antisemitism – Jewish Independent

Compassion over hate

Tony McAleer, who helped found the organization Life After Hate, spoke at Congregation Beth Tikvah last month, along with fellow Life After Hate member Brad Galloway. (photo by Pat Johnson)

A former leader in Canada’s far-right white nationalist movements says targets of white supremacist extremism should not be expected to “hug a Nazi.” But, as difficult as it may be, seeing the humanity in everyone and finding compassion for people who lack compassion may be key to reducing the problem of racist extremism.

Tony McAleer was a member of the so-called White Aryan Resistance and his early embrace of technology and the internet helped propel that movement into the digital age. He later helped found the organization Life After Hate and now works with others who want to leave the neo-Nazi movement. He shared his personal history at Beth Tikvah synagogue, in Richmond, on Sept. 8. He has also spoken at other synagogues and venues in recent weeks.

“While we condemn the activities, while we condemn the ideology, we don’t condemn the human being,” McAleer said of his organization’s strategy. “It’s coming from that place of compassion.… The hardest thing to do in the world is to have compassion for people who don’t have compassion. We do that as harm reduction – hurt people hurt people, and we can bring them back from that place of hurt so they don’t do it anymore.”

McAleer grew up in a stable, comfortable Dunbar home, which contradicts some stereotypes, he said. He attended private Catholic school but lost respect for authority figures when he caught his father with a woman who was not McAleer’s mother.

“Can anyone remember the day when God fell off the pedestal?” he asked. His grades fell, his behaviour deteriorated and he was regularly sent to the principal’s office for canings.

“When I look back on it, I don’t think that I’ve ever felt more powerless than I did in that office time after time after time after time,” he said. “It didn’t make my grades go up. I continued to tune out.… I went from listening to Elton John and Queen to the Clash and the Sex Pistols. I was angry and the music I listened to was angry. It eventually led me down the road into the punk scene and later into the skinhead scene. And, in the skinhead scene, I found an outlet for my anger.”

Ideology is secondary, at best, as an attractant to racist groups, he said.

“What we find in the young men and women who are drawn to these movements is there’s an underlying rage, underlying vulnerability that makes the ideology so seductive,” he said. “I want to be very clear here. I’m not for a minute blaming anything I did on my childhood. Everything I did I chose to do and I take accountability for that and I always will. I work for Life After Hate, do things like this to pay back for that.”

He shares the story of his early life as an explanation, not as a justification, he said.

“What I found in the movement, what I found from being a skinhead – I found a sense of power, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning,” McAleer said. “I got power when I felt powerless. I got attention when I felt invisible and I got brotherhood, camaraderie and acceptance when I felt unlovable.… Those are the vulnerabilities that make the ideologies so seductive. If you have those in a healthy way, the ideology doesn’t make sense to you. But, for somebody craving those things, the ideology becomes something powerful, a false seduction.”

When he was 21 years old, McAleer’s girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl.

“For the first time, I connected to another human being. Up until that point, I was completely cut off from my heart, I was completely dehumanized,” he said. “I believe that the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mirror reflection of how internally disconnected and dehumanized that we are.”

That began the transformation. He had a son months later and was soon a single father being assisted by his mother who, he said, “never gave up on me.”

“It’s safe to love a child,” he said. “They see the magnificence in us when we can’t see it ourselves when we look in the mirror…. The more I can connect to my humanity, the more I can connect to the rest of humanity. I couldn’t connect to the rest of humanity because I couldn’t connect to myself.”

Though he was heavily involved in antisemitism, it wasn’t about Jews, he said.

“I was projecting my crap and I had a vehicle to project it onto – the Jewish people – and that’s what I did.”

The compassion Life After Hate promotes must be accompanied by healthy boundaries and consequences, he said.

“It doesn’t mean we let people off the hook. It doesn’t mean we don’t hold people accountable,” he said. “We do hold them accountable. It’s like tough love. But we need to see the humanity, even in someone whose heart is filled with hate. I don’t think we can afford to dehumanize anybody regardless of how inhuman their behaviour. I believe that nobody is irredeemable. It’s tough work.”

Brad Galloway, who is also a member of Life After Hate, joined McAleer at the event. Also a former white supremacist, Galloway is now completing a degree in the school of criminology and criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. He researches extremism and participates in interventions with members of hate groups to help them leave the movements.

Galloway too came from a middle- to upper-class home. After a fairly typical adolescence and a period of struggling to find his identity, he ran into a childhood friend who was involved in the white power movement.

“I was looking for an identity,” said Galloway. “I was looking for something to belong to, something that I can call my own. He gave me the chance. We’ll give you brotherhood, we’ll back you up, we’ll be there for you … some sort of pseudo-support network which never, never came to fruition. They never provided any of those things for me.”

photo - Brad Galloway — Brad Galloway *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

Like McAleer, it was fatherhood that made Galloway realize his extremism was putting his family at risk.

He also reflects on compassion he received from police and others during his time in the far-right.

“Why do these people care about me?” he wondered, adding that he began to recognize that individuals who were kindest to him were often members of the very cultural groups he demonized. After a gang brawl where Galloway was nearly killed, he saw compassion in action.

“I ended up in a hospital and I’m lying on the table and a doctor walks in and he’s an Orthodox Jew. I’m lying there with a swastika shirt on, blood all over me, thinking this guy should not help me. I do not deserve to be helped at all right now…. I felt like I was a terrible person and I didn’t feel I deserved this person’s time,” said Galloway. “He did not mention anything about me. He just did his job as a doctor and provided me exactly what I needed. That moment made me start to think about all these different times when minority communities had been good to me.”

Since the racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, Life After Hate has been inundated with requests for help. About 300 new cases have opened, about half of which are people trying to leave the movement, the other half family seeking help to extricate their loved ones.

Cpl. Anthony Statham, one of two members of the RCMP’s B.C. Hate Crimes Unit also spoke, outlining the legal strategies employed to fight extremism.

