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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