From the JI – Page 27

Human life v. politics

A dozen or so people gathered outside the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Monday in a makeshift Yizkor service to commemorate the deaths of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defence Forces in recent weeks. (Click here for story.)

Each one of the people killed was, indeed, a full human being, with a full life, as Rabbi David Mivasair said of the Palestinian dead. And the loss of life is tragic. That is not something we will debate.

However, reports indicate that, of the 60 Gazans killed on May 14, for example, 53 were claimed as members by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Given the IDF’s strategy of deterrence, which includes graduated steps from warning shots, to shooting to injure and, as a last resort, shooting to kill, it is likely that those who died were among the most aggressive and dangerous among the protesters, some of whom were armed with pistols, firebombs and other weapons.

While there were peaceful protesters among the thousands who marched on the Israeli border, depictions of the rally as a primarily peaceful protest are wrong. In some interpretations, unarmed protesters were there merely as human shields for the violent participants, whose aim, in the words of a Hamas leader, was to infiltrate Israel and tear the hearts out of the Jews. Hamas social media channels presented maps to guide people from the border to adjacent Israeli towns, encouraging those who might break through the frontier to head for civilian locations and presumably fulfil the orders of Hamas.

The deliberate strategy of the Gazan leaders, it seems, is to sacrifice their own people’s lives for their PR value. Col. Richard Kemp, a British military official who has become a vocal defender of IDF strategies, said of Hamas: “This is the first government in history that has deliberately sought to compel its enemy to kill its own people.”

In a Daily Telegraph article re-printed in the National Post, he went on to state that, had the thousands of protesters breached the border and headed for those Israeli towns, the bloodshed would have been exponentially worse.

There is no question that the entire situation is a tragedy. And there is blame to go around. The narrative purveyed outside the JCC Monday and in much of the media commentary – that the Israeli military wantonly kills human beings – is as unfair and inhumane an assessment as the alternative extreme, which finds satisfaction in the loss of life.

As for Monday’s gathering, the combination of a Jewish religious ritual with a political agenda that arguably makes common cause with those seeking the destruction of the Jewish state is a dubious choice, but this is a free country and Judaism is a big tent.

To be clear, the people of Gaza are suffering, due in part to the Israeli blockade, in part due to the repressive kleptocracy of Hamas and in part to their own self-defeating actions, like burning down the main border entry point for supplies.

Palestinians receive more humanitarian aid per capita than any other people in the world. Where much of that money ends up, sadly, is in the mansions of Hamas and Fatah leaders and in pensions and rewards to terrorists and their families. This fact, of course, does not bring the dead back to life.

Palestinians, Jews and everyone who cares about human life are struggling with recent events. Each of us is confronting the multiple dimensions of the violence, which seems to be a repetition of seven decades (or more) of recurrent conflict. Respect for human life – on all sides – should be what we seek. Tallying up the dead like they are goals in a sports match does not demonstrate respect. Indeed, it may be precisely what Hamas wants us to do and, as such, may encourage them to put at risk even more Palestinian lives.

An apology is the start

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that he will make an apology in the House of Commons for the government of Canada’s 1939 decision to turn away the refugee ship MS St. Louis. The ship, carrying 907 German Jews, was denied entry at most North American and Caribbean ports before returning to Europe. Around half of the passengers were then accepted by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. About 500 were returned to Germany, where 254 were murdered by the Nazis.

Apologizing for the past has become common in Canada. Trudeau himself has apologized for Canada’s refusal in 1914 to allow the docking of the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying 376 migrants, mostly Sikh; apologized to gays and lesbians who were discriminated against by government in the past; exonerated six Tsilhqot’in chiefs who were hanged in 1864; and apologized to survivors of the Indian residential school system in Newfoundland and Labrador. The latter apology was necessary because this particular group was excluded from the 2008 residential schools apology made by Stephen Harper, when he was prime minister, because the schools there were not operated by the government of Canada. Harper also apologized, in 2006, for a head tax that penalized Chinese immigrants. Brian Mulroney, when he was prime minister, apologized, in 1988, for the internment of Japanese Canadians.

