diversity – Page 3

The lights of allyship

This Chanukah, kindle the light of liberation, not just for you and your loved ones, but for all people whose freedom of expression is threatened. (photo by Robert Couse-Baker / flickr.com)

In a time of identity searching, introspection and anticipation, Chanukah can be an inviting space to reflect and refract the light before us. From the Chanukah that was to the Chanukah we arrive at, the world has shifted and we are not the same. This holiday of chocolate, oil and games of dreidel beckons us into a moment of contemplation.

Chanukah expresses a language of novelty, innovation and a miraculous expansion from what we thought was possible. The ease and accessibility, the simplicity of candles, the sense that Chanukah is predictable and performative belies the very creative, radical nature of the Festival of Lights.

The annual Chanukah experience, at its core, is an opportunity to receive new insight, empowerment and opportunity to overcome the forces that oppress, debase and deny our most essential identities. Had the few Maccabees not searched to provide that light for the many, none of us would have a miracle to celebrate today. Even though we are privileged to be able to publicly observe our traditions, Chanukah reminds us that our work is not complete until everyone can safely and freely express their identities.

Visibility and proximity

One of the unique aspects of Chanukah is that it is the only festival that occurs in two different months. It is literally positioned between Kislev and Tevet to help us be aware and adapt to changing times. In the light of the candles, it is possible to see our roles anew, clarifying our commitment to ensuring that the privilege and expression of being is available to everyone.

When the Talmud explores modalities of the mitzvah of lighting the chanukiyah, it says that each and every person should have a candle. It continues to explain that an even greater beautification of the mitzvah is when everyone is able to increase the light with each additional day. When everyone has their own chanukiyah, when everyone is able to light all the candles on each night, then everyone is bringing the fullest light possible. This is the hope: with so much light, the world is relieved of darkness.

Our rabbis teach that this attribute of adding is connected to Joseph, whose story we read on Shabbat Chanukah. Joseph’s name means to increase, and his story reveals the relationship between proximity and visibility. The Talmud, Shabbat 22a, juxtaposes the narrative of Joseph being thrown into a pit with the laws detailing the proper placement of the menorah and the limits on how far off the ground it can be.

In Genesis 37:18, Joseph’s brothers “saw [Joseph] from afar … and they conspired against him.” They throw him into a pit, which Genesis 37:24 says “was empty and didn’t have water.” But the rabbis disagree, arguing that, while “empty” implies that the pit didn’t have water in it, it was not without venomous pit-dwellers. There were snakes and scorpions that the brothers didn’t know about, because they were not close enough to the pit to see.

Moreover, the distance at which the brothers first saw Joseph approaching made it easy for them to plot against him. In not one, but two cases, the brothers’ lack of proximity leads to actions that degrade and humiliate. If only they waited to see their little brother up close before acting, they might have changed their plan. If only they approached the pit to look inside, they might have seen the snakes and scorpions. The Torah is clear: proximity and visibility lead to responsibility.

It is for that reason the Talmud instructs us that we cannot place a menorah too far off of the ground – we must be close enough to see and be affected by the candles. If the menorah can’t be seen, we miss the message of the miracle, and the opportunity to take responsibility is lost.

The Hasmoneans were descendants of Aaron, who, the Mishnah tells us, was a lover of peace, pursuer of peace and lover of peoples.

Judaism is a religion of action, and we must be practitioners of our tradition’s wisdom by taking responsibility.

Today, even with technologies that keep us connected across oceans and continents, we understand the challenge and, more so, the threat of being too distant. Jews have a response to prevent the dehumanization that often comes when we are distanced from the lived experience of others – draw in close.

A great miracle happens with allyship

The Hebrew words behind the story of Chanukah and Joseph also reaffirm the holiday’s charge to increase visibility, to be an ally. The rabbis saw our world as created through speech and language and, thus, all Hebrew letters represent hidden truths. Just like the story of Joseph in the pit, the closer you look, the more that is revealed.

The mystics teach that the Hebrew letters for Greece (Yavan is spelled yud, vav, nun) are three lines that descend as the word progresses. The great and mighty culture that claimed elite thought and refinement was in fact a culture that debased and denigrated. Greek leadership prioritized the body over the spirit; what was seen on the outside was of greater value than that which was within. Thus, it could be said that Greece, by elevating the external, actually debases it, a message hidden within the descending letters: yud, vav, nun.

The Hebrew word for Joseph, Yosef, begins with the same first two letters. But the third letter is where the comparison is stark. Instead of a nun sofit (a nun at the end of a word), which is a straight line going down, we have the round letter samech, a symbol for equality. Unlike the hierarchy of the nun, the circle of the samech allows every point on its circumference to be equidistant to the centre. Joseph chooses to chaver (friend) up and stops the descent by treating others as equals.

