Eight months after the Conservative movement issued a public apology to interfaith families for historically treating them as a threat to Jewish survival, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), the rabbinic arm of the denomination, released a new set of Jewish legal rulings delineating both the possibilities and limits for including interfaith families in Jewish religious and ritual life, entitled “Gateways Into Jewish Living: Guiding the Conservative/Masorti Rabbi in Supporting Families with Non-Jewish Loved Ones”. Two findings make this story of particular interest to Canadian Jews. First, as of 2019, Conservatives comprised the largest denominational affiliation among Canadian Jews, totalling 33 per cent of the population. Second, more than 35 per cent of married Jewish Canadians under the age of 40 have a non-Jewish spouse. While the rulings did provide concrete ways for rabbis and congregations to welcome interfaith couples and families, critics are frustrated that the CJLS said that rabbinic officiation of interfaith marriages remains beyond the pale of permissibility under Jewish law. Defenders say that the rulings deal with how interfaith families can build a Jewish home, raise Jewish children and celebrate life-cycle events—the things that make up Jewish life every day outside of the wedding. The publication solidified a number of practices into Jewish law for the first time. For instance, non-Jewish parents “may and should” be included in English blessings on the bimah during their child’s bar or bat mitzvah. They may not receive an aliyah to the Torah—recite the official blessing before a Torah reading—but may accompany a partner to do so. A Jew may not sell their hametz, leavened bread products, to their non-Jewish spouse. A non-Jewish spouse may perform “labour” that is typically religiously prohibited for Jews to do on Shabbat, as long as it’s not directly asked for by the Jewish partner, though a young Jewish child may ask them to do so. Our rabbinic podcasters react to this set of rulings and wonder if the movement is trying to be “half-pregnant,” or deftly trying to walk the tightrope between tradition and modernity. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

The prospect of summer grilling season might bring a tear to the eye of any patriotic Canadian, but it’s the eye-watering prices in the meat aisle that are stirring up the most emotion this year. The cost of beef remains stratospheric—up nearly 63 per cent since 2021 and over 12 per cent over the past year alone, according to Statistics Canada. Even switching to less expensive meats, such as chicken thighs, offers little relief. But for Jews who eat only kosher meat, those prices are almost enviable. A major fire on July 28 at one of the largest kosher meat-processing plants in the United States threatens to drive up kosher meat prices ahead of the High Holidays. The fire at AgriStar Meat & Poultry in Postville, Iowa, destroyed at least 75 per cent of the plant and put more than 600 people out of work, city officials said. While the damaged facility will likely mean a shortage of kosher beef and chicken in the United States, the Kashruth Council of Canada is reassuring Canadian Jews that it does not foresee any disruption to the domestic kosher meat supply chain. But that doesn't change the fact that the rising cost of living is squeezing meat off many dinner tables this year—and some kosher Jews are ahead of that curve, cutting out meat already to hold an easier kosher life, and going full vegetarian or vegan. Today on the podcast, our rabbinic podcasters ask: How did meat come to play such a significant role in Jewish culture and cuisine? What is its spiritual and emotional significance in the community? And does it have to be this way? Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

As darkness fell last night, Jews around the world sat on synagogue floors and listened to the chanting of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, marking the beginning of Tisha B’Av. Traditionally the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, it is a day of mourning for the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people over the centuries—chief among them the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the devastation of Jerusalem. While the community survived and continued going through the motions of worshipping the god of their forefathers, surely many Jews—in the generation that saw the Temple burn, and the streets of their holy city strewn with starved and butchered bodies—must have lost their faith. And today, as Jews read Lamentations and refrain from eating, drinking, washing, wearing leather shoes or even greeting one another, some may participate in rituals they no longer entirely “believe” in. On this episode of Not in Heaven, rabbis Avi Finegold and Yedida Eisenstat ask how closely Jewish observance has to line up with personal conviction or theological belief. Sparked by the new Israeli television series Behasture, about a secret group of Jerusalemites who outwardly live fully haredi, strictly religious lives despite having lost their faith long ago, they explore why people remain in communities they no longer internally align with; the pressures of living with the cognitive dissonance between practice and belief; and the costs of searching for a community whose rituals and values perfectly mirror your own commitments. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

