Features
New book by former Winnipegger Dr. Ted Rosenberg explores his personal experience of anti-Semitism, along with a call to action
By MYRON LOVE After a bit of a hiatus, it is nice to see Yolanda Papini Pollock and Winnipeg Friends of Israel – the group she founded ten years ago – back in action.
“I was frustrated by the media bias (against Israel), the coverage without context, the attempts to delegitimize Israel and deny our people the right of self-defense,” she said in an earlier interview. “Violent demonstrations, hate crimes, antisemitic comics, blood libel allegations, and hostile media coverage were daily events that led people to question whether Israel has the right to exist or defend herself against repeated terror attacks.”
In fighting back, over the years WFI has not only introduced its supporters to pro-Israel speakers. Papini Pollock has also brought in speakers from the Yazidi and Kurdish communities; a Christian minister from Africa; the pro-Israel son of one of the founders of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef; and Kasim Hafeez, the WFI’s first guest speaker who, at the time, was doing outreach and education programming for B’nai Brith locally. (Hafeez is a British-born Muslim – of Pakistani origin – who switched from being virulently anti-Israel to supporting Zionism after reading Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel.”)
Over the past four months, Papini Pollock and WFI have organized three programs – in conjunction with her frequent partners – the Christian Zionist Bridges for Peace. Last June, the two groups brought Rabbi Leo Dee to Winnipeg via Zoom to talk about how he has overcome the murder of his wife and two daughters at the hands of Palestinian terrorists about 18 months ago.
Most recently, in the week before Yom Tov, the partnering organizations held a program highlighting the Druze community in Israel and Syria – at the Rady JCC – and hosted an evening with Dr. Ted Rosenberg, a former Winnipegger, who quit his position as a professor at the University of British Columbia School of Medicine – in January of 2024 – after 30 years of teaching, in protest against the rising tide of antisemitism in his faculty, the university as a whole, and universities in general across the country.
Rosenberg was in Winnipeg not only to speak about his own experience as a victim of anti-Semitism, but also to talk about his book, “Ayekha (Where Are You?) A Memoir and Reflection about Antisemism, Anti-Zionism and the Western Response to October 7, 2023.”
In the book Rosenberg recounts his disappointment about what happened to him at UBC and challenges readers to take action to fight back against antisemitism.
The book’s title, he pointed out, comes from the part of Genesis where God confronts Adam and Eve – who are hiding after committing the sin of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge – and demands to know “Ayekha (Where Are You?)”.
“Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik taught that if we don’t ask ourselves, “Ayekha?” – Where am I? – we will ask ourselves “Eicha?” – how does this happen,” Rosenberg noted. “ ‘Eicha’ is the name for the Book of Lamentations.”
By contrast, Rosenberg continued, when God asked the question of Moses from the burning bush, Moses’ response was “hineni” – “here I am.”
“It is my solemn wish, Rosenberg said, “that our leaders and people in the Diaspora will stand up and likewise answer the question with hineni.”
The author began his presentation by reminiscing about growing up in Winnipeg – where he still has many family members and friends. He attended Talmud Torah as a kid – later graduating from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine.
“Winnipeg was a special place to grow up,” he recalled. “It was a golden age then for Canadian Jewry.”
“There was always an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in Canada,” he commented, “but after October 7, it became a torrent. This was something else. I knew we were in trouble.”
He referred to the numerous libels that were being spread. “My son was told that the Jews were not chosen,” he recounted. “Israel stood accused of stealing another people’s land. I began to think about how I could protect my children, teach them how to protect themselves.”
Rosenberg was spurred to action after 225 UBC medical students signed a petition titled “A Call for Action on Gaza” which, according to an article in the Vancouver Jewish Independent, “called for a ceasefire, condemned Israel as “a settler-colonial state, accused Israel of collective punishment through indiscriminate bombing of civilians and claimed that Palestinian people have been continually abused, traumatized and killed by the settler state of Israel and its Western allies for over 75 years.”
The response from the administration, Rosenberg noted, was that there was nothing they could do because this was all happening on social media.