The nun and samech form the word miracle, nes. The first letter, nun, is the only letter in Hebrew that doesn’t appear in the alphabetical acrostic of the prayer Ashrei. Our rabbis explain that this letter stands for nefela, falling, and, therefore, is omitted. The next letter in the alphabet is the samech and it starts the Ashrei verse, “samech l’chol hanoflim,” “supporting all those who have fallen.” Jews in those days, as in ours, had a choice between the “nun” and the “samech” – to align with the oppressors and feel secure or to ally with those who needed support. In choosing the latter, a great miracle (nes) happened there.

Kindling the light

As the story and words of Chanukah convey, the Jewish response to oppression is not just to be free but to dismantle the system of oppression and provide equality for others. Today, we place a menorah in the window in order to publicize our engagement in the ancient and ongoing story of this struggle. We stand up in broken places of despair and hopelessness to rededicate ourselves and our institutions to this cause. Now, when we see an injustice, when we are proximate to the dehumanization of a child of G-d, we not only see the unholy act itself but also we recognize the imperative to respond.

This Chanukah, kindle the light of liberation, not just for you and your loved ones, but for all people whose freedom of expression is threatened. Kindle a light to banish the darkness of hatred, racism, transphobia and misogyny. Kindle a light that signals to outsiders that you are a home (or an organization) committed to rededication and the recreation of holy space, particularly in the most broken of places.

Chanukah was not immediately established as a holiday. The Talmud teaches that the rabbis waited until the following year to institute a permanent commemoration. When they realized that the miracle could be replicated – that, in every generation, Jews could learn to take the little they had and turn it into something miraculous – they created the holiday. That is the holy ask of Chanukah: to be the light that can extend and expand, to be the miracle that someone else needs.

Michael Walzer writes that “wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt,” but that there is a Promised Land, and the only way to make it across the wilderness is by “joining hands, marching together.” The story of oppression and liberation is also a story of allyship. We will not survive without hands to support and guide us, to hold and elevate us. This year, on Chanukah, be the light and bring the light out of the closet and into the world.

Rabbi Mike Moskowitz is scholar-in-residence of trans and queer Jewish studies at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York and Rabbi Dara Frimmer is senior rabbi at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles. This article was originally published in the Jewish Journal and articles by other Shalom Hartman Institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Diverse learning series

Rabbi Gila Caine (photo from Kolot Mayim)

Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria welcomes back Rabbi Gila Caine, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Ora in Edmonton, to speak on the topic Toratah/Her Torah: Women Rabbis Revealing the Goddess in Torah.

The Nov. 7, 11 a.m., lecture on Zoom kicks off a six-part series of talks called Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity in Jewish Life. The community is invited to listen and learn from Indigenous, Black, Asian, feminist and differently-gendered and differently-abled advocates who are working to make our world a better place.

As a people who have experienced the devastating impact of antisemitism and hatred, Judaism commits us to the responsibility of tikkun olam (repairing our world). In that spirit, Kolot Mayim’s series of speakers will lead attendees on a journey to deepen their understanding of these contemporary issues and how they can support those who do not feel included.

Kolot Mayim’s Rabbi Lynn Greenough describes the series as “an opportunity to build bridges – bridges that enable us to link to what is and what can be, to step beyond our own particular experiences.” The Hebrew word for bridge is gesher, she explained, pointing to the song, “Kol Ha’Olam Kulo,” “the whole world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid.”

In the series opener, Caine will explore how, throughout the millennia, rabbinic tradition, and especially written tradition, was composed from within a man-focused and -experienced perspective. Now, after around half a century of ordaining women, there is a growing corpus of documented writing flowing from within woman’s experiences and interpretations of Torah and life. In her talk, Caine will read a few Torah commentaries written by (women) rabbis from North America and Israel, as examples of weaving together rabbinic and women’s experience into something new.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Caine graduated Hebrew University with a master’s in contemporary Judaism and received her rabbinic ordination at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Israeli program in 2011. Her rabbinic thesis explored liturgical, spiritual and ceremonial aspects of birth in Jewish tradition and contemporary practice.

Stemming from that, as well as her years as a volunteer at a rape crisis centre, Caine is one of the founders of the Israeli rabbinic women’s group B’not Dinah, creating a female and feminist rabbinic tradition of healing after sexual trauma. She now serves as rabbi at Temple Beth Ora and her Building Bridges talk is co-sponsored with her shul.

Other speakers in the 2021/22 series are:

Carmel Tanaka, founder and executive director of JQT Vancouver (Jewish Queer and Trans Vancouver) on A Day in the Life of a Queer, Neurodivergent, Jewpanese Millennial (Dec. 5);
Rivka Campbell, executive director of Jews of Colour Canada, on Harmony in a Divided Identity: A Minority Within a Minority (Jan. 9);
Joy Ladin, poet, author and first openly transgender professor at a Jewish institution, on Jonah, God and Other Strangers: Reading the Torah from a Trans Perspective (Feb. 6);
Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo, director of the Shira Choir, Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Montreal, on The Power of Music: In Honour of Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (Feb. 13); and
Patricia June Vickers, Indigenous artist and independent consultant, and Rabbi Adam Cutler, senior rabbi of Adath Israel Congregation in Toronto, on An Indigenous and Jewish Dialogue on Truth and Reconciliation (March 20).

