Generations of Sunday school teachers have turned Hanukkah into the story of unified Jewish bravery against an anti-Semitic Hellenic empire. Settlers in the West Bank tell it as a story of how the Jewish hard-core defeated the corrupt, assimilated Jewish masses. Rabbis later added the lamp miracle to give God at least a bit part in the proceedings.

But there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices. 

(Hat tip: Lesley).

It is certainly true that there are a number of ways to interpret the story of Chanukah. It can be read as a tale of the triumph of religious extremism over secularism. It can be read as an anti-assimilationist tale. It can be viewed as an anti-imperialist struggle, or as a divisive civil war.

All of this tends to get lost in the shuffle among most people who simply view Chanukah as the “festival of lights”, a generic, commercialized Jewish version of the equally-commercialized Christmas, a simple excuse for retailers to make money. A view would have likely incensed the anti-assimilationist Maccabees to no end.

Sure, at its core, Chanukah is just another one of those “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat” holidays that fill the Jewish calendar. And there’s nothing wrong with a little celebration. But it’s important to know what, and why, we’re celebrating.

Happy Chanukah, all!

“Amidst this tremendous media storm stirred up by imprudent remarks of mine on Swedish television, I beg of you to accept, only as is properly respectful, my sincere regrets for having caused to yourself and to the Holy Father so much unnecessary distress and problems,” Williamson wrote.

In other words, “I’m not sorry for what I did; I’m just sorry it caused you headaches”. Has he been taking lessons from Mel Gibson?

The school employed 85 artists and had 1,800 students learning painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, calligraphy, printmaking, design, jewellery, ceramics and more.

[ . . . ]

The facilities are state of the art(s). Fletcher cited the Saidye’s printmaking and ceramic studios as among the best in Montreal.

“The school is unique and vital,” he said. “It’s essential that it keep going.”

There’s a web petition circulating on the subject, but it’s unlikely to do much in itself. As with any issue, the real question will come down to dollars and cents. By raising awareness, we might hope to get the big machers interested in the cause. Perhaps someone will step in at the eleventh hour to save these programs that are so unique and important to the community.

I’m not religious by most definitions, but I’ve always liked the concept, and particularly the notion that we need to be forgiven by people before we can be forgiven by G-d. The latter part is personal, but the former is, I believe, a prerequisite for all people of any religion or background who live in a society. See, a sin against G-d, such as failure to keep Shabat or eating pork, could only potentially affect the person committing it, so it’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves what we choose to observe. However, sins against our fellow human beings cause real harm to people. It’s the so-called “victimless crime” argument; a crime becomes more serious due to the consequence of committing harm to someone else.

So, in that spirit, I ask forgiveness from anyone reading this who I may have wronged in the past.

And, if you’re in the process of doing the same, and one of the people you happen to have wronged last year is Stephen Colbert, here’s how to make amends:

Gibson’s Con Artist Productions is developing “Flory” for ABC, based on the true story of a Dutch Jew named Flory Van Beek and her non-Jewish boyfriend who sheltered her from the Nazis, The New York Times and Variety reported in Wednesday editions.

Critics claimed Gibson’s blockbuster film “Passion of the Christ” was anti-Semitic, a charge Gibson has denied. Gibson’s father also is on the record denying that the Holocaust took place.

“For (Gibson) to be associated with this movie is cause for concern,” Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Melrose Park, Pa., told the Times. “He needs to come clean that he repudiates Holocaust denial.”

Now, I’m not saying that Gibson isn’t perfectly capable of making a good movie even set against a Holocaust backdrop. But I’m very, very skeptical, to put it mildly.

A very happy New Year to all my MOT readers. L’Shana Tova.

Wiesenthal took on the task of hunting down former Nazis at a time when nobody else would. He started off working alone. Today, his organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is a major NGO dedicated to combatting worldwide antisemitism.

Simon Wiesenthal is proof that one person can make an enormous difference. He may be gone but his legacy will endure for a very long time.

By the way, Canadians looking to make a contribution to the Center can use this link.

It is a day to remember the 6 million who perished.

But beyond that, it is a day of reflection: on the world that let it happen, on Jewish identity before and after the Holocaust, on Israel and its role, and on where we go from here.

Sadly, this day gets more and more relevant each year, as antisemitism rises and the world sits idly by.

Meryl has some must-read links. Jewlicious has the story of the MTV Holocaust commemoration special, which is probably not as irreverant as it sounds (at least I hope not). Allison has second-grade humour with a bitter Holocaust twist. And Jewschool promotes a rally against the genocide going on in Sudan’s Darfur region – only the latest chapter in the countless episodes of “Again” that have occurred since we resolved “Never Again”.

Horror at the atrocities that will be shocking no matter how many times we hear or read about them.

Pride that the Jewish people is today so strong and is standing at the gates of the former death camp, declaring with our presence that we are alive and that the Nazis failed.

Anger at the world that pays lip service to the anniversary and condones and promotes antisemitism the rest of the time.

Disgust that Jewish people are pitied by the world for being weak, but loathed by the world when we are strong.

Sadness at the thought that the generation bearing witness will soon be gone, outnumbered by the racists and deniers, and apprehension at what this will mean for “never forget”.

Fear for the future of Israel and for the future of freedom in the world.

Disappointment in the human race’s seeming inability to learn from the past.

As the world remembers and reacts, mostly I wonder about the lessons of the Holocaust. What has the world really learned? In the wake of horrors in Kosovo, Bosnia, the DRC, Sudan, North Korea… how can we claim that we’ve learned anything? Since the beginning of time, human beings have shown a cold genius in inventing new ways to cruelly murder one another. Was the Holocaust just another part of that?

Today the world remembers. But it does not learn.

I disagree. And I’d like to explain why, by addressing his arguments:

A/ This isn’t the US, private schooling is not something that should involve getting a second mortgage. If you are absolutely hell-bent on sending your offspring to private school yet can’t afford it right off the bat, make a few sacrifices if you value your child’s education that much.

Private Jewish school tuition, last I checked, runs in the neighbourhood of $6,000 a year or thereabouts. Per child. That may not force most families to get a second mortgage, but it’s not pocket change either. And when you factor in the fact that many families are paying this for two, three, four kids at a time, you can see how it quickly spirals out of reach for parents quickly.

B/ Wouldn’t a reduction in our overall level of taxation provide people with more than enough spare money to do this, rather than providing selective credits, vouchers, etc. from which only taxpayers with children could profit? (To coin a phrase, wouldn’t that be democracy in taxation?) Moreover, how many new civil servants would have to be hired to administer the granting of vouchers, or other things along those lines?

Of course it would, and that argument can be made about pretty much any government subsidy program. In general I believe in less government spending and greater tax cuts.

But education is something that is government-funded, at least in the public sector. Everyone pays school tax, whether they send their children to public schools or not. So parents who opt for private schools are in essence double-taxed, as they pay both for the private school and for a spot in a public school that their kids aren’t using.

C/ If parents want to send their children to fully-subsidised schools that won’t cost them much of anything, they already have that option in the form of public schools. Sure, they may not be all that they’re cracked up to be, so maybe some sort of public education reform might be in order (and one may argue that the creation of a public school curriculum that actually teaches something and is available to all might be a more equitable and responsible use of our money).

I think there’s some confusion about the Reid plan here. The intention was never to fully subsidize private schools (i.e. no tuition), it was to fully subsidize the secular portion of the private schools’ education. The religious portion – which is not available or offered in the public system – is subsidized at 0% and would continue to be. So essentially, parents would be paying only for the part of the program that isn’t available in the public system.

Quebec used to have religious schoolboards – Catholic or Protestant. If you were neither, you could either send your kids to one or the other (usually Protestant), or you could fork over the dough for private school. Now, we have linguistic schoolboards, which is a step in the right direction, but the public schools still offer Catholic or Protestant religious education courses. The Jewish option doesn’t exist in the public sector, so the private schools fill a void. And parents who select them usually aren’t doing so because they’re snobby or find the schools posh (a laughable thought, considering the state of disrepair of my high school), but because they want their kids to learn something about their background and culture that they can’t get in the public system. Ditto with the Greek schools, which are fully government-subsidized in their secular programs – students can’t learn Greek language or culture in the public system, so these schools fill that void.

So sure, parents have a choice of where to send their kids to learn the 3 Rs. But they don’t have a choice if they want their kids to have some cultural or moral education as well.

