The CJN Magazine: Fall 2024

The Canadian Jewish News Yehei zichram baruch

Fall 2024 | Stav 5785

S H A N A

TO VA

As we approach the High Holy days with hope for a sweet 5785, we cannot forget those still held in Gaza nearly one year after October 7.

Our hearts grieve for the almost 1,200 lives ended by Hamas on that tragic day and ache for the pain suffered by hundreds of families still recovering from their unimaginable loss.

We pray for peace for the people of Israel, for the return of all the hostages, and for the safety and security of the Jewish people worldwide.

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Happy New Year & Shana Tova

‫שנה טובה‬

from Jerusalem! ‫תשפ״ה‬

Wishing you and yours a sweet and healthy New Year full of hope for a better year ahead.

The Jerusalem Foundation continues to build a future for the city of Jerusalem by supporting creative culture, communal strength and shared society and developing young leaders who will work together for a shared future.

For more information about the Jerusalem Foundation: Nomi Yeshua, Executive Director: nomiy@jerusalemfoundation.ca Tania Haas, Donor Relations Coordinator: thaas@jerusalemfoundation.ca Tel: 416 922 0000 The Jerusalem Foundation of Canada: 130 Queens Quay East, Suite 1110 – West Tower, Toronto, ON M5A 0P6

www.jerusalemfoundation.org

SPONSORED CONTENT

Azrieli Music Prizes: October 28 Gala Concert Offers World Premiere Works by 2024 AMP Laureates

T

en years ago, soprano Dr. Sharon Azrieli set out to create something that didn’t yet exist in Canada – an international competition that celebrates contemporary composers, opening doors to their future success.

Today, her brainchild, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP), has become the largest competition of its kind in Canada and one of the most substantial in the world.

On October 28, audiences will hear the results of the 2024 competition.

Four AMP-winning works will be performed by the renowned l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Chorus, conducted by Andrew Megill, at the AMP Gala Concert. On the program is music inspired by preHispanic Mexican cultures, hymns from the Old Testament, Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages and harmonies divined from the Canadian landscape.

Two of the Azrieli Music Prizes are dedicated specifically to Jewish music.

Yair Klartag won the 2024 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music for The Parable of the Palace, which draws from Maimonides’s 12th-century allegory about the limits of logic to explain reality. The commission is awarded to encourage composers to creatively and critically engage with the question, “What is Jewish music?”

Josef Bardanashvili’s Light to My Path, a choral fantasy for choir, saxophone,

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percussion and piano, won the 2024 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. This award is given to a composer who has written the best undiscovered work of Jewish music. Each movement in Bardanashvili’s composition grows from one of the various states of belief – supplication, ecstasy, doubt, gratitude – as found in the Book of Psalms.

The Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music is awarded to a Canadian composer to write a new work that engages with the complexities of creating concert music in Canada today. Jordan Nobles, the winner, composed each section of his Kanata for Large Choir in tribute to the Canadian landscape as he was traveling through the land on which it is based.

This year also marks the launch of a new prize. The Azrieli Commission for International Music is offered to a composer who creatively engages with the world’s richly diverse cultural heritage. Simetrías Prehispánicas (“Pre-Hispanic Symmetries”), by composer Juan Trigos, honours the pre-Hispanic culture of his native Mexico, incorporating text by anonymous and major Aztec poets from the 15th century in their original Nahuatl and in Spanish translations.

The music continues long after October’s applause dies down. In addition to the gala concert, each

composer receives a recording of their prize-winning work released by Analekta, two additional international performances and possible future performances supported by AMP’s Performance Fund. Altogether, AMP has found these to be critical elements to a new work’s future success.

AMP searches for excellent composers – the best in the world – and gives them the resources to imagine new works, elevating and advancing their careers in the process.

Through these efforts, many more audiences have come to know, support and enjoy the music of these great living artists, and – through their shared experiences – have fostered greater intercultural understanding on an international scale For more information about the Azrieli Music Prizes, visit azrielifoundation.org/amp Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert October 28, 2024, 7:30PM Maison symphonique, Montréal Tickets from $30 to $85

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What’s inside 48 THE FRONT PAGES

Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images/Naomi Harris; Jim Pringle/AP/CP; Miriam Libiciki; Jonah Strub

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Holiday traditions from Asia to Amsterdam

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Q&A: A taste of Rosh Hashanah from chef Anthony Rose

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Our year of being extremely online SARAH BARMAK

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FEATURES

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What do we mean by Zion?

AV I F I N E G O L D

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Special section: The Year in Photos

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Philosemitism gets a makeover P H O E B E M A LTZ B O V Y

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THE BACK PAGES 70

John Lorinc explores his family’s roots in Hungary

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“I Was Banned from the Comic-Con!” MIRIAM LIBICKI

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Jonah Strub is tripping on his pickled birthright

Contributors Jan Feindt (cover and p.28) is a freelance illustrator living and working in Berlin. His work on a 2014 report about the neo-Nazi scene, The Weisse Wölfe, earned him a German Reporter Prize. Five years later, he illustrated the Washington Post’s publication of the Meuller Report on Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

Photograph by Ronit Novak

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Sarah Barmak’s (p.28) writing about sexuality and social justice has appeared in The Walrus, The Cut, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, The Toronto Star, and others. Her book Closer was published in 2016; she is now at work on a new book about sexual consent.

She lives in Toronto with her partner and two children.

Ezra Baderman (p.60) was born in Paris, raised in London, lived in Tel Aviv, and now resides with his family in Lisbon. His artwork ranges from collages and more traditional painting techniques to ultraviolet slime installations and paintings made from plasticine. Yogasaurus, his upcoming picture book, is designed to introduce children aged 3 to 8 to the concept of body postures.

THECJN.CA 11

Jewish Canadians need a voice now more than ever.

In these difficult times, we need a voice like The Canadian Jewish News.

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.

You can help give Jews a voice.

Donate to The CJN today. thecjn.ca/donate Donate $118+ for a tax receipt, and a one-year subscription to The CJN’s new quarterly magazine

A time for honest conversations

Photograph by Shlomi Amiga

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ournalism shapes our perceptions, influences public opinion, and drives societal change. It has a unique capacity to mould narratives, highlight issues, and amplify voices. I was reminded of this shortly after the atrocities of October 7, when many mainstream outlets pushed one-sided stories, offered personal opinion as fact, and published “news” that was unsupported by research or facts—much of which was borderline prejudiced if not demonstrably antisemitic and inflammatory.

Since joining The CJN, I have gotten to know a group of professionals who are passionate about the industry, about our community, and about bringing a diverse set of experiences and perspectives to you on a daily basis. Our team of journalists are ardent about delivering independent and in-depth reporting that connects Jewish Canadians across the country: generationally, politically, and religiously.

As we continue to evolve, we will be doing even more to offer stories and opinions that capture the full diversity of Canadian Jewish experiences.

You may not agree with some —or a great deal—of this work, and that’s okay: the heart of our mission is putting Canadian Jews in conversation with one another.

We will be launching our new website soon.

When we do, we will be turning to you to let us know what you think we’re doing right and wrong: we’ll read every email, opinion, and letter to the editor you send. If you have something to say about the news stories we’re covering (or other people’s opinions on that news) we’ll be providing more space to publish your input, too.

A primary motivation for growing in this direction is reaching younger generations of Canadian Jews—who, like their non-Jewish friends and neighbours, are less likely to get

their news from credible journalistic outlets than ever before.

Expanding our reach to these next generations will require support to ensure that we can continue to provide journalism across all our media channels free of charge. As a not-for-profit and registered journalism organization with the CRA, we provide charitable tax receipts for your contributions, which will help us continue

The Canadian Jewish News The Canadian Jewish News Magazine Editor in Chief Hamutal Dotan Art Director Ronit Novak Contributing Editors Phoebe Maltz Bovy Avi Finegold Marc Weisblott Designer Etery Podolsky The CJN Chief Executive Officer Michael Weisdorf General Manager Kathy Meitz Sales Director Grace Zweig

Board of Directors: Bryan Borzykowski President Sam Reitman Treasurer and Secretary Ira Gluskin Jacob Smolack Elizabeth Wolfe

our essential work of covering the news that affects Jewish Canadians from coast to coast to coast. You can make a donation at thecjn.ca/donate or by writing to donate@ thecjn.ca.

Your contribution will ensure The CJN is something that Canadian Jews can not only depend on, but regard as the most innovative and reliable source of Jewish news in Canada.

For all inquiries info@thecjn.ca Cover: Illustration by Jan Feindt for The CJN Printed in Winnipeg by Prolific Group With the participation of the Government of Canada.

Shana Tova!

MICHAEL WEISDORF, MBA Chief Executive Officer The Canadian Jewish News THECJN.CA 13

SPONSORED CONTENT

Jerusalem Foundation President Shai Doron was a passionate advocate for the city and its diversity.

Shai Doron, President of the Jerusalem Foundation, passed away suddenly at age 63. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of unwavering dedication to Jerusalem and its people. The Jerusalem Foundation of Canada community, including all members of the Board of Directors, mourn this devastating loss.

Doron was a devoted Jerusalemite and a tireless advocate for diversity, shared society, and equal opportunity for all.

His career of public service began in Neveh Yaakov where he led a community center. One of his key accomplishments was founding a unit of scouts, demonstrating his early commitment to youth engagement and community development.

He then served as the head of Mayor Teddy Kollek’s office for five years where his commitment to the city of Jerusalem deepened.

Under Kollek’s leadership, he gained invaluable experience and insight into governing the city.

In a pivotal role, Doron spent 25 years as the director of the newly established Tisch Zoological Gardens. Under his leadership, it became one of Israel’s most beloved attractions. With a groundbreaking vision, he played a key role in establishing Israel’s first aquarium.

His efforts in conservation were instrumental in protecting numerous species from extinction, such as his project to return the Persian fallow deer to Israeli vistas, to protect eagles, his otter initiative and more.

This work further cemented his legacy as a true environmentalist.

Doron’s career came full circle in 2018 when he was appointed President of the Jerusalem Foundation, an organization established

by Kollek in 1966 to raise funds for the city.

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As President, Doron was a driving force behind the Foundation’s initiatives, focusing on strengthening the social fabric of Jerusalem.

He was deeply committed to nurturing young leaders and worked to unify the city’s diverse communities.

His visionary “Jerusalem 2030” plan was a testament to his commitment to the city’s future. The plan emphasized educational, employment, and cultural programs, as well as other projects that aimed to benefit all residents. This strategic roadmap has been critical in shaping the city’s development and remains a cornerstone of the Foundation’s ongoing efforts.

Under Doron’s leadership, the Jerusalem Foundation launched vital projects that have left a positive mark on the city and its residents with a focus on communal strength and creative culture. His efforts were widely recognized, with many viewing him as a shining star of the Foundation and the entire city.

“Shai believed in leadership and building the next generation of young leaders. He led by example, always the first to carry the message of hope. We will continue Shai’s mission and work to advance civil society and provide equal opportunities for all,” says Joel Reitman, President of the Jerusalem Foundation of Canada.

Doron saw Jerusalem as a beacon of light, and his vision of leadership and inclusivity will continue to inspire future generations.

His legacy lives on through the countless lives he touched along with his wife, three children and granddaughter.

THECJN.CA 15

JORDYN HAIME /JTA

This story was published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in anticipation of Sukkot last year; we think it’s still pretty neat.

R

ebecca Kanthor, a member of a progressive Jewish community in Shanghai, knows that she can easily order lulavs and etrogs in a few clicks online.

Kanthor, who belongs to Kehilat Shanghai, simply logs onto Taobao, China’s equivalent to Amazon. Etrogs, important components of the Sukkot holiday, are known as xiang yuan 16

(fragrant citrus, or citron) in Chinese. While American Jews may spend anywhere between $20 and $200 on a single etrog grown in the Mediterranean, etrogs grown in China, mostly in the southwestern Yunnan province, are available on Taobao for about $2 each.

Taobao also sells a wide array of traditional products made from the etrog, including tea, perfume, preserves and candy. The fruit is well known in China as a medicine used to treat everything from stomach issues to severe cough. (The components of the lulav, the other major component of Sukkot rituals, are available, too, in potted form: palm, willow, and

myrtle plants go for around $7 altogether.)

But even though etrogs are available locally, most Jewish communities throughout Asia opt to import them from countries such as Israel or Italy for Sukkot. That’s because rabbinic authorities on Jewish law have for decades debated whether etrogs grown in Asia meet the standards for ritual use.

The etrog plays a central role on Sukkot, when Jews are commanded to hold it as they shake the lulav and recite the holiday’s prayers. The fruit’s ritual significance has given rise to a competitive marketplace: some Jews pay hundreds of

iStock; Courtesy of Rebecca Kanthor/JTA

Etrogs grow all over Asia—here’s why most Asian Jews import them anyway

iStock; Courtesy of Rebecca Kanthor/JTA

The Buddha’s hand citrus fruit is used as an etrog in some communities.

dollars for the perfect fruit and spend hundreds more on etrog boxes.

Most important to observant Jews today are the rules proclaiming that an etrog must be clean and without blemishes; that it retains its pittam (a protrusion separate from the stem); and that the plant must not be grafted. “Etrog is a weak tree,” said Rabbi Shalom Chazan, an emissary for the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement stationed in Shenzhen, China. “Usually, farmers will make a graftage between an etrog and lemon tree to make it stronger. That makes the etrog not kosher. We don’t know if the Chinese farmers do it or not, therefore we buy from Israel or Italy, and Morocco, to make sure it’s kosher.”

Scientists have traced the fruit’s genetic origins to the triangle of southwest China, northern Myanmar and northeast India.

Today the etrog still grows in abundance in that area. But it was after the fruit migrated that it caught on with ancient Jews.

According to David Z. Moster, a Bible scholar and author of Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol, the etrog was the first citrus fruit that traveled from East to West—likely because of its thick rind that hardens rather than rots over time, preserving the fruit and seeds inside. It arrived in Israel around the fourth to third centuries BCE, and while it is not clear when exactly the etrog became the “choice fruit of the tree,” it quickly rose as an important symbol to distinguish Jews from Christians and Samaritans while fulfilling rules laid out in the Torah.

“Every Jewish community has, in the past, found what they wanted the most,” said Moster. “There’s the Yemenite etrog, which, if you get a really good one, you get the size of a football.… A lot of the European Jews are looking for [an etrog with] a gartel, a belt…

Now, in the modern world, a person like me can go to Borough Park [a heavily Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn] and see 10,000 etrogim in one day.”

In modern times, most Jews in the West used etrogs grown in what is now Israel, the Caribbean or North Africa, including Morocco. But in the East, where most Jewish communities formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, debates over the etrog continued, especially with the discovery of the Chinese “Buddha’s hand” citron,

which sprouts finger-like protrusions due to a genetic mutation.

Rabbi Asher Oser of Hong Kong’s historic Ohel Leah synagogue has researched the subject heavily for classes he has taught.

He found documents revealing debates among Baghdadi rabbis about the Buddha’s hand citron, which is often not considered an etrog at all. (“All etrogim are citrons but not all citrons are etrogim,” Moster wrote.) Most important, the rabbis wrote, was continuing tradition.

