ADL

Rabbi talks of healing

Clockwise from top left: Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker of Congregation Beth Israel in Texas speaks with the Anti-Defamation League’s Cheryl Drazin, Jonathan Greenblatt and Deb Leipzig. (screenshot)

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker was bustling around Congregation Beth Israel, in the Dallas suburb of Colleyville, Tex., getting ready for Shabbat morning services. There was a knock on the synagogue’s door and the rabbi welcomed a stranger who was looking for shelter from the unusually cold morning. Cytron-Walker prepared the man a cup of tea and made conversation.

“There were no initial red flags,” the rabbi recalled Jan. 20, in an Anti-Defamation League web event that included the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The man exhibited no signs that he would be a danger, said Cytron-Walker.

“The sense of nervousness, the darting around, those kinds of things that you might expect,” were absent, said the rabbi. “He was calm, he was appreciative, he was able to talk with me all the way throughout, look me in the eye.… I didn’t have a lot of suspicions.”

The unexpected guest was, of course, Malik Faisal Akram, an armed British man who would take the rabbi and three congregants hostage in an 11-hour standoff on Jan. 15. In the end, for all the responders mobilized and crisis negotiators assembled, the incident ended when the rabbi threw a chair at the attacker and the four hostages escaped.

Cytron-Walker explained how he put together the man’s motivations by listening to his rantings and the conversations he was having by phone. Akram was seeking the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted terrorist known as Lady Al Qaeda, who is incarcerated in an American prison not far from Beth Israel synagogue. The hostage-taker apparently subscribed to antisemitic ideas, including the belief that the United States would do whatever was necessary to save the lives of Jewish hostages and that pressure by Jews could lead to his demands being met. At some point, Akram became aware of Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City, and demanded to speak with her during the incident.

“I don’t know how or why he chose her exactly, other than the fact that he thought that she was the most influential rabbi,” said Cytron-Walker. “And I was thinking, this guy really believes that Jews control the world.… I tried to explain to him to the best of my ability that it doesn’t work that way.”

The rabbi credited law enforcement for their response, and spoke at length about the security preparations that synagogues and other Jewish institutions take, with the support of groups like UJA Federations, the Anti-Defamation League, the Secure Community Network and the FBI.

“We had a security plan in place,” said Cytron-Walker. “All of it was helpful, and yet, one of the things that we are aware of is that no matter how good the plan is, no matter how good the security is, these kinds of things can still happen.”

Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, expressed solidarity with not just those immediately affected by the incident but the entire Jewish community.

“We understand all too well that these kinds of attacks are terrifying and that they are not only terrifying to the individuals directly and physically involved, they are also terrifying for all the members of Congregation Beth Israel and, really, for the entire Jewish community, many of whom understandably worry about other threats still out there,” Wray said. “Our joint terrorism task forces across the country will continue to investigate why this individual specifically targeted Congregation Beth Israel on their day of worship.”

Neither Wray, nor any other individual on the livestream, addressed remarks by the FBI’s special agent in charge of the case. As the hostage-taking in the synagogue was unfolding, Matthew DeSarno told media that the assailant was “singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, but we are continuing to work to find motive.” His remarks have been condemned as erasing the antisemitic motivations of the terrorist.

While none of the hostages was physically harmed, Cytron-Walker spoke of the emotional recovery that he, the other hostages and the broader community are undergoing.

“It’s going to be one step at a time for us,” he said. “We are doing the best we can to heal. We’re going to have services on Shabbat evening, we’re going to have services on Shabbat morning, we’re going to have religious school on Sunday and we already had a beautiful healing service on Monday night that was so meaningful – to actually see people, to be able to hug people.… But it’s one step at a time.… I’m getting the care that I need. I’m trying to make sure that I take care of my family and, at the same time, one of those pieces that we’re going to have to get past is that sense of fear.

