From the JI – Page 2

Antisemitism a problem

The overwhelming joy of seeing the remaining hostages reunited with their loved ones, and Israelis and Jews heaving a sigh of relief after two excruciating years, is tempered with the sadness of all that was lost on and since Oct. 7, 2023. The entirely reasonable fear, also, is that this eight-decade conflict is not over. With the days-old ceasefire already fraying, it is not clear that even the immediate conflict is decisively ended.

For Jews in the diaspora, the past two years have seen two related but distinct conflicts. The war in the Middle East, with the fate of the hostages as well as the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives, has been a constant source of pain. The paroxysm of antisemitism worldwide has been a parallel phenomenon.

We are careful to note that the phenomenon of antisemitism is parallel to the war in Gaza, not caused by it. The blame for antisemitism must always be placed where it belongs – on antisemites. To justify it as being a consequence of international affairs is to excuse the perpetrators and avoid the problem. Even so, it is naïve to ignore the parallel – for decades, every time violence flares between Israelis and Palestinians, trouble increases for Jews worldwide.

Assuming that the war is over, we will see whether the antisemitism we have witnessed and experienced – the violence against Jews, the attacks on Jewish institutions, the loss of jobs, the end of friendships, the graffiti, vandalism, and tsunami of online and verbal hatred and conspiratorial speculation (and even unintended offence) – abate. Even if it does subside, the underlying issue remains. Antisemitism in Canada is a Canadian problem. To accept that it ebbs and flows with international news is not an acceptable approach for people who claim to oppose racism and advance inclusion.

Two interesting approaches – and doubtlessly scores more that have received less publicity – take aim at the issue. They come from organizations with significantly different views and propose significantly different responses. This diversity is understandable, in part because antisemitism manifests in diverse ways and so requires diverse responses. This also points to a larger problem: antisemitism is so diffuse and varied, and so historically enduring, that we can disagree on its very nature, its manifestations and causes, let alone how to confront and overcome it. If anyone had the magic solution, we wouldn’t be having this discussion three millennia on.

The latest intervention is a report by the Nexus Project, a US-based nonprofit focused on combating antisemitism while protecting democratic norms like free speech and civil rights. The Shofar Report: A Call to Defend Democracy and Confront Antisemitism contends the best way to combat antisemitism is to strengthen the values of American society (and other Western societies). It argues that Jewish safety and security and American (or, we might extrapolate, Western democratic) institutions are inseparable. Put succinctly, their approach rests on the conventional wisdom that the very societies where antisemitism flourishes are endangered in existential ways. As such, antisemitism is a kind of canary in the coal mine of societal erosion.

The report has several calls to action, including expanding education around the Holocaust, media literacy and diverse Jewish contributions to society; strengthening civil rights enforcement; countering disinformation and conspiracy theories; preserving academic freedom; building cross-community coalitions; and so forth. It critiques antisemitism on the left and right of the political spectrum. While these are not fresh ideas, they are compiled and contextualized here within the apparent erosion of American democracy. If these approaches have not seemed to work, a response might be that we have not been doing them forcefully enough or with enough resolve. With a rapidly changing landscape, might focused attention and some new tactics yield better results?

The Heritage Foundation has a rather more assertive approach. The foundation is perhaps best known in this era as the authors of Project 2025, which serves as a policy map for the current American administration.

Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, which was released a year ago, rests on the assumption that antisemitism in the United States (and, again, to extrapolate, in the West) is not an incidental, populist phenomenon, but a deliberately fomented strategy of a coordinated “Hamas Support Network.” The strategy of this report is to put pressure across academic, social, legal, financial and religious spheres to identify and isolate forces they see as perpetrators, supporters or fence-sitters. Their aim is to dismantle the “pro-Palestinian” movement as it is currently constituted, including associated liberal and progressive organizations. To that end, they focus exclusively on left-wing antisemitism. They recommend a combative strategy based on existing and new counter-terrorism and hate-crime laws, investigations and litigation.

We may agree with aspects of one approach more than the other, or take nuggets from each and a thousand other tactics. The solution to antisemitism’s rise, if there is one, will probably come from some synthesis of strategies: building bridges, fighting for democracy, and holding individuals and institutions accountable for their failures and fomentation. The most important thing is to be engaged in the struggle and not to assume that, if an overseas conflict is resolved, the domestic problem will be solved. That would be a form of denial and, while we can disagree over the potential resolutions, we must be unanimous in recognizing the painful realities of the problem.

From the archives … a coin, etc.

