From the JI

Survival not passive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teach critical thinking

We are failing in a battle we cannot afford to lose. Canadians and the world are trying, unsuccessfully, to control the spread of misinformation and disinformation at the source, policing online platforms, flagging content and regulating perpetrators.

This “supply-side” approach is fundamentally flawed. Information today moves too fast, too freely and too globally to ever be contained. Controlling what is produced is a losing battle. Our main hope is to vaccinate consumers of information against the pandemic of lies.

In recent issues, the Independent has reported on steps being taken by the provincial and federal governments to police boundaries (for example, provincial legislation that would create “bubble zones” around religious institutions) and strengthening hate crime laws (the federal government’s Bill C-9). These are deeply necessary and well-intentioned steps.

They are also like plugging a collapsing dike.

In the immediate term, we need to police speech that is hateful and potentially violent. In the longer term, we need to educate citizens to differentiate between truth and lies so they are less susceptible to bigoted ideas and misinformation.

B’nai Brith Canada has launched a national digital literacy campaign that is timely and necessary. (See story, page 12.) Even this initiative, though, should go further. Digital literacy alone is not enough. Canadians – and people everywhere – require a much broader foundation in critical thinking and media consumption. They need to know not just how to use digital tools, but how to question and critique all manner of information: how to evaluate sources, how to distinguish fact from fiction, commentary from reporting, propaganda from legitimate information.

If individuals are equipped to interrogate what they see – if they instinctively ask, “Who created this? Why? What evidence supports it? What motivations might the creator have beyond informing me?” – then misinformation loses some of its power. It stops spreading, not because it has been removed, but because it has been assessed and rejected by its targets.

Importantly, this is not just about young people, though teaching students these skills early is essential. Misinformation does not discriminate by age, and neither should our response. In many cases, older generations, who did not grow up in a digital environment, are even more susceptible.

The world is experiencing a tsunami of information. Everything – everything – depends on the ability of each of us to navigate these surging waters. If people cannot tell what is real, they cannot make informed decisions or vote responsibly. If they cannot distinguish truth from manipulation, democracy itself erodes.

This is especially relevant right now to Jewish Canadians, who are deeply concerned by surging antisemitism and antizionism. We are wringing our hands over how to successfully confront this crisis. If we can train people to identify misinformation, propaganda and assorted falsehoods and conspiracies, the Jew-hatred problem may not entirely resolve itself. Those steps would, however, almost certainly be the most effective and enduring contemporary response to an ancient and enduring bigotry.

A society that can think critically is a society that is less easily misled. And, in today’s world, that may be the most important skill of all.

Moment of opportunity

From the first of Vancouver’s weekly vigils for Israeli hostages, after the 10/7 attacks, members of the local Iranian community were a welcome presence. Asked by the Independent why he was moved to join the mostly Jewish crowd at one of the first vigils, an Iranian-Canadian man explained that no one knows better than Iranians the enemy Israel is up against.

Now, it is the Iranians in Vancouver who are gathering regularly to show solidarity with their families halfway around the world. And it is uplifting not only to see Israeli flags and Jewish community members amid the throngs, but additionally inspiring that the Jewish presence is as profoundly welcomed at these gatherings as the Iranian-Canadian support was at our own community’s vigils.

The escalating confrontation between the United States, Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is fraught with danger. War in the Middle East rarely unfolds in neat or predictable ways. Yet, for all the risks, the present moment might represent a genuine opportunity.

For more than four decades, the regime in Tehran has destabilized the Middle East. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic has invested enormous resources in regional proxy networks, backing armed groups across the Middle East while suppressing dissent and freedoms at home. Iran is one of the world’s foremost state sponsors of terror and the primary backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah – Israel’s most dangerous terrorist enemies.

Many Iranians living outside Iran, probably most, support efforts to weaken or eliminate the Islamist regime in Tehran. Diaspora communities across North America and Europe include people who fled political persecution, censorship and the stifling of basic freedoms.

Domestic opposition – the courageous Iranians who have taken to the streets in opposition to government tyranny – has not dislodged the regime, obviously. Many hope that the US-Israel military action could create an environment that might topple it.

The Israelis and Americans, it needs to be noted, have both explicit and less overt objectives in this war. One stated aim, of many unclear objectives, is to ensure that Iran is prevented from developing nuclear weapons. Regime change is not an explicit goal. The US president has instead called on the Iranian people to take this opportunity to continue to rise up against their oppressors. However, the US administration has not made it clear that ending the theocracy is their aim or that the US will be there for the Iranian people if the war’s other geopolitical aims are met.

