The Jewishness of Halloween

With Halloween approaching, we can expect the same debates about tradition vs. assimilation that we often hear in the Jewish community to be trotted out. While every Jewish kid I knew growing up in what was a very tight-knit Jewish community in Winnipeg went trick or treating, and the vast majority of Jews I now know also celebrate the holiday, the question of whether Jewish kids should be trick-or-treating still rears its head in Jewish circles.

“Do Jews celebrate Halloween?” asks Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in an article on chabad.org. (Rabbi Freeman was my seventh grade Judaics teacher at Vancouver Vancouver Talmud Torah in 1985. Our class had some good debates then, and it is partly in that spirit of nostalgia that I seek to take on some of his ideas here.)

Contrasting Halloween with Purim, Rabbi Freeman writes, “Flip it over (October instead of March, demanding instead of giving, scaring instead of rejoicing, demons instead of sages, etc.) and you have Halloween. There you have it: a choice of one of two messages you can give to your children. I call that a choice, because one of the beautiful things about kids is that, unlike adults, they don't do too well receiving two conflicting messages at once.”

If you’ll forgive the metaphor, like a piece of Halloween candy, Rabbi Freeman’s statement is rife for unwrapping. One of the most memorable parts of Rabbi Daniel Gordis’s book How to be a Jewish Parent is precisely his attempt to scale back the automatic attempt by Jews to present their holidays as alternatives to ones in the dominant culture. Purim is Purim, not a Jewish Halloween, Gordis wisely stresses.

There are a host of other problematic assumptions in Rabbi Freeman’s statement. “Trick or treat” may be about demanding, but trick-or-treaters instinctively know that, as they are knocking on their neighbour’s door, their own family is home giving out candy to others. Scaring instead of rejoicing? Hmm...sorting through Halloween loot is a pretty joyful experience, I’d say. And let’s take Purim: discussing a story of threatened genocide capped by a public execution ranks pretty high on the horror and gore scale.

I have heard one Jewish parent say that she and her husband don’t let their kids go trick or treating because “Judaism is about the celebration of life rather than death.” But that’s not how I see the meaning of Halloween. Sure, there are ghosts, goblins and zombies. But are trick-or-treaters celebrating death? Or are they challenging the innate fear of our own mortality?

And what of Freeman’s claim that kids can’t digest multiple ideas, especially if they are in tension with one another? Two diametrically opposed messages are certainly problematic. But I see the idea of Jewish kids celebrating Halloween as a nested idea. When I send my Jewish kids out for Halloween, I am sending them as kids who happen to be Jewish, just as one happens to be a girl, and the other a boy. (The one group that is officially excluded from trick-or-treating is, of course, grownups!) 

My kids celebrate Halloween neither because they are Jewish nor in spite of being Jewish. For one chilly Ottawa night per year, they get to share a memory-making slice of childhood with the rest of the kids across the city -- whoever they are, and whatever masks they are parading behind this year.

Freeman concludes by suggesting that our kids “belong to a people who have been entrusted with the mission to be a light to the nations -- not an ominous light inside a pumpkin, but a light that stands out and above and shows everyone where to go.”

But being a light unto the nations means leading by example. Unless one has an intrinsic concern with Halloween as a holiday -- and I’ve already suggested that Jewish holidays can be just as macabre, that Halloween isn’t so much glorifying death as it is making fun of our intrinsic mortality -- then standing apart for its own sake isn’t actually leading by example. 

Canada sadly has a dearth of inclusive, non-religious holidays. With the exception of Canada Day and possibly Thanksgiving, Halloween is the only holiday that brings children of all backgrounds together. Most importantly, Halloween is the only holiday that is specifically about that most precious of urban commodities. “It’s very neighbourly,” is how my eight-year-old daughter describes Halloween. It’s an apt summary, for a girl whose Hebrew name comes from the Biblical word for neighbour.

Any holiday that encourages the residents of cities and towns to walk the streets and interact -- even if fueled by a little too much sugar -- is a way of invoking the best of everyday, community life. And that is very Jewish.

**A version of this article appeared in The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Daniel Gordis, Peter Beinart, and Ameinu's Israel Trip

Last spring, I was fortunate to teach a course with a dynamic group of adult learners at the Soloway JCC in Ottawa on the topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations and Diaspora Jewish identity. What I did not realize then was that two of the “main characters” that figured in the Zionist debates which we parsed and debated would be coming to our community this fall. 

What follows in this column is a brief reflection on Daniel Gordis’s recent appearance at Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s campaign kickoff event last month, some discussion of Peter Beinart’s upcoming talk in Ottawa and Montreal (co-sponsored by Ameinu) on October 23, and a mention of yet another way community members may wish to have these nuances come to life: via Ameinu’s “multiple narratives” trip to Israel in January.

Those who attended Daniel Gordis’s talk last month were treated to a superb orator who kept the audience captivated with his passion for Israel and the Jewish experience. Senior Vice-President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and author of multiple books on Israel, Gordis relayed a breathtaking anecdote about attending the Israeli opera at Masada with a group of olim from the Former Soviet Union. Alongside all that, though, was a message about Israel and its neighbors sorely lacking in nuance. He decried Palestinian “resistance,” demanding instead that the Palestinians seek to emulate Israel. We would all like to snap our fingers and have our adversaries lie down passively. But would we, if we were under military occupation of a foreign government? His utter lack of empathy for the experience of the Other left me cold. You can’t make peace in a vacuum, after all.

Having squared off in public debates at Temple Holy Blossom in Toronto, and at Columbia University in New York, Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinart represent two different strands of Zionism. These two contemporary strands hinge on the question of agency. Does Israel have the ability to do more to advance peace then it is currently doing? Gordis paints a picture of Israel being mostly at the mercy of its many enemies. He draws out a familiar story of besiegement, implicitly advancing the “no partner” for peace thesis. (Concluding his remarks in Ottawa with the image of Masada, the site of ultimate besiegement, was a calculated choice.)

