H eadlines
NEWSBRIEFS Canadian Jewish News Restarts, Eyes
Younger Audience with Digital Approach
THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS, which shut
down operations in April 2020, relaunched on Sept.

1 as a digital-first enterprise aimed at a younger
audience, JTA reported.

The largest Jewish news organization in Canada
will prioritize digital content, including email
newsletters and podcasts, and scale back its print
edition from weekly to four times a year.

CJN, which resumed producing a small amount
of content over the past year, now employs seven
full-time staffers. That’s down from 40 in 2013 and
less than half of the 16 on the masthead when it closed
last year.

The COVID shutdown was “a bit of a gift” in disguise,
said Marc Weisblott, CJN’s new managing editor.

“That liberated the next iteration from the
customary publishing style,” he said. “It allowed us to
reinvent what the CJN would be.”
up from 7,313 in 2019 and the most since 2008, the
FBI said.

The FBI relies on hate crime reports from more
than 15,000 police precincts nationwide, but a 2020
Department of Justice report found that 87% of
precincts reported zero hate crimes in 2017.

The Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit
pegged the number of antisemitic incidents in 2020
at 2,024.

“Data drives policy and without having a complete
picture of the problem, we cannot even begin to
resolve the issues driving this surge in hate and
violence,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said,
calling the lack of reporting by police precincts as
“simply not credible.”
American Jewish Athlete Wins Paralympics
Table Tennis Gold in Tokyo
Jewish-American Ian Seidenfeld upset the world No.

1 at the Tokyo Paralympics to win a gold medal in
table tennis on Aug. 28.

Seidenfeld, 20, followed the footsteps of his
FBI: Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes Drop in 2020 —
father Mitchell, a four-time Paralympic table tennis
or Did They?
medalist, who won gold in Barcelona in 1992. His
The FBI said that anti-Jewish hate crimes dropped
father now
coaches the Team USA Paralympics table
29% from 953 in 2019 to 676 last year, but some people
tennis squad.

are questioning the data, JTA reported.

Seidenfeld beat defending champion Peter
In all, hate crimes nationwide climbed to 7,759,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM JEWISH EXPONENT
Rosenmeier of Denmark, 3-0, to win. He had lost to
Rosenmeier in preliminary-round play.

Both Seidenfelds have Pseudoachondroplasia
dwarfism, an inherited bone growth disorder. They
competed in Class 6, “for players who can stand but
have severe impairments in their arms and legs.”
Amsterdam Museum Says it Will Return
Wassily Kandinsky Painting to Jewish Family
Amsterdam said its city-owned museum should
return a Wassily Kandinsky painting acquired from
a Jewish family that was under duress during the
Holocaust, JTA said.

“Painting with Houses” — believed to be worth
at least $22 million — will be transferred from the
city-owned Stedelijk Museum to the family of Irma
Klein, the museum said in a statement. The family has
fought in the courts for about a decade to retrieve the
painting, which prompted international pressure and
protests in support.

Klein and her husband sold “Painting with Houses”
in the 1940s for the modern-day equivalent of about
$1,600 because they needed money to survive the
Holocaust. The painting is considered stolen by the Conference
on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
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