The Editorial Board

Array of bad ideas from Quebec

There is a saying in politics that when you’re explaining, you’re losing. So it should be an extraordinarily bad omen for Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, in the early days of her election campaign, to be forced to declare: “The Parti Québécois is not an antisemitic party.”

The defence was necessary after the clearly written views of one of Marois’ candidates became widely known last week. Louise Mailloux, a college philosophy instructor and Montreal-area Parti Québécois candidate in the April 7 Quebec election, is a staunch supporter of the PQ’s secularism policy. The party is proposing a Charter of Values that would prevent displays of religious affiliation – kippahs, turbans, hijabs, for example – by civil servants. The crucifix that stands at the front of the Quebec National Assembly would remain, interpreted by the PQ not as a religious statement but as a symbol of the province’s cultural heritage. Likewise, presumably, the enormous illuminated cross that bears down over Montreal from atop Mount Royal.

Mailloux, however, goes somewhat further than most secularists. One might call her a secular fundamentalist. She has written that circumcision is equivalent to rape. (In fairness, she said the same thing about baptism.) A particular interest of hers is kashrut, which she has called “robbery,” a “rip-off” and a “tax” paid “directly … to the synagogue.” (She says the same about halal certification.) She has demanded that kosher and halal products be banned because, she believes, they artificially inflate prices and the revenue from certification goes to fund “religious wars.”

It’s useful to be reminded of the kind of ideas that emerge from those with animus toward identifiable groups. A moment on the darker reaches of the internet reminds us that the nature of bigotry quickly twists into convoluted, bizarre and arcane conspiracies. There is an increasingly small market for ideas that express outright hate. That may have worked in past eras, but people and society have changed. To gain traction, such expressions now require some imagination. The “kosher tax” conspiracy theory is an ideal example. Take an issue about which the general public has only the vaguest awareness and build a dramatic and devious story around it. But this story is not new. It’s been most prominently pedaled by the Ku Klux Klan. Yet it is not as fringe an idea in Quebec as we might like to believe. When a provincial commission looking into “reasonable accommodation” of minority rights in Quebec, the Bouchard-Taylor commission, delivered its report in 2008, it explicitly mentioned the “most fanciful information … circulating among Quebecers” about kosher food. (In fairness, the Bouchard-Taylor hearings showcased an encyclopedic array of bad ideas held by Quebecers about a whole range of minority groups.)

When Jewish organizations heard of Mailloux’s views, they reacted with predictable outrage. In a party press release, Mailloux apologized – just not for her ideas.

“I never wanted to offend or hurt anyone,” Mailloux said. “If that has happened, I very sincerely apologize.”

Hours earlier, the PQ rescinded the nomination of one of its other candidates for online comments against Islam and supportive of the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. But when Mailloux’s views became a top story, Marois stood firmly with her.

“She supports our secular charter and I appreciate her support,” Marois said, not hesitating to add that Mailloux “is an eloquent writer” and “I respect her point of view.”

It is always better to shine light on rancid ideas than to allow them to fester in hiding. Never more is this true than in the midst of a democratic election campaign. Given that this election campaign is shaping up to be largely about two issues – the future of Quebec in Canada and the future of minority rights in Quebec – Mailloux’s ideas could hardly have come to light at a better time. The voters of Quebec will make their opinions known on April 7.

Of course, even the democratic voice of a free people does not always reflect the best of human nature. Given the tenor of Quebec attitudes toward minorities and the fact that we are discussing the preparation of meat, a dictum comes to mind not from the Talmud, but from the sage of Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, who said that democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.

Government about halfway there in recognizing Jewish refugees

In 1948, there were an estimated 856,000 Jews in Arab and Muslim countries, from Algeria to Iraq. The estimated Jewish population in 2012 was 4,315 – 3,000 of whom are in Morocco alone.

Four months after the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development’s November 2013 report “Recognizing Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa,” Canada’s Cabinet accepted one of its two recommendations. The next day, on March 4, Parliament “concurred in” the report.