Such apologies are deeply important to the victimized communities, as evidenced by comments from Jewish community organizations last week.

“Canada is extraordinary not only because we strive to uphold the highest ideals,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, in a statement, “but also because we have the courage to address moments in our history when we failed to do so.… A formal apology will be a powerful statement to Holocaust survivors and their families, including St. Louis passengers who live in Canada today.”

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre president Avi Benlolo said, “While an apology can never change the past, it can awaken the national conscience to ensure such grave mistakes are never repeated in the future.”

On the other hand, critics come from two sides: one arguing that we cannot change the past by apologizing in the present; the other contending that apologies are mere words.

The government’s recognition of past injustices is important, however. While political motivations are probably a factor in any government decision, this should not detract from the positive impacts an apology has on affected communities.

That said, if the objective is, as the prime minister and others have stated, to learn from the past and create a more just present and future, apologies should be accompanied by other undertakings, such as ongoing education, including curricula that teachers could download to contextualize issues, monuments at relevant locations marking the incidents (some of which already exist), a commitment to further commemoration or a host of other initiatives created in conjunction with affected communities.

Apologies, in other words, should not be the end of a conversation, but the start of a process.

Blaming the victims

In a speech to the governing body of the Palestine Liberation Organization last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rambled off a host of textbook antisemitic myths. He reiterated the refrain that Jews have no historical connection to the land of Israel, unearthed a legendary trope about Ashkenazi Jews actually being descended from Khazars and accused European Zionists of collaborating with the Nazis.

Abbas went on to say that the tragedies of Jewish history were not a result of antisemitism, but of Jews’ own behaviours. “The Jewish question that was widespread throughout Europe was not against their religion,” he said, “but against their social function, which relates to usury and banking and such.”

One of the things Abbas has in common with other elected leaders is the willingness to try to get away with something and then to apologize when called out. Though his wasn’t much of an apology: “If people were offended by my statement … especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them.”

The speech gave Israeli and other commentators the opportunity to once again insist that the Palestinian leader is no partner for peace, something that is no more or less true today than it was last month. Abbas has been saying things like this most of his adult life. His doctoral dissertation, which was later published as a book, quibbled over the number of Jewish victims of the Shoah and advanced the perverse conspiracy theory he returned to last week: that Zionists were Nazi collaborators for whom six million (or, on Abbas’s abacus, fewer) Jewish lives were a small price to pay for advancing the Zionist cause.

Inherent to most antisemitic suppositions is the defence that Jewish particularities, habits, traditions, identities – in other words, whatever stereotypes the purveyor is advancing – are the legitimate causes of Jewish woes. In Abbas’s telling, all European Jews were usurers and bankers. (Consider the corollary: That, if true, being bankers and usurers would seemingly justify genocide.)

It is appalling that a man who is accepted as a legitimate figure on the international stage can claim, with minimal consequence, that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. So, the most salient point from this terrible incident may be what it says about his audience.

Consider this in the context of the widespread global interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. One can disagree with the policies or approaches of an Israeli government or any number of historical and contemporary developments. But, by no fair reading of history can the full blame for 70 years of conflict be laid at the feet of Israelis. Yet, at almost every point in history – when a pizzeria blows up in Tel Aviv or Jews are stabbed walking down the street in Jerusalem or when Hamas sends thousands to the Israeli border and floats firebombs that set the Israeli landscape aflame – there will be a sizable number of people who will conclude that Jews brought it on themselves.

Whatever else his speech may have accomplished, and despite his apology, Abbas has succeeded in bolstering the stereotype that cunning Jews will sacrifice whatever is necessary to reach their devious aims, and that any horrors that befall them are their own fault. That suits the contemporary popular narrative neatly.

