Zionism

Putting allyship into action

Zara Nybo leads an Israel on Campus meeting at the University of British Columbia. Nybo is the new BC representative for StandWithUs Canada. (photo from Zara Nybo)

When Zara Nybo transferred to the University of British Columbia from Camosun College on Vancouver Island, she wasn’t sure if Hillel was a place where she belonged, since she is not Jewish. Her partner encouraged her to check it out anyway – and it set her on a course to become an ally for Jewish students.

Recently, Nybo was hired as educational outreach and content manager for StandWithUs Canada, a nonprofit dedicated to pro-Israel education and advocacy. Though still finishing her degree in sociocultural anthropology and Jewish studies, she works full-time, overseeing the Emerson Fellowship for university students in British Columbia and the Leventhal Internship for high school students in Western Canada. She’s also responsible for non-Jewish outreach and community partnerships across the province.

“I think a lot of people assume this work is just for Jewish students,” Nybo said, “but education is the pathway to peace, for everyone.”

That idea fuels her days managing fellowships, mentoring students and helping young people navigate what have become among the most emotionally and politically charged issues on campus: Israel and antisemitism. In recent years, as anti-Zionist activism – and antisemitism – have surged across Canadian universities, Jewish students have increasingly found themselves isolated and targeted. Nybo has been impacted by what she has seen.

“What really struck me,” she said, “was watching Jewish and Israeli students grow afraid to go to class, to speak openly, to walk freely with a Star of David necklace. I wanted them to know – you’re not alone. There are people who see you, who care, and who are willing to stand with you.”

Nybo’s advocacy didn’t come out of nowhere. Raised in a family that prioritized global experience over staying in one place – she moved 13 times before age 13 – she learned early how to build bridges. But it was through Hillel and a series of fellowships, including the Campus Media Fellowship, a joint initiative of Allied Voices for Israel and Honest Reporting Canada, and the Israel Leadership Network, which consisted of more than 150 of the top Israel-focused student leaders from within the Hillel movement across North America, that she gained the knowledge, tools and confidence to become a leading pro-Israel advocate at UBC.

“I used to think of antisemitism as a historic form of hatred,” she said. “But once you learn to see the invisible forms of antisemitism, you realize how present and widespread it really is. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

As a 2024/25 Canadian Emerson Fellow and Campus Media Fellowship alumna, Nybo staffed tables, hosted dialogues and wrote op-eds that challenged misinformation and promoted empathy. She’s continued to write ever since, crediting those programs with awakening her voice.

Now, in her leadership role, she trains others to do the same – Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.

“The Emerson Fellowship isn’t about slogans,” she said. “It’s about education. It’s about staying calm in hard conversations, being grounded in facts and speaking with authenticity – even when it’s scary.”

Nybo acknowledges she sometimes feeling “shaky” while tabling on campus. But she refuses to let fear stop her and she sees it as an important part of her role to encourage others to stand up even when it is daunting.

“Our job isn’t to scare students out of advocacy,” she said. “It’s to empower them to do it anyway.”

As tensions around Israel and antisemitism continue in Canada – on campus and beyond – Nybo is one of a small but crucial group of non-Jewish individuals who have stepped up to contest the atmosphere that is making Jews on campus uncomfortable and vulnerable.

“This isn’t just about being pro-Israel,” she said. “It’s about being anti-hate. No student – Jewish or otherwise – should walk around feeling like there’s a target on their back.”

In her new role, Nybo has already filled the BC positions open next year to Jewish and non-Jewish students seeking to broaden their knowledge and skills by participating in the programs StandWithUs Canada offers. She will oversee the students as they proceed through the range of learning and experiential projects she herself engaged in last year. These students, like Nybo, will go on to amplify the voices of Jews and allies on campus and, after graduation, take their places as leaders in the fight against antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Oslo not a failure: Aharoni

Dina Wachtel of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, and Ido Aharoni, a former top Israeli diplomat who now teaches at various universities. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Zionism is as popular now as it has ever been on North American campuses, according to a former top Israeli diplomat who now teaches at multiple American universities.

The bad news, he added, is that Zionism was never a hit on North American campuses.

“Zionism was never popular in academia,” said Ido Aharoni, speaking with the Independent during a trip to Vancouver as a guest of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. “In fact, I would argue that … we’ve never had so many Zionists in North America as we have today.”

Protests on campuses and reports of professors inculcating anti-Israel ideas are disturbing, he said, but it’s not new.

“The people that are at the front of the effort, that spearhead the effort, are different,” he said, arguing that the vanguard now is comprised of foreign students and descendants of immigrants from societies where antisemitism is endemic. “But it’s the same thing, the same messaging that was designed by the Soviet Union.”

Aharoni is a 25-year veteran of Israel’s foreign service, a public diplomacy specialist, and founder of the Brand Israel program, which, since 2002, has sought to reposition Israel in the public mind globally. He served in the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles in the 1990s and was consul general of Israel in New York and the Tri-State Area from 2010 to 2016.

Since retiring from government in 2016, Aharoni has lectured and spoken at academic institutions including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton and Berkeley on topics such as Israel’s foreign relations, mass media, the information revolution, public marketing, and nation branding. He has served as a professor of business at Touro University, as a professor of international relations at New York University and is the Murray Galinson Professor of International Relations at University of California in San Diego and San Diego State University’s business school.