My latest trip down a rabbit hole was inspired by this issue’s theme of Finance & Law. One of the first news items that caught my eye was “Model for U.S. Coin Revealed as a Jewess at Marriage.” The two-paragraph story appeared in the July 24, 1930, copy of one of the Jewish Independent’s predecessors, the Jewish Centre News.

“Through her marriage it was revealed that Miss Doris Doscher, whose face adorns the new twenty-five cent pieces issued by the National Treasury, is a Jewess. She was married yesterday to Dr. H. William Baum at the Jewish Institute of Religion,” reads the article.

“Miss Doscher was selected several years ago by the government representatives as the model for the new twenty-five cent pieces because she characterized ‘the highest type of American Womanhood.’”

Doscher, who lived from 1882 to 1970, was an actress (in silent films!) and model. Her main claim to fame movie-wise seems to have been the role of Eve in 1918’s The Birth of a Race. Her most famous modeling ventures were for the Standing Liberty Quarter (in circulation 1916-1930), designed by Hermon Atkins MacNeil, and for the Pulitzer Fountain of Abundance by Karl Bitter (and Thomas Hastings, according to nycgovparks.org), which was dedicated in 2016, having been completed by Isidore Konti and Karl Gruppe after Bitter died in 1915. The fountain is located at Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan.

From the late 1920s, Doscher worked as a newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster, even having her own health and beauty column for a time; she also lectured on the topic. But, back to the Standing Liberty Quarter, which was controversial for a couple of reasons.

image - A 1918 print of Doris Doscher, horizontally flipped for comparison to the Standing Liberty Quarter, for which she may have been the model — A 1918 print of Doris Doscher, horizontally flipped for comparison to the Standing Liberty Quarter, for which she may have been the model. (photo from mediastorehouse.com)

image - Standing Liberty Quarter, 1930 — The Standing Liberty Quarter, 1930.

The first iteration of Liberty was quite risqué, with her right breast exposed, which apparently appalled the women’s movement of the day, as well as clergy and others. According to edmontoncoinclub.com, “The initial production run of 52,000 pieces had made their way through the Treasury system by January 1917; by then, the production of the ‘Type 1’ 1917 issue was already in full-swing … but by early 1917 clearly something had to be done. Hermon MacNeil was obliged to modify his design, which he strenuously objected to [an article on uscoinnews.com asserts that MacNeil never authorized the design change], and the reasons that were given to him by the mint were everything from poor striking characteristics, relief problems, die wear, coin wear, anything else but that exposed breast. The dies were modified in time for the 1918 strike (known as ‘Type 2’), and it featured a now ‘clad-to-the-neck’ in chain-mail Liberty.” Other changes were made for that casting and there were later revisions.

“The last run of the Standing Liberty Quarter took place in 1930, with only Philadelphia and San Francisco minting them. None were made in 1931 or 1932, possibly reflecting an oversupply because of the Great Depression, which had decimated the world economy in 1929,” notes the article on edmontoncoinclub.com.

The second controversy – which is still unresolved – arose after Doscher died. In 1972, another actress and model, Irene MacDowell, claimed to have been MacNeil’s model. According to various reports, her husband was friends with MacNeil and would not have approved of her modeling for the sculptor, hence, the secrecy. Another rumour is that MacNeil’s wife considered MacDowell a threat to her marriage, and so the sculptor kept her identity hidden.

It may never be known whether MacDowell or Doscher was the real model for the Standing Liberty Quarter, but Doscher was publicly credited, becoming known as known as “the girl on the Quarter.” And the moniker stuck. As noted on a memorial site for MacNeil (hermonatkinsmacneil.com), “100 years after the birth of Hermon MacNeil and fifty years after the Standing Liberty Quarter was minted, Doris Doscher Baum appeared on the TV quiz show I’ve Got a Secret on April 4, 1966.” The video is on YouTube.

There’s even more on this whole topic – including the reason the Standing Liberty coin was made. According to a blog on greatamericancoincompany.com, “When Robert W. Woolley took office as Mint director in April 1915, he asked [Philadelphia Mint superintendent Adam] Joyce to have [Mint chief engraver Charles] Barber submit some new designs for the dime, quarter and half dollar. It seems Woolley misinterpreted a memo from the assistant treasury secretary stating that coin designs could be changed after 25 years. Woolley took it to mean they must be changed and set the redesign wheels in motion.”

Barber’s suggested designs did not impress, and so a few sculptors were asked to make a submission, and MacNeil’s won. In the end, the blog notes, more than 214 million MacNeil quarters were made.

