Local News
Winnipeggers set to participate in upcoming Maccabiah Games
By MYRON LOVE After a year’s delay due to the ongoing Covid situation, the 21st Maccabiah Games are back on track. The Maccabiah, aka “The Jewish Olympics”, is the world’s largest Jewish athletic competition.
The (usually) quarterly event highlights the centrality of the State of Israel in the life of the Jewish people. The games, which were first held in 1932 and 1935 in what was then Palestine and – resumed in 1950 after Israeli independence, is organized by Maccabi World Union. The most recent competition in 2017 featured 10,000 athletes representing 80 countries, making it the third largest event in the world, behind only the Summer Olympics and the World University Games.
Maccabi Canada sent a delegation of 600, one of the largest delegations from any Diaspora country. Canadian athletes won 72 medals at the Games, including 15 Golds.
Now, my impression of the Maccabiah Games has been that it is a regular sporting event geared to Jewish young people – much like the Olympics. I have been wrong, however. The Games, reports Sam Lazareck, has a Masters category – for amateur athletes over 40 – and Winnipeggers Lazareck and his close friend Michael Stoller are looking forward to participating in this summer’s Maccabiah – scheduled for July 12-26 with opening ceremonies scheduled to take place, as usual, at Teddy Kollek Stadium in Jerusalem. Lazareck and Stoller will be members of the Canadian Men’s hockey team, in the Masters category.
Both Lazareck, a psychiatrist, and Stoller, a portfolio manager (StollerWealth), have been playing hockey for years. For Stoller though, his first sport as a competitor was racquetball. It was racquetball in which he competed as a junior (under 18) on the Manitoba men’s team at the Canada Winter Games in Prince Edward Island in 1991.
Lazareck started playing hockey as a 10-year-old. He was on the St. John-Ravenscourt team in high school, played at university and has been part of various men’s leagues around the city. Lazareck also coaches his hockey-playing sons, Dylan, 12, and Ben, 10, at SJR. His daughter, Julia, 14, is a synchronized swimmer.
Stoller coached his younger daughter, Madelyn, who is now 13, at SJR when she was younger in hockey there. This past season (2021-2022), she played for the U15 AA female Rangers. (He notes that his older daughter, 16-year-old Reina, takes dancing classes at the Shelley Shearer School of Dance.)
Both Stoller and Lazareck play forward.
“I love the speed of the game,” Lazareck says. “It is exhilarating. And there is a lot of opportunity for creativity and improvisation.”
It was Lazareck who first saw the Facebook posting calling for prospective players for the Canadian Men’s Maccabiah Masters hockey team. He later recruited long time friend Stoller to try out with him.
“We had to fly out to Toronto last July for the tryouts,” Lazareck reports. “Our team practices have all been in either Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa. All the other players are from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
”The practices – all optional – have been fun.”
“Israel is an amazing place” says Stoller, whose wife Miriam hopes that she will be able to join him in Israel. (Their daughters, he notes, will be at BB Camp in July.)
For Sam Lazareck, this will he his second time in Israel in three years. In 2019, he says, he and his wife, Chloe, joined his parents (Karyn and Mel), Sam’s siblings, and all their children for a multi-generational family visit.
“I didn’t expect to be back this soon,” observes Sam, who will be accompanied by Chloe and younger son Ben. (The other kids will be at camp.)
Prior to the Maccabiah Games, Lazareck notes, he is involved in putting together a fundraising hockey tournament. “The Goals for G.R.O.W. Tournament” – scheduled for June 4 at the Iceplex – aims at raising money for the G.R.O.W. in Winnipeg Program – which was founded by his mother Karyn 20 years ago, (originally under the auspices of the Rady JCC).
The program provides the opportunity for mentally and physically challenged individuals to learn and practice life skills and social skills in a safe environment. The transitional day program for young adults (21 and older) prepares them for independent living – with the focus on life management and healthy living – and the development of social, recreational and pre-vocational skills.
The Goals for G.R.O.W. tournament was last held in 2019.
(Readers who may want to participate in the upcoming tournament or make a contribution can email info@growourway.ca or phone 204 505-3799.)
For Israeli-born teenager Ariel Tsaiger, representing Canada at the Maccabiah Games will be a homecoming of sorts
Tsaiger says he is really looking forward to being a participant in this summer’s Games. “I have some friends who have gone to the Maccabiah before and they really loved it,” says the Israeli-born junior basketball player, whose parents, Dmitri and Lana, moved to Winnipeg when he was three.
The rising local star has been playing basketball since he was five. The 15-year-old Henry J. Izzat High School student plays point guard for the Manitoba-based Northstar Preparatory Institute (NPI) team, which competes in tournaments and circuits around North America. He is also a participant in Triumph, Winnipeg’s premier youth basketball program.
“What I like most about basketball,” he says, “is that, unlike most other sports, you can’t afford to lose focus. You have to be fully engaged at all times.”
