{"id":42640,"date":"2023-11-10T01:47:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T09:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=42640"},"modified":"2023-11-09T15:04:26","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T23:04:26","slug":"a-call-for-toughness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2023\/11\/10\/a-call-for-toughness\/","title":{"rendered":"A call for toughness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum spoke at Congregation Schara Tzedeck on Nov. 5. He said: \u201cWe can\u2019t raise a generation that is scared of being Jewish.\u201d <\/em>(photo from kolotmanagement.com)<\/em><\/p>\n

The mood at Congregation Schara Tzedeck was solemn Sunday night, Nov. 5, when parents, grandparents and students from the Jewish community gathered to listen to Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum, an American professor who is considered one of the world\u2019s preeminent Holocaust scholars. Berenbaum came to discuss the importance of campus conversations, and specifically how to handle the critics of Israel who are voicing their support of Palestinians vociferously on college campuses throughout Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n

Until the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Berenbaum said, our children had never known serious difficulty as Jews. \u201cThey\u2019ve had the privilege of living in the greatest time to be Jewish, maybe in the history of the Jewish people,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, we\u2019re asking our kids to toughen up, because they\u2019re now going to face difficulty, pain, anguish and danger \u2013 physical or intellectual \u2013 for being Jews. This is our test of the hour, and it comes with the shattering of easily held assumptions about Jewish life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oct. 7 pogrom, he said, was worse than the 1906 Kishinev pogrom and worse than Kristallnacht in 1938 in terms of the number of Jews killed and the vehemence with which they were killed. \u201cWe believed Israel was founded to protect its people from these pogroms, and yet we were not safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berenbaum said it is crucial for Jewish students to be armed with accurate knowledge so they can counter the anti-Israel rhetoric they hear on campus. That means refuting claims that Israel is committing genocide. \u201cUnderstand that this is war, and it has both direct and collateral consequences,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot deal with war at this point without significant civilian casualties. While Israel is taking significant steps to avoid that, it\u2019s unavoidable.\u201d He noted that, since March 2011, the conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of 500,000 people \u2013 \u201cand the rest of the world has heard nothing about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the claim that Israel is \u201coccupying Gaza,\u201d he clarified that Israel left Gaza in 2005, displacing 8,000 settlers so that Gazans would take control of their lives. \u201cIsrael is the only country in the world who has sacrificed land for normalization. We gave up Sinai for normalization with Egypt, and the reason the invasion happened now was because it appeared Saudi Arabia would establish a certain kind of peace with Israel,\u201d he said. \u201cNormalization represented a danger to the lateral forces in the region and that\u2019s why this broke out now.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the claim that \u201cJews are colonizers,\u201d he noted that Jews have never forsaken their connection to the land of Israel, and that there have been five cities with a permanent Jewish settlement in Israel. \u201cWhen they came to Israel, they settled and worked the land, which is the opposite of colonization,\u201d he said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t take its resources and export it elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that Palestinians were offered a state in 2000 and again in 2006, and they turned both opportunities down. \u201cThe Palestinians have never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity, because their leadership is weak and corrupt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There are a few things we can do now to ensure we are strong, he continued. One is to educate ourselves on the history of the state of Israel and Zionism. Another is to ensure we have solidarity by reaching out to one another.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThese are not easy times and we need Jewish toughness and resilience,\u201d said Berenbaum. \u201cWe can\u2019t raise a generation that is scared of being Jewish. I want our Jewish students to be proud, tough and confident enough to accept the animus that will come their way, but to have the human capacity to respond to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ended his talk by calling Jews the \u201ccanary in the coalmine. You want to know if a society is healthy? See how it treats its Jews. We\u2019re living in a world that\u2019s fundamentally unhealthy, but it\u2019s important to remember that we have many friends, we are not alone. We have to cultivate and respect those friendships, and not take them for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The events of Oct. 7 precipitated an earthquake, he added, \u201cand the ground won\u2019t settle for awhile. But earthquakes give the opportunity to build in a different way. We are in for a tough and difficult time, which will demand the best of us. But I fundamentally believe we have it in us to rise to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren Kramer<\/strong>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum spoke at Congregation Schara Tzedeck on Nov. 5. He said: \u201cWe can\u2019t raise a generation that is scared of being Jewish.\u201d (photo from kolotmanagement.com) The mood at Congregation Schara Tzedeck was solemn Sunday night, Nov. 5, when parents, grandparents and students from the Jewish community gathered to listen to Rabbi Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,3076,4242,4330,22729,22736,22725,7579,1774,19778],"class_list":["post-42640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-education","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-michael-berenbaum","tag-oct-7","tag-parenting","tag-terrorism","tag-university-campuses"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}