Place blame where due

For weeks since March, each Friday, thousands of Gazans have rallied at the border with Israel, leading to violent confrontations with the Israeli military. The objective is to build up to an incursion of such proportion that Israel’s military is unable to prevent an invasion into Israeli territory. The stated goal of the so-called March of Return is to catalyze the movement toward a “right of return,” which would have the not coincidental consequence of demographically threatening the Jewish nature of Israel.

Of course, even tens of thousands of Palestinians trying to breech the border will not result in this goal. Instead, there is an unstated goal: Hamas seeks to turn global opinion (further) against Israel. Shamefully, it seems that a few dozen Palestinian lives is a small price to pay, in Hamas’s worldview, for the PR benefits they deliver. As the New York Times reported Sunday, at least some of the protesters believe that they have nothing to lose. “It doesn’t matter to me if they shoot me or not,” said a 22-year-old protester interviewed by the paper. “Death or life – it’s the same thing.” That attitude will suit Hamas just fine.

To overseas audiences, march proponents depict it as an unarmed, peaceful, civilian-led mass action – and a peaceful protest is something we could accept, if not agree with. However, evidence shows that it is stage-managed by Hamas and anything but peaceful. Flying swastika-festooned kites with petrol bombs are sent over the border, massive tire fires are set to obscure the view of Israeli soldiers and tug-of-war lines are formed to pull down the border barrier, while crowds simultaneously hurl projectiles. At this past weekend’s action, there were reports of a few protesters armed with pistols.

Writing in the Times two days earlier, Fadi Abu Shammalah, executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centres in Gaza and a documentary film producer, insisted that he loves life, but that he is prepared to risk it to give his children a future with dignity.

A more effective means to ensure that Palestinian children live a life of dignity would be for Shammalah and others like him to write opinion pieces in the New York Times and to agitate elsewhere for the Hamas leadership to abandon both violence and their refusal to live in coexistence with the Jewish state. These are the two prerequisites to Palestinian self-determination. But such actions could well get Shammalah and others killed faster than marching against the border with Israel.

A sovereign country has the fundamental right to protect its borders from invasion. Ideally, this could be achieved without the use of live ammunition, and should minimize casualties as much as possible. Killing unarmed protesters is not acceptable.

Exclusively blaming Israel, however, is unjust. But this is more than misplaced blame: it has the precise consequence of rewarding Hamas’s strategy of sacrificing its own citizens. The more world media and activists condemn Israel and reward Hamas, the more Palestinians will be pushed toward the border. In such a scenario, the blame lies not solely with Israel or even with Hamas. The blame must be shared by these overseas enablers who, by rewarding Hamas, truly deserve part of the responsibility for the deaths and injuries.

Cynicism and realism

Last week, thousands of Germans of all faiths and identities participated in a “kippa march,” standing in solidarity with German Jews who feel endangered in the current political climate. In 2017, there were 1,468 reported antisemitic attacks in Germany, most perpetrated by members of the far-right.

The gesture is lovely. However we cannot help wondering if the whole “Je suis Charlie,” “We are all Muslims” or the “Ich bin Eine Jude” movements that pop up as gestures of solidarity are not at least slightly misplaced.

We will leave it to others to speak for their communities. But we would note that there may be a degree of comfort among some people in Europe and North America to criticize Jews. Since Christianity is descended from Judaism, it seems that there is felt more freedom to criticize Jewish behaviours, including the policies of the Jewish state. After all, the thinking might go, we are all part of the same family; it’s practically constructive self-criticism. Yet this ignores millennia of significantly divergent experiences and theology.

While the idea that donning a kippa will help keep Jewish neighbours in Germany safe, recent European history should give us reason to worry that today’s gesture of solidarity could be repurposed as a cover for criticism tomorrow on the pleasant idea that Ich bin Eine Jude.

This is a cynical response to a kind gesture, we realize. But sometimes cynicism and realism are not unrelated.

The tough choices

The value of ahavat ha’beriot, the love of God’s creations, is open to broad interpretation. The animal world, the environment, as well as other people, can all fall under this crucial tenet of Judaism.

