Category: Opinion

Importance of listening

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish (photo by Bob Talbot)

I was born in Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, southern Israel. My father, an Israeli-born Jew of Tunisian descent, began his residency in obstetrics and gynecology the following year. Joining him in the program was a Muslim-Palestinian doctor from Gaza, the first to do so in an Israeli hospital. Through their respective residencies, they grew to become close friends and remain so to this day. This is the story of how that doctor from Gaza taught me the advantages of remaining level-headed during disputes, by his mere demeanour and the way in which he converts misfortunes into valuable life lessons. This is the story of how Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish changed the way I appreciate my parents, invest in my future and, most importantly, how I listen.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish was born in 1955 in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, in conditions most of us can’t even comprehend. His school bag was an old, fibre bag, he owned a single pair of pants sewed from scrap materials and his school eraser was so valuable he had to wear it on a string around his neck. His mother, the “Lioness,” as he often refers to her, knew education to be the most powerful weapon of choice in their limited arsenal. Consequently, she pushed him to his limits, having him work in the mornings before school and in the afternoons. His teachers saw in him a passion and competence that could elevate him and his family out of their current conditions and, like his mother, pushed him to pursue his studies. He went on to receive a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo, he then went on to receive a diploma in OB/GYN from the University of London, accompanied by a subspecialty in fetal medicine in Belgium and Italy; and onwards to completing a master’s of science in health policy and management at Harvard University.

His road out of poverty was not smooth, but 2009 brought the worst wave of hurt to his life. Only a few months after losing his wife to cancer, Abuelaish’s apartment was shelled by an Israel Defence Forces tank during the Gaza War. His three daughters – 20-year-old Bessan, 15-year-old Mayar and 13-year-old Aya – and 17-year-old niece Noor were all killed. The entire tragedy was caught on live television, as Abuelaish had been communicating with Israeli media on the effects of war on Palestinian civilians. Destroyed and devastated, his wails were heard all over the world and, for the first time during the war, the Palestinian people had a human face, and a haunting shriek.

Despite this unimaginable heartbreak, Abuelaish refused to let hatred coerce him into visceral action. “Hatred,” the doctor said, “is destructive to the hater, not the hated.” In the face of such trauma and injustice, he remained calm and rational and channeled his anger into a fight for justice, not revenge. He knew that hatred would only hurt his interests and sway him off course.

Abuelaish had friends in the hospitals he worked at, colleagues, patients and others who cared for him deeply, my father being one of the many among them. Abuelaish knew not to let the loudest of political actions silence the intentions of citizens on either side of the border. He knew to listen, to speak out with kindness and courage and through action.

I was formally introduced to Abuelaish for the first time when he came to speak at my university. “You’re the son of Bentov?” he said to me. I replied with a smile and a nod. He was ecstatic to meet me, and I could barely believe I was in his presence. We were both baffled by the coincidence, and rejoiced in the opportunity. After the lecture, the professor and several students went to a nearby café to further discuss the tenets of his talk. He inquired on the well-being of my parents and I shared my vague childhood memories of him. Upon his departure, he left his card with me and asked me to contact him again. I have remained in close touch with him since.

In the summer of 2015, Abuelaish offered to let me work in his office, hoping I could write a research paper under his guidance. Sitting in his office at Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, I gazed around the room, awestruck by the number of awards, photographs with world leaders, diplomas and gifts from supporters and friends that were on display. I remember most my reaction when I saw his bookshelf: the goliath volumes of medicine and politics were overshadowed by the collection of self-help books on overcoming trauma.

One morning, Abuelaish asked me to come with him to see the office of his philanthropic organization, Daughters for Life Foundation. After asking me whether Upper Canada College or University of Toronto Schools, both of which command some $20,000 in annual tuition, are better high school choices for his son’s education, he threw on the same black leather jacket he’s owned for at least a decade and a half, and we made our way to his 1998 Saturn SUV. The priorities he made clear that day and his mere demeanour ingrained in me a sense of proportion that drastically altered the things I hold dear in life. I am unable to articulate exactly how I felt driving in his car that day. I wanted to go home and burst into tears. His humility, his unending devotion to his children, his disregard for material goods. For the life of me, it took everything in my power not to shed a single tear during that car ride.

Before I met Abuelaish, I was an angry young man, easily swayed by inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda. I was arrogant, rigidly opinionated and impatient. When I met the doctor, my father’s friend, I saw a sobering display of the prowess of human endurance – an absolute refusal to remain defeated, even after many severe blows. I coined his philosophy “proactive pacifism,” as I could see no other way to describe it.

I began to realize the many unacknowledged fortunes in my life and the immense efforts my parents made. I also learned the value of listening and the importance of letting others voice their opinions unscathed by my bias. Most of us are quick to see differences, carelessly and lazily dividing people by economic, political and religious beliefs and doctrines. Instead of investing our energies into improving our lives, we spend it on putting or shutting down others, lest they make us work harder to maintain our place in the world or our opinions. Following the change of atmosphere in Europe and the United States, I think Canadians can learn from the valuable lessons of Abuelaish’s actions.

