Trudeau signs another feel-good agreement while Yazidis suffer aloneTuesday December 11th, 2018
Oslo, Norway and Marrakech, Morocco were more than geographical miles apart on Dec 10.In Oslo, Nadia Murad, a courageous Yazidi survivor of genocide, accepted her Nobel prize, alongside Congolese recipient Denis Mukwabe, for efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. Nobody has objected to the legitimacy of this award. In Marrakech, Prime Minister Trudea...
There’s no shame in looking after your family’s interestsTuesday December 4th, 2018
The Late George Apley, John P. Marquand’s 1937 novel, chronicles the life of a “Boston Brahmin,” whose encounters with a fast-changing world trace the decline and fall of America’s WASP establishment. In the novel’s most famous anecdote, the protagonist’s ultra-conservative grandfather, observing a nouveau-riche neighbour retrieving his morning newspaper f...
Zionism vs the Tikkun Olam Movement: Scorpions in a Jewish BottleTuesday December 4th, 2018
Edited version of a talk delivered at Beth Emet Synagogue in Toronto Nov 18, 2018
At the prestigious Munk Debate in Toronto in early November between pundit David Frum and controversial right-winger Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Bannon asked a legitimate question: “Why is the nation-state so scorned and demonized [by the post-nationalists]?”
This is...
There’s no shame in looking after your family’s interestTuesday December 4th, 2018
The Late George Apley, John P. Marquand’s 1937 novel, chronicles the life of a “Boston Brahmin,” whose encounters with a fast-changing world trace the decline and fall of America’s WASP establishment. In the novel’s most famous anecdote, the protagonist’s ultra-conservative grandfather, observing a nouveau-riche neighbour retrieving his morning newspaper f...
Kay: Finding parallels to the Nazis where there aren’t anyThursday November 29th, 2018
On Nov. 1, the illustrious historian Simon Schama was the honoured guest of Montreal’s Jewish Public Library, as the keynote speaker for Jewish Book Month. His topic was his latest book, Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900, the second instalment of a trilogy covering the entire history of the Jewish people. The auditorium was packed with hundreds of Montreal Jews who anticipated a riveti...
Will anyone stand up to Airbnb’s anti-Semitic boycott?Tuesday November 27th, 2018
Planning a group holiday in Kashmir? Airbnb is there to serve you. Likewise in Tibet, northern Cyprus and Georgia’s separatist republic of Abkhazia, all occupied or disputed territories. Airbnb’s political neutrality in these hot spots therefore quite rightly casts suspicion, to put it mildly, on its recent decision to delist some 200 Jewish homes in West Bank communities.Airbnb ...
Jews Revolutionized the Universities. Will Asians Do the Same?Friday November 23rd, 2018
In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for student admission, a blind test that favored intelligent applicants even if they lacked poise or polish. By 1908, Jews—most the children of immigrants—constituted 7% of the school’s student population—double the percentage of Jews in the U.S. general population. By 19...
Do none of these Edmonton ingrates realize how much fresh lemons cost?Monday November 19th, 2018
The world is going to hell in a handbasket, as we know, but to preserve our sanity we must periodically step back from the sturm und drang of hard-core news, without entirely depriving ourselves of food for thought. A good way to do that is to focus our attention on some of life’s more picayune issues.Picayune-issue wise, you can’t do better than the story of New York Bagel Caf&e...
For culture warrior David Horowitz, deplatforming is no deterrentTuesday November 13th, 2018
An opinion columnist nowadays could take campus disruptions or deplatformings of conservative speakers as his or her sole weekly topic and never run out of material.The latest example comes to us out of New Hampshire’s elite Dartmouth College (tuition US$75,000 a year), where formidable conservative polemicist David Horowitz — soon to celebrate his 80th birthday — was recen...
Kay: The politics of saying sorryWednesday November 7th, 2018
In 1939, the MS St. Louis departed Germany with 907 Jewish passengers, who were seeking haven from Nazi persecution. Cuba and the U.S. turned them away. Canada was their last hope. Yet Canada’s “none is too many” sentiment governing Jewish immigration prevailed and the refugees were forced to return to Europe, where about half were received by Allied countries and the others ended up in Germany...
In defence of the nation-state, and democracyTuesday November 6th, 2018
Although not on the ballot, America’s midterm elections were all about Trump. Not his policies or unique personality, but the trend throughout the West — loosely defined as populism — that he symbolizes. This was the topic of last Friday’s Munk Debate between David Frum and Stephen Bannon: “Resolved that the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal.&r...
Kay: Is eating meat antithetical to Jewish values?Wednesday October 31st, 2018
One of the most talked-about Jewish books of the season is Jonathan Neumann’s To Heal the World: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel.
The book’s tone, as one can tell from the title, is muscular. The boldly stated theme is that tikun olam (to heal the world), a phrase used once in our liturgy and never given exegetical significance, is now, as interpreted by p...
Trump’s rhetoric didn’t cause this massacreTuesday October 30th, 2018
The Sabbath massacre in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, but it is not the first time Jews in the United States have been targeted for attack while at worship.
In 1960, a 16-year-old boy threw a bomb into a synagogue in Gladsden, Ala., but it didn’t explode. The would-be massacrist then shot and injured two people fleeing the bui...
KAY: “What’s in a Residential School’s Name?” – The Talk that the University of Winnipeg Club Didn’t Want Their Members to HearSunday October 28th, 2018
On Oct 23, the University of Winnipeg Club, a dining and social club, with membership open to all university employees, cancelled an Oct 25 talk scheduled as one of its “Hot Lunch Speakers Series”.
The deplatformed speaker is University of Manitoba Sociology of Education professor and Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Rodney Clifton. The topic...
Canada is better for having the Post — and far more interestingSaturday October 27th, 2018
The birth of the National Post 20 years ago had a profound impact on our national conversations about politics, the economy and our swiftly evolving culture. The Post was meant to be a journalistic disruptor, and it accomplished that goal.
Long before I joined the Comment section as a weekly contributor in 2003 — indeed, for months before the Post’s official launch — I was ac...
Trudeau signs another feel-good agreement while Yazidis suffer alone
Tuesday December 11th, 2018
KAY: Can conservatives and liberals really be friends in 2018?
Monday December 10th, 2018
Zionism vs the Tikkun Olam Movement: Scorpions in a Jewish Bottle
Tuesday December 4th, 2018
Kay: Finding parallels to the Nazis where there aren’t any
Thursday November 29th, 2018
