Ideas propel a community forward. Without fresh ideas, new takes, varied perspectives, and the broad participation of voices, there is only so far a community can go.
Our community - the Canadian Jewish community - is in need of new ideas.
Wax without a flame
The prolific Israeli speech writer and advisor to prime ministers, Yehuda Avner, told a story of a time he met the Lubavitcher Rebbe while visiting New York with Menachem Begin.
In a rare candid conversation, the Rebbe described his life’s mission to Avner in the following way: you open the cupboard, and there you see a candle, though it is not really a candle. It is a lump of wax with a piece of string inside it. When do the wax and wick together become a candle? When one brings a flame to the wick. That is when the wax and the wick fulfil the purpose for which they were created, and together, they become a candle.
The Rebbe continued that his mission was to help every person fulfil their purpose. To him, his fire was the fire of Torah - and he used the fire of the Torah to light the wick that is the human soul. The soul gives life to the body - the wax - and together, a human reaches their potential all starting with the flame of the Torah.
A Purpose
This will be our purpose. We will endeavour to inspire and improve our Jewish community by infusing new ideas and bold initiatives. If this spark can catch, it can turn our community into one that exhibits its full potential, something that we believe has been lacking in recent years.
Our community is amazing…
We have a community of which to be proud. Numbering almost 400,000 across Canada, our Jewish community is bold and diversified. We are successful, generous, proud Canadians, bold Zionists, and take pride in our immigrant roots. Our Federation systems are strong, and recognized at international levels. We have representatives at every level of government, we lobby, we advocate, have access to those in power, and we demonstrate the strength of our people, and our community, in any number of ways.
Our present circumstances, however, do not always dictate what our future holds.
…but has its set of challenges.
Our community, like others, is susceptible to modern trends, many of which are not conducive to maintaining what makes us unique.
Dwindling attention spans, and the failure to maintain our focus, means that complicated circumstances and ideas - things that have always defined the Jewish community - cannot be adequately explained or understood in sound-bytes, Facebook posts, 240 characters, or a 10-second video.
Antisemitism is real, and it comes with a 3,000 year history. Anti-Zionism is real, and it comes with a 120 year history. Anti-Israel sentiment is real, and this year it turns 75. Each of these trends is present in Canadian society. They dictate the role that Jews play, and the place that Jews inhabit, in the modern world. But the mere existence of these trends need not overwhelm us or our community’s ability to respond to the same. Their complexity, however, and their attractiveness to a growing number of people both outside and even inside of the Jewish community, means that we must take steps to understand these complicated ideas even if the task of understanding takes time. We must adapt to the times, as the times never hesitate to adapt to us.
With a dwindling attention span comes the desire to seek the path of least resistance. Jews make up an astoundingly small number of the general Canadian population - just over 1%. Despite our shared values and generally liberal outlook, there are loud voices online and offline who spew nonsense, hatred, and bad faith attacks against the Jewish community, both here and abroad. We have never claimed that we are immune to criticism, and not all criticism is antisemitism or anti-Zionism. Yet, for every member of our community who is quick to label a perceived affront as antisemitism, there is another who may believe such an affront, and indeed turn inward in their disdain. Internalized antisemitism is real in our community, and there are an ever growing number of people who rather than learning the facts, understanding the nuance, or preparing to fight back for that which our community stands for, will simply believe what they read online, or are being told by friends, because that is the path of least resistance. Tragically, we have more enemies than we ourselves can number.
The chorus of voices of antisemites, or anti-Zionists, or anti-Israel critics who swear that they are not antisemites, is difficult to drown out and increasingly difficult to ignore. This is unfortunately our new reality. It is however only new to us, and not to our community. We have heard such voices before and have seen the very real destruction that such voices can cause. Thank G-d, there are still Holocaust survivors among us. But they cannot live forever. We must therefore be better prepared to respond, be more set in our convictions, and understand that our community, our beliefs, and our values, are important - not only to us, but to Canadian society as a whole.
Superior tools must be wielded
To be prepared requires tools, but these are tools that fewer and fewer young Jews are prepared to pick up. These tools require, first and foremost, a belief that you are actually part of a community, with a particular history, heritage, religion, and set of traditions. These are things that must be learned, but with only a minor percentage of young Jewish families today enrolling their children in day school, or attending a synagogue of any denomination, or lighting Shabbat candles, or reading about the most recent conflict in Israel, or teaching their children about general or even specific Jewish values, it will be impossible to use such tools in the future. Only by understanding, at the very minimum, where we come from, and where we have the potential to go, can we as a community properly move forward in a way that productively distinguishes us from the broader population. Though this distinction has not always served us well, it has enabled us (to borrow a phrase), to outwit, outplay, and outlast.
I believe that our community has, in recent years, failed at adequately addressing the challenges that we now face, or will certainly face in the future. We have certain community institutions that exist without competition. A lack of healthy competition is never good. It leads to stale processes, echo chambers, and an inability to change with the times.
Our 10 Principles
The purpose of this newsletter then, is to infuse new ideas into our community. We intend to productively challenge the inner workings of our community, to ensure that we are doing the best we can to give those who need them, the tools to live meaningful Jewish lives, combat antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and become proactive and proud.
To do so, we intend to abide by at least the following 10 principles:
Ideas are intended to cultivate action, passion and dedication. The ideas we put forward are intended to be construed in a productive way, and will not be used to unnecessarily pick fights, divide, or embolden our enemies.