“For me, this was a red flag,” he recalled. “I decided to take the bull by the horns. I believed that the administration didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.”
Rosenberg wrote a letter to the dean and president of the university, pointing out that Zionism is the culmination of the Jewish people re-establishing their homeland on their ancestral land. He further refuted the lies about “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide” and others. He noted that half of Israeli Jews are originally from Arab countries and that the Jews were in the land of Israel 1000 years before Islam was born. He cited the work of writer and anthropologist Adam Louis Klein, who argued that antisemitism is akin to a religious cult. He warned about the dangers not only to Jewish medical students and faculty but also Jewish patients across Canada who may have to deal with doctors who graduated from a university steeped in antisemitic beliefs. He advocated that the administration work with the faculty to educate students about antisemitism and turn down the temperature.
Rosenberg described the response that he received from the dean was as boilerplate stuff about the university’s emphasis on respect and inclusiveness. “I further reached out to (B.C. Premier) David Eby, the Lieutenant-Governor and (pro-Israel) Members of Parliament David Housefather and Marco Mendocino and still got nothing,” he recounted. “I had nowhere else to go.”
Rosenberg chose to resign his position, wrote about his decision and took to the media to explain his decision. He says he received a lot of positive response.
In January 2024, he went on a medical mission to Israel. “I felt in Israel that I could breathe again,’ he said. “I was very impressed by the resilience of the people and the humanity from both Arabs and Jews.”
In May of 2024, he began writing a blog on The Times of Israel – whIch led to “Ayekha”.
Before turning to a more detailed description of his book, Rosenberg provided an overview of Canada and the world vis-à-vis Israel and the Jews – and a gloomy overview it was. He pointed to ongoing antisemitic violence throughout the Western world, egged on by political leaders, unions and educational leadership – including our own federal government leaders in Canada. He suggested that antisemitic speech has become normalized. He further suggested that Israel is more isolated than ever and that even the Jewish community in Canada is divided.
“I am pessimistic about the future – but remain hopeful,” Rosenberg said.
On the positive side, he cited examples of Jewish communities taking action to “reclaim our story” and pursue legal redress. He furthere welcomed the support of Christian communities such as Bridges for Peace.
He also expressed his gratitude for the largely positive reaction to “Ayekha,” which has opened the eyes of many readers to the reality of the situation in Israel.
“Each one of us has a role to play,” Rosenberg suggested to his audience. “We are commanded to be a light unto the nations. Most people are ill-informed and under informed about the entire subject. We have to reach out and try to educate. If you need to be better informed so that you are more confident explaining these complex issues, you can read my book.”
Rosenberg’s book is part memoir, part historical documentation about the author’s experience , he said. All book sales support the first Jewish day school in Victoria, BC, founded on October 7, 2024. “Ayekha” is available on Amazon.
Features
Ancient Torah Lessons Students Can Still Use Today In Class
Texts don’t survive through age alone; they survive because each generation finds something new and intriguing in them. One such text is the Torah. Students will find it useful in classes ranging from religion to philosophy, literature, or cultural studies, but many of its teachings aren’t confined to the past either. Stories from the Torah touch upon topics like stress, conflict, leadership, confusion, errors, accountability, and meaning. It sounds remarkably contemporary.
A student approaching the study of Torah has several options: religious text, historical source, literary piece, and a basis for philosophical contemplation. They all provide opportunities to explore the text in unique ways. The student writing on ancient texts or ethics can use EssayPro, the company employs experts, including Paul S., a full-time writer, who could assist the student with structuring their research. But great essays on ancient texts require more than just the approach of a museum curator.
The goal is not to shoehorn ancient narratives into a modern form or to look for an easy life hack in every single passage. Rather, students need to think about what made those stories stand the test of time. What did they observe about people? What did they try to warn against? And last but not least, what virtues did they celebrate? As soon as students start asking such questions, the Torah appears much closer.