For Israelis, regime change in Iran probably presents the greatest chance for stability the country has experienced, at least in the past four decades.

A post-theocratic Iran might pursue normal relations with its neighbours and with the West. It could redirect vast resources away from proxy wars and toward economic development.

None of this, of course, is guaranteed or, perhaps, even likely. History offers sobering reminders that the collapse of authoritarian regimes can produce chaos as easily as freedom.

Iran is not Iraq in 2003 or Afghanistan in 2001. It has a large, educated population, a long, cohesive national history and a strong sense of cultural identity that predates the current regime. Civil society – though heavily suppressed – has shown remarkable resilience, from women’s rights movements to waves of protests demanding political reform. These internal forces matter a great deal. Ultimately, the future of Iran will be determined not by foreign militaries but by the Iranian people.

That is why the current moment, dangerous as it is, should also be understood as holding possibility. If external pressure weakens the regime enough to create space for internal change, Iranians may have a chance to shape a different future.

The risks are undeniable. Escalation could spiral. More civilian lives will be lost – especially as a regime saturated with end-times theology sees its very survival threatened. The region could face new volatility before it finds stability. Civil war could break out.

Sometimes, though, the status quo is the deeper danger. The Islamist regime in Tehran has spent decades exporting conflict and constraining the aspirations of its people. As long as it remains in power, Israel and other countries in the region will not know dependable calm or have much chance to fulfil any dreams of peace.

For the Iranian people, for the region and for the world, this may be one of those rare instances when risk and opportunity arrive together. What follows will depend not only on military outcomes but on whether the international community – and Iranians themselves – can seize the chance to build something better.

As events unfold half a world away, something positive is happening closer to home. In this time of danger and war, it is uplifting to witness Jewish British Columbians standing alongside our Iranian neighbours as they have stood alongside us in our most challenging moments.

Attack on Jewish kids

Fresh red lines have been crossed by anti-Israel agitators in Canada. These developments should alarm everyone who cares about civil society, diversity and safe spaces for children.

A coalition of antizionist groups is pressuring provincial camping associations to strip accreditation from Jewish summer camps on the basis that the camps integrate Zionism into their programming.

These opponents accuse the camps of politicizing Jewish summer camps, but the irony here is that it is the activists who are doing the politicizing. The land and the state of Israel are integral to Jewish identity. They deserve to be part of a holistic Jewish experience – camping, or any other cultural undertaking – for Jews of any age.

A primary complaint, it seems, is that Jewish camps often employ young Israelis, including (as almost all Israelis are) veterans of the Israel Defence Forces. They take it a step further, though – and this is a lesson about the insidious strategy behind the “genocide” libel.

The term genocide, we should not need to note, carries a strict definition under international law and no competent international court has made such a finding against Israel. While the term is thrown about with abandon, including by erstwhile legitimate nongovernmental organizations, this is, at best, a contested area of discourse.

It might have seemed that the widespread use of the term “genocide” was a means to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is much more than that.

Having planted the flag of “genocide,” antizionist groups are now moving from this presumed “fact” to employing it as a weapon on new fronts to attack Jewish identity, culture and security worldwide – the first, apparently, being Jewish kids’ summer camp experiences.

The activists targeting Jewish camps are accusing them of endorsing “genocide.” The campaign is part of a broader effort to cast Jewish institutions as unacceptable in public life if they are connected, even tangentially, to anything associated with Israel.

Jewish summer camps have nothing to do with military strategy in Gaza or legislative decisions in Jerusalem. They have everything to do with building community, preserving language and tradition, fostering positive identity and belongingness, and providing childhood experiences that many Canadian Jews cherish and remember fondly for decades. They are also sources of relationships – dating and marriages included – for many in the Jewish world.

And that, of course, may be the point.

The anti-Israel activists know the centrality of Israel to Jewish identity. To undermine Israel, they seem to have concluded, it is necessary to attack the foundations of Jewish identity in Canada and around the world. Starting with kids.

The attempt to weaponize accreditation – a marker of safety, quality and regulatory compliance – threatens to blur the boundary between political disputes and Canada’s multicultural harmony. Provincial camping associations are rightly focused on ensuring that camps meet health, safety and staffing standards. They are not forums for arbitrating geopolitical grievances.