D/ If private education becomes financed entirely (or mostly) by the Government and available to all, who’s going to be left to go to public schools? Considering that private schools are located mainly in large urban areas and their surroundings, I don’t see how inhabitants of rural areas are supposed to benefit from your position on democracy in education.

There would still be plenty of people left in the public system, out of choice or convenience. If the Quebec government increased secular funding to the Jewish schools to 100%, thousands of Catholic kids wouldn’t suddenly enroll. In fact, it’s doubtful if the schools’ admission would go up at all, considering that parents who can’t afford the tuition currently receive financial aid. Anyone who wants to send their kids to Jewish school is probably already doing so.

But the broader issue is the underlying claim that if private schools are more accessible, they’ll steal students from the public system. But by creating a sort of “protectionism” for the public schools, it gives them a disincentive to improve or to hold themselves to higher standards. Give parents a choice and schools will have to shape up to compete. Many already have. It’s doable.

E/ Government funding of private schools only makes some sort of sense if public schools are privatised and forced to live up to the same standards as other private schools. I can’t quite see that happening, though. No matter what, it sort of negates the point of private schools, i.e., that they’re not public.

There’s no need to privatise public schools. There is a need to fund public schools better. And the one argument against the Reid plan that I think is valid is that of opportunity cost: the money going to the Jewish schools is needed more by the public schools. There’s something to be said for that. But that’s a problem of chronic underfunding, not one of an ideological impasse. In theory, the public school system should be able to meet the needs of most people to the greatest degree possible, with the private system filling in the holes where needed.

For the record, I’m not exactly a cheerleader for the Jewish school system. Grade school was fine, but by high school it was a bit much. But I do think that parents ought to have the option, which is why I was in favour of the Liberal plan.

Those asking me for clarifications ought to be satisfied now… hopefully.

Far from a last-minute decision made behind closed doors, Charest said, allowing Jewish day schools to form an association with public school boards and boost their secular funding is an idea that has been in the works for more than 10 years.

The premier angrily denied reports the decision was related to financial contributions to the Quebec Liberal Party by members of the Jewish community.

“There is absolutely no link between political financing and the decision taken by the government,” Charest said at a late- afternoon news conference. “If some people want to piece together events to say there is an appearance, they can always try to do that, but I am here to say clearly that’s not the case.”

Sounds liek a standard-issue denial. But there’s much more than simple political criticizing going on here.

First of all, the decision had initially been approved by two public schoolboards, who signed on:

And Reid was acting with the approval of the two school boards involved, the Lester B. Pearson School Board and the Commission Scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys, which voted in favour of the deals at their own meetings and passed the requests up the line, Charest said.

Both schoolboards would also get additional funding for participating. But little attention is being paid to that.

Also, there’s a clear double-standard at play, since Greek schools in Montreal are already 100% funded:

Charest said that despite criticism the government is creating a precedent, the Greek community already has associations with school boards that entitle its schools to more funding. The Liberals had decided to give private Jewish schools associated status as early as 1994 but lost power to the PQ, which did not implement it.

[ . . . ]

[Former PQ education minister Pauline] Marois added that in the nine years the PQ was in power, the government refused just such a request from Jewish leaders for reasons of fairness and because the government wanted to get away from the religious aspects of education as part of the transformation from religious school boards to linguistic ones.

“My biggest fear is that this has the reverse effect sought by the Jewish community and by the minister, that it raises the objections we see today and it leads to intolerance between one group and another,” Marois said.

“The minister is creating a climate of tension, insecurity, and is not acting in the interests of all.”

Marois admitted, however, that despite her criticism of the deal with Jewish private schools, the PQ did nothing to reverse the same associated status the Greek schools enjoyed when the PQ was in power.

So funding Greek schools does not create a “climate of tension”, but funding Jewish schools does. That’s crystal clear, I suppose.

Marois even went so far as to suggest that the Jewish schools should refuse to sign on for the plan, ostensibly to avoid being criticized by the likes of her party.

Anyone notice a pattern here? When people “suspect” the Jews, it’s beacuse we brought it on ourselves by doing things that “create a climate of tension”. Marois’ comments were a bit more subtle than Parizeau’s infamous “money and the ethnic vote” speech… but not much.

The plan is simple, on the face of it. Jewish schools, previously getting 60% of their funding from the government, will now get 100%. In exchange, they sign a deal promising “cultural exchanges” with public schools, in order to foster better community relations and understanding.

But Charest’s government would never escape scrutiny for this move. Any sympathy for the Jewish community’s added financial burden of providing security for schools in the wake of the UTT firebombing has long faded. Reverting to type, the Quebec public sees a potential scandal involving Liberals, Jews, and money… and smells blood.

This from the Gazette’s Don Macpherson:

But, as everyone but apparently the government could have predicted, the increase is likely to worsen relations between Jews and non-Jews.

Other than the government, Jews and other religious groups using it as a precedent, nobody supports the decision. As the chief editorialist for the usually Liberal-friendly La Presse, Andre Pratte wrote yesterday the government managed to fan not one controversy but three: public funding of private schools, public funding of ethnic schools and the place of religion in publicly funded schools. And it awoke “the old demon” of anti-Semitism. The title of the editorial was an incredulous single word:”Incomprehensible!”

In other words, it’s bad policy because it gives fodder to the antisemites.

Now, Charest’s government is being attacked by the PQ for supposedly granting this extra money as a payout for the Jewish community’s support of his party:

Quebec Opposition leader Bernard Landry demanded Tuesday that Premier Jean Charest reconsider his decision to increase the funding of private Jewish schools from 60 to 100 per cent, which is the same as public schools.

Landry and Parti Québécois education critic, Pauline Marois, also called for Education Minister Pierre Reid to step down from cabinet because of his poor management of the education portfolio.

Landry said that Charest must make public his reasoning behind the decision in order to eliminate any appearance of a conflict of interest linking major contributions from the Jewish community to the Quebec Liberal Party.

Bernard Landry went on camera and called for Pierre Ried’s resignation. Never mind that there’s zero foundation. Never mind that the PQ has a long history of taking care of its friends (metro to Laval, anyone?) or that the Jewish community has its own reasons for supporting the Liberals and doesn’t require a cash incentive. Never mind that there are no ways to prove the allegations.

The Societe St Jean Baptiste is calling for an inquiry into the matter because it may have been “politically motivated”. Anyone who knows the SSJB knows how ridiculous that is.

Personally, I think an increase in public education funding should have been a higher priority. But I also know from experience that most of the Jewish day schools are desperately cash-strapped. Far from the stereotypical “posh” private schools, most of the buildings are falling apart, the facilities are in urgent need of replacement, and the textbooks are so old that my grade 10 history book had only 9 provinces listed in Canada. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating… but not by much.

Many families who send their kids to Jewish school can’t afford the tuition, and the schools work out financial aid for any family who needs it. Given all that, I can’t imagine any of the Jewish schools turning up their nose at more money.

The problem isn’t the added cash. It’s the fact that the government can pour money into union coffers, other ethnic communities, rural communties and just about anyone else’s pockets without people batting an eyelash. After all, we’re the most heavily-taxed province in Canada and there’s no shortage of people getting handouts. But the minute a dime goes to the Jewish community, it’s an “appearance of conflict”.

Tonight was the first candle of Chanukah. It may not be that big a deal, and it certainly gets ridiculously commercialized and blown out of proportion because of its proximity to Christmas. But I still like Chanukah. Eight days of yummy unhealthy greasy food and presents… what could be bad?

I won’t wax poetic about the deeper meaning of the holiday, or the victory of freedom over tyranny or the political implications of celebrating revolutionaries or even the random thought that this may have been the first war in which oil was a big deal. I’m sure you can find all that and more elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Instead, I’ll talk about latkes. Because Chanukah, like all Jewish holidays, fits the common theme: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.

My mom makes potato latkes grated in the processor, with a bit of onion and flour mixed in with the potatoes. And they’re fried small and nice and greasy and crisp, allowed to soak on paper towel so that they’re just slightly oozing with oil. With a little applesauce, they’re irresistible.

To all my Jewish readers, happy Chanukah!

But the big question going into this election was, would they or wouldn’t they?

The Jewish vote has been heavily Democratic since time immortal. But in light of 9/11, the war on terror, the situation in Israel and the alignment of the far left with Israel’s enemies, would some lifelong Jewish Democrats shift their allegiance to Bush? Would committed Democrats react like Meryl and Lynn and vote for Bush because of international issues? Or would they act more like Allison, putting these issues aside to vote for the candidate who they still feel is best on domestic issues?

