Opinion – Page 28

Solace in accomplishments

When I assess all the positive things that Jews have contributed to humanity, and contrast that with the treatment my people have undergone as recompense, I am at a loss.

Jews conceived a supreme being responsible for the creation of the material world. They also saw that this being insisted on moral laws to be obeyed by the humans He brought into being to be masters of the planet He had peopled. The Jews believed that this unitary deity, replacing the multiplicity of single-purpose idols and demigods, would reward the righteous who obeyed His laws with a future beyond the grave that all humans face. They also hoped these laws would make it easier for humans to live together in peace. The ideas were so powerful that, even though they were transmuted and altered through Christianity and Islam, they ultimately captured the hearts of millions and, today, billions.

In its early days, as they struggled for wider support, the Jewish followers of Jesus, and some of those they recruited, altered some of the tenets of Jewish observance and deified their leader. Further, the church established in Jesus’s name adopted the New Testament, which they established to replace the Hebrew Bible, containing the assertion, not borne out by available historical record, that his fellow Jews killed Jesus.

With the ultimate success of the new church, Jews have faced millennia of murder, forced conversion, exclusion and persecution from Christianity’s adherents. And Islam followed suit in condemnation because Jews would not accept their version of the story Jews had been telling.

Out of this crucible of trial by fire and sword, hate and exclusion, remnants have survived over the centuries, since most Jews left their native lands. Treated as strangers everywhere they ended up, they maintained a culture that has bred individuals of extraordinary talent, wisdom and ingenuity out of all proportion to their numbers.

When Jews were at last liberated from the restrictions placed upon them by various rulers of various lands, the contribution that Jews began to make to the welfare of their communities exploded across the whole range of human activity. Yet, hatred of Jews, official and random, remains a fact of life nearly everywhere.

As a youngster, I grew up in Canada, in a time when there were places in which Jews could not buy property. There were jobs from which Jews were excluded. There were courses in university where enrolment of Jews was limited.

One of my childhood acquaintances, the product of a Jamaican father and a German mother, lived in similar circumstance to ourselves, in an area on the edge of being a slum. We often spoke of our aspirations for future advancement. He had a talent for drawing. If I had a talent for anything, it was not obvious.

Almost a lifetime later, we reengaged and had a number of debates. When I mentioned some of the contributions Jews had made to humanity, making particular reference to recent discoveries made by scientists in Israel, they appeared of little significance to him. He cautioned me about being too tribal, indicating that national origins were irrelevant. Then, he stated that the creation of Israel had been a world blunder.

The contributions being made in Israel dispute that point. That it exists at all is a miracle. The current rallying of nations around the world to support Ukraine was not in evidence when Israel confronted the armies of seven invading Arab countries, in addition to internal terrorism, at the time of its birth in 1948.

An arid country, Israel converts seawater to freshwater with solar power. That solar power fills much of its energy needs, as it lacks natural resources. It is a pioneer in agricultural techniques that it markets to the world to conserve water.

It commits one of the highest percentages of the national budget to research and development, funding medical and technological advances that are being used around the world. Its medical advances have enabled people who couldn’t, for whatever reason, to walk, to hear or to see. It used its entire population to identify the best methods for preventing the spread of COVID-19.

No emergency anywhere in the world lacks an Israeli team if their aid is welcome, and they are often the first on the scene to save lives. It has one of the highest patent applications per million people in the world.

And Israel is a haven for any Jew in distress around the world. Its initial Jewish population was 800,000. After almost 75 years, it is more than six million, in a country of more than nine million, most of the balance being Arabs with citizenship.

Yet, some, even many, consider all this a blunder! And, as Jews, we face challenges to our safety and survival wherever we are located.

The outsize contributions made by Jews in every field, out of all proportion to their numbers, is a matter of public record. The explanation for it is puzzling. My conclusion centres on the nature of the Jewish community in the diaspora and in the Israeli national consciousness.

Communities in the diaspora inherited their format, as dictated by religious authorities in ancient Israel. Each community was responsible for meeting the needs all its inhabitants, children’s education and care for the poor included. This was reenforced in the diaspora by hostile surroundings, with internal literacy and educational priorities being in stark contrast to what existed in environments around them.

Most importantly, I believe, was a sense of common destiny, each Jew knowingly accepting responsibility for the welfare of one’s fellows. I believe that, when Jews entered the wider world, this individual consciousness was transmuted into a drive to be of service to the public as a whole. And these feelings dictated the choice of careers and the values of Jewish entrepreneurs. The community priority on education did the rest in the pursuit of excellence.