McAleer’s book, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion has just been released by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Focus on online hate

Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. (photo from Wosk Centre)

Hate in British Columbia, in Canada and globally is on the rise. In 2017, there were 255 police-reported hate crimes in British Columbia, an increase of 55% from just two years earlier. In 2018, Metro Vancouver had the highest rate of hate crimes reported to police in any of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, most based on the victim’s ethnicity or religion, with a smaller but significant number based on sexual orientation.

These alarming statistics, and others, provided a framework and urgency for an event Sept. 12 at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver. The event, titled From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age, is envisioned as the inaugural annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

Contextualizing the discussion, Shauna Sylvester, executive director of the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, cited the results of a report undertaken by her organization. These indicate that one in three Canadians believes Canadian-born citizens should have greater say in government than those born outside the country. One-quarter of Canadians say we have too many protections for minorities and one in four also believes we have too many protections for religious freedom.

Keynote speaker at the forum was Kasari Govender, in just her second week on the job as British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. She is the first to hold this role in the province since that office was closed in 2002.

“In my view, there is a strong connection between hateful speech and hateful violence, both on an individual and a systemic level,” she said, citing racist manifestoes sometimes posted online by perpetrators in advance of a mass killing. She said it is necessary to trace the path from speech to violence.

A common theme of recent mass murderers is anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes emphasizing the “purity of the nation, whether that nation is Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. or another,” she said, adding that many of the attacks around the world that have been linked to white nationalism correspond to discourse in mainstream political debates over immigration and public policy.

The worst antisemitic mass murder in United States history, the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, happened while U.S. President Donald Trump and others were promoting fears of the so-called “migrant caravan” coming from Central America. Part of that conversation, Govender said, “was somehow blaming the Jews for this migrant caravan, drawing a connection in the public discourse, and then there was the shooting.”

Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, compared women who wear burqas to bank robbers, which led, Govender said, to an increase in acts of hate against Muslim women in the United Kingdom.

Online hate is a particular product of technologies that have emerged in recent decades, she said. “The anonymity, reach and immediacy afforded by the internet escalates the problem beyond what we’ve seen before,” she said. “The internet is a very effective tool for fomenting hate from belief to action, from hateful words to violent actions.”

While forcing social media platforms to police hate speech might be criticized as an infringement of free expression, she said, the opposite is true. Regulating platforms to shut down violent rhetoric actually improves access to freedom of expression for many, as people of colour, women and others are being silenced online by racism and misogyny, she said.

Participants at the Wosk Centre offered a wide range of perspectives.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, outlined the approach his agency takes in confronting online hatred.

“Legal [action] would be our last recourse against a hate group or a hate propagandist,” he noted, saying that their first response is to “try to hold somebody socially accountable.” That means, if the person is anonymous, exposing them. If the person is not anonymous, this might mean bringing their posts to the attention of their employers, family and friends.

“Those might provide checks on their behaviour,” he said, adding, “We’re not really trying to reform people here, we’re just trying to stop the spread of hate propaganda.”

For those who do not respond to social accountability, Balgord said, Canada’s laws are insufficient. Application of the Criminal Code’s section that deals with the wilful promotion of hate and distribution of hate propaganda is unwieldy.

“We did use to have a better recourse,” he said. “It was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would allow a private individual to essentially file a complaint, which would be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, if found credible, would go to the tribunal. They could order a cease-and-desist order against that individual and up to a $5,000 fine.” If, at that point, the individual failed to comply, they would be in contravention of a court order and could face jail.

“We really want to see something like Section 13 come back,” he said.

Several speakers agreed that social media platforms need to do more policing of hate speech. Some countries have laws that force social media companies to address hate material on their platforms within certain timeframes or face serious fines.

Social media platforms, Balgord said, may already be in contravention of Canada’s existing laws against discrimination in the provision of a commercial service, because women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and other members of targeted groups are exposed to abuse, harassment and death threats that could drive them off the platform.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, noted that government budgets are limited but that education can take place everywhere – and that everyone is an educator. Early childhood is crucial, she said.

“What children do together, the songs they sing, the books they read, all of that becomes the building blocks of the way they think,” she said. “All of us who interact with children have an opportunity to begin to teach values of respecting difference, helping others, nonviolence.… One week of summer camp with friends on a theme of diversity, peace, public service – these are experiences that stay with teens and we really, really bring them into young adulthood in a different way.”

A speaker from the audience, a counselor and educator, noted that inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, makes people susceptible to fear and that can become a foundation for hate.

Another speaker contended that there is, in effect, no such thing as race.

“I think it’s very problematic to use the term race as if it’s a reality,” he said. “There is such a thing as racism but not really race. If you look at the majority of anthropologists, geneticists and so on, they say that we have much, much more in common with each other [than differences].… Even using terms like black and white to refer to people reinforces racism. We never call people yellow anymore, because that’s racist. We need to come up with a new language that doesn’t emphasize unreal differences and that are respectful to everybody.”

Lorene Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, contended that sharing one another’s stories is an effective means to education.

“People really don’t know the stories,” she said. “For sure, there are some people who do, but they don’t know the [extent of the] harm that was done and the intergenerational trauma.”

She applied lessons of the past to current events. “In 2019, Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians are horrified by some of the hateful rhetoric we’re hearing [that] could be lifted from 1942,” she said. “If people knew their history, more people would be going, ‘Wait a minute. What we did back in 1942 was wrong. Why are we saying the same things about people from [other] countries, putting people in camps, separating families, separating children from their families?’ All that stuff happened to Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians and it’s being repeated today.”

She added: “We feel it’s our duty that what happened to our community must never happen to another community again.”

Clint Curle, senior advisor to the president of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, agreed that education is pivotal.

“Is there a lesson, an experience, we can give children especially that will make them resistant to hate speech and resistant to hateful violence?” asked Curle. He compared hatred to a communicable disease.

“If this was polio, what would we do? If this was polio, we would do what we did, which is vaccinate. The way vaccinations work is you get children and you give them just enough of something close to the disease [so] that they develop an internal resistance to it, so, when they encounter the disease, there is something within them that says, no. So, when they encounter hate, they’ll know.”

