#Jewish High School in Ontario

[adrabas]

Empowering the Next Generation: Ontario's Jewish Educational Approach

The Jewish education program in Ontario plays a vital role in preserving cultural heritage and imparting values that help shape the next generation of Jewish youth. These programs go beyond the academic curriculum, focusing on both religious education and personal development. By combining traditional Jewish teachings with modern educational methods, these programs equip students with the skills, knowledge, and values to succeed in today's world. Today we will explore how Jewish education programs in Ontario impact the lives of students and contribute to shaping future leaders within the Jewish community.

The Structure of Jewish Education in Ontario

Jewish education programs in Ontario typically consist of day schools, supplementary schools, and high school programs, offering a range of options for students and families. Day schools provide a full-time curriculum where students study both secular and Jewish subjects, while supplementary schools offer religious education outside of regular school hours.

In these institutions, students receive instruction in core subjects like math, science, and language arts alongside Jewish studies, including Hebrew language, Torah, Jewish history, and religious customs. This dual curriculum not only fosters academic success but also reinforces a deep connection to Jewish identity, culture, and traditions.

Developing a Strong Jewish Identity

One of the main goals of the Jewish education revolution is to cultivate a strong sense of Jewish identity among students. Through the study of Jewish texts, traditions, and history, students learn the significance of their cultural heritage and the importance of carrying these values into the future.

By participating in Jewish rituals, celebrating holidays, and engaging in community service, students gain a sense of belonging to the larger Jewish community. These experiences instill a lifelong connection to their faith and help them navigate modern life with a strong moral and ethical foundation. The programs also encourage students to explore their spirituality, allowing them to form a meaningful relationship with their faith.

Fostering Leadership and Social Responsibility

Jewish education in Ontario places a strong emphasis on leadership, social justice, and community involvement. Many programs integrate values such as tikkun olam and chesed, encouraging students to contribute positively to society. Students are taught the importance of giving back, helping those in need, and being active members of their local and global communities.

Leadership development is another key aspect of these programs. Through student-led initiatives, public speaking opportunities, and participation in synagogue life, students gain the skills and confidence to become leaders in the Jewish community and beyond. These experiences help prepare them for future roles as advocates, professionals, and community organizers.

The Jewish education program in Ontario at ADRABA provides students with a well-rounded education that balances academic achievement with religious and moral development. By fostering a deep connection to Jewish heritage, promoting leadership, and instilling values of social responsibility, these programs shape the next generation of Jewish leaders. Through this blend of education, students are empowered to thrive both within the Jewish community and in the wider world. Call 437 777 2372 to enrol in their education program.

[mspiggy]

i wish to learn more about this sault fellow you post about. his vampire filmmaker swagger intrigues me

EEHEHEHEHEH you've said the magic words because tonight i'm gonna be working on my VTM chronicle with tal so i am in the PERFECT MOOD to talk about saul!!! we're basing this in "vampire the masquerade" V5, but it's inspired by older splatbooks like "dark colony" as well as new stuff like "boston by night" and vtm swansong. playing fast and loose and developing our own lore, redeveloping characters as we see fit.

here, let me repost his inspo board featuring art by /@osatokun (GO COMMISSION HER)

saul adam meyer, born 1952, embraced by a vampire biker fertility cultist named owen wilson in 1971! i'll put the rest under a cut. don't expect to see this on saul's blog @horrorhoser either because only i will spill saul's secrets... in a format that allows me to reference this later if need be WARNING IT'S SO LONG....

he was born and raised in sudbury, ontario, to a jewish couple, jake "j.j." meyer and his wife rachel (nee sander). he was their only child, after a number of miscarriages, so he was precious to both his parents. saul was a natural director early on, trying to take control of any games of pretend. he had a great childhood until his dad died in an industrial explosion when saul was 11! he stopped spending time with his old friends, isolating himself until he met an outsider who would go on to become his best friend for life: dickie goddard! (you can find him at @bite-me-monsterman ;3) despite rachel's objections to the stinky, rude, neglected dickie, saul insisted that nobody got him like dickie did-- and nobody understood dickie like saul did! even at age 11 and 12 and 13, saul and dickie spent a lot of time playing pretend-- acting is how saul preferred to see it, with himself as a dramaturge and director. dickie is a huge monster fan, while saul has a love of horror that gave them a perfect synthesis of interests. they fooled around and fell in love and experimented with each other, went to movies and spent time reading comics and listening to music... it was the mid-60s! saul got a camera, took lots of pictures, learned to draw and storyboard and started to make short films. and then dickie didn't even try to get into high school!

after a sullen summer sulking without dickie, they made up (and started to fool around a little more 😏). at school, saul started hanging out with the burnouts and freaks. he liked to listen to the doors and jimi hendrix and the stooges and the who, and yes even the beatles despite how lame they used to be. he got a job at the movie theatre, finagling his way into the projectionist's booth. he fixes up a slightly older wagon with his father's best friend and lifelong family pal phil (who saul feels betrayed by when he finds out phil's been seeing saul's mom rachel behind his back!!!) saul also became a lifelong devotee to the outsider, to the strangers, to freaks and geeks and weirdos. since the age of 12 he's had a pen pal named audrey neumann, an amateur sci-fi author with cerebral palsy who he met through a hebrew school project who became his long-distance girlfriend over the course of their high school years. it's on a post-graduation road trip in 1971 (because saul completed 13th grade in accordance with ontario educational standards) ostensibly with a stop in boston to finally meet up with audrey in person and lose his "real" virginity with her that saul and dickie end up at a gas station outside worcester, massachusetts. there, they get distracted ogling the awesome motorcycles belonging to the mad bulls motorcycle club, secretly a coterie of vampires serving the cult of mithras. owen, the mad bulls club president (secretly a welsh vampire embraced in 1754 by the malkavian elder william biltmore) sold the two boys on promises of hard drugs and occult knowledge back at the biker clubhouse. there, he turned them and began training them for an unlife in service to the ancient god-vampire mithras, which does not jive with saul's aspirations for artistic expression.

as a result of his malkavian madness (itself derived from the ticking time bomb of his undiagnosed bipolar disorder) saul has a persistent "Vision" (always capital V!) that he's compelled to express and share with as many people as possible, which he attempts to do by channel his bouts of madness into horror films! he also has a tendency to delusions of grandeur in the form of considering himself a true artistic genius, which i see getting him a reputation through the years as a mad auteur prone to obsessing over the most minute details and going into rages for seemingly minor infractions on whatever incomprehensible plan he has decided on.

he primarily uses the dominate and obfuscate disciplines, the former to get what he wants from mortals, and the latter to creep around to get what he wants from everyone else. his sire, owen wilson (because he's "will[iam biltmore]'s son," get it? 😏) is a roadside stalker who uses his daddy dom energy to get dickie to do whatever he wants-- something that makes saul incredibly jealous and angry, because he's VERY possessive of "his boy"... only he gets to push dickie around, tell him what to do... and only he gets to be the target of dickie's goo-goo eyes!!!

i think through the years saul makes a lot of z-grade horror movies, sexploitation and gorefests (eventually incorporating Real Vampire Victim Remains!™) while also being a total weirdo in mortal terms. he's more human than tommy wiseau, and cooler than neil breen, with a well-known ego and a propensity for people winding up dead or missing after being a part of his films! he HATES david cronenberg with a burning passion, sees him as a total hack and a complete nothing because he is incredibly intimidated by how they have all these similarities, but even as a vampire saul is less successful! (during the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, he fakes his own death because he hasn't aged since 1971 and it's getting harder and harder to fake it. his cronenberg hatred switches to brandon instead, so it's more age appropriate.)

at some point saul makes a sexploitation movie called "the daughters of lilith" that gets him in trouble with the bahari, the lesbian sadomasochism vampiric cult whose lore and rituals he got ahold of and used as inspiration for the aforementioned sexploitation movie. this is an idea im percolating for a future chronicle so i don't know how it turns out yet, other than that he (probably) survives 🤔 probably...

