Features
Berdina Shorten: Her long and circuitous journey to returning to her Jewish roots
By BERNIE BELLAN Berdina Shorten has lived in Winnipeg since coming here with her family from the Netherlands in 1953. Although Berdina was Jewish by ancestry (going back to her great-grandmother), she hadn’t been raised Jewish. It was only several years after having come to Canada – and having got married, that Berdina – and her late husband, Ken Shorten, both converted to Judaism.
Typically, the stories we publish in this paper about people’s wartime experiences have to do with the Holocaust. Those stories are all certainly horrendous – and almost always riveting, but when I happened to be talking to Berdina about a totally unrelated subject (the renewal of her subscription) and the conversation got around to her wartime experiences, I said to her that I wanted to write about her story.
I should also mention that I had heard Berdina speak at the Shaarey Zedek several years ago, but at that time I didn’t take any notes. (I can’t recall exactly why I was there or how I happened to be in the room when Berdina told her story, but I remember thinking that this would make a great story for the paper some day.)
In any event, here’s a recounting of the first part of Berdina’s story, based on a phone interview that I conducted with her on February .
First, a little history is needed, in order to understand the context for what happened to Berdina and her family.
The German army had invaded Poland in September 1939. After consolidating its gains there, Germany turned its attention to Western Europe in April 1940, first by invading Norway and Denmark, then launching an attack through Belgium into that country, also the Netherlands and Luxembourg (despite those three countries having adopted positions of neutrality).
The German invasion of The Netherlands began on May 10, 1943.
That is where Berdina’s story picks up. But first, a little background on her family history.
Berdina’s father, Theodore (or Theo, as he was known) was a master leather cutter. His “family was Protestant, but his mother was Catholic, so he was raised Catholic,” she said.
As Berdina explained, “his family had come from France in 1610. He used to say the reason his family didn’t go to the New World was ‘no pretty cruise directors, no first class cabins, no air conditioning.’ The real reason was they were Huguenots and they weren’t allowed to go to the New World – unless they went to England and went with the Protestants,” e.g., the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.)
Berdina’s mother (Anna), however, “was born Jewish” but, as Berdina noted, “the family never practiced Judaism. What happened was her mother was born Jewish to a Dutch girl and a German Rhine skipper. Her father died when she was four years old, so her mother went back to Holland, but her family wouldn’t accept her back because she had married someone who was not Jewish. She raised her child (Berdina’s grandmother) with the help of local charities and working in a grocery store.
“When she met my great-grandfather, he was more Catholic than the Pope, so she never practiced her religion and she raised her children as Catholic – but they were actually Jewish – by Jewish law.
“It wasn’t until I was 12 – and I had been sent to Catholic school. I was always challenging the nuns. I wanted to check out Judaism, but I wasn’t allowed.
I asked Berdina whether “she had an awareness that she was Jewish?”
She said she did. “I always knew. My mother knew also, but they hid it.”
I asked then how she knew about her Jewish heritage?
She answered: “My relatives. I heard conversations when I was a child.”
While, Her mother “didn’t practice any religion, her “father did. He’d go to Mass once in a while,” Berdina noted.
When the Germans invaded the Netherlands, Berdina’s father was in the Dutch army, fighting on the “Grebenberg (or the Grebbe line, the main line of Dutch defence)– where they held the Germans back for many days.” (Actually, it wasn’t many days at all – only three. The Dutch were badly equipped and totally outmaneuvered by the Germans.)
Berdina continued her story: “My father was a fantastic shot…But the Queen (Wilhelmina) capitulated. They were bombing the hell out of Rotterdam (May 14, 1940).” The Netherlands surrendered the next day.
Berdina’s father was taken prisoner and sent to work as a forced labourer (in Germany): “So my father was taken and put into a factory. He was a master leather cutter – making shoes.”
Berdina’s family lived very close to the German border with the Netherlands. Thus, even though Theo was forced to work in Germany, it was only a three-hour walk for him to return to his hometown – and his family. It seems somewhat strange to think of someone who’s kept as a forced labourer – which Berdina described as “slave labour”, yet who was allowed to return home on weekends, as she explained:
He was allowed to go home (where mother lived) once a week, Berdina said. “He was given one egg a week, so he would take that egg with him, so my brother (Corey, who was born four years before Berdina) would be able to have at least a little bit of protein in his diet.”
