The CJN Magazine: Passover 2024

The Canadian Jewish News Am Yisrael Chai!

Spring 2024 | Aviv 5784

As we gather with family and loved ones around the Seder table to celebrate the eternal and unyielding strength of the Jewish People, we pay tribute to those Israelis who are being kept away from their Seders, their families, and their lives.

Here at home, Jewish Canadians are facing extraordinary challenges. Now more than ever, for the sake of our collective future, we must work together to confront them.

Head to www.cija.ca/4morequestions to include Canadian Jewish Advocacy as part of your Seder.

Canadian.

Jewish.

Advocacy.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations of Canada – UIA, representing Jewish Federations across Canada.

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We hope that spring brings hope for peace and better days ahead

Happy Pesach

THIS YEAR IN JERUSALEM

Join us in Jerusalem May 20-22, 2024 For more information: Nomi Yeshua, JFC Executive Director nomiy@jerusalemfoundation.ca / 416 922 0000 www.jerusalemfoundation.org

What’s inside

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THE FRONT PAGES

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Whose stories are we really telling on Passover?

AV I F I N E G O L D

Q&A: Dr. Karen Devon talks MAID in Canada

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The news editor keeping track of the latest protests LILA SARICK

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FEATURES

50 Daniel Ehrenworth; Lila Sarick; Shlomi Amiga; Stocksy

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Ellin Bessner on reporting the story of her life

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Lessons learned from living in Israel in 2024 VIVIAN BERCOVICI

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When the Israeli hockey squad came to Toronto J O N AT H A N R O T H M A N W I T H P H O T O S BY S H LO M I A M I G A

THE BACK PAGES 60

Between the covers of the popularity of polyamory P H O E B E M A LTZ B O V Y

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A peek under the first official Toronto police kippah

Contributors Avi Finegold (p.10) founded the Jewish Living Lab in his native Montreal, and launched the Bonjour Chai podcast on The CJN Podcast Network in March 2021. He recently relocated to Deerfield, Illinois, with his wife Rabba Rachel Kohl Finegold and their three daughters, which gives him plenty of time to formulate contrarian rabbinical views while driving around the suburbs of Chicago.

Ronit Novak; Haley Wheeler; Vito Amati

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Phoebe Maltz Bovy (p.60) is the co-host of Bonjour Chai, and also the Feminine Chaos podcast with Kat Rosenfield, making her the newest Canadian citizen dedicated to talking about the culture wars.

A contributing columnist for the Globe and Mail along with her role at The CJN, she’s writing a book on female heterosexuality published by Signal, an imprint of Random House Canada.

Jonathan Rothman (p.50) is a multidisciplinary kibbitzer who might also be The CJN’s first staff news reporter to speak Brazilian Portuguese. He has written for Spacing, Exclaim! and Now Magazine, reported for CBC Radio, worked as an editor for Yahoo! and was a creative events producer at The Walrus—all the while aspiring to spend more time in tropical and Mediterranean locales.

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the vibrant hues of spring unfurl around us, I’m reminded of new beginnings and the promise of optimism this season brings. With it, we embrace the opportunity to embark on new journeys, both personally and professionally. It is also a time for reflection as the Jewish community comes together to celebrate Passover.

This past winter, two decades into my professional career, I joined The Canadian Jewish News with a mix of emotions. On one hand, I felt exhilaration upon joining a publication that I remembered reading weekly at my grandparents’ house. Yet, on the other hand, I was joining The CJN at a time when antisemitism reached a new peak in my lifetime.

Jewish voices have been silenced across Canada amid hateful and violent protests. Modern media and messaging platforms allow inflammatory, one-sided, and hateful rhetoric to reach a wider audience than ever before. It was through this lens that I realized the increased importance of an outlet dedicated to the practice of ethical journalism combined with the promise of greater connection.

When The CJN was revitalized in 2021 as a digital-first information source, it was done with an eye to the future. As we continue to move forward, we’ll do so with refined objectives and a concentrated approach.

Now, we’re aspiring to reach every Jewish household in Canada with the goal of engaging the next generation of readers, listeners, and influencers from coast to coast to coast.

In the months ahead, we’ll relaunch our website with dynamic design updates, and introduce a reimagined quarterly magazine, all while establishing new voices through our multimedia channels.

The goal is to continue serving our legacy audience with trusted news—while also adding initiatives that appeal to

those who haven’t previously connected with The CJN. You can help us get a head start by sharing this issue with your family and friends, and suggest they visit thecjn.ca to read breaking news stories, sign up for free digital newsletters, and subscribe to the eclectic shows offered through The CJN Podcast Network.

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Origin stories The essence of Passover is recounting our history.

Or is it?

BY AVI FINEGOLD

rauma myopia. It’s a term I encountered recently in the New York Times, in an article about alliances and tensions between Jewish and African-American activists. The journalist, Daniel Bergner, interviewed a young non-Jewish activist named Nicole Carty, who spoke about “a Jewish propensity for 'trauma myopia'.”

“I’ve been to a lot of Passover celebrations,” she told Bergner, “and it’s so weird that the story is only of Jewish subjugation, even though subjugation is still so present for other people.” She went on: “Black people still haven’t had their histories honored. We are still gaslit about the impact of slavery and the continued impacts of white supremacy.”

This highlighted a tension that has existed in Jewish thought for quite a while: How much of Judaism is rooted in particularism—in the notion that everything we do as Jews is uniquely by us and for us? And how much of it is rooted in a universalist mindset, or the idea that we have a set of values that can be adopted and presented to the world at large? Are we required to remember everything that has happened to every group when we discuss our past? What is the nature of the seder and why do we have one every year? Who is it for?

The majority of Jews and Jewish thought lives in between these two endpoints—the upshot of which is that we need to grapple with this tension, especially at peak moments in Judaism such as the seder.

Years ago, I was invited to give a series of talks entitled "Judaism: On Pleasure." The first session was about Judaism’s relationship to food. It was before Passover, and we got to talking about the seder and how gathering around food and meals shapes

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us as a community. One of the things I had mentioned as an aside was that there are rabbinic opinions that hold that one should not have any non-Jews at the seder. This stems from a technical halachic question, but it certainly became part of the rabbinic question of who is the seder for. If we say “let all who are hungry come and eat,” we need to define who all is.

To my surprise, at the beginning of the next session I was told that my presence was a near thing: they had come close to retracting my invitation to finish the series. Just about everyone attending had non-Jewish family members, and they were insulted to learn that those kin might not be wanted at their seders.

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ne of the formative questions that Judaism wrestles with is the relationship between universalism and particularism.

Which of our practices and ideas are meant to be something we share with the world (don’t murder, take time off to rest, the value of learning) and which are specific to us as a people (pray with a quorum, sit in mourning for seven days, don’t eat leavened products on Passover)?

The seder might be the ideal moment to contemplate this tension, precisely because the seder might be the peak moment of particularism in traditional understandings of Judaism. The story we tell at the seder is the story of our nation, our history, our relationship with the Divine.

The story of the exodus is about of how a small family grew and evolved into a nation.

And just like an individual who grows up and needs to assert their own identity, one of the central themes in this evolution is

differentiating ourselves from our roots in Egypt. When we arrive, we are the Children of Jacob. We leave as B'nai Yisrael, a people that define ourselves, very often, by how we are not like the Egyptians. We were instructed to sacrifice a lamb which was sacred to Egyptians. Our faith is not rooted in the movement of the stars and planets but in the one who placed those spheres in orbit. Most importantly, our ethical responsibilities are directly related

Culture Club/Bridgeman/Getty Images

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Culture Club/Bridgeman/Getty Images

Israelites making bricks in Egypt. Illustration by William Hole (1925) Old Testament History retold and illustrated. London Eyere & Spottiswoode.

to how we were treated in Egypt. We rest weekly because we were forbidden to do so as slaves; we treat others fairly because we were not. The seder by its nature celebrate our particularism, our difference.

This argument for Judaism’s particularism does not mean we are creating a hierarchy of nations. We are not inherently better than anyone else, and if we invite non-Jews to our seders it isn't so they can hear us talk about how much better we are than

them. We have this origin story that gives us our unique character. It is no better or worse than any other nation's origin story, and by extension the ethics we derived from our origin do not make us better.

It is what we do with those ethics that shapes us. If it is victimhood that was transformed into this sense of responsibility that we celebrate at the seder, then what we do with that responsibility is we should dwell on.

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he series of talks I'd given where the question of non-Jews at the seder came up was held at a Reconstructionist congregation. The movement (which now calls itself Reconstructing Judaism) is rooted in the theology of Mordecai Kaplan, an American rabbi born into an Orthodox family with some renegade tendencies. His thought was very much about the tension between nationalism and universalism.

Shira Stutman, who was the senior rabbi of THECJN.CA 11

This is what Nicole Carty seems to be missing when she talks about trauma myopia at the seder. There are many Jews who have taken these lessons to heart—many who feel the pain of others and do the work needed to make meaningful changes. But that work often needs to be rooted in something else, in our own story. I don’t expect others to center my story in their lives, and I want to be able to celebrate my story alone at certain points in my Jewish life.

The giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Illustration by William Hole (1925)

the historic Sixth & I synagogue in Washington D.C. (and can be heard weekly on the Chutzpod podcast) told me that for her, particularism is unequivocally important even in a time of universalism. “In our moment in history, it's about a balance between the two. When do we lift up universalism and when do we lift up particularism?”