Instead of seeking revenge against those who have harmed him, he has chosen to empower those who have been harmed. In all of the self-help books and all of the various philosophies I have come across, I have never met anyone who embodies the “golden rule” as much as Abuelaish. I’m 20 years old and have had a life virtually devoid of struggle, in large part because my parents worked incredibly hard to provide me with all that I have. I did not fully appreciate this until I got to know Abuelaish.

After meeting him, I also saw the real benefits of allowing speech to flow freely and, when someone speaks, I now listen. As aggravating as that feels sometimes, I know that preserving this right, this freedom, is more important than my reaction to the words being spoken. I am now confident that proving a point means more than shouting out an opinion; it means putting my beliefs into action. After every conceivable reason to give in to hate, Abuelaish not only rose above his many adversities, he used them to fuel his goal of greater peace and cohesiveness between Israelis and Palestinians.

Abuelaish does not stand on the shoulders of giants; he guides them onwards. In 2011, he created Daughters for Life Foundation, which raises funds for academic scholarships for aspiring female students of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other backgrounds from the Middle East. Abuelaish believes that, through the success of other young female students, he can bring to life the ambitions of the daughters he lost.

Abuelaish has accomplished more through dialogue than through dispute. As well, there are hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian children enjoying their lives due to his work as an obstetrician. Because of him, and the few others like him, I firmly believe in the prospect of peace in the region.

Abuelaish is far more than a mentor to me – he is my friend, he is family. The way he endures the many misfortunes in his life, the way he looks after his children, the way he helped me and the way he spoke of my parents are only examples. His many lessons transcend and translate into all aspects of life.

Following the recent election in the United States and a return of nationalist support across Europe, politics divide us now more than they have in a very long time. In an era of sound bites, protests and identity politics, it seems that most individuals have very little interest in listening to opposing viewpoints, lest these views betray their crafted narratives. We are eager to impose our opinions on others, convinced that mere criticism means that someone is an enemy of our noble cause or wants to harm us. This phenomenon is causing divides in parts of the world where diversity has been flourishing for decades. In these times, it would be wise for us to take a breath, to put things into perspective and remain coolheaded, regardless of our differences – or even our similarities, for that matter. If we invest our energies on improving ourselves, and encourage others to do the same, we should be able to get along, even if we disagree. These are just a few of the things I learned from my good friend, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. As he has said, “The energy you want to waste on anger. Convert it to strength and determination.”

To learn more about Abuelaish, his book I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey is available at various booksellers, including online, and the link to his foundation is daughtersforlife.com.

Gilad Kenigsberg-Bentov is a student at University of Western Ontario, where he is majoring in economics.

Thoughts on Oakridge exhibit

Staging a parade on Laurel Street, circa 1960. An image from the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia’s online exhibit, Oakridge. (photo from Gail Dodek Wenner via jewishmuseum.ca)

The oral history exhibit recently launched by the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia on the postwar Jewish community of Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood struck a chord and gave me pause. This is the area where my mom grew up – she was 13 when the shopping centre opened, the mall where my high school friends and I would later hold part-time jobs – and where my grandparents’ family home remained until a few years ago. And, it gave me pause because it reminded me that a little history can shake one’s sense of complacency.

Spending my teen years in Vancouver in the late 1980s, I sometimes wondered why the Jewish community didn’t live more north or more west – in short, closer to the beach, and in reach of sea and mountain views. Surely, part of the Jewish community’s move southward had to do with the wider lots and newer homes available as the city sprawled outward. But another important – and, to me, overlooked – part of the story is the legacy of racism and antisemitism that had infected the buying and selling of property in Vancouver.

One of the interviewees in the exhibit recalls a real estate agent telling her father, in reference to a house on King Edward Avenue between Oak and Granville streets, “This is a good neighbourhood because no Jews or Chinese are allowed.” By the fifties and sixties, however, Jews felt welcome and comfortable in the south Vancouver area, bounded by Oak and Cambie.

Times were different for my generation, growing up as multiculturalism was taking hold in a serious way and antisemitism and racism were increasingly seen as unmannered, even if they never fully went away.

In the mid-1980s, I recall accompanying my grandmother to an annual general meeting at the Richmond Country Club, where she regularly played tennis. I recall a discussion that evening about whether Jewish membership should be privileged. (An interview with the club’s current general manager, Mark Strong, confirms that, while the club’s written charter states that no member will be denied admission based on race, colour or creed, in practice, during that era, the club promoted Jewish membership.) After the meeting, I was outspoken in my criticism. To my 12-year-old sensibilities, trying to stack the membership of a recreational club with any particular religion or ethnicity seemed parochial and antiquated at best, and prejudiced and discriminatory at worst.

