Opinion

Get involved to change

In the closing days of the recent federal election campaign, CBC’s flagship news program, The National, found it newsworthy enough to run a segment about how many Canadian Jews were supporting the Conservative party, many for the first time. Concerned about the security of Israel and of Jewish communities here in Canada, these voters were attracted by the Conservative party’s pro-Israel expressions and concern for Jewish security domestically.

From this news report, and anecdotally, we know that among those first-time Conservative voters were traditional Liberal and New Democratic party supporters. Canadian Jews have generally leaned more progressive than the general population and, in the 20th century, were far more associated with the Liberal party. This election, however, there was a large number of Jews who made the choice to prioritize the security of our community and support for Israel above some of the other things that might generally determine their ballot choices. This is understandable – but it should never have come to this.

Traditionally, in the United States and Canada, there was a multi-partisan consensus that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself. More than this, certainly, Canada’s very identity is founded on the idea that cultural communities feel welcomed and included. But both of these assumptions have frayed, and Jewish voters responded to this changed reality.

The New Democratic and Green parties contain individuals who are highly critical of Israel, including many even high-profile candidates who contest the country’s very right to exist. It is not a surprise that Jews would perceive this opposition to Jewish self-determination in Israel as indifference to the security of Jewish people everywhere.

Meanwhile, as the Conservative party has become even more entrenched as a pro-Israel party, the Liberal party has taken a range of sometimes contradictory positions.

On social media and in a flurry of emails throughout the election campaign, Jewish community members at times accused the Liberal party of being irredeemably antisemitic. But middle-of-the-road political parties tend to be big-tent affairs and this creates tensions. Within the Liberal party, both its parliamentary caucus and its grassroots membership, there are pro-Israel and anti-Israel voices, as well as, we would venture to guess, a large number of people who wish this no-win issue would just go away.

It should never be the responsibility of a Canadian cultural community to beg, plead or lobby for respect for their personal and collective security. Any party that aspires to government should guarantee this as a matter of course. Even so, a political party is, in the end, nothing more than the people who make it up.

Admittedly, our parliamentary system and traditions place a great deal of authority in the prime minister’s office, with power trickling down to cabinet ministers, caucus members, party officers, activists and eventually to grassroots members. Without being too idealistic or delusional about the ability to alter the trajectory of a large ship, the most effective way to influence a party’s policy is still to get involved in it.

It is sometimes said that, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the government. This is facile and simply untrue – everyone, in a democracy, is free to both skip the election and kvetch about the outcome. The point, though, is that, small-l liberal Canadian Jews who cast a vote that didn’t align with their values except on Israel and Jewish security might solve their ideological dissonance by getting involved in the party that best represents them on issues other than Israel and Jewish security. If they were able to drag those parties back into a multi-partisan consensus around Israel’s right to defend itself and about the full inclusion of Jews in Canadian multiculturalism, they might not be forced to make such a difficult ballot choice in future elections.

We are all busy. Asking people to take time out to attend often-dull local meetings of federal political parties is kind of a big ask. But those people who felt a moral tug at being “forced” to vote against their social and economic views have an opportunity and a challenge – as does anyone who seeks to influence a party’s policy, either to change it or to support it.

If Jews have been made to feel unwelcome in some political parties, that is the fault of the parties themselves and it is victim-blaming to suggest that a lack of Jewish engagement justifies policies that isolate Jews. Still, changing, or supporting, parties’ policies will be best achieved by more Jews and allies engaging at the grassroots level. If successful, Jews will be able to vote their consciences knowing that their security as Jewish citizens of Canada – and our country’s commitment to the security of the state of Israel – is safe no matter which party wins.

Shattering city’s rosy views

The horrific car-ramming that killed attendees at the Lapu Lapu Day Festival on April 26 was Vancouver’s baptism by fire into a club into which no city seeks membership. This urban gem of “Beautiful British Columbia,” where one can ski down a mountain, sail in the ocean, cycle along rolling hills and relax on a beach on the same day, now also is home to a mass killing event. Life for Vancouverites will never feel as rosy again – nor should it.

As a Vancouver resident and mental health outreach worker who hails from the United States – where such events have become far too commonplace – I can only hope that this massacre will serve as a wake-up call to the province for the need for more mental health beds in the region. Specifically, I pray that this event will lead to the political will to reopen a reformed Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, which never should have been allowed to close in the first place.

While the exact circumstances of what led the individual charged with committing this murderous act remain under investigation, it is established that he had been a client in the Vancouver mental health system. The current broken state of that system is at least in part the result of the fate of the closing of Riverview, which was the only dedicated psychiatric hospital serving the Greater Vancouver area.

Riverview was understood to be rife with abuses. I experienced something similar while serving as a chaplain resident at Washington, DC’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital from 2012 to 2013, when it was undergoing a years-long settlement agreement with the US government for mistreatment of patients. Instead of following St. Elizabeth’s successful model of investing in the reformation of a century-old institution, elected officials here chose to capitalize financially and politically on Riverview’s deservedly nefarious reputation. They drew upon the understandable outcry over the violations – as well as the contemporary trend toward deinstitutionalization – to justify closing the hospital altogether in 2012. These excuses offered ample cover for what was at the heart of their motivation to close Riverview: saving taxpayer dollars to become endeared with the voting public.

In the 13 years since that decision, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has effectively replaced Riverview as an open-air psychiatric hospital. Rather than living in a protected environment, individuals in the greatest need of mental health support are forced to try to survive amid a fentanyl-laced, drug-laden dystopian metropolis. Members of this extremely vulnerable population succumb every day on the streets and in their homes to fatal overdoses of drugs to which their illnesses make them abundantly susceptible. This is an abomination that cannot stand in a civilized nation the likes of which Canada professes to be. Indeed, British Columbia now is the only Canadian province without an exclusive psychiatric hospital. For a province whose largest city – Vancouver – is a hotbed for the suffering and preventable deaths of human beings living with the dual-diagnosis of mental illness and addiction, this is simply inexcusable.

