When we think of Pesach, the theme that emerges is: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” As slaves, we endured years of torture and hardship, with no choice but to obey the edicts of the Pharaoh. In essence, we were powerless. Those addicted to either drugs, alcohol or a behaviour (think gaming, gambling) are slaves as well. They are chained to a disease that has control over their lives – their brain has been kidnapped into thinking “this is what I need to live, to survive.” They no longer have freedom. Often, the notion that they can break free is beyond what they can envision.
When the Jews left Egypt, their days in the desert were a struggle. Some wondered why they left what they knew for the unknown. Yet, here they were. With manna for food, a cloud for protection, they wandered for 40 years: a long, hard journey to learn how to live with their new-found freedom.
When someone initially breaks the chains of addiction, the struggles they face are no less daunting. There is fear, a sense of loss; a feeling of, will this work? Can I be successful? Will I be better off? In essence, they can feel like they are in a desert.
To assist individuals in the precarious time of new-found freedom, JACS Vancouver has launched the Sustaining Recovery program: a wrap-around service that supports clients with individual counseling, assessment and program planning.
Working with our client, we together build and implement a personalized set of supports and tools that focus on where they are in their journey, and what specific supports they need. When the opportunity arises, we help them focus on identifying the forces, triggers and/or messages that are beneath the surface of their addiction. They learn how to make different choices, where to go for help and how to recognize that life is better, health is possible.
The path to freedom, as our ancestors found out, was not easy – nor is it for those wanting to sustain recovery from addiction. With personal willingness and commitment, and solid and constant support, success and a purposeful life is within reach.
Shelley Karrel is a registered clinical counselor, and is manager of counseling and community education at JACS Vancouver. For more information about JACS, contact shelley@jacsvancouver.com.
One of my twins is always looking for something new to learn online. For awhile, he was fascinated by a Massachusetts service dog project, where Great Danes are trained to provide support to those with balance and mobility impediments. He found this amazing service dog program through the website explore.org. It has live cams of animals all over the world. While we’re not traveling anywhere, my kid is bird watching, seeing service dogs, polar bears, and more. When we least expect it, he rushes up with his iPad and demands that I admire a nesting owl, or that his biologist dad identify an animal he’s never seen before.
This kind of intellectual curiosity is something I’m excited to see. Open-ended questioning about the world and how it works is a special kind of Jewish exploration. This intensity and enthusiasm is how we delve into studying Torah and Talmud, or how we engage with the world in general.
Passover is an obvious time to think about questions and how we approach and answer them. Our families have been telling the Exodus and “Once we were slaves and now we are free” story for thousands of years! Still, our questioning can’t just stick to the Four Questions and be done. Sometimes, even with good intentions, we get hung up on the rote narrative of the seder. We know we have to get through it. We start at the beginning and head to the end. It’s a yearly ritual routine, punctuated by matzah, lots of other foods, wine, and, in normal times, family and guests.
When we were first married, I once attended a smaller seder with some of my husband’s family. I was excited and nervous to engage over the Haggadah’s ideas – but it didn’t turn out as I expected. The family was committed to getting through the ritual traditionally and to the food part. They looked uncomfortable when I tried to talk about ideas or ask questions. In retrospect, I realized I knocked them off their game. There was a seder routine – and I wasn’t following theirs.
My other twin is also learning. He’s not into the animal live cams. Instead, he comes up with questions about school projects. He brainstorms and makes suggestions, even when they’re not welcome. The remote learning teacher suggested he limit his research on one social studies project to their “class time” online rather than do more research later.
Of course, the minute he logs off, I help him look up his questions and learn – whenever he wants. His teacher maybe wants to slow down the group learning, or avoid making more social studies lesson plans, but feeding intense curiosity with knowledge helps enthusiastic learners blossom. In my experience, putting somebody off when they want to learn more feels negative and does the opposite.
For many people, the pandemic has knocked them off their game. Losing regular routines may have felt negative. As people anticipate getting vaccinated, they talk more about which things they miss the most and long to do when things return to “normal.” For another view, I recently read a CBC news article that quoted David Eagleman, a neuroscientist.
Eagleman suggested that, in fact, the pandemic might be good for people’s brains, because the huge lifestyle changes we’ve experienced have forced us off our “path of least resistance.” We’ve been forced to be more flexible and innovate. This can be positive for our brain health. In some cases, forcing our brains to adapt may result in positive growth and changes in our work or home lives.