As the United States pushes for at least a framework for a peace agreement in the coming weeks, the Palestinian side will continue to use as a significant bargaining chip the millions (under the unique definition of “Palestinian refugee”) of people seeking a “right of return.” The parliamentary committee recommended that Canada officially recognize these displaced persons and, secondly, that our federal government “encourage the direct negotiating parties to take into account all refugee populations as part of any just and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts.”

Responding to the committee’s recommendations, Cabinet made nice noises, concurring heartily with the first recognition, which is, ultimately, merely symbolic. On the second recommendation, the Conservative government resorted to diplomatic verbiage, saying, it “understands the positive intent underlying this recommendation but, at this time, Canada has offered its support to the peace process as presently structured.”

During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948-49, somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 Arab Palestinians were made refugees. History – and the Arab countries in which these refugees found themselves – has not been kind to them. The 1967 war created more refugees, while placing those Arab Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under Israeli control.

This history, which includes a definition of refugee known nowhere else in the world – one that is passed down from generation to generation, exacerbating rather than ameliorating the refugee situation – is well known. Yet, it is remarkable how many otherwise well-informed people are unaware of the Jewish refugees throughout the Middle East in the same era. To varying degrees, life for Jews in Arab- and Muslim-majority countries deteriorated rapidly after the 1948 war, and hundreds of thousands were either forced to leave their homelands or found it prudent to do so. The 1967 war finished the job.

But even the Jews who migrated to Israel during this period have often acknowledged that they were not comfortable assuming the role of historical victim. First of all, Jews who were forced from Arab and Muslim countries were welcomed (discrimination and economic disparities affecting Mizrahi Jews notwithstanding) by the new state of Israel, which they helped to build and strengthen.

Compared with the Arab Palestinians who had been displaced and who were, and still are, held in a form of statelessness, the Jewish emigrants were absorbed by Israel and the other countries to which they migrated, including Canada. More significantly, those who went to Israel joined a country that was absorbing refugees from Europe, whose experiences of statelessness had been more harrowing and catastrophic. Faced with new fellow citizens who had lost not only their material possessions and their ancestral villages, but also entire extended families, most of their civilization and even their mother tongue, the Jews who migrated from the Middle East and North Africa often found it best to keep their own tragic experiences closer to the vest.

Small nonprofit groups like JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) have kept this history alive. On the political front, in 2008, the United States became the first (and so far only) country to official recognize the Jewish refugees. More than a year ago, Liberal MP Irwin Cotler tabled a motion that Canada should recognize these forgotten refugees. In the parliamentary committee hearings, Canadians, including some refugees themselves, told personal stories of this history.

The government is on the right track. It is a matter of righting the historical record and of simple justice that, when Palestinian refugees are considered in the process of reconciliation, so should Jews who were forced from their homelands in the same era. But it is necessary for Canada, as the vaunted “honest broker” we claim to be, to demand that Jewish refugees also be considered among the many difficult historical realities that must be resolved for a lasting and just peace to be realized.

The message is universal

Six designs have been unveiled for a Canadian National Holocaust Monument to be constructed in Ottawa. The designs vary wildly, including a proposal by the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed Berlin’s Jewish Museum. Libeskind and his colleague Gail Lord propose a structure in the form of an elongated Star of David. Five other shortlisted design concepts are also under review by Heritage Canada.

These are powerfully moving proposals, each with a unique interpretation of memory and loss. Construction on the final design is anticipated to begin this year, with inauguration of the memorial in 2015. It will sit near the centre of the nation’s capital, opposite the Canadian War Museum.

A reasonable question might be why Canada is inaugurating a memorial to a tragic event on another continent. As a country, we continue to struggle with aspects of our own difficult history of conquest, violence, repression and victimization. Why a Holocaust memorial in our capital?

Here’s why: as a member of the Allied nations confronting Hitler’s Germany, Canada played a role in bringing the Nazi regime and the Holocaust to an end, albeit regrettably late. We also have some penance to do, having been one of the countries – including all Western countries except the Dominican Republic – that bears some responsibility for the Holocaust, having closed our doors to the desperate Jews of Europe.

