As we approach the High Holy days with hope for a sweet 5785, we cannot forget those still held in Gaza nearly one year after October 7.
Our hearts grieve for the almost 1,200 lives ended by Hamas on that tragic day and ache for the pain su ered by hundreds of families still recovering from their unimaginable loss.
We pray for peace for the people of Israel, for the return of all the hostages, and for the safety and security of the Jewish people worldwide.
Wishing you and yours a sweet and healthy New Year full of hope for a better year ahead.
The Jerusalem Foundation continues to build a future for the city of Jerusalem supporting creative culture, communal strength and shared society and young leaders who will work together for a shared future. ה״פשת H a p py N ew Ye a r
The Jerusalem Foundation continue the city of Jerusalem by supporting creative culture, communal and developing young leaders who ill k h f h d future.
For more information about the Jerusalem Foundation: Nomi Yeshua, Executive Director: nomiy@jerusalemfoundation.ca Tania Haas, Donor Relations Coordinator: thaas@jerusalemfoundation.ca Tel: 416 922 0000
The Jerusalem Foundation of Canada: 130 Queens Quay East, Suite 1110 – West Tower, Toronto, ON M5A 0P6
A zrieli Music Prize s : Oc tober 28 Gala Concer t Offer s World Premiere Works
by 2024 AMP L aureate s
Tenyears ago, soprano Dr. Sharon Azrieli set out to create something that didn’t yet exist in Canada – an international competition that celebrates contemporar y composers, opening doors to their future success.
Today, her brainchild, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP), has become the largest competition of its kind in Canada and one of the most substantial in the world.
On October 28, audiences will hear the results of the 2024 competition
Four AMP-winning works will be performed by the renowned l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus, conducted by Andrew Megill, at the AMP Gala Concert O n the program is music inspired by preHispanic Mexican cultures, hymns from the O ld Testament, Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages and harmonies divined from the Canadian landscape.
Two of the Azrieli Music Prizes are dedicated speci cally to Jewish music.
Yair Klartag won the 2024 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music for e Parable of the Palace, which draws from Maimonides’s 12th-centur y allegor y about the limits of logic to explain reality e commission is awarded to encourage composers to creatively and critically engage with the question, “What is Jewish music?”
Josef Bardanashvili’s Light to My Path, a choral fantasy for choir, saxophone,
percussion and piano, won the 2024 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music is award is given to a composer who has written the best undiscovered work of Jewish music. Each movement in Bardanashvili’s composition grows from one of the various states of belief – supplication, ecstasy, doubt, gratitude – as found in the Book of Psalms.
e Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music is awarded to a Canadian composer to write a new work that engages with the complexities of creating concert music in Canada today Jordan Nobles, the winner, composed each section of his Kanata for Large Choir in tribute to the Canadian landscape as he was traveling through the land on which it is based is year also marks the launch of a new prize. e Azrieli Commission for International Music is o ered to a composer who creatively engages with the world’s richly diverse cultural heritage Simetrías Prehispánicas (“Pre-Hispanic Symmetries”), by composer Juan Trigos, honours the pre-Hispanic culture of his native Mexico, incorporating text by anonymous and major Aztec poets from the 15th centur y in their original Nahuatl and in Spanish translations. e music continues long after October ’ s applause dies down In addition to the gala concert, each
composer receives a recording of their prize-winning work released by Analekta, two additional international performances and possible future performances supported by AMP ’ s Performance Fund Altogether, AMP has found these to be critical elements to a new work’ s future success. AMP searches for excellent composers – the best in the world – and gives them the resources to imagine new works, elevating and advancing their careers in the process. rough these e orts, many more audiences have come to know, support and enjoy the music of these great living artists, and – through their shared experiences – have fostered greater intercultural understanding on an international scale
For more information about the Azrieli Music Prizes, visit azrielifoundation.org/amp
Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert
October 28, 2024, 7:30PM Mais on symphonique, Montréal Tickets from $30 to $85
October 7th Changed Everything
We are the Israel Magen Fund of Canada (IMFoC org), a unique charitable organization managed by an experienced Board of Directors
We are dedicated to supporting Zionist efforts that promote the well-being and prosperity of the State of Israel Established after October 7th, our commitment to efficiency is not just a promise; it's a reality
Over 90% of funds raised are directed to vital projects in Israel.
The ZAKA Search & Rescue Vehicle Fundraising Drive
ZAKA, Israel's top non-governmental rescue organization, is fundraising for 7 rescue vehicles, 17 ambulances, and 25 motorcycles. Partnering with the IMFoC, this aims to boost ZAKA's life-saving work
Your support is vital for ZAKA's continued effectiveness and expanded reach Donate to help ZAKA save lives and honour souls
Arbel Institute Responding to Mental Trauma in Israel
Israel faces a severe mental health crisis due to ongoing conflicts, with 30% of the population at risk of PTSD. Children are especially affected, showing symptoms like depression
The Arbel Institute, with the Israel Magen Fund of Canada, provides community support, emergency training, and school programs to aid over 500,000 traumatized children
Ziv Medical Centre in Northern Israel
Ziv Medical Centre in Tsfat, a Level 1 Trauma Centre, is in urgent need of upgraded equipment for its new Neuro and Thoracic Surgery Departments. This is crucial to maintain care standards during crises
Treating 100's of soldiers and civilians, it's a key trauma center in northern Israel Support in raising funds is crucial to ensure the hospital continues saving lives amid escalating conflicts
For excellent care, it’s the one
For excellent care, it’s the one Alzheimer ’s and Dementia Care
Let go of worr y and find solace in knowing your loved one is safe, valued, and cared for with the utmost dignity and respect.
Brand New Suites Now Available! Elevate your loved one's retirement living experience with our enhanced offerings designed specifically for those living with dementia
Discover a harmonious blend of luxury and accessibility, carefully curated to provide unparalleled comfort and support Our spacious layouts and tranquil colour palettes promote an atmosphere of serenity, calm, and well-being for all residents, enhancing their quality of life and peace of mind Secure your suite today!
What’s inside
94
Contributors
Jan Feindt (cover and p.28) is a freelance illustrator living and working in Berlin. His work on a 2014 report about the neo-Nazi scene, The Weisse Wölfe, earned him a German Reporter Prize. Five years later, he illustrated the Washing ton Post’ s publication of the Meuller Report on Russian inter ference in the U S presidential election
Sarah Barmak’s (p.28) writing about sexuality and social justice has appeared in The Walrus, The Cut, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, The Toronto Star, and others Her book Closer was published in 2016; she is now at work on a new book about sexual consent She lives in Toronto with her partner and two children
Ezra Baderman (p 60) was born in Paris, raised in London, lived in Tel Aviv, and now resides with his family in Lisbon His artwork ranges from collages and more traditional painting techniques to ultraviolet slime installations and paintings made from plasticine Yogasaurus, his upcoming picture book, is designed to introduce children aged 3 to 8 to the concept of body postures
Jewish Canadians need a voice now more than ever.
In these di cult times, we need a voice like The Canadian Jewish News. A voice that unabashedly highlights the issues i m
g
i semitism in our communities. A platform for Jews to speak, and be heard.
A time for honest conversations
Journalism shapes our perceptions, influences public opinion, and drives societal change It has a unique capacity to mould narratives, highlight issues, and amplify voices I was reminded of this shor tly af ter the atrocities of October 7, when many mainstream outlets pushed one-sided stories, of fered personal opinion as fact, and published “news” that was unsuppor ted by research or facts much of which was borderline prejudiced if not demonstrably antisemitic and inflammator y Since joining The CJN, I have got ten to know a group of profe s sionals who are pas sionate about the indus tr y, about our communit y, and about bringing a diver se set of experience s and per spective s to you on a daily basis Our team of journalis ts are ardent about delivering independent and in-depth repor ting that connects Jewish C anadians acros s the countr y : generationally, politically, and religiously
A s we c o n t i n u e to evo l ve, we wi l l b e d o i ng eve n m o re to o f fe r s to r i e s a n d o p i n i o n s t h at c a p tu re t h e f u l l d i ve r s i t y
their news from credible journalistic outlets than ever before.
Expanding our reach to these next generations will require suppor t to ensure that we can continue to provide journalism acros s all our media channels free of charge As a not-for-profit and registered journalism organization with the CR A, we provide charitable tax receipts for your contributions, which will help us continue
o r a g re at d e a l o f t h i s wo r k , a n d t h at’s o kay : t h e h e a r t o f o u r m i s s i o n
i s p u t t i ng C a n a d i a n J ew s i n c o nve r s at i o n
wi t h o n e a n ot h e r
We will be launching our new website soon When we do, we will be turning to you to let us know what you think we’re doing right and wrong: we’ll read ever y email, opinion, and let ter to the editor you send If you have something to say about the news stories we’re covering (or other people’s opinions on that news) we’ll be providing more space to publish your input, too
A primar y motivation for growing in this direction is reaching younger generations of Canadian Jews who, like their non-Jewish friends and neighbours, are les s likely to get
our es sential work of covering the news that af fects Jewish C anadians from coas t to coas t to coas t You can make a donation at thecjn .c a/donate or by writing to donate@ thecjn .c a
Your contribution will ensure The CJN is something that Canadian Jews can not only depend on, but regard as the most innovative and reliable source of Jewish news in Canada
Shana Tova!
MICHAEL WEISDORF, MBA Chief Executive Officer The Canadian Jewish News
T he Canadian Jewish News
The Canadian Jewish News Magazine
Editor in Chief Hamutal Dotan
Art Director
Ronit Novak
Contributing Editors
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Avi Finegold
Marc Weisblott
Designer Etery Podolsky
The CJN
Chief Executive Officer
Michael Weisdorf
General Manager
Kathy Meitz
Sales Director
Grace Zweig
Board of Directors:
Bryan Borzykowski President
Sam Reitman Treasurer and Secretary
Ira Gluskin
Jacob Smolack
Elizabeth Wolfe Cover: Illustration by Jan Feindt for The CJN
in Winnipeg by Prolific Group With the participation of the Government of Canada
Jerusalem Foundation President Shai Doron was a passionate advocate for the city and its diversity.
Shai Doron, President of the Jerusalem Foundation, passed away suddenly at age 63 He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of unwavering dedication to Jerusalem and its people The Jerusalem Foundation of Canada community, including all members of the Board of Directors, mourn this devastating loss
Doron was a devoted Jerusalemite and a tireless advocate for diversity, shared society, and equal opportunity for all
His career of public service began in Neveh Yaakov where he led a community center One of his key accomplishments was founding a unit of scouts, demonstrating his early commitment to youth engagement and community development
He then served as the head of Mayor Teddy Kollek’s office for five years where his commitment to the city of Jerusalem deepened Under Kollek’s leadership, he gained invaluable experience and insight into governing the city
In a pivotal role, Doron spent 25 years as the director of the newly established Tisch Zoological Gardens Under his leadership, it became one of Israel’s most beloved attractions With a groundbreaking vision, he played a key role in establishing Israel’s first aquarium
His efforts in conservation were instrumental in protecting numerous species from extinction, such as his project to return the Persian fallow deer to Israeli vistas, to protect eagles, his otter initiative and more This work further cemented his legacy as a true environmentalist
Doron’s career came full circle in 2018 when he was appointed President of the Jerusalem Foundation, an organization established by Kollek in 1966 to raise funds for the city
As President, Doron was a driving force behind the Foundation’s initiatives, focusing on strengthening the social fabric of Jerusalem He was deeply committed to nurturing young leaders and worked to unify the city’s diverse communities
His visionary “Jerusalem 2030” plan was a testament to his commitment to the city’s future The plan emphasized educational, employment, and cultural programs, as well as other projects that aimed to benefit all residents This strategic roadmap has been critical in shaping the city’s development and remains a cornerstone of the Foundation’s ongoing efforts
Under Doron’s leadership, the Jerusalem Foundation launched vital projects that have left a positive mark on the city and its residents with a focus on communal strength and creative culture His efforts were widely recognized, with many viewing him as a shining star of the Foundation and the entire city
“Shai believed in leadership and building the next generation of young leaders He led by example, always the first to carry the message of hope We will continue Shai’s mission and work to advance civil society and provide equal opportunities for all,” says Joel Reitman, President of the Jerusalem Foundation of Canada
Doron saw Jerusalem as a beacon of light, and his vision of leadership and inclusivity will continue to inspire future generations His legacy lives on through the countless lives he touched along with his wife, three children and granddaughter
Etrogs grow all over Asia here’s why most Asian Jews impor t them anyway
J O R D Y N H A I M E /J T A
This stor y was published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in anticipation of Sukkot last year; we think it’s still pret ty neat
Rebecca Kanthor, a member of a progres sive Jewish communit y in Shanghai, knows that she can easily order lulavs and etrogs in a few clicks online Kanthor, who belongs to Kehilat Shanghai, simply logs onto Taobao, China’s equivalent to Amazon. Etrogs, impor tant components of the Sukkot holiday, are known as xiang yuan
(fragrant citrus, or citron) in Chinese While American Jews may spend anywhere between $20 and $200 on a single etrog grown in the Mediterranean, etrogs grown in China, mostly in the southwestern Yunnan province, are available on Taobao for about $2 each Taobao also sells a wide array of traditional products made from the etrog, including tea, perfume, preserves and candy The fruit is well known in China as a medicine used to treat everything from stomach issues to severe cough (The components of the lulav, the other major component of Sukkot rituals, are available, too, in potted form: palm, willow, and
myr tle plants go for around $7 altogether )
But even though etrogs are available locally, most Jewish communities throughout Asia opt to impor t them from countries such as Israel or Italy for Sukkot That’s because rabbinic authorities on Jewish law have for decades debated whether etrogs grown in Asia meet the standards for ritual use
d o l l a r s fo r t h e p e r fe c t f r u i t a n d s p e n d h u nd re d s m o re o n et rog b oxe s
Most impor tant to obser vant Jews today are the rules proclaiming that an etrog must be clean and without blemishes ; that it retains its pit tam (a protrusion separate from the stem) ; and that the plant must not be graf ted “Etrog is a weak tree,” said Rabbi Shalom Chazan, an emis sar y for the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement stationed in Shenzhen, China “Usually, farmers will make a graf tage between an etrog and lemon tree to make it stronger That makes the etrog not kosher We don’t know if the Chinese farmers do it or not, therefore we buy from Israel or Italy, and Morocco, to make sure it’s kosher ”
Scientists have traced the fruit’s genetic origins to the triangle of southwest China, nor thern Myanmar and nor theast India Today the etrog still grows in abundance in that area But it was af ter the fruit migrated that it caught on with ancient Jews.
According to David Z Mos ter, a Bible scholar and author of Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol, the etrog was the fir s t citrus fruit that traveled from Eas t to We s t likely because of its thick rind that hardens rather than rots over time, pre ser ving the fruit and seeds inside It arrived in Israel around the four th to third centurie s BCE, and while it is not clear when exactly the etrog became the “choice fruit of the tree,” it quickly rose as an impor tant symbol to dis tinguish Jews from Chris tians and S amaritans while fulfilling rule s laid out in the Torah
“Ever y Jewish communit y has, in the past, found what they wanted the most,” said Moster “There’s the Yemenite etrog, which, if you get a really good one, you get the size of a football A lot of the European Jews are looking for [an etrog with] a gar tel, a belt… Now, in the modern world, a person like me can go to Borough Park [a heavily Or thodox neighborhood in Brooklyn] and see 10,000 etrogim in one day ”
I n m o d e r n t i m e s , m o s t J ew s i n t h e We s t u s e d et rogs g row n i n w h at i s n ow I s ra el, t h e C a r i b b e a n o r No r t h A f r i c a, i n cl u d i ng
M o ro c c o B u t i n t h e Ea s t , w h e re m o s t J ew -
i s h c o m m u n i t i e s fo r m e d i n t h e 1 8 t h a n d
1 9 t h c e n tu r i e s , d eb ate s ove r t h e et rog
c o n t i n u e d, e s p e c i a l l y wi t h t h e d i s c ove r y
o f t h e C h i n e s e “ B u d d h a’s h a n d” c i t ro n ,
w h i ch s p ro u t s f i nge r- l i ke p rot r u s i o n s d u e to a ge n et i c m u t at i o n .