Like positive values and most good things, of course, this is easier in theory than in practice. We all want a clean environment and a better world, but we also want the convenience of automobiles, abundant and varied food, and the panorama of disposable consumer goods that we associate with the “good life.”

Awareness is, on the one hand, the most important factor in social change. On the other hand, it can overwhelm us to learn the full scope of our impacts on the world. Leave aside the huge looming catastrophe of climate change and consider for a moment the impact of a single, almost universal item of clothing: the cotton T-shirt.

Some bumper sticker wisdom urges us to “live simply, that others may simply live.” We do not always think of our wardrobe when considering our carbon footprint. Yet, after housing, food and transportation, for many people, clothing is one of the largest expenditures. Since voting with our wallets is one important way of making change, it is worth considering the impacts of our wardrobe choices. And what we wear on our backs says more about us than merely our fashion sense. It speaks (whether we know it or not) about our views on the environment and matters like child labour and fair wages.

To this end, one might think that a basic T-shirt would be a good choice. Yet it can take up to 2,700 litres of water to produce the cotton required for this simple garment, according to the World Wildlife Federation. Caring for the T-shirt over its lifespan takes further resources: each load of laundry takes more than 150 litres of water. Throwing it in the dryer (with a full load) consumes even more energy resources than the washing machine – about five times as much. Hanging it instead on a clothesline would reduce the shirt’s carbon footprint by one-third, but who remembers those? (Walk down a back lane in Vancouver a generation ago, and clotheslines snaked across almost every yard.) That few of us would be prepared to make this comparatively small shift indicates the glacial – to use an ironic term in the context – pace of human change in a time of rapid change in the environment.

Our food choices are even heavier with impacts. Researchers at institutions including the Weizmann Institute of Science calculated the use of land area, water and nitrogen fertilizer in animal food production. Potatoes, wheat and rice require half to one-sixth of the resources needed to produce pork, chicken, dairy and eggs in a calorie-for-calorie comparison. (Beef takes as much as five times the resources as chicken.)

Livestock for food are estimated to create about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions while using vast amounts of agricultural and water resources. Reducing or giving up meat consumption results in a huge reduction in resources. Producing a kilogram of protein from beef requires about 18 times more land, 10 times more water, nine times more fuel, 12 times more fertilizer and 10 times more pesticide than producing a kilogram of protein from kidney beans. But, again, many people love a steak or roast chicken and giving up these pleasures is not on the agenda.

This is not to instil hopelessness that even our simplest choices are leading to environmental disaster. Rather, it is to be aware of the power of small changes to have significant results.

We can extrapolate the outsized impacts of larger choices. When faced with the realities of carbon fuels on our environment (and health), most of us will not choose to sell our cars. But we might use them more judiciously. Or buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. And, when it comes to making big political decisions that impact our environment and health, we might consider that, on balance, we should be moving toward investing in alternatives to fossil fuels, not pouring public or private billions into perpetuating deleterious and nonrenewable resources. We may not go cold turkey on gasoline and oil overnight, but our discrete choices should be leading incrementally in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Antisemitism exposed

It recently came to light that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, was a member of at least one closed Facebook group where antisemitic rhetoric and hatred, including the most ridiculous assertions based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other such bunkum, was liberally purveyed.

David Collier, an independent British researcher, released an in-depth analysis of the kind of content that appeared in the group to which Corbyn and other leading Labour activists belonged. Members of the group routinely threw around phrases like “Jewnazi” and “Zionazi.” Members posted articles about the “Rothschild Empire,” the “Zionist agenda and New World Order” and “Jewish organ trafficking,” the latter, as the title implies, being a modern incarnation of blood libel.