But there is another, more important reason for a Canadian Holocaust memorial. We must remind ourselves that, while the Holocaust was unique in its intent and scope, it carries universal messages and lessons for future generations about the dangers of totalitarianism, intolerance, extreme nationalism and racialism, the perversion of science and myriad other lessons still inadequately assimilated. Above all, while the Holocaust was particular in its genocidal intent toward Jews, it was not as particular in its Germanness. While the instigators of the atrocities were German, they found enthusiastic supporters, to varying degrees, in every country they invaded – and even in places they didn’t, including Canada. And some Germans were among the bravest enemies of Nazism.

There are so many lessons to be learned from every aspect of the Holocaust that we may never do more than scratch the surface of how it happened, why people behaved as they did, what it means and how future such atrocities can be prevented. But we hasten understanding and the potential for learning vital lessons if we acknowledge that the Holocaust was perpetrated, above all, by human beings against other human beings. If we isolate the Holocaust as something that is uniquely German – or European – we lose the opportunity to understand that, at root, it was perpetrated by human beings with motivations not at all exclusive to a single nationality, time or place. This is what makes Ottawa an ideal location for a Holocaust memorial.

Alice Herz-Sommer – an extraordinary life

Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest known survivor of the Holocaust, died Sunday at the age of 110. Herz-Sommer, her husband and their young son were taken from their native Prague to Theresienstadt in 1943. Theresienstadt, which was used by the Nazis in propaganda as a “model” Jewish community, was in fact little better than any other concentration camp. While most of those who passed through Theresienstadt would ultimately perish at Auschwitz or Treblinka, death rates at Theresienstadt were also high. Nevertheless, when, late in the war, the Nazis allowed representatives of the Red Cross to enter the camp, they found, among other things, musicians pouring emotion and power into performances. Many of these performances featured Herz-Sommer and, after she and her son were liberated (her husband did not survive), she became a master pianist and music teacher. A film about Herz-Sommer, The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, is nominated for best short documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

The announcement of her passing – and the reflections on her extraordinary life – remind us of the importance of listening to, of seeking out, the stories of survivors. The stories we should hear are not solely about survivors’ experiences as the persecuted Jews of the Shoah, though these are critically important as individual historical records.

An additional, perhaps equally crucial obligation, is to learn from these survivors about human resilience. The life of Herz-Sommer was extraordinary – and yet, it wasn’t. If her life was extraordinary, then so is the life of every Holocaust survivor who rose above the extreme events they withstood and built for themselves a life, a family, a community, a record of service in myriad disciplines. And, so they are.

What we find most curious, or astonishing, in stories like Herz-Sommer’s and so many others, is that these individuals could come back at all from the horrors they experienced and witnessed to become not just functioning members of society, but ones who excel. The soldiers who liberated the concentration camps of Europe, and the witnesses and aid workers who came after, certainly could not have predicted that these members of the surviving remnant would amount to much. As discussed in a feature story this week, a French government report on the 426 “boys of Buchenwald” inaccurately predicted that the survivors would never rehabilitate, that they were irreparably damaged, physically and emotionally, and would not survive to middle age.

In a world that so frequently seems to have not learned the lessons of the past, where generation after generation of people in various parts of the world still experience and witness atrocities, the examples of how human beings can endure and still thrive after catastrophes provide a lesson sadly still needed today. In retrospect, it is easy to see that even well-intentioned people sent to aid and possibly rehabilitate survivors of the Shoah may have unintentionally, if understandably, written off their potential when they saw the conditions of the survivors and their surroundings. Yet, they underestimated the power of human endurance, which had rarely been so tragically strained.

Each one of the individual survivors’ stories is a testament to human capability. The ultimate lesson may be this: every life is extraordinary. And the ability for human beings to overcome adversity sometimes exceeds the human ability to predict such resilience.

Cautious reaction to Spain’s invitation for Jews to return

In 1492, as schoolchildren used to learn, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In Jewish history, as in the history of North American First Nations, 1492 stands out as a blue year for other reasons.

