Features
Annamie Paul wants to be the first Black-Jewish leader of a Canadian party
By ILANA BELFER
TORONTO (JTA) — Annamie Paul will break new ground if she wins the Green Party of Canada’s upcoming leadership race: She would be the first Black Jewish person to lead a federal or provincial party in the country.
That fact isn’t lost on her — it’s a big part of her motivation.
“We have a profound lack of diversity at the highest levels in our political leadership and it has always been the case,” said Paul, 47, who was born and raised in Toronto. “We have to do something about it — not only for reasons of equity, but also because there’s decades of research that confirms you get better public policy results when you have diversity at the table.”
For Paul, studies on the benefits of diversity in the public sector are more than figures and statistics — they’re her experience. She’s a lawyer who has dedicated her career to public affairs, working for Canada’s mission to the European Union, advising the International Criminal Court and serving as executive director of the Barcelona International Policy Action Plan, which aims to cultivate NGOs and other public policy centers.
While getting a master’s degree in public affairs at Princeton University, Paul converted to Judaism in 2000. Supervised by the director of the Hillel on campus, a Conservative rabbi, she learned to read Hebrew and was questioned by a beit din, or rabbinic court, prior to dipping in the mikvah, the ritual bath one submerges in as part of the conversion process.
“It was full on. I was very committed,” she said. “It’s a faith that has really spoken to me: the universality, the humanistic values … I’m very much guided by the idea that if you save one person, you save the world.”
Paul has been married to Mark Freeman, a Jewish international human rights lawyer, for nearly 25 years. But she stressed that the only reason anyone should consider conversion is “because they’re internally compelled to do so.” She said questions around whether she converted for her husband can make her feel othered by the Jewish community.
“It seems inconceivable to them that I might have been born Jewish, despite the fact that there are many Black Jews. I would not be asked these questions if I was white,” Paul said. “We need to avoid making distinctions between Jews, and questions like these suggest that some people are more Jewish than others or that Judaism is intrinsically white.”
Paul said raising a Jewish household has been one of “the great joys” of her life. Her two sons — Malachai, 19, and Jonas, 16 — spent much of their childhoods attending Jewish day schools in Belgium and Spain, depending where the family was living. They had bar mitzvahs in Toronto and Barcelona.
Like picking a religion, Paul looked to shared values to determine which political party she would join when her work no longer prohibited her from doing so. She said she was aligned with the liberal Green Party’s commitment to the climate emergency and to participatory democracy.
She ran as its Toronto Centre candidate in the 2019 federal election and, though she failed to win the seat, the small Green Party — led by Elizabeth May — celebrated a record result, earning three seats in the Parliament.
Paul recently spent six months as the party’s shadow international affairs chief. But she also hasn’t shied away from criticizing the Greens, which ran the least diverse slate in the last election.
“The Green Party has the most progressive platform and policies related to issues of social and racial justice … [but] we’re not reflecting that within our party,” Paul said. “We can’t preach these things externally if we’re not doing them internally.”
It’s not just a Green Party problem, though.
Currently, 12 of Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial leaders are men. Only a handful of the 338 Members of Parliament are Black. And until this year, it had been nearly 50 years since a Black woman ran for leadership of a national party.
Despite having one of the world’s largest Jewish populations, Canada has only really had one Jewish federal party leader — David Lewis, who was elected the New Democratic Party’s national leader in 1971.
“And this is 2020,” said Paul, adding that she believes this is one reason why “Canada is so far behind on issues related to systemic racism.”
“The frustration I have at the moment in terms of Canada is that we think we’re doing better. We think Black and Indigenous people are safer and … the statistics just say different,” she said.
In response to recent claims by the premiers of Quebec and Ontario denying or minimizing the existence of systemic racism in Canada, Paul was quick to cite a 2017 U.N. report, which found that “anti-Black racism” is “entrenched in [Canada’s] institutions, policies and practices.”
On her website, where she is collecting signatures to gather momentum for a national database on police use-of-force victims, Paul points out that Black residents of Toronto are 20 times more likely to be shot by police than whites, according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and that over 35 percent of people killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from 2007 to 2017 were Indigenous, despite being just five percent of the population, according to the Globe and Mail.