The wrongs of the past, it seems, will not be righted. We must earn our satisfactions from our accomplishments.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Back to the magic – Camp Miriam

Earlier this summer, I gave each of my Tzofimot (Grade 8 campers) metal kitchen tongs and told them that we were crabs. Then we all ran around the camp click-clacking our tong pincers and yelling “Crabs!” at the top of our lungs, to the amusement and confusion of everyone we encountered. Next, we headed to the pool for a nighttime crab swim. As we swam around our little “ocean,” I realized how wonderful it felt to be silly again, and it was clear my campers felt the same way.

In 2020, Camp Miriam pivoted and managed to run a day camp despite COVID. In 2021, we were able to return to Gabriola Island for a short time and spend three amazing weeks there. But this year was the first normal summer any of us – staff and campers alike – had had in three years.

It turned out that the thing we needed most was permission to be silly again; a release from the heaviness that these recent years have been. As crazy as it sounds, the simple joy of pretending to be a crab and, for a moment, not caring about anything else, was the perfect antidote to the fear and masks and insulation of the pandemic.

This summer was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, a phrase which, if I’m honest, I say basically every summer after camp ends. But the additional element of this summer was getting to help my campers – and me – remember and re-learn that silliness is a vital part of life. Sitting and talking with them was meaningful and special, running cool educational programming for them was exciting and interesting, but the most special parts of the summer were the times where all of us let go of our inhibitions and were just goofy. Being crabs, singing “Solidarity Forever” at the top of our lungs from our kayaks, or creating synchronized swimming routines in the pool, it all just felt so freeing.

Being a camp counselor is the hardest thing I have ever done. It requires late nights, constant emotional presence and endless amounts of energy and enthusiasm. The reward is that I get to hang out with incredible campers while we splash around in the pool, cheering and giggling and pretending – and that makes it all worthwhile.

It’s possible that I’m reading too much into a fun activity we ran for our kids. Maybe Crab Night wasn’t as profound as I’m making it out to be, but, for me, it epitomized the magic of this first full summer at Camp Miriam since the pandemic started. Small moments of silliness were what made it feel like a regular summer again. It felt like we had truly returned to camp’s essence: a space to be ourselves, to have fun and to connect with people who care about one another.

Shani Avrahami Saraf is a third-year student at the University of British Columbia and this was her 12th summer at Camp Miriam and her fourth summer as a camp counselor.

Must confront lies

Leslyn Lewis, a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership that will be decided in the coming days, made a stir last week when she invoked the Nuremberg Code, apparently with regard to coronavirus vaccines.

The Nuremberg Code is a postwar set of principles on medical ethics arising from the horrific medical experimentations of the Nazi era. Although Lewis did not explicitly mention COVID-19, the issue was clear in context. She warned of government overreach, saying, “even in modern times the tenets of informed consent and voluntary participation in scientific experiments can be easily undermined by even our modern governments.”

If for no better reason than avoiding a communications crisis, reasonable candidates for elective office should avoid comparing things to Nazism. In almost every instance, there is nothing to be gained. In this instance, where the candidate appeared to be referring to a vaccine that can prevent or seriously reduce the impacts of a potentially deadly virus, the comparison is irresponsible and base.

Around the same time as Lewis was causing controversy here in Canada, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, stood next to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and declared that Israel had perpetrated “50 holocausts” on the Palestinians. Scholz has been criticized for not immediately condemning Abbas’s atrocious act of Holocaust desecration – words that took place on German soil.

This incident was a flashback to the time, in 1999, when Hillary Clinton, then the U.S. first lady, got in trouble for standing on stage with Suha Arafat, wife of Yasser, when Mrs. Arafat accused Israel of poisoning the Palestinian water supply. This accusation, an unoriginal claim pilfered straight from antisemitic Medieval European well-poisoning canards, was akin to the latest outrage from Abbas in both form and international reaction.

About the only time the West expresses any concern about such defamations is when they are uttered in the presence of world leaders in front of less credulous media than the Palestinian leaders face at home. While Clinton and Scholz certainly deserve some censure for not speaking out instantly in the face of such overt libels, their presence is a sideshow to the main event: a narrative that is founded on grotesque demonizations.

Abbas is no newcomer to Holocaust revisionism and defilement. His PhD dissertation at a Soviet university contests the number of Jewish dead and accuses Zionists of participating in the Shoah to advance their nefarious aims.