[ladyimaginarium]

last night as families were observing yom kippur, the holiest holiday of the high holidays in judaism, shots were fired at another jewish school in ontario, a vile act of antisemitism, terror, hate & cowardice. as of now, jews are the #1 target of hatecrimes. goyische/nonjewish allies, jews need your solidarity.

[hugheses]

Ontarian here! Yeah we have publicly funded Catholic schools and publicly funded secular schools. It goes back to our confederation and the related negotiations that made that happen.

TLDR; yeah we do have Catholic schools in Ontario, but students of many faiths (or atheist students) can and do attend them. I personally wouldn't read too much into the Hughes' attending one.

...

Generally, you can attend publicly funded Ontario Catholic schools if you arent Catholic, parents just need to register as a Catholic school supporter on their property tax forms. At the elementary (K-8) level, you sometimes need approval from the school/district to attend Catholic schools if students aren't Catholic. As far as I know, you don't need to be Catholic to attend a publicly funded Catholic high school.

At Ontario Catholic schools, you have to attend school mass and take religion class every year. You don't participate/receive Catholic sacraments. Other than health class (which for me lacked information about condoms/birth control), and prayers during announcements, my other classes weren't about religion.

... Canada was colonized by the French (who were largely Catholic) and the British (who were protestant). Before confederation, compromises were made in both the majority-French Lower Canada (now Quebec) to allow there to be Protestant schools, and in majority-English Upper Canada (now Ontario) to allow there to be Catholic schools. Then this was enshrined in the 1867 Constitution Act.

Eventually, the protestant schools became secular, and elsewhere, other provinces amended their constitutions to eliminate publicly-funded Catholic schools.

There are many people nowadays who are opposed to public Catholic schools for a variety of reasons (there are many redundancies to having two English school boards serve the same neighbourhoods, it is wrong to prioritize one religion when Ontario is way more diverse now, the harm caused by the Catholic church with respect to residential schools, SA, etc., the intersection of LGBTQIA+ students' rights and the Catholic faith (although some Catholic school boards are more progressive than others), etc.

Teachers unions in Ontario are generally quite strong, and given the need (afaik) to amend the constitution to get rid of the system, I am not sure if/when they will be eliminated. Also, sometimes there is a perception that Catholic schools are "better" than public (secular) schools because they have more funding (from the Catholic church I presume - but I am not sure if that is even true).

yes i do know about this! tho it feels very foreign to me from the US where this would be like, very illegal. i am ethically/culturally jewish on my moms side but my parents/grandparents are all atheists, and i chose to apply and go to a catholic school for HS bc i wanted to! and my experience was very similar in that it wasn’t super religious, aside from like monthly mass and the crosses in every classroom and mandatory theology class which i actually personally liked. the school itself was only 30% catholic students. so i agree i don’t think it necessarily means something that they went to catholic school but in this particular case i do think their dad’s side of the family being catholic is important to them and if i had to guess they probably did identify as catholic on whatever forms and stuff.

[shion-yu]

Al & Theo Masterpost

Albert Eugene Mikhael - "Al." Born December 10, 1979 in Ohio, USA. Jewish-American. Illustrator for children's books. Has Cystic Fibrosis. Ex-husband to Oliver (deceased), partner to Theo. [Picrew] [Toyhouse]

Theodore Marsh - "Theo." Born May 16, 1981 in Ontario, Canada. Trinidadian-Canadian. Environmental law attorney. Moved to the US for college, where he was quite the partier.

TIMELINE (TW mention of suicide)

September 1997: Al (17, junior) and Oliver ("Ollie", 15, sophomore) meet when Ollie transfers to private school due to bullying. Al is repeating his junior year of high school due to illness.

June 2000: Ollie graduates high school with a full scholarship at FIT, but declines enrollment to stay with Al, who is in poor health. They marry in October of that year.

August 2001: Al and Ollie move to NYC. Ollie's first suicide attempt follows by the end of that year. Begging | "Why Wasn't I Enough?"

October 25, 2004: Ollie (22) dies. Al is 24.

August 2005: Theo (24) meets Al (25) as roommates. Theo is in his final year of law school. They begin dating on Christmas.

2005-2010: Domestic life together. Stay with me | Headaches | Oxygen Deprivation | Under Anesthesia | “Who decided soup is sick people food?” | Medication Bribery

Summer 2010: Al (30) gets his lung transplant. Cliff (17) interns at Theo's law office. Running out of time | Sick on a Road Trip | False Alarm

2010-2025: More domestic life. Popsicle

March 2025: Al (45) is in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant, where he reunites with Cliff (31). Wait for Tomorrow

[anicacarpenterbloglr]

Wk 2 Blg 4

My great-great grandfather, on my father's side, immigrated to the United States from Italy, he was Catholic. My great-great grandmother was Jewish. She fell in love with the Catholic boy from Italy. For him she left her faith, and they married in the Catholic Church. My mother's side of the family has been Catholic for longer, likely coming from a small town in southern France. Both of my parents grew up Catholic, living only 2 hours away from each other in upstate New York. They didn't meet until they both ended up clerking for judges in Washington State, however.

My mother's father died when she was sixteen. I never knew him as a grandfather. He drank often, a habit that would lead to his early death. I have never seen my mother drunk. She fell far from the tree. She spent a lot of time with my Nana, going to church with her almost everyday. She was deep-rooted in her faith. She imagined growing up to become a nun. She didn't. I exist. Later in life, she fell away from the Church, a combination of disgust with the Church's cover of the actions of priests and reckoning with injustice in the world.

My father's story is much more simple. He would go to church with my Grandma every Sunday, until high school. Then he would drive by the church, pick up the pamphlet from Mass, put it in his passengers seat, drive to Lake Ontario and go fly fishing. The illusion of him going to Mass never tricked my Grandma, I'm sure, but she never confronted him for it.

By the time my parents had me, December 19th 2005, both had become lapsed-Catholics. Both of my grandmothers died when I was young. At my grandmothers funeral, I remember them looking at me and saying "She doesn't understand yet." I did understand but I didn't correct them.

In 2019, we went to France. Including the small town in the south. I sat in countless old Catholic Churches. I remembered my grandmothers in Sacre Coeur. A year later I got confirmed and my family returned to the Church.

[gduncan969]

Gospel Grinches

Psalm 2:1-3 “Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.”

