanie informing us that the same individual who targeted her last summer is targeting her again during this year’s Fringe Festival.
Melanie wrote: “Hi! Thanks so much for the mention in the preview article! I just wanted to let you know that Eric Rae is at it again.”
Attached to that email was a picture taken from Rae’s Instagram account.
As of the writing of this post, Melanie said that she is out of town for three days and is not aware whether any of her posters have been defaced – the way they were last summer.
She did add, however, that “I assume by ‘make her feel unwelcome’ (which is what is written on one of the pictures on Rae’s Instagram account) he is planning something. Ugh.”
Melanie also said that “The one post is too close to a threat to ignore.”
In a subsequent email Melanie also sent a screenshot of an exchange that took place on Rae’s Instagram account between him and someone who goes by the handle “Kat Cat.”
If we hear more about what’s been happening to Melanie we’ll update this article.
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