How much does motive matter when it comes to hate crimes? In recent years, Canadian Jews have been rocked by a series of attacks on their community institutions, including late-night shootings at schools and synagogues, attempted arson, and smashing community centres' windows. Many Jews have met the situation with a profound sense of dislocation and disbelief; a feeling that the country they once thought they knew had radically shifted around them, that their non-Jewish neighbours were not who they thought they were. But last month, new information emerged about the alleged perpetrators of these crimes. According to reports in both Toronto and Montreal, some significant portion of these attacks were carried out by ‘gig-criminals’, a kind of gun-for-hire network of young people getting paid thousands of dollars from anonymous clients to shoot at targets as varied as waste managment plants, the American embassy, tow truck companies—and Jewish instiutions. This prompted our rabbinic podcasters to ask: if the perpetrators of at least some of these shootings were motivated by financial gain, and not animus towards Jews in particular (as one arsonist has claimed in court as recently as this week), how does that change our community narrative? Will collective pressure on politicians to combat antisemitism actually help the situation, if the criminals are not motivated by antisemitism? And, on a deeper level, do you need to feel hate to commit a hate crime? Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

Canada Day and the Fourth of July are coming up, which means flags are popping up across North America like summer flowers. But Jewish Canadians — and Jewish Americans — have fair reason to be skeptical of nationalism. Jewish parents would be forgiven for feeling uneasy seeing their children pledge allegiance to a national flag — and that's even before getting into the extreme evolution of modern nationalism movements that, in North America and Europe, tend to skew anti-Jewish. So on this week's episode, we're looking at flags. Specifically, flags in synagogues. Whether the flag is Canadian, American or Israeli, not everyone will feel comfortable with broad national symbols on the bimah. Some view them as "idol worship". Others insist they're a unifying force for the majority of congregants. No one is right, so how do community leaders bridge the divide? Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

Too often, when people talk about Jewish life in Canada, they are really talking about Jewish life in Toronto and Montreal. But the truth is more than a quarter of Jewish Canadians live outside those cities. Yes, many still live in large cities, but Jews live in mid-sized and smaller communities, from the coasts of Nanaimo, B.C., to Sydney, N.S. These communities have a different texture, richness, set of challenges, and needs than those in the largest Jewish population centres. Today on Not in Heaven, our resident rabbis talk about some of the work happening to support Jewish life and leadership in smaller communities. We'll discuss the Jewish Federation of British Columbia’s Community Connector program, which partners with local Jewish leaders across the province to facilitate whatever Jewish culture looks like in their grassroots community, and the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Courageous Leadership Canada Initiative, which brought together lay and professional leaders from small and mid-sized communities to study, collaborate, and reflect on common challenges. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

Two weekends, two parades, two attendance-taking exercises. On each of the past two Sundays, the United States and Canada each held their largest annual gatherings and celebration Jewish pride in their respective countries, in the form of a walk, parade or march for Israel. In New York, there was enormous community outcry over the refusal of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and some other political officials to attend to appear at the ostensibly non-partisan event. That outcry was quickly drowned out by the sound of backpedalling from local Jewish leaders and political figures as they condemned the parade for hosting three of Israel’s most extreme right-wing ministers at the head of the Israel delegation. In Toronto, there was similarly strenuous consternation about which politicians attended and which did not, why, and what that means about their views towards Jews. Some columnists have begun asking why our countries’ largest celebrations of Jewish pride should focus on a single aspect of identity—and perhaps the most contentious. On this week's episode of Not in Heaven, our rabbinic podcasters weigh in on the growing debate. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