While not denying the real threats Israel faces from a region in turmoil, Beinart, editor of the Open Zion blog at Newsweek/Daily Beast (one of the most dynamic and exciting forums for Zionist debates today) and author of The Crisis of Zionism, presents a view that is more critical of Israeli policies and the American Establishment that supports those policies. At the same time, Beinart’s is a view that advances the possibility of change.

Co-sponsored by Canadian Friends of Peace Now, the New Israel Fund of Canada, as well as Ameinu, Peter Beinart will give a talk in Ottawa at Temple Israel on October 23, on what he sees as a “crisis” in Zionism today. If the Israeli government doesn’t get serious about the peace process soon, Israel’s democratic and Jewish nature will be compromised. What’s more, the next generation of Jews may be lost to Zionism as the “establishment” has forced young Jews to “check their liberalism at the door” when it comes to engaging with Israel. (Beinart will also appear in Montreal on October 24.)

Of course there’s yet another way to engage with these various Zionist nuances, specifically by visiting Israel. To that end,  Ameinu is sponsoring a six-day study trip to Israel called “Multiple Narratives - Israel’s Realities”. From January 1-6, participants will join “freedom riders” on a de facto (but no longer legal) gender-segregated bus; meet with members of an urban kibbutz that focuses on education; meet with Stav Shafir, one of the leaders of the country’s “social protests;” meet with settlers at Kfar Etzion along with members of Breaking the Silence (an organization of IDF soldiers committed to exposing the military deeds done in the name of occupation), explore co-existence in Haifa and the warrens of South Tel Aviv, meet with a member of Knesset, and even engage in text study with BINA (Centre for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture). 

As Ameinu president Ken Bob describes it, “Leveraging our political and social activist contacts in Israel, Ameinu's Journey to Israel will challenge participants to think deeply about the choices facing Israel while introducing them to fascinating personalities who will impact the country's future."

To help and support Israel in a meaningful way one must understand its many narratives. Engaging the next generation will require less us-and-them thinking and more nuance about what is possible. And a Jewish community that is exposed to a range of voices about the political and social situations near to our heart is a stronger, more thoughtful and more effective community. 

Peter Beinart will speak in Ottawa at Temple Israel, 1301 Prince of Wales Drive on Tuesday, October 23 at 7:30 pm. 

He will appear in Montreal on Wednesday, October 24, at 8 p.m. at Knox Hall, 6225 Godfrey, a short street off Grand Blvd. between Sherbrooke and Monkland.

And for more information on the Ameinu Israel trip, visit www.ameinu.net

**A version of this article appeared in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Ottawa's Conservative Shuls: Expand the Chuppah. It's time.

On May 31, the Committee of Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly formally approved the wording of two ceremonies to sanctify same-sex Jewish weddings. In a vote of 13-0 with one abstention, the CJLS took the historic step of officially enabling gays and lesbians to take their proper place in partaking of all Jewish life cycle events.

The Reform and Reconstructionist movements have allowed rabbis to perform same-sex marriages since 1993 and many Conservative rabbis had officiated at same-sex weddings well before the recent decision, encouraged by the 2006 ruling that gays and lesbians could serve openly as rabbis and cantors.

Significantly, neither of the two ceremonies approved by the CJLS uses the term kiddushin, the formal Judaic term for sanctified marriage. As Naomi Zeveloff, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward (June 15) points out, “In substituting kiddushin with partnership law, the rabbis borrowed from the Brit Ahuvim, or Lovers’ Covenant, created by Reform Rabbi Rachel Adler.” 

Zeveloff quotes Rabbi Adler on the CJLS decision: “What it does basically is to move marriage out of property law and into partnership law.”

Some supporters of inclusion will no doubt find the lack of kiddushin problematic, thinking it is a second-class form of marriage ceremony. Others, like Michael Gennis, find that aspect heartening. Raised in Ottawa at a Conservative shul, Michael and partner Bob Birnbaum married in 2010 in an Ottawa Jewish same-sex officiated by Rabbi Steven Garten of Temple Israel. 

Gennis found something admirable about the same-sex ceremony approved by the CJLS being different from the traditional heterosexual one.

“I am thrilled that the Conservative movement has taken the bold and necessary step to ensure that not only are same-sex unions recognized, but that they are recognized as unique, and obviously deserving of a unique ceremony, one that isn’t necessarily a variation on the existing ceremony,” Gennis told me.

As the Forward article notes, some straight couples may even turn to the same-sex ceremony as a way to transcend some of the more problematic gendered aspects inherent in the traditional male-female ceremony. I know that I, for one, closed my eyes and swallowed hard before working my way through the wording of my Aramaic ketubah, modernized slightly by the addition of the Lieberman clause which is intended to prevent agunot (women tethered to marriage because their husbands refuse to grant them a get, or Jewish bill of divorce). I was reminded of this at a recent family wedding when the rabbi announced that in the Jewish legal context, the bride was akin to property. The audience tittered uncomfortably.

The Conservative movement is a big-tent movement, which is both a strength and a challenge. As such, gays and lesbians are still subject to the predilections of their particular Conservative congregation and/or rabbi on the matter. As anyone involved in the management of a shul knows, the rabbi, while officially being mara d’atra (final arbiter for the congregation in interpreting religious laws and rules), the preferences of the board and ritual committee loom large in policy making.

Until now in Ottawa, parents at Conservative shuls with gay children have known that at some point, their shul will have to reject them. Sure these children can be members. But, if they want to marry their beloved, they will be turned away. Whether this will change with the new ruling, is an open question.

Agudath Israel does not currently perform same-sex com- mitment ceremonies, nor is there a specific timetable for this to come under consideration. However, we are committed to a policy of inclusiveness and we view this as a work in progress,” wrote Agudath Israel President Jack Klein in response to my question to each of the local Conservative congregations on whether they would allow same-sex wed- dings.