Ha’aretz is reporting that Bush picked up 22% of the Jewish vote this election. That’s up 3 percentage points from the 19% he got in 2000. So it seems that there were at least some Jewish voters who switched allegiances.

On the other hand, that’s still 78% of Jewish voters casting their ballots for Kerry. And the “why” isn’t exactly a mystery:

They predicted “anticipated conflicts” between the Republican majority on Capitol Hill and the Jewish community on issues such as separation of church and state, abortion, gay rights, and same-sex marriage – issues, one Jewish leader said Wednesday, on which “the vast majority of the Jewish community disapproves of the Republicans’ positions and views.”

The voting broke down similarly for Jews as it did for Christians, with the more secular voting for Kerry and the ultra-Orthodox religious allying more closely with Bush:

According to unconfirmed results, Bush won 75 percent of Jewish votes in two large Brooklyn voting precincts that have a substantial concentration of Orthodox Jews, compared to a 25 percent turnout for Kerry.

Ultra-Orthodox activists predicted Wednesday that the final results will prove that other voting precincts in Brooklyn with an ultra-Orthodox populace overwhelmingly supported Bush.

[ . . . ]

“In the current elections, Orthodox Jews played within the community the role of evangelicals in the general electorate,” Furst said. The difference is that evangelicals make up about 40 percent of America’s population, while the percentage of Orthodox members in the Jewish community does not exceed 10 percent.

That may be so, but it’s telling that the division line in the sand seems to be religious versus secular, not one religion versus another. (The Muslim vote, of course, is an exception. An estimated 93% of Muslims voted for Kerry.)

At any rate, the big story here hasn’t materialized the way some people thought it might. The Jewish population did not become conservative overnight, abandoning decades of liberal values in order to vote for a president whose support for Israel is – at least in part – due to his evangelical Christian beliefs. Considering that there was no Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic ticket this time around, getting only 3% less of the Jewish vote than four years ago can hardly be called a defeat for Kerry.

I had to answer that I wasn’t really sure. Thanksgiving isn’t all that big a deal here – it’s not like it is in the US, for example – but most people still get together for a family meal or something. And yes, plenty of Jewish people do so as well. But upon reflection I realized she was right; the vast majority of my Jewish friends and relatives just treat Thanksgiving like a convenient legal holiday.

The best I can figure, it’s because we’re all holidayed out. After Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succot… by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we’ve had more than enough of big family meals and holidays for a while.

However you spent your Thanksgiving weekend, hope it was a good one.

9. Play anagrams with the English side of the Machzor text.

8. Start a rumour that a high school classmate is engaged to a political figure… but refuse to say which one.

7. Insert random words into the songs where everyone sings along, and see who notices.

6. Make eye contact with a relative on the other side of the mechitza and try to communicate using rudimentary sign language.

5. Say hello to all the people who you haven’t seen since last year and have no intention of seeing again till next year, and score them on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how convincing their fake conversation is.

4. Debate what would be more appropriate for the the President of the congregation who deems it necessary to bore everyone to tears with his 45-minute speech during Kol Nidre services – a hook, a band, or a slow clap.

3. Start a chorus of boos when the same president stands up the next night at ne’ila to give yet another speech 5 minutes after the shofar was supposed to be blown.

2. Sleep. Especially effective during the Rabbi’s sermon.

1. First row of the men’s balcony section method: Start a betting pool as to how long the Rabbi’s sermon will be, and buy the winner a steak dinner at a popular “kosher-style” restaurant after the holidays.

I’m not sure why we do this. Maybe it’s because, unlike happy holidays, there isn’t really an appropriate greeting for Yom Kippur (in English, anyway). It doesn’t seem appropriate to wish someone a “happy” Yom Kippur – it’s not a happy holiday. So really, what most people think of when they think Yom Kippur is the fasting.

Of course, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We refrain from food and drink on Yom Kippur so we won’t be distracted by it… in theory, anyway. In practice, the lack of food and drink has become the focal point of the day. We discuss it endlessly, rather than focusing on the real meaning of the day. We make a much bigger deal of it than it really is, talking about it the same way Canadians spend half of every winter complaining about the weather. The lack of food is such a distraction, in fact, that I can’t help but think that permitting food on Yom Kippur would direct more people’s attention towards prayer.

Perhaps instead of “have an easy fast”, we should say “have a meaningful fast” or something along those lines. Or use a greeting that has nothing to do with fasting.

G’mar chatima tova.

Jonathan’s Blogburst on the subject has a number of thought-provoking posts on the theme of the future of the Jewish community in America. So I figured that today would be a good opportunity to put a few of my own thoughts to paper (or to screen, as it were) on the subject of the Jewish community in Montreal. Most of what I will say in this post is not politically-correct. But if you want political correctness, go read a different blog.

I am a fourth-generation Montrealer, I consider myself thoroughly Canadian… but most definately not thoroughly (or even partially) Quebecoise. Sure, I live in Quebec, but Quebecois is less about location and more about culture… and the Quebecois culture has never been particularly welcoming to Jews – especially anglophone Jews.

From the overt antisemitism of Quebecois figures such as Lionel Groulx, to the WWII conscription crisis and identification of Quebec with fascism, the history of this province is rife with antisemitism. The people here will be extremely offended if you bring it up or call attention to what has become one of Quebec history’s dirty little secrets… as historian Esther Delisle found out the hard way.

Things are changing. Montreal is a truly multicultural city, and many of the barriers faced by Jews until midway through last century have disappeared. But Quebec society – especially outside Montreal – continues to be relatively closed compared to the rest of North America. As Jacques Parizeau’s comments on the evening of the 1995 referendum defeat told us, we will always be considered part of the “money and the ethnic vote” that most Quebecois nationalists feel keep costing them their dream of self-determination. Quebec continues to have the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Canada. This narrow-minded attitude creeps up now and again, as a reminder that, despite their outward facade, many Quebecois politicians and leaders have not truly overcome this antisemitism. The bottom line is, we will never be “pure laine” enough to truly fit in here. And there’s still a long way to go before that will truly change.

The Montreal Jewish community, too, is changing, though. More anglophone Jews are making the move down the 401 to Toronto, or to the United States, resulting in a shrinking, aging community. Partially compensating for this is the leaps-and-bounds growth of the francophone Sephardic Jewish community, which is young and dynamic and is changing the face of Montreal Jewry.

Antisemitism is coming from new directions now, too. Mirroring the worldwide trend, much of it is originating from the growing Arab and Muslim communities, especially on university campuses where the traditional student Left has adopted the Palestinian cause. Incidents such as last April’s UTT firebombing remind us that we must be ever vigilent.

Despite all of that, I love living here. This is a great community with lots to offer. I’m a proud Canadian and I love my country, and I’m a proud Montrealer and I love my city. We grumble about how small the community is and how everyone knows everyone else, but in a way, that too is kind of nice. With over 90,000 members, the community is certainly still large and vibrant, and is one of the least culturally-assimilated Jewish communities in all of North America (with the exception of the ultra-Orthodox). During community-wide events like the March to Jerusalem or the Yom Ha’atzmaut parades, we can really see the strength of the community, but its backbone are the people who volunteer tirelessly to keep things running and strong.

Happy arrival day to our US neighbours. Today, as all days, I’m very proud of my identity as a Canadian, Montrealer, and Jew.

Sylvain Abitbol, president of Montreal’s Federation of Jewish Community Services, said the arson attack [at U.T.T.], “combined with the defacing of many of our cemeteries and the rise in anti-Semitism in the world, led us to decide to raise the security level at our schools.”

Security agents will patrol the community’s 22 schools and 40 campuses at a cost of three million dollars (2.3 million US). The Jewish community is raising money to pay for the extra security.

“I worry for Montreal, but it is obvious that there are worries at the national level and my colleagues in other cities are asking themselves the same questions,” Abitbol said. “They all are considering the same type of measures.”

Will the money be raised? Of course – and then some. It’s going to be the theme of this year’s annual Federation CJA campaign, and the community is sure to be generous.

But just because they will succeed in raising the money doesn’t make it right. That $3 million should be spent on pressing community needs, such as helping the poor, seniors, social programs, advocacy, and Israel support. Not on security guards to make sure that nobody tries again to blow up our elementary schools.

I find it sad that the community needs to foot the bill. I find it even sadder that schools need security guards in the first place. This isn’t the Canada I know and love.