Adina Sash, known online to over 100,000 followers as Flatbush Girl, is an American Jewish social media influencer and activist based out of Brooklyn. Originally, her content focused on the comedic aspects of Orthodox female life, but in recent years, her activism has shifted to advocating for agunot, women who cannot get halachically divorced from their husbands for various reasons. For all intents and purposes, they are trapped in their marriages under Jewish law. Sash's most recent focus is a couple originally from Montreal, Raphi Stein and Adeena Kohn. For five years, Stein has refused to grant Kohn a gett, a Jewish divorce. Sash has taken up the cause and waged a social media campaign urgently calling on Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community to increase pressure on Stein. As part of that campaign, Sash launched an online initiative called “Gett Naked”, where Orthodox women have sent unusually revealing photos of themselves with the hashtag #freeadeena. In the pictures, they show parts of their bodies that are usually covered: hair, elbows, shoulders, knees. Others go further, snapping shots of cleavage and bikinis. In some ways, it's a successor to Sash's successful 2024 campaign, in which she organized a sex strike in support of Malky Berkowitz, a 29-year-old agunah. Hasidic women in Brooklyn withheld sex from their husbands on Friday nights, and after they went to the mikvah, to recruit men and women alike to the cause. After six months of the campaign, Berkowitz received a gett. Will Sash's efforts work for Adeena Kohn? And what are the broader effects of these massive digital campaigns in Orthodox circles? Our rabbinic podcasts discuss on this week's episode of Not in Heaven. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV (an unusual place for us to start, but bear with us) released “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” a letter to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics on how to preserve human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence. Genesis’ story of the Tower of Babel is a touchstone throughout the document, outlining the Church’s desire to protect human dignity and agency as the tech industry races to build an all-powerful superintellegence: “I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell.” And the Pope is not alone. Around the world, a surge of religious groups have begun organizing working groups and conferences, public and private, as communities come to fully understand that whatever script they’ve used in the past to address technological change simply won’t cut it in the age of AI. Some Jews, like Rabbi Zohar Atkins, argue that AI bots will lead to a renaissance in Jewish learning and the democratization of Jewish wisdom. Others are less sanguine. R. Eliezer Simcha Weiss, the representative of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to the Vatican said that, in high-level discussions on AI ethics with the Holy See, he urged the Church to think of AI less like the Tower of Babel and more like the Golem of Prague. This week on Not In Heaven, our rabbinic podcasters argue whether religious communities should be getting out ahead of AI or taking a more deliberative, wait-and-see approach to the technology. Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )

Ask most Jews what their favourite holiday is and you’ll hear Hannukah, Passover, Purim, Sukkot—maybe even Yom Kippur for some diehards. But despite being one of the big three holidays in the Hebrew Bible, the upcoming festival of Shavuot doesn’t usually make the cut. Which is a shame, because some of its themes feel more relevant than ever. Today, Shavuot is about nationhood, covenant and belonging. It’s a time to commemorate the biblical revelation at Sinai, when the Israelites were forged into a national collective through an eternal covenant with God. It’s also the festival when Jews read the Book of Ruth, which tells the story of what it means to be part of the Jewish people in a very different way. Today on Not in Heaven, we discuss a new white paper from the Shalom Hartman Institute called “Building Communities of Belonging: Jewish Identity, Conversion, Intermarriage, and Adjacency.” Its goal is to help empower Jewish communities to speak openly about, and set policies around, Jewish status and affiliation in a way that feels aligned with a community’s norms and values. According to the Pew Research Center, among Jews who married between 2010 and 2020, 61 percent are intermarried; when Orthodox Jews are omitted, that rate jumps to 72 percent. Contrary to historic assumptions, many families of mixed heritage remain committed, active participants in Jewish community life. One implication, the paper proposes, is the emergence of a whole new population of individuals we might call "Jewish adjacent"—including the networks of spouses, grandparents, family members, and others who are deeply involved in the Jewish community, but who neither identify as Jewish nor have Jewish status conferred upon them by the community. Nonetheless, they may be raising Jewish children, serving on synagogue boards or teaching in Jewish institutions, attending seders and shiva, and regularly dedicating their personal resources, time and labour to Jewish communal activities and causes. How can Jewish communities have open and honest conversations about competing notions of identity, status, membership, and belonging in the Jewish community? Credits Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Socalled Support The CJN Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here )