In addition to teaching and lecturing, Aharoni provides advice to international companies to access Israeli innovation. He also helps businesses and agencies communicate with governments. His third focus is strategy and planning, particularly helping clients tell their story.

Aharoni contests widely held assumptions, including that Israel is unpopular in Western countries. Opinion polls say large majorities of respondents side with the Jewish state, he said. That does not necessarily translate, however, into family vacations in Israel or investments in Israeli enterprises. Changing that mindset could include convincing non-Israelis to consider differently the challenges the country faces.

“Think of terrorism the same way you think of crime in any major urban centre in North America,” he said. “If you only focus on attempts to carry out criminal acts, or the number of criminal acts carried out, then the picture can be very scary.”

If all anyone heard about Vancouver was crime statistics, he said, they might be reluctant to visit or invest. “That’s what happened in Israel,” said Aharoni. “We communicated our problems to the world. At one point, it became the only thing we communicated to the world. As a result, the world doesn’t see us beyond those problems.”

It’s hard to alter a narrative once it is set, he said. And yet, he added, Israel is no more dangerous a place to visit – and far more stable a place to invest – than many other spots in the world.

“You know how many inflammations of violence we have right now in the world taking place?” he asked. “People are talking about Israelis and Palestinians as if it’s the only conflict in the world and I think there’s something wrong about that.”

Early in his career, Aharoni was involved in the beginnings of the Oslo Peace Process. He was the policy assistant to Uri Savir, director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry under then-foreign minister Shimon Peres. “I was part of a very small group of people that knew about the secret negotiations and my job was mostly to prepare him for meetings,” he said.

Aharoni rejects the narrative that the entire process is a story of failure. What did fail was the assumption by Israelis and the broader diplomatic world that Yasser Arafat would confront the extremists on his side, get Hamas in hand, end incitement against Israelis and prepare his people to live in peaceful coexistence.

The Palestinians faced their Altalena moment, he said, citing a pivotal incident in the earliest Israeli history, when the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, ordered the nascent Israel Defence Forces to attack the Irgun ship Altalena, effectively ensuring there would be a single, unified military force in the country.

“If you ask me, this was the biggest mistake: the assumption that Arafat was of that calibre. But the truth is that Arafat was no Ben-Gurion,” said Aharoni. “Arafat was not of that calibre. He was in it way over his head. He didn’t have the skill or the character – nor the desire. To have the desire, you have to have some knowledge of history, you have to have some depth. He had none of that. He was in love with the position of a rebel, of a revolutionary. He thought he was Che Guevara and that was his historical reference. If you ask me, that was the biggest failure.

“Other than that,” he argued, “Oslo was a big success.”

Before Oslo, he noted, Israel did not recognize the existence of the Palestinians and vice versa. The recognition and direct contact between the two sides, for whatever shortcomings that dialogue has had, allows Israel to coordinate anti-terror efforts with the Palestinian Authority.

“A lot of people don’t know that,” he said, “but the Palestinian Authority, which is the creation of the Oslo Accords … they have been very instrumental helping Israelis curb terrorism coming out of the West Bank.”

Oct. 7, 2023, or “10/7,” changed everything, he said.

“Before 10/7, there was this expectation on the part of Israelis that, somehow, we will be able to introduce peace in its full conceptual meaning.… I think, after 10/7, it’s very difficult for people to imagine that kind of peace.”

The best hope now, probably, is what Aharoni calls “a livable arrangement,” which would protect Israel’s security needs and deliver maximal Palestinian civil self-rule, while limiting the Palestinians’ military capabilities. Eliminating the antisemitism and genocidal incitement in the Palestinian and broader Arab education systems is another priority, he added.

Aharoni forcefully rejects the idea that support for Israel has become a partisan wedge issue in the United States, noting that a vote on an Israeli aid package passed the US Congress after 10/7 with 366 in favour, 58 against and seven abstentions.

“It’s true that we pay a lot of attention to the fringes,” he said, citing vocally anti-Israel representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who, he said, “represent a very marginalized and very narrow agenda.”

Aharoni was in Vancouver to meet with local supporters of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. CFHU will host a public event next month, in which the mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, will be in conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Infeld. The event, titled Diversity as Strength During Challenging Times, takes place June 9, at 7:30 p.m. Register at cfhu.org/moshe-lion.

Some miracles from tragedy

Dr. Gil Troy spoke of being inspired by Ben Mizrachi and other young Jews, who he described as Zionist lions. (screenshot)

Vancouver’s Ben Mizrachi died a hero saving others at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. On that terrible day, and since, a new generation of Zionist lions has emerged, exemplifying the heroism that Mizrachi and so many others epitomized.

This, according to the American-Canadian-Israeli academic and author Dr. Gil Troy, is one of many miracles that have risen from the tragedy.

Troy, an American presidential historian and McGill University professor who lives in Jerusalem, knew Mizrachi well. One of Troy’s sons participated in an Israeli program with the Vancouverite.

“They became close, close friends,” said Troy. “He was one of those kids who walked into the door and straight into your heart. He was really part of our family.”