Kolot Mayim has been active for 20 years and this is the fourth year that the synagogue is offering this speaker series. Talks are free and held on the scheduled Sundays from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. PST. To register, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

– Courtesy Kolot Mayim

A time for diversity training

We’re in the month of Heshvan on the Jewish calendar. Some people call it Mar-Heshvan or Marcheshvan. (Since this is transliteration, it can be spelled either “ch” or “h.”) It’s called mar, or bitter, because, aside from Shabbat, there are no Jewish holidays during this month.

Of course, as Canadians, we had Thanksgiving in there. However, after a long stretch of Jewish holidays, many Jewish people, myself included, quite like the idea of a month off from them. Finally, I have time to start another big project. A relatively quiet Jewish month leaves more time to do “regular” work, learning and making changes.

As a kid, I was very active in my Reform congregation. I learned to lead services and read Torah and Haftarah, and did it without hesitation after becoming a bat mitzvah. Unfortunately, though, at that time, we didn’t chant in my parents’ congregation, so I never learned how to do it. I married into a family with slightly more traditional practice among some of its members and, therefore, have been attending services with chanting now for more than 20 years.

Yet, learning to chant is a tricky business as an adult. On one occasion, I asked a rabbi if I might learn and he said of course, the congregation ran a special group class for adult b’not mitzvah. (Mostly it was women who never were able to participate in a bat mitzvah service as a child.) I said no, I’d been there and done that – complete with leading the service, a reception with custom-made omelettes, and a special dress. I just wanted to learn to chant. He had no space in his imagination for someone who just wanted to learn this skill without the lifecycle event.

I also learned that there are different kinds of trope. Chanting comes along with symbols in the text of the Torah, Haftarah, Eicha and Megillat Esther. The symbols were introduced by the rabbis as a way to mark and understand the text better. It’s like punctuation. However, as an oral tradition, chanting melodies differ according to where one lives and one’s background. There are actually many different styles of chanting trope, including smaller regional differences, as well.

The trope I’ve begun learning is an Ashkenazi one, which is perhaps appropriate to my family background. (I haven’t done a DNA test, though, so I’m going by family lore.) However, parts of my family are Western European and others have been in the United States for a long time. It’s even possible that I’m learning the “wrong” trope for my background. I’ve found that several Sephardi and Mizrahi chanting styles sound clearer and make more sense to me, perhaps because I’ve learned Modern Hebrew and I lived in Israel as a teenager. It’s actually not as simple as “Learn trope!” “Chant Torah!” although it seems this way if you’ve only lived in one specific Jewish ethnic community with unified customs and traditions.

The more you know, the more complicated things seem. The best metaphor I’ve come up with springs from an odd social media interaction I had. Someone I know only online described her harvest supper menu as including “Jewish-style brisket.” I jokingly responded, “WHAT?! There’s only one kind? What about the many varieties I’ve had over the years? Could it be that I’ve never eaten the only ‘official’ Jewish brisket recipe?”

I said maybe this was an Eastern European/Ashkenazi recipe, or her family recipe. After all, brisket is a relatively cheap cut of meat, cooked low and slow, which is perfect to make on Shabbat, when some families do not adjust oven temperatures or turn the oven on or off.

The person insisted that this was indeed the Jewish-style brisket her family made, mostly, and that, if you Google it, this exact recipe pops up. (Hint, lots of things pop up online that don’t hold up under scrutiny.) Eventually, I suggested that perhaps this was best called a family recipe or a specific geographic recipe, and wished her bon appétit.

Geography matters in cooking meat – for instance, in a Southern barbeque recipe. That is, brisket in Texas doesn’t taste like brisket made in eastern Carolina. Nothing could be more different! The same is true for Jewish trope or chanting. They don’t sound the same because, although Jews originated, long ago, in what is now called Israel, we’re now a diverse people, from all over the world. Just as Jews don’t all look the same, we all don’t eat the same foods on holidays, or sing the same melodies for Lecha Dodi, Adon Olam or myriad other prayers.

So, I begin, with baby steps, to learn one chanting/trope tradition while acknowledging there are many others out there. Like the many brisket recipes and holiday traditions out there, knowing about diversity and traveling deepens our appreciation for what we know and enjoy, and for learning more.

In the meanwhile, I joked with a non-Jewish friend I know in “real life” that, if there is really only one Jewish-style brisket recipe, we might be in trouble. “Oh no!” she replied. “I have to figure out ‘the’ Christian brisket recipe! How have I missed it after all this time?!” We snorted together with laughter. Next, I might call a Muslim friend to ask if there just one Muslim meatball – after all, the kibbe and kofte I’ve shared over many years might not be the official kind?