Stutman also remembers the moment of disbelief she had when she learned that some Jews don’t have any non-Jews at their seders. She thinks that for many Jews, Passover is the not only the story of our liberation but also a way to support liberation for all. This universalist gloss on a what was once a particularistic holiday is one of the main reasons why many Jews continue to celebrate the seder.

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Sid Schwarz, a rabbi who grew up Orthodox, was ordained in the Reconstructionist movement, and now works extensively in trans-denominational settings, put it this way: “Most lessons about chesed and the responsibility towards the other are best learned in a particularistic setting.” He continued by stressing that if someone remains in a particularist setting, however then you haven't actually learned the lessons you're meant to. At Passover, the story of going from slavery to freedom is certainly a particular one. But it is the start of an emotional and intellectual journey, not an end in and of itself. The lesson in the story is to help others, whoever they might be, in their journey from slavery and oppression to freedom and autonomy.

his year, in the wake of Oct. 7 and the ongoing war, Passover will inevitably have a different feel to it. Many people will, naturally, want to discuss those events at their seders—and this is not, I don't think, a collapse into universalism.

The very nature of what we discuss in the Haggadah is at the core what is currently happening with this war. Many of our values as Jews stem from this origin story, and there is so much to draw from when we discuss this conflict that is rooted in these very nation-forming values. Ignoring them would be foolish and pretending that this story is just ancient history or myth is just plain wrong.

It would also be wrong to assume to know what lessons the Hagaddah holds about the war.

In the seder, we are reminded that in every generation there are those who rise up to annihilate us, and we are saved from them, and we ask God to pour wrath upon the nations that do not know God. So maybe let's hear out what cousin Shmuli from Sderot has to say about how this is manifesting today, and accept that we are dealing with a fear that runs deep and is part of our collective unconscious.

But this is not the end point. The fact that we were once slaves in Egypt is exactly why the rabbis remind us to care for those that are less fortunate than us and are in need of care and comfort. We are required to imagine ourselves as if we are leaving Egypt.

If that doesn’t make you feel compassion for a Palestinian who is starving and under constant bombardment, then you might be doing it wrong.

The seder is the perfect moment to celebrate our particularism as a nation, and also to remember that it was shortly after our own liberation that we were given a set of rules about how to govern ourselves, not just internally, but with relation to the rest of the world as well. n

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The space between Dr. Karen Devon on how MAID is a reflection of survival and freedom

BY ELLIN BESSNER PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAOMI HARRIS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS THECJN.CA 15

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hile her hectic surgical schedule usually has her performing life-saving thyroid cancer procedures in the operating room, occasionally Dr. Karen Devon is assisting patients approved for the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, as one of about 1,500 specially trained practitioners in Canada.

MAID allows patients suffering from serious or terminal illnesses or disability to be put to death with the help of drugs administered by a physician or nurse practitioner.

Finding herself carrying out an assessment in Yiddish is but one example of where her background came in handy. She also happens to be one of the first female Jewish general surgeons to ever work at the University of Toronto.

A medical ethics specialist, 47-year-old Dr. Devon is also the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who regularly presents her late father Moishe Devon’s story to generally non-Jewish school groups.

And while these two parts of her life have opened her to criticism—specifically, from those wondering how she could condone putting anyone to death after what the Nazis did—she believes her father, who died of natural causes in 2021, would have considered MAID if it was a necessary way for him to avoid pain and suffering.

It’s nearing eight years since MAID became legal in Canada, on June 6, 2016.

Where did it begin for you as part of your practice?

One of my own patients with metastatic cancer was suffering terribly. I was present for her MAID procedure, and I was able to see what a peaceful and pain-free death that allowed her to have. It was then that I decided I wanted to be involved with facilitating this for patients in general. Like most MAID practitioners in Canada, it’s not usually the main part of our job, but it’s something we really feel strongly about: giving patients autonomy and the ability to make that choice for themselves.

How many patients are you personally helping on an annual basis—and has that number been increasing over time?

And have your views on it changed along the way?

Certainly we know there’s been a growth in MAID because it’s now about four percent of deaths in Canada, about 19,000 per year. I’m a provider who only does 16

MAID in the hospital, although many of my colleagues do it in people’s homes or other places. Sometimes I’m helping people several times a month—other months have fewer requests.

Mostly, I’ve just learned what a privilege it is to be in the room, to witness someone suffering and to just be there, to be trusted at this really intimate moment in their life.

And I remember, when I first started, thinking this must be a little of what it’s like to be a rabbi, playing a role in these important life events and helping to counsel patients, especially because several of those who I’ve helped are Jewish.

“From a Jewish values perspective—I have no issue with that connection. I’m a proud child of a survivor and I proudly do this work.”

What legal frameworks are you operating under? How would you explain the process of eligibility for MAID? As a physician, I don’t feel a significant amount of legal risk. Certainly, I want to make sure I’m doing my job well and assessing a patient thoroughly. The process each person has to go through is pretty rigorous, involving a written request form and two independent assessors—very strict criteria. So, part of my job is to really talk to patients, understand their life, their illness, their suffering, and determine whether or not I can help them in this way.

I also talk to them about all the other opportunities or possibilities for alleviating their suffering that might be acceptable to them. We explore other options aside from assisted death.

The criticism comes from the view that a doctor is supposed to follow the Hippocratic oath of “Do No Harm,” and then you’re killing a patient…

Well, certainly that’s not what I see myself as doing. If it’s a disease that’s harming the patient, the disease is killing them. What my colleagues and I are doing is providing help through compassionate care at a point where we can no longer cure someone. We

are still able to think of them as a whole person and respond to their needs.

The federal government has now paused opening up MAID to those with mental illness as a sole criterion, and minors under 18 aren’t in the cards right now.

Part of my job is to ensure people understand all the options available to them. At the same time, I don’t think we can hold people who are suffering hostage to the feelings of our society. I don’t think that would be fair, but this is a really difficult issue. We all have a lot of guilt about how our system works.

But you’re the daughter of a man who spent ages 12 to 15 hiding in an underground bunker to evade the Nazis. It leads to you being asked about how you can reconcile counselling Jewish people who want to take their own life when Hitler murdered so many of us. How do you deal with that?

My father was well aware of the work I was doing. He supported me. And he was very, very proud of the way in which I’m able to help people.

But specifically regarding the Holocaust, people sometimes conflate different issues. What I see as the greatest atrocity of the Shoah is that people had freedom of choice taken away from them, the freedom to choose their own fates. In becoming a MAID provider, that’s exactly what I’m doing for people, allowing them to have the freedom to determine their life. For me, there is really—from my moral perspective, from a Jewish values perspective—I have no issue with that connection. I’m a proud child of a survivor and I proudly do this work.

And while I’m definitely not an expert on Jewish law, I was raised with Jewish values, and raised to be kind and compassionate with a commitment to social justice. My role as a MAID provider fits well with the way I try to live my life.

The overwhelming response I get from all patients is that of immense gratitude.

I had a specific discussion with someone who heard about the work that I do and knew that I was the child of a survivor— because I also have done some medical ethics work around medicine and the Holocaust—and he sent me a book about euthanasia and the Holocaust. You know what? It’s a great book.

People can see things as they wish, but I’m proud of this work. I know that I’m helping people. And that’s ultimately what I’m here to do, just to bring people mercy and to care about them. This is the total opposite of what the Nazis were.

You were the only child in your family.

How did you decide that enrolling in medical school was something you wanted to do?

It’s sort of clichéd but I was one of those people who, from the youngest age, knew I wanted to be a physician. My first memory was seeing a disabled child on the bus, and I started crying, because their mother was yelling at them. I think that comes from having heard the Holocaust story from such a young age. My father’s story. I just always

had this extremely deep sense of empathy, which was also not always helpful to me.

Your father Moishe also worked for the Canadian clothing designer Franco Mirabelli. Did that play a role in the fact that you’re recognized for your own fondness for wearing big colours and big prints?

I like to think it’s genetic. Both my parents had an astute sense of style, and my dad would tell me if what I was wearing was no longer in fashion. He’d be the one to tell me “mini is in now” or “mini is out now.” He loved seeing me dress up and glowed with pride.

What about your weekly Carrying Testimony presentations about the Holocaust

to public school kids in Grade 5 and up?

Have those felt more urgent lately?

I want them to connect to a specific story: to understand what antisemitism is, and that it’s a form of racism. I try to situate it within their own lives and what they can understand. Sometimes I’m asked, “Did your father think antisemitism was ever going to go away? What would he think now?”

And as much as he was an optimist—and a satisfied and grateful person in his life– he would’ve always said, “It’s never going to be gone.”

The other thing I’ve thought is that it’s a good thing he hasn’t been alive to see what’s happened since Oct. 7. I actually wish he was here to guide me. He would’ve been disappointed, but also not surprised. n THECJN.CA 17

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CHAG PESACH SAMEACH! Wishing you a joyful holiday Segal wishes happiness, peace and prosperity to all who are celebrating Passover. Here’s to a full plate and a happy heart.

Best wishes to you and your family

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A first draft of history Lila Sarick, our website’s news editor, on the work of covering the Israel-Gaza war’s complex impact on Canadian Jews

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to synagogue, all we had were questions.

How could Israel’s security have been so thoroughly breached? What had happened to that baby’s parents?

