Opinion

The balancing of rights

Canada prides itself on being a country where free expression is a core value. We have always differed from our American cousins, though, in recognizing a balance between an “anything goes” right to speech and the contending right of individuals and groups to live free from fear and incitement.

Canadian law draws definite lines. Speech that incites violence against an identifiable group, that promotes hatred or that crosses into criminal harassment is not protected. Those limits are not theoretical – they exist precisely because history has shown what can happen when words move from expression into incitement.

Even as governments take steps towards legislation that would create “bubble zones” and strengthen hate crime laws, many Canadians Jews are concerned that limitations already set out in law, intended to protect minority communities, are not being enforced. Rhetoric like “Globalize the intifada,” which is heard as an overt call for violence against Jews by most Jews and other people who can hear clearly, is going uncontested by police and courts, for example.

The Criminal Code is clear: advocating or promoting violence against identifiable groups crosses a line. The question is no longer whether such limits exist. The question is whether they are being enforced. And, increasingly, the answer appears to be no.

What we are seeing is not simply robust debate. It is a climate in which harassment and intimidation are proliferating, often without legal consequence.

There are, of course, consequences. Jewish institutions require heightened security after so many incidents that it is hard to keep up with the grim news. Students and faculty experience actively hostile campus environments. Public demonstrations brazenly cross the line between protest, provocation and hate.

There is no provable causal chain between rhetoric and violence. Democracies are right to err on the side of speech. But, when the same language, the same slogans and the same patterns of escalation appear alongside an unprecedented rise in hate incidents and targeted attacks, the correlation becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss – and demands attention.

Canada is not alone in confronting this tension. The British authorities have begun to draw firmer lines – distinguishing between lawful protest and language and conduct that threatens public safety or targets vulnerable communities.

The approach is not without controversy. It raises legitimate concerns about overreach and the risk of suppressing dissent. But it also reflects a recognition that inaction carries its own dangers.

Canada is facing a similar showdown.

The goal must not be to silence political views, however unpopular. Or to criminalize protest or suppress debate about complex international issues. Those must remain protected. The goal must be far narrower – to enforce the laws that already exist and to ensure that calls for violence, harassment and intimidation are treated as such, regardless of political context. To make clear that free expression does not extend to threatening the safety and dignity of others.

This is a position that seems simple enough, even unquestioned, when it comes to hateful language and physical intimidation against other vulnerable populations. The situation is serious and it demands the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

Canada should not abandon its commitment to free expression. But we must recognize, as we always have, that free expression has limits – and that those limits exist for a reason. In this instance, the reason is the evident correlation between rampant anti-Israel, antizionist and antisemitic rhetoric and the violence against Jews and Jewish institutions we are experiencing.

The government of the United Kingdom is now experimenting in enforcing limitations on hate expression. It is a courageous step. It could also be a turning point – in either direction.

The inevitable pushback around “silencing” (itself often founded on antisemitic tropes of Jewish power) and the more legitimate concerns about free speech make this a fraught policy area. However, if the UK, which shares much of our political culture, can find a middle ground, we would be wise to pay attention.

If, on the other hand, more violent protests, adverse court decisions or – more damagingly – if the government suffers internal splits or popular disapproval over its approach to anti-Jewish harassment, it could set a precedent in which politicians in places like Canada learn that it is best not to provoke the harassers. If that happens, it will signal an open season for anti-Jewish agitation and an extraordinary abandonment of free speech’s twin core value of being able to live free from fear and incitement.

What is needed right now is political courage. Some of that exists, but it needs to exist in a sufficient number of decision-makers and in the places of power where it is most needed and can have the most effect. For better or worse, we will know if this is the case soon enough.

Bad behaviour affects us all

Recently, my kids walked home from high school late because of their games club, which meets once a week. On their way, they saw a man on the sidewalk, coming from a pedestrian trail. He wore a sign on his back that read, “Netanyahu, Butcher of Gaza.” They hung back, took photos and alerted me when they got home.

Here’s a good reason to give Jewish teens access to cellphones. I used the “Find My” app to watch them walk home. They used the phone to document this. We found this signage offensive and upsetting, but it hadn’t been an emergency incident, so they didn’t use their phones to call 911.

I reported this incident to B’nai Brith Canada, who suggested also filing a police report. Over dinner, we discussed the sign. Was this antisemitism or just free speech, when using the IHRA definition of antisemitism? Is the test for this, “Would anyone reasonably use this kind of language about other countries’ publicly elected officials?” The answer for us was, “Well, yes.” We don’t approve of it, but, in 2022, we heard all this as part of the truckers’ convoy that came through Winnipeg. They parked (and honked) at the provincial legislature, close enough to our home so we saw their signs and hateful rhetoric.

I Googled the phrase on the man’s sign. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started using this phrase in November 2023. It’s been used repeatedly in the last 2.5 years of the Gaza conflict. Knowing a phrase’s “origin story” doesn’t make it less virulent. It still didn’t feel OK. Something can be legal, but also shameful, wrong or antisocial, bad behaviour.

As a family, we debated whether we should do a police report. In Winnipeg, it’s not that easy to report something like this. There’s an online form, but it specifically rejects claims due to hate crimes or speech. In situations like this, there is calling 911 to report it or going downtown to the only police station that takes these reports. We chose to leave this one up to B’nai Brith, but the situation remained fresh and upsetting.

