identity

Reluctant kids loved camp

Generations of kids have “the best summer of their lives” at camp. (photo from Camp Miriam)

“There’s no way we are going to a Jewish camp,” my kids declared with absolute resolve. Wait. What? Why??? They explained that they knew “enough” Jewish people and plenty of culturally Jewish things, so camp was not necessary. OK, I thought, that’s completely, totally and utterly crazy.

While we’ve been involved at Temple Sholom for years, speak Hebrew at home and celebrate the holidays, my kids are the only Jewish kids in their classes at public school. They are often told they don’t look Jewish, let alone Sephardi. Whatever that means – there’s a huge span between Barbra Streisand and Ofra Haza. They weren’t excited about their identity, but begrudgingly went along with being Jewish. It was the equivalent of cultural, ethnic and faith feet dragging.

My disappointment couldn’t be missed because I literally said, “I’m so disappointed to hear you say that.” I thought guilt might move them – a powerful tool of every Jewish mother. They apologized. Yes. I was moving the needle. And then, they immediately asked me if they could go to a Christian horse camp. Nope. I failed, while concurrently being mortified. To be clear, I wasn’t horrified of considering a different faith camp, but because they are wildly allergic to horses. Who wants to be the parent that gets a phone call that their kids can’t handle equines? Not me. Too embarrassing.

Moreover, it was a complete reversal of my experience. I begged my parents to send me to a Jewish camp. I started going from the age of 10, eventually visiting Israel and managing to get a coveted staff position. My camp time was the most incredible and defining experience of my youth. I wished, hoped and prayed for my kids to have the same experience. They had shut down the idea, but before I wrote them off as blasphemers, I decided to let it sit and cook in their minds like a delicious shakshuka.

photo - kids in the pool at Camp Miriam — *(photo from Camp Miriam)*

For a couple of months, they pondered a tough year of COVID-19 shutting down so much of life – and the idea of being away for several weeks with a lot of independence became very appealing. They finally agreed to “let me send them” to Camp Miriam, which was very similar to the camp I went to back east. They diligently packed, were welcomed by friends at registration, got on the bus and did not look back. I got two postcards. The first informed me that they hadn’t been eaten by wild island dogs, and the second told me they were having the best summer of their lives.

The kids came back transformed both physically and figuratively. They both grew half a foot, and something in their psyche profoundly shifted. They loved, I do mean loved, all things Jewish because of Camp Miriam. They had a magical summer that every parent wishes their kid to have. A tight group of friends, a deep respect for their beloved staff and a passion for the programming. Frankly, they wouldn’t zip it about how much they adored Camp Miriam.

They bragged about doing avodah (work), one choosing garbage duty and the other cleaning the sherutim (bathrooms). Umm … what happened? I couldn’t get them to make their beds at home, and they were doing legitimate work at camp? It struck me. Camp Miriam had instilled a profound sense of pride. For weeks, and I do mean weeks, they would prompt a conversation with, “At Camp Miriam….” Some of their most profound moments were having Shabbat at the Point, feeling a deep connection of chevra (community) and telling me they felt understood for the first time. They didn’t have to explain themselves, and that was mind-blowing.

photo - two people playing guitars at Camp Miriam — *(photo from Camp Miriam)*

Going to Camp Miriam coalesced for my kids a sense of identity; they felt seen and heard, so could go deep into what this meant. We were able to have a shared generational experience, which was pretty awesome, considering my kids think electricity was barely invented when I was a kid. I corrected them and explained that the cutting-edge technology of faxing existed when I was a child.

Last week, I overheard them at Sunday Temple Sholom school bragging that Camp Miriam was the best camp ever. And there it is. My kids not only needed Jewish camp, but they also desperately wanted to be there. I feel utterly indebted to Camp Miriam for giving my kids such a brilliant and rich Jewish experience and, although I couldn’t say it to their faces, I was satisfied thinking, “Yes! In your faces. You suck. I was soooooo right about everything, and you were so unequivocally wrong.” Also, now I can breathe easy, knowing they can’t wait to go back to Camp Miriam and build a lifetime of memories and friendships.

– Courtesy Camp Miriam

Why we need summer camp

Summer camp helps foster grit, creating space for kids to develop independence and author their own stories. (photo from URJ Camp Kalsman)

As a parent of three, I know how hard it is to balance the overwhelming desire to make sure my kids “have it all” – diverse extracurricular activities, best schools, quality family time, etc. – and, at the same time, to know when to let go (and actually do it!) so they can experience the power of paving their own way. Skinned knees, bruised egos, broken hearts and all.

As a summer camp director, I also know that parents like me are not alone. In fact, there is a whole army of incredibly kind and passionate young adult role models, often dressed up in silly costumes, ready to be my partner in this “gritty journey” of adolescence and the teenage years.

Ask anyone who grew up at overnight summer camp – Jewish or otherwise – and most will tell you it felt like their second home. At Camp Kalsman, where my children and I have spent the past six years, we welcome campers and staff members “home” each summer. But what does this really mean and why is this important for fostering grit in our kids and teens?

I’d argue that home, a place of true belonging, is prime real estate for failure, learning and growth – home is where grit is born. Often, when we think of home we think of being safe and protected, perhaps shielded from the real world. I would argue that home is more of a safety net, giving a child the reassurance that not only is failure OK but that, when they do ultimately fail at something, we’ll be there to catch them and help them bounce back, stronger and more resilient.

What are the top three reasons why you, as a parent, guardian or loving adult, need summer camp, too?