Paul said she is aware that her identities as a Black and Jewish woman in politics give her a unique platform during times like these. As she put it, “people are very curious about my perspective.”
“I’m trying to be as clear as I can about what things I consider to be important … on behalf of those who don’t usually get asked what they think about things,” she said.
This entails raising up the voices of young Black Greens on social media, where Paul has posted a video series featuring people like Kiara Nazon, who founded the “Young Greens” at Carleton University.
“What does it feel like to be Black right now? To be entirely honest it feels just about the same as it always has and that’s because these issues aren’t new,” Nazon said in a video posted to Twitter. “We need leaders who aren’t going to be taken by surprise by issues like police brutality toward Black, Indigenous People of Color. We need leaders who have lived these realities.”
https://twitter.com/AnnamiePaul/status/1269724192271974400
Paul said she felt more at risk on a daily basis while living as a Black person while living in the United States, and that she “trembles” for some family she has there. She also said her husband didn’t want their son going to school in the U.S., fearing for his physical safety.
But, she added, “I certainly feel those dangers here as well.”
Demonstrations in Toronto have been relatively peaceful, as thousands have taken to the streets calling for justice for George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet. Korchinski-Paquet fell from a balcony to her death in the presence of police officers. Her family has raised concerns over the role played by the police, which Ontario’s police watchdog is now investigating.
“I’m hoping that we move from what I consider to be the empty gestures of our prime minister and some of our other politicians to actual action,” Paul said. “I don’t want him to kneel. I want him to stand up and say that he’s going to make the changes that have been recommended by the U.N. on behalf of Black Canadians.”
While running an unprecedented campaign almost entirely online due to COVID-19, Paul said she spends most of her days in the digital world, where they run three to four events a week, including “The New Normal Tour,” a series of virtual town hall meetings discussing critical issues within the context of a Green recovery.
Next they’ll discuss long-term care centers, which have had 82 percent of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths. Sadly, Paul’s father was among them.
“It was avoidable,” she said. “These things were problems but they weren’t laid so bare. They’ve been exposed in a way they have never been before.”
In addition to advocating for long-term care centers to be publicly insured under the Canada Health Act, Paul said she hopes large government investments triggered by the coronavirus are used to fill holes in the social safety net — without forgetting climate change.
“I want to see us moving towards the green transition … the climate emergency has not taken a pause,” said Paul, noting the European Commission’s green recovery package as an example of recent global action.
Paul is facing off against nine other candidates in the race to lead the Green Party, which will hold its election in October. But Paul has the longest list of endorsements.
“We need to move towards a truly just and equitable society by … making sure that every Canadian — whether they’re living in long-term care or they’re working part-time or they’re students or they’re black or they’re Indigenous — whatever their circumstances, can live in dignity and security,” she said.
Features
So, what’s the deal with the honey scene in ‘Marty Supreme?’
By Olivia Haynie December 29, 2025 This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
There are a lot of jarring scenes in Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s movie about a young Jew in the 1950s willing to do anything to secure his spot in table tennis history. There’s the one where Marty (Timothée Chalamet) gets spanked with a ping-pong paddle; there’s the one where a gas station explodes. And the one where Marty, naked in a bathtub, falls through the floor of a cheap motel. But the one that everybody online seems to be talking about is a flashback of an Auschwitz story told by Marty’s friend and fellow ping-ponger Béla Kletzki (Géza Röhrig, best known for his role as a Sonderkommando in Son of Saul).
Kletzki tells the unsympathetic ink tycoon Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) about how the Nazis, impressed by his table tennis skills, spared his life and recruited him to disarm bombs. One day, while grappling with a bomb in the woods, Kletzki stumbled across a honeycomb. He smeared the honey across his body and returned to the camp, where he let his fellow prisoners lick it off his body. The scene is a sensory nightmare, primarily shot in close-ups of wet tongues licking sticky honey off Kletzki’s hairy body. For some, it was also … funny?