All the while Theodore though, was part of the Dutch underground– meeting with other members of the underground surreptitiously while he was in forced labour for the Germans.
Berdina told this story about one harrowing brush with danger her father had while he was in the resistance: “A story he told was that he was going to a meeting (of the underground) with a friend. They were caught by a young German soldier and the soldier” pointed his rifle at them and “told them to put their hands up. Somehow my father was able to overtake this young soldier.
“His friend said ‘We have to run.’ My father said, ‘No, we can’t. If we run and they find him (the soldier), they’ll kill ten people on this street.“ (That was the retribution the Germans typically exacted, Berdina explained.)
“So my father was able to get a hold of some liquor, put it over the kid’s mouth, then took his guns and papers to the nearest police station, which was controlled by the Germans, and said: ‘One of your soldiers was drunk and we took his guns and papers before he hurt someone.’
“My father was given a pass to go anywhere he wanted that night.”
I asked Berdina if she knew when it was that her father fled the factory for good and ended up going totally “underground” with the Dutch Resistance, but she said she didn’t know exactly when that happened.
When the Canadian army reached Holland in September 1944, anyone who had been in the Dutch army was able to join the Canadian army, Berdina explained, so her father ended up joining the Canadian army.
“When the Dutch army reorganized, he went back to the Dutch army.”
Her father was uncomfortable talking about what he did during the war, Berdina noted, but according to her brother, Theo had once told him that he “had killed at least one German that he knew of (a sniper) and probably more, but he wasn’t sure.”
I asked Berdina whether there were any other memories from the war that she wanted to talk about.
She said there was a young girl – only 14, in her town, “who was the first girl (in Berdina’s home town) to get pregnant by a German soldier.”(That soldier died in a plane crash coming back from North Africa, Berdina added.) “She was also the first girl to get pregnant by a Canadian soldier.
“After the war the people in that community were going to get her and shave her head and send her packing.
“My mother said to my father: ‘That little girl is still only 15 years old. She’s still walking around in Bobby socks and skipping with a skipping rope. Theo (Berdina’s father), could you please do something to stop those people from hurting her?’
“My father went out on to the street and he saw about 50 people coming for the girl. He stopped them.”
In 1953, Berdina, along with her parents and three brothers (two of whom were born after the end of the Second World War), came to Canada.
“My father started to work as leather cutter in the Canada West shoe factory,” Berdina explained.
“Maitland Steinkopf hired him. Eventually my father started to work in St. Boniface Hospital; he’d had a year’s medical training in Edinborough after the war – so he started to work in the hospital, in the x-ray department.
“He worked four hours a night doing piece work for Maitland. He made more money doing that than he did in the hospital.”
I was curious to know more about Maitland Steinkopf and his connection to the shoe business. I knew that Steinkopf was a very successful businessman who also played a leading role in the development of the Centennial Concert Hall, as well as being a prominent Conservative politician and cabinet minister, but other than that I didn’t know much about him.
Berdina said to me that Steinkopf’s success in the shoe manufacturing business was a result of his decision to go to Minneapolis at one point and come back with the Canadian rights to a line of shoes called “Hush Puppies”. That reminded me of another famous decision made by a local Jewish businessman – Samuel Cohen, who decided to begin importing transistor radios made by a company called Sony.
Turning to Berdina’s decision to become Jewish, here is how she explained how that came about:
“My late husband, Ken Shorten (whom I incorrectly referred to as Frank in my previous article), came from an Irish family – that originally came to Canada in 1690, and they farmed in the McCreary area.
“He worked in Eatons – and I worked in Eatons as well. That’s where I met him and we got married.
“Well, he was Protestant and I had been raised in a Catholic environment. We decided that we weren’t going to let the difference in our faiths have a negative effect on us, so we just stuck to ourselves when it came to the religious part.
“But that didn’t work for me and it didn’t work for him and I always knew about my Jewish heritage, so I said to him one day: ‘You know, I’d like to learn more about Judaism; it’s part of my heritage.’ And he said: ‘Me, too.’
