Last Sunday, I took my two daughters to the Vancouver Pride Parade.
Though I was certain my four- and seven-year-olds would enjoy every ounce of the many colors and sounds, and the energy of the parade itself (few events produce the same level of spirit as a Pride Parade) a day of fun wasn’t my prime motivator.
I had seen a posting on Facebook from Yad b’Yad, a community-based group that rallies local members of all sexual preferences each year to represent the Jews of Vancouver in the parade.
Pride: In so many ways!
I decided that with everything going on in Israel at the time, combined with the dramatic presence of antisemitism spreading across the globe, never was there a better time for me to teach my children about tolerance, acceptance, diversity and pride.
Yes, there were a few questions I had to be prepared to answer – like when one of the participants handing out freebies to the crowd placed a couple packs of Trojans in my seven-year-old’s hands. I responded to the expected, “What’s this, Daddy?” with an abbreviated version of how she wouldn’t be enjoying this parade if Daddy had those eight years ago. A quick shrug of the shoulders and she was back to watching “princesses” roller skate down the street to roaring cheers.
The value gained in that experience, led by the conversations I had explaining the importance of the parade, was what made me most proud. That’s because one of the scariest things I see when I look closely at Israel’s Middle East problem is the amount of education-themed hatred being passed on to children in the region. Cartoon characters who preach killing Jews and manipulated curricula that offer false truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all but guarantee this crisis is not likely to end until well beyond my days.
Outside of the Middle East, the Hamas propaganda machine – which has clearly become their most powerful weapon – has helped spread hatred and bigotry around the world and, in some cases, just down the street from our own homes.
Like many other people I know, I have found myself walking around my country, my city, wondering how many people around me would like to shame me and my family because of something they once saw on TV or read on Facebook.
I’ll always do all that I can debating with and educating folks via various social media outlets. But the most important thing I can do for the future is teach my kids. Teach them to love. Teach them to accept. Teach them to continuously open their minds to the many choices free people have in this world.
It’s entirely possible that watching half-naked men and women prancing up Robson Street is not for everyone (say, what!?). But I encourage parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends everywhere to do something unique, outside of the box, and, especially, meaningful to provide your youth every chance to identify the difference between right and wrong. They will see it all on Facebook one day. Better they are prepared to figure it out for themselves when they do.
Gaza, July 28, 2014: An Israel Defence Forces soldier examines a newly revealed tunnel in the Gaza strip. (photo by IDF via Ashernet)
It’s been awhile since I’ve written. There’s a story I’ve been meaning to share but, unfortunately, circumstances have led me to write a different story entirely, about “the matzav.”
“The matzav” means, literally, “the situation,” but it’s used to refer euphemistically to a current bad security situation in Israel. You say it in a half whisper, the way our parents used to say, “cancer.”
“How’s business going now, with – the matzav?”
“We’re going up north for a few days because of – the matzav.”
“My mother-in-law has been with us for two weeks, thanks to – the matzav.”
It’s definitely not an easy time to be in Israel, though now, more than ever, there is no place I would rather be.
I didn’t grow up in a particularly Zionist household. Most of what I know about Judaism and Israel I learned in college. People used to say to me that being in Israel is like being with family, and making aliyah is like coming home. My family never shoved in front of me to get on buses or overcharged me for souvenirs, so I guess I just couldn’t relate.
I got a little taste of the family thing when I was visiting Israel 12 years ago on a mission during the Second Intifada, when tourism was at an all-time low. I went to the falafel stand in the Old City by the Cardo with my 10-month-old son. There were no other tourists to be found. The owner, who was usually just interested in taking orders and keeping the line moving, insisted on holding the baby while I ate. This was like my family – not always warm and fuzzy, but there for you in hard times.
These are hard times. There’s been a constant barrage of rockets in southern Israel for weeks, keeping the population within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter. As I wrote these words, four people were killed by a rocket fired from a playground in Gaza. This morning, a man on the radio was saying that he’s terrified to shower or even go to the bathroom for fear a siren will go off.
Another woman was asleep and didn’t hear a siren. She only heard the rocket hit her house. She is being treated in the hospital for wounds to the head, legs and knees, but no treatment will cure the fear you can hear in her voice, unable to speak in full sentences.
On the other side of the border, the suffering in indescribable and the media images haunting. I feel torn apart by my pain for the Palestinian losses on the one hand and the need for us to defend ourselves on the other. Then there’s the sadness for the soldiers who are trained to minimize civilian casualties, but who find themselves hurting innocent civilians, behind whom the cowardly terrorists hide.
Our “adopted” lone soldier Danna tells us stories of what her friends see who are serving in Gaza – hospitals and UN schools hiding weapons and terrorists; gunmen literally hiding behind families; terrorists shooting with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.
As Golda Meir said to Anwar Sadat just before the peace talks with Egypt, “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”
Before the war started, I got a call one Friday afternoon.