First, there’s the debate over whether something hateful and harmful is illegal or immediately dangerous. Our city’s police service is overburdened. Everyone in Winnipeg has heard of someone who has called the cops and been told that, unless the situation was life threatening, no police would show up. This means that squatters without life-threatening weapons aren’t immediately tossed out of vacant homes – but then the homes catch on fire. In one awful case, a panicked teen, trying to protect his grandmother, called the police during a home invasion. He was killed before the police arrived. This horrific incident puts our hate-signage sighting in perspective.

Second, though, is the question of whether we (Jewish people) or teens walking home from school deserve to feel safe. This man wasn’t walking in front of a consulate or legislature in protest. He was near multiple schools, a library, a synagogue, several churches, a hospital and a care home. If bubble legislation existed in Canada or in Winnipeg, it would have been possible to report this and expect a police response. As things stand, it didn’t seem forthcoming.

This incident reminded me of a conversation I had at Kiddush lunch at synagogue. A Jewish family at our table insisted, in alarm, that Bill C-9 (the one for federal bubble legislation) would interfere with their right to free speech. I asked how often they wrote for the press or how this risked interference with their current modes of protest. I asked if they felt that their right to protest was in jeopardy. When I Googled them later, I found that they don’t write widely. Their names don’t appear in the news regarding protests. Their right to free speech or protest was likely not being threatened in any way. It seems they had fallen prey to misinformation. At the table, I brought up multiple incidents that our children face as they leave a public school and walk home past our congregation.

When a protester is outside the synagogue just after school lets out, the police say that it’s public space. The protest is allowed, even though the signage blocks the sidewalk. Kids walking by are exposed to potential hate speech, and normalizing hate speech or graffiti can lead to acts of violence. This kind of protest first happened about two years ago, but, this spring, the signage on a man’s jacket left us in the same quandary.

Well-intentioned allies have asked, “Do you feel safe?” or “What can I do?”

The answer to the first question is, “no.” There are a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, I’d like my kids to be able to walk home without feeling threatened or having to dodge protesters or shoot photos.

I regularly encounter non-Jewish Canadians who ask the second question. I try to help them learn more about the issues, so they feel ready to be “upstanders” rather than just “bystanders.” Calling the police, paying privately for huge amounts of security or shielding children from hateful protest shouldn’t be something Jewish Canadians navigate alone. We’re less than 1% of the Canadian population. It’s necessary to educate and mobilize allies to help.

Political “free speech” can be legal and still hateful. A society that speaks up can make change, even if the offender isn’t arrested. Education happens when we say, out loud, that some behaviours are shameful and un-Canadian. Bad behaviour affects all of us. It’s time to find adults willing to speak up. If somebody wants Jews to feel safe in Canada, then the status quo is not what they want either.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press 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. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Thankful for the police

Communities are not built in theory. They are built in presence. They depend on people feeling safe enough to walk through the door, to gather, to participate, to be visible.

Judaism is not something we observe from a distance. We gather. We show up. We pray together, learn together, and support one another in real and tangible ways. Some of our most sacred prayers require a quorum. When people do not feel safe enough to walk through our doors, our way of life and our community itself are at risk.

I felt this during the COVID pandemic. I brieﬂy returned to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver the day after it had closed. The temperature outside was nearly identical to the day before, yet, inside, the building felt profoundly different. It was not just empty. It was cold. The absence of people had stripped the space of its soul. A body without a soul is not life.

In the months following Oct. 7, 2023, I feared that feeling would return. Not because of a public health crisis, but because of something more insidious: fear, intimidation, extremism. The kind of pressure that makes people hesitate, questioning whether it is safe enough to attend school, synagogue or community programming. When that happens, the consequences are not abstract. They are immediate and deeply human. A community begins to shrink, not by choice, but by necessity.

Leadership in these moments requires clarity. We do not retreat. We do not disappear. And we do not accept intimidation as the cost of living openly as Jews.

That resolve is made possible by those who stand watch so that we can stand together.

Across British Columbia, officers from the Vancouver Police Department, the RCMP and other security services have maintained a consistent presence outside Jewish schools, synagogues and community institutions. Their role is not symbolic. It is practical, preventative and deeply human. It allows parents to send their children to school with confidence. It allows seniors to attend services without hesitation. It allows a community to remain visible.

One officer said something that has stayed with me: “I don’t weigh in on politics. I’m here to protect everyone. But, if I can choose between being spit on or being hugged, I’ll take a hug any day.” That simple statement speaks to the humanity behind the uniform, the quiet dignity of service, and the emotional toll that often goes unseen.

Jewish tradition teaches that saving a single life is considered to have saved an entire world. Protecting our community means safeguarding thousands of those worlds. Not buildings. People.

Jan. 9 is recognized as Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Most people do not mark it on their calendars. But, for communities like ours, the sentiment behind it is not confined to a single day. For our community, every day is Jan. 9.

At a time when law enforcement officers face criticism, threats and, at times, violence simply for doing the work we rely on, it matters to say this clearly: gratitude is not political. It is human. It must be voiced, not assumed.

To those who stand outside our schools, our synagogues and our community spaces, ensuring that we can continue to gather safely and openly, we say thank you. Strong communities do not endure by accident. They endure because people show up and because others make it possible for them to do so.

Ezra Shanken is chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of British Columbia.

UBC needs a wake-up call

I am graduating and, somehow, my school, the University of British Columbia, feels more isolating than ever. This campus prides itself on the ideas of critical thinking and open dialogue. But, right now, it feels like neither is being practised. Instead, I see a culture where misinformation about Israel and the Jewish people spreads easily, where hateful slogans replace dialogue and where Jewish students are intimidated and harassed for expressing their Zionism and connection to Israel as an integral part of their Jewish identity. More than that, it feels like expressing these views comes with a social cost – one that many students quietly calculate before deciding whether it is even worth speaking at all.