The best learning for Heshvan? There might not be a single “official” version of anything. That, in itself, is a lesson in diversity that might be worth learning like trope … over and over.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Navigating gender, sexuality

Marion Rom, who works with gender-diverse youth, spoke as part of a Beth Tikvah-hosted panel on the topic Navigating Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century. (screenshot)

“Almost one-third of people who have gender dysphoria will attempt suicide and have mental health issues, and that’s why we often have such a high rate of kids with eating disorders who are transgender,” said Marion Rom, a counselor who works with gender-diverse youth in the Lower Mainland.

Rom was speaking as part of a March 11 panel on the topic Navigating Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century. She defined gender dysphoria as when “your body doesn’t match the sense of who you are.” She also explained to the 65-plus attendees of the discussion the difference between sex and gender, some of the terminology around gender, and a few resources for those who want to learn more.

The panel, which was hosted by Beth Tikvah Congregation, also included Dean Kaplan, who joined the conversation from Washington, D.C., and the Abelson family – Kay, Bernard and their son Jason – who live here. The discussion was started by the congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Susie Tendler.

“I think that we have a special mission, as the Jewish people, of finding people who have a potential to be marginalized and always elevating them, along with elevating everyone, to ensure that we are all in a sacred space,” said Tendler. She described her rabbinate as being “about opening doors” and a kehila kedosha, holy community, as one that creates pathways for everyone to be welcome in sacred spaces. She thanked the Zoom participants for their efforts in opening the door of community wider to “welcome everyone as their authentic selves because that’s the only way that, I believe, we really approach God.”

Rom was asked to speak by BT congregant Linda Steiner, who had heard Rom’s talk at a Habonim alumni meeting last year. The presentation was geared to older people, like Rom herself, who is 63.

She defined sexuality, and explained several terms, including lesbian (a female attracted to another female), heterosexual (females attracted to males and vice versa), bisexual (someone attracted to both males and females) and pansexual (someone attracted simply to the person, irrespective of gender). She broke down the acronym LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer; with the plus including but not limited to asexual, two spirit, and allies). She also went through some of the gender terminology, such as cisgender (“either male or female”) and transgender (someone whose sense of self doesn’t match their birth gender). She spoke briefly about hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery.

For people wanting to start learning more about gender and sexuality, Rom suggested the books Love Lives Here by Amanda Jette Knox and Transgender Children and Youth: Cultivating Pride and Joy with Families in Transition by Elijah Nealy, the Israeli documentary Family in Transition and the narrative film The Danish Girl (or the book from which it was adapted, written by David Ebershoff).

Dean Kaplan, 28, who goes by the pronouns they, them and their, came out as non-binary a couple of years ago. They spoke about how they see themselves and their relationship to how the world sees people like them. Describing themselves as Jewish, white and having grown up upper-middle-class and with privilege, Kaplan acknowledged that these factors have “contributed to me being able to live as myself comfortably.”

Despite that comfort, Kaplan first came out as queer in terms of their sexuality, at the age of 17 or 18, before identifying as gender-nonconforming.

“An important part of identifying as queer in almost any part of the world,” said Kaplan, “is not only understanding who you are, but also, in some ways, accepting this label as ‘deviant’ by society.”

In their early 20s, Kaplan began to realize “I very much enjoy connecting with parts of myself that would be considered feminine,” such as having longer hair and wearing tights.

From a young age, they said, “I’ve had this latent sense of difference in how I want to emotionally connect with people and that played a lot into my sense that I was gender-nonconforming. I think also a little bit of it is this sense that I want to live in a world and exist in space without a lot the negative aspects of masculinity that I was raised to cherish in a lot of ways. I’m still aware of the fact that almost all of my male friends are embarrassed to cry, even alone; it’s a sign of anti-masculinity. And so, being non-binary for me is very freeing in a lot of ways. I can be who I want to be and who I feel I am without the kind of embarrassment or labels that go with certain actions for certain genders.”

That said, the reactions to their coming out were mixed and some were hurtful. They get misgendered every day – “sometimes I correct, sometimes I don’t,” said Kaplan. That will depend, for example, on whether the person making the mistake is a superior at work or a peer. “Power and economics play into my ability to be myself in the spaces I happen to be in,” they said.

Jason Abelson, 24, started his transition in 2012, but his first memory of wanting to be a boy goes back to a gymnastics class when he was in preschool, so 4 or 5 years old. Initially, he attended an Orthodox elementary school in South Africa, where he was born, but his parents switched him to a public school. He used the fact that he was a swimmer to cut his hair short in Grade 4. He hated it when his parents would correct people who would mistake him for being a boy. “I just wanted to go and hide somewhere,” he said.

When his chest began to develop in puberty, he would try and hide it, but, eventually, he quit swimming. He has since picked the sport up again, and has joined an LGBTQ+ team.

When he was younger, he said, “I didn’t know what transgender was. I didn’t know that you could transition, that the feelings I had for wanting to be a boy were experienced by anyone else until an Oprah show that my mom was watching one summer’s afternoon. In that Oprah show, they had a transgender guy and his family, and shared his story.”