OK, that’s it!  I’ve had enough!  Now that the woke crowd has labeled me and all of my white friends as racists under their Critical Race Theory, they are well on their way to taking over the world and are now pushing for all kinds of retribution and cash compensation for the racist crimes committed by our forefathers—or in their terms, fore-parents or, even better, fore-birthing people, over the last several hundred years.  I’m done with it!  This past week I read that the governor of California is proposing that any person of African descent whose fore-birthing people were subject to slavery, be paid the sum of $30,000+ US dollars as compensation.  Of course, deciding who will get the money creates the same problem for Governor Newsom as it did for Adolf Hitler who had to decide who should be regarded as Jewish and thus marked for extermination. The woke crowd has been very busy all over the western world making sure that we, the masses, admit our guiltiness and prove our repentance by coughing up the funds to finance their new world utopia which will bring us happiness while we own nothing.  Their insanity knows no bounds.  A film-maker in Norway was recently charged with hate-speech for saying that trans-women (who are biological men) cannot be lesbians.  In nearby Finland a Lutheran Bishop and a Finnish MP were similarly charged with hate-speech for simply quoting the biblical texts on sexual sin.  The word “sin” was deemed to be a particularly hateful term.  A teacher in Idaho has been forced to resign for refusing to use her students’ gender-preferred pronouns and one recent media headline asked the question, “Do Unvaccinated People Need to Be Counseled to Drive Slower?”, a question undoubtedly worthy of top priority at the United Nations.  Here in Ontario, a high school teacher is showing up for work dressed as a woman and wearing gi-normous prosthetic breasts under a see-through slip while he teaches classes in workshop skills.  Complaining students and parents are being told by the school board that they fully support the teacher’s right to do so!  These and countless other examples like them leave me asking how long can this go on before our entire society collapses under the weight of all these new “individual rights”.  A modern translation of Ecclesiastes 1:1 would be: “Insanity, insanity, all is insanity”!  It amazes me how far we have fallen into this chaos of confusion but my amazement is not so much with the questions being asked as it is with the fact that such inane, insane and self-evident questions are not only being asked but worse still, willingly being discussed by normal, intelligent people who might as well spend their time debating if the earth flat or if the moon is really made of green cheese!   What possible discussion is needed to refute the statement that a man cannot be a lesbian and what degree of narcissism does it take to be offended by such a viewpoint?  Who among us, other than the mentally ill, is running around looking for someone to tell them how to define a woman or how men can become pregnant?

So, what can I do about all of this?   For a brief moment I thought of starting a legal action against the Scottish government to seek compensation for the vast amount of Scottish land seized from my ancestor, King Duncan who was killed by Macbeth only 800 years ago—a mere blip in the chronology of the earth—and maybe I could include compensation from William Shakespeare for stealing the rights to the story for his play, “Macbeth”.  Of course, I shouldn’t have to prove I’m King Duncan’s descendent  because, according to the current official viewpoint, it is sufficient that it is “my truth” even if it doesn’t match anyone else’s “truth”.  However, if you are in any doubt, I can offer clear proof of my claim: I was born in Scotland, so there!  What other proof would you possibly need? Based on all the lawsuits going on around us these days, I suspect I might just win my case and pocket a few million dollars to boot.  

How do we explain this madness?  Have governments lost their collective minds and are so far into this new woke culture they cannot find their way back to common sense?  Are they just too fearful of the woke crowd and its insidious hidden power to speak out against their hell-bent effort to destroy civil society and replace it with a one-world government having control of everything and everyone—except them?  On second thoughts, there’s a much deeper and more insidious motive at the heart of all of this and it has nothing to do with claiming rights, whether it be the pronouns or gender of our choosing , or compensation for whatever wrongs we think we have endured or whatever rights we might invent for ourselves.  The heart of this problem is plain and simple rebellion—rebellion against God and His authority as revealed in His book, the bible!  God has clearly shown us what He requires of humanity in Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?”  However, the rulers of this woke world and their followers have rejected any notion that there is a God who should be recognized and glorified for who He is and they have replaced His authority with their own.  Tragically, many in the churches in the west have followed them. They have mistakenly believed that being a Christian in today’s world is all about obeying the rules whether they be of God or government  but they have failed to understand Jesus’ only command to us was not to obey the rules but to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).  We will never succeed in obeying God’s rules until we first know Him and trust Him for who He is, our Father, our Friend and our Savior.  Trying to obey rules without first having a walking, talking relationship with the Ruler leads only to sterile religiosity which in turn leads to cold-hearted legalism that knows only how to criticize and accuse others.  Religious zeal for rules can never substitute for a living, breathing relationship with the Ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is able to rescue us from ourselves through the new life He gives us as we surrender to Him.  So many people reject the Gospel message because they see it only as form of religious obedience to rules for good behavior rather than a vibrant relationship with a Person who loves them completely and who empowers them to love others as themselves.  As one wise man once told me, being a Christian is not about what you say you believe, it’s about WHO you know!  Many years ago I listened to a guest speaker at a Christian conference give a talk on Psalm 68:1 “Let God arise, Let His enemies be scattered; Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.” and then went on to ask us, “Who and where are God’s enemies?”.  The answer he provided to his own question was eye-opening: “God’s enemies sit in the front rows of many churches glaring at the pastor because they hate God”. The reason they hate Him is because life has not been kind to them and they blame God for their suffering, perhaps the loss of a loved one or a divorce or an illness or a financial difficulty.  The reasons are many but the result is the same: since joining the church they have tried their darndest to serve Him by obeying all His rules but never felt the warmth of His touch or saw the brilliance of His glory. God never seemingly came through for them so they continue to attend church knowing that He is God and must be obeyed but they hate Him for it! While remaining locked up in a spirit of bitterness, their sole purpose in church is to oppose any move of the Holy Spirit that seeks to destroy the traditions of men that they have become accustomed to.  They have become “Gospel Grinches”, stealing the enthusiasm of God’s people for worship, deliverance and fellowship. Jesus warns all of us who have believed in His name that He is the vine and we are the branches and that without Him we can do NOTHING (John 15:5). Countless lives have been lost by those who grabbed hold of the bible’s rules for living and ran with them but forgot the relationship that alone gives us the power to obey them.  The insanity we are witnessing is the result of rebellion “against the Lord, and against His Anointed” (Psalm 2:2) which has led to the decision to discard any notion that God’s rules are for our benefit, not our destruction. Verse 3 puts it this way: “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.” In other words, let’s unstrap ourselves from all these rules that are impossible to keep and let’s do our own thing.  This decision has led to the “Me Generation” where it’s all about me-my-and-mine but God in Isaiah 53:6 describes this generation this way: “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”  How sad it is to see whole denominations of the Church adopt the world’s standards of righteousness as they go about blessing same-sex marriages, homosexual behavior, mutilation of the body to change gender and medical assistance in dying even for those who are mentally ill.  That’s bad enough but they are also actively opposing those who disagree with these things who are making a stand for righteousness’ sake.  

Thankfully, the rest of Psalm 2 gives us reason to rejoice.  God is still in control:

4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision. 5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure: 6 “Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion.”

7 “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. 8 Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ ”

10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth. 11 Serve the Lord with fear, And rejoice with trembling. 12 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, And you perish in the way, When His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Are you ready to “kiss the Son”? Please know that you will not survive Christ’s return if all you have to offer is blind obedience to the rules of the faith.  You must enter into fellowship with the Ruler who will give you His Holy Spirit to lead you and comfort you and best of all to empower you to live the new life God has promised you.  You will also be able to pass on to others what you yourself have received just like Peter and John did at the temple gate when the crippled beggar  asked for alms: “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” (Acts 3:6).  Ask yourself ,“What do I have to give?”  If your answer is “a bunch of rules for holy living”, then you really have nothing worth having.  If you haven’t entered into this vibrant relationship with the Lord Jesus, you can simply by asking Him to forgive your past failings and fill you with His Holy Spirit.  Believe that He will and He will!  This could be a whole new Christmas for you as you celebrate the birth of our Savior.  Have a Merry Christmas.