I’m a Jewish student at UBC. And I’m done pretending this is normal.

Universities are supposed to be spaces where ideas are tested, challenged and debated openly. My four years at UBC have shown me that certain perspectives are treated as inherently unacceptable before the conversation even begins. If freedom means anything, it must include viewpoints that fall outside dominant campus narratives, including Zionist perspectives.

The role of campus groups and student politics cannot be ignored. UBC Staff for Palestine and the way BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction from Israel) is promoted within spaces like the Alma Mater Society elections are not just frustrating. They reflect a campus environment where hateful and discriminatory movements and campaigns are tolerated and normalized.

While BDS is framed as a progressive, justice-oriented movement, it seeks to end Israel’s existence and strip away Jewish rights to self-determination. If BDS were to achieve its political goals, Israeli Jews would either be killed, ethnically cleansed or forced to live as an oppressed minority. According to an official BDS handbook, campus divestment is merely a “stepping-stone” to larger-scale boycotts and other measures aimed at ending Israel’s existence. This hateful and destructive movement is experienced by most Jewish students as contributing to an environment that marginalizes and endangers the campus community.

At its core, this is where the disconnect becomes impossible to ignore. A movement presented as advancing human rights dismisses the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland altogether. When that position becomes the norm on campus without any serious scrutiny, it is not political activism but the legitimization of hate and exclusion.

It is also worth asking why this issue dominates student political spaces in the first place. In a world full of ongoing conflicts and humanitarian crises, Israel is consistently singled out in student government discourse with false and misleading accusations. It does not feel like a coincidence or a legitimate concern for human rights, but rather a pattern of disproportionate focus that shapes how we are perceived and treated on this campus.

These narratives often leave no room for nuance. There is no space to acknowledge complexity, no willingness to engage with perspectives that don’t fit a predetermined frame, and no recognition that calling for the dismantling of a Jewish homeland has real implications for Jewish students on this campus. BDS, for instance, actively tries to shut down Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and dialogue.

You cannot claim to advocate for justice while erasing the legitimacy of other people’s existence. And yet, that contradiction is increasingly accepted here at UBC.

Students like me are excluded from conversations that directly affect them. Discussions about our own homeland often unfold without any Zionist Jewish perspective present. And, many of us are hesitant to speak up, not because we lack arguments, but because we know how quickly disagreement is shut down or mischaracterized.

And there is one final point that cannot be ignored.

The rhetoric and imagery that have surfaced within anti-Israel activism on this campus go far beyond political critique and cross into something far more disturbing. Slogans, symbols and messaging that frame violence as “resistance” or elevate martyrdom are not abstract ideas. For Jewish students, they are not theoretical – they are deeply personal, and they create a real and growing sense of fear for our safety on campus.

When violence is normalized or even implicitly justified, it sends a message about whose lives are seen as expendable. That is not activism. That is not justice. And it has no place at a university that claims to value safety, inclusion and critical thought. UBC cannot continue to ignore this.

What kind of campus we are willing to accept? One where certain students feel unsafe, unheard and pushed to the margins, or one where difficult conversations happen without crossing the line into dehumanization? Right now, we are closer to the former.

A university should not act as an ideological gatekeeper. Its role is not to decide which perspectives are acceptable, but to ensure that all students can participate in good faith without fear of exclusion or intimidation.

UBC, it’s time to wake up.

Avigail Feldman is a fourth-year student at the University of British Columbia, completing a bachelor’s in political science, and set to begin a master of management. She is also a StandWithUs Canada Emerson Fellow.

Recalling a shining star

My mother, Joyce, met my father, Bernie, at a dance at the Jewish Community Centre in Vancouver. She was selling tickets. He just wanted to talk to her, but she sent him upstairs to check out the other young women at the dance. He did, then came right down and asked her out, even though she told him she had two children and was in the middle of a divorce.

photo - Joyce Freeman with Ria, her first grandchild — Joyce Freeman with Ria, her first grandchild. *(photo from Cassandra Freeman)*

My mother was both elegant and beautiful. When I was a child, she ran a “model and poise” class for teenagers out of Kerrisdale Community Centre. My sister and I modeled there for an audience when I was about 4 years old. Later, I did some ballet on stage as well, with my partner from the dance school. I still remember how nervous I was, but it was so much fun.

I grew up with the many people in the house my mother invited over. They were from all over the world and spoke English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and other languages. (Looking back, I see why I chose to get a degree in international relations!) Mom would literally ask people she met shopping or on the street back to the house for dinner. A lot of them were single and lonely.

My dad worked as a court reporter and often had late hours, so refused to go out. My mother, therefore, had parties at home. I remember pancake and waffle brunches with at least 50 people going in and out. The toppings were cherry, pineapple, strawberry, blueberries, peaches and, of course, whipping cream and syrup. All my friends from the neighbourhood would be there, too.

My friends got an education in Judaism, including the Jewish holidays and the basics of keeping a kosher kitchen. One friend, Madeleine, credits my parents for her choice of a career that involved prosecuting war criminals. I’m guessing that’s because dad was a court reporter and she learned about the Holocaust from us.

I was thrilled when my mother invited the National Ballet of Canada company over for dinner after their performances – if my Uncle Sam had not been performing with them, she might have done it anyways.

I remember two things about the dancers. One was that they seemed to go back to the table and eat at least three times. The second was that, even though they were athletes, they didn’t have a hope when playing table tennis in our basement. Apparently, they had little hand-eye coordination. I remember meeting Karen Kain. She said I had a nice straight back and should continue to dance – and she left me all her beads.