In a Jewish context though, when we consider our ritual routines, we must balance the comfort of what’s familiar with the opportunity to learn. Questioning and continuing to grow intellectually are valuable, particularly during Passover.
In the talmudic tractate of Pesachim, on page 105a, there’s a discussion about when to say certain blessings such as the Kiddush. Should we interrupt a meal in the middle to do Kiddush? Rav Hamnuna the Elder says, “You don’t need to do this, because Shabbat establishes itself.” In other words, our holidays, like Shabbat or Pesach, will happen whether we are ready or not. We must automatically rise to the obligations associated with them. So, yes, we do a lot of things by rote and habit.
Even so, the next page, Pesachim 106, teaches that there are times where leaders must do things extemporaneously, or work to learn more to figure out what to do. A good leader both continues with the routines and remains able to ask questions, be flexible and learn.
It’s too early for me to conclude whether our freeform research online this year has helped my twins become lifelong learners. (I hope so!) I don’t know if observing animals via live cam will result in a career like field biologist or even a hobby like bird-watching. Whatever they choose, creating a routine-based learning environment that encourages and cultivates questioning, improvisational thinking and flexibility may go a long way towards helping them succeed later on.
It’s true, as Rav Hamnuna the Elder explains, that holidays happen whether or not we’re ready for them. As Rabbi Sari Laufer explains on My Jewish Learning’s explanation of Pesachim 105, “Kiddush doesn’t make Shabbat begin, we make Kiddush because Shabbat has begun.” Yet, once our holidays begin, it’s our obligation to engage with them, to learn and to question.
“Due to the pandemic” is a phrase we’ve heard too often, usually in relation to cancelations or programs offered exclusively online. Perhaps we might add a positive “due to the pandemic” twist. We’re forced to be more flexible thinkers in our ritual routines, too. We can question why we always did them this way. In the end, we might be all the better for that brain jostling and chance for intellectual inquiry.
My family and I wish you a wonderful, thoughtful, questioning Passover, full of joy this year, however different it may be from your usual routines. Chag sameach.
Joanne Seiffhas 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.
Having spent so much time with my Israelites for last year’s Passover cover photo shoot, I thought it would be nice to see where they ended up. They successfully exodused from Metaphorical Egypt, as COVID was just getting started, and are now living in various places around the world. With the exception of Moses, who is still wandering the desert (but with good wi-fi), they all have solid roofs over their heads and are relatively sedentary, especially now, during COVID. They’ve kept in touch and are marking their one-year anniversary in freedom with a Zoom seder, as depicted on this year’s Passover cover. They offer holiday greetings in English, French, Spanish, Judesmo (or Judeo-Spanish), Hebrew, Yiddish, Portuguese and Russian.
While one of the Israelites couldn’t join the online gathering for the first night of Passover, as he doesn’t Zoom on the holy days, he does send his best wishes in the language of your choosing. My hope for them is my wish for all of us – that, next year, we can all gather together in-person with our loved ones, whether they be in Jerusalem, Vancouver or anywhere in between. And that we can do so without the need for masks, sanitizer or social distancing.
When Moses went up Mount Sinai, the Israelites grew restless and constructed a golden calf to worship. Every Jew and everyone with any theological literacy knows what happened next. So it came to pass that, last weekend at the annual convention known as the Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States, a giant golden statue of Donald Trump was wheeled around, drawing adulation and selfies. With an apparent absence of irony, the defeated president was transformed into a literal golden idol.
CPAC has been an annual shindig for Christian and other religious conservatives, libertarians, right-leaning economic thinkers and a big tent of the country’s centre-right. As evidenced by last weekend’s iteration, it is now, like so much of that country’s political establishment, in thrall to Donald J. Trump.
This is the latest in an avalanche of evidence that, despite losing the election, Trump maintains a stranglehold on the Republican party and much of the country. The literal idolatry he inspires deserves fresh consideration. It is the inevitable end-point (we hope) of a trend that was predictable.
It is easy – and not wrong – to view the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as domestic terrorists who threatened the very foundation of American democracy. But these people view themselves – or, at least, some do, based on interviews after the incident – as saviours of democracy. They (or, at least, many of them) genuinely believe that the election of Joe Biden was a result of a rigged process; that millions of votes were stolen or some other jiggery-pokery ensured that the true voice of the people was thwarted.
They believe this because they have been told, repeatedly and as recently as last Sunday at CPAC, by Trump, the man they believe won the election, that the process was rigged, that American democracy has already collapsed and that the election was stolen. Thus, we observe people attempting to steal a free and fair election carrying signs demanding, “Stop the steal.”