On Oct. 7, Mizrachi, who was a trained medic, and his friend Itai Bausi, went back into the festival site and saved the lives of others before being murdered themselves.

“What I learned from his heroism was, yes, the Israeli government failed that day,” Troy said. “Yes, the IDF failed that day. But Zionism was vindicated that day. Zionism raised a generation of lions. Zionism raised a generation of Bens and Itais, who fought back, and that was the real miracle of Oct. 7. What saved Israel was Israelis. What saved Israel was Zionism, which taught them to defend themselves, which taught us the value of defending ourselves, which taught us the language of defending ourselves, which sometimes is with words and sometimes is with arms and sometimes with our bare hands.”

Troy was speaking Feb. 2 at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. As a professor used to daily interactions with North American college students, Troy has witnessed Jewish young people undergo an awakening on and after Oct. 7. People who had never been deeply invested either in Israel or in their own Jewish identity realized they were the object of the terrorists’ wrath.

“This is happening to me. I’m being targeted. This wasn’t just anti-Zionism. This was antisemitic anti-Zionism,” Troy said of how he characterizes the realization among Jewish students. “So many young Jews had an awakening, had their Herzl moment, had their ’67 moment, had their reawakening.”

Rather than hide from their Zionism, Troy said, Jewish young people are recognizing its centrality and resisting others’ attempts to separate their Jewishness from their Zionism.

“At Columbia University, 600 Jewish students signed a statement saying Zionism is central to our identity,” said Troy. “Zionism is who we are.”

The signatories called out those who would define for Jews the acceptable parameters of their Jewishness and Zionism – and they called out anti-Zionist Jews in language deliberately formulated to stick it to their ideological heart, accusing them of being “colonized” by antisemitic forces.

“We’ve seen, from coast to coast in Canada … Jewish students stand up and say, this shall not stand. This is not acceptable,” Troy said. “We’re watching new chapters in Zionist history being written. And we’re seeing it in Israel too.”

This is not easy, he acknowledged. The challenges are enormous. Jews on campus and elsewhere are being betrayed by the very groups who should be counted on as allies, he said.

“Too many of my women colleagues – not all, but too many feminists either decided that it didn’t happen or that we deserved it, or that rape is resistance,” said Troy. “I can’t make this stuff up. They showed at that moment that their hatred for Israel trumped, if I can use that verb, their commitment to fighting gendered violence. That’s how deep the hatred goes.”

Troy calls this the “triple double-cross.” Activists threw Jews under the bus, threw liberalism under the bus and threw their own core ideals under the bus, he said.

The fight of which Jewish students are at the vanguard is not just a fight for Jewish security, Troy contended.

“Who waves the American and Canadian flags at rallies and who burns them?” he asked. “Who disrupted shopping malls and the Toronto mayor’s ice-skating party? Who showed a hatred for Canada, again and again and again? The fight against this academic intifada is not just a fight for Israel and Zionism and Judaism, which should be enough, but it’s also a fight for Americanism and Canadianism and liberalism and for academic values.”

In the face of all the hatred seen in Canadian streets and on campuses in the past year-and-a-half, he said, it could be easy to spin into despair.

“But, you know who doesn’t allow me to despair? Our students,” Troy said. “We’ve seen such heroism. We’ve seen zeal on their part, a gleam in their eye, pride.”

The inspiring courage of young Canadian Jews is mirrored in a million ways, he said. Reserve soldiers living abroad or traveling around the world came to the rescue after Oct. 7.

“Two hundred thousand Israelis flew home,” he said. Many non-Israeli volunteers mobilized as well. “So many of you, since Oct. 7, instead of running away, came toward us – either physically or spiritually and financially, which was part of the language of love.

“There has been something mystical happening here,” he continued. “For all that high price we paid, Israel is now safer than it was Oct. 6 and the United States and Canada and the world is safer than it was on Oct. 6.”

Amid all the darkness, including the tragic loss of his son’s friend, Troy sees inspiring resilience and determination.

“Every moment since that funeral I’ve had Ben on my shoulder, inspiring me and inspiring us to fight like lions and to save the state but also to make it better,” said Troy. “Because Zionism is about defending the state when necessary but building, rebuilding and being rebuilt by it always. That’s the power of the story. That’s our good fortune amid all our grief.”

Queer Jews are feeling isolated

Aviva Rathbone, chair of JQT Vancouver, finds hope in the fact that “[t]here are lots of people in the community coming together right now and finding connections to heal what they can in what is a very broken world and what is a very broken situation.” (photo from JQT)

Probably all Jews have experienced emotional and mental impacts from the events of Oct. 7 and since. For LGBTQ+ Jews, these effects are often magnified by the climates in their multiple communities.

JQT Vancouver (pronounced J-Cutie), a volunteer-run Jewish queer and trans nonprofit group whose mission is “‘queering’ Jewish spaces and ‘Jew-ifying’ queer spaces,” has released the results of a survey that indicates LGBTQ+ Jews are experiencing profound pain – regardless of where they stand on an apparently vastly diverse spectrum of opinions about the conflict in the Middle East.

Titled 2024 JQT Temperature Check Report, the document collates responses from 91 individuals, including narratives of their experiences, and the overview it paints is bleak.

