jews-from-canada

"... after finishing my postdoc, I became a faculty member at , and then ended up being the scientific leader of this project to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding. ... when that project finished, .. we .. resolved the issue. We went from a factor of 2 uncertainty — we measured an uncertainty of 10%."

"The , which measures the , together with the total energy density of the Universe, sets the size of the observable Universe, its age, and its radius of curvature. Excellent progress has been made recently toward the measurement of the Hubble constant: a number of different methods for measuring distances have been developed and refined, and a primary project of the has been the accurate calibration of this difficult-to-measure parameter. The recent progress in these measurements is summarized, and areas where further work is needed are discussed. Currently, for a wide range of possible s, the Universe appears to have a . Combined with current estimates of stellar ages, the results favor a . They are consistent with either an , or a with a non-zero value of the ."

"We are at an interesting juncture in cosmology. With new methods and technology, the accuracy in measurement of the has vastly improved, but a recent tension has arisen that is either signaling or as-yet unrecognized uncertainties. Just under a century ago, Edwin Hubble revolutionized cosmology with his discovery that the . Hubble found a relationship between radial velocity and the distance to nearby galaxies, determining the proportionality constant Ho (=v/r), that now bears his name. The Hubble constant remains one of the most important parameters in cosmology. An accurate value of Ho can provide a powerful constraint on the cosmological model describing the evolution of the universe. In addition, it characterizes the expansion rate of the Universe at the current time, defines the observable size of the Universe, and its inverse sets the ."

"Outer space is like Dolly Parton. You don't quite believe it, but there it is."

"Get out of Canada. Zionism equals terrorism."

"I was a Cabinet minister in B.C.’s New Democratic Party government earlier this year when I made an impolitic remark about the quality of the land on which Israel was founded."

"We know that it is 18-to-34-year-olds that have no idea about the Holocaust, they don’t even think that it happened. They don’t even understand that Israel was offered to the Jews who were misplaced, displaced, so they have no connection to how it started. They don’t understand that it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it – you know, there were several hundred thousand people but other than that, it didn’t produce an economy. It couldn’t grow things it didn’t have anything on it, and that it was the folks that were displaced that came and had been living there for generations and together they worked hard ..."

"How does one teach Yiddish literature without teaching something about the history of the countries in which it was created-mainly Poland, Ukraine, Russia-and the history of the Jews in those countries? How does one teach Jewish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without teaching about anti-Semitism, which was pervasive throughout this region at this time and sanctioned by the government? How many references to the persecution of the Jews in Eastern Europe are too many references? There is no way to avoid the topic of suffering. But how much gloom is too much gloom? How many pogrom stories should one teach? How many novels about the Holocaust?"

"Most non-Jews, I have come to realize-and not just my young Albertan students-know little about the history of the Jews. Nor are they necessarily aware of anti-Semitism's roots in Christianity. From Sholem Aleichem to Peretz and beyond, canonical Yiddish literature does not mince words when it comes to identifying the tormentors of Jews as Christians."

"Working together on the translation of my books forged a bond between us that is stronger than the bond I have with any other human being, because it is made up of the intimacy that only translation can confer on a writer and her translator, and because it implies a shared creative effort."

"Studying what is specific to one culture is often the first step toward understanding many cultures. And that, finally, is the best reason, I think, for studying literature altogether."

"In the end it does not matter whether students are Jewish or not Jewish. What matters is that they be sympathetic to another point of view, that they be open to a reality radically different from their own. And it is the function of literature-and of teaching-to bridge the gap between realities."

"Maybe already the next generation [of tools] that is coming in 2024 could be very dangerous. Governments need to start preparing for this."

"Like a spoiled rich child, the meager stream of honored cream flowed out of a narrow tube, while the common thin milk, its essence taken from it, gushed out of the larger tube in a rush."

"a great poet or artist is no coincidence in the history of a people. He is the logical consequence of historical developments, a product of ceaseless labor that has lasted generations. Centuries are spent toiling in the dark laboratory of the national subconscious in order to produce such a perfect individual who could become the people’s memory, its tongue, and—its conscience. His rise may not be attributed only to himself but rather, should be considered an answer to the nation’s concealed questioning of its own fears, of its own dreams. Only then, when the people itself is creative, when it searches and struggles, when it collects its debts from itself alone, the answer comes—in the form of a tremendous poetic talent."