What I didn’t sufficiently appreciate then was the legacy of Jews being barred from many country clubs and, indeed, the Richmond Country Club had been founded by a group of Jewish businessmen and professionals in 1951 for that reason. If the club’s policies seemed antiquated to my 12-year-old ears, there was more resonance to it than I then realized. While I was trying to afflict the comfortable, these club members likely still felt the sting of affliction requiring comfort.

Today, the Richmond Country Club has a Magen David in its logo, and states on its website that “the spirit of inclusion remains one of our core values.” (I will leave aside the separate though partially related question of whether any country club can be economically inclusive.)

What does it mean to have grown up in what felt like a post-antisemitism era? I admit that, until recently, I have been suspicious of those who seek to find antisemitism at every turn. Not long ago, an older relative clipped a real estate ad for a cottage near Lake Winnipeg that stated it was in a “restricted” area. My relative took this to mean no Jews allowed. I did a little research and soon learned that, in this particular cottage zone, “restricted” meant something very different – no cars allowed. When I showed my relative what I’d found, he turned angry. It’s easy to get locked into patterns of victimhood.

But now my comfortable post-antisemitism bubble seems to be bursting. The Trump era has unleashed a torrent of hateful, xenophobic and bigoted discourse. Swastikas and racist graffiti have popped up on various houses of worship – including four Jewish institutions where I live, in Ottawa. Trump has appointed as chief counsel Steve Bannon, a man accused of trafficking in antisemitism via his website, Breitbart News.

Modern liberal polities require a constant sense of balance between comfort and vigilance. Too much comfort, and one risks complacency – for oneself and others. Too much vigilance, and one veers into paranoia. At the very least, we mustn’t forget history. Narratives of the past help explain collective fears, while suggesting what is necessary to make possible the kinds of societies that are worth fighting for.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications.

Definition of insanity

In a rare venture into current events, the head of Yad Vashem has spoken out about the urgency of humanitarian disaster in Syria. After the forces backing Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad succeeded in taking the rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo last week, murderous retribution unfolded and terrified residents fled for their lives.

Avner Shalev, chair of Yad Vashem, said “the global community must put a stop to these atrocities and avert further suffering, as well as provide humanitarian assistance to the victims seeking safe haven.”

It is not insignificant that the head of the world’s leading Holocaust museum and memorial would be moved to speak out on the subject. The atrocities the world is seeing stir memories of the past. No history is precisely like other history, obviously, and making direct comparisons can be unhelpful. Yet, after the Second World War, as the extent of the Holocaust became understood, international agencies, nations and individuals committed to a future free of those sorts of atrocities. Those promises have been betrayed too many times in the seven decades since, most recently in Syria.

When we look back in history, we ask, why didn’t this party or that country do more? Why was this or that allowed to happen? How did the world not step in sooner, when evidence began to mount about the rising danger of authoritarianism? Questions and answers are easier in hindsight. Yet there can be no doubt that Syria has presented especially difficult choices, even for actors who want to do the right thing.

U.S. President Barack Obama has insisted through the years of the Syrian civil war, which began at the time of the Arab Spring in 2011, that there was no military solution to the problem; that diplomacy had to prevail. He may have been correct that there was no military resolution. There are multiple bad guys in this fight – Assad’s regime, backed by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, on one side, and al-Qaeda and ISIS on the other. And, on the third side – because this is, vexingly, a multiple-sided conflict – is an amalgam of defectors from the Syrian military, Kurdish militias, and other anti-Assad forces who may have democratic and pluralist intents. Or, were they to be victorious – which now seems unlikely in the extreme – they could split among themselves, their only cohesion perhaps being the glue of opposition to Assad. By one count, what we call the Syrian civil war is as many as 10 separate conflicts. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have provided some support to the rebels, but it has been unreliable and uncoordinated. Estimates of the number of civilians and fighters killed range from 312,000 to more than 400,000.

Civilians casualties have been enormous, with all sides indiscriminately attacking civilian targets. Torture and extrajudicial killings typify the regime’s approach to war. Assad’s forces have also been accused of deliberately targeting medical installations and personnel. When the United Nations was able to secure humanitarian aid routes within Syria to provide food and medicine, the regime ensured that aid reached government-controlled areas and prevented aid from reaching rebel-controlled areas.

Negotiations have gone nowhere, because Assad is determined to hold on to power no matter how much of his population dies in the process, and he has powerful military friends in Russia and Iran who back his iron fist. The opposition is unequivocal that Assad must be deposed. There is no room for negotiation.

And so, the matter has come down to military might, with the last stronghold of the opposition crushed in recent days. Assad has now regained control of almost all the population centres of the country, with the rebels limited to peripheral enclaves.

