I try not to take all my life lessons from TV shows, but if there is one show and character whose life lessons I’m fairly comfortable relying on, it’s the one that gives us gems like,
“As the man once said, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.””
Or,
“Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”
And,
“You beating yourself up is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet. I don’t wanna hear it.”
Especially,
“You say impossible, but all I hear is ‘I’m possible.’”
SO good.
But while those familiar with the show no doubt read through the above and saw the mustachioed face of Ted Lasso sharing his wisdom, another line has recently struck a chord.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Ted Lasso follows an American football coach on his journey coaching a British football (soccer) team in London. If you’re looking for an escape that is pure and wholesome, turn it on as soon as you’re finished reading this post.
(*Spoiler alert*) By season 3, episode 7, one of the young footballers, Sam Obisanya, originally from Nigeria, had started his own upscale Nigerian restaurant in London. One day, in response to a social-media post he wrote criticizing a politician, his restaurant was sacked. He found the windows and mirrors smashed, tables and chairs thrown about, with a wall covered in graffiti that read, “Shut up and dribble!” (echoing Laura Ingraham criticizing Lebron James in 2018 when he criticized President Trump on a podcast).
Listening to his son Sam crying on his arm, wondering what he was going to do next with his restaurant, Sam’s dad Ola said,
“If you really want to piss off the people who did this, forgive them…
Don’t fight back. Fight forward.”
The assault
In the last few months, it sure feels like someone has trashed my restaurant.
Aside from the obvious devastation caused in Israel on 10/7, we in the Diaspora have sustained our own smashed windows and mirrors in every conceivable way.
In Canada, as elsewhere, aside from having some of our institutions firebombed or otherwise physically attacked, we have had our sense of security, and importantly our sense of belonging, assaulted. The neighbourhoods we inhabit, the homes we built and bought, the communities we developed, and the lives we lead, have all unfortunately been besieged.
The method of the assault proves, in no uncertain terms, that there is no line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism; it is one and the same. When Jewish not Israeli, businesses, neighbourhoods, or homes are attacked, the perpetrators’ motives and underlying prejudices are laid bare. Antisemitism has always been lingering below the surface, and we have all witnessed a resurgence that will not soon resubmerge.
Though we cannot yet survey the damage - the attacks continue unabated on the streets and online - we have now had just over 100 days to get acquainted with this new reality, and to assess what comes next. In those 100 days, we have learned a lot. We are starting to know what surprises, or fails to surprise, us. We know that many of our neighbours will tolerate, and even themselves spew, antisemitic ideas, and we know what the authorities will do - or not - to keep us safe. In these 100 days, we have learned to live within a new set of parameters with altered expectations.
In doing so, we have of course reacted. But our ongoing reaction must be a viable long-term response to this new normal. And as always, we have something to learn from our brothers abroad.
In Israel
Talk to any Holocaust survivor and they’ll tell you that the way they fought forward after the War was to live. They survived. They remained Jewish, had Jewish children and grandchildren, and laughed at the failure of Hitler’s evil plans. “To live” is in some ways such a cliché answer, yet when you look at Holocaust survivors, and now those “new survivors”, i.e. many Israelis post-10/7, they are doing just that.
My cousin Leah recently traveled to Israel with her son on one of the many solidarity missions going from Canada. While she was there, I texted, asking her what it was like. Her response was, “I can’t process what I’m seeing. I can’t understand. You need a reservation for a restaurant. The bars are packed.”
You see at home, a palpable black cloud still sits atop our community. We are in mourning, are immersed in a distraught echo-chamber of WhatsApp and Facebook groups and messages, and are trying to figure out what our individual and collective next steps should be. We are looking over our shoulder, ready to pounce. We are trying to help. This is a normal response to what happened, and I am of course feeling it myself. Thus, when Leah traveled to Israel - Ground Zero - she expected the similar sort of feeling. The same sort of atmosphere when you step off the bus on the March of the Living, in and amongst sad Jews.
But that’s not what she found in Israel. Well not exactly. Whereas we here in the Diaspora are reacting to the resurgence of hatred around us, many Israelis have moved on slightly faster. Though there is no doubt a huge sector of Israeli society beset by utter devastation and angst, with their family, friends, and neighbours killed or kidnapped, fighting on the front lines, they are living life. They are eating in restaurants and going out to bars, and, well, being Israeli. They are living their lives, since life post-10/7 in Israel, though no doubt different, is also sort of the same. They have by no means minimized the impact of 10/7, but have sought their own mechanisms to deal with the fallout.
I am told though, that there is of course a tension in Israeli society between those who have “moved on” and those who have not. If so, this is understanding, with the caveat that my personal understanding is limited as a non-Israeli outsider.
But the people of Israel are necessarily pragmatic. They have no illusions about where they live, and who their neighbours are. Through this awareness, they take their collective destiny into their own hands. Year after year, studies emerge that Israelis are among the happiest people in the world. In March 2023, the study from the UN’s World Happiness Report noted that the Israelis were the fourth-happiest people (trailing Finland, Denmark, Iceland). This despite their endless election cycles, insanely high cost of living, internal and external threats of war and terrorism, and their lack of Amazon Prime.