What is most disturbing about this campaign is not merely its target, but its implications. If any cultural institution can be penalized because it maintains a connection to a nation or narrative that some (rightly or wrongly) find objectionable, then no group is safe from the imposition of political litmus tests in civic life. Imagine if every cultural organization that used Russian, Hausa, Arabic, Urdu or Mandarin were accused of endorsing every foreign government’s actions. The corrosive effect on Canadian pluralism would be profound.

To their credit, camping associations in Ontario and Manitoba have responded appropriately. We await similar expressions from the BC Camps Association.

Jewish camp leaders, Jewish federations and others have rightly pushed back, calling the campaign discriminatory and cautioning that it risks undermining the welfare and safety of Jewish children. Their voices deserve amplification. Protecting our children’s right to participate in enriching experiences free from political and antisemitic harassment is not a partisan concern. It is a foundational element of a just, inclusive society.

In defending Jewish summer camps, we are defending more than campfires and games. We are defending a principle: that identity – religious, cultural or ethnic – must not be a basis for discrimination in Canada.

To suggest that Jewish camps should lose their accreditation because they use Hebrew words around a campfire, celebrate Jewish holidays or employ staff who have served in the Israeli military is to redefine discrimination as activism.

Targeting Jewish summer camps for their cultural identity is an assault on the very foundations of multicultural community life.

Concerning actions

The federal government announced last week that they are eliminating the office of Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.

The announcement came in conjunction with the decision to eliminate the similar office of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, and the announcement that there will be a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion.

It is hard to find fault with the hope expressed by the government that the new council, which will be comprised of prominent Canadians from academia as well as experts and community leaders, will foster social cohesion, rally Canadians around shared identity, combat racism and hate in all their forms, and help guide the government’s work in fighting racism. However, cutting the one position in Ottawa explicitly committed to addressing antisemitism just doesn’t seem wise.

Given the precipitous rise in antisemitism in Canada, we might assume that the office of antisemitism was not a great success. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to measure success and failure on these matters. Perhaps things would have been markedly worse without it. In any event, for what was no doubt a barely negligible cost in the bigger scheme of the federal budget, the office was at least a nod toward taking the matter seriously.

Perhaps the new office will have profound impacts that the two eradicated offices did not. The problem is that, in so many ways, antisemitism is different in form and content from other forms of racism. It needs and deserves to be recognized and treated in ways that reflect this meaningful difference.

It is a symptom of the problem of antisemitism itself that this basic recognition of difference elicits condemnations of “Jewish exceptionalism,” or worse. It is an unavoidable truth, though, and the unique challenges of antisemitism are not addressed when elected officials, commentators, academics and antiracist activists seem congenitally incapable of condemning antisemitism without couching that condemnation in a basket of other biases and bigotries that deserve their own condemnation.

It should be reason for concern that the homogenization of antisemitism is now being institutionalized in an agency that lumps biases against Jews – which Statistics Canada says account for 70% of religiously motivated hate crimes and almost one in five of all hate crimes in the country – into a catch-all council dealing with a vast range of social ills. (The fact that antisemitism is grouped with “religiously motivated hate crimes” is a problematic but common misnomer for another editorial.)

A second, seemingly unrelated story in the news last week should amplify this concern.

In a minor political coup, Doly Begum, the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party in the Ontario legislature, blindsided her leader by suddenly resigning her legislative seat and announcing she would run federally – not for their federal counterpart, the NDP, but for Mark Carney’s Liberal party.

Political commentators have had a field day poking the entrails of Ontario’s NDP and wondering what it might mean for the federal Liberal government’s left flank as some people ponder a snap election this year.

Those attuned to other nuances of the story soon found that Begum has been one of the Ontario legislature’s most vocal anti-Israel voices, with a particular inclination toward the “genocide” claim. Given that provincial governments have precisely no foreign policy responsibilities, Begum’s fixation on this issue suggests she may bring a very particular agenda should she be elected in the upcoming by-election.

There is no way that the prime minister, the Liberal party and anyone else involved in these headline-topping machinations was not aware of their new recruit’s repeated and inflammatory comments on this topic.

The welcoming of Begum into the Liberal fold seems like another message to Canadians about this government’s approach to Israel and Palestine and the inevitable fallout of that conflict on domestic harmony.

Coming on the heels of the federal government’s recognition of a “state of Palestine” last year, it is hard to imagine the latest developments as anything short of a slap in the face to Jewish and pro-Israel Canadians, and anyone who cares about combatting Jew-hatred.

