Opinion – Jewish Independent

Troubles in leadership

A world leader decries investigations into his possible criminal corruption as an “attempted coup” based on “fabrications and a tainted and biased investigative process.”

No, not that world leader. This time it is Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime-minister-by-a-thread. Finally indicted on graft charges after months of anticipation, he became the first Israeli prime minister ever to face charges while in office. He insists the indictment will not impact his leadership, just as the country seems on an irreversible path to a third election in a year.

In a region with a scarcity of free and fair elections, Israel can’t seem to stop having them. From that perspective, things could be worse. Whether Netanyahu’s Likud party stands with him in his time of trouble remains to be seen. The possibility of his departure from the political scene, which he has dominated for nearly a generation, would provide the most significant shakeup of the field and possibly prevent a third inconclusive outcome.

On this side of the ocean, the U.S. House of Representatives continues investigating President Donald Trump. Few people, including Republicans, are making much of an effort to refute the basic facts. Evidence piles upon itself that the U.S. president indeed asked the president of Ukraine for a dirty political favour – a bribe – in exchange for military financial aid that had already been approved by the U.S. Congress. GOP responses to this evidence range from “So?” to the only slightly more nuanced argument that the president of the United States didn’t get what he wanted and the president of Ukraine did, so no harm done.

With Trump seemingly in thrall or somehow beholden to Vladimir Putin, and his party steadfast behind him, we are treated to the spectacle of a party that 60 years ago was trampling over individual liberties based on a largely false suspicion that “the Russians” were infiltrating the country’s government and threatening its entire way of life now responding to a disturbingly similar situation, this one far more provably real, with a shrug.

While Canada, thankfully, has no such level of political intrigue or corruption at the moment, a shocking diplomatic move last week has set the official voices of the Jewish community on edge.

The day before swearing in a new cabinet, the government of just-reelected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opted to vote at the United Nations General Assembly to condemn all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, jumping on a dogpile led by North Korea, Egypt, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, none of whom should be arbiters of justice or human rights. To be clear, the vote means almost nothing in practical terms. But symbolism does count. And the vote was a slap in the face by Canada to Israel and those in this country who recognize it as our closest ally in the region for historical, moral and pragmatic reasons.

Some speculate that the shift in tone reflects the new minority government currying favour with the New Democratic Party, which has included some notorious Israel-bashers. That is probably a less likely reason than the campaign by Trudeau to win Canada one of the rotating seats on the United Nations Security Council. Where former prime minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to “go along to get along” in the anti-Israel hatefest that occurs annually at the UN was seen as a key reason we lost out on a seat, Trudeau seems determined to hedge his bets.

A prestigious seat on the Security Council would presumably elevate Trudeau in the eyes of the world after he frittered away the “Canada is back” optimism of four years ago by failing to meet climate targets while bhangra dancing across the world stage.

Regardless of the motive, it is a reprehensible act that could have serious implications for the political orientation of Jewish Canadians in the next few years. Coming as it does while the ink is barely dry on the results of an election in which Liberals mostly made the right noises to Jewish and pro-Israel Canadians, it seems a particularly brutish little dagger to unsheathe now.

Generations struggle together

I’ve heard some unsettling real-life stories lately. These weren’t news, but family stories, in my social media inbox. One friend is wrestling with how to best cope with family members struggling with addiction. (This is, unfortunately, a common problem.) In another note, I heard of how an estate is being divided after a parent died; in this case, a sibling told his sister and her family (who stayed local to care for the parents) that she will be homeless within two months unless she can manage to get a mortgage to buy the family’s home. Another message concerns the arrival of a baby, and how scared the new mother is about being sent home early from the hospital. Finally, another friend and I shared our cultures’ rituals as we worked through a discussion about miscarriage, premature babies, infertility and pregnancy loss.

There is both love and struggling out there. These challenges are just part of dealing with our families and lives. No matter what your religion, you may encounter things like this in your life. But, while none of the stories I’ve mentioned is a “Jewish” one, neither are they not Jewish.

With these burdens in mind, I thought about the stories we hear in synagogue this time of year. This week’s parashah, Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9), offers vignettes about life. There’s Rebecca’s story about what it’s like to struggle with infertility and pregnancy difficulties. There’s sibling favouritism, as Isaac and Rebecca raise their twins, Jacob and Esau. There’s inheritance trickery when the twins struggle over their father’s blessing. Their dying father, Isaac, shows what some might call poor judgment, as he mixes up his children’s identity and offers them unequal blessings.