[adrabas]

How Jewish Studies in High School Cultivates Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is an essential skill in education today, preparing students to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information effectively. But how can Jewish studies foster this ability? At ADRABA, an institution offering accredited Jewish high school courses in Ontario, the curriculum does more than teach traditional subjects—it equips students with the tools to think critically about their world.

How Does Jewish Studies Encourage Critical Thinking?

Jewish education often centers around interpretation and debate. In Talmudic study, for example, students are encouraged to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and look for alternative viewpoints. Could there be a better method to develop critical thinking skills? By delving into ancient texts, students learn to approach complex ideas with curiosity and open-mindedness, building their analytical capacity. These are the same critical skills necessary for success in both academics and life.

Integration with Modern Studies

Jewish studies at ADRABA aren’t isolated from the general Ontario high school curriculum. In fact, they blend seamlessly with other accredited subjects, reinforcing critical thinking through multidisciplinary approaches. Imagine a student learning about World War II in their history class while simultaneously exploring the Jewish perspective on the Holocaust in their Jewish studies course. The ability to view the same event from different lenses deepens understanding and promotes sophisticated reasoning.

Can Critical Thinking Impact Career Success?

Absolutely. Critical thinking isn't confined to academia; it’s a vital skill in the workplace, too. Whether a student aspires to become a lawyer, doctor, or entrepreneur, being able to evaluate information and make informed decisions is essential. ADRABA’s focus on both Jewish education and Ontario-accredited courses ensures that students develop this critical skillset, preparing them for university and beyond.

Real-World Applications

Let’s consider a real-world example: students studying ethical dilemmas in Jewish law are asked to debate modern issues like medical ethics or social justice. How does ancient wisdom apply to contemporary challenges? This reflective process forces students to connect historical perspectives with today’s complex realities—an exercise in deep critical thinking.

Why ADRABA?

With a focus on both Jewish and secular education, ADRABA offers a holistic approach to learning. By fostering curiosity, debate, and critical thinking, students are well-prepared not just for graduation but for a future where they can navigate complex global issues.

In conclusion, accredited Jewish high school courses at ADRABA offer Ontario students a unique opportunity to develop critical thinking. This approach to education, rooted in Jewish traditions and combined with modern subjects, ensures that students leave high school ready for academic and personal success.

[bunnyinatree]

Dream rambles under the cut!

Man, a lot happened in my sub-conscious last night... But there are two snippets of those dreams that stand out the most!

The first was a bit where I was heading home somewhere with my childhood best friend, though in the dream we were both our current ages. We passed by an open volleyball court with some balls still lying out. (I think we had just come from some sports game at a school, and this was another section of the athletic facilities.) She’s always been more athletic than me, but I enjoy playing sports, too, even if I have terrible hand-eye coordination. So that part of the dream was just my childhood best friend playing volleyball with me in the dark, lit by a few street lamps, being very patient when I was obviously below her skill level and giving me some pointers. It was very fun, because I know I would benefit from the extra physical activity, and I was happy to reconnect with that friend after so many years 🥰

The second part of my dream that I really enjoyed was a phone call with another former best friend, this one from high school rather than elementary school. (And this person and I still talk every so often!) We were having one of our regular phone calls to catch up with one another, and they told me that they had started reading a webcomic. It was called something like, “Four Corners, Four Couples,” and the name took a moment to ring a bell, but apparently, in the dream, I had read it in high school. I looked it up online and was having fun skimming through the first chapter and being all nostalgic (for a series I’ve never read in real life because it doesn’t exist). It was hand-drawn then scanned into a computer, but the artist used such vibrant colors and mixed media—like watercolor for the background but something sharper for the characters. Each character had their own designated color to help the motifs along, and the first chapter was this neat montage of all eight protagonists sharing a dream that was less plot and mostly vibing in the sky with beautiful colors. They were introduced to one another, but they had no reason to think any of the other seven existed outside of their dream. Still, they tried to ask about each other’s names/identities/etc, but they all spoke different languages and didn’t come away with much information. I guess the rest of the webcomic was about the eight characters returning to their lives (which were less appealing than the dream) and reuniting with one another over the course of the story, couple by couple. I told my friend that I enjoyed this webcomic at the time, but since I’m not super enthusiastic about soul mates as a trope, it’s not one of my lasting favorites, and I understood why they were also a bit dubious about it.

Also about the fictional webcomic: I remember that the author was Canadian, and it was obvious because of the languages that they chose to use in the opening chapter. Like, they knew French and English very well, and two of the eight characters were from Canada (one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast). Even the character who spoke French lived not in France but in somewhere like Ontario or Quebec. There was also a character from New York or New Jersey (who was either Italian or Jewish or maybe both), which isn’t quite the four corners of the Earth that the title advertises. But maybe the other five protagonists were spread out in different countries. I genuinely wonder how the author was planning on having all eight characters cross paths at some point and come together from so far away 🤔 The webcomic was from 2013-2014, so there would’ve been no pandemic to restrict travel. But I also think that it had gone on permanent hiatus, so even if I were still in the dream, I don’t think I would have any more answers than I do now 😭😭

[jewishwarriorprincess]

London has a small Jewish community consisting of mostly those who are middle aged and elderly and a growing Muslim population. For context in 2001-2005 in high school I was the only Jew in the school and the school was Muslim majority. A Jewish teacher was forced to quit after daily anti semitic torture and I was told by teachers to not be openly Jewish.

How is a 20 year old maniac with a Dutch last name have any connection to the conflict? Nothing has come out yet. No motives other than assuming it’s due the fact that they looked Muslim

[blogspersonal707]

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More ways to help Fritch, Texas after wildfires

–St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church Amarillo -Fritch Fire Volunteers — please note! The address for the multi-agency resource center — MARC — has changed. The new address is 308 Ridgeland, Fritch TX 79030. Please follow the Red Cross signs. –Toot’n Totum … Continue reading

Posted inAmarillo, Community, Fires, Lake Meredith, News, Panhandle, Texas, VolunteersTaggedamarillo, Amarillo Area Foundation, Benefit shows, Borger Texas, disaster relief, donate, donations, Fritch Texas, help, Hutchinson County, Hutchinson County Texas, Lake Meredith, May 2014, Pantex Federal Credit Union, Red Cross, St Andrews, Texas Panhandle, Toot n Totum, volunteers, wildfiresLeave a comment

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[klakokum]

TRIBUTE TO HANS

You are that old cop who feels all right

with Mercy all through every night

or day, when her quality unstrained

still means sister Justice is not pained

with that correctness members of the new school

of the unschooled learn from the cruel

left (where they pack their holster).

You are the Kind who remembers the spade

called the spade; today Robert Peels bolster

the transfer of all power to those paid

by Alien. Alienated from the symbiotic

understanding-belonging of town to man

and man to town which the right cop nurses,

the left cop nurtures only the chaotic

pride of rebellion which sent Satan

into his pitted hell of heated curses…

But you understood the spirit to the law

left behind by the left cop’s ascendancies

from his people, and, yes, he will draw

the gun to cuff and shackle as he fancies

while you’d rather charm those orang-utans back

to their cages, compassion your lure.