My mother had good friends she would call almost every day. One was my godmother, Helen Friedman, who became like a grandmother to me. We spent a lot of time together. I took on her left-wing perspective and voted NDP for a very long time. She was also a feminist with a capital “F” and I took that on, too.

Growing up in my parents’ house, it was like all three of us kids – Devorah, Tzvi and me – ate social justice for breakfast. Now I see that this was clearly the ancient Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, healing the world. My sister said I had it so bad that, at age 8, I wrote to the Vancouver Aquarium and demanded they let their whale go back into the ocean.

My mother was clairvoyant. She taught me how to send her a psychic message about what I wanted for lunch on my way home. I normally got what I requested but that’s likely because I either wanted macaroni and cheese or a salami sandwich. My father says that, when we kids left home, my mother could make us call her at will, which I believe.

Mom’s favourite psychic story was about Dad and Grandma. Dad would come home from work and say, “Joyce, I don’t know why I bought that.” And Mom would say, “Oh, Grandma wanted that.”

I inherited my mother’s ability to communicate with spirits. Just before my Uncle Steve’s funeral, I was ironing. He said, “Hurry up and get to the funeral.” Mom got a message from him, too. During the transmission, it feels perfectly normal. Sometime after Uncle Sam died, I got an energy hug from his spirit. It didn’t diminish the sadness, but it was comforting.

At some point, my mother began doing I Ching readings for guests and family. I have her I Ching book and display it proudly. It is a book of strategy above all. It doesn’t tell the future, as most people think. It says that, if you are in this situation, you should do this; if you are in that situation, you should do that. It’s difficult to read but my mother was smart and seemed to know exactly what it was saying, even if it talked a whole lot about princes and generals and varied states of mind.

The other thing Mom did was cook – and she is famous for it. I remember helping her by cutting cucumbers. They all had to be about one-eighth of an inch thick or they were no good.

My mother got sick when she was 40 and was never really well after that. She had become a Chabadnik, which I believe helped her with the pain.

We knew when she was going into hospital because she would cook meals for us and put them in the freezer. In her late 70s, she was diagnosed with a cruel disease called Supranuclear Palsy. They tried a Parkinson’s pill, but it didn’t work. Mom died, at age 84, just as the sun was setting, bringing in the first night of Passover. We recently marked her yahrzeit.

A few days after she died, both my sister and I got the same message from her spirit. She said, “I am skipping.” I took this to mean she was ecstatic at being without her painful body. Now, I imagine she is a shining star in the universe. And that’s how I remember her.

Cassandra Freeman is a Vancouver storyteller and improviser.

Is it the end of an era?

The landslide defeat of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party in the recent Hungarian parliamentary elections could herald a seismic shift in European and global politics. Or not.

There were many issues at play in the election, obviously, including pocketbook economics and other domestic matters. Overseas observers have focused on Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” – his hacking away at free media and other institutions that tend to be measures of democratic health. It bears noting, to his credit, that as undemocratic as Orbán may have been in office, when he was defeated, he accepted the peaceful transition of power without apparent reservation.

The Hungarian election outcome is notable because of the era it could bring to a close. Orbán’s election in 2010 is viewed in retrospect as a major milestone in the advance of far-right politics in Europe.

Orbán did not invent European far-right politics, clearly. His election, though, was a major breakthrough and served as a model and inspiration for other movements, including those outside Europe, like figures in Latin America, as well as Donald Trump, who went so far as to send his vice-president to Hungary in an unashamed bid to shore up support for the Hungarian leader in the final hours of the campaign.

Something else Orbán may not have invented, but which he and his government exemplified and honed, was an ambiguous, somewhat cunning approach to Jews and the Jewish state.

Jews, put mildly, have a history with European far-right politics. Even sensible non-Jews are conscious of this third rail. Neutralizing the echoes of that history – or at least casting its veracity in doubt – is essential to legitimizing contemporary far-right politics.

Being pro-Israel has been a calculated and expedient position for figures like Orbán. In the sense that support for Israel fits into a xenophobic European narrative that sees Israel as a bulwark of Western civilization, there is something more transactional going on. Far-right pro-Israel politicians are often militantly anti-Muslim, supporting Israel less because they endorse Jewish self-determination than because of the adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Contemporary Israel is a model for them of defiant nationalism facing down (not coincidentally, Muslim) threats, which justifies some of their own domestic policies.

Support for Israel can also serve as a reputational shield. Supporting Israel in their foreign policy can deflect allegations of antisemitism – even in cases where leaders and grassroots supporters have deeply problematic records of antisemitic rhetoric. In many countries, Jews serve as a wedge in centre and left politics, pitting more vulnerable communities against one another as those in power deflect attention from charges of corruption or the results of bad policies and other inequalities that plague societies.

Pro-Israel politicians who deny charges of antisemitism often engage in anti-Jewish dog whistles like conspiracy theories about “globalists,” “elites,” “the Epstein class” or George Soros, in which linguistic stand-ins for “Jews” allow just enough plausible deniability. Orbán perfected this strategy, using the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire Soros as a scapegoat, with overtly antisemitic undertones.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally presents itself as pro-Israel and protective of French Jews. But many Jews and analysts question whether this is a tactical strategy to “mainstream” the party, which was founded on explicitly antisemitic premises by Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party routinely attacks the Holocaust memorialization culture in Germany and tolerates antisemitic rhetoric in its ranks, while its pro-Israel foreign policy puts a twist in its ideological pedigree. But the AfD’s commitment to Israel looks to many observers like a qualified alliance based on Jews fitting the party’s anti-Muslim civilizational story.