Certainly, some recognize that the election was fair but hop on a bandwagon arguing otherwise simply because they dislike the outcome. But there are many who are absolutely convinced that corruption and trickery unjustly deprived Trump of a second term. More alarmingly, a subset apparently believes in an entirely alternate reality, in which Trump is still president, operating the “legitimate” government from his Mar-a-Lago retreat or, even more fancifully, that a series of events is yet to unfold in which the election will be proven wrong and Trump will triumphantly return to the White House.
Listening to the comments of some Americans on cable TV or in online sources is chilling. It is hard to decide whether the scarier position is the one that winks at the truth, as many Republican members of Congress do, claiming disingenuously that they merely want to investigate to make sure the election process was fair, or the one that is rooted in thin air, asserting, despite all evidence and scores of court decisions, that Trump was cheated.
There is much talk of the political polarization that the United States and other countries are experiencing, a result in part of a refraction of the media universe. We are now all capable of consuming a diet of news and information that completely reinforces our prejudices. Combined with a charismatic (to many, anyway) leader who repeats lies endlessly while stoking a narrative of grievances, this refraction has led not to differences of opinion but to incongruities about the very facts of history and current events. To use a condescending and clichéd construction, the people who are convinced Trump won are themselves victims of their leaders’ lies.
This is not to let either side entirely off the hook in this time of division. Much has been made of perceived snobbery that dismisses or diminishes the intelligence or goodwill of Trump supporters. Terms like “wokeness,” which suggest one side has awakened to incontrovertible truth while the rest of the world is mired in somnambulant ignorance, do not leave much room for constructive dialogue. The certainties of the left are visible online and on cable news as well, if for now at least founded more sturdily on a foundation of reality.
There is much talk of healing the divided society that Biden has inherited. Even this elicits disagreement, however, with some demanding accountability for the egregious oversteps of the Trump era before moving on to making nice.
This challenge runs deeper than politics. The United States may be an urgent example but all societies must confront the divisions created by the diffusion of information and contested ideas of “truth” in the internet era. This is a challenge for educators, for elected officials, for thinkers and activists and, significantly and problematically in a free society, for media.
A society requires some shared understanding of reality. When we are literally arguing over the definition of truth, when terms like “alternative facts” are uttered without a smirk, we have a problem. To say nothing of a chunk of the population who reject science, including denial around whether a virus that has killed more than 500,000 Americans actually exists. This is a desperately urgent, possibly existential, challenge for democratic societies. The first step may, as in other cases of human behaviour, be acknowledging we have a problem.
Trump exploited, and continues to exploit, a situation in which it is possible to convince large swaths of people that up is down and black is white. But, while he makes excellent use of the ambiguity of our time, he is a product of it. Whether Trump remains an influential figure or not, we have inherited a world where others like him will emerge from a miasma of mistruth unless we find some common foundations of fact.
A Stitches by Orli mask, modeled by the designer Orli Fields.
A little over a year ago, Israeli radio news reported that Dr. Li Wenliang, an eye doctor in Wuhan, China, had tried to warn people that there were too many sick in his region. The report caught my attention because it stated that the doctor had been silenced by Chinese authorities.
When the coronavirus outbreak first became newsworthy, Israelis – from the prime minister on down – were sure we wouldn’t be seriously encumbered by it. We were in the mood to confidently assist others. I remember a man in front of me at the grocery checkout, turning around to ask if I knew why he was buying so many packages of toilet paper. When I said no, he told me he was sending toilet paper to family and friends in the United Kingdom.
In an unexpected turn of events, however, the virus became not just a key topic of discussion, but the manager of our daily lives. Over the long months of 2020, family visits and events were severely curtailed. In Israel, for religious and non-religious alike, Jewish holidays are always occasions for get-togethers, but not so this past year.
Some friends and acquaintances have become so nervous about catching the virus, they no longer want to converse, even outdoors, at a safe distance and from behind a mask. Fearing the spread of the pandemic, government officials, in turn, have put the kibosh on live cultural events.
Many people have learned to work from home and some have managed to re-create themselves, opening new businesses, such as those involving logistics, shipping and delivery. For example, a tour guide who used to lead groups through the colourful Mahane Yehuda Market now prepares and delivers baskets of shuk food items. Notably, during the pandemic, some lucky artists and galleries have found more of a demand for their work. Possibly this is due to the fact that people are home so much, staring at the walls, as it were. Yet, most artists-musicians, singers, actors and all the crews that keep theatres and other cultural facilities running have found themselves without work and without significant governmental bailout grants. All tolled, thousands of people have been laid off or have become unemployed altogether.
