justice

Does history matter?

The promise of the internet was that people could access unprecedented volumes of information for the benefit of themselves and society as a whole. What has regrettably proven to be the case is that it is a fount from which people draw to “prove” falsehoods they choose to believe – or, for nefarious reasons, claim to believe.

Amid the oceans of “information” online, it is sometimes difficult to tell what people genuinely believe as opposed to what they say they believe in public to mislead their audiences. For example, does the U.S. member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene actually believe that reliance on solar energy means the lights will go out when the sun goes down? Or is her apparent stupidity a deliberate foil for her support of polluting energy sources? If she believes what she said, this is misinformation. If she knows she is telling a lie, it is disinformation.

The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” are sadly necessary to understand what is happening in our era, as we have said in this space before and feel moved to repeat. In few places is this difference as consequential as in discussions of the history of the Holocaust.

Correspondence between Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and right-wing journalist Bronislaw Wildstein (and two others) leaked last week defines some of the world’s foremost Holocaust scholars as “enemies of the entire Polish nation.” There is other chilling language in the back-and-forth, detailing how top Polish authorities are expending enormous energies to rewrite the history of Polish collaboration in the Shoah.

A 2018 law forbids any suggestion that the Polish state or Polish people participated in Nazi crimes against Jews. International pressure saw the penalties for breaking this law reduced from a criminal conviction to a civil matter potentially resulting in a fine. But the intent and impact remain clear. Prof. Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born Canadian academic, and a Polish colleague, Barbara Engelking, were victorious in a 2021 appeal that saw an earlier court decision order to apologize to a descendant of a Shoah-era perpetrator for betraying Jewish neighbours to the German Nazis. But this court decision has not quenched the thirst for revisionism.

The obsession among top Polish officials on this subject is unabated. The email exchange includes the suggestion that Polish authorities should strategically coopt the Jewish experience in the Holocaust to their own benefit, recasting Poles as the Nazis’ primary targets and victims.

Poland also recently extended its Holocaust-related legislation to explicitly forbid financial restitution or compensation to survivors or their heirs.

The Polish government has steadfastly asserted that Nazi atrocities catastrophically affected non-Jewish Poles, which is plainly true. But two things can be true simultaneously. Many Poles were victimized by the Nazis and many Poles collaborated with the Nazis – and, in some cases, both involved the same individuals.

Wildstein, the journalist who seems to have the prime minister’s ear, makes threatening noises about top Holocaust research and archival bodies, including the Jewish Historical Institute, in Warsaw, and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and mentions “the possibility of introducing our people into their midst.” He accuses the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of presenting “an almost obsessive hatred of Poles.”

There is paranoia in the idea that exposing historical truth is identical to hatred. Ironically, while Germany is the European country that has engaged in the most introspective contrition, as much as a society can hope to do for so unparalleled a crime, Poland has steadfastly dug in its heels. The society that bears more blame for complicity with the Nazis than any other is the one that is not only refusing to confront its grotesque past but most stridently whitewashing it.

All of this has led to strained relations between Israel and Poland. It should also be a source of friction with other countries, including Canada, partly because it is a Canadian citizen, Grabowski, who is among the most targeted objects of Polish scorn, and partly because all democracies should stand up to this appalling historical revisionism.

There is a grim silver lining in this “debate.” The Polish authorities understand, as too few in the world seem to, that history matters. What happened in the past informs our present and future. If they can recast the past, they can affect the future.

The question for us is whether we, as a society, have the same understanding of and commitment to historical power. Are those who seek truth as motivated as those whose goal is to subvert it?

Editor’s Note: For a contrary point of view, click here to read the letter to the editor that was published in the Jewish Independent’s Sept. 2/22 issue.

Stand for truth – again

Last week, John Horgan sent a welcome letter to the Pacific regional office of CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. The British Columbia premier committed to fighting antisemitism, including using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism as a measuring stick in the ongoing fight against anti-Jewish discrimination.

The premier’s statement came on the very day that Abacus Data, an opinion research firm, released data from a survey of 1,500 Canadians. The alarming results show that a huge number of Canadians subscribe to appalling ideas.

Nearly one in five Canadians, according to the survey, believe there is a cover-up to hide the “fact” COVID vaccines kill people, while fully another 25% of Canadians think that might be true or aren’t sure.

One in 10 believe that vaccines implant a microchip to control human behaviour, and another 14% think that could be accurate.

Things go downhill from there. More than half of Canadians say that official government statements cannot be trusted – a serious allegation in a democratic society.

The poll also found that 44% of Canadians believes a “secret cabal of elites” control world events. As alarming, about 37% of respondents agreed with the statement: “There is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political view.”

Whenever phrases like “secret cabal of elites” are employed, informed people know exactly to whom that dog-whistle refers. And the second concept, dubbed the “Great Replacement” theory, was the motivation for the mass murder of 10 Black people in Buffalo, N.Y., last month. The “group of people” frequently accused of masterminding such alleged “replacement” are, of course, Jews. This was something that came to broader public awareness during the fatal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago, when tiki torch-bearing racists chanted “Jews will not replace us!”

It is above our paygrade to understand or explain the socio-psychological reasons why, at the first sign of crazy, attention seems inevitably to turn to Jews. (At least the caricatured Jews of the antisemites’ imaginations, a pathology that inevitably has impacts on actual Jews.)

For whatever reasons, as we noted in this space a month ago, when a society leans into conspiracies, it seems inevitable that sights turn to Jews. These poll numbers suggest Canadians are further down this slippery slope that we might have imagined.

Canadians – Jewish and otherwise – can be forgiven for feeling a sense of smugness in recent years as we have watched some seriously messed up stuff happening with our nearest neighbours. Many of us have hedged our bets, knowing that, in societies that are in some ways going off the rails – not only the United States, but parts of Europe and other erstwhile stable liberal democracies – Canada cannot be immune from some of these tendencies. And, it seems, we are not.

It is important that government officials say the right things, as Horgan did last week. Of course, that so many Canadians do not trust elected officials presumably dulls the impact of these actions somewhat, but this does not detract from the urgency of forging ahead with what we know is the right thing to do.

The answer remains, as it was when we wrote about this issue (albeit less urgently) a month ago: we must stand verbally and forcefully against misinformation and disinformation. We must recommit, every day, to liberal values of tolerance, pluralism and the quest for truth and justice. We must ourselves exercise as well as teach young people the critical thinking skills to discern truth from fiction, and how to evaluate facts. And we must challenge politicians, commentators, family and friends who promote, or justify, the sorts of ideas that, we now know, are held by far too many Canadians.