The left cop will gladly number the arm

of the innocent, but you refused to crack

the trigger even permanently to cure

Red Ryan from bringing further harm.

Your back against the law is love. [Copyright © 1974, 2004, 2009 K’lakokum]

     Kangaroo Poet Karol Hans Jewinski passed away early in 2007 near his home in Jerusalem, at the age of 100.  He was still full of vigour, and had the physical appearance of a normal man in his late fifties.  Indeed, Karol fully expected to live at least 120 years, and would have, had he not become the innocent victim of a suicide bomber while shopping near his home.  Hans, as he preferred to be called, was a follower of Gjrg who, eight centuries ago, lived to the astounding age of 145, repeatedly proclaiming that everybody should expect to live at least 120 years.  Gjrg’s Ten Rules for Living a Century have been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, and 52 of his descendants have been documented to have lived at least 100 years, with another 40 probably doing so as well, but without proper supporting documentation. 

     As a young boy in rural Poland, Hans was allowed to adopt an abandoned and sick wolf cub.  The Jewinski farm was in the neighbourhood of Yvan Pavlov’s laboratory, and when the young lad consulted Pavlov about care for the wolf, he obtained his first job – cleaning out Pavlov’s dog kennels.  Often he did not receive payment for this work, because Pavlov was chronically broke until two decades later when his “science” was adopted by official Communism, and the Reds financed a little empire for him.  Hans became a life-long dog lover, and was always accompanied by a German Shepherd.

     When Hans’ father died suddenly, the lad was given into custody of an orthodox uncle in St. Petersburg.  This uncle, a German Jew, was a rabbi who made Hans fully acquainted with the Jewish faith (not taught to him earlier by his non-practicing father).  Hans received his bar mitzvah in the same week as the February Revolution. 

      In the civil war which followed the second [October] revolution, the tween-ager became a combatant on the White Russian side.  Even though Hans had experienced tsarist and White Russian anti-Semitism first hand, he fought on the tsarist side because he believed that all lawful authority was established by God, and obedience to authority was obedience to God.  When the royalists lost the civil war due to American intervention on the Communist side (Henry Ford et al), Hans escaped through Afghanistan into India, where he added English to his language repertoire.  [Hans was fluent in Polish, German, English, French, Greek and Yiddish.]  After being homeless and unemployed for three years, the teen-ager took on a job as an able seaman.  But he soon discovered that life on the water was not for him, and he abandoned ship at the first opportunity when in port at Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Taking brief jobs as a farmhand, or whatever he could get, he worked his way westwards across Canada.  In 1924, at the age of 18, he took on a civilian job caring for dogs in training for police K-9 duty, and started night school in Kingston, Ontario in order to obtain his high school diploma.  Upon graduation, he joined the Belleville, Ontario police department and was a cop for 37 years [except for 4 years in the air force during WWII, 13 months of that in a German  concentration camp after being shot down], retiring in 1963 on full pension at the age of 57.  He moved to Toronto and began his second career as a full-time poet, later becoming a founding member of the Kangaroo City Poets’ Collective.    He was about three decades senior to the average age of the poets in the collective, and was frequently consulted by the younger poets for advice on all aspects of life, as well as on questions of poetry.

        The Kangaroo City Poets’ Collective is a permanent organization, and when one of the member-poets passes on, his/her place is taken by someone elected from the membership of an auxiliary organization:  Kangaroo Poets – The Next Generation.  In this particular case, the Karol Hans Jewinski Chair is now occupied by Felll Wood.  Felll lives in Kokomo, Indiana.  She was introduced to Kangaroo City by Kangaroo Poet Rabin Duff, her high school English teacher in Peru, Indiana.  Through him, she was first published in South of Tuk in 2003.  Since 2007, she is the official custodian of the Karol Hans Jewinski Collection of the Kangaroo City Archives, and makes the selections in Hans’ name in the Nebiru Crossing bookstore, in keeping with the spirit and interests of Hans.

See also http://kangaroopoets.blogspot.ca/2011/04/hans-biographical-excerpt-from-nebiru.html

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[sciencespies]

Covid-19 Cases Surged After Canadian Thanksgiving in October. Will Americans Heed Their Northern Neighbor's Warning?

https://sciencespies.com/news/covid-19-cases-surged-after-canadian-thanksgiving-in-october-will-americans-heed-their-northern-neighbors-warning/

Covid-19 Cases Surged After Canadian Thanksgiving in October. Will Americans Heed Their Northern Neighbor's Warning?

After months of social distancing, lockdowns and quarantining, Americans are craving the warmth and joy of being surrounded by loved ones during the holiday season. As Thanksgiving nears, however, Covid-19 cases in the United States are already at an all-time high.

Perhaps a preview of the country’s post-holiday fate lies north: Canada, which celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, offers a cautionary tale for Americans planning to celebrate next week. Canadian Thanksgiving fell on October 12 this year, and two weeks later, authorities reported a spike in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations—most likely as a result of people being together indoors during the holiday, reports Alex Fitzpatrick for Time magazine.

“It’s not that we were flat and all of a sudden Thanksgiving happened and there we see an increase,” Laura Rosella, an epidemiologist at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, tells Time. “The reason why we’re fairly confident Thanksgiving did increase cases is that we saw our highest numbers yet in the two weeks following Thanksgiving, which is consistent with the incubation period, when people would show symptoms and get reported.”

Nearly two weeks after Thanksgiving, the two most populous provinces in Canada set new records for Covid-19 cases. As of October 25, Quebec, the epicenter of disease transmission in Canada, reached 100,000 total recorded cases for the year. And Ontario logged more than 1,000 cases daily, setting the province’s new record for the greatest number of infections per day, reports Brooklyn Neustaeter for CTV News. At this rate, Ontario is on track to reach, or even exceed, Europe’s level of coronavirus crisis, report Paula Newton and Leah Asmelash for CNN.

“In the spring, everybody was scared,” Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious-disease specialist at Trillium Health Partners, a hospital network in Canada. “They barely went for jogs. That’s not the case now. I’ve heard people say, ‘I don’t care if I get sick. I’d rather die than not see my grandkids.'”

Hi, Americans!

Some of you are perhaps wondering: Should we go to Thanksgiving with family this year?

Well, here in Manitoba, we celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, which fell on Monday, October 12th (see graph below). So, from experience, the answer is no.

No, you should not. pic.twitter.com/R3n33Xen0l

— Lukas Neville (@lukasneville) November 14, 2020

For Americans, Thanksgiving is only a week away, but the U.S. is one of the hardest hit country in the world, reports Katie Camero for the Miami Herald. Cases are already skyrocketing in the U.S., and nearly 250,000 Americans have died from the virus so far. As the weather gets cooler and outdoor gatherings become intolerable, people will be tempted to socialize inside, further fueling the surge of coronavirus cases.

A survey from the Ohio State University suggests that nearly two out of five Americans are planning to gather for Thanksgiving with ten or more people, Time reports. But it’s hard to practice social distancing at indoor social gatherings. People get up and move around, they eat and drink with their masks off and air circulation in homes is difficult to manage.