These sorts of lies – “holocausts,” poisonings, genocide, even Zionist sharks attacking tourists – are routine fodder for Palestinian leaders, newscasters, media and even the United Nations-funded Palestinian education system. It is the nature of dictatorial leaders and undemocratic movements that they grow intellectually lazy, having groomed an audience so inured to lies and exaggerations that they will accept, or at least not contest, the most depraved allegations. After 70-plus years of exposure to increasingly preposterous conspiracies like Zionist-trained sharks snapping at European tourists at beach resorts, many are ready to accept and repeat them.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” Winston Churchill colourfully said. Churchill died before the internet was born. Today, a lie gets even farther even faster.

Mix the range and speed of the internet with millennia of conspiracies about Jews and the reality that most people are inundated with Israel-Palestine news without context, and it is easier to understand why people who are overwhelmed by complexity and who seek simple solutions don’t resist or even question such lies.

For similar reasons, we must both keep a critical eye on how science evolves with coronavirus and vaccines, as well as encourage people to get vaccinated, to reduce the risks of disease. Terrible experiments have been done on marginalized populations so, as a society, we must be sensitive to these experiences and traumas. The mistrust has a real history, but some people are using this fact to sow more mistrust in institutions and governments, which adds to the fires of conspiracy, which is bad for everyone, but in particular marginalized and minority populations.

While miles apart in quality, the remarks by Lewis and by Abbas deserve condemnation. The world, especially now, tends to move on quickly from one moral atrocity to the next, from this outrage to the next. But we cannot let these things go unchallenged – whether they come from dictators or from potential leaders in a democracy. The job of decent people is to come along and clean things up. It’s a dirty job. But somebody has got to do it.

Finding my “why”

As a former World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder Fellow, I attended the first Ronald S. Lauder Fellowship Diplomacy Summit. The fellowship is an international cohort of top Jewish students with an interest in global Jewish advocacy who are invited to Europe to participate in high-level meetings with government institutions. From the moment I arrived at the summit in Brussels, the excitement felt by the other fellows and staff was infectious.

We began the trip in the European Union offices, hearing from EU members about the state of Europe and advocating for the European Jewish community. This was followed by a visit to NATO. The number of brilliant minds in these rooms was astounding, and it was such a privilege to watch as my small cohort of young Jewish students and professionals posed challenging questions to EU and NATO leaders regarding the state of European Jewry, global antisemitism and recent world tensions.

The same can be said about our visit to UNESCO in Paris the following day. As a media and information studies student with a niche interest in big tech policies, I was intrigued to learn about the organization’s recent report, History Under Attack: Holocaust Distortion and Denial Within Social Media, directly from its writers. I am hopeful that, combined with efforts to address online harms in countries such as Canada, the UNESCO report will spur positive change in hate speech regulation worldwide.

Once the summit concluded, with my Jewish pride at an all-time high, I hopped on a plane to Israel for a much-needed reunion with family and friends, celebrating Shabbat with my great-aunt and others at her beautiful Jerusalem apartment.

After we studied the week’s parashah (Torah portion), a neighbour began to translate a book written in Hebrew by our relative about our family’s history in Israel. Although I had heard these names growing up, I had not fully understood their weight or meaning. It was there, sitting with family and friends, and with the WJC experience fresh in my mind, that I began to appreciate their significance and what my Jewish heritage really means to me.

My great-great-grandfather was Zvi Pesach Frank, chief rabbi of Jerusalem during the end of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate of Palestine. He was instrumental in the creation of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and in the appointment of Rav Kook (Abraham Isaac Kook) as the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi. I learned more of his historic contributions and my family’s legacy of working to build and protect Israel.

My experience as a World Jewish Congress Lauder Fellow and attending the summit took on a new layer of meaning. Not only am I inspired and committed to continuing my work in global Jewish advocacy, but I have also developed a determination to follow this path, grounded in my profound pride in my family and their accomplishments over the generations. For that, I am grateful to World Jewish Congress, to my great-aunt and to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. I look forward to what’s ahead, fully appreciating the rationale supporting my aspirations, and I will hold the summer of 2022 near and dear to my heart.

Following the conference and my visit to Israel, it became clear to me that, in high school – when I found my footing in Jewish leadership and learned more about my intersecting Muslim and Jewish background – I had found the “what” of my life’s passion. It was this summer that I found the “why.”

Tia Sacks is a Vancouver native going into her fourth year at Western University in the faculty of media and information studies. She participated in the World Jewish Congress Lauder Fellowship and is currently the vice-president of the Israel committee at Hillel Western and an intern at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Introspection’s the hard stuff

Before the pandemic, we were once at synagogue on Shabbat when the clergy person leading the family service reminded us that, hey, Elul was here, and we could hear the shofar blown if we came to morning minyan. The next day, Sunday, one of my kids decided we needed to go hear the shofar. It was just a normal Sunday. The minyan was small, largely comprised of senior citizens. My elementary school-aged kid rocked and wiggled in his seat. Most of the adults there smiled and gave him high fives and handshakes and made him feel welcome.