"the three most outstanding representatives of the Yiddish-Canadian literary group: J.I. Segal, Melekh Ravitch, and Rokhl Korn. Their presence in Canada corresponds to the most fruitful period of Yiddish-Canadian cultural life."

"I was born and raised on a farm, ringed with fields and forests, where even to arrive at the nearest village was a serious journey, especially for a child’s tiny feet. I had no friends. Instead of friends, I had trees, and I spoke to them."

"my mother’s special wish that the oven should be “really remarkable,” as if the rest of the house were only an addition to the oven, as if all her thoughts and dreams would warm themselves there."

"In modern Yiddish writing, the moral, spiritual, and emotional capital of generations of Jewish women was utilized by male and female writers alike...Female prose writers, such as Fradl Shtok, Esther Kreitman, Rokhl Korn, Kadia Molodowsky, and Khava Rosenfarb, also deepened the awareness and understanding of the feminine contribution to Jewish civilization...In the realm of poetry, four female writers deserve special mention: Miriam Ulinover, Kadia Molodowsky, Rokhl Korn, and Rajzel Zychlinsky...Rokhl Korn grew up in the Galician countryside, spent the war years in the Soviet Union, and emigrated to Canada in 1948. Her early stories and poems emphasized rootedness in nature and the landscape of her childhood, while her later work stressed rootlessness and homelessness. Her poetry excels in brevity and the deft utilization of silence. Hers is one of the major lyrical voices in modern Yiddish poetry. Of particular excellence are the poems about her mother, her love poems, and her poems about the Holocaust and the reborn Israel."

"In Poland one of the most outstanding of these neoclassical poets was Rachel Korn (who finally came to live in Canada), who writes with a deceptive simplicity, a pure lyricism."

"Often the poet will take faded words, lying forgotten and cobwebbed. He shakes off their dust, collected over generations, and marries them off to new images. He conducts them to a new breyshis, a second genesis. He also sets words as witnesses to the eternal struggle between justice and injustice, between purity and impurity."

"what, in essence, is poetry. To me it seems that it is a magical transporter through time and space because it manages to contain the present, the past, even the future. Poetry is also the only literary medium that allows for the deformation of reality in service of artistic vision while at the same time endowing that vision with a marked purpose defined by all the attributes of reality."

"Aaron Maté received the Izzy Award for his persistence toward finding out the truth behind the “Russia election collusion” story, primarily during his reporting for “The Nation.” During his acceptance speech, he discussed the importance of relying on factual evidence in journalism. “Journalism is about following the facts — drawing conclusions and inferences based on the available evidence,” Maté said. Maté also spoke about the President Donald Trump and Russia conspiracy. He said he believes the mainstream media has been promulgating a false narrative that Trump colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. “In short, I think Mueller’s pro show that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced by the U.S. media political establishment is largely a work of fiction,” Maté said. Maté said he believes journalists need to be more skeptical of claims from the intelligence community. “Whatever allegation is made, there must be concrete evidence,” Maté said."

"Donald Trump became president through his own conmanship. He didn’t need Russian help with his election, and he may not have got it. Since election day 2016, the controversy over alleged Russian meddling and Trump campaign collusion has consumed Washington and the media. Yet one year later there is still no concrete evidence to support it — let alone any evidence that a Russian intervention might have altered the election result.... US intelligence officials claim that the Russian government hacked emails and used social media to help elect Donald Trump, but there has yet to be any corroboration. Although the often-cited January 2017 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ‘uses the strongest language and offers the most detailed assessment yet,’ The Atlantic observed, ‘it does not or cannot provide evidence for its assertions.’ Noting the ‘absence of any proof’ and ‘hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack,’ the New York Times concluded that the intelligence community’s message ‘essentially amounts to “trust us”.’ That remains the case today."

"I think that that meltdown reflects just like a general hostility they have towards people who are upholding actual progressive values and upholding actual journalism standards. The reason why they slandered me at that time is because I was in Syria and Syria is a, you know, touchy subject for many people on the left... So I’ve been pretty much alone in the U.S. media in covering it and so The Young Turks, instead of covering this story, have ignored it. And then when I went to Syria and I put a short video talking about it, that helped trigger this meltdown."