That year is remembered as the end of a golden age of Jewish civilization and multicultural amity in Iberia. The Jews of Spain (and, later in the same decade, the Jews of Portugal) were ordered to leave their homeland. In truth, the so-called golden age had ended for Jews more than 200 years earlier. The succeeding centuries had seen increasing levels of isolation, repression, exploitation, impoverishment, humiliation and violence, including notorious massacres in 1366 and 1391. Thousands of Jews had been forcibly converted, but even these “conversos” were not accepted as “true” Christians and were subject to pogroms perhaps as violent as any suffered by those who did not give up their Jewish ways. Spanish Jews were required to distinguish themselves by wearing a yellow badge. But, by 1492, it was determined that the proximity of conversos to their former co-religionists was causing recidivism. As in so many parallel instances, it was also no doubt a factor that Jews were evicted with few of their possessions, which were left to enrich the monarchs. And so the Jews were expelled, the departure slated for the day before Tisha b’Av.

In what appears to be a genuine effort at righting an historical wrong, the Spanish government announced recently plans to offer citizenship to Jews who can prove their Sephardi ancestry back to the expulsions. Lawyers in Israel and elsewhere are fielding calls by the score from people hoping to obtain Spanish citizenship, which, of course, also grants entry to the European Union as a whole.

The officials who are spearheading the drive to welcome back Spain’s Jewish descendants may believe that they are providing a permanent resolution, as best as can be done five centuries on, to a grave injustice. But perhaps they lack the breadth of knowledge of Jewish history to know the pattern into which their generosity falls.

Generation after generation, in duchies, principalities, city-states and empires throughout Europe, Jews in one generation would be exploited for economic advantage by the ruler then forced out when their economic usefulness was drained, only to be welcomed back when a new generation of leaders smelled economic advantage. Then, almost invariably, the cycle would begin again.

While this occurred in instances too many to count, yet in ways astonishingly alike each time, the expulsion from Spain stood out in Jewish history. Until the grievous experiences of 20th-century Europe, the expulsion from Spain was held up as the darkest example of the perils of Jewish statelessness since the destruction of the Temple.

There is little doubt that the current initiative by the Spanish government is being approached in a spirit of fraternity and justice. But it also has to be noted that the European economy overall, and those of southern European states like Spain in particular, are at their worst in a generation. It was precisely at times like these in history when a duke or prince would decide that it was an advantageous time to welcome back the Jews that his grandfather or great-grandfather had forced from the realm. The Jews of Europe, always seeking a place where they may find some peace and a welcome, would flow back in, experience a period of well-being followed inevitably by economic, political and religious oppression, followed by another expulsion.

Surely, this is not what the good legislators of Spain are thinking as they make this invitation. But Jewish people with a better sense of history can certainly be forgiven for seeing this act of generosity in a broader historical context.

The spirit of Limmud in Vancouver

On Sunday, more than 200 adults and children converged on King David High School for the first annual Limmud Vancouver. Limmud is a global phenomenon celebrating Jewish learning and experiences in their most diverse and unexpected forms. Now occurring in scores of cities worldwide, each event is unique and driven by local volunteers.

Vancouver’s first foray into the Limmud experience was not only apparently flawless in execution (with 42 presentations in multiple rooms, with hundreds of participants, any number of things could go wrong – if they did, they were invisible to the average participant) but also as a model of community in its purest sense.

Limmud was brought to Vancouver by Ruth Hess-Dolgin, z”l, whose vision and passion outlives her. After her passing, her dream was taken up by her husband Avi Dolgin and friend Betty Nitkin, who corralled dozens of volunteers to deliver a truly remarkable event. Some community organizations supported it, but Limmud was led, driven and delivered by volunteers acting in no capacity except their dedication to the idea of learning in ways that are “non-denominational, multi-generational and truly transformational.” The buzz around the event was so intense that it sold out weeks in advance, which was perhaps the only disappointment of the day; that so many who would have liked to were unable to attend.

Limmud is founded on a philosophy that everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. When they were not presenting on their own topics, presenters were participating in lively sessions with others. Titles – rabbi, doctor, professor – went out the window.