I could have spent as many hours exploring the other clippings I picked for this issue’s theme. I settled on a group that, to me, shows the paper’s diversity, as well as how technology and societal attitudes change over the years.

image - April 4, 1947: In an article by Winnipeg Jewish community member David Orlikow, Saskatchewan’s then-premier Tommy Douglas talks about the Bill of Rights his province was introducing – the first such bill in Canada. Orlikow would have a 43-year political career, including 26 years as an MP (1962-1988) — April 4, 1947: In an article by Winnipeg Jewish community member David Orlikow, Saskatchewan’s then-premier Tommy Douglas talks about the Bill of Rights his province was introducing – the first such bill in Canada. Orlikow would have a 43-year political career, including 26 years as an MP (1962-1988).

imaeg - Oct. 17, 1969: An organization called the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education was appalled, to say the least, by the goings-on at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, which, it contended, created “a national hallucination which has distorted the minds of 200,000,000 Americans as to what is wrong morally" — Oct. 17, 1969: An organization called the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education was appalled, to say the least, by the goings-on at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, which, it contended, created “a national hallucination which has distorted the minds of 200,000,000 Americans as to what is wrong morally.”

image 2 - Community organizations need to fundraise, of course. A couple of the longest-running initiatives were the Hadassah Bazaar, which may have started in 1933 as a small affair at the JCC that graduated to Seaforth Armories in 1952, though the 1952 bazaar is generally counted as the first one and the 2007 event at the Hellenic Community Centre as the last; and the community phone directory, a fundraiser for Vancouver Talmud Torah that ran from 1959 to 2013-14. — Community organizations need to fundraise, of course. A couple of the longest-running initiatives were the Hadassah Bazaar, which may have started in 1933 as a small affair at the JCC that graduated to Seaforth Armories in 1952, though the 1952 bazaar is generally counted as the first one and the 2007 event at the Hellenic Community Centre as the last; and the community phone directory, a fundraiser for Vancouver Talmud Torah that ran from 1959 to 2013-14.

image - Nov. 17, 1995: Antisemitic graffiti on Beth Israel Synagogue concerned a passerby, but it was a “false alarm.” BI had agreed for its exterior to be used for “an episode of the locally-produced cop show The Commish.” — Nov. 17, 1995: Antisemitic graffiti on Beth Israel Synagogue concerned a passerby, but it was a “false alarm.” BI had agreed for its exterior to be used for “an episode of the locally-produced cop show The Commish.”

When approaches differ

News of a possible breakthrough that could lead to the end of the war between Israel and Hamas is encouraging, but there is effectively no happy ending to this situation. Nothing can return the lives lost or undo the horrors of the past two years. Even if it ends tomorrow, the tragedy of this war will go down as one of the saddest, most protracted chapters in a heartbreaking history.

The international repercussions have been less lethal but will have permanent implications for, among other things, the stability and well-being of Jewish communities in the diaspora. Global antisemitism has reached unimagined heights. And, globally, Jewish people and organizations are at odds over how to proceed.

For many months, voices in Israel, among Jews worldwide and in our own local community have been divided over, among other things, whether Israel should unilaterally end the war, pursue it to the stated end of eliminating Hamas or, depending on the perspective, something on a spectrum between these views. Some are calling for an Israeli or international occupation of Gaza.

Here in British Columbia, weekly solidarity rallies at Vancouver City Hall have continued, sometimes with small numbers, and featuring a diversity of voices. Other rallies, including marches across the Burrard Street Bridge and, this week, a community commemoration of the second anniversary of 10/7, have brought together overlapping and different participants.

It is sometimes hard for human beings, especially those deeply determined to do the right thing, to accept that there can be legitimate but differing opinions on the best way forward. We should be able to agree on this: no one can predict the future or know for certain what is best for the people of that region (or for Jews worldwide). We may disagree on fundamentals, such as whether a two-state solution remains a viable possibility or whether, at the other end of opinion, the West Bank and Gaza should be absorbed into an enlarged state of Israel (a perspective still generally viewed as extremist), or whether some kind of federated one-state system might integrate both peoples’ needs and futures. If we disagree on the end goal, we will almost certainly find fault with the other side’s means of reaching it.

Stuck as we may be in what seems an ideological, moral, political, strategic and theological disagreement, it is easy to view others, even those in our own community, as adversaries – this certainly is reflected in some of the messages we have received in recent days. On the one hand, we received an open letter to community rabbis ostensibly reminding them what Jewish morality entails, and, on a different hand, we received messages declaiming those in our community who call for a ceasefire as being in cahoots with nefarious groups, including one proscribed by the federal government as a terrorist entity. Both missives encourage community members to call out those who do not agree with their approach.