“Hi, Emily. We’re thinking of cancelling the partnership minyan this week, but I just want to check with you, because I know you worked hard on your speech.”
“Oh, well, sure … but why?”
“We just thought it would be better for the whole community to pray together tonight because of, you know – the matzav.” (Pause) “Did you not here what happened?”
That’s how I heard about the three kidnapped soldiers.
You would think all three of them were from our kibbutz, the way people spoke of them and cried and prayed for them and organized around helping their families. The whole country was suddenly one big family. One big, sad family.
At school, the teachers held special meetings with their pupils to help them digest the news and share their feelings. They had a meeting in the evening to help parents with how to talk to their kids. All this despite the fact that the three boys were from a different part of the country and not at all connected to our school or our region, except that here everyone is connected. At these times, we’re all cousins, brothers, sons.
The news a few weeks later – that the boys were killed – hit hard. I was out for the day to Beit Shean with my son Abaye to get braces on his teeth. Abaye is very sensitive to “the matzav” and I try to keep him away from the news most of the time so we can share things with him in our own way, but there was no escape. The news was on in the dentist’s office, and staff and patients were openly crying. Afterwards, we went for ice cream and the ice cream shop was playing the tape over and over again. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen.
“You’re an ice cream shop!” I wanted to yell at them, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole country was in mourning.
Then the rockets started in the south. Everyone’s hearts turned to the families under fire. Our kibbutz Google group filled up with suggestions of where you could bring food and supplies, requests to run programs, and even invitations to drive down south into the fire to help entertain kids in bomb shelters. There were so many projects being run out of so many places that volunteers had to quickly set up a committee to manage them all.
Our area happens to be one of the safest parts of the country. We haven’t heard any sirens. We haven’t even unlocked our bomb shelters. So, everyone is opening their homes.
Several families have come to our kibbutz for a break, and our youth group organized a camp for a week with peers from a kibbutz in the south. I heard on the radio about a resort nearby that has opened its doors to another kibbutz (200 people!), feeding and housing them and running programs for the kids. And these are just a few tiny examples. Every community is doing something.
Then there are the troops fighting in Gaza.
Tel Aviv, July 29, 2014: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the press conference announcing an extension of the Gaza operation. (photo by Ashernet)
Soldiers were sent to the border to defend our country from rocket attacks. Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to stave off a ground incursion, but the rockets kept falling and, it seems, there was work that could only be done on the ground.
When the army finally went in, they discovered a complex underground tunnel network that Hamas had built to infiltrate Israel. It seems they were planning a massive operation for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah – hundreds of terrorists were scheduled to appear from nowhere in kibbutzim and villages across the south, dressed in Israeli uniforms, for a mega terrorist attack. It’s chilling to think about what they might have done.
Several of the fatalities of this war, including the three kidnapped boys, have resulted from terrorists coming through these tunnels. They lead from private homes in Gaza right into Israeli neighborhoods, one ending directly beneath the dining hall of a kibbutz. It was reported that children on the kibbutz had been complaining they could hear someone digging under them, but adults hadn’t taken them seriously, because how could that possibly be?
So, now we are at war in Gaza until we get rid of the tunnels, of which 30 have been discovered so far, and many destroyed. Meanwhile, the number of fallen and wounded soldiers continues to rise, as well as, of course, the massive toll on both terrorist and innocent Gazans.
But I wanted to tell you about the efforts to support our troops.
Being the army of the Jewish people, the aid started with, of course, food. Fresh meals, cakes and treats – you name them. A renowned chef opened shop to provide gourmet cuisine for the soldiers.
At one point, we got the message that it’s enough food, and now could we please send personal hygiene products (soaps, deodorants, etc.) and “fresh towels with the scent of home”? In addition, children sent so many letters of love and support that the soldiers use them to wallpaper their tanks and living spaces. At the camp for Adin, my nine-year-old son, they changed the program this week so that every day was a different activity to support the soldiers – making gifts, preparing food and raising money.
And, of course, it’s difficult for soldiers to communicate with their families, so the radio has taken to running extra programs in which they can send personal messages.
“Hi Mom, Dad and, of course, my girlfriend Tal. I’m here to protect you and I’m fine, so you can sleep without worrying. I love you.”
And I’m sure Mom, Dad, Tal and half the country are crying with me.
Among the first losses of the war, we heard about the falling of two lone soldiers – people like our “adopted” daughter, who moved to Israel voluntarily to protect our country, who are here with no family. It made me sad to think these people would be buried alone, but what could anyone do? Their whole family is overseas.
A photo of one of these fallen boys, Sean Carmeli from Texas, appeared on the news in a Maccabee-Haifa soccer T-shirt. They were his favorite team. The team apparently shared my concern and made an appeal for people to attend his funeral. Twenty thousand people showed up!