My son belongs to a lively and thriving independent minyan where decisions are made collectively. That morning, a brief but uncomfortable debate broke out about whether to add a psalm for Israel, just before the Yizkor memorial service. Some people had not looked at their phones because it was a holiday and didn’t yet know the news. Others had already heard from family in Israel who had been called up to fight and were distressed. And one or two, who opposed the addition of a psalm were ambivalent (at best) about Israel. (In the end, a psalm was recited.)

On the walk home, another question arose. What would this mean to us in Canada where sentiments about Israel were already complicated and conflicted?

Was this an attack on Israel’s very existence, so eerily similar in timing to the Yom Kippur War in 1973? Should we march to the Israel Bonds office, chequebooks in hand, as many in my parents’ generation had—or was this something equally terrible but different?

These two parallel currents—the trauma of what had occurred in Israel and its impact on North American Jews—have preoccupied me since that morning.

The first story The CJN published about the attack was on Oct. 8. I interviewed the

childhood friends of Vivian Silver, a Winnipeg peace activist, who was presumed to have been kidnapped from her home on Kibbutz Be’eri.

Lynne and Michael Mitchell had talked to Silver just a few days before the attack and they were careful to speak about their friend in the present tense, even while Lynne’s voice cracked a little. They told me about her commitment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians and their hope that all her good deeds would somehow spare her. Tragically, Silver’s body was identified weeks later, in the burned-out ruins of her home.

The stories of the Canadians killed in the attacks were heartbreaking—some were just kids attending the now infamous rave.

Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images)

ince Oct. 7, the Canadian Jewish News has published over 200 news stories and first-person columns on its daily website. I’m the news editor, my byline has been on many of those stories and I have assigned and edited nearly all of them. Reporters, or at least old-school ones like me, were taught to be dispassionate observers, and we maintain that professionalism here.

We report what we see and I leave it to our columnists and pundits to try and peer into the future. But I also want to pull back the curtain a bit and tell readers what it’s been like being a Jewish journalist in Canada over the last five months.

On the morning of Oct. 7, I was visiting my adult son in the United States. As we got ready for synagogue, we checked our phones. My colleague Ellin Bessner, who hosts The CJN Daily podcast, had already texted me that there was breaking news from Israel.

As my son and I scanned the reports, it was clear that something catastrophic had occurred, but it was hard to understand what exactly had gone on. The one awful detail that rattled around my brain all morning was a report from a southern kibbutz that a baby had been found, but the parents were missing. What could have happened that a baby had been abandoned while the parents had disappeared?

Now, of course we know the details of those terrible hours and days in Israel.

But that morning, as my son and I walked

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march during a rally outside US Consulate General and marched in downtown Toronto, on December 16, 2023

Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images)

A few were killed in their homes—Netta Epstein died protecting his girlfriend, Adi Vital-Kaploun, was killed while shielding her two little boys. Two were older women, Silver and Judih Weinstein-Haggai, who had chosen to live on the southern border despite the risks.

We wrote about as many of the Canadians who were killed in the attacks as we could, contacting their friends and families to paint a picture of how they lived, rather than only about how they died.

Although it was initially believed, and hoped, that some of these people were alive and being held hostage in Gaza, in the end none of the Canadians survived.

I have heard that in Israel, people will

symbolically adopt one particular hostage whose life somehow resonates with them.

For me, that hostage was Ofri Brodutch, an Israeli girl who was abducted, along with her mother, two younger brothers, and a 4-year-old neighbour, the day before her tenth birthday.

Ofri had spent the past summer in Canada, going to one of the Zionist camps here and visiting her aunt and uncle who live in Toronto. She reminded me so much of my grown daughter and her friends who had started camp together at that age. Ofri’s uncle Aharon was tireless in his efforts to help his brother’s family. He met with politicians pleading for the Canadian government to exert its international pressure and

facilitate the hostages’ release.

In a news conference from Ottawa, he recalled how the Israeli soldiers who had searched his brother’s family home after the attack cried when they found Ofri’s birthday cake still in the fridge.

Ofri and her family were freed on Nov. 26.

The video released by the Israeli hospital where they were taken, showed them having a joyful reunion with the family dog.

Keeping the story of the hostages, especially those who remained in Gaza, in front of our readers has been one of our priorities. The Jewish community found creative ways to keep the hostages’ stories before the mainstream media, when their attention flagged. We have written about THECJN.CA 21

Pro-Palestinian supporters on the Avenue Road bridge, Toronto, on January 6, 2024

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My morning routine was to read the news and look for the most egregious antisemitic incident from that day, not the only one but the worst one in the country and then think, how can I find a reporter to cover this?

The CJN operates with a small staff and even though we worked weekends and evenings, it was frustrating that we couldn’t cover every story. It was, however, a relief to work for a news organization where we could call the Hamas attackers what they were—terrorists.

Many media outlets, including the CBC, have shied away from the term and those responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre are simply called attackers. I think it would have crushed my soul a little to abide by that newsroom policy.

Not long after Oct. 7, I ran into a senior educator, who was distraught. Jewish students and teachers were harassed and vulnerable while their classmates participated in mass walkouts, yelling, “Free Palestine” and, “From the river to the sea.”

The educator had spent much of her career teaching tolerance and cultural sensitivity but at that moment questioned whether she had done enough. “People don’t know how bad it is,” she said.

Perhaps, but many of us would learn.

Every city in Canada saw pro-Palestine (or anti-Israel, depending on your viewpoint) marches that blocked downtown streets week after week. These were not calls for a two-state solution or decrying the rule of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers. They were, point-blank, a call for the end of the Jewish state, with Zionists labelled white colonial settlers, who were ordered to return to wherever they came from (as long as it wasn’t Israel).

Even more disturbing were the ways the anger and hatred for Israel mutated into frank antisemitism, especially against children. There were shots fired at two Montreal schools and a call from Hamas leaders for a global “day of violence” that led parents to keep their kids home, fearful of what could happen.

I stood in the rain as the principal of Toronto’s largest Jewish high school described the bomb threat the school received and the decision to evacuate the building and a nearby daycare. Fortunately, no one was injured in any of these incidents, but they succeeded in their objective: evoking fear.

A bridge not far from my home became briefly infamous when it was blocked by raucous Palestinian protests every week-

Lila Sarick (2)

the empty strollers and empty Shabbat tables symbolizing the missing hostages that are temporarily installed in public spaces. I interviewed people who prepared care packages containing teddy bears and hand cream that were delivered to the Canadian Red Cross, in an effort to highlight the International Red Cross Committee’s refusal to aid the hostages.

The only thing we didn’t do, as a publication, was view the 45-minute video of the horrors of the attack, filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves, that the Israeli consulate in Toronto showed to Canadian reporters. Both Ellin and I declined—we had no doubts about the gruesome details and the veracity of the reports and we didn’t think our readers did either.

Writing about the victims of Hamas and a Canadian-Israeli soldier who was killed in battle was tragic, but the parallel story of protests and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in Canada has proven more challenging in some ways.

The word unprecedented is used so often in reference to antisemitism that it has lost much of its meaning. But in truth, the eruption of antisemitism across the country is greater both in numbers of incidents and ferocity than we have ever seen.

Nathan Philips Square in Toronto, at a rally marking 100 days of captivity for the hostages on January 14, 2014

Lila Sarick (2)

end for weeks on end. The tipping point was when a police officer delivered a carton of Tim Hortons coffee that demonstrators on the barricaded bridge had ordered.

I was standing with the residents on the far side of the bridge that morning and couldn’t see the coffee delivery, which police chief Myron Demkiw had to issue an apology for. But the residents, not all of whom are Jewish, had plenty to say about the protesters.

They were both angry and intimidated by the masked demonstrators who used the highway overpass as a site to launch smoke flares, hang flags and chant, “Zionists out.”

They were outraged the protests were targeting a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood rather than the Israeli or American consulates—places where foreign policy is actually made. And even before the coffee faux pas, they were frustrated with the Toronto police force’s practice of deescalating tensions rather than stopping the protests.

The next week the police chief (who had by then received a phone call about the matter from the prime minister) declared the bridge off limits and warned that protesters would be arrested.

Predictably, a few people tested their luck the following Saturday and strolled

out on the bridge, although without any flags or signs. And equally predictably, police warned them to leave and then made three arrests.

This time I was standing among the pro-Palestinian protesters and what I heard was not political but personal and chilling. “How would they like it if their babies were killed” they said among themselves, referring to the rising death toll in Gaza.

“Who do they think they are? Why is their neighbourhood so special?” “We’ll show those ‘Zionists.’”

These protests have become increasingly disruptive as the winter, and the war in Gaza, dragged on. In Toronto, a protest stopped in front of Mount Sinai Hospital and people loudly chanted “intifada” underneath the hospital windows, while a self-described “Palestinian Spiderman” scaled the building to wave a flag.

In early March, as I was writing this column, protesters blocked the entrance to the Bronfman building at McGill University and a few days later, surrounded a Jewish community building where Concordia students were hosting an event.

The Jewish community held its own rallies, which we covered, but they were very different in tone. Whether they were large

events organized by Jewish federations, or smaller ones planned by both left or rightwing groups, they tended to focus almost exclusively on the hostages and their desperate situation.

Canadian Jews hold a wide range of views, especially concerning Israel and the current government. But after Oct. 7, at least temporarily, there was a tacit agreement to focus on the one thing all camps could agree on: the release of the hostages.