Evidently incited by the presence of an Israeli flag wrapped around the shoulders of Tamar Schuri, an Israeli student from Ben Gurion University, the first assailant ran at the group while its members were being guided through a model gas chamber and crematoria and began swearing and hurling anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli insults.

“He told us to go back to Israel and said that we were stupid and should be ashamed to walk around with an Israeli flag,” testifies Maya Ober, a 21-year-old Polish student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and member of the Polish Union of Jewish Students (PUSZ), which organized the 16-day summer learning program along with the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS).

After the initial altercation, a second assailant grabbed Ober by the arm. “One of the guys held me by the arm and wouldn’t let go,” says Ober, who lost several members of her family at Auschwitz. “I was afraid. I couldn’t move and I didn’t know what he was going to do.

“I was shocked. Although I have met anti-Semitism many times, I never expected to meet it at Auschwitz, where so many of my relatives were killed,” she says she spoke to the assailants in French and that in addition to being “brutish and vulgar,” their sentiments “made absolutely no sense.”

That’s the thing about antisemitism. It “makes absolutely no sense”. But that hasn’t helped it disappear in the last 2000 years.

(Via Damian Penny, who astutely points out that we’re about to hear some lame excuses as to why this is “anti-Zionism, not antisemitism”).

In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the state can’t regulate personal religious beliefs.

“A claimant need not show some sort of objective religious obligation, requirement or precept to invoke freedom of religion,” Justice Franck Iacobucci wrote for the majority.

“It is the religious or spiritual essence of an action, not any mandatory or perceived-as-mandatory nature of its observance, that attracts protection.

“The state is in no position to be, nor should it become, the arbiter of religious dogma.”

B’nai Brith, which intervened in this case, had the following reaction:

Allan Adel, National Chair of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, reacting to the news, stated: “We are satisfied with the decision of the Supreme Court, which has applied a broad interpretation to the Charter guarantee of freedom of religion and believe it to be in the best interests of all Canadians. The Succah ruling is an important, groundbreaking case that champions the cause of religious freedom in Canada and will have important ramifications well beyond the immediate facts of the case.”

Personally, I agree. While not religious, I tend to think that anyone should have the right and freedom to practice a religious belief that doesn’t harm or infringe upon the rights of someone else. The condo association had no real reason to ban the succahs, and people want to build them on their own private property. There are a lot of fine lines and open questions when it comes to religious freedoms, but this ruling makes sense.

The Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy Public Affairs Committee (CIJA-PAC), Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC), and the Quebec-Israel Committee (QIC) have conducted interviews with the party leaders and selected local candidates on a number of issues including Israel, antisemitism, terrorism and community security.

In general, I’m uncomfortable with anyone who purports to speak for an entire community. But to their credit, these groups have not so much as issued an endorsement; they have asked questions that they think might be of interest to many Canadian Jews, and posted the answers, leaving it up to readers to make up their own minds and draw their own conclusions (for the most part).

This is not going as far as the Canadian Islamic Congress, which has openly been calling on all Canadian Muslims to vote NDP – or strategically Liberal, has published such articles as the one entitled ten reasons not to vote Conservative, and has issued its now-infamous grading of Federal MPs, which seems to rank MPs mainly by their stance on Israel. I, for one, find it extremely insulting that the CIC assumes that Canadian Muslims are incapable of making up their own minds on the issues.

But whether Muslim, Jewish, or any other religion, none of us are party members in a parliament without free votes. No, we are all individual citizens, fully capable of evaluating the candidates and issues, and drawing our own conclusions. Bloc voting may sometimes work inside the House of Commons, but outside it, we are all more than just a label. Not all Jews must vote the same way, any more than all Muslims must vote the same way.

So with all those disclaimers, I’ve posted the transcripts anyway… read them and draw your own conclusions.

I won’t post excerpts because I urge everyone to read the entire thing. (Via Meryl Yourish).

Former chief Sephardi rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron yesterday advocated dismantling the Orthodox rabbinate’s monopoly over marriages – the first time any leading rabbi associated with the rabbinical establishment has publicly urged such a step.

[ . . . ]

In his speech, Bakshi-Doron gave several reasons why he thought the rabbinate’s monopoly on marriages must end. First, he said, the law has become irrelevant, as growing numbers of Israelis are choosing to marry in civil ceremonies either abroad or in Israel (the state recognizes civil marriages conducted overseas, but not those conducted locally). Second, he said, the law encourages hatred of the rabbinate, since it is seen as the primary expression of religious coercion in Israel.

Israel has been trying to work out the meaning of “Jewish democracy” for decades. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, and other religious and secular leaders will speak out and work to change this law.

But today was Yom Ha’Shoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day. See Lynn and Imshin for some poignant reflections. And while you’re at it, pay a visit to the Yad Vashem website and see some of the exhibits currently showing in the museum.

Never Forget.

Jews have been tireless in using the Holocaust to teach about man’s inhumanity to man. Has it made a difference? Ask the 1.7 million Cambodians slaughtered between 1975-1979 by communist lunatics. Ask the over 800,000 Rwandans cut down by machetes — in a mere 100 days — in 1994.

Clearly, efforts to universalize the lessons of the Holocaust have utterly failed. Would a forced visit of Hutu killers through Washington DC’s Holocaust Museum saved a single Tutsi?

No one predisposed to genocide will be shamed into human decency by exposure to Schindler’s List. More than that: Even humanists who mourn Hitler’s Jewish victims have, in the blink of a relativist eye, condemned Israel for eliminating Ahmed Yassin, though he was single-mindedly committed to a new genocide.

[ . . . ]

We are loathe to equate today’s foes with the Nazis. But as Yad Vashem’s Yehuda Bauer has argued, “Nazism, Stalinist communism, and radical Islam are different from each other, but they also have a certain similarity: All three aim, or aimed, at exclusive control over the world, all three oppose or opposed all expressions of democracy, and all three attacked Jews…” On this day, it is worth remembering that in Mein Kampf Hitler predicted terrorism and force would be victorious over reason.

The battle continues.

To that, we can add the Armenian Genocide, the hundreds of thousands (or more) killed in the Congo, the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, and the thousands of North Korean “political prisoners” being subjected to untold horrors in the Gulags. These are, sadly, only a few examples.

Was it realistic to say “Never Again” after the Holocaust? How could it be, when millions of years of human history teach us that the one thing human beings keep doing is finding new ways to instill horror and cruelty on one another? How could we think that the Holocaust would scare humanity straight, when it was only the “next step” in a long line of massacres, wars, and the wiping out of entire peoples?

There’s still an emotional connection to the Holocaust today. The events of 50 or 60 years ago are close enough in time that there are still survivors to tell their tales, to share their pain and to remind us. There are still memorials standing where the death camps once were. We can visit them, witness them.

But how long until the Holocaust becomes just another dry chapter in a history textbook, too remote in time for emotion? How long until future generations talk about it with the same detachment as they do the Crusades, or the Roman conquest?

Never.

Because maybe we haven’t learned. We haven’t figured out “Never Again” and perhaps we never will. But we have figured out Never Forget.

We haven’t forgotten the events of two or three thousand years ago. We’ve been observing holidays, retelling stories and prayers, tearing our clothing on Tisha B’Av and reciting the story of the Exodus on Passover. We weep over events of two thousand years ago with the same emotion as though they happened yesterday.

If there’s one thing us Jews have, it’s a very long collective memory. It unites us as a people as we remember the chapters of our shared history.

And if it hasn’t ensured a “Never Again”, then we have at least ensured that we will “Never Forget”. Maybe it’s a first step.

When you search for the word “Jew” in Google, you no longer get an antisemitic hate site as the top result. Thanks to a web campaign to create links like Jew and Jew, those two sites are now ranked 1-2. The aforementioned hate site has dropped to third, plus when you click on it, you get a message saying the person’s account has been suspended.

Individual site owners may not feel like they have much power, but when everyone works together, things can change for the better. It’s encouraging.

From The Testimony of Lucille Eichengruen:

Interviewer: What happened after 1933?

Answer: In 1933 the climate changed. There were restrictions, there were ugly incidents – we walked to school, children would beat us up. Children would yell at us and make nasty remarks. We were told to be quiet on the streetcar. We were told not to draw attention to ourselves, and slowly and gradually people began to leave. Students, teachers – it was a very unsettled situation. It was constant turmoil and for a child it was not conducive to learning.