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis, has attempted to soften the hard edges of their anti-Muslim immigration policy with what some have termed a “charm offensive” toward Jews, especially relating to support for Israel.

The opacity of parties with problematic, antisemitic individuals taking actively pro-Israel stands has blurred conventional lines in politics and apparently created some confusion in the Jewish community. At a time when voices defending Israel are so rare, some Jews welcome anyone who expresses anything that can be construed as something like empathy.

Above all, foreign policy is a place where alliances are commonly as tactical as they are principled. Notably, the government of Israel plays this game, too. Last year, far-right European figures were invited to a conference on combating antisemitism. (Many mainstream Jewish leaders stayed away.)

Whether Orbán’s downfall is a Hungary-specific phenomenon or whether it might portend a waning of the European extreme right and those forces around the world will be known only over time. Either way, what will it mean for Jews and the Jewish state? That, too, remains an open question – one that Jewish communities need to keep trying to better understand and be more strategically positioned to respond to.

The only sure thing is that Jews and Israel will remain tools in the hands of self-interested politicians, one way or another.

Taking life a step at a time

Feeding teenage boys healthy, homemade food is no joke. It’s a marathon and not a sprint. Every time, I start with “Where did the leftovers go? Did you eat them all?” and “What else can I possibly throw together from the produce in the fridge and meat in the freezer?”

For anyone who is immersed in household routines, food production easily moves from creative enjoyment to drudgery. This morning, I pondered what to make for dinner, as I walked the dog. Just like the need to think up meals, the dog walk feels heavy, each step weighing me down. Then I hear a noise and look up to see Canada geese migrating home. It’s a sign of spring and, after a long winter, a sign of joy.

We’re experiencing what looks like a failing ceasefire, ongoing wars and, in North America, ongoing antisemitic upheaval. I feel I have that sentence on repeat. The situations change but the worry about world conflicts and about friends and family remains. I’m afraid to invest in commenting on today’s news because tomorrow, we’re still going to wrestle with these issues, but the specifics will change. I feel swamped by it, and I’ll guess that I’m not alone in that.

I continue to study Daf Yomi, a page of Babylonian Talmud a day. Lately, I’ve been trying to follow the rabbis in Menachot, as they cover the particulars of grain sacrifices and how they were carried out in the Temple. The Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed just under 2,000 years ago, and these rabbis were discussing this more than 1,500 years ago. On one hand, the rabbis’ debate feels important – they worried that, should the Temple be rebuilt, they would need to understand and replicate these sacrifices. On the other hand, the incredible level of nuance in these discussions feels over the top. It’s way past “How one loads the dishwasher” and up there with “How do you clean out the sink drain?” and “Do you sort coffee grounds from tea leaves in your compost?”

It’s between these extremes that a lot of spiritual discussion happens. It’s something like “We are but a grain of sand on an endless beach” and, at the same time, “Listen to your heartbeat, as its beat is the centre of the universe.” As individuals, our lives are nothing in the eternal universe and, also, we are the centre of everything all at once.

I get mired in the minutiae, particularly when it comes to household management. Societally, this is common for middle-aged moms with kids at home. This past week, we bought our kids an old-fashioned clock radio, in hopes they would wake up on their own. Despite the clock, their dad goes in first to tell them to wake up. I come in 15 minutes later, to rouse them again. This morning, something occurred to me as I sang “Modeh Ani” at high volume to my teenagers and then a little Paul Simon, “Oh, my momma, she loves me, she loves me, she gets down on her knees and hugs me, she loves me like a rock!” (I can be annoyingly loud and cheery in the morning.) Maybe, even at 7:15, my boys like seeing us do this. Maybe these will be things they remember. Maybe this is how they are reminded that their parents love them.

Slogans that urge us onwards, to do “great things,” like “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives,” can really rub me the wrong way. After the raucous wakeup, I was outside, dressed and walking the dog 15 minutes later, wondering if this meant that picking up dog poop or reminding a kid not to forget his lunch was indeed how I’d spend my life. In a “loud” world full of people who boast of big world-changing endeavours, where does that leave me?

Some people I went to school with are, indeed, in big important positions in business or nonprofits, making change in the world, and that can make a person feel small and hopeless. The notion of tikkun olam, or fixing the world, feels far off. This umbrella phrase is a concept consisting of many individual mitzvot (commandments). It’s misleading and too broad when the individual commandments (visit the sick, provide food for the poor in your community, etc.) are accessible. Example: I saw a new mom of twins feeling desperate online. I knew, from experience, how to help.

“You can do this,” I wrote. “Take it one feed, one diaper change, one snack and one nap at a time. Take all the help you are offered. Think forward but only to the next thing you have to do.”

When I was in the trenches, alone, with my twin infants, I felt furious when smiling people said, “Enjoy it! It will all go by so quickly.” It was painful and slow, like being a grain of sand on an endless beach. Now, though, as I jostle my teens off to school with their lunch bags, I’m reminded that we can do big things, like raise a whole new generation, through these small details.

The rabbis spent a lot of energy trying to reconstitute what Temple sacrifice looked like. This seems a bit much to me until a kid loses his brand new, handknit mittens. Suddenly we’re retracing our steps, calling the places where he might have left them, and getting into the nitty-gritty. These little steps, how we spend our days, are, I believe, how we find our humanity. The global conflicts and issues change, but, if we can just focus on doing these small tasks for others, we can make enormous change over time.