Rabbi A sher Oser of Hong Kong’s his toric Ohel Leah synagogue has re searched the subject heavily for clas se s he has taught He found documents revealing debate s among Baghdadi rabbis about the Buddha’s hand citron, which is of ten not considered an etrog at all ( “All etrogim are citrons but not all citrons are etrogim,” Mos ter wrote ) Mos t impor tant, the rabbis wrote, was continuing tradition
“In the cit y of Baghdad we don’t allow the Dibdib tree, which has all the signs of an etrog, except it is sour,” wrote Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad in 1909 in response to questions about the Buddha’s hand “If a person is in a strange place and they find a fruit completely similar to etrogs of the place
ter Pearl Harbor, when patriarch David Abraham was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp and the family’s proper t y was seized by the Japanese, who had occupied par ts of the cit y With the Jewish communit y desperate for the ritual fruit at Sukkot, someone was sent to climb the walls around the family’s garden and pick etrogs to distribute The Japanese army then cut down the tree in retaliation With no other choice, the Jews were lef t to source local etrogs and were again faced with the Buddha’s hand variet y The communit y was conflicted.
In today’s world, impor ting fresh fruit acros s borders is a complicated proces s that can require significant paper work and sometimes diplomatic inter vention Chabad was repor tedly only able to legally impor t etrogs into China beginning in 2017, af-
where they are coming from, then they can be used. If they’re not completely similar … they should not be used ”
According to researchers, etrogs from what is now Israel or Iraq have long been preferable in Asia Jewish communities in Shanghai and Kobe, Japan, for decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries received etrogs from the wealthy Abraham family, international traders who had brought a Baghdadi etrog plant with them to Shanghai It was planted outside the Abraham mansion and tended by Chinese gardeners, according to Yecheskel Leitner’s 1987 book Operation–Torah Rescue.
Leitner wrote that this tradition ended af-
ter a Chinese profes sor of Jewish studies helped the communities provide adequate documentation Before then, emis saries had to come up with “creative alternatives,” said Rabbi Shalom Greenberg of Shanghai (Chabad emis saries did not elaborate when asked what those solutions were )
The etrog has long been hard to get, said Moster
“In many Jewish lands, if they wanted an etrog, they [would] have to send someone on a multi-thousand-mile trip and cros s many nations, just to be able to pick this thing up and get it there in time,” he said “So the idea of it being historically hard to get also added to its value ” n
Rebecca Kanthor, far left, celebrating Sukkot with members of Kehilat Shanghai
The Buddha’s hand citrus fruit is used as an etrog in some communities
Praying by candlelight in Amsterdam
A
Yom Kippur tradition that dates back to the invention of electricity
We are still moved by this stor y from the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic A gency We checked with the Por tuguese Synagogue, which confirmed that this tradition continues
One of Europe’s oldest and most impressive Jewish buildings, this cit y’s Por tuguese Synagogue is known for its beaut y Built in 1675 for the descendants of Jews who fled religious persecution on the Iber-
ian Peninsula, the Por tuguese Synagogue today sees many thousands of tourists annually Inside its vast sanctuar y, a mas sive Torah ark made of Brazilian Jacaranda wood towers over 17th-centur y furniture and a multitude of low-hanging golden chandeliers hang among 12 stone pillars
Yet most of the synagogue’s visitors are not around on the day when its beaut y shines brightest: Yom Kippur On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the hall is packed to capacit y as worshippers pray by the warm light of hundreds of candles a tradition that dates back to the invention of electricit y accompanied by unique cantorial melodies that resemble operas.
“It’s one of European Jewr y’s most pro-
found and beautiful sights,” says Esther Voet, a regular visitor to the synagogue and the managing editor of the Dutch-Jewish Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (New Israelite Weekly) . On Yom Kippur, entering the candlelit synagogue “has a cleansing effect which is what Yom Kippur is all about ”
It’s like “stepping into a time machine,” she adds “You feel that you are a link in a ver y long chain of Jewish tradition ”
Few congregants experience this intergenerational dimension more than Ronit Palache, whose ancestors were among the early leaders of the synagogue. “Coming there means being a par t of histor y, and it’s my histor y,” says Palache, whose greatgreat- grandfather was a chief rabbi of the Por tuguese Jewish communit y
But you don’t need a personal connection to appreciate the historical dimensions of Yom Kippur ser vices at the synagogue, according to Bar t Wallet, a Universit y of Amsterdam historian and author of the book Histor y of Jews in the Netherlands
“There is growing interest in at tending on Yom Kippur and, in response, the communit y only a few years ago star ted as signing pre -ordered tickets,” he said
The Portuguese Synagogue uses candlelight in its sanctuary on Yom Kippur, when dignitaries visit the historic site, and during the occasional concert
Some Jews, including Lipika Pelham, a London-based author and journalist with Indian roots, travel with their families especially to at tend the Yom Kippur ser vice here Tickets cost just $22 but need to be ordered well in advance
On Yom Kippur, the ser vice is es sentially conducted by the communit y’s men, who are seated around the bimah, or pulpit, in the central section of the main hall Male guests sit in pews surrounding the central section Women sit upstairs, in the women’s section, “where we strug gle to follow the reading of the text below, which is not easy because of the acoustics,” Voet says
Still, while it may be les s than ideal for reading prayers, the acoustics at the Por tuguese Synagogue work beautifully for musicians and singers something that was key to the synagogue board’s decision 10 years ago to host occasional concer ts here During those events, non-Jewish audiences can get a taste of the Yom Kippur atmosphere because all the candles are lit
The candles are also lit when impor tant dignitaries visit, including Dutch royals and world leaders such as the late President of Israel Shimon Peres
On Yom Kippur, the men of the communit y put on the traditional Por tuguese Jewish top hats, worn by Jews who immigrated here from Por tugal, Spain, and their colonies when they adopted the church’s anti-Jewish Inquisition as policy The wood used for the Torah ark was brought from Recife by Jews who fled the Brazilian cit y for Amsterdam Flanking the ark are two 16th-centur y sofas from the Middle East
“The interior makes for a ver y cosmopolitan mix,” Wallet says. “You have ar tifacts from many corners of the world ”
Nowhere else in 17th-centur y Europe were Jews allowed to build a synagogue quite as large and impressive as the Por tuguese Synagogue, Wallet explains, which makes the building a testament also to the relative tolerance that Jews enjoyed in the Netherlands for centuries, before the Nazis and local collaborators nearly wiped out the community
The Yom Kippur ser vice features prayers by Santo Ser vicio, the synagogue’s resident choir, which curates the special tunes that have evolved here over the centuries Sung in Hebrew in the Por tuguese inflection, the tunes are melodic because they were composed in the 16th and 17th centuries to please the ear and compete with Christian choirs, Wallet says par t of a broader ef for t by communit y leaders to rehabilitate and preser ve in Amsterdam what the Inquisition destroyed in Iberia
That ef for t is also evidenced in the thousands of manuscripts of the Ets Haim Jewish librar y, the oldest institution of its kind still in operation, which is par t of the Por tuguese Synagogue compound “You can see in the books their enthusiasm about being able to reconnect with their Jewish traditions openly and resume the study of it,” says Ruth Peeters, a senior cataloger at the librar y
The librar y’s central role in the daily life of synagogue-goers is evident in the name that locals use for this house of worship: Esnoga a mashup of the Por tuguese words for school (escola) and synagogue (sinagoga)
At times, enthusiasm led worshippers and even the communit y leaders astray
Around the time the synagogue was built, the communit y was split between followers and opponents of Shabbetai Zevi, the Turkey-born Jewish eccentric who divided the Jewish world with his claim that he was the Mes siah (He would go on to Islam, under dures s, in 1666 )
Even this communit y ’s founding father and rabbi for 40 year s, Is aac Aboab da Fonseca, was for a time a follower Wallet s aid the debate on the is sue was “a crisis for the communit y,” and largely purged from its official records
The communit y’s ultimate test came in 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, initiating racist policies that ended with the murder of 75 per cent of the Netherlands’ Jewish population of 140,000 The Por tuguese Synagogue was sealed, its librar y and treasures looted
But while Amsterdam’s Ashkenazi synagogue was gut ted, the Por tuguese Synagogue remained es sentially unharmed. “I think they didn’t quite know what to do with it,” Wallet sys. “Ultimately even they didn’t dare destroy it ” n
Happy New Year
From Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario & the Ontario PC Caucus
Laura Smith
MPP/Députée – Thor nhill
Robin Martin
MPP/Députée – Eglinton–Lawrence
Stan Cho
MPP/Député – Willowdale
Stephen Lecce
MPP/Député – King–Vaughan
Michael Kerzner MPP/Député – York Centre
Michael Parsa MPP/Député – Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill
Daisy Wai
MPP/Députée – Richmond Hill
Andrea Khanjin
Logan Kanapathi
MPP/Député – Markham –Thor nhill
But have you tried the herring ?
Chef and restaurateur Anthony Rose talks with Avi Finegold about tradition, family, and what’s on the menu for Rosh Hashanah
I want to star t with this cock tail I’m having , because it would not exist without the Manischewitz vermouth [ from your Last Schmaltz Cookbook] You were the first one that was like, “ When life gives you Manischewitz, do something fun with it,” so I have to thank you because it’s become the backbone of so many cock tails .
You know, it’s funny with the Manischewit z vermouth : we’ve used it, then we haven’t used it I actually think it’s one of the more cool recipes in the book Just recently, I star ted to dive back into the vermouth-making at Fat Pasha [Rose’s restaurant in midtown Toronto] We have it on the menu and in the big barrel on the bar Now we sneak some other things into there, like a lit tle bit of whiskey here and there It’s amazing that you can just tweak it
Yes! If I’m running out of brandy, I’ll throw in some rum. I’ll throw in some bourbon instead I’ll put in extra peppercorns if I want, depending on what I’m thinking about doing with it. Recipes are supposed to be like that, easy and breez y, you know ?
Exactly, yeah!
The next one I’m working on is a Slivovit z I think the impor tant par t is that there’s so many of these kinds of Jewish old school t ypes of things that are decidedly just not cool at all, right? Whether it’s the Manischewit z or Slivovit z or herring, a lot of these
things totally skipped a generation I think that Fat Pasha is just tr ying to be as cheek y as pos sible with these ingredients and Judaism in general, right? And just having fun with it, not being serious.
So, two questions then based on that First, and with no judgement on my par t : What’s your personal relationship with the idea of kosher ? Was there a point in your life when you were kosher-ish as a family, or was it always like this thing and then you had to make this break and decide, I’m doing this?
It wasn’t neces sarily a break. Growing up, I think our kosher was the same as a lot of people that I knew, which was Chinese food equals kosher At home, we wouldn’t have cheeseburgers We wouldn’t have milk and meat We didn’t have two dishwashers or anything But even though we were Conser vative, from a young age, I wasn’t [kosher] . I do remember the first time I had bacon, the first time I had a ham and cheese sandwich they were all ver y family-related It was cer tainly taboo, but it wasn’t taboo enough Then when I moved to New York from San Francisco I literally, for whatever reason just went whole hog, just dove into it
The most interesting kosher stor y and I actually feel really badly about this one but when I first got reviewed with [the now closed restaurant] Rose and Sons, the menu was really weird to many, because I could have mat zah ball soup on the menu and my
mom’s brisket, but we also made our own bacon and had pork fried rice, which is reminiscent of my Jewish upbringing. I t h i n k t h at t h e rev i ewe
I’m just doing what feels right to me I shouldn’t have said the first par t, [that] they’re meant to be antiquated They’re not laws that move with time they’re laws that just stayed in time, which is kind of beautiful as well But my dad called me and he was really disappointed in me for what I said. It didn’t change how I cooked, but it cer tainly changed how I talked about it
From what I’ve seen from your presence online and the cookbook , and from what people tell me, of all the nouveau Jewish or nouveau Israeli chefs you feel like the most Jewish to me : there’s this sense that the food is definitely Jewish, that a Shabbat meal can break out at any time, because what you care about is bringing people together and celebrations .
We have a line at the restaurant where we don’t take ourselves ver y seriously, but we take what we do ver y seriously I will walk around the restaurant on any given day and wish ever yone a Good Shabbos I will stand at Schmalt z all day long; even though one out of 50 people order herring, I’m just giving it out and telling people, “You got to tr y it You’re probably not going to like it, but your grandparents did ”
Chef Anthony Rose shares a bissel of herring with our photographer at Schmaltz Appetizing in Toronto, August 2024
You’re like Chabad, but for herring .
You know, Fat Pasha was never supposed to be truly Middle Eastern When we opened it, Ot tolenghi had just come out with Jerusalem, so I was thinking, “This is what we should do ” But as we [kept] get ting closer to opening the restaurant, I’m like, wait a second That’s not the Jewish I grew up with at all So that’s where we threw the latkes at it and the brisket and the hot dogs and the salami that’s what I understood as Jewish Eating is all my family does, right? It’s not only the Sabbath dinners, but ever y day of the week. We’re always together, we’re always having fun And I ver y much like to make fun of myself and my Jewishness for that mat ter as well
I’ve always said that the original slow food movement is Shabbat dinner, because it takes hours to prepare and you get to enjoy it free of any screens and distractions
Each dish begets another dish, right? Even when it came to brisket or t zimmes or whatever, you star ted the night before the Sabbath and just forget about it in in the oven Even the schmalt z: ever y single par t of that chicken is used up How much chicken fat can you eat? Let’s throw it in this bread over here and put it in the kishke casing Nothing was wasted.
Rosh Hashanah feels like prime time for Anthony Rose. Do you get questions from home cooks , or people coming up to you and saying , “I want to make this meal at home? ”
I used to get a lot of those questions “How can I cook this? Can you send me the recipe for that?” I do find af ter COVID, more and more people are really just going back to the basics they want the gefilte fish and they want the chopped liver.
Top: Shabbat dinner at Fat Pasha with Rose and his mother Linda in 2019; Bottom: Rose and his Zaidy Simon catch a smallmouth bass at the cottage, 1979.
I think people see it like a comfor t, to know that it’s there and it’s available, even if they’re not going to get it themselves That’s par t of the holiday meals that people want the comfor t for, too. They don’t make it on an average Friday night in November, but they want to know that it’s available to them somewhere It’s like Israel, right? You don’t have to make aliyah to know that it’s there in case you have to make aliyah.