Making internet safer

(image from internetmatters.org)

On March 30, Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti announced a new expert advisory group on online safety as the next step in developing legislation to address harmful online content.

While online platforms play a central role in the lives of Canadians, bringing many benefits to society, they can also be used as tools to cause real and significant harm to individuals, communities and the country. Harmful content, such as hate speech, sexual exploitation of children and incitement to violence, is published online every day. There are no broad regulatory requirements in Canada that apply to platforms regarding their responsibilities in relation to such content.

The expert advisory group will be mandated to provide advice on a legislative and regulatory framework that best addresses harmful content online. The group is composed of diverse experts and specialists from across Canada: Amarnath Amarasingam, Queen’s University; Bernie Farber, Canada Anti-Hate Network; Chanae Parsons, community activist and youth engagement specialist; David Morin, Université de Sherbrooke; Emily Laidlaw, University of Calgary; Ghayda Hassan, Université du Québec à Montréal; Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia; Lianna McDonald, Canadian Centre for Child Protection; Pierre Trudel, Université de Montréal; Signa A. Daum Shanks, University of Ottawa; Taylor Owen, McGill University; and Vivek Krishnamurthy, University of Ottawa.

The advisory group will hold nine workshops to discuss various components of a legislative and regulatory framework for online safety. They will also take part in additional stakeholder engagement, including with digital platforms. The work of the advisory group will be open and transparent. The group’s mandate, the supporting materials for each session, and non-attributed summaries of all sessions and discussions, will be published.

“We conducted a consultation last year and released the What We Heard Report earlier this year,” said Rodriguez. “It’s clear that harmful online content is a serious problem, but there is no consensus on how to address it. We’re asking the expert advisory group to go back to the drawing board. We need to address this problem openly and transparently as a society.”

Facts and figures on online violence in Canada include that:

62% of Canadians think there should be more regulation of online hate speech;
58% of women in Canada have been victims of abuse online;
80% of Canadians support requirements to remove racist or hateful content within 24 hours;
one in five Canadians have experienced some form of online hate;
racialized Canadians are almost three times more likely to have experienced harmful behaviour online;
there was a 1,106% increase in online child sexual exploitation reports received by the RCMP National Child Exploitation Crime Centre between 2014 to 2019.

“Too many people and communities are victimized by harmful online content that is often amplified and spread through social media platforms and other online services,” said Lametti. “The Government of Canada believes that Canadians should have protection from harmful online content, while respecting freedom of expression.”

– Courtesy Canadian Heritage

Also on March 30, the Canadian Coalition to Combat Online Hate announced the launch of their new website, combatonlinehate.ca, providing youth, parents, educators and policymakers with strategic tools to be effective in their efforts to identify and combat online hate.

“Canadians are exposed daily to a barrage of hateful and divisive online messages that pollute social media forums with content that is antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous, misogynistic, Islamophobic and homophobic, and that promotes conspiracy theories. These posts, videos and memes are easily discoverable and readily shared, often masked by anonymity or given undue credibility,” said Richard Marceau, vice-president, external affairs and general counsel at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). “We know that online hate can become real-life violence. Hate-motivated murders at Christchurch’s Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre and at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue stand as notable examples. It is incumbent on all of us, before it is too late, to combat online hate with the most effective tools available.”

According to a 2021 survey by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, 42% of respondents have seen or experienced hateful comments or content inciting violence online, and younger and racialized Canadians are significantly more likely to be confronted with this hate. The same study indicated that 93% of Canadians believe that online hate speech and racism are problems, of which 49% believe they are “very serious” problems. Findings also showed that at least 60% of Canadians believe that the federal government has an obligation to pass regulations preventing hateful and racist rhetoric and behaviour online. Only 17% prefer no government involvement at all.

“We saw COVID exacerbate online hate exponentially, as stress levels and political division rose amid lockdowns. By working together, we can make the communities we are building online – and, by extension, the communities we inhabit offline – safer places for all Canadians,” said Marceau.

The website combatonlinehate.ca is organized by the Canadian Coalition to Combat Online Hate, funded by Canadian Heritage and powered by CIJA.

– Courtesy Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

Reflections of her childhood – an excerpt from The Singing Forest

Say hello to Leah, the daughter of a man who disappears when she is a baby and a mother who dies in a car crash when she is 6 years old. She is placed in the care of her Jewish aunt during the week, and her three eccentric Jarvis uncles on the weekends – Rudy, Gus and Malcolm. This excerpt is a flashback – she is now a junior lawyer, working on the deportation of a war criminal, and Nate is a fellow junior in the firm.

***

You have no idea where he is? said the social worker. I don’t believe it for a minute, said her tone.

No idea, said Rudy. I’m sure he would be here if he knew.

In fact, he was not at all sure of this. The youngest brother, the father – witty and weak and self-absorbed. And a man who was afraid, desperately afraid of – what? Of being ordinary. Of leading a rye-and-ginger life. Chasing anything that might save him from this, like a distracted dog. A fugitive from the everyday, the commonplace, always searching for a way out.

He’ll turn up soon, said Rudy.

He is far from sure of this either.

The aunt was the formal placement – the mother’s half-sister, 19 years older than her, almost another generation. But a woman whose kidneys were starting to fail, scarred organs slowly breaking down.

I can’t handle her full-time, she said miserably, exhausted by the disease.

The social worker knew enough – too much – about the foster home system to send the child into its labyrinths. So this arrangement would have to work – the aunt during the week, the uncles on the weekend. She did what could be done, the things that were possible. A session on child-rearing, simple advice, checklists on clothing, food, sleeping. The child was the only one who read the lists, though, or tried to – her small finger tracing out the letters she knew until the papers were stained and dog-eared. Hoping that somewhere in there were the clues she needed, the answers to what had happened, how her life had jackknifed so wildly. But she also passed along anything she understood to Gus.

A taciturn man, something that suited them both. He used words sparingly, as if he had only a limited supply, and was storing them for some future use. Instead, he preferred silence, or a range of silences: dusty silences, steep silences, warm silences.

A clam, said the social worker to her supervisor. But soon he became used to the child winding around his legs, and developed a clumsy affection for her. Not a man who was a good bet in other ways, though – someone with serial bankruptcies, an instinct for failure.

Raised by your uncles? Nate says in the same tone someone might say: raised by wolves? His voice is dark, slightly hoarse. He is intrigued by this odd household, intrigued as only someone with two card-carrying parents can be.

I raised her, says her aunt. They looked after her.

