Opinion – Page 70

Why I collect

I never set out to be a collector. Whenever I read about millionaires with fabulous private collections of art and sculpture, I thought, why not just keep a few pieces you really love and give the rest on loan to a museum or gallery so that others can share their beauty?

Yet, I find now that I do have collections. They’re not worth any money and probably no one else would want them. Most people in my age group have accumulated possessions they can’t bear to part with, despite moving homes and maybe even countries several times in their lives.

Who remembers that song of yesteryear: “Among My Souvenirs”? Part of the lyrics were: “Some letters tied with blue, a photograph or two, I find a rose from you, among my souvenirs.”

What we are collecting are memories. There are moments we want to hold on to forever and, when we handle these mementoes, they bring a smile, a tear, a bittersweet wave of nostalgia.

I have more than a thousand books, and nowhere to put them all. Many are paperbacks, yellowed pages and tattered covers. But, to throw them out would be like disposing of dear friends. Lots of poetry – some by almost-forgotten writers like Alice Duer Miller, Rupert Brooke, A.E. Housman, Dorothy Parker. Novels by Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, Steinbeck. Volumes of Jewish essays, which provide great divrei Torah. Books on philosophy, psychology, the craft of writing. They all represent my youth, when I discovered the world and the wonders it contained. No, I can’t throw them away!

Then there are the photos. They started out in albums, but there are too many and I’m too lazy. Beloved family no longer with us. Friends from long ago. Weddings. Babies, bright-eyed and dimpled. Rites of passage – first day at kindergarten and school, b’nai mitzvahs, graduations. Grandchildren. Holidays. They are all cherished, and overflow from drawers and cabinets.

Bric-à-brac. One earring (the other lost), given by my first boyfriend. Small children’s drawings. Their clumsy efforts at making you things from wood or papier mâché. A challah cloth with crooked stitches. A letter on a torn page that proclaims in shaky Hebrew letters, “Savta, I love you.” How could you ever toss those?

I also have a collection of shells and rocks. Most were gifts from grandchildren who wanted to give me something in return for the toys I gave them. There is a pinecone. There are stones I gathered at the Dead Sea on my sister’s last visit, when we spent a perfect, quiet day together, exchanging memories of our parents and siblings, our childhood, the dreams we realized and the ones we lost along the way. All precious. All irreplaceable.

“Get rid of the clutter,” we’re told. Not me. I shall go on collecting mementoes and memories until I die. And I hope my children, even then, will save a few of them. Because some things are worth more than money.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She has written 14 books, including The Pomegranate Pendant, which was made into a movie, and her latest novella, Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at dwaysman@gmail.com or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

Confront racism

On Remembrance Day, pro-Nazi posters were discovered at War Memorial Gym on the University of British Columbia campus. The posters depicted Nazi soldiers with the words “Lest we forget / The true heroes of WWII.”

This incident followed the discovery earlier in the week of antisemitic drawings on a chalkboard in the forestry faculty. Rabbi Philip Bregman, executive director of Hillel BC, sent an email to the community thanking the Forestry Undergraduate Society for making a clear statement of solidarity. While this is the good news, he wrote, there is also bad news. Students are reporting that the latest incidents are a “tip of the iceberg” of similar expressions and depictions that go unreported.

Earlier this month, white supremacist and antisemitic posters also appeared at the University of Victoria. “(((Those))) who hate us / Will not replace us,” read a poster. The use of triple parentheses is a method used online to identify Jews. The fear of white people being “replaced” by non-white people is a recurring theme in the white supremacist movement.

These incidents are local iterations of a larger and obviously deeply troubling phenomenon occurring worldwide. In part a response to the movement of refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, far-right groups in Europe have grown significantly in recent years. This is evident in the horrifying rally of an estimated 60,000 neo-Nazis, hyper-nationalists and racists in Warsaw, Poland, last weekend. And it is underscored by the neutrality or even affirming noises from those in positions of power at the sight of ralliers carrying signs urging “Clean blood,” “Pray for an Islamic holocaust” and “Jews out of Poland.”

Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party has informal connections with some of the extremist groups that organized Saturday’s rally. Poland’s foreign ministry, on the one hand, condemned the xenophobic, antisemitic and racist messaging, but, on the other hand, called the event “a great celebration of Poles.” The country’s interior minister called the rallying extremists “a beautiful sight.”

This sort of equivocation from leaders is perhaps as worrying, or more so, than the rallying mobs themselves. While the past year has seen numerous European far-right parties fail to live up to expectations in elections, their strength is nevertheless very concerning.