Though perhaps the rest of 2023 won’t be counted as one of those years when Israelis were so happy, there is a reason why this is more often than not the case: Ben Gurion’s New Jew is made of something slightly different. Their grit, their response to having their restaurant trashed, is to fight forward. Yes, they are fighting a brutal war in Gaza right now in response to the inhumanity they witnessed on 10/7, but Israel fights back and forward well, to show that their country may have been attacked on 10/7, but it was by no means broken. That their determination was dashed, but by no means defeated.
At home
So how do we here, at home, fight forward too?
We must begin from the premise that we cannot allow our enemies to dictate our collective destiny. By that I mean that our response, if any, to provocations from the anti-Israel mob must be a deliberate effort to strengthen our community, not weaken theirs. We must be proactive, not reactive. We must never sink to their level of depravity. Whatever we do must be primarily for our benefit, not their detriment.
The Canadian Jewish community is remarkable. But we will only remain so when we realize that what our community can give is only as much as the effort it in turn receives.
Show up and participate
Our institutions are strong, but can always be stronger. They can be strengthened by our participation. We must volunteer our time, donate our money, undertake security training, and come up with new ideas to unite disparate groups within our community. Question those in authority, take nothing for granted, look at your surroundings with a critical eye, push decision-makers, and make the uncomfortable comfortable. Show up and talk at town halls, question school trustees, email employers, suggest seminars, and contact our organizations for support: you are not alone.
Proactively protest and speak out
When there is an anti-Israel rally planned, we do not need to show up and counter-protest. It is a waste of time. Let them take the blame for disrupting Christmas Tree lightings and new years celebrations. Instead, we must plan our own protests, chant our own slogans, and most importantly, makele sure that those who need to hear our message, hear it.
Build bridges
We fight forward by building bridges. Do not get sidetracked by only identifying those who hate us, rather endeavour to find those who love us. I am an immigration lawyer, and I can say with confidence that my clients from India, Nigeria, and Iran were the first to pick up the phone and call me after 10/7 to see if I was doing alright, and to express their support for the Jewish community and Israel.
When Elon Musk, a controversial but also arguably the world’s most powerful man, visits Auschwitz as he did on January 22, and tells the world that he’s “aspirationally Jewish” because of his many ties to and long history with the Jewish community, accept that as something positive. When fewer and fewer people are willing to have our backs, accept the support we get.
We may fight back by naming our enemies, but we fight forward by counting our friends.
Educate yourself
We also fight forward by educating ourselves about our history. This may seem counter-intuitive (as it obviously involves looking back), but in the civilizational battle that is the world versus the Jews and now the world versus Israel, we must look forward by at least knowing-back. We can only effectively counter our enemies’ bogus talking-points about occupation and apartheid, settlements and colonialism, by understand what did, and most importantly, what didn’t happen. By understanding Jewish indigeneity in Israel, the efforts that went into building the state, and the extraordinary attempts to make peace with our neighbours, to (until recently) no avail.
It is never too late to learn, and it is important to do so in order to counteract the lies so often spewed by the anti-Israel mob. For example, only then would you know that a world with Zionism did not always have to look like this. That in 1919, Emir (later King of Iraq) Faisal, when negotiating with Chaim Weizmann, said,
“We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home…We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East, and our two movements complement one another.”
Emir Faisal, one of the most important Arab leaders of the time, was willing to accept a Middle East with a Jewish presence. Others were too. It is thus important to understand that the past and present conflict was not inevitable - it did not have to look this way. In knowing this, perhaps we can make the future look different. To do so, we must take pragmatic and practical control as we fight forward.
So, let’s go
I don’t know if the quip about fighting forward originates from Ted Lasso or not. But what I do know is that as Jewish Canadians, we can never be told to “shut up and dribble.” We will never be pushed into a corner in this country, told to mind our business, stay in our lane, or defer to the will of any other population to the exclusion of our own. Canada is not a zero-sum country, where some must be pushed aside to accommodate others. We will never stop contributing to this country that is our home. We have as much right as the next Canadian to stand up for ourselves and drive our own future forward.
In Israel, there is a long fight ahead, which will see many tenuous days. There are hostages to rescue, Hamas to destroy, Hezbollah to neuter, the West Bank to pacify, and a Palestinian Authority that teeters on the brink of collapse. There are elections to be held, a political reckoning to be had, a country to be run, people to be housed and fed, and a prosperous future to envision. I personally have no doubt that they will get it under control. As Golda said, there is no alternative. Knowing that they have no alternative, Israelis manage to balance the aims of their war with their food delivery orders, as their country must continue to work. They must continue to live. They must continue to look ahead.
But we here also have our fight. Israel thrives with a strong Diaspora, and we have much of which to be proud. We cannot however allow ourselves to be defined by the nature or will of our enemies. We must seek our own way forward and embolden our abilities. We have the determination, motivated by the blood and sweat of our brothers in Israel. But only by turning that determination into real steps can we elevate our voices, generate ideas, stand up for ourselves, teach our children, and guarantee a prosperous Jewish Canadian future.