Anna Rubin. Puffy-faced, her skin floury, her dark eyes circled with shadows. Persistent in her own way, determined that the girl would know something of this other life, that she would have some sense of its latitudes and longitudes.

No such thing as half-Jewish. Don’t let me hear you say that. If your mother is Jewish, you’re Jewish. Halachah. Those are the rules.

Those are the rules, echoed the girl, curled under the woman’s arm.

But her aunt had more to say, much more. A personal mission, built around tzimmes and the ten plagues.

The plague of locusts. The plague of frogs. The plague of water turning into blood.

The girl held up a hand, raising her small fingers.

Only three, she said.

She was a literal child.

A selection of the best, said her aunt.

Behind the scenes, though, her kidneys were silently abandoning their functions, the toxins in her system slowly building. Soon – too soon – it was the uncles during the week, the aunt on the weekend.

Not even a Jewish disease, said her aunt disgustedly, her skin yellow.

No need to tell that social worker, she added.

What do you do when you’re there? Malcolm said once, not so much interested in the girl as the aunt, any possibilities for money.

The child hesitated.

We eat brisket, she said after a minute, the only thing that came into her mind. She had no words for this briny, tender woman, for her kitchen, her houseplants, vines running along mantels, trailing down shelves. For the moth orchids everywhere – windowsills, bookcases – leaning over pots, their grey air roots twisting around them.

Malcolm looked at her uncomprehendingly. The idea that the girl was half-Jewish, the idea of Jewishness itself was so foreign, so baffling to him – to all three of them – that they ignored it. They had an unspoken agreement to treat it as if it were an awkward genetic problem, something that was better left unmentioned. And after awhile, she understood that she was not to talk to them about it, that this was something she had – she was – with her aunt.

Is it only for girls? she said to her, early on. Being Jewish?

Who told you that? Full of men. Look at Moses. Look at Einstein. Look at Marvin next door.

Marvin – thinning hair, mild, someone who yawns a lot. Ida’s husband, content to drift in her slipstream. Neighbours.

She’s not the brightest, but she has a good heart. And he shovels my walk in the winter.

And Moses? Einstein? Other neighbours?

Big shots, said her aunt.

That night: Men can be Jewish, too, she said to Gus, putting her to bed.

He said nothing in an agreeable way.

Look at Moses. Look at Marvin.

More nothing.

She sighed, the world-weary sigh of a six-year-old.

Those are the rules.

* * *

Half-Jewish. This is unsound genetically as well, she discovers later in biology classes, not a matter of chromosomal halves. Instead, she has a mix of genetic variations, extending in all directions. If some of them mark her as a carrier of Tay-Sachs disease, Bloom syndrome and an inability to drink milk, one non-Jewish parent will make no difference. This is a mess of a genome.

* * *

A week after the motion. Nate is sitting on the arm of one of her office chairs, cracking pumpkin seeds in his teeth. Lime, chili, salt – I roasted them myself.

You’re distracting me, she says, although the truth is that she was already distracted. The stay motion has been stalking her thoughts, intruding everywhere. She is waiting for the decision, although this is a wholly pointless exercise – it could be issued tomorrow, next week, or even next month, especially if the judge decides to write extensive reasons, not at all improbable. Still, she feels suspended in the web of this case, in part because she is still possessed by the idea that if they lose, it will be her fault.

Unlikely, says Nate. Although not impossible.

Or that she will be blamed anyway, whether it is her fault or not.

Not quite so unlikely, Nate admits. Give me your hand.

She stretches out her palm, and he leans over and shakes some pumpkin seeds into it.

She studies them absently, and then puts them in her mouth.

For more information, visit judithmccormack.com.

Importance of food security

Plans are for Jewish Family Services to open a food centre in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood this year. (photo from jewishvancouver.com)

The Tu b’Shevat More Than a Bag of Food program – a day of giving, of cooking and of education on food security in the age of COVID-19 – concluded with a panel discussion on the importance of good food, supply chain challenges, and the ensuing impacts and issues facing the Vancouver Jewish community.

The Jan. 28 program was presented by Congregation Beth Israel and Jewish Family Services (JFS), and the discussion event featured Mara Shnay, founding member and chair of the JFS client advisory committee; Cindy McMillan, director of programs and community partnerships with JFS; Dr. Eleanor Boyle, an educator and writer on food and health; Krystine McInnes, chief executive officer of Grown Here Farms, a company that supplies more than 1.5 million families with produce in Western Canada; and Dr. Tammara Soma, assistant professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.

Moderator Bernard Pinsky began by highlighting the connection of the Jewish community and providing food. “Feeding the needy is an act of chesed,” he said.

“For people who are food insecure, it is not about having enough for food,” explained Shnay. “It is about not having enough money for anything – to buy a new pair of shoes, to replace a phone, to go to the dentist or to take one’s kids to the movies, and it is about living in that kind of poverty. In Vancouver, housing security is inextricably linked to food security. The income of many JFS clients is less than their rent,” she emphasized.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the circumstances of many JFS clients, particularly seniors, who are at higher risk of contracting the disease and, therefore, should refrain from using public transport or going to stores. Consequently, shopping has become increasingly expensive for them.

McMillan said the food needs within the Jewish community more than doubled in the past year, with children comprising 20% of those seeking food services. The number of Jewish families and seniors living in poverty has been rising for several years in the Lower Mainland, well before the pandemic started, she added.

To help combat the challenge, JFS will open an as-yet-unnamed food centre in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in the spring of 2021. “There will be a community kitchen, a place for social gathering, opportunities for general food knowledge, cooking classes, meals and a warehouse with increased storage for dry goods and perishables,” said McMillan.

The centre will also have a market-style food pantry for people to choose their food according to their customs and cultures, and the offerings will extend to outlying communities in the Greater Vancouver area through a pop-up van. The centre’s emphasis will be on supplying healthy food in a dignified manner to those in need, she explained.

Boyle spoke of food security in a wider sense – “We have food security when everyone is confident they can put adequate, healthy food on the table,” she stated.

There are systemic problems in Canada, she pointed out, as the country exports half the food it produces. “Food is treated like any other consumer good, like cars or shoes. It is run largely by private industry and, for business, social good is not a priority, profit is,” Boyle argued.

She advised involving government in the food industry, as is done in other sectors, such as education, transportation and health. More money, she suggested, should go to those who have trouble buying food, perhaps in the form of guaranteed income. The federal government could also pay farmers to grow certain amounts of healthy foods, like lentils, which would be available at below-market rates to everyone. This would in turn enhance food security and health for everyone with no stigma attached to buying this food; rich and poor would be paying the same price at the grocery checkout, said Boyle.