On the subject of elections … off-year elections in the United States last week delivered a strong rebuke to the U.S. president. Although polls indicate that 36% of American voters would vote for him again, no president in the history of polling has been this unpopular this early in his mandate. This is, perhaps, a sign that most Americans are turning against the divisiveness and xenophobia that this president advances.

Encouraging as that may be, possibly (wishfully) portending his defeat in 2020, the damage he is doing to the civil fabric of the country is incalculable. It is saddening to see the president of the United States overtly promote racism against Mexicans and people from Muslim-majority countries, threatening one group with a wall and the other with a travel ban that has been repeatedly deemed unconstitutional by the courts. Among his supporters are openly racist and white supremacist activists.

All of this is to say that the world is experiencing a time of extremism. Rather than throw up our hands in despair, this is a time to rededicate ourselves to the values that motivate us, the values for which Canadian and other Allied soldiers fought.

The posters at B.C. universities should be enough to sweep away any complacency we may have about our shores being free from this sort of racist ideology. This is a good thing. Canadians have a right to be proud of our comparatively decent record of multicultural harmony, but smugness is a blinder that can allow us to ignore very real undercurrents. We must be vigilant in calling out evil ideology when we see it at home and abroad.

The Holocaust in literature

This academic year marks the second session of Writing Lives, a two-semester project at Langara College, coordinated by instructor Dr. Rachel Mines. Writing Lives is a partnership between Langara, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Azrieli Foundation. This fall, students are learning about the Holocaust by studying literary and historical texts. In January, students will begin interviewing local Holocaust survivors and will write their memoirs on the basis of the interviews. Students are keeping journals of their personal reflections on their experiences as Writing Lives participants. Many students used their most recent journal entry to reflect on the value of literature in transmitting Holocaust memory. Here are a few excerpts.

The role of literature in preserving history is controversial but important. Understandably, there are people who are reluctant or even vehemently opposed to recording the Holocaust through the lens of art, concerned that the act of rewriting events in a fictional context may undermine the significance of the tragedy. Others may worry that historical inaccuracies are inevitable in these artistic works, thus doing a disservice to the victims and betraying their memories.

I would argue otherwise: that literature and historical facts can and should build upon one another, used to educate and not obscure. For me, reading our history textbook this semester has not always been easy, but reading the short story A Ghetto Dog by Isaiah Spiegel took the experience to a different level. Such is the power of narrative. As Menachem Kaiser wrote in his article “The Holocaust’s uneasy relationship with literature” (The Atlantic, Dec. 28, 2010), “literature affects us in ways that even the most brutal history cannot.” Literature makes the event close, immediate and personal. It’s hard for me to imagine being a Jew in Second World War Europe, but personal accounts and narratives come close to letting us immerse ourselves in the tragedy.

– Athina Leung

In his article “The Holocaust’s uneasy relationship with literature,” Kaiser argues that Holocaust literature is an important part of history. It can provide the emotional connection that reading facts cannot. It is a window to understand what people felt without having to experience the ordeal that the characters or author went through. Literature has the power to move the human heart. Facts are important, but they do not give the reader the ability to connect with history in ways that a more emotional and personal experience can provide.

– Tina Macaspac

I found the assigned reading, “The Holocaust’s uneasy relationship with literature,” to be incredibly relevant and thought-provoking. This article discusses the various difficulties associated with Holocaust literature, including the opinion by some historians that the only valid way to recount the Holocaust is through historical facts and memoirs. I agree that acquiring factual knowledge about the Holocaust is integral, and that reading historical documents is essential. However, I find myself disagreeing with the perspective that Holocaust literature is distasteful or discrediting to the Holocaust. Rather, literature provides an alternative, more emotional perspective that one cannot acquire from reading a fact-based history textbook. This week, for example, we read the short story A Ghetto Dog, which narrates the tale of the Jewish widow Anna and her dog Nicky. While I was aware of the facts (in this case, Jews being rounded up by Nazi troops) from a historical perspective, the story emphasized the feelings of helplessness and exhaustion that Holocaust victims and survivors felt. It touched a part of me in a way that facts and statistics could not.

– Emma Proctor

In A Ghetto Dog, the widow Anna and her dog Nicky are persecuted under the Nazi regime and forced to move into a ghetto. It is very clear from the beginning that Nicky is extremely important to Anna, and that he is her last remaining tie, not only to her deceased husband, but to her home.

The Nazis took livestock and any useful animals away from the Jewish people in order to make a profit. The livestock had value, which is why they were kept alive. People’s dogs, however, were not valuable to the Nazis, and that is one reason the dogs were killed.

