Spring 2024

Spring 2024 | Aviv 5784 Am Yisrael Chai! The Canadian Jewish News

As we gather with family and loved ones around the Seder table to celebrate the eternal and unyielding strength of the Jewish People, we pay tribute to those Israelis who are being kept away from their Seders, their families, and their lives. Here at home, Jewish Canadians are facing extraordinary challenges. Now more than ever, for the sake of our collective future, we must work together to confront them. Head to www.cija.ca/4morequestions to include Canadian Jewish Advocacy as part of your Seder.

Canadian. Jewish. Advocacy.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations of Canada – UIA, representing Jewish Federations across Canada.

We hope that spring brings hope for peace and better days ahead Happy Pesach THIS YEAR IN JERUSALEM

Join us in Jerusalem May 20-22, 2024

For more information: Nomi Yeshua, JFC Executive Director nomiy@jerusalemfoundation.ca / 416 922 0000 www.jerusalemfoundation.org

What’s inside

THE FRONT PAGES 10

Whose stories are we really telling on Passover? AVI FINEGOLD

14 Q&A: Dr. Karen Devon talks MAID in Canada 20 The news editor keeping track of the latest protests LILA SARICK

FEATURES 28

Ellin Bessner on reporting the story of her life 40 Lessons learned from living in Israel in 2024 VIVIAN BERCOVICI 50 When the Israeli hockey squad came to Toronto JONATHAN ROTHMAN WITH PHOTOS BY SHLOMI AMIGA THE BACK PAGES 60 Between the covers of the popularity of polyamory PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY 70 A peek under the first official Toronto police kippah

Contributors

Jonathan Rothman (p.50) is a multidisciplinary kibbitzer who might also be The CJN’s first staff news reporter to speak Brazilian Portuguese. He has written for Spacing, Exclaim! and Now Magazine , reported for CBC Radio , worked as an editor for Yahoo! and was a creative events producer at The Walrus —all the while aspiring to spend more time in tropical and Mediterranean locales. Phoebe Maltz Bovy (p.60) is the co-host of Bonjour Chai , and also the Feminine Chaos podcast with Kat Rosenfield, making her the newest Canadian citizen dedicated to talking about the culture wars. A contributing columnist for the Globe and Mail along with her role at The CJN, she’s writing a book on female heterosexuality published by Signal, an imprint of Random House Canada. Avi Finegold (p.10) founded the Jewish Living Lab in his native Montreal, and launched the Bonjour Chai podcast on The CJN Podcast Network in March 2021. He recently relocated to Deerfield, Illinois, with his wife Rabba Rachel Kohl Finegold and their three daughters, which gives him plenty of time to formulate contrarian rabbinical views while driving around the suburbs of Chicago.

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Greetings from our new CEO: Michael Weisdorf

The Canadian Jewish News

A s the vibrant hues of spring unfurl around us, I’m reminded of new beginnings and the promise of optimism this season brings. With it, we embrace the opportunity to embark on new journeys, both personally and profes- sionally. It is also a time for reflection as the Jewish community comes together to celebrate Passover. This past winter, two decades into my professional career, I joined The Canadian Jewish News with a mix of emotions. On one hand, I felt exhilaration upon joining a publication that I remem- bered reading weekly at my grand- parents’ house. Yet, on the other hand, I was joining The CJN at a time when antisemitism reached a new peak in my lifetime. Jewish voices have been si- lenced across Canada amid hate- ful and violent protests. Modern media and messaging platforms allow inflammatory, one-sided, and hateful rhetoric to reach a wider audience than ever before. It was through this lens that I realized the increased importance of an outlet dedicated to the practice of ethical journalism combined with the promise of greater connection. When The CJN was revitalized in 2021 as a digital-first information source, it was done with an eye to the future. As we continue to move forward, we’ll do so with refined objectives and a concen- trated approach. Now, we’re aspiring to reach every Jew- ish household in Canada with the goal of engaging the next generation of readers, listeners, and influencers from coast to coast to coast. In the months ahead, we’ll relaunch our website with dynamic design updates, and introduce a reimagined quarterly magazine, all while establishing new voices through our multimedia channels. The goal is to continue serving our legacy audience with trusted news—while also adding initiatives that appeal to

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The essence of Passover is recounting our history. Or is it? Origin stories