Whether because we were in lockdown or because we were anxious about being in situations where we might be exposed to people who have the virus, we have perfected online shopping to the level of an art. But some of us have also taken advantage of the farmers who are selling their produce directly to clients rather than through the now-quiet public markets.
We have learned to see ourselves as others see us, that is, in tiny boxes on Zoom. Some cultural institutions – such as the National Library of Israel, the Zionist Confederation House, Beit Avi Chai, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and others – have been broadcasting lectures and even some festivals on Zoom. I know one lecturer whose delivery has actually improved over Zoom.
Another Stitches by Orli mask, also modeled by the designer Orli Fields.
Not only have we learned that we can talk and be understood with a mask over our nose and mouth, I have heard that there are people who, being self-conscious of their teeth and mouth, are now more confident in public because they are wearing a mask.
And masks have changed over the course of the pandemic. In Tel Aviv especially, you will see people wearing designer masks, even while most of us are dressing more simply. In my neighbourhood, for instance, the vast majority of people wear sweatpants and sweatshirts (called “training” in Hebrew) on a daily basis. Teenagers wear indoor-outdoor pajamas; sometimes, they venture outside in their slippers.
The pandemic has brought out lots of dark humour, something Israelis have always been good at. And people have become more cynical about government proclamations. As but one example, the “last lockdown we will have” has happened four times already.
The coronavirus has aided in dividing Israel even more, as certain segments of the population are singled out for their non-adherence to government policy, but are not held accountable for their non-compliance. As one doctor candidly told me, “healthcare decisions are hampered by political considerations.”
Until this pandemic, many discharged Israeli soldiers would travel to southern Asia or to South America to “clear their heads.” With the spread of corona, however, travel has no longer been a safe option, so, in the past year, some soldiers who finished their compulsory service decided to immediately enrol in colleges and universities.
Altogether, the pandemic has caused tremendous financial and emotional stress. We have learned that corona is the loneliest hospitalization and death. But government budget problems have left social service agencies and nonprofits with little or no funding to continue their work of easing the tension, so the psychological damage continues to spread, untreated.
On the brighter side, people have picked up new hobbies, such as gardening or building terrariums. Baking has become a big thing, too. Working on jigsaw puzzles is another activity going through a revival. There seems to be more appreciation of nature, as well, as people have been going out for walks or picnics near their homes as a way to cope. And there has been a significant rise in the number of people adopting dogs, which may help reduce or prevent stress disorders during the pandemic. (While the number of abandoned pets has not dropped in Israel, it has not increased.)
It is generally acknowledged that doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are on the frontlines of the pandemic, so they were the first to receive coronavirus vaccinations. However, there is no shortage of vaccines in Israel and two things happened just recently: “pop-up” inoculation stations opened, to accommodate both citizens and non-citizens, so that, basically, anyone who walks in with an ID can get one; and Israel’s prime minister began talking about vaccine diplomacy – selling or giving vaccines to other countries.
The few pluses of 2020 notwithstanding, however, I doubt most Israelis, if not all, would object to having skipped the past year.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Passover is coming! I’m actually looking forward to this second chance at the pandemic seder. Sounds crazy, perhaps, but the rabbis in talmudic times believed in second chances, and this is one of them – an opportunity to make a smaller holiday experience meaningful.
The second-chance concept has a long history. Have you ever noticed Pesach Sheini on the Jewish calendar and wondered? Well, a month after Passover started, there was a second opportunity. Those who’d been impure (interacted with a corpse, for instance) or been on a distant journey, could still potentially sacrifice the Paschal lamb at the Temple on this second Passover date.
This second Passover was not a huge, inclusive repeat opportunity. The Jewish community was required to plan ahead. It wasn’t acceptable to say, “Oops, I missed #1, so now I have a free do-over.” The only opportunities to do Pesach Sheini were spelled out very clearly. Most of those who messed up the first time weren’t eligible for the second round.
Planning ahead for the Passover sacrifice was spelled out in the Talmud. It struck me as interesting because, even now, like many big Jewish holidays, Passover requires a ton of planning. Even when the Temple was standing, one had to “register” to sacrifice a lamb. For Passover, everyone needed to do it, so imagine that version of old-fashioned registration, long before curbside pickup, cellphones, computers or online platforms came on the scene!