Another reason was psychological. To the Nazis, it was important to wound people emotionally in order to conquer them. In the story, there were Jewish children dragging their dogs on ropes and leashes, bringing their pets, beloved family members, to be put to death. Dogs were part of a support system and, as with Anna, were reminders of home. To kill these dogs was to kill hope of return. The deaths of dogs were a stern reminder that just as easily as they could kill animals, Nazis could kill humans.

– Yukiko Takahashi-Lai

Trouble with the census

These are not easy days for print media, so it was with a bit of dark humour that your devoted scribes here at the Independent reacted to the latest tranche of Canadian census information released last week.

According to the census, the number of Jews in Canada fell to 143,665 in 2016 from 309,650 five years earlier – a precipitous decline of more than 50%. Looking on the bright side, we concluded that, by that measure, this newspaper’s circulation had just doubled based on the proportion of Canadian Jews who subscribe. Great news, right?

But the census figures are actually not a laughing matter. Governments at all levels rely on this information to make determinations about spending allocations, policy determinations and all manner of decisions. Likewise, nonprofit organizations, think tanks and academics base their research and outreach on the figures, providing Canadian society, decision-makers and legislators with evidence-based policy recommendations and solutions to tough problems.

The Jewish community in Canada faces a number of challenges, including assimilation, de-affiliation and low birth rates among most denominations. But a decline of 50% in five years does not reflect any or all of these issues. There is a larger structural concern. To have a population decline with such speed is clearly a sign of flawed science, an issue immediately identified by various experts when the numbers were released.

In 2011, during that census, Canadians were asked to identify their ethnicity and “Jewish” was among the 24 examples offered. More than 250 ethnic identities were reported, however, and the examples on the 2016 census form were determined based on the most prevalent responses from 2011. This did not include “Jewish.”

Without “Jewish” as a choice, some scholars and policy analysts suspect that many Jews selected “Canadian” as a response or may have entered their or their ancestors’ countries of origin, for example, “Russian” or “French.”

Calculating the number of Jews in North America has never been an exact science. A century ago, some jurisdictions estimated the number of Jews based on school absenteeism during the High Holidays.

But technology and systems for assembling and analyzing data have improved over time so that estimates of populations and identities should have become easier and more reliable. That said, we cannot expect to arrive at accurate answers if we do not ask the proper questions. No matter how advanced the systems, software or algorithms, bad data will result in bad analysis.

While it makes some sense that Statistics Canada failed to include “Jewish” as an example – given the reasonable explanation that the examples they chose were based on the most common responses from the previous census – the problem raises the issue of how much the prompts given, or the wording of the census questions in general, affect the results. It also raises concerns about the lack of understanding and consensus about Jewish identity. This confusion is not limited to government apparatchiks, but to many Jews ourselves.

Judaism is a religion. Jewish is an ethnic identity. There are Jews who are atheists and do not adhere to Judaism, but this does not negate their Jewish ethnicity. (This is additionally problematic, it should be noted, because identifying Jews – and using proscribed genealogical theorems to do so – has been a tool used to discriminate against us and in the service of genocide.) Even discussing ethnicity is a fraught topic today, with a hearty discussion taking place right now over the inclusion of Jews under the larger “white” umbrella.

If there is one thing we can perhaps agree on it is that ticking boxes on a form, by definition, literally forces people into figurative boxes. This may not raise difficulties if one identifies straightforwardly as, say, “French” and “Roman Catholic” or “Scottish” and “United Church.” It may be easy for an individual who is a religious Jew to identify themselves as Jewish both in religion and ethnicity. But those whose religious identity may not align precisely with their Jewish ethnicity can stare at a census form and choose an identity that does not entirely comport with their reality.

Even the foregoing statements, broad generalizations that they are, should raise some debate over the accuracy of self-definition and the meanings of the term “Jewish.” While we may not have captured everyone’s interpretation of what the term “Jewish” means to them, this is evidence of the larger case: that forcing people with complex identities to tick one box on a form is to force square pegs into round holes. It creates a challenge for Jewish Canadians. And, in a country that prides itself on encouraging self-expression and welcoming diversity, the census problem raises questions that go to the heart of multifaceted identities and Canada’s willingness to recognize them.

Before the next census, in 2021, Jewish Canadians should have a collective discussion that helps us clarify our own relationships with the terms “ethnicity” and “religion,” and then ensure that the government understands that counting populations accurately requires a recognition of the complexities.

