Opinion – Page 61

Boring politics is good

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood in the House of Commons this month and apologized for his predecessors’ decision to turn away more than 900 Jewish refugees on the ship MS St. Louis in 1939, he also made a plea for a better, more tolerant world.

Almost all Jewish Canadians – and probably most Canadians in general – thought this was the right thing to do.

The most recent public opinion polls indicate that most Canadians think that, on balance, what Trudeau has been doing since he became prime minister three years ago is generally OK. With the collapse in public support of the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québecois, Trudeau seems to have an edge in a two-way race against the Conservative party of Andrew Scheer.

It is hard not to imagine that the leaders of most of our allied countries aren’t a bit jealous of Trudeau’s position right now.

In the United States, the mixed messages of this month’s midterm elections – which strengthened Republican control in the Senate and saw the Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives – leaves President Donald Trump with less power than he had a few weeks ago, although it does give him a scapegoat, in the shape of a Democratic House of Representatives, which will doubtlessly invigorate his 3 a.m. tweetstorms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down as leader after a remarkable 13 years at the country’s helm. At times, she has seemed the adult at an international kids’ table, holding Europe together while bailing out failing economies and managing influxes of refugees, among other things. But apparently she’s had enough of the excitement.

One-time wunderkind French President Emmanuel Macron is learning that coming out of nowhere to take the top job can leave one ill-equipped for the demands it entails. His popularity, according to polls, is spiraling downward.

In far worse shape are the governments to the west and east of these European powers. In both Israel and the United Kingdom, the leaders are unsure when they go to bed what their status will be when they wake. Between the time of writing and the time of reading this page, either or both of these governments may have fallen and new elections called – or some Band-Aid solution found for propping up or rejigging the existing coalitions.

In Britain, division at the top over the conditions of British withdrawal from the European Union has led to resignations of top cabinet officials (as well as lesser cabinet officials). Dissidents are penning letters that could lead to a leadership review for Theresa May, the Conservative prime minister, by her own caucus. Even if she survives that, the inevitable vote on the Brexit plan could see her government defeated just a few weeks hence.

For Jewish Britons, this situation is particularly serious. May’s Conservative government has been struggling in popularity almost since she took the helm. The Tories faced a surprisingly strong challenge from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in last year’s general election, in which the Conservatives expected to glide to an easy majority and ended up having to cobble together a coalition with sectarian parties from Northern Ireland. A new Conservative leader might revive the party’s chances, though it seems impossible to see how anyone could paper over the seemingly irreparable divisions in that party between pro- and anti-Brexiteers.

The potential for a Corbyn-led Labour government is anathema to the vast majority of Jewish voters in that country. Corbyn himself has been a leading voice against Israel and in support of those who seek its destruction, including Hamas and Hezbollah, whom he has referred to as “friends.”

While extremists on the continent, like French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, do everything in their power to convince Jewish and other voters that they are not antisemitic, Corbyn seems to relish poking Jewish voters figuratively in the eye. And he is the proverbial tip of an iceberg. Websites are devoted to chronicling the extraordinary outpouring of overt antisemitism in the party he leads. One local chapter recently demurred on condemning the mass murder at the Pittsburgh synagogue, with one member complaining that there is too much focus on “antisemitism this, antisemitism that.”

In Israel, division among top cabinet officials over the response to the most recent violence from Gaza has led to the resignation of Avigdor Lieberman as defence minister, and extremely unfriendly musings from Education Minister Naftali Bennett. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition government is hanging by a thread, though public opinion polls indicate that support for his Likud bloc may actually give him reason to look favourably on early elections.

An ancient Chinese curse speaks of living in “interesting times.” For the leaders of many of our closest allies, these are interesting times indeed. But they probably look enviously to Canada and realize what Jews have known for many generations: when it comes to politics, boring is good.

Sorting out playground fights

If you’ve got grade school-aged children, chances are they come home recounting fights on the playground and in their classrooms. Sometimes, it involves them, and other times, they are bystanders. There are kids who are hitting, name calling, mimicking and punching each other. The chasing and hurting seems to come out of the blue, or sometimes it has been expected and dreaded for way too long. People can be cruel to one another.

It might not come as a surprise that moms talk to each other about their children but, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve probably talked to four parents who have mentioned their worry or concerns. While it’s possible for some to pile on stereotypes about Jewish mothers, if you ignore all the nonsense, the underlying theme is simple for all parents. We’re trying to raise good, kind people and that’s why we devote so much effort and concern to it. We want healthy, happy children, and wonder how to keep them from killing each other.

Unfortunately, turning to traditional texts doesn’t always offer us solace. We’re not reading about happy families all the time when we read the weekly Torah portion – and, often, the rabbis’ commentary doesn’t soften the harsh responses in Genesis. For instance, when you read the stories about Joseph and his brothers, well, they were brutal to one another.

Joseph is his father’s favourite, and it’s no secret. Joseph doesn’t help matters – he tattles on his older brothers (Genesis 27:2). His dad makes him fancy clothing, too, so it is obvious he is getting preferential treatment.

Joseph’s brothers strip him of his clothes and throw him in a pit and, if that’s not bad enough, they sell him as a slave. Even Reuben, who hopes to fix things, cannot stop his brothers when they are dead-set on doing harm.

Of course, many commentators rush to point out how forgiving Joseph is and that, later, as a powerful man in Egypt, he saves his whole family in a time of famine. Yet Joseph misleads his brothers about who he is; he kidnaps his brothers. Well, the summary is that this is a complex story with difficult characters. It can be hard to figure out who is in the right here, and if anyone behaves well, after all.