You could call it a social media ploy, but I don’t think so. The next day, there was a funeral for the other lone soldier, Max Steinberg from California. I was afraid his funeral would pale in comparison to Sean’s, seeing as he wasn’t a major sports fan. But my fear was baseless. Thirty thousand people were in attendance. Those who were interviewed about why they came simply said that he made the ultimate sacrifice for them when he didn’t need to, and it was the least they could do.
Max’s family had never been to Israel before. I thought about my own mother, who did not want us to make aliyah, and who would never forgive me if, God forbid, anything happened to any of my kids. Max’s parents and siblings were overwhelmed by the turnout.
His mother Evie told the mourners, “We now know why Max fell in love with Israel. It was all because of its people. He was embraced with open arms and treated like family,” she said, “and, for that, we are eternally grateful.”
When his sister began, “We come from a very small family,” I held my breath expecting to hear her anger or sadness at having lost her brother. Instead, she continued, “But that seemed to quickly change after meeting people in Israel, who made it feel like one big family.”
This morning, I was out walking in the forest around the kibbutz when a new song came on the radio by Ariel Horowitz, son of one of Israel’s greatest singers, Naomi Shemer. The song is about the lone soldier Sean Carmeli. The writer had attended the funeral and was deeply moved. The chorus goes something like this:
20,000 people and you’re at the front. 20,00 people are behind you, Sean. Marching in silence with flowers, Two sisters and 20,000 brothers.
Sgt. Nissim Sean Carmeli and Sgt. Max Steinberg, and all our fallen soldiers will never be forgotten, because we don’t forget family.
Emily Singeris a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children, and live on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa.
My new friends! A mixed group of Arab and Jewish kids playing hockey together in Israel.
I have to admit that it has been tough to concentrate on much these days with everything going on in Israel this month.
The country and people that I love – along with every Jew around the world – has been fighting a war of epic proportions. Both in Gaza and in the media.
As I have struggled to come to terms with the reality of how deeply rooted antisemitism currently is around the world and how gleefully willing many people are to remain ignorant and naive, I consider what I can do to contribute.
Sure, there are rallies and gatherings to attend, letters to be written to MPs, Facebook posts to share, all with hopes of spreading intelligent information and support for Israel. But I feel myself needing something more tangible to contribute to.
Those feelings and thoughts almost always take me to a program – or mission – I have already embraced the past few years I have visited Israel.
Myself with Daniel (left) and Ariel Wosk on the Canada Centre ice in Metula.
In the very northern tip of Israel, in Etzpah Hagalil – Vancouver’s P2G Partnership region, there is the lone full-sized (actually, Olympic-sized) hockey rink at Mercaz Canada (Canada Centre) in Metula. I have visited it the past three years to participate in the Israel Recreational Hockey Association Tournament (amazing event!) along with several local friends.
In 2013, while visiting, an Israeli friend told me about a new, growing program at the Canada Centre called the Canada-Israel Hockey School (CIHS). Merely 3 years old, CIHS already featured approximately 400 Israeli kids of all ages, wearing a mish-mosh of donated gear and Jerseys, learning to play Canada’s game.
Just watching these kids had already blown my mind. I was beyond enlightened when Coach Mike Mazeika, a non-Jewish Torontonian who has embraced Israeli culture in more ways than one, informed me that among those skaters was a complete mix of Jewish and Arab children. Hockey had brought Jewish teens who had never once spoken to an Arab teen, and vice-versa, together as teammates. Line mates. Eternal friends. And it was working!
Adding to that, I took a look around the stands and saw the parents of all these children cheering together. Ignoring, at least within this small group, decades of religious and political conflict since Israel had been born.
Hockey, Canada’s game, was doing this!
As I watched in awe I declared, “Someone has to document this!” To which Mazeika replied, “Actually, TSN was here a couple of weeks ago.” (see link below)
I was invited to come back and skate with the school before leaving Israel – an opportunity I called the coolest thing I had done on the ice. I returned home from that trip with a few new friends (Jewish, Christian and Druze) and a new commitment to use my role as the JCCGV’s sports coordinator to develop our community’s connection with the Canada-Israel Hockey School.
Team Vancouver returned this past February to an even larger hockey school as founder Levav Weinberg told me of their plans to reach out to even more communities around Israel.
We are currently working with Weinberg on plans to bring a group from CIHS on a Canadian tour with a key stop in Vancouver in the spring of 2015.
In the mean time, I will be returning in February, with whoever wants to join me, to represent Team Vancouver in the tournament (amazing experience as well!) and continue to develop our relationship with CIHS.
If you are hockey inclined and would like to join us to be part of something truly special in such a desperate time, there are always spots on our team!
I was 15 during the summer of 1962 when a visiting Lubavitcher rabbi named Zalman Schachter came to Camp Ramah. He sang his soft and expressive melody for the first blessing of the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals), which I remember to this day. It was the first time this yeshivah boy had experienced a different way of giving thanks for the gift of nourishing food, one that focused on the Source of the food. In a sense, I became his chassid that summer, although I didn’t know it at the time.