"Aaron Maté, reporter for The Grayzone and host of the “Pushback” podcast, on Monday shot back at accusations from the hosts of The Young Turks (TYT) that he was paid by the Russian government and denied the killing of Syrian children. Maté said the criticism stemmed from his acknowledgement of the U.S. and its allies have “waged a multi-billion dollar dirty war that left Syria in ruins,” as well as his reporting that suggested a 2018 chemical attack in Syria had been staged. Matè’s reporting has suggested that the intergovernmental chemical weapons watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence of a chemical attack in Syria that triggered retaliatory actions from the U.S. and its allies."

"Journalism is about following the facts — drawing conclusions and inferences based on the available evidence... In short, I think Mueller’s pro show that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced by the U.S. media political establishment is largely a work of fiction... Whatever allegation is made, there must be concrete evidence."

"I promised myself in life that I would not stop myself from being surprised and you never know what’s going to surprise you. Some things that seem dull turn out to be the most interesting things so I just open doors and say let’s do it!"

"I’m just one of those guys you know. I lived in England for eight years, I lived in America and I live in Canada. It’s sort of Canadian syndrome. There’s a whole bunch of British actors like that too, where you go, "I think I know that guy, I’ve seen him a million times but I have no idea what his name is." It’s that kind of thing, I don’t know if that will ever change but that is what my life is."

"Aliens is an amazing thing in my pocket, a landmark thing. On my gravestone it’ll say, “Well, his career wasn’t that great, but he did Aliens.”"

"I’m close to nature, and I draw a lot inspiration from nature. And I think my connection to Tolkien was also through nature. I think that’s how I made that connection to his writing: the love of everything green and good."

"I like to read a lot. I like the printed word. I find that structure–of words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters–a very good structure for writing music. Music also has a very linear quality on the page, of those five parallel lines and the bar structure of music. I start on projects always by reading."

"I’ve never believed in “write what you know.” I believe in “write what you must.” So I tried, knowing that I very well might fail. When writing fiction, you need to find that kernel of truth within you and superimpose it onto your character."

"Jewelry is an important part of Yemeni Jewish heritage. In Yemen, jewelry making was strictly a Jewish profession; the majority of the Jewish men were silversmiths and they were known for their fine craftsmanship. In fact, after the Jews went to Israel, Yemeni culture suffered a huge loss because they took their craft with them."

"(Describe your female characters, their sexual aggressiveness.) AT: I like to think my women are badasses. The first person to point that out to me was one of my teachers at Guelph who said he appreciated that my female characters were sexually aggressive, that they wanted sex and went for it. It wasn’t something that I did consciously. I just wrote the kind of female characters I like to read. A part of it stems from my interest in gender dynamics in Israel, in particular the mandatory nature of the army service and how it shapes young men and women. I feel that being forced at such a young age to go into the army—still a male dominated environment—contributes to young Israeli women possessing what’s considered stereotypically male characteristics. It probably also has something to do with growing up and living in a warzone, a place where survival is an issue and the need to defend oneself is so instilled in our minds that people—regardless of gender—feel they need to develop a certain toughness, be on the offensive, even in everyday life."

"I never read Mizrahi writers or writers of color growing up, and never found myself or my family reflected in the books they assigned to us in school. I actually believed that there were no published Yemeni writers in Israel (of course they existed but I didn’t know that, because they had not received media attention, and were not taught in schools). It made me feel as though our stories weren’t worth telling and as though my dream of becoming a writer myself was far-fetched. The exclusion of Mizrahi writers (and Palestinian writers) in the school curriculum, to me, is an act of erasure that has yet to be rectified, and one which puts limitations on children’s dreams. It infuriates me. So as a result, my favorite poets growing up were all male and Ashkenazi, like Yehuda Amichai (whom I still love), Natan Zach, David Avidan. (2016)"

"I think there is an expectation when writing about Israel for it to be political, to be about the conflict, the situation (“hamatzav”) and this can be frustrating for someone not inclined to focus specifically on war stories. I’m interested in many conflicts: cultural clashes and dynamics within families and romantic relationships. I also wanted to capture how the political situation is always in the background: the way we live our lives with the sense of contention that is always present but not always on the forefront. The question is also what is political, because to me the book is political. My decision to write strictly Mizrahi characters was a political decision for me. To shed light on characters who are marginalized in Israeli society was also a political choice. Whenever I watch news from other places these are the things I want to know too: I want to see the family dynamics and love stories, and how people live amidst tragedy and war. This is one of the things I think fiction does best. (2016)"

"maybe the best place is the in-betweeness, or the search for a home and a belonging, which is a very Jewish theme, or the act of wandering, the movement between places. In my twenties I wanted to believe that. I romanticized wandering and wore my nomadic lifestyle on my head like a crown, but it wasn’t a sustainable choice and eventually I got tired of travelling and living without some stability. So what is the best place on earth, then? Ultimately, the place where you feel most at home. In my case, it might have to be wherever my husband and child are. And other times, or actually at the same time, it is the page. (2016)"

"I was a terrible soldier. That’s the thing with mandatory service—it’s not for everyone, yet everyone has to go."