Meanwhile, the anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism unleashed after Oct. 7, continued to seep into new cracks, in disturbing ways. The CJN wrote about the cancellation of a play set in Israel, The Runner, about an Orthodox volunteer who grapples with the fallout after saving a Palestinian woman’s life—and leaving a fatally wounded Israeli soldier behind.

Performances of The Runner were cancelled by a Victoria B.C. theatre which said this was not the time for a play that could further incite tensions in the community.

Soon after, a theatre festival in Vancouver pulled the play from its lineup after a Palestinian artist threatened to withdraw his work from the event.

I interviewed Leah Goldstein, a championship cyclist and motivational speaker who had served in an undercover unit in the IDF 30 years ago. She was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a women’s festival in Peterborough, Ont., but was abruptly disinvited when the organizers asked her for a statement on Israel and then cancelled the engagement, before she could even reply. Goldstein told me that after Oct. 7 her agent has been unable to book any speaking events.

The festival in a small Ontario city became an international news story, and in the end, organizers cancelled the entire event for this year.

I could go on. Nearly every single one of the hundreds of stories we have published and aired since Oct. 7 has been coloured in some way by the absolute tragedy of that day.

It would be a fool’s errand to try and predict what Israel will look like as it absorbs the losses of Oct. 7 and the toll of the war.

Similarly, there’s no way of telling how Canadian Jewish life will be reshaped by the violence and antisemitism here. For now, all we know is that those two parallel stories are still being written. n THECJN.CA 23

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War reporting from

the heart Ellin Bessner on how her Jewish journalism mission changed forever PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL EHRENWORTH EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

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THECJN.CA 29

Makeup and hair by Maya Goldenberg

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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 historical-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 attendance 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 important 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.”

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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

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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 biggest 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 Carleton University, and later held high-profile journalism jobs with CBC News and CTV News, including as a freelance correspondent 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 protests 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 terrorists 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 themselves 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 booming 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 Canada had barely been on the job for a few weeks. But he called on Ottawa to re-examine 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 history—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

son Shayne, spent the High Holiday season in Tel Aviv. They had planned a day at the beach on Oct. 7. Instead, their morning was spent watching rockets soar by, with the Iron Dome deployed to destroy them.

One rocket hit the building next door to where my friend Mark’s mother Hadassah Kingstone lives. The war was impacting us here in Canada, too.

Increasingly, there were questions about whether our government was moving fast enough to help Canadians who wanted to come home.

Within the week, a plan was hatched to use the Royal Canadian Air Force to shuttle them out of Tel Aviv to Athens, Greece, where they could transfer to Air Canada.

The first of these flights was set to land at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Oct. 13—so I went to find reunions worth reporting on.

Natalie and Jimmy Bitton were scanning the giant screen for the arrival time of the flight carrying their 18-year-old daughter Simona. She was volunteering at a daycare

I recognized this attack meant we would have to scramble to cover the biggest Jewish story of my career. in Tel Aviv, but a week spent in and out of bomb shelters, as things started heating up with Hezbollah in the north of Israel, led her worried parents to put their feet down.

The reunion was an emotional one, but Simona also shared her deepest feelings with me.

“I want to go back.”

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t was easier to report on tearful reunions than to process the emerging confirmations of young Canadians murdered on Oct. 7: Netta Epstein, 21, killed jumping on to a grenade the terrorists tossed into the safe room where he was hiding with his girlfriend.

Shir Georgy, 22, killed at the Nova music festival.

Ben Mizrahi, 22, from Vancouver, used his army training as a medic to save lives at the festival—before being murdered himself.

Alexandre Look, 30, of Montreal, killed while shielding his friends.

I left it to my colleagues to do the follow-up interviews with their families. I already wasn’t sleeping well due to my son’s sudden death.

Evan Shayne Bessner Friedlan was full of life. Beloved by his family and friends, and office colleagues. He was generous, smart, fashionable. He loved creating hip-hop songs, working out in the gym, watching Rick and Morty cartoons, and hockey. He had his whole life ahead of him.

I often imagined what it would have been like for me had he been a hostage, or if he had been murdered by Hamas. Would that have made it more bearable, somehow?

With a real enemy to blame?

As I was suddenly covering personal tragedies on the job, I chose not to reveal my THECJN.CA 31

personal details to anyone I was interviewing.

You can’t compare griefs. They’re all terrible.

But soon the Israeli-based relatives of Tiferet Lapidot started contacting Canadian journalists to raise awareness that she was missing from the music festival, and likely in Gaza.

Tiferet was about to turn 23.

Her aunt and uncle, Galit Goren and Harel Lapidot, were speaking on behalf of the family. Both grew up in Canada, as had Tiferet’s father. They all kept their citizenship when they moved back to Israel in the 1970s. But officials at the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv weren’t getting back to them.

The Lapidots desperately wanted Ottawa and Qatari officials to pressure Hamas to hand her back, and hoped stories in the Canadian media would do the trick.

Goren explained why she wasn’t able to sleep in her own bed for worrying that her niece might be spending nights tied to a chair, or on the floor in a tunnel under Gaza.

I cried, then. For Tiferet. For my son.

I revealed that I was a newly bereaved mother.

I felt I needed to show them some kindness, and show that I understood some of what they must be feeling.

Eleven days later, Israeli authorities confirmed Tiferet had actually been killed on Oct. 7, at the music festival. This would be a recurring theme in my stories over the weeks and months, as next-of-kin waited unusually long for forensic experts to make a positive identification.

But there was only so much detail in these atrocities that I could bear seeing for myself.

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hile I didn’t personally know any victims or hostages, the war and the spike of antisemitism in Canada after Oct. 7 brought its own distress and feeling compelled to do something from this side of the world.

We were grateful for those who organized the donation of items to help with the war effort, and the opportunity to contribute to fundraising campaigns. But there was no getting around fear about potential threats to our lives as Jews living in Canada.

Three times a week, I routinely visit a Jewish building in Toronto to swim. Security had been ramped up, but I worried it was inadequate. No one was checking my gym bag or purse. How were those with kids in Jewish day schools under threat coping in

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these times? Anxiety about the war and its impact here was affecting the mental health of everyone—my colleagues, my interview subjects, and the audience.

Maybe there was something to learn from those more directly affected. Lynne Mitchell, a practicing psychotherapist in Toronto, was a lifelong friend of Vivian Silver, the 74-year-old peace activist originally from Winnipeg, who was initially believed taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri. Lynne told me how she was using her professional training to counsel Vivian’s two sons, Chen and Yonatan, as they struggled with not knowing what happened to their mother. The technique was mostly one of listening.

It would be December before Israeli officials found enough of her remains to declare Vivian had actually been killed on Oct. 7.

It wasn’t quite Chesed Shel Emet, the Jewish commandment to honour the deceased without any compensation in return.

But I felt that by doing multiple podcast episodes about Vivian Silver, I was making my small contribution to her life and legacy.

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he CJN Daily found Canadians who rushed to Israel to join the war effort however they could—and also asked those who were already there, why they felt compelled to stay.

Leora Prutschi’s original program of volunteer work in Eilat pivoted to helping do arts and crafts with displaced Israeli kids forced to evacuate the Gaza area and stay in hotels. Reichman University student Maya Winkler had her classes cancelled for months, so she dedicated the study time to babysitting children of soldiers. Joey Lipetz, a yeshiva student in Mevasseret Zion, hand-tied the fringes of prayer shawls for soldiers to wear into battle.

Ronnen Harary, the co-founder of Toronto-based toy company Spin Master, shared the emotional experience of providing toys and games to Israeli children. He also joined Montreal natives Franck Azoulay and Lawrence Witt serving BBQ treats and burgers from a food truck to lineups of IDF soldiers about to head into battle.

Toronto cardiologist Dr. Bradley Strauss told me how he went to lend a hand in a hospital in Afula, as one of thousands of Diaspora medical personnel who turned up in the early days.

One of the most remarkable stories I did was about Joy Frenkiel, a social work-

er originally from Chomedey, Quebec, whose main job was helping soldiers’ families get through the dreaded “knock on the door”–when military authorities break the solemn news their loved one has been killed in battle.

I told her that she was doing holy work— which I felt because of my own recent first-hand experience. I’ll never forget the compassion the police officers showed to us on that fateful night in July.

But even 25 years of experience couldn’t prepare Frenkiel for the second task she volunteered for. It took place at the morgue on the Shura base, where families positively identified the remains of loved ones.

Amidst all the indescribable cruelty at the hands of Hamas, she still can’t get two particular sounds out of her head: IDF soldiers hammering wood to build coffins, and the motors of refrigerated containers storing hundreds of still-unidentified bodies.

For this daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Frenkiel saw her efforts as her way to fulfill the mitzvah of giving kindness to the murder victims during the darkest period of Israel’s modern history.

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peaking of former Montrealers, I consider myself in that category too, even if I was among the English-speaking Ashkenazi Jews who left in droves in the late 1970s. I still consider it “home” given how it’s where my mom and sister and other family members still live.

I wasn’t surprised to have to report on the spike in hostilities toward Jewish students at Concordia University, and McGill. In their day, my nephews had been among the vanguard of activists who opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions passed by anti-Israel student councils. But after Oct. 7, aggressive street rallies became a fixture in the city.

Then, on Nov. 7, Montrealers woke up to shocking news. Not only had a Molotov cocktail fire bomb been thrown at the door of a synagogue in Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, but gunshots had left holes in the doors of Yeshiva Gedola in midtown Montreal and at the Herzliah High School. A Jewish business was also targeted.

I was already booked to travel to Montreal to visit my family. So, I tucked my microphones into my briefcase, intending to explore why my native city had suddenly become a dangerous place for Jews.

Driving along Westbury Avenue, and in

Journalists often don’t get personally involved with the people they interview. It prevents any conflict of interest in reporting.

After Oct. 7, I broke that tradition. This wasn’t just any story, but an existential struggle for my people.

THECJN.CA 33

the heart of Snowdown, I saw police cars parked opposite the yeshivas and the day schools.

I hadn’t been inside the Federation headquarters on Cote St. Catherine Road for decades. In my youth, I often visited my mother’s office there, as she worked for the community. My late father attended meetings in the building volunteering for the March to Jerusalem.

The Jewish Public Library was a regular haunt. Back then, in-person community participation felt carefree.

Now, as a reporter on my way to interview the Federation CJA’s CEO Yair Szlak, I had to pass through metal detectors, plus a baggage screening machine supervised by uniformed security. I felt like I was at an airport. I was told it’s been that way at the front entrance for years. And yet, this was a whole other level from what I experienced in Toronto, even after Oct. 7.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Szlak told me in a candid interview. His team was consulting with local police, the RCMP, the FBI, even with law enforcement in France, where they were more accustomed to violent attacks on Jewish targets. He couldn’t go into more details, for security reasons.

But appeals to the city and province for more police—including off-duty police carrying weapons to patrol schools–were going unanswered.

Oliva Weizman, a local architect, was so worried about the street protests and targeted attacks that she launched a petition to get the Quebec government to provide more security. She admitted her synagogue visits now involved carefully checking where the exits were located, in the event of an attack.

During my flight coming into Montreal, I’d removed a pin I usually wear on my coat lapel, featuring the Israeli and Canadian flags. I was afraid to call attention to myself. But on my way back to Toronto, after the shootings, after the Molotov cocktails, I felt mad enough to put it back on with kavanah. Screw the haters, I said to myself. Bring it on.

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eeper into autumn, we started reporting stories of Israeli families coming to Canada as displaced persons for a respite from the war. While a few arrived with the intention of only staying a month or two, others made it permanent. They want peace and quiet for themselves and their children. They want to live in a house

34

without a safe room.

These families left everything behind in Israel, and arrived with their children—and a few suitcases—poorly equipped for winter in Canada.

It was inspiring to see how the community welcomed these newcomers, with free day school classes, mothers’ drop-in programs at community centres, and donation drives that allowed them to pick out their own needed supplies.

I cried, then. For Tiferet.

For my son.

I revealed that I was a newly bereaved mother.

I felt I needed to show them some kindness, and show that I understood some of what they must be feeling.

Journalists often don’t get personally involved with people they interview. It prevents any conflict of interest in reporting.

After Oct. 7, I broke that tradition. This wasn’t just any story, but an existential struggle for my people.

In my off-hours, I collected household items and even bought Hanukkah gifts for the children of these families. I connected the adults with a tutor, reviewed their resumes, and called in favours to help their kids get to the right schools.

But by February, all the hate directed at Jews in Canada started overwhelming me.

I felt scared. I tried to talk about it with friends and family, but processing a daily deluge of information isn’t their job. They’re not aware of all the reported incidents, the often-exaggerated social media outrage, the repetitious police news releases. They don’t have to worry about harsh online comments about their work, which I have also received.

I asked people to stop texting me links to the “antisemitism du jour” stories, as I call them. I needed a break from seemingly infinite immersion in examples of anti-Jewish hate.

D

espite my decision not to interview all the families of young Canadian adults killed on Oct. 7 because it hit too close to home, I made one exception.

In mid-February, Jacqui Rivers Vital, a native of Ottawa who lives in Jerusalem with her husband Yaron Vital, gave a Zoom talk to a seniors group from Ottawa AJ50+.

They’re the parents of the late Adi Vital-Kaplun, an Israeli-born woman with an engineering background, who was murdered while hiding in the safe room of her home in Kibbutz Holit.

Adi’s husband was away on a camping trip that day. She grabbed their rifle, bundled their two young sons inside the shelter, and barred the door.

She had the presence of mind to call her dad, who was visiting for the weekend—but sleeping in a guest house across the path. She told him in no uncertain terms to stay put and not come to their rescue. She then called her husband, asked for a refresher course on how to use the weapon, and told him to stay away, too. They are convinced she saved both their lives.

When the terrorists discovered Adi and the boys, she begged them to spare her children, told the boys she loved them, and opened fire at the terrorists. She killed one, before she was killed.

The boys survived, although they were briefly stolen by the terrorists and carried towards captivity in Gaza, before being let go the same day.

Now her parents are doing virtual speaking tours for North American groups, and raising funds for her surviving children. The Vitals describe her as a lioness. People in Israel consider her a hero.

It was gut wrenching to listen to their story.

I lay on my bed and cried into my hands.

I felt like we’re members of the same club: our children died too young.

Our family’s tragedy happened before Oct. 7. It changed me. But on Black Saturday I knew I had to find a way to channel my personal grief and put it aside so that I could do what I trained to do for my whole life. Be a journalist.

I can’t say how this period would have been for me had I not been able to do something: I couldn’t wear a uniform. Flying to Israel on a solidarity mission wasn’t in the cards for me, either. But I know how to tell stories. And I hope a few of them have connected with you. n

Jewish Canadians need a voice

now more than ever.

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A voice that unabashedly highlights the issues impacting us, and shines a light on rising antisemitism in our communities. A platform for Jews to speak, and be heard.

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THECJN.CA 35

From Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and your Liberal MPs

Happy Passover

Chag Pesach Sameach

Hon. Randy Boissonnault Edmonton Centre Randy.Boissonnault@parl.gc.ca

Ali Ehsassi Willowdale

Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau

John Aldag

Papineau

Cloverdale—Langley City

Brampton Centre

Oakville

John.Aldag@parl.gc.ca

Shafqat.Ali@parl.gc.ca

Anita.Anand@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Bardish Chagger

Shaun Chen

Paul Chiang

Ben Carr

Shafqat Ali

Hon. Anita Anand

Waterloo

Scarborough North

Markham—Unionville

Ben.Carr@parl.gc.ca

Bardish.Chagger@parl.gc.ca

Shaun.Chen@parl.gc.ca

Paul.Chiang@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Mona Fortier

Hon. Chrystia Freeland

Hon. Hedy Fry

Anna Gainey

Winnipeg South Centre

University—Rosedale

Vancouver Centre

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount

Ali.Ehsassi@parl.gc.ca

Mona.Fortier@parl.gc.ca

Chrystia.Freeland@parl.gc.ca

Hedy.Fry@parl.gc.ca

Anna.Gainey@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Marci Ien

Hon. Helena Jaczek

Majid Jowhari

Arielle Kayabaga

Hon. Kamal Khera

Ottawa—Vanier

Toronto Centre

Markham—Stouffville

Richmond Hill

Marci.ien@parl.gc.ca

Helena.Jaczek@parl.gc.ca

Majid.Jowhari@parl.gc.ca

London West

Brampton West

Arielle.Kayabaga@parl.gc.ca

Kamal.Khera@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Joyce Murray

Yasir Naqvi

Hon. Mary Ng

Taleeb Noormohamed

Jennifer O’Connell

Vancouver Quadra

Ottawa Centre

Markham—Thornhill

Vancouver Granville

Pickering—Uxbridge

Joyce.Murray@parl.gc.ca

Yasir.Naqvi@parl.gc.ca

Mary.Ng@parl.gc.ca

Taleeb.Noormohamed@parl.gc.ca

Jennifer.OConnell@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Judy Sgro

Francesco Sorbara

Leah Taylor Roy

Tony Van Bynen

Hon. Dan Vandal

Humber River—Black Creek

Vaughan—Woodbridge

Saint Boniface—Saint Vital

Francesco.Sorbara@parl.gc.ca

Aurora—Oak Ridges— Richmond Hill

Newmarket—Aurora

Judy.Sgro@parl.gc.ca

Tony.VanBynen@parl.gc.ca

Dan.Vandal@parl.gc.ca

36

Leah.TaylorRoy@parl.gc.ca

De la part du premier ministre Justin Trudeau et de vos députés libéraux

Joyeuse Pessah

‫חג פסח שמח‬

Parm Bains

Yvan Baker

Hon. Terry Beech

Hon. Bill Blair

Steveston—Richmond East

Etobicoke Centre

Burnaby North—Seymour

Scarborough Southwest

Parm.Bains@parl.gc.ca

Yvan.Baker@parl.gc.ca

Terry.Beech@parl.gc.ca

Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca

Michael Coteau

Julie Dabrusin

Anju Dhillon

Terry Duguid

Julie Dzerowicz

Don Valley East

Toronto—Danforth

Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle

Winnipeg South

Davenport

Michael.Coteau@parl.gc.ca

Julie.Dabrusin@parl.gc.ca

Anju.Dhillon@parl.gc.ca

Terry.Duguid@parl.gc.ca

Julie.Dzerowicz@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Karina Gould

Hon. Steven Guilbeault

Brendan Hanley

Ken Hardie

Anthony Housefather

Burlington

Laurier—Sainte-Marie

Yukon

Karina.Gould@parl.gc.ca

Steven.Guilbeault@parl.gc.ca

Brendan.Hanley@parl.gc.ca

Marie-France Lalonde

Hon. David McGuinty

Hon. John McKay

Fleetwood—Port Kells

Mount Royal /Mont-Royal

Ken.Hardie@parl.gc.ca

Anthony.Housefather@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Marco Mendicino

Wilson Miao

Orléans

Ottawa South

Scarborough—Guildwood

Eglinton—Lawrence

Richmond Centre

Marie-France.Lalonde@parl.gc.ca

David.McGuinty@parl.gc.ca

John.McKay@parl.gc.ca

Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca

Wilson.Miao@parl.gc.ca

Hon. Rob Oliphant

Hon. Carla Qualtrough

Hon. Harjit Sajjan

Hon. Ya’ara Saks

Randeep Sarai

Don Valley West

Delta

Vancouver South

York Centre

Surrey Centre

Rob.Oliphant@parl.gc.ca

Carla.Qualtrough@parl.gc.ca

Harjit.Sajjan@parl.gc.ca

Yaara.Saks@parl.gc.ca

Randeep.Sarai@parl.gc.ca

Anita Vandenbeld

Hon. Arif Virani

Patrick Weiler

Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson

Sameer Zuberi

Ottawa West—Nepean

Parkdale—High Park

Pierrefonds—Dollard

Arif.Virani@parl.gc.ca

West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country

North Vancouver

Anita.Vandenbeld@parl.gc.ca

Jonathan.Wilkinson@parl.gc.ca

Sameer.Zuberi@parl.gc.ca

Patrick.Weiler@parl.gc.ca

THECJN.CA 37

Happy Passover!

Mayor Steven Del Duca and Members of Council extend their best wishes for a healthy and happy Passover.

2022-26 City of Vaughan Members of Council First row, left to right: Gila Martow, Ward 5 Councillor; Chris Ainsworth, Ward 4 Councillor; Rosanna DeFrancesca, Ward 3 Councillor; Adriano Volpentesta, Ward 2 Councillor; Marilyn lafrate, Ward 1 Councillor Second row, left to right: Gino Rosati, Local and Regional Councillor; Linda Jackson, Deputy Mayor, Local and Regional Councillor; Steven Del Duca, Mayor; Mario Ferri, Local and Regional Councillor; Mario G. Racco, Local and Regional Councillor

Happy Passover!

ֵ ‫ַ​ַחג ָּכ‬ ‫ֵׁׂשר ְו ְָׂשׂ ֵ​ֵמ ַ​ַח‬ Wishes for a Happy Passover, sharing the traditions our loved ones handed down to us with the generations that follow.

MICHAEL KERZNER

From our family to yours, wishing you a happy and healthy Passover.

MPP/Député - York Centre

830 Sheppard Ave. W., Toronto, ON M3H 2T1 416-630-0080 • michael.kerzner@pc.ola.org michaelkerznermpp.ca 38 Sagecare_AD_CJN S agecare_AD_CJN 2 2024 024 P Passover.indd assover.indd 1

2024-02-29 2 024-02-29 1 11:28 1:28 A AM M

THECJN.CA 39

Too pious to serve?

Canada’s former ambassador to Israel on a nation perilously divided during wartime

40

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

BY VIVIAN BERCOVICI

A protester is taken away as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men protest against attempts to change government policy that grants ultra-Orthodox Jews exemptions from military conscription in Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2024.

We must be unified.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

We have heard this ceaselessly since Oct. 7 in the Diaspora and in Israel. Am Yisrael Chai.

But we are not unified. In fact, the social divisions tearing apart Israeli society are more pronounced and threatening than ever.

Unity is not decreed from on high. There is no “King of the Jews” with the moral or actual power to dictate how we, the people, think and behave. If anything, the opposite is true. Those in positions of authority in Israel have failed the people and the nation so profoundly and repeatedly as to place us all in an existential crisis. This despair and rage crosses partisan, ethnic, and socio-economic lines.

There is, however, consensus on one issue in Israel at the moment—often articulated with deep pain: that we find ourselves in the most serious national crisis since the founding of the state in 1948. It cannot and should not be airbrushed. It is real.

And, yes, it is dire.

Oct. 7 represented the failure of the paramount covenant embodied by the State of Israel: to provide a refuge for all Jewish people, after millenia of persecution and reasonably regular attempts to annihilate us. Ironically, the hatred fortified Jewish solidarity and identity. I have often thought that if we would just be left alone for a century or so we’d likely assimilate, and the job would be done. But the pogroms recur, with a dependable frequency.

On Oct. 7 the Israeli psyche was shattered by the magnitude of the total failure of the state to keep its most important promise—to ensure our physical safety within our national borders.

Several days ago, I met with Eyal Eshel, the bereaved father of Roni Eshel, who was murdered by Hamas monsters on Oct. 7 at the Nahal Oz army base in southern Israel. Roni was an IDF soldier in an intelligence unit comprised solely of women, known as ‘scouts’ or ‘observers’. Lore has it that women have a heightened attention to detail, making them ideally suited to sit for hours on end, staring at a computer screen that shows images from a small patch of border terrain. I have visited several of these units over the years. If a rock is moved a few centimeters, they know immediately. They are the eyes on Hamas. 24/7.

Roni was among the more senior members of the small unit and had returned to base on Oct. 4, following a short family holiday. As she was leaving to catch a train, she said goodbye to her dad, telling him, worriedly: “Dad. It’s so volatile there.” The word she used in Hebrew conveys explosiveness, as if a cauldron was boiling over, or a volcano about to erupt.

Eyal assured her that the IDF was the best military in the world and that the leadership was surely on top of things. Eyal believed in Israel’s power but, more importantly, in the professionalism and dedica-

tion of senior military leadership. Not in a million years would he imagine the horror his life was about to become.

Roni was set to greet several new recruits joining her team that weekend and to assist in their training and orientation. Among them was Na’ama Levy, a 19-year-old peace activist from the central Israeli city of Ra’anana. Video footage of Na’ama went viral on the morning of Oct. 7, showing her being pulled by her hair from the trunk of a white jeep in Gaza City, where she’d been stuffed in like a load of garbage. Her arms, face and feet were bloodied, her expression pure terror, her Achilles tendons severed so she could not run or escape, the butt of her light grey pants drenched with blood and soiled with dirt. Men surrounded the jeep, screaming “Allahu Akhbar,” as Na’ama was shoved into the back seat between two masked terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs.

Na’ama and Roni were among the first to be brutalized that day. Roni was tortured before being asphyxiated in a locked room set afire with accelerant, to which Hamas added toxic gas in order to ensure maximum pain and suffering. Five months on, her father seethes with rage.

The army at the highest levels knew about the very real threats on the border with Gaza. But senior leadership chose to dismiss the scouts’ concerns, articulated repeatedly in reports, as being about nothing more than hijinks by a bunch of Hamas punks. They demeaned the female scouts, who pleaded with their male superiors to pay attention to the shocking reports they had been making for months, based on observation of Hamas training drills that were extraordinarily rigorous, disciplined and ongoing. It was all there. Day after day.

On their screens.

Israeli Major General Aharon Haliva, commander of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, had better things to do. When alerted late on Oct. 6 to deeply concerning activity in the Gaza Strip, Haliva told the underling that he was on holiday in Eilat and not to be contacted until after 9 a.m. the following day. General Haliva slept soundly as Roni was brutalized.

Israeli civilians and soldiers were abandoned by the state. And five months on, we have yet to receive a remotely appropriate explanation as to why.

Why did the IDF, Shin Bet domestic security service, and senior civilian leadership THECJN.CA 41

Ultra-Orthodox protesters dance while holding a sign reading “The people of Israel do not have a right to exist without Torah,” Route 4 near Bnei Brak, March 4, 2024.

Israelis speak of their relationship with the state as a “contract.” Throughout the last year of social unrest, when many Israelis protested the sweeping judicial and institutional reforms proposed by the coalition government, many said that we need a new contract with the state.

The existing contract is predicated on the agreement of citizens to serve in the military to secure a liberal, democratic state with a Jewish majority. In return, based on the wording of the Declaration of Independence, as well as 75 years of national culture, the state must support institutions that are democratic.

Often misunderstood in Diaspora com-

munities, the protest movement was not a bunch of leftist, anarchist rogues. Not by a longshot. It reflected the diversity of Israeli society, socially, economically, and politically, but with one exception. It did not include the ultra-Orthodox, or haredim, who comprise 14 percent of the current population of 9 million.

Since the founding of the state, haredi men have been granted an exemption from serving in the military. In return, they are free to dedicate their lives to the study of Torah until age 26. The state fully supports them and their large families. When they turn 27 and are required to work to earn a living, they are unqualified to do much, having had a rudimentary secular education. Many take menial jobs and continue to study, relying on the largesse of foreign donors.

This “arrangement” came about in the weeks before the state was declared by prime minister David Ben Gurion. Haredim were threatening to oppose the establishment of a secular state before the United Nations. In their eyes, only God could restore statehood for the Jews.

Ben Gurion faced a very practical conundrum. He had to stifle haredi dissent and present a unified voice before the global

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

42

We find ourselves in the most serious national crisis since the founding of the state in 1948. It cannot and should not be airbrushed. It is real.

And, yes, it is dire.

Itai Ron/Flash90

scoff at the detailed intelligence reports made by the female soldiers for well over a year? Why was one female officer threatened with a court martial if she persisted in expressing alarm at what her soldiers were reporting? Why was a report—obtained

by IDF military intelligence at least a year before Oct. 7—which detailed a planned attack against Israel dismissed as the fantasies of Hamas punks?

Why did every aspect of Israel’s defence infrastructure and capability fail its citizens living in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip? Why did the IDF deploy masses of troops in the West Bank in the days leading up to Oct. 7 and leave the Gaza area completely exposed? Why did it take eight hours, minimum, from the launch of the attack, for the IDF to show up? And why was the air force nowhere in sight? Why did it take three weeks for the IDF to get boots on the ground, meaning that any possibility to “shock and awe” Hamas and rescue hostages was squandered?

Imagine, if you dare, the fury of Eyal Eshel.

Israelis revere the IDF. “The people’s army,” they call it. The military is the great equalizer in society, a true meritocracy. At least, that was the myth that we all believed.

community. And so, he agreed to finance the few hundred yeshiva students preferring a life of religious devotion. In return, a potential haredi revolt was averted.

As Ben Gurion stated then and in subsequent years, he was doing the impossible and creating a state after a 2,000-year hiatus.

Others, he felt, could deal with the details.

Among the issues which so many opposed during the protests in Israel last year was an insistence by haredi political parties that their exemption from military service be enshrined in a Basic Law. These Basic Laws—meant originally to form the basis of a proper constitution—have become the next best thing.

They articulate broad principles regarding the manner in which laws may be passed and

Haredi and other coalition leaders—including Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu—lashed out, smearing the protesters as traitors and resisters.

The impact of those attacks was lethal.

Among the ranks of the protesters were the vast majority of corporate CEOs, heads of banks and key financial institutions, tech executives, academics, current and former heads of the Bank of Israel, former IDF chiefs of staff and heads of Shin Bet and Mossad, and, most telling, reservists from top IDF combat and intelligence units and the air force. These are not exactly loopy, revolutionary types. Some haredim went so far as to refer to the protesting Israelis as “shirkers”.

of service for reservists will rise to 46 from the current 40.

After 90 days of reserve duty in hell, when almost immediately upon discharge, many men received fresh call-up notices to report for duty in the north in late March and April, this news was just too much.

Meanwhile, the haredim continue to demand their exemption, saying that their piety is what saves the country, not weapons and warriors. This epic battle will come to a head in April, when every year since 1948, the Knesset has extended the haredi exemption.

I expect that this year will break the cycle.

If not, the “contract” will be torn up, and that portends a downward spiral in so many ways.

An Israeli protester lifts her T-shirt next to Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men outside an army recruiting office in March 5, 2024, during a demonstration against their army exemption

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Itai Ron/Flash90

appropriate substantive parameters.

For many Israelis, demanding a Basic Law to legitimize the haredi refusal to serve was a step too far.

In exasperation, many participants in the protest movement said that if the nature of the state was to be modified to the degree that it would no longer be democratic, then they may not serve when called. May not.

To even venture into such sacred territory in Israel is extreme. Military service is morally not negotiable.

That is how serious a crisis the country faced. That is how deep and wide were the social chasms.

And then, Oct. 7 happened.

Not only do haredim, aside from a very small number, refuse to serve militarily, they continue to demand increasing financial support from the state. Throughout the postOct. 7 period, when so many reservists have died, been maimed and suffered all manner of grave injuries, the haredim have carried on with their normal lives.

But this war has changed everything.

Israel has a shortage of army personnel; conscripts and reservists. The IDF announced in February that all Israeli men will serve longer compulsory terms. Reserve duty will be doubled annually, and the age

Israelis are not unified. We are gutted, shattered and spent.

Ask yourself. If you lived in Israel would you serve? Would you send your sons and daughters to serve? Many Israelis are reluctantly beginning to say they refuse to bear this burden any longer unless the haredim also serve.

These Israelis—disparaged as resisters— are the salt of the earth. They are depleted, deeply mistrustful and feel betrayed. And they will no longer submit to the terms of the old contract. All citizens must step up to do their part. Only then, perhaps, can we begin to speak of unity. n THECJN.CA 43

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PILLARS

Rob Kumer and Barbara Schechter

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LEADERS

The Prosserman Family

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Wishing you peace, joy and good health at Passover that lasts the whole year through. ‫חג פסח שמח‬ WISHING YOU & YOUR FAMILY A HAPPY PASSOVER

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Sending warm thoughts and blessings as you gather at the Seder to celebrate with those you love.

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WHO WE ARE / CE QUE NOUS SOMMES

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation is a Crown Corporation committed to fighting racism in Canada. We work to strengthen the social fabric of our society by supporting, enabling and convening community groups and organizations through our grants, services and network of public, research and community partners.

La Fondation canadienne des relations raciales est une société d’État qui s’est engagée à lutter contre le racisme au Canada. Nous travaillons à renforcer le tissu social au Canada en aidant, habilitant et rassemblant les groupes et les organismes communautaires grâce à des subventions, des services et un réseau de partenaires dans le milieu de la recherche et dans les secteurs privé et communautaire.

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Nous aidons les communautés en finançant des projets et des événements de lutte contre le racisme Nous élevons le discours public sur la lutte contre le racisme par le biais de partenariats et de l’éducation Nous faisons avancer les politiques gouvernementales liées à la lutte systémique contre le racisme et la haine Nous aidons les municipalités à développer des programmes de lutte contre le racisme

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Israel on ice Lacing up with the players who fought an international ban PHOTO ESSAY BY SHLOMI AMIGA EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS TEXT BY JONATHAN ROTHMAN

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sraeli hockey games, like everything else related to the Jewish state, were thrust into the limelight in the months leading up to the white-andblue Magen David team lacing up in Toronto. The promotional series on March 2 and 4 followed a major off-ice victory, in which the International Ice Hockey Federation overturned its decision to bar Israel’s national teams from its 2024 tournaments.

Generations of Israeli hockey families were among the former and potential upcoming national team players cheering at the games organized by the private Israel Elite Hockey League, where a team of mostly Jewish players from across North America faced the Redeemer University Royals from a Christian college in Hamilton, Ont. Along with these “touring” contests, the league aims to grow Israeli hockey through its 10-game summer season, offering players a way to keep active in the off-season.

Brothers Isaac and Shlomi Levy, two former national players who run a hockey school in Montreal, are among those helping Israeli hockey develop with local assists. The new Blue Ice Arena in Ashdod, a rink built with private Canadian financing, is set to finish construction later in 2024.

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PHOTO ESSAY

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“We’re attracting players who play professionally in Europe, college players, and kids who just want to come to Israel and visit.”

- Isaac Levy

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“Those kids looking up to the players, if they’re hockey players, then they know that it is possible to one day, represent Israel.”

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Seeing other people A hot new book asks: Can polyamory save this marriage?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy reviews More by Molly Roden Winter

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shy to visit a local sex toy shop. But she’s an eager pupil. She devours Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy’s 1997 bestseller The Ethical Slut—a Gen X sensation that kicked off the last wave of media interest in open relationships—mind-blown to learn that polyamory exists at all. While sometimes this aw-shucks stance reads as disingenuous (she also mentions having gone to a sex club with her now-husband years prior), the easily scandalized narrator allows the book to read like a journey.

If you’re picturing an erotic romp, you will be disappointed. More reads as a cautionary tale about what can happen— doesn’t always, but can—when a woman is financially dependent on her husband. In tenor if not artistry of writing, it’s of a piece with poet Maggie Smith’s bestselling 2023 divorce memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. While the couple at the centre of More stays together, it’s very much the same how-do-these-things-still-happen story of a smart, well-educated woman who marries a high-earning man, has a couple of kids, and tells herself she has accepted her role as the submissive-in-the-unsexysense one in the marriage—only to have the same realization as countless women

before her about the drawbacks, autonomy-wise, of such an arrangement.

There is a whole literature on Jews and polyamory: in the Bible, in history, and in modern-day secular and religious settings.

Does More belong on that shelf? Elsewhere, Winter has mentioned converting to Judaism , but there’s no discussion of this in the book itself. Winter keeps things simple, spirituality-wise, and sticks with her conversion to polyamory, and to a side plot about her mother’s own arguably more compelling finding-herself journey into a Japanese cult. Jewishness only comes up when she mentions that Mitchell’s last name suggests he’s Jewish (this is never confirmed, nor brought up again), and in what I think is meant to serve as the meetcute story of how she got together with her now-husband.

Is it cute? Judge for yourself.

Winter writes that when she first met Stewart, she assessed that he wasn’t her “type,” because “he fit every negative stereotype of a Long Island Jew.” This, for her, apparently means having a problematic sense of humour and wearing pleated pants. (I may be a Manhattan Jew by birth but I am guilty on both counts.) It’s meant

Kristina Balashova/Stocksy

t’s easy to feel like the world’s last remaining square when reading the many polyamory articles that have appeared recently. They first started cropping up in all those publications with New York in the name (the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New York Post). Stories multiplied from there—the last one I saw was in the National Post.

These days, everyone allegedly has multiple concurrent romantic and sexual relationships, or wishes they did.

What gives?

The impetus for this new wave of media interest in non-monogamy is a new book, More: A Memoir of Open Marriage, by the debut American author Molly Roden Winter.

Lots of books take on sexy subject matter and don’t get anything like this degree of press. Some credit must go to a publicity team, but the book itself pulls its weight.

The clever twist in this new addition to the genre is that Winter, a married mother of two now-young-adult sons, arrives at extramarital adventures as a wide-eyed novice. The reader meets a woman who’d barely been with anyone other than her husband—one who is too embarrassed to buy condoms at her local pharmacy and too

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to be romantic, I guess, that she looked past what she interpreted as his distinctly Jewish brand of unpleasantness. All this anecdote accomplished was to make me think that these people—she with her casual anti-Jewish quip, he with his reluctance to lift a bottle of dish detergent—might just deserve each other.

husband. And then she comes home and learns that not only has she failed to get a rise out of Stewart, but that he’s into it: he finds the idea of her with other men a turnon. They renegotiate the terms of their marriage such that both are allowed to have outside sexual partners, and, eventually, additional long-term romantic relationships.

the kids—the dinners, the bedtimes, the dishes, the loneliness of doing it all by myself.” She writes that she “love[s] being a mother,” but why must she do everything?

She wonders this. I wonder this.

The why is addressed, in a sense. Winter and her husband eventually uncover, in couples’ therapy, that the reason she had done all the childcare when the kids were little—which he doesn’t dispute—is that she was a control freak and he had worried he’d get it wrong. This is presented as a therapeutically brilliant revelation about her perfectionist tendencies, rather than the sort of psychobabble a man might come up with to retroactively explain why he had saddled his wife with all domestic responsibilities. You’d think Betty Friedan never existed, let alone the many waves of feminism since. The heterosexual landscape she inhabits seems at least 50 years out of date. Somehow, despite More’s many orifices and contortions, the result is less Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City than Edith Bunker from All in the Family.

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All of this might sound modern, but the home life she describes with her husband, who remains her primary partner, strikes me—and her!—as bleak and archaic. They have two young sons, but he comes home after they’ve gone to bed and works on weekends, even once she’s returned to paid employment herself. She thinks “about all the years I’ve spent my nights alone with

Kristina Balashova/Stocksy (2)

The subsequent story of how Winter’s marriage opened up is neither titillating nor empowering. Stewart has come home late from work, again, leaving her with all the childcare and housework, as usual. She storms out of the house in a huff and ends up going out for drinks with a female friend.

At the bar, she flirts with a man, imagining that she is somehow getting revenge on her

rowling for strange men offers Winter not so much liberation as a distraction from life as a doormat—or maybe just an opportunity to serve as a doormat for a wider pool of men. She meets some real charmers, like one man with questionable integrity regarding condom usage, and another who turns out to be playing the long game to get her into bed with his girlfriend.

(Winter is not bisexual but acquiesces.)

These liaisons generally take place after she has done her kids’ dinner, bedtime, and clean-up. She waits for her husband to get home from work or ‘work’ or wherever he is, so she can head out. This is time she should be sleeping. (“‘I did not sleep very much,’” Winter confirmed to the New York Times in an interview .) She writes about working with her therapist to sort out why she keeps getting migraines, anticipating some existential revelation, when—if I may armchair diagnose—it seems more likely to be a sleep deficit. My head hurts just thinking about it.

That polyamory might not always be the most woman-friendly arrangement becomes obvious if you think about why plural marriage came to be stigmatized, even outlawed, on liberal grounds. (The Wikipedia entry for polygamy has a clarification note up top: “Not to be confused with Polyamory or Polysexuality.” I am

going to ignore these instructions and will make the case that one should, in fact, confuse these two things.)

Polyamory may distinguish itself by “the informed consent of all partners involved,” but the world does not operate according to definitions. The deeply rooted cultural practice of a certain sort of man amassing a group of women for himself, cannot not reappear under the guise of consensual non-monogamy.

Do not take my word for it. Advice columnist and podcaster Dan Savage has long suggested that straight people adopt the easy-breezy attitude towards “ethical non-monogamy” favoured by many gay men (for whom these gender dynamics are not, for obvious reasons, an issue). With polyamory the topic of the moment, he recently took a call from a despondent woman in an open relationship. Her boyfriend of a year had moved on to another woman while still stringing her along. What’s his incentive to make a clean break, though, if they’re polyamorous? The call put Savage in an awkward spot, which he acknowledged.

“There’s a lot of… atheistic Mormonism being shipped under polyamory these days,” he said on the podcast, referring to the caller’s boyfriend’s behaviour as “typical, biblical straight male assholery.”

In other words, people may claim they’re doing a very modern and feminist version of open marriage, while the on-the-ground realities suggest nothing of the kind. Consider that an early manifestation of modern open marriage was called wife-swapping.

Yes, technically the swinging went both ways, but it’s right there in the language who’s actually calling the shots. Consider, too, a New York magazine mention of a polyamorous rule pattern wherein outside partners are allowed, but only if they have female genitalia. Not unlike monogamy, polyamory as it exists in the world—as separate from the Platonic form of polyamory described in books on the subject—often winds up being more favourable to men.

In this post-#MeToo age of thinking critically about consent, does it not stand to reason that a woman who is financially dependent on her husband might ‘consent’ to an open marriage, not because she’s a free spirit, but because her choices are constrained? While More is not a straightforward case of a wife looking the other way at her breadwinning husband’s dalliances, it’s not far off. That Winter, too, has lovers

changes little. Her doing so is not an assertion of power within her marriage, or even something she gives much indication of enjoying. I base this not only on the surprisingly scant (but not altogether absent) erotic moments, but also on how often Winter writes about not wanting an

At the bar, she flirts with a man, imagining that she is somehow getting revenge on her husband.

And then she comes home and learns that not only has she failed to get a rise out of Stewart, but that he’s into it: he finds the idea of her with other men a turn-on.

open marriage. There’s the time she tells a couple’s therapist, “We’re here because I don’t want to be in an open marriage anymore. But Stewart does.” Then there’s that time she vows to “tell Stewart that I tried as hard as I could, but I just can’t do open marriage anymore.”

Winter cavorting outside her marriage caters to her husband’s proclivities. He likes picturing her with other men, and understands that as long as she’s doing so (even if it is somewhat at his behest), he gets to date other women. Win-win as far as he’s concerned.

While her lovers disappoint, there is one steady Other Man in Winter’s life: Mitchell,

her therapist. He does what Stewart will not or cannot: puts her needs first. Mitchell gently raises the question of whether she’s using extramarital sex as “an illusion of freedom.” She gestures at contemplating this, regarding her own life and her mother’s, but doesn’t appear to quite listen to this point. As Tyler Austin Harper writes in his Atlantic review of More, “The only solution [Winter] can imagine is to persist in an open marriage, rather than push for an equal one. Inward sexual revolution plainly feels more possible than a revolution in who does the dishes.”

Much of the criticism of More has centred on the couple’s socioeconomic privilege, and the way it’s easier for upscale married people to mess around without consequences in an era when the less well-to-do struggle to get married in the first place.

“Polyamory, the Ruling Class’s Latest Fad,” reads the Atlantic headline. The New Yorker casts its own wary eye at “the new monogamy skepticism of the moneyed,” and takes a not-unjustified dig at Winter for noticing that a lover’s apartment lacks a mudroom.

Money barely comes up in the writing— perhaps, unlike the author’s urinary tract infections, it is too personal—but there are clues. Indeed, the biggest tell of them all is that money itself barely comes up. A new lover starts massaging her feet, prompting her to write, “I’m thankful I squeezed in a pedicure yesterday.” Affairs and nail salon visits, in this economy? Blithe spending abounds. The real estate angle, however, makes the rest look like peanuts: Winter and her husband buy and renovate a house in Park Slope, a housing type that today costs several million U.S. dollars.

So yes, these are rich people, living in the rarified worlds generally covered by lifestyle articles. But at least as relevant to More is where she fits, financially, within the relationship. It’s clear in the book—as much as it can be without their tax documents—that she’s the lower-earning (and, while a stayat-home mom, non-earning) spouse. She refers to Stewart as the family’s “provider.”

While the balance of power may change now that she’s a famous author, More is about a woman with little leverage in her relationship. At various points, he wants an open marriage and she does not; it’s making her unhappy. Each time, this resolves itself with her having some epiphany about how she wants the same thing he does so actually everything is fine. Is it, though? n THECJN.CA 63

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From police headquarters

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skullcaps when on duty in 2022, to match the status previously granted to turbans and hijabs for Skih and Muslim officers, respectively.

The new kippah gained additional resonance when Chief Myron Demkiw presented it at a TPS board meeting after detailing the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitic hate crimes. Inspector Paul Rinkoff, the highest-profile Jewish cop in Toronto (statistics aren’t kept on the total number

of them) worked with B’nai Brith on the details of this uniform addition, and wore it himself to several religious events including ones he attended during a recent immersion experience in Crown Heights, New York. “It’s been rewarding for me to meet Jewish TPS members who’ve contacted me to receive their kippah,” says Rinkoff. “It also sends a message to communities that we’re respectful of all faiths—and we are hiring!” n

Photograph by Ronit Novak

he first official Toronto Police Service (TPS) kippah was introduced during a Hanukkah gathering in December, where it was announced members are now welcome to wear one on the job, if they so choose.

The policy put the TPS in line with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Ontario Provincial Police—along with the Vancouver Police Department—whose members were first permitted to wear Jewish

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