Montreal federation bans speakers

Editorial

Federation CJA Montreal might have thought it was simply registering displeasure over the inclusion of controversial speakers at a weekend event. But the actions of Montreal’s Jewish community umbrella agency have sparked a national conversation about the power of community bureaucrats to determine who is heard by – indeed, who is a part of – the Jewish community.

Last weekend saw Montreal’s Le Mood conference. The event was part of Limmud, which has emerged as a unique, grassroots phenomenon of “unexpected” Jewish learning. Limmud is a loosely affiliated global movement that allows each local organizing committee to operate with much independence. (The first Limmud event in Vancouver is to take place in February.)

The tempest around Montreal’s Le Mood centred on the local federation’s decision to cancel two panel sessions because of their presenters. The two were not speaking on the topics that apparently so offended the sensibilities of the federation. One was to speak on Jewish radicalism, the other on Jewish labor movements. While these broad categories may well have veered into contemporary Israeli topics, it seems the actual quibbles the federation had with the two speakers involved things they had done and said outside of this particular conference. One is a member of Not In Our Name, a group that represents “Jewish voices against Zionism” and supports Israel Apartheid Week on Canadian campuses. The other is a co-founder of Renounce Birthright, which has a mission of educating young Jews “about the connections between Birthright trips and the ongoing colonization and occupation of Palestine.”

We may agree or disagree with many of these adventures in activism. But is it now the role of a Jewish federation to dictate who can speak at community-funded events? And, more to the point, to make those decisions based not on what the participants are expected to say but on what they have said and done on other topics in other places at other times? Are we now drawing up community blacklists?

Spokespeople for the Montreal federation claim their withdrawal does not equate to censorship. To paraphrase, people can say whatever they want, just not a federation’s dime. But this response clouds the real issue.

Our communities have handed over a great deal of power to our local federations. There is a broad consensus that our federations should serve as a primary fundraising agency that distributes community wealth on merit to the range of agencies within the community. However, there may be far less consensus on the idea that our federations should be dictating who can and who cannot speak at community-supported events. This goes beyond the mere issue of what is an acceptable topic in our community; it goes directly to the heart of who is acceptable in our community. If federations can pick and choose who may appear at community events based on criteria of an individual’s political history, they are approaching a level of chutzpah that dares to determine who is a Jew at all. The federation system has enormous benefits for our community. But it also has a great deal of control. In the Montreal case, it has overreached.

There is, to put it mildly, a long and proud strain of contrarianism in Jewish culture. This attitude proverbially takes on as many different features as there are Jews. Some in our radical past and present express their divergence in polite ways, others, like the anti-religious Jews of a century ago who would show up on Yom Kippur to eat ham sandwiches on the steps of shul, less so. Yet, with rare exceptions, these individuals and groups are acting on their consciences; indeed, they will contend that it is their Jewishness itself that drives their actions.

In these pages, we have, over the years, held firmly to the idea that Israel, as the Jewish homeland, is integrally aligned with (even inextricable from) the future of the Jewish people. We can see how many people equate attacks on Israel as attacks on the Jewish people. But this is a very delicate balance. Though functionally Zionist, the mission statement of Montreal’s federation does not lay out a policy towards Israel; Zionist beliefs don’t seem to be a requirement to donate. And, while it may be fair for a Zionist organization to refuse to support an event with anti-Zionist speakers, among the goals of our federations is “to touch the lives of every member of our community and to connect them with each other, and with fellow Jews around the world.” Counted among “every member of our community” is a small number who are anti-Zionist. Are these people not Jews?

In Judaism, there is no authority to excommunicate. And yet, it seems at least one federation in Canada has taken on a self-appointed authority to do something dangerously close to that. Montreal’s federation declared two individuals personae non grata and, based on their attitudes toward Zionism, acted to undermine their efforts to speak at a Jewish federation-sponsored event.

The bottom line is this: federations are driven by the donations made by Jewish community members. Jewish community members in Montreal who believe in the cherished Jewish value of animated discourse should look closely at how their local federation is behaving in this area. And concerned community members everywhere should keep a watchful eye on their federations to ensure that, in representing our overwhelmingly pro-Zionist community, we are not at the same time undermining some of our most cherished Jewish values.

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