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Dec. 22, 2006
Speaking out for Jews
Rabbis come together to meet parliamentarians.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Twenty rabbis of all denominations met with Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and several members of Parliament in Ottawa Dec. 5, marking
the first assembly of the newly formed Canadian Rabbinic Caucus
(CRC).
The group came together with the assistance of the Canada-Israel
Committee (CIC), following a discussion by several rabbis on the
need to form a faith-based advocacy group to represent Jewish issues.
The group was created "primarily in response to the rising
worldwide tendency to use religion as an excuse for violence,"
according to CRC literature. "CRC believes that violence endorsed
by religion is a distortion of religion and negates the basic values
of human dignity and respect cherished by Canadians."
"It's been actual members of the clergy who have been engaging
CIC to do something like this," said CIC, Pacific Region, director
Adam Carroll, "to say that rabbis have an important role to
play in bringing forward the issues of importance to Jewish members
of their individual temples and synagogues but also Jews as a whole
in the country."
The CRC is made up of rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform
and Reconstructionist streams of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto,
Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
The two rabbinical representatives from Vancouver are Rabbi Philip
Bregman of Temple Sholom and Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt from Congregation
Schara Tzedeck.
Bregman described himself as being deeply impressed by Harper, particularly
as a result of a CRC meeting with the prime minister's parliamentary
secretary, Jason Kenney.
"He basically blew us away," said Bregman. "He said,
'You know, when you think of Canadian society and you think of the
ideals of Canadian society, such as family, health, education, security,
democracy, the Harper government believes that there is no other
country in the world that exemplifies the ideals of Canada as much
as Israel does and that we have a lot to share and a lot to learn
from each other.'... It's one thing when a Jew says these [things],
it's something else coming from not just a member of Parliament,
but a very, very high-ranking [member], the one who has the ear
of the prime minister on a daily basis."
"We really feel that Canadian governments have often failed
to recognize the difficult situation that Israel is in," said
Rosenblatt. "This is a prime minister who I felt had a truly
moral voice and it's important for those individuals to know that
their courageous stance does not go unappreciated."
On the agenda, alongside Israel itself, was the threat of Iran.
Bregman said the prime minister "is very concerned about what
is going on in Iran. No matter who we spoke with, whether it be
a Conservative, a Liberal, a member of the NDP, when we asked questions
about what are we going to be doing with regard to Iran, everybody
sort of threw their hands in the air and were just tremendously
concerned and not really sure what the appropriate response is supposed
to be with Iran, whether it's sanctions, whether it's talking to
them, not talking to them ... because they see this as a rogue state
with a leader who just is not going to respond to reason and is
tremendously dangerous, not only in terms of destabilizing the entire
Middle East region, but the world."
Bregman said CRC members hope to see similar groups launched by
other faiths. It is important, he said, for religious and communal
leaders to respond to dangerous behavior. He cited last week's attendance
of the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran by a small group of
Charedi (ultra-Orthodox Jews).
"I think it's important that when somebody hijacks the agenda
of a group that the other members of that group whose agenda and
scenario has been hijacked need to stand up and say something,"
said Bregman. "Clearly, the disgusting individuals who travelled
to Iran this past week ... I don't even know how to refer to them
... I am totally, completely distraught in calling them Jews. That
requires statements of outrage on the part of normative Judaism.
And those statements came immediately from around the world.
"My point is that if 90 per cent of the Muslim world detests
and deplores the violence and what I consider to be the hijacking
of Islam, the world has to hear that clearly, loudly, succintly
from its religious leaders, its political leaders, its business
leaders. We need to hear it. God knows that Israel hears all sorts
of things from its constituents, both in Israel and around the world,
but it does something. Agreeing and disagreeing – it's a vigorous
debate. The world is not hearing, from my perspective, that same
discussion taking place, so whether it's imams, whether it's teachers,
businessmen, your average Canadian Muslim, American Muslim, French
Muslim, British Muslim, the world and in particular the west have
to hear statements and see things. Yes, there are some websites,
but it doesn't seem to be enough."
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem in Montreal
was one of the early organizers of the CRC. He described the group
as being, "really, in many ways, a post-9/11 phenomenon. After
you've seen so much radicalism and anti-humanitarian values in the
name of religion, at some point, other people have to stand up and
assert their voices. The feeling is this kind of radicalism, you
certainly see it around the world, you see it in radical Islam,
the first thing that we came to do is to make sure that it's not
imported into Canada."
Steinmetz said the CRC would be an ongoing concern and that its
members would next meet at CIC's advocacy and action conference
in Ottawa in February. He said that although Israel and the threats
against it would naturally be a focus of CRC, the group may also
address domestic issues in the future.
"It's very different people with a very different voice,"
he observed. "Rabbis are not lobbyists. We're, in a sense,
lobbying, but lobbying with a great difference. This is really lobbying
with a twist, this is really people who are not necessarily polished
and our message is not really a polished lobbying message, it's
really a group of rabbis with a great deal of shared perspective,
despite our differences, who have an affinity for certain values,
who have an affinity for certain viewpoints and we're really there
to talk about that and to share that. I think, in fact, one of the
important things is that, as rabbis, we're not like smooth, cool
lobbyists with a set of agendas, and I think that for many of the
[MPs], they were very, very appreciative of that."
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