“There are a lot of really sad commentaries,” Aviva Rathbone, chair of JQT, told the Independent. “A lot of the folks who responded to the survey are people who are really struggling right now.”

She cautioned that the survey may not include the perspectives of others who may be having more positive experiences.

“Some people are feeling really accepted into community right now, they are feeling like they found a place,” said Rathbone. “We didn’t hear from those folks, but that’s not to say that they don’t exist.”

The results are not surprising, she said.

“We knew people were struggling,” she said. “It was a surprise, I think, the depth of anger and sadness that was there.”

Fewer than half of survey respondents indicated that they felt safe and accepted in Jewish spaces and only about a quarter said they felt safe and accepted in queer spaces. Fewer still, 14%, said they felt comfortable in both.

Since Oct. 7, approximately half of respondents indicated that actions and/or statements of queer (57%) and Jewish organizations (51%) have had a negative impact on their mental health.

A majority (57%) of respondents indicated that their safety and security felt threatened since Oct. 7 because of their Jewish identity. More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) said they experienced antisemitism online or in-person since Oct. 7.

Much of the discomfort centres on divergent attitudes toward Israel and the war against Hamas, as well as opinions around the definitions of antisemitism and what some respondents describe as exclusivist attitudes in the Jewish community, often described as overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and in the LGBTQ+ community, described by many as unwelcoming to pro-Israel Jews.

One respondent said the Jewish community should “acknowledge that anti-Zionist Jews are still Jews and should be welcome in Jewish spaces” and that “queer Zionist Jews are still queer and should be welcome in queer spaces.”

JQT serves members who self-identify as Zionist and those who self-identify as anti-Zionist.

“When the mainstream Jewish community dismisses Jews who criticize Israeli actions, it makes me feel alienated from that community, more than before,” wrote one respondent.

Two among scores of examples illustrate the chasm between the narratives shared in the report. One respondent accuses “queers for Palestine” of trying “to turn Zionism into a dirty word” and making them feel “unwelcome as a Jewish Israeli in queer spaces when not hiding myself.” Another writer says, “It makes me unsafe when Jewish organizations […] make wildly racist statements about Palestine. Conflating Judaism with Israel makes it seem like I am complicit in this genocide.”

Said another respondent: “None of the synagogues or even [Jewish queer groups] have made any statements that humanize the struggle of non-Zionist Jews and how we’ve been systematically shut out of spiritual, social and cultural Jewish spaces for far too long. In fact, the current climate within these spaces promotes a pro-war and anti-Palestinian rhetoric that pushes me and my friends away from feeling security and belonging in our identities.”

The divergence in attitudes is typified by another survey response.

“People wearing an End the Occupation T-shirt or other such slogans signal to me that the wearers believe Hamas to be righteous rather than terrorist, that all lives are not equal, makes me uncomfortable, as does the aggressivity of protesters, including [queer groups that support] Palestine. Standing in solidarity with Israel and its absolute right to defend itself, while not recognizing the numbers of non-Hamas Palestinians killed and the living conditions in Gaza during the war is also not comfortable for me,” wrote a respondent.

If there is a clear takeaway from the study, Rathbone said, it can be summed up in one word.

“Empathy,” she said. “We have the ability to hold space for our own pain and anger and for other people’s pain and anger. I fully believe that humans are expansive and the Jewish community for sure is expansive and we have done this many times. We have been able to hold space for ourselves and for other people who are suffering, even when we don’t agree with them.”

Disagreements over politics, no matter how intensely and personally held, should not erase the empathy Jewish people have for one another, she said.

It is possible to have conversations across that divide, as JQT did recently in a “listen and be heard” event, facilitated by two professionals.

That event was part of a major mental health initiative in collaboration with Jewish Family Services, with funding from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver, that was in the works even before Oct. 7. Among numerous projects rolled out in recent months addressing the challenges facing LGBTQ+ Jews is a 10-page resource issued last week, titled JQT Affirming Care: A Toolkit for Mental Health Providers. It was developed by care providers Hannah Zalmanowitz and Anat Kerelstein.

Carmel Tanaka, executive director of JQT, said the toolkit, which Jewish trans or queer people can give to healthcare providers, as well as friends or anyone else who might benefit from a deeper understanding of their experiences, is a direct response to expressed needs in the community.

photo - JQT Vancouver executive director Carmel Tanaka talks about Twice Blessed 2.0 at a recent event. The 2022 needs assessment includes 13 calls for action, including mental health support and being open to those who have a spectrum of opinion on Israel/Palestine — JQT Vancouver executive director Carmel Tanaka talks about Twice Blessed 2.0 at a recent event. The 2022 needs assessment includes 13 calls for action, including mental health support and being open to those who have a spectrum of opinion on Israel/Palestine. *(photo by Kathryn Nickford Photography)*

“We kept hearing that one of the barriers to receiving mental health support was linked directly to the lack of provider knowledge, training and competence around working with Jewish queer and trans people,” Tanaka said. “So, we created this educational toolkit aimed at reducing the burden on JQTs of having to educate their mental health providers on their lived experiences and mental health needs.”