Beth Shalom President Ian Sherman declined to comment “pending further review of the ruling and our policies by our ritual committee and then the shul’s board of governors, all under rabbinic guidance from Rabbi [Scott] Rosenberg.”

“Since we do not have a full-time rabbi on staff, we do not have any weddings,” responded Adath Shalom Co-president Paul Adler.

Many gays and lesbians are understandably drawn to Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. A spirit of inclusion is a powerful draw, and justifiably so.

But just because someone Jewish may be romantically drawn to members of their own sex says nothing about their theological commitments or their preference for a particular worship style, or for a particular spiritual community within Judaism. Some gays and lesbians prefer Reform and Recon- structionist Judaism, and some prefer Conservative Judaism. Still others, like Rabbi Steven Greenberg, are fighting pas- sionately for their place in Orthodox Jewish life, a process proceeding much more slowly.

On the heels of the new CJLS ruling, who will be the first same-sex couple to approach a Conservative rabbi in Ottawa to officiate at their wedding? And which shul will be the first to take part in the most exciting inclusion innovation to come out of the Conservative movement since women were granted equal access to the seminary? The way I see it, Ottawa’s first Conservative Jewish same-sex wedding will be a sacred day, not only for the betrothed, but for the whole community, which gets to welcome the couple to the community in the way straight couples have long taken for granted.

The door to inclusion in Conservative Judaism was blown open with a gust of commitment to diversity. Now, we just need to walk through it, together.

**A version of this is appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Home from Camp

“What’s this?” my daughter asked me, fingering a yellow plastic soap dish. I’d begun assembling items for her ten days away at Jewish sleepover camp, and she was sorting through them. That my daughter, who knows three languages, can sing most of the lyrics to Fiddler on the Roof, and can program my iPhone, had never encountered that most prosaic of plastic objects occupying a central place in every camper’s toiletry case, struck me. I was reminded -- as if I needed reminding -- of the intense life-changing, memory-making and identity-shaping experiences ahead of her at Jewish summer camp. 

To mark my daughter’s first time at sleepaway camp, here are my wishes for the new generation of Jewish campers upon their return.

I hope you experienced one unrequited and one requited crush.

I hope you saw the sun set every night, and the sun rise once.

I hope that, the next time you attend shul on Shabbat morning, the words and melodies take you back to praying outdoors, surrounded by friends.

I hope you danced your heart out and didn’t care a whit about whether your moves were cool. (They were.)

I hope you come back healthy -- except for having temporarily lost your voice from singing your guts out.

I hope you did at least one thing that scared you just a bit.

I hope you will challenge me to a game of cards when you get home -- preferably Hearts or Cribbage.

I hope you have Hebrew words running through your head, and inky black siddur letters etched in your mind.

I hope you have a beginning sense of some of Israel’s political dilemmas.

I hope you have a new in-town friend, a new out-of-town friend to visit, and two new out-of-town friends with whom to Skype.

I hope you laughed a thousand times and cried once.

I hope your counselors were loving, fun, smart, athletic and artistic, and just weird enough to be inspiring.

I hope you are already contemplating next year’s plays, songs, and dances.

I hope you made an effort to include someone who was feeling left out.

I hope you forged new sensory memories containing two new tastes, three new sounds, and five new smells.

I hope you heard at least one song by the classic Israeli folk-rock group Kaveret.

I hope you can sing the chorus and at least three verses of Don Maclean’s American Pie.

I hope that hearing The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and The Guess Who makes you want to dance.

I hope you banged on the tables in the chadar ochel until your palms hurt.

I hope you passed a swimming level.

I hope you stood up on waterskis as well as on stage.

I hope you held a hammer, a sewing needle, a yad, and a paddle.

I hope that when you hear the word Judaism, your memory lands on snippets of conversations punctuated by challenging questions.

I hope you drew on courage, bravery, prudence and empathy.

I hope you didn’t care what you wore but knew you looked great in it.

I hope you can sing Erev Shel Shoshanim and Ani V’Atah.

I hope your towels got sandy enough to remember it’s summer.

I hope that when it’s time to get ready for bed at home, you instinctively reach for your soapdish.

I hope your countdown to next year goes slowly enough to allow you to appreciate each day for what it is, but quickly enough to make the time fly.

**A version of this appeared in The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Souvenir from Ariel, northern West Bank

On the first day of my Israeli-Palestinian relations course, I typically show my students a photo of me posing with relatives at age 10, when I first visited Israel with my grandmother in 1983. The landscape behind us is rocky and barren, yellow and sundappled. I tell my students it’s no surprise that their professor is a Jewish Canadian, someone for whom her subject matter is both personal and political.  I want them to begin to reflect on how they connect facts and theories with their own philosophical, emotional or collective subjectivity.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the photo had been taken in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, only five years old at the time. Evidently we had been visiting the driver of my grandmother’s cousin.

Last month I visited Ariel again, this time with Lior Amihai, a thoughtful, intelligent and articulate staff member with Peace Now’s Settlement Watch team. 

One gets to Ariel, a settlement of 18,000, easily from Tel Aviv, by driving 42 kilometers east along route 5. But Ariel juts 17 kilomters deep into the West Bank, reminding visitors, observers and negotiators that a two-state solution is increasingly becoming a mirage. As you drive east, you would have to closely inspect a map to realize you had crossed the Green Line, a demarcation that has sadly become an irrelevant and imaginary boundary for most Israelis. 

With 300,000 settlers in the West Bank (and another 200,000 in and around East Jerusalem), the Israeli government continues to speak about a two-state solution, but the cost of withdrawal will be significant. Most estimates are that 70,000 settlers will have to be moved, with the remaining areas being annexed to Israel in the form of ‘settlement blocs’ with ensuing land swaps.

The West Bank is currently divided into three checkerboarded areas -- Area A (under Palestinian Control), Area B (under partial Palestinian control), and Area C (under Israeli control). At the checkpoint in the northern West Bank that we observed for several minutes, there were two lanes: one for Israeli cars (sporting yellow plates) and another for Palestinian cars (with green and white plates).