“There needs to be a shift from big agriculture to a more diversified local system,” she continued. “We created these current systems, and they should work for us. Change can happen. We will need to face down climate change and make food systems more sustainable,” she said, urging support for local food that is sustainably produced, as well as for people to waste less food and to eat a more plant-based diet.

McInnes elaborated on Boyle’s points by listing a number of problems in the supply chain, the agriculture and retail sectors, and government policy. “We are in a game in which corporate interests win and farmers lose, and consumers don’t understand that they are playing the card of the unwitting party that made it all happen,” she claimed.

Reeling off some concerning figures, McInnes reported that 85% of the space in grocery stores is controlled by four or five companies, that retail mark-up of local produce is 150% to 200% on average and that 92% of Canadian farmers do not have a succession plan.

Soma, meanwhile, spoke of food as spirituality and food as a right. She questioned, from an ethical perspective, the policies of big agriculture, which, for example, kills male chicks because they cannot produce eggs.

“Food as a right is not a secular concept, it is an act of spiritual justice to promote equity,” said Soma. “Food is a means of building relationships and a means of showing that you care and love someone.”

She added, “Without food security, we will not have peace and we will not have unity. The further the distance between the food and the one who eats it, the more the waste. There is a loss of connection.”

To watch the food security panel discussion or the Hilit Nurick and Rabbi Stephen Berger cooking session that took place earlier on Jan. 28 (and to download their red lentil soup recipe), visit bethisraelvan.ca/event/tubishvat5781.

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

Human rights above all

A poster in Marseille, France, in July 2020, calling for Nasrin Sotoudeh’s release from prison.

The National Council of Jewish Women of Canada spotlighted the remarkable story of Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh during a showing of the eponymously titled film, Nasrin, on Jan. 10.

Narrated by actress Olivia Colman, the film takes us into Sotoudeh’s life in Tehran, where she has been a stalwart in defending a wide array of people: political activists, women who refused to wear a hijab, members of the religiously oppressed Baha’i faith, and prisoners sentenced to the death penalty for crimes allegedly committed while they were minors. Her work has come with a tremendous amount of personal sacrifice, including prolonged periods in jail.

Among the notable cases brought up in the film is that of Narges Hosseini, who, in 2018, stood on an electricity box on Tehran’s Revolution Street and removed her headscarf to protest Iran’s mandatory hijab law. She was immediately arrested, and Sotoudeh soon took up her cause. At her trial, the prosecutor claimed she was trying to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public.”

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi is another of Sotoudeh’s clients. In 2010, Panahi was given a 20-year ban on making films, but he has nonetheless continued to create widely praised cinematic works, such as Taxi, in which he played a Tehran taxi driver – Sotoudeh was one of his passengers. The movie won the top prize at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in 2015. Together with Sotoudeh, Panahi was co-winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2012.

And there is the unassuming hero we encounter in Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan. His unflagging loyalty to his wife and family is underscored throughout the film. He, too, has been imprisoned several times, most recently from September to December 2018, after he wrote about human rights violations in Iran on Facebook. He was accused of operating against Iran’s national security by backing the “anti-hijab” movement. Khandan currently faces a six-year prison sentence.

The film relies on secret footage, made possible by intrepid camerapeople within Iran who took on incredible risk to record Sotoudeh in both her professional and private lives. In the midst of filming, in June 2018, Sotoudeh was arrested for representing several women protesting Iran’s mandatory hijab law. Due to health concerns, she was briefly released from prison late last year, but has since been incarcerated again.

During Sotoudeh’s furlough, she was scheduled to undergo tests to monitor her heart. At one time, she was moved to intensive care in a Tehran hospital after a 46-day hunger strike, protesting the conditions political prisoners in Iran have to endure. She also has pressed for their release during the time of the pandemic.

Shortly before her own release from the Qarchak women’s prison, Sotoudeh contracted COVID-19 but has since recovered.

Following the film’s presentation, a panel discussion took place with the film’s director, Jeff Kaufman; its producer, Marcia Ross; activist Shaparak Shajarizadeh; and former Canadian minister of justice Irwin Cotler. The discussion was led by NCJWC president Debbie Wasserman.

“One of the intents of the film is to say it is not just about Sotoudeh and Iran, it is about applying her standards to our countries and ourselves. Let’s take her example and make it global,” said Kaufman.

The filmmakers said they wanted to tell Sotoudeh’s story because she personifies a commitment to democracy and justice, and represents the power of women to shape society. Further, Sotoudeh holds a deep conviction that people of all faiths and backgrounds deserve equal opportunity and protection.

Both Kaufman and Ross spoke of the extraordinary caution taken to preserve the anonymity and security of those shooting the footage in Iran.

Asked about her reaction upon seeing the screening, Shajarizadeh said, “I cried the whole time. We could see ourselves in every minute of the movement.” Shajarizadeh, who now resides in Canada, was a women’s rights activist and political prisoner in Iran – she fought against the country’s mandatory hijab law for women.

“Nasrin is not only the embodiment of human rights in Iran, but a looking-glass into the persecution of all those who are imprisoned in Iran,” Cotler said.

Cotler advocated for “showing the film as much as we can, and [to] have the sort of conversations we are having now, and mobilize the different constituencies that she has been helping.”

Ross said the film will be out later in the year on Amazon and iTunes.

Established in 1897, NCJWC is a voluntary organization dedicated to furthering human welfare in the Jewish and general communities locally, nationally and internationally. To learn more, visit ncjwc.org.

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

Justice slams the UN

On Dec. 9, the Honourable Rosalie Silberman Abella, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, delivered the inaugural Elie Wiesel Lectureship in Human Rights. (photo by Philippe Landreville)

The Honourable Rosalie Silberman Abella, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, last week delivered an emotional, scathing indictment of the world’s failures to live up to the promise of post-Holocaust human rights protections.

Abella, a daughter of Holocaust survivors who herself was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, in 1946, delivered the inaugural Elie Wiesel Lectureship in Human Rights. She spoke Dec. 9 on the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the day before the 72nd anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The promise of those documents – and the justice represented by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals – has been betrayed and ignored, she said.

“These were the powerful legal symbols of a world shamefully chastened,” Abella said in the streamed virtual presentation. “But although Nuremberg represented a sincere commitment to justice, it was a commitment all too fleeting.”

As the West’s triumph over fascism gave way to conflict with communism, Germany transformed in the diplomatic imagination from an enemy conquered to a potential ally to be wooed, she said. Britain issued a communiqué to all Commonwealth countries to abandon prosecutions of Nazi war criminals.