In the process of the civil war, half of Syria’s population has been uprooted – six million people are displaced internally and another six million have been made refugees, with global implications, as European, American and other politicians have exploited fears of radicalization among refugees to advance their own xenophobic agendas. The effect may ultimately unravel the entire European Union.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been significantly strengthened and ISIS, which has suffered in Syria, will likely turn its attentions to more fertile ground elsewhere. The murderous Assad regime is more secure than it has been in years. Russia is ascendant in the region and globally. The United States has been chastened, and the incoming president is, characteristically, belligerent in rhetoric but anti-interventionist in expressed policy, which indicates nothing if not pandemonium in future U.S. approaches.

The world has failed the people of Syria – and, as a result, the world is a far more dangerous place.

Significant blame for this disaster must be placed on the United Nations, the primary bodies of which are hobbled by the control of despots who owe more to Assad’s governance style than to the vision of the idealists who founded the organization. While there are agencies under the UN umbrella that do superb work, its governance structures are so dysfunctional that talk of a replacement body must continue in earnest.

The least the world should be able to do now is pressure the emboldened government of Assad to allow humanitarian aid to reach those who need it and allow his citizens to move to places of safety. Then, the world should reflect on the lessons of this catastrophic experience and promise, yet again, not to let such a thing recur. What we’re doing isn’t working. To prevent recurrence, we need to stop pursuing the definition of insanity, which involves doing the same things and expecting a different result.

We miss you already, Alex

With gratitude and sadness, we share with readers the news that Alex Kliner’s Menschenings column will appear for the last time in this issue of the Jewish Independent. Alex is retiring and, while we are happy that he’s about to enjoy a well-deserved break, we’ll miss him.

After more than two decades of keeping our readers up-to-date with news, quips, culture, history, wordplay and trivia from the Jewish world, Alex has decided that the time has come to relax a little and give up the grind of a weekly column.

Alex has been a pillar of this newspaper and remains a pillar of this community, reflecting ourselves back to ourselves, with wit, Yiddishkeit and puns that he well knows are groaners. He has brought his unique character to these pages, built on the linguistic and comedic styles that are distinctively Jewish but which are also inimitably Klineresque.

photo - Reading Alex Kliner's Menschenings has always been like spending time with a friend – a gossipy friend, but in the best sense
Reading Alex Kliner’s Menschenings has always been like spending time with a friend – a gossipy friend, but in the best sense. (photo from Alex Kliner)

Reading Menschenings has always been like spending time with a friend – a gossipy friend, but in the best sense. Lashon hara never, ever found a place in Alex’s column. His stories were always positive and joyfully told. Like Alex in person, Menschenings has been a cheery respite amid the world’s sometimes woeful events.

Alex has been able to pack an enormous amount into each column, covering news that matters and nuggets that entertain. He often notes the passing of figures of importance to Jewish life, many of whom were unsung heroes in their fields but little known to the general public. Goings-on around town, important new works of literature, tidbits from showbiz with a Jewish angle: there have not been many limits to the Menschenings beat.

His columns have also been filled with kavods and kudos for local and international figures about whom readers may otherwise have known nothing. Mazal tovs for simchot, recognitions of landmark events, notes on new cultural diversions and businesses opening and closing. Through these many years, week after week, Alex has curated stories of ordinary and extraordinary people, distilling a huge range of events and personalities into a tight package that is a pleasure to peruse. His chatty style has made our community feel a sense of togetherness, as though even people we do not know are linked with us through a mutual friend.

Importantly, each week Menschenings has featured a member of the local community, often someone whose contributions to the smooth running of communal organizations or a local business are crucial yet uncelebrated, an artist being introduced to new audiences, an author, a chef, an athlete, any number of people we were better for knowing about through Alex’s introduction. He has often been the first to identify rising stars in the local arts scene and there is no gauge to measure the careers he has helped along the way.

For 21 tireless years, and just two columns short of 1,000, Alex has been an irreplaceable and beloved voice of this newspaper and the community we serve. Together with Elaine, whose name has appeared frequently in Menschenings as a muse and a foil – El-Al, as they are collectively known – Alex has attended more community events, concerts, plays and other events than the most dogged culture vultures.

Thank you, Alex, for everything you have done to help build this community and tell our stories. Your name is, appropriately, inextricably connected with the word mensch.

– all of us at the Jewish Independent

There is danger in autocracy

Last week, an Israeli artist erected a life-sized golden statue of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. Reminiscent of the golden calf with its connection to forbidden idolatry, artist Itay Zalait said he was making a statement about freedom of speech in Israel and what he sees as a type of idolatry growing around the man sometimes called King Bibi.

Citizens gathered around the statue, arguing about its meaning and various interpretations. Because the installation was erected without a permit, city officials ordered it removed but, before the artist could do so, it was toppled by a bystander and left laying on its side like the figure of a deposed despot.

In addition to the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu occupies the portfolios of foreign minister, economy minister, minister of regional cooperation and communications minister.