Right The chopped liver is definitely one of those dishes Gefilte fish, no one really gives a shit about one way or the other It can be there We’re not going to sell ver y much of it I do think gefilte fish is one of the best things to put in between a toasted but tered bagel I love the High Holidays for that There are definitely some of those dishes that you’re right about, that you just want to know that it’s there
As somebody who grew up kosher, who eat s kosher regularly, who had this food all my life growing up, I love this food and I love being able to go back for it. But I don’t always want it And so when it comes to the High Holidays and I’m making a big meal with a lot of guest s , I don’t want to go to the clas sic s , but people expect the clas sic s , and I don’t know how to balance those two You’re coming to my house for Rosh Hashanah, you may not be getting matzo ball soup, or a brisket. I don’t know how to play with that for the people that want that and those that are done with traditional food. Traditional food doesn’t feel ambitious , and I feel stuck sometimes . I tot a l l y ag re e. I ’ m d i vo rc e d, s o w h e n i t c o m e s to t h e H ig h H o l i day s I ’ m s tu ck s o r r y M o m! e at i ng t h
This inter view has been condensed and edited for clarity
Being extremely online is pushing us to extremes
DAlongside the over whelming nature of the October 7 Hamas at tack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent onslaught in Gaza, the always -online era has pushed almost all of us into a politicized realm with a new found intensit y Amid the flood of traumatic images and news spurring anger and grief, the per formative nature of online culture has demanded we each know who is right, and that we always post the right take This has always been true on the internet But in the past year, it’s been all-encompas sing This shif t has taken on a heightened meaning for diaspora Jews We have all been drawn into the obsessive political realm in ways I’ve never seen. Friends, old university colleagues and family who rarely so much as mentioned Israel before have spent the past year religiously watching, posting, weeping, and arguing almost daily The diaspora may or may not be directly involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but we have been implicated by Israel’s designation of itself as the homeland for all Jewish people With Jewish communities torn across ideological lines Zionist and anti-Zionist, anti-ceasefire and pro-ceasefire we have burned with grief, fear, passion, anger, and hatred Some of us have drif ted in the middle, conflicted or confused about what to believe But we have posted anyway It felt strange not to Feeling compelled to engage has been both organic it feels wrong to be neutral in a situation of injus tice and amplified by multiple social pre s sure s Nearly all of us in the C anadian Jewish communit y have, or have family or friends with, deep emotional tie s to the S tate of Israel Many of us have felt coerced, implicitly or explicitly, into
showing our unconditional suppor t ; at the ver y s ame time, we have faced mounting calls to dis avow its actions, and even the idea of Israel itself
el o n s o c i a l m e d i a, t h reate n i ng to d i s t a n ce t h e m s elve s a n d cu t o f f m u ch - n e e d e d fin a n c
t h e m, m ea n t a b et raya l o f fa m i ly a n d tu rn i ng away f ro m a h o m el a n d t h at was u n d e r te rro ri s t at t a ck Th e i r p re s s u re, to h e r, m ea n t s h e fe el s s h e h as l o s t b ot h h e r fa m i ly a n d h e r a b i l i t y to sp ea k
Anti- war Jews have had to defend their sentiments to other Jews, expected to furnish s tatis tic s and arguments on demand, both online and of f They have been asked for detailed answer s to, “ Well, what should Israel do? Let Hamas go?” Jews who back the current war have found themselve s in precisely the s ame situation Jus t about all of us could expect to be approached anytime, anywhere with huge que s tions “C an you t wo tell me what the f--- is going on?” one pal asked me and a Christian-Lebane se friend at a par t y in November. It wasn’t the las t time we were asked for answer s that night I didn’t know W TF was going on myself
Silence online risked signalling other things There lurked an uncomfor table awarenes s that not talking or posting about the conflict might speak volumes in ways that non-Jews’ silence did not To Zionist family members, it could mean betrayal To friends or colleagues outraged by the mas s killings of Palestinian children, it could mean implicit suppor t of Israel’s bombs And to them, conversely, any opposition to Israel
from Jewish sources carried more weight
Of course, online speech about Israel has always been incredibly fraught, but this has boiled over in new ways Over the past year, far too many people par ticularly people of colour, and par ticularly anyone who is Middle Eastern have lost their jobs or been labelled antisemitic for criticizing Israel in any way Zionist Jews (and sometimes those presumed to be Zionist because Jews) have also lost work, had public appearances cancelled, and been unceremoniously removed from theatre and galler y schedules
That many of us have been forced to reckon with a disastrous 75-year-long conflict is not a bad thing Social media has been rightfully lauded for giving a voice to those who wouldn’t normally have an outlet And some of us in the diaspora have had the luxur y of being apolitical for too long
Much of this new engagement has been an awakening It has been remarkable to see
the diaspora in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and other communities engage in political action this past year, some people for the first time We have marched in protests, joined massive organizing chats, called our politicians, moved money to escaping Gazan families, and even flown to Israel and Palestine to provide medical assistance, help kibbut zim bring in their har vests, or just show up: a mass activation of people with many sympathies for dif ferent sides Much of it has inspired me: the current conflict shook me awake from a long, inat tentive hibernation I have tried to update my ignorance by reading and learning I have engaged in various ways, though nothing I did ever felt remotely enough I have of fended my dad, who volunteered in the Six-Day War, and even more thoroughly of fended a distant relative who lives in an Israeli set tlement I have found community online with other anti-war Jews who live as far away as Texas
What was troubling this past year were not these good faith, if of ten fraught, ef for ts It was the way online culture which is an aw ful lot of our culture these days demanded our politics be instantly clear, instantly shareable, and consumable in tweets and TikToks It was the lack of space for learning, for basic facts free of opinions, for uncertaint y Online seemed a place where only fully formed conclusions were welcome. This pres sure risks producing a huge swath of content about the conflict that is either halfbaked or regurgitated tweets and posts whose tone and content are largely copied from others, so that we have something to say when we’re not sure what to say
I have become a dif ferent person, online and of f In person, I have conversations with people whose views are far dif ferent than mine and have felt open to hearing them Online, those same views have filled me with disgust. The uncompromising all-caps opinions of social media have admit tedly become comfor t food in a nonsensical world. I feel my tangled, contradictor y thoughts smooth out against the solid online edifice of declarations, callouts, and rage These days, I tr y to stay aware of my reactions the way I seek out the self-righteousnes s of social media most when I’ve been torn apar t by a new image of the war zone, when I feel the most helples s I tr y to notice when I’m scrolling to make myself feel bet ter, not to learn or discover anything new And I remind myself that, in those moments, I don’t need to add my voice to the din n
As
Shana Tova U’Metukah
As
Exclusive Programs
Peace of Mind
Trusted Expertise
The Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation Receives an Anonymous Gift of Hope: $1M USD for Prostate Cancer Research
The Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation is honored
t o a n n o u n c e a g e n e r o u s a n o n y m o u s g i f t o f $ 1 million USD dedicated to advancing prostate c a n c e r research. This transformative contribution will support a groundbreaking project led by P ro f . Bo r i s C h e r t i n at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem
The project aims to explore the potential link between t h e B RC A g e n e a n d a n i n c re a s
c a n c e r i n m e n B y i d e n t i f
d i v i d
t h i g h e r risk, this research promises to facilitate early intervention a n d d e ve l o p l i f e - s a v i n g t re a t m e n t s T
marks a significant a
h a n d ex e m p l i fi e s t h e spirit of p h i l a n t h ro p y that drives our mission We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the anonymous donor whose remarkable generosity is advancing medical science and saving lives
We invite the community to join us in celebrating this exceptional gift and the hopeful future it heralds for men ’ s health Together, we are saving lives, delivering lives, and changing lives.
T h e C a n a d i a n S h a a re Ze d e k H o
ex i s t s t o ra i s
u n
s fo r t h e S
Ze d e k M e d i c
l Center in Jerusalem As Jerusalem’s fastest growing hospital in the region, Shaare Zedek responds to the n e e d s o f t h i s u n i q u e l y d i ve rs e p o p u l a t i o n S h a a re Ze d e k M e d i c a l C e n t e r i s a m a j o r u r b a n h o s p i t a l treating over 1 million patients each year by providing lifesaving and compassionate care. We treat patients of every race, religion, and n a t i o n a l i t y by fo l l ow i n g a p a t i e n t - c e n t e re d a pp ro a c h . You can learn more by visiting www.hospitalwithaheart.ca.
About The Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation
What do we mean by
Z ion?
Since the earliest Enlightenment debates about politics, Jews have wondered whether and how they could take charge of their relationship to other nations (Crowds celebrating in Tel Aviv after the United Nations votes to partition Palestine and create a new Jewish state, Nov. 30, 1947.)
On the idea of a homeland for a people whose history has been defined by both exile and annihilation
B Y A V I F I N E G O L D
In the weeks and months since October 7, debates about Zionism and its role within Judaism have become both more prominent and more pointed Religious Zionists are firmly convinced that God gave the Jewish people the Land of Israel and that to be a Zionist is the most Jewish thing pos sible Secular Zionists (which, notably, describes the majorit y of the Jewish-Israeli population) believe just as vehemently in Jewish rights to the land, though they argue these exist for historical rather than theological reasons. These two groups are of ten at odds with each other and both are at odds with anti-Zionists, who argue either that Judaism does not entail any particular relationship to a par ticular patch of land, or that other Jewish values (such as our relationships with and obligations to others, including Palestinians) , are more impor tant in determining our relationship to that land than any ancestral or religious claim
This es say is an at tempt to explore what Judaism actually has to say about Zion as a historic homeland and how contemporar y Jews might relate to it. It is not an at tempt to be prescriptive: there are multiple points of view within the Jewish communit y, many of which are deeply rooted in Jewish ideas. My hope is simply to lay out that full spectrum of ideas in a way that can help us all navigate these debates with some solid ground under foot
Though it may sound strange to many secular and even believing non- Or thodox Jews, Zionism is inextricably entwined with the Jewish understanding of a redeemed era and therefore also of mes sianism The former can be seen as either a fulfilment or a repudiation of the lat ter but, in any case, it must be grappled with
The prophets of the late -Fir s t Temple era foretold the exile and subsequent ingathering of the Jewish people back to Zion Is aiah the prophet of “beating swords into plowshare s” and of nations laying down arms proclaimed that when that time came, “ Torah shall come for th from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerus alem,” de scribing this as a time of univer s al recognition of God and univer s al peace Other prophets, including Micah and Zechariah, echoed the se ideas
The concept of a mes siah figure as the vehicle by which this redeemed era and return to Zion would be brought about came later, in the wake of the destruction of the temple and subsequent exile in 70 CE. For the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, the redeemed era, in which Jews returned to the Zion from which they had been exiled, would be led by a heroic figure: an anointed descendant of the Davidic royal family
“We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live,”
Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896. “It is not permitted to us ” One year later, the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland
Much Talmudic discussion and lore emerge from this idea These are the rabbis who tell of meeting the Messiah sitting among the lepers at the gates of Rome, or the Messiah leading the people back to Zion on a white donkey (They were also pragmatic, advising that if someone is told of the arrival of the Messiah while in the midst of planting a tree, they should first finish the planting and then go to greet the Messiah ) By the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that the Messiah would, when he arrived, redeem the Jewish people, restore their homeland in the Land of Israel, and unify humanity in an era of peace
Me s sianism has of ten come under at tack within Judaism : fir s t because of various false me s siahs through the age s, such as Shabbetai Tzvi in the 17th centur y and, more recently, with the devotion among large swaths of the Haredi movement, to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel S chneer son For many Jews, this veer s too close to Chris tianit y ; even for those who s top shor t of that accus ation, the se demons trations of fidelit y to individual, human figure s s till ser ve as a warning about the danger s of me s sianic thinking Yet for mos t of Jewish his tor y, me s sianism has been an accepted par t of Jewish belief
Maimonides, who included belief in the Mes siah as one of the core ar ticles of Jewish faith, famously also held that the more significant aspect of the mes sianic era was neither the person who would bring it about nor a universal acceptance of their significance, but rather the return to Jewish sovereignt y in the Land of Israel. Maimonides made a point of minimizing the apocalyptic upheavals that
the prophets foretold, such as Isaiah’s proclamation that the wolf shall lie with the lamb, or that the mes siah will resurrect the dead. These prophesies of global peace and eternal life for all Jews are not to be taken literally, according to him : they are just parables The mes sianic era, he wrote, will retain a global natural political order Others vehemently disagreed with Maimonides’ naturalistic approach, understanding the Mes siah to be a unique figure who would be universally recognized and lead the world to peace and an understanding of Jewish monotheism A centur y af ter Maimonides, Nachmanides claimed that not only would the Mes siah resurrect the dead but all of those who were resurrected would go on to live eternally in this world which was now the world to come This line of thinking persists in some segments of the Jewish communit y to this day: many Chabad sources, for example, recount the Talmudic teaching that when the Mes siah arrives all synagogues and houses of study, past and present, will be uprooted and transplanted to Israel, and that resurrection will involve the dead rolling through the ear th to the Land of Israel, where they will then be made alive again In the 19th centur y, Jewish thinking on these mat ters diversified Following the emancipation of German Jewr y, and in a newly intellectual age that emphasized humanit y’s capacit y to develop itself rather than relying on God, Reform Judaism held that mes sianism was an ancient myth for which there was no longer any use Today, Reform and other newer denominations of Judaism can be broadly seen as believing in a redeemed era rather than in a redeemer
Related to the mat ter of mes sianism, though not exactly the same, is the question of how much agency or autonomy Judaism allows us to have in determining our own destiny At the same time as some Jews were reevaluating their relationship to mes sianism and religiosit y more broadly was waning among a significant number of Jews, nationalism was beginning to take hold as a political theor y: this was the era of the French and American revolutions, Rous seau and Voltaire, and a modern reshaping of political philosophy Jews were at the forefront of this thinking as well, debating whether a people could take charge of their relationship to other nations or they were entirely dependent on forces (whether historical or religious) that had rendered many groups of people powerles s
The early Zionists felt that national self-determination was the tool to put Jews on equal footing on the global stage Others were not as sure. As we will see, many Or thodox Jews at the time rejected this. As Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dar tmouth College and Conser vative rabbi, told me, “Nationalism is not an inherently Jewish idea Nationalism is an idea that comes from a famous essay by Ernset Renan, ‘What is a Nation?’ It’s kind of a Christian way of rethinking collective living outside of empire And that’s fine It’s not that Jews can’t then use it for their own benefit But to then say, That’s Judaism the Haredim at the time were saying, Where is that?”
And yet, self-determination as a positive value took hold and has been a powerful force ever since The western European Jews who would go on to found classical Zionism were almost entirely secularized and correspondingly devoid of any messianic fervor They were, however, big believers in the ideas of nationhood and nationalism that were coming into vogue at the time This led them to the conclusion that, as Jews, they had the right and the responsibility to take matters into their own hands, advocating for and creating a homeland for the Jewish people. The Messiah wasn’t going to do it and it needed to be done
contemporar y nation- s tate, but that it should do so in the L and of Israel, was of cour se Theodor Her zl. The Aus tro-Hungarian writer and activis t, who founded what would go on to become the World Zionis t Organization, convened the Fir s t Zionis t C ongre s s in 1897.
The upshot was a commitment to e s tablish a national home for Jews in their ance s tral home
The year before, in a pamphlet titled “Der Judenstaat,” Her zl laid out his line of thinking “The idea I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State,” he wrote “The decisive factor is our propelling force And what is that force?
The plight of the Jews.” Not a mes siah, not a God- given right simply historical circumstances
Le
Zionism is inextricably entwined with the Jewish understanding of a redeemed era— and therefore also of messianism.
In the earliest days of Zionism, the question of where to create this modern political Jewish nation-state wasn’t viewed as entirely settled : there was some suppor t for creating a Jewish home wherever this could be established In 1882, Zionist Leo Pinsker wrote: “The goal of our present endeavours must not be the ‘Holy Land’ but a land of our own We need nothing but a large piece of land for our poor brothers ; a piece of land which shall remain our proper t y from which no foreign master can expel us.”
The alternative to Palestine that was being considered was par t of what is today Kenya. (This ef for t of ten gets referred to the Uganda Scheme ) Some saw it as a stepping stone to Palestine, which was at the time difficult to secure from the Turks Others saw it as an easier path to statehood When the plan was ultimately rejected, some (including British author Israel Zangwill) began to look for other lands in which Jews could pos sibly set tle Places both historical (ancient Mesopotamia, par ts of Eg ypt) , and modern (Angola, Australia) were considered and ultimately rejected The over whelming sentiment was that the historical land of Israel was the only real option Even to avowed secularists, the historical pull of the historical homeland of the Jews was too strong to ignore
The mos t famous proponent of the view, not only that Jewish self-determination can and should take the form of creating a
While Her zl readily accepts the idea of a home in Israel that is rooted in ancient histor y, the mes sianic drive is completely absent from his thinking, replaced by a not-untrue feeling that the force that prevented Jews from returning to Israel wasn’t the delayed arrival of a saviour but a mundane, human powerles snes s
Shaul Magid put it to me this way: “For most pre -modern Jews, the Land of Israel and the mes siah are fused It’s secularism that disentangles dwelling in the land of Israel en masse and the Mes siah ” He continues, “If you think about it from the perspective of tradition, that is a pret t y radical move ”
In sum : the tensions between and shif ting significance of these two animating ideas mes sianism and self-determination, one as old as Judaism and the other as new as the idea of modernit y itself explain much of how Jews relate to Zionism and Israel Where someone sits on these two axes does much to explain their approach to the idea of Zion, and to the nation-state of Israel
When Jews with a strong commitment to mes sianism which is to say, religious Jews were confronted with Her zl’s burgeoning Zionist movement, they had one of two choices : modif y their approach to mes sianism to accommodate Zionism, or reject Zionism The former approach, what we now refer to as Religious Zionism, combines a high degree of mes sianism with a high degree of self-determination In this revision of traditional mes sianism, rather than Jewish sovereignt y being the outcome of mes siah’s arrival, it instead lays the groundwork for that arrival
Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, an as sociate editor of the Or thodox journal Tradition, frames the religious at tachment to a Jewish return to the Land of Israel as a hope that would not die “There was never a period where the Jewish people somehow stopped being aware of Israel,” he told me recently, “which is why thousands of years later they could re -engage Jewish sovereignt y and Jewish power, and the idea of Zionism could find fer tile ground ”
Like the adherents of mos t ideologie s, mos t Religious Zionis ts temper their belief s based on prevailing realitie s : they want to live in the land, not wage a holy war They follow in the foots teps of Rabbi Abraham Is aac Kook, the fir s t A shkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Jews of the British Mandate, and his s tudents Kook died before the Holocaus t and the founding of the s tate, but he lef t behind a legacy of idealism He maintained that the le s son of exile was that power is a dangerous tool, and that if and when Jews succeeded in their national ambitions, they needed to be careful how they wielded it Jewish politic s could be dif ferent, Kook believed, and Jews did not need to exer t power over other s He approved of the purchase of land in Pale s tine by the Jewish National Fund but not the taking of land by force. This reflects the view of many Religious Zionis ts today They send their children to he sder ye shivot a system of religious ins titutions in which young adults s tudy in ye shiva while pur suing a parallel track of army ser vice and genuinely want peace with the Pale s tinians
As with most ideologies, there are extremists : adherents who are so fer vent in their beliefs that they will wish for or cause harm to anyone Jewish, Palestinian, or other wise who impedes their pursuit of Jewish sovereignt y in the full terrain of what they consider the Land of Israel These are the Religious Zionists we are accustomed to seeing on the news, who as ser t Jewish supremacy and, increasingly, wage violent at tacks on their Palestinian neighbours.