This section of Genesis contains a lot: wealth, poverty, lying, distrust, water rights, and discord between neighbours, intermarriage, family relationship troubles and even possibly some mental health issues. What happens to Rebecca, for instance, when Isaac dies? She needs to know that Jacob will marry someone with whom she can cope, as she mentions with the phrase, “I am disgusted with my life….” (Genesis 27:46)

When we wrestle with similar family and community relations issues in a 21st-century context, many feel isolated. Despite plentiful online information, we can feel overwhelmed and lost when life throws us big challenges.

Our tradition gives us support. When I hear the Torah read or read it on my own, I’m reminded that these stories come with centuries of commentary. When using a modern tool like sefaria.org, I can pull up the portion, but also see commentaries (in both English and Hebrew) that allow me to learn from that scholarship.

It’s true that, for some, nothing beats seeking out an elder or a rabbi who might offer in-person wisdom. For others, the struggles are deeply private. It can be good to have access to knowledge online when dealing with hard issues like addiction, infertility or other family issues. Sometimes, the backlash from older family members can be such that a young person might never again want to talk with them about it. For instance, the pressure to “start a Jewish family” or even “accept being childless” from an older family member can be anguishing.

This Torah portion is called Toldot, which translates to Generations. We’re often in a North American generational struggle, as the phrase “OK, Boomer” currently echoes around the internet. Millennials seek help, guidance and a place in society, while their elders respond with comments like the AARP’s senior vice-president Myrna Blyth, who said, “OK, Millennials, but we’re the people that actually have the money.” (Even as a Gen Xer, I’ve long known how the Millennials might feel. Yes, Boomers have the money. The rest of us, largely, don’t.)

Elders do often have the money, power and influence in society. They sometimes, like Isaac and Rebecca, make selfish or complicated decisions. So, the question is, how does Judaism and its leaders respond to younger generations who seek out help? Are we doing this on a local level to help those in need? These sound like institutional questions, and perhaps our institutions can help. Yet, the last step is a personal one. What can we do as individuals when we see someone in need of support? We can reflect on how our words, actions and contributions help others along life’s path.

I go back to what I heard about how that estate was managed after a parent died. What parent would want to turn out their child and her family from their home? What sibling declares that “it’s only fair” to insist his sister pay off the other siblings or be homeless within two months? (Especially considering this was after she did most of the daily caretaking of their parents for years.)

Of course, families are complicated and have their difficulties, but being an upstanding elder might mean thinking ahead. How does your child/executor behave? Is he or she without compassion? Good, fair estate planning should protect all your children. It should recognize and support those who took time off to care for you. That’s a sign that you’re helping all your generations along their way.

None of these are new problems, but they’re hard. Luckily, we have voices of experience, love and compassion in our tradition to help us do the right thing. It might be time to listen.

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

Trojan horse for Israel?

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the United States does not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law, reversing long-standing U.S. policy.

Most countries, and the United Nations General Assembly, hold that the settlements contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention, which declares that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territories it occupies.” There are counterarguments: Jewish residency in the area goes back thousands of years and, since Jordanian occupation of the area, which was superseded by Israeli occupation in 1967, was never internationally recognized, there was effectively no legal sovereign power and, as a result, the prohibition outlined by the Geneva Conventions is moot.

These are arcana for legal minds, but the more practical implications of the announcement demand the questions: Why? And why now?

The announcement came 48 hours before the deadline Benny Gantz was granted to form a government in Israel. Was this some last-ditch lifesaver thrown to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by his friend Donald Trump? Trump seemed to throw Netanyahu more of an anvil than a buoy after Netanyahu’s poor showing in the most recent election, contending that the relationship was between two countries, not between two men. Typically, Trump’s concept of loyalty to ostensible allies is solid as the wind.

And what does the U.S. administration hope to gain from this? Is there some domestic political calculation at play? It may be an ideologically consistent position for Republicans to side with the Israeli right. But ideological consistency, or any consistency at all, is not a hallmark of the administration.

