At the intersection of community and law is Jonathan Anschell, a 1983 CJA Grade 9 alumnus. Now living in Los Angeles, Jonathan has built a career in entertainment and media law and has served as Chief Legal Officer at Mattel for the past six years, after fifteen years as General Counsel for CBS Television. Throughout his career, he has remained committed to helping the people around him, both professionally and within the local Jewish community.
Jonathan has a deep appreciation for the education he received at the CJA and the role it played in developing both his passion for Jewish life and the skills that became fundamental to his life. Hannah Harel, his Hebrew teacher in grades 3-4, was pivotal because, as Jonathan says, “suddenly it all clicked,” and “a lot of [my enjoyment for Hebrew] is directly attributed to her.” He also remembers the encouragement of Donna Lyseng, his junior high social studies teacher and student council advisor, who challenged him to write, think, and speak, providing him with “skills that we could carry forward in life.”
Jonathan credits many of the lessons and memories he gained at the CJA with shaping his commitment to community. As he shares, “sometimes it’s those smaller moments that really add up to shape who we are.” He believes that growing up in a small Jewish community also cultivated a sense of collective responsibility. Now living in Los Angeles, where it can be easy to feel lost, he sees an advantage to having grown up in close-knit Jewish Calgary, where there was a sense that everyone had to do their part for the community to flourish.
For as long as he can remember, Jonathan has wanted to be a lawyer. He ultimately found his way to entertainment and media law, which he describes as “a fun area to practice” that “ always presents interesting questions.” His involvement in the Jewish community over the past 25 years has also helped Jonathan build relationships that “have been helpful over the course of my career,” he explains, “as they also have touch points in the Jewish community as well.”
Although Jonathan values his professional work and volunteer efforts, he is most proud of his daughter Sarah, her own involvement in the Jewish community, and what she has accomplished as a young Jewish leader. She attended Jewish day school, later served as co-chair of the Jewish Students Organization at her high school, and now is a first-year student at Harvard University.
As one can see, Jewish day school has been a thread running through generations of the Anschell family. His mother taught junior high science at the CJA’s predecessor institution, the Calgary Hebrew School, while his three step-brothers attended I.L. Peretz School, and Jonathan chose a Jewish day school education for his own daughter. Decades after leaving Calgary, the sense of Jewish identity and collective responsibility nurtured during his childhood continues to shape both his own life and the next generation.