Over the last couple days (and weeks, and months), the messages I’ve received from dear friends and loved ones in the United States sound something like, “Well, at least you’ve already moved to Canada.” This theme echoes our persistent Jewish response, honed across the generations, to ensure that we always have an up-to-date passport (more than one, if possible), and a plan to leave if and when Jewish life becomes unsustainable in our home countries. And yet, we know that there is no place, no utopia, no country without its problems, challenges, and brokenness, including our own country of Canada. Our task, as Jews, is to do everything we can in the place that we are to build a more just and a more safe society, for ourselves and for our neighbours.
Last week, the Government of Canada and the office of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, released the long-awaited Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Statistics Canada data on hate crimes for the first half of 2024 shows that Jews are the most targeted group – 17.6% of hate crimes have targeted Jews and Jewish communities, although we make up less than 1% of Canada’s population. This handbook is intended to be one of many tools in the fight against hate and antisemitism, to be used by law enforcement, community organizations, local government, the media, schools, and more.
This is one tool of many. At times like these, it is easy for our first instinct to be to turn inwards – to our own families, our own loved ones, our own communities. But in order to create the world we imagine, to create a world of belonging for everyone, we must turn outwards, to form relationships with our neighbours across the lines of race, class, and faith. The world as it should be is not a guarantee. This week, bookended by the English anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, and the anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the pogrom often considered the start of the Holocaust, we know all too well the lived consequences of hate and political violence. Together, maybe, just maybe, we can imagine a different future.