“In the city of Baghdad we don’t allow the Dibdib tree, which has all the signs of an etrog, except it is sour,” wrote Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad in 1909 in response to questions about the Buddha’s hand. “If a person is in a strange place and they find a fruit completely similar to etrogs of the place

ter Pearl Harbor, when patriarch David Abraham was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp and the family’s property was seized by the Japanese, who had occupied parts of the city. With the Jewish community desperate for the ritual fruit at Sukkot, someone was sent to climb the walls around the family’s garden and pick etrogs to distribute. The Japanese army then cut down the tree in retaliation. With no other choice, the Jews were left to source local etrogs and were again faced with the Buddha’s hand variety.

The community was conflicted.

In today’s world, importing fresh fruit across borders is a complicated process that can require significant paperwork and sometimes diplomatic intervention. Chabad was reportedly only able to legally import etrogs into China beginning in 2017, af-

Rebecca Kanthor, far left, celebrating Sukkot with members of Kehilat Shanghai.

where they are coming from, then they can be used. If they’re not completely similar … they should not be used.”

According to researchers, etrogs from what is now Israel or Iraq have long been preferable in Asia. Jewish communities in Shanghai and Kobe, Japan, for decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries received etrogs from the wealthy Abraham family, international traders who had brought a Baghdadi etrog plant with them to Shanghai. It was planted outside the Abraham mansion and tended by Chinese gardeners, according to Yecheskel Leitner’s 1987 book Operation–Torah Rescue.

Leitner wrote that this tradition ended af-

ter a Chinese professor of Jewish studies helped the communities provide adequate documentation. Before then, emissaries had to come up with “creative alternatives,” said Rabbi Shalom Greenberg of Shanghai.

(Chabad emissaries did not elaborate when asked what those solutions were.)

The etrog has long been hard to get, said Moster.

“In many Jewish lands, if they wanted an etrog, they [would] have to send someone on a multi-thousand-mile trip and cross many nations, just to be able to pick this thing up and get it there in time,” he said.

“So the idea of it being historically hard to get also added to its value.” n THECJN.CA 17

Praying by candlelight in Amsterdam

CNAAN LIPHSHIZ/JTA

We are still moved by this story from the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

We checked with the Portuguese Synagogue, which confirmed that this tradition continues.

O

ne of Europe’s oldest and most impressive Jewish buildings, this city’s Portuguese Synagogue is known for its beauty.

Built in 1675 for the descendants of Jews who fled religious persecution on the Iber18

ian Peninsula, the Portuguese Synagogue today sees many thousands of tourists annually. Inside its vast sanctuary, a massive Torah ark made of Brazilian Jacaranda wood towers over 17th-century furniture and a multitude of low-hanging golden chandeliers hang among 12 stone pillars.

Its architect is said to have drawn inspiration from Solomon’s Temple, and promised the synagogue would be Europe’s largest and most ornate. While the Portuguese Synagogue was later eclipsed by even larger and more magnificent shuls

(like the one on Dohany Street in Budapest) the Amsterdam building remains a spectacular sight on any day of the year.

Yet most of the synagogue’s visitors are not around on the day when its beauty shines brightest: Yom Kippur. On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the hall is packed to capacity as worshippers pray by the warm light of hundreds of candles—a tradition that dates back to the invention of electricity—accompanied by unique cantorial melodies that resemble operas.

“It’s one of European Jewry’s most pro-

Ernst van Deursen

A Yom Kippur tradition that dates back to the invention of electricity

Ernst van Deursen

The Portuguese Synagogue uses candlelight in its sanctuary on Yom Kippur, when dignitaries visit the historic site, and during the occasional concert.

found and beautiful sights,” says Esther Voet, a regular visitor to the synagogue and the managing editor of the Dutch-Jewish Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (New Israelite Weekly). On Yom Kippur, entering the candlelit synagogue “has a cleansing effect—which is what Yom Kippur is all about.”

It’s like “stepping into a time machine,” she adds. “You feel that you are a link in a very long chain of Jewish tradition.”

Few congregants experience this intergenerational dimension more than Ronit Palache, whose ancestors were among the early leaders of the synagogue. “Coming there means being a part of history, and it’s my history,” says Palache, whose greatgreat-grandfather was a chief rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community.

But you don’t need a personal connection to appreciate the historical dimensions of Yom Kippur services at the synagogue, according to Bart Wallet, a University of Amsterdam historian and author of the book History of Jews in the Netherlands.

“There is growing interest in attending on Yom Kippur and, in response, the community only a few years ago started assigning pre-ordered tickets,” he said.

Some Jews, including Lipika Pelham, a London-based author and journalist with Indian roots, travel with their families especially to attend the Yom Kippur service here.

Tickets cost just $22 but need to be ordered well in advance.

On Yom Kippur, the service is essentially conducted by the community’s men, who are seated around the bimah, or pulpit, in the central section of the main hall. Male guests sit in pews surrounding the central section. Women sit upstairs, in the women’s section, “where we struggle to follow the reading of the text below, which is not easy because of the acoustics,” Voet says.

Still, while it may be less than ideal for reading prayers, the acoustics at the Portuguese Synagogue work beautifully for musicians and singers—something that was key to the synagogue board’s decision 10 years ago to host occasional concerts here. During those events, non-Jewish audiences can get a taste of the Yom Kippur atmosphere because all the candles are lit.

The candles are also lit when important dignitaries visit, including Dutch royals and world leaders such as the late President of Israel Shimon Peres.

On Yom Kippur, the men of the community put on the traditional Portuguese Jewish top hats, worn by Jews who immigrated here from Portugal, Spain, and their colonies when they adopted the church’s anti-Jewish Inquisition as policy. The wood used for the Torah ark was brought from Recife by Jews who fled the Brazilian city for Amsterdam.

Flanking the ark are two 16th-century sofas from the Middle East.

“The interior makes for a very cosmopolitan mix,” Wallet says. “You have artifacts from many corners of the world.”

Nowhere else in 17th-century Europe were Jews allowed to build a synagogue quite as large and impressive as the Portuguese Synagogue, Wallet explains, which makes the building a testament also to the relative tolerance that Jews enjoyed in the Netherlands for centuries, before the Nazis and local collaborators nearly wiped out the community.

With so much history in view, folklore inevitably grew around almost every aspect of the synagogue—even the fine sand that is strewn on its floor, which some believe is a reference to the desert that the

ancient Hebrews crossed on their way to Canaan. (In truth, sand was a common 17th-century means of cleaning and maintaining wooden floors.)

The Yom Kippur service features prayers

by Santo Servicio, the synagogue’s resident choir, which curates the special tunes that have evolved here over the centuries. Sung in Hebrew in the Portuguese inflection, the tunes are melodic because they were composed in the 16th and 17th centuries to please the ear and compete with Christian choirs, Wallet says—part of a broader effort by community leaders to rehabilitate and preserve in Amsterdam what the Inquisition destroyed in Iberia.

That effort is also evidenced in the thousands of manuscripts of the Ets Haim Jewish library, the oldest institution of its kind still in operation, which is part of the Portuguese Synagogue compound. “You can see in the books their enthusiasm about being able to reconnect with their Jewish traditions openly and resume the study of it,” says Ruth Peeters, a senior cataloger at the library.

The library’s central role in the daily life of synagogue-goers is evident in the name that locals use for this house of worship: Esnoga—a mashup of the Portuguese words for school (escola) and synagogue (sinagoga).

At times, enthusiasm led worshippers and even the community leaders astray.

Around the time the synagogue was built, the community was split between followers and opponents of Shabbetai Zevi, the Turkey-born Jewish eccentric who divided the Jewish world with his claim that he was the Messiah. (He would go on to Islam, under duress, in 1666.)

Even this community’s founding father and rabbi for 40 years, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, was for a time a follower. Wallet said the debate on the issue was “a crisis for the community,” and largely purged from its official records.

The community’s ultimate test came in 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, initiating racist policies that ended with the murder of 75 per cent of the Netherlands’ Jewish population of 140,000.

The Portuguese Synagogue was sealed, its library and treasures looted.

But while Amsterdam’s Ashkenazi synagogue was gutted, the Portuguese Synagogue remained essentially unharmed. “I think they didn’t quite know what to do with it,” Wallet sys. “Ultimately even they didn’t dare destroy it.” n THECJN.CA 19

Happy New Year ‫שנה טובה ומתוקה‬

From Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario & the Ontario PC Caucus

Laura Smith

MPP/Députée – Thornhill

Stan Cho

Robin Martin

MPP/Députée – Eglinton–Lawrence

Stephen Lecce

MPP/Député – Willowdale

MPP/Député – King–Vaughan

Daisy Wai

Andrea Khanjin

MPP/Députée – Richmond Hill

Michael Kerzner

MPP/Député – York Centre

Michael Parsa

MPP/Député – Aurora– Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill

Logan Kanapathi

MPP/Député – Markham–Thornhill

THECJN.CA 21

Shana Tova!

Wishing you a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.

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May 5785 be a year of peace and hope, unity and strength.

Shana Tova U’Metuka Am Yisrael Chai elal.com

But have you tried the herring?

Chef and restaurateur Anthony Rose talks with Avi Finegold about tradition, family, and what’s on the menu for Rosh Hashanah PHOTOGRAPH BY NAOMI HARRIS FOR THE CJN

I want to start with this cocktail I’m having, because it would not exist without the Manischewitz vermouth [from your Last Schmaltz Cookbook]. You were the first one that was like, “When life gives you Manischewitz, do something fun with it,” so I have to thank you because it’s become the backbone of so many cocktails.

You know, it’s funny with the Manischewitz vermouth: we’ve used it, then we haven’t used it. I actually think it’s one of the more cool recipes in the book. Just recently, I started to dive back into the vermouth-making at Fat Pasha [Rose’s restaurant in midtown Toronto]. We have it on the menu and in the big barrel on the bar. Now we sneak some other things into there, like a little bit of whiskey here and there. It’s amazing that you can just tweak it.

things totally skipped a generation. I think that Fat Pasha is just trying to be as cheeky as possible with these ingredients and Judaism in general, right? And just having fun with it, not being serious.

So, two questions then based on that.

First, and with no judgement on my part: What’s your personal relationship with the idea of kosher? Was there a point in your life when you were kosher-ish as a family, or was it always like this thing and then you had to make this break and decide, I’m doing this?

Exactly, yeah!

It wasn’t necessarily a break. Growing up, I think our kosher was the same as a lot of people that I knew, which was Chinese food equals kosher. At home, we wouldn’t have cheeseburgers. We wouldn’t have milk and meat. We didn’t have two dishwashers or anything. But even though we were Conservative, from a young age, I wasn’t [kosher].

I do remember the first time I had bacon, the first time I had a ham and cheese sandwich—they were all very family-related. It was certainly taboo, but it wasn’t taboo enough.

Then when I moved to New York from San Francisco I—literally, for whatever reason— just went whole hog, just dove into it.

The next one I’m working on is a Slivovitz. I think the important part is that there’s so many of these kinds of Jewish old school types of things that are decidedly just not cool at all, right? Whether it’s the Manischewitz or Slivovitz or herring, a lot of these

The most interesting kosher story—and I actually feel really badly about this one— but when I first got reviewed with [the now closed restaurant] Rose and Sons, the menu was really weird to many, because I could have matzah ball soup on the menu and my

Yes! If I’m running out of brandy, I’ll throw in some rum. I’ll throw in some bourbon instead. I’ll put in extra peppercorns if I want, depending on what I’m thinking about doing with it. Recipes are supposed to be like that, easy and breezy, you know?

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mom’s brisket, but we also made our own bacon and had pork fried rice, which is reminiscent of my Jewish upbringing. I think that the reviewer kind of questioned it. And in my very young, stupid mind, I said that I felt like kosher laws were antiquated.

I’m just doing what feels right to me. I shouldn’t have said the first part, [that] they’re meant to be antiquated. They’re not laws that move with time—they’re laws that just stayed in time, which is kind of beautiful as well. But my dad called me and he was really disappointed in me for what I said. It didn’t change how I cooked, but it certainly changed how I talked about it.

From what I’ve seen from your presence online and the cookbook, and from what people tell me, of all the nouveau Jewish or nouveau Israeli chefs you feel like the most Jewish to me: there’s this sense that the food is definitely Jewish, that a Shabbat meal can break out at any time, because what you care about is bringing people together and celebrations.

We have a line at the restaurant where we don’t take ourselves very seriously, but we take what we do very seriously. I will walk around the restaurant on any given day and wish everyone a Good Shabbos. I will stand at Schmaltz all day long; even though one out of 50 people order herring, I’m just giving it out and telling people, “You got to try it.

You’re probably not going to like it, but your grandparents did.”

Chef Anthony Rose shares a bissel of herring with our photographer at Schmaltz Appetizing in Toronto, August 2024.

THECJN.CA 25

Top: Shabbat dinner at Fat Pasha with Rose and his mother Linda in 2019; Bottom: Rose and his Zaidy Simon catch a smallmouth bass at the cottage, 1979.

I think people see it like a comfort, to know that it’s there and it’s available, even if they’re not going to get it themselves. That’s part of the holiday meals that people want the comfort for, too.

They don’t make it on an average Friday night in November, but they want to know that it’s available to them somewhere.

It’s like Israel, right? You don’t have to make aliyah to know that it’s there in case you have to make aliyah.

Each dish begets another dish, right? Even when it came to brisket or tzimmes or whatever, you started the night before the Sabbath and just forget about it in in the oven.

Even the schmaltz: every single part of that chicken is used up. How much chicken fat can you eat? Let’s throw it in this bread over here and put it in the kishke casing. Nothing was wasted.

Rosh Hashanah feels like prime time for Anthony Rose. Do you get questions from home cooks, or people coming up to you and saying, “I want to make this meal at home?”

You’re like Chabad, but for herring.

You know, Fat Pasha was never supposed to be truly Middle Eastern. When we opened it, Ottolenghi had just come out with Jerusalem, so I was thinking, “This is what we should do.”

But as we [kept] getting closer to opening the restaurant, I’m like, wait a second. That’s not the Jewish I grew up with at all. So that’s where we threw the latkes at it and the brisket and the hot dogs and the salami—that’s what I understood as Jewish. Eating is all my family does, right? It’s not only the Sabbath dinners, but every day of the week. We’re always together, we’re always having fun. And I very much like to make fun of myself and my Jewishness for that matter as well.

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I used to get a lot of those questions. “How can I cook this? Can you send me the recipe for that?” I do find after COVID, more and more people are really just going back to the basics—they want the gefilte fish and they want the chopped liver.

Liver is a funny one because every time we put it on the menu, people say it’s awesome. I want everyone to eat this, but when we put it on the menu, the same five people come in every three months to order it. Then we take it off the menu and you get that one guy every week who comes in and says “What the fuck? What happened to the liver?” I’m like: “Well, you say you want it, but you don’t come and get it.”

As somebody who grew up kosher, who eats kosher regularly, who had this food all my life growing up, I love this food and I love being able to go back for it.

But I don’t always want it. And so when it comes to the High Holidays and I’m making a big meal with a lot of guests, I don’t want to go to the classics, but people expect the classics, and I don’t know how to balance those two. You’re coming to my house for Rosh Hashanah, you may not be getting matzo ball soup, or a brisket. I don’t know how to play with that for the people that want that and those that are done with traditional food. Traditional food doesn’t feel ambitious, and I feel stuck sometimes.