About Mein Kampf, one poster urged: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.” Members have claimed that Hitler “supported Zionism” and that the Holocaust is being exploited so that Jews can oppress others – all the while shielding themselves with the assertion that “criticizing Israel isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

When caught, Corbyn, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” defended his online association with antisemitism by saying, “Had I seen [evidence of antisemitism], of course, I would have challenged it straight away, but I actually don’t spend all my time reading social media.” In fact, even the most cursory glance at the page would indicate this is a site with which no legitimate public figure should be associated.

An older incident was made public about the same time, in which Corbyn defended the artist in a case where a local government opted to paint over an overtly antisemitic mural on a public wall. Later, Corbyn would claim he hadn’t really looked at the mural, which clearly depicts stereotypically Jewish looking men divvying up money on the backs of the oppressed, while the symbol of the Illuminati, a figment of the antisemitic movement’s imagination, hovers above them.

The fact that overt antisemitism, which has existed in the Labour Party for some time, has finally had a bright light shone on it, has brought some surprising reactions. Some MPs and other Labour activists have called for MPs who attended a rally against antisemitism to be blackballed from the party. You read that right.

Those whose dogged campaigning has brought the unseemly underbelly of antisemitism on the British left to light seem to now face the daunting task of ensuring that the blame for the problem – and the task of fixing it – falls to the perpetrators, not the victims.

Challenges in Mideast

The Russia- and Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria employed chemical weapons against its own citizens again last week. It’s hard to imagine that the atrocities in Syria could be any worse. Indeed, it is chilling to imagine what Syrian forces would be doing right now had Israel not neutralized that country’s nuclear capabilities in 2007.

Despite the horrific images coming out of Syria, much of the world’s attention, including that of the United Nations, was focused on Israel’s response to rallies on the Gaza border. It was striking to hear the outrage about Israel’s reaction to the Gaza events while a few hundred kilometres away the most atrocious acts were being perpetrated on a people by their own government. That said, the loss of life in Gaza is startling and we hope that the Israel Defence Forces can find non-lethal ways to defend against the protesters.

At the same time, it has been difficult not to be frustrated about the placement of blame. Portrayed by apologists as a peaceful rally – the so-called March for Return – the Friday events, for the second consecutive week, were a violent assault on the Israeli border. The planned action featured Gazans burning hundreds of tires in order to obscure the visibility of IDF soldiers. While tallying up the number of dead – 26 have been killed, according to the Associated Press Monday – it’s clear that the associations of some of the dead have been lost on most audiences, as at least 10 have been reported to be known combatants in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and Hamas’ terrorist wings.

On Friday, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yehya Al-Sinwar, was employing what outside observers will likely dismiss as flowery rhetoric for domestic audiences when he exclaimed on Al-Jazeera that “We will take down the border [with Israel] and tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Whether the actions of the IDF are deemed justified, the Diaspora community must continue to press for a non-military solution where possible and demand that the IDF remain restrained when demonstrators are unarmed. With a video surfacing that allegedly shows an IDF sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man while other soldiers cheer, there are calls for an investigation within Israel from across the political spectrum. As one Israeli politician said in the Times of Israel, “The battle isn’t just between us and Hamas; it is also for ourselves, for our values and for the identity of Israel society.”

It was, however, a leading figure in the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas, which runs the West Bank, who pointed out what should be obvious to the world. Dr. Mahmoud Habbash, a supreme judge in the Palestinian Authority Islamic court and Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, accused Hamas of “trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims” to get sympathetic headlines worldwide.

It seems to be working. “Solidarity” marches around the world included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free.”

Against this backdrop, it may seem odd to raise the issue of Israel’s treatment of African refugees. As a Jewish newspaper, we feel it is our obligation to defend Israel from unjust accusations and attacks, and it is our duty also to condemn actions by Israeli governments or others that betray what we believe to be the just course.

Last week’s flip-flop by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was a disgrace and an insult to the values on which Israel prides itself.