Zooming back to the playground, there are some startling comparisons. When the kids race up and start telling the parents that this kid hit that one, this kid is bad, etc., it can be hard to untangle the story. Often, too, the kid who throws the first punch didn’t do it out of the blue. If you provoke someone enough, particularly a kid who hasn’t quite mastered self-control, someone’s probably going to fight back.

There are a few conclusions I can make in comparing this important biblical narrative with a parent’s everyday one. First, it’s complicated. It is way too simplistic to think that one child is a perfect blameless angel and the other the nasty bad person. This isn’t how relationships and people work.

Second, untangling the story can take awhile. It’s important to learn everybody’s point of view before deciding what actually happened. Sometimes, it’s crucial not to just trust those in authority to be omnipotent and sort things out. An example? I got an official report home one day that one of my kids punched another kid. (We were really upset with him.) Days later, I found out from another child that the reason why mine acted out was because other kids were copying my kid, making fun of him and pretending to be him in an unkind way, behind his back. While I might not condone punching somebody in the nose, I sometimes can understand how it might happen if I hear the details of what exactly transpired.

Third, making peace is a multi-step process. The wronged party may need to work through a few things before the situation can be resolved. This takes time and fair judgments like Solomon’s. It can feel beyond a parent’s capabilities!

Finally, when following the story of Joseph and his brothers, we learn that they worked it out. Joseph helps feed his family and saves them – but it’s not a narrative of instant forgiveness and affection. Jealousy, unequal treatment and violence? It’s all in there.

Sometimes the complicated family dramas of Genesis demonstrate that even tangled and dangerous altercations can be resolved. It’s a reminder that everyone – kids, too – can get over their intrigue, fights and disagreements and forgive one another. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we forget everything about the complicated characters who are our friends, relatives and classmates. It might mean that, while we can’t change the past, we can get beyond it to build better future experiences together.

While I mulled this over, my husband pointed out something further. When we must rely on our families or our (smaller) Jewish communities, we must work together on many crucial issues of survival. We can’t change the past interactions or bad behaviours that may have taken place in a family or congregation. We can’t go back in time to repair or undo those wrongs, but we can drop the rancour to work together towards shared future goals. Joseph – and those playground reconciliations – show us that history is just history, not destiny.

Joanne Seiff writes 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. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Not only grades matter

In the Wisconsin town of Baraboo, high school students in their final year before graduation take formal pictures on the steps of the town’s courthouse. Census figures say that the town of 12,000 in the country’s heartland is 94% white.

Among the pictures available for purchase on the website of a local photographer was one with only the boys and in which many – most, it appears – were performing a Nazi salute. (The photo disappeared from the site on Monday but is widely available online.) One of the students near the front did not make the Nazi salute – instead he made a hand signal made popular by far-right white supremacists. He’s the real rebel, we suppose.

Actions like these can often be sparked by the dumb idea of one or two kids, with others following along. It would be distressing and disgusting at the best of times but, now, when there is a clear, genuine resurgence of white supremacy, antisemitism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance in the United States and worldwide, this takes on a deeper resonance. Is this an example of a bunch of high schoolers thinking (perversely) that this would be funny or kooky or somehow amusing? Or is there, among the crowd, a few or a lot who know what the salute really means, identify with the ideology behind it and, because of the mainstreaming of “alt-right” ideas in the country, felt emboldened to make this statement?

Certainly, there are worse hate crimes and other catastrophes in the United States – including racially motivated and gun violence – that deserve attention. Yet, this incident sticks out for a number of reasons.

The picture is jarring. Kids – young adults almost – well-dressed in their graduation suits, nearing a turning point in their lives, standing in front of the embodiment of justice and rule of law in their society, raising their arms aloft en masse in a motion determined to provoke.

But this is not the most alarming thing about the photo and how it came to be. Deep into the New York Times story about the incident, a recent alumna of the high school said she was disappointed but not shocked, knowing that a group of boys in the school were noted for bullying and offensive remarks. “I’m not surprised by them doing this,” she said.

Then she added: “But I’m surprised that there’s so many of them doing this. Photographers were there; the parents were there; community members were there.”

There’s more to the story. The photo was apparently taken months ago and it took this long for anyone to raise alarms.

Still more: a young man in the back of the photo whose arms remain by his side said, on Facebook, that the salute was the idea of the photographer. Should this make us feel better? If true, the photographer should suffer professional and social consequences. But were there parents and other community members who witnessed this live and stood by silently?

In a world not lacking in tragedies or social ills, this is not the worst of the week’s news. Yet it resonates because these young people are part of the next generation we are depending on to fix society’s ills and improve the world. Have their parents, grandparents and educators done their jobs in preparing them for the world and their responsibilities in it?

In a letter to parents, the superintendent of the school district said her team was “extremely troubled” by the image.

“Clearly, we have a lot of work to do to ensure that our schools remain positive and safe environments for all students, staff and community,” she wrote. “If the gesture is what it appears to be, the district will pursue any and all available and appropriate actions, including legal, to address the issue.”

Fair enough. But, first and foremost, perhaps they should look at their curriculum and also consider what messages are being sent consciously or unconsciously by teachers, administrators and other role models before they initiate legal or any other actions against the students.

While school administrators and teachers have much on their plates – shrinking budgets and broadening demands, as well as trying to prevent their charges from being murdered in yet another gun rampage – this should be a warning for educators everywhere to remember that success is not only measured in grades and that a proper education includes more than academics.

Learning throughout our life

Isn’t life wonderful? It has such potential to deliver joy, beauty, poetry and music for every one of us. More’s the pity that so many of us get only a small fraction of that potential for our portion. Still, gratitude must be the order of the day because things could always be worse.