Along with the Temperature Check report, Tanaka said, the toolkit provides tangible evidence of both the challenges and steps to improving the isolation and difficulties faced by affected individuals.

“I just really hope that leaders in the Jewish community, as well as leaders in the queer community, do take a moment to seriously read this so that they can better understand why we are doing this and why there is a need to support our community,” Tanaka said, adding that JQT continues to remain open to those who are on a spectrum of opinion on Israel and Palestine. “It really hurts to not be included in Pride events or in queer spaces, to not feel included in Jewish spaces. It’s an impossible situation to feel like you don’t belong.”

Even amid a plethora of discouraging responses, Rathbone said there is reason for hope.

“I don’t want folks to read it and to become really depressed and hopeless, because there are lots of ways to find hope,” she said. “There are lots of people in the community coming together right now and finding connections to heal what they can in what is a very broken world and what is a very broken situation. That also gives me hope, to watch people recognize that they can come together in community and do their part to heal something.”

Teshuvah: a guide to repentance

Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com/photos/gsankary)

The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote, is a wake-up call for the soul. Its message: “Arise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator!”

Teshuvah is the central theme of the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known collectively as the Ten Days of Teshuvah. Typically, teshuvah is translated from the Hebrew as repentance, but it literally means return, as if turning back to something you’ve strayed or looked away from. But that begs the question: return to what? Depending on the time and place, there have been different answers – God, a state of moral purity, the Jewish people and Israel.

The Jewish Experience at Brandeis University asked Near Eastern and Judaic studies professor Yehudah Mirsky about the history of teshuvah. Mirsky, who is also a faculty member of the Schusterman Centre for Israel Studies, is the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press).

Ancient Teshuvah

The Hebrew Bible sees teshuvah as principally a return to God. “Come, let us return to the Lord,” the prophet Hoshea (14:2) tells the people of Israel.

In Psalm 51, King David seeks teshuvah for committing adultery with Bathsheba. Importantly, David’s confession is addressed to God because, as he says, “Against You alone have I sinned.”

Traditional rabbinical commentators have interpreted this to mean that teshuvah requires confessing your sins to God. Part of achieving intimacy with Him involves His knowing your sins. And only in that way can you return to Him.

Talmudic teshuvah

For centuries after the destruction by Rome in 70 CE of Jerusalem’s ancient temple, where Jews would say confession and offer sacrifices for atonement, the rabbis reworked biblical ideas and practices of teshuvah into a roadmap for spiritual and moral growth.

In the Mishnah and the Talmud, the vast collections of law, theology, interpretation, folklore and more compiled roughly between 200 and 500 CE, they called for introspection, changing one’s ways, and asking others for forgiveness.

This line of thinking reached its apotheosis in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah (The Laws of Return). He placed confession and regret at the centre of repentance so that teshuvah, according to Mirsky, became a process of “moral and spiritual self-cultivation and self-education.”

Teshuvah was no mechanical act. It had to involve genuine contrition and the individual becoming a better person. In addition to being a scholar, philosopher, jurist and communal leader, Maimonides was also a physician.

“One senses his medical sensibility was at work here, too,” said Mirsky. “Transgression sickened the soul and teshuvah is the cure, a return to full spiritual and moral health.”

Cosmic teshuvah

Already during the talmudic period, rabbis had begun talking about teshuvah as a spiritual energy flowing through the universe that was created by God when He made the earth.

The medieval mystics who wrote the great texts of the kabbalah took this even further. They said teshuvah comes not only from inside the individual but is also a dynamic force all around us. To repent, you tap into it. As Mirsky put it, “You catch the wave.”

In the 13th-century Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, teshuvah became a way of repairing a rupture or tear in the spiritual fabric of the universe. When the varying energies at work in the world – justice and mercy, male and female, tradition and change – go out of whack, teshuvah helps to rebalance them. In other mystical texts, return is seen as a kind of rebirth and the achievement of the soul’s deepest freedom.

Some 300 years later, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great mystic of Safed in northern Israel, famously connected teshuvah with tikkun olam (healing the world). Through teshuvah, Jews perfect God’s work, helping usher in the Messianic Age.

For Luria, this largely meant a kind of spiritual healing. But, over time, and especially in the last century, Jews have begun to connect this to ideas of social justice, adding another layer of interpretation to Jewish messianic ideals.

Teshuvah and Israel

In Mirsky’s view, the Zionist movement secularized and redefined teshuvah.

Political passivity, which the rabbis thought was anathema to the survival of the Jewish people, was now considered a sin. Repenting involved identifying with the nationalist yearnings of the Jewish people for a homeland. In this way, teshuvah returned Jews in the diaspora to Israel, and the Jews as a whole to a more vital sense of group identity.

Kook’s teshuvah

Past and present interpretations of teshuvah came together in the work of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the leading thinker of religious Zionism. To him, all existence is rooted in God and seeks to return to God. That return takes the form of religious practice, social and ethical commitment, art and culture – everything we consciously do to make the world better for the Jewish people and ultimately all of humanity. And, all of these elements – the ritual and ethical, material and intellectual, the Jewish and universal – all need one another to do God’s work in the world. (For more on Kook, see Mirsky’s book.)