1. Creating space to deepen connection. I’m going to say something that might make some people uncomfortable – your kids need a break from you just as much as you need one from them. Camp gives you the chance to create that space, knowing that you have a trusted partner to create that same safety net for your child. Absence makes the heart grow fonder is a cliché and it’s also a deeply true statement. By creating (physical) space for a finite period of time, your child has the chance to broaden their perspective, test everything you’ve taught them, try something on their own and learn from other trusted adults. When a camper has a temporary moment of sadness at camp (sometimes referred to as homesickness), that feeling is validated – “how wonderful is it that you have such great folks at home who love you, believe you can do this and know you will be safe and cared for at camp?” Camp simultaneously builds a sense of self separate from the family unit and strengthens the roots of that family tree from afar.

photo - kid kayaking at Camp Kalsman — *(photo from Camp Kalsman)*

2. Declaration of independence. How often do you wish your kid would make their own lunch for school, make their bed without you asking, pick up those socks that have been next to the couch for what seems like days? At camp, where “nagging” parents are replaced with super-cool counselors who are the perfect combination of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins, kids learn a sense of communal responsibility, pride in keeping their space clean, and come to understand how their action (or inaction) can have ripple effects on those around them. At the beginning of the summer, they will have contributed to creating a cabin covenant (at Camp Kalsman, we use the Hebrew term brit kehillah), a shared understanding, co-created by their bunkmates and counselors, about how they will live and play together for the camp session. Campers have to navigate social situations without adult or teacher intervention (those cool counselors are also trained in conflict-resolution and will help out, of course). The ownership children and teens feel about their time at camp helps foster confidence and self-awareness and helps calibrate their inner moral compass for when they return home and to school.

3. Sharing the stories. It may happen in the car-ride home, over that first “real-world” meal after so many days of camp food, or a few days after they get home and have had time to process, but your child might just freely and willingly tell you stories about the summer. It won’t be like their one-word answer when you ask about school. With their new-found independence and confidence (see #2!), they might tell you about the friends they made, the new food they tried, the counselor they loved, maybe even the silly dance they made up. And, after you’ve listened intently, controlling your need to ask 1,000 follow-up questions, and instead basking in their joy and nostalgia, you’ll say, “Wow, that sounds like one incredible summer!” You will have given your child the gift of summer camp, and they will have given you the gift of sharing in their joy and confidence and gratitude.

While there are many, many more reasons that we all need summers at camp (a second home), the combination of creating space, developing independence and authoring their own stories is, at its core, the secret sauce of raising a gritty and resilient generation of children, teens and parents!

Rabbi Ilana Mills is camp director, URJ Camp Kalsman. If you are interested in learning more about the camp, visit campkalsman.org or contact Rabbi Ilana at [email protected]

Campers share their thoughts

Making friends and challenging oneself are just two of the things kids love about summer camp. (photo from Camp Solomon Schechter)

Jewish camping can be an integral part of children’s lives and their development. Involving them in Jewish summer camps leads to brighter Jewish futures and a stronger Jewish community as a whole. Camp helps Jewish youth feel proud of their heritage and can lead to stronger friendships and relationships, campers finding their true passions, and discovering the joy in Jewish life. We spoke to several Camp Solomon Schechter campers about what camp means to them and how it’s made an impact on their lives.

Ruby Lipsky (1st year): “[Camp friends are special] because you can just do whatever you want with them and they make you feel like [you’re] home and, if you’re sad, they help you and it’s just nice to have somebody here to be with you. You’re living with some new people in your cabin that you’ve never met before and I made very good friends with them because I treated them nicely. If you treat them how you want to be treated, then it just makes camp so much more fun.”

Izzy Drazin (2nd year): “You’re just welcome to anything you want to do. I feel like I’ve been more excited whenever I come to camp. Instantly something clicks in my head to be happy, have fun, try new things. I want to bring back some of the energy that I have here, some of the ruach, happiness, and this new sense of self.”

Orli Kalman (7th year): “Out of camp I have learned so many new values of kindness and working with others. It’s a really great opportunity because you’re constantly surrounded by people and sometimes that’s a lot, but you deal with it and learn how to prioritize yourself and take time for yourself when you need it. Then, you can go back and make friendships and value the time that you get to spend with others.”

* * *

“My friendships at camp are the most important thing to me and that is one of the main reasons that I come back to camp. I get to see the same people every year that I love and that I get to grow with and learn more about every summer. We have so many similarities but at the same time so many differences, I’m constantly learning new things about my friends. It’s great that we are able to start right back where we left off and just keep growing these friendships and making them stronger.”

photo - kids having fun at Camp Solomon Schechter — *(photo from Camp Solomon Schechter)*

Bella Robinson (8th year): “At home, I have a few Jewish friends but going to camp, where everyone is Jewish, is such a magical thing. All the aspects of my life tie into me being Jewish and, at home, I find that I may not relate to my other non-Jewish friends because they don’t share some of the same aspects of their culture or religion or keeping Shabbat and they may not know about some of the traditions I keep close to my heart. When I’m at camp, constantly practising Judaism and I’m with all my Jewish friends, those friendships are just so much stronger than any other ones at home.”

Josh Kittay (15th year, counselor): “The biggest thing about camp that makes it so special is those memories for me. I love to tell stories and, when I go home, I get to tell all my family and friends those stories that happened, whether it’s your new friend you made or something really funny you did on the aqua park or an amazing shot you made on the basketball court. You get to really find out who you are here and you get to be that person you want to be, whether you’re extra goofy here or you wanna change a little bit who you see yourself as. You get to do that here ’cause no one’s gonna judge you.”

* * *

“It’s so important to be somewhere that is so inclusive. We are judged as a Jewish community, we are judged for just being Jewish, and being able to not only be Jewish here with tons of other Jews … you also get to be how you want to be and you better come up with your own story about who you wanna become. You don’t have to go along with the rules, go along with the set laws of what we call the ‘real world.’ You get to be who you wanna be, you get to choose who that person is. What we like to say is you get to try on new clothes. If you wanna become someone else, go for it. This is the place where no one is gonna judge you, everyone wants to do the same thing, so find out who you are.”