In this latter role, Netanyahu has appointed figures to oversight positions that have allowed them to put a finger on the scale in support of media outlets that are sympathetic to the government. Similarly, American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bankrolls the newspaper Israel HaYom, which is widely seen as a propaganda machine for Netanyahu.

The Netanyahu government is also seen as threatening the broadcast news sector, having undertaken an effort to replace the state-run broadcaster with a more complimentary version, only to reverse course when it appeared the new agency would also be insufficiently uncritical. Like other politicians in democratic countries, Netanyahu has found some popularity among his supporters by picking fights with the media, including individual reporters who report things unfavorable to the prime minister.

While discourse in Israel remains legendarily vibrant, evidence that the government may be attempting to influence or control aspects of journalistic freedom are rightly drawing deep concern. And this concern is exacerbated by evidence of other tendencies within Israeli society that seem to reflect authoritarian, anti-democratic and discriminatory inclinations.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett is having “ethical rules” drawn up for what university lecturers can and cannot say about politics. Culture Minister Miri Regev has promoted a bill to retroactively cut funding to cultural institutions that do not meet the government’s standard of “loyalty” to the state of Israel.

On a different, but similarly ham-fisted front, there is the attempt to legislate the public broadcast of the muezzin, the five-times-a-day call to Muslim prayer, which begins before dawn. Granted, not everyone is keen to have daily pre-dawn loudspeaker broadcasts, whatever the purpose, but such a move against a religious minority already experiencing myriad forms of discrimination calls into question fundamental issues of multiculturalism and respect for religious freedom and pluralism that need to be addressed.

The rabbinate has also weighed in on a few issues that have outraged progressive and feminist Israelis.

Crediting a 15th-century scholar, the Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef declared that women and yeshivah scholars are forbidden from serving in the Israel Defence Forces or performing national volunteer service. He claimed that women had been permitted to go to war at times in Jewish history, but only to cook and clean. The comments come at a time when Israel has seen a four-fold increase in the number of women combat soldiers and as some segments of the political spectrum and civil society are speaking up against what they see as the unsustainable tradition of military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.

Then there is Eyal Karim, who was recently sworn in as chief rabbi of the IDF. During his confirmation hearings, Karim was forced to explain earlier comments that seemed to justify the rape of non-Jewish women during wartime. He apologized, saying that his comments were a theoretical consideration of biblical permissions and prohibitions. Karim has also stated that women should not serve in the IDF, or sing at army events.

These and other developments have combined with the Netanyahu government’s warm reaction to Donald Trump’s election to raise alarm among some that Israel is on a path similar to the populist, authoritarian phenomenon seen in the United States and much of Europe. In so many ways, Israel’s body politic is sui generis, utterly unlike any other democracy on earth. Yet it should not surprise that what emerges among its closest allies should also find a place among Israelis.

Trump, tweeting from his gold-embossed chambers in Manhattan, is exhibiting plenty of monarchical characteristics. European political upstarts are glorifying strongmen of the past and, in some cases, of the present, in the form of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. When these sorts of autocratic inclinations arise in Israel, they should be opposed there, just as they should be everywhere.

Benefits from finding your I

What was your growing-up story like? If we are fortunate, we are in a nurturing environment as we scramble to make some sense of the world around us, with little sense of who or what we are. We are all the sensations we react to, hunger, cold, heat, pain, pleasure, more instinctive than rational. When do we develop a sense of self, an idea of what it is we might want rather than what those around us might wish for us?

For me, the smoke began to clear by the time I was in Grade 5, about the age of 11 or 12. Suddenly, it seemed to me, I had a sense of self, and opinions about what was going on around me in the world. Not only that. The opinions of others were less important. I had begun reading voraciously, learning of a world that had a past that had shaped my present. My immigrant parents’ views had begun to disappear as reference points; my feeling was that I knew more about the real world we lived in than they could possibly understand.

By the time I was in my mid-teens, I felt I was fully in charge of my life. I was under the family roof, but the things going on in my head, the plans and actions I contemplated, were formulated and carried out with almost no reference to parental guidance. I generated the funds to permit me independent action from an early age. Was it just me? Was I the only one who was obnoxiously opinionated by the time he was a teenager? I was fortunate that my parents did not stand in my way. It doesn’t happen to everybody like that.

Gaining a consciousness of oneself as separate from those around us, with an independent will, especially, independent from those in positions of authority, is a big thing. The sense of being an independent identity may come long before we achieve independence, but it surely must come first. We may begin by feeling a rising sense of rebellion, exasperation with the lack of understanding by those around us. We may begin to object to decisions made for us, about us, without consultation. We may begin to object to rules of the game, which we find erroneous, obtuse, nonsensical or unjust. We may say nothing, but a knot of resistance, even anger, may begin to form. Our I begins to take shape. We may even be wrong, lacking all the information needed to make a correct decision. We learn to negotiate those things.

