Canada is home to the world's fourth largest Jewish population of over 350,000 Jews. About 10 per cent of this population lives in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Due to losing sovereignty of their ancient homeland to the Roman Empire, Jews were dispersed as minorities throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Therefore, unlike most immigrants to Canada, they did not come from a country or region where they were the majority cultural group.
The Jewish Western Bulletin, was established October 9, 1930 and continues to be published to this day as the Jewish Independent. Reading through past issues of the Bulletin gives the reader a direct look into the Canadian Jewish community over the past 70 years.
You can find and enjoy over 3000 issues of the Jewish Western Bulletin on Multicultural Canada.
Pesach (Public Domain)
You have been hired by the Jewish Western Bulletin to research and write an article on Jewish festivals. You will need to search the collection of over 3000 digitized newspapers on Multicultural Canada to learn the Jewish significance of six of their traditional holy days. You will need to research Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, Chanukah and Pesach (Passover) to create a news spread that has a main column discussing the importance of the festivals in general and then side columns that look at each festival in more specific detail. Try to find and convey the personal side of each that can be found in many of the existing articles when writing your own articles.
1. View the following sites to learn about the Jewish holidays. You can also perform your own search using a search engine.
Multicultural Canada [1]
Chabad [2]
Jewish Federation of Ottawa [3]
Akhlah [4]
Orthodox Union [5]
aJudaica [6]
GoIsrael [7]
The Jewish Federations of North America [8]
Kolel [9]
Consider the following questions as you research:
Why are the holidays celebrated?
What special customs are followed?
How does Canadian culture influence the holiday?
How are each of the holidays unique?
What makes each holiday special?
What rituals are followed for each holiday?
Why are the holidays important to Jews?
How are they alike or dislike traditionally celebrated Canadian holidays?
Chanukah Dreidel (Public Domain)
Sukkot (Public Domain)
You may wish to use a mind mapping program to help organize your thoughts and record your information. Remember to keep a record of reference information.
2.Explore the collection of digitized copies of the Jewish Western Bulletin found on Multicultural Canada to research Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, Chanukah and Pesach (Passover). Use the search function to search for a particular holiday. Remember to look for examples of personal experiences being expressed in the articles.
Multicultural Canada Collection
Jewish Western Bulletin (Multicultural Canada)
3. Using a power point template or another similar program create a news spread that has a main column discussing the importance of the festivals in general and then side columns that look at each festival in more specific detail. Try to find and convey the personal side of each that can be found in many of the existing articles when writing your own articles.
Shabbat (Public Domain)
Yom Kippur (Public Domain)
Passover (Public Domain)
Wow! You are an excellent reporter. Hopefully you gained increased insight and appreciation for the cultural richness of the Jewish holidays, one of the many diverse cultural groups that make this country so great.
Links:
[1] http://multiculturalcanada.ca/Encyclopedia/A-Z/j3
[2] http://www.chabad.org/holidays/default_cdo/jewish/Holidays.htm
[3] http://www.jewishottawa.com/page.aspx?id=110132
[4] http://www.akhlah.com/holidays/jewishholidays.php
[5] http://www.ou.org/holidays
[6] http://www.ajudaica.com/Jewish_holidays
[7] http://www.goisrael.com/Tourism_Eng/Tourist+Information/Jewish+Themes/Jewish+Holidays.htm
[8] http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?ID=838
[9] http://www.kolel.org/pages/holidays/holidays.html