With more than 1.5 million visitors to the museum since it opened five years ago, Curle said what resonates, especially with young people, is exactly what Oikawa suggested.

“The thing that seems to work best is storytelling across social boundaries,” he said.

Zena Simces, a health and social service policy consultant and a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress, conceived of the annual event with her husband, Dr. Simon Rabkin.

“We felt that we wanted to enhance an understanding of human rights in our community and to create an opportunity for dialogue on human rights issues,” Simces said. “Our aim is to select current and relevant themes each year and to invite experts and community leaders and community members to advance and generate positive action.”

Rabkin, a cardiologist, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver General Hospital, added: “The dialogue this evening … is seeking to enhance our understanding and knowledge of how this increase in hate and its consequences can be addressed from legal, social media and community perspectives.”

Vancouverite’s novel on trail

Vancouver writer Aren X. Tulchinsky at the Aug. 16 unveiling in Toronto of Project Bookmark Canada’s plaque honouring his novel, The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky. (photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

The Canadian Literary Trail has a new bookmark – one honouring The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky by Vancouver writer Aren X. Tulchinsky. The 25th such plaque to be erected by Project Bookmark Canada across the country, the unveiling took place Aug. 16 in Dominico Field at Barton Avenue and Christie Street in Toronto. Tulchinsky took part in the ceremony.

“Last October, I received a phone call from Laurie Murphy, executive director of Project Bookmark Canada, letting me know my historical novel The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky was nominated for a bookmark,” Tulchinsky told the Independent. They chose to unveil the plaque on Aug. 16 because it is the day on which the 1933 riot in Christie Pits took place.

Surprised and thrilled to hear that Project Bookmark Canada and the City of Toronto would be erecting the plaque in honour of his book, Tulchinsky said, “I was particularly struck by the timing, when, right now, we are all being called upon to make sure that dark chapters of our history do not repeat themselves.”

He explained, “My novel is about a fictional Jewish Russian immigrant family, living in the Kensington Market neighbourhood in the 1930s and ’40s. The main character, Sonny Lapinsky, is a Jewish boxer. He is 9-years-old … when the riot in Christie Pits occurs and, on that night, he discovers he has boxing talent and goes on to become a professional boxer. That same night, tragedy strikes the Lapinsky family.

“Many Canadians are not familiar with the 1933 riot, which involved 15,000 people and is the largest race riot ever to occur in Canada. A group of British- and German-Canadian young men, members of the Swastika Club, set off the riot when they unfurled a huge, black and white swastika flag in Christie Pits during a packed amateur league baseball game on a hot August night. The Project Bookmark plaque in Christie Pits will bring greater awareness to this piece of Canadian history and, of course, to my novel.”

Project Bookmark Canada was founded by writer Miranda Hill in 2007, with the first plaque being unveiled in 2009 – for Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, at the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto. There are bookmarks from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Vancouverites have easy access to Bookmark No. 12, which commemorates Wayson Coy’s The Jade Peony, at the southeast corner of Pender Street and Gore Avenue in Chinatown.

“Visitors are encouraged to read their way across Canada, online and in person,” said Project Bookmark board of directors president Hughena Matheson in the press release about Tulchinsky’s honour. “A launching place for conversation, collaboration and learning, the bookmarks provide a unique reading experience and a deeper understanding of the country and its people.”

“I think Project Bookmark Canada is an important organization,” said Tulchinsky. “Their goal is to get people to read Canadian books. It is vital to celebrate our unique Canadian history and, sadly, our country is constantly in the shadow of the U.S., with American books filling our bookshelves. With the loss of small independent bookstores across the country who used to promote Canadian authors, and with people buying books online from huge American corporations, many excellent Canadian books go unnoticed. As a Canadian and as a writer, I applaud the work Project Bookmark Canada is doing to bring Canadian stories to the forefront.”

photo - The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky bookmark text — The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky bookmark text. *(photo by Don Oravec)*

At the Aug. 16 unveiling, Tulchinsky read the excerpt of his novel – published under the name Karen X. Tulchinsky – that appears on the plaque. “It is the moment when, in 1933, the Swastika Club unfurled a huge swastika flag at the ninth inning of an amateur league baseball game in the park. All summer, the Swastika Club had been bullying Jews on the beaches of Toronto. On this day, they upped the ante and brought their antisemitism to the west side of town, which was mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants. After a summer of being kicked off the beaches, young Jewish men fought back. And, interestingly, the Italian men in the park joined the Jews in fighting against the Swastika Club and their allies, in what became the largest race riot ever to occur on Canadian soil.”

“Our past president, Don Oravec, spoke at the unveiling and said the novel was on his radar as a potential bookmark,” Project Bookmark’s Murphy told the Independent of how The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky was selected. “When Daniel Gelfant made an official submission to us to consider the book and its variety of Toronto settings as potential bookmarks, the wheels were set in motion. The board’s national bookmark advisory committee reviewed the proposal and approved it for development. Councilor Joe Cressy made a motion to the City of Toronto to provide funding in support of a bookmark for the Christie Pits ball field, on the anniversary of the riots in 1933. It was approved, and subsequently developed. Additional funds were raised by individual donors attending a bookmark fundraiser on Aug. 15, complete with a boxing demonstration by the author and the Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club at Jazz Bistro.”

When he first started writing the novel, Tulchinsky, who was born in Toronto, said it “was loosely based on stories my grandfather had told me about his escape from Russia before the Second World War and his early days in Toronto, where his first home in Canada was in the Kensington Market area.

“When I started researching the Jewish community in 1930s Toronto, I discovered the riot that pitted young Jewish men and their Italian allies against the Swastika Club and their gentile allies…. As a Canadian Jew, I knew immediately that I would tell my story against this backdrop, an important piece of our history that had not yet been told in fiction. So, I created a fictional family, with four sons, all of whom get involved in the riot in different ways. On the night of the riots, one of the brothers is permanently injured in a way that shatters the family, especially the main character, Sonny, whose guilt over what happened to his brother causes a rift between him and his father, that sends the family into turmoil.