I totally agree. I’m divorced, so when it comes to the High Holidays I’m stuck­— sorry Mom!—eating the exact same meal two days in a row. What we’ve started to do—and I started to do it at the restaurants as well—is that one night will be very much Ashkenazi, and then the other night will be much more Sephardic. It could be rice and lentils and chickpeas. I crave that and want that. n This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Courtesy of Anthony Rose

I’ve always said that the original slow food movement is Shabbat dinner, because it takes hours to prepare and you get to enjoy it free of any screens and distractions.

Right. The chopped liver is definitely one of those dishes. Gefilte fish, no one really gives a shit about one way or the other. It can be there. We’re not going to sell very much of it.

I do think gefilte fish is one of the best things to put in between a toasted buttered bagel.

I love the High Holidays for that. There are definitely some of those dishes that you’re right about, that you just want to know that it’s there.

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Being extremely online is pushing us to extremes

BY SARAH BARMAK ILLUSTRATION BY JAN FEINDT FOR THE CJN

D

uring a deadly, divisive war, everything is political. Especially a war that is livecast 24/7 around the world, on every screen and device.

Alongside the overwhelming nature of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent onslaught in Gaza, the always-online era has pushed almost all of us into a politicized realm with a newfound intensity. Amid the flood of traumatic images and news spurring anger and grief, the performative nature of online culture has demanded we each know who is right, and that we always post the right take. This has always been true on the internet. But in the past year, it’s been all-encompassing.

This shift has taken on a heightened meaning for diaspora Jews. We have all been drawn into the obsessive political realm in ways I’ve never seen. Friends, old university colleagues and family who rarely so much as mentioned Israel before have spent the past year religiously watching, posting, weeping, and arguing almost daily. The diaspora may or may not be directly involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but we have been implicated by Israel’s designation of itself as the homeland for all Jewish people. With Jewish communities torn across ideological lines—Zionist and anti-Zionist, anti-ceasefire and pro-ceasefire—we have burned with grief, fear, passion, anger, and hatred. Some of us have drifted in the middle, conflicted or confused about what to believe. But we have posted anyway. It felt strange not to.

Feeling compelled to engage has been both organic—it feels wrong to be neutral in a situation of injustice—and amplified by multiple social pressures. Nearly all of us in the Canadian Jewish community have, or have family or friends with, deep emotional ties to the State of Israel. Many of us have felt coerced, implicitly or explicitly, into

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showing our unconditional support; at the very same time, we have faced mounting calls to disavow its actions, and even the idea of Israel itself.

There are extreme examples. A single Jewish mother I know who sympathizes with Palestinians has family who demanded she post her support of Israel on social media, threatening to distance themselves and cut off much-needed financial aid if she did not. Not posting at all about the issue was unacceptable. Her silence, to them, meant a betrayal of family and turning away from a homeland that was under terrorist attack. Their pressure, to her, meant she feels she has lost both her family and her ability to speak.

Anti-war Jews have had to defend their sentiments to other Jews, expected to furnish statistics and arguments on demand, both online and off. They have been asked for detailed answers to, “Well, what should Israel do? Let Hamas go?” Jews who back the current war have found themselves in precisely the same situation. Just about all of us could expect to be approached anytime, anywhere with huge questions.

“Can you two tell me what the f--- is going on?” one pal asked me and a Christian-Lebanese friend at a party in November. It wasn’t the last time we were asked for answers that night. I didn’t know WTF was going on myself.

Silence online risked signalling other things. There lurked an uncomfortable awareness that not talking or posting about the conflict might speak volumes in ways that non-Jews’ silence did not. To Zionist family members, it could mean betrayal. To friends or colleagues outraged by the mass killings of Palestinian children, it could mean implicit support of Israel’s bombs. And to them, conversely, any opposition to Israel

from Jewish sources carried more weight.

Of course, online speech about Israel has always been incredibly fraught, but this has boiled over in new ways. Over the past year, far too many people—particularly people of colour, and particularly anyone who is Middle Eastern—have lost their jobs or been labelled antisemitic for criticizing Israel in any way. Zionist Jews (and sometimes those presumed to be Zionist because Jews) have also lost work, had public appearances cancelled, and been unceremoniously removed from theatre and gallery schedules.

That many of us have been forced to reckon with a disastrous 75-year-long conflict is not a bad thing. Social media has been rightfully lauded for giving a voice to those who wouldn’t normally have an outlet. And some of us in the diaspora have had the luxury of being apolitical for too long.

Much of this new engagement has been an awakening. It has been remarkable to see

the diaspora in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and other communities engage in political action this past year, some people for the first time. We have marched in protests, joined massive organizing chats, called our politicians, moved money to escaping Gazan families, and even flown to Israel and Palestine to provide medical assistance, help kibbutzim bring in their harvests, or just show up: a mass activation of people with many sympathies for different sides. Much of it has inspired me: the current conflict shook me awake from a long, inattentive hibernation. I have tried to update my ignorance by reading and learning. I have engaged in various ways, though nothing I did ever felt remotely enough. I have offended my dad, who volunteered in the Six-Day War, and even more thoroughly offended a distant relative who lives in an Israeli settlement. I have found community online with other anti-war Jews who live as far away as Texas.

What was troubling this past year were not these good faith, if often fraught, efforts. It was the way online culture—which is an awful lot of our culture these days—demanded our politics be instantly clear, instantly shareable, and consumable in tweets and TikToks. It was the lack of space for learning, for basic facts free of opinions, for uncertainty. Online seemed a place where only fully formed conclusions were welcome. This pressure risks producing a huge swath of content about the conflict that is either halfbaked or regurgitated—tweets and posts whose tone and content are largely copied from others, so that we have something to say when we’re not sure what to say.

Without enough spaces for expressing still-inchoate thoughts, for seeking complex analysis (and cited sources), for showing the embarrassing gaps in your knowledge without being shamed for them, awakening into politics can never

involve the deep education and mature reckoning that it should.

I have become a different person, online and off. In person, I have conversations with people whose views are far different than mine and have felt open to hearing them.

Online, those same views have filled me with disgust. The uncompromising all-caps opinions of social media have admittedly become comfort food in a nonsensical world.

I feel my tangled, contradictory thoughts smooth out against the solid online edifice of declarations, callouts, and rage. These days, I try to stay aware of my reactions—the way I seek out the self-righteousness of social media most when I’ve been torn apart by a new image of the warzone, when I feel the most helpless. I try to notice when I’m scrolling to make myself feel better, not to learn or discover anything new. And I remind myself that, in those moments, I don’t need to add my voice to the din. n THECJN.CA 29

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What do we mean by

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Zion?

On the idea of a homeland for a people whose history has been defined by both exile and annihilation

BY AVI FINEGOLD

I

n the weeks and months since October 7, debates about Zionism and its role within Judaism have become both more prominent and more pointed. Religious Zionists are firmly convinced that God gave the Jewish people the Land of Israel and that to be a Zionist is the most Jewish thing possible. Secular Zionists (which, notably, describes the majority of the Jewish-Israeli population) believe just as vehemently in Jewish rights to the land, though they argue these exist for historical rather than theological reasons. These two groups are often at odds with each other—and both are at odds with anti-Zionists, who argue either that Judaism does not entail any particular relationship to a particular patch of land, or that other Jewish values (such as our relationships with and obligations to others, including Palestinians), are more important in determining our relationship to that land than any ancestral or religious claim.

This essay is an attempt to explore what Judaism actually has to say about Zion as a historic homeland and how contemporary Jews might relate to it. It is not an attempt to be prescriptive: there are multiple points of view within the Jewish community, many of which are deeply rooted in Jewish ideas. My hope is simply to lay out that full spectrum of ideas in a way that can help us all navigate these debates with some solid ground underfoot.

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Since the earliest Enlightenment debates about politics, Jews have wondered whether and how they could take charge of their relationship to other nations. (Crowds celebrating in Tel Aviv after the United Nations votes to partition Palestine and create a new Jewish state, Nov. 30, 1947.)

hough it may sound strange to many secular and even believing non-Orthodox Jews, Zionism is inextricably entwined with the Jewish understanding of a redeemed era—and therefore also of messianism. The former can be seen as either a fulfilment or a repudiation of the latter but, in any case, it must be grappled with.

The prophets of the late-First Temple era foretold the exile and subsequent ingathering of the Jewish people back to Zion. Isaiah— the prophet of “beating swords into plowshares” and of nations laying down arms—proclaimed that when that time came, “Torah shall come forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” describing this as a time of universal recognition of God and universal peace. Other prophets, including Micah and Zechariah, echoed these ideas.

The concept of a messiah figure as the vehicle by which this redeemed era and return to Zion would be brought about came later, in the wake of the destruction of the temple and subsequent exile in 70 CE. For the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, the redeemed era, in which Jews returned to the Zion from which they had been exiled, would be led by a heroic figure: an anointed descendant of the Davidic royal family.

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“We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live,” Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896. “It is not permitted to us.” One year later, the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland.

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the prophets foretold, such as Isaiah’s proclamation that the wolf shall lie with the lamb, or that the messiah will resurrect the dead.

These prophesies of global peace and eternal life for all Jews are not to be taken literally, according to him: they are just parables. The messianic era, he wrote, will retain a global natural political order.

Others vehemently disagreed with Maimonides’ naturalistic approach, understanding the Messiah to be a unique figure who would be universally recognized and lead the world to peace and an understanding of Jewish monotheism. A century after Maimonides, Nachmanides claimed that not only would the Messiah resurrect the dead but all of those who were resurrected would go on to live eternally in this world—which was now the world to come. This line of thinking persists in some segments of the Jewish community to this day: many Chabad sources, for example, recount the Talmudic teaching that when the Messiah arrives all synagogues and houses of study, past and present, will be uprooted and transplanted to Israel, and that resurrection will involve the dead rolling through the earth to the Land of Israel, where they will then be made alive again.

In the 19th century, Jewish thinking on these matters diversified.

Following the emancipation of German Jewry, and in a newly intellectual age that emphasized humanity’s capacity to develop itself rather than relying on God, Reform Judaism held that messianism was an ancient myth for which there was no longer any use. Today, Reform and other newer denominations of Judaism can be broadly seen as believing in a redeemed era rather than in a redeemer.

Previous page: Jim Pringle/Associated Press; This page: World History Archive/Alamy

Much Talmudic discussion and lore emerge from this idea. These are the rabbis who tell of meeting the Messiah sitting among the lepers at the gates of Rome, or the Messiah leading the people back to Zion on a white donkey. (They were also pragmatic, advising that if someone is told of the arrival of the Messiah while in the midst of planting a tree, they should first finish the planting and then go to greet the Messiah.)

By the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that the Messiah would, when he arrived, redeem the Jewish people, restore their homeland in the Land of Israel, and unify humanity in an era of peace.

Messianism has often come under attack within Judaism: first because of various false messiahs through the ages, such as Shabbetai Tzvi in the 17th century and, more recently, with the devotion among large swaths of the Haredi movement, to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. For many Jews, this veers too close to Christianity; even for those who stop short of that accusation, these demonstrations of fidelity to individual, human figures still serve as a warning about the dangers of messianic thinking. Yet for most of Jewish history, messianism has been an accepted part of Jewish belief.

Maimonides, who included belief in the Messiah as one of the core articles of Jewish faith, famously also held that the more significant aspect of the messianic era was neither the person who would bring it about nor a universal acceptance of their significance, but rather the return to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Maimonides made a point of minimizing the apocalyptic upheavals that

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elated to the matter of messianism, though not exactly the contemporary nation-state, but that it should do so in the Land of same, is the question of how much agency or autonomy Juda- Israel, was of course Theodor Herzl. The Austro-Hungarian writer ism allows us to have in determining our own destiny. At the same and activist, who founded what would go on to become the World time as some Jews were reevaluating their relationship to messi- Zionist Organization, convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897. anism and religiosity more broadly was waning among a significant The upshot was a commitment to establish a national home for number of Jews, nationalism was beginning to take hold as a polit- Jews in their ancestral home.

The year before, in a pamphlet titled “Der Judenstaat,” Herzl laid ical theory: this was the era of the French and American revolutions, Rousseau and Voltaire, and a modern reshaping of political phil- out his line of thinking. “The idea I have developed in this pamphlet osophy. Jews were at the forefront of this thinking as well, debating is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State,” he wrote. whether a people could take charge of their relationship to other “The decisive factor is our propelling force. And what is that force? nations or they were entirely dependent on forces (whether historic- The plight of the Jews.” Not a messiah, not a God-given right—simply al or religious) that had rendered many groups of people powerless. historical circumstances.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, he made this explicit: “I The early Zionists felt that national self-determination was the tool to put Jews on equal footing on the global stage. Others were not as consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, sure. As we will see, many Orthodox Jews at the time rejected this. As even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and national question,” he declared. “We have sincerely tried everyConservative rabbi, told me, “Nationalism is not an inherently Jewish where to merge with the national communities in which we live… idea. Nationalism is an idea that comes from a famous essay by Ern- It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes set Renan, ‘What is a Nation?’ It’s kind of a Christian way of rethinking superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and collective living outside of empire. And that’s fine. It’s not that Jews property as our fellow citizens.”

While Herzl readily accepts the idea of a home in Israel that is can’t then use it for their own benefit. But to then say, That’s Judarooted in ancient history, the messianic drive is completely absent ism—the Haredim at the time were saying, Where is that?” from his thinking, replaced by a not-untrue And yet, self-determination as a positive feeling that the force that prevented Jews value took hold and has been a powerful force from returning to Israel wasn’t the delayed ever since. The western European Jews who Zionism is inextricably arrival of a saviour but a mundane, human would go on to found classical Zionism were powerlessness. almost entirely secularized and correspondingentwined with the Shaul Magid put it to me this way: “For most ly devoid of any messianic fervor. They were, Jewish understanding pre-modern Jews, the Land of Israel and the however, big believers in the ideas of nationmessiah are fused… It’s secularism that dishood and nationalism that were coming into of a redeemed era— vogue at the time. This led them to the conentangles dwelling in the land of Israel en and therefore also of masse and the Messiah.” He continues, “If clusion that, as Jews, they had the right and you think about it from the perspective of the responsibility to take matters into their own messianism. tradition, that is a pretty radical move.” hands, advocating for and creating a homeland In sum: the tensions between and shifting for the Jewish people. The Messiah wasn’t gosignificance of these two animating ideas— ing to do it and it needed to be done.