If we take the time to examine the simple pleasures that most of us benefit from, we should be able to swallow some of the less digestible bits with a little more grace. Nature is nearly everyone’s inheritance – sun, moon, sky and stars, the green around, with maybe a spot of colour. We breathe in and out, taste the sweet along with the sour, and sometimes hear a birdsong. And perhaps, from time to time, if we are fortunate, our lot allows us a warm embrace.

We start out as strangers in a world we know absolutely nothing about. We start out with only sensations: warmth, cold, discomfort, pain, or their absence, and hunger pangs. Our first lesson is the instinct to cry out in reaction to what we find uncomfortable. We soon learn whether our instinctive appeals for help are likely to be answered quickly or with an incomprehensible delay. Scientists tell us that this knowledge might play an important part in determining what sort of creature we will become in later life. (See, for example, “The Role of Parents in Early Childhood Learning” by Susan H. Landry, Children’s Learning Institute, University of Texas Health Science Centre, which was published online in 2008.)

Totally dependent on others, humans, like other mammals and many species, begin their lives in a precarious situation. We all know from our own learning that survival rates have markedly improved with living standards and advancing technology. An exploding world population provides solid evidence for that. So has the chance that the psyches present in adulthood will be healthier. By no means can it yet be said that such is a foregone conclusion.

We accept that our early years on this planet are the period when we consciously concentrate on amassing the information and knowledge that we need to negotiate our passage through life. In earlier times, that formal period of education, now increasingly financed in one way or another by the state, was much shorter than it has now become.

In the end, we often learn much more on the job, after formal education has ended, about what we must know to do our work. Life has become increasingly complicated though and even this learning will not suffice always, as the very nature of work is altered daily. Jobs disappear, never to return, and new skills become imperative.

I was born during the Great Depression. For a good number of years, my father never had a job. I don’t believe he ever had a formal education, arriving in Canada as a young man. Yet, hired as a labourer to feed coal into a boiler furnace, through self-study, he rose to be an engineer solely responsible for a vast industrial complex. He had some book-learning to get his papers, but mostly he learned his stuff from doing his work.

My degrees were in agriculture, but the only planting I ever did was in my home flower garden. I had four jobs in my career, but only one, the first, had any direct relationship with agriculture. Essentially, I became a manager and I never learned anything about doing that kind of work at school. If I learned anything at all during those years, it was certainly by doing things I had to do on the job.

So what is management? It has to do with trying to get thing done through other people. I know there are courses that try to give a head start on learning that, but I never had the good fortune to take any of them. I can’t say I was a good manager, but I certainly learned a lot about what not to do. And I am content that I learned enough to get all my work done well.

The truth is that learning on the job applies to almost everything we challenge ourselves to try and accomplish in life. This applies to parenting and partnering like everything else. This is not news to any of you out there.

What makes our current situation so much more challenging is the rapid rate of change we face in our lives. How can we give advice to our young when they know more about what is happening in our current reality than we can possibly keep up with?

Parenting may be one the most perplexing learning-on-the-job challenges we will face in our lives. And I don’t envy this generation of parents, who find their children more adept at the latest devices in every home than they ever will be. They will have to concentrate on the management skills they will have to pick up to deal with children who know more about important things in the world than they do.

From working to getting along with our partners to parenting and more, it fascinates me how much we have to learn on a continuing basis, throughout our lives.

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.

Teaching our hearts

Today, Nov. 9, is the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Seen by some historians as the moment when the Nazis’ legalized discrimination against Jews turned irreversibly toward genocide, the date has been marked by the Vancouver Jewish community for several decades.

Jews view the present and the future through a lens of the past. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Unable to see the future clearly, a keen awareness of the past can lead us to reasonably project expectations. But the memory of Kristallnacht and what came after it instils a rightful and necessary caution in interpreting current events. History tells us that vigilance is crucial and that complacency can be fatal.

Of course, no two moments in history are identical. Are we overreacting by drawing too instructive an historical parallel when we experience traumas like the mass murder at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27? We can’t be certain. It is probably wise to err on the side of caution and respond with vigilance.

The reaction from so many faith groups and other allies, including at a “solidarity Shabbat” last weekend that filled synagogue seats throughout Metro Vancouver and across North America, is not only a reassuring phenomenon. These demonstrations of intercommunal friendship are underpinned by the awareness that, while some might dismiss the events in Pittsburgh as the deranged act of a single madman, historical consciousness places the terrible act within a larger context.

History is important, too, because we live busy lives and a lot of things are slammed into our consciousness every day. Stepping back and placing contemporary events in a larger context helps us assimilate our place in society, individually and collectively. This is being demonstrated particularly well this week, as Remembrance Day (Nov. 11) approaches.

The Government of Canada’s apology for the 1939 refusal to accept the imperiled Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis comes as part of a long line of apologies for historic wrongs. A cynic could look at the litany of regret and see political expediency. We prefer to look at it as a progressive, healthy way of not only addressing the past but of improving the future.

The journey of the MS St. Louis saw just 29 of the 937 passengers allowed to disembark in Cuba, the intended destination and presumed final refuge for the passengers fleeing the imminent Holocaust. The ship then sailed to the United States and on to Canada, where, in both places, xenophobic and antisemitic attitudes among the general public and the governing elites prevented the asylum-seekers from disembarking. Forced to return to Europe, 254 of the passengers would be murdered in the ensuing genocide.

At a time when many Jews are looking at the news with trepidation, the prime minister’s statement represents the voice of a country facing the antisemitism of its past and, more importantly, committing to face and combat similar sentiments today and in future.

Presaging the prime minister’s formal apology this week, Canada’s ambassador to Israel, Deborah Lyons, speaking at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America last month (see “Interdependent communities” and “GA pitches softballs at Bibi”) spoke movingly about the importance of applying historical knowledge to the present. She quoted a 17-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., who, after completing the March of the Living, observed that, “as our hearts were breaking, our hearts were also growing.”

