Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video

Search

Archives

"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.

Recent Posts

  • New housing partnership
  • Complexities of Berlin
  • Obligation to criticize
  • Negev Dinner returns
  • Women deserve to be seen
  • Peace is breaking out
  • Summit covers tough issues
  • Jews in trench coats
  • Lives shaped by war
  • The Moaning Yoni returns
  • Caring in times of need
  • Students are learning to cook
  • Many first-time experiences
  • Community milestones … Gordon, Segal, Roadburg foundations & West
  • מקטאר לוונקובר
  • Reading expands experience
  • Controversy welcome
  • Democracy in danger
  • Resilience amid disruptions
  • Local heads CAPE crusaders
  • Engaging in guided autobiography
  • Recollecting Auschwitz
  • Local Houdini connection
  • National library opens soon
  • Regards from Israel …
  • Reluctant kids loved camp
  • An open letter to Camp BB
  • Strong connection to Israel
  • Why we need summer camp
  • Campers share their thoughts
  • Community tree of life
  • Building bridges to inclusion
  • A first step to solutions?
  • Sacre premières here
  • Opening gates of kabbalah
  • Ukraine’s complex past

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie

Tag: Confederation

The year it all changed

The year it all changed

On May 24, Israelis celebrated the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem in the streets around the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. (photo from Ashernet)

Everything changed in 1967. Fifty years ago, Canada celebrated its 100th birthday, hosting an Expo in Montreal and, at least in the narrative we like to tell ourselves, came into our own as a country.

We became a country in 1867, “came of age,” historians tell us, at Vimy Ridge, in 1917, gained full autonomy from Britain’s Parliament in 1931, and adopted our very own constitution in 1982. But 1967 is when we stopped being a baby-country and became a confident, adult-like state on the world stage.

It’s possible that few Canadians pinpoint 1967 as a particular turning point. The various measures of Canadian pride – the U.S. exchange rate, hockey titles, military engagements, pop cultural contributions – have ebbed and flowed in the successive decades. National unity saw multiple flashpoints, from the October Crisis just three years after the euphoria of the Centennial, to the referenda of 1980 and 1995, the latter of which almost ended the nation. Free trade and globalization altered us once again.

“Canadianness” itself changed dramatically in this half-century, from a concept rooted in British heritage to a recognition of “two founding nations” to celebrating multiculturalism and a belated recognition of the rights and tragic history of indigenous peoples resulting directly from our national project. In this time, too, Canada has gone from a staid, comparatively conservative place to one of the most liberal countries in the world. Institutionalized antisemitism, which was still rife in the Canada of 1967, has become almost entirely absent (although incidents and acts of antisemitism, like much else, continue to occur).

While nothing really substantive changed overnight, 1967 is a symbolic moment in Canadian history.

For Israel, 1967 had symbolism but, in very real, tangible and irreversible ways, it was a year when everything changed. While it didn’t happen overnight, it did take a mere six days. The Six Day War, which began June 5, 1967, literally and figuratively reshaped Israel, the Middle East, Diaspora Jewry and global diplomacy.

In its early years, Israel experienced exponential population growth like almost no country on earth has seen. It went from the proverbial desert to a blooming success, first through innovations in agriculture and, later, in technology and almost every other sector of human endeavour. A successful nation was born. But the Jewish state was never accepted by the neighbours it defeated in 1948-’49 and, in 1967, war came again.

Yet the result was so quick and so decisive that some viewed it as a sign of Divine intervention or evidence of chosenness. More realistically, it was a people holding their ground because there was no alternative.

The experience affected not only Israelis but Jews everywhere. Canadian Jews and others in the Diaspora volunteered, sent money, prayed and organized. Less than two decades after it had begun, Jewish self-determination in the ancient land and modern state of Israel hung by a thread. And then victory.

The anxiety before and jubilation after transformed into something new and unexpected. The control by Israel over the West Bank (formerly part of Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (which had been under Egyptian control) led to a new dynamic in Israel – and in the world’s approach to Israel. Having been seen as the underdog, Israel in 1967 transformed – in the eyes of the world and, to an extent, in the eyes of Israelis themselves – into a powerful regional force.

The occupation has been the defining foreign policy concern for Israel for half a century now and affects the way Israel is treated on the global stage. Jerusalem, reunified under Israeli control during the war, is a flashpoint of local and international conflict over competing claims. Israelis will likely be forced to reckon with the legacy of 1967 for many years to come, as it seeks to protect both the democratic and Jewish natures of the state, as well as reaffirming its commitment to minority rights and to pluralism.

Despite this overarching conflict and its associated violence and threats, Israel has developed an economy and culture that is a human-made miracle of the modern world. The list is familiar and endless: scientific and academic achievement, technological innovation, global emergency response, lifesaving medical advancements. Even Israel’s intelligence capabilities, born of necessity, are so advanced that the president of the United States foolishly can’t help bragging to adversarial foreign despots that he has insider intel.

Amid all these challenges and hard work, Israelis self-report in international studies to be among the happiest people on the planet. (Canadians also rank high.) Even with room for improvement, this reality is perhaps the greatest achievement of all.