The sessions were as diverse as the attendees. Experiential sessions included Jewish chanting, the music of Uganda’s Jews, and singing along in Yiddish. Ethical and spiritual issues confronted included organ and tissue donation, reflections on the Shema, the Ten Commandments and whether God has gender. Historical themes included religious tolerance in the Middle Ages, klezmer music in early-20th-century Montreal, what caused the death of Jesus, and the Nazis’ policies on reproduction. There was a presentation on how Jews should treat people who transition to Judaism from other religions and Jews who transition from one gender to the other.

In the breaks between sessions, the hallways were filled with traditional and untraditional Jewish musical performances. People were able to unwind in a crafts room. Children were tended but also treated to family-oriented programming of music, art and a session on how to be grateful and what it means.

For those who attended, Limmud provided countless opportunities to reflect on our inner selves, our communities, our world. And perhaps the most important lesson of the day was that this kind of an event does not require the mobilization of organizations and institutions. It was envisioned by a single woman, whose spirit and enthusiasm inspired hundreds of individuals to share her passion for Jewish experiential learning. It was the model of how a single individual, even when she was there only in spirit, could significantly enrich our community.

Bigotry shameful

A personal tragedy in Montreal last week exposed yet again a streak of unpleasant racial attitudes in Quebec. A 48-year-old woman died on a Metro station escalator when her scarf became entangled in the mechanisms and she was strangled. Editors at the tabloid Journal de Montréal made a judgment that the most newsworthy fact of the tragedy was that the “scarf” was, in fact, a hijab, the head covering often worn by Muslim women. A characteristically enormous headline roared: “Strangled by her hijab.”

As more temperate reporters would later discover, Naima Rharouity, a mother of two, was indeed wearing a hijab. But she was also wearing a scarf. Montreal is very cold this time of year and hijabs are not intended for warmth. It appears that, while the victim was wearing a hijab, she was strangled by a run-of-the-mill scarf, the sort that many, if not most, Quebecois wear during the winter months.

Yet, why does it even matter? The tragedy is a tragedy, with no need to add unnecessarily to the pain of the loss experienced by the family and community.

The sad accident comes in the midst of the province’s public hearings on the Parti Quebecois’ proposed Charter of Values. While it is hard to imagine what motivated the newspaper to trumpet (apparently incorrectly) the religious nature of the garment that caused the misfortune, it seems that readers were to assume that the woman had lost her life because she insisted on dressing herself in the exact sort of garment the Charter of Values seeks to censure. Of course, the discussion around the charter is not strictly about the letter of the proposed legislation, which would apply clothing limitations only to public-sector employees; it is cloaked in a spirit of intolerance that goes beyond the limitations of the bill. The hearings have proved an invitation for anyone with an aberrant sensitivity to other cultures to openly express their views in a welcoming environment, and witnesses at the hearings have raised all range of paranoid and bigoted opinions.

Any who question whether Quebec is indeed a “distinct society” within Canada should hope that is the case, at least as regards the charter and the notions on which it is based. But we dare not assume that our distinctly laid-back West Coast society is free of religious intolerance. We must stand up to religious and racial intolerance everywhere and in every form.

Backlashes ensue in Canada and in Israel over words spoken

Images and symbolism mean a great deal in politics. This was presumably on the mind of Conservative Member of Parliament Mark Adler last week, when he hounded an aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to let him into the cordoned-off area adjacent to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, where Harper was to be photographed having a quiet moment of reflection against Judaism’s holiest site.

Adler, who later claimed he was making a joke, asked Harper’s handler to let him get a photo with the prime minister at the Wall, saying, “This, it’s the reelection. This is the million-dollar shot.”

Assuming that not everything Adler said was in jest, he was not speaking about the Conservative party’s reelection as government, but his own reelection in a swing riding with a large Jewish population (Toronto York Centre). The incident was particularly harmful – joke or no joke – because it seemed to confirm what many critics have posited about the prime minister’s visit.