As Riverview prepared to close, community mental health outreach programs opened, partly in the hope of meeting the needs of clients discharging from that moribund institution. Among those initiatives were new, innovative mental health outreach teams, such as the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams on which I serve as a spiritual health practitioner. Despite the best efforts of dedicated professionals alongside whom I am privileged to work on these teams, Vancouver’s “capital” punishment of its mentally ill persists. As I write these words, I have learned that another young client of ours has perished, the latest victim of a broken system plagued by chronically lacking mental health housing and hospital beds – someone whose life might well have been saved by Riverview.

The rebuilding of Riverview hospital will not guarantee that Vancouver will be spared from another horror the likes of the Lapu Lapu Day attack. It will, however, provide some peace of mind to those of us who work in Vancouver’s mental health system every day that our society is taking every reasonable action to buoy the system intended to help support those who are at heightened risk of endangering themselves or others.

As part of my duties for the ACT teams, I run a weekly spirituality group at the Gathering Place on Seymour and Helmcken streets for clients and staff. Each week, I guide attendees through images, poetry and live music as we explore a universal theme. This week, I was prepared to explore the concept of “springtime,” playing such songs as “La Vie en Rose” by Edith Piaf. Like Vancouver’s rose-coloured veneer in cherry blossom season, that plan, too, was shattered by the Lapu Lapu massacre. Instead, we will be making space for individual and collective mourning for the members of the Filipino community, as well as our fellow client who just passed today, by offering a rendition of “A Tree of Life.” This song by Idina Menzel and Kate Diaz commemorating the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Oct. 27, 2018, will now be used to help make space for the profound need for grief support across Vancouver.

How many more deaths will it take before we break through the mirage of the rosy-coloured hues of British Columbia’s rainforest paradise? Rather, may we grow our own “Tree of Life” here in the form of a new and improved psychiatric hospital on the Riverview grounds. Former Riverview vice -president and assistant administrator Dr. John Higenbottam adroitly mapped out exactly how to achieve this more than a decade ago in his proposal entitled “Into the Future: The Coquitlam Health Campus – A Vision for the Riverview Lands.” (See rhcs.org/media/Into_the_Future_-_the_Coquitlam_Health_Campus.pdf.)

It is high time his advice was heeded.

Cantor Michael Zoosman is a certified spiritual care practitioner with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care and received his cantorial ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2008. 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. Currently, he serves as a spiritual health practitioner (chaplain) for mental health outreach teams, working with individuals in the community living with severe mental health disorders and addiction. He lives with his family in Vancouver. His opinions are his own.

Finding hope through science

The organizer of a conference panel I’m going to be on asked me some questions ahead of the event. He asked how to find hope from a Jewish perspective amid challenging times. I responded with both academic Jewish content and personal information about my sons’ recent big success at a science fair. This person, a male academic, quickly grasped the personal narrative I provided – he thought it was about being a mother. Let’s not be “essentialist,” I suggested. My ability to provide information about hope doesn’t stem from reproduction alone.

If one looks at what is going on in the United States, where there’s interest in limiting women’s reproductive rights, including motivating women to have more children and boost the birth rate, one might think that is what women are mostly for: reproduction. Yet, all sorts of data indicate that, for example, in a country like Israel, which has a high education rate and good possibilities for women, a high birth rate is also possible.

Perhaps choosing to have multiple children is easier with better health care, reliable social networks and support and maternity leave, and in a country that ranks high in terms of happiness on a global scale. Countries without birth control or proper education for women have high birth rates, but there are also high mortality rates. Focusing on women’s reproductive capabilities alone misses the boat. If women are educated and engaged in their country’s workforce, they contribute more than their biological value – the quick response of a male academic to traditional rhetoric about mothering left me disappointed.

This notion of maintaining hope during challenging political moments can be approached in many ways. I’m still sorting out what I’ll say in the five-minute slot on the conference panel. However, something I learned yesterday in the Babylonian Tractate of Makkot, on page 20b, made me think further about these issues.

Makkot 20b is about haircuts and ritual cutting as a mourning practice. First, Jews are not supposed to cut their hair in certain ways. Second, self-harming through incisions or ritual mutilation isn’t considered an acceptable mourning practice – self-harm isn’t OK.

While I studied this, I was also checking out the Canadian election results. My father, in the United States, was surprised that we hadn’t let our kids stay up late to watch what was happening. I explained that we’d voted early, and that our kids had voted in a school mock election. Also, we wouldn’t know the complete results until later anyway. More importantly, my kids needed sleep to cope with other activities later this week. Sleep felt like more important self-care.

It struck me that much of our tradition, and Jewish law, tries to maintain a complicated form of self-care. Even in dire circumstances, Jewish tradition encourages us to practise resiliency, intellectual curiosity and hope. Each day, the sun will rise, our souls will return and we will have what we need, like clothing and food, and feel grateful for it. As I write this, I hear Omer Adam’s popular musical version of the traditional prayer said on rising, “Modeh Ani.” (Google it, it’s good!)

While we also pray for our country and its leaders, sometimes we jokingly invoke the words that Tevye quotes his rabbi as saying in Fiddler on the Roof: “A blessing for the czar? Of course! May God bless and keep the czar … far away from us!”