In an ar ticle in The New York Times Magazine this spring, Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzet ti profile the rise of the Hilltop Youth, whose commitment to Jewish sovereignt y is so extreme that it does not actually countenance the nation-state that currently exists “Their objective,” the authors write, “was to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish ‘Jewish rule’ : anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews ”
At the other end of this axis are religious Jews who also have a strong belief in mes sianism but with a weak commitment to political self-determination These are the originalists the ones who refused to modulate their mes sianism in response to the Zionist aspirations for a Jewish nation-state in the Land of Israel, and who persist in that refusal, to var ying degrees, even long af ter that nation-state was born This is the view that defines much of Haredi and Chabad Judaism
Unlike Religious Zionists, these movements understand Jewish tradition as precluding any pos sibilit y of the human pursuit of national self-determination. They reject the notion that Jews can bring about the mes sianic era themselves, by becoming a political power among the nations. Rather, the only available path is for Jews to study and follow the commandments to the best of their abilities, thereby spiritually redeeming the world
Rabbi Moses Sofer, the leader of Hungarian Or thodox y in the 17th centur y and one of the architects of Haredi theolog y, did not shy away from the consequences of such a position “It is wor thwhile for the people of Israel to suf fer prolonged exile, in order to at tain such redemption in the end,” he wrote in his commentar y on the Torah “The full mes sianic claim does not permit the Jew to follow such hear t promptings [for a restoration of the ancient past] and accept such existential options It cannot be satisfied with a par t, but only with the whole, the appearance of the Redeemer of Israel in all his power ” While Sofer lived and wrote long before Zionism
was even pos sible, his ideas were taken up centuries later by late19th centur y German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. He wrote: “We are obligated to follow the ‘well-trodden paths of our ancestors and early leaders,’ who never mentioned any obligation for us to encourage the redemption by developing Eret z Yisroel They mention as the path toward the Redemption only that we become bet ter Jews, repent, and look for ward to the redemption ”
How, then, do Haredim navigate the realit y on the ground, namely the fact that, though no mes siah has arrived, a Jewish nation-state does exist in the Land of Israel? Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public af fairs for Haredi umbrella group A gudath Israel of America, describes a delicate balancing act “Once the state became a fait accompli,” he summarized in an email, “most of the Haredi world… opted to embrace, if not the Zionist philosophy, at least the fact of Israel, including citizenship. Which is why there are Haredim in Israeli government ser vice and Haredi par ties in the Knes set ” He describes current Haredi thinking as, if not reconciled to the existence of Israel, something like agnostic, calling it a-Zionist
This is not fully borne out As recently as Januar y, a study conducted by Nishma Research found that Haredim are still much less suppor tive of Zionism than other Or thodox and non- Or thodox populations: in their sur vey of approximately 1,300 respondents, 28 per cent of Haredim felt strongly pro-Zionist and another 23 per cent felt somewhat Zionist a combined 51 per cent. By comparison, 94 per cent of modern Or thodox Jews identified as somewhat or strongly Zionist Among the comments from Haredi sur vey respondents: “Zionism enrages the nations of the world” and “I see how people put the army, its power and weakness before G-d and believe in that first ”
If Haredim are officially a-Zionist and unofficially divided, Chabadniks are most consistently clear in their rejection of the current Jewish state
In 1900, the fif th Lubavitcher rebbe, Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, wrote a widely circulated let ter on the mat ter: “Even if the Zionists were G -d fearing Torah true Jews, and even if we had reason to believe that their goal is feasible, we are never theles s not permit ted to join them in bringing our redemption with our own streng th. We are not even permit ted to force a premature redemption by showering the Almight y with insistent entreaties ” Schneersohn went even further: for him, the is sue was not that Zionism was incompatible with Jewish faith but that it stood in direct opposition to it: “The Zionists’ true desire is to sever the hear ts of the Jewish people from the Torah and mit zvos We will not accept their promises Even if they have some good to of fer, we must throw it back to their faces ”
More than a centur y later, despite Chabad having launched many campaigns that “shower the Almight y with insistent entreaties” in the form of myriad children singing “We Want Moshiach Now,” and despite Chabad accepting the concrete benefits they receive from Israeli state cof fers, there has been no real theological change of hear t Some materials currently available on the movement’s website explain that, politically, Israel is a land of darknes s ; others describe the state as the result of a Jewish inferiorit y complex
Most congregations around the world recite a prayer for the State of Israel There is a line in the prayer that refers to Israel as reshit t zmichat geulatenu the beginning of the flowering of our redemption Some Religious Zionist congregations add shetehe that it should be at the beginning of the phrase, to temper the streng th of that claim Others omit the phrase entirely, choosing to divorce the idea of the redemption from the idea of Israel itself. Haredi and Chabad congregations refuse to say the prayer at all
As is hopefully apparent so far, clas sical Zionism the one that led to the creation of the S tate of Israel in the land of Israel is founded on ideas that were ver y high on the self-determination axis and fairly low on me s sianism. This is the tradition that shaped mains tream (which is to s ay, secular) Jewish-Israeli societ y, and over the decade s came to characterize the at titude s of a majorit y of diaspora Jews, as well
Elliot Glas senberg, senior educator at the pluralistic Israeli non-profit BINA, says that most Israelis can’t even begin to identif y much of what Zionism actually was or is anymore Most are not religious and don’t have a sense of the historical or spiritual connections to the land “The secular Israeli theolog y has been summarized as follows,” he told me: “There is no God and He gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people ”
BINA which describes itself as a secular yeshiva, strives to be a place where Israelis and diaspora Jews can learn about Judaism and Israel in a space that is non-denominational by design, and offers clas ses on topics that are of ten of f-limits to a wide swath of Jews other wise Glas senberg explains that “for young Jewish adults, whether they’re from Israel or from the diaspora, having these oversimplified and in many cases inaccurate understanding of what Zionism is, is incredibly limiting ” It makes for, as he puts it, “a ver y narrow conversation as well as a narrow choice of identit y If you ask a student Are you Zionist or are you not Zionist? I find this really unproductive What does Zionism mean to you? or How do you see your relationship with Israel? are much more productive questions.”
Glas senberg advocates for reconnecting with the discus sions that shaped Zionism from its outset: “I think it’s actually ver y empowering and enriching for students, to be exposed to Zionist perspec-
tives that are over 100 years old, that in the time of Her zl and Ahad Ha’am were arguing about what the solution to Jewish challenges should be, and what a Jewish home in the Land of Israel should be or look like, and why we should or should not have a Jewish home in the Land of Israel ”
Though it may be counterintuitive, contemporar y secular Zionism perhaps is least able to find a home in the schema I’ve been developing More than any other quadrant, it has been reshaped in the wake of the Holocaust, which is generally understood by holders of this view to have fundamentally reconfigured Jewish nationalism, taking it out of the realm of theological or even broadly speaking political discourse and rendering it starkly existential In the face of only par tially avoided annihilation, the conceptual underpinnings of the Jewish relationship to Israel have taken a back seat to an imperative of sur vival.
Finally, we get to what is undoubtedly, right now, the knot tiest quadrant: Jews whose views about their relationship to the Land of Israel are not determined either by a strong belief in messianism or a strong belief in self-determination This encompas ses several dif ferent groups : diasporists, anti-Zionists, and many secular Jews who have lit tle to no relationship to Israel These are of ten the most misunderstood groups within the Jewish communit y, and the ones most likely to be and feel excluded from communit y’s conversations about Zionism
A rise in Jews who are questioning their commitments to Israel in light of events of the past year notwithstanding, this overall stance dates back to the beginnings of early modern Judaism. In 1885, leaders of the then-emerging Reform movement convened to formu-
When religious Jews were confronted with the burgeoning secular Zionist movement, they had one of two choices: modify their approach to messianism, or reject Zionism (The Old City on the eve of Jerusalem Day, May 18, 2023 )
late their founding beliefs The document, known as the Pit tsburgh Platform, consists of eight concise points, one of which was a rejoinder to burgeoning Zionism : “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious communit y, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state ”
This was a controversial move, even for a liberal communit y, and over the following decades, with the prospect of Israel becoming more and more real, succes sive Reform platforms moderated those ideas By 1937, the Reform movement’s Columbus Platform stated that, “in the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewr y to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppres sed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life ”
Around the s ame time as the Pit tsburgh Platform was being written, but emerging from an opposing sentiment, was diasporism If the early Reform movement emphasized the religion in Judaism, other s were taken by the idea of Judaism as a culture and did not feel the need to move somewhere to fully flourish This concept of Doykayt, or Herene s s, was ver y much a par t of the secular Y iddish world of Eas tern Europe at the time The idea emerged from the social-democratic Bundis t ideolog y, which argued that Judaism didn’t need a separate place to exis t In order to develop a robus t Jewish identit y, Bundis ts argued that one needed to recognize that wherever Jews were was central to their identit y If there was a “Jewish Problem” it needed to be solved wherever it was being felt, not by fleeing to another land ( The Rus sian town of Birobidzhan, e s tablished in 1928, was originally planned as the centre of a Jewish autonomous region within that countr y, and a direct out grow th of the idea that Jews could have their own land, wherever they were )
meanwhile, told me that while the realities of the Holocaust made Zionism a neces sit y for a time, that time has now pas sed. We are no longer facing extinction, and the exigencies that trump other considerations have faded. In arguing for a post-Zionism, he holds that the Jewish communit y could repair some of the is sues plaguing the communit y in general as well as the rif ts with Israel’s Palestinian neighbours In recognizing our own existence in exile and as an other in the global societ y, Magid says, we should develop a more compas sionate approach to the Palestinian people
Then there is modern anti-Zionism, which come s in several forms and which was a lonely position for a Jew to hold until about 10 year s ago Cultural anti-Zionism is ver y similar to diasporism : it rejects a single place in which to center Jewish identit y. Political anti-Zionism the variet y we tend to think about mos t of ten itself come s in diver se forms, but mos t share the idea that a land e stablished by displacing (an)other people, and continually causing harm to them both individually and as a group, is wrong Whatever religious or his torical connection Jews may have to the L and of Israel cannot supercede this wrongne s s, and as a re sult, Israel as a nation- s tate should be, according to this line of thinking , abolished or fundamentally reconfigured
“ The secular Israeli theology has been summarized as follows: There is no God and He gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.”
Diasporism evolved in the decades that followed, of ten but not always as an alternative to Zionism Jews who embraced this model tended to focus on the incredible diversit y of Jews around the world, and on the realit y that, however painful the origins of Jewish exile are, much of contemporar y Jewish culture and religion were informed by being a group of people who were dispersed around the world Instead of seeing this only in terms of those painful origins a state of af fairs to be remedied they framed it as an evolution that could be embraced
While diasporism predates the Arab-Israeli conflict, that conflict is likely one of the reasons why it is having a bit of a resurgence today This is evidenced in two books that came out (and this is wor th noting) before October 7 and the subsequent upending of Jewish discourse around Zionism : Israeli- American historian Daniel Boyarin’s The No-State Solution, and Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile, both published in 2023 Both authors argue that living outside of Israel is not only acceptable but might even be the ideal state for Jews Boyarin sees Zionism as a novel invention of recent Jewish histor y and argues that Zionism’s focus on land and sovereignt y runs counter to what Judaism has believed for centuries Magid,
Anti-Zionist Jews have, by and large, felt alienated within and by the Jewish community: many describe being called, even by friends and family, self-hating Jews, and having their suppor t for Palestinian rights vilified and trivialized But their ranks have, slowly, been growing in recent years, in tandem with and largely fueled by Israeli expansionist tendencies in the West Bank and a pronounced rightward trend in government policy More Jews than at any other time in Israel’s histor y reject the halut znik narrative of Jews as neutral immigrants to a barren land with foreign nations seeking to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Within larger segments of the Jewish community, there is a recognition that at the ver y least, the histor y is much more complicated and facts on the ground lend much credence to the Palestinian claims on the land Israel’s pursuit of the war in Gaza in the wake of October 7 has visibly and significantly accelerated this grow th This is evident in the increasing numbers of Jewish par ticipants in anti-war rallies and anti-war university encampments, in public statements by Jewish ar tists and academics, in polling of Jews since the war star ted, and in the growing presence of explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish groups. A sur vey of Canadian Jews conducted by University of Toronto sociologist Rober t Br ym in Februar y found a statistically significant drop in suppor t for Israel compared to previous years, “par ticularly among younger Jewish Canadians ” The American Jewish Commit tee conducted a sur vey at about the same time; 19 per cent of respondents repor ted feeling somewhat or much less connected to Israel since October 7
It is impos sible to say how much the grow th of Jewish anti-Zionism is grow th, and how much is a change in how many Jews who have long harboured doubts about Israel feel comfor table expres sing them But it is clear that debates on the question are breaking out into the open in new ways. Nowhere was this more clearly evidenced than in the movement Reconstructing Judaism and its Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC ) . In the spring of 2024, two students lef t the school and published an op-ed in The For ward about their
negative experience as Zionists on the RRC campus “We came to find that RRC is, de facto, a training ground for anti-Zionist rabbis,” they wrote It was a rare situation in which the Zionists, rather than the anti-Zionists, felt alienated by their Jewish communit y.
Rabbi Brant Rosen was the staf f clerg y at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois from 1998 until 2014, when he resigned over a deepening divide over his outspoken criticism of Israel’s policies and actions Recently Rosen, now the rabbi of Tzedek Chicago, an anti-Zionist congregation, told me that “the politicization of the land and the goal of creating a Jewish sovereign presence in the land to establish, or reestablish Jewish political control of that land was always treated with deep ambivalence by Jewish tradition ”
For Rosen, Zionism is ver y far from a natural expres sion of Jewish tradition : “I would never make the argument that Zionism is alien to Judaism But I would say that Zionism sought to over turn in many ways the ver y definition of Judaism and what it meant to be a Jew up until that point ”
It isn’t jus t that Zionism was a modern invention ; Rosen is candid that he views it as “a de s tructive form of Judaism.”
should never have come at the expense of the Palestinian population that has deep histor y with the land as well As many anti-Zionist Jews do, Rosen’s beliefs are rooted in his understanding of Judaism In the seder supplement that he published for his congregation this year, he wrote: “If we fail to give the Palestinian people a voice at our table this evening, we will not have fulfilled the requirements of the Pas sover seder If we celebrate this festival by hardening our hear ts to the horrif ying stories and images from Gaza that have been cr ying out to us for the past seven months, we will not have fulfilled the requirements of the Pas sover seder ” Rosen is also careful to dif ferentiate between a right to the land and rights on the land
For many anti-Zionist Jews, the claim is not that Jews have no legitimate attachment to the land, but rather than we are not the only ones who do. (Celebrating Jerusalem Day at the Western Wall, June 5, 2024.)