Seeing the possibilities for himself, Abelson thought about next steps and started the process of transitioning, one part of which is convincing a psychologist “that you are transgender.” He then saw an endocrinologist. In Grade 10 at the time, he stayed at the same school throughout. “I finished the first semester as a girl; came back five days later as a boy,” he said. “All we did was we changed the name on the class list.”

While he was given a key to the teacher’s washroom, he didn’t want to call attention to himself, so he avoided using the facilities. “Bathrooms still do give me a little bit of anxiety,” he said.

He started hormones nine years ago, at age 15. About a year after that, he had top surgery – prior to that he had used binders to keep his chest down.

With respect to going to an Orthodox shul after he started his transition, Abelson was told that he could come to services but would have to sit in the women’s section. Even now, attending a new synagogue and sitting on the men’s side, he said, “I don’t feel like I have a place in the shul. Being gay as well, I can’t get married in that shul, so that’s still a world that is being navigated.”

Kay Abelson spoke about both the emotional journey and the “very practical life journey.” She said she struggled with those early years when her son was asserting his identity – in his clothing choices and in his desire to cut his hair short, for example.

“I found it really hard, as a mother,” she acknowledged. “And it did cause some conflict in our family.” However, she noted, “For me, the time before Jason’s transition was more of a struggle than once he transitioned…. I found the earlier time hard, before we knew what we were dealing with. Bernard and I both always had a sense that there was something with Jason when he was growing up, but we just could not put our finger on it. And so, that moment of him watching the Oprah show and having that ah-ha moment was a huge turning point for all of us.”

It took time for her and her husband to understand and digest what was happening. She had fears about what people would think and say, but people were supportive and accepting, she said.

“When you start thinking about the history and the background about all those situations that Jason mentioned,” said Bernard Abelson, such as the first time he cut his hair short. “All I wanted to do was get him earrings so that he could look more feminine.” When people would refer to his son, “I was immediately defending, ‘This is my daughter.’… I thought I was

defending him. That’s the irony of all that, is that, as a parent, you think you’re doing the right thing by

defending them … but, at the end of the day, for him, as you’ve heard, it wasn’t working for him at all.”

One thing that helped the family was watching the documentary Becoming Chaz, about Chaz Bono’s transition. Watching it helped Bernard Abelson to accept, “This is real.”

“It’s been an incredible, incredible journey for all of us,” said Kate Abelson.

While some parents go through a mourning period for the son or daughter they once had, Kay Abelson said, “I never felt like I lost anything. In fact, I actually gained something through the process because, before Jason’s transition, as you heard in his story, he never felt comfortable with who he was. He was always yearning to be someone different, so he was never really happy within himself…. When he transitioned and he could actually stand loud and proud and be who he was … it was just so exciting.”

Rom reentered the conversation by stressing that the level of grieving varies among families. She then opened the question-and-answer session that included Dean Kaplan’s dad, Des Kaplan, talking about some of his challenges in understanding his child’s gender and sexuality. There was also discussion about Jewish tradition, which identifies at least six genders, and that some Jewish communities have changed the b’nai mitzvah rituals to be more gender-inclusive.

To watch the panel discussion, without the Q&A, visit btikvah.ca/inclusion-and-diversity.

Arts enhance inclusion

Matthew Tom-Wing, right, dressed as Elvis, was one of the participants in the 2019 Chutzpah! Festival finale. His mother, Elizabeth Tom-Wing, recalled it as a “standout moment for our community and for our son!” (photo from JCC)

February is Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (JDAIM). It offers a wonderful time to look back at some of our community achievements in fostering inclusion at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver; in particular, the 2019 Chutzpah! Festival’s Inclusion Project.

Mary-Louise Albert was artistic and managing director of Chutzpah! and the Rothstein Theatre for 15 years. Before she retired, she and I had many spirited conversations about the importance of creating access for local community members in all areas of Jewish communal life and at the JCC, which is the home of the festival and the theatre, and where I am the coordinator of inclusion services.

We believed that the arts are an important avenue for personal growth and skills development, and that they also bolster visibility and foster true belonging. We hoped that the JCC’s inclusion services and Chutzpah! could collaborate in some way and, through our conversations and Mary-Louise’s vision and expertise, the Chutzpah Inclusion Project crystalized.

After months of planning, in November 2019, members of the local community took to the Rothstein stage to participate in a first-ever Inclusion Project performance – an evening of dance and comedy with international inclusion advocate Pamela Schuller and professional dancers Troy Ogilvie and Rebecca Margolick. The event was the finale of the 2019 Chutzpah! Festival and a highlight of Albert’s final year with Chutzpah!

In preparation to take to the stage, participants had a yearlong introduction to theatre, including low-barrier and free classes with a specialist through the JCC’s Theatre Lab program. Participants attended many local productions through the JCC’s social club, and spent hours rehearsing and co-creating with Ogilvie, Margolick and Schuller over a series of workshops that would not have been possible without community partners and friends.