Ancient Texts Teach Students To Be Patient Readers
Modern students are trained to read quickly. Just skim through the article. Scan all the comments. Read the summary and move forward. It does not quite work with the Torah, though. Many of the passages are rather short but rich in conflict, repetition, silence, and subtle details. Sometimes a person’s name, a long journey, an order given, or even a family squabble means more than expected.
For this reason, it is a great practice for students to deal with, as education is mostly geared toward finishing chapters faster, submitting assignments sooner, and hitting deadlines regularly. However, profound reflection requires patience, and the Torah is the perfect tool.
This type of reading goes past religious education alone. Students who learn to pace themselves with Torah can carry this approach into their literature, legal, historical, philosophical, and even scientific readings. Details are crucial. Contexts are crucial. Silence is equally crucial to speech.
Questions Do Not Denigrate One’s Faith Or Cognition
One of the best lessons for students from the Torah is that sincere people pose serious questions. The texts are full of debates, disagreements, doubts, tests, and misunderstandings. The addressees do not understand the demands placed on them. They argue, they bargain, and sometimes make mistakes.
It is necessary for the reason that many students view good studying as a process of getting clear and immediate responses to questions. It is usually not the case. Learning can start from frustration and confusion, since such a passage can serve better than an easy one.
During lessons, students should not fear questioning why a character did something like that, what their motivation was, what the possible consequences of their actions were, how it was perceived at that time, or how other cultures interpret the passage. Asking questions neither denigrates the subject nor learning itself.
Responsibility Is Greater Than Personal Success
In contemporary educational circles, the discourse of success often revolves around the personal gain that follows from achievement. Earn good grades. Construct your résumé. Land scholarships. Map out your future career path. On numerous occasions, the Torah asks a much larger question: what are our obligations to one another?
Themes associated with the concepts of justice, community, caring for the weak, honesty, and responsibility recur regularly throughout the work. These recurring motifs serve to undermine the narrow understanding of education and suggest that knowledge informs conduct.
To students, this message could be particularly relevant, as they face a daily opportunity to exercise their responsibility as members of the academic community. Education is more than a competitive pursuit, and the values that are promoted by the Torah can manifest themselves in group projects, class discussions, peer interactions, and other facets of college life.
Leaders Need Humility
Many students picture great leaders as people with big voices and confidence, who seem to have power from birth. Torah portrays leaders in a more complex way. They are hesitant, flawed, fearful, impatient, and highly human. Greatness is not portrayed as an absolute quality; rather, it is viewed as an ordeal.
This makes for some valuable insight for all those students who believe they lack “leader type” personalities. Leaders are not necessarily extroverts or people who get along easily with everyone else. Sometimes they speak up against injustice; at other times, they own up to their mistakes. Most of the time, they take responsibility even if it is hard.
This is also a useful perspective for all those people who lead student organizations and groups and manage projects for them. Being in charge doesn’t mean one can afford arrogance. A leader needs to know how to listen and learn, and leadership entails responsibility rather than power.
Memory Allows For Self-Understanding By Humans
There is a reason why the Torah speaks of memories time and again: remembering journeys, vows, commandments, failures, oppression, and liberation. This is not a form of nostalgia. Memories create identity. Memories tell people about their origin and things they cannot forget.
Students can take a lesson from it. In a world where everything keeps changing, memories may appear too slow or impractical. However, memories are useful to a student because they help one understand one’s place within a larger scheme of things. One learns about oneself through family history, national narrative, religious traditions, personal experience of migration, community experience, and culture.
It does not imply that students should blindly follow anything and everything handed down by others. Students should know where they stand and where they come from. Otherwise, they cannot make proper decisions in the present.
Features
Cricket in Israel: where it came from, why it’s barely visible, and who plays it today
Cricket made its way to Israeli soil back in the British Mandate period, and later got a boost from waves of immigration from India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Despite such a long history, it barely registers in the mainstream: it never found a place on TV, and the rules remain a mystery even to many sports journalists. Today, cricket grounds are used mostly by immigrants and a handful of local enthusiasts, for whom the game has become something far more than just a pastime.