In the earliest days of Zionism, the question of where to create this messianism and self-determination, one as old as Judaism and the modern political Jewish nation-state wasn’t viewed as entirely set- other as new as the idea of modernity itself—explain much of how tled: there was some support for creating a Jewish home wherever Jews relate to Zionism and Israel. Where someone sits on these two this could be established. In 1882, Zionist Leo Pinsker wrote: “The axes does much to explain their approach to the idea of Zion, and to goal of our present endeavours must not be the ‘Holy Land’ but a the nation-state of Israel. land of our own. We need nothing but a large piece of land for our poor brothers; a piece of land which shall remain our property from hen Jews with a strong commitment to messianism—which which no foreign master can expel us.” is to say, religious Jews—were confronted with Herzl’s burThe alternative to Palestine that was being considered was part of geoning Zionist movement, they had one of two choices: modify what is today Kenya. (This effort often gets referred to the Uganda their approach to messianism to accommodate Zionism, or reject Scheme.) Some saw it as a stepping stone to Palestine, which was Zionism. The former approach, what we now refer to as Religious at the time difficult to secure from the Turks. Others saw it as an eas- Zionism, combines a high degree of messianism with a high degree ier path to statehood. When the plan was ultimately rejected, some of self-determination. In this revision of traditional messianism, rath(including British author Israel Zangwill) began to look for other lands er than Jewish sovereignty being the outcome of messiah’s arrival, it in which Jews could possibly settle. Places both historical (ancient instead lays the groundwork for that arrival.

Mesopotamia, parts of Egypt), and modern (Angola, Australia) were Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, an associate editor of the Orthodox jourconsidered and ultimately rejected. The overwhelming sentiment nal Tradition, frames the religious attachment to a Jewish return to was that the historical land of Israel was the only real option. Even the Land of Israel as a hope that would not die. “There was never a to avowed secularists, the historical pull of the historical homeland period where the Jewish people somehow stopped being aware of of the Jews was too strong to ignore.

Israel,” he told me recently, “which is why thousands of years later The most famous proponent of the view, not only that Jewish they could re-engage Jewish sovereignty and Jewish power, and the self-determination can and should take the form of creating a idea of Zionism could find fertile ground.”

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Like the adherents of most ideologies, most Religious Zionists temper their beliefs based on prevailing realities: they want to live in the land, not wage a holy war. They follow in the footsteps of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Jews of the British Mandate, and his students. Kook died before the Holocaust and the founding of the state, but he left behind a legacy of idealism. He maintained that the lesson of exile was that power is a dangerous tool, and that if and when Jews succeeded in their national ambitions, they needed to be careful how they wielded it. Jewish politics could be different, Kook believed, and Jews did not need to exert power over others. He approved of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund but not the taking of land by force. This reflects the view of many Religious Zionists today. They send their children to hesder yeshivot—a system of religious institutions in which young adults study in yeshiva while pursuing a parallel track of army service—and genuinely want peace with the Palestinians.

As with most ideologies, there are extremists: adherents who are so fervent in their beliefs that they will wish for or cause harm to anyone—Jewish, Palestinian, or otherwise—who impedes their pursuit of Jewish sovereignty in the full terrain of what they consider the Land of Israel. These are the Religious Zionists we are accustomed to seeing on the news, who assert Jewish supremacy and, increasingly, wage violent attacks on their Palestinian neighbours.

In an article in The New York Times Magazine this spring, Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti profile the rise of the Hilltop Youth, whose commitment to Jewish sovereignty is so extreme that it does not actually countenance the nation-state that currently exists.

“Their objective,” the authors write, “was to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish ‘Jewish rule’: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews.”

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t the other end of this axis are religious Jews who also have a strong belief in messianism but with a weak commitment to political self-determination. These are the originalists—the ones who refused to modulate their messianism in response to the Zionist aspirations for a Jewish nation-state in the Land of Israel, and who persist in that refusal, to varying degrees, even long after that nation-state was born. This is the view that defines much of Haredi and Chabad Judaism.

Unlike Religious Zionists, these movements understand Jewish tradition as precluding any possibility of the human pursuit of national self-determination. They reject the notion that Jews can bring about the messianic era themselves, by becoming a political power among the nations. Rather, the only available path is for Jews to study and follow the commandments to the best of their abilities, thereby spiritually redeeming the world.

Rabbi Moses Sofer, the leader of Hungarian Orthodoxy in the 17th century and one of the architects of Haredi theology, did not shy away from the consequences of such a position. “It is worthwhile for the people of Israel to suffer prolonged exile, in order to attain such redemption in the end,” he wrote in his commentary on the Torah. “The full messianic claim does not permit the Jew to follow such heart promptings [for a restoration of the ancient past] and accept such existential options… It cannot be satisfied with a part, but only with the whole, the appearance of the Redeemer of Israel in all his power.” While Sofer lived and wrote long before Zionism

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was even possible, his ideas were taken up centuries later by late19th century German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. He wrote: “We are obligated to follow the ‘well-trodden paths of our ancestors and early leaders,’ who never mentioned any obligation for us to encourage the redemption by developing Eretz Yisroel. They mention as the path toward the Redemption only that we become better Jews, repent, and look forward to the redemption.”

How, then, do Haredim navigate the reality on the ground, namely the fact that, though no messiah has arrived, a Jewish nation-state does exist in the Land of Israel? Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Haredi umbrella group Agudath Israel of America, describes a delicate balancing act. “Once the state became a fait accompli,” he summarized in an email, “most of the Haredi world… opted to embrace, if not the Zionist philosophy, at least the fact of Israel, including citizenship. Which is why there are Haredim in Israeli government service and Haredi parties in the Knesset.” He describes current Haredi thinking as, if not reconciled to the existence of Israel, something like agnostic, calling it a-Zionist.

This is not fully borne out. As recently as January, a study conducted

by Nishma Research found that Haredim are still much less supportive of Zionism than other Orthodox and non-Orthodox populations: in their survey of approximately 1,300 respondents, 28 per cent of Haredim felt strongly pro-Zionist and another 23 per cent felt somewhat Zionist—a combined 51 per cent. By comparison, 94 per cent of modern Orthodox Jews identified as somewhat or strongly Zionist.

Among the comments from Haredi survey respondents: “Zionism enrages the nations of the world” and “I see how people put the army, its power and weakness before G-d and believe in that first.”

If Haredim are officially a-Zionist and unofficially divided, Chabadniks are most consistently clear in their rejection of the current Jewish state.

In 1900, the fifth Lubavitcher rebbe, Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, wrote a widely circulated letter on the matter: “Even if the Zionists were G-d fearing Torah true Jews, and even if we had reason to believe that their goal is feasible, we are nevertheless not permitted to join them in bringing our redemption with our own strength. We are not even permitted to force a premature redemption by showering the Almighty with insistent entreaties.” Schneersohn went even further: for him, the issue was not that Zionism was incompatible with Jewish faith but that it stood in direct opposition to it: “The Zionists’ true desire is to sever the hearts of the Jewish people from the Torah and mitzvos… We will not accept their promises. Even if they have some good to offer, we must throw it back to their faces.”

More than a century later, despite Chabad having launched many campaigns that “shower the Almighty with insistent entreaties” in the form of myriad children singing “We Want Moshiach Now,” and despite Chabad accepting the concrete benefits they receive from Israeli state coffers, there has been no real theological change of heart. Some materials currently available on the movement’s website explain that, politically, Israel is a land of darkness; others describe the state as the result of a Jewish inferiority complex.

Most congregations around the world recite a prayer for the State of Israel. There is a line in the prayer that refers to Israel as reshit tzmichat geulatenu—the beginning of the flowering of our redemption. Some Religious Zionist congregations add shetehe—that it should be—at the beginning of the phrase, to temper the strength of that claim. Others omit the phrase entirely, choosing to divorce the idea of the redemption from the idea of Israel itself. Haredi and Chabad congregations refuse to say the prayer at all.

When religious Jews were confronted with the burgeoning secular Zionist movement, they had one of two choices: modify their approach to messianism, or reject Zionism. (The Old City on the eve of Jerusalem Day, May 18, 2023.)

Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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s is hopefully apparent so far, classical Zionism—the one that led to the creation of the State of Israel in the land of Israel— is founded on ideas that were very high on the self-determination axis and fairly low on messianism. This is the tradition that shaped mainstream (which is to say, secular) Jewish-Israeli society, and over the decades came to characterize the attitudes of a majority of diaspora Jews, as well.

Elliot Glassenberg, senior educator at the pluralistic Israeli non-profit BINA, says that most Israelis can’t even begin to identify much of what Zionism actually was or is anymore. Most are not religious and don’t have a sense of the historical or spiritual connections to the land. “The secular Israeli theology has been summarized as follows,” he told me: “There is no God and He gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.”

BINA which describes itself as a secular yeshiva, strives to be a place where Israelis and diaspora Jews can learn about Judaism and Israel in a space that is non-denominational by design, and offers classes on topics that are often off-limits to a wide swath of Jews otherwise. Glassenberg explains that “for young Jewish adults, whether they’re from Israel or from the diaspora, having these oversimplified and in many cases inaccurate understanding of what Zionism is, is incredibly limiting.” It makes for, as he puts it, “a very narrow conversation as well as a narrow choice of identity… If you ask a student Are you Zionist or are you not Zionist? I find this really unproductive. What does Zionism mean to you? or How do you see your relationship with Israel? are much more productive questions.”

Glassenberg advocates for reconnecting with the discussions that shaped Zionism from its outset: “I think it’s actually very empowering and enriching for students, to be exposed to Zionist perspec-

tives that are over 100 years old, that in the time of Herzl and Ahad Ha’am were arguing about what the solution to Jewish challenges should be, and what a Jewish home in the Land of Israel should be or look like, and why we should or should not have a Jewish home in the Land of Israel.”

Though it may be counterintuitive, contemporary secular Zionism perhaps is least able to find a home in the schema I’ve been developing. More than any other quadrant, it has been reshaped in the wake of the Holocaust, which is generally understood by holders of this view to have fundamentally reconfigured Jewish nationalism, taking it out of the realm of theological or even broadly speaking political discourse and rendering it starkly existential. In the face of only partially avoided annihilation, the conceptual underpinnings of the Jewish relationship to Israel have taken a back seat to an imperative of survival.

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inally, we get to what is undoubtedly, right now, the knottiest quadrant: Jews whose views about their relationship to the Land of Israel are not determined either by a strong belief in messianism or a strong belief in self-determination. This encompasses several different groups: diasporists, anti-Zionists, and many secular Jews who have little to no relationship to Israel. These are often the most misunderstood groups within the Jewish community, and the ones most likely to be—and feel—excluded from community’s conversations about Zionism.

A rise in Jews who are questioning their commitments to Israel in light of events of the past year notwithstanding, this overall stance dates back to the beginnings of early modern Judaism. In 1885, leaders of the then-emerging Reform movement convened to formuTHECJN.CA 41

late their founding beliefs. The document, known as the Pittsburgh meanwhile, told me that while the realities of the Holocaust made Platform, consists of eight concise points, one of which was a re- Zionism a necessity for a time, that time has now passed. We are joinder to burgeoning Zionism: “We consider ourselves no longer a no longer facing extinction, and the exigencies that trump other nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a considerations have faded. In arguing for a post-Zionism, he holds return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, that the Jewish community could repair some of the issues plaguing the community in general as well as the rifts with Israel’s Palestinnor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”

This was a controversial move, even for a liberal community, and ian neighbours. In recognizing our own existence in exile and as an over the following decades, with the prospect of Israel becoming other in the global society, Magid says, we should develop a more more and more real, successive Reform platforms moderated those compassionate approach to the Palestinian people. ideas. By 1937, the Reform movement’s Columbus Platform stated Then there is modern anti-Zionism, which comes in several forms that, “in the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by mem- and which was a lonely position for a Jew to hold until about 10 ories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many years ago. Cultural anti-Zionism is very similar to diasporism: it of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its up- rejects a single place in which to center Jewish identity. Political building as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a anti-Zionism—the variety we tend to think about most often—itself haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture comes in diverse forms, but most share the idea that a land esand spiritual life.” tablished by displacing (an)other people, and continually causing Around the same time as the Pittsburgh Platform was being writ- harm to them both individually and as a group, is wrong. Whatever ten, but emerging from an opposing sentiment, was diasporism. religious or historical connection Jews may have to the Land of IsIf the early Reform movement emphasized the religion in Juda- rael cannot supercede this wrongness, and as a result, Israel as a ism, others were taken by the idea of Judaism as a culture and nation-state should be, according to this line of thinking, abolished or fundamentally reconfigured. did not feel the need to move somewhere Anti-Zionist Jews have, by and large, felt to fully flourish. This concept of Doykayt, alienated within and by the Jewish community: or Hereness, was very much a part of the “The secular Israeli many describe being called, even by friends secular Yiddish world of Eastern Europe and family, self-hating Jews, and having their at the time. The idea emerged from the theology has been support for Palestinian rights vilified and social-democratic Bundist ideology, which argued that Judaism didn’t need a separate summarized as follows: trivialized. But their ranks have, slowly, been place to exist. In order to develop a robust There is no God and He growing in recent years, in tandem with and largely fueled by Israeli expansionist tendenJewish identity, Bundists argued that one gave the land of Israel cies in the West Bank and a pronounced rightneeded to recognize that wherever Jews were was central to their identity. If there to the Jewish people.” ward trend in government policy. More Jews was a “Jewish Problem” it needed to be than at any other time in Israel’s history reject solved wherever it was being felt, not by the halutznik narrative of Jews as neutral imfleeing to another land. (The Russian town migrants to a barren land with foreign nations of Birobidzhan, established in 1928, was originally planned as the seeking to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Within larger segments centre of a Jewish autonomous region within that country, and a of the Jewish community, there is a recognition that at the very least, direct outgrowth of the idea that Jews could have their own land, the history is much more complicated and facts on the ground lend wherever they were.) much credence to the Palestinian claims on the land. Israel’s pursuit Diasporism evolved in the decades that followed, often but not of the war in Gaza in the wake of October 7 has visibly and significantalways as an alternative to Zionism. Jews who embraced this mod- ly accelerated this growth. This is evident in the increasing numbers el tended to focus on the incredible diversity of Jews around the of Jewish participants in anti-war rallies and anti-war university enworld, and on the reality that, however painful the origins of Jewish campments, in public statements by Jewish artists and academics, in exile are, much of contemporary Jewish culture and religion were polling of Jews since the war started, and in the growing presence of informed by being a group of people who were dispersed around the explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish groups. A survey of Canadian Jews conworld. Instead of seeing this only in terms of those painful origins—a ducted by University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym in February state of affairs to be remedied—they framed it as an evolution that found a statistically significant drop in support for Israel compared to could be embraced. previous years, “particularly among younger Jewish Canadians.” The While diasporism predates the Arab-Israeli conflict, that conflict is American Jewish Committee conducted a survey at about the same likely one of the reasons why it is having a bit of a resurgence today. time; 19 per cent of respondents reported feeling somewhat or much This is evidenced in two books that came out (and this is worth not- less connected to Israel since October 7.

It is impossible to say how much the growth of Jewish anti-Zionism ing) before October 7 and the subsequent upending of Jewish discourse around Zionism: Israeli-American historian Daniel Boyarin’s is growth, and how much is a change in how many Jews who have The No-State Solution, and Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile, long harboured doubts about Israel feel comfortable expressing both published in 2023. Both authors argue that living outside of them. But it is clear that debates on the question are breaking out Israel is not only acceptable but might even be the ideal state for into the open in new ways. Nowhere was this more clearly evidenced Jews. Boyarin sees Zionism as a novel invention of recent Jewish than in the movement Reconstructing Judaism and its Reconstruchistory and argues that Zionism’s focus on land and sovereignty tionist Rabbinical College (RRC). In the spring of 2024, two students runs counter to what Judaism has believed for centuries. Magid, left the school and published an op-ed in The Forward about their 42

Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

negative experience as Zionists on the RRC campus. “We came to should never have come at the expense of the Palestinian populafind that RRC is, de facto, a training ground for anti-Zionist rabbis,” tion that has deep history with the land as well. As many anti-Zionist they wrote. It was a rare situation in which the Zionists, rather than Jews do, Rosen’s beliefs are rooted in his understanding of Judaism.

