Carl Rosenberg

The April 9 panel discussion Israel, Canada and Me in the Age of Trump will feature, clockwise from top left, Dr. Shayna Plaut (photo from Shayna Plaut), Ofira Roll (photo from Ofira Roll), Rabbi Susan Shamash (photo by Robert Albanese) and Eviatar Bach (photo from Eviatar Bach).

Israel, Canada and Me in the Age of Trump will be the topic discussed by a panel of four Jewish speakers on April 9 at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture.

“Trump’s election in the U.S. has shifted the relationship that Diaspora Jews in general, and progressive Jews in particular, have with Israel,” Yom-Tov Shamash, one of the organizers, told the Independent. “I believe that most Jews in Vancouver, young and old, Zionist or not, affiliated, religious or secular, feel uncomfortable with the Israel-Trump alliance. Bringing four progressive Jewish leaders from different walks of life provides an opportunity for all Jews supporting values of social justice to hear different points of view, to find common ground, to develop relationships and hopefully to get involved in common causes.”

One the participants, Dr. Shayna Plaut, is research manager of the Global Reporting Centre. She is currently teaching courses on migration and social inequalities at the University of British Columbia and is adjunct professor in international studies, Simon Fraser University.

“Ashkenazi Jews in Canada and the U.S. are in greater positions of safety than we have ever been,” two or three generations removed from the Holocaust, said Plaut. “Ashkenazi Jews can pass for white. We have a responsibility to do something with this privilege, [to uphold] the tradition of tikkun olam.

“As a descendant of refugees, I have always felt connected to refugees,” she continued. “I work to make my ancestors proud and, right now, that means standing in solidarity with this generation of refugees.

“We all have different strengths. And we have a responsibility to see, and use our strengths. My strengths are in education and connection.”

Plaut said, “The level of intolerance in Canada and the U.S. has increased. I was born and raised in the U.S. I became a Canadian because I was having a hard time recognizing my own country. It’s not like racism didn’t exist before – we are a country built on colonization and slavery – but we are also a country built on ideals and resistance. I have always worked in this positive vein of how to make things better. I view patriotism as a commitment to make my country better. It’s easier to talk about what’s wrong than to present alternatives to make things better and work together. It was in December 2015 when I [began to feel] that perhaps I was able to do this better from Canada … as a Jew, as a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and as an educator and worker for human rights and social justice.”

Ofira Roll, another of the panelists, is a PhD candidate in education at UBC. Born and raised in Israel, she reflected on what is involved in activism in Israel as opposed to Canada or the United States.

“Our activism here has productive aspects. However, it feels as if we do it by remote control,” said Roll. “I truly miss the messiness in Israel – the messiness of communication, liveliness and opinions, of cultures and interests. People have opinions and they share them and embody them. I know the darker sides of living there – it’s a nationalistic state, undemocratic, racist, capitalist and anti-human rights – but it feels more real to me, where I feel pushed to the edge in all aspects of life. I am asked to speak up for what I truly care about and act on it. For me, being ‘pro-Israel’ means criticizing what’s wrong.”

Roll is critical of recent Israeli legislation excluding supporters of boycotts from entering Israel. “Personally, I don’t believe in boycotting countries. Still, I can’t accept the idea that if I came to Israel and had decided to boycott, I’m on this list. Friends of mine would be on this list. I don’t understand how a democratic country can pass such an undemocratic law. It’s not just stopping people who don’t support Israel – it stops more Palestinians than anyone else so, in a way, it really is a racist law.

“As several philosophers I am influenced by – Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt – say, engaging in dialogue doesn’t mean that we are in agreement. Dialogue is more about the process we go through in the search for new understandings. Now, when I see everyone coming together, it’s a strong moment for me. In the time of Trump, that’s what I’m happy about. People start understanding that all these divisions are fake. We are not different at the core. The women’s marches we had all over the world – for women’s rights, which are human rights – ironically, thanks to Trump.

“It’s not about convincing, but about sharing. It’s an invitation to talk, first of all, as humans. I don’t believe in all these divisions and borders. I have a hard time with flags, anthems. I think home is within you. Home is not something defined by others. It doesn’t need always to be in the name of a country.”

Roll has found the atmosphere in Vancouver’s Jewish community fairly open. “When [Israeli singer] Ahinoam Nini came here,” she noted, “people fought to bring her, with the support of the Jewish Federation, against groups who did not believe she should be invited because she supports Palestinians’ causes. I wrote a collective letter [to the Federation] on behalf of my Hebrew-speaking community theatre group. They read our letter at a Federation meeting, and they were brave enough to take a stand, and Nini was invited. In the end, they made an extra effort to bring us all together to meet Nini after the show. The Jewish community here includes many other voices, even among synagogues. There are many small groups, which don’t follow one way.”