We all know many people who are more “in the moment” and aren’t good at the planning-ahead parts of life. Whether it’s a holiday, a big winter storm or a pandemic, some people are just better able to prepare in advance. This isn’t a modern issue, it’s a human one. It’s something akin to Aesop’s poem about the ant and the cricket. While the cricket sings and dances away the summer, the ant prepares for winter.
In some ways, my household was oddly ready for a pandemic. To clarify, no one is really ready for emergencies like this. However, our household had an odd assortment of skills that allowed us to make the best of a difficult situation. I’m not making light of the situation, not at all – having lost a relative during this time, we know the virus means business. Even with such a serious challenge, however, it’s possible to see things that worked out.
For one thing, I’m married to a biology professor. Although he scared the pants off me in early 2020, I can’t say I wasn’t warned about what might happen as the coronavirus spread. It gave me an early warning system that worked, although it was hard to manage my anxiety at the beginning, too, since no one else seemed as alarmed.
We might have been practically prepared in some ways. We have always tried to eat carefully, with homemade local foods. We had full freezers. Our canning closet was stocked with homemade jams, pickles, and more. We had homebody skills, too. I’ve been making bread (and not just challah!) for years. We were fine in the food department.
The transition to learning and staying at home involved screaming, upset twin 8-year-olds at first. Again, though, we felt oddly lucky. I used to be a teacher and, while that never involved grade school students for anything other than religious school, we got into the swing of things. “Once a teacher, always a teacher” is apparently true. I wasn’t swayed by the screaming – I taught high school and community college in urban U.S. environments, where occasional weapons (and screams) weren’t unusual. I’ve figured it out. We’re still voluntarily remote schooling. It has worked for us.
We’re also mostly introverted. As creative folk, our stash of things to do has kept us sustained. There’s been lots of reading, as well as sewing, knitting, weaving and spinning, as well as coin collecting and building with Lego, and we’ve made good use of the kids’ art supplies. We’ve felt well-occupied.
Yet, the story of “second Passover” and planning ahead struck hard these past few weeks. We had a serious issue with our car. Then our boiler needed repairs during a frigid part of Winnipeg’s winter. And our hot water heater needed replacing.
When the weather began to warm up, we glibly thought we’d solved all the hard stuff. Whew. Never think that! On a Sunday evening, my husband went to the basement to get the dog food. He heard a trickling sound. In short order, he was dismantling part of the basement. We had a radiator pipe that froze and then burst as things warmed up. This cued yet another round of emergency plumbers’ visits during a pandemic, with the kind of repairs for which you just can’t plan ahead.
All this led me to thinking about our second, upcoming pandemic Passover. Passover is always a home-based holiday. We can make plans. We can save up and attempt to make everything work. Yet, some things are like the Yiddish saying, “Man plans. G-d laughs.” Even so, we keep trying. My parents in Virginia have already told us that they plan to join us (via Zoom) for the first seder. Our twins seem surprisingly motivated to clean up a mountain of toys, as we tidy the house before the holiday. We’re getting ready.
These days, Jews mostly don’t observe Pesach Sheini, but I’m really hopeful about enjoying another “first” Passover while apart. For months to come, a continuation of the Purim “everything’s upside down” spirit will be normal. We’re not done with this pandemic yet, so we must both plan ahead – and be grateful for flexibility and all these second chances.
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.
I don’t know what the reason is, but I note a change in my attitudes, ideas and emotional makeup. Could it be my advancing age, or was what I’m feeling always there, hidden under the impedimenta of getting through life?
We all start out, when getting on our feet, stumbling about – in choosing our direction, determining a focus, finally forging the path or paths that will be the ones we follow through most of our lives. Our background cannot help but be important in that process and, for some people, it is the essence of who they are. For me, I never felt it was of much matter.
These days, however, as I advance toward the final curtain, with a burgeoning altered perspective, I become more and more certain that I am all about what I was when I started. This may mean nothing to so many of you out there who have re-made yourselves into the images of what you wanted to be, rather than that what you were, but this seems to be the truth for me. I am extremely conscious of this because I had a spouse who totally remade herself into what she wanted to be by conscious effort, but I find now that that was not to be for me.
