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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: academia

A best home for Jews?

Despite its flaws, most Canadians are proud to call this country home. And most of us would leave it at that, and not delve too much into why we feel that way. But a recently published book asks 20 scholars to consider the question, “Has there ever been a better home for the Jews than Canada?” The result is a compelling read that raises many more questions than answers.

No Better Home? Jews, Canada and the Sense of Belonging, edited by David S. Koffman of York University, was published by University of Toronto Press last year. While many of us may not rush to pick up an academic publication, for fear of its denseness and potential incomprehensibility for laypeople, this one is surprisingly readable. Not every essay will be of as much interest, as the book is Eastern Canada-centric, but many of its ideas will help us in determining for ourselves what we mean when we say Canada is one of the best places in the world to live. And some of its discussion will prod humility – for example, the reality that many immigrants to Canada would rather have been able to stay where they were, but had to flee persecution, war or other circumstances, is a sobering reminder. As is the fact that the situation in Canada has not always been good for Jews or other minorities.

An exact measurement of “best” is elusive and subjective, of course. As editor Koffman notes in his introduction, “Canada may now very well be the safest, most socially welcoming, economically secure, and possibly most religiously tolerant home for the Jews than any other diaspora country, past or present. Jews in Canada today enjoy (1) high rates of voluntary religious participation at all denominational in-points; (2) relatively low rates of nonviolent forms of antisemitism; (3) high degrees of Jewish literacy; (4) the capacity to exercise political power unfettered by antisemitism; (5) institutional completeness for Jewish communal needs; (6) thoroughgoing social acceptance; (7) significant cultural production; (8) public recognition; (9) comparatively low intermarriage rates; and (10) economic opportunities unrestricted by their Jewishness.”

image - No Better Home? book coverThat said, the matter is not so easily determined, as the other contributors to the volume delve into Canada’s past, into other countries that offer good homes for Jews, into the accessibility and affordability of Jewish education, into Canada as a point of arrival for Holocaust survivors, into Yiddish not only as a language but as a link to family, heritage or tradition, and into many other topics.

The situation in Ukraine makes Jeffrey Veidlinger’s essay particularly interesting for anyone wanting to know more about that country and the influence of its history and its emigrants on Canada. For instance, Canada’s multiculturalism policy was a concept introduced in the 1960s by Ukrainian Canadians, “who, in turn, adapted it from the notion of ‘national autonomy’ that Jews had introduced to early 20th-century Ukraine, where Jews were conscious of securing rights as a minority group within a largely binational (Russian and Ukrainian) state,” writes Veidlinger, who is at the University of Michigan. “Ironically, when multiculturalism made it to Canada in its new form, it was met with skepticism and even outright rejection by the organized Canadian Jewish community.” Some of that rejection had to do with this vision of multiculturalism being “premised on a common Christianity,” he says. As well, the Jewish community had learned to navigate between the so-called “two founding races” (French and English powers) and there was concern that diffusion of power would make it harder to do so.

More than one writer touches on the French-English dichotomy, as well as where Indigenous peoples fit in those narratives. In his essay, Koffman considers the question, “What have Jewish-Indigenous peoples’ interactions looked like? How might we think about Jews’ home in Canada refracted through the prism of the interactions between the placed and the displaced?”

The only local contributor to No Better Home is Richard Menkis, a professor at the University of British Columbia. The way in which his essay on museums fits into the collection is encapsulated in the two questions he poses: “What kind of home would it be if the narrative of the Jewish community were not considered ‘Canadian’ and included in the national experiences depicted in state-sponsored exhibitions? And the corollary question is: How comfortable are Jews, in this home, telling their stories, including the stories of the marginalized (the poor) and the ostracized (the criminals)?”

Menkis looks at three exhibits on Canadian Jewry – Journey Into Our Heritage (1970s), A Coat of Many Colours (late 1980s) and narratives at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax since it opened in 1999. He concludes that, in the two exhibits, as groundbreaking as they were, Canadian Jews were comfortable only in sharing their achievements and contributions (ie. worth) to Canadian society at large. These exhibits omitted people and activities that could be more controversial, such as Jews involved in the union movement or in radical politics.

At the Canadian Museum of Immigration, the historical summations eventually became more nuanced about Canada’s immigrant communities, and recognized them as having “enriched the cultural mosaic.” This is a grand improvement from the attitude in 1945 of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada when it was asked to recognize the country’s first synagogue. Menkis begins his essay with this point, citing a member of the board, who said “he was not particularly interested in the commemoration of Jewish activities.” The board member had a similarly dismissive response to the suggestion “that there be a commemorative marker for 400 African Canadians who lived on Vancouver Island before 1858,” notes Menkis.

Every contributor to No Better Home? offers a different perspective. One that seems sadly true is that of Jack Kugelmass of the University of Florida. “My point,” he writes, “is that good places for Jews have a lot to do with robust economies, with stable governments and a consensus in which difference is at least tolerated and immigrants welcomed because they’re good for business.” He recommends: “Enjoy the good times while they last. Nothing is forever. Right now is certainly Canada’s time, as it is for Canada’s Jews.”

Posted on March 11, 2022March 10, 2022Author Cynthia RamsayCategories BooksTags academia, David S. Koffman, No Better Home?, Richard Menkis
A testament to free speech

A testament to free speech

A new book on an incendiary topic turns out to be not quite as expected. The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, by Kenneth S. Stern, may be the most comprehensive assessment of the (at least) 20-year battle on North American campuses between pro-Israel and anti-Israel forces.