Six years later, while visiting a friend in Boston, we attended Shabbat services at Havurat Shalom and I moved closer to knowing that I was his chassid when I heard him sing “Eyl Adon,” the Shabbat poem in praise of the many realms of light, to the Yiddish folksong “Donna Donna.” And, four years after that, searching for a spiritual practice that affirmed the first 25 years of my life, and immersion in Jewish practice and study, I wrote him from the B.C. Interior and asked to learn with him, consciously becoming his chassid.
Reb Zalman always said that a chassid must have a rebbe and one becomes a rebbe only when one has a chassid. When he asked me if I would accept semichah (ordination) from him, we created new possibilities for others with what has become the movement for the spiritual renewal of Judaism and a current ordination program of 80 students. He offered me a semichah that I could accept and, as he put it, I gave him permission to begin a lineage which is both new and old.
On July, 3, 2014, I was teaching at our Semichah Week summer gathering at a retreat centre outside of Portland, when one of our students opened the door to my classroom. After waiting politely for a break in the conversation, he said that he had the sad duty of informing us that our beloved rebbe had peacefully passed into the next world that morning. Supported by my students and dear friends, together we affirmed Reb Zalman’s death with the traditional words, “Baruch Dayan HaEmet (Blessed be the True Judge).”
Memories and images passed before me, arising from the years of learning and friendship that we had shared. In the summer of 1971, my life partner, Hanna Tiferet, and I immigrated to British Columbia and settled in the Kootenays. It was a year of living in harmony with the earth and seeking spiritual meaning. Our first son, Noah, was born the following summer, after our house burned down. I had written Zalman for spiritual guidance. He was living in Winnipeg at the time and teaching at the University of Manitoba. He invited me to come to Winnipeg. After Hanna and Noah were settled, I hitchhiked 1,500 miles there and back to officially meet and begin my studies with my rebbe.
In 1976-77, Hanna and I lived in Philadelphia with Reb Zalman, learning how the rebbe “tied his shoelaces.” Mordecai and Hana Wosk visited him that year and they encouraged me to apply for both the University of British Columbia Hillel director position and to become Congregation Beth Tikvah’s first rabbi. This provided the opportunity for us to bring this new-old form of Judaism to a place we loved in a country where I, as the son of a Toronto-born Jewish pioneer, felt at home.
Inspired by the havurah movement and Reb Zalman’s mystical teachings, we slowly gathered people to form the Hillel Minyan, which became “The Minyan,” then Havurat Sim Shalom, which is now Or Shalom. I served the Vancouver Jewish community for 10 years and then went back to the United States to work as the rabbi at Dartmouth College. After another 10 years, we settled in Boston, where I became the director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and, eventually, a teacher in the rabbinic program. Reb Zalman’s teachings became my life’s work and I worked closely with him to translate and transcribe his thought in several books and manuals, including Credo of a Modern Kabbalist, The Kabbalah of Tikkun Olam, Renewal Is Judaism Now, and Integral Halachah.
Reb Zalman revealed to us a Judaism that is open and inclusive. He said that, once we were witness to the profound image of the earth from outer space, we could begin to comprehend the oneness of all life beyond the limitations of national borders. How could we then separate the fate of the Jewish people from that of all people, or the fate of humanity from the condition of all of life on this planet? He taught about deep ecumenism and showed us how to relate to Christians, Muslims, Hindus and First Nations people, embracing and respecting the holiness in each tradition. His mission was to maintain the integrity of Klal Yisrael while also embracing the shared truth in all the spiritual and ethical paths present in our world. Inspired by him, we opened spiritual leadership to women, created services that others could help lead as they developed their skills, designed tallitot that were colorful and beautiful, included gays and lesbians and then all the wonderful and various expressions of identity in our growing communities.
Reb Zalman, together with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, had a spiritual assignment to redeem the Jewish people after the Holocaust. These two shlichim (messengers) from Chabad revitalized Judaism and sparked the renewal of spirituality in every facet of Jewish life.
When I received and accepted semichah from Reb Zalman in 1974 in the Winnipeg home of Rabbi Neal and Carol Rose, I was the first and only member of this new lineage. Now, there are more than 100 ordained as a Renewal rabbi, chazzan or rabbinic pastor, and students keep arriving, though we don’t advertise or recruit. Meditation, retreats, ecstatic prayer, new music, poetry, art and movement are now available options everywhere that Jews gather to pray. So much of this results from the vision, intelligence and spiritual depth of this one man, whose life we celebrate and whose presence on this earth plane we will miss so deeply.
With gratitude for the blessing of his presence in my own life these past 52 years, I say my own Kaddish for my rebbe and spiritual father, Meshullam Zalman Chiyya ben Chayah Gittel v’Shlomo haKohen, z”l. May his memory be a blessing and awaken in us the deep desire to live in peace and harmony with all of creation.