– Courtesy Camp Solomon Schechter

Four more questions to ask

One of the four additional questions that the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs suggests we ask ourselves this Passover is: As we solemnly intone “Next year in Jerusalem,” how can we express the significance of the land of Israel in our Jewish Canadian identity? (photo by IRR Photography)

Traditional celebrations of recent Passover seasons were certainly curtailed, and even canceled, by the pandemic. For those of us fortunate enough to have emerged from COVID-19 with our families intact, we now – finally – will have an opportunity to come together to celebrate the holiday as it should be – among extended family and old friends.

The limits placed on us by the pandemic, however, have not curtailed the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ work. Ensuring increased COVID funding for frontline charitable organizations helping the elderly, ill and all others among our most vulnerable was paramount in our advocacy to governments at all levels. Supplemental funds are never quite sufficient, but these extra funds were realized in federation agencies across the country.

The disturbing surge in antisemitism that came with the pandemic became another focus of our work. Last summer, as a founding member of the Canadian Coalition to Combat Online Hate, we organized the federal government-|sponsored Emergency Summit on Antisemitism that brought together government, media, academic and other experts in combating online hate that so often leads to real-life violence.

Connected to pervasive hate online is spreading distortion and even outright denial of the Holocaust. A poll commissioned by the Canadian charity Liberation75 showed that, of 3,600 students in grades 6 to 12, a shocking 33% were either uncertain about the Holocaust, thought that the death toll was exaggerated or questioned whether the Holocaust even happened. In Ontario’s largest school board – and in others from the West to the Maritimes – incidents of antisemitism have begun to be reported almost weekly.

This kind of disturbing trend requires focused, strategic action. CIJA has received a grant to leverage the expertise of historians, teachers and Jewish scholars to create a curriculum for Ontario middle-school students that will teach them about the Holocaust – and about modern-day antisemitism. Most recently, CIJA has urged support for MP Kevin Waugh’s private member’s bill that proposes Canada follow the example of other countries – including France and Germany – to make Holocaust denial an offence under Canada’s Criminal Code.

To spur discussion about what such legislation could do, CIJA hosted a national webinar about reasons to criminalize Holocaust denial, the challenges posed, and what we can learn from jurisdictions where similar laws have been enacted. With experts from Canada, France and Israel espousing various perspectives, the discussion was informed, civil and productive.

Discussion. Now that’s an area where Jews tend to feel both comfortable and motivated. And that brings me to the Pesach celebration awaiting us this year. Of course, we will delight in visits with our loved ones. Some of us will see children or grandchildren, newly arrived or grown significantly since our last Passover seder together. Many will have questions – not only the traditional four we ask annually, harking back to our historic connections to Israel, but also questions about being Jewish today, in Canada.

We think Jews in communities large and small have lots to talk about, and we want to facilitate engaged, thoughtful discussions responding to four more questions we’ve proposed for this Passover. We propose, this Passover seder, that Jewish families and friends think about the issues CIJA, as the advocacy agent of Jewish federations across Canada, has been prioritizing.

More background is available, along with suggested responses, at cija.ca/4morequestions, but here are the questions:

Looking at increased denial and distortion of the Holocaust, our most recent enslavement, how can we stop Holocaust denial and distortion? In the realm of online hate and antisemitism, we remember numerous historic efforts to destroy the Jewish people. What can Canadians do to combat online hate and antisemitism today? Turning to community security, as a once-enslaved people, we ask, what does a safe space for Jewish Canadians look like? And, as we solemnly intone “Next year in Jerusalem,” how can we express the significance of the land of Israel in our Jewish Canadian identity?

That’s a lot. But that’s what we are up against, even living in Canada, one of the safest places for Jews anywhere.

As we gather this year, whether part of a small family, an extended clan of young and old, or among friends, let us celebrate the joy of our survival and how, together, we can work to shape our future.

May your Passover be a peaceful, thoughtful, and happy one. Chag Pesach sameach!

Judy Zelikovitz is vice-president, University and Local Partner Services, at CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Trying to fix broken wings

Not fitting in. Being misunderstood and miscategorized. These are recurring themes in Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, a Seattle writer, musician, activist and occasional contributor to the Independent.

The book was first released in the 1990s and was recently re-released.

“I wish I could say that this book is no longer as revolutionary, cutting-edge, or as needed as it was when I began compiling it in 1992, but, unfortunately, that is not the case,” writes Khazzoom, the daughter of an Iraqi Jew, in the new introduction. “Even though there have been changes – shifts in consciousness, language, and even representation – Mizrahi and Sephardi women remain overall excluded, in theory and practice, from spaces for women, Jews, Middle Easterners, people of colour, LGBTQI folk, and even Mizrahim and Sephardim. In addition, so many of the presumably inclusive conversations about us seem basic and superficial, with an undertone of it being a really big deal that these conversations exist at all.”

Khazzoom’s struggle to fit in led her to Seattle, in large part because it is home to one of the largest Sephardi communities in the United States. But even in that milieu she found herself an outsider.

“In June 2014, however, on the first sh’bath [Sabbath] after driving my U-Haul up the coast from Northern California, I was appalled by a sermon so sexist – where women were equated with ‘meat’ – that I walked out of the Sephardi synagogue, just 15 minutes after arriving,” she writes.

“I have been a hybrid all my life, forever caught between two or more worlds,” writes Caroline Smadja in her contribution to the collection. It is a state of being that is shared by many of the writers.

Yael Arami, born in Petah Tikvah to parents from Yemen, speaks of others’ perceptions of her.

“In Germany, I have had to avoid certain areas, fearing local skinheads’ reaction to my skin colour. In France, I have been verbally ridiculed and insulted for being yet another ignorant North African who does not know French,” she writes. “In California, people’s best intentions have resulted in a number of social blunders: When I left a tip in a San Francisco café, I got a courteous ‘gracias’ from the politically correct Anglo waiter. After a predominantly African-American gospel group sang at a Marin County synagogue, several members of the congregation approached me, to express their admiration for our wonderful gospel performance! It seems that wherever I go in white-majority countries, I am, in accordance with local stereotypes, seen as the generic woman of colour – Algerian in France, African-American or Puerto Rican in California.”

