Making the world better

Editorial

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world," said the anthropologist Margaret Mead. "Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

In the spirit of Mead, congratulations are due to a small number of Vancouverites who made important contributions last week to tikkun olam, repairing the world.

Rabbi Ross Singer of Congregation Shaarey Tefilah launched a hunger strike in the days leading up to last week's Fast of Esther. On Thursday afternoon, March 4, he assembled with about 100 supporters on the plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery to make a statement against anti-Semitism, which has been surfacing in Canada, as it has more brutally in Europe and the Middle East. Singer spoke movingly of the impact anti-Jewish violence has had on himself and the communities it has touched in Israel, Europe and Canada.

The rabbi said he was moved to organize the vigil after the synagogue bombings in Turkey and Tunisia.

"Synagogues were being blown up," said Singer. "It could have been my synagogue." He and others in the audience were moved by the words of the late Canadian-Israeli Yechezkel Goldberg, who wrote in 2001 of the nonchalance with which some, himself included, were meeting the routinized murder of homicide attacks.

"If we don't cry about what is happening around us, who will? If you don't cry about what is happening around us, who will? If I don't cry about what is happening to us, who will?" Goldberg wrote. Barely two years later, it was Goldberg himself who was killed by a terror attack.

Goldberg was among the hundreds mourned by the Vancouverites who gathered at the gallery last Thursday. The skies, which had been overcast most of the week, broke through for Singer's vigil, but if there was a dark cloud over the event, it was that only about 100 people were moved to join Singer in standing publicly against anti-Semitism. Kudos deserve to be shared with members of the Jewish-Christian Friendship Circle, who came out in numbers.

Others who deserve recognition for their efforts last week are pro-Israel students at local campuses, who interrupted their studies on three occasions to boost important events that sought to bring some reason and sanity to the enflamed and massively imbalanced "debate" about the Middle East. The larger Jewish community has rallied, to some extent, to support these students, but they are still shouldering much of the burden themselves in what is clearly the frontline in the fight against anti-Semitism in contemporary Canada.

Vancouver Hillel, in conjunction with the small but vigorous Israel advocacy clubs on post-secondary campuses, brought in two of the most articulate speakers this city is ever likely to hear on the subject not only of Israel's right to exist, but its right to thrive and be recognized as an oasis of democratic pluralist values in a region and a world where those values are under siege.

Haim Divon, Israel's ambassador to Canada, was drowned out on numerous occasions at Langara College Tuesday, by protestors shouting the predictable mantras of the anti-Israel mobs. The ambassador spoke again Wednesday at UBC, where tighter security ensured his message could be heard, despite the attendance of the regular anti-Israel crowd.

Divon is a diplomat first and foremost. His reasoned, rational responses may have been largely lost on the critics for whom shouting loudest remains the key to victory. Nevertheless, Divon's soft-spoken, cool-headed approach was starkly in contrast with the irrational, thoughtless hysteria of his opponents.

Far less diplomatic but no less rational was Irshad Manji, the magnetic and passionate author of The Trouble with Islam, who came to the UBC campus Friday at the behest of Hillel, the Israel Advocacy Committee and others.

Manji is one of this country's most articulate and engaging young political activists and a defender of Israeli diversity who, unlike too many friends of Israel, takes the offensive rather than the defensive when discussing the issue. Few speakers have activated a crowd in this city as Manji did last week. Her refusal to be pushed into a corner by the loud interruptions of Israel's enemies is something more of us need to emulate.

With the assistance of Divon and Manji, a small group of thoughtful, committed young Vancouver students brought messages of optimism, hope and diversity to two campuses where such messages have too often been drowned out in recent years. Along with Rabbi Singer, who has taken it upon himself on more than one occasion to act as a single individual to alter the world, these few people deserve our encouragement, support and emulation.

What did you do last week?

^TOP