“We were told not to draw attention to ourselves.” It’s what Jews used to do. It’s what Jews had to do. It’s what the world was used to Jews doing. That’s why the German police told its Jewish population to stop wearing any outward signs of Judaism so they wouldn’t be attacked by thugs — last year. It’s one of the attitudes that got six million of us slaughtered then, and countless thousands more murdered over the centuries.

We don’t keep our heads down anymore. We won’t.

The Nazis didn’t want the Jews to draw any positive attention… but they encouraged negative attention. Which is why they imposed the yellow star armband or patch. They wanted the Jews to keep their heads down – but to be easily identifiable for humiliation and harassment.

The yellow star was a symbol of shame and fear. But the outward symbols of Judaism that many Jews wear today – kippot, magen david or “chai” necklaces or even souvenir t-shirts from Israel with IDF logos or Hebrew lettering – are anything but. They’re symbols of pride. They’re saying, you can’t label us because we’re proud to advertise who and what we are!

I wear my magen david necklace all the time. (These days I also wear an Israel flag pin on my jacket lapel.) But even I removed my necklace before going touring around Europe. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to risk breaking or losing it – same as the other jewellery I left at home. But if truth be told, I was also a little nervous about travelling with the star of david around my neck through the same countries that forced their Jews to wear yellow stars only a few short decades ago. I’m not proud of that. Far from it. But I didn’t want to ask for trouble either.

Now it’s two years later, and if I had to do it again I’d probably wear the star. Because I’ve learned that sometimes you have to wear your colours with pride, in order to let the world know that you will never again allow them to make you wear their colours with shame.

Symbolism, of course, was all that the uprising created. There are next to no survivors from those who fought. It took years of starvation rations, slave labour, and ghetto “liquidations” before a handful got together the spirit to even launch a fight. And they knew at the time that they were signing their death warrants. But it didn’t matter, because they knew they were dead anyway.

But it would be wrong to assume that there is anything less heroic about those who did not participate… those who lived in other ghettos, or were rounded up and shipped to death camps… those whose small acts of heroism sometimes allowed them or their loved ones to survive – even if only for one more day.

The Jewish Virtual Library chronicles the amazing story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which has gone down in history as a symbol of resistance to tyranny despite insurmountable odds.

Police arrested the spiritual leader of a small Islamic community in Budapest Tuesday during a visit President Moshe Katsav and suggested he was planning to bomb the city’s Jewish museum. Two Syrians also were detained on related charges.

[ . . . ]

Police identified the suspect as a 42-year-old dentist of “Palestine origin” and said he was the spiritual leader of a small Islamic community in Budapest. He is a naturalized Hungarian citizen.

The suspect, whose name was not released, was charged with being involved in “preparation for a terrorist attack,” said Police Lt. Col. Attila Petofi.

The irony of this couldn’t possibly be clearer.

With all the extra attention being called to this inauguration, the spotlight has fallen on Hungary’s chapter in the terrible events of the Holocaust. This year is the 60th anniversary of the deportation of nearly all of Hungarian Jews – who numbered over 600,000 – to ghettos, slave labor, and death. Few survived to tell the story.

Hungary was under Nazi occupation, which has allowed a sort of absolving of any kind of feeling of collective guilt in subsequent years. The fact that Hungary fell under another tyrannical regime – this time Soviet – after the war even further served to allow people to distance themselves from their past. Because surely Hungary suffered under both Nazism and Communism. But, as the new Holocaust Center’s spokesman, Balint Molnar, says, this doesn’t tell the whole story:

“For 60 years, there has been no debate about the responsibility of Hungarian society for the Holocaust. Under communism, everything was blamed on the Germans and a handful of Hungarian extremists. There was no discussion over the role of the wartime Hungarian authorities, the lack of resistance and the wholesale looting of Jewish property.

“The Holocaust in Hungary was not the private tragedy of the Jews,” he said. “It is part of Hungarian history, as much as the revolutions of 1848 or 1956. Even now it is hard to comprehend the profound damage that has been done to Hungarian society.”

The fact is, the vast majority of the Hungarian people stood silently by as the Jews were shipped off to slaughter. Many actively participated and helped the Nazis. There was, after all, a Hungarian branch of the Nazi party. The Holocaust wouldn’t have been possible without the help or at least tacit acceptance of the populations of the countries in which it took place.

One of my great-grandmothers was Hungarian Jewish. Her family came to Canada and, because of that, my grandfather was lucky enough to be born here. So instead of being caught up by the war, he attended high school here in Montreal, got married, had kids, went on to be an accountant and found a company, retire, get a condo in Florida, and play a lot of golf. I can hardly even contemplate what would have happened if his mother stayed put in Hungary. I’m sure he can’t either.

Hungary’s role in the Holocaust isn’t a new research topic for world historians and interested parties. It’s been studied and written about extensively. The US Holocaust Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies even held a symposium back in 1999 to examine Hungary’s role in the Holocaust in more detail. You can listen to some of the talks online. But for Hungary as a country, the opening of the museum – the first such memorial ever in Budapest – is an important milestone. It speaks volumes about the country’s willingness to finally come to terms with its past.

And the attempt to bomb it speaks volumes about the challenges the world’s Jews are still facing today.

Mauthausen was built with a half-million rocks which 150,000 prisoners – 18,000 was the capacity – carried up on their backs from a quarry 800 feet below. They carried it up steps so steep that a Captain and I walked it once and were winded, without a load. They carried granite and made 8 trips a day… and if they stumbled, the S.S. men pushed them into the quarry. There are 285 steps, covered with blood. They called it the steps of death. I saw the shower room (twice or three times the size of our bathroom), a chamber lined with tile and topped with sprinklers where 150 prisoners at a time were disrobed and ordered in for a shower which never gushed forth from the sprinklers because the chemical was gas. When they ran out of gas, they merely sucked all of the air out of the room. I talked to the Jews who worked in the crematory, one room adjacent, where six and seven bodies at a time were burned. They gave these jobs to the Jews because they all died anyhow, and they didn’t want the rest of the prisoners to know their own fate. The Jews knew theirs, you see.

[ . . . ]

This is my Mauthausen letter. I hope you will see fit to let Bill Braude and the folks read it. I would like to think that all the Wachenheimers and all the Friendlys and all our good Providence friends would read it. Then I want you to put it away and every Yom Kippur I want you to take it out and make your grandchildren read it.

For, if there had been no America, we, all of us, might well have carried granite at Mauthausen.

I hate to post only an excerpt. Read the whole thing.

Yom Ha’Shoah is in six days. This letter made me think of something I want to do on this site. For the next six days, starting today (six to symbolize the six million), I want to post some sort of story or account to remember the Shoah. Today, thanks to seeing this letter, the story is Mauthausen.

Almost two years ago, on my tour of Europe, I visited the remains of the camp. They’ve turned it into a museum, you see. A museum of death, for us tourists to stop off at in between the beer hall and the white water rafting. Just another tourist attraction.

I had been learning about the Holocaust for nearly my entire life. I heard firsthand accounts from survivors, read books, saw films, went to Yad Vashem and to the Holocaust Museum in Washington… but nothing prepared me for that experience. I hadn’t been before. Not on the March of the Living or on any of the trips that took groups to Poland or Germany or Hungary or the Czech Republic to bear witness. No, there was just this one experience and it caught me completely off guard.

That day, I wrote pages and pages in my journal. I couldn’t stop writing, even for hours afterwards. Every impression. Every detail.

And I also took photos. I debated long and hard about that one. On the one hand, it seemed almost disrespectful to walk around with a camera taking snapshots. But then I realized it was probably the most appropriate thing I could do. To take photos. To write. To see it for myself and to show the photos to as many people as possible as if to say, here, here is proof that these horrors and atrocities happened and the more people who record witness accounts or take and publish photos or write about it or make films about it, the more the world remembers and the better we can counter the propagandists and antisemites who would claim otherwise.

So here are the photos that I took that day. I have a hard time looking at them myself. And these were of the memorials… taken nearly 60 years after the camp was liberated. But I still have a hard time looking at them. And I don’t know if you will want to either. But it’s important to witness, to remember.

Because my sentiment after walking out of the gates of Mauthausen – walking, you understand, free as a bird and getting on a bus and moving along to the next stop of our tour – was the same as Fred Friendly’s: It could have been me.

Really, if you think about it, whatever sick freaks did this didn’t time it very well. Not only is the school is closed for Passover anyway, but there’s gonna be a lot of angry Jews discussing it at their seders and demanding action.