A week ago Monday, Netanyahu announced an agreement with a United Nations refugee agency to alleviate a conflict about what to do with 38,000 African asylum-seekers currently in legal limbo in Israel by relocating about half of them to Western countries, including Canada. The next day, after getting pushback from right-wing members of his coalition and some aggressive residents of south Tel Aviv (where most of the migrants live) who want few or no migrants to remain in Israel, the prime minister reneged on the deal, seeking again to eject all 38,000.

As we have said in this space previously, it is ludicrous to suggest that 38,000 Africans – or half that – threaten the Jewish nature of the state. Neither, contrary to Netanyahu’s allegations, would the acceptance of these refugees – who fled violence and war – create a precedent.

If Israel wants to create a situation where it can avoid unwanted refugees while ensuring that it meets the obligations of a democratic state, it must develop the systems to appropriately adjudicate refugee claims. At present, situations like this – affecting the lives of 38,000 individuals – are being addressed arbitrarily and inappropriately. Israel, like Canada, Germany and other democracies, needs to have a standard by which the world’s homeless, who happen to find temporary refuge within its borders, are assessed and treated fairly within clearly defined legal parameters that recognize both the rights of individual non-citizens and the necessities of Israel, from the perspective of both the security of its citizens and the Jewish nature of the state. These are not incompatible objectives.

There is no shortage of challenges facing the Middle East. The situations in Gaza and Syria seem intractable. The fate of 38,000 migrants should not be so difficult to resolve.

Marching in right direction

Estimates of the number of people – most of them teens and young adults – who rallied in Washington, D.C., last Saturday range from 500,000 to 800,000. They called for sensible gun control legislation and mourned lives lost to gun violence, mobilized particularly by the memory of the mass murder of 17 in a Parkland, Fla., school Feb. 14. Many more rallied across the country and even in Canada. A small group gathered in solidarity at Vancouver’s Jack Poole Plaza.

Despite the horrors that inspired the marchers, the day was uplifting and inspiring. Survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school shooting – who have become the faces and voices of the movement – proved youthfulness was not a barrier to eloquence or to courage. In fact, they may have proved it was a prerequisite.

After nothing changed when 20 children, 6 and 7 years old, plus six adults, were killed at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut, in 2012, many of us concluded that nothing would ever be done to confront gun violence and the monetary and grassroots power of lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association. What the Stoneman Douglas students determined was that, if the adults of the world were not going to protect them, they would take matters into their own hands. The movement they have launched – and the dialogue they are fomenting – is being compared with the anti-Vietnam War movement that mobilized their grandparents’ generation.

It will take time to see if the power they seem to have unleashed develops into something long-lasting. Voters aged 18 to 29 consistently have the poorest turnout record among American (and Canadian) voters.

While it is encouraging to see the political waves being made by the movement, it is a cause of additional naches to witness the role of Jewish young people. Synagogues and JCCs became makeshift hostels for Jewish students piling into D.C. last weekend.

Zoe Terner, a Florida leader in the Reform movement’s North American Federation of Temple Youth, spoke at a Shabbat event the night before the march. “This is how we grieve,” she told JTA. “Tomorrow I will pray with my feet and, with every step, I will think of those few hours a month ago when I didn’t know if my friends were alive or dead.”

Students from Minnesota, who traveled 21 hours to the capital, wore T-shirts reading “Dayenu,” repurposing the Passover refrain to echo the anti-gun movement’s chant “Enough!”

We can’t help noting with a bit of disappointment the appropriation of the term #NeverAgain, which the movement adopted in good faith. Perhaps they were unaware that it has been the rallying cry for Holocaust remembrance and education for decades. It is one oversight in what has largely been a seamlessly orchestrated affair. Of course, groups cannot claim monopoly on sentiments like “Never Again,” but we wonder if it loses some resonance when used for other purposes. Perhaps parents and teachers have not sufficiently educated successive generations on the lessons of the Shoah. Or, just as likely, it may be that a familiar refrain expressed the urgency of the moment: the Jewish population of Stoneman Douglas high school is estimated at about 40%. (Several of the murder victims were and a number of the vocal activists are Jewish.)