Harper and his supporters maintain emphatically that the prime minister and his government’s stalwart allegiance to Israel is based on principle. Adler’s outburst appeared to be evidence that the most cynical political calculations were at play, at least for some members of the tour. Regardless, it is probably safe to say that, after nearly eight years of Harper’s prime ministership, any Jewish Canadian who is going to be influenced to vote Conservative based on Harper’s foreign policy has already been won over.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s words early this week also sent people into a tizzy. Netanyahu appeared to moot the idea that, when a two-state resolution is realized, the Jews living in the West Bank should have the option of becoming citizens of the new Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s intention, perhaps, was to draw global attention to the hypocrisy of accepted wisdom that Israel should be a multicultural society that respects minorities and that Israel should negotiate a “right of return” for Palestinians, while a “free” Palestine should be free of Jews. Realistically, of course, the idea of Jewish residents opting to remain in a new Palestinian state holds the potential for both comedy and tragedy. Not for nothing have Jews almost to a number fled every Arab-majority state in the region. Most settlers would not look fondly at their options under Palestinian rule. In fact, if Netanyahu’s trial balloon was meant to get a reaction from the world community, the sharpest response was from closer to home. His own cabinet minister, Naftali Bennett, responded with a single word: “Never.”

In any negotiation, wise participants put forward proposals that the other side is certain to reject, sometimes in an effort at appearing to compromise, sometimes to expose the other side’s pretense. Netanyahu’s latest gambit appears to be along these lines. But the Palestinians have demonstrated no willingness to entertain the idea of giving Jewish people citizenship in their new country. And the world community, for whom the words may have been expressed in the first place, will likely be unswayed.

However, Netanyahu’s own right flank appears to view his comments as the abandonment of the Jews of the West Bank. In the aftermath of the resulting backlash, one can almost imagine him taking a cue from Adler, who, after the incident at the Wall, confronted the reporters who conveyed the incident to voters back home: “You guys don’t get a joke, huh? It’s all said tongue-in-cheek. Tongue-in-cheek, guys, come on.”

Canada’s support of Israel feels good

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood in Israel’s Knesset Monday and delivered a speech that was, predictably, a summation of his government’s unconditional defence of Israel’s right to exist in peace.

While Harper received thunderous applause, his speech was significantly disrupted by a couple of members of the Knesset. At home, while Harper’s position is deeply pleasing to Zionists, it has been condemned as a betrayal of Canada’s traditional “honest broker” role, our middle-of-the-road approach to this issue and many others.

There is no doubt that Harper’s government has moved the country’s foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction, but seeing this as an abandonment of a balanced approach requires selective hindsight. Was Canada’s position “balanced” when we maintained our “go along to get along” approach that saw us vote in support of endless rounds of anti-Israel resolutions, year after year, at the UN? No.

Since the formation of Israel, the Liberal party has governed Canada for some 20 more years than have the Conservatives, including Harper’s seven-plus years as prime minister. Looking at the three main parties, from left to right, it’s the NDP, Liberals and Conservatives. The Liberals are in the middle. It should not be surprising that the party’s position on any topic should, on average, be closer to the middle, or more “balanced” than a position taken on the same topic by the NDP or Conservatives.

In other words, our vaunted Canadian neutrality is a figment of the ideological imagination. It is a chicken-and-egg scenario to determine whether Canadians’ overall middle-of-the-roadness caused so many Liberal federal governments or whether our middle-of-the-roadness is the product of many years of Liberal governments. The question of identity is a complex one, but Canadians are perceived as polite, apologetic, and meek rather than aggressive. This is a perception that, most likely, has allowed us to act as peacemakers in the international arena where others have failed. (It also helps, no doubt, that Canada has never been strong enough militarily on its own to pose a threat to any government with which it may be working to resolve a conflict.)

On many fronts, Harper and his Conservative government have thrown into question what it has meant to be Canadian thus far, from social policy to arts funding to foreign affairs. But, as Canadian voters have given him a majority government, he and his party are obviously not the only ones interested in reshaping the Canadian identity and changing its role in the world.

Harper’s political opponents – and those activists who tend to side against Israel – insist that Canada is losing face internationally, that our long-husbanded reputation for not making waves is hurting us on the global stage. Keeping in mind that Canada remains a small power whose influence, such as it is, has always come through the world’s respect for our principled stands, not because we have the biggest army or the largest population, this may be true as regards our role as a peacemaker. However, the jury is still out on how it will affect our international standing to be a country that speaks out strongly and unequivocally in support of our friends.