Lifelong Jewish relationships

Awhile back, I was talking on the phone to my mom in Virginia. Oh, she said, your dad is busy. He’s out at the cemetery. It turned out that he had taken one of my brothers with him. The two of them used their fix-it skills to mend a broken gravestone. The next time I visited the Jewish cemetery in Alexandria, Va., my dad pointed out the neatly mended marker. The person had died 100 years before. Despite good records, they couldn’t find any surviving family to maintain the gravestone. So, my dad and brother stepped up to the job.

Reading the Torah portion for this Shabbat, Chayei Sarah (Sarah’s Life), Genesis 21:1-25:18, makes me think about this cemetery story. This week’s portion is full of family lifecycle events. Here’s a quick summary from the ReformJudaism.org website:

Abraham purchases the cave of Machpelah in order to bury his wife Sarah. (23:1-20)
Abraham sends his servant to find a bride for Isaac. (24:1-9)
Rebekah shows her kindness by offering to draw water for the servant’s camels at the well. (24:15-20)
The servant meets Rebekah’s family and then takes Rebekah to Isaac, who marries her. (24:23-67)
Abraham takes another wife, named Keturah. At the age of 175, Abraham dies, and Isaac and Ishmael bury him in the cave of Machpelah. (25:1-11)

There is so much in this portion that it’s lucky we reread it every year. The first thing I noticed is how the Hittites, who owned the land around Machpelah, honoured Abraham. They valued him so much that they tried to give him the burial land for free – but Abraham honoured them back, and made an effort to pay for it. This exchange reminded me of how careful we need to be in managing Jewish burial sites. My mom has often had the opportunity to help families who need a cemetery plot and don’t have one. “Real estate” in Jewish cemeteries can be expensive. Sometimes it’s hard to get a spot when there’s an unexpected family death. The bottom line? Nobody comes out of this alive, so let’s help each other when dealing with death.

Next issue: finding the right life partner. Abraham works hard to find Isaac the right wife. Although love matches are usual these days, your family’s opinion is often pretty useful in making such a big choice. Rebekah makes a good impression.

Abraham then remarries. Rashi indicates that Keturah is actually Hagar, although other commentators disagree. In any case, this brings up another issue. Some people vilify Hagar, but here it seems that some believe she and Abraham are actually a likely couple. They go on to have several more children. How does that work? When one marries again and has more children, does parenting differ? Do religious differences work themselves out? How is it that some people outlaw intermarriage, and refuse to incorporate kids from intermarried families, when it was clearly prevalent in the Bible?

When Abraham dies, Ishmael helps Isaac bury him. However, Isaac’s name is mentioned first. Why? Some rabbis indicate this is because Ishmael repented and acknowledged Isaac’s superiority, even though Ishmael is older. Others indicate that, since Sarah was Abraham’s wife, her son should go first, before Hagar’s. While this sort of discussion about whose name is first seems out of date, we need only look at the succession of the British (Commonwealth) monarchy to acknowledge that we still look at birth order with some importance. How has our view of this changed over time?

Also, if Ishmael is the father of Islam, was this an interfaith funeral? Or just two brothers who loved their father?

This week’s portion also relates to Remembrance Day. How do we dal with profound issues of life and death? How do we confront mortality, embrace issues of loyalty and honour, while embracing our family responsibilities to the living? What are our priorities? Why?

As my family walked through that old cemetery in Virginia, we passed familiar names on gravestones. My dad told stories about the different family friends he knew during their lives. My uncle, visiting from Boston, chimed in. The conversation continued. We also celebrated another important milestone in life with my uncle. He and his high school friend Don were celebrating 50 years of friendship this year, too.

Someone recently said that my newspaper columns are about relationships. I’d suggest that the primary relationship I explore here is with Judaism. Many of us associate our religion with other people, in a sort of club or tribe mentality. However, what if we saw it as a tool? Imagine Judaism as a tool that helps us navigate life’s events and how to behave with others.

If so, we can often use a Torah portion as a guide – just as we might do with other kinds of literature or non-fiction – on how to respectfully bury our dead, and maintain meaningful relationships with family members and also in the wider Jewish and non-Jewish communities. We can offer support, as the Hittites did, in a time of grief. We can build new or rekindle relationships, as Abraham did with Keturah.

Sometimes, doing the right thing might mean repairing a gravestone for someone who is long gone. Maintaining long relationships with friends or with communities takes a different kind of work – emotional as well as physical upkeep. Do we put the same amount of effort into our relationship with understanding Judaism as well?

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and is a regular columnist for Winnipeg’s Jewish Post and News. She is the author of the book 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.