A good place to start

A massive 94% of Canadian Jews support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. However, according to University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym, who conducted the survey of 600 respondents, only 51% of those call themselves “Zionists.”

In the National Post this month, Brym took aim at those he says have weaponized his work, including the group Independent Jewish Voices and Avi Lewis, who is running for the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party. Lewis and IJV have claimed, based on an apparent deliberate misreading of Brym’s study, that 49% of Canadian Jews are not Zionists.

Brym calls that “gaslighting.”

When asked “Do you support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state?” 94% of respondents answered “yes” – in a word, they are Zionist. However, in another question, about how they personally identified, 51% of Jewish Canadians affirm they are Zionist, 15% “express ambivalence” about referring to themselves as Zionist, 7% say they “don’t know” and 27% say they are not Zionist. Just 1% describe themselves as “anti-Zionist.”

Intellectually honest politicians and organizations should not engage in misrepresenting Jewish Canadians’ actual views and the diminishment of their overwhelming emotional, spiritual, familial and other connections to Israel and its right to exist.

Here is something we should be pondering: How has a word and an idea that reflects the manifestation of Jewish self-determination, freedom, actualization and civilizational achievement become so sullied that almost half of Jews hesitate or refuse to identify with it?

In some ways, it is understandable. Before Israel became a state in 1948, Zionism as a contemporary political movement was the outgrowth of Theodor Herzl’s late-19th-century idea of a separate Jewish homeland. Since 1948, and the existence of Israel as a nation-state, the term Zionism has been associated with a tangible country, with a military, a government, and the flaws and foibles that accompany all nation-states. Zionism has come to mean, in some eyes, a vast range of concepts, including actions, good or bad (but, for the purposes of Lewis and groups like IJV, almost always bad), of the government of Israel.

This contradiction between the strict meaning of the term as it is defined in the political sphere and the broad application of it by bad actors is part of the reason many Jews are hesitant to adopt the descriptor “Zionist.” Jews themselves may have limited knowledge around other forms and visions of Zionism that have existed, making it difficult for the average Jew to engage in a discussion that contextualizes modern-day Zionism and the fuller arc of Jewish history.

Given the challenges and anxieties around being Jewish in Canada (and everywhere else in the world) right now, perhaps it is unwise to criticize the hesitancy of half of Canadian Jews to self-identify with an unpopular term. This is especially the case when faced with nefarious discourses that align Zionism with racism, white supremacy and Naziism, and a lack of knowledge of how to respond to those charges.

This survey’s misuse seems like a line in the sand, though.

The defilement of the term “Zionist” to mean things it doesn’t mean is part of a larger trend to score political victories by moving goalposts and using language to obscure truth.

Generally, the anti-Israel narrative is founded on a sort of postmodern rejection of objective definitions and terminology. Terms like “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are redefined to encompass whatever those who weaponize the terms want them to mean.

When Jews, in the form of the Jewish state, are accused of genocide, a term that had to be invented to describe the Jewish experience of mass death, it makes arguing over the adoption of the label “Zionist” seem petty. But, if there is no consensus on something so foundational to the way many Jews define ourselves and our values, we put ourselves at a disadvantage in combating an abuse of language that reduces the human dignity of the Jewish people and, worse, can have literal life-and-death consequences.

If we are going to reverse this trajectory, which threatens not just Jews but truth itself, we need to contest the manipulation of language. By proudly reclaiming the term “Zionist,” which, apparently, 94% of Canadian Jews are but either don’t know it or won’t admit it, perhaps we can build some of the resilience and strength needed to combat the fight against more destructive and deceitful redefinitions of terms.

If we are going to defend the definition of the words we use to discuss the most vital issues of our time, “Zionism” seems like a good place to start.

Killed for being Jewish

For Jews worldwide, the hope represented by the first candle of Hanukkah was snuffed out by the horrifying mass murder at a communal Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia. At press time, 15 were confirmed dead, ranging from a 10-year-old named Matilda to an 87-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, Alex Kleytman.

There have been many antisemitic incidents and attacks in Australia in the past two years, as there have been in many places. One of the reasons this hatred is spreading is the refusal of leaders to recognize and address it specifically as Jew-hatred.

This stubborn blindness was evidenced in the words of Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s mass murder.

“An attack on Jewish Australians is an attack on every Australian,” he said.