“The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky, which takes place … when Hitler first came to power in Germany, and continues through the Second World War years, is about antisemitism in Canada,” he said. “It’s about how hatred only leads to more hatred and violence. At the risk of sounding like the Vancouverite I am, I believe the only cure for hate is love. Sadly, history tends to repeat itself and, today, in 2019, we are seeing a rise in hate crimes in Europe, the U.S. and here in Canada against Jews, Muslims, South American migrants and the LGBTQ community. We are witnessing the president of the United States taking children away from their asylum-seeking parents and imprisoning them in what can only be called concentration camps. The themes in my novel, sadly, are just as relevant today as ever. I hope people see the parallels in the fascism that swept the world in the 1930s with what is happening today. I just keep hoping that humans will find a better way forward that does not repeat the mistakes of our past.”

And Tulchinsky continues to examine that past.

“I am currently working on a new novel, set in 1930s Berlin, in which I follow fictional characters (Jewish and non-Jewish) as Hitler first comes to power. In the story,” he said, “we watch as the Jewish characters are systematically stripped of their civil rights, then their livelihoods and, eventually, their lives. For my research, I have read hundreds of books on the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and I can tell you there are many policies the Trump administration is pursuing in the U.S. that are taken directly from Hitler’s playbook. In the current climate, with antisemitism, racism and homophobia on the rise, I feel particularly driven to finish and publish this new novel.”

To find out more about the Canadian Literary Trail, visit projectbookmarkcanada.ca.

Concern over what to share

For many of us, it’s the beginning of the year. Not the year that starts with Rosh Hashanah. I mean, the academic year. If you’re a student, a student’s parent or a teacher, professor or other education professional, the beginning of September can mean only one thing. It’s time to get back to the grind.

This is both exciting and a nerve-racking time. You want people to like you and appreciate your skills, talents and special gifts. You want to feel welcome and make others feel welcome, too. Seeking approval is an important part of life. We all do it, right?

As overachievers, my husband and I try to start early. He mentioned that some new colleagues were moving in down the street at the beginning of August. They were moving from another country, so we should try to help, we figured. The wait for one’s belongings to arrive and pass through customs can be awhile. (For us, it took 10 days.)

My husband was out of town when they arrived, so I sprang into action. We loaned them a picnic basket filled with dishes, silverware and cups, some patio chairs and, when they asked, even a broom and dustpan.

A few days later, my husband home, we enjoyed a Saturday together out in the sunshine. When we checked our email again, we found that our new neighbour had asked us to loan more items. We apologized, but explained we weren’t usually online on Saturdays. “Oh!” she replied, “Do you do a tech Sabbath?” I had to look this up, but this term was coined in 2010 by Tiffany Shlain, an internet pioneer, and her husband, Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor. It is based loosely on the notion of unplugging from technology on a traditional Sabbath.

I was flummoxed. There seemed to be no nice way to say, “Uh, no, I do real Shabbat.” So, I thought, OK, I will try to explain. I said something like: “In the safety of Canadian diversity, we observe real Shabbat, not just ‘tech Shabbat.’

“We are Jewish and try to take the day off from Friday night to Saturday night. So, we have a big family dinner on Friday nights, we go to synagogue on Saturdays many weeks and we spend the day together, sometimes with friends. However, if you need to reach us, you can always call the landline or walk over and knock on the door. We use the phone when necessary, drive, turn on lights, etc. We are not very strict in our observance; sometimes, we spend the day as a family outside, at a farm or doing an outing together. We just try to rest and not to work.

“We hope your belongings will arrive soon!”

Her response? I kid you not – she said, “Thanks for sharing.”

I felt completely uncomfortable and embarrassed. This was from a new neighbour, someone to whom we offered the loan of various items and tried to welcome. I left it there, I had nothing else to say. My partner was somewhat more hopeful, that perhaps they were just clueless. He tried to explain how hard it is sometimes to be a minority in this way.

In the end, I realized that this fit right into the “new school year, new school experience.” Many of us are seeking approval from peers, colleagues, family members and friends. We jostle and jockey for position. We want others to admire us or, at the least, accept who we are. Then, in an effort to bond or make connections we maybe overshare with people who couldn’t care less.

At the start of the new school year, I’m often keen to make new connections, but it would have been altogether possible for me to say nothing about who we were or why we weren’t online on Saturdays. We might even have saved ourselves the trouble by not offering to loan things in the first place. However, in the interest of being welcoming to strangers and reaching out to make friends, I ended up feeling embarrassed and self-conscious rather than proud. I didn’t like it.

Before I moved to Canada, I lived in the southern United States in a place where I had good reason to feel wary about revealing too much about my religious life. We knew it could be an issue; it wasn’t an especially tolerant place.

Based on recent news events – a swastika painted on a car in a Winnipeg neighbourhood, an election scheduled for Shemini Atzeret – I have to conclude that maybe it’s time to be more careful here.

Sadly, for the first time in 10 years in Canada, I’m wondering if I would have been better off to keep my Jewish practice to myself, and reveal less. Maybe if I were hip, I’d be considering a tech Sabbath, but no. I’m connected to something that’s perhaps less popular, but a lot deeper. Sometimes, sharing this is important, even if it isn’t always the cool answer.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Intolerance is growing

A recent study indicates that Americans are increasingly tolerant of the idea that businesses should be able to refuse service to customers based on the customer’s identity.

Of those polled, 19% said that a business should be able to refuse to serve Jews, an increase from 12% the last time the question was asked five years earlier. Twenty-two percent believe that Muslims could be legally denied services, 24% said atheists should be able to be turned away and slightly fewer than one in three believe that gay, lesbian or transgender people could be denied service. Fifteen percent of respondents said that a business should have the right to refuse to serve African-Americans, an increase from 10% in 2014. Most notable is that these numbers have increased over the past five years. For example, the number of people who said gays or lesbians could be denied service almost doubled, to 30% from 16%. (The question did not include Muslims five years ago.)