My household felt strangely conflicted about voting. We knew for instance that the Conservatives, in the past, cut funding for research and science, which worries us. Choosing parties that maintain or grow science funding is important to us personally, since my husband is a science professor. His lab needs funding to do research. Good science research can protect us. However, the Liberals have a poor track record of protecting Jewish Canadian citizens. Our local NDP MP has expressed something akin to real hate in my dealings with her. So, again, we can think like Tevye’s rabbi: we bless the outcome of a democratic election – no matter how it goes – while hoping those in charge don’t get close enough, through their actions, to do us any harm.

Similarly, the rabbis acknowledged that mourning causes us great psychological pain. This might encourage some to self-harm. Ideally, we should control that impulse. Self-care is a balancing act. It’s not always clear how to make safe choices.

Locally, I watched politicians’ interactions with the Jewish community with interest. In one case, an incumbent Jewish Liberal MP of a riding known to historically have a “big” Jewish community mentioned that perhaps only 5% of his riding was Jewish. His efforts made to support the Jewish community and offer allyship to Israel were an expression of his conscience. That choice likely didn’t help his chances and maybe even was an impediment to his campaign, but that decision to act conscientiously offered me hope, too, even if I couldn’t vote for him because I don’t live in his riding.

Sometimes, our choices aren’t as clear as we’d like them to be. It can be hard some mornings to rise full of hope and gratitude amid the political chaos and death we hear about each day. Given that, we need the reminder of ancient, traditional Jewish prayer and thought, too. There are days when I feel praying is a rote practice. Other days, I remember that we’re doing this in a way that brings us connection with ancestors who maybe didn’t have enough food, who suffered with terrible plagues or physical danger. In many ways, things are so much better for us than they used to be. This alone is worth our gratitude.

When the rabbis warned long ago against cutting oneself, they lived in a world without antibiotics or effective medical care. My conversation about finding Jewish hope wasn’t simply about reproduction, my maternal pride, but rather my pride in the kids doing good science. I have hope because I don’t only believe in blind faith, I also believe in science. Whether it’s Israel’s Iron Dome, Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, or other discoveries, doing science is another form of self-preservation.

The world can be a painful place. We must make compromises to continue as a small minority ethno-religion. Those choices require us to acknowledge what’s happening, to make nuanced decisions based on what’s best in the moment, and to build a better world each day.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of my children, whatever they do, but I’m filled with hope because my Jewish kids won all sorts of accolades at a divisional science fair. To me, that’s Jewish self-care for the future. Yes, it’s also a political statement, too.

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.

It’s important to vote

You may have received anxious emails or other messages from friends in the last few days. Throughout the community, there is concern about a Vote Palestine campaign for Monday’s federal election. Emails and social media posts are flying.

However wrongheaded you may think this advocacy campaign is, its proponents are doing exactly what they should be doing during an election campaign. They are highlighting the issues that are important to them and encouraging others to support them. You may disagree with the approach and policies, but there is nothing fundamentally different in what they are doing from what plenty of Jews and community organizations are doing right now.

The Vote Palestine campaign is an initiative of several groups of usual suspects, including Independent Jewish Voices and other anti-Israel groups. The platform, which federal election candidates can choose to endorse, calls for a two-way arms embargo on Israel; ending Canadian support for settlements (whatever that means); combating anti-Palestinian racism and protecting pro-Palestine speech; recognizing the state of Palestine; and funding Gaza relief efforts, including through UNRWA, the controversial UN body that has been at the centre of this conflict for almost 80 years.

By press time, 124 New Democrats, 44 Greens and 13 Liberals had endorsed this platform. Given that there are 343 electoral districts in the country and the three largest parties are running candidates in almost every seat, the number of endorsers should be, frankly, a bit of an embarrassment for the campaign’s organizers. Almost all the endorsers are candidates for the New Democratic and Green parties. Of the Liberals who have signed on, just one is in British Columbia: West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country incumbent MP Patrick Weiler.

Most of the candidates who have endorsed the campaign and its platform are unlikely to be elected. That, though, is largely beside the point. The issue, we believe, is not the Vote Palestine campaign, but our community’s overwrought reaction. It is a symptom of a particular sort of impulse that seems to believe people do not have a right to raise issues in an election campaign in the manner that the Vote Palestine organizers are doing.

Though they may not have come across your social media feeds or in other ways to capture your attention, there are probably scores of organizations right now campaigning for or against policies that are important to you. Many organizations are encouraging Canadians to vote based on candidates’ positions on such things as the climate crisis, taxes, housing, and the cost-of-living. Agree or disagree with the positions, many of these campaigns fulfil an important civic purpose, assuming they comply with our country’s election laws around third-party advocacy spending.

The next time you receive an email or catch wind of some sort of advocacy campaign that you disagree with, here is how you should respond: take the anger and energy that you would otherwise direct into sharing your outrage with your friends and family and redirect it instead to something positive, a result you desire and hope to achieve.

Here are a few ideas …

Find out which of your local candidates share your values on the issues most important to you. If you find one that suits you, express your support. Get a lawn sign to let your neighbours know who you support. Donate to their campaign.

Offer to volunteer – it’s not too late! Election day is the most intense time in a campaign. You can drive voters to the polls or otherwise help your preferred candidate. (Check out cjpac.ca for more info.)

Ensure that friends and family go out to vote. Contact them over the weekend to make sure they plan to cast a ballot.

On Monday, message or telephone everyone you know who agrees with you on the issues most important to you and make sure they have voted. Suggest they block out at least an hour or maybe two or even three – advance voting statistics tell us Canadians are deeply engaged this election, so high turnout is expected. Prepare for lineups. Bring water and snacks for yourself and your neighbours in line.

Check the voting card you received in the mail to confirm your polling place so you know where to go on election day. If you did not receive a card in the mail, go to elections.ca right now and ensure you are registered to vote.