"I returned to Israel after 20 years in Canada because I wanted to see if I belonged here. The jury is still out. I’ve been gone for so long that I feel a little bit like an immigrant here, in Israel, too. This may be a case of the immigrant predicament: you no longer belong anywhere, or maybe you belong everywhere? I think my writing tries to make sense of that question (2022)"

"(Do you think things are getting better here in terms of people’s understanding about the differences between Jews from different cultures?) AT There definitely seems to be more in the media now, and more books by Jewish authors whose background isn’t Ashkenazi. It’s improving, for sure. I feel like there’s more awareness about Mizrahi and Sephardi inclusion within Jewish spaces. But I still have to be that person who says things on social media, like, when there’s a post about Jewish food and the entire conversation is Ashkenormative, “Actually, that is not Jewish food. That is Ashkenazi Jewish food.” (2025)"

"(Is her memoir consciously undergirded by feminist assertions of agency, and standing up to patriarchy?) I think this is an essential element of my memoir that is rarely discussed. As a young woman, it absolutely felt subversive and defiant in a way, wishing to break free from patriarchal expectations of me. But also, the fact that it felt so radical was on its own a testament to how oppressed women still are. It really shouldn’t be such a big deal, you know, to want to be free, to follow your heart. (2022)"

"Jerusalem, a city surrounded by thick forests and rolling hills, where the air was fresh and cool, where everything was ancient, biblical, suffused with meaning. (chapter 18)"

"Whatever resolve and certainty he had felt in the past few weeks had melted away. Strangely, there was some lightness in the unknowing, like a clenched fist had been unfurled. (chapter 34)"

"Growing up, I had often felt out of place in my own country, a feeling I couldn’t comprehend or name until much later. It had to do with my father; grief shakes the foundations of your home, unsettles and banishes you. It might have also had to do with the exclusion of my culture from so many facets of Israeli life, with not seeing myself in literature and in the media, with being taught in school a partial history about the inception of Israel that painted us as mere extras. Or perhaps that failed sense of belonging was an Israeli predicament, because how does one feel at home when home is unsafe, forever contested? When the fear of losing is so entrenched in us it has become a part of our ethos?"

"The revolution of Mizrahi artists in Israel is really exciting and something I craved as a child, growing up without seeing myself portrayed in literature or history classes. I find the idea of what it means to be Jewish to be pretty narrow also outside of Israel. The majority of the books translated from Hebrew have been mostly by Ashkenazi authors, and so hopefully this book might contribute just a tiny bit to the act of complicating Jewish identity and showing that there’s more to Jewishness and more to the Israeli story. (2016)"

"I think a lot of women who have experienced sexual assault have the same story. It’s like an ulcer in our bodies. There is something positive about the experience of letting it out and telling the story."

"On bad days, I looked at the paleness of the sky, and all I could see was how deeply fucked up everything was, how much the pain radiated from the earth, fury bubbling up like hot lava underneath the surface. Other days, mostly at the beach, I would breathe in the saturated air and be filled with gratitude. Despite everything, this was the only home I knew. Flawed, imperfect, but home. And though my sense of belonging was fractured, still I belonged here more than anywhere else. Maybe that's why I held on to this dream of peace so desperately. I needed to believe we were heading somewhere better. If peace came, maybe we would finally be able to let out the breath we'd been holding for forty-seven years, and exhale. (chapter 19)"

"Maybe that's why the two of them felt so connected. Both waiting, both missing an integral part of themselves, the constant ache in their bodies throbbing like a phantom limb. (chapter 16)"

"For a long time I didn’t write about Israel at all. It’s such a volatile place and people have such strong opinions and everything you write about Israel is perceived as political. It is a double edged sword—some people may find your writing more alluring because of it while others may not want to go anywhere near it. At some point I had to stop worrying. I had to resign myself to the fact that I was going to piss people off, and that people are going to read the book and interpret it any way they like, and there is nothing I can do about it."