Rachel Wahba, an Iraqi-Egyptian Jew, calls out politically correct hypocrisy.

“Sometimes, when I bring up the oppression of Jews in Arab countries, progressive Jews get strangely uncomfortable – as if recognizing the Jewish experience under Islam would make someone racist and anti-Arab,” she writes. “During my mother’s cancer support group intake, I listened as my mother told her story of living in Baghdad and surviving the Farhud. She ended with an ironic ‘I survived the Arabs to get cancer?’ The Jewish oncology nurse was shocked that my mother was so ‘blunt.’

“Should we revise our history? Leave out the details of our oppression under Islam? Pretend my mother never saw the Shiite merchants in Karballah wash their hands after doing business with her father, because he was a ‘dirty Jew?’”

The book’s title comes from an essay by Lital Levy, “How the Camel Found Its Wings” and an Israeli film of the same name.

The metaphor involves the repair of a broken statue of a flying camel, which actually stood at the entrance to the international fairgrounds in Tel Aviv in the 1930s. In the film, the two wings of the camel become stand-ins for a dichotomy that mostly excludes Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews and yet still casts them in a negative light.

“By the end of the screening, the camel had found two new wings, and I got to thinking,” writes Levy. “I started putting my own pieces together – making my own flying camel out of the remnants of the past, borrowing missing pieces from the present, and using my imagination and willpower to try to make it all stick together. The pieces of my own American childhood, the histories that preceded it in Israel and in Iraq, and the challenges I see before me in my work are the various fragments I have been remembering and re-membering into an integral whole. I do not yet know its shape – camel, dromedary, llama, yak – but I do not care, as long as it will fly.”

Dutch family’s secrets

“Twins run in the family, you know,” Stella ter Hart’s mother, Sophia, said to her nonchalantly when Stella was pregnant with her first child. That this was news to Stella is a first sign that there was a great deal about her family she did not know. In fact, she wasn’t aware she had much family at all.

Thus begins Stella ter Hart’s book Discovering Twins: A Journey into Lives.

As a high school graduation gift, Stella and her mother made the trip from Estevan, Sask., to Holland. There, she meets an endless web of confusingly related kin – almost all on her father’s side. A visit to the home of family on her mother’s side raises questions in the teenager’s mind.

“‘Oom Jacob and Tante Becca are Jewish,’ I stated rather than questioned, ‘no one other than Jewish people are named Jacob and Rebecca.’

“And, in a style completely out of character for her, almost resignedly, my mother replied, ‘Yes, they are.’

“There was no further clarification of her answer, no offering up of a tidbit of a childhood memory, as might be expected when revealing so vast a thing as religiously specific relatives for the first time.

“‘So, if Oom Jacob is your first cousin, and he has the same last name as your mother’s maiden name, then he is the son of your mother’s brother,’ my new skill of dissecting family relationships now sharply honed, I added, ‘so your mother must have been Jewish, too.’

“In a split second, she came back at me, her voice strident with an unexpected, insistent, and lashing response, ‘NO! My mother was NOT Jewish. According to the Germans, she was Italian because she married an Italian.’”

Whether that logic ever truly convinced her mother, Sophia, it did not sit well with ter Hart. After her mother’s death, ter Hart began a genealogical quest. Slowly and excruciatingly, she pieces together the tragic fates of almost the entire maternal line.

“Our extended circle of family, formerly numbering over 1,200, was reduced to the less than 20 who returned, or were known to have survived, creating a psychological tsunami shock-wave impacting existing and future generations,” writes ter Hart.

The book recreates ter Hart’s prewar extended family, flashing back from postwar comfort in Canada. She captures what must have been a dawning realization among Dutch Jews in the earliest months of what became the Holocaust, as relatives who were relocated to the east inexplicably never wrote back.

“How many ‘workers’ did this totalitarian German regime require for its slave labour force? Where was the food to feed them all going to come from and the rooms to house them all? Supplies were already hitting dangerous lows in the cities, and rationing was strictly enforced.

“The unsettling sentiment echoing throughout the community for months raised its voice again. What in heaven’s name would the Germans do with grandparents and babies? This didn’t seem like a necessary part of war. This was something else.”

As ter Hart’s research expands, numbers and dates leap off the page.

“The ages and dates are, each time, an emotional shock. The eye at first does not even see, let alone accept, the horrific truths the numbers expose. Mothers with all their young children around them all killed at the same time, or an elderly couple, obviously arrested and deported together, also murdered together. The gruesomeness and cruelty of it all is staggering and overwhelming,” she writes.

On Sept. 30, 1942, 103 family members were murdered at Auschwitz, the youngest 15 years old, the oldest 54. On June 11, 1943, 64 family members were gassed at Sobibor, aged 2 to 68.

The author seeks to build suspense, but her discoveries are, generally, no surprise to those with knowledge of the history. The emphasis on twins – across generations, the family seems to have an occurrence of twins about twice the average – gives the reader an anxious sense that, at some point, some family members are going to fall into the hands of the monstrous Dr. Josef Mengele.

“Not wanting to know, but needing to know, I researched the lists of Mengele Twins, now publicly available. None of our family were on that list, as most had been deported and killed before Mengele began his murderous experimentations. Small comfort,” she writes.

The narrative at the beginning of the book devolves near the end into something of a genealogist’s notebook, with records, short biographies and charts. Generally, the book hangs together, though an editor’s hand could have been firmer, to avoid easily avoidable clangers like misspelling Anne Frank’s name.

Experiences shape identity

I recently studied the Pardes story in Tractate Chagigah of the Babylonian Talmud. This story is a complicated, mystical journey. The Mishnah starts by asking what extremely sensitive topics are difficult and, therefore, should only be taught in small groups. The presence of G-d is one of those topics. In the Pardes (literally “Orchard”) narrative, four rabbis go in search of G-d’s presence. It’s a life-changing event. Only Rabbi Akiva comes out alive and intact. Ben Azzai dies. Ben Zoma “was harmed” – this is interpreted to mean that he lost his mind. Elisha Ben Abuya becomes acher, or other, a heretic who is forever changed by his experience.