BY AVI FINEGOLD

T rauma myopia. It’s a term I encoun- tered recently in the New York Times , in an article about alliances and tensions between Jewish and African-American ac- tivists. The journalist, Daniel Bergner, inter- viewed a young non-Jewish activist named Nicole Carty, who spoke about “a Jewish propensity for 'trauma myopia'.” “I’ve been to a lot of Passover celebrations,” she told Bergner, “and it’s so weird that the story is only of Jewish subjugation, even though subjugation is still so present for other people.” She went on: “Black people still haven’t had their histories honored. We are still gaslit about the impact of slavery and the continued impacts of white supremacy.” This highlighted a tension that has existed in Jewish thought for quite a while: How much of Judaism is rooted in particular- ism—in the notion that everything we do as Jews is uniquely by us and for us? And how much of it is rooted in a universalist mind- set, or the idea that we have a set of values that can be adopted and presented to the world at large? Are we required to remem- ber everything that has happened to every group when we discuss our past? What is the nature of the seder and why do we have one every year? Who is it for? The majority of Jews and Jewish thought lives in between these two endpoints—the upshot of which is that we need to grapple with this tension, especially at peak mo- ments in Judaism such as the seder. Years ago, I was invited to give a series of talks entitled "Judaism: On Pleasure." The first session was about Judaism’s relation- ship to food. It was before Passover, and we got to talking about the seder and how gathering around food and meals shapes

us as a community. One of the things I had mentioned as an aside was that there are rabbinic opinions that hold that one should not have any non-Jews at the seder. This stems from a technical halachic question, but it certainly became part of the rabbinic question of who is the seder for. If we say “let all who are hungry come and eat,” we need to define who all is. To my surprise, at the beginning of the next session I was told that my presence was a near thing: they had come close to retracting my invitation to finish the series. Just about everyone attending had non-Jewish family members, and they were insulted to learn that those kin might not be wanted at their seders. O ne of the formative questions that Ju- daism wrestles with is the relationship between universalism and particularism. Which of our practices and ideas are meant to be something we share with the world (don’t murder, take time off to rest, the value of learning) and which are specific to us as a people (pray with a quorum, sit in mourning for seven days, don’t eat leavened products on Passover)? The seder might be the ideal moment to contemplate this tension, precisely because the seder might be the peak moment of particularism in traditional understandings of Judaism. The story we tell at the seder is the story of our nation, our history, our relationship with the Divine. The story of the exodus is about of how a small family grew and evolved into a nation. And just like an individual who grows up and needs to assert their own identity, one of the central themes in this evolution is

differentiating ourselves from our roots in Egypt. When we arrive, we are the Chil- dren of Jacob. We leave as B'nai Yisrael, a people that define ourselves, very often, by how we are not like the Egyptians. We were instructed to sacrifice a lamb which was sacred to Egyptians. Our faith is not rooted in the movement of the stars and planets but in the one who placed those spheres in orbit. Most importantly, our ethical responsibilities are directly related

Israelites making bricks in Egypt. Illustration by William Hole (1925) Old Testament History retold and illustrated. London Eyere & Spottiswoode.

T he series of talks I'd given where the question of non-Jews at the seder came up was held at a Reconstructionist congregation. The movement (which now calls itself Reconstructing Judaism) is rooted in the theology of Mordecai Kaplan, an American rabbi born into an Orthodox family with some renegade tendencies. His thought was very much about the tension between nationalism and universalism. Shira Stutman, who was the senior rabbi of

them. We have this origin story that gives us our unique character. It is no better or worse than any other nation's origin story, and by extension the ethics we derived from our origin do not make us better. It is what we do with those ethics that shapes us. If it is victimhood that was transformed into this sense of responsib- ility that we celebrate at the seder, then what we do with that responsibility is we should dwell on.

to how we were treated in Egypt. We rest weekly because we were forbidden to do so as slaves; we treat others fairly because we were not. The seder by its nature celebrate our particularism, our difference. This argument for Judaism’s particularism does not mean we are creating a hierarchy of nations. We are not inherently better than anyone else, and if we invite non-Jews to our seders it isn't so they can hear us talk about how much better we are than