With our yellow plates, we gained easy access not only to Ariel but also to two other “settlement outposts” slated for withdrawal: Migron and the Ulpana neighbourhood of Beit El. In those two settlements, the Israeli courts deemed the settlers to be living on “private Palestinian land” and mandated their relocation. In Ulpana, though, the settlers are being relocated just down the hill.

Ariel has been in the news lately since the Israeli government is about to grant its community college university status, a move ardently opposed by many Israeli academics. 

The name Ariel -- meaning lion of God -- is the Hebrew middle name we gave our daughter, to invoke the memory of three of her paternal uncles. I never had the opportunity to meet those uncles and I have no idea what opinions they held about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the settlements or the occupation. But I do know that in naming our kids, we sought to connect them with our family and our Jewish heritage.

Like many of us, I consider Israel a touchstone of my identity, an identity that I am passionate about passing along to my children. I speak only Hebrew to my kids, they have visited Israel, Hebrew books and music line our shelves, and they are connected to friends and family throughout the country. But I struggle with how I shall explain the pesky problem of the occupation, the military rule to which Palestinian residents of the West Bank are subjected while Jewish residents naturally enjoy civilian rule, the fact that Palestinian freedom of movement is restricted while Israelis are free to roam as they please. 

Perhaps next trip, in addition to Hebrew Bazooka chewing gum, a white knitted kippah and an “I heart TLV tank top,” jewelry from Sheinkin street, and a Hebrew version of the “Captain Underpants” book, I will try to bring home two license plates: one yellow, another green. These plates will hang next to the vintage BC and Manitoba license plates I find for my kids at garage sales to remind them of their parents’ home towns.

The Israeli and Palestinian plates will be a grim reminder of the unacceptable ethnic rule that Israel, the country we teach our kids to love so much, maintains east of the Green Line. The plates will remind my kids to help strive for a democratic separation into two states and an end to the ugly occupation. The plates will be a badge against silence, a call to action, something to reflect on when we recite the prayer for the State of Israel on Shabbat, or say Next Year in Jerusalem on Passover.

**An earlier version appeared in The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Turning 40 and Revisiting Judy Blume

As I turn 40 this month, I notice that several of my beloved childhood books, like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, both by Judy Blume, turn 40 this year too. As I find myself reading Blume’s books to my daughter lately, I thought it would be fitting to revisit one of my favourites, Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, through 2012 eyes, both as a parent of a daughter (and a son), and as a girl who can no longer deny she’s a grownup.

The 1970 classic tells the story of a grade 6 girl as she negotiates a family move from New York City to the suburbs, leaving behind her grandmother, her old friends, and soon (as she is on the cusp of puberty), her childhood. Margaret’s mom is a lapsed Christian and her father is a secular Jew, so Margaret deploys frequent private discussions with God to make sense of her own identity. 

Judy Blume’s use of intermarriage as a plot device was prescient, as intermarriage rates were rising in North America. But Margaret’s maternal grandparents had disowned her mom for marrying a Jew. Perhaps because of this, Margaret’s parents present her background less as two heritages to be celebrated than as burdensome theological obligations to be shed, in the words of an old friend who describes his own Jewish identity this way. In today’s much more pluralist climate, Margaret’s parents’ world might seem outdated to some, at the same time that her own private spiritual quest feels entirely current.

There is much of the simple intimacy of 11-year old female friendships to mine, with summer sprinklers, friendship clubs, and kids who are not so over-programmed that they cannot spend afternoons just hanging out and talking.

I had recalled much in the book about periods and bras, and it’s hard to say that the fascination with the mixed distinction of having passed through puberty ever goes out of style. With each decade of age the contours of the questions and focus of the fascination simply shifts a few bodily inches vertically in some places and horizontally in others.

Of course, it’s easy to giggle at the antiquated feminine hygiene products depicted. (Subsequent editions have apparently replaced the “belts” that predated even me -- with adhesives.) But the most shocking part to my 2012 sensibilities was the scene of Margaret and her friends looking at an issue of Playboy, a magazine that the father of Margaret’s friend typically keeps in the family magazine rack. Eleven year olds looking at the naked breasts of an 18-year old girl-woman from pornography belonging to their dad, seems, well, unsavory. I hadn’t recalled that scene as I worked through the book with my daughter (who, luckily, thought they were reading a medical book) before I skipped ahead.

But Playboy in the early 1970s wasn’t what most pornography is today. Coming out of the fifties, many would have viewed reading Playboy as an outright act of social liberation. Neither was the old joke about reading Playboy for the articles entirely bogus. Both Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer were published in Playboy. Playboy wasn’t Bible comics (though with its share of sex and violence the Bible is a poor example, perhaps), but neither was it the kind of trashy and frequently violent porn that has replaced the tamer and more artistic erotica of the pre-digital age.

The final thing that strikes me today is how hetero-normative the book seems. Margaret and her friends concoct lists of boy crushes and attend parties dominated by boy-girl spin the bottle. Would a young lesbian or a gay male teen find a space for themselves in Judy’s world? Writing in the early seventies, Blume wouldn’t have likely considered the GLBTQ market. But there is so much timelessness to her stories that I almost wish she could slip in some more sexually pluralistic references alongside the updates of feminine hygiene products. I have tweeted Blume on the topic. Maybe an idea will be sparked; who knows?

Unlike much of what passes for children’s lit these days (series like Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Blume doesn’t peddle in demeaning stereotypes and toxic patterns of interaction where power is wielded capriciously. Judy Blume’s characters argue, experience real and robust emotions, and are often plagued by self-doubt. But the fights are clearly between people who care deeply about each other, and the self-doubt is eroded as the characters grow and mature. In short, they are both human and humane.

Celebrating my fortieth in the real company of my own treasured relationships and in the imaginary company of Judy’s characters -- in all their tender complexity -- is not a bad way to usher in a new decade. 