As the conflict rages in Israel and Gaza, so it does, in a different way, worldwide. As is always the case when Israel is involved in a conflict, the rage level escalates swiftly among commentators, social media, street activists, politicians and diplomats. While both sides are engaging in heated and contentious “debate” – we should take nothing away from Zionists’ ability to engage in slapfests on social media – something darker is emerging.
Protests in France and Germany have been especially grisly. In Paris, one synagogue was firebombed while, at another, Jews were forced to barricade themselves inside the shul as a mob attacked with bats and chairs. Jewish-run businesses were ransacked in a Paris suburb. In Germany, overt neo-Nazis are marching daily, some chanting, “Gas the Jews.” “Anti-Israel” rallies worldwide are rife with anti-Jewish imagery and messaging. Individual Jews have been assaulted around the world. One man in Australia, badly beaten, told media that the antisemitic onslaught he experienced after going public was worse than the assault itself.
There are certainly examples of anti-Jewish prejudice amid the public discourse in Canada, though we have seen nothing near to what is happening elsewhere. In fact, the brightest spot in the whole sad global discourse around the conflict comes from right here in Canada. For the better part of a decade, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been an unequivocal voice of reason and support for Israel’s right – obligation, he said – to defend its citizens from terrorism. Our foreign policy has been steadfast in defending our closest ally in the region, and the only democracy there, amid a cacophony of vitriol and hatred.
Significantly, what was a few years ago considered a surprising and unusually unambiguous position has become the dominant Canadian political consensus. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has issued a statement echoing the Conservatives’ strong support for Israel.
More remarkable has been Thomas Mulcair’s extraordinary success at turning his New Democratic Party from what was once a nest of Canada’s most vocal anti-Israel zealots into a moderate party in line with the other two mainstream parties. He has done this in the face of a small but venomous clutch of extreme Israel-haters. A writer on the website Rabble recently referred to “Mulcair’s abhorrence of Palestinian rights.” (We have been known to employ some extravagant semantics in this space, but for a really eccentric level of rhetoric almost unknown since the fall of the Berlin Wall, head over to Rabble for a nostalgic walk down memory lane.)
Mulcair’s accomplishment, of course, is derided by Israel’s enemies as proof that the craven Zionists have finally got their talons into the last of the major parties’ platforms. In reality, it is an acknowledgement that Canada’s body politic has recognized, alas, that morality and pragmatism demand that we stand with our allies and against those who seek to slaughter them. There is nothing novel in this – what was novel was the years when we went off the rails trying to play an “honest broker” role between a democratic, peace-seeking, pluralist Israel and the genocidal terrorists determined to destroy the country and kill its citizens.
There is a place for extreme views in a democracy – in extreme, fringe parties. Which may explain why Green party leader Elizabeth May is right now taking up an anti-Israel cudgel just as the rest of the civilized political spectrum is affirming the only position mainstream, moderate parties can justify.
There are tactical reasons, too. Israel-bashers insist that Harper’s Israel policy (and now that of the Liberals and NDP) is a sop to win Jewish votes, which suggests they are as bad at math as they are telling terrorists from allies. The “Jewish vote” in Canada is miniscule and shrinking, while the number of new Canadians coming from places where hatred of Israel is something akin to a birthright is growing.
While the three main parties are doing the right thing, the Greens seem ready to welcome those who have been left out in the cold by a consensus that our country should stand with democracies when they are under assault from terrorists. It may be a political strategy for a tiny party seeking a foothold, but it doesn’t seem like a moral one.
What can we possibly add to the billions of words shed on the topic of the Israel-Hamas conflict? If this paper is in your hands – or you’re reading this on our new website or in our affordable and environmentally friendly e-edition – you probably already know where we stand.
If you are on social media, you probably know where every one of your friends stands on the issue as well. There has been a barrage of posts, tweets, emails and media pieces on every conceivable aspect of this conflict, its causes, its potential solutions, the actors, the victims, the sound and the fury.
There has also been a vast amount of analysis of media coverage of the events. It is fair enough to call out media for consistently biased reporting. But it does seem excessive sometimes to catalogue every instance of poor or malicious reportage. Media outlets we have never heard of before are getting widespread attention for bad journalism. The irony is that in the PR biz there’s an old saw that there’s no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right. Some newspapers and broadcast outlets that would be best ignored are instead going viral for all the wrong reasons.
This is not to say egregious reporting should go unchecked. Organizations like CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, PMW, Palestinian Media Watch, and the acronym-deficient Honest Reporting, do a bang-up job keeping reporters’ feet to the fire and illuminating journalistic atrocities around real-world atrocities.