In the blogosphere, I see that LGF and Burnside have picked up the story. And Stefan Sharkansky wonders whether officials are too politically-correct to release information that would seem to implicate Palestinian-sympathetic vandals as the responsible parties:

The CBC and the Toronto Star might not want to confront the unpleasant truth about the motives and identities of the arsonists, but at least some Canadian journalists are doing their jobs:

The CTV network quoted sources who said the notes denounced recent attacks against Palestinians, including the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, and threatened further attacks.

The contents of the note and the name of the “unknown organization” that signed the note should be released.

If – and this is a big if – what CTV said is true about the content of the note, then it must – and will – be dealt with. Especially considering the note threatened future attacks, which is truly chilling:

“Our goal was only to sound the alarm without causing deaths. . .but this is just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue,” the letter reads.

There’s no telling whether the assholes who did this were using it as an excuse or cover-up, or whether they really are affiliated with some Hamas-sympathetic group. Not yet anyway. My sense is that the police will release details when they see fit, and until then, they might be keeping them under wraps to help them do their jobs. And anything that increases the chances of apprehending the responsible parties is okay with me.

And the political reactions continue. Here’s PM Paul Martin:

“This is not my Canada. This is not our Canada,” he told reporters in Burlington, Ont.

“They are attacking all of us. And it is only if we are unequivocal in that statement that we join together that we are preserving our values.”

And of course, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (a UTT grad himself) wasted no time ringing in:

“As students, we experienced anti-Semitism, but it was an anti-Semitism of ignorance, of stereotype, of prejudice. What we have witnessed here today, it’s anti-Semitism of hatred, racism and violence.”

“We will not be intimidated and we will act and we will bring the full force of the law to bear against those who commit these cowardly hate crimes,” Cotler told reporters.

And Mayor Gerald Tremblay:

“These acts will not be tolerated in our city and must be denounced as emphatically as possible,” he said.

It’s good that people are taking this seriously.

Never once in eleven years of Hebrew school did I feel unsafe in my classroom (except for maybe the fear of exams, or a test tube exploding in a science lab). The current students, who are pretty much exactly like me, won’t have that luxury.

I’m just plain angry now. There should be a special section of hell reserved for anyone who targets or frightens innocent children.

Another update: It seems Michael Demmons has picked up the story. And Ted Belman at Israpundit posted about it, and included an e-mail from Lori Anders, who was a grade ahead of me in high school. The Globe and Mail, Gazette, and La Presse all have plastered the story prominently on their front pages. And the AP story is being picked up off the wires by publications as remote as the Kansas City Star.

Gotta love Jewish humour. (Via Dave).

At this moment in time, many Jews who love and support Israel hear the soft voice within, asking the question to which Kofi Annan recently alluded in Madrid: Can we alone be right, while the whole world around is wrong?

[ . . . ]

Well, yes. If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. From our first patriarch to Israel’s precision-targeted destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which laid the foundation for a successful Operation Desert Storm and the rescue of Kuwait, our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong.

This goes hand in hand with a question I’ve long viewed with some degree of fascination: what’s the difference between what’s right and what’s merely popular?

We hear it from our earliest days: “if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” The implication is, of course, that there’s some absolute standard of “right” that doesn’t rely on a majority-rule. That the lone voice of conscience is right, and that the angry mobs are wrong. And that we ought to be able to tell the difference, even when it’s lonely.

But then, isn’t democracy founded on the principle that the majority opinion is the right one? And if democracy is such a beautiful thing, then how do you reconcile the notion that it systematically allows the majority to make decisions that go against the minority? I mentioned homosexuality before; is gay marriage “wrong” because the majority of people oppose it? Or if the majority support it, does it become “right”? To put another way, if Quebec held a referendum tomorrow asking if the Jews should pay extra taxes, and it passed with a 70% majority, does that make that “right”?

Clearly not. History has proven pretty conclusively that the majority opinion can be wrong, and the minority opinion is often right.

But how do we determine these external standards? In a practical sense, how do we judge?

Oh, it’s easy for religious people. To them, “right” is an absolute that comes from the laws of the bible, and “wrong” is anything that goes against that. But of course, most of the majority-wrong decisions in history have been – and continue to be – justified by religion. The terrorists on September 11th believed that they were “right” too and that their religion supported their deeds. (The next time I hear “homosexuality is wrong cause the bible says so, I’ll be happy to point that out again).

So religion obviously isn’t any great way to judge right and wrong… though one assumes that a religious person can also be a good person.

I used to think of the analogy of a white light that was seen through the eyes of every human being, but all wearing cellophane-coloured glasses. If 99% of the world had red glasses, and 1% of the world had blue glasses, then the light’s red and the person who sees blue is crazy. That then becomes the truth. The real truth is irrelevant, I argued, because we have no way of knowing or seeing it. But wouldn’t that mean that it’s in fact impossible for the Jews to be right and the whole world to be wrong? Wouldn’t they be “right” just because there’s more of them? After all, where is this external standard of rightness coming from? If we need a test of time or a perspective of history to see who was really right all along, as Rabbi Fischer argues the Jews have been throughout history, then how is it possible to know how to act “right” today? Without the benefit of hindsight, how do we know if our unpopular position – perhaps dictated by conscience – is really the right one?

It’s not that simple. A conscience is really nothing more than a set of values and experiences – some taught, some perhaps innate – that looks at each situation and comes to a conclusion of how the decisions fit with what we already know. My conscience says that Israel is right and the Palestinians are wrong. Sheik Ahmed Yassin’s conscience (assuming he had one, which I highly doubt) said the opposite.

That’s the thing about life. In the movies, the bad guys know they’re bad. They laugh evil laughs. They talk about their plots of world domination. They dutifully don their black hats in the Westerns and identify themselves as the “bad guys” so that we can readily identify them. But in real life, the bad guys think they’re the good guys. We all think we’re the “good guys”. Self-righteousness is perhaps more dangerous than evil.

There’s no easy way to reconcile that one. But I’ll just say that yes, there is some standard of right and wrong that doesn’t depend on a popularity contest. No, I’m not entirely sure how we determine that standard, other than looking at things like not harming others, promoting quality of life, and acting with positive intentions. But I also know that Rabbi Fischer is right when he says that history will pass judgement on the world for how it’s treating the Jews today, just as it has for over two thousand years.

Coincidence?

It’s a crazy world we live in.

Just as we are busy denying that the Jews control the world, it turns out that we do. Look what a wonderful job we have done publicizing Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. Only we could take a film of unrelenting torture – by all accounts not a pleasant experience – entirely in Aramaic and Latin, and turn it into one of the best-selling movies of all time.

Haven’t seen it. Have no plans to see it. And somehow I think the publicity was generated more by the Christian religious groups than the Jewish ones. But why add fuel to the fire?

The crazy Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef has made some new ridiculous extremist pronouncements for Purim.

He says it’s forbidden to dress in a costume of the opposite sex for Purim, it’s forbidden to wear a Kaffiyeh (i.e. no Arafat costumes) and …. as a crowning touch, now it’s forbidden to give a Purim basket to a member of the opposite sex (the baskets, known as “mishloach manot” are a Purim holiday tradition, a basket filled with cookies and candy that you give out to friends and neighbors)

Yep, who knows what that kinky basket-exchanging can lead to…..

Hmmm, I wonder how he would’ve reacted to my sixth-grade Hebrew teacher dressing up as a nun?

Visas will not be issued for the following groups of people:

• An Israeli passport holder or a passport that has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp.
• Those who don’t abide by the Saudi traditions concerning appearance and behaviors. Those under the influence of alcohol will not be permitted into the Kingdom.
• There are certain regulations for pilgrims and you should contact the consulate for more information.
• Jewish People

Oh well, there go my travel plans. Damn.

I guess I’ll just have to settle for going to Israel instead. (Countdown: 4 1/2 months – woohoo!)

Update (Friday Feb 27): Damian notes that the restrictions listed above – as well as the others regarding women – have disappeared from the Saudi tourism site since yesterday. I notice that they still appear in Google’s cache, though I wonder how long that will last too.

But whatever one thinks of Mel Gibson, Meryl has the scoop on Mel’s dad, giving credence to the theory that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Even if there’s no direct evidence that Mel shares his father’s extremist views, in light of the film and surrounding controversy, can you really blame a person for wondering?

How much? Well, we’re about to find out:

Jewish Montrealers will soon be asked to give saliva to see how stressed they get when they read about the Palestinian-Israeli situation in daily newspapers.