**A version of this appeared in The Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

We Don't Make Peace with our Friends, After All

With the death of Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, one article about his legacy has been shared widely. Writing in Tablet Magazine, Yossi Klein Halevy wrote of the legacy of Revisionist Zionism, the hawkish version of Zionism peddled by Vladimir Jabotinsky through to Menachem Begin through to today’s Likud party. The take-away message of Revisionist Zionism according to Halevy? “Don’t be a fool.”

Israeli slang changes frequently. But one term that has remained for decades is the word “fryer.” One of the worst things you can be in Israel is a “fryer,” a fool, someone who is taken advantage of. No wonder that the right-wing Zionists I know shared the article on Facebook almost immediately.

But there’s another side to the story. Recently I sat down at Bridgehead coffee in the Glebe with Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now in Israel. During our interview as well as at the talk he gave that evening at Temple Israel, Oppenheimer painted a bleak picture of the state of Israeli democracy. Both within Israel and via the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the peace camp is sorely needed.

In Israel, two recent laws threaten to undermine Israeli democracy.

The Nakba law declares that any publicly-funded organization attempting to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba (the Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that Palestinians use to describe the violence and dispossession surrounding the Palestinian exile of 1948) is liable to have its funding cut. 

The boycott law entails any Israeli calling for a boycott of settlement products being subject to a civil suit without the plaintiff having to prove damages. In response to the boycott law, Peace Now launched a campaign that quickly went viral called “sue me; I boycott settlement products.”

Talking about budget discrimination against the Arab sector and widespread racism within Israeli society, Oppenheimer said, “I think Arab Israelis are more loyal to Israel than Israel is to its Arab citizens.”

The Revisionist Zionist philosophy that motivated Netanyahu’s father, and today Netanyahu and most of his governing coalition, warns Israelis away from playing the fool. Revisionist Zionists surely were not troubled over the military administration Israel extended to its Arab minority citizens until it was repealed in 1966, they do not lose sleep over Israel’s 45-year-long occupation of 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank that continues apace, nor are they distressed by the apparent erosion of the free-speech principles integral to Israeli democracy.

It’s all good and fine to retreat behind fortress Israel, shutting our ears to Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel’s occupation policies, and chalking up anti-democratic legislation as necessary for security. But we must realize that there is a great moral and strategic cost to not questioning why Palestinian commemoration of their history is a threat, and why Israelis challenging their country’s settlement policies with their wallets needs to be stifled.

One of the most striking things Oppenheimer relayed in his public talk was when he regularly meets with Israeli teens. Most of the teens he talks with no longer have a concept of the Green Line, no longer seem to realize that the West Bank is an entirely separate entity from democratic Israel. Neither do these teens seem troubled by the occupation. “If we have the power to enforce an occupation, we should,” these teens tell him. He responds by telling them that one day they may very well find themselves studying abroad and sitting next to a Palestinian student at university. “What are you going to tell that Palestinian student?” he asks them. “How will you possibly be able to defend the occupation then?” 

That morning, I asked Oppenheimer a question I often hear from the right: how can Israel contemplate a withdrawal from the West Bank given the ongoing rocket fire following the 2005 pullout from Gaza? 

Oppenheimer’s answer was this. He rightly pointed out that both Israeli-Arab peace treaties -- one with Egypt in 1979 and another with Jordan in 1994 -- have held. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza was a unilateral move; unaccompanied by a peace treaty. To this I would add that neither was it a full withdrawal: while Israel did remove its ground forces and all 7,000 settlers, Israel still maintains a naval blockade and control over airspace as well as control over borders.

In Hebrew, Yariv means adversary, opponent, or “he will fight.” It’s an odd name perhaps for someone who leads the main grassroots peace camp movement in Israel. But we shouldn’t forget that Peace Now was founded by Israeli army officers in the late 1970s, officers who understood the value of security as well as the urgency of making peace with their country’s adversaries. You don’t make peace with your friends, after all.

**A version of this appeared in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Talking about Israel with our Grandmothers

At my Passover seder, an elderly relative who suffers from senility was having a particularly foggy day.  Though I’ve known him all my life, my grandmother -- sharp as a tack into her nineties, realized the man had forgotten me. “Mira is a professor who tries to get the world to love Israel,” my Babba said. Though she delivered it with a wink, it was an obvious jab at what she sees as my dovishness when it comes to the question of Israel.

Seems that grandmothers come up a lot nowadays when Jews discuss Israel. University of Toronto’s Jenny Peto caused a small firestorm in 2010 with her controversial MA thesis on Holocaust Education which she dedicated to her late grandmother. If she were alive today, Peto wrote, “she would be right there with me protesting against Israeli apartheid.” (Soon after, her incensed brother sought to correct that view of their grandmother in a letter to the National Post.)

Grandmothers also figure in the opening sentence of Peter Beinart’s new book, The Crisis of Zionism. “I wrote this book because of my grandmother, who made me a Zionist.” Beinart sees Zionism undergoing an intense moral and political crisis, and seeks to do everything he can to keep his beloved Jewish and democratic Israel afloat. By this he means push for a two-state solution and an end to the highly undemocratic occupation that has plagued Israel’s moral profile for forty-four years.

It’s clear to me from ongoing conversations with my grandmother -- and with many other Jews -- that the Jewish community needs to think seriously about what it means to care about Israel.

What does it mean to feel attached to a country of which one may not be a citizen, but whose anthem one sings at community events, whose birthday one celebrates in Diaspora communities, which receives a portion of funds raised through annual Jewish Federation campaigns, to which we send our kids on Birthright, and where we may visit, live or mark our kids’ Bar or Bat Mitzvah? 

If we truly and deeply care about Israel, do we remain silent in the face of shocking actions of brutality like the recent video clip of the IDF soldier slamming his M-16 rifle into the face of a Danish protestor? Do we attempt to silence criticism of Israeli policy with accusation of anti-Semitism? Do we decide to sign up for Israel advocacy training, so we can act as Likud government spokespeople?