It’s OK to be annoyed, bored and frustrated by all of life’s mindless tasks. That’s a real feeling that many of us share! It’s legitimate. Now, though, I have to go make chicken meatballs, with onions and dill and matzah meal in them, for supper, which we’ll have with potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets and a salad.

These endless details? They’re about nothing. They mean everything.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press 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. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Nakba exhibit biased

The following is the executive summary of the study The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and Its Nakba Exhibit: Bias and Animus in Process and Outcome and the Nature and Impact of the New Antisemitism in Canada, written by Dr. Bryan Schwartz, a professor of law at the University of Manitoba, and Rhonda Spivak, LLB, editor of the Winnipeg Jewish Review. It is reprinted with permission, edited for JI style and length. The exhibit is set to open in June. For a link to the full study, go to winnipegjewishreview.com.

The proposed Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, is not a balanced exploration of displacement. It is a partisan exercise in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel – driven from its inception by a process whose composition predetermined its outcome.

A publicly funded national museum exhibiting biased content that vilifies one national/ethnic group’s homeland constitutes a discriminatory denial of equitable human rights education.

The process and work product – to the extent it is already available – are not consistent with the CMHR’s statutory mandate under the Museums Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism adopted by both Canada and Manitoba, and the ethical codes of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) and International Council of Museums (ICOM).

The bias is structural and traceable. The CMHR assembled a Palestinian Content Advisory Network whose membership was kept opaque – referenced once in the 2022/23 annual report and then deleted. Investigation reveals that its members hold views that are hostile to Israel and not sustainable on a fair-minded analysis of history and current realities.

Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba and member of the advisory network, has publicly called Zionism a “disease that must be destroyed,” accused Israel of genocide, rationalized the Oct. 7 massacre as Palestinians “biting back,” and condoned violent intifada with language such as “intifada revolution … scorch the earth.” Other advisory network members have framed Israel as an apartheid settler-colonial state, endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, advocated one-state solutions that would deny the right of the Jewish people to their own state, have accused Israel of genocide at its founding and in Gaza, and compared Israel to the Nazis. The CMHR cannot credibly claim that work product shaped by this group is free of bias and animus rather than driven by it. By including persons with such views in an official advisory committee, it has extended official recognition and an aura of respectability to them.

The process excluded and marginalized the mainstream Jewish community at every stage. There was no public consultation of the kind that accompanied the Holocaust gallery. The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada withdrew its partnership with the CMHR over the exhibit. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) warned that the exhibit would deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative that would omit Jewish refugee experiences. The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI) wrote to the CMHR, the minister of Canadian Heritage and the prime minister requesting suspension.

Jewish organizations who supported the exhibit are fringe anti-Zionist groups, such as Independent Jewish Voices (constituting at maximum 0.2% of Canadian Jews, this report places them around 0.0025% of Canadian Jews), the United Jewish People’s Order (expelled by the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1951, and whose membership has never surpassed their 1950s numbers, placing it well below half a percent of Canadian Jews; it seems that their largest attended event in recent years was around 350 people total) and the Jewish Faculty Network (less than 0.05% of Canadian Jews). IJV and UJPO were involved with the organization that organized a Nov. 2, 2025, panel at which the exhibit’s director discussed her involvement in the exhibit.

The exhibit’s content is equally one-sided. The CMHR’s potted history, as per its website, attributes Palestinian displacement primarily to Jewish and Israeli armed forces while omitting critical context: Jewish acceptance of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, repeated Arab rejection of two-state solutions, the invasion by five Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state, over a century of lethal anti-Jewish violence in Mandatory and Ottoman Palestine (documented from at least 1834), the ethnic cleansing of approximately 850,000 to 900,000 Jews from Arab countries after 1948, and the documented pattern of rejectionist violence against moderate Palestinians who favoured coexistence.

The very term “Nakba” – originally coined to describe the catastrophe of Arab armies’ failure to destroy Israel – has been recast to frame Israel’s founding as an illegitimate catastrophe, implicitly justifying campaigns to eliminate it. The CMHR exhibit instead insists that “Nakba” refers only to the displacement of Palestinians and avoids acknowledgement of Arab rejection of the two-state solution, of the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland, and the armed invasion of Israel by the armies of five Arab states aimed at Israel’s destruction.

The museum’s diversity policies require representation of multiple perspectives, especially on contested histories, which in this case requires presenting sources that nonviolent Palestinian villages were allowed to stay, multiple Arab sources showing calls by Palestinian leadership and Arab states for evacuation of villages to further the Arab war effort, or leave rather than give the nascent state of Israel legitimacy…. Since Israel is an open society, multiple lines of scholarship diverge. That is not the case in Arab states, which have not opened their archives. Nor is it the case in the Palestinian Authority, where President [Mahmoud] Abbas made “Nakba denial” a crime subject to jail terms.

The exhibit, as Zeid’s own statements make plain, rests on a double game. The exhibit is presented as a collection of individual personal narratives – merely “telling stories” about the effects of displacement, yet it simultaneously advances “the story” that is supposedly the single overall historical truth. The audience is expected to accept these personal narratives as historical fact, even in the context of an advisory network whose documented members variously call Zionism a “disease” or a virus that must “be destroyed” and adopt other epithets that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

It is known that oral histories can contain varying degrees of fact and can be coloured by “collective memory” – political perspectives on past events that are widely shared but may not reflect fairly or fully the actual events of individual lives in earlier generations. Judging from the composition of the Palestinian Content Advisory Network, we can expect these stories to be infused with negativity towards Israel and a lack of any historical context.