Many have reported that the scene has been triggering a lot of laughter in their theaters. My audience in Wilmington, North Carolina, certainly had a good chuckle — with the exception of my mother, who instantly started sobbing. I sat in stunned silence, unsure at first what to make of the sharp turn the film had suddenly taken. One post on X that got nearly 6,000 likes admonished Safdie for his “insane Holocaust joke.” Many users replied that the scene was in no way meant to be funny, with one even calling it “the most sincere scene in the whole movie.”
For me, the scene shows the sheer desperation of those in the concentration camps, as well as the self-sacrifice that was essential to survival. And yet many have interpreted it as merely shock humor.
Laughter could be understood as an inevitable reaction to discomfort and shock at a scene that feels so out of place in what has, up to that point, been a pretty comedic film. The story is sandwiched between Marty’s humorous attempts to embarrass Rockwell and seduce his wife. Viewers may have mistaken the scene as a joke since the film’s opening credits sequence of sperm swimming through fallopian tubes gives the impression you will be watching a comedy interspersed with some tense ping-pong playing.
The reaction could also be part of what some in the movie theater industry are calling the “laugh epidemic.” In The New York Times, Marie Solis explored the inappropriate laughter in movie theaters that seems to be increasingly common. The rise of meme culture and the dissolution of clear genres (Marty Supreme could be categorized as somewhere between drama and comedy), she writes, have primed audiences to laugh at moments that may not have been meant to be funny.
The audience’s inability to process the honey scene as sincere may also be a sign of a society that has become more disconnected from the traumas of the past. It would not be the first time that people, unable to comprehend the horrors of the Holocaust, have instead derided the tales of abuse as pure fiction. But Kletzki’s story is based on the real experiences of Alojzy Ehrlich, a ping-pong player imprisoned at Auschwitz. The scene is not supposed to be humorous trauma porn — Safdie has called it a “beautiful story” about the “camaraderie” found within the camps. It also serves as an important reminder of all that Marty is fighting for.
The events of the film take place only seven years after the Holocaust, and the macabre honey imagery encapsulates the dehumanization the Jews experienced. Marty is motivated not just by a desire to prove himself as an athlete and rise above what his uncle and mother expect of him, but above what the world expects of him as a Jew. His drive to reclaim Jewish pride is further underscored when he brings back a piece of an Egyptian pyramid to his mother, telling her, “We built this.”
Without understanding this background, the honey scene will come off as out of place and ridiculous. And the lengths Marty is willing to go to to make something of himself cannot be fully appreciated. The film’s description on the review-app Letterboxd says Marty Supreme is about one man who “goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.” But behind Marty is the story of a whole people who have gone through hell; they too are trying to find their way back.
Olivia Haynie is an editorial fellow at the Forward.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
Features
Paghahambing ng One-on-One Matches at Multiplayer Challenges sa Pusoy in English
Ang Pusoy, na kilala din bilang Chinese Poker, ay patuloy na sumisikat sa buong mundo, kumukuha ng interes ng mga manlalaro mula sa iba’t ibang bansa. Ang mga online platforms ay nagpapadali sa pag-access nito. Ang online version nito ay lubos na nagpasigla ng interes sa mga baguhan at casual players, na nagdulot ng diskusyon kung alin ang mas madali: ang paglalaro ng Pusoy one-on-one o sa multiplayer settings.
Habang nailipat sa digital platforms ang Pusoy, napakahalaga na maunawaan ang mga format nito upang mapahusay ang karanasan sa laro. Malaking epekto ang bilang ng mga kalaban pagdating sa istilo ng laro, antas ng kahirapan, at ang ganap na gameplay dynamics. Ang mga platforms tulad ng GameZone ay nagbibigay ng angkop na espasyo para sa mga manlalaro na masubukan ang parehong one-on-one at multiplayer Pusoy, na akma para sa iba’t ibang klase ng players depende sa kanilang kasanayan at kagustuhan.
Mga Bentahe ng One-on-One Pusoy
Simpleng Gameplay
Sa one-on-one Pusoy in English, dalawa lang ang naglalaban—isang manlalaro at isang kalaban. Dahil dito, mas madali ang bawat laban. Ang pokus ng mga manlalaro ay nakatuon lamang sa kanilang sariling 13 cards at sa mga galaw ng kalaban, kaya’t nababawasan ang pagiging komplikado.
