Rabbi Steven Wernick

26/05/2026

At our Tikkun Layl Shavuot last week, Bruce Elman — retired law professor, dean, and Constitutional law expert — asked a question I'd never considered: Why does the Ninth Commandment use two different words for "false witness"?

In Exodus: sheker — a deliberate lie.
In Deuteronomy: shav — something more insidious. A misleading frame. A true fact deployed to deceive.

That distinction has never felt more urgent. Our new Times of Israel piece explores what the Torah knew about misinformation — and what Yossi Klein Halevi is saying we need to hear about the narrative war being waged against Israel and the Jewish people.

Go to my Times of Israel Blog to read the entire piece. Link in comments.

From the blog of Steven C. Wernick at The Times of Israel

26/05/2026

At our Tikkun Layl Shavuot last week, Bruce Elman — retired law professor, dean, and Constitutional law expert — asked a question I'd never considered: Why does the Ninth Commandment use two different words for "false witness"?

In Exodus: sheker — a deliberate lie.
In Deuteronomy: shav — something more insidious. A misleading frame. A true fact deployed to deceive.

That distinction has never felt more urgent. Our new Times of Israel piece explores what the Torah knew about misinformation — and what Yossi Klein Halevi is saying we need to hear about the narrative war being waged against Israel and the Jewish people.

Go to my Times of Israel Blog to read the entire piece. Link in comments.

Http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/they-argue-narrative-we-argue-fact-what-torah-knew/

11/05/2026

Last Thursday night, Beth Tzedec hosted a conversation that belongs in a much wider public.

Bruce Elman (Co-Chair, CIJA Legal Task Force and our own Board member), Mark Ross (LTF Steering Committee), and Noah Shack (CEO, CIJA) sat together and laid out what the Jewish legal community is doing to combat antisemitism in Canada — in courts, in schools, in workplaces, in unions.

This past Shabbat's Torah portion has something to say about all of it.

Read: "The Mountain Doesn't Blink. Neither Do We." — The Times of Israel: The Blogs

Link in Comments

05/05/2026

From its very beginning, Jewish life has unfolded on both sides of the river. The tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh chose to settle outside the land. Moses did not condemn them — but he did make them swear something binding: cross over and fight alongside your brothers. Tie your destiny to theirs.

That is the conversation we still need to be having about aliyah — not as a litmus test, but as a calling that belongs to all of Am Yisrael, not just one denominational corner of it.

In a new piece for eJewishPhilanthropy responding to Adam Ferziger's important April op-ed, I share data from my role as Chair of The Jewish Agency's aliyah committee that reframes the conversation — and I name what we in the non-Orthodox world owe Israel, and what Israel still owes us.

A Jew who builds a deeply engaged Jewish life in Toronto and raises children who love their people is success. And there is a notch above. Both are true. Both belong in the conversation.

Adam Ferziger has done the Jewish philanthropic community a genuine service in his recent op-ed for eJewishPhilanthropy, “The aliyah imperative and the philanthropic dilemma: Navigating the Modern Orthodox crossroads” (April 6). His analysis of the April 2026 YU Torah To-Go symposium names som...

04/05/2026

Last Friday night, Beth Tzedec hosted something we believe matters.

Jewish and Persian university students — brought together by Hillel of Greater Toronto — shared a Shabbat dinner. Three flags on every table: Israeli, Canadian, Persian. Two anthems sung at the close of the evening. One Shabbat.

The Jewish-Persian relationship is three thousand years old. Cyrus the Great is called meshiach — anointed one — in the Book of Isaiah. The Talmud was compiled on Persian soil. The natural grain of this civilization runs toward alliance, not enmity.

It took a theocratic revolution in 1979 to obscure that. But it couldn't erase it.

In my Times of Israel Blog I reflect on what the evening revealed — and what it means beyond Toronto.

🔗 Link embedded in picture due to Canadian Law and Social Media News.

23/04/2026

Read the latest from Rabbi Steven Wernick at Canadian Jewish News (The CJN)
𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗝𝗲𝘄𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆

21/04/2026

The most jarring moment in the Jewish calendar doesn't happen on Yom Kippur.
It happens tonight.

One moment: sirens. Silence. Tears. Names. The weight of nearly 33,000 fallen soldiers, security personnel, and victims of terror since 1948 — and this year, more than 2000 since October 7.

And then — music. Fireworks. Am Yisrael Chai.
No other people does this. No other calendar asks you to move, in a single breath, from the deepest grief to the most defiant joy. Not because the grief is over. But because the joy is an act of faith — faith that the lives we mourn were not lost in vain, that the state they died to build is worth celebrating, worth defending, worth loving.

This year, I find the transition harder than ever. And more necessary than ever.

Yom Hazikaron v'Yom Ha'atzmaut. Memory and Independence. They are not opposites. They are inseparable.

May the memory of the fallen be for blessing. And may we find the courage — through tears — to say: Happy 78th Birthday, Israel. We love you. We need you. We will not let you go.

Chag Atzmaut Sameach. 🇮🇱

31/03/2026

Some of our congregants called the police this week.

They had received a yellow bag at their door — stamped with JUDE and a Magen David in barbed wire. It was our annual Yom HaShoah yahrzeit candle delivery, a tradition Beth Tzedec founded that is now practiced by communities worldwide.

We had announced it in advance.
But when they got home and saw that bag, they didn't remember the newsletter. They saw symbols of persecution and thought: someone is sending me a message.

They weren't wrong to be afraid. They were right to be vigilant. That's exactly what worries me.

New piece in the Times of Israel on fear, Passover, and what this moment is costing us as a community. Link in photo and link. Canada views TOI Blog as news and won't allow link.

Beth Tzedec Congregation Rabbinical Assembly United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism The Jewish Theological Seminary - JTS The Jewish Agency for Israel #