The issue has come to a head on a couple of occasions, such as when bakeries have refused to provide cakes for same-sex weddings. But it is the increase in the feelings of exclusion that have grown over the past half-decade that indicate we are not in a period of unfettered progress in our acceptance of diversity.

Some economists would suggest that the market should decide the matter – a business that turns away customers may have more trouble surviving, or it may benefit from an increase in like-minded clients, but that is of concern only to its owner. Others would say, if a baker doesn’t want to bake your wedding cake because they are prejudiced against your sexual orientation, why on earth would you want to patronize them? Of course, the principle of equality goes beyond economics. Court decisions in Canada and the United States have indicated that the law will not tolerate the refusal of service to identifiable groups by a business or service that otherwise is available to the general public.

There are nuances to the discussion, though.

This year, the White Rock Pride Society claimed discrimination after the Star of the Sea Catholic church refused to rent a venue to the LGBTQ organization. Here is where things get a little more complicated. A Catholic individual – or a Muslim, or a Jew or anyone – operating a business aimed at the general public does not have the right to discriminate based on a customer’s identity. But a church – or a synagogue or a mosque – is not on par with a business that is open to the public. One has to wonder about the motivation of a gay organization approaching a Catholic church to rent space, which seems like a bit of a set-up for a discrimination complaint. But the larger issue here is that religious organizations should certainly have the right to determine who can use its facilities. Imagine, for example, an overtly antisemitic organization asking to rent space in a Jewish community centre. There is a substantial difference, of course, between one’s beliefs (being anti-Zionist or even antisemitic is a choice) as opposed to an immutable characteristic of one’s personality, such as sexual orientation.

The issue is at once simple and complex. Businesses are not individuals with human rights. They are entities created under laws and they must adhere to the laws and norms of the jurisdiction in which they operate. We might be thankful to know that, if a particular pizza maker or café owner holds antisemitic views, we can choose not to patronize them. This is an entirely different scenario than the flip side of that coin, in which a business refuses to serve Jews.

There has been a lot of commentary in recent years that the American president and others in high-profile positions have given permission to people to air their prejudices openly. A study like this is welcome because it puts quantifiable numbers to the perception of growing intolerance. This is a wake-up call to those who would ignore the warning signs of our current era of discontent. The evidence has arrived. Now, what are we going to do about it?

ללכת עם ישראל

קהילת היהודים בטורונטו מפגינה עמדת כוח של תמיכה בישראל

למעלה משלושים אלף איש צעדו בדאון טאון טורונטו לאחרונה בפרוייקט השנתי: “ללכת עם ישראל”. זאת הפגנת עמדת כוח לתמיכה במדינת ישראל. מדובר באחד מאירועי התמיכה בישראל מהבולטים ביותר עולם, כמובן אחרי קהילת היהודים של ניו יורק.

לפי הערכה למעלה מארבע מאות אלף יהודים חיים כיום בקנדה. מדובר בעצם באחת מקהילות היהודים הגדולות בעולם מחוץ לישראל. במקום השני ארה”ב, אחרי כן עדיין צרפת ואולי גם רוסיה ולאחר מכן במקום המכובד קנדה.

קהילת היהודים בקנדה נחשבת לתומכת בישראל לפי מחקרים של אוניברסיטאות טורונטו ויורק, ואפילו אולי יותר מיהדות ארה”ב? לא בטוח שהנתונים נכונים, אך בוודאי בכל קהילה של יהודים בעולם רוצים לחשוב ולקוות שהם התומכים הגדולים ביותר של ישראל.

הקהילה היהודית בקנדה היא קהילה חזקה ומבוססת ובעלת השפעה בקנדה, בתחומים הפוליטיים, הכלכליים ועוד. זאת בעיקר ערים הגדולות של קנדה בהם מרוכזים מרבית היהודים: טורונטו ומונטריאול. בערים מרכזיות אחרות בקנדה מספר היהודים נחשב לקטן ויש להם פחות משמעות. מדובר בערים כמו: ונקובר, אוטווה, קלגרי, אדמונטון וויניפג.

שגריר ישראל בקנדה, נמרוד ברקן, מסר לעיתון ידיעות אחרונות כי אם גורמים בישראל ימשיכו לדחוק את היהודים הקונסרבטיבים והרפורמים, ישראל תשלם מחיר על כך בקנדה. ליהודי קנדה הפלורליזם היהודי מאוד חשוב יש לזכור.

לפי נתוני שגרירות ישראל בקנדה: כארבעים אחוז מהיהודים במדינה הם אורתודוכסים, כארבעים אחוז מהיהודים הם קונסרבטיבים וכעשרים אחוז מיהודים הם רפורמים. למעלה ממחצית היהודים בקנדה (כחמישים וחמישה אחוז) שולחים את ילדיהם למערכת החינוך היהודית. על סדר יומה של הקהילה היהודית בקנדה, בדומה לקהילות יהודיות אחרות בעולם: אנטישמיות הגואה, ביטחון, הדור המזדקן, הגברת המעורבות של דור העתיד, הקמת הנהגה חדשה והקשר עם ישראל.

בממשלה הפדרלית הקנדית של המפלגה הליברלית בראשות ג’סטין טרודו, מכהנים כיום שני שרים יהודים: השר לגיוון סחר חוץ, ג’ים קאר והשרה למוסדות הדמוקרטים, קרינה גולד. בבית הפרלמט הקנדי יש שישה חברי פרלמנט יהודים (בהם יו”ר ועדת החוץ ויו”ר האגודה הפרלמנטרית קנדה-ישראל, מייקל לוויט). בבית המשפט העליון שמכיל תשעה שופטים מכהנים שני שופטים יהודים.