THECJN.CA 11

This is what Nicole Carty seems to be missing when she talks about trauma my- opia at the seder. There are many Jews who have taken these lessons to heart—many who feel the pain of others and do the work needed to make meaningful changes. But that work often needs to be rooted in some- thing else, in our own story. I don’t expect others to center my story in their lives, and I want to be able to celebrate my story alone at certain points in my Jewish life. T his year, in the wake of Oct. 7 and the ongoing war, Passover will inevitably have a different feel to it. Many people will, naturally, want to discuss those events at their seders—and this is not, I don't think, a collapse into universalism. The very nature of what we discuss in the Haggadah is at the core what is current- ly happening with this war. Many of our values as Jews stem from this origin story, and there is so much to draw from when we discuss this conflict that is rooted in these very nation-forming values. Ignoring them would be foolish and pretending that this story is just ancient history or myth is just plain wrong. It would also be wrong to assume to know what lessons the Hagaddah holds about the war. In the seder, we are reminded that in every generation there are those who rise up to annihilate us, and we are saved from them, and we ask God to pour wrath upon the nations that do not know God. So maybe let's hear out what cousin Shmuli from Sderot has to say about how this is manifesting today, and accept that we are dealing with a fear that runs deep and is part of our collective unconscious. But this is not the end point. The fact that we were once slaves in Egypt is exactly why the rabbis remind us to care for those that are less fortunate than us and are in need of care and comfort. We are required to im- agine ourselves as if we are leaving Egypt. If that doesn’t make you feel compassion for a Palestinian who is starving and under constant bombardment, then you might be doing it wrong. The seder is the perfect moment to cele- brate our particularism as a nation, and also to remember that it was shortly after our own liberation that we were given a set of rules about how to govern ourselves, not just internally, but with relation to the rest of the world as well. n

The giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Illustration by William Hole (1925)

Sid Schwarz, a rabbi who grew up Ortho- dox, was ordained in the Reconstructionist movement, and now works extensively in trans-denominational settings, put it this way: “Most lessons about chesed and the responsibility towards the other are best learned in a particularistic setting.” He continued by stressing that if someone remains in a particularist setting, however then you haven't actually learned the les- sons you're meant to. At Passover, the story of going from slavery to freedom is certainly a particular one. But it is the start of an emotional and intellectual journey, not an end in and of itself. The lesson in the story is to help others, whoever they might be, in their journey from slavery and oppression to freedom and autonomy.

the historic Sixth & I synagogue in Washing- ton D.C. (and can be heard weekly on the Chutzpod podcast) told me that for her, par- ticularism is unequivocally important even in a time of universalism. “In our moment in history, it's about a balance between the two. When do we lift up universalism and when do we lift up particularism?” Stutman also remembers the moment of disbelief she had when she learned that some Jews don’t have any non-Jews at their seders. She thinks that for many Jews, Passover is the not only the story of our lib- eration but also a way to support liberation for all. This universalist gloss on a what was once a particularistic holiday is one of the main reasons why many Jews continue to celebrate the seder.

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Dr. Karen Devon on how MAID is a reflection of survival and freedom The space between

BY ELLIN BESSNER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAOMI HARRIS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

THECJN.CA 15

W hile her hectic surgical schedule usually has her performing life-sav- ing thyroid cancer procedures in the oper- ating room, occasionally Dr. Karen Devon is assisting patients approved for the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, as one of about 1,500 specially trained practition- ers in Canada. MAID allows patients suffering from ser- ious or terminal illnesses or disability to be put to death with the help of drugs adminis- tered by a physician or nurse practitioner. Finding herself carrying out an assess- ment in Yiddish is but one example of where her background came in handy. She also happens to be one of the first female Jewish general surgeons to ever work at the University of Toronto. A medical ethics specialist, 47-year-old Dr. Devon is also the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who regularly presents her late father Moishe Devon’s story to generally non-Jewish school groups. And while these two parts of her life have opened her to criticism—specifically, from those wondering how she could condone putting anyone to death after what the Nazis did—she believes her father, who died of natural causes in 2021, would have considered MAID if it was a necessary way for him to avoid pain and suffering. It’s nearing eight years since MAID be- came legal in Canada, on June 6, 2016. Where did it begin for you as part of your practice? One of my own patients with metastatic cancer was suffering terribly. I was present for her MAID procedure, and I was able to see what a peaceful and pain-free death that allowed her to have. It was then that I decided I wanted to be involved with facilitating this for patients in general. Like most MAID practitioners in Canada, it’s not usually the main part of our job, but it’s something we really feel strongly about: giving patients autonomy and the ability to make that choice for themselves. How many patients are you personally helping on an annual basis—and has that number been increasing over time? And have your views on it changed along the way? Certainly we know there’s been a growth in MAID because it’s now about four per- cent of deaths in Canada, about 19,000 per year. I’m a provider who only does

are still able to think of them as a whole person and respond to their needs.