Professors from Carleton University in Ottawa are looking for people willing to stick a cotton ball in their mouth to measure how irate they become while reading stories about this subject. They hope to get about 60 participants.

[ . .. ]

Matheson said she watched her Jewish co-workers’ faces turn red in anger last year as they read stories about the situation in Israel.

“My Jewish colleagues were getting very upset at the news coverage,” she said. She could see their stress levels rise.

I don’t think there’s much doubt as to what the results will show. But then what? Where is the line between healthy stress – getting angry at an injustice and channelling it towards making a change – and unhealthy stress – letting anger over the news take over your life? At what point do we have to shut of CNN and turn on the Simpsons, and just say “enough”?

It might give us an indication if we look at mainstream Israeli society. Israelis have been living with the constant fear of war and terror for decades… and yet the most popular shows on TV are consistently fluff like this. In fact, I probably talk about current affairs or politics the LEAST with my Israeli friends. Our conversations are about much more important things… like scummy boyfriends who don’t return text messages, or the latest episode of Friends.

So while it’s great to be informed, it can get to be a bit much. Every so often, let’s take our cue from the Israelis and just relax… focus on celebrity sightings, magic wands, or politicians’ personal lives.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has released the report in defiance of the EU’s refusal, and it is available online. Read it here.

Small wonder the EU is so critical of Israel… it beats introspection any day of the week, doesn’t it?

Asper, 71, was the owner of CanWestGlobal, the Canadian media conglomerate that owned, among other things, Global Television and the Montreal Gazette.

“The company feels a sense of profound loss on the passing of our founder, who distinguished himself as a visionary business leader, a caring leader in his encouragement and financial support of worthy causes, and as a champion of Israel,” a news release sent to staff said.

Unfortunately, Asper became a symbol to the anti-Israel crowd of every rotton Jewish stereotype in the book: a wealthy capitalist, owner of a company fuelling media convergence, and an outspoken supporter of Israel. It is my hope that, with his passing, they will maintain a modicum of respect for the man.

I highly doubt it, though. They haven’t demonstrated their ability to be respectful.

Asper was a controversial figure to some, but all he really did was become successful and then use his success to attempt to advance causes he believed in. He will be sorely missed.

Oh well. 364 days till next Yom Kippur.

Incidentally, I haven’t been blogging much this week because I’ve been sick. There’s been a lot going on, but frankly, I haven’t been able to keep up. Blogging will get back to normal as soon as I am.

In the meantime, enjoy the holiday.

Must be tough being both gay and Jewish. Kind of a double-minority-whammy. At least this guy’s got a good sense of humour about it.

“At first, neither the politicians, nor the courts, nor the intellectuals, nor the media, nor public opinion, nor civil society — none of them said anything,” said Simon Kouhama, president of the Jewish Citizens Forum, an organization founded largely by Sephardic Jews. “We began to ask if we could even stay in France. Were we really French citizens? Were we Jews? We had the feeling we were a people apart.”

Worth a read.

Even more important than convenience – the bus made three stops in Outremont, picking up people almost from their doorsteps – is that the bus service offers kosher food, separate seating for men and women, and prayer time, Werzberger said.

The bus service has existed for about 30 years, he said, and nobody had complained about it until a small group of residents started lobbying council.

“There is a small group of people in Outremont who have made it their raison d’être to make life difficult for the Hasidic community. They come and bang in at the councillors and sometimes you just cave in to this kind of pressure.”

The credibility of the residents who keep complaining about the Hasidic community is long gone. The only question is, will the borough council cave into their pressure?

The CST blamed the sharp rise in anti-Semitism on anti-war campaigners who linked the Iraq conflict to the situation in Israel. Mike Whine, CST’s media director, told the BBC, “The Iraq war fed anti-Semitism because groups from across the political and social spectrum alleged that the war was fought for `Zionist’ interests.”

Whine said anti-war protesters “consistently linked the issues of Iraq and the events in Israel and Palestine.”

The English and the French may not like each other much, but it seems that something they’ve got in common is their hatred of Jews. But before we get too smug over here in Canada, our own numbers aren’t looking that great either.

The rise in antisemitism may not be surprising, but it does nobody any good to be complacent either. This is a red flag that’s been waving in front of our faces for a couple of years now. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that red flags are ignored at our peril.

It’s a day to take a moment and reflect. A day to light a candle in remembrance of the six million. This is what the US Holocaust Memorial Museum says about Yom Hashoah:

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day that has been set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign. The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, created by act of Congress in 1980, was mandated to lead the nation in civic commemorations and to encourage appropriate Remembrance observances throughout the country. Observances and Remembrance activities can occur during the week of Remembrance that runs from the Sunday before through the Sunday after the actual date.

While there are obvious religious aspects to such a day, it is not a religious observance as such. The internationally-recognized date comes from the Hebrew calendar and corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on that calendar. That is the date on which Israel commemorates the victims of the Holocaust. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah.

The Holocaust is not merely a story of destruction and loss; it is a story of an apathetic world and a few rare individuals of extraordinary courage. It is a remarkable story of the human spirit and the life that flourished before the Holocaust, struggled during its darkest hours, and ultimately prevailed as survivors rebuilt their lives.

For more information, a few good links to visit are the Nizkor Project, the website for Yad Vashem, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s website.

Perhaps not incidentally, Simon Wiesenthal announced his retirement from six decades of work pursuing and catching Nazi war criminals. The 94-year-old and his organisation are responsible for apprehending about 1,100 war criminals, and he is finally ready to quit:

“My work is done,” he said. “I found the mass murderers I was looking for. I survived them all. Those who I didn’t look for are too old and sick today to be pursued legally.”

It may seem like a small event, but Wiesenthal’s retirement is probably symbolic of the turning point that the world finds itself at today. Normally quiet to almost the point of being reclusive, Wiesenthal has spoken out this year about current events, including the riot at Concordia that prevented Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking:

Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has urged Concordia to reschedule last month’s speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that anti-Israel protesters have succeeded in restricting freedom of speech for the entire student body.

“I never thought I would live to see the day when there would be more open expression of hate against Jews than in the 1930s,” said Wiesenthal in a letter to Rector Frederick Lowy. “Tragically, that is the situation today around the world.”

Perhaps this is never more relevant as right now. The last generation of Holocaust survivors is ageing, and sadly, there will soon no longer be anyone alive to bear witness. The horrors of the Nazi regime will become just another chapter of history, remembered by Steven Spielberg movies and the hundreds of archives that are frantically being assembled by museums and historians. And the more remote in time it becomes, the easier it will be for the racists and revisionists to twist history. And the easier it will be for history to repeat itself.

At the same time, the world is witnessing an outbreak of antisemitism that – while it would be unfair to all to compare it to the Holocaust – is clearly heightened.

Tomorrow’s challenges are already crystallizing today. It will no longer be sufficient to point to history, because too many people are loudly rewriting history to make it fit their prejudices and perspectives.

I’ve frequently heard criticism that there is too much focus among Jewish organizations on the Holocaust, and that we ought to move forward after so long. That may be, but anyone who moves forward without remembering history is bound to repeat it. We say that so often, it’s become somewhat of a cliché. But it is also an irrefutable truth.

Yes, this is a turning point in history. Something to think about in the coming hours of Yom Hashoah.

P.E.T.A. has gone WAY overboard. Again. It is absolutely one thing to campaign for the rights of animals. It is entirely fine – even noble to put yourself on the line to help those inhabitants of this planet who are unable to help themselves. But it is positively disgusting to use pictures of Jews in German concentration camps next to pictures of chickens in cages and say one is as bad as the other. I really don’t know what to say about this.

Frankly, neither do I.

Update: It seems the campaign’s creator is Jewish and claims his family lost members in the Holocaust. He also claims that the campaign is being funded by an “anonymous Jewish philanthropist”. I wish I could claim to be more surprised.

The Anti-Defamation League has denounced the campaign, by the way.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, says he was “blackballed” from speaking at Sunday’s rally because he has criticized one of four coalitions sponsoring the event for spreading “anti-Israel propaganda” at recent peace rallies.

[ . . . ]

The local peace movement’s intramural spat erupted nationally Wednesday when Lerner publicized his situation in a Wall Street Journal opinion article. It is all the more striking because the San Francisco-based Lerner is perhaps one of the most vocal Jewish critics of Israel in the country.