ראש הממשלה, ג’סטין טרודו, נחשב לידיד הקהילה אם כי הוא רחוק מאוד מראש הממשלה הקודם, סטיבן הרפר, שנחשב בשעתו למנהיג התומך ביותר בישראל מקרב כל מנהיגי העולם. הרפר בנסיעתו לישראל העמיס על מטוס הממשלה משלחת גדולה של כמאתיים איש ומרביתם יהודים. טרודו השתתף לאחרונה באירוע ההצדעה לישראל שנערך בטורונטו, במלאת שבעים שנה לקשרי קנדה וישראל. באירוע טרודו נאם ויצא בחריפות נגד האנטישמיות וכן גינה את תופעת הבי.די.אס הגואה בקנדה בשנים האחרונות. במהלך ביקורו בקנדה של נשיא המדינה, ראובן ריבלין, נפגש עמו טרודו לא פחות מארבע פעמים. לפי הערכות טרודו מחפש את הקול היהודי לקראת הבחירות הפדרליות שיערכו בעשרים ואחד באוקטובר.

לפי הערכת שגרירות ישראל בקנדה מספר הישראלים בקנדה עומד כיום על יותר משבעים אלף. מטבע הדברים מרביתם חיים בטורונטו. בנוסף אליהם בשנים האחרונות הגיעו לקנדה קרוב לכארבעים אלף יהודים מארצות חבר העמים. מרביתם כנראה גרו קודם לכן בישראל.

הקונסוליה הישראלית בטורונטו אגב נחשבת לאחת מהעמוסות בעולם וזאת לאור הגידול המתמיד במספר הישראלים המהגרים לקנדה, בין אם בגלל עבודה או רצון לשפר את איכות החיים.

יצויין כי המגבית היהודית של טורונטו מגייסת מדי שנה כשישים מיליון דולר, ומהם כעשרים מיליון מועברים לסיוע בפרוייקטים שונים בישראל, בעיקר בפריפרייה.

Hiding is not an answer

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this,” says the patient in an old joke. “Don’t do that,” advises the doctor.

In a decidedly unfunny twist on that old joke, the German government’s Commissioner on Antisemitism Felix Klein responded to the fact that Jews are being beaten up on German streets by advising German Jews not to wear kippot in public.

Discretion may be the better part of valour. In the short term, donning a baseball cap may be a personal choice for someone who merely wants to dash out to the market to pick up some vegetables. As part of a bigger picture, the idea that Jews in Germany should hide their identities – and the bleak historical resonance that act of Jewish hiding evokes in that particular nation – is a testament to something far beyond individual security. If a country – but, more importantly, that country – is not a safe place for identifiably Jewish people to go about their everyday lives, that is a society with a problem.

After the Holocaust, many Jews, including the leaders of Canadian Jewish Congress, determined that the surest path to safety, security and acceptance for Jewish people was to promote a universalist approach and advocate for a society in which all people are safe, secure and accepted. This is one reason why, throughout recent Canadian history, we have seen Jews in leadership roles in multicultural organizations and supporting policies that advance inclusive, universalist goals.

But there may be, in this approach, an unfortunate acknowledgement that asking people to take a stand in support of Jewish people in particular may be a losing bet. Consider the disparate responses in theory and practice of public opinion in recent months. After the murders in synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego, a great many voices (on social media, predominantly) declared solidarity with Jewish people. Yet almost concurrently, when Israelis were under attack by missiles and incendiary devices from Gaza, the overwhelming reaction was to condemn Israel’s responses. It is incongruous and incoherent to support Jews under threat in one place and, at the same time, side with those who would attack Jews in another location.

The bigger point is that, if a society like Germany seems prepared to accept a level of social illness that means a kippa becomes a hate target, how do Jews respond?

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin reacted passionately to events in Germany last weekend.

“We will never submit, will never lower our gaze, and will never react to antisemitism with defeatism – and we expect and demand our allies act in the same way,” he said. But Rivlin’s is the voice of a self-determined Jewish people sovereign in their own land. The reality for Jews in Germany, and in many other places, is that they face antisemitism of a sort and magnitude unseen since 1945. Whether Diaspora Jews will indeed submit, lower our gaze or react with defeatism actually remains to be seen, Rivlin’s encouraging words notwithstanding.

Rivlin is unequivocally correct, though, when he says he expects more of Israel’s allies in protecting Jewish people, rather than suggesting that we hide our identities. Ideally, as a result of this discussion, the German government will recognize the inappropriateness of the commissioner’s words. Through preventive actions, like increased security, and educational efforts, including genuinely tackling antisemitism in schools and public discourse, the government of Germany, as well as other European countries, can move in the right direction.

Equally important, especially when leaders won’t lead, citizens must. It falls to each of us – Jews and non-Jews – to build bridges of understanding across ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural lines. We need to advocate for those same inclusive values. Yes, times have changed and ideals of multiculturalism and the celebration of difference have taken a beating, but the inherent goodness of those values has not changed.

We also should strive to make intolerance and bigotry socially unacceptable again. The culture in Europe and North America has become coarsened and we are becoming inured to statements and imagery that would have been unacceptable before. Social media is partly to blame for this, but, as it seeps into broader society, we need to keep calling out words and ideas that divide, harm, vilify or seek to diminish others.

We know these “solutions” sound idealistic and perhaps a bit like bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. But we got to this stage in history through a million small incremental steps in the wrong direction. It is a constellation of small, positive steps that may be our best way back – in conjunction with people of all backgrounds who share our views.

Two things are certain. There is no magic wand that is going to right the wrongs we see in the world – and hiding our identities is no solution.

Absorbing controversy

Israel’s Eurovision 2019 entrant, Kobi Marimi, didn’t fare very well but he gave an emotional performance. (photo © Martin Fjellanger, Eurovision Norway, EuroVisionary)

The Eurovision Song Contest, like the World Cup, is one of those cultural phenomena that seems to enrapture huge swaths of the world while North Americans observe it dispassionately, if at all, wondering what it’s all about.

For Jewish North Americans, the annual international songfest gained attention last year and this year for the 2018 Israeli victory by performer Netta Barzilai, a victory that comes with the privilege of hosting the next contest. So it was that the world descended on Tel Aviv last week for the 2019 edition.