“He had some very good Jewish friends at the time (who were all in the NDP). One of them was Cy Gonick, another was Harry Shafransky. He got to know quite a few Jewish politicians. He liked their ethics, liked their values, and so we started to look into Judaism.
“We went to see Rabbi Nesis and (the late) Rabbi Berkal, and we studied with them for two years, and then made the conversion.”
Interestingly, Berdina said that she also spoke with (the late) Rabbi Weizman, who told her that “You can’t convert – you’re already Jewish”.
“But, I said to him, ‘It’s my decision. It’s my journey. I want to do the process.’
“We had two children that we had adopted before we decided to convert – and we brought them in with us.”
I asked when this all happened?
Berdina said the conversion process went from 1973-75.
“We were officially converted in May of ’75,” she said, “and then we were married in the rabbi’s office again.”
“I sang in the Shaarey Zedek choir for 36 years,” Berdina added, “and my son, Theodore, sang in the choir for 20 years…and both kids had their bar and bat mitzvah together.”
“It was the best decision I ever made in my life,” Berdina observed. “It completed me as a human being. I finally fit – because I used to question those nuns. I must have been a real pain in the tuch.”
I asked, “Do you have relatives remaining in Holland?”
Berdina answered: “Yes, I have many.”
I asked, “Are any of them Jewish?”
She answered, “I have one cousin who recognizes himself as Jewish – and that’s it.”
I said to Berdina that what she had told me about her Jewish ancestry and her family’s subsequent conversion to Christianity, it jives with what I had read about how commonplace it was for Jews to have become Christians. I said that I recalled hearing from the late Rabbi Rappaport that only about one-quarter of all Jews in Europe remained Jewish through the years. The rest either converted willingly or by force.
During the course of our conversation, Berdina told me many more stories about her wartime experiences in the Netherlands, all of which were fascinating. Since she was only two years old by war’s end, naturally the stories she tells are one that have been recounted to her by others, but they are all worth retelling.
One that stood out for me in particular was about a Jewish doctor who was kept hidden by his Dutch housekeeper, unbeknownst to anyone else in the town. According to Berdina, when German soldiers came to the house looking for the doctor in 1940, the housekeeper said to them: “I kicked him out long ago when I knew you would be coming. He was miserable to work for and he never paid me enough.”
All through the war that housekeeper was ostracized by her fellow townspeople, as the doctor was universally loved. As Berdina told it, when the town was liberated by Canadian soldiers in 1944, the doctor emerged from the basement – where he had been kept hidden the entire period of occupation by the housekeeper.
Berdina is a great storyteller and when I asked her whether she’d be willing to tell her story to other audiences – as I had heard her do several years ago at the Shaarey Zedek, she readily agreed. If a day comes when Berdina will be able to tell her story to a new audience, I’ll be sure to post something in this paper.
Features
A People and a Pulse: Jewish Voices in Jazz and Modern Music
By MARTIN ZEILIG Jazz history is usually told through its most iconic names — Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis — yet running alongside that familiar story is another, often under‑acknowledged one: the deep and enduring contribution of Jewish musicians, bandleaders, composers, and cultural intermediaries.
From the moment jazz emerged at the turn of the 20th century, Jews were not simply observers but active shapers of the music and the industry around it. Their influence — artistic, entrepreneurial, and cultural — has been both significant and, in many respects, disproportionately large. Jews and Jazz (171 pg. $18.75 US) a self‑published work by Laurence Seeff, brings this parallel narrative into sharp, affectionate focus.
Seeff is an ideal guide.
Born in London in 1951, he built a career that moved from statistics to energy policy in Paris, from financial markets at Bloomberg to corporate training in the City of London, all while writing poetry, songs, and humorous verse. Today he lives in Israel, where he continues to write, perform, learn Ivrit, and enjoy life with his large family. Through all these chapters runs a constant passion for jazz — a passion sparked more than fifty‑five years ago when he first heard Terry Lightfoot’s Jazzmen in a Bournemouth pub.
His writing blends clarity, humour, and genuine love for the music and the people who made it.