In one of the most imaginative volleys, some anti-Israel brainiac took a still from the Hollywood horror film Final Destination 4, depicting grotesquely mangled human remains, and alleged that it was the work of Operation Protective Edge. Other “evidence” of Israel’s inhumanity turned out to be photos from the Syrian civil war.
For a few hours last week, there was an online rumor that the murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir was not the work of Jewish Israelis, but an “honor killing” by his own family allegedly because he was gay. Such a scenario would have reassured us of the uprightness of our side and the baseness of the other, but the facts came out and, sadly, did neither. In either case, a boy is no less dead.
There is certainly cause for concern over fair reporting, and false accusations and misrepresentations should, of course, be challenged, but is this where so much of our energy should be going? We live in a wired world where access to information is almost beyond the human imagination of just two decades ago. No matter on what side of an issue people fall, they will find data and stories that support their views. This is what the internet does well: it provides information and makes it accessible to almost everyone. What people do with that information, if anything, is up to them.
People in some parts of the world do not have the access we do to electronic information, which makes it easier for their powers-that-be to control the message, to propagandize. In North America and Europe, though, anyone who is undecided about an issue and who truly wants to learn more has the opportunity to do so from millions of articles, blogs, newscasts and other sources. This is a good thing. We should be vigilant when major media outlets skew the facts, but we should not expect them to take our position simply because we think we’re right. (We are.)
Instead of being fearful and demanding more regulation of ideas, the reality of this still-new electronic world is that we need to learn – and we need to teach our children – to be effective media critics who can tell good sources from bad. We have the freedom to engage in dialogue and we should. For the most part, we can’t control how others present themselves and their views, but we can choose to present our own wisely and with civility.
The tragedy of four murdered teenagers in Israel has had more than emotional repercussions here in Canada. But it is unfair to blame foreign events for the shameful actions that took place in a Toronto suburb last Thursday, July 3.
The previous Monday, June 30, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, the three kidnapped Jewish teens, were found slain. Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Arab, was subsequently killed in what appears to have been a revenge murder by a group of Jewish assailants.
Into this moment of tragedy and tension, in an act with predictable repercussions, the Jewish Defence League announced it would hold a protest over the murders outside Palestine House, in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.
The Palestine House Educational and Cultural Centre bills itself as a not-for-profit organization that “serves as the educational, cultural and social centre for the Palestinian community in the Greater Toronto Area (in particular) and in Canada (in general).”
The Jewish Defence League, which was founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, is viewed by many as a right-wing extremist group with vigilante tendencies. The respected Southern Poverty Law Centre has added the JDL to its hate group watch-list. The Anti-Defamation League has accused the JDL of harboring “thugs and hooligans.”
Predictably – the JDL having given advance notice – they arrived at Palestine House (backed up by some members of the motorcycle club Yidden on Wheels) to greet a large throng of Palestinian Canadians and their supporters already chanting anti-Israel slogans and waving anti-Israel placards and Palestinian (and Canadian) flags. What ensued was caught, as almost everything seems to be these days, on video. It leaves both sides looking like jackasses. Three people were injured as police struggled and failed to separate the mobs of competing thugs, most of the minor injuries seemingly from whacking with flagpoles as both sides paraded their respective ensigns and used them as weapons.
To say the scene was juvenile is an understatement. Jewish extremists show up, knowing their mere presence, let alone their antagonistic actions, will provoke another group at a time of understandable international tension. Not surprisingly, some of the Palestinian supporters took the bait. Mayhem ensued. Chauvinistic slogans and provocative gestures ruled the day. A couple of people were mildly hurt, but it could have been much worse.
By Canadian standards, though, this was a particularly nasty scene. And, while the fact that it happened during the week of Canada Day does not make it worse, it certainly doesn’t make it better.
The JDL and some similar groups view themselves as the embodiment of a “new Jew” that learned the tragic lessons of passivity. But if the JDL represents the future, we reject it entirely.
If the concept of a “new Jew” is at all legitimate, it is most reflected in the state of Israel. This type of “muscular Judaism” is about more than brute force. It is about attempting to defend and exemplify the values upon which Israel is based, and that it continues to strive to represent: rule of law, justice, fairness, humanitarianism, intercultural collaboration and mutual respect regardless of immutable characteristic. These are the same values that have made Canada among the safest, most secure, successful and welcoming nations for Jews, Palestinians and so many other people.
Events outside Palestine House last week suggest that both the JDL and those who engaged with them – pretty much all men, it might be worth noting – have something to learn about Canadian values.
I was caught completely off-guard by the question: “Don’t you sometimes long to run away from all this war and violence and madness and terrorism? You could always go back to Australia.”
This was when, like every other Israeli, and probably Jews around the world, I was listening to the news every hour, hoping that the three kidnapped boys would have been found, safe and unharmed. At that time, there was no news yet.
I looked at my friend, a tourist from my birthplace. I didn’t know how to answer her. Once I would have known. I would simply have said “yes,” and my eyes would have filled with tears of nostalgia for the comfortable lifestyle, the ordinariness of everyday living, of only bothering to listen to the news if I wanted a sporting result or the weather forecast; all the security – emotional, financial, physical – that I’d left behind when I made aliyah.
She was looking at me strangely and, I suppose, a lot of time must have passed since she asked me the question. To me, the answer had become extraordinarily complex. A simple “yes” or “no” would not suffice.
We were sitting on a park bench in Beit Hakerem, in Jerusalem, where I live. It was Sunday afternoon, and I’d looked at the scene before us hundreds of times without truly registering it. A little boy was walking his dog on a leash. A pretty girl was jogging, music from an electronic device giving her the beat and rhythm. A grandfather wheeled a baby carriage. A young couple sat near us sharing a falafel and looking into each other’s eyes. Nothing special. Nothing dramatic.
All the drama had been played out in the weeks and months and years before her visit. Down south in Gaza. Up north in Lebanon. Rockets from Syria. Weeks of needing to hear the news every hour. Years of watching funerals on TV of beautiful young soldiers and ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Making phone calls to ensure that grandsons in the army, involved in searching for the missing boys in Hebron, were safe.
How could you “run away” from all the things that had shaped your life for decades? Of course, you could leave, but you’d take all that caring and commitment with you. It would feel like an amputation, and you’d never be a whole person again.
Over the years, I’ve been back to Australia for holidays, but they were never successful visits for long. For a few days, I’d bask in the warmth of seeing family and friends, enjoying their attention and the luxury of their lives. But then, someone would make a thoughtless remark about Israel, and I would bristle at their lack of understanding and feel that I had to defend the country. I’d long to be back home in Jerusalem, where I could talk about, even criticize, the government and corrupt politicians, the lack of good manners and the insane Israeli drivers, because I’d be talking to people on the same wavelength. It was different, very different.
The familiar scene in the park suddenly became very dear to me. I didn’t know any of these people, but I loved them. They were my family. I hoped the young lovers would marry; that the grandfather would live to see the baby’s bar or bat mitzvah; that the little boy with the dog would never have to fight in a war.
Finally, I had my answer. “No, I don’t long to run away. It’s not easy, but we understand what all the sacrifice is about. And it’s home,” I added as an afterthought. And, after all, home is where the heart is.
Dvora Waysmanis the author of 13 books. She has lived in Jerusalem for 43 years.
I am an oncologist, and I am Jewish. Fortunately, at this moment, I am not terminally ill, nor do I bear an incurable disease. By virtue of my profession and my age, death, suffering and the indignity that can go with it are familiar to me.
That is my perspective. I lead with that declaration because, when it comes to the business of assisted suicide, context is everything.
The rationale for actively ending a life is always posited on the basis of ending suffering and, hence, preserving dignity. At face value, this appears both straightforward and without controversy. It is not. Whose suffering? What is dignity, and is it realistic to provide some idealized form of dignity in every instance, try as we may? Who is to judge? When to decide, and when to act? Who is to act, and on what authority?
Some years ago, at a palliative-care conference in Israel, I was riveted by a panel where Anglican, Catholic and Jewish physicians discussed suffering. The ordained Anglican, a highly respected surgeon, spoke of the purifying nature of suffering and its role in preparing people for the afterlife. For him, the total relief of pain was at cross-purposes with the spiritual transit of the end of life. For me, as a Jew, this was a striking perspective, certainly far from my understanding that pain of this sort had little redeeming value. Lesson No. 1: Cultural context is important.
More recently, I was asked to see a young man dying of cancer, whose pain seemed uncontrollable. He was desperate to go home. The complex logistics of pain management and support appeared to make this impossible. What to do? We talked, initially rather guardedly, then more openly. It turned out that, more than anything else, he wanted to see his dog. That was why he wanted to go home, for the absence tormented him. We arranged for the dog to make a hospital visit. The pain went away. My patient died quite comfortably in his hospital bed a few days later. Lesson No. 2: Understand the pain; you may be able to relieve it.
Almost 30 years ago, a small group of Winnipeg cancer physicians asked what was then a heretical question: Are we treating cancer, independent of the patient, or are we treating a patient who happens to have cancer? We created the “quality of life” concept, and objective measures of it. What happened to the tumor became less important than what happened to the person – physically, emotionally, socially and functionally. We broadened our understanding of our patients, and so were born the diverse range of interventions and supports we now routinely employ to more than keep people alive. We help our patients live lives. Lesson No. 3: It’s about the person, not the disease.