The argument that “true” friends are unafraid to criticize and, therefore, Canada is not being a true friend of Israel in its supposedly unquestioning support (we are not privy to what happens behind closed doors) holds some sway, but, at this point, there is no shortage of people letting Israel know what it is ostensibly doing wrong. The international discourse is so lopsided and biased against Israel that, despite any disagreements with Harper we as Canadian Jews might have on any number of his domestic or foreign policies, it is hard not to be proud – both as Canadians and as Jews – that he is so publicly and steadfastly supportive of Israel, rather being a bit player in the European and American chorus of ambiguity.

Harper’s seemingly uncharacteristic Canadian lack of balance on this matter of international affairs appeals to us. Whether or not his lonely voice is having any impact – positive or negative – in re-balancing a wildly unbalanced discourse doesn’t even matter. It just feels good to hear it.

Diaspora and Israel 2.0

Next month, we may get an idea of the shape of a dramatic paradigm shift in Israeli-Diaspora relations. The government of Israel is expected to spend as much as $1.5 billion in the next 20 years on a new initiative to strengthen Jewish identity outside Israel.

The Jerusalem Post reports that working groups are considering programs in seven different areas, primarily targeting Diaspora Jews aged 12 to 35. Ideas being floated include a world Jewish peace corps, Hebrew language courses in public schools, and the expansion of Birthright-style programs to younger Jews and more financial support for Jewish summer camps.

The program, which first made news last summer, seems to be a significant shift away from the traditional Israeli position that the reconstitution of Jewish sovereignty in the state of Israel should logically and inevitably lead to the “negation of the Diaspora.” As Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett said last year, “In Israel, we typically view the world as a source of aliyah and a big fat wallet, and that’s got to change.”

The Israeli government is apparently prepared to put up $30 million this year, rising to $300 million annually within five years. The initiative has a 20-year timeline.

The potential is enormous. But there are issues to address as the idea comes to fruition. In initial discussions, the issues of intermarriage and assimilation in the Diaspora appear to be significant motivators for the Israeli proponents. Certainly, the creation of more social and programmatic opportunities for young Diaspora Jews to meet one another will increase the possibility that they will find their bashert. However, there has been, at least in certain parts of the Diaspora, an effort to recognize intermarriage and accommodate it, in order to ensure that our communities are inclusive and accepting of diverse families. It would not be a welcome measure if the Israeli government were to initiate public relations campaigns that appear to condemn or stigmatize intermarried families.

There is also the not-insignificant reality that, it could be argued, the Diaspora has more effectively managed relations between Judaism’s religious streams than has Israel. The quasi-governmental role in religious affairs we see in Israel represents a degree of discrimination against the very streams of Judaism that represent a majority of Jews in the Diaspora. There are a great number of things that Israel would do well to export to the Diaspora; relations between religious streams and secular Jews is not among them.

Especially among secular Israelis, Israeli-ness is often considered effectively a successor to Jewishness. The Diaspora experience has nothing to parallel this reality. Israel is founded on Jewish traditions, values and rituals. It follows a Jewish calendar. It observes Jewish holidays. Its citizens – religious, secular, even non-Jewish – are confronted and absorbed every day with a culture that is intrinsically Jewish. In the Diaspora, Jewish people must make a personal effort to engage with their Jewishness. In many instances, the synagogue is the point of connection between Jewish families and their identity. In Israel, belonging to a synagogue can have a very different connotation.

The proponents of this program – in the government of Israel and in the Jewish Agency for Israel – appear to be making tremendous effort to incorporate the interests and needs of Diaspora communities into the planning of the program. There is great reason for optimism that this could be the beginning of a profoundly improved and dramatically more integrated relationship between and among the world’s Jews. If, as early indicators suggest, this program progresses as a mutually supportive undertaking, and not as Israelis telling Diaspora Jews how to run their affairs, it could be a turning point in Jewish life for the 21st century and beyond. Israel has much to teach the Diaspora. And the Diaspora has much to teach Israelis.

Any increase in dialogue and understanding between Jews inside and outside of Israel is a step in the right direction. But neither group should attempt to define for the other the right way to be.