Commentary on social media was polarized. Anti-Israel activists called for a boycott of the event, while Israelis and Zionists (as well as tourists who are as attuned to Israel-Palestine politics as most of us are to the nuances of Eurovision or the World Cup) posted photos of a rapturous Mediterranean seaside celebration.

Calls to boycott one of the world’s most watched cultural events because it takes place in Israel represent a continuing effort to portray Israel as a nation apart from the rest, an untouchable among countries. To make this approach make sense, Israel has to be recast to fit the narrative. Notably, there was no serious discussion of a boycott when Eurovision was hosted by Russia, an autocracy guilty of terrible crimes and oppression.

For all its bluster and online ubiquity, the boycott-Israel movement has largely been a failure on the surface. Last week, activists called for a boycott of Israeli wines and, in response, there was a run on Israeli wines at Vancouver-area liquor stores. Similar campaigns have regularly produced far more sizzle than steak, with counter buycotts negating any large impacts that the boycotts might inflict.

What the BDS movement does successfully, though, is solidify in the minds of uninformed or unengaged people the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be blamed on one party. If peace, justice and coexistence were the real aim of the movement, they might choose to call out injustices and corruption by the Hamas and Fatah rulers in Palestine alongside wrongs perpetrated by the Israeli government and military. Indeed, boycotts need not have any actual economic success in order to succeed at planting a narrative – a fact the BDS movement has seized upon.

Meanwhile, there has been outrage from supporters of the BDS movement in response to legislative moves to block anti-Israel boycotts. The German Bundestag recently passed a resolution condemning BDS as antisemitic and calling it redolent of Nazi-era boycotts. Activists have responded with a classic goose/gander dichotomy, seemingly demanding the right to boycott while incensed that anyone might boycott them back.

As we have written in this space previously, legislative punishments for boycotting Israel, which have also been passed by many U.S. states, may come from the right philosophical place, but we’d prefer to see the basis of the movement countered intellectually, rather than with the blunt force – and unintended consequences – of these laws.

Ultimately, the message we should take from the Eurovision experience and the broader BDS movement is that misrepresentations must be met with truth, even if that seems like a Sisyphean effort. More specifically, the boycotts should be met with a forceful response that not only declares our opposition to the boycott itself. We must also loudly proclaim that the underlying assertion of unilateral Israeli guilt for this seven-decade conflict is a false premise upon which the entire BDS cause rests. Of course, Israel has responsibilities in the goal of a lasting peace, but so do Palestinians, a fact that BDS supporters and much of the world refuse to acknowledge.

Eurovision organizers tried unsuccessfully to keep politics out of the competition but they came anyway. The supposed controversies did nothing to detract from the “big show” and, in fact, could be said to have highlighted the complex entity that is Israel and its capacity to embrace diverse views.

While Israel’s entrant, Kobi Marimi, didn’t fare very well – coming in 23rd of 26 entrants – he gave an emotional performance, finishing his song “Home” with tears. He later told reporters, “I don’t have words to explain how much I love this country, and how proud I am for myself and my team.” We’re pretty proud, too.

Goodness a heroic act

There is a world of difference, needless to say, between the murder of a congregant in a California synagogue and the publication of an overtly antisemitic cartoon. But, while the incidents are incomparable in magnitude, they both implore us to action.

Lori Gilbert Kaye was killed Saturday morning during Shabbat services on the last day of Passover at Chabad of Poway, north of San Diego. Eight-year-old Noya Dahan was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds, as was her uncle, 32-year-old Almog Peretz, who was shot in the leg. Peretz was visiting family for the holiday from his home in Sderot, Israel, a city adjacent to Gaza that is under constant threat of bombardment and attack.

In the instant terror struck, heroism abounded. Kaye reportedly died intervening to protect the rabbi from the shooter. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, although shot in both hands, immediately teamed with Peretz, who was also wounded, to shepherd the children in the synagogue to safety. Army veteran Oscar Stewart chased the assailant out of the synagogue and Jonathan Morales, an off-duty border patrol agent, shot at the getaway car as the perpetrator fled.

The alleged perpetrator had posted on social media that he was willing to give up his life for the cause of white supremacy. He blamed “international Jewry” for a litany of perceived “crimes” and said that Jews “deserve nothing but hell. I will send them there.”

This shooting is the latest in a terrible string of attacks on religious institutions and the people within them, including the Easter attack that killed more than 300 in Sri Lanka and the mass murder of Muslims in a mosque in New Zealand, among many other attacks on people and institutions worldwide that do not make the front pages. While such incidents in the United States are partly a result of that society’s dysfunctional relationship with guns, the propensity to murder people in places of worship – like the endless stream of mass killings in schools – represents a particular manifestation of evil.

Six months to the day before the Poway attack, 11 people were murdered in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Given that horrific number, it is understandable that human nature would react to the latest news with an unconscious sense of relief that the death toll in California was not higher. But this reaction, however natural, must be resisted. The invasion of a religious sanctuary represents an assault on the most basic human instincts for goodness and stands apart from other crimes in its deliberateness and in the calculated impact it will have on the victimized community’s sense of security and belonging. Such attacks – no matter how frequently they seem to come – must never be responded to routinely. Each attack is cause for a fresh sense of revulsion.

While the situations are clearly not analogous, there was another episode recently that demands vigilance. The New York Times international edition last week ran a cartoon of Donald Trump as a blind man with dark glasses and a black kippah, being led by an elongated dachshund with the head of Binyamin Netanyahu wearing a Star of David around his neck. The cartoon exists as part of a long history of motifs that portray Jews manipulating guileless, gullible non-Jews to serve Jews’ devious ends. The New York Times apologized and blamed a lack of oversight.

If the editors of Der Stürmer were still among us, they could justifiably claim plagiarism, as numerous comparative memes on social media have indicated. Such images are extremely common on the internet, where there is no oversight. When they make their way into print in one of the English-speaking world’s most august media outlets, this is a new challenge.