When I explained our shofar mission, they nodded. They all understood why we were there. My kid was given honours and made to feel special. When it was time to hear the shofar, he sat up and listened intently. It was one of those times when I thought, “Oh, we should try to come to minyan to hear this every day.”

This was one of those moments when my aspirations were much higher than my capabilities. Years later, I can’t pretend we’ve ever made it to morning minyan regularly again, even virtually, even during Elul. Maybe, someday, I’ll be one of those senior citizens in the frequent minyan attendee club. For now, I’m rushing to get everyone up, fed and out the door to school and work.

Still, I think that morning minyan experience may stick in a kid’s mind. The Elul shofar is a quintessential wake-up sound for many Jews. It’s the time to think about how the year has gone. We can focus on what’s ahead on the Jewish calendar, how we can make amends and do better in the future. What will change next year? What, most likely, will stay the same?

Is this wake-up ritual true of everyone? No, of course not. I recently saw a TikTok reel of a man, probably in his 20s or early 30s, with a beard. The guy was joking that he observed Jewish holidays through food, and then jokingly said, “Rosh Hashanah? That’s the one with the matzo balls, right?” Maybe I haven’t remembered the skit’s details quite right, but I wasn’t its intended audience. I inadvertently cringed. It was grating to me, jarring, like driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Here was this guy, probably an influencer, showing everyone that he not only wasn’t religiously literate, but also thought Ashkenazi food was the only essential part of the ritual or the holiday. I mean, food is part of Jewish ritual, don’t get me wrong, but, it rubbed me the wrong way.

Here is a full-blown Jewish adult. And yet, he doesn’t think knowing anything about his ethno-religious identity or choosing to observe anything in regards to its religious context is his responsibility. As a Jewish woman who cares about this stuff, this irked me, because with his masculinity comes a lot of privilege in some parts of the Jewish world. He might be so privileged that he doesn’t even have to know any of this but he still would count in an Orthodox minyan and I don’t.

Our household philosophy is that, if people may potentially harass us or kill us for our Jewish identities, we should know more about who we are and why – and try to find joy or meaning in it. Focusing on Jewish knowledge and joy is kind of a “thing” for us.

This is when I have to remind myself, hey, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable or observant or ignorant this guy on TikTok is. He’s still Jewish. I am no more or less Jewish than he is. It’s not a competition.

Elul is for introspection. It’s also the time to admit that we are all works in progress. I sure need to keep working. As we grow, learn and age, we can recognize and understand new and different things. Hardest, of course, is to recognize what we don’t know: our biases, intolerances and prejudices. We all have these blind spots. This emphasis, each year, on working on ourselves is valuable in many ways, not least of which is trying to be more inclusive and kind.

Elul is also about wonder – through our senses, when we hear, see, touch, smell and, yes, taste the holiday. It’s the primal feeling we get when hearing the shofar, or the release one gets after a heartfelt apology to a loved one. That wonder continues into Tishri, throwing our bread (like sins) in the water at Tashlich. The wonder is in sweet honey on apples and other holiday symbols. It’s in this season, in the northern hemisphere, when the days shorten and get cooler, the trees lose their leaves and we start again.

As I write this, it’s still summer. I’m the first to say that I’m not ready to embrace Elul. It’s coming though, no matter what. In preparation, we’ve already been apple picking at a neighbour’s tree. We got honey from a local farm. The food part is easy. It’s the introspection that’s the work – and I’m looking forward to hearing the shofar remind me to get busy doing it.

L’shanah tovah (Happy New Year) in advance. May the year ahead be sweet.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba 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.

Belief in a future Poland

Editor:

Your editorial of Aug. 19 entitled “Does history matter?” recounts some of the terrain of recent right-wing Polish political machinations against an open, self-critical approach to Shoah research and discourse in the country. It is sad, unfortunate and, I dare say, stupid of many Polish politicians to think that avoiding rigorous debate will somehow improve the standing of Poland and Polish culture internationally.

I am a proud Polish Canadian, raised in an amazing, secular Catholic family, and now for the last decade-and-a-half (officially, anyway): a Jew. I love the choice I made and I love Judaism, however the world does look very odd from where I stand. I am often too Jewish for Poles and too Polish for Jews.