Democracy is threatened in countless places around the world. Voting is a right and a privilege we should never take for granted.

Meanwhile, as we know from the flurry of messages making their way around the community in the past few days, people who may disagree with you are planning to vote. They are organized and ready to mobilize. The most important thing you can do in response is to make the trek to your polling place and mark a single X on a ballot.

Flying camels still don’t exist

We’ve been getting a lot of weird phone calls lately. The caller ID says it is from our credit card company or the bank. Yet, the person on the phone seems a little off. What we realize, before giving away any important information, is that it’s likely some new kind of scam. The person calling knows our names, or knows where we shop or bank. Maybe that person has seen our mail. Maybe they work at the store and noticed our info when we ordered online. Maybe the information has been sold to them. No matter, it becomes clear it’s a scam. We hang up. Later, we might log on and check our accounts. Is everything fine? Is someone stealing money or information?

This is well worth asking because, sometimes, there is theft happening. If you read the news, there are often articles saying “Caution! Look out! There’s a new scam out there, beware!” Like everything we read, it’s helpful to think critically about this. Criminals are always upping their game to catch new victims. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

I’ve just started studying a new tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, Makkot. So far, it’s mostly about how a court of law rules and doles out punishment. I’ve learned about “conspiring witnesses.” That is, witnesses who arrange in advance to lie about something to the court. For instance, imagine there was a crime in Saskatoon and there were witnesses to it. The conspiring witnesses might swear that, in fact, the criminal was in Winnipeg that day, and not in Saskatoon. It’s clear to the court that the conspiring witnesses were lying, due to the testimony of others. How should the court punish those conspiring witnesses? How are they held accountable for lying?

This topic continues for awhile, but my absolute favourite moment happens on Makkot 5a. The situation is as follows, in summary:

Rava says: If two witnesses came and said, So-and-so killed a person in Sura on Sunday morning and two other witnesses came to court and said to the first witnesses, on Sunday evening, you were with us in Nehardea – if one can travel from Sura to Nehardea from the morning and arrive by the evening, fine, nobody is misleading us. If not? They are “conspiring witnesses.”

The Gemara (later commentators) say: This is obvious. Don’t be concerned that these witnesses traveled via “flying camel” – that is, using a magical or impossible way to travel with great speed. You don’t have to take that kind of thinking into account.

In practical terms, Sura and Nehardea were both places in Babylon with Jewish academies of learning, but they were far apart. Nehardea was destroyed in 259 CE. More than 1,766 years ago, the Mishnah described this. Later rabbis advised students not to be taken in by somebody lying outright in court. After all, these lying witnesses didn’t travel by “flying camels.”

It often feels like that we’re struggling with ever new and complicated scams. The pace and amount of information via the internet and social media is astounding. Yet, I sometimes hear the most interesting things close to home, in the old-fashioned way people have always communicated. When is that? Well, when I’m visiting with friends, having a cup of coffee after lunch on Shabbat, or at synagogue.

Both world news and “true accounts” are only as good as the people who tell them and how much trust we have in those sources. If those sources rely on witnesses who like to offer bald-faced lies, well, that’s not a good source. If we have trouble with the veracity of someone’s account, we must ask: What flying camel did you ride in on?! How were you in two places at once, that you witnessed both these things?

Jewish tradition is amazing. We have these ancient sources to remind us that “there’s nothing new under the sun.” The bigger point is a modern one: we must get out of our usual news bubbles or coffee klatches. We are so easily lulled into believing some versions of the “truth” when we trust our sources without question. For example, some Canadian news outlets suggest that Israel is targeting specific Gazan locations with a vengeance. Yet these same outlets fail to mention the Hamas rocket fire that came from that location just before the Israeli response. So, if the story conveniently fails to mention why the Israeli army is firing at a specific location, the news article may not be an objective source of war coverage.

In the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper, I read about a new lecture series created by professors supposedly concerned about freedom of expression. Their invited speaker, a professor from York University, brought up the suspension of her colleague, who had been charged with “vandalism of a bookstore.” Notably, the article did not mention which bookstore. My household strongly suspected it had been the incidents targeting Indigo, when Jews and Israelis were targeted by protesters. Further, the article didn’t mention that freedom of expression doesn’t mean freedom to commit crimes against businesses.

The article’s tone was matter of fact. A person could read such an article and feel that the professors were rightfully concerned about the loss of freedom of expression. To me, it seemed like the example given before, of the distance between Sura and Nehardea. If you don’t know the particulars, such as the distance between these two locations, you can miss the absurdity of the situation. In the guise of defending free speech, the professors wanted readers to bemoan the suspension of a professor who was charged with vandalism – a crime.

Sometimes, when someone presents a news story or a court defence that seems so smooth and practised as to be suspicious, well, perhaps that’s because it is. Likewise, the tidbits we gain at Kiddush lunch after services may also vary in their reliability. We may have faster transportation and cellphone connections today, but, sometimes, things still aren’t as they seem. As much as things change, much is still the same. Yes, a juicy bit of news is an interesting truth to ponder, but a lie is still a lie. We still have conspiring witnesses to contend with and, even now, we still don’t have flying camels.

Test of Bill 22 a failure

A small cluster of anti-Israel activists protested outside the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver last week, apparently assuming incorrectly that an Israeli diplomat was in the building. Regardless of the motivations, the protest was against the law. And police did not enforce the law.

In May of last year, the provincial government passed Bill 22, the Safe Access to Schools Act, which includes provisions known as “bubble zone” legislation. The law prohibits protests that could interfere with or threaten students in schools or engaged in formal school activities off school premises. In other words, if there is a class field trip, say, to the Vancouver Aquarium, it would be illegal for protesters against cetacean captivity to protest there.

