March 2016

• After 44 years, Shaar Shalom Synagogue announces it will close its doors on June 30. The Conservative synagogue in Markham, Ont., was started in a house basement by several families living in the Don Mills Road and Steeles Avenue area.

•  Premier Kosher Inc., a company located in Smithville, southwest of Hamilton, is granted the right to provide Ontario-raised and processed chickens to the kosher market.

Ontario consumers lacked access to locally produced chickens since May 2013, when Chai Poultry sold its quota to a halal producer and closed. Marvid, a Quebec-based company, stepped into the breach, but consumers complained about their chickens’ quality and that store shelves were often empty

• Jewish comedian Garry Shandling dies in Los Angeles at 66. Shandling wrote for several sitcoms before starring in his own shows, including The Larry Sanders Show, which aired on HBO in the 1990s and earned Shandling 18 Emmy nominations.

• Microsoft pulls its artificial intelligence tweeting robot after it posts several anti-Semitic comments. The software company had launched the so-called chatbot as an experiment, but quickly paused the endeavour after the controversial tweets, several of which expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.

• A Pew study of Israelis finds that 48 per cent of the country’s Jews believe that Arabs should be “expelled or transferred” out of the country. The finding, the most shocking in a wide-ranging study of Israeli attitudes, is based on interviews with 5,600 Israelis conducted between October 2014 and May 2015.

• Israeli leaders condemn the actions of a soldier caught on video shooting an apparently incapacitated Palestinian lying on the ground. “What happened today in Hebron does not represent the values of the IDF,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says following the release of the video, shot by the human rights group B’Tselem. Sgt. Elor Azaria is charged with manslaughter in May and later goes on trial.

• Merrick Garland, the chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, is nominated to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in February, on the U.S. Supreme Court. In his acceptance speech, Garland emotionally recalls his grandparents who had fled anti-Semitism for better lives in the United States. Republicans vow not to consider his nomination during President Barack Obama’s last year in office.

READ: 5776: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

April 2016

• The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said it’s “a slap in the face” that one-third of York University’s president’s advisory committee on inclusion – formed in March after controversy erupted over a mural on campus – is made up of faculty who are on record as being anti-Israel.

• At the NDP convention in Edmonton, the party unveils its Leap Manifesto, which has strong support from husband-and-wife team Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, both vocal critics of Israel. Although the Manifesto doesn’t talk about Israel, the party’s move to the left causes concern about what the NDP’s stance on Israel will be after ousted leader Tom Mulcair leaves the party.

• Days ahead of the New York Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton engage in a heated exchange over Israel at a debate in Brooklyn, with the Vermont senator accusing the former secretary of state of neglecting the Palestinians and reiterating his charge that Israel used disproportionate force in Gaza in 2014. Clinton says she worked hard to bring peace to the region as secretary of state. Clinton won the primary in New York, home to the country’s largest Jewish population, 58-42 per cent.

• The first same-sex Jewish wedding ceremony in Latin America is held at a synagogue in Argentina. Some 300 guests attend the wedding of Victoria Escobar and Romina Charur at the NCI Emanu El Temple in Buenos Aires.

• Canada Post and the government of Canada are named in a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act for distributing a monthly Toronto tabloid newspaper that is allegedly laced with hate propaganda. Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman claims in a four-page complaint that Your Ward News is “misogynist, racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and homophobic hate propaganda.”

In June, Judy Foote, the federal minister responsible for Canada Post, issues an order against the delivery of the free newspaper.

READ: Highlighting the top stories of 5776 – part 2

May 2016

• Toronto’s Rabbi Philip Scheim becomes the first Canadian president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the umbrella group for Conservative rabbis. Rabbi Scheim says his nationality will bolster his efforts to make the 1,700-member, New York-based organization more international in scope and reach.

• Jewish organizations rally to help support the tens of thousands of displaced residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., who were forced to evacuate the area due to a ravaging wildfire.

• French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, who has a lengthy criminal record in France for hate speech and incitement, is refused entry to Canada by Border Services agents shortly after his arrival at Trudeau Airport in Montreal from France.

• Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne visits Israel for a week and conducts meetings with government officials and sectors including business, technology and health. During the week, Wynne says, “we have signed agreements and memoranda of understanding worth about $182 million, [creating] 216 jobs.”

• In an announcement timed to the annual independence celebrations in Israel, the nation’s Central Bureau of Statistics reports Israel’s population has risen to 8.52 million residents, a more than ten-fold increase over the 806,000 in 1948 at the time of the Jewish State’s founding.

• Britain’s Labour Party launches an investigation into anti-Semitism within the party one day after the suspension of former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who claimed Adolf Hitler was a Zionist because he advocated moving Europe’s Jews to Israel.

• Canadian Morley Safer, a 46-year veteran of the long-running CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, dies at 84, a week after retiring from the show. Safer, winner of 12 Emmy Awards during his career, helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War with his coverage of U.S. atrocities. He is buried at Roselawn Avenue Cemetery in Toronto.

• Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and major backer of Republican candidates, endorses Donald Trump for the presidency.

• An 11-minute video showing what appears to be a chassidic school principal sexually abusing a young boy in New York refocuses attention on sex abuse in the haredi Orthodox community. The video, which prompts an investigation by state police, was filmed secretly from an overhead camera and posted on social media before being removed.