“All this virus needs is close contact for a prolonged period of time,” Matthew Oughton, an attending physician in the infectious diseases division of Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, tells Time. But for those who choose to gather anyways, Oughton says that a little distancing is better than none at all, and dining outdoors is the safest option. Plus, several smaller tables that are further apart from each other are preferable to one large table. But the best option, he says, is to connect with loved ones virtually.

“It’s not the same thing as being able to see them and hug them in person, but then again,” he tells Time, “I wouldn’t want to have a nice Thanksgiving and then find out two weeks later that [a family member] landed in the hospital.”

#News

[aliciahaydens-blog]

Avenue south residence

In 1827, the newly formed council of King's College University bought 150 acres of undeveloped forest land south of Bloor Street and west of Avenue Road. The purchase price was 3,750 pounds. What would eventually become the University of Toronto Campus was originally acquired for 25 pounds per acre!

Today, the University-Palmerston area is a mix of single family homes, student housing, condominiums and retail development. Next to the University of Toronto's St. George Campus, the neighbourhood has museums, live music venues and Honest Ed's - arguably Toronto's most famous discount store. This eclectic blend is what makes University-Palmerston unique.

The University-Palmerston neighbourhood is also thought of and referred to as the South Annex by its Residents and merchants. Those working and living east of Grace Street and north of College think of themselves as part of the South Annex. The area is served by the Spadina and Bathurst subway stations along the Yonge-University line. Drivers will find Harbord Street an easier drive than Bloor Street West when traveling east and west.

A typical University-Palmerston house is a 2-storey semi-detached on a 20' wide lot. In 2011, prices ranged from just under $550,000 to above $1,000.000. Some of the houses have undergone interior renovations and retain their original exteriors. Others have modified Avenue south residence  exteriors that express the tastes and traditions of their current owners. There are a few high rise condominium projects, most of which are located along Spadina Avenue. 2011 condominium prices ranged from $300,000 to over $900,000.

University-Palmerston is served by Huron St. Jr. Public School, Lord Lansdowne Jr. and Sr. Public School and Harbord Collegiate Institute. St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School is located at 80 Clinton Street. Nearby private schools are The University of Toronto School (UTS) and Taddle Creek Montessori School.

University-Palmerston's two main shopping areas are located along Bloor Street West and along Harbord Street. Harbord Street between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street has specialty bookstores, restaurants and a ceramics studio. Bloor Street between Avenue Road and Bathurst Street features food shops, yoga studios and restaurants offering a wide variety of national cuisines. There are plenty of sidewalk cafes which make strolling Bloor Street in clement weather a delight.

The Royal Ontario Museum, The Bata Shoe Museum, The Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre and the Bathurst Street Theatre are all within walking distance of University-Palmerston. Trinity St. Paul's United Church is home to the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. Mirvish Village on Markham Street offers artist's studios, restaurants and a comic book shop. Honest Ed's, brainchild of Toronto merchant and theatrical impresario Ed Mirvish, still provides bargains at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets. For those seeking a peaceful walk, elegant Palmerston Boulevard, with its turn-of-the-century streetlamps, offers a haven from the hustle and bustle.

University-Palmerston caters to students, families, theatergoers, music lovers and foodies. Its residents can walk to museums, restaurants and yoga classes. Fine housing stock and an excellent location make the University-Palmerston neighbourhood a value proposition for Buyers. Its cultural scene and services make it highly desirable.

[canadiangeekgirl]

Photo, Canadian Press.

I’m scared about what’s happening in Canada.

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, many of us Canadians wagged our fingers smugly at our southern neighbour. “What were they thinking?” we said to one another in line at Tim Hortons. We spent the next year or so glued to CNN, more captivated by American politics than what’s happening here.

We might have wanted to pay more attention.

The tide in the Great White North appears to be shifting right — but not in the way we’re used to. This isn’t a typical liberal-conservative tug-o-war, the ebb and flow we’ve seen throughout election cycles. This new movement is one that has already swept through Hungary, Poland, the U.S., it’s fuelled Brexit in the U.K. and has seen the rise of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, who have been compared to the Nazi regime. And it’s tilted so far to the right that it threatens to upend our democracy and the very liberties we’ve fought for.

While conservatives have historically called for less government regulation, lower taxes and a stronger military, today’s Canadian right-wing politics has rebranded itself to include more visible intolerance. Bigotry isn’t just bubbling under the surface these days, it’s out in the open and proudly displayed for when the guests come over.

This ugly, newfound boldness threatens to dominate the next federal election, impacting not only the world’s view of us a fair, diverse and welcoming country, but also the lives of all marginalized Canadians. That keeps me up at night.

As a gay mother with a trans child in the Ontario school system, and as a human rights advocate who spends a lot of time on social media, I’m on the receiving end of a lot of messages from people who think it’s “about time” politicians start standing up to “special interest groups.” We’ve been coddled for too long, they say, and we don’t deserve special treatment. They mock, namecall and outright threaten those of us who fight for the rights of marginalized people to be preserved. They’ve always done this, of course, but their voices, now embolded by the very politicians and public figures they support, are growing in number and getting angrier. I’ve had to file two police reports after my life was threatened — and those are only the incidents I reported.

This swing to the populist right is both in our face and insidious. Donald Trump might be loud and brash, but his win was unexpected by most. We surveyed the damage from up north, thinking it couldn’t possibly happen here. Surely, Canadians know better. We didn’t.

Modern populism has grown quietly, from the pages of right-wing websites to the birth of new neo-fascist groups such as the Proud Boys, now designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Support for the populism movement gained traction through one protest, one meeting, and one tweet at a time. Now it’s loud and it’s everywhere. It unseated Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Ontario government, with Premier Doug Ford and the Conservatives promising little more than a buck-a-beer and the end of teaching gender identity in schools.

And then, in October 2018, Premier Ford met privately with university professor Jordan Peterson. While the premier openly discussed other meetings that had taken place around that time, the public only learned of this one after the CBC obtained his itinerary through a freedom of information request.

Wildly popular in some right-wing circles, Peterson’s views have been slammed as retrograde, problematic and dangerous. He became well-known after taking a stand against using trans people’s chosen pronouns, claiming being forced to do so is an attack on free speech. He argued vehemently against the federal Liberal government’s now-passed trans rights bill, speaking in front of the senate committee overseeing the bill, and warned his followers about the dangers of “compelled speech.” Peterson has also proposed “enforced monogamy” as a way to reduce male violence and believes “crazy women” can’t be controlled by men because men can’t resort to physical violence against them.

Despite, or, perhaps, because of these views, Peterson, who teaches at the University of Toronto, earns tens of thousands of dollars monthly from his Patreon account, a site where fans can pledge financial support to creators of all stripes. These donations are given to him by admirers, many of them Canadians.

Ford, meanwhile, campaigned heavily on the removal of Ontario’s most current incarnation of the sex-ed curriculum, and followed through — a move that has earned much criticism and more than one lawsuit. However, it was also, in part, what earned his party a majority government. A slew of Ontarians has proudly come out in support of Ford’s policies, including the removal of mandatory student funding for certain college and university services, such as pride centres.