Para sa mga baguhan, ideal ang one-on-one matches upang:
- Sanayin ang tamang pagsasaayos ng cards.
- Matutunan ang tamang ranggo ng bawat kamay.
- Magsanay na maiwasan ang mag-foul sa laro.
Ang simpleng gameplay ay nagbibigay ng matibay na pundasyon para sa mas kumplikadong karanasan sa multiplayer matches.
Mga Estratehiya mula sa Pagmamasid
Sa one-on-one matches, mas madaling maunawaan ang istilo ng kalaban dahil limitado lamang ang galaw na kailangan sundan. Maaari mong obserbahan ang mga sumusunod na patterns:
- Konserbatibong pagkakaayos o agresibong strategy.
- Madalas na pagkakamali o overconfidence.
- Labis na pagtuon sa isang grupo ng cards.
Dahil dito, nagkakaroon ng pagkakataon ang mga manlalaro na isaayos ang kanilang estratehiya upang mas epektibong maka-responde sa galaw ng kalaban, partikular kung maglalaro sa competitive platforms tulad ng GameZone.
Mas Mababang Pressure
Dahil one-on-one lamang ang laban, mababawasan ang mental at emotional stress. Walang ibang kalaban na makaka-distract, na nagbibigay ng pagkakataon para sa mga baguhan na matuto nang walang matinding parusa sa kanilang mga pagkakamali. Nagiging stepping stone ito patungo sa mas dynamic na multiplayer matches.
Ang Hamon ng Multiplayer Pusoy
Mas Komplikado at Mas Malalim na Gameplay
Sa Multiplayer Pusoy, madaragdagan ang bilang ng kalaban, kaya mas nagiging komplikado ang laro. Kailangan kalkulahin ng bawat manlalaro ang galaw ng maraming tao at ang pagkakaayos nila ng cards.
Ang ilang hamon ng multiplayer ay:
- Pagbabalanse ng lakas ng cards sa tatlong grupo.
- Pag-iwas sa labis na peligro habang nagiging kompetitibo.
- Pagtatagumpayan ang lahat ng kalaban nang sabay-sabay.
Ang ganitong klase ng gameplay ay nangangailangan ng maingat na pagpaplano, prediksyon, at strategic na pasensiya.
Mas Malakas na Mental Pressure
Mas mataas ang psychological demand sa multiplayer, dahil mabilis ang galawan at mas mahirap manatiling kalmado sa gitna ng mas maraming kalaban. Kabilang dito ang:
- Bilisan ang pagdedesisyon kahit under pressure.
- Paano mananatiling focused sa gitna ng mga distractions.
- Pagkakaroon ng emosyonal na kontrol matapos ang sunod-sunod na talo.
Mas exciting ito para sa mga manlalarong gusto ng matinding hamon at pagmamalasakit sa estratehiya.
GameZone: Ang Bagong Tahanan ng Modern Pusoy
Ang GameZone online ay isang kahanga-hangang platform para sa mga naglalaro ng Pusoy in English. Nagbibigay ito ng opsyon para sa parehong one-on-one at multiplayer matches, akma para sa kahit anong antas ng kasanayan.
Mga feature ng GameZone:
- Madaling English interface para sa user-friendly na gameplay.
- Real-player matches imbes na kalaban ay bots.
- Mga tool para sa responsible play, tulad ng time reminder at spending limits.
Pagtatagal ng Pamanang Pusoy
Ang Pusoy card game in English ay nagpalawak ng abot nito sa mas maraming players mula sa iba’t ibang bahagi ng mundo habang pinapanatili ang tradisyunal nitong charm. Sa pamamagitan ng mga modernong platform tulad ng GameZone, mananatiling buhay at progresibo ang Pusoy, nakakabighani pa rin sa lahat ng antas ng manlalaro—mula sa casual enjoyment hanggang sa competitive challenges.
Mula sa maingat na pag-aayos ng mga cards hanggang sa pag-master ng estratehiya, ang Pusoy ay isang laro na nananatiling relevant habang ipinapakita ang masalimuot nitong gameplay dynamics na puno ng kultura at inobasyon.