The musicians he profiles often came from immigrant families who brought with them the musical DNA of Eastern Europe — the cadences of synagogue chant, the urgency of klezmer, the cultural instinct for learning and artistic expression. When these sensibilities met the African American genius of early jazz, the result was a remarkable creative fusion.
Some figures, like Chico Marx, are better known for comedy than musicianship, yet Seeff reminds us that Chico was a serious pianist whose jazz‑inflected playing appeared in every Marx Brothers film and whose orchestra launched young talents like Mel Tormé. Others — Abe Lyman, Lew Stone, and Oscar Rabin — shaped the dance‑band era on both sides of the Atlantic.
Canadian readers will be pleased to find Morris “Moe” Koffman included as well: the Toronto‑born flautist and saxophonist whose “Swinging Shepherd Blues” became an international hit and whose long career at the CBC helped define Canadian jazz.
Seeff also highlights artists whose connection to jazz is more tangential but culturally revealing. Barbra Streisand, for example — a classmate and choir‑mate of Neil Diamond at Erasmus Hall High School — was never a natural jazz singer, yet her versatility allowed her to step into the idiom when she chose.
She opened for Miles Davis at the Village Vanguard in 1961 and, nearly half a century later, returned to the same club to promote Love Is the Answer, her collaboration with jazz pianist Diana Krall. Her contribution to jazz may be limited, but her stature as one of the greatest singers of all time is unquestioned.
Neil Diamond, too, appears in these pages.
Though not a jazz artist, he starred — with gusto, if not great acting finesse — in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, 53 years after Al Jolson’s original. The film was not a success, nor was it truly a jazz picture, but its title and its star’s Jewish identity make it part of the cultural tapestry Seeff explores.
Diamond and Streisand recorded together only once, in 1978, on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” a reminder of the long‑standing artistic ties between them.
Mel Tormé, by contrast, was deeply rooted in jazz. Nicknamed “The Velvet Fog,” he was a prodigy who sang professionally at age four, wrote his first hit at sixteen, drummed for Chico Marx, and recorded with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Ethel Waters once said he was “the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man.” His story exemplifies the porous, collaborative nature of jazz.
Seeff also includes non‑Jewish figures whose lives intersected meaningfully with Jewish culture. Frank Sinatra — perhaps the greatest crooner of them all — was a steadfast supporter of Jewish causes, from protesting during the Holocaust to raising funds for Israel Bonds and the Hebrew University. His multiple visits to Israel, including a major concert in Jerusalem in 1975, underscore the depth of his connection.
Danny Kaye earns his place through his close work with Louis Armstrong, his pitch‑perfect scat singing, and his starring role in The Five Pennies, the biopic of jazz cornetist Red Nichols. Though not a jazz musician per se, his performances radiated a genuine feel for the music.
A later generation is represented by Harry Connick Jr., whose Jewish mother and New Orleans upbringing placed him at the crossroads of cultures. A prodigy who played publicly at age five, he went on to become one of the most successful jazz‑influenced vocalists of his era, with ten number‑one jazz albums.
Even Bob Dylan appears in Seeff’s mosaic — another reminder that Jewish creativity has touched every corner of modern music, sometimes directly through jazz, sometimes through the broader cultural currents that surround it.
Taken together, the concise portraits in Jews and Jazz form a lively, engaging mosaic — a celebration of creativity, resilience, and cross‑cultural exchange. They show how Jewish musicians helped carry jazz from vaudeville and dance halls into swing, bebop, cool jazz, pop, rock, and film music.
They remind us that jazz, at its heart, is a meeting place: a space where people of different backgrounds listen to one another, learn from one another, and create something larger than themselves.
For further information, contact the author at the following email address: laurenceseeff@yahoo.co.uk
Features
Jews in Strange Places
By DAVID TOPPER The Jewish contribution to 20th century popular music is well known. From Jerome Kern through to Stephen Sondheim, Jews played major roles as both composers and lyricists in the so-called Great American Songbook. (An exception is Cole Porter.) It continued in Musical Theatre throughout the rest of the century.
One very small piece of this story involves what Time magazine in the December 1999 issue called “the tune of the century.” First recorded sixty years before that, it is the powerful and haunting tune called “Strange Fruit,” which is about the lynching of black people in the southern USA. First sung by Billie Holiday in 1939, it became her signature tune.