What, then, does he think Judaism’s role should be with respect to the Land of Israel? He describes it as many anti-Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, do: a set tler-colonial project It’s language that many Jews find incendiar y and abhorrent but which is also, perhaps, deeply misunderstood The claim is not that Jews have no ancestral or religious connection to the land no legitimate at tachment but rather than the claim is not exclusive “I think that Palestine, like other countries that had been under colonial domination, should have been decolonized and power rever ted to the indigenous people who live there,” he says And that includes Jews Rosen argues that rights should have been extended “to all people who live there, whether they were, Jewish, Christian or Muslim ”
Zionists have and will continue to argue that there has been continuous Jewish presence in Zion since the time of the First Temple Anti-Zionist Jews, even when they describe Israel as a set tler-colonial state, don’t neces sarily contradict that. But they do want to decouple the Jews that were indigenous to the land from the European Jews who began to set tle the land, displacing others in the proces s “Biblical tradition records cer tain narratives about the Jewish people creating a sovereign state af ter the conquest and set tlement of Canaan,” Rosen tells me These are not historical documents ; these are religious documents and they’re profoundly ahistorical What we do know from histor y is that the Jewish people as we know them came into being centuries later, and that Judaism as we understand it today by and large was a product of the day it came to full flourishing in the diaspora ”
Rosen recognizes the role the Holocaust had to play in shaping contemporar y Zionism and believes the world should bear deep shame over its unwillingnes s to set tle Jewish refugees before, during, and af ter the war He understands that it is specifically that refusal to reset tle Jewish refugees that led to Jews, refugee and otherwise, clinging to Israel as their homeland But he believes that this
“The ver y notion of people having a right to the land flies in the face of the Torah itself God has the right to the land, but allows people and by the way allowed other nations before the Jewish people to live on the land, with cer tain conditions of how you’re supposed to behave on the land. But the land [can] vomit you out if you’re not careful.”
T’ruah : The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights is an extensive network of rabbis who use Jewish thought to suppor t their anti-Zionist views. In one piece on their website, Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton of Ot tawa Reconstructionist congregation Or Haneshama connects the fact that the Torah records separate names for a given place one by Jacob and one by Laban to the various place names in Israel-Palestine today If the Torah values both enough to remember them, she wrote, we should honour and value the multiplicities that exist today
Whenever I see a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, I am struck by the blue thread that runs along its lef t side Ostensibly, this thread was used to sew together the three pages of script, but I can’t help but draw a comparison to the blue thread of the t zit zit on the tallit
The Bible tells us that the t zit zit act as a reminder of all the commandments whenever we see them Thousands of years have pas sed and we have an ever-increasing multiplicit y of views about Jewish thought and practice None have a monopoly and however you think of your Judaism the t zit zit are a reminder of that thread that binds us together
Fruit Stand & Sunflower Meadow Craft Cotton Collections
Yom Yocheved
Each year, over 1 , 2 0 0 families and individuals in need benefit from an oppor tunity to receive brand new clothing in a dignified way, at no cost.
Special thanks to Federation CJA, the generous clothing donors and the Yom Yocheved family for their dedicated time and effor t in mak ing this event possible year af ter year. We eagerly anticipate the upcoming event happening on November 3rd and encourage ever yone to continue suppor ting this beautiful initiative for the nex t 10 years.
FOR INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTAC T Elodie.Perez@federationcja.org
5784: The year in pictures
Even by the harsh standards of Jewish histor y, this has been one of the more difficult years As with many other kinds of grief, it has come in waves : first in proces sing the severit y of Hamas’s unprecedented at tack on civilians, and then in grappling with the war Israel launched in response In Canada, this has unfolded against the backdrop of renewed suppor t for Israel from some quar ters, a rise in antisemitism in others, and increased at tention acros s the board
O
r
b e e n i n
at o n c e
No collection of images can capture the full range and complexit y of Jewish experiences over the past 12 months But at this moment in the calendar which is always an occasion for contemplation and, this year, also a terrible yahr zeit we wanted to create some space to remember and reflect on what we have, individually and collectively, been going through
In hope of bet ter days ahead,
The CJN
October 9, Toronto Thousands of Torontonians, along with leaders from all three levels of government, mourn the Hamas attacks at a solidarity rally at Mel Lastman Square
October 8, Toronto Protesters hang Palestinian flags on an overpass above the Gardiner Expressway in response to Israel’s retaliations in Gaza
October 13, Toronto. At Pearson International Airport, Kinneret Butterfield-Morrison greets her children as she arrives on a Canadian government evacuation flight from Tel Aviv
October 18, Toronto Protesters outside the Israeli consulate office
November 10, Toronto At a downtown Indigo store, a postering and paint protest accuses owner Heather Reisman of funding genocide
October 25, Edmonton A demonstration calling for the release of Israeli hostages outside the Alberta legislature
October 23, Toronto Jewish groups opposed to the Israeli military campaign block Monday morning rush hour traffic at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor streets, near the Israeli consulate
December 4, Ottawa Three months after the Hamas attack, thousands journey to Parliament Hill for “Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People ”
December 14, Toronto The end of the eight-day Festival of Lights is marked by a “Hanukkah for
Ceasefire” event at Trinity-Bellwoods Park
December 14, Winnipeg A vigil at the Rady JCC commemorates Vivian Silver, 74, a locally born peace activist who was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7
January 6, Toronto A police officer drew sharp rebukes after handing out coffee at a pro-Palestinian protest
March 27, Vancouver Justin Trudeau visits Temple Shalom Synagogue to meet with a group of local rabbis and discuss security concerns amid a rise in antisemitism
April 5, Edmonton A Shabbat table installation in Violet King Henry Plaza, outside the legislature, commemorates still-captive hostages
April 30, Toronto An interfaith gathering, “Freedom for All: A Jewish-Palestinian Resistance Seder,” convenes to mark the eighth day of Passover outside of Toronto City Hall
June 9, Toronto. An estimated 50,000 people turned out for the annual Walk with Israel
June 30, Toronto Jewish groups march in the annual Pride Parade
June 30, Toronto Pro-Palestinian protesters also march in the Pride Parade before blocking the procession
The New Philosemitism
An age-old tradition has taken new shape recently. Who, exactly, is this helping?
Jews have always had our share of enemies, but some moments seem more antagonistic than others Our popularit y’s taken a hit since October 7 There was a blip of a moment when well-meaning gentiles were parsing whether it counts as cultural appropriation to put up a mezuzah in solidarit y with one’s Jewish neighbours, as an I am Spar tacus-t ype solidarit y gesture. But, soon enough, the world at large switched its focus to the IDF’s response Do Israel’s actions constitute a genocide, and are Canadian and other diaspora Jews complicit? Is it possible, asked antisemites, who already had their answer, that Jews are the worst people ever to exist, and now the world is finally waking up?
Going by cer tain corners of social media, not to mention lamppost flyers, it can be easy for Jews even those of us with our own criticisms of how Israel is handling this war to catastrophize about the people who hate us But, on a population level, Nor th American Jews are not actually unpopular, recent criticisms notwithstanding High-profile antisemitic incidents have a way of masking the fact that Canadians and Americans tend to have favourable views of us
A March 2023 Pew Research Center sur vey found that 35 per cent of Americans expres s ver y or somewhat favorable at titudes toward Jews, while 6 per cent expres s “unfavorable
at titudes,” making Jews the most positively viewed of all religious (or non-religious) groups sur veyed more so than Catholics or Protestants and much more so than atheists, Muslims or Mormons In a sur vey conducted af ter October 7 and published in a special edition of Canadian Jewish Studies this spring, Universit y of Toronto sociolog y profes sor Rober t Br ym found that 83 per cent of Canadians “hold positive feelings about Jews” and that “antisemitism comes primarily from four specific groups in Canadian societ y Muslims, white supremacists and lef tists, non-Jewish universit y students, and Quebecois ”
Some non-Jews, however, have more than a vaguely positive feeling about us A handful of them think we are the greatest and want the world to know that they are on Team Jews. This can be anxiet y-producing in its own right
Philosemitism has a rich and much-explored his tor y, the relevant bits of which I will get into shor tly, but my focus here is what I have come to believe is a new incarnation of this centurie s -old phenomenon Where philosemitism of recent decade s been under s tood as an affinit y for Jews, this new philosemitism is dis tinguished by s teadfas t commitment to the t wo-pronged policy platform of defending Israel and fighting antisemitism It’s the sor t that ex-
pre s se s itself online and in political speech about how wronged Jews (and sometime s Israel) are, in such pas sionate language that you think ( that is, I think) there has to be some per sonal at tachment but no, this is jus t their side The sor t where someone has a S tar of David or Israeli flag emoji in their bio and you think (if you are me) , “Oh, I didn’t know so- and- so- was Jewish,” and it turns out they ’re not
A few words about what philosemitism is not Philosemitism might inspire conversion, but once you are Jewish, you’ve ceased being someone with an outsider’s affinit y for Jews The lobbyist Richard Marceau may be a pro-Israel advocate with a French- Canadian name and heritage, but he conver ted to Judaism, thereby making his own stor y a par t of the Jewish one
I also have trouble referring to a solidarit y born of real-life closenes s with Jews as philosemitism Plent y of non-Jews’ concern for Jews’ welfare comes from having a Jewish par tner or Jewish kids Jews aren’t abstract entities to them, but real people This is dif ferent from finding Jews interesting as a concept It is a bias born of proximit y, and not so far of f from being pro-Jewish on account of being Jewish yourself.
It’s not that there are hard-and-fast rules for these things. Someone can be Jewish and still think of Jews as abstractions,
though if you’re a Jew yourself, you probably know others, which mitigates generalizations But philosemitism, to me, sug gests a gulf between philosemite and Jew. You have to be someone who could up and decide you didn’t like Jews af ter all, or just that you preferred some other hobby, and nothing substantive would change in your life The fate of the Jewish people is, at the end of the day, not the philosemite’s problem
In 2011 in The New Republic, critic Adam Kirsch reviewed Philosemitism in Histor y, a book whose topics ranged “from the Christian Hebraists of the seventeenth centur y to documentaries on West German television ” The review is a synthesis both of philosemitism in histor y including prior to the coining of the term in the late 19th centur y, alongside that of antisemitism and of the significance of the phenomenon “It takes pathetically lit tle good will toward Jews to qualif y for a place in the book,” Kirsch writes Some philosemites of yore were simply the people who didn’t want all Jews murdered when others were advocating for this. Initially, prior to the 1789 French Revolution, philosemitism had lit tle to do with its proponents’ real-life Jewish contemporarie s and far more to do with biblical Hebrews The se philosemite s were early modern Chris tian theologians and Enlightenment philosopher s, who weren’t encountering Jews socially or swinging by the deli for a smoked meat s andwich. Jews were intere s ting because of their role in Chris tianit y ’s backs tor y
The theological place of Jews and Judaism in Christianit y still plays a role in philosemitism, but its significance has waned over time ; it is now mainly relevant to Christian Zionism As the 19th centur y proceeded, the odds were ever- greater that a non-Jewish thinker would have met actual Jews, not just read about them Their philosemitism, therefore, would be rooted in that more direct experience (though the high levels of integration and familiarit y we know today would have been unlikely in most set tings until fur ther into the 20th centur y)
Philosemitism’s manifestations in modern European histor y included ever ything from fetishization of “Oriental” Jewish women (the belle Juive was a popular trope in 19th centur y France) to an as sociation of Jews with French republicanism itself Af ter all, before the French Revolution, there was no concept in Europe of Jews as full citizens If
you believed in the Enlightenment values of human rights or in the idea of an unhyphenated French identit y available to all, then you had to be on the side of the Jews, even if actual Jews proved a bit pious and particularist for your tastes. If you didn’t want French-nes s to hinge on Catholicism, one of the easiest ways to demonstrate your anticlericalism or commitment to laïcité (French secularism) was to insist that even a Jew could be French
The Dreyfusards those who defended French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus from a false accusation of treason in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were not neces sarily immune to holding negative stereot ypes about Jews But categorically defending Jews from antisemitism became, in that moment, fur ther entrenched as a prox y for defending the secular French
If someone says they’re a friend of the Jews, you do eventually have to ask, of which Jews, for we are not all friends with one another.
state Siding with Jews was a way of rejecting those who believed only Catholics with the right ancestr y could be trusted as loyal compatriots
The Nor th American philosemitism of the mid to late 20th and early 21st centuries was both les s political and more stereot ype -driven than the versions that preceded it. It was also much more about interpersonal relationships with Jews, a natural reflection of the increasing interactions between non-Jews and Jews It came out of what Franklin Foer’s much-discus sed March 2024 Atlantic ar ticle deemed the “golden age of American Jews ” (In May, The Globe and Mail ran a Canadian quasi-equivalent, from Noah Richler: “Is the Jewish moment in Nor th America over ?” ) Jews were at the centre of things culturally, seen as model minorities, and non-Jews admired us. Let’s call this Golden A ge philosemitism
Golden Age philosemitism was organic Jews were seen that is, stereotyped as a
group of par ticularly colour ful white people: more cosmopolitan, intellectual, successful, and intense than their WASP y or preppy Catholic neighbours. Jews clustered in cosmopolitan cities like New York and Montreal We took piano lessons, we read books or even wrote them, we ate Chinese food despite not (generally) being Chinese ourselves To many gentiles, this made us of f-put ting; to others, it constituted our charm
This philosemitism also had a sexual component Unlike the 19th centur y French variet y, though, the Golden A ge exotic Jewish Other tended to be male In her 2001 es say, “American Shiksa,” American writer Meghan Daum does a good job conveying this fixation In it, she describes a love of Jewish men, those “dark-haired boys who read books and stayed up late, who had circles under their eyes, who looked like wise men, like owls perched up on the highest rungs of the evolutionar y ladder ”
More than that, Daum writes about enjoying taking on the role of shiksa in relationships with these men Af ter flir ting with the idea of conversion, she realizes an “agnostic” like herself isn’t about to do so “So I decided that if I couldn’t be Jewish I might as well be un-Jewish in as obstreperous and maddening a way as possible And that meant surrounding myself with Jews and being a gentile Blonde Flaky Adoring ” It’s a ver y funny essay, if you’re not easily of fended
As Daum presents it, her fixation on life amongst Jews is about fleeing all that is “white trash ” Writes Daum, of her fellow gentile white Americans, “With or without countr y homes in Kennebunkpor t or Squibnocket, we’re all descendants of shot gun culture, of Coke at break fast, Triscuits for lunch, 4-H champions, horse thieves, and drunks pas sed out in front of 60 Minutes ” By contrast, Jewish families were restricting proces sed foods and screen time before it was cool, or at any rate tended not to set tle in places where agriculture -themed scouting groups are a big deal (I watched plent y of T V and ate no shor tage of junk growing up in Manhat tan in the 1980s and 1990s, but I did so in a home without guns or hard liquor, and with no livestock nearby )
In her 2014 book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite, British writer Julie Burchill also frames her philosemtism in terms of an adoration of Jewish men and a hyperconsciousnes s of her own unsophisticated-in-her-view gentilenes s. The Jews had become a symbol to me of escape of
outsidernes s not just embraced, but made magnificent ” Burchill also considered and ultimately rejected conver ting to Judaism, but recalls dyeing her hair black and inventing Jewish ancestr y in order to get her own first job in journalism
T h e re i s a f i n e l i n e b et we e n a d m i rat i o n
a n d a m b i t i o n - d r i ve n e m u l at i o n Wh o o p i
G o l d b e rg , o r ig i n a l l y C a r y n El a i n e J o h n s o n ,
g rew u p C h r i s t i a n b u t h a s m e n t i o n e d a
fe el i ng o f J ewi s h n e s s i n i n te r v i ew s . “G o l d -
b e rg” i s a s t age s u r n a m e, o n e t h at m ay h ave o r ig i n ate d f ro m h e r s e n s e ( o r h e r
m ot h e r ’s s e n s e?) t h at J ew s s u c c e e d e d i n
s h ow b u s i n e s s I n 2 0 2 2, s h e m a d e h e a d -
l i n e s fo r a n a n t i s e m i t i s m c o n t rove r sy :
s t ate m e n t s s h e m a d e o n Th e V i ew , a n d
s u b s e qu e n t l y a p o l og ize d fo r, t h at we re p e r-
c e i ve d o f a s d i s m i s s i ve o f t h e H o l o c a u s t
T h e h e a d o f t h e A n t i - D efa m at i o n Le ag u e
re s p o n d e d to t h e ke r f u f f l e by s ug ge s t i ng
Th e V i ew h i re a J ewi s h h o s t , a re m i n d e r
t h at “G o l d b e rg” - n e s s i s n ot e n o ug h
Th e n ew p h i l o s e m i t i s m i s l e s s a b o u t
l i k i ng J ew s a n d m o re a b o u t d efe n d i ng
u s f ro m a l l e n e m i e s , re a l a n d p e rc e i ve d
I t’s
In more concrete terms : the new philosemitism is MP Kevin Vuong pos ting photos of himself dining at Toronto re s taurants targeted by pro-Pale s tinian prote s tor s, not because this set of cuisine s appeals to him, but to defend C anada’s Jewish communit y It is U S senator John Fet terman pas ting Israeli hos tage flyer s all over his office It’s the C anadian author, law yer, and political operative Warren Kinsella pos ting on X, “I’m not Jewish. My par tner isn’t Jewish. I don’t have a Jewish client I haven’t been asked to go on a trip to Israel I’m not getting an award for what I write or s ay about
Israel or antisemitism I write what I write, and s ay what I s ay, because it’s what I believe Period ” It is Aus tralian Quillet te founder Claire Lehmann coming through with something along much the s ame line s : “I’m not Jewish,” she wrote on X ( formerly Twit ter) , “but they can put me on the Zionis ts in Publishing lis t anytime they want ” ( This was in reference to anti-Zionis t lis ts that were circulating at the time, and aimed at would-be Israel boycot ter s )
Philosemitism is not something that happens sealed-of f from actual Jews, but rather something Jewish communities have welcomed, par ticularly since October 7.