Students from King David High School routinely use the gymnasium and other facilities at the JCC. They were there when the protesters were outside. And there was another formal program taking place in the building involving elementary school students. In other words, the law set out under Bill 22 was undeniably broken. (The existing legislation affects only public and private elementary and secondary schools, so the fact that there is a permanent childcare facility in the JCC does not mean protests of the premises are universally prohibited.)

This is a relatively new law, less than a year old, but, of course, police are required to be aware of legislation as it emerges or is amended. It was not, for example, the responsibility of the JCC or others in the building to notify the police that the law was being broken.

At a minimum, police should have ascertained whether there were school programs happening at the JCC and, discovering that there were, informed the protesters that they were in contravention of Bill 22 and ordered them to disperse.

One can agree or disagree with the law, based on free expression. But the law exists and the protesters were breaking it.

This incident speaks to a larger problem.

In recent years, there has been discussion about the need to address online hatred and harassment. Last year, a federal online harms proposal, known as Bill C-63, met with concerns on civil liberties grounds and underwent significant amendments, including being broken into two separate bills. Both bills died on the order paper when the federal election was called last month.

As commentators pointed out during that debate, Canada already has laws prohibiting expressions of hatred and harassment. Should it matter whether those expressions happen online or in person? And, while elected officials are busy passing new laws, existing laws that might remedy the problems they are trying to address are going unenforced.

There are problems in our legal system. Occasionally, police will defend their actions (or inaction, as the current case may be), complaining that when they recommend charges to the prosecution service, the prosecution service does not pursue them.

In turn, prosecutors sometimes contend that courts, too often, do not convict. In each case, it is an example of one level of the system blaming the one above for inaction.

While governments need to step gently and seriously around the danger of political interference in policing, prosecution and the judiciary, it is unequivocally governments – primarily provincial and federal – who have the responsibility for setting guidelines around things like hate speech and harassment. Governments need to send a message to police, prosecutors and courts that we, as a society, take these issues seriously. We do not send that message when a clear breach of the law results in no consequences whatsoever.

From the perspective of the Jewish community, what happened at the JCC last week may have been the first test of Bill 22’s efficacy. It was a failure.

Considering that clear violation of provincial law, British Columbia’s Attorney General Niki Sharma has an obligation to explain what went wrong. She would also do well to reiterate (or iterate) that the government takes seriously harassment of Jewish students. (Harassment of the broader Jewish community is also a serious concern, but there seems to be a societal consensus that young people deserve greater protections from this sort of behaviour.)

If police will not enforce the law because they do not believe prosecutors will press charges, we need to address, as a society, this problem in the system. If prosecutors will not act because they have been dissuaded by courts that won’t convict, then we need to educate the judiciary or amend the laws.

Pondering peace post-Oct. 7

Commemorations of individuals murdered at the Nova festival. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Since I returned home to Vancouver from Israel a few weeks ago, it has taken me time to write about my reflections. There’s the usual getting over jetlag, catching up with work, dealing with the odds and ends that pile up after a five-week absence. I have also experienced a degree of avoidance. In some ways, there is so much to say I don’t know where to begin. In other ways, what can I possibly say that hasn’t been said before?

Unlike Israelis, I have had the luxury of putting my head in the sand, to some extent, in the days since I returned to my ridiculously quiet suburban home. My experiences – including a visit to the Gaza Envelope, Kibbutz Re’im and the Nova festival site, and conversations with scores of Israelis – have been percolating. In recent days, I have been immersed in video testimonies and other reports from survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks.

One of the reasons I have avoided writing so far, I think, is that the parallel I feel compelled to make is one that I hate to invoke. I intentionally avoid making comparisons with the Holocaust, as almost any contrast cheapens the sanctity of that event’s memory. It also is unavoidably an exaggeration – nothing can compare to the Holocaust. And so, we should not be in the business of raising false equivalencies.

But not everyone subscribes to my hesitancy. More than one Israeli I spoke to referred to Kibbutz Be’eri as “Auschwitz.”

Although I was guided around the sites of the Oct. 7 atrocities by a senior Israeli military official, we were denied entry to Be’eri, which came as a relief. I didn’t want to make the choice not to go in, but I was glad that decision was made for me.

I had to ask myself – as other people asked me – why I was compelled to visit these places in the first place? I had not, for example, taken the opportunity to watch the footage that screened in Vancouver last year of the most terrible carnage from Oct. 7. I believed that I knew enough of what happened that I did not need to be exposed to the images so graphically. (There are people, on the other hand, who I think should be forced to watch such footage.)

I could say no to the video but, in Israel, I felt an obligation to bear witness in what small way I could by visiting the Nova festival site and other locations, including Highway 232. My guide, who was among the first on the scene during the morning of Oct. 7, provided (as you can imagine) a jarring play-by-play of what he witnessed, saw, heard and smelled that day.

As I watch documentaries and continue to read about the events, and hear from eyewitnesses, including those who defended their kibbutzim, and military personnel who were among the first on the scene, it is almost impossible for the mind not to go to historical parallels.

I hear stories of people pretending to be dead for hours while murderous attackers surrounded them. Testimony recounts the nonchalant murder of the elderly, babies, anyone and everyone the terrorists could kill – as well as the collaboration of “ordinary” civilians.

The ripping apart of families. Parents shielding their children from gunshots. Families huddling as they are engulfed in flames. Survivors’ stories of screams still ringing in their ears. Jews recalling what they were sure were the last moments of their life. Acts of brutality that defy human imagination. Sadistic jubilation while perpetrating acts that make most people recoil. Residents of a village reconnoitring after the catastrophe to determine who remains alive.

The parallels are, to me at least, unavoidable.