The passions ignited around this topic are understandable. These are existential issues faced by our people and our homeland. With no universally agreed-upon ends or means, division is inevitable. We should, though, keep in mind that, while it is our obligation to pursue justice, that pursuit includes minimizing harm in our own community. We should be guided by the understanding that our actions will have greater impacts on our people’s well-being here at home than on events halfway around the world.

While it may be difficult in the moment of discord to see the sincerity and humanity of those we see as our opponents, there is a commonality at play. Believe it or not, the people in our community most vehemently hostile toward your outlook are convinced, as you are, that they are acting in the best interests of the Jewish people, and, in most circumstances, the best interests of our homeland.

Human affairs are an art, not a science. There are – surprise! – no right answers, only opinions and presumptions. As convinced as we may be otherwise, not one of us can conclusively know for certain the best avenue to pursue to bring about the future we dream of.

At a minimum, let us presume we are all committed to a future of peace, justice and security. What that looks like, and how we get there, will differ.

Let us further presume the best intentions in others and celebrate our shared desire for positive outcomes and the impassioned commitment even of those with whom we disagree.

From the archives … social life

Oct. 10, 1935: This week, 90 years ago, community members were coming and going from the city. There was a Folk Song and Dance Festival and Arts and Crafts Exhibition coming up. Beth Israel, Young Judaea, AZA, BB Junior Auxiliary, Junior Council and Sub-Junior Council all had meetings and other events. China Seas and Page Miss Glory were screening at the Capitol Orpheum and Heart’s Desire was playing at the Strand.

The Jewish Western Bulletin / Jewish Independent has always covered the arts and culture scene. Amid the harder-hitting news, there have been society and social notes columns, social and club news sections, synagogue calendars, event listings, notices and advertisements, as well as articles promoting, reviewing or otherwise profiling various creatives (including community organizers) or their creations/events.

One of the longest-lasting social columns is Between Ourselves (Tsvishn Unz Alein) by Lazar, which started on April 14, 1949, when the JWB was run by the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Organization (akin to our Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver) and Abraham Arnold was managing editor. When Sam and Mona Kaplan took over the paper in 1960, Mona Kaplan penned her first Between Ourselves (Tsvishn Unz Alein) by Lazar columns, in the Aug. 5 issue of that year, and she continued to be “Lazar” until the paper again sort of changed hands in mid-1995. While the Kaplans still owned the JWB, it came under new management, as they were beginning their retirement journey. At first, the new publisher, Andrew Buerger, kept the Lazar column – minus its Yiddish flavour – but editor Ariela Friedmann bid “Farewell to Lazar” (then written by Cara Loebl) a couple of months’ later, on Aug. 18, 1995.

Its replacement was Menschenings, which, Friedmann noted, would “give voice to all ages and aspects of the community, from social news, to what’s new, who’s new, some schmoozing, a bit of this and that.”

Initially, the column was alternately written by two different writers, Jacqui Roitman and Alex Kliner, both of whom had experience in theatre and film. As many readers will know, Alex became the sole face of Menschenings, continuing through the Kaplans’ sale of the paper in mid-1999 to Kyle Berger, Pat Johnson and me. From his first column to his last, in 2016, when he retired, Alex’s writing was infused with Yiddish, having a heimishe (homey and familiar) quality like Lazar’s, meaning that Between Ourselves/Menschenings lasted some 67 years.

More unenforced laws?

Rumours were that the federal government was about to table “bubble zone” legislation last week, which, if passed, would have criminalized protests in specific locations such as places of worship, community centres and schools.

That didn’t happen.

While the almost-proposed legislation was to be universal in terminology, there were few doubts that its intent was really to limit protests at synagogues, Jewish community centres and Jewish day schools. This was a response to concerns from Jewish organizations about persistent and often aggressive targeting at community institutions.

Bill C-9, which saw first reading Sept. 19, proposes amending the Criminal Code to add new hate-related offences and to criminalize obstruction or intimidation that prevents people from accessing certain places, like those mentioned. It does not include the “bubble zone” provision, at least not as most advocates had envisioned it. It would proscribe not mere “protests” but criminal behaviours such as obstructing or intimidating people accessing community spaces. However, if such obstruction or intimidation is already criminal behaviour, we’re not sure why new legislation is needed. In fact, this is the larger issue with this whole approach.

The so-called “bubble zone” idea was mooted alongside another piece of legislation being considered. In the last Parliament, the Liberal government had proposed an online harms bill that was wide-reaching, emphasizing content that could lead, for example, to young people self-harming, but also addressing racist ideas that foment hatred. This died on the order paper when the election was called, as all incomplete legislation does.