In practice, we can expect that many or all narratives in this exhibit may be an occasion to vilify Israel, from its foundation until the present. For example, it may speak of checkpoints without mentioning the suicide bombings that necessitated them, of displacement without mentioning Jewish acceptance of partition and Arab rejection of it, of suffering without acknowledging that it was Arab rejectionism and aggression that created the refugee crisis in the first place.

The “personal story” framing is a shield against accountability: it permits the museum to disseminate a partisan political narrative while disclaiming responsibility for its historical claims. This exhibit will contribute directly to the rising tide of antisemitism that has made Canada an increasingly dangerous place for its Jewish citizens, as documented in … this report.

This selective framing constitutes the “Three Ds” of antisemitism identified by Natan Sharansky and popularized in Canada by former justice minister Irwin Cotler: demonization, delegitimization and double standards applied to Israel. It occurs at a time when Jews face the highest per capita hate-crime targeting of any group in Canada (Statistics Canada). Many Jewish Canadians feel unsafe in their own country, even though both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly affirmed Zionism and Israel’s right to exist and prosper. Those are the rights that the advisory network has dismissed for this exhibit.

The CMHR, in the aftermath of the genocidal attack on Israel in 2023 and the ongoing brutalization of hostages, allowed an unauthorized pro-Palestinian “die-in” inside the museum. This “die-in” was allowed while refusing a request from supporters of Israel for a counter-demonstration, a disparity that exemplifies the institutional bias at work. [CMHR vice-president of exhibitions] Matthew Cutler’s public statements at the time made it unmistakable that the museum had already promised off the books, without public consultation from the Jewish community, to include an exhibit that focuses on the contested oppression of Palestinians by Israel.

Officials of the CMHR have, on the public record, favoured anti-Israel fringe groups while showing disrespect for the groups that represent the overwhelming majority of Jewish Canadians. The museum has not been transparent with the general public or the mainstream Jewish community. This invites the question of how transparent museum bureaucrats have been with the museum’s own board of trustees, who are responsible for fulfilling the museum’s mandate and maintaining its reputation.

The exhibit in its current form must be halted. The CMHR must commission an independent historical review by balanced, credentialed experts. It must require transparent public consultation, including meaningful engagement with mainstream Jewish Canadian organizations; ensure the exhibit includes parallel refugee stories, Arab rejectionism, the full context of the conflict; and conduct a governance audit of curatorial processes to prevent future partisan capture.

Proceeding instead risks CHRA complaints, further reputational damage and continued erosion of public trust in a taxpayer-funded national institution whose mandate is to promote universal human rights, not to serve as a vehicle for the delegitimization of the Jewish state.

Survival not passive

Driving south along Oak Street on a recent sunny spring morning, it was hard not to feel the hope of renewal. Paralleling Vancouver Talmud Torah is a majestic line of cherry blossoms in full flourish. A few metres on, outside Congregation Beth Israel, waves of daffodils tell the cyclical story of nature and regeneration.

If hope itself were temporal, springtime would be its incarnation. Sometimes, though, recognizing and feeling hope can take effort.

For many of us, the just-ended celebration of Jewish redemption and rebirth held special resonance, as it has since 2023. The ageless stories, relived at the seder, remain so relevant. We are living through a period that feels, at once, ancient and immediate, because hatred has resurfaced so ferociously and wears familiar disguises.

The redemption of the last hostages from Gaza and the end of that war gave little reprieve before a new war began in a cycle with which Israelis are all too familiar. Jewish history, though, teaches that darkness is never the whole story.

Seeking peace is a central obligation in the Jewish tradition. But Jewish law, halachah, also acknowledges the role of force when necessary. Jewish survival has never been passive; it has never been the result of favourable conditions. It has been an act of will – a refusal to accept that the present moment, however dark, is permanent. From the destruction of the Temples to the expulsions of Europe and the Levant, from the crusades and pogroms of the Middle Ages to the ashes of the 20th century, Jewish history has been punctuated by chapters that seemed like endings. And yet, they were not.

Jewish hope is not blind. It is strategic – necessary and unavoidable. Consider what has happened in just the past century – an epoch that, in the annals of Jewish time, is the blink of an eye. A people nearly annihilated rebuilt not only our lives, but our language, our culture and our sovereignty. The rebirth of Jewish life in our ancestral homeland was not inevitable. It was improbable.

War is tragedy. There are no easy moral lessons in suffering, no easy narrative that redeems loss. But history demonstrates that moments of profound rupture can create the conditions for transformation. As David Ben-Gurion said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”

The peace between Israel and Egypt followed a devastating war. The Abraham Accords emerged from a recognition that endless conflict was untenable. It is not naïve to hope that, from the current devastation, a new framework might eventually emerge – one that prioritizes stability, dignity and coexistence over perpetual violence.

The same is true of the surge in antisemitism globally. It is alarming, yes. But it is also exposing something that has long simmered beneath the surface. Ideas that were once coded are now explicit. Relationships that were once assumed are now being tested. Perhaps, in these challenges lies opportunity.

There is a growing recognition that Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred are not isolated prejudices, but warning signs. Individuals and communities are standing ground and pushing back. Young Jews and “Oct. 8 Jews” – whose connections to Jewishness were limited until the shock of renewed hatreds motivated new inquiries into their identities – are rising to the moment.

Non-Jewish allies are speaking out, showing their support in their actions and presence. Take, for example, those daffodils at Beth Israel – planted in memory of those people murdered in the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the garden was inspired by a non-Jewish ally. (See jewishindependent.ca/flowers-for-those-murdered.)