There is, of course, a quantitative chasm between this modern horror and that of the Shoah. It is this difference that also makes comparisons so incredibly problematic. But it is the qualitative experiences, the grotesque similarities between Nazi atrocities and those of Hamas, that force the mind to go in that direction.

While visiting Jerusalem, I stumbled upon a pathway that begins at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum and research centre, and winds through the military cemeteries in which the casualties of Israel’s successive defensive wars and endless terror attacks are buried, as are most of the country’s prime ministers, presidents and other leading figures. The pathway ends at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the man most credited with making real the dream of a Jewish state, and adjacent to the museum that tells his life story.

The message here is that, from the moral abyss of the Holocaust to the sustaining of national self-determination as envisioned by Herzl, the path has had an unimaginable human cost.

The promise of the state of Israel, in Herzl’s mind, was that a people who were no longer stateless would not be subject to the predations of their brutalizing neighbours. Like so much else Herzl envisioned – he imagined that Jews would be welcomed for the positive contributions they bring to the region – a state has not ushered in the lasting peace for which he had hoped.

photo - An empty Shabbat table set for missing loved ones at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv — An empty Shabbat table set for missing loved ones at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

We have known this since the moment Israel’s independence was declared and the new country was immediately invaded by the massed armies of its neighbouring countries. The Arab states unanimously rejected coexistence and soon Jews from across the Middle East and North Africa were expelled or otherwise forced to flee, most finding a home in the new Jewish state. The Arabs who were not within Israel’s border at the time of the 1949 ceasefire – and their generations of descendants – have been held as stateless people ever since in one of history’s most cynical acts.

What is still able to shock, even in a world where we have become inured to inhumanity, is that there are people who experience joy at Jewish death and thrill at the opportunity to torture, terrorize and kill Jews. A state has not removed that possibility from the world.

If there was one single objective for the existence of a Jewish state, this was it: the basic security of the Jewish person. On Oct. 7, that promise was broken.

While many Israelis told me that Oct. 7 demonstrated that coexistence with Palestinians is impossible, other people told me that it merely made them redouble their commitment to building a future of peace and coexistence. If I went back to those who said Oct. 7 taught us to work harder for peace with Palestinians, would they see a cognitive dissonance in my position as I do with theirs?

If the existence of a Jewish state cannot prevent the most basic thing it was created to realize, is the entire enterprise a failure?

A Jewish state does not guarantee, obviously, that Jews will not still and again experience the atrocities that have befallen them historically. It is, nevertheless, the best defence, however imperfect.

The Israelis who told me they must work harder for peace believe that, when our ideal falls short, rather than give up, we have to do more to attain it. For them, that means doubling down on peace activism. I admire their idealism.

For me, any realistic plan for peace is worthy of consideration. But I will also double down and say that the answer to a Jewish state that fails to live up to its core mission of keeping Jewish people from reliving the horrors of the past is also not to give up – but to continue building a Jewish state that is impermeable, unparalleled in strength and impervious to the genocidal assaults of its neighbours.

Reflecting on the thousands I saw buried along the pathway between Yad Vashem and Herzl’s tomb, I believe that, until Israel’s neighbours are incapable of the sorts of atrocities we have seen, Israelis must work for peace, on the one hand, while assuming their neighbours won’t change, on the other.

Birthday musings on mitzvot

It’s almost Israel’s 77th birthday! And a birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on things.

When my kids attended Chabad preschool, they celebrated their birthdays at school. The teachers encouraged them to think about a mitzvah (commandment) to take on to mark the occasion. Listening to preschoolers discuss what they’ve chosen and why is such a celebration of Jewish life! I’d invite you to try this out at the next available opportunity. You can ask any Jewish person what mitzvah they’d take on, it’s amazing to hear. Israel isn’t a person and can’t take on a mitzvah, but maybe we can help with that to celebrate its birthday.

One thread in our tradition follows certain steps: we improve the world and our behaviour, and that brings about the Messiah, or the Messianic Age, the next world and a better place. Ideas differ on how we do that and why, and even on what the Messianic Age will be like. We don’t agree on the specifics – and that’s fine. However, a recent page of Talmud that I studied in the tractate Sanhedrin, on page 98, really highlighted this concept. It’s a story, of course.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asks Elijah the Prophet when the Messiah will come. Elijah says, “Go and ask him.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says, “Well, where is he?”

Elijah describes him as sitting at the entrance of Rome, far away from where they are in the Galilee, at Mount Meron. The rabbi asks how he’ll recognize the Messiah. Elijah explains that the Messiah is sitting with all the other poor, sick people, but that the Messiah doesn’t untie all his bandages at once to replace them. Instead, he unties and reties them one at a time, so he’ll always be ready to bring about the redemption.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi goes all the way to Rome, identifies the Messiah, and asks him “When will the Master come?” The Messiah says, “Today.”

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi travels all the way back to the Galilee to see Elijah. Elijah asks him what the Messiah said and the rabbi tells him, “Well, he lied. He said the Messiah was coming today, and it didn’t happen.” Elijah says no, this is what he really said: he said he will come “today, if you listen to his voice.” (Psalms 95:7)

Sue Parker Gerson, who wrote the introductory essay for this page of Talmud on My Jewish Learning, points out several things. First, that the traditional commentators inferred that we must do more mitzvot to bring about the Messiah. Additionally, she steps in with something that is a bit deeper: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi visits all these sick people with bandages, talks to one person, and then leaves. He didn’t stay to help any of the people. Perhaps, Gerson suggests, we need to put the “do the mitzvah” message into practice, to help people in need and fix wrongs we see in the world. Elijah saw that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi failed the test, so to speak, not helping when he should have.