“There was something traumatic that happened within the congregation,” he continued, “and we know that it’s not just our congregation that feels a sense of fear. It’s something that a lot of people and a lot of Jewish people in particular, our people, are living with.… We want to be able to go to services and pray and be together because one of the most important things is to be with one another within that sense of community. That’s needed right now more than anything else.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, moderated the online event.

Antisemitism, Part 2 of 2

Last week in this space, we addressed some of the challenges facing the Jewish people globally, which were put into stark relief by the latest edition of an Anti-Defamation League report titled Global 100. The most recent annual review of antisemitic attitudes worldwide paints a disheartening picture.

There are (at least) two inferences to draw from the report: that what we’ve been doing to confront antisemitism isn’t working or, perhaps more disturbing, they are working and, without them, the situation would be much worse.

First, a point that deserves repeating. Antisemitic ideas are most rampant in places where there are few or no Jews, because antisemitism is far less about Jews than about the antisemites and their need for scapegoating or other psychosocial outlets. But that fact is of limited comfort for the Jewish woman attacked on the subway or the hundreds of people evacuated from Jewish community centres around New York state last Sunday due to bomb threats.

We who are writing these words and you who are reading them can, for the most part, do little about the global situation, but the familiar saying, “Think globally, act locally,” rings as true as ever. While there are myriad organizations working nationally and internationally in the interests of the Jewish community and Israel – and we would like to see more of that, as well as some means of quantifying their results – the greatest impacts most of us can have are probably right here in our own neighbourhoods.

Again, advertising the great achievements of Jews and Israel may not be the best strategy. There is no need for, or value in, diminishing Jewish achievement and pride, but there is value in simultaneously reinforcing the universal humanity of Jewish people.

Without reopening that can of worms about whether Trump (or Bolsinaro or Orban or Modi or Mohammad bin Salman) is bad for the Jews – because we have national and international organizations operating on those macro-diplomatic fronts – what can ordinary folks like us, who feel afraid, helpless and perhaps disenfranchised, do to have an impact and, no less crucially, feel less isolated and disempowered?

As individuals, we can engage with others in our midst: with the church down the street, the service clubs in our communities, the ethnocultural groups that abound in Vancouver and across Canada, and the pet parents we meet at the dog park. The objective, we think, should not be a full court press to persuade these people that Jews are awesome. The point should be to rebuild the relationships that Jewish communities and individuals have enjoyed with the broader Canadian mosaic; not to advocate for these other groups and individuals to stand with us, but to stand with them so that, together, we form bonds of mutual understanding and care.

It is sometimes noted, especially on social media and in conversations among friends – you’ve certainly heard it – that some of the most concerning voices today are not coming from far-right radicals (though these are troubling) but from ostensibly reasonable people on the left. Ameliorating this challenge is not going to come from declaring them the enemy and polarizing our voices with their opposite – which is what is happening quite frequently in a perilous form of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend construction (see Trump/Bolsinaro/Orban/Modi/MBS above). The challenge will be addressed by rebuilding or strengthening the bridges between our communities and causes – not because it is the expedient thing to do, but because it is the right thing to do.

Last week on the front page, we featured two (of many) individuals in our community who are leading local voices in the movement against climate change, each using different strategies toward the same goal. They are not doing this as ambassadors of the Jewish people, of course, but they are doing so as Jews, motivated by their values and urgent commitment to saving the planet. They are Jewish allies in a diverse mix of dedicated activists.

Countless other Jewish community members are working across faiths and cultures to advance all the communities they encounter. Holocaust survivors are partnering with indigenous residential schools survivors in joint educational initiatives, and there are Jews who are actively supporting the Japanese community’s call for redress from the B.C. government for its role in the grave mistreatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. Local Jewish groups and individuals are doing everything from working to stop human trafficking to sponsoring Syrian refugees to participating in interfaith activities to making food for the homeless.

The pages of this paper are filled regularly with stories that are not, let’s say, Jewish-specific, but of Jewish people making positive contributions to the world. Motivated by a vast range of factors, often by their Jewish values, these points of light in the world are acting on issues important to them and building interpersonal and cross-community bridges in the process.