Some would say that there is an overemphasis on settlements as a component of the conflict, that there is a vast range of issues at the root of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian struggle and that settlements are among the most likely to be satisfactorily resolved through compromise. Other accelerants, like incitement in Palestinian society, are less easily dismantled or accommodated through trade-offs.

Whether we are vehemently opposed to settlements in the West Bank, whether we are passionately in favour of the right of Jewish people to live in that area, or whether we fall somewhere in between, realpolitik should convince us that settlements undermine attempts by the Israeli side to project a good-faith commitment to an eventual resolution of the conflict.

But, more to the immediate consequences, almost instantaneously after Pompeo’s comments, the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a branch of his own department, issued a new security alert for Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, warning of potential retaliation by Palestinians in response to Pompeo’s remarks: “U.S. citizens should carefully consider risks to their personal safety and security at sites and events that are potential targets” and “should avoid nonessential movements and events that attract attention.”

Violence should always be blamed on the perpetrator, and defences should not be made that seem to excuse it based on “provocations.” Nevertheless, the Secretary of State made a comment that led to an immediate warning from his own department that American and Israeli people and interests may be put at risk. And for what?

Is this a “gift” to Jewish and Zionist Americans? Sure, if we believe that it is beneficial to have the Diaspora pro-Israel movement associated with the extreme right in both countries, and that our long-standing commitment to peace and two states with contiguous defensible borders is a concept increasingly isolated to the left. Clearer heads would see it as a very divisive gift indeed, a Trojan horse more than a gift basket from Zabar’s.

For whatever else it may have been, Pompeo’s statement is, at root, the manifestation of something we have repeatedly warned against in the space: the politicization of the important bilateral relationship with Israel for short-term political reasons. That isn’t good for Israel in the long run.

A day that changed my life

The author in the Sinai in October 1973, before his unit was attacked by two Iraqi planes, which caused the unit’s ammunition supply to explode, killing some soldiers and wounding others. (photo from Yom Shamash)

I would like to say that an event that happened 46 years ago left no marks on me and that I am over it. But then, I would not be honest. In fact, the experience left an indelible mark on my life and changed me completely.

In 1971, I returned to Israel – the country of my birth and early childhood – from Brazil with a Zionist youth group, to Kibbutz Zikim. I remember very well the prevailing thinking in Israel then. Four years after the victory of 1967, Israelis were quite confident. Egypt, the most powerful enemy Israel had, was neutralized. We were strong. We had conquered the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan. All in six days. I had absorbed this attitude and felt secure in my little world.

And then the war of 1973 exploded.

I served in the Sinai before the war; I was in a Nahal Brigade unit in which part of my service was spent on a kibbutz. On Oct. 6, 1973, I was on the kibbutz. It was Shabbat, Yom Kippur. Because Israel was caught off guard, there was no time to set up the unit in an orderly manner. As soon as we arrived at our position behind a high dune in the Sinai desert, we started shooting. My tank had a long-range cannon; we could not see what we were hitting 30 kilometres away.

Because my job was to pull the cannon’s trigger with both hands, I could not block my ears with my fingers, as all my tank mates did. As a result, I have a significant and permanent hearing loss.

On Oct. 13, 1973, our unit was decimated by two Iraqi planes. There had been a lull in the fighting and we had been resting on the sand. Suddenly, the two planes swooped from the sky, dropped bombs and disappeared in a matter of seconds. Very quickly, our own ammunition started to explode. Pieces of shrapnel started flying. The only thing to do was to run away from this inferno. Some soldiers were wounded, some died, and all who survived were traumatized.

Looking back now from the vantage point of 2019, many of us wonder about the heavy loss of young lives. Israel lost about 2,700 soldiers in that war. What did they die for? Defending the Sinai? Those of us who served in the Sinai know well that there isn’t much there except sand, stretching for miles; there isn’t much there to defend. What I didn’t know in 1973 was that, for several months prior to the war, Israel’s then-prime minister Golda Meir had rejected numerous initiatives by Egypt’s then-president Anwar Sadat to negotiate a peace accord. Was it worth it holding on to the Sinai? Especially since, in the end, Israel wound up returning the Sinai anyway?

The same could be said about Lebanon – more than 1,200 Israelis lost their lives in Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Was it worth it? We must ask this question of the parents of those soldiers who lost their lives. I wonder what they would say.