This narrative stuck with me, particularly the stories about Elisha Ben Abuya, who, although still respectful and learned, remains forever “othered” by his experience. He’s unable to be included, or to properly reconnect or embrace communal Jewish life again.

When I was 14, I decided I wanted to become a rabbi. For years, this was my goal. I was actively involved in my congregation. My mom, a Jewish professional, started a Jewish nursery school, and then went on to become a director of education and, finally, a temple administrator/executive director. That building and community were like my house. I knew it inside and out. The rabbi’s family was extended family to me. We had picnics and cookouts, I played with their kids. I knew that Jewish professionals were people I loved. It made becoming a rabbi seem attainable.

I lived in Israel for a year in high school. I went to and worked at Jewish camps, studied Hebrew and Near Eastern studies in university, taught religious school and Jewish music and served on a religious school committee. I helped lead services. Then, in my last year of university, I interviewed at not one, but two rabbinical schools. I started with the Reform Movement’s Hebrew Union College (HUC). I later interviewed at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC).

I wasn’t accepted. Looking back, with a lot more interview experience, I can easily see that the interview process was flawed. The committee asked illegal, uncomfortable questions. The process didn’t judge me on my academic skills, Jewish involvement or merits. I was told, after the “try again next year” rejection, that I needed counseling. (Not career counseling, but just vague “counseling.”) Since my family was closely tied to the Reform movement, I heard later that, in that cohort, the competition for women to be accepted was much harder than it was for men. Many more women applied than men did, and there were reportedly quotas. At the time, women hadn’t reached parity in the field. The seminary didn’t want to accept more than 50% women.

Later, I watched several people, including a guy I had dated in university, get into rabbinical school and become a successful rabbi. He had lower academic grades and less Hebrew proficiency than I did.

RRC’s interview was much more respectful. I appreciated it, but they suggested that they weren’t sure I was Reconstructionist. They also rejected my application, again with an invitation to resubmit later, when I was “sure.”

Losing the life goal of becoming a rabbi was a difficult identity shift. I focused on what I had wanted out of the rabbinate: Jewish learning, chances to teach and lead services, build community and write about Jewish topics. I pursued a master’s in education and started teaching. I moved, got a dog, and got engaged … all serious commitments. It meant I wouldn’t suddenly be reapplying to rabbinical school and flying off to spend a year in Israel. I didn’t want to put off my life any longer to face rejection again.

On social media, I recently watched a long-time teacher transition out of the classroom to another kind of consultancy work. It was a flashback moment. More than 20 years ago, I was a high school teacher. I also taught religious school and tutored kids for b’nai mitzvah. Teaching was a huge part of who I was as a person. However, I wasn’t sure that my position was ideal. I still wanted to study more. I decided to go back to graduate school. This coincided with getting married. When I returned to get a religious studies degree, it felt like I’d lost any sense of authority, despite having a master’s degree and teaching experience.

In the graduate program, I earned a tiny stipend as a teaching assistant. Nobody cared that I already knew how to teach. While I did learn a lot, mostly on my own, I had the bad luck to enter a program that was splintering. A lot of faculty left, including my advisor. Without an advisor, I finished with only a second master’s degree, and went back into an educational administration job. I continued moving for my husband’s academic career, becoming a shape-changer in terms of my freelance work life.

I’m now in mid-career and, while I’m not a rabbi, I achieved some of my goals. I study more, have taught some, and I write about Judaism. That said, reading about Elisha Ben Abuya’s “othering” as a result of his experiences really struck home. Many of us have had these life-altering shifts of identity. Sometimes, it is individual, like a teacher’s career change or a divorce or the death of a loved one. Sometimes, like the millions fleeing war in Ukraine, Syria or Afghanistan, it’s a complete departure from life as they knew it. It can be soul-crushing. Some die, like Ben Azzai. Some are unable to maintain their sanity, like Ben Zoma.

One’s career or life can change gently, but often it’s sudden, like in war or with a swift rejection. Sometimes, it is a sapling or “shoot,” a hope for new direction, cut down, as Ben Abuya’s experience relates. Our lives shift. We change identities and directions. However, through all this, Jewish traditions can offer us a story or a metaphor from which we can learn or with which to identify.

Elisha Ben Abuya’s story is a tough and sad one. It also offers solace. I suspect more of us have had this gut-wrenching experience than we want to admit. Acher/Ben Abuya was public about his angst and struggle – and his community did try to help. Perhaps there’s a lot to be gained through processing and acknowledging our hardest experiences, even if, in Acher’s situation, his relief and resolution came only long after he died.

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.

“Rainbow Maccabees” talk

Participants in the Jan. 19 event Rainbow Maccabees: The LGBTQ+ Jews Leading the Fight Against Jew-Hate, included, clockwise from top left, Blake Flayton, moderator David Sachs, Eve Barlow and Ben M. Freeman. (screenshot)

Blake Flayton arrived at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., four years ago, from a progressive home where ideas were fodder for passionate debate and disagreement. He anticipated vibrant engagement and free- flowing discussion on campus. Instead, he came head-on with a progressive culture that viewed free thinking as apostasy.

It took Flayton some time to assimilate the cognitive dissonance he experienced when he realized his political cohort had an ideology that rejected dissent – and an almost universal antipathy to Israel.

“I believed them, because how could I not?” he recalled. “I figured to myself, if I agree with these people on A through Y, I must also agree with them on Z. They plant these pervasive lies into the heads of young Jews that your community lied to you, your community betrayed you, your community brainwashed you into believing something horrible and we are here to save you from it. Sounds awfully like Christianity, right? We are here to redeem you from that so that we can all walk into a more blessed future. It has such ancient themes.”