When we began this two-part conversation last week, we pointed out that, if we had the solution to antisemitism, you would have heard it. We don’t. It seems nobody does. The work being done at the national and international levels by the vast network of Jewish and Zionist organizations is mostly admirable and should be supported. But each of us also needs to look closer to home and remember that, as Margaret Mead said, a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world – and perhaps make some friends along the way.

While celebrating and preserving what is unique in our Jewishness, we should also enhance what was successful in parts of the 20th century: allying with the diversity of individuals and groups in our multicultural society to remind them – and ourselves – that we are not alone, but part of a larger human enterprise.

Antisemitism, Part 1 of 2

The recently released 2019 version of an ongoing Anti-Defamation League survey on global antisemitism, titled Global 100, contains predictable but still depressing confirmation of anecdotal evidence that antisemitism is growing, not receding, almost everywhere on the planet.

At a time of economic and social change and upheaval, people search for explanations and scapegoats. While so much can change, while we witness so many reversals and inversions, plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose. The unified theory of the root of the world’s problems, for so many across continents and centuries, remains some variation of blaming the Jewish people.

If we had a solution to the challenge of antisemitism, you would have heard it. It’s easy to cite failures, noting that whatever we’ve been doing obviously isn’t working. The approach commonly used to fight both antisemitism and anti-Zionism – “Look at the great things we contribute to the world! Please like us!” – is almost certainly barking up the wrong tree, given that antisemites and anti-Zionists are driven, to a large degree, precisely by an envy of Jewish and/or Israeli success and achievement. Bigots never have doubted that Jews are clever; that’s exactly what they hate.

But overt bigots are not really our greatest threat. The sensibilities highlighted in the Global 100 report are slightly more oblique, evincing a complex of presumptions about Jewish character, power, influence, intentions and untrustworthiness. It is not so much discrimination of the we-hate-Jews variety, but a (slightly) more subtle bias that is extrapolated to conclude this or that about Jewish people. And these biases are held, as the report illustrates alarmingly, not by a small fringe group of violent haters, but by large minorities – and, in some societies, large majorities – of ordinary people. These are people who, on a wide range of human affairs, behave rationally and humanely, but not when it comes to Jews.

It also deserves to be noted that the statistics on anti-Jewish bias are almost directly inversely proportionate to the presence of Jews in a society; that is, anti-Jewish sentiment is strongest in places where there are few or no Jews. Because, to a large extent, antisemitism is not about Jews at all, but is a projection of the fears, animosities or ignorance of the carrier.

The wild-eyed Jew-haters who occasionally emerge are comparatively few, although the damage they can wreak, of course, is enormous. Their ideas and their actions are condemned by all good people. The broader swath of ideas Global 100 identifies as indicative of antisemitism in a society are more instinctual and less overt. The people who carry them are probably inclined to deny any conscious negativity toward Jews and would recoil from being called antisemitic. In many cases, they might be amenable to self-assessing and unlearning these attitudes, if approached appropriately and educated.

This is the hopeful part. These alarming numbers may not represent entrenched antisemitic ideas that are growing and cannot be effectively challenged. The majority of people who harbour such ideas, in Canadian and other Western societies we know best, are probably receptive to reason. So, why have we not succeeded?

Our likeliest allies – indeed, the people and groups with which Jewish people have consistently marched, organized and made common cause for a century or more: progressives, anti-racism advocates, social activists – have lately turned against us, either openly or more quietly, because they have decided that Israel represents an embodiment of antithetical values and that Jews, by extension, are inclined to have some degree of association with Zionism and are, therefore, either unwelcome in these movements or required to repudiate Israel.

There are other complexities that go beyond Israel. Certainly the antisemitism that permeates the British Labour party and some other parts of the Western left goes far beyond anti-Zionism and often echoes the basest medieval bigotry.