Winning with grace

It was the model of dignity and decorum in a ludicrous situation. When Israeli judoka Tal Flicker won a gold medal last week at the Judo Grand Slam in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, his excitement was diminished by the Emirati host federation. Because of Flicker’s nationality, the UAE refused to play the winner’s national anthem or raise his nation’s flag. Instead, while the gold medal winner stood under a flag of the International Judo Federation and the federation’s theme song played, Flicker had to quietly sing his own private rendition of Hatikvah, the Israeli anthem.

Similarly, when Israel’s Tohar Butbul beat an Emirati judoka, the defeated competitor turned his back on Butbul’s extended hand, carrying through the tournament’s motif of betraying the values of judo in particular, and sports more generally.

Israel went on to win five medals in all at the tournament, with the rudeness by Emirati organizers repeated again and again. (The Israeli team was also forced to remove their nation’s flag from their uniforms.) Yet Flicker’s grace, and that of the other winners, was a model that Israelis and Jews worldwide – indeed, anyone with a smidgen of sportsmanship – should admire.

In what was a small consolation, two senior Emirati sports officials later apologized to the head of the Israeli judo delegation for the loser’s refusal to shake Butbul’s hand. But there has been no apology for the larger silliness around the Israelis’ participation in the competition.

In an ideal world, international sports federations and other bodies would reward behaviour like the UAE’s by preventing them from hosting major events for a specific period and demanding in advance that the most basic tenets of sportsmanship be respected by any country that hopes to host.

In the bigger picture, the incident demonstrates the absurd treatment Israel receives in the international community more broadly. The latest example, which also happens to involve the UAE, occurred on Monday in Paris at the 39th general conference of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The UAE struck a commemorative medal to mark the renovation of UNESCO’s conference room. The medals feature a portrait of Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE’s finance minister (a keepsake for sure!) and one was left on the desk of every UNESCO member-state except … the Jewish one.

“The state of Israel has no need for gifts,” said Carmel Shama-Hacohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, “but this ugly and uncivilized step, here in the world’s organization for culture and education, which follows the outrageous treatment of our judokas during the tournament in the UAE’s capital, shows how much hatred, incitement and dark mentality surround these people.”

And so it seems.

Balfour after 100 years

Balfour Street in Jerusalem. (photo by Pat Johnson)

One hundred years ago, on Nov. 2, 1917, one of history’s most consequential letters was typed. Simple and short, the Balfour Declaration, as it would become known, is a central artifact in the history of Zionism, the state of Israel and the ongoing conflict over claims to the land on which Israelis and Palestinians reside.

The letter from the British foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, was addressed to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader in the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It informed Rothschild that the British cabinet had approved this one-paragraph statement:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The letter was enormously historic for a number of reasons, not least that the first Zionist Congress had taken place a mere 20 years earlier, the first tangible expression in two millennia that the Jewish people should reasonably anticipate self-determination in the land of Zion. And now one of the world’s great powers was on record as supporting the endeavour.

The letter was also hugely presumptuous because the area in question was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans would not be thoroughly vanquished by the British-French-Russian allies until 1918. Yet the allies were so confident of eventual victory that the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was already (on paper) carving up the region between the European powers.

Nevertheless, the document stood as a testament to British allegiance to the Zionist ideal in the interwar period. That allegiance, of course, amounted to very little in practical terms. In response to Arab protests (including mass murder in Hebron in 1929), the British froze Jewish migration to Palestine at the very moment in history when it was more urgently necessary than ever. The Holocaust – which can be said to have begun in earnest on Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, 21 years to the day after the Balfour Declaration was made public – occurred, of course, because of the Nazis’ Final Solution. But it could only have occurred in the enormous extent that it did because no other nation on earth would welcome the imperiled Jews of Europe. Palestine was the most obvious place for them to go, but British resolve folded in the face of Arab protest and Jews were trapped in Europe, where six million would die.

Likewise, the British commitment to Zionism amounted to nothing when it mattered again after the Holocaust. Still preventing widespread Jewish migration to Palestine, the British eventually gave up on the entire enterprise and threw the troubled land into the lap of the newly founded United Nations. The UN, for its part, eventually passed the Partition Resolution that would have seen two states – one Jewish, one Arab – formed in Palestine.

The reality remains that one significant sub-clause of the Balfour Declaration stands out to the contemporary eye. The statement that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” would certainly be viewed by many as remaining unfulfilled. The civil rights of non-Jewish citizens of Israel are protected in law, but serious inequalities remain. More significantly, the statelessness and associated lack of civil rights experienced by Palestinians in the Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank would certainly not live up to the well-intentioned words of Balfour.