I am afraid that one day the West Bank and the Golan will return to their rightful owners, the Palestinians and the Syrians, and, years later, we will ask ourselves what the hell we were doing in these places, and in Gaza.

Two million Palestinians in Gaza and two-and-a-half million in the West Bank, who do not have the right to vote in Israel, will not disappear, and I see no reason why Israeli soldiers should be controlling the movements of Palestinians traveling within the West Bank and those wanting to leave or enter the Gaza Strip. If I told you that Israelis traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa have to pass through Palestinian checkpoints, you would say this is absurd. And I would agree, but it is no less absurd than Palestinians going from Ramallah to Nablus having to pass through Israeli checkpoints.

And why are settlers in the West Bank consuming 10 times more water than the indigenous Palestinians? And why are Israeli soldiers protecting settlers – who should not be there in the first place – some of whom do not serve nor send their children to serve in the army?

There can be no peace in Israel until there is peace in Gaza and the West Bank. The occupation is a recipe for continuous wars and insecurity for all.

I recall clearly, at the end of the Yom Kippur War, returning my equipment at the army base. I pledged that I would never again wear a green uniform.

For a long time, I did not understand how and what changed inside me that October. No one talked about post-traumatic stress disorder; no one talked about personal feelings. But the recurring nightmares never stopped. The fear and anxiety stayed. Right after the war, I sought out a psychiatrist friend, who told me to leave Israel for awhile – I had planned to study in Jerusalem, but he said leave and decide later. I left. I came to Canada, started a new life, married, studied, had four kids, remarried, had a good career and am enjoying life with my wife, children and four grandchildren.

Since leaving Israel in 1974, I have been back twice for visits, in 1998 and 2008.

What happened on Oct. 13, 1973, changed me and shaped my views, my values, my activism, my appreciation for what is important in life. Perhaps one of the most important lessons I learned is that war is never the best option to resolve conflicts. Taking land from others is never a way toward peace. Military strength is not a guarantee of security.

I wish I could be optimistic about the future of Israel, but I am not. For me to have any optimism at all, at a minimum, the occupation would have to end.

Yom Shamash was born in Israel. At the age of 6, his family moved to Brazil. He returned to Israel as a member of the Hashomer Hatzair group and settled in Kibbutz Zikim, south of Ashkelon. In British Columbia, he worked as a public school teacher in Surrey and, since retirement, he has been working as a translator and babysitter.

The wisdom of an oxymoron

Shabbat, Nov. 23
Chayei Sarah, Genesis 23:1-25:18
Haftarah, I Kings 1:1-31

I am an American citizen living in Vancouver, B.C., and serving a Reform congregation for the past six years. This juxtaposition of two increasingly disparate identities has given me a unique perspective on this week’s parashah, Chayei Sarah, and its introduction of the term ger toshav, resident alien.

In Chayei Sarah, we read the rather peculiar line, “Ger v’toshav anochi imachem” – “I am a resident alien [foreigner] living for a time among you; sell me a gravesite among you, that I may bury my dead here.” (Genesis 23:4) This is what Abraham says as he petitions the owner of a field for the right to purchase land for a gravesite for his wife Sarah.

To both the student of Torah and the student of the English language, this phrase, ger v’toshav, resident alien, piques interest and draws attention. It is an example of one of those delightful and often poignant turns of a phrase in any language, an oxymoron – the bringing together of two seemingly incompatible and opposite terms, like sweet sorrow, recorded live, act naturally, good grief, passive aggressive and, though not kosher, but still illustrative, jumbo shrimp.

I have always enjoyed how this literary device can be used to construct biting commentary on the incongruity of frequently paired things. That commentary can have a powerful effect, causing a moment of silence to hover over a room as we contemplate the phrase’s meaning. We recognize this when we dwell on the underlining message of ger v’toshav, resident alien. The oxymoron challenges us to see compatibility – even harmony – in seemingly incompatible things.

So, what is a ger v’toshav, a resident alien? In our Torah portion, and in Jewish legal texts that have followed, a ger v’toshav was an individual of special status in the community, one who lived permanently among the citizens of a place but did not have the status of a citizen. A ger toshav enjoyed all the protections a society offered its citizens but was exempt by virtue of his (it was not gender inclusive back then) special status from many of the requirements of citizenship. A ger toshav was a protected visitor and honoured guest in a society. Central to this was the public obligation for the health and welfare of a ger toshav. This was the sacred responsibility of each citizen in that society and of the society as a whole.