So, why do I bring this up? Because there is a multi-layered Jewish connection to this song that is worth recalling, which may not be known to many readers.
Let’s start with the lyrics to “Strange Fruit,” which are the essence of this powerful piece:
Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Before becoming lyrics in a song, this poem stood alone as a potent statement about the lynchings still taking place throughout the American South at the time. The strong metaphorical imagery never explicitly mentions the lynching, which adds to the poetic power of this poem. Standing alone, I believe it’s an important protest verse from the 20th century.
Searching it on the internet, you may find the author listed as Lewis Allan. But that’s not his real name. “Lewis Allen” is the often-used pen name of Abel Meeropol, a Jewish High School teacher from the Bronx in New York. He and his wife, Anne (nee Shaffer), had two stillborn children with those names – a fact that adds a poignant element to this story.
The origin of the poem for Abel was a photograph he had seen of a lynching of black men in the South. I have seen such images, possibly even the one Abel saw: for example, a sepia photograph of two black men hanging from a long tree limb, and a large crowd of white people below (men, women and even children!), most seeming dressed in their Sunday best (some men with straw hats) looking up and gawking at the sight, some with smiles on their faces – as if attending a festive spectacle. Like Abel, I felt repelled by the picture: it turned my stomach. This communal display of horrific cruelty gave me a glimpse into Abel’s mind, and I understood how it compelled him to write about it. He thus wrote the poem, and it was published in a teacher’s magazine in 1937.
Being a songwriter too, in 1938 Abel added a melody and played it in a New York club he often attended. But here’s where this story’s documentation gets contradictory, depending upon who is recalling the events. The club owner knew Billie Holiday, and he showed the song to her. What her initial response was, we cannot know for sure. But we do know that in a relatively short time, she added it to her repertoire. It eventually became her signature tune. She initially sang it in public, but because of its popularity among her fans, there was pressure to record it too.
There were initial rejections from recording companies because of the controversial content. But Commodore Records took a chance and pressed the first recording in April 1939. This was the same year the movie “Gone with the Wind” came out; it was steeped in racial stereotyping. It was also sixteen years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
As a record, the song obviously reached a large audience. Since the content was about racism, the song was seen as politically radical; not surprisingly, many radio stations banned it from the airwaves.
Furthermore, it’s also not surprising that Abel, a schoolteacher, was called to appear before a committee of New York lawmakers who were looking for communists in the schools. Possibly they were surprised to find that the poem and the song were written by a white man – and a Jew to boot. In particular, they wanted to know if he was paid by the Communist Party to write this song. He was not. And, in the end, they let him go. But shortly thereafter he quit his teaching job.
This took place in 1941 and was a precursor to the continued American obsession with communism into the 1950s, under Senator Joe McCarthy.
Indeed, that episode had an impact on Abel and Anne too. In 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of giving information about nuclear science to the Soviet Union, and they were the first married couple to be executed in the electric chair. They left two sons, Michael (age 10) and Robert (age 6). Apparently, immediate family members were reticent to get involved with the boys, possibly afraid of being accused of sympathizing with communism.
Enter Abel and Anne. Without a moment’s hesitation they stepped in, taking and raising the boys. As Michael and Robert Meeropol they eventually went on to become college professors – and naturally were active in social issues. Anne died in 1973. Abel died in 1986 in a Jewish nursing home in Massachusetts, after a slow decline into dementia. Long before that, Billie Holiday died in 1959, ravaged by the drug addition that took her life at forty-four years of age.
See why I called this a multi-layered Jewish story that’s worth telling?
To hear Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” click here: Strange Fruit
Features
Is This the End of Jewish Life in Western Countries?
By HENRY SREBRNIK “Globalize the Intifada” has been the chant echoing through streets since October 7th, 2023. It was never a metaphor, and we now see the gruesome results across the western world, from Australia to Canada: the rise of groups of large, active networks of Islamist and anti-Zionist organizations.
Jews in the West are discovering that the nations they defended, enriched, and profoundly shaped have become increasingly inhospitable. After the Holocaust, explicit Jew-hatred became unfashionable in polite society, but the impulse never disappeared. The workaround was simple: separate Zionism from Judaism in name, then recycle every old anti-Jewish trope and pin it on “the Zionists.”