An independent will can form at any age. Sensitivity on the part of those in authority, inviting expressions of opinion, can stimulate development. An authoritarian environment can delay it. Doesn’t it take some people a long time to achieve a sense of I? One wonders at the history behind that. How much goes on in the mind as part of this process? How much conflict does it generate? How many experience damaging environments that prevent a proper development, haunting their adult lives. Don’t some people spend a lifetime in counseling working through their feelings? Don’t some people take pills to quiet the questions? We really have to work through this stuff to become happy campers, to make a success of what we hope to do in life. How many people do I know who, even in their 50s and 60s, are agonizing about relationships with parents that still leave them anxious, angry and confused about their self-worth? How can we successfully interact with a life partner with this monkey on our back?

Yet some of us who have lived through the worst seem to get through it relatively unscathed. Perhaps a parent or family member saved the day. Or they met the right person early on who got them on the right track. Or they just had the right stuff to see beyond the sickest parts of the people they were in forced contact with and sloughed it all off. What we do know is that a healthy sense of I, a healthy sense of self-worth, a positive self-image, is crucial to making it through to adulthood with some chance of happiness. With it, we can handle being knocked down a peg or two by the inevitable reverses we will face over the years. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and step back into the fray.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero In My Own Eyes has just been published.

For the love of G-d and man

Our Bible, according to my estimation, tells us repetitively to love G-d. How can we comply with this mandate? I love my wife, kids, a few highly select friends who owe me money, even the cat. And I love lamb chops with garlic and lemon. But my Creator and Judge? There’s an inter-dimensional enigma here. An emotional warp. How can it be?

photo - James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884)
James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884). (photo from National Portrait Gallery NPG 2508 via Wikimedia Commons)

Strangely, Leigh Hunt, an English poet who probably never met a Jew, answered the question with a Jewish slant. He was a Londoner who lived 2,000 miles west of Chassidism’s headquarters in Poland. He was an aristocratic Englishman who, unlike his Polish contemporaries, wore a frock coat and did his best work on the Sabbath. He was a good Episcopalian, but somehow saw the world through Jewish eyes. The poet, in an inspired mood, wrote a work of 18 short lines, singing the same love-thy-neighbor theme that’s in our prayer book. Unintentionally, it is a very Jewish poem: an angel alights in the room of Abou Ben Adhem, an exemplary soul who:

“… saw within the moonlight in his room
making it rich like a lily in bloom.
An angel writing in a book of gold
the names of those who love the Lord.”

Abou Ben Adhem, in a flash, sits up in his bed only half-awake, but alert enough to know that his visitor is not his cousin from Cincinnati. Am I in your golden book, he wants to know. (“Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.”) The angel sadly shakes his head.

But the man with a heart for humanity is not disheartened. “Well,” he says, “put me down as one who loves his fellow man.”

The angel notes the words of Abou Ben Adhem and disappears. Next night, he’s back in the dim bedroom “with a great wakening light” and his fateful list of those who love the Lord. “And lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.”

Loving your fellow man is like loving G-d, an insight initially proclaimed by our Tanach.

I’ve heard it said that the hardest part of being a good Jew is loving your fellow man. Now I didn’t originate that – it’s probably in the Talmud or maybe in the Tanach from some bitter prophet like Jeremiah. But, sadly, it’s true. Didn’t G-d Himself tell us we’re a stiff-necked people? Easy-going, sweet, lovable people don’t cure polio, don’t split the atom and don’t win Nobel prizes. They’re too busy displaying their love. There’s some furnace running in the core of great people that keeps them from election as most popular kid in school or fraternity/sorority presidency. You wouldn’t have enjoyed a beer and a bowl of pretzels with Einstein. Your Uncle Louie was probably much better at small talk.

In all the English vocabulary, the hardest word to define is love. It has no synonym, only antonyms. It thinly communicates when it describes our relationship with our fellow creatures, even the four-legged ones. But it miserably fails to describe our feeling to our Creator, even though I count the mandate more than 150 times in the Tanach.

In nature, love flows down, not up. A river originating in a mountain peak flows down to water the animal and plant life at its base. I’m convinced that parents, especially mothers, love their children more than kids love their parents. Survival of the species demands it. Our limited human understanding comes closest to defining divine love by loving our fellow human creatures. And, while we’re talking about love and G-d and man and English poets, let me remind you of Alexander Pope, another famous English Bard. He’s clearly on my side: “The proper study of mankind is man,” he says. “Presume not G-d to scan,” which to my understanding says the Creator lies beyond our telescopes.

What is love? We understand friendship. We know all about lust. We understand why your heart glows when your wife makes kreplach in chicken soup, your favorite. And even closer to your emotional warmth is the sensation of holding in your arms your newborn child. But words fail when we try to cozy up to the Lord. There is awe, respect and reverence, but love?