Jewish law is emphatic about our responsibility to the stranger who lives within our midst. Thirty-six times in Torah we are commanded to “love the stranger.” Every year at Passover, this theme serves as the narrative thread of the seder. At the very centre of the Torah, in the Holiness Code, we read, “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:34)

In this week’s parashah, Abraham, the emissary of Judaism to the world, the individual whose merit and relationship with God, above all others, is the reason we were given the Torah, is presented not as a powerful, wealthy businessman or as a man who regularly talks with God. Instead, he is presented as a helpless stranger in a land that he now calls home, seeking aid and assistance from its citizenship.

The text is both graphic and poignant. His dead wife literally lays at his feet, he owns nothing in this land and he asks to purchase a place so he may bury her. He does not seek a handout; he is willing to pay a fair price for the land, but wants permission to do so. And the Hittites who owned the land sell him a burial plot, breaking with their tradition, breaking the law against allowing aliens, even resident aliens, from owning land. (See Manfred R. Lehmann, “Abraham’s Purchase of Machpelah and Hittite Law,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, February 1953.) They sell him the land because they see themselves in his shoes; they imagine their own dead lying at their feet and they make a new law – and they help.

We hear the echo of this story in our own times, at borders north and south, east and west of wherever we are. How do we treat the strangers who show up in our land? Are they to be feared, incarcerated and ostracized? Or are they to be allowed some comfort, as our forefather Abraham was in his hour of great sorrow and despair?

When we are reminded of the kindness shown to our ancestors, when we are reminded that it was also a kindness shown to us, because we too were once strangers in the land, then the solution Judaism demands of us is obvious no matter the challenges. We must care for those who cross freeways, deserts, oceans and mountain ranges to get here, just as (or better than) our nations cared for our parents and grandparents as they were running for their lives. We must reach out to the strangers in our midst, to the resident aliens who live and work here, but for whom economic, social, medical and educational systems have no place. Torah commands us to make a place.

As is our tradition, when Abraham buried Sarah, he placed a stone on her grave as a sign to all who would see it: a sign with its own double meaning, like an oxymoron. The stone signified that beneath this ground lay Sarah, the wife of Abraham, the mother of Isaac. But it also said that this ground, this portion, belonged to Abraham, a resident alien in the land of the Hittites, who purchased this land though he had no legal claim to it. The stone is a sign for all times, a symbol of the kindness and sense of responsibility shown by the Hittites to the ger toshav, the resident alien, the stranger in their land, and a symbol of the universality of human life.

We all mourn our dead. Every person’s life has meaning, even if he or she speaks a different language than ours, comes from a different country, is a member of a different tribe. When we fail to act to heed this mitzvah, our Torah is clearly misunderstood.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and author of The Men’s Seder (MRJ Publishing). He is also chair of the Reform Rabbis of Canada. His writing and perspective on Judaism appear in major print and digital media internationally. This article originally appeared on reformjudaism.org.

Rockets raining down

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu talks about the rockets being fired from Gaza. (photo by IGPO via Ashernet)

Rockets were falling on southern and central Israel as the paper went to press this week. After the Israeli military killed Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu al-Ata, Gaza once again erupted into full war footing.

The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the assassination “a declaration of war against the Palestinian people” and declared, “Our response to this crime will have no limits.” Because they’re usually so restrained.

Schools were closed and Israelis, especially in the “envelope” area near the Gaza Strip but also in Tel Aviv, hunkered down in bomb shelters as Iron Dome deflected some but far from all of the rockets launched from the enclave.

The new, or renewed, conflict does not occur in a vacuum. Political leaders in Israel are in the midst of difficult negotiations to form a government after the second inconclusive election this year. Some critics claim the fighting is a scorched earth attempt by incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to shake up the status quo and tip domestic politics in his favour. But, among those who reject this assessment is Netanyahu’s chief rival, Benny Gantz, who is now leading the efforts to cobble together a working alliance in the Knesset.

It all has a feel of déjà vu, of course, because this scenario, in different permutations, has played out repeatedly. As we posited in this space recently, some people say the status quo cannot hold. It can. It has for decades. But intermittent, terrible flare-ups like this are a part of and a price for that status quo, a high price paid by both Israelis and Palestinians. Until someone finds a path for both peoples to coexist more peacefully, this is life.