Nonetheless, these movements and the individuals who comprise them should be engaged, not cast away and dismissed. In many cases, they are ignorant or have not thought deeply about these topics, or they have not been confronted about the problems in their worldview. Since they are, in theory, our natural allies, we should be investing more effort and goodwill in building bridges, not blowing them up.

Antisemitism is distinct in many ways, but it must be viewed alongside the panoply of prejudices and bigotries being contested by progressive people and others of goodwill. By giving up on our natural allies – even if some of them don’t seem like allies right now – we risk the longer-term dangers of isolation or, possibly worse, befriending people who really are not our natural allies.

On the global stage, look at how Israel’s lack of friends has driven its leaders and diplomats into the arms of fascist-adjacent governments in Hungary, Poland, Brazil and elsewhere. Abandoned by its natural allies in the liberal democracies, Israel has been embraced by – and has embraced – those who should be its natural enemies. This is the potential for Jews in North America and Europe if we fail to protect and fortify the alliances previous generations have built with trade unions, progressive political parties, anti-racism activists and the broader pluralist societies we inhabit.

In next week’s issue, we will look at some approaches that are bearing fruit and other ideas we could consider in response to the challenges in the world generally and those presented in the Global 100 report specifically.

It’s OK to boycott BDS

The Anti-Defamation League, one of North America’s most prominent Jewish advocacy agencies, has taken a stand that is at odds with the consensus position of almost all other local, national and international Jewish and Zionist organizations.

Responding to the BDS movement, which strives to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, and which is condemned by some as being founded on antisemitic premises, most Jewish organizations have stood emphatically in opposition to the movement.

Governments have also come out against BDS. The government of Canada passed a motion in Parliament in February, condemning “any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.” Just in the last year, nine U.S. states have enacted anti-BDS laws, which generally prevent state government departments and agencies from doing business with organizations that support BDS. Similar legislation may come to the U.S. Congress.

The ADL’s position, which has been slammed by the Zionist Organization of America, is that the issue comes down to free speech.

“A decision by a private body to boycott Israel, as despicable as it may be, is protected by our Constitution,” wrote Abraham Foxman last year, when he was the national director of the ADL. “Perhaps in Europe, where hate speech laws exist and are acceptable within their own legal frameworks, such bills could be sustained. But not here in America.”

There is no question that the American political tradition falls very heavily on individual rights and free expression. Canadian and European approaches tend to balance individual and group rights. Free speech, sacrosanct in American constitutionalism, is limited by law in some cases in Canada and other democracies if it is seen to possibly incite hatred against individuals or groups.

The United States has its unique constitutional history and relationship with free expression and the Jewish organizations in that country can be left to argue these issues among themselves. As Canadians, we would contend that, in fact, countering the BDS boycotters by boycotting them is not an infringement on free expression, but rather an entirely logical extension of it.

When the House of Commons passed the anti-BDS motion last winter, it was an expression by members of the House that the movement was founded on ideas that are selective, misguided and potentially discriminatory. The motion did nothing whatsoever to legally forbid those ideas and their promulgation. They merely condemned them.

The idea that state or other governments would forbid their departments and agencies from investing in or doing business with organizations that promote BDS may seem heavy-handed. A government is not the same thing as a business or a church. People can quit a church or disagree with the policies of the business by voting with their dollars. A government represents all of its people. But governments also, by definition, must take stands on the issues of the day. By rejecting the BDS movement, governments are doing precisely that. Voters will have the opportunity to endorse or repudiate those positions at the time of the next election.

Boycotting the boycotters, which is effectively what nine U.S. states have chosen to do, is fair game. We have made the case before in this space that one person’s free speech does not erase that of another person. When an individual or group expresses an ugly idea, in a democracy, it does not abrogate their rights if another individual or group speaks up to condemn the ugly idea.

Whether legislation against BDS is the most effective means of combating BDS is open to debate.

Foxman argued that education, lobbying or persuasion may be the more effective long-term strategy. In our view, legislation and education need not be mutually exclusive.