We have seen the full legitimization of genocidal anti-Zionism and its enthusiastic adoption by large segments of the public. The protests themselves, as they began immediately on October 7th, were celebrations of the Hamas massacres. The encampments, the building occupations, the harassment campaigns against Jewish students, the open calls for intifada, the attacks on Jews and Jewish places have become our new norm. History shows us that antisemitism does not respond to reason, incentive or the honest appeals of the Jewish community.
Outside the United States, there is no Western political establishment with either the will or the capability to address this problem, let alone reverse its growth. I’m sorry to say this, but the future of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is likely to be increasingly Jew-free.
Today, police stand and watch mobs chant for Israel’s destruction, call for the genocide of its people, harass visibly Jewish citizens, and drive antisemitic intimidation deep into urban life. They now believe their job is to enforce the law only if it does not risk upsetting violent constituencies. This makes Jews expendable, because defending them risks confrontation. This was very clear in the Bondi Beach massacre.
Jews are again donning caps instead of kippot, dressing generically with no cultural markers, and avoiding even a tote bag with Hebrew on it. A corrosive creep toward informal segregation in retail and service sectors is occurring, as Jewish customers report being refused service. A mezuzah hanging from a rideshare mirror leads to cancellations. When Jews express frustration, they are accused of exaggeration or attempting to suppress criticism of Israel. Jewish fear is not treated as a real problem.
“Jews Are Being Sent Back into Hiding,” the title of a Dec. 15 article in the New York Free Press by David Wolpe and Deborah Lipstadt, asserts that the attacks on Jews, including physical assaults, social media campaigns and, most tragically, the recent murders in Australia, are part of a purposive campaign designed to make Jews think twice about gathering with other Jews, entering a synagogue, going to kosher restaurants, putting a mezuzah on the doorpost of their apartments or dorm rooms, or wearing a Jewish star around their necks.
“We know of no one who would consider giving a niece, nephew, grandchild, or young friend a Jewish star without first asking permission of their parents,” they write. The unspoken, and sometimes spoken, question is: “Might wearing a star endanger your child’s well-being?”
Recently, a prominent American rabbi was entering a Target store in Chicago with her grandson, whom she had picked up from his Jewish day school. As they walked into the store the 10-year-old reached up and automatically took off his kippah and put it in his pocket. Seeing his grandmother’s quizzical look, he explained: “Mommy wants me to do that.”
Borrowing a phrase from another form of bigotry, they contend that Jews are going “back into the closet.” No public celebration of Hanukkah took place in 2025 without a significant police presence. Some people chose to stay home.
Lipstadt and Wolpe know whereof they speak. They are respectively a professor of history and Holocaust studies who served as the Biden administration’s ambassador tasked with combating antisemitism, the other a rabbi who travels to Jewish communities throughout the world, and who served on Harvard’s antisemitism task force in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 pogrom.
What the world has seen over the past two years is a continual, often systematic attempt to terrorize Jews. When political leaders fail to condemn rather than merely “discourage” chants of “globalize the intifada,” we are seeding the ground for massacres like the Hannukah one in Sydney.
If each Jewish holiday will now be seen by antisemites as an opportunity for terror, then the prognosis for diaspora Jewry is bleak. There will be fewer public events, more alarms, more bag checks at doors; there will have to be more security and more police. Unless things change, Jewish life in the diaspora will become more sealed off from the larger society.
Why has this failure come about? Confronting antisemitism, stopping the mobs, challenging the activists, and disciplining antisemitic bureaucrats all carry electoral risk for politicians; Jews are demographically irrelevant, especially compared with Muslim voters, with the U.S. being the only partial exception.
There are those who suggest Jews stop donating funds to educational and other institutions that have turned against us. At this point, I doubt very much that withdrawing dollars will have an impact. For every dollar withdrawn, there will be 100 from Qatar and other sources in its place.
Throughout history, the way a society treats its Jews predicts its future with unerring accuracy. If Jews leave, it will be because a civilization that will not defend its Jews will also defend next to nothing and may itself not survive.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island