An artist by schooling and a software engineer by profession, I am not an historian. However, I have to be one just to muddle through my own life. Poland has always been a cultural floodplain between great powers. Most Poles, perhaps like most Israelis, have to be very finely tuned both to history and to current geopolitical rumblings. To be otherwise would be existentially precarious. Because of my conversion to Judaism, a significant portion of the last two decades of my life has been spent studying topics relating to Polish Jewish history, Polish/Jewish relations, Israeli history and contemporary Polish politics (especially as they relate to Israel, the diaspora and the history of the Shoah).

It is quite exhausting to sit between two communities that I love very much (the now thinly overlapping Polish and Jewish Venn diagram) and have to read occasional inaccuracies, such as the one sadly published in your fine publication in an otherwise excellent text.

When your editorial asserted that Poland is “the society that bears more blame for complicity with the Nazis than any other,” I got quite angry. It is simply not true. This claim is pernicious misinformation that Poles regularly have to dissipate. It is not true on the level of governance, nor is it true on the level of day-to-day street life at the time. Poland was the only Allied force to fight Germany from the very first day of the war to the very last. It never surrendered to Germany as did France. It never made any secret collaborative pacts with Germany as did Russia. Poland knew that Germany was planning the Shoah and it shared solid evidence with Allied command as early as 1942. That the Allies did not act upon this is another story.

Poland was a massive net contributor to the Allied war effort. One source I read suggested that over half of British wartime intelligence reports came from Polish field agents. The Polish army was very active outside of Poland as a key member of the Allied forces during the war, commanded from their government-in-exile in London. The Polish army under General Wladyslaw Anders in fact made a famous march all the way to Israel, where its Jewish soldiers were offered the option of decommissioning and settling down there. The Polish resistance effort was also very active throughout the war throughout occupied Polish territory, where they applied lethal punishments upon those who collaborated with the Germans – matching the brutality that the Germans applied to any Pole who provided shelter to their Jewish neighbours. It was a dangerous time for everyone.

To your editorial’s point about Poland’s historical reputational ranking, I submit here a few other societies that “bear more blame for complicity with the Nazis” than Poland: Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovakian, Danish, Finnish, Burmese, Thai, Iraqi, Russian, French. Oh, and German.

Perhaps some of these are debatable, others much less so. I certainly agree with your editorial that history is important and should be open to public argument.

We live in different times today. To remember is important and we must remember well, but we must also be nimble enough not to get stuck in the ruts of history. One of my favourite Polish Jews, Shimon Peres, once said: “don’t be like us. Be different…. I have very little patience for history. I believe that to imagine is more important than to remember.” In that vein, I would like to echo the words of another Polish Jew I admire. Julian Tuwim, one of Poland’s best writers. He dared imagine: “I believe in a future Poland in which that star of your armbands will become the highest order bestowed upon the bravest among Polish officers and soldiers. They will wear it proudly upon their breast next to the old Virtuti Militari.”

I, too, believe in a future Poland. With criticism, I imagine that it could be something very good indeed.

Ian Wojtowicz
Vancouver

Does history matter?

The promise of the internet was that people could access unprecedented volumes of information for the benefit of themselves and society as a whole. What has regrettably proven to be the case is that it is a fount from which people draw to “prove” falsehoods they choose to believe – or, for nefarious reasons, claim to believe.

Amid the oceans of “information” online, it is sometimes difficult to tell what people genuinely believe as opposed to what they say they believe in public to mislead their audiences. For example, does the U.S. member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene actually believe that reliance on solar energy means the lights will go out when the sun goes down? Or is her apparent stupidity a deliberate foil for her support of polluting energy sources? If she believes what she said, this is misinformation. If she knows she is telling a lie, it is disinformation.

The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” are sadly necessary to understand what is happening in our era, as we have said in this space before and feel moved to repeat. In few places is this difference as consequential as in discussions of the history of the Holocaust.

Correspondence between Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and right-wing journalist Bronislaw Wildstein (and two others) leaked last week defines some of the world’s foremost Holocaust scholars as “enemies of the entire Polish nation.” There is other chilling language in the back-and-forth, detailing how top Polish authorities are expending enormous energies to rewrite the history of Polish collaboration in the Shoah.

A 2018 law forbids any suggestion that the Polish state or Polish people participated in Nazi crimes against Jews. International pressure saw the penalties for breaking this law reduced from a criminal conviction to a civil matter potentially resulting in a fine. But the intent and impact remain clear. Prof. Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born Canadian academic, and a Polish colleague, Barbara Engelking, were victorious in a 2021 appeal that saw an earlier court decision order to apologize to a descendant of a Shoah-era perpetrator for betraying Jewish neighbours to the German Nazis. But this court decision has not quenched the thirst for revisionism.