Both of these proposals elicited concerns from civil libertarians, and rightly so. The right to free expression, while not as unrestrained in Canada as it is in the United States, is, we assume most Canadians agree, a sacrosanct characteristic of Canadian society. Canadians also, though, have tended to accept some limitations on individual expression for what is perceived as the greater good. For example, limiting hateful commentary in the interest of intercultural harmony.

In the case of the bubble zone approach, there is at least one court case that will presumably help determine the balance between free expression and the ability of identifiable groups to be protected from harassment. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is challenging a municipal bubble zone bylaw in Vaughan, Ont. Some commentators believe the bylaw – and, by extension, the concept – will be determined to be excessive and an unnecessary impediment to legitimate protest under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

One’s hearts and minds can be at odds on this issue, as they can be on so many things. The infuriating and deliberately taunting protests we have seen adjacent Jewish institutions belies the idea, in many cases, that these protests and protesters are always operating in good faith. But people being deliberately provocative and mean isn’t the legal litmus test here.

While the Liberal party made commitments during last spring’s federal election to introduce bubble zone legislation, we do not fault them for awaiting relevant legal decisions. (If we fault them, it would be on making promises in a campaign that they might have known would be subject to Charter challenge.) Here, though, we come back to what we consider the larger issue: we already have laws.

The Criminal Code has prohibitions against harassment, incitement to hatred, uttering threats, intimidation, mischief motivated by hate targeting religious property, schools, community centres and so on. And yet, too often these laws act neither as a deterrent nor as a form of accountability and consequences, perhaps because they don’t seem to be enforceable or enforced. For example, it has been noted that police hesitate to recommend charges because Crown prosecutors don’t lay charges. Crown doesn’t recommend charges, we are told, because they have wasted too many resources on cases courts throw out.

A particular case that has upset and disturbed Jewish community members involves a Vancouver woman who led a shameful chant of “Long live October 7” and called the perpetrators of those atrocities “heroic and brave.”

This case seems, to many of us, an example of incitement to hatred. And yet, no charges have been laid, a reality that some observers have attributed to a lack of political will at the top of the province’s law enforcement bureaucracy – that is, the attorney general’s office.

When a case like this languishes for more than a year without charges, is the problem the people in charge, or the system more broadly? Given the multiplicity of laws already on the books, is the answer to this problem more laws? Or is the problem something related to the human, political and judicial forces that are responsible for enforcing and judging those laws that leads to frustration in communities like ours?

This is the national conversation we would like to see as the new-ish Parliament approaches these topics in the coming weeks.

From the archives … Israel

Hope for a good year

We begin the cycle of a new year in the coming days. We are all reflecting on our lives, our actions and our place in the world at this time of year. Perhaps, in the past two years, we are doing this more than ever before, even without the catalyst of the month of Elul or the impending holy days as motivation.

One of the things many of us are certainly pondering is how we move through life, and whether we approach the world with the balance tilted towards wonder and hope or towards cynicism and pessimism. These choices are challenging no matter where or under what conditions you live. For Jews in Israel and the diaspora right now, they are especially poignant.

A strength of Jewish life and practice is the capacity to hold sadness and joy in the same moments – life is rarely all one or the other. We mourn that there are still people being held hostage, the deaths in Israel and Gaza and in other conflicts, loved ones facing illness and confronting mortality, natural disasters, climate change, creeping

authoritarianism in many countries, and all the big and small sadnesses of being human, but these are, above all, a part of being alive. In Judaism, it is a mitzvah to choose life through our actions and choices. This commandment appears in a Torah portion we read prior to Rosh Hashanah, reminding us that we can choose hope over despair, that we can choose a different reality.

This duality will be on full display in the coming days as we move through the holy days, including navigating the joys and now sorrows of Simchat Torah, which will forever be equated in our memories with the atrocities of 10/7.

Along with holding joy and sadness in the same moment is holding more than one truth, that being strong is being able to experience things that sadden or madden us and not permit their presence to destroy what happiness or equanimity we have.

Pirkei Avot asks and answers: “Who is mighty? One who conquers his impulse.”

If our impulse is to be angry, vengeful, depressed or miserable, we might conclude that we have no control over these responses. We do. It’s not easy, but it is within our capability.

Without minimizing the challenges, neither should we dwell on them exclusively.

In the context of Jewish history, victory of a sort in our era comes from being physically safe, with the opportunity to live a contented, meaningful life.