We endeavour to be bold. We are a community of believers, dreamers, doers, and achievers. We have always set our sights high, and though we have dark days in our past, we have also reached incredible heights. Just three years after the end of the Holocaust, we established our own sovereign state. We have Nobels, we have been to space, our advice is sought by world leaders, and we have made the world a better place. Half-baked ideas can often lead to brilliant solutions, and we, as both a Jewish and Canadian community, should never shy away from putting ourselves or our ideas out there, in service to ourselves or others.
We can always do better. Proud as we are of our accomplishments, we know that we are human. We err, But, what we do with those mistakes is what determines what our future holds. We can do better as a community, and we are prepared to call on our leaders or our community members to acknowledge errors, mistakes, or room for improvement. It is important to not let ego get in the way of greatness.
Compromise is a strength not a weakness. Opinions can change, and healthy arguments can change the minds of others. People in our community ought not be afraid to change their minds, and cannot be afraid to be “dunked on” or made to believe they are weak-minded if their positions or beliefs change. Compromise is a virtue and a strength. It is not evidence of a weakness, but rather a willingness to evolve and adapt to meet your own and others’ needs.
There is room for varying opinions in our community. We are the people of Hillel and Shammai, of the Talmud and Gemara. Argument, persuasion and different opinions and beliefs are at our core. There must always be room for varying positions in our community, and a different viewpoint must be met with respect. We welcome debate, especially in this newsletter, and hope to publish dissenting opinions too.
Our community’s positions cannot be dictated by resentment. Though the Jewish community, it seems, is usually emboldened when we are under threat, we cannot allow the success, ideas, or principles of our community to be dictated by resentment. As Jews, there is plenty to be resentful of, but this leads us to become reactive, rather than proactive, and guides us off the path of forging our own way forward. We ought not be led astray, but must rather forge our own way forward, wherever it takes us.
Judaism is not a universalist religion. The Jewish community has survived for thousands of years because we are different. Yes, there are elements of our religion and worldview which can be universalized, and which can be used to make the world a better place. However, there is something that makes us unique, and that has contributed to our longevity. We believe that even though Judaism is an evolving religion, with a community that adapts to its time and place, there are red lines in Judaism that make Judaism unique, and that make us adherents. One of those red lines in 2022 is the support of the legitimacy and existence of a Jewish state.
Zionism is intertwined with Judaism. From the earliest of times, Judaism has believed in the principles of Zionism: a connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the building up of Jerusalem. The Torah speaks of this connection, our history and archaeology draw an indisputable connection between our people and the land, we pray towards Israel, we seek its redemption, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was one of the greatest achievements of Jewish history. We believe fundamentally in Zionism, and that it is tied innately to Judaism. We believe that the Jewish people, like every other people on earth, yes, including the Palestinians, are entitled to a homeland of their own.
Israel is not infallible. Though we often think (and pray) that it’s not, Israel is now a country much like any other. It is a democracy, it has a vibrant government made up of disparate individuals, and as a country, it makes decisions that we may sometimes disagree with. We take no issue with criticising the State of Israel when necessary, or practicable, or when doing so encourages it to do better. We do not however believe that the state’s government, or president, or prime minister, means that the country illegitimate. One may not like the American president or that country’s policies, but they do not call into question the right of America to exist among nations. Israel is a sum of its parts, but it is a state like every other, it was created by the United Nations, with a right to exist among the community of nations. Similarly, it has a right to be judged by the same standards as other countries.
We must always be looking forward, not backwards. Our community is based on history, traditions, culture and a religion that are each a product of their time. We cannot however be stuck in the past, rely on arguments that once served us well but are no longer relevant, and must always look forward. We welcome ideas that serve to strengthen our community now, and that look forward to what the Jewish people both are, and can be, and not just were. To echo Isaac Newton, we are always standing on the shoulders of giants, and they enable us to see further than we would be able to see on our own.
Some or all of these principles may seem obvious, but they are an important guide for both our contributors and our readers.
Proudly Jewish and Canadian
We are proud of being members of a Canadian and Jewish community. We live in a country that has given us untold opportunities as immigrants and citizens, and we have endeavoured to repay the favour by making this country everything that it can be. We believe however that our community is largely unexplored, and that what makes us unique is sometimes overshadowed by being part of the broader North American Jewish community. Our neighbours to the south have a tremendous and vibrant community of their own, and though we all share the same heritage, we, like every Jewish community in the world, are unique. Our trends, politics, size and discourse are different. We thus cannot, and ought not, be lumped in with American Jews just because we share a border and country code. They are louder, and their voice and organizations can sometimes be mistaken for ours. There is however much to be explored in the Canadian Jewish context, and we seek to enlighten and embolden Canadian Jewish voices.
Join Us
With the Canadian Jewish community as a lump of wax with wick, we hope these new ideas, as a flame, can catch, and become the candle that enlightens. We know we have our work cut out for us, but we believe with full faith that we have something to offer to make our community the best that it can be.
We are seeking to expand the thoughtfulness of our community. We are serious about making positive changes in the community.
We hope to give you something to think about. We encourage productive dialogue, and these ideas are meant to be taken, used, and built on.
We are throwing it out there. Now…catch.
Thank you Adam. In a time where we are all struggling to find the right words, thank you for putting this together.