“The past was tucked away and the moral comfort of the Nuremberg trials gave way to the moral expedient of the Cold War,” Abella said.

As the fight against communism eclipsed the fight for justice over past crimes, expedience led Western countries to welcome Nazi scientists and others to contribute to the military-industrial strategy – even as Jewish victims of Nazism, like Abella and her parents, sat stateless in DP camps.

To Abella, Nuremberg represented an acknowledgement of the failure of Western democracies to respond when they should have and could have.

“And so, the vitriolic language and venal rights abuses unrestrained by anyone’s conscience anywhere in or out of Germany turned into the ultimate rights abuse: genocide,” she said.

Some justice did in fact emerge in the aftermath of Nuremberg and remarkable progress has been made in some quarters, she said. “But we still have not learned the most important lesson of all – to try to prevent the abuses in the first place. All over the world, in the name of religion, domestic sovereignty, national interest, economic exigency or sheer arrogance, men, women and children are being slaughtered, abused, imprisoned, terrorized and exploited with impunity.… No national abuser seems to worry whether there will be a Nuremberg trial later because usually there isn’t. And, in any event, by the time there is, all the damage that was sought to be done has been done.”

Abella reflected on the preoccupation among jurists with the rule of law, noting that the atrocities of the Nazi era all took place legally under German laws. She said we should be focused on “the rule of justice, not just the rule of law.”

Itemizing the myriad genocides that have occurred since 1945, including ones happening now, Abella decried a lack of global will to confront atrocities before they occur.

“Clearly what remains elusive is our willingness as an international community to protect humanity from injustice,” she said, launching a broadside against the failures of the United Nations.

“It can hardly be said to have been the avatar of human rights we hoped it would be when it was created,” she said. “We changed the world’s institutions and laws after World War II because they had lost their legitimacy and integrity. Are we there again? Not so much because our human rights laws need changing, but because a good argument can be made that our existing global institutions, and especially the UN’s deliberative role, are playing fast and loose with their legitimacy and our integrity.”

She acknowledged the successes of some UN agencies, such as UNICEF, but lamented the body’s failures to meet its core objectives.

“The UN had four objectives: to protect future generations from war, to guard human rights, to foster universal justice and to promote social progress,” she said. “Since then, 40 million people have died as a result of conflicts all over the world. The UN eventually reacted in Libya and wagged its finger at Syria, but I waited in vain to wait to hear what it had to say about Iran, Venezuela and China, for example. Isn’t that magisterial silence a thunderous answer to those who say things would be a lot worse without the UN? Worse how? I know it’s all we have but does that mean it’s the best we can do? Nations debate, people die. Nations dissemble, people die. Nations defy, people die. We need more than the words and laws of justice. We need justice.”

Abella acknowledged the need to address climate change but suggested a moral climate crisis is upon us.

“We have to worry not only about how the climate is changing the world but how the moral climate is creating an atmosphere polluted by bombastic anti-intellectualism, sanctimonious incivility and a moral free-for-all,” she said. “Everyone is talking and no one is listening. We are rolling back hard-fought human rights for minorities, immigrants, refugees, workers and women.

Abella approached global justice through the eyes of a single family. Her parents were married in Poland on Sept. 3, 1939, the day the Nazis rolled over the border and as the Second World War began. Her parents spent four years in concentration camps. The brother she never knew was murdered at the age of two-and-a-half. The only survivors of her extended family were her parents and one grandmother.

“My life started in a country where there had been no democracy, no rights, no justice,” she said, struggling to maintain her composure. “No one with this history does not feel lucky to be alive and free. No one with this history takes anything for granted and no one with this history does not feel that those of us who are alive have a duty to wear our identities with pride and to promise our children that we will do everything humanly possible to keep the world safer for them than it was for their grandparents, a world where all children regardless of race, colour, religion or gender can wear their identities with dignity, with pride and in peace.”

Her own existence is a statement of the resilience of human hopefulness, she said.

“In an act that seems to me to be almost incomprehensible in its breathtaking optimism, my parents and thousands of other survivors transcended the inhumanity they had experienced and decided to have more children,” she said. “I think it was a way to fix their hearts and prove to themselves and the world that their spirits were not broken.”

Abella dedicated her lecture not only to Elie Wiesel, the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate, but also to Irwin Cotler, who introduced her prior to her presentation and who Abella called Wiesel’s “spiritual heir.”

Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister, is the founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, which sponsored the lecture along with faculties of law at McGill University and the Université de Montréal, the Lord Reading Law Society and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.

Cotler, who last month was appointed Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, noted that Abella was the youngest person ever appointed to the Canadian judiciary, at age 29.

“She was the first refugee ever appointed to the judiciary and she was the first Jewish woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada,” Cotler said, noting that he was the justice minister who nominated her to the highest court. “She has been a remarkable trailblazer. A quintessential Renaissance jurist, public intellectual, educator and judge.”

Among Abella’s recognitions, Cotler noted, are 39 honorary doctorates.

To watch the lecture, click here.

Fighting for women’s equality

Linda Silver Dranoff kicked off the four-part National Council of Jewish Women of Canada Women and Justice speaker series on Sept. 23. (screenshot)

National Council of Jewish Women of Canada started its four-part Women and Justice Speaker Series on Sept. 23 with retired family law lawyer Linda Silver Dranoff, who lives in Toronto.

The online setting allowed NCJWC members from across the country to be involved. The talk was opened by national president Debbie Wasserman, in Toronto, and closed by co-vice-president Debby Altow, in Vancouver; the question-and-answer period was handled by a committee chair, Bianca Krimberg, in Calgary.

Silver Dranoff’s talk was sobering, explaining how women in Canada have been defined by their subordinate role in the family, in relation to a man. She gave examples of laws that have reinforced this status, but also offered possible solutions, as legal reform has been an important part of her career. Among the books she has written is a memoir, called Fairly Equal: Lawyering the Feminist Revolution.

“Throughout human history, women were unprotected and vulnerable. Husbands controlled the purse strings, all property, any pension and the children,” she said. “A woman did not even own her own clothing, which was called ‘the wife’s paraphernalia.’ Women and children were property, not people. Once a woman was married, she was stuck, even if her husband beat or starved her. What we call domestic violence was considered, until very recently in human history, a private family matter that the state and the community did not get involved in.

“There was no divorce law in Canada until 1968,” she continued. “If a woman was guilty of marital misconduct, such as adultery, she could lose her right to have custody of her children and often even access to visit with them.”