The 2019 performance received a standing ovation from the audience. The feeling of solidarity and acceptance between the audience and the performers was palpable. What was most amazing, Elizabeth Tom-Wing recalled, is that her son had the opportunity to “train and perform on stage with the professional dancers, along with his friends, and close off the three-week-long 2019 Chutzpah! Festival.” She recalled it as a “standout moment for our community and for our son!”

This project demonstrated that artists of mixed ability and skill can create a powerful and moving performance. Moreover, it reminds us that it is only through equity and action that belonging can be fostered. As diversity, equity and inclusion strategist Arthur Chan explains: “Diversity is a fact. Equity is a choice. Inclusion is an action. Belonging is the outcome.”

Leamore Cohen is inclusion services coordinator at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Harris-Emhoff’s significance

After the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, many Jews were quick to celebrate that Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish. Indeed, it is a win given the sharp rise in antisemitic expression and white supremacy we’ve seen in the United States, and which is bleeding over into Canada.

Jews often celebrate when someone like us makes it into a position of some influence. This time, it isn’t any particular achievement of Emhoff’s but, rather, his proximity to someone powerful.

Harris represents so many firsts: the first woman, the first person of South Asian and of Black heritage, and the first person married to a Jew to reach the vice-presidency. Her family is a positive representation of the dream of the United States, where anyone can become anything and where, crucially, diversity is a strength.

In open and free democracies, intermarriage is inevitable. If we are to live and work alongside each other, we will fall in love with each other. This isn’t a bad thing. Given how many people seem to hate Jews, it is nice that some people actually love us. I realize intermarriage is a perceived threat to Judaism; fears of assimilation are very real. And yet, Emhoff is proudly Jewish. His identity is not threatened by the multiple identities of his partner – they celebrate the many elements of who they are and where they come from.

Since the election, there have been many pieces published about how nice it is to see one’s intermarried family represented in the White House. Jewish communities have spent the past several decades trying to stop intermarriage. These efforts have failed and have even driven some Jews and their loved ones away from Judaism.

If we care about Jews and Judaism, including challenging the multiple threats we face, this kind of infighting really needs to stop. It’s time we embrace our pluralistic and diverse families, celebrate all those who wish to be and do Jewish, and recognize that there is so much in Judaism that is beautiful and meaningful, joys that can be experienced by all who are part of the wide web of Jewish families.

Rabbi Denise Handlarski lives in Toronto. She is the author of The A-Z of Intermarriage, published by New Jewish Press, and the leader of the online community Secular Synagogue.

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Editor’s Note: For a response to Rabbi Denise Handlarski’s opinion piece, see “We Jews Are a People of Destiny” by Rabbi Ari Federgrun.

Jewish diversity exists

Rivka Campbell, a co-founder of Jews of Colour Canada, speaks at a school event. (photo from JOCC)

The spirit of openness and inclusion that many Jewish organizations express in their literature and social media posts is frequently not felt by Jews of colour, according to several members of the community.

Jews of colour, who are said to represent about 12% of the overall Jewish community, constitute a broad spectrum of people, including those of African, Middle Eastern, East Indian, Asian, Indigenous and Latin American descent, yet they are vastly underrepresented in congregation attendance, on organizational boards and throughout the community as a whole.

Rivka Campbell, a co-founder of Jews of Colour Canada (JOCC), says the unwelcoming feeling happens immediately upon entering a Jewish institution. She refers to it as the “question or questions” that are asked: Do you know this is a synagogue? What made you decide to visit? When did you convert?

“These are not the sorts of questions that most Jews who attend a synagogue or other places associated with Judaism have to answer, and it is really none of anybody’s business,” Campbell told the Independent.

In a recent Jews of colour webinar run by Moishe House Montreal, participants relayed numerous negative and often disturbing experiences, some of which caused them to distance themselves from Jewish circles.

“I have withdrawn from synagogue life and gone into online mode,” Deryck Glodon, Campbell’s JOCC co-founder, stated. “I don’t want to be in a position where people make you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. People don’t know that Jewish diversity exists.”

Another participant mentioned a rabbi who once told him to choose between being black and being Jewish. Yet another recalled several untoward remarks made in Jewish settings about Filipino people, which happened to be part of this person’s heritage.

“It’s driving many Jews of colour away from any involvement within the broader community,” noted Campbell, who is executive director for Beit Rayim, a Conservative synagogue and school in Richmond Hill, Ont.

Campbell, the sole Canadian recipient of the Union of Reform Judaism’s JewV’Nation inaugural fellowship – a leadership development program – has had numerous encounters with misconceptions. She is often asked if she is Ethiopian. Once, at a Kiddush, she had to explain to someone that being a person of colour does not correspond to a fondness for fried foods.

A noticeable thread during the Moishe House webinar was the wide disparity between the progressive causes supported by Jewish leaders and the experiences of people of colour within the community.

Many Jews of colour feel that, despite some good intentions by Jewish organizations, there are always those moments when they have to prove who they are, when they just want to be, Campbell explained. The hope, she said, is that, one day, Jews of colour won’t have to spell out what Jewish diversity is.

“Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s solidarity with Dr. Martin Luther King happened 55 years ago – we need to do something now and not rest on our progressive laurels,” she said. “Nor should we forget that Rabbi Heschel was not universally praised from within the Jewish establishment for his civil rights stand.”

As for what clergy and lay leaders can do, Campbell pointed to the resources found on Union of Reform Judaism website regarding diversity, equity and inclusion for all members of the community.

For the broader community, she said, “It is not a big deal to be welcoming. Treat me the same as anyone else. You have to see me as a Jew first. ‘Shabbat Shalom’ should flow off the tongue as easily with me as anyone else.”

She continued, “Our diversity as Jews of colour adds to the diversity of Judaism. This can be turned into a very positive thing.”

On this hopeful note, in 2017, Campbell started work on a documentary that shares several stories of people from various backgrounds within the Jewish community and is designed to show the richness therein. Its objective is “to discuss how we are starting to embrace our differences and how we can do a better job of celebrating our diversity.”

Campbell’s first involvement with Jews of colour groups began at the time social media was gaining momentum. After locating ones on Facebook, she found their focus to be American-centric. In 2012, she started her own Facebook group, A Minority Within a Minority: Jews of Colour, a Canadian-focused group.

The need to move beyond Facebook ensued and, together with Glodon, she started a website and reached out to “people in the real world to have gatherings and lunches.”

“The aim was to have an in-person connection, to do things like teaching, research and advocacy,” said Campbell. The group was incorporated as a nonprofit and, at some point, she would like it to be a charitable organization.

JOCC hopes to expand its presence outside of Ontario and Quebec, and would like to have more exposure in British Columbia. Campbell spoke at Beth Tikvah

in July.

For more information about Jews of Colour Canada, visit jewsofcolour.ca or their Facebook page, facebook.com/joc.canada.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

No Silence on Race: an update

It’s been almost two months since we launched our open letter on June 30 and so much has happened since then!

We have received hundreds of signatures of support from the Jewish community across Canada and several Canadian organizations, congregations and initiatives have written public statements outlining their commitment to our pillars. We have published these statements on our website and you can view them at nosilenceonrace.ca/statements. We’ve also received some coverage in Jewish publications across the country. We have made them available on our website as well. Although our set date of July 29 has passed, we are still accepting signatures and statements.

We have had conversations with leaders in our community and we know that many organizations are committed to action and to change. The work of creating inclusive, anti-racist and equitable Jewish spaces is a daily pursuit and we are encouraged to see the way our community has embraced our letter and the need for action and accountability.

Many of you have expressed interest in learning more about our pillars. Our team has launched a resource page (nosilenceonrace.ca/resources) on our website dedicated to furthering the conversation on each of our pillars and on how our community can collectively enact meaningful systematic change. We have also included equity consultants on this page that organizations can connect with directly to begin and continue this work.

Thank you to all of you who have reached out to us directly expressing your support and desire to get involved with our team and our work. We will be reaching out to you all soon. If you are reading this and would like to get involved with us, we’d love to hear from you! Please fill out our Get Involved page (nosilenceonrace.ca/get-involved) on our website to join us as we continue our work and create opportunities to connect with the community, grow our platform and take action.

We look forward to a time where we can create an in-person event and come together as a community. Until then, we encourage everyone to keep the conversation alive with your family, friends, communities and workplaces.

– Sara Yacobi-Harris, Akilah Allen-Silverstein and
Daisy Moriyama, co-founders, No Silence on Race

Working to advance equality

Akilah Allen-Silverstein, a co-founder, with Sara Yacobi-Harris and Daisy Moriyama, of No Silence on Race. (photo from NSR)

Amid a global reckoning around race, a group of Canadian Jews of colour is calling on the community to advance inclusivity and racial equity in Jewish spaces. And rather than generalized good wishes for more equality, No Silence on Race has created nine pillars to guide community organizations through a comprehensive process.

The group emerged at the end of June, when founder Sara Yacobi-Harris and co-founders Akilah Allen-Silverstein and Daisy Moriyama released a letter to the community introducing their work and their nine pillars.

“We are Black Jews and non-Black Jews of colour,” the letter said. “We are Jewish community board members, educators and leaders. We write from a place of love for our Jewish identities and community, while also grappling with the cultural erasure, exclusion and structural racism that we experience in Jewish spaces. Nevertheless, we are compelled to be in Jewish community because it is who we are.”

They began by sending the letter to agency leaders and posting it on Jewish social media and discussion platforms. Organizations circulated it further and began to request meetings.

“We are working to make a change in the culture, recognizing that the Jewish community is multifaceted in identity and making sure there is an awareness and an education around the diversity of the Jewish community,” Allen-Silverstein told the Independent in a recent interview.

In addition to asking individuals and organizations to sign their open letter, the group is asking community agencies to issue statements of their own and commit to the nine pillars.