Some say the British government should apologize for their role in advancing an independent Jewish state. British Prime Minister Theresa May batted that one back in a letter to her party’s Conservative Friends of Israel, saying, “We are proud of our role in creating the state of Israel.… The task now is to encourage moves toward peace.”

If apologies are in order, the British government might consider apologizing for giving little but lip-service to the Zionism enterprise throughout the 20th century.

The Balfour anniversary is an interesting time to reflect on history – and the past has an important role to play in informing us of the present. But, as always, we should keep our focus on the future.

America’s UNESCO exit

The United States and Israel will withdraw from UNESCO. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is one of the most impressive and vital global agencies addressing international cooperation on this range of human endeavours. Unfortunately, like the United Nations itself, which exemplifies unfulfilled promise, it has been coopted into the service of Israel-hating forces.

UNESCO does vitally important work advancing education as a basic human right, fostering cultural diversity and dialogue, and promoting heritage as “a bridge between generations and peoples.” It is also committed to “full freedom of expression; the basis of democracy, development and human dignity.”

The irony here is that, by succumbing to the influence of Israel-bashers, UNESCO is in cahoots with countries that betray the most basic concepts of free expression and democracy.

The U.S. State Department announced last week that it would quit UNESCO and, while insisting that Israel was unaware of the impending announcement and that the decision was uncoordinated between the two countries, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would follow its ally and also leave the agency.

Coincidentally or deliberately, UNESCO elected its first Jewish director general just days after the United States’ announcement. France’s former minister of culture, Audrey Azoulay, was elected to the leadership role, outpolling the Qatari perceived frontrunner, in a vote by UNESCO’s executive last Friday.

The United States was in arrears to UNESCO to the tune of $550 million and even a U.S. State Department spokesperson didn’t deny that money figured into the calculation. The United States stopped paying its dues to UNESCO in 2011, when the agency admitted “Palestine” as a full member state.

In July, UNESCO declared Hebron an endangered World Heritage site, diminishing the Jewish people’s ancient and contemporary connections to the city, home to the tombs of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

UNESCO has also adopted resolutions that call Jerusalem “occupied” territory, acknowledge Muslim but not Jewish historical connections to the Temple Mount area and repeatedly reinforced a common Palestinian position that Jews have little or no historical connection to the land of Israel.

The question is, do you stay and fight or give up and decamp in protest? A similar paradox occurred at the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. When it became clear that the event had been commandeered not only by anti-Zionist elements, but by some of the most antisemitic forces in the world, the United States and Israel walked out. Canada stayed. The Liberal government of the time justified the decision by saying they could remain as a voice of critical reason. There are legitimate cases to be made for both positions.

In choosing to leave the organization as a member but remain as an observer state, the United States found the right balance. They can continue to make their opposition to UNESCO excesses heard, without countenancing them morally or financially.

At least, that is how it would work in a world in which Donald Trump was not president of the United States. In this, as in so much, Trump changes everything. While the administration’s decision on UNESCO may be a decent one, in context with other decisions of the Trump administration, it becomes part of a retraction of American influence in and engagement with the world. Trump is motivated by spite, not by principle. While another president could have made the same move and explained it as a principled defence of the country’s most important ally in the Middle East, this president’s lack of principle and surfeit of malevolence relocates even defensible positions into a constellation of petty pique. Despite its manipulation by anti-Zionist ideologues, UNESCO remains an invaluable institution, doing much good work in the world. Even while maintaining observer status, the U.S. decision is likely to be read by critics not as a repudiation of what UNESCO does wrong, but as part of an ongoing American trend against all that is good in culture, science and education.

Context matters. Like Richard Nixon in China – OK, perhaps not really like that, but at least in the respect that a president with some credibility in areas relevant to UNESCO could get away with repudiating it – a president Hillary Clinton (or Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama) could have withdrawn from UNESCO and not made their country look like a collection of petty Philistines. When a president who has little demonstrated respect for culture, education or science withdraws from a global organization dedicated to these pursuits, it probably legitimizes UNESCO more than it delegitimizes it.

Worse for Jews, this tight friendship between Trump and Netanyahu reinforces perceptions of the Jewish people – or, at the very least, the Jewish state – as ideologically entwined with a figure who seems destined to go down as the most ineffectual and destructive president in American history. Not an enviable place to find oneself.

Need for interfaith learning

Have you heard about the sacred text in which the Almighty says, “Stand back from this community so that I may annihilate them in an instant?”