I know that I am being arbitrary by appropriating the “chicken soup” theme as an ethnocentric symbol of my Jewish background. Surely it is available and present in the culinary arrays offered by so many cultural groups. Nevertheless, I have seized on it because of what it means to me and to so many of my co-religionists. How often was it a centrepiece of the Sabbath meal, when chicken was the only meat offering even in a spare week’s diet, in the shtetl and on the tables of recently arrived immigrants in the “new world”?
For me, no matter how important the item was in the diet, making the sparse stretch so much further, it has a context for me that goes much further, even beyond its important role as “Jewish penicillin.” For me, it speaks of home and hearth. For me, it speaks of a mother’s love for her children, her family and her home. It speaks to me of taking something small and making it into something big that had ramifications for a person all of their lives.
For many us, our lives are shaped by the happenstance of our early experiences. Child psychologists can confirm that the impressions we absorb in our early days can have important implications for the people we become in our later years. I believe that one of the important things parents can offer their children is to provide evidence to them of unconditional love. We absorb that into the essence of our beings unconsciously and it can set us up well for life.
Chicken soup speaks to me of unconditional love. Whoever we are, whatever it is, that love can impart a sense of self-confidence that can otherwise take years of positive experience to generate. It can give us the strength to try, and fail, and try again and again until we succeed, or choose to move on.
For me, the humble chicken soup speaks of that unconditional love. For me, in the Jewish home of my upbringing, that was the message I received. So, now, after many decades of pursuing a life in nonsectarian environments – for the most part, a Jew among non-Jews – I trace back my capacity to arrive and thrive, to the original environment from which I drew my strength.
Am I being too ethnocentric? Surely, working in an environment that was much more merit-based than the one my grandfather and father were born into made an enormous difference? All too true! And yet, for me, I feel the difference of how I grew up.
Whatever your background, from where do you draw the drive that powers you through life? Mine leads back to chicken soup.
Max Roytenbergis 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.
The entire federal cabinet – save the foreign affairs minister – was absent Monday when the House of Commons unanimously voted to characterize the Chinese government’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the northwest part of China as “genocide.”
In the absence of the prime minister and all his cabinet colleagues, Marc Garneau, the foreign minister, stood and declared, “I abstain on behalf of the Government of Canada.”
The vote was on a nonbinding resolution brought forward by the Conservative party and, ultimately, was supported by all parties, receiving a unanimous vote by those members in the house and participating remotely. An amendment, brought by the Bloc Quebecois, also passed, calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the games scheduled for Beijing in 2022 unless the genocide stops.
According to international law, genocide is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The United States, at the tail end of the Trump regime, became the first country to name China’s behaviour genocide.
The Chinese government is perpetrating mass incarceration of millions of Uyghur Muslims and ethnic Kazakhs in northwestern China, operating concentration camps, separating families, committing forced sterilization, using slave labour and employing indoctrination apparently aimed at breaking the victims’ adherence to Islam and promoting obeisance to the communist regime.
The Chinese state barely disguises their intent, acknowledging that they are operating “re-education camps” or “counter-extremism centres.” An Australian study last year posited that there are 380 such facilities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, where most of the 12 million Uyghurs live. The area produces a large proportion of the world’s cotton and the BBC has reported that an estimated 500,000 people are being employed in forced labour picking cotton. Some who have escaped the camps report physical and mental torture, including mass rape and sexual abuse.
An argument could – indeed should – be made that the use of the term “genocide” must be applied carefully in order to avoid diminishing the significance of the language. We have seen the misuse of the term applied to Israel. But there is a great difference between using caution out of respect for the magnitude of the allegation and avoiding the term out of some political expediency or fear of diplomatic retaliation.
Whether what is happening in China right now fits the definition of genocide as we understand it in contexts like the Holocaust, Darfur, Rwanda or Bosnia is not immaterial. But there can be no question that what is happening are crimes against humanity on a massive, blood-chilling scale. Censure of the most extraordinary sort is absolutely justified.
Of course, discretion plays a role. In every decision and position the government takes relating to foreign parties, there are multiple domestic, diplomatic and practical considerations. No country’s foreign policy is pristine or unsullied by what we might consider pure self-interest or unprincipled motives. Fears of repercussions are legitimate.
China is a bully. In response to Canada’s rightful arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request, the regime effectively kidnapped two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have now been incarcerated for more than 800 days.
As we have said in the context of Canada’s support for Israel, elected officials should exercise immense caution in employing foreign policy as a wedge issue. Certainly there are legitimate differences of opinion among parties and individuals on various international topics.