Or do we chart a different path, one where we wrestle with Israel, and think deeply about the implications of its current policies for Israelis and for Palestinians? Most importantly, do we recognize that the officer who beat the Danish protestor is a symptom of the bigger problem of occupation?

I have heard people say that we shouldn’t “air our dirty laundry,” that the subject of Israel is a family affair. Surely our synagogues and other Jewish organizations represent the metaphorical family living room. But when it comes to those venues, voices seeking to pierce the silence are few and far between. 

Beinart writes that if Israel ceased to be a liberal democratic Jewish state, “it would be one of the greatest tragedies of my life.” To that end, he calls for a boycott of settlement products from what he calls “non-democratic Israel.”

Beinart has a public voice: author of wide-circulation books, editor of the new Daily Beast blog Open Zion, and writer of a much-discussed 2010 article in the New York Review of Books where he demanded that the American Jewish establishment be more responsive to the moral sensibilities of younger Jews who are being forced to “check their liberalism at the door” when it comes to engaging Israel.

Not all of us enjoy a regular public platform. But each of us can decide when to speak out, how to vote, to whom to donate money, and how to talk with our kids. Those who care about Israel’s future might reconsider where their charitable efforts go. Groups like Ameinu, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights, and, in the U.S., J Street, are desperately digging in the avalanche for the keys to a democratic and Jewish Israel, keys that some days are being camouflaged by the dirt of occupation. The alternatives -- a “one-state solution” or perpetual occupation -- are simply not tenable if one wants Israel to remain both democratic and Jewish.

There’s a reason why young progressive and liberal writers on Israel -- from the radical left to the Zionist left -- invoke their grandmothers. In different ways, these young Jews are trying to honour their ancestors’ legacy. Beinart concludes, “Either our generation will help Israel reconcile its democratic and Zionist ideals, or we will make our children choose between them.”

**A version of this column is appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Towards a Jewish Values Declaration

In my February 20 column about why Temple Israel removed its bid to move to the Jewish Community Campus, I discussed why the decision was ultimately as much about potlucks as property. Temple Israel planned to have two kitchens in its new facility, one which would be under the supervision of the Vaad HaKashrut and which would be used for community-wide events, and another which would abide by a different set of dietary standards and would be dedicated to Temple events and private simchas.

I concluded by suggesting the dispute over dietary laws and standards merely scratched the surface of what is a broader conversation that needs to be had about the set of values that bind us as a community.

I often hear the term “Jewish values” mentioned, but I’m not always sure what that means. In the spirit of the goal behind this Values, Ethics, Community column that I was invited to launch some years ago, I’m going to try my hand at laying out a first-cut Values Declaration. These are both aspirational values as well as descriptive ones. Where we fall short in practice, we should strive to improve.

My hope is that this will be a draft which people will weigh in on, redraft, rework and wrestle with.

1. Jewish Literacy – This is a theme I’ve returned to, particularly around discussions of Jewish education and Jewish camp. I think it’s fair to say that a value of our community is ensuring our next generation is conversant in Jewish history, Hebrew (if not Yiddish) language, the cycle of the Jewish calendar, and Jewish prayer. This means we need to shore up the ability of our institutions to deliver the kind of Jewish knowledge that will sustain a content-rich Jewish identity. Having a Jewish identity with knowledge as its cornerstone is ultimately richer and less prone to clubbishness for its own sake.

2. Kehila (community) – Our many community events and fundraising efforts signal to each other, and to our children, that shoring up existing institutions and their enhancement of Jewish life in Ottawa is a priority. But, we should be cognizant of where we can strive to improve the various institutions that make up the landscape. I have written previously about my desire to work within my own shul to strengthen practices around inclusion, for example. In Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Albert Hirschman’s famous social science formulation, the ultimate question for some, for whom mute loyalty doesn’t feel right, may be how one can exercise one’s voice before one abdicates altogether?

3. Israel – In many of our community activities, we work to inculcate a connection to Israel. I think we could work to encourage a more nuanced understanding of Israeli culture, as well as the serious political situation in which Israel finds itself. Some people seem to view a connection to Israel as implying that Israeli actions should not be criticized. In my mind, there remains much more to be discussed around this, including the question of how we can be meaningfully engaged if we don’t wrestle loudly and visibly with the question of Israel in our lives, and with the impact of Israel’s actions on others.

4. Derekh Eretz (civility) – When someone acts unkindly, I sometimes hear the action criticized in terms of it not living up to Jewish values. Jewish tradition points to the imperative of derekh eretz, (literally “the way of the land,” but generally understood to mean, kindness, appropriateness, and civility). This, of course, should translate into awareness both of how we treat each other interpersonally within and across communities; how we manage pluralism, including different types of Judaic belief and practice; and how our community may occasionally deliver messages about other communities. This also means that we should continue to be aware of the kinds of messages our community-sponsored speakers deliver about others groups.

5. Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) – Are there wrongs out there that need to be righted? Who is hungry? Who is lonely? Who is excluded? Who is suffering? What is at risk? Working to build up a sense of community feels hollow to me if we don’t see our actions as being connected to a grander vision of repairing the rips in the fabric of the world, including on our planet itself. Though we are a strong and vibrant community, we should view our borders as permeable.

Let’s see how we can continue to hone the conversation on Jewish values in Ottawa. E-mail your thoughts to me at mira_sucharov@carleton.ca or, as always, write a letter to the editor at bulletin@ottawajewishbulletin.com. I will collect what I receive and get back to you in a future column.

**A version of this column is appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Thinking big about community with my friend Sam Zunder

I depend on my gym buddies to help me get through my regular workout at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC). Recently, I spoke to one of them, Sam Zunder, about the weekly breakfast of eggs, toast, juice, and coffee he shares most Sunday mornings with 12 to 20 other guys. They are old Ottawa friends, many of whom have been breakfasting together for 25 years. They used to meet downtown at the Bay Street Bistro, but now they gather on Sunday mornings at Sam’s retirement residence.