Xenophobia intolerable

Don Cherry and Ron Maclean on screen, in 2018. (photo by Ross Dunn/flickr.com)

For many Canadians, Don Cherry and his bombastic pronouncements about hockey, but, more importantly, about society and whatever pops into his head, have been like a tolerated, occasionally amusing uncle at the family table. An opinionated crank who seems like a throwback to an earlier, less refined time, Cherry has been coming into our living rooms for decades, part and parcel with our national pastime.

But there’s a limit.

Cherry was finally told to leave the family table Monday after a rant about “you people” – new Canadians, immigrants or, as people of his inclination might characterize them, “foreigners.”

“You people … you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,” Cherry said on Hockey Night in Canada last Saturday, two days before Remembrance Day. His implication was that new Canadians do not wear poppies or perhaps do so in lesser numbers than Canada-born Canadians. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council was inundated and paralyzed on the weekend by complaints from viewers. On Remembrance Day, Sportsnet, which broadcasts the program, pulled the plug.

Cherry was unrepentant: “I know what I said and I meant it. Everybody in Canada should wear a poppy to honour our fallen soldiers.”

But that wasn’t the context of what he said. His implication was clear: immigrants take the benefits of life in Canada but do not respect the sacrifices that built the country or those who made them. That’s a far different – and more xenophobic – thing than saying everyone should wear a poppy.

Already, of course, social media grumps and trolls are declaring this the latest case of “political correctness” run amok, akin to taking “all thy sons command” out of the national anthem and all the other modernizations that threaten the hegemony of the geezer class.

Times change. People adapt or they don’t. But there are consequences in either case.

“To keep my job, I cannot be turned into a tamed robot,” said Cherry.

So be it.

The next generations

An important event took place in Vancouver last weekend, as hundreds of child survivors of the Holocaust convened at a downtown hotel for the conference of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants. A Shabbat dinner, moving speeches, presentations and other events were attended by survivors, their children and grandchildren, with specific programs organized with the interests and needs of each group in mind.

Attendees felt the heavy presence of time, as some reflected that these conferences are seeing fewer survivors and that the firsthand knowledge of these events will soon be carried only by the second and third generations. (See next week’s paper for coverage of the event.) Attendees, who fortunately witnessed Vancouver over a few days of autumn sunshine, raved about the welcome they received from locals and the quality of the program and the achievements of the organizers. But it is Vancouverites who should be most honoured to have been able to meet and experience the spirit and resilience of these remarkable individuals. Each survivor has a very different survival story and life history, yet they come together in part because of a need to connect with others who are most likely to understand not only the facts of their Holocaust experiences, but the unique hurdles – and, notably, the many, many achievements – of having survived and thrived after an early life of often-unimaginable challenge.

We are now amid a week of solemn remembrance – the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, on the night of Nov. 9-10, followed by Remembrance Day, Nov. 11. These weighty commemorations are an opportunity to reflect on the past and to rededicate ourselves to a world free of hatred, war and genocide.

The past cannot be undone, but restitution and reconciliation can help to take that past and, in some small ways, find meaning that restores honour and dignity to the victims and those who carry their legacies. That is one of the themes of the new exhibit just opened at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).

Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family and the Search for a Stolen Legacy opened Thursday, launched at the annual Kristallnacht Commemoration with a presentation by Dr. Michael Hayden, a renowned Vancouver medical researcher. Hayden’s grandparents, Max and Gertrud Hahn, who were murdered in the Holocaust, had one of Germany’s most significant collections of Judaica. The story of the survival of parts of that collection – and the ongoing efforts to locate and restitute other items – is not so much, he says, about the artifacts themselves, but about reclaiming the individuality and dignity of his grandparents and the lives that were stolen from them. (Again, next week’s paper will feature coverage of this event.)

For Hayden, the process has been emotional, sometimes rewarding, sometimes disheartening. But it is an act of dedication to restore the individuality of two of Nazism’s victims. Sheer numbers of genocide victims are almost incomprehensible, especially to young minds, which are the most critical target of contemporary Holocaust education. Intergenerational narratives like those of the Hahn-Hayden family, illuminated with tangible artifacts, are a vital means to bring this history in a meaningful way to the generations who will not have the opportunity to meet and hear testimony from those who witnessed and experienced that cataclysmic history themselves.

