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The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada’s 2025 Sol & Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecturer is Yair Rosenberg, who writes for The Atlantic, where he covers the intersection of politics, culture, and religion, and writes the Deep Shtetl newsletter. His timely topic will be The New Reality for North American Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracism, and Populism.
In addition to his work at The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg was a senior writer at Tablet Magazine, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and his work has received awards from the Religion Newswriters Association and the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies. He has testified in the U.S. Congress about antisemitism and has covered everything from national elections in America and Israel, to observant Jews in baseball, to the translation of Harry Potter into Yiddish. In his spare time, he composes original Jewish music and creates bots that troll antisemites on Twitter. His latest projects include, “Antisemitism, Explained,” a video series about anti-Jewish prejudice, and Az Yashir, an album of new Shabbat music.
The annual Sol & Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture, now in its 19th year, is the Jewish Heritage Centre’s only fundraising event. Dessert reception to follow the lecture.
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During WWII, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland and Lithuania escaped the Holocaust thanks to transit visas issued by Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania. For these individuals, having a transit visa in hand was only the start of a harrowing journey.
Join us for a special public presentation by Akira Kitade, author of Visas of Life and the Epic Journey: How the Sugihara Survivors Reached Japan and Emerging Heroes: WWII-Era Diplomats, Jewish Refugees and Escape to Japan. He will share the stories of Jewish refugees who survived the cross-Asia escape to Japan – and what happened next.
This event is offered in partnership with the Consul‐General of Japan in Calgary, the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba, and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada. In 1984, Chiune Sugihara was honoured as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre.
The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada will present a program relating the history of Jews of the Lake of the Woods and the existence of German POW camps. The speakers will be Dr. Ray Singer and Braden Murray Dr. Singer will talk on the Jewish community while Mr. Murray will focus on the local POW camps that housed German prisoners..
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