As the Jewish Heritage Centre’s 6th annual speaker in its Sol and Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture Series, political commentator David Frum will speak to the topic “Is Time Running Out for Israel.” The lecture takes place Thursday, April 28 at 8 pm at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue. Lecture sponsorships that include tickets and a tax receipt are available starting at $100. Individual tickets are $36, $24 seniors and students. An American Sign Language interpreter will be present at the lecture. Contact JHC at 477-7460 or jhcwc.org

On January 25 on cnn.com, Frum wrote about the leak of Palestinian documents to Al Jazeera:  “It's being called a Palestinian WikiLeaks: a dump of 1,600 Palestinian Authority documents to Al-Jazeera and the British newspaper The Guardian. The first releases reveal Palestinian negotiating concessions. Later releases will (the Guardian claims) detail the extent of Israeli-Palestinian Authority security cooperation. In the words of a Guardian columnist today: "Who will be most damaged by this extraordinary glimpse into the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Perhaps the first casualty will be Palestinian national pride, their collective sense of dignity in adversity badly wounded by the papers revealed today. "Many on the Palestinian streets will recoil to read not just the concessions offered by their representatives -- starting with the yielding of those parts of East Jerusalem settled by Israeli Jews -- but the language in which those concessions were made.” To read the entire article, go to: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/24/frum.mideast.papers/index.html

An essential component of the JHC is the extensive Irma and Marvin Penn Archive that dates from the founding of the Jewish Historical Society in 1967. In the collection are personal family records and photographs, institutional records, and several hundred oral histories; and this material is used by researchers from Winnipeg and from all over the world. A database, diligently maintained by volunteers, lists every news article published in Manitoba Jewish newspapers since their founding one hundred years ago. The Jewish Genealogy Institute has established and maintains a unique digital photographic record of every tombstone in Jewish cemeteries in Manitoba and Thunder Bay. Not only is there a visual record, but the data is also recorded on a database so families and other researchers can have accurate information at their fingertips. Photographic copies of all archival materials can be ordered from the JHC. The Jewish Heritage Centre is located at the Asper Campus.