Silver Dranoff became a lawyer in family law in 1974. At the time, she witnessed women staying in abusive marriages because they had little choice – if they left, they could become destitute and lose their children, too. “Marital misconduct ended any right to financial support, even if it happened after separation and divorce,” she said, explaining that settlement agreements often included a dum casta clause, a “while chaste” clause.

If a woman left her abusive husband, she said, anyone helping or harbouring her could be charged as a criminal. “This was an offence in our criminal law until the 1970s – that’s how recently it was. The law permitted a man to disinherit his wife and leave her destitute, no matter how long they’d been married and even if she was the model of a perfect wife.

“The husband controlled the wife’s reproduction. Contraception and abortion were criminal offences. A husband and wife were considered one person in law – the husband. This concept of the legal unity of husband and wife is what allowed a man to control his wife in every respect.” Until 1983, a husband could legally rape his wife – “marriage was considered consent to conjugal relations,” explained Silver Dranoff, who stressed that, of course, many men didn’t take advantage of their power – “but those who did could do so with impunity” and with legal sanction.

In addition to these restrictions, married women were discouraged from working outside the home. “In 1941,” said Silver Dranoff, “fewer than four percent of married women were employed. It wasn’t until 1955 that married women were eligible to be employed in the federal civil service. In any event, there was almost no publicly supported childcare – this actively discouraged women from employment. Even if women worked, usually out of necessity, there were no laws protecting them from discrimination in employment.” This meant that women could legally be paid less, disregarded for promotion consideration and fired if a man needed a job. “There was no law against sexual harassment in the workplace; it didn’t even exist until the early 1980s in law.”

In the public arena, said Silver Dranoff, “women were invisible.” While most women have had the right to vote since 1918 – a right won by the efforts of the first-wave women’s movement – government policy usually overlooked issues of concern to women. “Only five women were elected to Parliament before 1950,” she said. “It wasn’t until 1957 that the first woman ever was appointed as a federal cabinet minister. And a woman lawyer was a rarity – in 1951, there were 197 women lawyers in all of Canada out of a total of 9,000.”

This was the world in which Silver Dranoff grew up, and it energized and impelled her to action, as it did others. “I believe the most significant transformation allowing women a less dependent role in society came about when women could control our reproductive powers,” she said. “The birth control pill was developed in 1961. While contraception and abortion were still criminal offences, the pill gradually became publicly available in the 1960s, and that is when the second-wave women’s movement began.”

Women’s groups proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s. “The National Action Committee on the Status of Women comprised most of the major women’s organizations of the day, totalling, at its height, 700 women’s organizations that all gathered together to promote the rights of women with one voice.”

Silver Dranoff went to law school in 1969. She was a single parent with a 2-year-old and had been out of school for eight years. “Other women were also seeing a life outside the family as a possibility,” she said. “In my law school class, there were 14 women out of 300; we were five percent of the class. Had I attended eight years earlier, when I graduated from history, I would have been the only woman in a law school class in Toronto.”

With more women lawyers, there was more pressure for change and Silver Dranoff spoke about some of the advances that have been made in family law reform, Charter equality rights, abortion, violence against women, childcare, pay equity, and representation and power.

When Silver Dranoff came to the bar in 1974, women had no right to share property accumulated during a marriage, and spousal and child support amounts were “paltry and difficult to enforce.” By the 1980s across Canada, improvements had been made both in multiple laws and in their enforcement. “These changes enabled women to leave bad marriages and live independently,” she said.

However, there is more to be done. Husbands and their lawyers still “use the legal system and its processes and delays as a club to intimidate women.” As well, she added, “It is often too expensive to seek the rights which the law gives, and legal aid is severely underfunded.” Another problem is that mediation and arbitration are replacing the courts in some cases and, “as a result, women may be encouraged to make a deal that doesn’t give them the benefit of the laws we fought long and hard for.”

When the Canadian Constitution was repatriated from Great Britain in 1982, a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted. Women’s groups lobbied the government of the day, led by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, “to include constitutionally entrenched equality rights in the Charter – by the way, a right that American women still don’t have. Our women lawyers provided the wording to protect us, using the lessons taught by the ineffective Bill of Rights passed in the 1950s.”

One of those lessons was the need to make sure the rights were actually protected. “We had to lobby, we had to organize, we had to participate in court cases that would affect our equality rights. So, we founded the Women’s Legal and Educational Action Fund, known as LEAF, in 1985, when equality rights came into effect, to try and ensure that court interpretations of the Charter did not erode, but enhanced and ensured women’s equality rights.”

In the late 1960s, Trudeau, as justice minister under then-prime minister Lester B. Pearson, brought in amendments to the Criminal Code that permitted abortion under defined conditions. The amendments did not legalize abortion, but said the prohibition would not operate if a medical committee deemed a pregnant woman’s life to be in danger if she carried to term. This law did not work, said Silver Dranoff. Among other things, there was inconsistency among hospital abortion committees in rulings and there were no guidelines on what constituted endangerment.

“Dr. Henry Morgentaler became women’s champion,” she said. “He opened a clinic in Montreal and women traveled there from across Canada to be assured of getting and having a safe abortion.”

Morgentaler challenged the medical committee law, she said, and his goal was to get abortion removed as an offence under the Criminal Code; he also challenged provincial laws. “The main challenge was decided in 1988 by the Supreme Court of Canada,” said Silver Dranoff, “which agreed with defence counsel’s constitutional argument that the abortion provisions of the Criminal Code breached the rights of Section 7 of the Charter to life, liberty and security of the person and, therefore, was unconstitutional.”

There is no longer any federal law preventing or criminalizing abortion, or requiring anyone’s consent to the procedure other than that of the pregnant woman. There have been challenges to the change, though, including the federal government under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, which tried twice – unsuccessfully – to form an anti-abortion law that wouldn’t violate the Charter.

“This shows how important it is to keep vigilant and organized and focused,” said Silver Dranoff. “There’s no such thing as a permanent victory, only a continuing struggle.”

A case in point is the progress that has been made with respect to dealing with violence against women. The courts used to accept the argument that, if a woman had ever had sex before with anyone, she probably consented to the approach by the accused. Victims can no longer be cross-examined on their previous sexual experience, unless the trial judge determines there is some compelling reason to allow it, said Silver Dranoff. However, “victims are still being mistreated by the courts,” she said. “As a result, many women are reluctant to complain.”

In addition to a need for more education of lawyers, police and others in the system before attitudes will change, Silver Dranoff spoke of the need for prevention, offering the example of proactive imprisonment, which is practised in some communities in the United States. Whereas a bail hearing assesses whether an accused is likely to flee before trial, this process assesses how likely an accused is to murder their accuser. If the risk of murder is high, the accused would be imprisoned until their trial and the victim (and their children) would be able to stay at home instead of having to seek shelter and protection, for example.