As you hopefully gather as a community in prayer spaces and around holiday tables in the coming days, may you find a greater sense of ease in the balancing of the sweet and the sorrowful, and may you grant yourself and those you love the consent to live well, with hope for a truly good year.

What’s old is new again

“At a time when we are all wishing each other a Happy New Year we may well pause to consider what we mean by happiness and what we shall do to attain it. There is one thing that holds true of all of us: there is nothing that we think so much about, care so much for, aim so much at, as somehow to be happy. Yet happiness remains one of the most elusive objects in the world, and even when we stop chasing it long enough to think about it, we find ourselves confused as to what we mean by being happy, anyway.”

“Let us talk friendly with ourselves as we face the New Year,” continues Rabbi Samuel Cass, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel from 1933 to 1941, writing in the Jewish Western Bulletin’s Sept. 26, 1935, Rosh Hashanah edition. “What is it that we’re trying to overcome? Why does that call of renewal of vitality come as a refreshing sound to our ears?”

Cass contends that “many of us” in that day and age were in a “state of boredom,” despite the “many avenues of excitement that modern civilization has to offer to us for the enjoyment of our leisure hours.” Hours that “ancient man” – who, “when he did not toil, he slept” – did not have.

“Modern man, thanks to a machine civilization with its labor-saving device, enjoys a greater amount of leisure than man had ever enjoyed before, aside from the enforced leisure of unemployment. Yet our leisure hours are the most boring we enjoy. Just an endless round of movies, cards, games.”

Cass goes on to recount a display at the World’s Fair a couple of summers earlier: “the electric marvel of our age, Captain Televox, the mechanical man. This electrical mechanism, when addressed in the proper pitch, gives correct information, and executes various commands. It can start a vacuum cleaner, turn on the electric lights, sets the radio at the proper station.”

The engineer who created “Mr. Televox” predicted “the day when housewives will be able to be away from the house all day and manage the household duties in absentia, by merely calling up the mechanical man and giving it orders.”

Cass laments that life in the 1930s was “reduced to a mechanical existence” with alarm clocks, radios, cars – even newspapers! “Our music comes from the radio, our dramatic entertainment from the motion picture, our philosophy from newspapers,” he writes.

His solution for happiness?

“Find an ideal somewhere and let it life [sic] you above the mechanics of living, let it give you true freedom and stir within you new fountains of personality. We need not seek very far for it. We are living in a world teething with problems, teething with causes that demand to be taken up!”

He asks readers to “embrace some great human ideal in the New Year, and in it experience the blessedness of a Happy New Year.”

This Rosh Hashanah message – and most of those throughout the JWB/Jewish Independent’s 95-year history – hold up remarkably to the test of time. The language differs, of course, but the problems are variants on sadly consistent themes: war, economics, technology, assimilation, antisemitism, etc. And the “solutions” are also relatively consistent over the years: the need for Jewish education, a renewed embrace of Judaism’s ideals, unity, engagement, financial and physical support of community institutions, self-reflection. This year’s missive contains some of these same ideas.

In addition to holiday-related articles and editorials, Rosh Hashanah papers over the years have featured local and Israel year roundups, games and puzzles for kids, crosswords, recipes, reflective pieces, and more. The front covers generally gave some indication that the New Year’s issue would be special in some way – another tradition we continue to uphold.

Tolerating intolerance

It was mayhem outside the BC Provincial Court, near Main and Hastings, Aug. 20, as anti-Israel protesters screamed, chanted and shouted into megaphones to drown out the words of Dallas Brodie, member of the BC Legislature for Vancouver-Quilchena and leader of the upstart OneBC party.

Brodie attempted a media conference outside the courthouse before filing a “private prosecution” against Charlotte Kates, the Vancouver woman who is international coordinator for Samidoun, a group the government of Canada has designated a terrorist entity.

Kates was arrested by Vancouver police in April 2024 under suspicion of public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred, a criminal offence in Canada, after a public rally where she led a crowd in a chant of “Long live Oct. 7,” called the Hamas attack “heroic and brave” and described designated terrorists as “heroes.”

She was released on condition that she refrain from participating in any protest activities. Those conditions expired Oct. 8, 2024, when the BC Prosecution Service and the assistant deputy attorney general had not approved the charges recommended by police. It was a week later that her organization, Samidoun, was officially designated as a terrorist entity by the government of Canada.

Brodie’s prosecution – an obscure legal move similar to a citizen’s arrest – is unlikely to have a direct impact on the case, though it might refocus the spotlight on the failure of authorities to follow through on a criminal prosecution.