Then, I read a Jewish advice column online. A parent is organizing a bat mitzvah and asks, “Should I invite relatives with whom I disagree politically? They also won’t like the liberal way we practise Judaism, but, if I invite them, they’ll likely come.”

The columnist suggests that, since COVID, it has been OK to make smaller guest lists and exclude people. Also, if the kid doesn’t want to invite these relatives, you don’t have to invite them. The columnist says briefly at the end, well, families usually invite everyone, and that’s what families do, but if you don’t want your happy occasion to include these people, that’s OK, too.

My gut reaction was that this answer failed the test. The columnist fails to behave Jewishly and recommend including everyone in a lifecycle celebration. The choice to exclude could cause bad feelings for years.

But, instead of a “failure” lesson, I have been considering what I might embrace about taking on mitzvot instead. I think a lot about turning negatives into positives lately. I’m the mom-chauffeur of junior high-age twins. I hear lots of negativity from the backseat!

To begin: be the energy you want to see. If Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi wanted the Messiah to come today, he had to do more to fix the world, including caring for the sick. Visiting the sick is a positive commandment. We should take care of one another, and it’s often not enough to just visit.

Also, don’t leave people out. If we want our lives, including our Jewish lives, to be inclusive, we can’t just ditch people. Even if a Jewish person, aka a family member, has different viewpoints, votes or behaves differently, within reason, we should invite them in, rather than leave them out. Offering unity and a “big tent” approach is the kind thing to do.

I just read Amir Tibon’s The Gates of Gaza, and its anecdotes echoed this. When Tibon’s family was trapped in their safe room in Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, his parents raced south with only a pistol to save them. His father, a retired, secular Israeli general, spent a harrowing day attempting to save Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, on the way to Nahal Oz. After exchanging deadly fire with the enemy, he ends up with a soldier’s weapon and his helmet, but he still wore civilian clothing, which confused soldiers under pressure. A religious soldier nearby helped. The soldier took off his army issue tallit katan (an undershirt with tzitzit, ritual fringes, on it) and handed it to him. Tibon, clothed in borrowed tzitzit and a helmet, weapon in hand, was ready for battle. The soldier’s inclusivity and flexibility saved lives. Saving a life, a huge mitzvah in Jewish tradition, outweighs everything else.

Helping each other and skipping negativity contribute to our people’s unity. We may disagree with one another and vote differently. Just this week, I’ve signed two petitions and written several letters to voice disagreement; in Israel, protests are part of life. Also, this week, a cousin of ours was inducted into the Israel Defence Forces. When it counts, we’re there for one another. Regarding issues of life and death, we protect one another.

Finally, sometimes restraint is the better part of valour. Occasionally, the first word out of our mouths is no, or a defensive or harsh response. Holding back, listening and considering the situation may help us make thoughtful choices that better reflect the people we wish to be. Israel’s birthday is a chance for all of us to celebrate, listen and include. Like everyone and every nation, Israel has flaws, but embracing positive steps may change lives, or even save them, in the years to come.

Work still left to finish

Last week, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, in conjunction with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, released the results of a community survey on antisemitism. There were, perhaps, few surprises.

Of those surveyed, 85% said that antisemitism has “increased a lot” since Oct. 7, 2023. More than 60% of respondents said they avoid displaying items that would identify them publicly as Jewish and almost two in three said they avoid particular places and events out of concern for their safety.

A public opinion poll released around the same time indicated that the often-discussed “silent majority” is on our side – most British Columbians are concerned about antisemitism. More than three-quarters of respondents to a Research Co. poll said they are concerned about “aggressive behaviour by pro-Palestinian protesters,” “protesters targeting Jewish neighbourhoods and Jewish-owned businesses” and “rising prejudice against Jewish Canadians.”

While we would appreciate if the solidarity expressed in this survey were articulated more vocally and visually, it is reassuring to know that the targeting of our community is not unnoticed or uncontested. The survey is, in any event, a rare encouraging sign.

It may seem delusional to seek rays of light amid reports of unabating antisemitism. But is one narrative of Passover not precisely to remind us that we have met and overcome suffering and subjugation in the past? When we celebrate the holiday, we are reanimating our collective experience of resistance to tyranny and oppression, the birth pangs of our peoplehood, and the victory over apathy and forgetting. An unequivocal through-line across Jewish history is resilience.

We retell the story of Exodus every year during the seder not as history but as a living, spiritual framework for Jewish identity and values.

While this is a very difficult time, it also has the capacity to bring out tenacity, determination and unity among the Jewish people.

Difficulty can also create cracks in unity. This is the night when, more than other nights, we reflect on liberation from literal or figurative slavery – in today’s situation, perhaps, freedom from violence and discrimination – and the imperative of Jews to protect and advocate for liberation. So, as we witness growing fissures in the Jewish world, let us rededicate ourselves to the project of liberation and peoplehood based on fundamental values of freedom, love, unity and community.

On Passover, we are reminded that there are pharaohs in every generation who seek to destroy and oppress. We utter the words “You shall tell your children,” because a vivid memory of the past is central to facing our present and creating our future. Every generation faces its own “Egypt.” The work of liberation is not yet finished.

May those who are held captive in Gaza, those who are fighting to defend Israel, those experiencing violence and discrimination, or seeking freedom in any form, be redeemed.

A Purim-Ramadan oasis

Members of the local Jewish and Muslim communities who came together in the Downtown Eastside March 16 to commemorate Shushan Purim and Ramadan by giving out food to those in need. (photo from Rabbi Philip Bregman’s Facebook page)

On Sunday, March 16, on the corner of Main and Hastings, members of the local Jewish and Muslim communities converged for a joint commemoration of Shushan Purim (the day after Purim) and the holy month of Ramadan.