Michael Moynihan, once Tablet magazine’s “Righteous Gentile” columnist (the name a reference to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust) remains on the philosemitic beat, having recently defended Israel’s war in Gaza for Bari Weis s’s The Free Press Tristin Hopper, of the National Post, came to Vancouver’s Congregation Schara Tzedeck to speak on Januar y 14. On Februar y 28, the conser vative British journalist Douglas Murray spoke at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto (BAY T) synagogue, a packed event covered on The CJN’s website
I will now voice a question I have heard asked privately: Are our non-Jewish suppor ters how to put this delicately being paid? Yes, and no
Someone with philosemitic tendencies may wind up working for a Jewish organization, or a heterodox one with pro-Israel leanings, but I have trouble seeing this as nefarious evidence that Jews (or, for the les s conspiracy-minded, Christian Zionists) are bankrolling suppor t It seems of a piece with people of all inclinations working for a place in line with their interests and values Politicians are doubtles s making calculations when deciding which communities to align themselves with witnes s the Conser vatives presenting Justin Trudeau and the Liberals as bad-for-the -Jews and gaining themselves a win in a midtown Toronto byelection This is no more suspect when it’s the Jewish communit y than when it’s any other group
The new philosemites don’t hold identical views on all is sues, but their politics converge in ways that give political coherence to their pro-Jewish advocacy Barring other mitigating modifiers, a Star of David or Israeli flag emoji in a non-Jew’s social media bio most of ten functions as a prox y for liberal or centrist anti-wokenes s. The same is the case for pro-Jewish gestures that go
fur ther still It’s not conser vatism, exactly, unles s that’s the term you’re using to refer to nostalgia for the calm liberalism of the notso-distant past. That said, some philosemitism is more right-wing than centrist, and springs from criticisms of Islam and of lef tist politics, and a sense (not always accurate) of Jews as natural allies in this There have been times in histor y and still are corners of social media where defending the West implied antisemitism Now it appears to go the other way It all depends how you’re defining Western civilization, and there have always been competing definitions There are still the white supremacists who use the term The West as a euphemism for a realm that ought to exclude Jews
Is it, then, that the marginalized are for Pale s tine, and the privileged for Israel? This is cer tainly the impre s sion you get if you obser ve the way Pale s tine has become the centrepiece of a consolidating progre ssive movement (or, in more skeptical terms, an “omnicause” ) .
But philosemitism doesn’t shake out along clear-cut identit y-based lines. Ritchie Torres, an Afro-Latino U S congres sman representing the impoverished South Bronx, is on Israel’s side Many Iranians living outside Iran are Israel suppor ters out of a shared opposition to Islamic fundamentalism In Canada and elsewhere, some Indigenous leaders suppor t Israel and see Jewish Israelis as having a similar connection to that land as they do to theirs. Last I checked, Kevin Vuong is not a posh WASP
Much is made of Queers for Palestine, and the seemingly counterintuitive at tempts to link suppor t for Palestinians with LGBTQ+ liberation (Sample headline: “Yes, Palestinian solidarit y is a queer is sue,” in Xtra Magazine ) But then you get individual non-Jewish gay people like comedian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding on the opposing side. Suppor ting Israel aligns with opposing transgender activism in the strange polarization of contemporar y political alliances, and is therefore a natural fit for whichever subset of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communit y has dissociated itself from mainstream queer activism This is just one of the enemy-of-my-enemy backstories that can, these days, make someone seeming randomly pro-Jewish
Here is how I’ve been able to make sense of who falls where on Israel-Pale s tine matter s, among those not other wise implicated or intere s ted : People who favour the s tatus quo and s tabilit y pick Team Jews, while
those with more of a burn-it- all-down approach embrace Team Pale s tinians ( If you were to take my use of Teams here to be dismis sive, you would be right.) What I’m dismis sing is not the seriousne s s of conflict itself, which is bleak and self-evident. Rather, it’s how lit tle what’s going on in the diaspora has to do with the war ver sus what it symbolize s in pre -exis ting dome s tic rif ts How else could you explain the way that, per Mar tin Gurri writing in the Free Pres s, Jews have come to repre sent “normie s” and frat boys? There’s something to the way that the clas sic conflict of preppie s ver sus theatre kids now plays out as if it were somehow about geopolitic s : t wo intractable conflicts, conflated
The new philosemitism, then, consists of pro-Israel cheerleading interspersed with sombre anti-antisemitic posting Is this what Jews, collectively, find appealing ? It’s unclear how much this wave of philosemitism has to do with real-life Jews to begin with
Philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism. It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us.
Lof t y principles conflicting with on-theground ick at real-life Jews is basically the stor y of philosemitism in any era or incarnation If you like Jews because we’re cosmopolitan, you’re going to lose it when you learn how many Jews (no more or les s than anyone else) are deeply provincial and lacking in curiosit y about the world beyond whomever they went to kindergar ten with. If you imagine Jews are all like Hannah Arendt or Susan Sontag, what do you do when you meet one who owns exactly one book and it’s The Catcher in the Rye and she was assigned it in high school? Will you consider this a les son learned, or will you be mad at her for not living up to expectations?
If someone s ays they ’re a friend of the Jews, you do eventually have to ask, of which Jews? for we are not all friends with one another. The new philosemitism mus t contend with the pre sence of Jews with-
in the pro-Pale s tine movement, including rabbis as well as Jewish S tudie s s tudents and facult y And the anti- woke philosemite the one incidentally pro-Israel but more centrally inve s ted in fighting progre s sive dogma mus t come to terms with the embrace, by many liberal Jews and Jewish ins titutions, of the ver y phenomenon they oppose Bari Weis s is Jewish but so too is DEI consultant extraordinaire Tema Okun There are progre s sive Jews and right- wing Jews and anti- woke Jews and ambivalent Jews and Jews who ( like our Catcher-reading composite above) don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
If I could pres s a but ton and turn the world’s commit ted antisemites into philosemites I suppose I would, because it’s bet ter to be liked for weird reasons than wished dead
But philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us In his book Obstinate Hebrews, historian Ronald Schechter writes about how terribly useful Jews were, symbolically, as figures for Enlightenment gentiles to use for thinking through philosophical notions of dif ference and inclusion This is both an interesting abstract thing for academics to contemplate and terrible foreshadowing
As Kirsch writes, “There may be lit tle to love about philo-Semitism, and lit tle to be grateful for in its histor y ; but that is because genuine esteem between Christians and Jews, like real af fection of all kinds, cannot be grasped as an ‘-ism ’ Ideologies deal in abstractions, and to turn a group of people into an abstraction, even a ‘positive’ one, is already to do violence to them ”
If sur veyed on their feelings about the Jews, the answer I’d like to hear from a non-Jewish compatriot would not have anything to do with being impres sed at Jewish achievements or contributions. It would simply be: “They’re human beings, no bet ter or worse than anyone else.”
J ew s a re o f i n te re s t to t h e o u t s i d e wo r l d wi l d l y o u t o f p ro p o r t i o n to o u r ow n n u mb e r s O u r fate a s re a l - l i fe p e o p l e s h o u l d n’ t b e t i e d u p wi t h t h at o f p h e n o m e n a, eve n i mp e c c a b l e o n e s l i ke e n t re p re n e u r s h i p o r s o b r i et y I d o n’ t wa n t to b e c o l l e c t i vel y a d m i re d fo r qu a l i t i e s I, a s a n i n d i v i d u a l, m ig h t n ot eve n s h a re Yo u a d m i re J ew s fo r o u r f i n a n c i a l s av v y ? I n te re s t i ng ; l et m e i n t ro d u c e yo u to my b a n k a c c o u n t T h o ug h i t’s t r u e I h ave n o a l c o h o l to l e ra n c e yo u’ ve got m e t h e re n
T O V A
S H A N A T O V A
T O G E T H E R , W E A R E I N V E S T I N G I N O U R C H I L D R E N ' S
F U T U R E F O R A S T R O N G E R C O M M U N I T Y
A s w e w e l c o m e t h e J e w i s h N e w Ye a r, w e c e l e b ra t e t h e c o r n e rs t o n e o f o u r c o m m u n i t y ' s f u t u re : J e w i s h e d u ca t i o n . Fe d e ra t i o n C JA i s d e d i ca t e d t o f o s t e r i n g J e w i s h k n o w l e d g e , va l u e s , a n d p r i d e i n o u r c h i l d re n .
LAST YEAR, WE PROUDLY SUPPORTED 5,388 STUDENTS ACROSS 13 JEWISH DAY SCHOOLS, PROVIDING OVER $7 MILLION IN TUITION SUBSIDIES, SECURITY MEASURES, AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES, INCLUDING SUPPORT FOR THE BRONFMAN JEWISH EDUCATION CENTRE (BJEC).
va l u e s . We a re c o m m i t t e d t o n u r t u r i n g t h e n ex t g e n e ra t i o n a n d p ro v i d i n g t h e m w i t h t h e t o o l s t h e y n e e d t o t h r i v e
David Mayer
Dear Canadians,
Wishing you a sweet and joyful Rosh Hashanah! As a proud Canadian and Real Estate Agent in Miami, l have had the pleasure of helping many clients navigate the process of buying and selling proper ties in South Florida If you are considering selling or buying a condo, house or an investment proper ty, feel free to reach out anytime I also offer vir tual visits, making it easy for you to explore your options from afar
May this new year bring you health, happiness, and prosperity!
REBNY Deal of the year, 2023 Consistantly ranked #1 at Compass Top 1% nationally
davidmayer@compass com ranked #1 at Compass
Conditions treated:
• Chronic Pain
• Fatigue
• Digestive Conditions
• Allergies
• AD H D
• Environmental Illness
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Diabetes
• Neurological Conditions
• Cold and Flu
• Skin Conditions
• Weight Management
• Stress Management
• Depression/Anxiety
• Smoking Cessation
• Pediatric Health concerns
• Women’s/Men’s Health concerns and more
Naturopathic Medicine is covered under most group benefit health plans
Dr. Betty Rozendaal BES, MA, R AC, ND Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine Registered Acupuncturist Thornhill Naturopathic Health Clinic 12 A Centre Street Thornhill, Ontario L4 New Patients
On family lore, secrets, and the Hungarian-Jewish experience.
B Y J O H N L O R I N C
Dohany Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary, late 1920s / early 1930s
Ever y family pos ses ses a librar y of stories, and these narratives come in all flavours : happy, tragic, distant, comic, trauma-saturated, transcendent, cathar tic, a combination of the above Some travel effor tles sly acros s generations, accumulating meaning and conjured details with each telling Others simply aren’t interesting, or not interesting enough to be retold
What’s more, a family stor y is never merely a rote account of events Plotlines and points of view are imposed by the stor yteller, who may also manipulate, embellish, or omit facts, the way a pot ter shapes a lump of clay on a wheel, working out the imper fections until the sur face is smooth and presentable In this process of oral authorship, we also misremember or forget basic facts or downplay some subplots that may hold enormous meaning to someone else But this shaping ser ves a larger goal I recently asked one of my sons how he’d categorize this narrative form: is it journalism, fiction, memoir, oral his-
Like countles s others who endured trauma during the Holocaust in par ticular and war in general, my father did not relate his experiences, and I was too young to understand why There are all the obvious answers the listener (me) lacked the maturit y and the context to deal with the harshnes s of his experiences Yet the ubiquit y of the heav y silences that define the lives of so many survivors and veterans as well as perpetrators and bystanders sug gests something else, a kind of psychological or psychic outer limit, beyond which the conventional tools of narrative and memor y and stor ytelling vanish into a black hole
Many stor ytellers have sought to def y the instinct to succumb to wordles snes s These include the archivists who have meticulously recorded, compiled, and made available oral testimonies given by sur vivors who summoned the emotional wherewithal to share their stories. Authors like Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Hannah Arendt all sought,
esteemed Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, who, in Ordinar y Men : Reser ve Bat talion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, reconstructed from post-war testimony not just the actions but also the private thoughts and motivations of the soldiers in a Nazi death squad.
All of this laborious work the excavation of narrative aims in some sense to provide future generations with an understanding of what happened and how to prevent future war time atrocities Needles s to say, we’re bet ter at the former than the lat ter
My father didn’t speak of his experiences, but he took specific steps that sug gest to me a deep desire to not allow his own histor y to repeat itself with his children He tried, for example, to teach my sister and me some basic s of boxing He enrolled me in karate, then an exotic spor t, so I had the tools to defend myself As a teenager, he had got ten into a lot of fights, and those fights, I suspect, had something to do with the toxic anti-Semitism that hung like acrid smog over Budapest in the 1930s He wanted me to be prepared
When I was about ten, my father told me we were Jewish, and then gave me strict instructions to not let anyone know. Although both my parents discus sed the timing and nature of this revelation, my father did the telling, taking me aside on one of our family’s af ter-dinner walks He provided few reference points with which to proces s this shard of information The confounding detail was that we did nominally Christian things, like celebrate Christmas and search for the treats lef t by the Easter Bunny. Never theles s, I promised to keep the secret and did so for many years
tor y ? “Mytholog y,” he replied, the burnish that distinguishes anecdote from narrative Family lore also resembles a Rus sian doll : there are stories inside other stories, as well as the faint voices of earlier, unacknowledged narrators who have told the stories that will then be retold, and reshaped, later on. The fact that they’ve been picked up and reshared at tests to something about what makes them engros sing, to narrator and listener alike
in their own ways, to impose narrative form onto events that seem literally too horrible for words
Filmmakers in the late 1970s and early 1980s Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino, etc similarly sought to dispel the pall that hung over post-Vietnam America with movies that turned to the power of metaphor as a way of talking about that which a scarred societ y couldn’t adequately put into words I also think about someone like the
Secrets, it seems to me, are like dams : they hold back the natural flow of a narrative and ef fectively prevent it from spreading into the world But secrets also whip up a chaotic and of ten corrosive energ y, a building up of pres sure as the taboo of the secret, trapped as it is in some dark room in our minds, seeks other outlets For me, the secret about our Jewishnes s turbo-charged my curiosit y about what it meant Af ter all, I couldn’t ignore what was lef t unspoken : Why did I need to keep his secret?
The answer must have been one hell of a tale
At the turn of the twentieth centur y, Hungar y was a nation of increasingly stark divisions Budapest, perhaps even
My father, Janos Lusztig (right), circa 1935
more than Vienna, had become a thriving hub of commerce, ar t, and liberal politics, a place that fully embraced the modern era and ser ved as a magnet for upwardly mobile Jews (The cit y acquired the obviously problematic sobriquet “Judapest ” ) Rural areas and small towns, by contrast, remained stuck in the feudal era, ruled by land-owning gentr y whose members clung to the archaic customs of the Hungarian aristocracy (which included a deep disdain of commerce) , employed and taxed the peasants, and remained aloof from the sophistication of the big cit y Even at that relatively late date, a shockingly small percentage of Hungar y’s population had the right to vote Those who owned land could
The urban Jewish middle and upper clas ses, meantime, thrived, especially in Budapest The wealthiest families established intimate social and busines s connections with Hungar y’s ruling elites and aligned themselves politically with the countr y’s small-l liberal government.