In a statement, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs noted that a report to Crown counsel has been sitting on the desks of relevant officials for more than a year.

“Every day they do not press charges,” said CIJA’s Pacific region vice-president Nico Slobinsky in a statement, “she acts with increasing impunity, including by flying to Iran to receive a ‘human rights’ award from its government and attending the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. Our legal system must send a clear message: antisemitism and hate have no place in British Columbia or anywhere else in Canada. Charges must be pressed without delay.”

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, observed that more than two-thirds of the BC Jewish community have reported experiencing an antisemitic hate incident.

“Individuals and organizations like Charlotte Kates and Samidoun have exacerbated this dramatic wave of antisemitism, which is why our community has been calling for accountability since her despicable remarks on April 26, 2024, on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery,” Shanken said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

We wrote in this space recently about an incident at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver that clearly violated existing laws banning political protests at locations where official school functions are taking place. Police did not recommend charges in that instance.

The inner workings of the Crown prosecutors’ office and other components of the judicial process are not entirely transparent, the sensitivity of the issues they address necessitating a degree of privacy. However, some observers have suggested that there is a systemic problem up the ladder of the process. Police often do not pursue instances of apparent offences because they have seen prosecutors decline to charge. Prosecutors are said to hesitate to lay charges because they have seen courts throw out cases they presented.

There has been a great deal of hand-wringing about a massive spike in antisemitism, including violent incidents. There are many remediative and preventive opportunities that do not involve criminal charges – public awareness campaigns and restorative justice and diversion programs among them. But, at some point, the laws on the books to prevent the spreading of hatred and incitement to violence must be tested. If they do not stand up in court, then we as a society need a dialogue about what we will tolerate.

We may find that we need new laws that courts will uphold, so that Crown prosecutors will be empowered to lay charges, so that police will know that enforcement is not a waste of energy, and so that Canadians will recognize what is acceptable and what is not in our country.

What is not tolerable is doing nothing.

From the archives … JCC, 1937

It was the big black square on the cover of the June 11, 1937, Jewish Western Bulletin that caught my attention initially. Then, as I flipped backwards and forwards through the archived papers, it was the weekly drama – that kind of left me hanging – and the sheer bluntness of tactics that drew me in to the JWB’s coverage of the 1937 campaign to raise funds for a second unit of the Jewish Community Centre, then located at Oak and 11th. (The building still exists, the home of the BC Lung Association for a long time now.)

The campaign action plan came out of a shareholders’ meeting in March of that year, at “which over one hundred men of the community were present,” according to the March 12, 1937, JWB, the JI ’s predecessor. I’ve no idea who the shareholders of the centre were. Nor if any women were at that planning meeting, but Lillian Freiman Hadassah, Council of Jewish Women and the Schara Tzedeck Auxiliary were among the organizations that helped solicit and collect pledges.

The appointed campaign committee set a quota of $12,500 (or $271,217 in today’s dollars) and collections were divided into three divisions: donors of $100-$250 (Group A), $25-$100 (Group B) and up to $25 (Group C). The “keynote” of the campaign was “that each give according to his ability,” and every organization on the committee committed “its intention of getting whole-heartedly behind the task ahead.” Meanwhile, “The proposal submitted to shareholders by Schara Tzedeck Congregation of taking over the building has been tabled for a period of three weeks.”

While that proposal obviously fizzled out, I couldn’t find any later mention of it. As I’ve often found when looking through the paper’s archives, it’s easy to find when things start, but harder to find out how they ended up. What is clear is that there was a hard push to raise the $12,500, and, while the March 12 article noted that, “possibly, for the first time in community history, there is no division of opinion concerning the necessity of and the urgent need for doing constructive work for [the] community Centre,” the JWB did feature some disparate views as soon as the next issue.

Rabbi J.L. Zlotnik summed up those concerns in a March 19 article: the quota was too much, given other community concerns and organizations that also needed financial support; and the quota was too little, given that actual building costs are almost always larger than planned, and the community would, therefore, become even more indebted as a result.

“After a period of ten years, twenty thousand dollars are still to be paid before this building can truly be called our own,” wrote Rabbi Samuel Cass in the March 31 issue, about the existing centre, while also pointing to the need for a second unit. He observed, “First, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past,” so the second unit should “be paid for in cash to the very last penny, before the first sod is turned. Second, the campaign must go beyond the amount necessary to erect the contemplated addition.” Lastly, he said, the whole community must agree that the debt on the first unit be paid off “even speedily, and at a near time.”

The advice seems to have gone unheeded. In the same March 31 paper as Cass’s article, the page 2 headline read, “All Organizations Endorse Second Unit Campaign.”