In addition to participating in this sumemr’s Maccabiah, Tsaiger is also looking forward to seeing some of the many relatives he still has in Israel.
His dream , he says, is to be able to play college basketball – hopefully on a full scholarshop.
Local News
New Israel Fund to hold event in Winnipeg December 11
The Road Ahead: Israelis Fighting for Peace and Democracy in a Trump-Netanyahu Era
with Ben Murane, Executive Director, and Michael Mitchell, Board Member
of the New Israel Fund of Canada
Wednesday, December 11th at 7:30-9:00 pm in the Grant Park area
Advance registration required — exact location provided upon registration. Registration link at the end of this post.
Co-sponsored by Canadian Supporters of Women Wage Peace
As President-elect Trump’s return to the spotlight stirs tensions globally, the Israel-Hamas war drags on, and the hostages are not any closer to coming home, NIFC’s work takes on new urgency in confronting a government that continues to undermine democracy and human rights.
Israeli progressives are determined not to let this extremist agenda win again — they’re modeling a powerful vision of a more peaceful, shared future for the region and pushing back against the forces of division, inequality, and authoritarianism. They’re fighting for both the release of hostages and aid to Gazans, as well as civil liberties, Jewish-Arab partnership, religious freedom, and for an end to this bloody conflict.
Join this private discussion with our Executive Director Ben Murane to hear how NIF-fueled civil society initiatives are fighting today and preparing for a better tomorrow.
About our Executive Director and Board Member
Ben Murane is the Executive Director of the New Israel Fund of Canada and a leading voice of millennial engagement with Israel. For over fifteen years, Ben has led at the intersection of Jewish life, social justice, and Israel. He previously worked for NIF’s U.S. branch, won Jewish innovation awards for his work in environmentalism and campus life, and founded both online and offline Jewish communities. In 2012, he received the prestigious Dorot Leadership Fellowship in Israel, where he studied comparative nationalism and consulted for social action groups. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two young children.
Michael Mitchell is a board member of the New Israel Fund of Canada. He is Vice-Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and an Arbitrator/Mediator in private practice. Michael was a senior partner at Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, a leading labour law firm in Toronto and Ottawa for almost forty years, where he also served as the managing partner. Michael was President of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, and the President of Darchei Noam, the Toronto Reconstructionist Congregation. He is a long time donor and supporter of the New Israel Fund and participated in the NIFC study tour of Israel in 2018. Michael is married to Lynne Mitchell, has three daughters, Rachel, Alisa and Sara, and has six grandchildren.
About the New Israel Fund of Canada
Since 1986, NIFC has contributed over $10 million to more than 100 organizations in Israel that fight for socio-economic equality, religious freedom, civil and human rights, shared society and anti-racism, Palestinian citizens, and democracy itself.
To register, click here: NIF event
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
‘Hateful remarks, gestures’: Canadian coffee chain boots franchisee at Jewish Montreal hospital
Second Cup Café said that the anti-Israel protester had violated the chain’s “values of inclusion and community.”
(Nov. 24, 2024 / JNS) The Canadian chain Second Cup Café announced on Saturday that it shut down a franchisee’s cafe at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and terminated its relationship with that person after the latter “was filmed making hateful remarks and gestures.”
“Second Cup has zero tolerance for hate speech,” the chain stated. “In coordination with the hospital, we’ve shut down the franchisee’s cafe and are terminating their franchise agreement.”
The person’s actions, the chain said, breach the franchise agreement and “violate the values of inclusion and community we stand for at Second Cup.”
Idit Shamir, the consul general of Israel in Toronto and western Canada, named the former franchisee as Mai Abdulhadi, and said that the latter had chanted “the Final Solution is coming” and performed a Nazi salute at Concordia University, “while running a café at Jewish General Hospital, a place built by Holocaust survivors.”
“Thankfully, Second Cup acted swiftly: café shut down, franchise revoked,” Shamir wrote. “Mai Abdulhadi—Hate speech isn’t just vile, it’s a threat, and it will be met with consequences.”
The company earned accolades—and some promises of business—from Paul Hirschson, the Israeli consul general in Montreal, and leaders at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.
“This great Canadian, Montreal-owned company has taken this principled stand at risk to their own business. In so doing, they are showing the courage and leadership Canada needs right now but is so desperately lacking from those in the highest of public offices,” stated Leo Housakos, a senator from Quebec. “I hope everyone goes out and buys their coffee tomorrow.”
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, the Israeli special envoy for combating antisemitism, wrote that it “turns out moral clarity is not so difficult.”
“Thanks Second Cup for showcasing Canadian values standing up to lethal hate speech and incitement,” she wrote. “Antisemitism is not a problem of Jews. It’s a problem of antisemites and the people and places that allow it to spread.”
“How is it that a coffee chain was able to put out a statement condemning antisemitism and racial hatred, faster, clearer and unambiguously better, than the prime minister of Canada?” wrote Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum.
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