Many anti-war activists have unspoken agreements not to publicly air their differences, in part because they feel infighting distracts from the more urgent cause of opposing U.S. policy on Iraq. But Lerner said the anti-war movement will grow in strength only if it is able to seriously critique itself.

He charges that San Francisco rally organizer Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or A.N.S.W.E.R., uses anti-war rallies to blast Israel’s human rights record while ignoring Palestinian violence, a tactic that he characterized as both lopsided and anti-Semitic.

The article goes on to explain that while the vast majority of the anti-war protesters are simply against war in Iraq, Jews attending these events often find themselves in a “hostile” environment that is strongly anti-Israel. The pro-Palestinian cause has been linked to the anti-war cause, and those who support the latter and not the former find themselves unwelcome, and asked to keep their opinions to themselves.

Some democratic movement.

Canadians talk proudly of our tolerance and fair-mindedness. Often a tone of moral superiority insinuates itself into our national discourse. But these virtues are of fairly recent vintage – we have little to be smug about.

Mulroney summarized the dark history of antisemitism, and Canada’s shameful participation – including PM Mackenzie-King’s praises of Hitler, and the shameful “None is Too Many” immigration policy that slammed our doors shut to refugees in desperate need. He then brought his speech back to the present, blasting the current leadership for refusing to take a moral stand:

Anti-Semitism is born in ignorance and nurtured in envy. It is the stepchild of delusion and evil. The ongoing success of Canada’s Jewish community is consequently often misunderstood, misrepresented and misreported. The rise in the number of attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in Canada and the pathetic but startling ravings of Saskatchewan Indian leader David Ahenakew testify to the intractability of the problem, and the constant need for vigilance, consistency and strength in dealing with the entire sweep of anti-Semitism.

In Dante’s Inferno it is noted that ”the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis, strive to maintain their neutrality.” Prime ministers are not exempt from this.

After his speech, Mulroney also blasted Chretien for its fence-sitting on Iraq:

“I don’t think anybody can be impressed by what has taken place so far in Canada,” he said.

“Our traditional allies -the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and so on – are going one way and we appear to be going another with the Russians and the Chinese.”

“We have to be moving now to convey to the (United Nations Security Council) our view that this evasion by the Iraqis is no longer acceptable and we want action and that we will support action taken by the United States, preferably, of course, through the Security Council.”

Widely blamed for an international recession, hated for the introduction of the infamous GST, and criticized for a laundry list of sins, Mulroney did not leave office as Canada’s most popular politician. The Conservative Party has been in freefall since his departure. But in this case, he happens to be right. Neutrality is another way of siding with the status quo. As long as the Liberals bury their heads in the sand and refuse to take a stand, Canada is tacitly voicing approval for the current state of affairs. And, as Mulroney pointed out, this current state is unacceptable.

A story is told of a Jewish man who was riding on the subway reading an Arab newspaper. A friend of his, who happened to be riding in the same subway car, noticed this strange phenomenon. Very upset, he approached the newspaper reader, “Moshe, have you lost your mind? Why are you reading an Arab newspaper?”

Moshe replied, “I used to read the Jewish newspaper, but what did I find? Jews being persecuted, Israel being attacked, Jews disappearing through assimilation and intermarriage, Jews living in poverty. So I switched to the Arab newspaper. Now what do I find? Jews own all the banks, Jews control the media, Jews are all rich and powerful, Jews rule the world. The news is so much better!”

(via Laurie).

The poll results indicate, among other things, that:

• Nearly one third of Americans fear that a Jewish president may have divided loyalties when dealing with the state of Israel. (This apparently relates to the announcement by Senator Joseph Lieberman that he will seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2004).
• Nearly one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that Jewish control of the media distorts the news.
• Twenty percent of Democrats and Independents tend to “view Jews as caring only about themselves,” compared to only 12 percent among Republicans.
• 34 percent of Americans agree that “Jews have too much influence on Wall Street.
• 37 percent believe that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus Christ.

The poll results were disturbing to Gary Tobin, President of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco:

Gary Tobin, the president of the institute, said the results appear to reverse a post-World War II and post-Holocaust trend of declining anti- Semitism in America.

The academic survey of 1,013 randomly selected adults was conducted from May 2-7, 2002. But Tobin suspects that the trend has only deepened since then because of the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the buildup toward a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“We’re not saying that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic,” Tobin said.

“But college campuses have become bastions of anti-Israelism. In places like Berkeley or Santa Cruz, the demonstrators’ signs say ‘Stop Israel’ and ‘Stop the Jews.’ That’s what we picked up in this survey.”

To me, it’s appalling that Tobin even had to include the disclaimer about not saying that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. That he had to say that at all indicates that Jews everywhere are on the defensive – about Israel, about our beliefs, our politics, and our identity.

This defensiveness is precisely what the existence of the State of Israel was supposed to eliminate. Zionism instilled a sense of pride in being Jewish, and all over the world, Jews no longer had to hide or be ashamed of their heritage. At least that was the theory.

The poll results are showing the opposite trend, though. And it’s scary as hell.

We are now experiencing “a very explosive moment in Jewish politics,” one that is rocking the traditional Jewish affiliation with the Democratic party and creating an undercurrent of anti-Semitism, said Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic magazine.

[ . . . ]

For the left, the methods employed are of secondary importance to the otherwise justified anti-imperialist struggle, so the Palestinian use of suicide bombings are seen as no more than a “misguided tactic,” Beinart said.

Beinart described how traditionally liberal U.S. Jews have recoiled from that view and how they are moving away from their traditional liberal affiliations.

[ . . . ]

With the outbreak of the current intifadah, “this consensus started to crack. The liberal media have gone in one direction and the Jewish community has gone in another. The liberal media have gone left and the Jewish community has gone right.”

One of the reasons I find this so interesting is that I don’t think much has changed on the side of the Republican party. All the reasons that many Jews didn’t vote Republican before still exist. If anything, the party has become even more conservative. The party is still heavily mortgaged to interest groups such as the NRA and the far-right Christian lobby groups.

But now the same people who were wearing Gore-Lieberman kippot in shul on Rosh Hashanah 2000 are switching sides. And to me, what that indicates is not so much a shift in the population, but a shift in the issues.

Nobody agrees with a political party on every single issue. It’s impossible. So people tend to focus on the issues most important to them at the time, and vote for the party that is closest in position to their take on those issues. There’s no question that in the wake of September 11th, the outbreak of mideast violence, the escalating situation in Iraq, and the general shift in international politics, we’re living in a different world. So while four years ago, people might have chosen the party they felt most closely reflected their views on social and domestic issues (i.e. the Democrats), now suddenly foreign policy is the key issue and the Republicans seem to have the more sensible position on that score.

The time for silence and passive acceptance is over. Now is the time to speak out. And now is the time to take back our universities.

Agreed.

Look for comments from the usual antisemitic suspects about the “Jews taking over the world” in, oh, about 30 seconds.

Anti-Semitism thrives because slandering Israel is the only aggression against a minority that is encouraged by the rules of political correctness.

Along similar lines, universities have allowed Middle East departments to disseminate anti-Israel propaganda to an extent unimaginable a generation ago, representing violations of intellectual honesty and academic impartiality that may be unique in our academic life.

Worth a read.

Judaism is much more than a set of religious beliefs and practices. Secular Humanistic Jews have a strong connection to Jewish history and culture and are committed to the future of the Jewish People. Secular Humanistic Jews rely on reason, rather than faith, to understand the world and believe that human intelligence and experience are capable of guiding their lives.

Secular Humanistic Jews believe that Jewish history is a human saga, a testament to the significance of human power and responsibility. We identify with the experience and culture of the Jewish people and we celebrate our Jewish identity at holidays and special moments of our lives using practices, rituals and language that are consistent with our secular beliefs and ideals. We enrich our knowledge by studying the collected teachings and experiences of the Jewish people, as well as modern ideas based on rational inquiry.

There are other interesting quizzes at SelectSmart too. According to the Mideast Selector Quiz, I’m an average Israeli (but choice #2 was Israeli far-right wing, which makes me wonder how they define “far right wing” based on the answers I provided). Last place in that quiz was Palestinian suicide bomber . . . I wonder if they track IP addresses of anyone who takes the quiz and gets that as a result? Perhaps they should start.

Oh yeah, and apparently I should move to Alaska, read Nietzsche, and vote for the Marxist-Leninist party in Canadian politics (as you can see, some of these quizzes are more accurate than others).