Those of us who have had the privilege of being entrusted with the stories of survivors, or the experiences of veterans of the wars against tyranny, must appreciate the importance of being witnesses to the witnesses. We should take a moment over this weekend to consider how we can act in our daily lives to advance a world that does justice to their memories and experiences.

Turning FOMO into JOMO

Adrienne Gold is a participant in this year’s international Shabbat Project, Nov. 15-16. (photo from Shabbat Project)

FOMO: fear of missing out. Four letters that encapsulate the human hankering for absolute control, and the profound anxiety we suffer from knowing we will simply never satisfy it.

FOMO is an impulse exacerbated by social media, by scrolling through the Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat lives of others, consciously and unconsciously measuring ourselves up to their non-existent standard of living. Comparing our brats to their seraphs, our tiresome drudgery to their idyllic island getaways, our 1980s-style kitchens to their gleaming open-plan masterpieces. And, while social media does not itself cause narcissism, it certainly can help flick the switch of those tendencies latent within us. Especially those of us who suffer from FOMO by nature.

When I was a young girl, I constantly worried that I had missed something, anything that would change the tone and balance of my carefully curated life. In our family, kids came in for the night “when the lights went on” in the street. Many of my neighbourhood friends could stay out later than that, and I remember like it was yesterday sitting in my room fretting over the potential new allegiances that would be formed without me; the stories and games and fun that I would not be privy to. I would be gripped by a terror that things would not be “as I left them” and that the next day would begin leaving me in the dark.

This mindset remained with me through my teens. Wherever I was, I wondered what was happening somewhere else. Whoever I was speaking with, at whatever party, my eyes roved the room to see what else was happening, who else was there? It was as though I had internalized that whatever I was engaged in could not possibly be where the “action” was; that I was missing something that could only happen if I were not there. And this unease continued into my dating life and well into my 20s. There was no me without my agitating the universe, without my scrambling and “hustling for worthiness.”

So, imagine my horror when, many years later, I learned about Shabbat. No phone. No computer. No car. No shopping. No way! What possible benefit could there be in living 24/6 in a 24/7 world? And what if someone needed to reach me? What would I fill those gaping 24 hours with? I was a human doing, with no clue how to be. Or who to be.

Yet, in that struggle with the very idea of Shabbat came the deep epiphany that radically changed not just my world, but my psyche. In advance of this year’s international Shabbat Project, which will be taking place in cities around the world Nov. 15-16, I’m inspired to share this journey.

I was 40 when I started to keep Shabbat. (How that came about is too lengthy and labyrinthine a tale for this space.) Married with two children, deep into my career and as afflicted by FOMO as ever. Nevertheless, I was determined to do this. While the anxiety clung in the early stages of my “disconnecting in order to connect,” it was less than a year before I began to understand something that had eluded me my entire life – apparently, the world turned and ran quite nicely without my help. The control I was seeking could be found by relinquishing it. The Mishnah tells it straight when it says, “Who is rich? He who rejoices in his lot.” I learned to be still, to rejoice in my lot, to be in the moment. I felt rich.

In short, Shabbat forced me to stop trying to play God, to stop long enough to recognize that He did just fine without me. I discovered that “letting go and letting God” gave me the freedom to find value and purpose, and even joy – not in productivity but in simply being. I felt in touch with my soul and grasped in a deep sense its primacy over the body.

Over 20 years have passed since the therapeutic benefits of Shabbat first liberated me from my FOMO and gifted me perspective and clarity on what it means to be a human being; since I first tasted the indescribable spiritual delights of the Jewish day of rest.

Today, I have the pleasure and the privilege of introducing thousands of women every year to Shabbat and more. Momentum – formerly known as the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project – has, to date, taken more than 18,000 women from 27 countries on an eight-day journey to Israel to grow as people, connect to Jewish values, engage with the Jewish homeland, foster unity not uniformity, and return to take action as leaders in their communities.

As a leader on these trips, I have seen thousands of women try to make Shabbat more meaningful in some way or another. These women saw the power of what disconnecting in order to connect might do for their families, and for themselves.

