September 17, 2018: The prime minister comes to visit

By Michael Regenstreif

The final production day for an issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is always a busy day. This final production day – Friday, September 7 – was the busiest I can remember. Normally, we go to press sometime between 1 and 3 pm, but today we held off so that we could cover the visit of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the Jewish Community Campus for a pre-Rosh Hashanah event at the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge organized by the Jewish Federation of Ottawa.

Trudeau joined Lodge residents and Ottawa Jewish Community School Grade 3 students as they braided challahs to be donated to the Ottawa Kosher Food Bank and dipped apples in honey as they wished each other a sweet New Year. Trudeau’s 45-minute visit was at 2:30 pm. While many MPs and cabinet ministers have attended events on the Jewish Community Campus over the years, this was, significantly, the first visit ever by a sitting prime minister.

The day before his visit to the Campus, Trudeau told Canadian rabbis in a conference call that the government’s formal apology for the refusal to admit Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the MS St. Louis on June 7, 1939 would be made in the House of Commons on November 7 – just prior to the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Speaking of the prime minister, he is next scheduled to face the voters in a federal election on October 21, 2019.

On August 22, Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), wrote to Chief Electoral Officer of Canada Stéphane Perrault to point out that the scheduled federal election date falls on Shemini Atzeret “which serves as the concluding days of the annual High Holy Day period. Consequently, observant Jews will not avail themselves of the right to vote on that day.”

Since 2007, the Canada Elections Act has specified “the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election” be Canada’s fixed date for federal elections. Strategically, the CIJA letter did not ask for a change of the election date, but noting other Jewish religious days in the weeks leading to the scheduled date, asked that special attention be paid to the scheduling of advance polls “to ensure that Canadian Jews’ right to vote is included.”

Corbyn Update

Last issue, I commented on the situation being faced by the Jewish community in the United Kingdom regarding Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who may well be the U.K.’s next prime minister.

Corbyn has a long history of anti-Israel activity that has included embracing terrorists as “friends.” Increasingly, though, revelations of antisemitism in the party – and in Corbyn’s own history as an anti-Israel activist – have been revealed.

I won’t list all of Corbyn’s transgressions but one that surfaced since my last column was a 2010 speech in which he claimed that Israel controlled speeches made by MPs in the U.K.

MPs, Corbyn said, “all turned up [in parliament] with a pre-prepared script. I’m sure our friend Ron Prosor [then Israeli ambassador to the U.K.] wrote it.”

Also since that last column, important figures including former Labour Party prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the highly regarded former British chief rabbi, have expressed concerns about antisemitism in the party and about Corbyn in particular.

“When people hear the kind of language that has been coming out of Labour, that’s been brought to the surface among Jeremy Corbyn’s earlier speeches, they cannot but feel an existential threat.

“Jews have been in Britain since 1656 – I know of no other occasion in these 362 years when Jews, the majority of our community, are worrying, ‘Is this country safe to bring up our children?’” said Rabbi Sacks in a BBC interview on September 2.

Normally diplomatic, Rabbi Sacks noted that it was the first time in 30 years that he had spoken out about a political party.

We continue to watch the situation in the U.K. with grave concern.

September 3, 2018: What were they thinking?

By Michael Regenstreif

I was recently reminded of “What Was I Thinking,” a clever piece written in the 1990s by New York City singer-songwriter Christine Lavin. In a series of verses, Lavin documents some dumb choices made by various people that lead into a chorus that variously asks, “What was I-he-she thinking?”

The song came to mind when news surfaced about a fashion photo shoot that was held here in Ottawa at the National Holocaust Monument.

On August 12, Montreal-based designer Michèle Beaudoin posted a photo on Instagram of a model at the National Holocaust Monument wearing a rather revealing dress. She credited the model, the makeup artist and the photographer, and promised more photos to come.

The Instragram post was deleted later that same day after several irate people who witnessed the photo shoot contacted the media. Community leaders – including Rabbi Reuven Bulka, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Machzikei Hadas, and Mina Cohen, director of the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship at the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University – spoke out about how absurdly inappropriate it was to do a fashion photo shoot at what must be regarded as a sacred place.

What, indeed, were the designer and her associates thinking? In response to an Ottawa Citizen enquiry, photographer Richard Tardif told the reporter via email, “After further consideration, we decided to end the session and discontinue the project. Also, all material has been deleted.”

That sad incident in Ottawa was not the only inappropriate event related to a Holocaust site that day. Two young Israelis, on a school trip to Poland to learn about the Holocaust, were caught on video dancing naked at the site of the Majdanek concentration camp, where an estimated 78,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

A statement from Israel’s Education Ministry said it views “with great severity any behaviour that could harm the status and values represented by the trips to Poland. In the case in question, due to the students’ improper and inappropriate behavior, disciplinary actions have been taken against them to the fullest.”

Surely, one would think that Jewish students, studying the Holocaust, would know better. What were they thinking?

Corbyn and Trump

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, observers have been attempting to understand the hold that Donald Trump has over his right-wing base. No matter how outrageous, offensive, or even racist Trump’s statements and actions have been, his base has remained fiercely loyal.

Watching the steady stream of revelations about antisemitism in the British Labour Party, particularly as it relates to party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who might well be the United Kingdom’s next prime minister if the polls are correct – one begins to understand the hold that Trump has over his base. Corbyn, whose left-wing populism seems to parallel Trump’s right-wing populism, has a similar hold over his base.

No matter how disturbing the revelations are about Corbyn’s associations with Hamas, Hezbollah or Black September terrorists. No matter the revelation that he has appeared on the Iranian government’s propaganda TV station to denounce the BBC for recognizing Israel’s right to exist. No matter the revelation that his principal secretary advised his supporters not to vote for candidates who have appeared in Jewish newspapers – the list of examples grows longer by the day – Corbyn’s base sticks by him with unwavering loyalty.

In late-July, the United Kingdom’s three Jewish newspapers jointly published front-page editorials declaring that a Corbyn-led government would pose an “existential threat to Jewish life” in their country.

Historically, most British Jews have found a political home in the Labour Party. But, now in 2018, Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said, “It’s like Jeremy Corbyn has declared war on the Jews.”

It is a frightening situation for the Jewish community in the U.K.