Said Lyons: “We need to acknowledge these difficulties, we need to acknowledge these injustices. It may break our hearts, but it will teach our hearts to love again and to grow.”

A heartening message to hear

“I’m writing this while the victims are still being buried at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh. This period, just after any death, is a hard time, and lot of meaningful things have been said in the media already. The worst part about this rise in hatred and violence is that it was entirely predictable. In fact, I wrote about it in November 2016, in an opinion piece for the CBC in a piece called “Keep your passports up to date.”

On the day of the Pittsburgh shooting, I walked to synagogue in Winnipeg, where I live, with one of my twins to go to services. The other kid had the “I’m grouchy” sniffles and stayed home with his dad. We had a marvelous Shabbat “date” together. It was only when I got home and we were eating lunch together that my husband said, “Don’t turn on the radio or TV news.” That’s how I knew something really bad had happened.

By Sunday morning, we all needed to blow off some steam. I took my kids to the brand new accessible playground at Winnipeg’s Grant Park. It’s right near the Pan Am Pool building. After 45 minutes of bone-chilling playground duty, I grabbed both boys by the hand and steered them towards the car. That’s when I saw the graffiti on a door to a mechanical room for the pool. It was a big Jewish star – and inside it was a swastika.

I went to the pool front desk at 11:15, both kids in tow, and reported it. Then, I went home and reported it, with the help of a friend, to 311, to B’nai Brith, to the editor of the Jewish Post and News and to the police. This wasn’t an active emergency, so I called the non-emergency phone number. It took more than 30 minutes to get through to the police. When I did, they said, “Well, it’s on the Pan Am’s property, they have to report it.” I got nowhere, and it was time to take my kids to their piano lesson.

I’ve learned since having kids that you can’t just put them on pause and ask them to wait around. I had to keep going with life. I also didn’t want my whole day to be about somebody’s hate graffiti. I briefly mentioned my concerns about the exchange with the police to my non-Jewish friend, Kirsten, in Brandon, Man. She apparently posted it on Facebook. Within a short time, seven Winnipeg friends of hers reported the graffiti and, get this, two American friends called long-distance. They both live in Pennsylvania: one in Philadelphia, and one in Pittsburgh.

By the time piano lessons were over at 2:15, Ran Ukashi was following up on behalf of B’nai Brith. The graffiti had been painted over.

At the end of the weekend, I felt exhausted with emotions, as I’m sure many did. My parents, who live in Virginia, send video clips to my kids, as a way of keeping up with them from afar. Their video for Monday morning was heartening. They showed “just a regular” Sunday evening at their congregation. Multiple meetings and events were scheduled, and Jewish life went on as usual – aside from the evening service, which included an impromptu memorial service.

Then I was contacted via an online forum by an online acquaintance from Quebec, a (non-Jewish) Canadian named Esther. She moved here from Germany. She felt worried. She told me she wanted to be an ally, to support and reach out, and then she gave me her full name, address and phone number. “Just in case … for an emergency,” she said.

At our community’s memorial service, the sanctuary was so full that I stood for half of it. There were hundreds of people who could not get inside, it was too crowded. There were probably more than a thousand people there, including every kind of Winnipegger. Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, women in hijabs, priests in their clerical collars – everyone. Also there were the mayor, the police chief and many other “important” political people. All there to support the Jewish community.

The service was like a Jewish funeral, but, instead of one person, we were mentioning Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh and doing a prayer or two for healing, peace and hope. It was a good moment to be a Canadian.

This morning, we got a video from my folks about their official memorial service, also held on Tuesday, Oct. 30. Like ours, it was completely packed to overflowing with good people who came together, from all religions, from all over the area, to support the northern Virginia Jewish community.

I wondered what to write about, and mentioned it to Kirsten. She was visiting with her dad, Bruce McFarlane, a retired professor of sociology, who is in a care home there. He recalled, with pleasure, spending time with Chassidic families at their celebrations in Montreal. His response?

“What can one write after this week? Honestly, I thought this world would have been better by the time I got this old!” Later, he said, “I’m tired of the violence. Why is it still happening?” And, finally, he wished me peace. He wished peace to me and my family.

This has been a hard time, and I can’t do any better than what Prof. McFarlane said. Jewish tradition has many prayers for peace, hope and healing, and there’s no better way to commemorate the lives lost in Pittsburgh than to find yourself a place (at a shul or wherever you worship) to say those prayers. It’s a good moment to stand tall, surround yourself with community and be counted and comforted.

I’ve been heartened by the ad hoc support the Jewish community has been offered from everyone around us during this difficult time. If someone offers you support, please say thank you. I know I sure appreciate it. I have felt so grateful to hear others tell me, out of the blue, “I have your back.”

We’ve got a lot of work to do

(photo from Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels)

I am not normally someone who is especially active on social media. I am not normally someone who curates current events, even though I consume them like undergrads do coffee – habitually, obsessively, out of necessity.

For a long time, my political associations and the extent to which I follow world news have been largely separate from the image I have cultivated for public view. As far as Facebook is concerned, I am represented through dog videos, feel-good intercommunity displays of solidarity, recipes and the occasional satire poking fun at the absurd and horrifying climate we’re living in – but there has been a shift. A shift toward police brutality, transphobia, racism. A shift toward synagogue shootings.

I do not share news stories on such topics because I enjoy doing so. I don’t enjoy reading about things that make my heart heavy, nor offering vulnerabilities to people who do not see me as a person, but rather the embodiment of an idea they disagree with. I do not take pleasure in sharing pain. It is my very nature to shield myself and others from it. Although part of love is letting others learn, and that involves experiencing pain and hurt.