Shabbat is the only mitzvah described in the Torah as a “gift.” Tragically, it’s a gift that too many of us never take the time to unwrap. I was one of them. What I didn’t understand was that ceasing to create would make me more creative, that not exerting myself would give me more strength, that being where I am, limited, constrained, here and nowhere else, has alerted me to the joy in my heart and in my life.

You were wondering about that pesky FOMO? It has become JOMO: joy of missing out.

Adrienne Gold, a participant in this year’s international Shabbat Project, was a fixture on Canadian television for more than 15 years, hosting her own daily fashion and beauty program. Today, she is a trip leader for Momentum (formerly, the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project).

People are not bricks in a wall

Shabbat, Nov. 2
Noach, Genesis 6:9-11:32
Haftarah, Isaiah 54:1-55:5

W.C. Fields said, “Never work with animals or children, [they steal the spotlight].” Though no one ever accused him of being a Torah scholar, his insight was certainly applicable to last week’s Torah portion.

Parashat Noach, the second portion in the Book of Genesis (and my bar mitzvah portion) is perhaps the most universally known and, at least by children, most adored portion in the entire Torah. This is in part, no doubt, because it has not one animal, but all animals – and they come in pairs! So beloved and recognizable is this Torah portion that we tend to forget that there is more to it than the animals coming on the ark, two by two, the dove sent to find dry land, the rainbow, and our ancient ship builder, Noah. Tucked in at the end of the portion that bears his name is a small, poignant story about how the people (Noah’s descendants) focused their energies after the waters and fear receded, and they were once again on dry land.

We are told: “All the earth had the same language and the same words … they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there…. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!’” (Genesis 11:1-:4)

A midrash explains: “Many, many years passed in building the tower. It reached so great a height that it took a year to mount to the top. A brick was, therefore, more precious in the sight of the builders than a human being. If a man fell down and met his death, none took notice of it: but, if a brick dropped, they wept, because it would take a year to replace it. So intent were they upon accomplishing their purpose that they would not permit a pregnant woman to interrupt herself in her work of brick-making when she went into labour. Molding bricks, she gave birth to her child and, tying it round her body in a sheet, she went on molding bricks.” (“Yashar Noah,” in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 1909)

How do you measure your day? I once asked my friend who is a bricklayer this question, and he explained that the universal standard for a good day of bricklaying is 1,000 bricks day. It got me thinking, what would my 1,000-brick-day look like? What is my universal standard for a successful day?

As a parent, I could say it’s getting all the kids washed, fed, off to school and then to soccer or hockey, and back home again. Then it’s getting them to do their homework, brush their teeth and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

As a working adult, I could say it’s getting to work on time and responding to all my emails and messages – the modern-day equivalent of bricks. Then it’s meeting with constituents, handling synagogue programs and business, and getting home in time for dinner with my family.

What makes those days good days is not the quantity of work I do or the number of interactions I have, it’s the quality. The bricklayer, if reasonably competent at his task, can be irritable, antisocial, half asleep and day dreaming as he lays each brick. He can take his anger out on the bricks; he can curse at the bricks as he shleps them up the wall. He can listen to music, talk on his cellphone; it doesn’t matter. As long as the wall is solid at the end of his day and it contains 1,000 new bricks, it’s a good day of bricklaying.

But people are not bricks: we can’t take out our anger on people without consequence. We can’t ignore them or tune them out if the purpose of our day is to interact with them with care, compassion and attention. The great sin of the Tower of Babel’s builders was that they treated people like bricks and bricks like people. They wasted the one thing that set them apart from machines, which, had they existed in ancient times, could have helped build the Tower even better – they neglected their own humanity. When the bricks of our life become more important than the people in it, we, too, build a tower that is an affront to the purpose of our creation.

The midrash continues that, after God confounded the people’s language and scattered the people throughout the globe, the tower

remained: “a part sank into the earth and another part was consumed by fire; only one-third of it remained standing. The place of the tower has never lost its peculiar quality. Whoever passes it forgets all he knows.” (ibid., Ginzberg)

When we treat people like bricks, we forget what we know about ourselves and about others. We forget that the measure of our day is not how many bricks we lay, how many emails we answer, how many lunches we pack, how many children we shlep: the measure of our day is whether each person we touch, including ourselves, feels valued as a person, a blessing and a gift from God in our lives – not a brick.