The Schmooze Podcast

Calgary’s Jewish Community Podcast: Weekly episodes: events, interviews, stories & thoughtful takes.

Don & Jared host.

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Jewish culture is not the problem.

The question is whether some institutions now emphasize “culture” to avoid the parts that have become politically unpopular: Israel, Zionism, and Jewish peoplehood.

At what point does adaptation become self-erasure?

Substack coming tonight.

[Israel in Canada @IsraelinCanada]

When it comes to connecting innovation and technology: this is what Israel is all about💪

On the @SchmoozeYYC Podcast, Ambassador @MoedIddo highlighted Calgary as an exemplary model to spearhead the Israel-Canada innovation partnership, with cutting-edge technological ventures like @CheckPointSW 🇮🇱🇨🇦

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

A Thought Don'd on Me...
Every story begins with a choice.
Not whether to tell the truth...
But which truth matters most.

So here's the question:

Are we being informed... or are we being guided toward a particular way of feeling?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Canada is constantly told to use its leverage against Israel.

But why didn’t it use any leverage against Qatar, which hosted Hamas leaders after October 7?

The question isn’t whether Canada could have applied it.

It’s why that pressure was reserved almost entirely for Israel.

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

At what point does anti-colonialism become colonial?

Is it when it begins deciding who is indigenous?

Or when it claims the authority to rewrite another people's story?

That's the question behind my latest essay, Who Decides?

https://t.co/0TZV1BwAGJ

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

It's an honour to have our conversation with Ambassador Moed shared by the Embassy of Israel in Canada.
When we started The Schmooze, our goal was simple: create a space for great conversations that build understanding and strengthen community.

This does exactly that.
🇨🇦🇮🇱

[Israel in Canada @IsraelinCanada]

What makes Israel so different from other nations? We have a SPARK for innovation✨📈

Following our Israeli business delegation to Calgary Stampede, Ambassador Moed joined @SchmoozeYYC to discuss the Embassy's entrepreneurial events and the Alberta-Israel partnership🇮🇱🇨🇦

https://t.co/iAF5HgSsr3

https://t.co/9k7KFtfIaL

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

NOW LIVE.

Episode 33 of The Schmooze features Israeli Ambassador @MoedIddo from @IsraelinCanada.

A thoughtful conversation about leadership, diplomacy, Canada–Israel relations, innovation, resilience, and hope.

Watch now: https://t.co/efzNirQJUE

#TheSchmooze #Israel #Canada

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Tomorrow.

Episode 33 of The Schmooze features Israeli Ambassador @MoedIddo.

Beyond politics.

A conversation about leadership, diplomacy, innovation, resilience, and hope.

🎙️ Premieres Monday, July 20.

#TheSchmooze #Israel #Canada #yyc

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Why has Israel gone to such extraordinary lengths to recover the remains of hostages and fallen soldiers?

Michael Switzer explains the Jewish tradition behind bringing loved ones home.

Sometimes history makes more sense when you understand the values behind it.

[Jason Kenney 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱 @jkenney]

Utterly pathetic.

The left has become so infantilized, and so enthralled by antisemitism, that it is now deemed “hurtful” to be in the presence of the Ambassador of the world’s only Jewish country.

The putative reason Nenshi gives for his humiliating statement is “civilian casualties” in Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, which executed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and whose primary goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.

If civilian casualties in a just war make a country and its representatives pariahs, that would include Canada’s role in the two world wars, Korea, and Afghanistan.

Nenshi certainly couldn’t abide being in the presence of Winston Churchill or FDR.

I have seen @nenshi attend @CJPAC and other pro-Israel events for years, including this Stampede. So I expected better from him.

For shame.

[Israel in Canada @IsraelinCanada]

STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR IDDO MOED:

“Friendship should never be controversial.”

At Calgary Stampede with a 6-person tech delegation, I reconnected with Albertan friends old and new, and saw firsthand the growing strength of the Israel–Alberta partnership.

But it’s unacceptable for hate to creep and fester into a space built on hospitality, undermining the respect and empathy that should define it.

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Criticism of Israel is legitimate.

But when false claims are defended and Israel is judged by standards applied to no other country, when does scrutiny become obsession?

🎙️ The Schmooze Between: When Criticism of Israel Becomes Obsession

Watch: https://t.co/8HQ8Ov9BnD

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

@nenshi had it right the first time.

My new Substack examines what his shocking reversal means for leadership, western hospitality and Jewish and Israeli Albertans.

Dialogue is not endorsement. Civility is not complicity.

