Join Me In the Ring

So our kids don't have to

This is a guest post from Sharon Zohar. Sharon is a writer, editor, and founder of Zohar Publishing. She curates works that amplify Jewish voices, resilience, and stories of social impact, including the Proof of Life series and Never Again: Allies Speak Out Against Antisemitism

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Before

Growing up Jewish in Canada during the 70s and 80s felt like a dream. I immigrated to Canada from Israel in 1971, just old enough to walk off the airplane on my own, hand in hand with my two older brothers. We adjusted quickly. My parents enrolled us in a private Hebrew day school, and we settled into a middle-income neighborhood where only one other Jewish family lived.

Life felt safe. Normal. My best friend and next-door neighbor would invite me to celebrate Christmas and Easter at her home, while we welcomed her to our Shabbat table. She tried cholent for the first time, while I discovered the peculiar taste of ketchup with eggs. We laughed, played, and grew up together. Life was as carefree and innocent as it should be for any elementary kid.

Not once in my childhood, or even into my years as a young adult, did I experience antisemitism firsthand. Of course, we learned about it. Field trips to the Holocaust Museum. History lessons that spanned centuries of Jewish persecution. Stories passed down from grandparents. All of it shaped my Jewish identity, but it always felt like history. The kind of thing you study, remember, and honour while still believing that it belonged to another era.

I lived in a bubble. A safe, Canadian bubble.

Pop

Now, at 56, that bubble has burst.

The Canada I once knew and loved turned its back on me.

Mere hours after the October 7th massacre, antisemitism ran rampant in the streets. Only it wasn’t called antisemitism anymore. It was dressed up, rebranded as “anti-Zionism.” But the mask was thin. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. At first, I was in denial. How could it be that thousands poured into the streets waving flags and chanting against Israel while videos of children being dragged from their homes were still fresh? Did they not see? Did they not care?

Day after day of watching the hatred spill onto our streets with crowds of people chanting “from the river to the sea" conveniently in front of Jewish owned businesses, or screaming “Free Palestine” as an automaton response to any discussion on the topic, I decided I had had enough.

I had always believed in dialogue, in a way out of the hysteria, by calmly and empathically, finding solutions to guide people to the middle ground. That’s when I founded EnoughTo, a grassroots movement aimed at bringing civility back to the streets of Toronto. Yet even there, hate reared its ugly head. Trolls hurled slurs, strangers called me names. People flooded our social media, not with curiosity or openness, but with venom. I was called a “Zionist pig.” I was told to “go back where you came from.” I received direct messages dripping with hatred, mocking my identity and faith. Some hurled accusations that Jews were orchestrating the war, others laughed at the murdered children.

All I was asking for was a return to basic human decency, yet even that was met with rage.

It left me shaken. Not because I hadn’t known antisemitism existed, but because it revealed how close it had been all along, simmering beneath the surface of a Canada I thought was immune. The illusion of safety I had carried since childhood was shattered.

Allies

And then one night, feeling a wave of anger and grief pressing in on me, I turned to what I know best: writing. I wrote a poem that spilled out of me in a matter of minutes. It was raw, it was unfiltered, and it was very healing. That poem became the seed for an anthology.

I leaped into action again and reached out to an organization called One Family Fund and together we summoned submissions from across the world and published the first book, Proof of Life: An Exploration of Conflict, Survival and the Human Spirit, that captured the pain and the resilience of the Jewish people after October 7th.

But I knew the moment I published the book, another more powerful book needed to be written. Because the fight against antisemitism cannot be fought by Jews alone. We need allies. We need voices from every background and belief system to take this stand with us.

This new collection, Never Again: Allies Speak Out Against Antisemitism, is a rallying cry, weaving essays, poetry, and personal reflections that speak to the urgency of solidarity, moral courage, and the defense of democratic values. Because “Never Again”, must be more than a slogan. It must become a verb. Something we do.

For me, my actions became personal in a way I never imagined. Watching my daughter see the video of Naama Levy dragged into Gaza shattered something deep inside me. The innocence I was privileged to have as a child, the bubble of safety I knew so well, she does not get to inherit. That is what compels me to act. That is why I publish, why I organize, why I cannot remain silent.

I do not want my children to walk in fear as they go to the corner store feeling the need to tuck in their Magen David necklaces, or question whether they were denied a job because their last name sounds Jewish, or worse yet, Israeli. These fears have forced me into a sense of urgency and a promise that “Never Again” means more than just words. It means throwing my gauntlet into the ring, to fight for my children’s safety, and for a Canada I once knew and loved.

That’s why this book, and the upcoming launch, feels so personal to me. It’s a chance to sit together, to bear witness, and to begin turning words into something real. I would be honoured if you joined me in the ring.

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