Flayton was one of three young Jews, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, who participated virtually in a Canada-wide panel discussion on Jan. 19 called Rainbow Maccabees: The LGBTQ+ Jews Leading the Fight Against Jew-Hate. They speculated on why an apparently disproportionate number of the rising young stars in the pro-Israel movement come from the queer community.

Flayton, co-founder of the New Zionist Congress and recently appointed director of new media for the Jewish Journal, was joined by Eve Barlow, a Scottish-born, Los Angeles-based music journalist, and Ben M. Freeman, an educator and the author of Jewish Pride, who is also Scottish and is now based in Hong Kong. They met in conversation with Ottawa-area writer David Sachs, in an event funded by Congregation Beth Shalom of Ottawa Legacy Fund and a Jewish Federation of Ottawa micro-grant. It was supported by 11 national, regional and local Jewish organizations across Canada.

Left-leaning social and political spaces are where gays and lesbians first found widespread social acceptance. For queer Jews, this longtime safe harbour has become less welcoming – and this might account for why a seemingly disproportionate number of the new, young activists standing up to anti-Jewish hatred come from the LGBTQ+ community, Flayton speculates.

“I think it might be because we are naturally more likely to be exposed to progressive spaces and, therefore, we are more likely to find fault and to see the flaws of said progressive spaces,” he explained.

Freeman said being an openly gay man may give him an advantage in standing up to Jew-hate. LGBTQ+ people have been forced to advocate for themselves, he said, while the prevailing tendency, in some Jewish circles, is to keep one’s head down and not make trouble.

The hypocrisy progressive activists often display in their treatment of Jewish people versus LGBTQ+ or other minority communities is something Freeman has faced.

“When I tell people that I’m gay, the first thing they say to me is, what are your pronouns? Are you gay, are you queer, are you LGBTQ+? They want me to define my own identity,” he said. “But when I tell people that, as a Jew, I don’t identify as white, although I understand that I benefit from the advantage of being perceived as white, I am immediately told, no that’s incorrect. That hypocrisy you just can’t ignore.”

Barlow became politically engaged based on her own experiences in progressive British spaces – particularly seeing non-Jewish friends enthusiastically embrace the antisemitic Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“I saw the hypocrisy with people who claim to be about morally righteous causes and liberalism and who have this screaming a blind spot when it comes to anti-Jewish bias,” Barlow said.

As Jews and as queer individuals, Barlow and her co-panelists embody characteristics that are not always welcome in today’s progressive environment, she said.

“Intellectualism and individual thought is discouraged,” said Barlow. “We are doing what so many people in social justice spaces have been actively discouraged from doing, which is having our own ideas about what we think is right and wrong.”

Barlow stressed that she has had to pick her battles, in part because she realizes that tormenting Jews online, rather than good-faith debate or actual persuasion, is the goal for many.

“The more that you are on the other side of antisemitism, the more you understand the love that people who hate Jews have for picking on the Jew and tripping the Jew up and making the Jew feel small and bad,” she said. “It’s this pleasure that they get out of their antisemitic rhetoric.”

In the antisemitic mind, “the Jew” takes the shape of whatever the perpetrator fears most, said Freeman.

“It’s not about us as Jews, it’s about the ideas of Jews,” he said. “If you are a society which is positioning itself as capitalist, the Jew can represent communism. If you are a society that is communist, you can frame the Jew as the capitalist. If you’re a society which views white people as the apex predators, then Jews are white. If you’re a society that views non-white people as conspiring to bring down Western society, white society, then the Jew is not white.… All these different forms share a common core. They are saying basically the same things about us, expressed in a slightly different language.”

As a people who have maintained a particular identity across millennia and continents, Jews exemplify a stubbornness that resists assimilation, which can enflame some people. Similarly, because Jewish security and social flourishing has been most assured in liberal, democratic societies, Jews have a vested interest in perpetuating stable societies, so are often targeted by those who seek to subvert them.

“There is a very strong association between antisemitism and illiberal ideologies, ideologies that hold contempt and disdain for institutions of liberal democracy and that hold contempt for the ideas that come from liberal democracy, like meritocracy, like freedom of speech, like academic freedom, like gender equality, etc., etc.,” said Flayton. “Jews have often been portrayed, or at least been treated, as a proxy for these institutions.… Today, there is illiberalism bursting out of every corner, from the farthest you can go left on the spectrum to the farthest you can go right and everywhere in between. There is a rise in populism, there is a rise in anti-intellectualism, there is a rise in anti-establishmentism and it’s been replaced with conspiracy thinking and grievance politics.”

Throughout Jewish history, Flayton continued, there have been repeated attempts by various ideologies to convince Jews that they will be better off if they abandon their uniqueness and assimilate into the new orthodoxy – or, conversely, that the Jews’ refusal to do so is the primary inhibitor of progress or the impediment to utopia.

“Of course, that’s never the case,” he said, citing instances from the Hellenizing ancient Greeks in the Hanukkah story, to the Christians who are convinced that Jews are holding humanity back from salvation by refusing to accept Jesus, to the Soviets, who camouflaged antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.

Today, said Flayton, this takes the form of Jews being told that, if they only reject Israel or check their Zionism at the door, they will “be granted a seat at this table of diversity, equity and inclusion and that everything will be grand and the Jews will be protected, if only they give up their birthright to the land of Israel.”

He concluded: “It never works and, in fact, the Jews who were so vehement are not spared from antisemitism at all, because once the ideology has succeeded there is no longer any use for them.”

The event opened with greetings from Idan Roll, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, who is himself a young, gay Jew.

Lean into our identity

Left to right: Eve Barlow, Noa Tishby and Bari Weiss participate in a Nov. 3 panel hosted by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies. (screenshot)

In a time of burgeoning antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Jews need to lean into their identities, says a leading voice in the fight against anti-Jewish racism.

