109: The crisis no one is talking about in Canada, with Dr. Casey Babb

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Canada has long imagined itself as one of the safest, most tolerant societies on earth. For generations of Jews, it felt that way too. But something has changed, suddenly and profoundly. Synagogues have been shot at. Jewish schools targeted. People are hiding their identities, looking over their shoulder, taking down mezuzahs.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Casey Babb to ask a question few outside Canada are even aware needs asking: what is happening to Canadian Jews?

From the history of Jewish life in Canada to the shock of October 7 and its aftermath, we trace how a quiet, integrated community is now grappling with fear, isolation, and a growing sense that the country they helped build may no longer fully accept them. This isn’t just a story about Jews in Canada. It’s a story about what happens when a society loses the ability to confront its own realities -- and what that means for its future.

This episode was sponsored by Josh Sheptow and dedicated to the memory of Amnon Zilberspitz. Amnon was taken to the extermination camp at Auschwitz at age 20 with his brother and sister. Only he survived. After the war, he arrived at Kibbutz Dorot in 1947. On the Kibbutz he met Sara, the love of his life. Shortly after the War of Independence broke out, Amnon enlisted to fight. Amnon, the last of his family, fell in the Battle of Beit Guvrin at age 24. May we be worthy of Amnon and of all those who gave the only life they had to make the miracle of Israel possible.

You can learn more about Amnon in a video by Ofer Winter and Shimon Engel produced by Dov Abramson Studio for the Beit Avi Chai memorial project.

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDOj-C4mq3E&list=PLv2rnAORLiVBbV9uGbYC0ZdPq23pg2xPW

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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Habib Anything. Thank you for joining us.
0:10.4	Today we're going to take a look at Canadian Jews. The Jews of Canada are going through
0:14.7	what is probably an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitic attacks. I mean shootings at synagogues, things we haven't seen before,
0:23.1	things that a lot of Canadian Jews are telling us they can't remember ever experiencing.
0:28.0	And a government that many are saying isn't protecting them, isn't present, isn't doing what it
0:33.3	needs to do. We're going to dive today, not just into the present, but into the history of
0:38.3	Canadian Jews. When did Jews come to Canada? What brought them? What's different about Canadian
0:43.7	Jews when compared to people who speak a very similar English to them, which is American Jews? But
0:49.2	nevertheless, they live in a culture that's very different in many ways. And then finally, why has the situation in Canada soured?
0:59.4	Why are they experiencing this wave?
1:01.6	What exactly is happening?
1:03.5	A lot of people hear occasionally the news reports,
1:06.7	but we don't actually know much about this community,
1:09.6	even if we think we're talking to them,
1:11.6	even if Canadian Jews are Hollywood actors that we learn to love.
1:16.1	Our guest today, to talk about all these issues, what's happening to Canadian Jews,
1:20.9	is Dr. Casey Bab, the director of the Promise Land Project with a McDonald-Lorese institute in Ottawa,
1:27.0	an international fellow at the
1:28.8	Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, a fellow with a Royal United Services
1:33.7	Institute in London, England. He's one of Canada's foremost experts on confronting the hatred
1:39.9	of Jews. He is well-published also. Listeners, this podcast might know his byline from the Wall
1:45.9	Street Journal, from the free press, and elsewhere. Before we get into it, I want to tell you that this
	...

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