A week before meeting with Premier Ford, Peterson had spoken out in a tweet against the Ontario Human Rights Commission, claiming it to be the most “dangerous” organization in Canada, and calling for the Ford government to abolish it. Peterson has previously said he doesn’t agree with the OHRC’s support of gender identity and gender expression. The OHRC had just joined the legal fight against the Ontario provincial government’s removal of the sex-ed curriculum, which covered LGBTQ+ issues, consent and cyber-bullying.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission does exactly what the name implies: using the Ontario Human Rights Code as its guide, it strives to protect all Ontarians from discrimination and harassment. Those who are fiscally-minded might also appreciate how the OHRC first tries to resolve issues between parties out of court, taking the less-expensive mediation approach. It is not the country’s most dangerous organization, but its dismantling could certainly be very dangerous.

The timing of this secret meeting should ring alarm bells for liberals and conservatives alike. Protecting human rights is, after all, supposed to be a closely-held Canadian value.

Trump’s 2016 victory was a dog whistle for bigotry that reached the ears of Canadians. Doug Ford has proven Ontario will welcome similar politics, while Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, a federal right-wing party formed in 2018, has over 30,000 members and a social media presence that speaks out against “political correctness” and “diversity nonsense.”

Taking a page from the Yellow Vest movement in France, the Facebook group “Yellow Vests Canada” has more than 100,000 members. What began as a place to organize protests around the country quickly became a spot where anti-Liberal sentiments and memes are circulated around the clock, several going so far as to call for the Prime Minister’s death. Immigration is regularly condemned, and Islamophobia is dismissed as a made-up word.

While some of the most offensive posts have been removed over recent weeks, the views are still crystal clear. This group isn’t just anti-tax and pro-oil, it’s filled to the brim with intolerance. This message is consistent throughout provincial groups as well, such as BC Proud, Alberta Proud and Ontario Proud. With a combined total of hundreds of thousands of members in these groups, cries of fake news and the danger of refugees abound.

These sentiments don’t just live online.

Statistics Canada reported hate crimes had reached historically high levels in 2017, rising 47 per cent over the previous year, with Ontario and Quebec leading the pack on reported incidents. Black, Jewish and Muslim people were targeted most. Quebec saw a 50 per cent increase in hate crimes overall, and crimes against Muslims tripled between 2016 and 2017. In January of 2017, a shooter killed six men and injured several others in a Quebec City Mosque. Meanwhile, Ontario saw a 207 per cent increase in hate crimes against Muslims, and an 84 per cent increase against Black people. Crimes against LGBTQ+ people have also climbed. Swastikas have been spray painted on synagogues and other buildings across the country. Intolerance is growing.

Populism has many sources. Perhaps there are people who are tired of looking inward and are now lashing outward. Maybe, for some, it’s simpler to blame immigrants when they can’t find work than the companies who cut minimum wage jobs and still pay their executives millions in bonuses. Maybe it’s easier to find a scapegoat, to call someone like me a child abuser for supporting my transgender teen, than it is to grow and broaden our ideas of what’s normal.

Societal change can be hard and it can make people uncomfortable, but that’s a flimy excuse for discrimination.

Intolerance has never gone away, it was simply out of fashion for a while. Now it’s back with a fresh new look and a boost from fake news and social media.

We should all care deeply about this frightening political shift and where it could take us.

I know I care, which is why I’m so scared about what’s happening in this country, and what’s yet to come.

Amanda Jetté Knox is an award-winning writer, public speaker and LGBTQ advocate. She is the author of Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family, which will be published in August 2019 from Penguin Random House Canada. She lives in Ottawa with her wife and four kids.

[astrogeoguy]

The Moon Sends a Happy Easter and Passover, Limited Lyrids, and Peering at Polar Objects!

(Above: The globular star cluster Messier 3 imaged by Adam Block at Mount Lemmon SkyCenter - University of Arizona, is located 37,000 light-years from our sun.)

Hello, Stargazers! 

Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April 21st, 2019 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca. 

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlanitarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together! 

Public Astro-Events

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

At 7:30 pm on Wednesday, March 27, the RASC Toronto Centre will hold their free monthly Recreational Astronomy Night Meeting at the Ontario Science Centre, and the public are welcome. Talks include The Sky This Month, alien landscapes, and a do-it-yourself telescope project. These meetings are also streamed live on RASC-TC’s YouTube channel. Check here for details. Parking is free. 

On Tuesday, April 23 from 6 to 8:30 pm, the Lillian H. Smith Library will present a free public event called Chasing Exoplanets: Stories from the Centre of the Universe, which will feature several wonderful women scientists and authors. Details are here. 

On Thursday, April 25, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show Grand Tour of the Cosmos. Tickets and details are here. 

On Friday, April 26, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show The Life and Death of Stars. Tickets and details are here. 

The next RASC Family Night at the David Dunlap Observatory will be on Saturday, April 27. There will be sky tours in the Skylab planetarium room, space crafts, a tour of the giant 74” telescope, and viewing through lawn telescopes (weather permitting). The doors will open at 8 pm for an 8:30 pm start. Attendance is by tickets only, available here. If you are a RASC Toronto Centre member and wish to help us at DDO in the future, please fill out the volunteer form here. And to join RASC Toronto Centre, visit this page. 

Happy Easter and Pesach (Passover)! 

Easter Sunday and Paesach (Passover) have an astronomical connection to the moon, with the Jewish Passover pre-dating the Christian Easter. Some believe that the full moon allowed for safer travelling by religious pilgrims of the time. 

In 325 AD the Council of Nicaea determined that Easter should be observed on the Sunday following the first full moon that occurs after the vernal equinox, officially known as the Paschal Full Moon. The council fixed the equinox at March 21, but the astronomical timing of the equinox actually varies a little bit, and even occurs a full day early on Leap Years. This year, the equinox took place on March 20 at 6 pm EDT, and the full moon occurred that same day, at 9:43 pm EDT! 

So why is Easter being observed on April 21 in 2019, instead of Sunday, March 24 (the Sunday after March’s full moon)? It’s because, as I stated above, the Council of Nicea fixed the equinox on March 21 – and that was the day AFTER the full moon this year. 

In an added twist, if the post-equinox full moon falls on a Sunday, the following Sunday becomes Easter. The earliest that Easter can ever occur is March 22, which last happened in 1818, and won't happen again until 2285! If a full moon happens before March 21, Easter will be delayed by a full lunar month, plus up to six days – on April 25. That will happen in 2038. 

Passover is celebrated from the 15th through the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Nissan in the Jewish lunar calendar. It began with sundown last Friday night, which coincided with the first full moon after the spring equinox. In years when that full moon occurs early, Jewish religious leaders delay Passover by a month to ensure that spring-like weather conditions (warmer temperatures and flowers in bloom) have arrived in Israel. Last year’s Passover began about three weeks earlier, on March 27. The earliest that Passover can occur in our Gregorian calendar is March 25, which will next happen in 2089. 

In Western Christianity, Easter sometimes precedes Passover by several weeks. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the older Julian Calendar, and schedules Easter using the precise moment of the astronomical equinox and full moon as measured in Jerusalem (where the crucifixion and resurrection occurred). This ensures that Easter always occurs after Passover, since Jesus had traveled to Jerusalem to observe Passover. This year, Orthodox Easter will be observed on Sunday, April 28. 