“In other instances in Jewish history, we believed, wrongly, that the way to get acceptance, the way to get along, was to self-abnegate and erase who we are,” said Bari Weiss. “If there has been one lesson in thousands of years of Jewish history, it’s that that is a terrible strategy.”

Weiss is a former writer at the New York Times. She resigned her position there, citing a hostile work environment, and is the author of the book How to Fight Antisemitism. She was speaking as part of a panel convened Nov. 3 by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies (FSWC). She was joined by Eve Barlow, a pop-culture writer who grew up in the United Kingdom and has worked in music journalism as deputy editor for NME New Musical Express but who, most recently, is using her voice to stand up against antisemitism. Also on the panel was Noa Tishby, an Israeli-American actor, producer and author of the book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

The three women have become prominent voices, online and off, in the fight against the latest upsurge of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The Nov. 3 discussion took place in Los Angeles, where all three women are now based. They were joined by Michael Levitt, president and chief executive officer of FCSW, and the panel was moderated by journalist Jamie Gutfreund, both of whom traveled from Toronto for the event, titled State of the Union: Fighting Back Against Hate.

Weiss said the first step in confronting the problem must be vocal and unequivocal pride in Judaism and Zionism.

“The mere act of doing that is radical and contagious and changes the whole conversation,” she said. Doing grassroots work building alliances is another overlooked key to confronting the issue, she added.

“Let’s take a page from the book of our political opponents,” she said. “How have they done what they have done? Deep work inside communities on a grassroots level.”

The Black Lives Matter organization – not the wider movement, Weiss stressed, but the leadership of the organization – has exhibited problematic approaches to Jews and Israel. But no one should concede that there are not plenty of African-Americans (and Canadians) who are allies, she said.

“There are huge parts of the Black community that the Jewish community in America can still be allied with; there are other parts of it that we would be extremely foolish to try and ally ourselves with,” Weiss said. “There are other communities though. I’m thinking about Hispanics, I’m thinking about Hindus, I’m thinking about all kinds of other groups that I don’t see our community actively and affirmatively reaching out to and trying to build relationships with based on our mutual interests.”

Weiss warned that the polarization of politics in the United States and across the West does not bode well for Jews.

“That puts Jews in a deeply uncomfortable position because, I believe, where the political centre thrives, Jews thrive because, if the political centre is thriving, it means that there is room for nuance, that there is room for disagreement, that it’s not a kind of Manichaean, black-and-white, pure-impure, red-blue thinking. Right now, that is the world we are living in and – guess what? – we Jews don’t easily slot into either of those categories. We are both hyper-successful and also we are the victims of more hate crimes than any other group in this country. We are white-passing and yet white supremacists hate us because we are the greatest trick the devil has ever played. We predate the newfangled notions of ethnicity, of race, of religion. We are before all of that. I think that there is a dovetailing between fighting antisemitism and fighting Jew-hate, and standing up for liberalism, broadly defined, because, where liberalism thrives … Jews thrive too.”

Much of the panel’s discussion was about flourishing anti-Jewish hatred online, but Barlow warned that no one should assume there is a substantive difference between what happens online and what happens offline.

“We have seen how [online hatred] has contributed vastly to the amount of physical violence that happens offline and you would have to be extremely ignorant to … say right now that what happens online does not have offline ramifications,” said Barlow.

Tishby agreed, but suggested that offline violence may not be inspired by online hate but rather is part of a broader battle.

“Social media is just the tip of the iceberg of a well-funded political campaign that has been waged against Israel in the past 20 years,” Tishby said. “This is not by accident. This happened by design. The language, everything that we are seeing right now, originated in the Durban conference against racism in Durban in 2001 that was so antisemitic that the U.S. and Israel pulled out of it…. They have been putting a lot of money, a lot of effort and a lot of groundwork in going into these social justice causes, going to Black Lives Matter, going to the Women’s March, going to gay and lesbian marches in San Francisco, going to unions and actually slowly changing their minds and poisoning them basically with lies to make them shift against Israel. These are nefarious powers and nefarious countries that want to dismantle the Jewish state, period, end of story.”

screenshot - At a panel discussion hosted by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, journalist Bari Weiss warned of the potential dangers in pressuring social media giants like Facebook to censor certain messages — At a panel discussion hosted by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, journalist Bari Weiss warned of the potential dangers in pressuring social media giants like Facebook to censor certain messages. *(screenshot)*

Acknowledging that some of the most prominent anti-Zionists are themselves Jews, Barlow called the phenomenon “koshering antisemitism.” However, she advocates a compassionate response.

“I believe that how we deal with them has to be different than how we deal with non-Jewish antisemites because they are part of our people, we love them regardless and they are part of our tribe and I think we have to really understand the nuances of why people become anti-Zionist,” Barlow said. “I think a lot of what I see is trauma from the Jewish community and a rejection of the Jewish community that presents itself in this anti-Israel fashion.”

She offered up what she acknowledged as a controversial joke: “Don’t blame Israel for your daddy issues.”

Tishby laid much of the blame for anti-Zionist Jews on the Jewish education system.

“We need to take a good look at ourselves and what we did in order to allow for this,” she said. “We took our kids, put them through … this beautiful Jewish education, we give them all the values and we tell them Israel is the most amazing people and place in the world and we send them off to college without ever acknowledging the concepts of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘apartheid.’ We let college talk to them about this for the first time.… Nobody ever [said], let’s talk about why people call Israel an apartheid state. Let’s have a conversation about this, not when they get to college, [but] when the kid is 12, 13, 14, bring it up. Say, here’s the argument, here is where it’s completely false, here are the facts. Let’s talk about what’s happening in the West Bank.”

Weiss, who has spent her career in mainstream media, said those media outlets are “the most intellectually homogenous environment I’ve ever been in in my entire life.” But she warned against swallowing conspiracy theories.