Sam generally enjoys where he lives. He’s in a beautiful part of the city a short drive from one of the synagogues where he enjoys an associate membership, but there’s something lacking for him. “I want more Jewish culture. I want a kosher place,” Sam told me.

A few years ago, with his wife’s health in decline, they moved from their condo to a retirement residence. But he wishes there was a Jewish retirement residence in town, one located even closer to a synagogue and to other cultural activities.

Perhaps it is Sam’s storied history working for decades in his ByWard Market family business, Zunder’s Fruitland (originally, Zunder’s Quality Fruit Supply). Sam was profiled by Shawna Wagman in an Ottawa Magazine (November 2008) feature on the history of the ByWard Market’s Jewish food vendors.

“‘We were happy. There was never a locked door, and everybody helped each other out,’ recalls Zunder. ‘It was all Jewish people. You could just walk into anybody’s house, just like that.’”

This is the sense of community that Sam tries to recreate with his weekly breakfasts with his buddies, and on his regular visits to the SJCC.

Hearing Sam tell it, now is the time for the Jewish community to think creatively about new possibilities. Perhaps some shuls should consider land sharing. But, most importantly for Sam, the community – backed by a creative-thinking real estate developer or two – should consider adding a retirement residence to the property.

Others have been writing in a similar spirit of co-ordination. Although she works at one of Ottawa’s shuls, Marie Levine’s letter to the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin (published December 12, 2011) was written in her capacity as a private individual. She suggested “one spiritual centre encompassing many shuls.” In a letter in the following issue, David Kardish went further, calling for a “community shul on campus."

Looking around our community, it’s a fact that some shuls need to move – whether because they’ve recently sold their site or because they are outgrowing their space – while others have an adequate building but a surplus of land. Still others may wish to contemplate a new location, or a differently-sized building. Some denominations are growing while others are not.

Maybe a synaplex model, in which multiple shuls share some common banquet hall facilities, office staff, and classrooms, but have separate sanctuaries in a hub-spoke model, is the way to go.

Maybe some more informal outdoor recreational aspects could be added, like the basketball court Stephen Fried wrote about in his book, The New Rabbi. For regular post-kiddush pickup basketball games with other congregants and clergy at Philadelphia’s Temple Har Zion, Fried would keep his gym shorts and runners in his bag. In Ottawa winters, an ice rink might be appealing: think Shacharit & shinny.

Perhaps there are others like Sam who feel their specific needs aren’t being met by the current institutional structures. In addition to a retirement residence, maybe shuls should explore some affordable housing, perhaps co-ordinated with the Multifaith Housing Initiative. Maybe clergy housing – designed with the needs of a rabbi or cantor and his or her family in mind – could be envisioned.

Maybe some congregations will consider merging.

In Ottawa, Beth Shalom was, in fact, the product of two congregations which merged in 1956, with a third added 15 years later. Mergers are not easy. The pull of institutional memory can be strong, and compromises sometimes end up appearing to privilege one organization over another. Because of an amalgamation across three synagogues, the Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg – where my parents met, where I had my bat mitzvah, and where I said a final goodbye to my grandmother – was able to retain its building, but had to take on a new name. Winnipeg clearly saw potential for growth in a kind of Eitz Chayim (literally tree of life), a tree of synergy and possibility. But, it surely was with some sense of a fallen limb.

I hope Sam gets his infusion of community. And I hope that as a community we keep getting infusions of creative and caring thinkers like Sam and the many others who are trying to keep the conversation going. Maybe, if Sam’s dream becomes a reality, his weekly Sunday breakfasts will be right after minyan, with a bit of schnapps to chase the eggs and toast.

**A version of this appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

The Real Story Behind Why Temple Israel Decided not to Move to Campus

Temple Israel decision ‘was as much about potlucks as property’

I read the January 27 community advisory from the Jewish Federation of Ottawa about Temple Israel, Ottawa's only Reform synagogue, deciding not to move to the Jewish community campus with both surprise and disappointment. To my mind, the move would have added additional texture and vibrancy to our campus.

The Federation release said “moving to the campus imposed certain limitations, which included leasing, not purchasing, land and thus not having a property to sell in the future should the need arise.” This sounded reasonable enough to me.

But, as I soon learned, there is more to the failed bid than meets the eye. Temple Israel’s decision to pull out was as much about potlucks as property; as much about spiritual values as equity values.

Specifically, Temple Israel’s business plan involves having two kitchens: one under the supervision of the Vaad HaKashrut and another which would be what Temple calls “kosher-style”: no pork products, no shellfish, and no direct mixing of milk and meat.

As I understand it from conversations with Rabbi Steven Garten (Temple Israel's rabbi), the idea was that Temple’s own events – including simchas and the congregation’s monthly potlucks – would be free to use the “kosher-style” kitchen while community events would use the strictly-kosher kitchen.

I also spoke with Mitchell Bellman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa who told me he believes the failed bid hinged on the issue of leasing versus owning. But, as he also acknowledged, “There’s no doubt that the position of the Federation and of the Vaad HaKashrut is that there would be only one kitchen in the Temple building: a kosher one.”

Rabbi Garten told me the idea of two kitchens is central to Temple’s vision, including sharing home-cooked food that congregants warm up in the shul kitchen.

“The majority of Jews in this city do not keep kosher,” said Rabbi Garten. “The Federation has a perspective that keeping the campus kosher is an important statement for them, and we have a perspective that offering people who are participating in the life of the Temple an option. We felt that this was a way of opening the community, rather than keeping it narrowly defined.”

Paul Lyons, co-chair of the Temple Israel Building Renewal and Implementation Committee, echoed this sentiment.

“We would like to provide an institution where people feel comfortable participating, even if they aren’t kosher. They could host a non-kosher wedding or a bar mitzvah, for example,” said Lyons.