What about the king who gives permission to a people “to destroy, kill and annihilate the powers of any people or province that oppressed them, [even] young children and women, and to take their spoils.”

How do you feel about stoning a rebellious child?

That isn’t our religion! That’s not Judaism. It must be from some other religion’s holy book, right? Wrong. Actually, these come directly from the Tanach. Respectively: Numbers 16:21, Esther 8:11 and Deuteronomy 21:18.

Religious literature – heck, all literature – has concepts that might shock or offend. What about ideas that one doesn’t understand? Many educated people don’t read these sections as the literal truth. Thousands of years of commentators, in all religions, help us understand ideas that perhaps don’t make sense to modern sensibilities. These uncomfortable statements are sometimes proving a point by hyperbole, or creating metaphorical relationships to prove a point.

Many of us don’t take literature or anything we read – never mind the Torah – literally. We also know that, when something seems dubious, we should look it up. Use a dictionary, an online encyclopedia or even … a book.

Awhile back, an acquaintance sitting at a Shabbat table said something that seemed outrageous about Islam. His language and vehemence made me wish that there weren’t kids playing nearby. The man insisted he quoted the Koran correctly – nonetheless I felt concerned. Was he taking it out of context or distorting the point? When I got home, I looked it up. How? Easy, I have a copy of the Koran on my bookshelf. I took a whole course on the Koran as an undergraduate at Cornell.

Much of the time, we are too gullible. We believe what we read or hear from others or what we see reported in the news. We take it as true without thinking about it critically. We’re not always thinking about the words used in media reports … was the killer in Las Vegas a “lone wolf” or a “terrorist”? Does religion or race matter when it comes to how the media portrayed him? It does matter. A white man with Christian origins often doesn’t get called a terrorist or an extremist.

In that vein, many – including politicians and media commentators – feel free to make comments about Islam without actually reading the Koran. That sometimes results in a pretty skewed understanding of that faith tradition. Why am I talking about Islam? We live in a multicultural society. It’s important to know about our traditions and those of our neighbours.

Recently, Dr. Ruth Ashrafi gave a series of lectures to Catholics in Winnipeg about Judaism and the New Testament. She did it in connection with the Manitoba Interfaith Council, an important community organization. The president of the Interfaith Council is Belle Jarniewski, another member of the Jewish community.

These types of outreach efforts benefit everyone. Both Christianity and Islam have Jewish roots. Many Christians and Muslims want to learn more about Judaism. Further, Jews could learn a thing or two about others’ beliefs. Mutual understanding and education go a long way towards bridging differences and building on our common values. Ignorance breeds hate. We could all do with less of that, so let’s work on education.

It is easy to get whipped into a fervour when dealing with media reports or reading the newest bestselling polemical book about another people’s faith traditions. Yet, we aren’t experts in those traditions – unless we start from the beginning, read their holy texts, understand their customs, holidays and values before reading the newest polemic. Most of us aren’t even experts in our own traditions. When I was required to read the Hebrew Bible from beginning to end in graduate school, there were definitely upsetting things I read that I hadn’t known before. I had to read commentaries (both Jewish and non-Jewish ones) in order to get a better grip on what it contained.

I’m reminded, when seeing hot media rhetoric, of how my twins tell me about one of their fights. I hear the dramatic narrative from one side, and an entirely different tale from the other. The truth – or my understanding of their fight – lies somewhere in between all the different versions of their stories.

A friend of mine reads the news in multiple languages. If he has particular interest in one issue, he might use one piece of paper to take notes from all the international news sources. When he’s finished, he has created something like a Venn diagram. The news everyone seems to agree on, no matter the language or political agenda of the news source, is somewhere in the middle.

It’s only through study, asking questions and gaining knowledge that we become educated enough to understand difficult conflicts, religious disputes and political issues. We’d benefit from the programming of organizations such as the Manitoba Interfaith Council. As well, we can take time to read our sacred texts and others’ holy books in order to understand ourselves and our neighbours better.

Living an upright life as a Jew includes seriously taking responsibility for engaging with our foundational texts. Then, maybe, we’ll be living out our mandate as the People of the Book.

The next time you read a polemic against someone else’s religion (or your own) or hear a skewed media report and believe it without further research, remember that Venn diagram as a way towards better understanding.

We’re People of the Book. Maybe it’s time to crack some open? We can always learn more.

Sukkah more than symbolic

As we celebrate Sukkot this week, we’ll be thinking about many things – notably, how lucky the vast majority of us are to have a solid roof over our heads. For most of us, the sukkah is but a symbol of our wandering in the desert all those years ago, a symbol to remind us to be humble, empathetic, grateful. However, for many living in Metro Vancouver, including members of our own community, homelessness is a reality.