The British trace and the first matches on Israeli soil
The history of cricket in the region goes back to the days when the British flag flew over Palestine. Officers and officials of the Mandate administration brought with them not only bureaucratic traditions, but also the habit of gathering on trimmed lawns with a bat and a red ball. For the local population, used to passionate football and fast-paced basketball, it looked utterly foreign: hours-long matches, strict white outfits, tea breaks.
The “exotic” sport was slow to take root. When the Mandate ended and the new state shifted to completely different priorities, cricket quietly slipped to the margins of the sports scene, surviving only in the memory of a few.
Waves of immigration that brought cricket back all over again
The game was given a second life by immigrants from countries where cricket was an everyday thing. People from India, South Africa, and England, as they settled in Israel, looked for familiar ways to spend their free time and quickly found one another. For them, a weekend match meant not so much sport as a way to unwind and speak their native language.
However, even within these communities, cricket never became a mass pastime. It remained an activity for a narrow circle, like home cooking—made for special occasions, not put on a restaurant menu.
Why cricket didn’t break into the Israeli mainstream
There are several reasons the game remains invisible, and each one on its own would already be enough:
- Competition with football, basketball, and extreme sports, which take viewers’ attention and sponsorship budgets.
- The near-total absence of cricket on TV and in major sports media.
- The complexity of the rules for newcomers: many Israelis still don’t see the difference between cricket and baseball.
- A cultural unfamiliarity with spending half a day on the field for a single match, watching tactical nuances from a blanket on the grass.
Taken together, this creates a situation where even the rare bits of cricket news slip past in people’s feeds unnoticed.
Who takes the field today
The core of the community is made up of students and IT specialists from India, engineers who arrived on work visas, and immigrants from South Africa and the United Kingdom. They’re joined by a small group of locals who discovered cricket while studying or traveling abroad.
For many of them, the ground turns into a space for cultural memory: Hindi and English can be heard, whole families come along, and children run around the field while their parents discuss the finer points of the last delivery. There are no roaring fan sections here, but everyone knows everyone, and the sense of belonging turns out to be stronger than in the stands at any stadium.
Where and how matches happen without a major league
A typical place to play: a park on the edge of town, a rented pitch, hand-marked lines. Organizers combine the roles of coaches, umpires, and commentators. Matches are put together on weekends, and the whole thing feels more like a club scene than a professional structure.
Everyday hassles have become part of the folklore: soccer players take over the field, the ball disappears into the bushes, someone among the key players can’t get away from work. Every attempt to organize a full match feels like tilting at windmills.
Cricket’s prospects: the barriers are stronger than the hype
You can count specialized fields across the country on one hand, government funding is minimal, and media attention goes to sports that are more spectacular and easier to understand.
Even so, things have started to move. Israel’s national team periodically plays in international tournaments, and every win becomes a small celebration for the community. Youth sections have begun to appear within communities—more like after-school clubs for now—and enthusiasts are experimenting with shorter formats to lower the barrier to entry for newcomers.
Does growth in betting activity point to cricket’s popularity?
An indirect indicator of interest in cricket in any country has long been activity in the online betting segment. Industry iGaming portals regularly publish regional statistics, and we reviewed data from several major bookmakers: 1xBet, PinUp, Melbet. On the website, in a review of the 1xBet cricket betting app, we learned that the number of downloads from Israel is still small, but a slight uptick is still being recorded. This matches the overall picture: the cricket community in the country is growing slowly but steadily, and the betting-platform figures only confirm a trend that enthusiasts can see on the ground, in person.
Cricket in Israel is unlikely to turn into a mass sport in the foreseeable future, but it continues to live on thanks to a resilient community of immigrants and local fans who keep the game going despite the circumstances and make it visible at least within its own small, if modest, world.
Features
Are Niche and Unconventional Relationships Monopolizing the Dating World?
The question assumes a battle being waged and lost. It assumes that something fringe has crept into the center and pushed everything else aside. But the dating world has never operated as a single system with uniform rules. People have always sorted themselves according to preference, circumstance, and opportunity. What has changed is the visibility of that sorting and the tools available to execute it.