Objectively, O’Toole and his party did the right thing. They were accompanied by MPs from all parties, including Liberal backbenchers. We would hope that the motion and the unanimous support is a symptom of a genuine Canadian commitment to fighting evil in the world. However, it is difficult not to see some partisan calculation at play. O’Toole and his party have been effective and vocal in raising the Uyghur issue (as well as other Chinese government atrocities and human rights abuses) for some time. By contrast, the Trudeau government has appeared to waffle, hemming and hawing over the definition of genocide and appearing reticent to offend the Chinese regime; their approach to China in general has been scattershot and incoherent.
It is within the realm of reason that the Conservatives saw a chance to embarrass and divide the Liberal government and took it. But the bigger issue is, even if the Conservatives were motivated by some hope of political gain, the Liberal government could have muted any such benefit by simply doing the right thing – as Liberal MPs and those of other parties did.
O’Toole, after the vote, decried an absence of leadership. Fair enough.
If the Canadian government has a reason to not characterize Chinese actions as genocide, we’d like to hear them. By simply refusing to show up, the Trudeau government did not take a stand on one of the crucial global issues of the day.
When a people is facing genocide, the very least the victims and Canadian citizens should expect is for Canada’s government to speak up. Too many times in history we have seen the consequences of silence.
I was talking to my mother on the phone when she told me about one of her committee projects. At her congregation in Virginia, there’s an outdoor space, in the woods. It’s used as a learning environment and sanctuary, with play space, too.
While it may be a charming and rustic foray into nature, it’s also something else. It’s inaccessible to those with disabilities. My mom described how a group home brought some of its residents to an outdoor service, only to discover that, in fact, the residents couldn’t attend, because they use wheelchairs. The trails, filled with rocks and tree roots, are too difficult for those wheelchairs to navigate.
My mom is on the “inclusion committee” at her synagogue. In part, she joined because she cares about everybody at her congregation. She wants to practise “audacious hospitality” and “radical inclusion.” The other part is more personal. My nephew uses a wheelchair. Of course, she wants to help him have a full and meaningful Jewish experience.
These bumpy trails are a physical barrier to inclusion. Our Jewish communities are full of physical barriers. These can be things like having only one staircase as an access point into a building – and no ramp. It can mean having no accessible bathroom, or no place for a mom to breastfeed. It could be lacking a way to invite a person in a wheelchair onto the pulpit, because there’s no ramp, or even no handrail for those who might not be stable on their feet.
Physical barriers aren’t just stairs, of course. What about large-print prayer books or documents that work with text-to-speech software for those who have visual impairments? What about an amplification system, sign-language interpreter or closed captioning for those with an audio disability?
Even beyond this, there are those whose differing abilities aren’t visible. Is there a quiet room available and unlocked for those who have sensory challenges? Many might need a break from loud music at a bar mitzvah or during a raucous Simchat Torah celebration. Is there a way that those who have mental health challenges or intellectual disabilities can be offered support if they need it while at a synagogue event?
February is Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, or JDAIM. If this were a committee meeting, this is when, inevitably, someone would speak out. “Whoa,” this person might say. “We’re just a small congregation with limited funds. We simply can’t do all this. We can’t be all things for all people.”
This is the second barrier to break down. It’s an attitudinal barrier. When someone’s attitude gets in the way of helping practise radical inclusion, it stops us from meeting every Jewish person’s needs in the community. This attitude adjustment is necessary when, for example:
a baby starts to fuss and a parent works to quiet the baby and feed him,
a nonverbal person makes noises during services,
a person needs to stand or sit during services because of pain or disability when everyone else is doing the opposite,
a person who cannot hear turns to her spouse to ask, “What page are we on?” in that loud voice.
The list could be a mile long. I’ve seen somebody cast a fish-eye at every one of these people. Given how many of us struggle with disabilities, well, let’s just say it’s high time for a change in attitude.
To the person who says, “We’re a small congregation, we can’t do all this,” be ready to stand up and say, “Did you ever wonder why it’s such a small shul? This is why. This attitude. This inability to try and include everybody and to work to meet their needs.”
It doesn’t cost a lot to build a portable ramp for the bima (pulpit). Sometimes, funds can be raised in creative ways to fix physical barriers. What’s harder? Working to change our conscious and unconscious attitudes about disability and inclusion.
Disability will affect all of us or our loved ones at some point in our lives. Please, don’t wait until you break your leg to acknowledge this. It’s really important to bring JDAIM up, but it shouldn’t be a once-a-year discussion.