“Temple Israel’s vision is that of a big tent where people are free and encouraged to re-affiliate, given that affiliation rates are so low. We want to offer an institution that reflects the plurality of the Ottawa Jewish community,” he added.

While Reform Judaism views many halachic stipulations as not being binding, it is the issue of kashrut that looms large in the historical memory of North American Jewry when it comes to denominational issues.

One cannot think about Reform Judaism and kashrut without reflecting on the infamous Trefa Banquet, an event some historians have identified as paving the way for the founding of the Conservative movement about three decades later.

Held at the Cincinnati Highland House in 1883 to celebrate the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College, the gala honoured various local dignitaries, academics, clergy and professionals. The menu included clams on the half-shell, soft-shell crabs, shrimp, frogs’ legs and other period delicacies. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, president of Hebrew Union College, denied knowing about the menu in advance. But given Rabbi Wise’s apparent lack of contrition after the event, historians are still undecided as to whether this was an underhanded attempt by Wise and his supporters to thumb their nose at traditional Judaism.

But much has changed since then. Whereas classical Reform Judaism rejected kashrut completely, contemporary Reform practice encourages serious study of all the mitzvot, including those surrounding dietary practice. The broad range of Reform perspectives surrounding kashrut is encapsulated well in the recent book, The Sacred Table, which encourages a general mindfulness around eating, and which I reviewed last year in the July 18 issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

Some may feel that having a uniform kosher standard is the ultimate statement of inclusiveness. But Temple Israel’s leadership feels differently.

“Value statements that are offered in the name of inclusivity are also exclusive,” Rabbi Garten stressed.

“There have been regular meetings of five of the congregational rabbis since the late fall,” to discuss various synagogue and community issues, the rabbi added. “It’s fascinating, that in these meetings, people are really comfortable saying ‘what happens in your shul is what happens in your shul.’ Why couldn’t that have been the outcome on the campus?”

All this makes me return to one of my longstanding questions: What, exactly, are our communal values? As Passover, one of those great stocktaking holidays, approaches, I shall float my vision of how we can arrive at a joint values statement for the Jewish community in Ottawa, a statement that I invite everyone to grapple with, to debate and to rewrite and rework. As the debate over the relocation of Temple to the Jewish community campus demonstrates, the time has come.

**A version of this article originally appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin Feb. 20, 2012 issue**

A Sense of Place on Tu B'Shvat

Today is Tu B’shvat, a holiday named quite prosaically for its calendar date. But the theme -- celebrating the trees -- is anything but. For me, the poetry is amplified by Tu B’shvat coinciding with the week of my grandmother’s yahrtzeit.

When we joined a synagogue a few years ago, I made sure to enter my Babba Rosie’s yahrtzeit date in the shul calendar, despite not being considered a primary mourner (a role not typically extended to grandchildren of the deceased). Nevertheless, I cherish coming to shul with my kids so I can recite kaddish in my Babba’s memory, and so they can hear her name read from the bima. Our daughter was named after my Babba Rosie. We celebrated Rory’s first birthday as a tribute to her great-grandmother’s memory: the colour scheme was purple, my Babba’s favourite colour, and recipes came from Eaton’s The Grill Room cookbook. My Babba loved stopping for a bite at The Grill Room in Eaton’s-Portage Avenue after scouring the aisles for the perfect bargain.

Family stories are the stuff of family connection. But hardly anyone else in Ottawa knew my Babba. Sixteen years ago, my husband and I relocated from Vancouver (where I had moved as a teen from Winnipeg) to Washingon, DC and then to Ottawa, where I accepted a faculty position at Carleton University.

Ten years and two kids later, it’s important to us to make roots. It’s important that our kids feel a sense of connection to Ottawa, even if they have to travel thousands of miles to visit their grandparents, aunts, uncles and most of their cousins.

Tu B’shvat is a wonderful opportunity to think about how we make roots, and successfully nurture them. But is it possible to feel rooted in a place that’s not your home town? Does nostalgia, fuelled by time and the physical distance of relocation, obscure a natural feeling of belonging? It’s not always easy, but I think that a sense of day-to-day mindfulness and a regular dose of gratitude can shore up a sense of place.

In Ottawa, my husband and I chose to buy a home in a neighbourhood that has a very conscious sense of place. The Glebe has a marked sense of togetherness and purpose. The grocers, shops and cafes on Bank Street convey a small-town atmosphere, and enthusiastic public schools centered around a vibrant community centre give children a feeling of ownership over their area. Soon after, we helped found a chavurah -- a group of six families that meets monthly to celebrate shabbat and havdalah. Seven years later our group has grown from five kids to twelve. The oldest of the lot recently celebrated her Bat Mitzvah, and we have barely skipped a month in over seven years.

From the time our kids were toddlers, the SJCC had become a second home to us. There, I have found myself drawn to lay leadership positions to support a gathering spot that I think is superb for engendering a sense of community, heritage, and physical and social wellness. Our shul gives our kids yet another important point of contact and community. As they observe my comings and goings, they are also learning that keeping a shul running takes commitment, including serving on committees and training to lead services.

While we often travel to Vancouver for Passover, we make clear to our kids that our home -- with a wide array of friends spanning various generations -- is meant to be a hub of gathering and celebration, even if far from much family, and even if the high holiday season sometimes feels onerous in its intensity and frequency of the festivals. Dragging our sukkah boards and bolts from the garage each fall reminds them that structures can be temporary, but with some effort, they can convey a sense of home and hospitality.

I hope my children grow up feeling a sense of place and belonging in their neighbourhood, in their shul, at the SJCC and of course in their own home. This Tu B’shvat, even though there is hardly a hint of green to be seen in wintry Ottawa, I will be thinking of those stately yet precious artifacts of nature: the trees that surround us and which will sprout leaves in a few short months. I will say kaddish in memory of my Babba Rosie. And I will continue to cultivate a sense of mindfulness and gratitude to help strengthen the young roots that connect my family and I to our community.

**A version of this article appeared in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.