Lyrids Meteor Shower

The annual Lyrids meteor shower, derived from particles dropped by comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher), runs from April 16 to 25 every year and peaks before dawn on Monday morning. This shower can produce up to 18 meteors per hour, with occasional fireballs. True Lyrids will appear to be travelling away from a point in space (the shower’s radiant) near the bright star Vega, which will be high in the eastern sky before dawn. Unfortunately, a bright, gibbous moon will wash out all but the brightest meteors this year. I posted a diagram here. 

You can start watching as soon as it's dark. Even when the peak number occurs before dawn, some meteors will still be visible before midnight, too. Don't bother to watch the radiant, since any meteors near it will have very soft trails. Bring a blanket and a chaise to avoid neck strain. And remember that binoculars and telescopes will not help; their fields of view are too narrow to see the long meteor trails. If you have friends or family along, don’t look at each other while chatting. Keep your eyes to the skies! 

(Above: After midnight on Monday night, i.e., Tuesday morning, the waning gibbous moon will pass close to bright Jupiter, as shown here at 5 am EDT. Two mornings later, the moon will land near dimmer Saturn (top left))

The Moon and Planets

After Friday’s full phase, the moon will wane and rise later (after midnight) with each passing day this week. As it moves into the latter stages of its monthly orbit around the Earth, the moon will become visible in the eastern pre-dawn sky and will pay a visit to some of the bright planets that currently reside there. 

When the bright planet Jupiter rises in the southeastern sky at about 12:15 am local time on Tuesday morning, it will be positioned 3 finger widths to the lower left of the waning gibbous moon. The moon and planet will cross the sky together for the rest of the night, eventually moving to a point in the lower southwestern sky at sunrise. The duo will make a lovely photo opportunity when composed with an interesting foreground landscape! Jupiter will follow the same schedule, even after the moon moves away from it. 

In the southeastern pre-dawn sky on Thursday morning, the almost last quarter moon will land less than 3 finger widths to the right of yellowish Saturn, which will rise after 2 am local time. If you are outside a little earlier, look for the Teapot-shaped stars of Sagittarius (the Archer)  positioned about a fist’s diameter to the lower right of the ringed planet and moon. The pairing will fit nicely into the field of view of binoculars, and make another nice photograph. Half a day later, at 13:00 GMT, observers in Eastern Australia and New Zealand will see the moon pass over (See what I did there?), or occult, Saturn. 

On Friday evening, the moon will officially reach its last quarter phase, when it will be half illuminated, on its western (our left-hand) side. Remember that phases of the moon are controlled by the angle in space made by the three objects – sun, Earth, and moon. The rotation of the Earth, and who gets to see the phases when they happen, is on a separate schedule.

(Above: As shown here at 9 pm local time on Sunday evening, April 21, Mars remains the only bright planet in the evening sky this week. For the next several weeks, Mars will sit above Aldebaran, which is a similar in colour, but slightly brighter.)   

Mars will continue to be easily visible for an hour after dusk every evening this week. But the later spring sunsets mean that Mars will set in the west just before midnight local time. Once the sky has darkened, look for Mars as a medium-bright, reddish pinpoint of light sitting less than one-third of the way up the western sky. Mars has been slowly shrinking in size and brightness as we increase our distance from it little-by-little. The bright reddish star Aldebaran will be sitting about a palm’s width below Mars this week. Don’t confuse them - it’s brighter than Mars. 

On Friday evening, Mars’ orbital motion will carry it closely past a clump of three open star clusters (NGC 1746, 1750, and 1758). If your sky is dark enough, your binoculars might show a concentration of stars just to Mars’ lower left. A backyard telescope will show them better, but your optics will probably flip or invert the view – so check all around Mars for them. The best time to view should fall around 10 pm local time, when the sky is darker and Mars is higher.

(Above: On Friday evening, April 26, Mars’ orbital motion will carry it closely past three open star clusters (blue labelled yellow symbols). Use binoculars or a backyard telescope at low magnification before about 10 pm local time.)  

During this week, the very bright planet Jupiter will rise over the southeastern horizon a little bit after midnight local time. By 6 am, Jupiter will remain visible in the lower part of the brightening sky, over the south-southwestern horizon. Starting next Sunday, Jupiter will begin to rise before midnight – on its way to become a prime target for star parties this summer! Yellowish Saturn will be sitting about 2.5 outstretched fist diameters to the left of Jupiter from 2 am local time until dawn. It, too, will add to your summer stargazing fun! 

Mercury and Venus are together in the eastern sky just before sunrise this week, but they are surrounded by the dawn twilight, making much dimmer Mercury a challenge to find. Venus will rise at about 5:30 am local time. To help you find Mercury, Venus will be positioned about four finger widths to the upper right of the swift innermost planet. Both planets are swinging towards the sun and will soon disappear in solar conjunction.

(Above: The two innermost planets Mercury and Venus will shine within the eastern pre-dawn twilight this week, as shown here at 6 am local time.) 

Observing Ideas for This Week

If you missed last week’s note about what to see in the mid-April sky, I posted it here. Here are some more suggestions to look for, with unaided eyes and binoculars or telescopes. 

Here’s an easy target in the northern sky. Polaris marks the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper, the asterism we also know as the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear). In late April after dusk, the rest of the Little Dipper extends sideways to the right from Polaris, and curves strongly upwards towards the Big Dipper.

(Above: The circumpolar stars inside the large blue circle, include both dippers and the winding constellation of Draco, the Dragon, as shown here at 9:15 pm local time. The bright star Arcturus sits just beyond the upper right corner of this sky chart.)  

The magnitude 2.06 star at the outer edge of the Little Dipper’s bowl (and closest to the Big Dipper) is slightly dimmer than Polaris and fairly easy to see. This medium-cool, reddish star is named Kochab. The other five stars of the constellation may be too dim to see from the city, but binoculars will reveal them. Don’t forget that Polaris has a dimmer companion star tucked in close to it. A backyard telescope can see them both. As the sky rotates due to Earth’s spin, that little star revolves around Polaris. 

The two dippers flank the tail of the long and winding constellation of Draco (the Dragon). It really looks like a dragon when you follow its stars! 

Shortly after the sun sets in the west, the very bright star Arcturus will appear in the eastern sky, heralding the summer stargazing season. Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the entire sky. Its name means “bear watcher” because the star follows Ursa Major around the northern sky. (The word Arctic, home of the polar bears, comes from the same root, the Greek word arktos.) 

(Above: Arcturus, the very bright, orange star that shines in the northeastern sky during mid-April evenings, can guide you to four globular star clusters (yellow symbols) and beyond them to the realm of the spring galaxies (coloured ellipses), as shown here for 9:30 pm local time.)

Four globular star clusters, spherical balls of millions of stars, populate the sky above Arcturus. At visual magnitude 6.2 and within reach of binoculars, Messier 3 is the brightest, and sits nearly 12 degrees (a generous fist’s diameter) above Arcturus. The dimmer NGC 5466, sometimes called the Snowglobe Cluster, sits less than a palm’s width to the upper left of Arcturus. Another bright globular designated Messier 53 sits 1.5 fists to the upper right of Arcturus and only a finger’s width below the star Diadem, the brightest star in Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). NGC 5053, the dimmest of the four globulars, is located 1 finger’s width below Messier 53. 

Above those globular clusters is the realm of the spring galaxies, in Virgo (the Maiden.) But that’s another story… 

Keep looking up, and enjoy the sky when you do. I love questions and requests - so, send me some!