“From a Jewish values perspective—I have no issue with that connection. I’m a proud child of a survivor and I proudly do this work.” Mostly, I’ve just learned what a privilege it is to be in the room, to witness someone suffering and to just be there, to be trusted at this really intimate moment in their life. And I remember, when I first started, think- ing this must be a little of what it’s like to be a rabbi, playing a role in these important life events and helping to counsel patients, especially because several of those who I’ve helped are Jewish. MAID in the hospital, although many of my colleagues do it in people’s homes or other places. Sometimes I’m helping people several times a month—other months have fewer requests. What legal frameworks are you operat- ing under? How would you explain the process of eligibility for MAID? As a physician, I don’t feel a significant amount of legal risk. Certainly, I want to make sure I’m doing my job well and as- sessing a patient thoroughly. The process each person has to go through is pretty rigorous, involving a written request form and two independent assessors—very strict criteria. So, part of my job is to really talk to patients, understand their life, their illness, their suffering, and determine whether or not I can help them in this way. I also talk to them about all the other opportunities or possibilities for alleviating their suffering that might be acceptable to them. We explore other options aside from assisted death. The criticism comes from the view that a doctor is supposed to follow the Hippo- cratic oath of “Do No Harm,” and then you’re killing a patient… Well, certainly that’s not what I see myself as doing. If it’s a disease that’s harming the patient, the disease is killing them. What my colleagues and I are doing is providing help through compassionate care at a point where we can no longer cure someone. We

The federal government has now paused opening up MAID to those with mental illness as a sole criterion, and minors under 18 aren’t in the cards right now. Part of my job is to ensure people under- stand all the options available to them. At the same time, I don’t think we can hold people who are suffering hostage to the feelings of our society. I don’t think that would be fair, but this is a really difficult issue. We all have a lot of guilt about how our system works. But you’re the daughter of a man who spent ages 12 to 15 hiding in an under- ground bunker to evade the Nazis. It leads to you being asked about how you can reconcile counselling Jewish people who want to take their own life when Hitler murdered so many of us. How do you deal with that? My father was well aware of the work I was doing. He supported me. And he was very, very proud of the way in which I’m able to help people. But specifically regarding the Holocaust, people sometimes conflate different issues. What I see as the greatest atrocity of the Shoah is that people had freedom of choice taken away from them, the freedom to choose their own fates. In becoming a MAID provider, that’s exact- ly what I’m doing for people, allowing them to have the freedom to determine their life. For me, there is really—from my moral perspective, from a Jewish values perspective—I have no issue with that connection. I’m a proud child of a survivor and I proudly do this work. And while I’m definitely not an expert on Jewish law, I was raised with Jewish values, and raised to be kind and compassionate with a commitment to social justice. My role as a MAID provider fits well with the way I try to live my life. The overwhelming response I get from all patients is that of immense gratitude. I had a specific discussion with someone who heard about the work that I do and knew that I was the child of a survivor— because I also have done some medical ethics work around medicine and the Holocaust—and he sent me a book about euthanasia and the Holocaust. You know what? It’s a great book.

to public school kids in Grade 5 and up? Have those felt more urgent lately? I want them to connect to a specific story: to understand what antisemitism is, and that it’s a form of racism. I try to situate it within their own lives and what they can understand. Sometimes I’m asked, “Did your father think antisem- itism was ever going to go away? What would he think now?” And as much as he was an optimist—and a satisfied and grateful person in his life– he would’ve always said, “It’s never going to be gone.” The other thing I’ve thought is that it’s a good thing he hasn’t been alive to see what’s happened since Oct. 7. I actually wish he was here to guide me. He would’ve been disappointed, but also not surprised. n

had this extremely deep sense of empathy, which was also not always helpful to me.

People can see things as they wish, but I’m proud of this work. I know that I’m helping people. And that’s ultimately what I’m here to do, just to bring people mercy and to care about them. This is the total opposite of what the Nazis were. You were the only child in your family. How did you decide that enrolling in medical school was something you wanted to do? It’s sort of clichéd but I was one of those people who, from the youngest age, knew I wanted to be a physician. My first memory was seeing a disabled child on the bus, and I started crying, because their mother was yelling at them. I think that comes from having heard the Holocaust story from such a young age. My father’s story. I just always

Your father Moishe also worked for the Canadian clothing designer Franco Mirabelli. Did that play a role in the fact that you’re recognized for your own fondness for wearing big colours and big prints? I like to think it’s genetic. Both my par- ents had an astute sense of style, and my dad would tell me if what I was wearing was no longer in fashion. He’d be the one to tell me “mini is in now” or “mini is out now.” He loved seeing me dress up and glowed with pride.

