LUNCH & LEARN SESSION DETAILS:
 MAY 7: ROBERT ROTENBERG
in conversation with the CJN's Ellin Bessner
"WHAT WE BURIED"
Robert Rotenberg is the author of several bestselling novels, including Old City Hall, The Guilty Plea, Stray Bullets, Stranglehold, Heart of the City, and Downfall. He is a criminal lawyer in Toronto with his firm Rotenberg Shidlowski Jesin. He is also a television screenwriter and a writing teacher. He will be presenting his latest novel: “What We Buried”.
WHAT WE BURIED: A Toronto homicide detective is attacked at his doorstep when his investigation into possible links between the Nazi occupation of Italy and the murder of his brother decades later gets too close to the truth.
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 MAY 14: DAVID KOFFMAN
WILLIAM KURELEK'S
PAINTED CANADIAN JEWISH HISTORY
In 1976, the beloved Ukrainian, Catholic, Canadian painter created a suite of 16 paintings depicting Jewish life in Canada. The paintings were recently purchased by a group of Jewish art collectors and donated to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where they were exhibited. The exhibition will tour the country over the next few years. How did the suite come to be? What was William Kurelek's version of Canadian Jewish history? And what does a reconsideration of these paintings, nearly 50 years after their creation, signify about the intersection of Jewish history and art history in Canada? Join Professor David S. Koffman for some show & tell, and a discussion about this fascinating series of paintings.
David S. Koffman is the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry, and an associate professor in the Department of History at York University, where he teaches courses on Canadian Jewish history, religion in American life, the meanings of money, genealogy as history, modern antisemitism, and religion & capitalism.
He serves as the editor-in-chief of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, and the associate director of York's Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies. His first monograph, The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America (Rutgers University Press, 2019), explores the Jewish encounter with Indigenous Peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the editor of and a contributor to No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging (University of Toronto Press, 2021). His newest book, an edited volume, Promised Lands North and South: Jewish Canada and Jewish Argentina in Conversation, is scheduled to be published later this spring.
JUNE 4: CATHERINE R. POWER
LEBN VI GOT IN FRANKRAYKH?
JEWS AND CITIZENSHIP IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE
In 1789, Jews numbered perhaps 45 000 of a total population of 28 million in France. Yet, amidst the many topics of urgent concern to intellectuals and the revolutionary assembly, questions about Jews emerged again and again. Why were Jews (who were such a vanishingly small minority in France) even a topic of discussion amidst what would appear to be more pressing issues?
This talk will focus on what was being said about Jews, by whom, and what that can tell us about revolutionary political ideas and modern, secular citizenship.
Catherine R. Power is assistant professor of political theory at York University’s bilingual Glendon campus. Dr. Power has published works on early modern and Enlightenment political thought as well as contemporary Judeophobia.
JUNE 18: AUREL BRAUN
THE MIDDLE EAST & THE IRAN REGIME:
THE CENTRE OF INCESSANT TERRORISM
As the world’s attention has focused on the devastating war in Ukraine, and more recently on the horrific atrocities of Hamas and then the conflict in Gaza, the Iranian regime has further reinforced its status as the primary global supporter of international terrorism. While domestically, huge numbers of Iranians have shown their opposition to the regime, the latter has effectively combined internal repression with external aggression. Internationally, the regime has been enjoying remarkable successes. Thanks to the delusional Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which ignored the most fundamental requirements of any arms control agreements, never mind the nature of what really constitutes a nuclear capability, Iran is now a nuclear threshold state that is able to intimidate its neighbors and use its proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis with seeming impunity. Western democracies, and particularly the American administration, continue to work under the mistaken belief that this rogue Iranian regime, now allied with Russia, can be contained, appeased or deterred. The reality is that this regime is unrelentingly aggressive and irredeemably antisemitic. A nuclear arsenal would allow it to act with close to absolute immunity abroad and complete impunity at home.
Aurel Braun is currently a Professor of International Relations and Political Science, and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He is also an Associate of the Davis Center at Harvard. Between July 2012 and June 2015 he was a Visiting Professor teaching in the Department of Government, Harvard University.
Professor Braun has twice been appointed a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In March 2009, the Federal Cabinet via a Governor-in-Council appointment made Professor Braun the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development for a three-year term. In 2012, Professor Braun was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for services to Canada and for academic distinction by the Governor-General of Canada.
Professor Braun has published extensively on international relations and strategic studies and is a specialist in international law. He is the author and/or editor of several books. His latest book is NATO-Russia Relations in the 21st Century. His forthcoming book is on Russia, the West and Arctic Security.
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