“I think it’s a plan that’s worthy of consideration in Canada,” said Silver Dranoff. “We also need gun control. In the hands of men who are violent against women, guns are dangerous. And the only way to control violent men using guns is to control guns. Canadian statistics show that access to firearms by an intimate partner increases the likelihood of murder by 500%.”

Childcare is another integral issue, she said. “I personally think that women will never be able to take their full place in our workforce unless we have proper health- and childcare. We need government-paid, government-subsidized childcare centres, regulated places for our children to go and be cared for while women are employed in the paid labour force.”

She said that, 50 years ago, in 1970, the importance of childcare was recognized in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, “which called for a national childcare plan. The royal commission identified the care of children as the responsibility to be shared by mothers, fathers and society, without which, women cannot be accorded true equality. Just as true today as it was in 1970.”

She pointed to other instances in which a national childcare program had been recommended or dismissed by a federal government. Most recently, on Sept. 23, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government “announced plans for a significant long-term investment in a national childcare and early-learning system, including before- and after-school care, and built on the [publicly funded] Quebec model.”

Silver Dranoff warned that government announcements, and even the making of laws, do not necessarily translate into changes. In Ontario, for example, there have been equal pay laws since 1951, she said, while the Pay Equity Act, which applied to the federal public service, didn’t come until 1984. Changes to the various laws have occurred as a result of complaints from workers, she said, and different governments and employers have either progressed or hindered pay equity.

“Statistics tell the story, too,” she said. “In 1965, women earned, on average, 41% of men’s pay…. Today, Ontario women earn, on average, 70 cents for every dollar a man earns.” While an improvement, it took more than 50 years and it’s not good enough, she said. “These statistics repeat themselves all over the world. Women are still paid less than men in every country in the world, according to research by the World Economic Forum.” And the pay gap is even larger for Indigenous, racialized and immigrant women, she said.

Potential solutions include a law requiring pay transparency, wherein a wage is assigned to a particular job, not the gender of the person filling it, and requiring companies to get equal pay certification from the government or be fined. The latter policy has been implemented in Iceland, she said.

After a few more examples of ways to improve pay equity, Silver Dranoff moved on to her final topic – representation and power. She noted that, in 2013, there were six female premiers, now there is only one (Caroline Cochrane, in the Northwest Territories).

“We need more women in positions of power and we’re having great difficulty in achieving it,” said Silver Dranoff. One deterrent is that women in politics receive significantly more abuse and nastiness than male politicians. Much of this abuse is online in social media and even anonymous; two factors contributing to the fact that few perpetrators are charged or convicted.

She said, “The law could be strengthened in this way: make social media platforms legally responsible for the content they post, just as newspapers have a responsibility to ensure that the content they print is not defamatory.”

She noted there are no provisions in the Criminal Code for online bullying, online criminal harassment, online misogyny. “The Criminal Code only deals with in-person offences,” she said. Of course, to make these types of new laws work, she added, anonymity on the internet must be curtailed or eliminated.

To sustain the advances made by the women’s movement, she said, “Feminists must run for office and be elected. Parties must nominate feminists in electable ridings.”

In Silver Dranoff’s use of the term, feminists can be any gender, just as patriarchs can be any gender. Not every woman, she said, will stand up for the interests of women.

In addition to electoral reform – she believes that proportional representation of the mixed member proportional type is the best bet, “both for society as a whole and for women in particular because it requires consensus decision-making” – Silver Dranoff would like to see changes made in the corporate world, as well. She sees a need for things like mandatory quotas for women on boards, to ensure equal representation. “Voluntary doesn’t work,” she said.

Canada also needs a national women’s organization, she said, “like we had in the early days of the women’s movement. The National Action Committee on the Status of Women represented all of us…. We need that national voice to ensure that women’s issues are monitored and our interests are heard.”

Such an organization should not be dependent on government funding, she said, “which can be, and has been, withdrawn due to the ideology of the day. And, in fact, that’s what happened to NAC in the end. The National Action Committee was relying on government funding and an unsympathetic government removed it.”

Women cannot just accept the status quo, she said, or “that makes us complicit.”

She concluded, “My message to you all is carpe diem, seize the day. There is work to be done. It is, without a doubt, long past time for women to achieve equality and justice.”

***

Note: This article has been amended to make clear that it was married women who weren’t permitted to work in the federal public sector until 1955.

Do we care about being fair?

In its decision on Uber Technologies Inc. v. David Heller, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that the freedom of contract is not so absolute in its technical application as to undermine its purpose of allowing people to craft their own destinies. (photo from wikipedia)

Does fairness play a role in how we interpret and apply law? After all, doesn’t a person have the right to make bad decisions?

The Torah gives us the written law, similar to legislation, and the Talmud gives us the oral law and commentary, similar to the doctrines and jurisprudence of common law.

So, are we to interpret and apply law strictly, even if it seems unjust? Is there authority to temper the interpretation of law based on the circumstances? The Talmud tells us, yes. In June, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed.

Every businessperson knows that it’s a good idea to get an agreement in writing. We use written agreements to make a record of what the parties have agreed is their shared vision of their business relationship. Part of that shared vision might include agreeing that certain rights ordinarily afforded by the law of the land won’t apply to this relationship. The right to give up a right is central to the freedom of contract.

The freedom of contract is based on the idea that a person knows what’s best for them and wouldn’t agree to something if the bargain weren’t to their liking. The law doesn’t protect you from your own bad decisions, but it is supposed to protect you from bad decisions that you didn’t make freely.

In June of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada decided the case of Uber Technologies Inc. v. David Heller. Heller was an Uber food delivery driver. As such, he signed a standard agreement with Uber – the kind of agreement that is a “take it or leave it” proposition. Very few people read such contracts and, even if they do take the time to read and understand them, they don’t have the opportunity to create the “shared vision” that the freedom of contract is supposed to protect.

One of the terms of the Uber contract was that any dispute would be dealt with through a mediation and arbitration process in the Netherlands, rather than through the court system in Canada. Doing so would require up-front fees of $14,500 US, not including the cost of lawyers and travel. Heller’s annual earnings from Uber are between $20,000 and $30,000 Cdn. In other words, it would cost at least half of his annual earnings just to file his dispute, let alone pursue it.

The Supreme Court of Canada found in Heller’s favour.

If this had been a freely negotiated contract, Heller would have made a bad decision, but it would have been his decision to make and thus enforceable. However, it was clear to the court that Uber put this clause into the contract to make sure their drivers simply could not bring any dispute against them.