Read here: https://t.co/7voxSM0Aa8

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

COMING JULY 20

Episode 33 of The Schmooze features Israeli Ambassador Iddo Moed.

We discuss:
• Canada–Israel relations
• Rising antisemitism
• Innovation
• Calgary
• The Nenshi photo controversy
• Why friendship still matters
🎙️ Premieres Monday.
#TheSchmooze #yyc #Israel

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

At Stampede, @albertaNDP Leader @nenshi told protesters:

“That’s not how we do things here.”

Days later, he apologized for the “harm” caused by a photo with Israel’s ambassador.

Leadership means resisting pressure from your own side, too.

Naheed or Ya-Heed?

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

A Thought Don'd on Me:

Should we rename the @CMHR_News the Canadian Museum of Hateful Rhetoric?

But because institutions should be judged by what they tolerate, not just by the values they proclaim.

Should the CMHR keep its current name, or has it lost the right to it?

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.

But if “lecturing countries from afar” is ineffective when dealing with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, why does Israel receive a different public approach?

The issue is not criticism. It is consistency.

A new #AShoreThing from #TheSchmooze.

[j.r. shore @jrshore]

The faux anti-colonial mob won't think twice about cheering for Spain over Argentina because their ideology is morally bankrupt. Argentina supports Israel and that's enough for them.

[The Schmooze Podcast @SchmoozeYYC]

"We naturally shun the subject... maybe it'll just go away."

It won't.

Michael Switzer explains why having these conversations before they're needed may be one of the greatest gifts we can give our families.

Watch the clip from Episode 32 of #TheSchmooze.

[Jonah Platt @JonahPlatt]

FIFA world cup semifinals: THE JEW VIEW.

Four countries left. One question that actually matters: Who should Jews root for?! Let's see...🤔

A completely objective, deeply petty, historically rigorous ranking.

🇫🇷 France:
✔ Expelled the Jews in 1182. Let them back.
✔ Expelled them in 1306. Let them back.
✔ Expelled them AGAIN in 1394. Practice makes perfect.
✔ Framed the only Jewish officer on its General Staff for treason (the Dreyfus Affair) — a trial so antisemitic it inspired a journalist named Theodor Herzl to invent modern Zionism.
✔ Then Vichy France helped deport 75,000 Jews to the camps.
⚽ Points for: 3rd largest Jewish community on Earth. Accidentally created Zionism. Excellent kosher wine.
📂 Current form: Record antisemitism. Aliyah applications through the roof.

JEW VIEW SCALE: 4/10 for inventing modern Zionism (by accident)

🇪🇸 Spain:
✔ Invented the Inquisition (1478). Nobody expected it.
✔ Then 1492: convert, leave, or die — fifteen centuries of Spanish Jewry ended with one royal signature.
✔ The expulsion decree stayed legally in force for 476 years.
✔ Spain revoked it in 1968. Yes. THAT 1968.
⚽ Points for: Offered citizenship to Sephardic descendants in 2015. Only 523 years late. Great tapas (we checked — not kosher).
🇮🇱 Current form: ~40,000 Jews left, and a government going for Western Europe's gold medal in anti-Israel hysteria.

JEW VIEW SCALE: 1.5/10 for knowing what they did, but refusing to admit or talk about it. Ok

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England:
✔ Invented the blood libel — Norwich, 1144. History's worst export.
✔ First country in Europe to expel its ENTIRE Jewish population (1290). The ban lasted 366 years.
✔ In 2025, Jews were murdered outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur.
⚽ Points for: The Balfour Declaration. 5th largest Jewish community in the world. Readmitted the Jews in 1656 because Cromwell heard we were good for business — flattering AND insulting.
🥯 Current form: Despite scyrocketing record of antisemitism, multiple shootings, stabbings, and bombings, the North London bagels are holding the line.

JEW VIEW SCALE: 3/10 – "giveth the blood libel, giveth the Balfour"

🇦🇷 Argentina:
✔ Opened the door to thousands of Nazis after WWII. Eichmann. Mengele. A whole retirement plan.
✔ In 1994, the AMIA bombing killed 85 people — the deadliest attack on Jews outside Israel since the Holocaust.
✔ Iran and Hezbollah. Still unpunished.
⚽ Points for: The Mossad caught Eichmann in Buenos Aires anyway — thanks for the address. Largest Jewish community in Latin America. Current president studies Torah, wept at the Western Wall, and says he wants to convert. The most philosemitic head of state on Earth.
✡️ Current form: From Nazi haven to "is the president having a bar mitzvah?" in one generation.

JEW VIEW SCALE: 7.5/10 for “character development”

So, who are YOU rooting for?