Commentators have observed that the dachshund is a breed that rarely, if ever, serves as a seeing-eye dog. The choice by the cartoonist to use that breed was clearly deliberate. For at least a century, since the First World War, cartoonists have used a dachshund to represent Germany. In this way, the artist was adding insult to injury by equating Israel with the perpetrator of the gravest attack on Jews in human history.

The point of addressing the violent attack in San Diego together with a grievous but far less tangible affront in the pages of the New York Times is to make the case that vigilance should not be let down by the routinization of either violence or terrible imagery. These incidents seem to fly at us with such regularity that it is understandable that we as individuals and a community would have limited resources to respond to each case with the gravity it deserves. The memes and lies may become routinized, but our responses to them must never fall short.

Jewish tradition says that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The heroes of the Poway tragedy have done that. While we cannot predict how each of us would respond in such a crisis, we can promote small acts of light within our circles of influence, by advocating for understanding and peace and by supporting organizations that do good work. More immediately, we can take the advice of Rabbi Goldstein and do good in the world whenever and wherever possible. In a world with evil and intolerance, acts of goodness and understanding are their own type of heroism.

Goats out in the wilderness

Let’s talk about goats. When I was doing research for my book Fiber Gathering, about U.S. fibre festivals, which attract thousands of people, I learned lots about goats. But what do goats, which produce milk, fibre and meat, have to do with Judaism?

In Leviticus, we read precise descriptions of the high priests’ clothing. One may scoff about the details, but I bet you’re wearing clothes. In many Torah portions, Jews think a lot about textiles. (If you don’t, you should! You’d be cold without clothes.)

We read rigid rules for sacrifice, how we should eat and how we should behave in terms of intimacy towards our partners and family. This is also the text that includes the most discriminatory and misunderstood interpretations of homosexuality.

Like any good Jewish parent, the Almighty offers us strict guidelines in Leviticus. There are things we should and shouldn’t do. However, there’s also an acknowledgement of our humanity. We make mistakes. There are times when we won’t understand how to behave, so here, too, is a Temple sacrifice procedure. This forgiveness process turns into part of our modern Yom Kippur service. We learn how Aaron makes a sacrifice to atone for the “strange fire” that his sons, Nadav and Abihu, brought to G-d and how they were killed for it. Part of Aaron’s prescribed ritual includes sending a goat named Azazel out into the wilderness. The goat carries away the people’s sins, and it lives.

My husband, a biologist, struggled a bit with this but felt comforted that, of all the domesticated animals to be cast out, goats could survive in the wilderness. I remembered the goat cheese we ate at the Taos Fibre Festival in New Mexico. We met the farmer who raised the goats and made cheese. He told us how he lived off the grid. He had to drive hours on a dirt road just to get to his mailbox, and several hours farther to get to town.

Every day, his goats are sent out into the desert to forage along with their guard dogs. Some shepherds keep dogs, others use donkeys or llamas to protect their flocks. This man described how his goats were free range and how they returned each night. He milked these goats and his cheese varied according to where they had grazed and the season. It was truly “wild” cheese – and most of his goats did fine, despite the desert predators.

While we try to follow rules, we are also aware that things change in our world. Like the goats, we are susceptible to danger. A recent JTA article (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) pointed out ways that congregations are preparing for “the next Pittsburgh” by changing the ways congregations protect themselves. The first 911 call in Pittsburgh came from the Sabbath-observant rabbi, who was persuaded the year before to carry a cellphone for emergency use. In the Poway shooting, Steve Vaus, Poway’s mayor, indicated that congregants acted quickly, using training they had received right after the murders in Pittsburgh.

A few years ago, I heard an upsetting story about our responses to potential danger. One day, a religious man was praying when the congregation’s alarm went off. He was concentrating. Although he knew how to shut off the alarm, he didn’t stop praying to silence it. A woman who worked at the shul lived nearby, heard the alarm and came running to help. Perhaps she wasn’t perfectly dressed (according to her community’s standard). She wasn’t calm – but she took her responsibilities seriously and rushed towards the emergency to help. Later, the praying man belittled the woman for being flustered and for not dressing properly. He didn’t acknowledge her speed and bravery. When she ran, she didn’t know it was a false alarm. She made herself vulnerable for the sake of her community.

I didn’t witness that “false” alarm, nor was I there when people acted bravely during the Pittsburgh or the Poway tragedies. However, we must read these situations critically, in the same way we read Leviticus. We continue to face conflicts and emergencies. Along with the rigid everyday humdrum, there’s a vulnerability that we face in the wilderness (the world).

Some feel Leviticus’s rigidity can make us wary of making mistakes or of finding solace in religion. Others suggest these rules create life’s order. We are all different. Yet, we must all cope with changes, surprises and danger. We might get cold in our environment and need to know what to wear. We might be surprised or do the wrong thing in the midst of prayer. We face danger. We are truly vulnerable out there in the world and before G-d, just like the goats.

Parents, like goatherds, have to trust that, after we offer our kids structure and skills, they will make it out there and come home again. We have to hope that our children and congregations will be sturdy and flexible enough when danger arises.

In Leviticus, the goat, Azazel, bore our sins and was alive and at risk. In a sense, we are those goats. We seek divine rules and structure, while at the same time coping with a world that requires us to think critically, adapt and be ready for whatever may happen next. It’s a wilderness out there. We must think on our feet.

I applaud those leaders who run towards the danger as Lori Gilbert Kaye, z’l, did, risking everything, and who follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Pittsburgh’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers saved lives because he made an emergency cellphone call. Our religious traditions evolve. We no longer make sacrifices at the Temple. It’s important to reconsider our habits at many other occasions other than just Yom Kippur.

I’ve been belittled sometimes because I write about knitting. Yet, we wear clothes. According to Leviticus, that’s important. Also important? Being vulnerable to both the Divine, and to change. I keep that goat-in-the-wilderness image alive. We can meet these real-life challenges if we open up our minds to what’s really out there, bring a guard dog and avoid embracing rigid biases.