Panelist Eviatar Bach is graduating from UBC in physics and computer science. He is involved with the Social Justice Centre at UBC, is a co-founder of the UBC Progressive Jewish Alliance and a founding editor of the Talon, a progressive online student magazine.

“With the Trump administration, it appears that the U.S. has abandoned the pretense of an ongoing ‘peace process,’ with Trump expressing indifference at the choice between a one-state and a two-state solution, and the appointment of settlement backer David Friedman as ambassador to Israel,” said Eviatar.

“At the same time,” he continued, “there is perhaps more disagreement between mainstream Jewish organizations, which tend to uncritically support Israeli actions, and young Jews in North America, than ever before. New groups such as IfNotNow, predominantly composed of young Jews, emerged during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and have taken more confrontational stances than, say, J Street, by protesting Jewish organizations that defend occupation and killings directly.

“On university campuses, the Open Hillel movement has sought to challenge Hillel International’s guidelines, which narrowly constrain the range of views that speakers at Hillels around the world are allowed to express. Several Independent Jewish Voices chapters have started at university campuses in Canada, and the Progressive Jewish Alliance was started at the University of British Columbia.”

Rounding out the panelists is Rabbi Susan Shamash, who was recently ordained by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She is a retired lawyer and an active member of Congregation Or Shalom.

“As a recently ordained, progressive rabbi, my focus is always on the Jewish values that propel me towards acts of social justice, including engagement in interfaith dialogue and commitment to family and community, which includes my Jewish family and my Jewish community.

“As a born and bred Canadian (like both my parents), my relationship with Canada is foundational to my identity,” she said. “I have a deep and abiding faith in our legal and judicial systems and in our system of government which, though imperfect, is based on values of inclusion, social welfare and multiculturalism.

“As a religious Jew, my relationship with the Jewish community in general and Israel in particular is complicated, varied and nuanced. I often find myself interceding on behalf of a different perspective, of more open thinking and understanding. There is much more to Israel than the occupation and conflict with the Palestinians, but, unfortunately, that is what defines its current reputation in the world community.

“We live in troubled and troubling times,” said Shamash. “U.S. President Trump has already changed the world order in unprecedented ways. More worrisome is that he has a lot of support both within and without the United States. This is not just an American phenomenon.

“How do my Jewish values help me to live, survive and even thrive in this new world order? There are many that we repeat over and over again: seek peace, pursue justice, love your neighbour, welcome the stranger, be a holy people, steward the earth, perform acts of loving-kindness, repair the world.”

The April 9 event is sponsored by Independent Jewish Voices, Vancouver. It begins at 1 p.m. and the suggested donation is $10.

Carl Rosenberg is a member of the United Jewish People’s Order and Independent Jewish Voices Canada. For many years, he edited Outlook: Canada’s Progressive Jewish Magazine.

Prof. Ester Reiter, author of A Future Without Hate or Need, points to the U.S. election as a warning that the issues the Canadian Jewish left dealt with are as timely as ever. (photo from Ester Reiter)

On Dec. 1, Prof. Ester Reiter will speak at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture to launch her new book A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada (Between the Lines, 2016).

Reiter’s book documents “the varied political and cultural activities of those who were part of the secular Jewish left” – the movements in which many Yiddish-speaking immigrants and their children took part during the first half of the last century, made up of Yiddish schools, theatres, choirs, dance troupes, drama groups, sports leagues, union activism, newspapers, women’s groups and summer camps. Their members were animated by a vision of what many of them would have called a shenere, besere velt (a more beautiful, better world). There were groups throughout the country, with the strongest ones in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Many of these groups came together nationally in the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO), founded in 1945. The book launch is being undertaken to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Labor League – which later became part of UJPO – in Toronto in 1926. The launch is sponsored by UJPO, and co-sponsored by the Peretz Centre and the Shaya Kirman Memorial Foundation for Yiddish Culture. It will start at the Peretz Centre at 4 p.m.

Reiter, a sociologist by training and a senior scholar at York University in Toronto, grew up in New York in a milieu similar to the one she describes. “I grew up in the New York left, the sister version of the Canadian Jewish left. I was a child in the Yiddish shule [school] in Brooklyn and later the mittlshul [middle school] in Manhattan during the Cold War. Many of my teachers were well known in Canada – they were in the summer camps in Montreal and Toronto, and taught in Canada. The politics were virtually the same and shule materials used in Canada were produced in New York, particularly in the early years, the 1930s.”