Online dating generated $10.28 billion globally in 2024. By 2033, projections put that figure at $19.33 billion. A market of that size does not serve one type of person or one type of relationship. It serves demand, and demand has always been fragmented. The apps and platforms we see now simply make that fragmentation visible in ways that provoke commentary.
Relationship Preferences
Niche dating platforms now account for nearly 30 percent of the online dating market, and projections suggest they could hold 42 percent of market share by 2028. This growth reflects how people are sorting themselves into categories that fit their actual lives. Some want a sugar relationship, others seek partners within specific religious or cultural groups, and still others look for connections based on hobbies or lifestyle choices. The old model of casting a wide net has given way to something more targeted.
A YouGov poll found 55 percent of Americans prefer complete monogamy, while 34 percent describe their ideal relationship as something other than monogamous. About 21 percent of unmarried Americans have tried consensual non-monogamy at some point. These numbers do not suggest a takeover. They suggest a population with varied preferences now has platforms that accommodate those preferences openly rather than forcing everyone into the same structure.
The Numbers Tell a Different Story
Polyamory and consensual non-monogamy receive substantial attention in media coverage and on social platforms. The actual practice rate sits between 4% and 5% of the American population. That figure has remained relatively stable even as public awareness has increased. Being aware of something and participating in it are separate behaviors.
A 2020 YouGov poll reported that 43% of millennials describe their ideal relationship as non-monogamous. Ideals and actions do not always align. People answer surveys about what sounds appealing in theory. They then make decisions based on their specific circumstances, available partners, and emotional capacity. The gap between stated preference and lived reality is substantial.
Where Young People Are Looking
Gen Z accounts for more than 50% of Hinge users. According to a 2025 survey by The Knot, over 50% of engaged couples met through dating apps. These platforms have become primary infrastructure for forming relationships. They are not replacing traditional dating; they are the context in which traditional dating now occurs.
Younger users encounter more relationship styles on these platforms because the platforms allow for it. Someone seeking a conventional monogamous partnership will still find that option readily available. The presence of other options does not eliminate this possibility. It adds to the menu.
Monopoly Implies Exclusion
The framing of the original question suggests that niche relationships might be crowding out mainstream ones. Monopoly means one entity controls a market to the exclusion of competitors. Nothing in the current data supports that characterization.
Mainstream dating apps serve millions of users seeking conventional relationships. These apps have added features to accommodate other preferences, but their core user base remains people looking for monogamous partnerships. The addition of new categories does not subtract from existing ones. Someone filtering for a specific religion or hobby does not prevent another person from using the same platform without those filters.
What Actually Changed
Two things happened. First, apps built segmentation into their business models because segmentation increases user satisfaction. People find what they want faster when they can specify their preferences. Second, social acceptance expanded for certain relationship types that previously operated in private or faced stigma.
Neither of these developments amounts to a monopoly. They amount to market differentiation and cultural acknowledgment. A person seeking a sugar arrangement and a person seeking marriage can both use apps built for their respective purposes. They are not competing for the same resources.
The Perception Problem
Media coverage tends toward novelty. A story about millions of people using apps to find conventional relationships does not generate engagement. A story about unconventional relationship types generates clicks, comments, and shares. This creates a perception gap between how often something is discussed and how often it actually occurs.
The 4% to 5% practicing polyamory receive disproportionate coverage relative to the 55% who prefer complete monogamy. The coverage is not wrong, but it creates an impression of prevalence that exceeds reality.
Where This Leaves Us
Niche relationships are not monopolizing dating. They are becoming more visible and more accommodated by platforms that benefit from serving specific needs. The majority of people seeking relationships still want conventional arrangements, and they still find them through the same channels.
The dating world is larger than it was before. It contains more explicit options. It allows people to state preferences that once required inference or luck. None of this constitutes a takeover. It constitutes an expansion. The space for one type of relationship did not shrink to make room for another. The total space grew.