The court could have said that, according to the strict letter of the law, Heller agreed to the contract and is, therefore, bound by it. It doesn’t matter if you now find unfair a contract that you freely agreed to.

Instead, the court said the law in its strictest form is not always applicable, and we must determine whether it is inhumane to apply it strictly or whether circumstances demand we temper it. The court found that, rather than providing an alternative means to justice (i.e. arbitration), Uber imposed an unreasonable barrier to justice; they found a way to make sure that their drivers could not access justice no matter the merit of their complaint.

Many of us are familiar with the first three verses of parshat Shoftim in Devarim (Deuteronomy 16:18-16:20). First, a system of judges is established. Second, the judges are commanded to judge fairly on the merits of the cases. The third verse contains one of the most well-known phrases in the Torah: “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

Why is the third verse there, and why does it use the word “justice” twice? The second verse has commanded the judges to follow the law without prejudice. Why then tell us to pursue justice? Isn’t that implicit in the establishment of a rule-of-law justice system? And what is “justice, justice” as opposed to “justice”?

In Chapter 2 of tractate Avot in the Mishnah, we are told, “warm thyself by the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coals, lest thou be burnt, for their bite is the bite of a fox, and their sting is the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss is the hiss of a serpent, and all their utterances are like coals of fire.”

At the distance where coals keep you warm, you can learn. At this distance, you can also see the coals in the context of providing warmth. If you are close enough that they can bite, sting and hiss, you lose sight of their purpose (warmth) and will be burnt. This applies to law.

Chapter 1 of Avot provides three interpretations of law’s purpose in the olam, world – olam also means the universe and everything in it.

Verse 2 of Chapter 1 says that the world stands on Torah (law), work (the practice of law) and kindness.

Verse 12 directs us to love peace, to pursue peace and to love all creatures bringing them closer to the Torah (law).

Verse 18 tells us that the world stands on justice, truth and peace.

The inclusion of kindness and peace alongside law tells us not to get so close to the coals that we forget their purpose is warmth.

“Justice, justice” is not only law, but law with purpose. Law without purpose may wear a badge of justice, but it is not truly just. Law used for the purpose of subverting justice is not just.

The court determined, in the Uber decision, that the freedom of contract is not so absolute in its technical application as to undermine its purpose of allowing people to craft their own destinies. In this case, Uber’s contract precisely contradicted that purpose: Uber imposed a contract that expressly denied Heller the right to craft his own destiny without his freely given consent.

Jeremy Costin is a business and estates lawyer practising in Vancouver. He sits on the board of directors and the governance committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and is a frequent guest instructor at the Law Society of British Columbia.

Starting repair process

Among the many things this year has brought us is a reconsideration of race, equality and justice, spurred in part by racism and racially motivated violence, not least that perpetrated by police. In response, the Jewish community, locally and in the United States and beyond, is engaged in a discussion about how to respond as individuals and as a community.

Jews have long been involved in advancing racial equality and other progressive issues. Hundreds of U.S. Jewish organizations and individuals recently signed on to a message of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, despite some concerns by some about antisemitism in small parts of that movement. What too few have done, as we read the news from Kenosha or Louisville or other cities roiled by racist and civil unrest, is consider the issue from a perspective that is closer to home.

Earlier this year, three Jews of colour began a modest movement to specifically raise this topic more visibly, forming a group called No Silence on Race, which issued an open letter “from Black Jews, non-Black Jews of colour and our allies to Jewish organizations in Canada.” (See story at jewishindependent.ca/working-to-advance-equality and their website, nosilenceonrace.ca.) The letter asked organizations in the community to take tangible steps based on nine pillars they outlined: allyship, education, Indigenous education, equity consultancy, employment, anti-racism advisory, JOC leadership, programming and partnerships, and JOC voices. The Jewish Independent endorses this letter.

The letter requested that organizations in the community consider making a statement detailing tangible ways they will seek to hear, engage with and empower Jewish people of colour. In response, the editorial board of the Independent has met as a group and also individually considered these issues. We offer this statement in an effort to voice our commitment to equity and justice for Jews of colour within our community and within the specific scope of our own organization, the community newspaper of Jewish British Columbians. We believe that not all nine pillars are specifically applicable to the unique role that a news platform plays in the community, though as we proceed along this process, we remain open to reconsidering all assumptions.

In demonstrating allyship, in particular, there are several specific, tangible, realizable goals we have identified and to which we commit to undertake. These include:

Redoubling our efforts to feature stories involving Jews of colour, their experiences, lives, accomplishments, challenges, specific issues, and events, as well as addressing intra-community conflicts and reconciliations between Jews of colour and the broader Jewish community;
Continuing to advance a model of journalism that encourages reconciliation between Indigenous Canadians, Jews and all Canadians;
Intentionally holding space for new and less frequently heard voices, including prioritizing writers who are Jews of colour and gender-diverse people, and actively seek out such voices, recognizing the deep well of experience and expression that has not traditionally been heard or amplified;
Partnering with, and encouraging others to partner with, individuals and organizations that elevate a diverse range of Jewish diasporas, histories and lived experiences;
Undertaking to learn and exemplify diverse ways to understand language, gender, ability and other forms of human difference;
Amplifying, through our coverage, resources from other community organizations dedicated to these goals, in the interest of education and sharing resources;
Encouraging, in our reporting and commentary, inclusive and progressive decision-making around community allocations and fundraising, and engaging in educating about a vision of community philanthropy that advances these objectives.

We make these commitments conscious of our shortcomings as individuals and as a small, struggling community institution, and strive for their fruition to the best of our abilities.

We recognize and appreciate the emotional labour required by Jews of colour, and of others who are self-advocating, and will strive to minimize this burden through self-education and using existing resources that do not place added demands on individuals and organizations engaged in this critical work.

You are likely reading this still in the Jewish month of Elul, traditionally a time to reflect on our actions over the year and to ready ourselves for the power of the High Holidays. Indeed, the Jewish concept of teshuva, of atonement, literally “return,” provides a roadmap for doing things differently and better. For those transgressions between people, wrongs must be righted and forgiveness is only possible from the person we’ve harmed. We invite you – individuals and community institutions alike – to join us as we use this time to consider specific, actionable ways each of us may take responsibility for repairing any damage we may have done to beloved members of our community who have been excluded, questioned, silenced, marginalized or otherwise made to feel outside. At the Independent, we do this reflection and the work of repair with joy and a sense of purpose. Wishing each one of you a shana tova u’metuka, a good and sweet year.