In the seder supplement that he published for his congregation this the anti-Zionists, felt alienated by their Jewish community.

Rabbi Brant Rosen was the staff clergy at the Jewish Reconstruc- year, he wrote: “If we fail to give the Palestinian people a voice at tionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois from 1998 until 2014, when our table this evening, we will not have fulfilled the requirements he resigned over a deepening divide over his outspoken criticism of of the Passover seder… If we celebrate this festival by hardening Israel’s policies and actions. Recently Rosen, now the rabbi of Tzedek our hearts to the horrifying stories and images from Gaza that have Chicago, an anti-Zionist congregation, told me that “the politicization been crying out to us for the past seven months, we will not have of the land and the goal of creating a Jewish sovereign presence in fulfilled the requirements of the Passover seder.”

Rosen is also careful to differentiate between a right to the land the land—to establish, or reestablish Jewish political control of that land—was always treated with deep ambivalence by Jewish tradition.” and rights on the land.

For Rosen, Zionism is very far from a natural expression of Jewish tradition: “I would For many anti-Zionist Jews, the claim is not that Jews have no legitimate attachment to the land, but rather never make the argument that Zionism is than we are not the only ones who do. (Celebrating alien to Judaism. But I would say that ZionJerusalem Day at the Western Wall, June 5, 2024.) ism sought to overturn in many ways the very definition of Judaism and what it meant to be a Jew up until that point.”

It isn’t just that Zionism was a modern invention; Rosen is candid that he views it as “a destructive form of Judaism.”

What, then, does he think Judaism’s role should be with respect to the Land of Israel?

He describes it as many anti-Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, do: a settler-colonial project. It’s language that many Jews find incendiary and abhorrent—but which is also, perhaps, deeply misunderstood. The claim is not that Jews have no ancestral or religious connection to the land—no legitimate attachment— but rather than the claim is not exclusive. “I think that Palestine, like other countries that “The very notion of people having a right to the land flies in the face had been under colonial domination, should have been decolonized and power reverted to the indigenous people who live there,” he says. of the Torah itself… God has the right to the land, but allows people— And that includes Jews. Rosen argues that rights should have been and by the way allowed other nations before the Jewish people—to live extended “to all people who live there, whether they were, Jewish, on the land, with certain conditions of how you’re supposed to behave on the land. But the land [can] vomit you out if you’re not careful.”

Christian or Muslim.”

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights is an extensive network Zionists have and will continue to argue that there has been continuous Jewish presence in Zion since the time of the First Temple. of rabbis who use Jewish thought to support their anti-Zionist views.

Anti-Zionist Jews, even when they describe Israel as a settler-coloni- In one piece on their website, Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton of Ottawa Real state, don’t necessarily contradict that. But they do want to de- constructionist congregation Or Haneshama connects the fact that couple the Jews that were indigenous to the land from the European the Torah records separate names for a given place—one by Jacob Jews who began to settle the land, displacing others in the process. and one by Laban—to the various place names in Israel-Palestine to“Biblical tradition records certain narratives about the Jewish day. If the Torah values both enough to remember them, she wrote, people creating a sovereign state after the conquest and settlement we should honour and value the multiplicities that exist today. of Canaan,” Rosen tells me. These are not historical documents; these are religious documents—and they’re profoundly ahistorichenever I see a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independal. What we do know from history is that the Jewish people as we ence, I am struck by the blue thread that runs along its left know them came into being centuries later, and that Judaism as we side. Ostensibly, this thread was used to sew together the three understand it today by and large was a product of the day it came to pages of script, but I can’t help but draw a comparison to the blue full flourishing in the diaspora.” thread of the tzitzit on the tallit.

Rosen recognizes the role the Holocaust had to play in shaping The Bible tells us that the tzitzit act as a reminder of all the comcontemporary Zionism and believes the world should bear deep mandments whenever we see them. Thousands of years have shame over its unwillingness to settle Jewish refugees before, dur- passed and we have an ever-increasing multiplicity of views about ing, and after the war. He understands that it is specifically that re- Jewish thought and practice. None have a monopoly and—however fusal to resettle Jewish refugees that led to Jews, refugee and other- you think of your Judaism—the tzitzit are a reminder of that thread wise, clinging to Israel as their homeland. But he believes that this that binds us together. 

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5784: The year in pictures E

ven by the harsh standards of Jewish history, this has been one of the more difficult years. As with many other kinds of grief, it has come in waves: first in processing the severity of Hamas’s unprecedented attack on civilians, and then in grappling with the war Israel launched in response.

In Canada, this has unfolded against the backdrop of renewed support for Israel from some quarters, a rise in antisemitism in others, and increased attention across the board.

Over the last year, Canadian Jews have been in mourning, afraid, angry, determined, recommitted, questioning, in solidarity, and sometimes also at odds with one another—often several of these at once.

No collection of images can capture the full range and complexity of Jewish experiences over the past 12 months. But at this moment in the calendar—which is always an occasion for contemplation and, this year, also a terrible yahrzeit—we wanted to create some space to remember and reflect on what we have, individually and collectively, been going through.

UJA Federation of Greater Toronto

In hope of better days ahead, The CJN

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October 9, Toronto. Thousands of Torontonians, along with leaders from all three levels of government, mourn the Hamas attacks at a solidarity rally at Mel Lastman Square.

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October 8, Toronto. Protesters hang Palestinian flags on an overpass above the Gardiner Expressway in response to Israel’s retaliations in Gaza.

R.J. Johnston Toronto Star/Getty Images; Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images; Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images

October 13, Toronto. At Pearson International Airport, Kinneret Butterfield-Morrison greets her children as she arrives on a Canadian government evacuation flight from Tel Aviv.

October 18, Toronto. Protesters outside the Israeli consulate office.

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October 23, Toronto. Jewish groups opposed to the Israeli military campaign block Monday morning rush hour traffic at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor streets, near the Israeli consulate.

October 25, Edmonton. A demonstration calling for the release of Israeli hostages outside the Alberta legislature.

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Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images; Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images; CP24

November 10, Toronto. At a downtown Indigo store, a postering and paint protest accuses owner Heather Reisman of funding genocide.

December 14, Toronto. The end of the eight-day Festival of Lights is marked by a “Hanukkah for Ceasefire” event at Trinity-Bellwoods Park.

Lila Sarick; CBC

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Shawn Goldberg/SOPA/Getty Images; Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images

December 4, Ottawa. Three months after the Hamas attack, thousands journey to Parliament Hill for “Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People.”

January 6, Toronto. A police officer drew sharp rebukes after handing out coffee at a pro-Palestinian protest.

Lila Sarick; CBC

Shawn Goldberg/SOPA/Getty Images; Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images

December 14, Winnipeg. A vigil at the Rady JCC commemorates Vivian Silver, 74, a locally born peace activist who was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.

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March 27, Vancouver. Justin Trudeau visits Temple Shalom Synagogue to meet with a group of local rabbis and discuss security concerns amid a rise in antisemitism.

PMO;

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Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images; Frank Gunn/Canadian Press

Frank Gunn/Canadian Press; Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images

April 5, Edmonton. A Shabbat table installation in Violet King Henry Plaza, outside the legislature, commemorates still-captive hostages.

Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty Images; Frank Gunn/Canadian Press

Frank Gunn/Canadian Press; Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images

April 30, Toronto. An interfaith gathering, “Freedom for All: A Jewish-Palestinian Resistance Seder,” convenes to mark the eighth day of Passover outside of Toronto City Hall.

May 26, Toronto. Day 25 of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.

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June 9, Toronto. An estimated 50,000 people turned out for the annual Walk with Israel

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June 30, Toronto. Pro-Palestinian protesters also march in the Pride Parade before blocking the procession.

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UJA Federation of Greater Toronto; Daniel Malen; Arlyn McAdorey/Canadian Press

June 30, Toronto. Jewish groups march in the annual Pride Parade.

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The New Philosemitism An age-old tradition has taken new shape recently.

Who, exactly, is this helping?

BY PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY ILLUSTRATION BY EZRA BADERMAN FOR THE CJN

J

ews have always had our share of enemies, but some moments seem more antagonistic than others. Our popularity’s taken a hit since October 7. There was a blip of a moment when well-meaning gentiles were parsing whether it counts as cultural appropriation to put up a mezuzah in solidarity with one’s Jewish neighbours, as an I am Spartacus-type solidarity gesture. But, soon enough, the world at large switched its focus to the IDF’s response. Do Israel’s actions constitute a genocide, and are Canadian and other diaspora Jews complicit? Is it possible, asked antisemites, who already had their answer, that Jews are the worst people ever to exist, and now the world is finally waking up?

Going by certain corners of social media, not to mention lamppost flyers, it can be easy for Jews—even those of us with our own criticisms of how Israel is handling this war—to catastrophize about the people who hate us. But, on a population level, North American Jews are not actually unpopular, recent criticisms notwithstanding. High-profile antisemitic incidents have a way of masking the fact that Canadians and Americans tend to have favourable views of us.

A March 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 35 per cent of Americans express very or somewhat favorable attitudes toward Jews, while 6 per cent express “unfavorable

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attitudes,” making Jews the most positively viewed of all religious (or non-religious) groups surveyed—more so than Catholics or Protestants and much more so than atheists, Muslims or Mormons. In a survey conducted after October 7 and published in a special edition of Canadian Jewish Studies this spring, University of Toronto sociology professor Robert Brym found that 83 per cent of Canadians “hold positive feelings about Jews” and that “antisemitism comes primarily from four specific groups in Canadian society—Muslims, white supremacists and leftists, non-Jewish university students, and Quebecois.”

Some non-Jews, however, have more than a vaguely positive feeling about us. A handful of them think we are the greatest and want the world to know that they are on Team Jews. This can be anxiety-producing in its own right.

Philosemitism has a rich and much-explored history, the relevant bits of which I will get into shortly, but my focus here is what I have come to believe is a new incarnation of this centuries-old phenomenon.

Where philosemitism of recent decades been understood as an affinity for Jews, this new philosemitism is distinguished by steadfast commitment to the two-pronged policy platform of defending Israel and fighting antisemitism. It’s the sort that ex-

presses itself online and in political speech about how wronged Jews (and sometimes Israel) are, in such passionate language that you think (that is, I think) there has to be some personal attachment—but no, this is just their side. The sort where someone has a Star of David or Israeli flag emoji in their bio and you think (if you are me), “Oh, I didn’t know so-and-so-was Jewish,” and it turns out they’re not.

A few words about what philosemitism is not. Philosemitism might inspire conversion, but once you are Jewish, you’ve ceased being someone with an outsider’s affinity for Jews. The lobbyist Richard Marceau may be a pro-Israel advocate with a French-Canadian name and heritage, but he converted to Judaism, thereby making his own story a part of the Jewish one.

I also have trouble referring to a solidarity born of real-life closeness with Jews as philosemitism. Plenty of non-Jews’ concern for Jews’ welfare comes from having a Jewish partner or Jewish kids. Jews aren’t abstract entities to them, but real people. This is different from finding Jews interesting as a concept. It is a bias born of proximity, and not so far off from being pro-Jewish on account of being Jewish yourself.

It’s not that there are hard-and-fast rules for these things. Someone can be Jewish and still think of Jews as abstractions,

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though if you’re a Jew yourself, you probably know others, which mitigates generalizations. But philosemitism, to me, suggests a gulf between philosemite and Jew. You have to be someone who could up and decide you didn’t like Jews after all, or just that you preferred some other hobby, and nothing substantive would change in your life. The fate of the Jewish people is, at the end of the day, not the philosemite’s problem.

I

n 2011 in The New Republic, critic Adam Kirsch reviewed Philosemitism in History, a book whose topics ranged “from the Christian Hebraists of the seventeenth century to documentaries on West German television.”

The review is a synthesis both of philosemitism in history—including prior to the coining of the term in the late 19th century, alongside that of antisemitism—and of the significance of the phenomenon. “It takes pathetically little good will toward Jews to qualify for a place in the book,” Kirsch writes. Some philosemites of yore were simply the people who didn’t want all Jews murdered when others were advocating for this.

Initially, prior to the 1789 French Revolution, philosemitism had little to do with its proponents’ real-life Jewish contemporaries and far more to do with biblical Hebrews. These philosemites were early modern Christian theologians and Enlightenment philosophers, who weren’t encountering Jews socially or swinging by the deli for a smoked meat sandwich. Jews were interesting because of their role in Christianity’s backstory.

The theological place of Jews and Judaism in Christianity still plays a role in philosemitism, but its significance has waned over time; it is now mainly relevant to Christian Zionism. As the 19th century proceeded, the odds were ever-greater that a non-Jewish thinker would have met actual Jews, not just read about them. Their philosemitism, therefore, would be rooted in that more direct experience (though the high levels of integration and familiarity we know today would have been unlikely in most settings until further into the 20th century).

Philosemitism’s manifestations in modern European history included everything from fetishization of “Oriental” Jewish women (the belle Juive was a popular trope in 19th century France) to an association of Jews with French republicanism itself. After all, before the French Revolution, there was no concept in Europe of Jews as full citizens. If

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you believed in the Enlightenment values of human rights or in the idea of an unhyphenated French identity available to all, then you had to be on the side of the Jews, even if actual Jews proved a bit pious and particularist for your tastes. If you didn’t want French-ness to hinge on Catholicism, one of the easiest ways to demonstrate your anticlericalism or commitment to laïcité (French secularism) was to insist that even a Jew could be French.

The Dreyfusards—those who defended French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus from a false accusation of treason in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—were not necessarily immune to holding negative stereotypes about Jews. But categorically defending Jews from antisemitism became, in that moment, further entrenched as a proxy for defending the secular French

If someone says they’re a friend of the Jews, you do eventually have to ask, of which Jews, for we are not all friends with one another. state. Siding with Jews was a way of rejecting those who believed only Catholics with the right ancestry could be trusted as loyal compatriots.

The North American philosemitism of the mid to late 20th and early 21st centuries was both less political and more stereotype-driven than the versions that preceded it. It was also much more about interpersonal relationships with Jews, a natural reflection of the increasing interactions between non-Jews and Jews. It came out of what Franklin Foer’s much-discussed March 2024 Atlantic article deemed the “golden age of American Jews.” (In May, The Globe and Mail ran a Canadian quasi-equivalent, from Noah Richler: “Is the Jewish moment in North America over?”) Jews were at the centre of things culturally, seen as model minorities, and non-Jews admired us. Let’s call this Golden Age philosemitism.

Golden Age philosemitism was organic.

Jews were seen—that is, stereotyped—as a

group of particularly colourful white people: more cosmopolitan, intellectual, successful, and intense than their WASPy or preppy Catholic neighbours. Jews clustered in cosmopolitan cities like New York and Montreal. We took piano lessons, we read books or even wrote them, we ate Chinese food despite not (generally) being Chinese ourselves. To many gentiles, this made us off-putting; to others, it constituted our charm.