Jewish and pro-Israel readers picking up the work might anticipate a litany of horrors, anti-Zionist if not antisemitic incidents, brawls, screaming matches, vandalism, boycotts and the like. There is that. But Stern argues that the perception that campuses are aflame in anti-Zionist rage is simply not true. More, he offers proof that the pro-Israel side is far from innocent of engaging in disgraceful tactics, too. There is ill will and there are bad actors on both sides. Most unexpectedly, as much as the book is about the conflict, it is more than anything an exercise in applied ethics on the topic of free expression.

Stern is the director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate, an attorney and an author. For 25 years, he was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on antisemitism and he was a lead drafter of the Working Definition of Antisemitism. He is also, it appears, something close to a free speech purist. As such, he rails against efforts by Israel advocates who have organized campaigns to censure (and censor) anti-Israel voices. He doesn’t let the other side off easily, either, calling out acts of harassment like drowning out pro-Israel speakers with the “heckler’s veto.”

The book, from New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, begins with an empirical assessment. In institutions of higher learning in the United States, Israel is an issue in very few, he writes.

When speaking with Jewish audiences, Stern asks for a show of hands to gauge perceptions on anti-Israel attitudes. He asks for guesses on how many American colleges have divested from Israel.

“Many seem surprised when I say ‘zero,’” he writes. “There are relatively few campuses where Israel is a burning issue, and every year the number of pro-Israel programs … is usually at least double the anti-Israel ones. There are over 4,000 campuses in the U.S. – in the 2017-18 academic year, 149 had anti-Israel activity.… So the campuses aren’t burning.”

He does not dismiss the extreme tensions on a few campuses, however.

“[O]n some campuses where anti-Israel activity is prominent, pro-Israel Jewish students may feel marginalized, dismissed or vilified, sometimes with antisemitic tropes.” Identity politics and the conflation of Jewish people with “whiteness” creates racial conflict. “[T]he labeling of Jews as white becomes a problem when shared victimhood becomes a sacred symbol, a badge of honour, a precondition to enter a club of the oppressed. Antisemitic discrimination is rendered invisible.”

Though bigotry may play a role in the discussion, Stern does not see constructive resolutions in neologisms like trigger warnings, safe spaces and microaggressions.

“Faculty should have the right to give trigger warnings if they want, but I never do, and I think the idea is a horrid one,” he writes. “I teach Mein Kampf. It’s disturbing – get over it. College should prepare one to be an adult, and there are no trigger warnings after graduation day. Why are we encouraging students to be ostriches? Shouldn’t they, rather, be learning how to navigate things that will likely unsettle them over the rest of their lives?”

He quotes CNN commentator Van Jones, a strong civil rights proponent, who opposes “safe spaces” on campus: “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym.”

Stern contends a fundamental error has been made in defining terms.

“We want campuses that are open to expression – including, perhaps even especially, difficult and disturbing ideas – but which protect students from real harassment and intimidation. Hate speech codes were efforts to say that ideas themselves can harass and intimidate. Ideas can and should make one uncomfortable (a comfortable college education is a wasted college education). But harassment is something different.”

Strategically, he argues, trying to censor hateful ideas is self-defeating and advances hate agents by martyring them.

“By trying to censor, rather than expose and combat, speech the students perceived as hateful, they were actually helping the alt-right and white supremacists,” writes Stern. “It’s no coincidence that the white nationalists in recent years have wrapped their racist and antisemitic messages around the concept of free speech. Why would progressives allow these haters to steal the bedrock democratic principle of free speech, disingenuously saying that this is what their fight is about? By trying to deny alleged racists platforms, progressives are helping white supremacists recast their vile message as noble protection of a right.”

Another strategic failure, he argues, is buying into the Palestinian narrative’s good/evil dichotomy.

“Israel’s case is best understood as inherently complex and difficult; playing into the ‘all bad’ and ‘all good’ binary of the other side renders those complexities invisible,” he writes.

The conflict on campus spills over, of course. Israel has created a list of 20 organizations, those that urge boycotts of the country, for instance, and bars their members from entering the country. Stern sees this as counterproductive: “You don’t make the case that blacklists (especially of academics) are proper if your goal is to oppose blacklists. You are conceding the argument.”

He gives an example of an anti-Israel campus activist who defends his group’s refusal to meet with Zionists “over cookies and cake” because “you Jews, in all due respect, you wouldn’t sit down with Nazis for tea and cake.”

He also reflects on the “Standards of Partnership” adopted by Hillel International, the Jewish campus organization, which proscribe engaging with groups or individuals that deny Israel’s right to exist, or who delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard Israel, who support BDS or who exhibit “a pattern of disruptive behaviour towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”

Writes Stern: “For those who are not yet ideological soldiers, but want to learn more, and want to do it around their campus Hillel, what sense does it make that adults are telling them they can only bring in certain types of speakers? Yes, the adults defined BDS as hateful. But does it make sense to tell students they have to go elsewhere than the Jewish address on campus to hear about it firsthand from those who support it?”

The litany of bad behaviours on all sides of the ideological divide is likely to make readers of Stern’s book uneasy, whether the reader is Zionist or anti-Zionist. But it is a rare and uncompromising testament to free expression that should give genuine free speech advocates an uplift, particularly in an era when ideologically driven regulation of expression and ideas, especially on campuses, has left many advocates of core liberal, academic values feeling beleaguered.

Format ImagePosted on September 11, 2020September 10, 2020Author Pat JohnsonCategories BooksTags academia, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, antisemitism, BDS, boycott, censorship, conflict, free speech, Hillel, Israel, Kenneth S. Stern, Palestine, university campuses, Zionist
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