The movement for sensible gun legislation in the United States faces hurdles. While last weekend’s rallies were an important start, and this fall’s midterm elections a crucial testing ground, it is difficult to foresee the trajectory of the cause.

A commentator on CNN over the weekend noted that the issue of marriage equality reached a tipping point, from where opposition to same-sex marriage reversed to majority support in a remarkably short time. By contrast, the debate over reproductive freedom has seen two sides dig in their heels for decades, with little middle ground.

Moreover, gun control is a more complex matter than the comparative yes-or-no approach one can take to gay marriage or abortion. There are dozens if not hundreds of permutations that gun regulation and control legislation could take.

But, for whatever challenges the youth movement for sensible gun policies faces in future, last weekend was the sound of millions of feet marching in the right direction.

Holiday of freedom

As Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman writes (in this week’s issue), the Exodus story is not one in which humankind is the protagonist. It is the hand of God that creates the circumstances that permit the Hebrew people to escape bondage and, after a time, find freedom.

Still, this did not abrogate the need for human action. The people needed to recognize the successive messages being sent to them and, then, take the opportunity to escape – take that first step into the roiling Red Sea, for example, even before God parted it. A jailer may leave the key within reach of the unjustly imprisoned, but the inmate still needs to reach out and unlock the cell door.

Central to Judaism is the concept that God left the world unfinished and imperfect. It is the work of humankind to complete the work. Bringing about that ideal is the purpose of our existence.

Often, lately, it seems that the global trajectory is moving in the wrong direction. The reelection of Vladimir Putin – by an entirely anticipated landslide, assisted by his control of media and the murder of his opponents – moves Russia further away from the nascent democracy that emerged in the late 20th century. Across the former Eastern Bloc, tyrants and hyper-nationalists are rising. Even in Slovakia, one of the finest examples of democracy emerging from the communist past, people are rising up – this is an encouraging reality – as their government appears to be moving away from its promise.

The fate of the Rohingya people (addressed by Independent writer Matthew Gindin in this issue) is a flashpoint of inhumanity and yet we continue to argue over nomenclature. Is it genocide? Words matter. But, for heaven’s sake, let us take action.

Sadly, almost anywhere one looks in the world, including, of course, in Canada and in Israel, there are injustices, inhumanities and tragedies. The uncertainty facing African refugees in Israel, and still-unaddressed issues of the most basic human rights for First Nations communities – like the right to clean water, education and opportunity – remain scars on Canada’s conscience. To our south, angry rhetoric and divisive leadership sow discontent, distrust and falsehoods in pursuit of political and social advantage. There are literal or figurative slaves needing redemption on every continent.

Jewish tradition emphatically calls us to pursue justice, but perhaps never so ardently as at Pesach. Through our enjoyment of the holiday and the reminders of our bitter history and the components of the seder, the order of our remembrance, may our resolve be strengthened to pursue justice in this year and in the decades to come.

May we strive to not be disheartened by the magnitude and breadth of the work to be done, but inspired by the inestimable number of examples we have before us, locally and elsewhere.

So many in our own community are pursuing justice in their unique ways, from the day school kids who assembled and delivered hundreds of mishloach manot recently to those in need, or Rose’s Angels, who made Valentine’s Day special for hundreds more, or for the hundreds of individuals in our community whose every day is devoted to making the world better for seniors, students, people with special needs or those who just need a comforting companion.

We can be overwhelmed by the ferocity with which news comes at us, and it can seem that whatever we do could provide only a tiny drop in the required ocean of goodness to make this world a better place. But what is an ocean but billions and billions of tiny drops?

This is our mission. We do not repair the world by despairing. We redeem it by our actions. It is, perhaps, up to Canadians who are, by any measure, among the most fortunate people in the world, to rededicate ourselves during this season of remembering and reliving our time in bondage, release and redemption, to finding ways to play our small but irreplaceable part in the enormous work to be done.

Chag Pesach sameach!