The obsession among top Polish officials on this subject is unabated. The email exchange includes the suggestion that Polish authorities should strategically coopt the Jewish experience in the Holocaust to their own benefit, recasting Poles as the Nazis’ primary targets and victims.

Poland also recently extended its Holocaust-related legislation to explicitly forbid financial restitution or compensation to survivors or their heirs.

The Polish government has steadfastly asserted that Nazi atrocities catastrophically affected non-Jewish Poles, which is plainly true. But two things can be true simultaneously. Many Poles were victimized by the Nazis and many Poles collaborated with the Nazis – and, in some cases, both involved the same individuals.

Wildstein, the journalist who seems to have the prime minister’s ear, makes threatening noises about top Holocaust research and archival bodies, including the Jewish Historical Institute, in Warsaw, and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and mentions “the possibility of introducing our people into their midst.” He accuses the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of presenting “an almost obsessive hatred of Poles.”

There is paranoia in the idea that exposing historical truth is identical to hatred. Ironically, while Germany is the European country that has engaged in the most introspective contrition, as much as a society can hope to do for so unparalleled a crime, Poland has steadfastly dug in its heels. The society that bears more blame for complicity with the Nazis than any other is the one that is not only refusing to confront its grotesque past but most stridently whitewashing it.

All of this has led to strained relations between Israel and Poland. It should also be a source of friction with other countries, including Canada, partly because it is a Canadian citizen, Grabowski, who is among the most targeted objects of Polish scorn, and partly because all democracies should stand up to this appalling historical revisionism.

There is a grim silver lining in this “debate.” The Polish authorities understand, as too few in the world seem to, that history matters. What happened in the past informs our present and future. If they can recast the past, they can affect the future.

The question for us is whether we, as a society, have the same understanding of and commitment to historical power. Are those who seek truth as motivated as those whose goal is to subvert it?

Editor’s Note: For a contrary point of view, click here to read the letter to the editor that was published in the Jewish Independent’s Sept. 2/22 issue.

Argue for the sake of heaven

When they were having their animated disagreements so many centuries ago, could the wise Jewish sages Hillel and Shammai have imagined how much we would still look to them today to help us navigate our fragmented world?

Mishna Avot, a third-century collection of teachings, reminds us that “any mahloket (disagreement) that is l’shem shamayim (for the sake of heaven) will continue to exist, but one that is not for the sake of heaven will not continue to exist. What is a disagreement that is for the sake of heaven? This is a disagreement of Hillel and Shammai.”

In our world that is both full of beauty and goodness and yet also permeated with divisiveness and polarization, Hillel and Shammai remind us that it was, and is, possible to hold opposing views while still respecting and learning from one another. A disagreement for the sake of heaven is one in which the parties are motivated by a genuine desire to seek the truth of the matter. There is no selfishness or lust for power. Rather, the disagreement is approached with humility, curiosity and a willingness to listen.

I recently completed an eight-week Mahloket Matters alumni fellowship through the North American branch of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. I had previously studied at this pluralistic yeshivah (place of study) in Jerusalem, which is itself exemplary in demonstrating diversity, inclusiveness and a willingness to face challenging issues in respectful, cooperative and productive ways. What attracted me to applying for the fellowship was the topic – civil discourse. We would be delving into how to navigate difficult conversations and disagreements. When we all met, virtually, at the first class, we found that we shared a common concern about the fragmentation and jagged edges in our world, as well as a desire to learn and to equip ourselves with more skills to better navigate the types of thorny issues we face in our world.

Our studies were grounded in Jewish texts, which provided wonderful launch points for many of our discussions. We shared thoughts and ideas about what it means to have a disagreement l’shem shamayim and tried to bring those ideas forward to today. As Hillel and Shammai taught us, it is possible that sometimes both sides can be right and still hold opposing views. It’s also possible to debate an issue without harming relationships. Entrenched positions leave little room for genuinely listening to the other side or having the humility to admit that one might be wrong, qualities much needed for any truly healthy and productive disagreement.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, may their memories be blessed, perhaps provide a more contemporary example of Hillel and Shammai. They were judges who held vastly different views on many issues and yet had a warm and lengthy friendship, never mind a shared love for opera, which they often indulged in together. In a statement that Bader Ginsburg released to the public on the death of Scalia in 2016, she said: “We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots – the ‘applesauce’ and ‘argle bargle’ – and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion.”

Over the eight weeks of our studies, our diverse group from all over North America questioned, challenged, debated and confronted a multitude of issues, from moral foundations to creating our own mini Sanhedrin(Jewish High Court), taking on the role of judges and tackling some controversial issues from all angles. It was an enriching and meaningful experience, the fruits of which we are each now able to bring back to our own communities, with the hope that the small ripples we create through sharing our learning will radiate outwards and help, even in small ways. Help to smooth some of the sharp edges, soften rigid positions and create the safe spaces people need to have productive and healthy disagreements that create the fertile potential for new solutions to emerge – all for the sake of heaven.