“Assisted suicide” is a euphemism for ending someone else’s life. Every civilized society holds life sacred. The idea of “Thou shalt not kill” echoes in every faith. The penalties for killing are severe, mitigated by an understanding of intent. Whenever we introduce a legal exception, we run into trouble. Similar arguments about relieving suffering were used by the Nazis to justify first exterminating the weakened and disabled, then the mentally ill, and then non-Aryans on the regime’s hell-bent descent into depravity. In order to execute the policy, a cohort of licensed killers was created. This, in a society once considered the world’s most sophisticated and cultured. Lesson No. 4: Assisted suicide is not a legal matter, it’s a moral one, and we can’t legislate morality.
So, where does this bring me in the consideration of assisted suicide? Full circle, to my ancient role as physician. Not as medical technician, nor as the master of prognostic statistics, derived from groups somehow extrapolated to an individual. I am a member of the one profession whose essential role invokes individual life and death decisions, and acts on risks that necessarily include adverse outcomes causing pain and suffering and death. I’m not doing my job unless I understand context, cause and possibility when it comes to suffering. That takes time, patience and experience. The responsibility is a great harbinger of humility.
Each dying patient has their own context and belief frame for their “suffering.” Each case has its own mix of causes, and things that make it worse or better. My contention is that when we fully understand what’s going on, it is rare that suffering can’t be greatly palliated. It then follows that the perceived need to end life to alleviate suffering is a very rare occurrence.
In this most intimate and delicate interaction between patient and physician, the physician also has context and values. I don’t think they can be legislated away.
For me, as a Jew and as a physician, I can give morphine to relieve pain, but not to end a life. I come down against legalizing assisted suicide as a product of my faith, culture, training and experience. Put as a dichotomy, I’m prepared that a few might suffer more than they can bear, rather than countenance in the name of some kind of generosity of spirit the active taking of a life. I know from history, and I have seen too much of the slippery slope of convenience, to find confidence in any permissive legislative process.
Harvey Schipperis a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.
Others have observed that our generation is the first to carry a device in our pockets capable of accessing the entire depth and breadth of human knowledge, but mostly we use it to watch videos of kittens. This is not always the case, of course. Some of us use it to enrich our character, others less so.
During last week’s World Cup game between the United States and Germany, sports fans invoked Nazi imagery on Twitter 30,209 times. From referring to the players or referees as Nazis to otherwise throwing the term around, the word was tweeted an average of 3.4 times per second throughout the game. At one point, according to a blog that follows these statistics, references to Nazis came 20 times a second.
People say and do things on social media that they would never do without the anonymity it provides. It is not surprising that people looking for an obvious source of ridicule or debasement would focus on the darkest chapter in a country’s history, and one that is well known. Tweeting vicious names is not the worst that soccer fans have done. However, the phenomenal explosion of the use of “Nazi” during a sporting event is troubling in a few ways. From our perspective, accusations of Nazism should be limited to people who behave like Nazis – and that is a very, very small proportion of people in the world today, thankfully. To use this word with flippant nonchalance diminishes its meaning and the history that surrounds it. A worse thought is that people are using it without knowing its meaning and history.
More to the point, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in non-Germans throwing this word at Germans. As a society, Germany has done a great deal to confront the meaning of its Nazi era, to an extent far greater than other countries that collaborated with the Third Reich, for example. The German government has over the decades been exemplary in trying to learn from that history and make a better society, as well as making restitution financially and, as much as such a thing is conceivable, morally to the Jewish people.
More bizarre is the apparent social media wizardry of the murderers that are killing Iraqis in the quest for a Sunni Muslim caliphate. The New York Times reported on Sunday that ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, “has hijacked World Cup hashtags, flooding unsuspecting soccer fans with its propaganda screeds. It has used Facebook as a death threat generator; the text sharing app JustPaste to upload book-length tirades; the app SoundCloud for jihadi music; and YouTube and Twitter for videos to terrify its enemies.” A particularly grisly example was a video of a policeman being beheaded accompanied by the message “This is our ball. It’s made of skin #WorldCup.”
The Times reported that, weeks before ISIS overran the city of Mosul, it had issued on Facebook death threats to every Iraqi journalist who worked there. Understandably, most of the journalists singled out for death fled the city, which the newspaper suggests may have accounted for why the successful launch of ISIS’s brutal campaign took time to filter out to wide global attention.
While most people on Twitter and Facebook are posting pictures of summer barbecues, kids and pets, ISIS is broadcasting a steady stream of decapitations and other executions of Iraqi soldiers, police and disobedient civilians. These extremists hope to impose a Stone Age social order in the Middle East and, presumably, beyond, but they have no qualms about using the most modern technologies to advance their cause.
Site owners like Google and YouTube are trying to confront their responsibilities, but it is technically difficult – as soon as one post/tweet/video is removed, for example, the content pops up elsewhere. As well, there is debate about the merits of blocking all access to the propaganda, and not just from free-speech advocates, but from intelligence agencies, who would prefer the content be left online because it aids them in tracking the extremists.
This is the power of social media. Death threats that have a tangible impact on war zones and which also carry the potential for intelligence gathering. It’s not just for cat videos anymore.