American teshuvah

Teshuvah in the United States reflects the inescapable individualism of American life. The great American Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel linked teshuvah to the nation’s ethos of spiritual growth and renewal. He wrote:

“The sense of inadequacy ought to be at the very centre of the day [Yom Kippur].… To put contrition another way, develop a sense of embarrassment.… We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don’t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.

One belief all Jewish thinkers share about teshuvah – the process only begins during the High Holidays. It’s afterward when the real work begins.

For more on teshuvah during the Middle Ages, see Mirsky’s article, “How a lover of wisdom returns” in Sources Journal (sourcesjournal.org/articles/how-a-lover-of-wisdom-returns).

– from the Jewish Experience / Brandeis University

Living their values daily

Dror Israel representatives Noam Schlanger and Joanna Zeiger-Guerra visited Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver last month. (photos from Dror Israel)

Last month, two representatives of Dror Israel, Noam Schlanger and Joanna Zeiger-Guerra, paid a visit to the region – Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver.

“We are educators at Dror Israel, a grassroots educational organization which works all through Israel,” Schlanger told the Independent. “Our 16 intentional communities of young, trained educators operate a variety of programs, including a network of innovative schools for at-risk youth and Jewish-Arab encounters, which all aim to bring together Israel’s different populations and create a more just and equal society. Our pedagogy focuses on empowerment and community building.”

Comprised of 1,300 people, Dror Israel works in a multitude of fields in Israel and has an impact on the lives of more than 150,000 people each year.

As for their specific involvement in Dror Israel, Schlanger has led a youth centre in Kafr Manda, an Arab town in Lower Galilee, and now works at the community garden in Acre (in northern Israel). Zeiger-Guerra is an educator who is familiar to many young people in southern British Columbia, having worked at Camp Miriam, the Jewish summer camp on Gabriola Island, for several summers. She is also a Habonim Dror alumna.

“I founded and operate a community garden where I work with mainly elderly Russian speakers, and Joanna mentors a cohort of our young educators taking their first steps in a variety of formal and informal educational settings,” explained Schlanger.

During their local visits, Schlanger and Zeiger-Guerra met with a variety of individuals, groups and communities to inform them of their work, specifically Dror Israel’s coexistence programs and ongoing relief efforts with Ukrainian refugee children. These gatherings included talks at Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria and with the Victoria Multifaith Society.

The pair also met with representatives from the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. Those encounters involved “thinking about creative opportunities for programming collaboration,” said Schlanger.

For Schlanger, the message Dror brings – an inclusive vision of Zionism that strives to create a place for everyone, and the dream of a just and equal Israel – is a breath of fresh air amid the polarized discourse about the country.

Dror Israel was started in 2006 by graduates of the Israeli youth movement Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, who served together in the Israel Defence Forces and shared a belief in the founding principles of Zionism. “Through truly innovative education based on dialogue and understanding, we teach leadership and responsibility for self and community. We promote social activism to drive positive change,” the organization states on its website.

Both Schlanger and Zeiger-Guerra live on urban kibbutzim established by Dror, a recent adaptation of the rural kibbutz. Between 30 to 100 young adults, aged 20 to 40, live on each of Dror’s 16 kibbutzim in Israel and work on the organization’s educational, cultural and social projects. With an emphasis on social justice, members of Dror Israel reside in the neighbuorhoods they serve, seeking to bridge gaps and solve local problems.

Throughout the pandemic, Dror Israel has been engaged in opening daycare centres for the children of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers; delivering groceries and medicines to home-bound seniors and those in need; volunteering on farms; and providing online programming for thousands of teens.

“Our message and the story of our work really resonated with everyone we met and sparked a variety of thoughts about future cooperation between Dror Israel and local organizations,” said Schlanger of his time here. “Our hearts were warmed by people’s decision to support our programs. It really attests to the strong, living connection between the Jewish communities here and Israel.”

After more than two years of being unable to visit or host trips to Israel due to COVID, Schlanger said Dror Israel hopes to reinvigorate connections that began many years ago in the region. Aside from delegations of educators to British Columbia, it looks forward to hosting visits in Israel.

“Joanna and Noam were very well-received,” said Sid Tafler, one of organizers of the emissaries’ stay in Victoria. “Many people were inspired by their message of peace and coexistence in Israel, principles they don’t just espouse but practise and live every day.

“We learned about their compassionate and community-building work with youth-at-risk, isolated older people, members of minority communities – including Druze and Arabs – and integrating new olim recently arrived from war-ravaged Ukraine. We have received guests from Dror before and expect we will welcome them again.”

For more information, visit drorisrael.org.

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

Celebrate Israel with joy

In the coming days, we celebrate the 74th anniversary of the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. By press time, we were still anticipating the first local in-person celebration in three years, a coming together that, if all goes to plan, will be cause for great joy.

Those immersed in the daily news from Israel can lose sight of the forest for the trees. We celebrate the scientific advances, the medical breakthroughs, the cultural triumphs coming out of the small but astoundingly creative Jewish state. Yet it may be only on occasions like Independence Day that we step back to observe the big picture.