The nine pillars guide agencies through developing allyship and educational approaches around race, as well as relationship-building. They move from more general approaches to applied processes such as hiring an equity consultant and developing inclusive employment and recruitment policies; creating leadership strategies for Jews of colour in the organization and amplifying their voices. The process is anticipated to evolve over three- to five-year periods. The entire text is easily accessible online at nosilenceonrace.ca.

“We are asking every organization to make a public statement, but, within this public statement, it’s not just about solidarity or signaling that you’re with us or you feel the same,” said Allen-Silverstein. “Our pillars are intentional in that the first three are ‘free’ and we’re very cognizant that it’s COVID right now and a lot of these organizations are just working to keep the lights on. But the first three pillars –allyship and education and relationship-building – these are things that will mostly be individual work. The organization can help facilitate by sending out reading lists, book lists, articles to give people the context, because, if you just run ahead and skip to steps four, five, six, you’re trying to create proposals or rules and guidelines without the context of the education to understand where the issues are, what people of colour have faced for years and their experiences within the Jewish community, and we are not going to be putting together any policies that actually make sense or help.”

No Silence on Race is cautious to express that, in employment and recruitment, the group wants to avoid tokenizing. “Tangible efforts could include mentorship programs for Jews of colour to be groomed for leadership positions,” she said. “We realize that takes time but that should just be done intentionally.”

Working to amplify the voices of Jews of colour, Allen-Silverstein added, means not just expecting Jews of colour to come and share what “for some of us can be very painful and exhausting, to do this for free constantly.”

Allen-Silverstein, a financial planner, is the daughter of an Ashkenazi father from London, Ont., and a mother from St. Kitts in the Caribbean. Jews of colour, she said, can come from intermarriage, but the broad category also includes Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopians “and others who have always been Jews of colour,” she said.

Acknowledging and condemning antisemitic remarks and actions that have come from some prominent African-American athletes, artists and religious figures, as well as some incidents within the Black Lives Matter movement, Allen-Silverstein said the incidents speak to a communication problem.

“It just shows the breakdown between both communities,” she said. “I think, if you look historically, the similarities and the oppression that both communities have faced, we should be allies more than any other two groups. It’s sad. All we can do is honestly be that person who tries to explain it to both sides and that generally happens.”

Amid the hundreds of chapters of the Black Lives Matters movement, she acknowledged, there are some who have expressed extreme ideas. Allen-Silverstein sees two approaches in response.

“Sometimes, it’s noise and we really have to ignore that. One person speaking out and saying something stupid doesn’t mean that everybody else feels that way, and I think we need to be careful not to do that,” she said. The other step is to get to the root of the matter – “Let’s figure out where they’re getting this terrible message,” she said.

There has been forward movement in the fight for racial equality, as well as some backsliding, over many decades. Like others working for racial justice, Allen-Silverstein looks at the current moment with cautious optimism.

“It is inspiring that people are really listening and seem really genuinely interested to move forward, to acknowledge past things that have been done, whether it’s unconscious or consciously as well,” she said, adding that there appear to be more people engaging in the issue. “We are seeing, too, many things that make it very obvious that there was an element of people within the community who just considered these issues not theirs and not something they needed to participate in. That, for us, wasn’t acceptable as people who obviously walk both lines, being both members of that community and the Jewish community.”

Roll out welcome mat

Bill 21, Quebec’s law that forbids most public employees from displaying any religious symbols like a turban, a Magen David or a hijab, may become an issue in the federal election. On CBC Radio’s political program The House last weekend, MPs representing the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties all took effectively the same position: the law is discriminatory but provinces have the right to proclaim their own laws and, what’s more, the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause means Quebec can pretty much do whatever it wants.

There is a political calculation in all this, of course. Many Quebeckers support this law and any federal party needs to appeal to a chunk of these voters in order to succeed in the province during next month’s vote. As a result, party leaders are mostly making the right noises about this discriminatory law, while hoping to move on to the next topic ASAP.

With federal leaders basically throwing up their hands on the issue, which calls into question the most fundamental rights of Canadians of all religions, what can be done?

One individual interviewed on the program is a teacher who is Sikh. Her choice was to move from Quebec to British Columbia, where she could continue her chosen profession without diminishing her religious beliefs, which include wearing a turban.

If federal leaders will not act forcefully, perhaps leaders in the provinces outside Quebec can do something. Throughout history, Canada has been enriched by refugees and immigrants who sought freedom and opportunity – our gains roughly equating the loss to their places of origin. Why not apply the same principle to inter-provincial relations?

Perhaps provinces like British Columbia should roll out the welcome mat for teachers, school administrators, wildlife officers, Crown prosecutors and other civil servants from Quebec who no longer feel welcome there. Actively recruiting these experienced professional people of different cultures and religions would strengthen our communities and send a message to Quebec that cultural difference is an asset, not a liability.

In the absence of forceful federal leadership on this front, it would be encouraging to see provincial governments stepping up where they can.