The next edition’s cover blared, “2ND UNIT CAMPAIGN IN FULL SWING,” with the news that more than $3,000 had come in on the campaign’s first day, “collected from twenty men.” The building plans were also outlined in the April 9 paper: a two-storey building with a balcony was envisioned. The lower floor would be a gymnasium and banquet room, with “kitchen, showers, wash room, steam rooms, cloak-room, etc.” The upper floor would house an “Auditorium and Ball Room, cloak-room and lounge.” The balcony would be divided into small meeting rooms. “This present building is 33 feet 11 inches on 11th Ave. The addition would be 47 feet 9 inches or more than 40% larger,” the article stated.

By the April 23 issue, the A Division quota was “already assured.” A couple of weeks later, in the May 7 paper, a completely fictional piece was published on the cover, titled “Will You Make This Dream Come True?” It was written as if the second unit of the centre had opened, with a banquet, a highlight of which was the announcement of a $5,000 gift from an anonymous donor to pay for all the unit’s furnishings and appliances. The article imagined what meetings and other banquets were already being held in the new building and the great number of athletics classes available now that “the use of the gymnasium was available to all persons in the Community.”

By the end of May, though, the JWB was asking whether everyone had “done their share.” By June, the optimism hit a wall.

The cover of the June 11 issue featured the large black square that caught my eye. The label-sized caption with a white background read: “700 Jewish families in Vancouver can and must give towards the building of the Second Unit of the Community Centre.”

The dramatic editorial choice was explained in the June 18 paper:

“The editorial staff of the Bulletin was bombarded with heated criticism for allowing such a hideous, melancholy, morbid and depressing thing to appear on the front page of the paper. Jewish people in all walks of life shouted words of rebuke, prominent Jewish business men cried ‘Shame, Shame,’ and Jewish society matrons muttered ‘Oh, how awful, it nearly frightened me to death.’

“No one, however, said ‘That little message in white, standing so pure, apart from that black hideousness was TRUE. Every body should give to the Centre – How we need that second unit – How essential it is to our Youth to have a proper meeting place.

“What our Community needs is more players, and less bench criticisizers. More workers, and less kickers.”

It concluded: “If you have a conscience, if you have the true community spirit – come through and show it. If you haven’t already given your contribution to the Second Unit – Mail it in to the Centre – tell them this article made you feel your responsibility. If you have given your donation, send in notification to the Centre to have it doubled. No matter what you give, make it as much as you can afford. Don’t let us be criticisers – LET’S BE BUILDERS.”

Over the summer, a couple of meetings were held about the centre. There was a large notice on the cover of the July 2 paper about a July 5 meeting, but I couldn’t find a report in the paper about what transpired. Nor could I find out how the Sept. 22 “mass meeting” on “the Future of Vancouver Jewry” went – its Sept. 14 front-page notice declaring that “By your attendance … YOU SHALL BE JUDGED!”

There are no August or October 1937 papers in the bound archival collection I have, and I don’t know if they were lost to history or never published. Until June 1937, the reporting had been detailed and consistent, but the next mention of a campaign, in the Nov. 12 paper, is “the Recent Centre Drive” – not the second unit drive. In this campaign, there were seven grades, ranging from Grade A ($500 and up) to Grade G ($1 to $49). The Grade A donors were listed by name in that paper, the Grade Bs in the next issue, the Cs in the next, through to the Gs in the Dec. 24 issue, wherein the committee was congratulated for its work and the community for its “whole-hearted support to the campaign.”

Since there is no useable digital archive of the paper, sadly, my time-limited flipping came across no more mention of a second unit. The editorial two years after that campaign, on June 23, 1939, started, “Much water has gone under the bridge since our Centre Building has been re-financed. Inside and outside improvements on the building, in addition to the Amortization Plan itself has gone forward.

“Never have local Jewish efforts been more active, and the response greater, nor has the attendance within the building itself been so large. Much of the success is due to the liberal atmosphere of the Centre itself, which means the use of this building for any and all worthy Jewish efforts with but one thought – helping others to help themselves. One shudders to think of what might have happened to Jewish efforts in our city had not our fellow-Jews responded to the call for funds when it was made.”

The editorial also noted: “Some, however, have through oversight or neglect failed to send their payments in as yet.” It was hoped that “the pledgors in arrears will … see that their respective remittances are made … upon receipt of the notices.”

As far as I know, the second unit of the Oak and 11th JCC never materialized. It would be more than two decades later that a new centre would be built, at Oak and 41st, opening in 1962.