Both these sacred occasions call upon their observers to feed those who are food insecure, often through charity. Muslims refer to this as “zakah,” Jews describe it as “tzedakah.” Both words denote righteousness. United in this shared charge on that day, these two Abrahamic religious traditions met at ground zero of Greater Vancouver’s mental health, addiction and housing crisis to nourish some of the residents of the Downtown Eastside. This was assuredly a “righteous” act for all participants, inspiring renewed hope for our troubled world.

The gathering was mainly the initiative of Vancouver-Granville Member of Parliament Taleeb Noormohamed, a few religious leaders of the Vancouver Muslim community and rabbis Dan Moskovitz, Philip Bregman, Jonathan Infeld and Arik Labowitz. In a social media post describing the event, Rabbi Bregman wrote: “We may not be able to solve the world’s political issues but we can come together to deal with in a small way a local issue (feeding the hungry) that affects us all.”

It was my great honour to be a part of this group as an ordained cantor and member of the Vancouver Jewish community. My day job often places me at this street corner, serving a similar clientele. I work as a multifaith chaplain on Vancouver Coastal Health’s ACT (Assertive Community Treatment) teams, providing spiritual care to clients and staff as they navigate the existential angst, cumulative grief and moral distress that accompanies the city’s overdose crisis. Many days bring me to the same area to help provide spiritual comfort and solace through presence and song. The task often is daunting. (On the day that I wrote these words, our ACT team lost another longtime client to a preventable overdose death at the age of 29.) Standing alongside my Jewish siblings and Muslim cousins and handing out food that our respective communities had prepared and purchased brought a whole new level of hope.

I particularly needed the spiritual uplift that Sunday, which, like so many Sundays before, again witnessed my Jewish community’s impassioned rallies, calling for the release of all the remaining hostages – those alive and dead – who were taken to Gaza during the barbaric Oct. 7 pogrom that waged war against Israel’s right to exist.

I also needed the spiritual uplift that day because March 16 marked the date when 23-year-old American Jewish nonviolent human rights activist Rachel Corrie (April 10, 1979-March 16, 2003) was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she protested the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. This horrific anniversary led me to spend that early morning reflecting once again on how to reconcile my abiding love of Israel with my vehement disagreement with those Israeli and American governmental policies that have violated human rights, killed innocent children and civilians and threatened ethnic cleansing.

As if to emphasize the point, earlier that same morning, I had breakfast with a Jewish friend with whom I had engaged in a book club to discuss Peter Beinart’s latest treatise, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Another Conservative cantor I know well and respect recently challenged me to open myself to voices I would not otherwise have considered regarding world affairs. I took that charge to heart and decided to read Beinart’s latest work, which I would not have been likely to peruse previously. Like the death of Corrie, reflecting on this book over breakfast proved sobering, as I continue to realize the many blind spots in my own thinking over the years.

While my mind and spirit were still reeling from navigating these concurrent realities, the Purim-Ramadan event provided me with a palpable spiritual uplift, as I witnessed Jews and Muslims standing in unity side by side with wide smiles, handing out nourishment to those deprived of food.

The spiritual boost also came from meeting devout Muslims in their bountiful humanity.

There was Aroun, who shared with some Jewish attendees and I how members of his mosque (Al-Jamia Al-Masjid) often come downtown to provide food to the poor on Ramadan. Aroun had us all in stitches when he jokingly indicated how hard it was to handle so many edibles while observing Ramadan’s required daytime fasting. In the same breath, he reminded us that though there are indeed extremists on both sides of the aisle, events like the present one proved that we do not have to toe their party line.

I likewise will never forget talking with another Muslim participant, Mohammed Zaid, to whom I explained the traditional duties of a cantor as a chanter of prayer. Mohammed responded by offering to demonstrate his own chanting of Quranic verses in Arabic, one of five languages that he speaks. I listened to his mellifluous voice echo the similar Middle Eastern musical modes that I employ when leading synagogue services. In his prayer, I heard words such as “Rahman,” an Arabic cognate for the Hebrew “Rachaman,” meaning Merciful One, and, of course “salaam,” which I knew as “shalom.” His singing reminded me of my late friend Imam Sohaib Sultan, z”l, who was a fellow classmate in my first chaplaincy training class years ago, and with whom I traded our traditions’ sacred melodies.

Our spirits were raised even during the traditionally dreaded cleanup time, as we together refolded the tables we had brought, and shlepped them into vans. My friend Ben Lubinizki and I shot the breeze with young Muslim men while we waited to gain access to the trash and recycling room. At that moment, I felt inspired to pull out my recent Purim costume’s toque, on which was boldly sprawled the phrase: “Canada is not for sale.” In response to this gesture, my Muslim cousins laughed and cheered me on in solidarity. Here was another front on which we were united.

As we said our chag sameachs, Ramadan mubaraks and salaam/shaloms, I realized that a key to interfaith dialogue – even on the most fraught issues – can occur through shared life-affirming experiences such as this one.

The memory of that Sunday morning gathering gives me hope that our mutual striving for lovingkindness can overcome all else. As Rabbi Moskovitz reflected on the occasion, two divided communities had aligned “to feed the hungry and also to collaboratively feed our soul’s hunger for shared humanity.”

May we never forget these universal lessons for our time, lessons brought to us from a very real temporary oasis, built on the most infamous intersection in the poorest postal code in Canada. If humanity can achieve this here, of all places, we can do so in Israel, Gaza and the world.

Cantor Michael Zoosman is a board-certified chaplain with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. He serves as a spiritual health practitioner for the Assertive Community Treatment teams of Vancouver Coastal Health, working with individuals in the community living with severe mental health disorders and addiction. He sits as an advisory committee member at Death Penalty Action and is the co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. He served as cantor of Congregation Beth Israel 2008-2012.