Elisheva Gray is a lay leader and active member of the Victoria Jewish community and an alumna of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.

Working to embrace change

We’re hoping the school bus will know to pick up our twins at the right address when school starts. They’re starting Grade 6 this fall. We’ve finally gotten good at figuring out the back-to-school letter, so we send them with most of the right supplies.

Yesterday, I took them shoe shopping, because, apparently – even though kids’ feet grow all year round – you can only buy sneakers for them before school starts. I even know where their lunch kit is located. Last year, the kids got good at packing their lunches – with mom supervision, of course.

I dread the start of school. It’s full of pitfalls. Inevitably, the bus doesn’t come, maybe one twin has a conflict and gets in trouble, or the teacher isn’t connecting with the other one. Things don’t always go smoothly. I have to line everything up as well as I can and hope for the best.

We’d be way ahead of schedule if it weren’t for one thing. We moved this summer. We only moved a short distance. It’s a little less than two kilometres if you walk from our old house, built in 1913, to our new one, also built in 1913. The differences lay in the neighbourhoods, zoning and a few other details.

Our “old” house was entirely habitable, aside from some walls cracked by nearby construction. It’s currently for sale as I write this. We staged it with our furniture and now we’re sleeping on the floor at the “new” house.

Our current home is almost twice as big as the previous one. It has a bigger yard in a quieter neighbourhood, amazing woodwork, a library, leaded glass, two enclosed sun porches, a second floor open-air porch, and more. It’s got all the fine details one might expect of a house built for a doctor who was the head of the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1913. It’s also got only one working bathroom – several remain broken – and only about half of a kitchen. The other half of the kitchen was demolished due to some, umm, small issues like freezing pipes, and structural concerns that need to be fixed.

We moved for a variety of reasons, but we loved how close the new home would be to the synagogue we attend most of the time. To be more clear, the synagogue we used to attend in person and now mostly livestream, due to the pandemic! We imagined that the easy walking distance would be great if Shabbat observant relatives came to stay, for instance. We like walking in nice weather. Then? Things changed.

It turned out the synagogue needs to do big renovations. It has just “moved out” of the building for two years to have asbestos removed, the HVAC system fixed and a few other updates done. Services will now be held in two other places in the Jewish community – both of which require driving. Oh well.

Change is challenging. Our dog isn’t ready to be by herself in the new house. She let us know this yesterday. She broke out of the third floor bedroom, where we had left her for an hour, complete with her dog bed, the radio on, a dollop of frozen peanut butter, and several other treats. She greeted us, in high anxiety, at the first floor front door with all the same toys surrounding her. While we appreciate her intelligent, Houdini-like abilities, we still do sometimes need to leave home. This morning, we signed up to a new dog daycare at the last minute so we could attend a weekend bat mitzvah for a family with whom we’re close.

I could go on with examples because, with the pandemic fluctuations, the house move and other work changes, our life is really keeping us on our toes just now. Like many people, we’re continuing to roll with it. What else can we do?

Around us, we see people nostalgic for some mythical normal they want to get back to experiencing. I’m stymied by this because, at least in Manitoba, even as pandemic restrictions go away, more people continue to die due to COVID. It ain’t over yet, folks.

When I bump into friends or neighbours while walking the dog, everybody asks how we’re managing. We’re probably more deadpan or low-key than people expect. I mean, what are our other options?

At the dinner table, I mentioned these exchanges with my husband and he said, “You know, I’m out of bandwidth right now. I hope that I act appropriately and keep moving.” That is when it hit me that, during these times of big stress, it isn’t uncommon to act this way. We function automatically. When I taught high school, my students called it “home training.” Jewish tradition might call it “derech eretz” or “how to behave.” We’re all doing the best we can, relying on basic skills and manners learned in childhood about how to do the right thing.

We hope that, in every autopilot email, conversation with a neighbour or phone call, we’re behaving in an upright and kind way. Right after we mention this lack of bandwidth, we remember how lucky and grateful we are. We have a home, food and clothing. During this summer of “the great move,” we’re doing fine. We’re not facing any of the many awful things that Jews have had to face. It’s not the Inquisition, a pogrom, the Holocaust or, in 2022, time spent in bomb shelters in Israel or Ukraine.