The creation and flourishing of the Jewish state is a modern miracle – not only because every advancement has taken place within the context of a nation routinely under siege, but because these accomplishments would be exceptional even in the most conducive situations. There may be no other country that emerged in the postwar period of decolonization that has created a greater model for national development – lessons (like the oft-referenced act of making the desert bloom) that were widely shared with other emerging countries until after 1967, when the anti-Zionist movement snuffed out much of that international cooperation.

As a result of that anti-Zionism, our Zionism sometimes takes on a defensive tone. Young Israelis, traveling after their military service, meet young people from around the world in hostels and on hiking trails and are expected to justify their nation’s policies. Never mind Israelis, Jews in Canada and elsewhere are subjected to litmus tests to determine whether they are, by the standards of the interlocutor, a “good Jew” (anti-Zionist) or a “bad Jew.” (Of course, Zionists also engage in the good Jew/bad Jew game.)

Anti-Zionist voices dismiss claims that hyper-criticism of Israel endangers Jews in countries where mobs condemn the Jewish state in ferocious terms. These dismissals are disprovable through statistics. One could claim that the spike in antisemitic incidents in the Western world is unrelated to the precipitous rise in anti-Israel activism. But is there another case of a group of people in Canada or the United States or Europe telling people that their inflammatory rhetoric risks real-life violence only to have those concerns dismissed as a coincidence or as a trick to divert attention from alleged “war crimes”?

Aside from the physical dangers created by anti-Israel rhetoric, the insistence that none of this is aimed at Jews outside Israel is nonsense. Intent does not trump effect. The vast majority of Jews have familial, historical, religious and/or emotional connections to this land and the agitation against Israel is felt by Jews everywhere, no matter their views or feelings about Israel. Whether the mobs intend to strike fear in the Jews along the parade route is irrelevant – they do. Does this scenario constitute antisemitism? Well, if you seek the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state while striking fear in Jews worldwide and chanting “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism,” you have already demonstrated a spectacular indifference to the well-being of Jews everywhere. Does it really matter what we call that?

The trope that Israel was a consolation prize from the world to the Jews for the Holocaust is perhaps the most common misconception surrounding the history of the region. The world gave Israel nothing but a vote at the United Nations. After that, the Jews of the Levant were left to their own devices to build a state while under internal and external bombardment from neighbours.

Where the creation of the Jewish state intersects with the history of the Holocaust is in the collective global renaissance that the proclamation of the Jewish state meant for Jewish people. As the scope of the Shoah became known, Jews turned collective horror and grief into the constructive project of building a new country. Whether that was direct – fighting in the War of Independence or tilling the soil on a kibbutz – or indirect – supporting Zionist organizations abroad – this was an almost universal mobilization by the Jewish world. The agony of all the irredeemable losses of the past was channeled into reviving Jewish life in a sovereign state. Fairly or not, when Israel is attacked, it is received not, as the perpetrators insist, as “criticism of government policies,” but as an assault on the memory of all those who redirected what could have been existential collective despair into something redemptive.

As we begin the 75th year of Jewish sovereignty, let us situate the celebration in the biggest picture possible: despite all the naysaying, the war of words and the war of bullets and blades, the achievements of Israel are a source of pride for almost every Jew. Israelis, with the support of people like we who will gather at the Vogue Theatre on May 4, have made the desert bloom with agriculture, music and dance, science, medicine, high tech, art and almost every imaginable outlet of human creativity.

This is worth celebrating with unbridled joy.

Canada’s new direction?

Jewish Canadians were instrumental in building the Canadian labour movement and, by extension, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, which would go on to become the New Democratic Party.

Political scientists and others have observed that, as immigrant communities integrate into their new societies and become more economically secure, their voting patterns and ideological outlooks tend to move across the spectrum. While Canada has seen a small but steady growth of Jewish immigration in recent decades – with spikes during significant events like the end of the Soviet empire – the community, as a whole, is now firmly established.

Canadian Jews, like other groups that have deep roots in our relatively new country, have experienced economic and social success. Individual Jewish households, of course, face every range of economic and social challenge, issues that are addressed by a network of social service agencies guided by the principle Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all Israel is responsible for one another. While there is a sacred instruction for Jews to care for our own, Jewish values have also played a role in the actions of Jewish Canadians in relation to the broader Canadian society. Through individual and collective activism, from individuals like David Lewis in the last century to groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs today, Canadian Jews have influenced public policy and made the country better and more welcoming for all.

Despite whatever economic advances Canadian Jews have made as a group, it is often noted that, as a community, Jews tend to remain politically progressive. In a practical sense, this has been complicated by positions taken by some on the left, including trade unions, the New Democrats and the Green party. Jewish Canadians are overwhelmingly Zionist and, over the past 50 years, picking up steam in the past two decades, the left has become less and less supportive of Israel and Jewish self-determination. The debate about where anti-Zionism ends and where antisemitism begins is for another day. Stated simply, many Canadian Jews are progressive voters who, due to foreign policy issues, find themselves politically homeless. (The pro-Israel stands of the Stephen Harper government also shook many Jews away from their traditional political allegiances.)

With this context in mind, the surprise announcement Tuesday that the federal Liberal government has signed a supply and confidence agreement with the New Democrats may allow some progressive Zionist voters to have their cake and eat it too.