Last week, we ran a good news story from Tikva Housing Society – residents were moving into the recently completed Storeys complex in Richmond. The Diamond Residences at the Storeys will house six singles (five of whom are seniors) and 12 families. Tikva Housing is also working with various partners on the development of 32 townhouses in Vancouver, and they anticipate accepting residency applications by early 2018. These new projects are in addition to Tikva’s Dany Guincher House, in Vancouver – which has 11 units for people with low-income, people with disabilities who are independent and families fleeing abuse – and the Esther Dayson Rent Subsidy Program.

There is a lot of which to be proud. However, there is much more to do. Last year, Tikva Housing reported a decrease in donations to its rent subsidy program of more than $15,000. As a result, the organization had to decrease the monthly subsidy it provided to singles, couples and families.

According to Tikva, more than 16% of Jewish Vancouver residents – more than 4,200 people – are low-income and at least 450 Jewish children under the age of 15 in Vancouver are “living in households that depend on income assistance.” Its 2015 report on housing in Metro Vancouver concluded a need for 1,827 affordable housing units in the Jewish community, including for “those under 65, low-income singles, couples and families.” Calling this “an unreachable goal,” the report nonetheless suggests some solutions, most of which the Jewish community is already pursuing, such as rent subsidies and partnering with other agencies to develop new projects.

Yet, the problem remains. And, of course, it is not a problem unique to the Jewish community. On Sept. 26, the final report on Metro Vancouver’s 2017 Homeless Count was released. On the night of March 7, more than 1,200 volunteers conducted surveys throughout the region, on the streets and at shelters, “to obtain a 24-hour snapshot” of the situation. The final report confirmed the preliminary results – 3,605 were homeless in the metro area.

While there were four percent fewer homeless youth in 2017 as compared to 2014, there were five percent more homeless 55 and older. Overall, there was a 30% increase in homeless since 2014, “and the highest number since 2002, when the first metro-wide count occurred.”

According to the report, “The three most cited barriers to finding housing were the high cost of rent (50%), a lack of income (49%) and the lack of availability of housing that suits their needs (30%).” More than 80% of respondents reported having “at least one health condition, including addiction, mental illness, physical disability or a medical condition/illness. More than half of the respondents (52%) have two or more health conditions.” More than 40% of respondents received income assistance, 28% a disability benefit; 22% were employed.

Following the local Walk for Reconciliation on Sept. 24, where some 50,000 people – including an organized Jewish contingent – gathered downtown to join in a “call to action,” it is sobering to learn that 34% of the respondents of the Homeless Count self-identified as indigenous/aboriginal. “Indigenous people continue to represent about one-third of the homeless population in the region,” states the report, noting that it’s the highest proportion found to date in a regional count and “constitutes a strong over-representation compared to the total population, where two percent identify as aboriginal as per the 2011 Census.”

In a statement of the obvious, Mike Clay, chair of the Metro Vancouver Housing Committee, said, “In order to stem growing homelessness, it is clear we need more affordable housing options.”

But additional solutions are also needed, given the systematic discrimination that still exists for First Nations people and the health conditions many of the homeless are facing – and not only the homeless. Just last week, the Independent ran an article on the impact of addiction in our community. Jewish Addiction Community Service (JACS) Vancouver estimates that as many as 5,000 Jews in our community need support, “whether grappling with their own addiction issues or the addiction of a loved one.”

The Homeless Count’s findings most likely underestimate the problem. The report references the “hidden” homeless, which includes people “who do not have a regular address of their own where they have security of tenure, and who may be staying temporarily in another household – often called ‘couch surfing.’” The Tikva Housing press release about the new tenants at Storeys noted, “One 83-year-old woman cried when she was told she would be moving into a studio unit, as she has not had a place to live for years and was sleeping on someone’s couch.”

Then there are the tens of thousands of people at risk of becoming homeless. Apparently, housing shouldn’t account for more than 30% of a person’s or family’s gross income, yet the Homeless Count report notes there were 56,000 Metro Vancouver households in 2006 that spent more than 50% of their income on shelter, and the number had increased to 62,355 by 2011. (More recent data weren’t available but, based on skyrocketing housing costs, we can guess that the number of households spending 50% or more of their income on shelter has also increased.)

There is much to contemplate as we gather in our sukkot this week. And, once the holidays are over, once we celebrate Simchat Torah, thankful for the Jewish texts and traditions that have shaped the moral compass of even the most secular of us in some way, there is a lot of work to be done.