A reflection on unity

Editorial

The annual Day of Unity takes place Monday, Sept. 2 at Prospect Point in Stanley Park. Sponsored by the Ohel Ya'akov Community Kollel and the Shafran family, and supported by a long list of community agencies including the Bulletin, the event is a pleasant way to spend a holiday.

The event is a timely opportunity to get together with other Lower Mainland Jews. It is a celebration without an overt political agenda, focusing instead on the community's roots with the slogan: "We are all leaves from the same tree."

The Jewish community, in British Columbia and elsewhere, has a richness of opinions and a diversity of characteristics. This can be an advantage – as Canadians, officially at least, we value our differences and celebrate our diversity. Or it can be a handicap if there are forces in the Jewish community that would like to impose an ideological standard on the community.

As the primary news messenger of the British Columbia Jewish community, we at the Jewish Western Bulletin have a unique perspective on unity. We make genuine efforts to reflect the diversity and richness of opinion in the entire Jewish family of this area. But we frequently meet with criticism for including views that do not conform to what seems to be an "official line" of the community. This is especially true where Israel is concerned. Yet, don't Jews who express disagreement with aspects of Israeli policy have a right to add their voices to the discussion? Doesn't the true glory of Israel lie in its openness to diversity? The ideas that are expressed in the Bulletin to great controversy would raise hardly an eyebrow in the knock-'em-down intellectual rigor that constitutes the Israeli body politic.

This Monday, and all through the coming new year, let's strive for a unity that acknowledges the ideological, religious, ethnic and economic diversity of the Jewish community. Let us avoid the false "unity" of enforced ideology.

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