In the portion Yitro, which we read in synagogues at the beginning of February this year, G-d speaks to Moses and to all the people at once. They all hear the Ten Commandments together in Exodus 20:1-14. Rabbi Ana Bonnheim’s commentary on this portion uses the phrase “radical inclusion.” Moses prepares the people to hear from the Almighty, and they all receive this revelation together – each in his or her own way. Rabbi Bonnheim reminds us that inclusivity, this frequent repetition of “ha-am”, “the people,” is essential to Jewish tradition.
On Shavuot, when we gather again to hear the Ten Commandments, everyone is supposed to be there. If we want a Jewish gathering where everyone physically can be there, it’s time to start an inclusion committee, if your community doesn’t have one. If you already have that committee, remember the public relations campaign that must accompany any initiatives, so that attitudinal barriers change as well as physical ones. The truth is that, even if everyone can physically be present, if your community projects a bad attitude, those with disabilities won’t want to be there.
As for me, I received a “save the date” card for my nephew’s bar mitzvah recently. I cannot wait to see him, using his assistive speaking device, leading the service. Of course, there’s a closed border and a pandemic in the way, too, but their congregation works so hard to include everyone that I know that, in the worst-case scenario, I’ll be there virtually, through livestreaming. Jewish celebrations, like every other kind of Jewish gathering, are for all of us. That’s why inclusion matters.
Joanne Seiffhas 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.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been confronted by two viruses: COVID-19 and, in its wake, the rampant spread of online hate.
As much of the world has been forced indoors, our time on the internet using social media has increased, which has advantages. We have found new ways to engage, stay in touch with our loved ones, and maintain and transform our connections to our workplaces and the world.
But the same technologies that have allowed us to keep connected have also served as springboards for the spread of online hate and conspiracy theories, which form the perfect Venn diagram of antisemitism. Since the pandemic broke, we have witnessed the emergence of ludicrous conspiracy theories accusing Jews of being responsible for the spread of COVID-19 or of profiting from the havoc. As a community that has consistently encouraged compliance with public health measures, we may be tempted to dismiss these outlandish conspiracy theories as nonsense. It is a type of nonsense, however, that spreads quickly and remains a cause for great concern.
Recent history has taught us that what begins online as the absurd mutterings of a few haters can, and too often does, turn into real-world violence. What we witnessed in Pittsburgh, Christchurch and Halle can certainly happen again. The threat is even greater today because people are spending more time online while also under considerable financial and emotional stress, a combination that makes people even more susceptible to messages hate-mongers are peddling.
Curbing online hate has been a priority for the Jewish community – and, therefore, for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs – for nearly a decade. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have remained on high alert, monitoring the emergence of antisemitic and hateful activity and bringing it to the attention of law enforcement and social media platforms.
Recently, we launched Stop the Transmission! (cija.ca/stop-the-transmission), a campaign powered by CIJA and funded by Canadian Heritage through the Anti-Racism Action Program. The campaign has provided practical tools and tips to hundreds of thousands of Canadians to identify and slow the spread of conspiracy theories, misinformation and deliberate disinformation.
We have also engaged directly with social media giants and are proud to have collaborated with our colleagues at the World Jewish Congress to urge Facebook to ban Holocaust denial, one of the most pernicious forms of Jew-hatred, from their platform, an action they took earlier this year.
We continue to call on social media companies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, the most widely accepted definition in use today, including by the Government of Canada, who adopted it as formal policy in its 2019 Anti-Racism Strategy. In response to the global collective effort of our community, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said “the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism has been invaluable – both in informing our own approach,” and that Facebook would “continue to refine” its “policy lines as speech and society evolve.”
A continuing aspect of our work is advocating for governments to advance policies to address online hate directly. Federally, we continue our call for a national strategy on online hate that includes clear, harmonized and uniform regulations that apply to platforms and providers operating in Canada, as well as an independent regulator to enforce them. You can help by visiting notonmyfeed.ca and taking action.
CIJA is also working with Canadian Heritage to host the Action Summit to Combat Online Hate, scheduled for April 14-15. You can pre-register at cija.ca/action-summit. The summit will feature discussions with experts, law enforcement, industry leaders and community groups like ours. The goals are to create greater understanding of the issue and develop concrete actions to address it.
Even once the pandemic is over, our migration to the digital world will endure. We, therefore, must stay committed and united in our efforts to combat antisemitism and other forms of hatred online.
Judy Zelikovitz is vice-president, university and local partner services, at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