What about your weekly Carrying Testi- mony presentations about the Holocaust

THECJN.CA 17

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Lila Sarick , our website’s news editor, on the work of covering the Israel-Gaza war’s complex impact on Canadian Jews A first draft of history

S ince Oct. 7, the Canadian Jewish News has published over 200 news stor- ies and first-person columns on its daily website. I’m the news editor, my byline has been on many of those stories and I have assigned and edited nearly all of them. Re- porters, or at least old-school ones like me, were taught to be dispassionate observers, and we maintain that professionalism here. We report what we see and I leave it to our columnists and pundits to try and peer into the future. But I also want to pull back the curtain a bit and tell readers what it’s been like being a Jewish journalist in Canada over the last five months. On the morning of Oct. 7, I was visiting my adult son in the United States. As we got ready for synagogue, we checked our phones. My colleague Ellin Bessner, who hosts The CJN Daily podcast, had already texted me that there was breaking news from Israel. As my son and I scanned the reports, it was clear that something catastrophic had occurred, but it was hard to under- stand what exactly had gone on. The one awful detail that rattled around my brain all morning was a report from a southern kibbutz that a baby had been found, but the parents were missing. What could have happened that a baby had been aban- doned while the parents had disappeared? Now, of course we know the details of those terrible hours and days in Israel. But that morning, as my son and I walked

to synagogue, all we had were questions. How could Israel’s security have been so thoroughly breached? What had happened to that baby’s parents? My son belongs to a lively and thriving independent minyan where decisions are made collectively. That morning, a brief but uncomfortable debate broke out about whether to add a psalm for Israel, just before the Yizkor memorial service. Some people had not looked at their phones be- cause it was a holiday and didn’t yet know the news. Others had already heard from family in Israel who had been called up to fight and were distressed. And one or two, who opposed the addition of a psalm were ambivalent (at best) about Israel. (In the end, a psalm was recited.) On the walk home, another question arose. What would this mean to us in Canada where sentiments about Israel were already complicated and conflicted? Was this an attack on Israel’s very exist- ence, so eerily similar in timing to the Yom Kippur War in 1973? Should we march to the Israel Bonds office, chequebooks in hand, as many in my parents’ generation had—or was this something equally terrible but different? These two parallel currents—the trauma of what had occurred in Israel and its impact on North American Jews—have preoccupied me since that morning. The first story The CJN published about the attack was on Oct. 8. I interviewed the

childhood friends of Vivian Silver, a Winni- peg peace activist, who was presumed to have been kidnapped from her home on Kibbutz Be’eri. Lynne and Michael Mitchell had talked to Silver just a few days before the attack and they were careful to speak about their friend in the present tense, even while Lynne’s voice cracked a little. They told me about her commitment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians and their hope that all her good deeds would somehow spare her. Tragically, Silver’s body was identified weeks later, in the burned-out ruins of her home. The stories of the Canadians killed in the attacks were heartbreaking—some were just kids attending the now infamous rave.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march during a rally outside US Consulate General and marched in downtown Toronto, on December 16, 2023

symbolically adopt one particular hostage whose life somehow resonates with them. For me, that hostage was Ofri Brodutch, an Israeli girl who was abducted, along with her mother, two younger brothers, and a 4-year-old neighbour, the day before her tenth birthday. Ofri had spent the past summer in Can- ada, going to one of the Zionist camps here and visiting her aunt and uncle who live in Toronto. She reminded me so much of my grown daughter and her friends who had started camp together at that age. Ofri’s uncle Aharon was tireless in his efforts to help his brother’s family. He met with pol- iticians pleading for the Canadian govern- ment to exert its international pressure and

facilitate the hostages’ release. In a news conference from Ottawa, he recalled how the Israeli soldiers who had searched his brother’s family home after the attack cried when they found Ofri’s birthday cake still in the fridge. Ofri and her family were freed on Nov. 26. The video released by the Israeli hospital where they were taken, showed them hav- ing a joyful reunion with the family dog. Keeping the story of the hostages, especially those who remained in Gaza, in front of our readers has been one of our priorities. The Jewish community found creative ways to keep the hostages’ stories before the mainstream media, when their attention flagged. We have written about