In its architecture, cultural institutions, and mannerisms, turn-of-the -centur y Budapest saw itself as an up-and-coming rival to Vienna Historian Péter Hának, who has compared the two cities, describes them as the “garden and the workshop,” the lat ter a reference to the fact that Budapest, unlike Vienna, at tracted entrepreneurs, brokers, lenders, and hustlers. Its por t had grown to become the largest along the entire stretch of the Danube, ser ving freight-laden barges from the Balkans and proces sing enormous shipments of wheat from the Great Plains
The Pe s t side in par ticular boomed, and came to be surrounded by a ring of industrial precincts filled with overcrowded tenements, warehouse s, and small manufacturer s employing people s treaming in to the cit y from points eas t Pe s t’s major ar terials radiated out from the Danube in concentric semi-circle s, with each segment named for a member of the Habsburg family The Orient Expre s s, which connected Vienna and Is tanbul, made a s top at the Keleti train s tation, Budape s t’s large s t Touris ts flocked to the cit y in large number s Yet like many thriving metropolise s, Budape s t Europe’s fas te s t growing cit y bet ween 1867 and 1914 had plent y of pover t y and income inequalit y
Pest’s buzz y nineteenth-centur y grow th coincided with, and was greatly influenced by, the influx of Jews from rural Hungar y as well as more distant par ts of central and
eastern Europe The cit y’s earliest Jewish quar ter grew up well away from the Danube, in a district known as Er zsébet város (Elizabeth Town) Anchored by the majestic Moorish-st yle Dohany Street synagogue, built in 1859, the Jewish quar ter’s narrow streets were lined with small busines ses, such as kosher butchers, dr y- goods merchants, furriers, and fabric stores A bustling outdoor flea market operated nearby One could buy and bargain for anything, including kosher salami and ever y t ype of second-hand item, from mat tres ses to clocks While the area was still home to the cit y’s Hasidim and a few Yiddish signs remained over the storefronts, many of its residents had embraced a more as similated lifest yle. Some shops even displayed the Hungarian double -cros s and shield to demonstrate the merchant’s patriotism
ism,” Budapest’s first Jewish mayor, Ferenc Heltai, who happened to be the uncle of Theodor Her zl, predicted as early as 1912 “But the Jews of Hungar y will also be overtaken by their doom, which will be all the more brutal and merciles s as time pas ses, and wilder, too, the stronger they get in the meantime There is no escaping it ”
If i r s t v i s i te d B u da p e s t at age t wel ve, wi t h my p a re n t s a n d my s i s te r,
o k i ng f u n at t h e t ra d i t i o n a l i s m o f t h e i r O r t h o d ox b ret h re n
Yet some voices cautioned Hungar y’s Jews from mistaking their prosperit y and connections for securit y “I would gladly resign my claim to the Hungarian Jews if only I were cer tain that their patriotism would save them from the miser y of anti-Semit-
Arriving by boat to Budapest is to encounter the cit y in a state of romantic equipoise Like many great river metropolises, Budapest is both defined and divided by this halfkilometre -wide expanse of moving water
The Danube runs past and around Margit Island, an almond-shaped park fit ted out with paths and outdoor pools, and flows beneath Budapest’s seven bridges, five of which were blown up during the siege of the cit y in early 1945 On the western bank sits l’ancien Buda, its rolling, terraced sk yline encompas sing the garrison (Castle Hill, with the Royal Palace) and, a few hundred metres downstream, Geller t Heg y, a crag g y
Jozsef (Joska) Lusztig in front of his store, circa the late 1930s
mountain topped by a striving Soviet-era statue. On the east bank is par venu Pest, with its mainly nineteenth-centur y buildings radiating away from Hungar y’s Gothic revival parliament building, a postcard monument to the vanit y of the countr y’s nineteenth-centur y political clas ses
Cer tain specific impres sions of the cit y linger. I recall noticing the half-rot ten produce on of fer at a small grocer not far from my grandmother’s apar tment. We visited the zoo and Budapest’s incredible pools huge outdoor facilities, jammed with people One day, we made our way up to Castle Hill to take in the view of the cit y from the rampar ts and explore the warren of cobblestone streets lined with frescoed houses up on the plateau There was a government building up there with an exterior stone wall still riddled with bullet holes, damage inflicted either during the war or the revolution The sight of that pock-marked wall stuck in my mind, graphic evidence of the violence that forced my parents to flee in 1956
We spent that visit staying with my father’s mother, Klara, in her cramped apar tment
Those two weeks were a merr y- go-round of visits with cheek-pinching, beaming relatives and those friends of my parents who’d chosen not to leave during the Hungarian Revolution. One evening was spent with Klara, watching The Flintstones dubbed into Hungarian while my parents went out Another memor y: a shor t visit with an an-
cient aunt of my father’s named Piri on the terrace of a cafe on Margit Island, eating pastries and drinking fizz y lemon soda from a green glas s bot tle A third : a dinner par t y with one of my father’s closest medical school friends, a lank y man with a hang-dog face who lived with his wife and two sons in a low-ceilinged flat jammed with books and prints My sister and I were dispatched to hang out with one son, then in full hippie mode, who knew all the lyrics to Jesus Christ Superstar (he had the album) but other wise spoke no English
At some point in the mid-1920s, Klara and Jozsef Lusztig, my father’s parents, with their first and only child, moved into a modest Budapest apar tment the same one where we stayed more than half a centur y later The flat, on the third floor of a building on Szigeti Utca, was located in an emerging par t of the cit y, on the Pest side a district known as Újlipót város, or New Leopold Town. Located outside the major ring road on a precinct of former industrial lands acros s from Margit Island, the area was redeveloped in the 1920s as a dense enclave of mid-rise apar tments, many built in the Bauhaus st yle, the modernist school of design that flared during the Weimar era in Germany between the wars Újlipót város was also known as the “Bauhaus Shtetl ”
Besides the architecture, Újlipót város had a full range of urban amenities that reflected planning and intentionalit y on the par t of its designers The neighbourhood, largely developed with capital invested by affluent Jewish profes sionals, had been fitted out with schools, communit y centres, parks, tennis cour ts, and easy acces s to the enormous pools on Margit Island, just acros s the Danube. There were fashionable restaurants and Ar t Deco movie houses, as well as small synagogues tucked into the ground floors of a few buildings Nearby was the cit y’s transit network, one of the major railway stations, and a few impor tant cultural venues, such as the national theatre
Újlipót város also ser ved as something of a protective enclave for Budapest’s middle -clas s Jews, who by the 1920s had become increasingly alarmed by the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the countr y and elsewhere Both Klara and Jozsef came from this world, and it is not surprising they ended up living in a flat in Újlipót város
Klara, whose maiden name was Schwarcz, was raised in a family of three children Her
father, a dapper but stern-looking man, owned a depar tment store. Jozsef, known as Joska, also had two siblings, a brother named Geza and a younger sister named Ilona Their parents, Frida Lowinger and Ignacz Lusztig, a bookkeeper, originally came from market towns in western Hungar y and at some point moved to Budapest They owned a thriving manufacturing firm that produced cleaning products But the firm collapsed amidst the economic chaos of the late 1920s, so they bought a small per fumer y in Budapest’s suburbs, installing Joska as manager a job he apparently hated (that kind of busines s, known in Hungarian as “illatszer tár,” of fered a selection that would be similar to what’s on of fer in present day large -scale pharmacies) . Klara, in turn, set herself up as a seamstres s so the family could make ends meet, a turn of fate that she also resented
The two had met as teenagers, both par t of a friend group that endured af ter they’d finished school Even before they began dating, Joska liked to send Klara colour ful mounted postcards with reproductions of the works of Dutch masters and other German painters images of medieval waifs, Greek myths, angels, and even one of George Washing ton cros sing the Delaware They were addres sed to “Klarika” a term of endearment and signed either Lusztig Jozsef or just Joska
Their circle included Joska’s brother Geza, a rakish character who became a dentis t ; Geza’s future wife, Bosci ; and their younger sis ter, Ilonka, a lively young woman with a mischievous smile and a thicket of light brown hair L ater in life, Ilonka owned and ran a small private lending librar y from the apar tment she shared with her husband, a travelling s ale sman My father’s love of books traced back to the shelve s in their apar tment
The photos that sur vive from this group sug ge s t a comfor table life, with frequent outings and trips to the gentle beache s of L ake Balaton In one pos tcard, dated Augus t 1924, a t went y - four- year-old Klara pose s on a beach in a flapper- s t yle bathing suit with a flounce and low -heeled mar yjane s, her hands clasped behind her back Klara’s expre s sion is demure and her hair normally, and throughout her life, a dense shock of auburn is pulled back tightly “I wish I wouldn’t look so fat in this picture,” she’s writ ten on the back in loopy, childlike cur sive.
Joska Lusztig, 1926
Joska, who wore rimles s wire spectacles, appears self-as sured and open. He had dark, curly hair, receding by his mid-twenties away from a broad forehead, with full checks and a prominent chin There are many images of him posing with friends, young men full of brio, smoking, drinking cof fee, and mug ging for the camera In one picture taken in 1926, the year my father was born, Joska stands jauntily in front of a lush garden. He wears a well-tailored suit, with a puf f and a high-collared dres s shir t A cigaret te dangles from one hand
There was a term in Budapest for young men like Joska: kávéház zsidó, meaning “cof fee house Jew ”
A thriving cof fee house culture had taken root in Pe s t around the turn of the centur y, and the se busine s se s were heavily patronized by Jews . Almos t half of Budape s t’s journalis ts were Jewish, and cof fee house s, many of them owned by Jews, provided co- working space s, as well as a social milieu conducive to writing , arguing , networking , and the reading of local and international newspaper s The se place s also provided a re spite from small or overcrowded apar tments with inadequate amenitie s “Ever y intelligent per son had spent par t of his youth in a cof fee house,” recounted a prominent theatre director in 1926. “ Without it, the education of a young per son would be incomplete ”
As Joska matured, married, and became
a father, he grew stouter and fleshier, but the jovial expres sion didn’t fade with time, at least for a while There are shots of him and Klara as newlyweds, posing amidst the pigeons in St Mark’s Square in Venice, and leaning up against one another af fectionately. Yet the photos Klara kept also include a few undated shots, probably later, that offer a grimmer version of Joska. In one, taken on a cruise boat, he sits next to Klara and stares unsmilingly into the camera Wearing shir t sleeves with suspenders, his hair now much thinner, he hunches slightly for ward as Klara looks out past him, her chin raised with a hint of defiance When I found this image, which has none of the bonhomie of Joska’s earlier years, I wondered about the moment when the photo was taken. There’s no date, but he looks to be in his for ties, worn down by a job he disliked but also a moment this would be the early 1940s in which it had become increasingly perilous to be Jewish
No
first-hand accounts of Joska sur vive
My mother never met him, and her recollections of what my father said about him are sparse He apparently liked to take my father for long walks when he was a boy, but other wise lef t the parenting duties to his wife. There are more stories about Klara. She knew, for example, how to wring a live chicken’s neck, a detail that struck me as exotically old-world Yet Klara was an anx-
ious woman, shor t-tempered and frequently sharp with her son. “She had quick hands,” my mother said, describing her mother-inlaw’s willingnes s to dispense a slap to expres s her disapproval
There’s a s tor y my mother has of ten related about this par ticular habit Klara enrolled my father in dance clas se s when he was in his early teens One of Klara’s friends sent her daughter to the s ame clas s and seemed dis tre s sed that no one was asking the girl to dance A s my mother recounts, “ The friend complained to Klara She s aid, I’m going to talk to Janci [ my father] , and you will see, he’ll ask her to dance ’ S o he went to dance clas s and [ s till ] nobody asked her Klara kept s aying to him, `Go ask her to dance ’” But my father, who had a willful s treak that is apparent in his expre s sion as a child, refused S o Klara smacked him acros s the face, right there in front of the clas s . The emotional s ting of his mother’s slap the humiliation of being dre s sed down in that way in front of a room full of teens did not fade
By that point, my father had become an angr y and rebellious teen His marks plummeted and he fought so much that Klara and Joska moved him several times to new schools “He wasn’t a good scholar and he was always in physical fights with the other boys,” my mother recalls “They just hit each other in the schoolyard. And Klara was always called in ”
What were the fights about? The provocations and the dynamics are lost But the schoolyard problems sur faced in the early 1940s Maybe the careworn, distracted looks on the faces of Joska and Klara, in that photo taken on the ship’s deck, reflect a preoccupying anxiousnes s about their son. Or maybe something else was at play in those confrontations
One clue sur vives My father had been frequently taunted about his surname, including by one of his teachers : “Lusztig, Lusztig,” this man would say, “why are you so lustig ?”
In the original German, “lustig” means happy, funny, or jolly. But in Hungarian, the word at taches a pejorative connotation to an identifiably Jewish surname: laz y. It was a badge of shame, anticipating the literal badges that were yet to come
Adapted exc erpt from No Jews Live Here by John Lorinc ( Oc tober 2024 ) , published with permis sion of C oach House Book s .
Joszef and Klara Lusztig (centre and right), my paternal grandparents, circa the early 1940s
Amarjit (A J ) Manhas, CPA, CA
Stephen Chesney FCPA FCA
H GordonCLee, PA, CA
Jeffrey R Dessau, CPA, CA
Allan Garber, CPA CA
Benjamin J Detsky, CPA, CA
Pei (Peter) Zhang, CPA, CA
g as individuals and corporations
Celebrating over 65 years of excellence
Amarjit (A J ) Manhas, CPA, C A
Jeffrey R Dessau, CPA, CA
Pei (Peter) Zhang, CPA, CA
H Gordon Lee, CPA, C A
Munsoor A Khan, CPA, CA
Michael Hummel, CPA, C A
Acting as individuals and corporations
Stephen Chesney, FCPA, FCA
Benjamin J Detsky, CPA, C A
Lauren Cole, CPA, C A
20 Holly Street, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario M4S 3E8 & 45 Vogell Rd , Suite 510, Richmond Hill, Ontario, L4B 3P6
Tel: (416) 485-6000 www.yalepgc.ca
Celebrating over 65 years of excellence W hen it means more t han anyt hing
Celebrate the new year by creating a lasting
You need a specialist insurer
We' ve been by your side for hal f a centur y and as t ime s and chal l enge s change, we alw ays w il l be Our special ist s share your p as sion for your community and prov ide t he t ail ored product s , tool s and guidance you need to c are for your synagogue s and your congregat ions . Our spec ial ist s make us w ho we ar e V isit us at eccl e siastic al c a
Jewish Communit y Organizations, Synagogues and Schools wish
A HAPPY & HEALTHY YEAR 5785 Shana Tova!