In Pirkei Avot 2:5, Hillel offers a long list of instructions for how to behave, including: “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person.” Every day, if Jews recite any prayers at all, we’re reminded to be grateful, caring, appreciative people. The emphasis is to be a mensch, an upright, good person, even in a moment when no one else might be acting as such, or when no one else is around.

It’s really easy to get worked up and dread transitions and the start of new challenges. It’s harder for me to step up, not just face these changes, but to embrace them with good humour and enthusiasm. I wake up each day, heave myself up from the mattress on the floor, recite a very informal Modeh Ani (a prayer of gratitude for waking up) and hope I will meet the day with the right intention. Someday soon, when our furniture makes the move, too, I hope it will feel like less of an effort to get up and meet the challenge.

I hope you have a great start to the school year, and that you are also celebrating some big milestone events! Here’s hoping it all goes smoothly.

Games, fun and serious

Team Canada’s 600-strong contingent marched into the opening ceremonies of the quadrennial Maccabiah Games July 14 at Jerusalem’s Teddy Coliseum. They were led by a trio of flagbearers – Toronto’s Molly Tissenbaum, a hockey goalie who has overcome serious health challenges to return to the ice, and Calgary twins Conaire and Nick Taub, volleyball players who are slated to enrol at the University of British Columbia in the fall. Canada sent the fourth largest team to the 21st “Jewish Olympics,” after Israel, the United States and Argentina.

The flag-bearing trio, their 600 teammates and about 10,000 others streamed into the stadium at the start of the largest-ever Maccabiah Games. Also on hand was an American visitor, President Joe Biden, who was the first U.S. leader to attend the event, flanked by Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

The trio of leaders appeared jubilant, and no doubt there is a natural bond between Biden and Lapid that neither shares with either the former U.S. president Donald Trump or the once and possibly future Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had a legendary bromance together.

While athletes began their friendly skirmishing for medals, the politicians began skirmishing themselves, around issues more existential than soccer scores.

Whatever personal affinity Biden and Lapid might share is at least partly restrained by reality. Lapid took over from Naftali Bennett as a sort of caretaker during the election campaign. Whether he remains leader after the votes are counted in November looks, at this point, less than likely.

Far more importantly, the two leaders disagree on the approach to Iran’s nuclear threat.

“Words will not stop them, Mr. President,” Lapid told Biden in their joint public remarks. “Diplomacy will not stop them. The only thing that will stop Iran is knowing that … if they continue to develop their nuclear program, the free world will use force. The only way to stop them is to put a credible military threat on the table.”

Biden has returned the United States to the Obama administration’s approach, aiming to revive the 2015 agreement between Iran and the West, which was supposed to slow that country’s march to nuclear capability. Trump withdrew the United States from the deal.

After Biden left Israel and headed to Saudi Arabia, words heated up dramatically Sunday. A top aide to the Iranian leader asserted that Iran already has the capability of creating a nuclear bomb but has chosen not to do so. In response, Aviv Kochavi, head of the Israel Defence Forces, responded with uninhibited forewarning.

“The IDF continues to prepare vigorously for an attack on Iran and must prepare for every development and every scenario,” Kochavi said, adding that, “preparing a military option against the Iranian nuclear program is a moral obligation and a national security order.” At the centre of the IDF’s preparations, he added, are “a variety of operational plans, the allocation of many resources, the acquisition of appropriate weapons, intelligence and training.”

Meanwhile, the inevitable moving pieces of Middle East politics continued shifting.

Biden walked a fine line, visually demonstrated by his choice to fist-bump rather than embrace the Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, who has on his hands the blood of dismembered journalist, author and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, whose grisly murder at a Saudi consulate in Turkey shocked the world. Rumours of warming relations between Saudia Arabia and Israel – the rumours go from the opening of Saudi airspace to Israeli planes, to the full-on recognition of Israel – remain mostly that. Saudis reiterated the old orthodoxy that relations would never develop until there is a Palestinian state.

The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, is openly mooting returning to diplomatic relations with Iran after six years. The UAE has sided with the Saudis against Iran in the ongoing proxy war in Yemen, but the Emiratis are making noises about “deescalating” tensions.

Back in Israel, meanwhile, divergent approaches to issues foreign and domestic are very much on the front burner. With the diplomatic niceties of welcoming the leader of Israel’s most important ally now in the past, parties are holding their primaries to select their leaders and lists for the Nov. 1 vote – the fifth since April 2019 – and forming new partnerships that reshape the landscape in advance of the nitty-gritty campaigning to come.

Much closer in time, the Maccabiah Games close Tuesday, with final results expected to be more definitive than the national election, which will almost inevitably end up with weeks of negotiations leading to a tenuous coalition government.