It is easier to stick one’s head in the sand, but it doesn’t make it right. It is important to denounce insidiousness and nefariousness when you see it, especially if it does not directly affect you. It is important to hold space for those who are impacted by the injustices of the world, to hold them up and offer your strength. In doing so, we hope others do the same for us, and perhaps that is the only way we can get through these dark times with any semblance of sanity, of humanity.

I used to make a point of sharing light-hearted, feel-good posts, cognizant of the “bad news,” which is in no short supply. I believe my intention to provide some degree of respite from the political apocalypse we’re currently observing was a good one, but I would wager also misguided. To curate news is one thing, to disengage from it is another.

It became clear to me that, just because I am kept abreast of political happenings, and that I see them all over social media, does not mean others do; a classic cognitive bias that I should have spotted much earlier. This is true of what is happening in Trump’s America, to people of colour, LGBTQ folks, indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, Muslim communities. This is true of issues and current events related to antisemitism – I am now startlingly aware just how little people know about it. Not only the frequency of antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, but, at a much more basic level, what antisemitism is and how to spot it.

For many of my friends, especially those who I’ve met in London, I am the only Jewish person they know. While it shouldn’t significantly impact the way I conduct myself, the weight my actions carry is not lost on me when I am the entire schematic representation of “Jew” for many of the people I come across. There is a pressure to behave in a way that is contrary to the many persistent stereotypes that precede my traditions and my culture. I must be generous to a fault lest I be stingy. I must laugh off antisemitism and micro-aggressions lest I be perceived as a paranoid, uppity Seinfeld type. I must be soft and kind and open, I must not have strong opinions lest I be the overbearing, naggy Jewish woman. I must downplay my love of bagels (they’re so damn good).

I also must be a political chameleon, dodging demonization from the left and right for equal and opposite accusations: we are the puppet masters, yet the infiltrators. We are the root of capitalism, yet the root of communism. We are somehow the one percent who controls the world’s wealth, yet we also fund the movement that rallies against it. We are insular elitists, yet permeating globalists. Those of us who look like me have assimilated to whiteness and reap the benefits, yet we will never be “white enough” to those who would see us dead.

Over time, the belief sticks: “I must not behave in any way, shape or form, in any manner that would give credence to the ideas that this is how Jews are, as I represent them to so many.” Yet it’s as exhausting for me to keep up as it is to keep this narrative straight.

I thought that, perhaps if I wanted to be a socially engaged citizen of the world, I could avoid these pitfalls by sharing information about the world as neutrally as I could. I could be the “impartial reporter,” make the news palatable, make it sterile. I could be taken more seriously, sanitized of emotional attachment that would otherwise be paint me as “irrational,” which is the ultimate insult in political and academic discourse. (Undoubtedly rooted in sexism and undoubtedly seen as weak, as it is perceived as feminine.)

But to do this serves no one well. It is inherently more harmful to the people who are affected by the issues being reported. To be “unbiased” in the wake of something that should not be polarizing, yet somehow is, ultimately reflects complicity. It is contrary to my values as a person. It is contrary to my values as a Jew.

This confuses many people, who know I am largely secular and open in my agnosticism. How can I profess myself to be as Jewish as I do, while maintaining such a wide berth from religiosity and theism? By that definition, I’m not “that Jewish.”

I may not believe in a God, but I do believe in my people, and in the traditions that shaped me to be who I am. I am Jewish insofar as my birth and upbringing, in my values and my conduct, in my pursuit of tikkun olam, repairing the world. I am “Jewish enough” to lead services despite my relationship with my faith. I am “Jewish enough” to abstain from pork but not “Jewish enough” to abstain from shellfish or cheeseburgers. I may not be “so Jewish” as to observe Shabbat to the letter, but I am Jewish enough to be gunned down in a synagogue.

My tradition is one of orthopraxy, of deed over creed. We are meant to “pray with our feet” as well as with our words. The Talmud teaches us not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief, but rather to do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now; that we are not obligated to complete the work of repairing the fractures and chasms in our world, but neither are we free to abandon it.

There is the story in the Talmud of a man who came to the great rabbis of the day and told them to teach him Torah while he stood on one foot. He did this to mock them. He first went to Rabbi Shammai, who refused to engage when he recognized the man’s intentions. The man went next to Rabbi Hillel and made the same challenge: teach me your Torah while I stand on one foot. Rabbi Hillel knew this man’s intention as well, but he was patient. He simply said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others; all the rest is commentary. Go and study this.”

It should be that simple. If only it were that simple. I don’t know if the reason it isn’t is because of psycho-schematic representations in our minds, or nationalism, or capitalism, or groupthink, or whataboutisms, or strawmen, or ego, or that we forget that, when we bleed, we all bleed the same. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve forgotten how to be empathetic, or we’ve stopped doing it because it hurts, or that we feel powerless and that feels worse.

A friend told me recently that they don’t engage with this stuff because they’ve become numb to the horrors of the world. I can understand that, truly. Although I think it is precisely because of the commonplace, routinized nature of these injustices that we must engage because, when we don’t, they become routine, and they become a part of the fabric of our society that we will forget shouldn’t be there in the first place.

We have a saying in Judaism, “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” “justice, justice, you shall pursue.” But our understanding of tzedek is different to that of mishpat or din, other Hebrew words referring to justice or law in a strictly legal sense. Tzedek is tempered by compassion, of doing not necessarily what is lawful, but what is the right thing to do. And there is an emphasis on the action, on the doing. This may very well be rooted in some of the many names Jews use to refer to God, and the concept that people are made in God’s image.

In our tradition, there are many different names for God to reflect different aspects of God’s characteristics. Elohim is common, derived from the ancient word for judge. Certainly, people who are unfamiliar with the Torah often criticize the “Old Testament” for barbarism, for a wrathful, vengeful God that falls uncompromisingly into this depiction of an impartial, removed judge who delivers reward or punishment in accordance with the word that was given. I’m not about to unpack that, that’s a whole other essay in itself.