Adath Israel Congregation
Beach Hebrew Institute
Beit Rayim Synagogue & School
Bernard Betel Centre
Beth David B’nai Israel Beth Am
Beth Emeth Synagogue
Beth Sholom Synagogue
Beth Tikvah Synagogue
Beth Tzedec Congregation
Canadian Friends of Akim
Canadian Friends of Ezrath Nashim - Herzog Hospital
Canadian Friends of Hebrew Universit y
Canadian Friends of Yad Sarah
Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel
Congregation Beth Haminyan
Congregation Darchei Noam
Congregation Habonim
Holy Blossom Temple
Israel Bonds/Canada-Israel Securities, Limited
Na ’amat Canada Toronto
Reena
Temple Emanu-El
Temple Har Zion
Temple Kol Ami
Temple Sinai Congregation
The Song Shul
Toronto Board of Rabbis
C U LT U R E K L ATS C H
C O O K BO O KS
Sabor Judío : The Jewish Mexican Cookbook
Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle ( The University of Nor th Carolina Pres s , October 8 )
M ex i c a n J ew s I l a n S t ava n s a n d M a rga ret E B oy l e b r i ng t h e i r cu l tu ra l cu i s i n e i n to yo u r k i tch e n wi t h ove r 1 0 0 re c i p e s fo r S h a b b at , h o l i day s , a n d eve r y ot h e r day o f t h e ye a r
In the book, S tavans and Boyle detail the his tor y of Jewish his tor y in Mexico from 1492 to pre sent day and explore how A shkenazi, S ephardi, Mizrahi, and conver so women shaped Mexican-Jewish cuisine A few of their recipe s that we’re par ticularly excited to tr y : latke s with mole, chilaquile s with mat zah ins tead of tor tillas, and poblanos s tuf fed with guacamole and gribene s
Open Sesame : 45 Sweet & Savory Recipes for Tahini & All Things Sesame
Rachel Belle ( Sasquatch Books , November 12)
Rachel Belle grew up pronouncing hummus the Hebrew way: chhhoumoose The food media personalit y has an Israeli father, which meant her family ate delicious
chhhoumoose on a regular basis As an adult, Belle couldn’t find hummus that tasted as good as the one she ate as a kid ; after a lit tle investigating she discovered that the key is tahini
Eve
A Sweet Year: Jewish Celebrations and Festive Recipes for Kids and Their Families
Joan
Knopf
Nathan
( November 19 )
The American Jewish cooking icon returns with an updated version of her famous cookbook, A Sweet Year, filled with recipes for nine Jewish holidays Nat
With Love and Babka : 50 Sweet and Savor y Recipes for Ever yone's Favorite Braided Bread
Elana Pearlman ( Simon & Schuster, November 19 )
If you thought babka only came in one flavour chocolate Elana Pearlman is here to prove you wrong. The pastr y chef was inspired by her great grandmother’s old babka recipe cards, and her debut cookbook, With Love and Babka, promises to make you a “babka master” with its 50 dif ferent takes on the beloved des ser t The flavours range from dulce de leche to tomato pesto, and the doughs from but ter-blocked to glutenfree There seems to truly be a babka for ever yone in here.
If you worr y about pas sing on Jewish traditions and foods to your grandchildren, this book provides explanations, child-friendly recipe tutorials, and craf ts to explain the reasons behind the chagim
What we ’ re excited to read, watch, listen to, and cook this fall
N O N - F I CT I O N
The Myth of American Idealism : How U S Foreign Policy Endangers The World Noam Chomsk y and Nathan J. Robinson ( Penguin Pres s , October 15 )
A new book by public intellectual and social critic Noam Chomsk y is always a publishing event; this one, almost cer tain to be his last (Chomsk y is 95 and repor tedly in ill health) will be no exception With co-author Nathan J Robinson, the founding editor of Current Affairs magazine, Chomsk y takes readers on a tour of America’s deployments of militar y, financial, and political power acros s the world : there are chapters devoted to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, China, and beyond The lat ter par t of the book is devoted to an analysis of the domestic and international systems that enabled America to reach so far, and an examination of “how mythologies are manufactured ” The timing of the book’s publication, three weeks before the American election, is sure to add extra energ y to the conversations it ignites.
Lifeform
Jenny Slate
( Little, Brown and Company, October 22)
If you’ve not seen Jenny Slate’s phenomenal
standup, go to Netflix and turn on Stage Fright right now. Not only will you see the brilliant comedian and actor successfully make an Anne Frank joke, but you’ll learn about her beautiful, funny, and stylish Jewish family Slate also writes beautiful, funny, and st ylish es says Her last, hard-to-summarize collection, Lit tle Weirds, was an instant bestseller This new volume details her journey into motherhood In characteristically genre -busting fashion, she manifests ever ything from animal gos sip to obituaries to exploring the wild, hard, and life -affirming feelings that come up as one brings life into this world
Roman Year: A Memoir
André Aciman
( Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 22)
You may know André Aciman as the author of the Call Me by Your Name, the book-turned-award-winning film that tells a comingof-age stor y about teenage love Before he ever set foot in the novel’s Italian set ting, the acclaimed Jewish writer was born and raised in Alexandria, Eg ypt His new memoir, Roman Year, chronicles the teenage Aciman transitioning from living his luxurious Eg yptian life to moving into a rented apar tment in Rome with his mother and brother Aciman, now 73, draws on the smallest de -
tails of his adolescence in Rome From the maroon cravat his uncle wore to pick him up from the por t to the sharkskin suitcases his mother brought from Eg ypt, he evokes another time and world
Eventually, Aciman falls in love with Rome, sad to leave it behind when his family moves to the U S a few years later If you don’t have your own Roman holiday planned, this book could tempt you to book a flight
Didion and Babitz
Lili Anolik
( Scribner, November 12)
Paging all lovers of literary gossip: an investi-
gation into the friendship-turned-hateship between the very gentile Joan Didion and the very Jewish Eve Babitz is coming your way soon Babit z, a Los Angeles writer and ar tist, wasn’t exactly a wallflower (She posed nude while playing ches s with Marcel Duchamp, wrote a novel called Sex and Rage, and was known for her leng thy list of famous lovers ) Didion, who wrote ever ything from film scripts to essays and was one of the key figures of New Journalism, was quieter Nonetheles s, a friendship flourished Poignantly, the friends died in the same week in December 2021. Babit lef t behind sealed boxes of let ters between herself and Didion (retrieved by Jewish Family Ser vices, who had to work in hazmat suits to clean out the extreme filth of Babit z’s West Hollywood condo) Journalist Lili Anolik read through them to create por traits of these two extremely dif ferent writers first in an ar ticle for Vanity Fair, and now at greater leng th in book form.
F I CT I O N
The Stor y of the Forest Linda Grant
(Zando – SJP Lit, November 12)
Have you ever wondered what would happen if one of your Rus sian ancestors decided to dance with a bunch of Bolshevik boys instead of picking mushrooms in the forest? Acclaimed British novelist Linda Grant used that bit of her own family folklore to inspire a gripping and beautifully writ ten family saga. The Stor y of the Forest chronicles the butterfly ef fect of Mina’s 1913 forest encounter Af ter her brother, Jos sel, finds out how
enchanted Mina is with the Bolsheviks, he believes he must move his sister away from Rus sia for her safet y The book chronicles their adjustment to life in Liverpool, their sur vival through two world wars, and their family’s ups and downs, all the way through to the present day
The Rest Is Memor y Lily Tuck ( Liveright, December 10 )
Czeslawa was a 14-year-old Catholic girl living in southeastern Poland until, in 1942, the Nazis transpor ted her to Auschwit z and tat tooed 26947 on her arm Fellow prisoner Wilhelm Bras se snapped a photo of her. Lily Tuck saw this photo and wondered : how did a young Catholic girl end up in Auschwit z, where she eventually died? Her book, The Rest Is Memor y, imagines what Czeslawa’s life was like, from her shor t childhood to her death in Auschwit z
O N S C R E E N
Nobody Wants This Streaming on Netflix
September 26
In the materials announcing her new series, Erin Foster says the best thing she ever did was fall in love with a nice Jewish boy, following that up with a very Jewish quip: “I realized that being happy is way harder than being miserable (there’s nothing to complain about) . ” Then, she did a ver y Nora Ephron thing: she wrote a T V script loosely based on it.
Nobody Wants This chronicles the love story
between a rigid rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody) , and straight-talking shiksa, Joanne (Kristen Bell) The show chronicles their hilarious, sad, and frustrating struggle to meld their lives. The internet has been ablaze since Brody’s casting was announced, full of anticipation at finally get ting some “hot rabbi” representation in Hollywood
A Real Pain
In movie theatres
October 18
Jes se Eisenberg has become a triple threat over the years : he acts, writes, and directs His newest project is A Real Pain, in which two mismatched Jewish cousins return to Poland to honour their grandmother Timid David Kaplan (Eisenberg) and obnoxious Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) must contend with old tensions, all while taking in the trauma of their own family history Plus, they have to get along with the rest of their tour group, who Benji constantly alienates by making them do awkward things, such as taking smiling photos with a monument for fallen soldiers Jennifer Grey also makes an appearance as a divorcée who forms a nice bond with Benji
M U S I C
Bob Dylan and The Band : The 1974 Live Recordings
September 20
A 27- CD collection of live Bob Dylan shows from 1974 all of which are backed by Toronto rock legends The Band? Over 400 previously unreleased per formances? A never released version of “Forever Young”? Sign us up It’ll make for per fect listening to calm your ner ves before the American election, or as a primer for the release of the upcoming Dylan biopic featuring another nice Jewish boy, Timothée Chalamet in December
Shana Tova!
A MESSAGE FROM YOUR LIBERAL MPS FOR ROSH HASHANAH:
On October 2nd, as the sun sets, Jewish communities in Canada and around the world will gather to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, marking the beginning of the High Holidays and culminating in Yom Kippur Rosh Hashanah is a time for joyous gatherings of family and friends, where people come together for meals and worship, strengthening their connection with God. It is also an opportunity for introspection, reflecting on the creation of the world, and embracing the coming year with hope and optimism.
This year, as we join in these celebrations, we reflect on the challenges and triumphs of the past year. We recognize how difficult the last year has been for the Jewish Canadian community and Jews around the world. In these times of reflection and renewal, we stand in solidarity with you
Our commitment to fighting antisemitism at home and abroad remains unwavering. We are dedicated to ensuring the safety and security of Canada’s Jewish community and will continue to work tirelessly to create an environment where everyone can live without fear
We reaffirm Canada’s commitment to supporting Israel’s right to exist as a democratic and Jewish state, living in peace and security with its neighbours. May this New Year bring renewed hope and progress toward lasting peace
Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year May this Rosh Hashanah bring blessings of joy, health, and prosperity, and may we all pray for a better year ahead
Shana Tova Umetuka!
UN MESSAGE DE VOS DÉPUTÉS LIBÉRAUX POUR ROCH HACHANA
:
Le 2 octobre, au coucher du soleil, les communautés juives du Canada et du monde entier se réuniront pour célébrer Roch Hachana, qui marque le début des Grandes Fêtes et culmine à Yom Kippour Roch Hachana est une période de rassemblement joyeux de la famille et des amis, où les gens se réunissent pour les repas et le culte, renforçant ainsi leur lien avec Dieu C'est aussi l'occasion d'une introspection, d'une réflexion sur la création du monde et d'un regard optimiste et plein d'espoir sur l'année à venir
Cette année, alors que nous nous joignons à ces célébrations, nous réfléchissons aux défis et aux accomplissements de l'année écoulée Nous reconnaissons à quel point l'année écoulée a été difficile pour la communauté juive canadienne et les juifs du monde entier En ces temps de réflexion et de renouveau, nous sommes solidaires avec vous.
Notre engagement à lutter contre l'antisémitisme au Canada et à l'étranger demeure inébranlable. Nous sommes déterminés à assurer la sécurité de la communauté juive du Canada et nous continuerons à travailler sans relâche pour créer un environnement où chacun peut vivre sans crainte
Nous réaffirmons l'engagement du Canada à soutenir le droit d'Israël à exister en tant qu'État démocratique et juif, vivant en paix et en sécurité avec ses voisins. Puisse cette nouvelle année apporter un regain d'espoir et des progrès vers une paix durable.
Nous souhaitons à tous une bonne et heureuse année. Que ce Roch Hachana apporte des bénédictions de joie, de santé et de prospérité, et que nous puissions tous prier pour une meilleure année à venir
Shana Tova Umetuka!
PRESENTED BY / PRÉSENTÉ PAR
Hon. Terry Beech, M.P. · Hon. Bill Blair, M.P. · Ben Carr, M.P. · Shaun Chen, M.P. · Anju Dhillon, M.P. · Terry Duguid, M.P. · Julie Dzerowicz, M.P. Hon Mona Fortier, M P · Hon Chrystia Freeland, M P · Hon Hedy Fry, M P · Anna Gainey, M P · Hon Karina Gould, M P Hon. Steven Guilbeault, M.P. · Brendan Hanley, M.P. · Ken Hardie, M.P. · Hon. Marci Ien, M.P. · Majid Jowhari, M.P. · Hon. Kamal Khera, M.P. Hon Marco Mendicino, M P · Wilson Miao, M P · Yasir Naqvi, M P · Jennifer O'Connell, M P · Hon Rob Oliphant, M P · Leah Taylor Roy, M P Hon. Ya'ara Saks, M.P. · Randeep Sarai, M.P. · Francesco Sorbara, M.P. · Hon. Dan Vandal, M.P. · Anita Vandenbeld, M.P. · Sameer Zuberi, M.P.
An original comic by Miriam Libicki f or The CJN
The Return of the Strub
The disappearance of the Strub’s pickle brand from retail stores in the past year was the result of Quebec-based owner Whyte’s Foods going into receivership last October put ting a Jewish legacy in limbo, and not for the first time
A cucumber-dunking legacy that began in a back yard near Hamilton in 1929 draws from a family recipe brought over from Rus sia, cour tesy of the great- great- grandmother of Toronto visual ar tist Jonah Strub. “We always had an entire fridge of Strub’s at home,” he recalls, “and that’s what my family would bring to a par t y instead of a bot tle of wine ” The busines s was sold of f in 2008, then rescued in 2012 by Whyte’s, a company founded by Montreal couple Sam and Esther Witenof f in 1936 and whose own factor y for tunes have now soured
Soon af ter Strub’s was sold to Whyte’s, Jonah’s uncle star ted an independent bespoke dill busines s under the name Mart y’s Pickles as one way of maintaining the family legacy His 27-year-old nephew is taking a dif ferent approach During an ar tist residency at the Banf f Centre last year, Jonah imagined his own drag queen alter ego, Loxanne Creamcheese, embodying Jewish foods through glazed stoneware and fake eyelashes, and opted for the one synonymous with his surname. The name of the piece? Dressed to the Brines n
Testimonial from Tessa and IrvingResidents of V!VA Thornhill Woods
Wehave been residents at V!VA Thornhill Woods for two wonderful years, and we could not be happier. After 55 years of marriage and a long stint in our own home for 45 years, we decided it was time for a change. We sold our house and moved into a condominium, which seemed like the right choice at the time.
However, Tessa had an accident that required a wheelchair to recover, and suddenly, living in that condominium was far from convenient. Everyday tasks became challenges and driving soon turned into an issue. Thankfully, a friend recommended V!VA Thornhill to us. Our family came to visit and encouraged us to look, but we hesitated at first because we felt we were not ready to make that move.
When we finally visited V!VA Thornhill, it shattered our preconceived notions of retirement communities. We discovered a vibrant and welcoming place that felt far from the typical image we had. We realized you do not need to hold onto everything from your past; this community offered something much richer.
What attracted us the most was the flexible monthly arrangement. V!VA guarantees that if we are not happy, they will help us find a place that suits us better—this is what they call the “Happier Here” guarantee. Knowing we had that support made us feel secure in our decision.
Tessa loves curling up with a good book in my own library here. What truly stands out about living at V!VA is the balance between solitude and social connection. If we want some quiet time, we take it; if we want to engage, there are concerts, game nights, and we enjoy long walks in the beautiful gardens.
One of our biggest fears before moving was losing independence, but we have found the opposite to be true. The staff members are incredibly kind and attentive, always going out of their way to ensure our comfort. Each morning, Tessa wakes up to a hot cup of tea, a simple pleasure that makes her day start on a wonderful note.
Since moving here, we have met so many wonderful people. It is such a joy to connect with others; for instance, recently we met a resident from Scotland, which brought back so many memories of Tessa’s experience growing up in England.
Our family visits us frequently, and it feels so natural to
gather with them in the garden or at Perks Café. They will call us and say, “Mom, we’re in your garden or café!” and we will head down for a lovely visit—it is just like meeting them at Tim Horton’s, but better! The café makes fresh cookies daily which is a nice treat.
Irving notes that the soups and desserts here are nothing short of incredible, and we receive a new menu every week, keeping our meals fresh and exciting.
Living at V!VA Thornhill has transformed our days. We used to think retirement would drag on, but here, time flies. Every day is filled with choices, whether it is spending time in the gazebo, enjoying a drink at the Pub where we often play Rummikub, or taking a bus trip to Walmart, the casino, or other special outings. We can even catch a movie at the V!VAplex whenever we feel like it.
Our lives have become rich with connections and experience since we made the move to V!VA Thornhill Woods. We truly feel Happier Here™.
Are you ready to discover the vibrant community at V!VA Thornhill Woods? We would love to invite you for a personalized tour to experience the warmth, freedom, and joy that Tessa, Irving, and many others have found here.
V!VA Thornhill Woods Retirement Community is located at 9700 Bathurst St. in Vaughan. For more information, visit www.vivalife.ca/viva-thornhill-woods or call 905-417-8585.