“I think sometimes people in the Jewish community who are frustrated by this bias imagine some kind of secret conspiratorial meetings where they’re cooking up how to screw the Jews and the Jewish state,” Weiss said. “It’s just a reflection of the consistent bias among all the people that work there.”

The power of social media giants like Facebook and their haphazard responses to hate speech are a problem, Weiss said, but Jews and Zionists may be hastening their own defeat by pressuring them to censor certain messages.

“I think it is a genuinely knotty and complicated question whether or not the Jewish community should be going to these big tech companies and saying, in the same way that you’re censoring x, y and z, also censor the people who hate us,” she said. “My fear is that, in asking these companies [to] do more censorship on our behalf, then, in a way, we are actually feeding the fuel that will come to burn all of us. The ideology that is currently dictating the choices at many of these companies is an ideology that says Zionism is racism. That is part of that broader worldview.… What happens six months from now when … they want to go and censor Zionists because now they have decided that Zionism, to follow the Soviet lie, is a form of racism? Would we be happy with that? I don’t think so.”

The full video can be viewed by registering at friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com.

Help in facing antisemitism

Canada recently made several important commitments to the Jewish community, with plans to target hate and fund initiatives to educate and fight antisemitism. While good news, for some of us, these also feel like vague promises. Many of us have felt vulnerable because of our Jewish identities. It has gotten worse recently, with a sharp rise in both physical violence and hate online.

This fall, I signed up for a virtual program run by the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg, featuring Rabbi Matt Liebl in conversation with Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) chief executive officer Shimon Koffler Fogel. The event was called Antisemitism in Canada: Pushing Back against Hate. The conversation was intellectual and insightful but, when it ended, I was unsatisfied. The overall message was that perhaps 80% of the antisemitic events in Canada were due to ignorance. To fix this, we must educate people. So, I asked a question during the Q&A period. It was something like, “What resources are available to us, as we go forth to educate, both online and in the Canadian context?”

The answer didn’t meet my needs, although it wasn’t wrong, either. Koffler Fogel responded by first saying that the internet (Facebook, etc.) had no borders, so we needed better Canadian policy and international law around hate online. Second, he suggested that “we” older folks had no real power to stop this antisemitic stuff on social media, but that, if it was possible to enlist some 17-year-old influencers, they could help.

Right, I’m just a middle-aged nobody. I’m no big name social media influencer. However, as a Gen Xer, I’ve lived with email since its infancy. I’ve been on the web for more than half my life. I’ve also been the target of hate online, as well as through the (far more retro) postal service and telephone. Some might say this is because I write on Jewish topics, but I’m just not that famous. Right after I moved to Canada, my Winnipeg house was egged on Chanukah when somebody saw the menorah in the window. I wasn’t even writing Jewish articles here yet, and I doubt the people who egged my house had read any of the ones published in the United States.

I could produce a list of bad experiences that occurred before moving to Canada, and these had nothing to do with being “public” about my Jewish identity. Yet, too much has happened since moving here in 2009. Recent attacks on social media this spring and summer, including being harassed and banned by a Canadian knitwear designer who strongly supported Palestinian issues, weren’t my first Canadian antisemitic experiences. I’ve mostly kept this to myself, even though the harassment was scary and painful. These attacks were directed towards me because I’m Jewish and spoke up for Israel’s right to exist. I was harassed even though I don’t vote in Israel and don’t always agree with Israel’s policies. Being Jewish and speaking out was enough.

The October anniversary of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shootings reminded me of what greeted my family that awful Sunday morning in 2018. My kids and I went to a playground near where a lot of Jewish families live. It was easy to see an enormous swastika and other hate graffiti on the side of the nearby swimming pool building. The senior citizens, many of them Jewish, living across the street in apartment buildings, could see those hate symbols, too.

When my twins were done playing, I walked them, one holding each hand, indoors to the pool front desk to report the swastika graffiti. I then drove home and spent way too long trying to report what was obviously a hate crime to the police, the B’nai Brith and one of my editors at the time. The worst part was hearing, “Well, did you take photos?” The answer was no. I didn’t have a third hand to let go of my kids and take photos, which would have signaled to them how very distressed I was. It was another chance to feel isolated, vulnerable and angry. Not only did I experience the hate but, apparently, I should have documented it (to prove it existed) and take on the task of reporting it multiple times. The graffiti was cleaned up but, for me, the hateful message lingered.

After the virtual CIJA/Jewish Federation event, there was a follow-up note with a couple of links. One offered an entire page of antisemitism resources to read. Another link was “Report an antisemitic incident.” While I deeply appreciated the form online as being easier than what I’ve gone through previously when trying to report hate, the form didn’t say where the submitted information went. It didn’t suggest what supports were available. It didn’t say who would read submissions or when. I contacted the Winnipeg Jewish Federation to ask that this be added to the site but haven’t received a reply.

For me, the worst part of dealing with hateful messages, graffiti, assault or social media attacks is feeling alone and unsafe. Maybe most antisemitism comes from ignorance. That doesn’t make it any less hurtful or intimidating.

So, what are solutions? Yes, we need to educate others and invest in better laws and in security for Jewish institutions. We also need to invest in ourselves. Advocacy organizations and community institutions should be part of the solution. Give everybody useful tools and information for how to combat hate – because we never know who will need it next.

Also, let’s follow up and support those in our community who have faced hateful incidents. We may never erase all the hate in our midst, but our communities can offer better security, kindness, counseling or, heck, a (COVID-safe!) hug to those who experience antisemitism.

We need non-Jewish allies, too. Intellectually, I know that these incidents – graffiti, the egg on my window and even reporting a threatening email to the police – were not a big deal. These incidents can shake us up anyway. If those affected by hate crimes feel afraid, isolated and vulnerable, we can help by showing up for one another more consistently. There’s safety in numbers. Next time somebody submits one of these antisemitic incident forms, here’s hoping a friend in the community follows up, too. We can deal with the after-effects when we’re not alone. We can do that for one another. It’s time to try.

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.