An exercise in audacity

Rosh Hashanah is an exercise in audacity. We enter a new year conscious of everything that remains unresolved. We take stock, confront what we have done and failed to do. The very idea of a new year carries an implicit act of faith: that history is not finished, that individuals and communities can renew themselves, and that what we do now can shape what comes next. In other words, we behave as though there will be a future.

That may sound unremarkable. At this moment in Jewish life, it is anything but.

For nearly three years, Jewish communities have lived with a heightened sense of vulnerability. The trauma of Oct. 7 has been followed by war, grief, political fracture and an extraordinary surge in antisemitism. Jewish schools and institutions operate amid tightened security. Jewish students question whether they are welcome on their campuses. People who once took their place in Canadian society for granted have found themselves asking questions they never expected to ask. Among them is a deeply unsettling one: Do we have a collective future here?

Across British Columbia, Jewish communities are answering that question in the most concrete way possible. They are building.

In Vancouver, the groundbreaking of JWest is not merely the beginning of a major construction project. It is a declaration of confidence. A new Jewish Community Centre, a new King David High School, new housing and community spaces will rise on a site that has been central to Jewish life for generations.

Buildings are arguments made in concrete. They say: We expect to be here. We expect our children to be here. We expect their children to need classrooms, swimming pools, gathering spaces and places in which to discover what being Jewish means to them.

No less remarkable, in the context of comparative community sizes, is what is happening on Vancouver Island.

Victoria’s Jewish community has grown by an estimated 67% over the past decade. Chabad of Vancouver Island, once a comparatively modest presence, now encompasses a synagogue, camp, Jewish day school, kosher grocery and a Chabad at the University of Victoria, and they have just broken ground on a new facility. 

All around British Columbia, Jews are making communal life flourish. Synagogues, organizations and smaller groups are hosting activities and services, helping one another and their broader neighbourhoods.

This is what confidence looks like. Not confidence that the world will suddenly become less complicated. Not confidence that antisemitism will disappear. Not even confidence that every child raised in these communities will remain there. It is confidence of a more mature kind: the decision to invest in possibility despite uncertainty. That is also, in a sense, what Rosh Hashanah asks of us.

The High Holidays are sometimes framed around judgment, repentance and a moral accounting of the year just ended. But they are equally about what comes next. Teshuvah is meaningless without the assumption that we can become something different and the commitment to take the steps required to become that better version of ourselves. 

Jewish history has required this kind of daring repeatedly. To plant when exile was always a looming possibility. To establish schools after communities had been destroyed. To build synagogues in new countries while still speaking the languages of old ones. To have children in circumstances that might have provided every rational argument against optimism. Jewish continuity has never depended on believing everything will be fine. It has depended on deciding that there will be something worth preserving even if it is not.

This year, we should recognize the significance of what is happening around us. The cranes, architectural plans, fundraising campaigns, classrooms, synagogues, community centres and new institutions are not merely infrastructure. They are acts of collective faith.

At a time when some Jews are wondering whether they are fully welcome here, British Columbia’s Jewish communities are making an unequivocal statement. We are here and we are part of this place. We intend to remain part of it. And we are building for people we will never meet.

That may be the most audacious Rosh Hashanah wish of all. Not simply, may we have a good year. But rather, may there be generations after us who inherit what we had the courage to believe in and begin.