Opinion – Page 2

Attack on Jewish kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that, of course, may be the point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multiple benefits of a break

It’s been an incredibly stressful time in our community for more than two years. The relief I felt when Ran Gvili’s body, the last hostage in Gaza, was returned home, was huge. When I saw others at synagogue, all our body language said the same thing. We’re exhausted as a people. It sometimes feels like there is no end in sight to our worry – about the antisemitism, the ongoing violence.

Along with all this, of course, there are the usual life events. For example, we’ve watched the gradual blossoming of independence for our teens. This culminated for me recently when my husband took our twins on a skiing trip with extended family. I got the chance at a staycation – by myself – with our dog. I can almost hear those who would say, “What?! You didn’t join them? You didn’t want to go?”

Reader, I’m not a skier. I’m happiest at home. Staying in a ski house with 15 extended family members isn’t everyone’s idea of bliss. So, for the first time, I wrote the special letter that says I consent to my children traveling outside of Canada without me. I helped everyone pack, drove them to the airport and came home to a quiet house. Once or twice a day, I reminded our worried dog that they weren’t coming home today, while she lingered by the door, waiting.

Friends at synagogue asked what special things I would do. Are you ordering take out? What movies are you watching? What are your plans? At first, I had no answer for them. It’s been 15 years since I was actually by myself for so long. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do.

In the end, what I wanted was small, but it was meaningful. I took walks outdoors every day with my dog, particularly reveling in adventures on the frozen Nestawaya River Trail, right in the middle of the city. I dawdled outside in my crisp winter backyard looking at the stars. I listened to music my household wouldn’t have chosen and ate everyday things that my family doesn’t like. I read a whole book.

I also made inroads, each day, on routine chores that needed to be done. I vacuumed. Did a load of laundry. Cooked and polished silver. Nothing was crazy or so different. In embracing daily rituals, I kept things feeling normal and predictable. The dog got fed and walked. The lights got turned on and off. The phone got answered. The bed got made.

To many, this might not seem like a break or a particularly meaningful experience, but I had exchanges with multiple women, moms in mid-life, who absolutely knew what it meant when I said I was going to be staying home – alone. They offered smiles and good wishes. There was a wistful jealousy there, too. I recognized it well. Everyone asked if I was getting the chance to sleep a lot.

Truth is that I had nightmares more than once. There’s a lot to process. It was harder than I thought it would be to relax and rest. Yesterday though, my children, relatively new to downhill skiing, were finally off the mountain and on their way to an airport and back to the prairies, with my husband. They regaled me with what they’d accomplished. Their cross-country skiing experience, learned in Winnipeg public school gym class, had helped them. They joked that the biggest hill they’d ever gone down on a Manitoba school ski trip was small compared to the bunny hill in the Rockies. Their texts and calls showed 14-year-olds alternately nervous and boastful, a normal teen experience. They grew during their trip away, but I did, too.

Lately, I’ve thought about the many pressures parents face as we’re juggling households, kids, work and community. There are frequently calls to volunteer, donate, “get involved” and do more. This is particularly true in a (relatively small) Canadian Jewish community, in which every one of us helps keep things afloat. However, I’d gotten to a place where I kept showing up, feeling completely exhausted. Yes, I’d woken everyone up and dropped them off to volunteer, or I’d helped at another “do something to help others” event myself. The weekend break reminded me viscerally that when your own “cup” is empty, it’s hard to fill everyone else’s.

Everybody needs breaks to rest and restore themselves. Without that space – and, for this introvert, silence – there’s no way to offer our best selves to others. We often quote the famous Pirkei Avot 2:5 passage from Hillel: “In a place where there are no men [people], strive to be a man [person].” There are many takes on this, including, where there are no leaders, strive to be responsible. Another take is, when people behave as monsters, or aren’t behaving in an upstanding way, try to be a mensch. Yet, when, I woke up after several days by myself, rested and happy, I realized something else.

In a place where there are no other people, self-regulate. Strive to be a good person, one who does the chores and shows up and does her work, even when there’s no one else to hold us accountable. Take responsibility. Make space for recovery, so that we can all “treat others as we wish to be treated.” In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 31a, Hillel says to the gentile who asks to convert, with the condition that Hillel teach him the whole Torah while he stands on one foot, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

Right in one of our most popular Jewish quotes is a good answer for why a staycation – or a break when you’re tired – matters. Don’t demand something from others that you cannot manage. Instead, give space for others to learn, grow and change. Sometimes, the best restoration and learning happens in the same way we absorb and appreciate music. How do we best appreciate and learn music? In the rests between notes.

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

Concerning actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recipes not always required

Were you part of the pandemic sourdough bread baking craze? I’ve been baking bread for around 40 years, but I’m not a sourdough baker. Maintaining the starter was something I couldn’t manage. Although I’ve made many kinds of bread, including weekly challah (twin teens eat a lot!), I found using store-bought yeast was fine. Besides, my biology professor husband disliked the colourful, dangerous things he saw growing when I tried to maintain a starter long ago. He supports our bread habit as we buy one pound of dried yeast at a time.

My approach isn’t exact. However, I produce bread that rises and tastes good even without a recipe. I don’t use all the technical terms that I saw on the internet during the pandemic bread-baking phase. I stick to basic ingredients and easy methods. Bakers have used these successfully for thousands of years.

All this seemed familiar when I started studying the Babylonian tractate of Menachot. Menachot delves into the exact ways the rabbis thought meal (grain) offerings should be measured, cooked, burnt and sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbis who discussed this mostly lived long after the Temple was destroyed. They’d never seen Temple offerings but they still discussed detailed recipes and techniques for proper sacrifice.

I remember the many online discussions about sourdough science. These were often people who, while baking beautiful pandemic sourdough, had never made bread previously, as I had. Of course, all of us would be shamed before our ancestors who, using a wooden bowl ripe with wild yeast, turned out bread consistently, day in and day out, to feed their families.

You might think, well, this isn’t for me if I don’t bake bread. Perhaps you never have worried about the ancient grain offerings in Jerusalem, or the “shrewbread” that became our modern equivalent, challah. All these discussions came to a head in Menachot, page 18a.

A question arises about whether a specific offering is fit (acceptable) and why. First, we learn about a meaningful teacher-student relationship between Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua and Yosef the Babylonian.

Yosef the Babylonian learns something from Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua that doesn’t seem entirely right to him. He questions his teacher several times. After multiple repetitions of a simple answer, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua finally gives Yosef the Babylonian more information. He recalls another contradictory teaching from Rabbi Eliezer that agrees with what Yosef the Babylonian remembers.

Yosef the Babylonian erupts in joy. Both men are emotional, moved by the experience they’ve had, where careful analysis brings them important understanding and resolution. Yosef the Babylonian is relieved – he had worried that what he’d remembered was a mistake because he couldn’t find anyone else who recalled what Rabbi Eliezer had taught. Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua cries, filled with wonder. They celebrate Torah study, which maintains an intellectual genealogy of teachers and students by the historic transmission of knowledge. It’s a careful recounting of discussion and disputes, rather than just a simple, reflexive answer.

Menachot 18a, like bread-baking, shows that, if we get bogged down in the technical details, we can also be swept up in the transformation that occurs when we get everything – that we study or bake – right. This story is about mistakes, forgetting, misinformation and complex opinions. This tractate might describe how to do defunct sacrifice recipes correctly. It’s also about how we transmit important knowledge. We need to keep the facts straight, without forgetting anything, and synthesize complex opinions.

This is relevant today. We’re struggling daily to keep track of what’s happening in the world. Is it legal? Is it ethical? How does it affect us? In an age of “instant” information, diminished international reporting, social media disinformation campaigns and simplistic interpretations, it’s no wonder that we need to work hard to figure out what’s happening. It’s just as important now to do one’s own footwork. We must ask questions and analyze information carefully, just as when Yosef the Babylonian sat with his teacher, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, sometime between 135 and 170 CE.

We can get swept up in the technical aspects of our lives, whether it’s sourdough baking or legal proceedings. Yet, we also have that practical compass that guides us. I know intuitively, after decades of practice, how to throw together flour, salt, water and yeast, when to add sweetness, oil or eggs, and why. It’s a gut feeling, as deep as my internal moral compass that reacts when I see something wrong happening. Perhaps it’s how Judaism, my family or my community has shaped me, just as environment shapes all of us. Perhaps it’s an innate sense of the worth of each human being, as we are made in the image of the Divine. We know when things are going off the rails, and when we need to keep asking the hard questions to make change.

You could infer that all this refers to the current US upheaval, but it also relates to many other issues. For instance, at home, recent research found that Canadian Jews weren’t wrong about the CBC’s bias in reporting on the Israel-Hamas war. Statistical analysis indicates that yes, headlines, interviewer choices and perspectives lacked objectivity. If you, like me, questioned the CBC’s reporting over the last two years, just like Yosef questioned Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, this information is reassuring.

Farther away, Israelis care passionately about democracy. Israelis ask their government tough questions, including protesting its poor record in protecting Arab citizens and its failure to provide a sufficient inquiry concerning Oct. 7. Regarding Iran’s upheaval, the Islamic regime’s repression means protesters risk murder, injury, torture and rape. Brave questioning of authority and pursuit of truthful information aren’t specific to one culture or country.

Yosef the Babylonian doubted himself. He repeatedly nudged his teacher. He worried that he’d made a mistake, but then bravely sought clarity to understand the bigger picture. We, too, can be so persistent that authority figures, like our teachers and government officials, must answer with thorough responses. Let’s not get bogged down in the technical details. It’s not whether you say that your bread dough rests, or uses an autolyze. Rather, listen to your gut. Go for the big questions. Think hard. Act to take the moral high ground. We all deserve something better. Let’s hope soon to break bread together, in peace and safety, with emotional, deep discussions.

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

A good place to start

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

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

Brym calls that “gaslighting.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When boundaries have shifted

The beginning of January has not been easy in Winnipeg. We’ve dealt with hate crime graffiti, including swastikas, on Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Kelvin High School, the Abu Bakr Al-Siddique Mosque, as well as a hookah café, residential properties and street signs. For my household, it was personal. It hit our congregation and my kids’ school. It marred street signs near where we live. It defaced a mosque where I know one of the members. This is a lot to deal with. The police triumphantly made an arrest, but, from what I’ve heard, it seems unlikely that this individual did all these crimes. The story is familiar to Canadians at this point. Here it is.

Hate crimes happen. “Oh!” our leaders say. “Hate crimes are horrible. This isn’t Canadian. We will seek justice!” Then, an intermittent flow of outrage and misinformation follows. Suddenly, there’s an arrest. Everything’s solved. Canadians live happily ever after.

That is, until a new crime pops up. When that’s reported, the response sometimes is, “Well, this isn’t fitting into our narrative. We don’t know how this happened.” It even extends to, “Oh, we (police or officials) don’t clean up graffiti, so you can go ahead and do this yourself.” Essentially, another episode is swept under the rug as inconvenient.

I learned about the Overton Window in a social science class years ago. However, when it came up in reference to societal change and antisemitism, I had to review its meaning. The term is neither positive nor negative. It defines something that we have all experienced. Imagine you have a spectrum of beliefs: about school choice, disabilities, tolerance and diversity, human rights, whatever. The term was originally designed to describe how a politician might use a “window” to define policies on this spectrum. Occasionally, it’s used to say where someone’s beliefs fall on the political spectrum. We can shift the Overton Window; for instance, towards increased accessibility for those with disabilities. Some shifts are good, some are not. This term helps describe what’s happening with respect to antisemitism.

As the police described their arrest of the suspect in this recent series of hate graffiti, they said something like they “would have to examine the motive behind the crimes.” I was flummoxed. How could a swastika on a minority’s place of worship or a public school be anything other than an act of hate? Discussion followed about the suspect’s mental health situation, as he is unwell. Soon after he was released from custody, he was arrested again, for breaking into a home and violating the conditions of his release.

Many people have mental health issues, but going out in the dark at 4 a.m. to paint swastikas isn’t a normal, common expression of those challenges. People who perform hateful acts should face consequences. The Overton Window of what is considered “acceptable” antisemitism seems to have shifted.

I’m guessing there are multiple people committing this hate in our city. Yet the narrative here indicates that “Hurray! We’ve got the culprit” and no more effort is being made to resolve the bigger issues.

Meanwhile, I concluded my Daf Yomi (daily page of Talmud study) of Tractate Zevachim, on how sacrifices worked in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem. I’m lucky I didn’t start my learning with this – it felt like a slog. However, I continued studying the tractate, even while I found it somewhat dry and lacking in fun aggadah (stories).

Zevachim examines questions like when is a religious ritual sacrifice acceptable? What is the right physical and mental space for doing these holy rituals? When is it considered transgressive because it’s done wrong? When is it accepted even if it is not done in quite the right time or place? What rituals are exempt from repercussions, even if they are not done exactly right or considered acceptable practices?

These questions are intellectual exercises. We have no Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbis quoted in this approximately 1,500-year-old text didn’t have a Temple anymore. We Jews in modernity don’t do ritual sacrifice. Still, questions about what feels acceptable or forbidden, exempt or meaningful, have real-life repercussions. When the rabbis discussed different parts of ritual, they considered shifting their Overton Window about what they could see as correct, acceptable, exempt from punishment, or such a violation that one was cut off from the Jewish people.

Historically, the Overton Window about what’s considered appropriate discourse or hate speech has also shifted – multiple times. Slurs and crimes against Jews are commonplace throughout millennia. We’ve also had some golden eras, when things felt safe.

This January was another shift in Winnipeg. It’s been horrible, but we knew it was coming. It’s part of a worldwide shift of what’s considered “acceptable” antisemitism. I’ve been asked what can be done. I suggested giving this hate a broad, inclusive definition. Re-read the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. Nothing good is intended when someone spray paints a swastika on a synagogue door. It’s even more of a threat when it’s on a classroom whiteboard or hidden in a Jewish kid’s locker, as was the recent case.

We must educate people about history, including how to avoid antisemitic hate. Make that education required. With definitions and education, our window of what’s acceptable or a crime firms up.

These experiences have felt like a terrible personal violation. It feels threatening and unsafe. Yet, our congregation responded with courage and love. We welcomed many non-Jewish supporters at our Shabbat services afterwards. We responded with pride and inclusivity.

The kid was so brave. He took a photo of the graffiti on his locker, asked a parent for help, went to the school office. Now, there’s a police report, all his classmates know what happened.

The kid also faced extended questioning from administrators about “if he’d told the whole story.” He was told that “everyone makes mistakes.” One lesson the kid learned is that maybe reporting the hate crime itself was a mistake, because, instead of supporting him, the approach involved the suggestion that the victim did the graffiti to begin with. This is bad news, and a familiar type of antisemitism, where Jewish victims are blamed for having “brought it on themselves.” We shouldn’t say this to any victim. It’s not OK. If this is treated as being OK, it means that victims may trust institutions less, and report less often.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Actions like education and transparency can clean up and eradicate hate. We don’t know who did this, but we know who we are. We’re Jewish. We’ve been here before. We’re made of stern, proud stuff. The Overton Window has shifted. It’s time to ask our allies to all lean in to help shove it back again.

Killed for being Jewish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The complexities of identity

More than 16 years ago, I was accepted into a master class for writing fiction with a well-known regional author at a university near me in Kentucky. I’d written lots of non-fiction and dabbled in fiction. I thought this would be a good opportunity. Shortly after arrival, I realized that this was a fiction class that specialized in Appalachian themes. Although I was from Virginia, my background wasn’t Appalachian. I felt like an outsider. I was also the only Jewish person there. As things progressed, the author suggested we should always “write what we know!” He talked a lot. The class was a lot drier than I’d hoped.

When it was time for short writing exercises based on prompts, I let loose. I purposely wrote to fit in, creating a vignette around church. When it came time to read these pieces, everyone nodded along with my church scenario – I was fitting in, but only because I was purposely faking it. First, I’d proved to myself that “write what you know” wasn’t always necessary, because, of course, famous fantasy or science fiction authors don’t truly know the alternate worlds they dream up. Even fiction authors don’t always know how to do everything they describe in their imaginary worlds. Second, I’d faked being part of the majority religious culture and those classmates bought it.

In the afternoon, it was time to workshop pieces we’d submitted earlier. I’d submitted writing that had been favourably reviewed elsewhere. I felt somewhat confident. However, the workshop’s approach was to criticize without complimenting – and many comments didn’t even seem relevant to what I’d written. When I tried to respond, I was shushed and told I must not know how these kinds of workshops worked. Responding was bad form. I was meant to be “shamed” without recourse. I felt vulnerable and took their unhelpful comments to heart, forgetting that I’d been part of different yet successful writing workshops long before, as a teen at the University of Virginia. The day dragged on. I noted the famed author’s agitation and cigarette smoking at the breaks. I wasn’t having a great learning experience.

I returned home to spend the evening with my husband and my father-in-law, who was visiting from New York. They’d just heard of the sudden death of a close family friend in a skiing accident. I devoted my evening to them and realized that skipping day two of this workshop to be with family was more important. I sent regrets to the famous author’s class, but I mostly felt relief.

Later, I learned that the famous author, whose work was described as traditional, heterosexual rural Kentucky, and who had a wife and small kids, was going through a divorce at the time of the workshop. Later, he became happily married to a man. I wondered again about the “write what you know” and “represent your identity” advice.

This all came to mind when I recently read obituaries of Tom Stoppard and Frank Gehry. Stoppard, a great Czech/British playwright, only addressed his Jewish heritage later in life, when he learned more about what had happened to his family during the Holocaust. Gehry, born to a Polish-Jewish immigrant family in Toronto, heard Talmud from his grandfather as a child. Although Gehry claimed he was an atheist, he attributed his questioning and creativity to the rich encouragement of his childhood. Gehry changed his name from Goldberg to Gehry at the urging of his first wife, who wanted to avoid antisemitism.

I gained access to this fuller description of these creative figures not from a single write-up but from several. If I’d relied on the CBC’s account of Gehry, I’d only have known about his Judaism from his name change and antisemitism concerns; CBC never used the word “Jew” or “Jewish.” The retrospectives on Stoppard’s work came from both the CBC and Jewish publications, but Stoppard’s last name came from a non-Jewish stepfather. That man wanted him to stop using the name Stoppard when his work became too “tribal” or Jewish for his stepfather’s taste.

Stoppard and Gehry were ethnically Jewish and had identity struggles. They and their families wrestled with who they were in a cultural climate that made it hard to be Jewish. I didn’t know either of these men or their families, but the public obituaries and descriptions brought into sharp focus that same feeling I’d had when I wrote about church activities from a first-person perspective.

I remember a family friend who changed his name to avoid quotas, to get into medical school more than 60 years ago. I’d hoped that this need for identity code-switching would no longer be so pressing when I moved to Winnipeg in 2009. For a time, this was true. I didn’t have to be so careful about saying who I was and what that meant. Now, after Oct. 7, this struggle has risen to the forefront again.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, we’ve faced options like whether to downplay our ethnoreligious identity, embrace it with joy and pride, perform it by speaking out against hate or by being a “good Jew” who doesn’t, the kind with whom many non-Jews feel most comfortable.

This isn’t an obvious choice. Many of us code-switch daily. It’s no different than what Jews did during the Hellenizing days leading up to the Maccabees and the Hanukkah story, or the days of the European Enlightenment, when Jews were finally considered “citizens” – up to 1933 or so.

There isn’t a “one size fits all” answer, nor is it clear that anyone would have the same answer for every situation. I often think back to that “famous author,” carefully performing as a heterosexual, married man and droning on as an expert. It may be that we’re all experts on our own identities, but it’s also necessary to name the experiences we have when we purposely or unconsciously obfuscate, struggle or react with pride when it comes to who we are.

Some parts of our identities loom large. Other aspects of who we are may lurk in the background most of the time. We cannot examine these issues until we think about them and name them. It’s easy to tell people to “write what they know.” It’s much harder to write who we are and what we don’t know, especially when it feels unsafe. Further, just like how Gehry and Stoppard’s names changed, we, too, evolve, morph and change over time, even if we don’t know how to describe it.

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

Keep lighting candles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post-tumble, lights still shine

I recently celebrated Shabbat morning in a way I don’t recommend. I stepped out of my house for the dog walk, thought, “Oh, slippery!” The next thing I knew, I lost my footing. I fell down several stone steps. I ended up on the sidewalk. I’d let go of the leash. My large dog stood patiently, looking concerned, as I lay on the front walk, assessing the situation.

We’ve had a long and temperate fall here in Winnipeg. The light glaze of ice that covered everything was an unfortunate surprise. I’m very lucky. I was able to get up. I went back up the front stairs with the dog and got help. While I’m bruised and my hands were bloodied, nothing broke. While I would have preferred to go right back to bed, I stayed active enough to manage the rest of the weekend. My kids volunteer at services, so I still had to go there, too. Sometimes, what we want isn’t possible, so we make the best of the situation.

I think about Hanukkah, and the adversity that Jews face, in this way. In the best possible situation, we wouldn’t have to fight physically or verbally to maintain our traditions. We would be able to celebrate in a full-throated way, without hesitation. Yet, that option doesn’t always feel possible, even if we might think that embracing Jewish joy is the best way forward.

The issue arose for me recently when I participated in an accessible “make along.” This event, called Fasten Off, has a period each fall where knitting and crochet designers offer a big discount on their downloadable patterns. It is intended to be as accessible as possible to people with disabilities, as well as those with other challenges. There are multiple categories of challenges: non-gendered, low-vision, sizing for those who are taller or larger than average. For the first time, this year, there was a category on the form that one could tick off that said, “marginalized religious group.” I really didn’t know what to do.

It’s true that my designs include kippot and a hamantashen baby rattle stuffie. I have never hidden my identity. Now, in Canada, Jews are a marginalized group, with documented hate crime numbers and antisemitism rising. However, I wondered what would happen if I checked off this box. Would it mean fewer people would buy my work? More? What benefit would it have? I both ticked off the box and contacted the organizer to mention my concern. I got no response at all, which made me feel even more worried.

My sales stats show what a huge shift the last two years have been. Previously, one of my kippah patterns, as an example, had been a dependable seller. I looked up this design’s sales and found I’d sold only about 16 kippah patterns (all styles) on three sales platforms during two years of the Gaza war. In the previous year, 2022/23, I sold 14 copies of this pattern on only one sales platform. As a result of this drastic sales drop (I have more than 80 designs online), I ended up taking a break from designing. It no longer became cost-effective to sink money into creating new designs when knitters no longer make even these small purchases. It doesn’t mean my business interests changed. The situation has. I’m still marketing my work, offering discounts and trying to attract interest – even while being part of a “marginalized group.”

Our tradition teaches us to pivot when things are challenging. In the Torah parsha (portion) Toldot, Isaac grows successful as a shepherd. (Genesis 26:13 and onwards) However, when he increases his household and flocks, he needs more water. When he digs new wells, he runs into trouble. First, the Philistines fill up his old wells and, then, as he moves onward, digging new ones, other herdsmen object. He pivots, digging new wells in new places until he finds one that works out. Meanwhile, in time, those who objected to him previously seek a reconciliation, seeing Isaac’s divine fortune, and they make peace. (Genesis 26:31)

After hearing this portion chanted in synagogue, a friend reminded me that sometimes being resilient means pivoting or waiting with patience when faced with adversity. Things don’t turn around right away. We both have engaged in a lot of Jewish advocacy and antisemitism education work over the past year together. She is a professional, public figure, while I tend to write and reach out behind the scenes as a volunteer. Sometimes, my efforts net quick responses, and I know what I said mattered. Other times, I have no idea if anyone received my email or if they read it. I keep trying, as I’m invested in this effort to make life better for Canadian Jews for the long haul.

I believe that bringing up issues concerning antisemitism education, equity reviews in schools and school curriculum matters makes a difference. Sometimes my message reaches the right reporter or school official. Sometimes, it doesn’t or it fails. Yet, in every situation, it’s important to pick myself up, dust myself off – and start all over again, even if the setbacks can hurt.

During Hanukkah, we celebrate the triumph of regaining religious freedom and peace. We use candles to illustrate the metaphor of bringing light to dark times. Sometimes that light is sweeter because of the struggle beforehand.

I’m still very sore from tumbling down our icy front steps, but I’m also incredibly grateful. This morning, the dog barked, asking for her walk and, while I may still be hobbling and bruised for a bit, I was able to get outside again.

That opportunity, to keep digging wells, reaching out to others and continuing to try? It matters. Some might see Jews as marginalized, but it’s also possible to take another read. Rather, we’re lucky and resilient, too, a people offering religious freedom and Hanukkah light to other nations.