This philosemitism also had a sexual component. Unlike the 19th century French variety, though, the Golden Age exotic Jewish Other tended to be male. In her 2001 essay, “American Shiksa,” American writer Meghan Daum does a good job conveying this fixation. In it, she describes a love of Jewish men, those “dark-haired boys who read books and stayed up late, who had circles under their eyes, who looked like wise men, like owls perched up on the highest rungs of the evolutionary ladder.”

More than that, Daum writes about enjoying taking on the role of shiksa in relationships with these men. After flirting with the idea of conversion, she realizes an “agnostic” like herself isn’t about to do so. “So I decided that if I couldn’t be Jewish I might as well be un-Jewish in as obstreperous and maddening a way as possible…. And that meant surrounding myself with Jews and being a gentile. Blonde. Flaky. Adoring.” It’s a very funny essay, if you’re not easily offended.

As Daum presents it, her fixation on life amongst Jews is about fleeing all that is “white trash.” Writes Daum, of her fellow gentile white Americans, “With or without country homes in Kennebunkport or Squibnocket, we’re all descendants of shotgun culture, of Coke at breakfast, Triscuits for lunch, 4-H champions, horse thieves, and drunks passed out in front of 60 Minutes.”

By contrast, Jewish families were restricting processed foods and screen time before it was cool, or at any rate tended not to settle in places where agriculture-themed scouting groups are a big deal. (I watched plenty of TV and ate no shortage of junk growing up in Manhattan in the 1980s and 1990s, but I did so in a home without guns or hard liquor, and with no livestock nearby.)

In her 2014 book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite, British writer Julie Burchill also frames her philosemtism in terms of an adoration of Jewish men—and a hyperconsciousness of her own unsophisticated-in-her-view gentileness. The Jews had become a symbol to me of escape—of

outsiderness not just embraced, but made magnificent.” Burchill also considered and ultimately rejected converting to Judaism, but recalls dyeing her hair black and inventing Jewish ancestry in order to get her own first job in journalism.

There is a fine line between admiration and ambition-driven emulation. Whoopi Goldberg, originally Caryn Elaine Johnson, grew up Christian but has mentioned a feeling of Jewishness in interviews. “Goldberg” is a stage surname, one that may have originated from her sense (or her mother’s sense?) that Jews succeeded in show business. In 2022, she made headlines for an antisemitism controversy: statements she made on The View, and subsequently apologized for, that were perceived of as dismissive of the Holocaust.

The head of the Anti-Defamation League responded to the kerfuffle by suggesting The View hire a Jewish host, a reminder that “Goldberg”-ness is not enough.

T

he new philosemitism is less about liking Jews and more about defending us from all enemies, real and perceived.

It’s not about gravitating towards Jews, but rather about speaking up for us (or over us) as allies. It’s centrally about Israel—not the nitty-gritty of Israeli politics, but rather defending the right to be pro-Israel in the diaspora.

In more concrete terms: the new philosemitism is MP Kevin Vuong posting photos of himself dining at Toronto restaurants targeted by pro-Palestinian protestors, not because this set of cuisines appeals to him, but to defend Canada’s Jewish community.

It is U.S. senator John Fetterman pasting Israeli hostage flyers all over his office. It’s the Canadian author, lawyer, and political operative Warren Kinsella posting on X, “I’m not Jewish. My partner isn’t Jewish. I don’t have a Jewish client. I haven’t been asked to go on a trip to Israel. I’m not getting an award for what I write or say about

Israel or antisemitism. I write what I write, and say what I say, because it’s what I believe. Period.” It is Australian Quillette founder Claire Lehmann coming through with something along much the same lines: “I’m not Jewish,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “but they can put me on the Zionists in Publishing list anytime they want.”

(This was in reference to anti-Zionist lists that were circulating at the time, and aimed at would-be Israel boycotters.)

Philosemitism is not something that happens sealed-off from actual Jews, but rather something Jewish communities have welcomed, particularly since October 7.

Michael Moynihan, once Tablet magazine’s “Righteous Gentile” columnist (the name a reference to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust) remains on the philosemitic beat, having recently defended Israel’s war in Gaza for Bari Weiss’s The Free Press.

Tristin Hopper, of the National Post, came to Vancouver’s Congregation Schara Tzedeck to speak on January 14. On February 28, the conservative British journalist Douglas Murray spoke at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto (BAYT) synagogue, a packed event covered on The CJN’s website.

I will now voice a question I have heard asked privately: Are our non-Jewish supporters—how to put this delicately—being paid?

Yes, and no.

Someone with philosemitic tendencies may wind up working for a Jewish organization, or a heterodox one with pro-Israel leanings, but I have trouble seeing this as nefarious evidence that Jews (or, for the less conspiracy-minded, Christian Zionists) are bankrolling support. It seems of a piece with people of all inclinations working for a place in line with their interests and values. Politicians are doubtless making calculations when deciding which communities to align themselves with—witness the Conservatives presenting Justin Trudeau and the Liberals as bad-for-the-Jews and gaining themselves a win in a midtown Toronto byelection. This is no more suspect when it’s the Jewish community than when it’s any other group.

The new philosemites don’t hold identical views on all issues, but their politics converge in ways that give political coherence to their pro-Jewish advocacy. Barring other mitigating modifiers, a Star of David or Israeli flag emoji in a non-Jew’s social media bio most often functions as a proxy for liberal or centrist anti-wokeness. The same is the case for pro-Jewish gestures that go THECJN.CA 63

further still. It’s not conservatism, exactly, unless that’s the term you’re using to refer to nostalgia for the calm liberalism of the notso-distant past. That said, some philosemitism is more right-wing than centrist, and springs from criticisms of Islam and of leftist politics, and a sense (not always accurate) of Jews as natural allies in this. There have been times in history—and still are corners of social media—where defending the West implied antisemitism. Now it appears to go the other way. It all depends how you’re defining Western civilization, and there have always been competing definitions. There are still the white supremacists who use the term The West as a euphemism for a realm that ought to exclude Jews.

Is it, then, that the marginalized are for Palestine, and the privileged for Israel?

This is certainly the impression you get if you observe the way Palestine has become the centrepiece of a consolidating progressive movement (or, in more skeptical terms, an “omnicause”).

But philosemitism doesn’t shake out along clear-cut identity-based lines. Ritchie Torres, an Afro-Latino U.S. congressman representing the impoverished South Bronx, is on Israel’s side. Many Iranians living outside Iran are Israel supporters out of a shared opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. In Canada and elsewhere, some Indigenous leaders support Israel and see Jewish Israelis as having a similar connection to that land as they do to theirs. Last I checked, Kevin Vuong is not a posh WASP. Much is made of Queers for Palestine, and the seemingly counterintuitive attempts to link support for Palestinians with LGBTQ+ liberation. (Sample headline: “Yes, Palestinian solidarity is a queer issue,” in Xtra Magazine.) But then you get individual non-Jewish gay people like comedian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding on the opposing side. Supporting Israel aligns with opposing transgender activism in the strange polarization of contemporary political alliances, and is therefore a natural fit for whichever subset of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community has dissociated itself from mainstream queer activism. This is just one of the enemy-of-my-enemy backstories that can, these days, make someone seeming randomly pro-Jewish.

Here is how I’ve been able to make sense of who falls where on Israel-Palestine matters, among those not otherwise implicated or interested: People who favour the status quo and stability pick Team Jews, while 64

those with more of a burn-it-all-down approach embrace Team Palestinians. (If you were to take my use of Teams here to be dismissive, you would be right.) What I’m dismissing is not the seriousness of conflict itself, which is bleak and self-evident.

Rather, it’s how little what’s going on in the diaspora has to do with the war versus what it symbolizes in pre-existing domestic rifts. How else could you explain the way that, per Martin Gurri writing in the Free Press, Jews have come to represent “normies” and frat boys? There’s something to the way that the classic conflict of preppies versus theatre kids now plays out as if it were somehow about geopolitics: two intractable conflicts, conflated.

The new philosemitism, then, consists of pro-Israel cheerleading interspersed with sombre anti-antisemitic posting. Is this what Jews, collectively, find appealing? It’s unclear how much this wave of philosemitism has to do with real-life Jews to begin with.

Philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism.

It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us.

L

ofty principles conflicting with on-theground ick at real-life Jews is basically the story of philosemitism in any era or incarnation. If you like Jews because we’re cosmopolitan, you’re going to lose it when you learn how many Jews (no more or less than anyone else) are deeply provincial and lacking in curiosity about the world beyond whomever they went to kindergarten with. If you imagine Jews are all like Hannah Arendt or Susan Sontag, what do you do when you meet one who owns exactly one book and it’s The Catcher in the Rye and she was assigned it in high school? Will you consider this a lesson learned, or will you be mad at her for not living up to expectations?

If someone says they’re a friend of the Jews, you do eventually have to ask, of which Jews? for we are not all friends with one another. The new philosemitism must contend with the presence of Jews with-

in the pro-Palestine movement, including rabbis as well as Jewish Studies students and faculty. And the anti-woke philosemite—the one incidentally pro-Israel but more centrally invested in fighting progressive dogma—must come to terms with the embrace, by many liberal Jews and Jewish institutions, of the very phenomenon they oppose. Bari Weiss is Jewish but so too is DEI consultant extraordinaire Tema Okun.

There are progressive Jews and right-wing Jews and anti-woke Jews and ambivalent Jews and Jews who (like our Catcher-reading composite above) don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.

If I could press a button and turn the world’s committed antisemites into philosemites I suppose I would, because it’s better to be liked for weird reasons than wished dead.

But philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism. It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us. In his book Obstinate Hebrews, historian Ronald Schechter writes about how terribly useful Jews were, symbolically, as figures for Enlightenment gentiles to use for thinking through philosophical notions of difference and inclusion. This is both an interesting abstract thing for academics to contemplate and terrible foreshadowing.

As Kirsch writes, “There may be little to love about philo-Semitism, and little to be grateful for in its history; but that is because genuine esteem between Christians and Jews, like real affection of all kinds, cannot be grasped as an ‘-ism.’ Ideologies deal in abstractions, and to turn a group of people into an abstraction, even a ‘positive’ one, is already to do violence to them.”

If surveyed on their feelings about the Jews, the answer I’d like to hear from a non-Jewish compatriot would not have anything to do with being impressed at Jewish achievements or contributions. It would simply be: “They’re human beings, no better or worse than anyone else.”

Jews are of interest to the outside world wildly out of proportion to our own numbers. Our fate as real-life people shouldn’t be tied up with that of phenomena, even impeccable ones like entrepreneurship or sobriety. I don’t want to be collectively admired for qualities I, as an individual, might not even share. You admire Jews for our financial savvy? Interesting; let me introduce you to my bank account. Though it’s true I have no alcohol tolerance— you’ve got me there. n

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No Jews live here On family lore, secrets, and the Hungarian-Jewish experience.

Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy

BY JOHN LORINC

Dohany Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary, late 1920s / early 1930s.

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E

very family possesses a library of stories, and these narratives come in all flavours: happy, tragic, distant, comic, trauma-saturated, transcendent, cathartic, a combination of the above. Some travel effortlessly across generations, accumulating meaning and conjured details with each telling. Others simply aren’t interesting, or not interesting enough to be retold.

What’s more, a family story is never merely a rote account of events. Plotlines and points of view are imposed by the storyteller, who may also manipulate, embellish, or omit facts, the way a potter shapes a lump of clay on a wheel, working out the imperfections until the surface is smooth and presentable.

In this process of oral authorship, we also misremember or forget basic facts or downplay some subplots that may hold enormous meaning to someone else. But this shaping serves a larger goal. I recently asked one of my sons how he’d categorize this narrative form: is it journalism, fiction, memoir, oral his-

Like countless others who endured trauma during the Holocaust in particular and war in general, my father did not relate his experiences, and I was too young to understand why. There are all the obvious answers—the listener (me) lacked the maturity and the context to deal with the harshness of his experiences. Yet the ubiquity of the heavy silences that define the lives of so many survivors and veterans—as well as perpetrators and bystanders—suggests something else, a kind of psychological or psychic outer limit, beyond which the conventional tools of narrative and memory and storytelling vanish into a black hole.

Many storytellers have sought to defy the instinct to succumb to wordlessness. These include the archivists who have meticulously recorded, compiled, and made available oral testimonies given by survivors who summoned the emotional wherewithal to share their stories. Authors like Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Hannah Arendt all sought,

My father, Janos Lusztig (right), circa 1935.

tory...? “Mythology,” he replied, the burnish that distinguishes anecdote from narrative.

Family lore also resembles a Russian doll: there are stories inside other stories, as well as the faint voices of earlier, unacknowledged narrators who have told the stories that will then be retold, and reshaped, later on. The fact that they’ve been picked up and reshared attests to something about what makes them engrossing, to narrator and listener alike.

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in their own ways, to impose narrative form onto events that seem literally too horrible for words.

Filmmakers in the late 1970s and early 1980s—Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino, etc.—similarly sought to dispel the pall that hung over post-Vietnam America with movies that turned to the power of metaphor as a way of talking about that which a scarred society couldn’t adequately put into words. I also think about someone like the

esteemed Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, who, in Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, reconstructed from post-war testimony not just the actions but also the private thoughts and motivations of the soldiers in a Nazi death squad.

All of this laborious work—the excavation of narrative—aims in some sense to provide future generations with an understanding of what happened and how to prevent future wartime atrocities. Needless to say, we’re better at the former than the latter.

My father didn’t speak of his experiences, but he took specific steps that suggest to me a deep desire to not allow his own history to repeat itself with his children. He tried, for example, to teach my sister and me some basics of boxing. He enrolled me in karate, then an exotic sport, so I had the tools to defend myself. As a teenager, he had gotten into a lot of fights, and those fights, I suspect, had something to do with the toxic anti-Semitism that hung like acrid smog over Budapest in the 1930s. He wanted me to be prepared.

When I was about ten, my father told me we were Jewish, and then gave me strict instructions to not let anyone know. Although both my parents discussed the timing and nature of this revelation, my father did the telling, taking me aside on one of our family’s after-dinner walks. He provided few reference points with which to process this shard of information. The confounding detail was that we did nominally Christian things, like celebrate Christmas and search for the treats left by the Easter Bunny. Nevertheless, I promised to keep the secret and did so for many years.

Secrets, it seems to me, are like dams: they hold back the natural flow of a narrative and effectively prevent it from spreading into the world. But secrets also whip up a chaotic and often corrosive energy, a building up of pressure as the taboo of the secret, trapped as it is in some dark room in our minds, seeks other outlets. For me, the secret about our Jewishness turbo-charged my curiosity about what it meant. After all, I couldn’t ignore what was left unspoken: Why did I need to keep his secret?

The answer must have been one hell of a tale.

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t the turn of the twentieth century, Hungary was a nation of increasingly stark divisions. Budapest, perhaps even

more than Vienna, had become a thriving hub of commerce, art, and liberal politics, a place that fully embraced the modern era and served as a magnet for upwardly mobile Jews. (The city acquired the obviously problematic sobriquet “Judapest.”) Rural areas and small towns, by contrast, remained stuck in the feudal era, ruled by land-owning gentry whose members clung to the archaic customs of the Hungarian aristocracy (which included a deep disdain of commerce), employed and taxed the peasants, and remained aloof from the sophistication of the big city. Even at that relatively late date, a shockingly small percentage of Hungary’s population had the right to vote. Those who owned land could.