This is the sort of bromide politicians bring forth in moments like these, almost entirely devoid of meaning and, more significantly, a refusal to see the incident for what it is.

This was absolutely, decidedly, emphatically not an attack on “every Australian.” It was a targeted attack on Jewish Australians and to paint it as anything else – to universalize the very anti-Jewish particularity of the violence – is to deflect attention from the reality and true nature of the problem and ensure no resolution to Australia’s crisis of antisemitism is reached.

An Australian Jewish communal leader said antisemitic incidents in the country are “off the scale,” noting a series of recent antisemitic arsons, which pile upon recent attacks on synagogues, a daycare centre and an Israeli restaurant, as well as a tragically long list of less violent incidents.

The Australian problem is a microcosm of a larger global phenomenon. Government leaders, activists, commentators, NGOs and public figures worldwide for (at least) two years have been condemning Israel in the most malevolent terms, including outright blood libels and slanders that have become so endemic as to be treated as received truth.

The parallels between the tenor of frenzied rhetoric against Israel – including from the highest levels of government, society and media – and the unprecedented spike in antisemitic violence has seemed to spark almost no recognition of cause and effect. An alternative (and perverse) explanation seems to be that the victims of these incidents deserve it, considering their perceived complicity in Zionism.

Given the panorama of tragedy in the world and the myopic focus on the only one involving the Jewish state puts the lie to naïve assessments that there is no correlation here. Or that the Jewish victims are to blame. If overheated rhetoric toward any other identifiable group paralleled extraordinary targeted violence against members of that group (or anyone seen to be in sympathy or associated with them), almost anyone would recognize the correlation.

The Australian government, like so many others, seems to believe they can condemn Israel in the most strident, undiplomatic terms, on the one hand, and claim, on the other hand, shock and dismay – even bewilderment – when violence against Australian Jews erupts.

In the aftermath of the mass murders, Albanese committed to stronger gun laws, which are already some of the strongest in the Western world. Well, OK. But how about stronger laws and customs against antisemitic incitement? How about toning down the declarations from his own government, which some have accused of rewarding the 10/7 terror attacks by nearly instantaneously demanding and then leading a vanguard of nations to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood while terrorists are still in control there? How about listening to the voices of Jewish Australians who have been warning for more than two years that this sort of terror was becoming inevitable given the pitch of rhetoric?

It will be noted extensively that the attacks were apparently perpetrated by a father and son who are reported to be migrants from Pakistan. (The father is dead. The son is in hospital with significant injuries.) It should be noted at least as prominently that the man who disarmed one of the attackers is a Syrian Muslim. If we want to paint a broad brush of blame, we must also paint with an equally broad brush of heroism, truly incredible courage and heroic action. Let us not, though, pretend that there are not dangerous strains of cultural and theological antisemitism embedded in some communities that absolutely need to be addressed much more vigorously and vociferously than they are currently being addressed. It is also true that antisemitism knows no borders and has spread to nearly every pocket of the world over the last 2,000-plus years.

Early indications are that Australia is determined to ignore the obvious parallels between unrestrained continual damnation of Israel across society, including at the highest levels, and violence against Jews. Maybe other countries – like ours – will take heed and learn from Australia’s folly before it is too late. We hope so. Canada’s government and civil society have responded very much along the lines of Australia’s throughout these horrible two years.

Keep lighting candles

We were intrigued to receive notice of the 2026 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, which takes place in January and February. The festival has been running for more than two decades and bills itself as “a creative hub for dialogue.”

“The 2026 PuSh festival is an invitation to the culturally fearless – to those ready to step into fresh futurities and the uncharted possibilities of live performance,” said artistic director Gabrielle Martin in the media release that landed in our inbox recently.

Curious words for a festival that last year demonstrated cowardice that redefines the term.

The controversy centred on a play titled The Runner – a one-person offering by non-Jewish playwright Christopher Morris. The story is set in Israel and has as its focus an ultra-Orthodox Jewish ZAKA volunteer who faces an ethical decision: when encountering a wounded Palestinian woman, he opts to save her rather than pursue an Israeli soldier’s body.

The play had garnered acclaim, having won multiple awards in Canada, and was to be featured at the 2024 PuSh festival. The Belfry Theatre in Victoria had already canceled its planned 2024 run of the show after the theatre was vandalized and a public dialogue was overtaken by protesters.

The scheduled PuSh production was also targeted. Some critics complained that the play centred Jewish experience while marginalizing Palestinian voices and trauma, presumably because depicting an Israeli as a complex moral character was beyond the pale.

One Palestinian artist participating in the festival said he would withdraw his work if The Runner remained in the lineup. Organizers caved, couching their gutlessness in self-adulatory language of prioritizing artists whose perspectives were “underrepresented” given current events.

If the festival was indeed committed to “fearless” exploration, The Runner was an ideal vehicle for that sort of examination. Instead, organizers brought shame upon the arts sector, betraying the very values PuSh specifically and the arts in general are expected to advance.

Keeping up with incidents of hypocrisy these days is a game of Whack-a-Mole, but we cannot overlook the vote by the BC Green Party to adopt a so-called “Anti-Genocide Motion” at their provincial convention. The motion declares that the party will “oppose genocide, apartheid, systemic discrimination and colonial violence – at home and around the world.”

In supporting the motion, the party’s new leader, Emily Lowan, stated that the Greens consider the recent war in Gaza to constitute “genocide” and “colonial violence.”

The motion and the leader’s full-throated support for it is especially disappointing because, under previous leaders, the BC Greens had resisted the spiral of their federal party into this sort of hyperbolic and ahistoric anti-Zionism.

We could go on. There is literally not the space in this column or in these pages to delineate the myriad causes for Jewish disenchantment these days. This, though, is not justification for despair. History has presented Jews with challenges in the past, put mildly.

If these developments and their hypocrisy raise your heart rate, consider using that energy as fuel to build something better. The world is troubled right now, for Jews and for others, too, but it is a Jewish tradition – especially at this moment in the calendar – to light a candle rather than to curse the darkness.

If you are expending energy complaining to your friends about these events, consider more active ways to effect positive changes. For example, you can contact the Green Party and tell them you are affronted by their adoption of a resolution that debases the term “genocide,” misrepresents events globally and foments intercultural division at home. Contact the PuSH festival and their sponsors to tell them you haven’t forgotten their illiberal folding to coercion. Support arts institutions that continue to host and produce Israeli and Jewish art and artists, and our own community arts and culture organizations, which have faced additional challenges over the last two-plus years. Whenever you are angered or disappointed, remember that action is the antidote to helplessness and hopelessness. Just one candle can illuminate the darkness and bring hope and inspire change.

From the archives … Hanukkah

The editorial in the Dec. 8, 1939, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin.

We’ve come a long way in many ways, though some readers may disagree. I read, kind of in horror, the newspaper’s Dec. 8, 1939, editorial in which the lesson drawn from Hanukkah was that, “More formidable than the most rabid anti-Semite is the unfaithful Jew in our ranks. More threatening than all the malicious libels and frauds of such papers as DER ANGRIFF and DER DEUTSCHE BEOBACHTER, is the Jew who is IGNORANT of his history, ignorant of his literature, his tradition, his TORAH and his God.”

I can appreciate the Maccabean victory “was not by a superior might but with a superior SPIRIT, that untrained Judean forces did meet the enemy and vanquished him.” I agree that Jewish education is vital to Jewish continuity, but yikes. I’m not sure all the “yelling” capital letters encourage the message that: “There must be a closer alliance, a sense of closer affinity, a warmer consciousness of brotherhood between Jew and Jew and between the individual Jew and Jewry at large if we are to succeed – nay, if we are to insure our future as a people!”

I am also always surprised at how much of the advertising in the early years of the Jewish Western Bulletin was for alcohol. As but one example, given the time of year, is the Dec. 24, 1941, ad from United Distillers Ltd., “The Happy Holiday List” that readers are asked to “cut out and keep for reference,” which I guess I’ve done, though I don’t think any of the brands still exist.

I did enjoy some of the Hanukkah trivia that made the front cover of the Dec. 11, 1936, paper, though it was a jarring juxtaposition with the world news. As it happens, the first item, on the melody of the traditional Hanukkah song “Maoz Tzur,” mentions Martin Luther, as does the article on the cemetery in the German City of Worms that is featured in this week’s issue – on this very page, in fact – which discusses briefly Luther’s legacy.

In his “Lights on Hanukah” article, Rabbi Abraham H. Israelitan points out: “The familiar melody of ‘Maoz-Tzur,’ the well-known hymn that is sung after the kindling of the lights, is not Jewish at all, as is commonly supposed, but is really an adaptation of an old German folk song of the Middle Ages. This German folk melody has also been utilized by the Christians. The famous Martin Luther, for example, utilized it for his German chorals.”

The rabbi also notes, “One of the poems in Lord Byron’s ‘Hebrew Melodies’ – ‘On Jordans Bank’s’ [sic] – was set to the music of Maoz-Tzur by the great poet’s close friend Isaac Nathan.” He goes on to reveal “the origin of latkes,” and a few more of what we now call “fun facts.” Israelitan was not a local rabbi. His article was distributed by Seven Arts Feature Syndicate, which, according to Google, was an American group that provided content to Jewish papers from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Holiday parties, concerts, menorah lightings and more have always been promoted or covered in the newspaper, of course. Almost every Hanukkah issue has included recipes, gift ideas, personal holiday stories. And pretty much every Hanukkah-themed editorial aims to point out what the Maccabees can teach us today or what light we can shine to diminish the darkness in the world – though we do it a little less harshly than the editors of 80, 90 years ago, I think. Most certainly, we do it with fewer capital letters.

image - An adl in the Dec. 24, 1941, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin — An ad in the Dec. 24, 1941, issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin.

image - An article on Hanukkah trivia in the Jewish Western Bulletin Dec. 11, 1936 — An article on Hanukkah trivia in the Jewish Western Bulletin Dec. 11, 1936.

Words hold much power

At an event hosted by the National Council of Canadian Muslims on Nov. 1, Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow said, “the genocide in Gaza impacts us all.”

Four days later, protesters attacked a group of Jewish students from Toronto Metropolitan University at an event featuring a speaker who served in the Israel Defence Forces during the recent Gaza war.

Is this cause and effect? Did Chow’s words give a kind of permission for anti-Israel activists to act out violently?

Human nature doesn’t work so neatly. Suggesting one directly led to the other is both unprovable and probably specious.

Both of these incidents, however, are part of a larger zeitgeist.

For (at least) two years, Israel has been accused of monstrous barbarities. Accusations against the Jewish state include deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing, intentional mass killings, wanton destruction of infrastructure and other assorted war crimes.

There are legitimate debates around the definitions of terms and whether or how they apply to recent events in Gaza. However, public discussions, as Chow demonstrated, rarely reflect these nuances.

As a society, we now widely accept that incendiary language can lead to incendiary actions. In discussions around immigration levels, for example, responsible public figures generally engage in discourse that does not demonize migrants or new Canadians. Concerns have been raised in recent years around the tenor of discussion around transgender issues, with advocates warning that some of the language can exacerbate emotional isolation, especially in transgender youth, and can lead to suicide ideation. Words, it is widely accepted, can have tangible, indelible impacts.

This thoughtfulness seems nowhere to be found when Jews and allies warn that the provocative language against the Jewish state is having serious impacts on Jews in Canada.

While cause and effect are rarely provable, correlations can be clearer. Over the past two years, combustible rhetoric against Israel has coincided with an unprecedented spike in antisemitic acts against Jewish institutions and people. One would think, under the circumstances, that reasonable people might see the potential that one is at least somewhat related to the other.

Raise this possibility, though, and you can expect to be met with assertions that “Zionists” are trying to silence criticism of Israel or that there is a “chill” on discussion of urgent and legitimate international matters.

This is an admirable defence of free speech. It is interesting, though, that concepts of almost unfettered free expression seem to be the redoubt of Israel critics who accept limitations on civil discourse in a vast range of other topic areas.

Is it a coincidence, also, that the very concept of “Zionists” controlling what other people are permitted to think and say about Israel dovetails with traditional antisemitic concepts of Jewish power and control?

What everyone should be able to accept – because the evidence is plain – is that there is a parallel between the intensity of rhetoric against Israel and increasing attacks on Jews in Canada (and elsewhere).

Toronto’s mayor is just one of many Canadian leaders who should know better than to nonchalantly toss around accusations, understanding that the pitch of condemnation against Israel is having concrete impacts on Jews in Canada.

Anyone with a public platform should behave in ways that recognize the intended and potentially unintended consequences of their words. A mayor of a Canadian city, for example, should know that her words will have limited effect on the lives of Palestinians, but plenty of impacts here at home.

In a diverse country like Canada, where inclusivity is considered a core value, people in positions of respect and power have a duty to act responsibly, to promote unity and avoid phrases that might inflame community tensions.

Did Chow’s words directly lead to the violent attack on Jewish students this month? Almost certainly not.

But they contributed to an environment already aggravated with tension and peril.