Unquestionably, the most sacred name we have for God is one we don’t even know how to pronounce, and are not supposed to pronounce, that is often anglicized as YHVH. It is derived from the Hebrew word for “to be,” and it is sometimes understood to translate roughly as “the Essence of Being.” This name is said to reflect an intimacy, a mercy, a love that perhaps we don’t even know how to name.

These different names may suggest a God of multiple beings, or even multiple gods, but Judaism is quite strict in its monotheism, and these names are used in scripture deliberately in ways that are context-dependent: Elohim deals justice, YHVH deals in mercy.

“Genesis tells two creation stories,” writes Rabbi Mark Glickman, “in the first, Elohim is the Creator, in the second, the creator is YHVH Elohim. To reconcile the accounts, ancient rabbis argued that God first tried to create the world using only justice, and it didn’t work.”

I’m very much a Darwinist by trade, but the message of this rings true to me. To exact change, to make something sustainable, we must do so with justice that is tempered by compassion.

Now, compassion does not mean, “try to understand neo-Nazis and justify their actions.” What compassion does mean, at least in part, is to show kindness and solidarity to other groups who are being hurt, even when we ourselves are licking our wounds and trying to find our feet. It means to support one another, even when we ourselves have trouble standing. It means speaking up for those whose voices are hoarse and raw from screaming. It means using our visibility to shed light on stories that are sequestered to shadows. It means form a patchwork quilt of community, which, when stitched together and reinforced, is warm, strong and unbreakable.

These are dark times. I say this not with the intent to be dramatic or prosaic, but simply factual. But that doesn’t mean we can’t kick at it until it bleeds something more hopeful. That being said, if we want any chance of making it out alive, we’ve got to get to work.

Sasha Kaye is currently studying in London, England. An alumnus of King David High School and the University of British Columbia, she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London in performance science after her studies in classical voice performance and psychology at UBC. She was recently awarded a master’s of science with distinction for her research on the use of simulation technology as part of an intervention strategy to manage performance-anxiety symptoms. Now a doctoral student at RCM, Kaye is working to identify areas where elite musicians may require additional support to thrive in life, rather than simply survive.

GA pitches softballs to Bibi

Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, addresses the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, in Tel Aviv Oct. 24. (photo by Pat Johnson)

The theme of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Tel Aviv was “We need to talk.” The conference was explicitly dedicated to confronting the issues that divide Jews and alienate the Diaspora from Israel. But, when the moment came to meet with the most powerful man in Israel, conference organizers folded like a house of cards.

Outgoing chair of the board of trustees of the JFNA, Richard Sandler, sat with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on a stage and performed what Haaretz rightly dismissed as a “fawning” conversation. More Oprah than interlocutor, Sandler first offered belated birthday wishes to the prime minister, then proceeded with one softball lob after another, allowing Netanyahu to control the dialogue – which he could have done more effectively if he had delivered a conventional address instead of the folksy sit-down – while Sandler offered no resistance or challenge to anything the prime minister said.

The JFNA is a non-partisan organization, of course. But the very nature of this meeting was to frankly confront the very real divisions between Jewish people in the Diaspora and those in Israel.

Here was the first question: “I’m just wondering, when you were back in high school or college, did you ever imagine someday you would be the prime minister of Israel, and would you share with us a little bit of the path from that time to what got you here?”

Even Netanyahu seemed a bit embarrassed by the question and offered assurances that he was not, in childhood or young adulthood, some Machiavellian born with his sights on the levers of power. What seasoned politician would respond to such a question with, “Yes, I’ve been planning this since I toddled”?

Next question: “I’m wondering, in all the years you’ve been doing this, how do you see the relationship between our two countries, between Israel and the United States, evolving – and what concerns you most, if anything, about that relationship today?”

“If anything”? Thousands of people had traveled from North America to Israel to address the very tangible friction points between the two Jewish communities and the inteviewer effectively invited the prime minister to assert that everything is rainbows and unicorns. And Netanyahu accepted the offering. Everything is pretty great, he contended. The trajectory of American support for Israel is increasing, he said. When he and his wife walk around Central Park or visit the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, they get warmly welcomed. The audience of 1,300 at a performance of Hamilton gave him a standing ovation. (“How did you get tickets?” heckled an audience member. “My cousin’s wife works in the production,” the PM replied.)

Then it was time for the interviewer to get tough.

“One of the things that we spoke about, Mr. Prime Minister, that we’ve been talking about the last couple of days, are all the things that we have in common,” said Sandler, moving in for the kill, “We’re having frank discussions on some of the issues that concern many North American Jews and I’m sure you are aware, as I am, that we have a number of concerns about pluralism, acceptance of Reform and Conservative Jews here in Israel, the Nation State Law and.…”

At this point, Sandler’s words were drowned out by applause from an audience who seemed to think they were finally going to get some red meat. Instead, Sandler asked, “Are we missing something? And where do we have it right?”

“I don’t think you should be concerned, but I think you should be informed,” Netanyahu responded to a room filled with the leadership of every major Jewish community in North America. “So much of this is – let me be charitable – misinformation.”

Netanyahu went on to say that, from the first prime minister on down, Israel’s leaders have managed the status quo by making modest, incremental compromises.

“We have a series of slowly evolving arrangements and that reflects the evolution of the Israeli electorate,” he said. On the issue of an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, Netanyahu acknowledged a delay in the opening, but insisted his goal remains a place where women and men can pray together.

On a two-state solution, Netanyahu dismissed the terminology. “I believe that a potential solution is one in which the Palestinians have all the powers to govern themselves but not the power to threaten us,” he said. “What does that mean?”