Features
Rob Reiner asked the big questions. His death leaves us searching for answers.
Can men and women just be friends? Can you be in the revenge business too long? Why don’t you just make 10 louder and have that be the top number on your amp?
All are questions Rob Reiner sought to answer. In the wake of his and his wife’s unexpected deaths, which are being investigated as homicides, it’s hard not to reel with questions of our own: How could someone so beloved come to such a senseless end? How can we account for such a staggering loss to the culture when it came so prematurely? How can we juggle that grief and our horror over the violent murder of Jews at an Australian beach, gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, and still light candles of our own?
The act of asking may be a way forward, just as Rob Reiner first emerged from sitcom stardom by making inquiries.
In This is Spinal Tap, his first feature, he played the role of Marty DiBergi, the in-universe director of the documentary about the misbegotten 1982 U.S. concert tour of the eponymous metal band. He was, in a sense, culminating the work of his father, Carl Reiner, who launched a classic comedy record as the interviewer of Mel Brooks’ 2,000 Year Old Man. DiBergi as played by Reiner was a reverential interlocutor — one might say a fanboy — but he did take time to query Nigel Tufnell as to why his amp went to 11. And, quoting a bad review, he asked “What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?”
But Reiner had larger questions to mull over. And in this capacity — not just his iconic scene at Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally or the goblin Yiddishkeit of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride — he was a fundamentally Jewish director.
Stand By Me is a poignant meditation on death through the eyes of childhood — it asks what we remember and how those early experiences shape us. The Princess Bride is a storybook consideration of love — it wonders at the price of seeking or avenging it at all costs. A Few Good Men is a trenchant, cynical-for-Aaron Sorkin, inquest of abuse in the military — how can it happen in an atmosphere of discipline.
In his public life, Reiner was an activist. He asked how he could end cigarette smoking. He asked why gay couples couldn’t marry like straight ones. He asked what Russia may have had on President Trump. This fall, with the FCC’s crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel, he asked if he would soon be censored. He led with the Jewish question of how the world might be repaired.
Guttingly, in perhaps his most personal project, 2015’s Being Charlie, co-written by his son Nick he wondered how a parent can help a child struggling with addiction. (Nick was questioned by the LAPD concerning his parents’ deaths and was placed under arrest.)
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None of the questions had pat answers. Taken together, there’s scarcely a part of life that Reiner’s filmography overlooked, including the best way to end it, in 2007’s The Bucket List.
Judging by the longevity of his parents, both of whom lived into their 90s, it’s entirely possible Reiner had much more to ask of the world. That we won’t get to see another film by him, or spot him on the news weighing in on the latest democratic aberration, is hard to swallow.
Yet there is some small comfort in the note Reiner went out on. In October, he unveiled Spinal Tap II: The Beginning of the End, a valedictory moment in a long and celebrated career.
Reiner once again returned to the role of DiBergi. I saw a special prescreening with a live Q&A after the film. It was the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I half-expected Reiner to break character and address political violence — his previous film, God & Country, was a documentary on Christian Nationalism.
But Reiner never showed up — only Marty DiBergi, sitting with Nigel Tuffnell (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. The interview was broadcast to theaters across the country, with viewer-submitted questions like “What, in fact, did the glove from Smell the Glove smell like?” (Minty.) And “Who was the inspiration for ‘Big Bottom?’” (Della Reese.)
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- Actor-Director Rob Reiner dies at 78
- Carl Reiner On Judaism, Atheism And The ‘Monster’ In The White House
- Mandy Patinkin On His Favorite ‘Princess Bride’ Quote
DiBergi had one question for the audience: “How did you feel about the film?”
The applause was rapturous, but DiBergi still couldn’t get over Nigel Tuffnell’s Marshall amp, which now stretched beyond 11 and into infinity.
“How can that be?” he asked. “How can you go to infinity? How loud is that?”
There’s no limit, Tuffnell assured him. “Why should there be a limit?”
Reiner, an artist of boundless curiosity and humanity, was limitless. His remit was to reason why. He’ll be impossible to replace, but in asking difficult questions, we can honor him.
The post Rob Reiner asked the big questions. His death leaves us searching for answers. appeared first on The Forward.