A few were killed in their homes—Netta Epstein died protecting his girlfriend, Adi Vital-Kaploun, was killed while shielding her two little boys. Two were older women, Silver and Judih Weinstein-Haggai, who had chosen to live on the southern border despite the risks. We wrote about as many of the Can- adians who were killed in the attacks as we could, contacting their friends and families to paint a picture of how they lived, rather than only about how they died. Although it was initially believed, and hoped, that some of these people were alive and being held hostage in Gaza, in the end none of the Canadians survived. I have heard that in Israel, people will

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Pro-Palestinian supporters on the Avenue Road bridge, Toronto, on January 6, 2024

My morning routine was to read the news and look for the most egregious antisemitic incident from that day, not the only one but the worst one in the country and then think, how can I find a reporter to cover this? The CJN operates with a small staff and even though we worked weekends and evenings, it was frustrating that we couldn’t cover every story. It was, however, a relief to work for a news organization where we could call the Hamas attackers what they were—terrorists. Many media outlets, including the CBC, have shied away from the term and those responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre are simply called attackers. I think it would have crushed my soul a little to abide by that newsroom policy. Not long after Oct. 7, I ran into a senior educator, who was distraught. Jewish stu- dents and teachers were harassed and vul- nerable while their classmates participated in mass walkouts, yelling, “Free Palestine” and, “From the river to the sea.” The educator had spent much of her career teaching tolerance and cultural sensitivity but at that moment questioned whether she had done enough. “People don’t know how bad it is,” she said. Perhaps, but many of us would learn.

Every city in Canada saw pro-Palestine (or anti-Israel, depending on your viewpoint) marches that blocked downtown streets week after week. These were not calls for a two-state solution or decrying the rule of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers. They were, point-blank, a call for the end of the Jewish state, with Zionists labelled white colonial settlers , who were ordered to return to wherever they came from (as long as it wasn’t Israel). Even more disturbing were the ways the anger and hatred for Israel mutated into frank antisemitism, especially against children. There were shots fired at two Montreal schools and a call from Hamas leaders for a global “day of violence” that led parents to keep their kids home, fearful of what could happen. I stood in the rain as the principal of Toronto’s largest Jewish high school described the bomb threat the school received and the decision to evacuate the building and a nearby daycare. Fortunately, no one was injured in any of these inci- dents, but they succeeded in their object- ive: evoking fear. A bridge not far from my home became briefly infamous when it was blocked by raucous Palestinian protests every week-

the empty strollers and empty Shabbat tables symbolizing the missing hostages that are temporarily installed in public spaces. I interviewed people who prepared care packages containing teddy bears and hand cream that were delivered to the Can- adian Red Cross, in an effort to highlight the International Red Cross Committee’s refusal to aid the hostages. The only thing we didn’t do, as a publi- cation, was view the 45-minute video of the horrors of the attack, filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves, that the Israeli consulate in Toronto showed to Canadian reporters. Both Ellin and I declined—we had no doubts about the gruesome details and the veracity of the reports and we didn’t think our readers did either. Writing about the victims of Hamas and a Canadian-Israeli soldier who was killed in battle was tragic, but the parallel story of protests and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in Canada has proven more challenging in some ways. The word unprecedented is used so often in reference to antisemitism that it has lost much of its meaning. But in truth, the eruption of antisemitism across the country is greater both in numbers of incidents and ferocity than we have ever seen.