He explained by recounting a conversation with then-U.S. vice-president Joe Biden.

“Well, Bibi,” Netanyahu said, describing the discussion, “are you for two states or are you not? I said, Joe, I don’t believe in labels.”

Netanyahu committed that Israel would retain security control west of the Jordan River, envisioning a situation where Palestinians would govern themselves but that overall security would remain in the hands of the Israeli military. This is not only good for Israel, the prime minister said, but for Palestinians, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel uncovered and foiled a plan by Hamas to not only overthrow Abbas, but to murder him, Netanyahu said. Without Israel’s military control in the West Bank, Hamas would swoop in, overthrow Abbas’s Fatah and Israel would have another Gaza to the east.

“They’d be overrun in two minutes,” he said.

This is all true enough, perhaps, and the first job of the prime minister of Israel is to ensure the security of his country and people. But, in acknowledging that his position would negate the possibility of an independent Palestinian state, Netanyahu reduced it to a matter of nomenclature.

“Give it any name you want,” he said. “But that’s the truth. And this truth is shared much more widely across the political spectrum than people understand, because we’re not going to imperil the life of the state for a label or for a good op-ed for six hours in the New York Times.” Like a flailing comedian, Netanyahu then turned to the audience and complained, “Nobody’s laughing.”

Sandler’s final question to the prime minister was, “What are you the most proud of about Israel today that you want us to think about when we’re going home?” And Netanyahu offered a response worthy of the question, a meandering reflection on visiting a synagogue in his family’s ancestral home of Lithuania.

As the loudspeaker was trying to advise people to remain in their seats while the prime minister’s entourage departed, Netanyahu, already standing for his farewell, interrupted to take the opportunity to tell the audience that his real concern for the Jewish people was the loss of identity. “It’s not conversion,” he said. “It’s the loss of identity.”

He warned, “Jewish survival is guaranteed in the Jewish state if we defend our state. But we have to also work at the continuity of Jewish communities in the world by developing Jewish education, the study of Hebrew and the contact of young Jews coming to Israel.”

He talked about additional funding for programs to support study-abroad programs in Israel and other things the Jewish state is doing to advance the strengthening of Jewish peoplehood.

Given the last word at the close of the three-day conference – a meeting explicitly convened to address contentious issues between the parties – Israel’s prime minister took the opportunity to school the leaders of Diaspora Jewry in how their shortcomings could imperil Jewish survival. Then he departed.

Recalling the heyday of radio

The writer’s father listening to the radio, circa 1940. (photo from Libby Simon)

This black-and-white picture, lined with age, was taken of Papa in about 1940. His attire reflects a time when a vest was commonly worn under a man’s suit jacket. It is rarely seen today, nor is the armband on his shirtsleeve. His white shirt makes the ensemble too formal to be worn at home, especially with his often-repaired dress shoes. But Papa was a Hebrew teacher and, perhaps uniquely to him, he always dressed as if he were going out. The bare, worn floor reveals a modest home, not uncommon in the 1930s, considering the widespread impacts of the Great Depression.

He sits in rapt attention, hunched on a stool, his expression tense, his eyes fixed on an old, brown, wooden floor radio. We grew up with that radio the way people grow up today with television. It connected our family with the outside world, but each for different reasons. As immigrants, Yiddish was our first language and, for him, radio undoubtedly served as an opportunity to hone his English, as well as to receive its messages. Although I was still a preschooler, I remember what he was listening to because the scene in this photo was repeated several times every day from 1939 to 1945, the years of the Second World War. Papa was listening to the news. But the true catastrophic human saga unfolding beyond the photo, even as he listened, would not emerge until after the war ended.

Fortunately, we here in Canada escaped the devastating fate of our relatives. As a child, I was only aware that certain foods were rationed, like tea, coffee, sugar and butter. My four brothers and I would fight over the krychik (Yiddish for the end piece of a rye bread). It was not the bread itself, but the limited availability of butter on the krychik that made this a special treat worthy enough to be fought over. If Papa were home, he would assign it to me as the youngest and as the only girl, much to the dismay of my brothers. But the rations coupon books provided by the Canadian government gradually extended to include many other staples, such as meat, cheese and evaporated milk. These were needed for the soldiers and the war effort.

I also remember short musical promotions appealing to Canadians to buy Victory Bonds. As a second-grader, I stood up in class one day and patriotically sang one such little ditty, which still reverberates in my memory. My substitution of the word “bun” for “bond” exposes my childhood ignorance that I only came to realize in retrospect as an adult. The lyrics go as follows:

“Buy a ‘bun’ V for Victory / Show you’re fond of your liberty / Keep on buying to keep them flying, / And don’t ever stop till they’re over the top.

“Every dollar makes Hitler holler / And every ‘bun’ you buy will make him groan / So help flood our Chest, / Do your best and invest / In Canada’s Victory Loan.

“Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”

The radio became such a central focus and source of news that, when the war ended in 1945, I wondered what would happen to it. “Papa,” I asked, “now that the war is over, will they close the radio?”

“Why do you think they will close the radio?”

“Because,” I answered, “what else would they have to talk about?”

It was then I learned that radio not only delivered news about war. It also provided entertainment. For example, I discovered Hockey Night in Canada. My brothers and I would huddle around the radio every Saturday night and listen to Foster Hewitt, in his inimitable high-pitched excitement shout, “He shoots! He scores!” The contagion caused a clutch of five kids to holler in unison along with the sound of the roaring crowd – but only for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In time, I became a hockey aficionado, and could spout names like Syl Apps, Turk Broda or even Conn Smythe, their manager. Establishment of the Hot Stove League began during those early years and continues to this day.