The urban Jewish middle and upper classes, meantime, thrived, especially in Budapest. The wealthiest families established intimate social and business connections with Hungary’s ruling elites and aligned themselves politically with the country’s small-l liberal government.

In its architecture, cultural institutions, and mannerisms, turn-of-the-century Budapest saw itself as an up-and-coming rival to Vienna. Historian Péter Hának, who has compared the two cities, describes them as the “garden and the workshop,” the latter a reference to the fact that Budapest, unlike Vienna, attracted entrepreneurs, brokers, lenders, and hustlers. Its port had grown to become the largest along the entire stretch of the Danube, serving freight-laden barges from the Balkans and processing enormous shipments of wheat from the Great Plains.

The Pest side in particular boomed, and came to be surrounded by a ring of industrial precincts filled with overcrowded tenements, warehouses, and small manufacturers employing people streaming in to the city from points east. Pest’s major arterials radiated out from the Danube in concentric semi-circles, with each segment named for a member of the Habsburg family. The Orient Express, which connected Vienna and Istanbul, made a stop at the Keleti train station, Budapest’s largest. Tourists flocked to the city in large numbers. Yet like many thriving metropolises, Budapest— Europe’s fastest growing city between 1867 and 1914—had plenty of poverty and income inequality.

Pest’s buzzy nineteenth-century growth coincided with, and was greatly influenced by, the influx of Jews from rural Hungary as well as more distant parts of central and

Jozsef (Joska) Lusztig in front of his store, circa the late 1930s.

eastern Europe. The city’s earliest Jewish quarter grew up well away from the Danube, in a district known as Erzsébetváros (Elizabeth Town). Anchored by the majestic Moorish-style Dohany Street synagogue, built in 1859, the Jewish quarter’s narrow streets were lined with small businesses, such as kosher butchers, dry-goods merchants, furriers, and fabric stores. A bustling outdoor flea market operated nearby. One could buy and bargain for anything, including kosher salami and every type of second-hand item, from mattresses to clocks. While the area was still home to the city’s Hasidim and a few Yiddish signs remained over the storefronts, many of its residents had embraced a more assimilated lifestyle. Some shops even displayed the Hungarian double-cross and shield to demonstrate the merchant’s patriotism.

Besides the street retailers and professional offices, the quarter offered a full complement of leisure activities, including well-known brothels, night clubs, and music halls. The programming in the revue theatres included plenty of satirical and self-parodying comedy, with actors poking fun at the traditionalism of their Orthodox brethren.

Yet some voices cautioned Hungary’s Jews from mistaking their prosperity and connections for security. “I would gladly resign my claim to the Hungarian Jews if only I were certain that their patriotism would save them from the misery of anti-Semit-

ism,” Budapest’s first Jewish mayor, Ferenc Heltai, who happened to be the uncle of Theodor Herzl, predicted as early as 1912.

“But the Jews of Hungary will also be overtaken by their doom, which will be all the more brutal and merciless as time passes, and wilder, too, the stronger they get in the meantime. There is no escaping it.”

I

first visited Budapest at age twelve, with my parents and my sister, in July 1975, during a family trip to Europe. We arrived on a flat-bottomed tour boat that departed from Vienna and navigated down a languid stretch of the Danube as it flowed east out of Austria into (then) Czechoslovakia, banking south toward Hungary. The boat had a glass top, with lots of windows, and carried several dozen American tourists, talking noisily.

Arriving by boat to Budapest is to encounter the city in a state of romantic equipoise.

Like many great river metropolises, Budapest is both defined and divided by this halfkilometre-wide expanse of moving water.

The Danube runs past and around Margit Island, an almond-shaped park fitted out with paths and outdoor pools, and flows beneath Budapest’s seven bridges, five of which were blown up during the siege of the city in early 1945. On the western bank sits l’ancien Buda, its rolling, terraced skyline encompassing the garrison (Castle Hill, with the Royal Palace) and, a few hundred metres downstream, Gellert Hegy, a craggy THECJN.CA 73

cient aunt of my father’s named Piri on the terrace of a cafe on Margit Island, eating pastries and drinking fizzy lemon soda from a green glass bottle. A third: a dinner party with one of my father’s closest medical school friends, a lanky man with a hang-dog face who lived with his wife and two sons in a low-ceilinged flat jammed with books and prints. My sister and I were dispatched to hang out with one son, then in full hippie mode, who knew all the lyrics to Jesus Christ Superstar (he had the album) but otherwise spoke no English.

A Joska Lusztig, 1926.

mountain topped by a striving Soviet-era statue. On the east bank is parvenu Pest, with its mainly nineteenth-century buildings radiating away from Hungary’s Gothic revival parliament building, a postcard monument to the vanity of the country’s nineteenth-century political classes.

Certain specific impressions of the city linger. I recall noticing the half-rotten produce on offer at a small grocer not far from my grandmother’s apartment. We visited the zoo and Budapest’s incredible pools—huge outdoor facilities, jammed with people. One day, we made our way up to Castle Hill to take in the view of the city from the ramparts and explore the warren of cobblestone streets lined with frescoed houses up on the plateau. There was a government building up there with an exterior stone wall still riddled with bullet holes, damage inflicted either during the war or the revolution. The sight of that pock-marked wall stuck in my mind, graphic evidence of the violence that forced my parents to flee in 1956.

We spent that visit staying with my father’s mother, Klara, in her cramped apartment.

Those two weeks were a merry-go-round of visits with cheek-pinching, beaming relatives and those friends of my parents who’d chosen not to leave during the Hungarian Revolution. One evening was spent with Klara, watching The Flintstones dubbed into Hungarian while my parents went out.

Another memory: a short visit with an an74

t some point in the mid-1920s, Klara and Jozsef Lusztig, my father’s parents, with their first and only child, moved into a modest Budapest apartment—the same one where we stayed more than half a century later. The flat, on the third floor of a building on Szigeti Utca, was located in an emerging part of the city, on the Pest side—a district known as Újlipótváros, or New Leopold Town. Located outside the major ring road on a precinct of former industrial lands across from Margit Island, the area was redeveloped in the 1920s as a dense enclave of mid-rise apartments, many built in the Bauhaus style, the modernist school of design that flared during the Weimar era in Germany between the wars. Újlipótváros was also known as the “Bauhaus Shtetl.”

Besides the architecture, Újlipótváros had a full range of urban amenities that reflected planning and intentionality on the part of its designers. The neighbourhood, largely developed with capital invested by affluent Jewish professionals, had been fitted out with schools, community centres, parks, tennis courts, and easy access to the enormous pools on Margit Island, just across the Danube. There were fashionable restaurants and Art Deco movie houses, as well as small synagogues tucked into the ground floors of a few buildings. Nearby was the city’s transit network, one of the major railway stations, and a few important cultural venues, such as the national theatre. Újlipótváros also served as something of a protective enclave for Budapest’s middle-class Jews, who by the 1920s had become increasingly alarmed by the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the country and elsewhere. Both Klara and Jozsef came from this world, and it is not surprising they ended up living in a flat in Újlipótváros.

Klara, whose maiden name was Schwarcz, was raised in a family of three children. Her

father, a dapper but stern-looking man, owned a department store. Jozsef, known as Joska, also had two siblings, a brother named Geza and a younger sister named Ilona. Their parents, Frida Lowinger and Ignacz Lusztig, a bookkeeper, originally came from market towns in western Hungary and at some point moved to Budapest. They owned a thriving manufacturing firm that produced cleaning products. But the firm collapsed amidst the economic chaos of the late 1920s, so they bought a small perfumery in Budapest’s suburbs, installing Joska as manager—a job he apparently hated (that kind of business, known in Hungarian as “illatszertár,” offered a selection that would be similar to what’s on offer in present day large-scale pharmacies). Klara, in turn, set herself up as a seamstress so the family could make ends meet, a turn of fate that she also resented.

The two had met as teenagers, both part of a friend group that endured after they’d finished school. Even before they began dating, Joska liked to send Klara colourful mounted postcards with reproductions of the works of Dutch masters and other German painters—images of medieval waifs, Greek myths, angels, and even one of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

They were addressed to “Klarika”—a term of endearment—and signed either Lusztig Jozsef or just Joska.

Their circle included Joska’s brother Geza, a rakish character who became a dentist; Geza’s future wife, Bosci; and their younger sister, Ilonka, a lively young woman with a mischievous smile and a thicket of light brown hair. Later in life, Ilonka owned and ran a small private lending library from the apartment she shared with her husband, a travelling salesman. My father’s love of books traced back to the shelves in their apartment.

The photos that survive from this group suggest a comfortable life, with frequent outings and trips to the gentle beaches of Lake Balaton. In one postcard, dated August 1924, a twenty-four-year-old Klara poses on a beach in a flapper-style bathing suit with a flounce and low-heeled maryjanes, her hands clasped behind her back.

Klara’s expression is demure and her hair— normally, and throughout her life, a dense shock of auburn—is pulled back tightly. “I wish I wouldn’t look so fat in this picture,” she’s written on the back in loopy, childlike cursive.

Joszef and Klara Lusztig (centre and right), my paternal grandparents, circa the early 1940s.

Joska, who wore rimless wire spectacles, appears self-assured and open. He had dark, curly hair, receding by his mid-twenties away from a broad forehead, with full checks and a prominent chin. There are many images of him posing with friends, young men full of brio, smoking, drinking coffee, and mugging for the camera. In one picture taken in 1926, the year my father was born, Joska stands jauntily in front of a lush garden. He wears a well-tailored suit, with a puff and a high-collared dress shirt. A cigarette dangles from one hand.

There was a term in Budapest for young men like Joska: kávéház zsidó, meaning “coffee house Jew.” A thriving coffee house culture had taken root in Pest around the turn of the century, and these businesses were heavily patronized by Jews. Almost half of Budapest’s journalists were Jewish, and coffee houses, many of them owned by Jews, provided co-working spaces, as well as a social milieu conducive to writing, arguing, networking, and the reading of local and international newspapers. These places also provided a respite from small or overcrowded apartments with inadequate amenities.

“Every intelligent person had spent part of his youth in a coffee house,” recounted a prominent theatre director in 1926. “Without it, the education of a young person would be incomplete.”

As Joska matured, married, and became

a father, he grew stouter and fleshier, but the jovial expression didn’t fade with time, at least for a while. There are shots of him and Klara as newlyweds, posing amidst the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, and leaning up against one another affectionately. Yet the photos Klara kept also include a few undated shots, probably later, that offer a grimmer version of Joska. In one, taken on a cruise boat, he sits next to Klara and stares unsmilingly into the camera. Wearing shirt sleeves with suspenders, his hair now much thinner, he hunches slightly forward as Klara looks out past him, her chin raised with a hint of defiance. When I found this image, which has none of the bonhomie of Joska’s earlier years, I wondered about the moment when the photo was taken. There’s no date, but he looks to be in his forties, worn down by a job he disliked but also a moment—this would be the early 1940s—in which it had become increasingly perilous to be Jewish.

N

o first-hand accounts of Joska survive.

My mother never met him, and her recollections of what my father said about him are sparse. He apparently liked to take my father for long walks when he was a boy, but otherwise left the parenting duties to his wife. There are more stories about Klara.

She knew, for example, how to wring a live chicken’s neck, a detail that struck me as exotically old-world. Yet Klara was an anx-

ious woman, short-tempered and frequently sharp with her son. “She had quick hands,” my mother said, describing her mother-inlaw’s willingness to dispense a slap to express her disapproval.

There’s a story my mother has often related about this particular habit. Klara enrolled my father in dance classes when he was in his early teens. One of Klara’s friends sent her daughter to the same class and seemed distressed that no one was asking the girl to dance. As my mother recounts, “The friend complained to Klara. She said, `I’m going to talk to Janci [my father], and you will see, he’ll ask her to dance.’ So he went to dance class and [still] nobody asked her. Klara kept saying to him, `Go ask her to dance.’” But my father, who had a willful streak that is apparent in his expression as a child, refused. So Klara smacked him across the face, right there in front of the class. The emotional sting of his mother’s slap—the humiliation of being dressed down in that way in front of a room full of teens—did not fade.

By that point, my father had become an angry and rebellious teen. His marks plummeted and he fought so much that Klara and Joska moved him several times to new schools. “He wasn’t a good scholar and he was always in physical fights with the other boys,” my mother recalls. “They just hit each other in the schoolyard. And Klara was always called in.”

What were the fights about? The provocations and the dynamics are lost. But the schoolyard problems surfaced in the early 1940s. Maybe the careworn, distracted looks on the faces of Joska and Klara, in that photo taken on the ship’s deck, reflect a preoccupying anxiousness about their son. Or maybe something else was at play in those confrontations.

One clue survives. My father had been frequently taunted about his surname, including by one of his teachers: “Lusztig, Lusztig,” this man would say, “why are you so lustig?”

In the original German, “lustig” means happy, funny, or jolly. But in Hungarian, the word attaches a pejorative connotation to an identifiably Jewish surname: lazy. It was a badge of shame, anticipating the literal badges that were yet to come. 

Adapted excerpt from No Jews Live Here

by John Lorinc (October 2024), published with permission of Coach House Books.

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CULTURE KLATSCH

BY SABINA WEX

COOKBOOKS

Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle (The University of North Carolina Press, October 8) Mexican Jews Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle bring their cultural cuisine into your kitchen with over 100 recipes for Shabbat, holidays, and every other day of the year.

In the book, Stavans and Boyle detail the history of Jewish history in Mexico from 1492 to present day and explore how Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and converso women shaped Mexican-Jewish cuisine. A few of their recipes that we’re particularly excited to try: latkes with mole, chilaquiles with matzah instead of tortillas, and poblanos stuffed with guacamole and gribenes.

Open Sesame: 45 Sweet & Savory Recipes for Tahini & All Things Sesame Rachel Belle (Sasquatch Books, November 12) Rachel Belle grew up pronouncing hummus the Hebrew way: chhhoumoose. The food media personality has an Israeli father, which meant her family ate delicious 80

chhhoumoose on a regular basis. As an adult, Belle couldn’t find hummus that tasted as good as the one she ate as a kid; after a little investigating she discovered that the key is tahini.

Ever since, Belle has become a “tahini evangelist.” Open Sesame is her love letter to her favourite ingredient, showcasing how you can use it in everything from dessert to healthy salads to, of course, hummus.

A Sweet Year: Jewish Celebrations and Festive Recipes for Kids and Their Families Joan Nathan Knopf (November 19) The American Jewish cooking icon returns with an updated version of her famous cookbook, A Sweet Year, filled with recipes for nine Jewish holidays.

Nathan put together a new version to remove less-fashionable recipes (pot roast) and replace them with more contemporary ones (tahini shakes!). But long-time fans needn’t fret: she kept in latke, challah, and kugel recipes.

If you worry about passing on Jewish traditions and foods to your grandchildren, this book provides explanations, child-friendly recipe tutorials, and crafts to explain the reasons behind the chagim.

With Love and Babka: 50 Sweet and Savory Recipes for Everyone's Favorite Braided Bread Elana Pearlman (Simon & Schuster, November 19) If you thought babka only came in one flavour—chocolate—Elana Pearlman is here to prove you wrong. The pastry chef was inspired by her great grandmother’s old babka recipe cards, and her debut cookbook, With Love and Babka, promises to make you a “babka master” with its 50 different takes on the beloved dessert. The flavours range from dulce de leche to tomato pesto, and the doughs from butter-blocked to glutenfree. There seems to truly be a babka for everyone in here.

What we’re excited to read, watch, listen to, and cook this fall

NON-FICTION

The Myth of American Idealism : How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers The World Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson (Penguin Press, October 15) A new book by public intellectual and social critic Noam Chomsky is always a publishing event; this one, almost certain to be his last (Chomsky is 95 and reportedly in ill health) will be no exception. With co-author Nathan J. Robinson, the founding editor of Current Affairs magazine, Chomsky takes readers on a tour of America’s deployments of military, financial, and political power across the world: there are chapters devoted to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, China, and beyond.

The latter part of the book is devoted to an analysis of the domestic and international systems that enabled America to reach so far, and an examination of “how mythologies are manufactured.” The timing of the book’s publication, three weeks before the American election, is sure to add extra energy to the conversations it ignites.

Lifeform Jenny Slate (Little, Brown and Company, October 22) If you’ve not seen Jenny Slate’s phenomenal

standup, go to Netflix and turn on Stage Fright right now. Not only will you see the brilliant comedian and actor successfully make an Anne Frank joke, but you’ll learn about her beautiful, funny, and stylish Jewish family.

Slate also writes beautiful, funny, and stylish essays. Her last, hard-to-summarize collection, Little Weirds, was an instant bestseller. This new volume details her journey into motherhood. In characteristically genre-busting fashion, she manifests everything from animal gossip to obituaries to exploring the wild, hard, and life-affirming feelings that come up as one brings life into this world. tails of his adolescence in Rome. From the maroon cravat his uncle wore to pick him up from the port to the sharkskin suitcases his mother brought from Egypt, he evokes another time and world.

Eventually, Aciman falls in love with Rome, sad to leave it behind when his family moves to the U.S. a few years later. If you don’t have your own Roman holiday planned, this book could tempt you to book a flight.

Roman Year: A Memoir André Aciman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 22) You may know André Aciman as the author of the Call Me by Your Name, the book-turned-award-winning film that tells a comingof-age story about teenage love. Before he ever set foot in the novel’s Italian setting, the acclaimed Jewish writer was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. His new memoir, Roman Year, chronicles the teenage Aciman transitioning from living his luxurious Egyptian life to moving into a rented apartment in Rome with his mother and brother.

Aciman, now 73, draws on the smallest de-

Didion and Babitz Lili Anolik (Scribner, November 12) Paging all lovers of literary gossip: an investiTHECJN.CA 81

gation into the friendship-turned-hateship between the very gentile Joan Didion and the very Jewish Eve Babitz is coming your way soon.

Babitz, a Los Angeles writer and artist, wasn’t exactly a wallflower. (She posed nude while playing chess with Marcel Duchamp, wrote a novel called Sex and Rage, and was known for her lengthy list of famous lovers.) Didion, who wrote everything from film scripts to essays and was one of the key figures of New Journalism, was quieter. Nonetheless, a friendship flourished.Poignantly, the friends died in the same week in December 2021.

Babit left behind sealed boxes of letters between herself and Didion (retrieved by Jewish Family Services, who had to work in hazmat suits to clean out the extreme filth of Babitz’s West Hollywood condo). Journalist Lili Anolik read through them to create portraits of these two extremely different writers—first in an article for Vanity Fair, and now at greater length in book form.

enchanted Mina is with the Bolsheviks, he believes he must move his sister away from Russia for her safety. The book chronicles their adjustment to life in Liverpool, their survival through two world wars, and their family’s ups and downs, all the way through to the present day.

between a rigid rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), and straight-talking shiksa, Joanne (Kristen Bell). The show chronicles their hilarious, sad, and frustrating struggle to meld their lives.

The internet has been ablaze since Brody’s casting was announced, full of anticipation at finally getting some “hot rabbi” representation in Hollywood.

A Real Pain In movie theatres October 18 Jesse Eisenberg has become a triple threat over the years: he acts, writes, and directs.

His newest project is A Real Pain, in which two mismatched Jewish cousins return to Poland to honour their grandmother.

Timid David Kaplan (Eisenberg) and obnoxious Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) must contend with old tensions, all while taking in the trauma of their own family history. Plus, they have to get along with the rest of their tour group, who Benji constantly alienates by making them do awkward things, such as taking smiling photos with a monument for fallen soldiers. Jennifer Grey also makes an appearance as a divorcée who forms a nice bond with Benji.

FICTION The Rest Is Memory Lily Tuck (Liveright, December 10) Czeslawa was a 14-year-old Catholic girl living in southeastern Poland until, in 1942, the Nazis transported her to Auschwitz and tattooed 26947 on her arm. Fellow prisoner Wilhelm Brasse snapped a photo of her.

Lily Tuck saw this photo and wondered: how did a young Catholic girl end up in Auschwitz, where she eventually died? Her book, The Rest Is Memory, imagines what Czeslawa’s life was like, from her short childhood to her death in Auschwitz.

ON SCREEN The Story of the Forest Linda Grant (Zando – SJP Lit, November 12) Have you ever wondered what would happen if one of your Russian ancestors decided to dance with a bunch of Bolshevik boys instead of picking mushrooms in the forest?

Acclaimed British novelist Linda Grant used that bit of her own family folklore to inspire a gripping and beautifully written family saga.

The Story of the Forest chronicles the butterfly effect of Mina’s 1913 forest encounter. After her brother, Jossel, finds out how 82

Nobody Wants This Streaming on Netflix September 26 In the materials announcing her new series, Erin Foster says the best thing she ever did was fall in love with a nice Jewish boy, following that up with a very Jewish quip: “I realized that being happy is way harder than being miserable (there’s nothing to complain about).”

Then, she did a very Nora Ephron thing: she wrote a TV script loosely based on it.

Nobody Wants This chronicles the love story

MUSIC Bob Dylan and The Band: The 1974 Live Recordings September 20 A 27-CD collection of live Bob Dylan shows from 1974—all of which are backed by Toronto rock legends The Band? Over 400 previously unreleased performances? A never released version of “Forever Young”? Sign us up.

It’ll make for perfect listening to calm your nerves before the American election, or as a primer for the release of the upcoming Dylan biopic—featuring another nice Jewish boy, Timothée Chalamet—in December. 

a n a h S ! a v o T Wi s h i n gt h eJ e wi s h c o mmu n i t yah a p p y &s we e t n e wy e a r !

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A MESSAGE FROM YOUR LIBERAL MPS FOR ROSH HASHANAH:

UN MESSAGE DE VOS DÉPUTÉS LIBÉRAUX POUR ROCH HACHANA :

On October 2nd, as the sun sets, Jewish communities in Canada and around the world will gather to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, marking the beginning of the High Holidays and culminating in Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah is a time for joyous gatherings of family and friends, where people come together for meals and worship, strengthening their connection with God. It is also an opportunity for introspection, reflecting on the creation of the world, and embracing the coming year with hope and optimism.

Le 2 octobre, au coucher du soleil, les communautés juives du Canada et du monde entier se réuniront pour célébrer Roch Hachana, qui marque le début des Grandes Fêtes et culmine à Yom Kippour. Roch Hachana est une période de rassemblement joyeux de la famille et des amis, où les gens se réunissent pour les repas et le culte, renforçant ainsi leur lien avec Dieu. C'est aussi l'occasion d'une introspection, d'une réflexion sur la création du monde et d'un regard optimiste et plein d'espoir sur l'année à venir.

This year, as we join in these celebrations, we reflect on the challenges and triumphs of the past year. We recognize how difficult the last year has been for the Jewish Canadian community and Jews around the world. In these times of reflection and renewal, we stand in solidarity with you.

Cette année, alors que nous nous joignons à ces célébrations, nous réfléchissons aux défis et aux accomplissements de l'année écoulée. Nous reconnaissons à quel point l'année écoulée a été difficile pour la communauté juive canadienne et les juifs du monde entier. En ces temps de réflexion et de renouveau, nous sommes solidaires avec vous.

Our commitment to fighting antisemitism at home and abroad remains unwavering. We are dedicated to ensuring the safety and security of Canada’s Jewish community and will continue to work tirelessly to create an environment where everyone can live without fear.

We reaffirm Canada’s commitment to supporting Israel’s right to exist as a democratic and Jewish state, living in peace and security with its neighbours. May this New Year bring renewed hope and progress toward lasting peace.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year. May this Rosh Hashanah bring blessings of joy, health, and prosperity, and may we all pray for a better year ahead.

Shana Tova Umetuka!

Notre engagement à lutter contre l'antisémitisme au Canada et à l'étranger demeure inébranlable. Nous sommes déterminés à assurer la sécurité de la communauté juive du Canada et nous continuerons à travailler sans relâche pour créer un environnement où chacun peut vivre sans crainte.

Nous réaffirmons l'engagement du Canada à soutenir le droit d'Israël à exister en tant qu'État démocratique et juif, vivant en paix et en sécurité avec ses voisins. Puisse cette nouvelle année apporter un regain d'espoir et des progrès vers une paix durable.

Nous souhaitons à tous une bonne et heureuse année.

Que ce Roch Hachana apporte des bénédictions de joie, de santé et de prospérité, et que nous puissions tous prier pour une meilleure année à venir.

Shana Tova Umetuka!

PRESENTED BY / PRÉSENTÉ PAR Hon. Terry Beech, M.P. · Hon. Bill Blair, M.P. · Ben Carr, M.P. · Shaun Chen, M.P. · Anju Dhillon, M.P. · Terry Duguid, M.P. · Julie Dzerowicz, M.P. Hon. Mona Fortier, M.P. · Hon. Chrystia Freeland, M.P. · Hon. Hedy Fry, M.P. · Anna Gainey, M.P. · Hon. Karina Gould, M.P. Hon. Steven Guilbeault, M.P. · Brendan Hanley, M.P. · Ken Hardie, M.P. · Hon. Marci Ien, M.P. · Majid Jowhari, M.P. · Hon. Kamal Khera, M.P. Hon. Marco Mendicino, M.P. · Wilson Miao, M.P. · Yasir Naqvi, M.P. · Jennifer O'Connell, M.P. · Hon. Rob Oliphant, M.P. · Leah Taylor Roy, M.P. Hon. Ya'ara Saks, M.P. · Randeep Sarai, M.P. · Francesco Sorbara, M.P. · Hon. Dan Vandal, M.P. · Anita Vandenbeld, M.P. · Sameer Zuberi, M.P.

October 7

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Happy New Year Shana Tova

‫שנה טובה‬

Shana Tova!

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Kraft Berger LLP Wishes our Clients & Friends Happy & Healthy New Year David Yabrov Jerry Dykopf Elias Benaim Howard Bergman Jeff Westreich Jay Feingold Allan Jubenville

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With Many Good Wishes For a Happy New Year From our family to yours,

Shana Tova!

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L’Shana Tova May you be inscribed in the Book of Life

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The Return of the Strub T

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Dressed to the Brines. Glazed stoneware, cosmetic eyelashes. 10x15x27”. 2023. Photograph by Jonah Strub

he disappearance of the Strub’s pickle brand from retail stores in the past year was the result of Quebec-based owner Whyte’s Foods going into receivership last October—putting a Jewish legacy in limbo, and not for the first time.

A cucumber-dunking legacy that began in a backyard near Hamilton in 1929 draws from a family recipe brought over from Russia, courtesy of the great-great-grandmother of Toronto visual artist Jonah Strub.

“We always had an entire fridge of Strub’s at home,” he recalls, “and that’s what my family would bring to a party instead of a bottle of wine.” The business was sold off in 2008, then rescued in 2012 by Whyte’s, a company founded by Montreal couple Sam and Esther Witenoff in 1936 and whose own factory fortunes have now soured.

Soon after Strub’s was sold to Whyte’s, Jonah’s uncle started an independent bespoke dill business under the name Marty’s Pickles as one way of maintaining the family legacy. His 27-year-old nephew is taking a different approach. During an artist residency at the Banff Centre last year, Jonah imagined his own drag queen alter ego, Loxanne Creamcheese, embodying Jewish foods through glazed stoneware and fake eyelashes, and opted for the one synonymous with his surname. The name of the piece? Dressed to the Brines. n

SPONSORED CONTENT

Testimonial from Tessa and Irving Residents of V!VA Thornhill Woods W

e have been residents at V!VA Thornhill Woods for two wonderful years, and we could not be happier. After 55 years of marriage and a long stint in our own home for 45 years, we decided it was time for a change. We sold our house and moved into a condominium, which seemed like the right choice at the time.

However, Tessa had an accident that required a wheelchair to recover, and suddenly, living in that condominium was far from convenient. Everyday tasks became challenges and driving soon turned into an issue. Thankfully, a friend recommended V!VA Thornhill to us. Our family came to visit and encouraged us to look, but we hesitated at first because we felt we were not ready to make that move.

When we finally visited V!VA Thornhill, it shattered our preconceived notions of retirement communities. We discovered a vibrant and welcoming place that felt far from the typical image we had. We realized you do not need to hold onto everything from your past; this community offered something much richer.

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Tessa loves curling up with a good book in my own library here. What truly stands out about living at V!VA is the balance between solitude and social connection. If we want some quiet time, we take it; if we want to engage, there are concerts, game nights, and we enjoy long walks in the beautiful gardens.

One of our biggest fears before moving was losing independence, but we have found the opposite to be true. The staff members are incredibly kind and attentive, always going out of their way to ensure our comfort. Each morning, Tessa wakes up to a hot cup of tea, a simple pleasure that makes her day start on a wonderful note.

Since moving here, we have met so many wonderful people. It is such a joy to connect with others; for instance, recently we met a resident from Scotland, which brought back so many memories of Tessa’s experience growing up in England.

Our family visits us frequently, and it feels so natural to

gather with them in the garden or at Perks Café. They will call us and say, “Mom, we’re in your garden or café!” and we will head down for a lovely visit—it is just like meeting them at Tim Horton’s, but better! The café makes fresh cookies daily which is a nice treat.

Irving notes that the soups and desserts here are nothing short of incredible, and we receive a new menu every week, keeping our meals fresh and exciting.

Living at V!VA Thornhill has transformed our days. We used to think retirement would drag on, but here, time flies.

Every day is filled with choices, whether it is spending time in the gazebo, enjoying a drink at the Pub where we often play Rummikub, or taking a bus trip to Walmart, the casino, or other special outings. We can even catch a movie at the V!VAplex whenever we feel like it.

Our lives have become rich with connections and experience since we made the move to V!VA Thornhill Woods.

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Are you ready to discover the vibrant community at V!VA Thornhill Woods? We would love to invite you for a personalized tour to experience the warmth, freedom, and joy that Tessa, Irving, and many others have found here.

V!VA Thornhill Woods Retirement Community is located at 9700 Bathurst St. in Vaughan.

For more information, visit www.vivalife.ca/viva-thornhill-woods or call 905-417-8585.

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