This community was at its strongest from the 1920s to the 1950s. Yiddish-speaking immigrants were immersed in the secular Yiddish culture and literature that emerged in the late 19th century. “The Jewish left was the equivalent of a university for working-class women and men. The cultural activities – dance, choirs, orchestras – were accessible to both women and men. People working in the needle trades with no time to learn to read music would sing classical works in the choirs, learning them by heart.”

Reiter says of the Yiddish Arbeter Froyen Fareyn (Jewish Women’s Labor League) that, “the very act of getting together changed many of the women,” particularly in women-only groups, “where women felt more comfortable, they described how they learned to speak in meetings. Their political commitments, which involved activities such as walking picket lines, raising money for various causes, necessitated engaging in public life in a way that required and reinforced self-confidence. This participation in the wider world was empowering. They supported each other, made close friendships and had a lot of fun.”

Jews on the left in Canada, as elsewhere, were diverse – they included social democrats, Bundists, anarchists, Labor Zionists and Marxists. Reiter focuses on those whose outlook was Marxist and supported the Soviet Union after the 1917 October Revolution.

Reiter emphasizes that this sector of the Jewish left had a life of its own distinct from the Communist party. “The leadership were Communist party members, but approximately 95% of the membership of the UJPO and its predecessors were not. One could think and say what one felt in the Jewish left without concern over whether it was the ‘correct’ position. Many people came [to the Jewish left] because of the liveliness of the community, as well as the politics.”

Initially, Yiddish schools saw their purpose as conveying ideological values, but this later shifted to transmitting the Yiddish language and Jewish cultural identity for their own sake, including secularized versions of Jewish holidays and rituals. “In the early period, a Yiddish education in the shule was to ensure that the children learned they were the children of workers, and needed to care about racism and class exploitation. After Hitler came to power and antisemitism was growing, Yiddish was valued as an end in itself, and there was more acceptance of the different ways of identifying as a Jew. The community developed secular ceremonies around the bar/bat mitzvah, the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”

The Jewish left experienced government harassment during the Cold War, especially in Quebec under premier Maurice Duplessis. Reiter notes that Canadian Jewish Congress defended civil liberties in the face of repression, but “dealing with pro-communist groups in their midst was a different matter.” UJPO was expelled from CJC in 1952 for dissenting from the Cold War consensus by opposing the postwar rearmament of West Germany and supporting the Stockholm peace petition.

The Jewish left for a long time saw the Soviet Union as a hope for a better society, in its outlawing of antisemitism and support for Yiddish culture in the 1920s, but their hope was shattered by the Stalin regime’s murder of Yiddish artists in the late 1940s and early 1950s. “For many years, people projected their idealism on[to] the USSR. When they found out about Stalin’s suppression of Jewish life, it was shocking. Most of the Jewish [Communist party] leadership from UJPO left the party. However, the rank and file in UJPO were never actually party people, so many felt that, although the USSR under Stalin was terrible, their activities in Canada – helping the unemployed, union support – were important and valuable.”

Reiter describes various factors in the shrinking of the Canadian Jewish left – Cold War persecution, disillusionment with Stalinism, the erosion of Yiddish by assimilation. However, UJPO itself has survived the disappearance of the milieu that gave birth to it, and has even attracted new members. Reiter reflects, “There certainly is a need. Our politics mean that we are inclusive of different kinds of families – gay, straight, trans, mixed racial and religious origin. Yiddish has pretty well disappeared, but the progressive politics remain. With respect to Middle East politics, there are a variety of views in the UJPO, but we all agree that criticizing the actions of the Israeli government does not mean that one is a self-hating Jew. We also continue with trade union support, First Nations solidarity, environmental activism. We exist because we have a community that has a good time together. As the organized Jewish community has moved to the right, we provide a place where one can have a Jewish identity and be progressive. Secular left Jews now have to think about what we have in common, not what separates us.”

Reiter points to the Nov. 8 U.S. election as a warning that the issues the Canadian Jewish left dealt with are as timely as ever. “The struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia and all this meanness and narrowness is an ongoing one – a call to remember and honor and value our own history and where we came from.”

Carl Rosenberg is a member of the United Jewish People’s Order and Independent Jewish Voices Canada. For many years, he edited Outlook: Canada’s Progressive Jewish Magazine.

Byline: Carl Rosenberg

Jewish values in Trump era

Scholar talks at Peretz