I’ve never met anyone who loved G-d and could explain that exotic emotion. It cannot be expressed any more than a fish expresses his love for water, his medium. Maybe the prophets and Leigh Hunt were on to something. Love thy fellow man. That, itself, is an awesome challenge. But may be the only road to the celestial palace.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

Inspired by Standing Rock

The story of Chanukah is a narrative of the victory of a small group of righteous fighters against a powerful empire. It is a redemptive story of standing for one’s beliefs (and existence) and triumphing in the end.

The end of 2016 is a time when redemptive stories are even more welcome and the decision by the U.S. government last weekend to accede to the defiance of protesters in North Dakota is just such a story. Plans to run an oil pipeline through a cemetery and under a water reservoir near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation were kiboshed. This doesn’t mean an alternative route won’t see the project completed, but it does alleviate the immediate fears the people had of the potential destruction of their water supply and further desecration of sacred sites, some of which have already been bulldozed.

The example of the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies from all over the country who stood up to the oil company is already being held up as a model for British Columbians, many of whom spent the weekend fuming over an announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The prime minister declared that cabinet had approved the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline – which would see the number of tankers transporting bitumen from Burnaby, through Burrard Inlet, to Asia, increase to 34 per month from five – as well as another pipeline to the United States, while rejecting the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have sent diluted bitumen to Asia via northern British Columbia. The incongruity of the decision – that the government recognizes the pristine fragility of the northern coast, but not that of the southern coast – is among the causes of outrage. Other concerns involve larger global issues of fossil fuels and the range of options that could, if we are going to use this non-renewable resource, at least reduce the negative environmental impacts.

Ahavat ha’beriot, love for (God’s) creation, is at the heart of Jewish identity. There is also the commandment to not stand by the blood of your neighbor; that is, do not behave passively in the face of violence toward others. While there was violence at Standing Rock, the greater threat was to the livelihood of the community there, based on the necessity of potable water. Likewise, the potential for ecological disaster as a result of the increased tanker traffic along Vancouver’s coast could destroy much creation, while the commitment to non-renewable fuels exemplified by the pipeline infrastructure will have global consequences.

Protecting creation is at the heart of First Nations identity as well, as was so articulately expressed at Standing Rock and which has also been demonstrated by reaction to Western Canadian pipelines, much of the opposition to which is led by indigenous people. Among the most heartening aspects of the Standing Rock story was the solidarity between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

Even if we disagree on this issue – we who drive cars or otherwise exploit non-renewable resources should demonstrate commitment to reducing emissions with our actions as well as our words – the lesson of Standing Rock goes beyond this single topic.

The United States and much of the world is experiencing a political upheaval. Particular challenges will emerge from the stunning U.S. election result, which handed the White House and both chambers of Congress to a party that rejects much of what has been termed “progressive” – environmental regulations, equality for women and minorities, protections for workers and a long list of other advances that cannot now (if they ever could) be taken for granted.

In the face of a Washington that is uniformly Republican, there may be a renewed need for public demonstrations that advance alternative viewpoints. People stood up at the coincidentally but aptly named Standing Rock. People may have to do the same in many places, including Burrard Inlet, during the coming years.

We need not be modern Maccabees to take such a stand. It is highly unlikely that any of us will see our lives threatened for opposing a pipeline, or acting within the law to advance or oppose some other viewpoint. Conversely, if action is not taken, if voices do not coalesce to demand alternatives to our world’s rapacious appetite for fossil fuels, all of creation may well be threatened.

Does the truth still matter?

A recently released study from the graduate School of Education at Stanford University engaged 7,800 middle school, high school and college students to evaluate the information they received on the internet. The report said there was a “stunning and dismaying consistency” in the responses from the students, demonstrating an inability to discern information based on whether it originated from activist groups, neutral sources or advertising, and students routinely could not tell the difference between news articles from legitimate sources and unreliable webpages, nor between ostensibly balanced news coverage and opinion pieces.

The aftermath of the recent U.S. presidential election has seen commentators raise alarms over “fake news” – stories planted on social media with the deliberate intent to mislead. Obviously, this is another wrinkle in the whole issue of discerning fact from fiction. Then there is the ability of wholly unchecked assertions to go viral and be taken as fact by hundreds of thousands of people.

The New York Times analyzed one example of how these things can happen. In Austin, Tex., a man with just 40 Twitter followers saw a lineup of buses in downtown Austin on Nov. 9, the day after the election. That evening, crowds gathered in Austin, protesting the election of Donald Trump the night before. The man put two and two together and tweeted that “Anti-Trump protesters in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the buses they came in. #Fakeprotests #Trump2016 #Austin.”

The due diligence the man performed was a Google search to determine whether there were any major conferences being held in Austin and he found none. It turns out the buses were hired by a software company that was holding a conference for more than 13,000 people. Nevertheless, the tweet, which implies that the anti-Trump protesters were bused into town by some nefarious organizer, was shared 16,000 times on Twitter and 350,000 times on Facebook.