events organized by Jewish federations, or smaller ones planned by both left or right- wing groups, they tended to focus almost exclusively on the hostages and their desperate situation. Canadian Jews hold a wide range of views, especially concerning Israel and the current government. But after Oct. 7, at least temporarily, there was a tacit agreement to focus on the one thing all camps could agree on: the release of the hostages. Meanwhile, the anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism unleashed after Oct. 7, con- tinued to seep into new cracks, in disturb- ing ways. The CJN wrote about the cancel- lation of a play set in Israel, The Runner , about an Orthodox volunteer who grapples with the fallout after saving a Palestinian woman’s life—and leaving a fatally wounded Israeli soldier behind. Performances of The Runner were can- celled by a Victoria B.C. theatre which said this was not the time for a play that could further incite tensions in the community. Soon after, a theatre festival in Vancouver pulled the play from its lineup after a Pal- estinian artist threatened to withdraw his work from the event. I interviewed Leah Goldstein, a champion- ship cyclist and motivational speaker who had served in an undercover unit in the IDF 30 years ago. She was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a women’s festival in Peterborough, Ont., but was abruptly disinvited when the organizers asked her for a statement on Israel and then can- celled the engagement, before she could even reply. Goldstein told me that after Oct. 7 her agent has been unable to book any speaking events. The festival in a small Ontario city became an international news story, and in the end, organizers cancelled the entire event for this year. I could go on. Nearly every single one of the hundreds of stories we have published and aired since Oct. 7 has been coloured in some way by the absolute tragedy of that day. It would be a fool’s errand to try and pre- dict what Israel will look like as it absorbs the losses of Oct. 7 and the toll of the war. Similarly, there’s no way of telling how Can- adian Jewish life will be reshaped by the violence and antisemitism here. For now, all we know is that those two parallel stories are still being written. n

Nathan Philips Square in Toronto, at a rally marking 100 days of captivity for the hostages on January 14, 2014

out on the bridge, although without any flags or signs. And equally predictably, po- lice warned them to leave and then made three arrests. This time I was standing among the pro-Palestinian protesters and what I heard was not political but personal and chill- ing. “How would they like it if their babies were killed” they said among themselves, referring to the rising death toll in Gaza. “Who do they think they are? Why is their neighbourhood so special?” “We’ll show those ‘Zionists.’” These protests have become increas- ingly disruptive as the winter, and the war in Gaza, dragged on. In Toronto, a protest stopped in front of Mount Sinai Hospital and people loudly chanted “intifada” underneath the hospital windows, while a self-described “Palestinian Spiderman” scaled the building to wave a flag. In early March, as I was writing this column, protesters blocked the entrance to the Bronfman building at McGill University and a few days later, surrounded a Jewish community building where Concordia stu- dents were hosting an event. The Jewish community held its own ral- lies, which we covered, but they were very different in tone. Whether they were large

end for weeks on end. The tipping point was when a police officer delivered a carton of Tim Hortons coffee that demonstrators on the barricaded bridge had ordered. I was standing with the residents on the far side of the bridge that morning and couldn’t see the coffee delivery, which police chief Myron Demkiw had to issue an apology for. But the residents, not all of whom are Jewish, had plenty to say about the protesters. They were both angry and intimidated by the masked demonstrators who used the highway overpass as a site to launch smoke flares, hang flags and chant, “Zionists out.” They were outraged the protests were tar- geting a predominantly Jewish neighbour- hood rather than the Israeli or American consulates—places where foreign policy is actually made. And even before the coffee faux pas, they were frustrated with the To- ronto police force’s practice of deescalating tensions rather than stopping the protests. The next week the police chief (who had by then received a phone call about the matter from the prime minister) declared the bridge off limits and warned that pro- testers would be arrested. Predictably, a few people tested their luck the following Saturday and strolled

THECJN.CA 23

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War reporting from the heart

Ellin Bessner on how her Jewish journalism mission changed forever

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL EHRENWORTH EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

THECJN.CA 29

T here’s a poster I’ve hung on to from just a couple of days before Oct. 7. It reminds me how much has changed in what I do as a Jewish journalist—and as a Jewish person in general, too. The poster was promoting a Toronto visit by Swell Ariel Or, the Israeli star of the television series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem . Her fundraiser for Israel Bonds was the kind of event I’d typically cover for The CJN Daily over the prior two-and-a-half years. After watching the first season on Netflix, I was confident the podcast audience wanted to hear about her role in the his- torical-fiction tale of a Sephardic family in the years leading up to the founding of the State of Israel. Plus, there were questions to ask the 20-something actor: what it was like to work with Shtisel star Michael Aloni, and her recent move to Hollywood in a year when productions were plagued by strikes. Or arrived wearing an elegant blue pantsuit and stiletto heels. Everyone in at- tendance at the Kehila Centre in Thornhill, Ont. wanted a photo with her, but she broke away for a 30-minute sit-down interview. In the Beauty Queen show she played Luna Ermoza, a designer of haute couture gowns. But in real life? She can’t even sew. “Not a stitch,” Or confessed, adding that she didn’t do the fashion drawings herself either, but she took this as a compliment about her performance. The series also addressed domestic violence, in scenes where the actor playing her husband was initially reluctant to physically strike her—but she felt it was im- portant to make it look realistic. The show’s initial airing on Israeli TV was accompanied by the numbers of hotlines to call for help. “So, maybe even if we managed to save one woman out of it,” she said, “we did our job.” I t was 36 hours later when I realized airing this interview would have to wait. I woke up in the middle of the night and, as one does, I checked my phone. My heart raced with the news that thousands of rockets were being launched from Gaza— rockets aimed at Sderot, but also as far as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We started hearing reports that several thousand terrorists had stormed across the lightly defended border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, unleashing savagery upon the unsuspecting residents of many

of the closest kibbutzim and villages, and mowing down soldiers and police officers in their wake. The attackers killed 1,200 Israelis and foreign workers, and took hostages. But we didn’t know the extent of it yet. I learned the names of unfamiliar places now burned into our collective memory: Kibbutz Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Holit, the Nova music festival. Nahal Oz. The Canadian Jewish News doesn’t publish on Shabbat. It was also the holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, with the Thanksgiving long weekend adding to a scheduled break. But I recognized this attack meant we would have to scramble to cover the big- gest Jewish story of my career. I had been on bereavement leave since July 26, when my son Evan was killed in a tragic accident. He was 23. I was unsure whether I wanted to come back to work at all, but I’d returned in September for two days a week. Reporting supplied me with a structure during those early terrible times. And I was grateful for the support of colleagues. Suddenly, on Oct. 7, I felt it was time to jump back into action. All in. It’s what my family wanted me to do. Evan would have said, “Man up, Mom!” Now, if there was ever a time when my storytelling skills mattered, it was here. I became a reporter in 1979, at age 18, while studying journalism at Carle- ton University, and later held high-profile journalism jobs with CBC News and CTV News, including as a freelance correspond- ent based in Italy. I covered the Vatican, three wars in Africa, Mafia killings, and also major Canadian events like the 1990 Oka Crisis—a standoff between the First Nations and the Canadian Army west of Montreal—not to mention all kinds of pro- tests and mayhem on Parliament Hill. But I can’t tell very good stories until I gather every piece of relevant information I can find. I didn’t know how far the Hamas terror- ists had infiltrated Israel. I didn’t know that it would be hours before Israeli soldiers arrived with reinforcements. I just knew the first step was to find potential eyewitnesses: I sent a WhatsApp message to Gloria and Howard Wener, my cousins who’ve lived for 50 years in Sde Nitzan, a tiny moshav located less than 10

kilometers east of Israel’s southern border with Gaza. They were under orders to lock them- selves inside their house while the Israeli army tried to find the remaining terrorists in the area. They told me of rockets continuing to fly overhead. Their children and grandchildren were safe—but word arrived of friends and neighbours who had been killed, and others taken hostage. The Weners were “fuming and disappointed” over what they saw as a failure by intelligence in Israel. But they promised to record any boom- ing sounds they heard, to give listeners a sense of the sound of war. “ This is what Jewish Canada sounds like.” That’s the slogan I coined for The CJN Daily when the podcast debuted in May 2021. The goal from the start was to bring the voice of newsmakers to our audience. When I reached Iddo Moed on Oct. 8, the newly arrived Israeli ambassador to Can- ada had barely been on the job for a few weeks. But he called on Ottawa to re-exam- ine its long-standing policy of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). This was months before it became a political issue after Israeli troops uncovered agency staffer ties to Hamas. “It’s just another darker time in our hist- ory—but from this we always get stronger,” said Moed. I then talked to journalist Ira Gershowitz and lawyer Jonathan Shiff, two former Torontonians living in Israel who between them had seven children serving in the IDF. While they were understandably anxious, we here in Canada were also facing a surge of antisemitism. When a UJA solidarity rally was set for Oct. 9 at Mel Lastman Square, I wasn’t sure it would be safe to go. Still, I went in a group, with my husband and two Israeli-born friends. We had to navigate closed subway stations and cordoned off streets as Toronto police kept a small group of protesters away from 15,000 mainly Jewish attendees. For safety reasons, I carried my large Israeli flag inside my purse until we got to the rally. Then I took it out and wore it like a cape. Back at my desk, I started hearing from Canadians stranded in Israel, after major airlines paused flights from Tel Aviv. Gayle and Alf Kwinter, along with their

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