Under this deal – the same kind of agreement that the NDP and Greens in British Columbia signed to topple the B.C. Liberals in 2017 – the parties have agreed to advance things that have long been on the NDP agenda, such as a national dental care program and national pharmacare. It will apparently enhance ongoing reconciliation work through investments in Indigenous housing and continuing to confront the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Changes to the tax system and reducing barriers to participation in elections are also among the points released Tuesday.

The thorny issue of affordable housing will also be part of the mix – although what any government can successfully and substantively do on this issue remains a big question mark.

The provision of affordable universal child care – a promise made repeatedly by the Liberals and still not realized – is another marquis issue, as is addressing climate change and supporting workers.

The deal hearkens back to a similar one between then-prime minister Paul Martin, a Liberal, and the New Democrats, under Jack Layton, which buoyed a minority Liberal government in exchange for a $4.6 billion injection of federal funds into social programs.

For Canadian Jews who remain committed to progressive political values, the rather sudden announcement this week could be very welcome. Canada will (presumably) get a raft of new legislation on issues from environmental protections to economic justice, without subjecting Canadian foreign policy to the whims of a party that has signaled disregard to Jewish Canadians’ familial, historical and emotional ties to the state of Israel.

For those Canadian Jews who do not subscribe to this agenda, well, there is an opportunity for shaping an alternative. The federal Conservative party is in the early stages of what will be, it appears, a fight for the ideological soul of the party. The response to the Liberal-NDP deal by interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen was predictably skeptical. She called it a “power grab” by Trudeau, though time will tell whether a three-year reprieve from a snap election will allow the new Tory leader to cement their role before facing voters.

In any event, the battle lines for the next several years are being drawn. A Liberal-NDP agenda on one side and a possible new approach at the head of the Conservative party on the other.

We hope that Canada avoids the level of polarized partisanship we see in the United States and some other countries. It is, in fact, Canada’s history of moderation and compromise that has made it a welcoming place for Jews and other minority communities. However, it is always healthy in a democracy to have clear, definable choices.

The NDP and Liberals will be laying out their apparently ambitious agenda for the coming years. Those vying for the Conservative party leadership will now have a plethora of fresh policy initiatives to sink their teeth into to define themselves in contrast with this unexpected new informal coalition.

“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.

Heroes throughout the ages

Judah Maccabee purifies the Temple, etching by Julius von Carolsfeld, 1860.

Every year, we look forward to Chanukah, even though it is not even mentioned in the Torah. Its name means “Dedication” and it starts on erev the 25th of Kislev, which, this year, falls on the night of Nov. 28.

The festival celebrates the triumph of the Maccabees, led by Mattityahu and, later, by his son Judah, over the Greek Syrians, led by Antiochus. As a result, Jewish sovereignty was reestablished in Judea for a time.

But we should not forget that this ancient conflict was also a civil war between the Jewish people themselves. The Hellenists admired Greek culture, which they began to emulate; whereas the Maccabees remained steadfast in their adherence to Judaism’s ideals and beliefs. The factions disagreed on various issues, including the rite of circumcision, a fundamental and crucial Jewish ritual that the Hellenists claimed violated the perfection of the body.

In 175 BCE, Antiochus tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely by substituting the Greek language, gods and customs. The final blow came when the Temple was defiled and a giant statue of the Greek god Zeus was erected there, with the Jews ordered to worship it.

Some, like Hannah and her seven sons, resisted passively, choosing death rather than idol worship. Hundreds hid in caves and some suffocated to death. But there was no active resistance until the Hasmonean family of Mattityahu and his sons at Modi’in raised a banner: “Whoever is for the Lord, follow me!”

A small army was formed, with Judah Maccabee as its leader. Antiochus sent three armies to suppress the revolt, but the Maccabees triumphed. Their first priority after victory was to purify the Temple.

As the story goes, all the cruses of oil had been defiled except one. Instead of burning for just one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, until more holy oil could be acquired. Hence, the celebration of Chanukah for eight nights and days.

Today, Chanukah still has relevance. We remember not only the heroism of the Maccabeans, but other heroic acts. Many times in Israel we have seen the victory of a tiny nation against a larger and stronger one, the few against the many.

In 1948, the young Israel Defence Forces defeated much larger Arab armies to usher in the independent state of Israel. Earlier, in the Second World War, there was widespread Jewish resistance to Hitler’s brutal policies and Jews fought in the ghettos and joined partisan units in forests outside Polish and Russian cities conquered by the Nazis.

Israel’s operation into Entebbe to rescue hostages in Uganda is another instance of modern heroism and our history abounds with examples. The revolt of the Hasmoneans is the symbol of the spirit of Zionism. Today, in Western society, no tyrant is forcing us to abandon our faith, but many Jews are in great danger of losing their Jewish identity nonetheless. Hellenism, in a different form, is alive and well.

Chanukah has broad human significance as a festival of liberty and religious freedom, not just for us, but for all people. It is a humanistic festival. The symbol of Chanukah is light and the real miracle is that, despite millennia of persecution and dispersion, the light of our people has never been extinguished.

Dvora Waysman has written 14 books, and the film The Golden Pomegranate was based on her book The Pomegranate Pendant. Her latest novel is Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at [email protected].