We used to listen to shows like John & Judy, a serial about life in a small Canadian city, and Share the Wealth, with Bert Pearl. And Second World War songs filled the airwaves, like the “White Cliffs of Dover,” referring to the Battle of Britain. “We’ll Meet Again,” a song that resonated especially with soldiers off to battle and their families and sweethearts who had the heartbreak of waiting and not knowing if they would ever return.

Papa’s faded photo tells not only a personal story, but the story of many in Canada. It also highlights the role of radio in our lives. It served to bring the world into our homes between two catastrophic events – the Great Depression and the Second World War. We cannot overlook its importance as a medium of communication that brought the world into millions of living rooms across the country.

Of course, time brings change. My parents are long gone and my siblings and I have dispersed across North America. Radio was eventually muscled out by television but, today, you can “turn your radio on” in a resurgence of popularity. As a segment of mass media, the power of radio has infiltrated our lives again, even on the internet. And, online, you can go back to your childhood with “retro music” and shows like Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger. It still connects us, though without taking up nearly as much floor space.

Libby Simon, MSW, worked in child welfare services prior to joining the Child Guidance Clinic in Winnipeg as a school social worker and parent educator for 20 years. Also a freelance writer, her writing has appeared in Canada, the United States, and internationally, in such outlets as Canadian Living, CBC, Winnipeg Free Press, PsychCentral and Cardus, a Canadian research and educational public policy think tank.

Exercise your right to vote

(news.gov.bc.ca)

British Columbians have been tasked, once again, with voting on whether or not to change our electoral system.

Until Nov. 30, we are being asked to choose what voting system we should use for provincial elections, whether to keep the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system or switch to one of three proportional representation (PR) voting systems offered on the ballot. This is our third referendum on electoral reform, the 2005 and 2009 votes having chosen the status quo rather than change to a single transferable vote system. While the STV forms a component of one of our choices this time around, it is not one of the systems being proposed.

The 24-page voter’s guide from Elections BC describes our current system, FPTP: “the province is divided into electoral districts and each district is represented by one member of the legislative assembly (MLA). Voters mark their ballot for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes in the district wins and represents the district in the legislature. The number of seats a party gets in the legislature equals the number of districts its candidates win.”

In PR, however, “the share of seats a political party wins in the legislative assembly is about the same as the party’s share of the popular vote. So, if a party receives 40 percent of the popular vote, they are likely to have about 40 percent of the seats in the legislature. There are many different voting systems that are designed to produce proportional results.”

Indeed, there are dozens of variations on the PR theme, and herein lies one of the problems with the 2018 referendum. British Columbians will be asked: 1) which system, FPTP or PR, should be used for provincial elections, and 2) if a PR system were to be adopted, which of three systems – mixed member, rural-urban or dual member – we would prefer. There will be no second referendum, as there was in New Zealand, asking us whether we would prefer FPTP or the majority-chosen type of PR, with its details fleshed out by a parliamentary, expert or other committee.

We are, in essence, being asked to take our best, semi-educated guess as to which of three vaguely described PR options might yield better results than FPTP. Several key factors are “to be determined” after the referendum results, if PR is chosen, such as how electoral boundaries will change, how candidate lists would be drawn up, the total number of MLAs to be elected, how coalition governments would be formed. All of these elements determine how effective a PR system will be in producing a more responsive, diverse and balanced government. And we will not have a direct say in these decisions.

There is no way in this limited amount of space that we can satisfactorily explain all of the PR systems being put forward in the referendum. Readers should go to elections.bc.ca/referendum for the basics and research as best they can. This may not yield satisfactory results, however, because only one of the referendum’s PR options is actually in use in other countries; the other two are theoretical at this point. Mixed member PR is used in New Zealand, Germany, Scotland, Mexico and other countries, while the rural-urban system combines approaches used in various countries and the dual-member version is akin to a system Prince Edward Island once used (but no longer does) and also, according to one pro-PR website, “echoes our own voting history,” as British Columbia had multi-member ridings until the 1990s.

So, what do to then if we treat this referendum as less of a choice between which PR system we prefer and more of a choice between keeping the status quo and changing to a new system?

Vote PR BC and the No BC Proportional Representation Society each received $500,000 in government funding to advocate for and against PR, respectively. However, you will find little in-depth information from these sources. Think tanks and other groups have tried to fill in the gaps of knowledge but, perhaps not surprisingly, there’s valid-sounding evidence on both sides of the issue. For each piece of evidence supporting PR – such as it will end adversarial politics and hold politicians more to account – there is an evidence-based opposite finding. How many of us will look at all the studies, check the sources and determine how rigorous and accurate the conclusions are? Likely very few of us.

For what it’s worth, among the supporters of PR, you will find the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the B.C. NDP and B.C. Green Party. Among those skeptical of it are the right-leaning Fraser Institute and the B.C. Liberals. At the end of the day, most of us will probably base our decision on the opinions of those people and organizations with whom we agree on other subjects. We also will consider what we know personally (as opposed to filtered through another researcher’s lens) of PR systems elsewhere in the world, such as in Israel – even though the specific Israeli form of PR is not one of those on the B.C. ballot, it is similar. Some of us might opt for change for change’s sake, and others will stick with the devil we know. It might comfort some voters to know that, if we choose change, there will be another referendum in two election cycles to see if we want to return to FPTP or stay the course.

Knowledge is power and we recommend that voters do the absolute best to educate themselves about the various alternatives. But don’t be discouraged if you’re still uncertain after your research. Both FPTP and PR have their strengths and weaknesses. However, a vital aspect of both FPTP and PR – and one that directly speaks to the health of our democracy no matter what the electoral system – is that people exercise their right to vote. Whatever your choice, please fill out your ballot when you get it in the mail.