Format ImagePosted on June 2, 2017May 31, 2017Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags Canada, Confederation, Israel, Six Day War
Commemorative $10 note

Commemorative $10 note

(photo from Bank of Canada)

Beginning June 1, 40 million commemorative bank notes will be distributed through Canada’s financial institutions. The $10 note, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Confederation, features Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Étienne Cartier, Agnes Macphail and James Gladstone. Macdonald was Canada’s first prime minister and one of the Fathers of Confederation. Cartier, also one of the Fathers of Confederation, was a principal architect of Canadian federalism and a proponent of Confederation as a means of safeguarding French Canada and other minorities. Macphail was a champion of equality and human rights who, in 1921, became the first woman elected to the House of Commons in Canada. Gladstone, or Akay-na-muka (his Blackfoot name), committed himself to the betterment of indigenous peoples in Canada and, in 1958, became Canada’s first senator of First Nations origin. The back of the note emphasizes Canada’s natural landscapes. For more information, visit bankofcanada.ca/banknote150.

Format ImagePosted on May 5, 2017May 3, 2017Author Bank of CanadaCategories NationalTags Agnes Macphail, Confederation, James Gladstone, John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Étienne Cartier

Sacred task of Canada

Canada has changed dramatically in the past half-century. In two years, we will mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation. When we last celebrated such a momentous landmark birthday – in 1967 – it was a time of perhaps unprecedented optimism and belief that the world was better for having Canada in it. Yet, even in that celebratory year, the culmination of a decade of upheaval both positive and negative, no one could have predicted the Canada we would build in the next generation.

It was in that decade that Canada’s immigration laws – which since the 1920s had been notoriously stringent and oriented almost exclusively to white migrants – became part of the multi-hued world. A royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism opened the door to viewing Canada outside the British colonial and cultural prism through which it originated in 1867. Within a few short years, the ethnic mix of the country would expand the concept of multiculturalism, opening up an exciting new amalgam of peoples from around the world, though not without some significant social challenges. Even so, for a country whose demographic face has changed so dramatically in a relatively short amount of time, we have adapted to it in ways that should inspire pride.

It has been said that Canadians, polite and welcoming to strangers by reputation, are also self-critical in ways almost unknown in other countries. When there have been incidents of which Canadians should be ashamed – and, as in any country, there have been plenty – we do have a tendency to self-castigate.

On the other hand, sometimes not quickly or adequately enough. As we wrote in this space last week, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on the catastrophic history and legacy of the Indian residential schools program highlights one of this country’s worst open sores – and that confronts only one portion of this country’s treatment of indigenous peoples. It took too long to reach this point of truth and reconciliation and it remains to be seen if action and genuine reconciliation will be the result. It is worth repeating, in this Canada Day edition of the paper, that it is our responsibility as Canadians to ensure that the recommendations of this report are not ignored or dismissed.

And Canada has a legacy of racism and antisemitism. Not just a legacy, but an active problem in many places and in many contexts. But, in a country as diverse as ours, in the year 2015, we as a collective are doing pretty well at getting along.

It has not only been the comparatively speedy and dramatic shift in ethnic demographics that has changed Canada. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been the lynchpin for judicial and legislative changes that have altered the face of the country and the day-to-day lives of its citizens. From the start, the entrenched equality of women was a significant constitutional right. By the 1980s, when the Charter took effect, it may have seemed ludicrous that a woman would not be considered legally equal – but let us not forget that the country to our south had spent a chunk of the previous decade arguing over precisely that point and the effort to entrench in the U.S. Constitution an equal rights provision failed, leaving women constitutionally unequal to men.

Court interpretations of the Charter have led to some of Canada’s most stunning progressive steps, including marriage equality. Yes, it was the courts (successive provincial decisions and then the Supreme Court of Canada) that made marriage equal, but Parliament quickly acceded (not that they had much choice) and public opinion is now overwhelmingly on side. Numerous less prominent cases have swung on the Charter’s provisions and while our American cousins fret over judicial “overreach” or “activism” when courts interpret the laws of the land (as is their constitutional role in both countries), Canadians seem to accept and even admire our Charter and its impact on the country. Polls, reliable as they may or may not be, suggest that 82% of us like the Charter.

Canada has sometimes been seen as an unnatural country, not one united by language or race or even geography, because we’ve got too much diversity for any of these to be a unifying factor. But we have found things to unify us.

In a world where diverse people stuck within random national boundaries seem to have too often sought out differences, accentuated them and fought over them, Canadians have accepted our lot as destined to share this space – and found our own ways to coexist, to identify the things that unite us, even celebrate the things we do not share in common, and make the best of it.

We are not perfect. No country is. Jewish tradition says that God created an imperfect world and it is humanity’s responsibility to strive to repair it. Perhaps, in a constitutionally mandated non-denominational way, this is also the role of successive generations of Canadians: inherit a country and strive to make it better. On Canada Day this year, may we rededicate ourselves to this sacred task.

Posted on June 26, 2015June 25, 2015Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags Canada, Confederation
Proudly powered by WordPress