The story of Passover does not promise that the journey will be easy. It does not deny the existence of hardship or doubt. It does insist that liberation is possible. And this idea is not just tradition. It is necessary and an obligation.

New law a desecration

Israeli Minster of National Security Itamar Ben G’vir holds up a champagne bottle in the Knesset on March 30, toasting the passage of Israel’s new death penalty law. (screenshot)

On March 30, two days before erev Passover, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated the passing of his racist, dangerous, vengeful and unjust death penalty law by raising a champagne bottle and drinking to victory. The customary toast in Jewish tradition, of course, is to exclaim “L’chaim!” (“To life!”) Partly for this reason, the name chosen for the Jewish anti-death penalty group I co-founded, which now includes thousands of members in Israel and abroad, is “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Those members of the Knesset who support this law have upended the phrase meant to evoke Judaism’s core life-affirming principles.

While Ben-Gvir claims to be a pious and observant Jew, his actions once again reveal his blatant disregard for Jewish values, and an essential mockery of Jewish ritual symbolism. He might as well have screamed “Lamavet” (“To death”) for his celebratory toast. Make no mistake: the passage of this death penalty law will certainly bring death for both convicted terrorists and innocent Israelis and Jews across the world. It is an abomination that will prove disastrous for multiple reasons.

Wine at Passover

One of the most well-known facts about the Passover seder, which both Jews and many non-Jews are keenly aware of, is that it traditionally involves drinking four cups of wine or grape juice. These four cups are a mandatory rabbinic commandment, representing the four expressions of redemption God used in Exodus 6:6-7 to promise freedom to the Israelites. Consumed at specific intervals in the seder, they symbolize freedom, joy, and key stages of liberation, from slavery to becoming a nation.

Perhaps one of the most widely understood reasons for drinking wine on Passover, as on Purim and on any Jewish holiday, is its symbolism of life, joy, sanctification, and transformation used to elevate holy moments like Shabbat, holidays and weddings. It signifies “cheering the heart,” redemption (specifically the four cups at Passover) and divine blessing, while also serving as a reminder of the need for temperance and balance. By lifting a glass for death just ahead of Passover, Ben-Gvir has effectively desecrated this sacred tradition with inverted, grotesque symbolism.

Another tradition of the Passover seder highlights the extent of the sacrilege of Ben-Gvir’s celebration. It is customary for seder-goers to remove 10 drops of wine, one for each of the plagues they chant, symbolizing how the suffering that each affliction produced for our people’s enemies diminishes our joy. This list culminates in the 10th plague of the death of the firstborn of Egypt at the hands of Malakh Hamavet, the Angel of Death. Instead of honouring this Passover ritual, Ben-Gvir profaned it by using wine to glorify killing.

The 10 Plagues

It is most fitting, with Passover only recently having ended, for L’chaim to use the 10 Plagues – with which God cursed the Egyptians in response to Pharaoh’s “hardened heart” – as symbols of the many reasons to oppose the death penalty. We align these biblical maladies with 10 damning strikes against the death penalty to highlight that capital punishment itself is a plague on any society that enacts it. Capital punishment condemns any government that wields it, including Israel now, infinitely more so than any of the individuals it condemns to death.

Dam (Blood): Israel’s death penalty law could increase terrorism, making it more enticing to would-be martyrs (shahids).

Tzifatdeiya (Frogs): It will undoubtedly endanger Jews worldwide.

Kinim (Lice): From Adolf Hitler to Donald Trump, Machiavellian politicians wield the death penalty as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns, and that is the case with this law. Consider the recent examples in Israel of Ben-Gvir’s noose-shaped lapel pin and his video promoting the death penalty law, illicitly filmed at a gallows museum in Jerusalem, as well as Limor Son Har-Melech’s Nazi-inspired Purim costume featuring an injection syringe.

Arov (Wild Animals): Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Passage of this law has betrayed the life-affirming core of that tradition.

Dever (Pestilence): Terms like “deterrence,” which is a fallacious delusion when applied to the death penalty, and “retributive” or “proportional” justice, are veils for vengeance. Unequivocally, revenge does not bring closure for murder victims’ loved ones.

Sh’chin (Boils): The death penalty is racist, and this law in particular is viciously discriminatory.

Barad (Hail): The death penalty inherently violates the human right to life. Relatedly, it often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture, for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will.

Arbeh (Locusts): Many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing and lethal injection.

Choshech (Darkness): Capital punishment will traumatize the executioners within the Israel Prison Service. This law also risks placing anyone involved in contravention of human rights treaties.

Makat Bechorot (Death of the Firstborn): The death penalty inevitably risks executing the innocent.

Onward toward repeal

On March 30, the same day that the Knesset passed this barbaric law, a vast coalition of Jewish organizations across Israel and the world immediately petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to repeal it. The next day, the Supreme Court ordered that the state must respond to the petition and the request for an interim injunction by May 24. The members of L’chaim, together with Jews of good conscience and all of civilized humanity, will continue to do all we can to support this vital, sacred effort.

None other than death penalty abolitionist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) aptly referred to capital punishment as the “Angel of Death.” It is high time to banish this medieval plague from Israel once and for all. The final uplifting song of the Passover seder is “L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim” (“Next year in Jerusalem”). It is our consummate hope and intention that next Passover, Jerusalem will see the repeal of this monstrous legislation.

Cantor Michael Zoosman is a certified spiritual care practitioner and received his cantorial ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He sits as an advisory committee member at Death Penalty Action and is co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. Zoosman is a former Jewish prison chaplain and psychiatric hospital chaplain. He lives with his family in Vancouver.