Growing up, Allan Novak assumed his family was fairly ordinary: modest, witty, hardworking Jewish immigrants who found a new live in Canada after the war. That his mother was one of four sibling survivors was noteworthy, but the outside world did not take notice.

That is, until the siblings all began reaching the age of 100.

Once international reporters and Holocaust foundations discovered the story of the world's oldest survivor siblings, Novak—a veteran director who worked with Canadian comedy icons in the 1980s and '90s—decided to turn the camera on his own family. The result is a 30-minute documentary called Crossing the River: From Poland to Paradise, featuring intimate and insightful interviews with his aunts, uncle and mother, the youngest of whom is 96-years-old. The film has been touring the festival circuit this year and is currently available on-demand.

Novak sat down to share his family's remarkable story with his longtime friend and collaborator, Ralph Benmergui, on the latest episode of Not That Kind of Rabbi.

Credits

• Host: Ralph Benmergui
• Producer: Michael Fraiman
• Music: Yevhen Onoychenko

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Michael Coren has lived many lives. Born to a Jewish cab driver in England, Coren converted to Catholocism in the 1980s, then Evangelicalism in the '90s; he grew into a bombastic right-wing Christian talk radio and TV personality with shows on the Sun News Network and the Crossroads Television System; then he came back to embrace the Catholic Church, before finally leaving again to become not just an Anglican—but an Anglican priest.

Coren's spiritual malleability—including open repentance for insulting comments he made about queer people decades ago, and the journey he's taken to fundamentally change various political opinions—is at the heart of his new memoir, Heaping Coals: From Media Firebrand to Anglican Priest, published in October 2024. In it, he recounts how he never considered how hard it was for his parents when he left his home country for Canada, and how his perspective on Christian values has changed, while the role of Christiandom has shifted in the broader Western world.

Coren sits down with fellow former broadcaster Ralph Benmergui for a frank talk about his numerous mea culpas, handling backlash on social media and the profound difficulty in forgiveness.

Credits

• Host: Ralph Benmergui
• Producer: Michael Fraiman
• Music: Yevhen Onoychenko

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• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Not That Kind of Rabbi (Not sure how? Click here)

Both of Eva Almos's parents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother, from Lithuania, was a kind and gentle soul who went out of her way to uplift strangers and support her daughter. But her father was the opposite: a traditional Greek man with chauvinist ideas who was hardened by the horrors of the Holocaust. The duality sent Almos into therapy, where she spent years trying to piece herself together.

All this time, she was making a career in the Los Angeles entertainment industry. She's worked on numerous cartoons from the 1980s to today, including Care Bears, Pinky and the Brain and the popular current PBS show Wild Kratts. But her latest project has a very different vibe. Almos voices numerous characters in The CJN's new original audio drama, Justice: A Holocaust Zombie Story, including a survivor whose voice she styled after her late mother.

To explain more about her inspiration and life, Eva Almos sat down with her old friend Ralph Benmergui for a candid conversation about the impacts of generational trauma and the new zombie audio drama, available at thecjn.ca/zombies.

Credits

• Host: Ralph Benmergui
• Producer: Michael Fraiman
• Music: Yevhen Onoychenko

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Not That Kind of Rabbi (Not sure how? Click here)