Matthew Gindin is a journalist, educator and freelance writer located in Vancouver, BC. He is the Pacific Correspondent for the Canadian Jewish News, writes regularly for the Forward and the Jewish Independent and has been published in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Religion Dispatches, Kveller, Situate Magazine, and elsewhere. He also writes on Medium from time to time.
Chicago native Lupe Fiasco, who has been called “one of the greatest MCs to ever grace the mic,” is facing controversy over the anti-Semitic lyrics in his recently released track “N.E.R.D.” a low-tech freestyle over J. Cole’s “Everybody Dies.” The track, whose sole purpose seems to be to indulge in some standard, if justified, hip-hop…
On the night of Donald Trump’s election, Canada’s immigration website crashed from an overload of traffic. Data from Google Trends also suggests that searches for “move to Canada” spiked significantly during the night as Trump victories unfolded. On Twitter, Canadians shared an image of Bugs Bunny sawing the U.S. off the continent, and speculated about…
The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends. The report was compiled by the World Wildlife Federation and the London Zoological Society, and shows that destruction of…
I was in the middle of teaching a Hebrew School class at a synagogue in Vancouver when one of my 8-year-old students began chanting the following piece of doggerel: If you’re dumb and you know it vote for Trump If you’re smart and you know it whip his rump If you’re dumb and you know…
When news broke about the anti-Semitic marker being used to identify Jews on Twitter — a sequence of three parentheses called “echoes” — the symbol was added to the Anti-Defamation League’s hate speech database within days. Many Jews, and even some non-Jews, immediately began putting the echoes around their names as an act of defiance….
Citing both changing social practice and Jewish values, the international association of Conservative rabbis last week passed a resolution calling on Jewish institutions and government agencies to embrace the full equality of transgender people. Some see this as a departure from tradition. But, as the resolution claims, a stronger case can be made that full…
Isabel Sherrel, an alumna of Oberlin College, recently did something courageous. She decided to treat her alma mater’s assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, Dr. Joy Karega, like a human being and actually reach out. She wanted to dialogue over the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Karega had reportedly been posting about on Facebook. Karega has…
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