SNL could never smear another group like it does fathersTuesday December 18th, 2018
Saturday Night Live usually hits the mark, humour-wise, but when it misses, it can miss big time.
On Dec. 1, SNL mounted a skit called “Dad Christmas.” One blogger commented on it, “I don’t remember SNL ever sinking to this depth to disparage divorced dads in an attempt to provoke a laugh.” I agree. It was an act of vile misandry.
The skit begins with two adolesc...
KAY: The debate over “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is tone deafMonday December 17th, 2018
Baby, it’s cold outside. Seriously. I live in Montreal and it’s extremely cold outside. We’re also deeply into pre-Christmas festivating, which naturally involves multiple inescapable encounters with the eponymous holiday earworm, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” an allegedly rapey song so widely discussed it has its own recognizable acronym, BICO (as in “Bro...
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 Trudeau...
KAY: Can conservatives and liberals really be friends in 2018?Monday December 10th, 2018
A dialogue between two former enemies, “Can You Love the Person You Love to Hate?” published by the New York Times, has attracted a lot of attention. The protagonists are female writers who used to spar angrily on Twitter, then found, when they met in person at a conference, that they actually liked each other.
Are there lessons here for those of us who find Twitter combat with hat...
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 from...
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 from...
KAY: Women are not “womxn” no matter what activists saySunday December 2nd, 2018
Activists at some British universities have decreed that the words “woman” and “women” are not inclusive enough in today’s gender-fluid world, so have introduced “womxn”—pronounced the same as “woman” and “women”—as a replacement.
Some cultural groups immediately jumped on the bandwagon: Her Stories, a feminist organ...
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 s...
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...
KAY: Shared parenting after separation – Canadians want it, but Bill C-78 stubbornly clings to outdated winner-takes-all modelThursday November 22nd, 2018
Bill C-78, An Act to amend the Divorce Act had its first reading on May 22.
It is now in Committee with witness presentations underway.
Everyone agrees that government reforms on divorce law were necessary, as Canada’s Divorce Act has not been re-evaluated since it was passed in 1985. Given the rapid pace of socio-cultural change in the interim, it seems more like a century ago than a m...
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&ea...
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 recent...
KAY: Britain’s refusal of asylum to Asia Bibi is the modern equivalent of Canada’s rejection of the MS St Louis JewsSaturday November 10th, 2018
Almost ten years ago, Asia Bibi was an obscure farm worker in Pakistan, whose name would, in the normal course of events as we understand them in the West, remain completely unknown apart from her family and local fellow Christians throughout her entire life.
But if you are not Muslim in Pakistan, there is no such thing as a “normal course of events.” You keep your head down and yo...
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: Who really won the Munk Debate on populism – and whySaturday November 3rd, 2018
Friday night’s Munk debate between David Frum and Stephen K. Bannon at Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall had, as its topic, “Be it resolved, the future of western politics is populist, not liberal.” It was a remarkable event for a variety of reasons.
The debate was a win for free speech
First, because it actually took place in this era of easy deplatforming. Bannon is a cont...
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...
SNL could never smear another group like it does fathers
Tuesday December 18th, 2018
KAY: The debate over “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is tone deaf
Monday December 17th, 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