This was an example of a “story” not being adequately researched and proven. It is a slightly different species from the deliberately false “news” stories that popped up during the election with headlines like “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president” and “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide.” Both of these, and countless more like them, were intentionally false, yet shared by thousands of people who believed – or wished – them to be true.

Comedian Jon Stewart used to refer to his program The Daily Show as “fake news,” but in fact it was parody and satire, taking a grain of truth and riffing humor and social commentary from it. This differs as well from sites like The Onion or Canada’s The Beaverton, which are not intended to be taken seriously, but sometimes are.

Then there is, to bring it full circle, the forms of legitimate journalism – news and analysis – which are generally well-researched, with facts corroborated and sources verified, but are often received by consumers as something else. In other words, people will take falsified news as fact and decry factual reporting as made-up.

On Sunday, Trump himself tweeted, without a shred of evidence, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” With vote counting (inexplicably) still underway, Trump has easily won the electoral college and, therefore, the presidency, but Hillary Clinton is currently 2.2 million votes ahead of Trump in the popular vote.

This sort of assertion from a sore winner is typical of the man, who seems to lie even when there is no advantage, as if to keep in practice. Throughout the campaign,

Trump routinely told untruths, which helps explain why the Oxford dictionary chose “post-truth” as its international word of the year for 2016.

Tens of millions voted for Trump despite, or possibly because of, his awkward relationship with the truth, suggesting that truth doesn’t matter like we once assumed it did. Or that people don’t care what the truth is, so long as what is said, published or posted conforms to or supports their preexisting opinions. People are willing to hear (or read, say or write) falsehoods and accept them as true if they wish them to be, rather than question their own beliefs or situation at all.

The unwillingness or inability to differentiate truth from fiction has long been a concern. Purveyors of lies – in advertising, politics, daily life – have been doing their deeds for centuries. Yet the ability in the internet age for people to select “news” that supports their worldview, or to be duped by people with agendas, has opened whole new universes of falsehood. Scarier, by far, is the apparent insouciance with which many people approach the issue. Some of us are satisfied with fiction if it suits our preferred version of fact. In such a case, we are not facing a problem of media literacy. We are facing a more serious affront to the very idea of reality.

Much work to be done

It has been a difficult month for me and I know it has been for many of you. Though I feel more and more like a Canadian with each passing year and I am a rabbi in this community, I still have an emotional connection to family and events in America (“the old country”). Like many around the world, I am grieving a loss, not of an election, but of a promise and a vision of a more hopeful, kind, tolerant and peaceful world.

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States is a reminder of the power of fear and the fragility of the human spirit. There is no denying that a majority of the global population of Western countries feels threatened by unrelenting change – immigration, globalization, terrorism, multiculturalism. Many conflate slowing or stopping the pace of change with preserving their heritage, their privilege. The election of nationalistic leaders around the globe, of which Trump is only the latest, is an unfiltered primal scream of the fragility and fear consuming Western civilization.

As Jews, we are always hyper-aware of these kinds of tectonic shifts in societal norms. When what was once considered beyond the pale of decency becomes mainstream, we rightfully get worried.

That the U.S. election took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht only served to remind us of the thin veneer of civility that exists in society and how fragile it is against the pressures of a global economy and existential threats to safety and security.

Here in Canada we have seen an increase in antisemitic incidents since the American election. Perhaps they are unrelated, but our “radar” for these kinds of things tells us otherwise. Anger and resentment have been given licence and agency by this recent campaign. Perhaps they would have no matter the winner but, whenever this happens, it is never “good for the Jews.”

Throughout the Torah, God tests the Jewish people. He puts them in the most vexing of situations. Temples are destroyed, false prophets rise among them, they are attacked from within and they are attacked from without. In each instance, the people rise above the challenges and are stronger because they confronted the challenge and found a way to persevere in spite of it.

I don’t think God brought us Trump or those world leaders like him, but I do think this is a test of our character and our humanity as individuals, as Jews and as Canadians, a test with great implications.

The biblical prophets were ignored and often derided, and yet they stood up and spoke truth to power. In the end, sometimes decades later, they were always proven right. The situation developed just as they said it would and the people suffered greatly, but they recovered, eventually healed and were restored.

I am 46 years old. For my generation, this is our time to lead, and the world will look to us to address these problems. This is the great test of my generation, one that began on 9/11. A test of our humanity, a test to prove that love does trump hate, that we can be good and prosperous, that America and other nations can be great without tearing each other and their citizens down in the process.

I am lucky to be in Canada right now, but election night made clear what we already knew: we are not there yet. There is work to be done here, too, as well as in America and around the globe. We are not impervious to the isolationist forces and economic circumstances that brought Trump to power.

Rabbi Tarfon used to say: it is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to idle from it (Avot 2:21). The time for mourning is ending. We must rise from our grief and get back to work – for there is much to be done.

Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom.