November 24, 2014: New film explains connections between Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel

By Michael Regenstreif

One of the ugliest aspects of the movement to delegitimize the State of Israel is the denial of the deep historical and religious connections of Judaism and the Jewish people to the Holy Land – a denial that also seems to be at the root of the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the nation-state of the Jewish people. The late Palestinian Authority (PA) president Yasser Arafat, for example, rejected the historical existence of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, a deceit that seems to remain as PA policy.

American filmmaker Gloria Greenfield has responded brilliantly to this effort at delegitimization with Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation, a documentary in which 36 talking heads – including academic, religious and legal experts – explain the ongoing centrality of the Land of Israel, and of Jerusalem, to Judaism and the Jewish people, the constant presence of Jewish people there from ancient biblical times to the present, and the legal case for the modern state.

Earlier this month, I attended the Canadian premiere of Body and Soul, presented by the Free Thinking Film Society at the Library and Archives Canada auditorium – an evening that also included a question-and-answer period with Greenfield and Rabbi Reuven Bulka.

Although there is little in Body and Soul that will surprise anyone who has studied Jewish history seriously, the commentaries are fascinating. Among those interviewed in the film are such religious experts as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, and Rabbi Jeffrey Woolf, an authority on the relationships between Judaism, Christianity and Islam; renowned academics, including historian Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University and Robert S. Wistrich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, probably the world’s leading expert on antisemitism; and legal experts, including MP Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice of Canada, renowned Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, and Alan Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada.

The evidence these and the other experts in the film cite – including religious texts, archeology and historical records – is compelling, and Greenfield has woven all of the various strands and commentaries together beautifully in the 65-minute presentation. This is a film I strongly encourage all in the community to see at the earliest opportunity. It seems to me this is a film that should be shown at schools, synagogues and community centres. It is also available on DVD. Visit www.bodyandsoulthemovie.com for more information about the film and to view the trailer.

Mazel Tov, Harvey Glatt!

As some know, I have long been active in the Canadian folk music scene. So, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I extend a hearty mazel tov to community member Harvey Glatt, who will receive the Unsung Hero Award at the 2014 Canadian Folk Music Awards ceremony on Saturday night, November 29. The annual event moves from city to city and region to region around the country and takes place this year at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa.

The Unsung Hero Award is presented in recognition of “the exceptional contribution of an individual, group or organization to any aspect of the Canadian folk music scene.”

That Ottawa, today, boasts one of the most active folk music scenes in Canada is, in many ways, due to Harvey’s pioneering efforts as a concert producer, artist manager, record store owner and radio station owner. For many decades, he, along with his wife Louise, has been one of Ottawa’s most important and influential patrons of the arts. Their patronage, I would add, is equally significant in the folk, classical and jazz worlds, and in the theatre scene, too.

There are three major awards of this type on the Canadian folk scene, and, with the Unsung Hero Award, Harvey will have received all three. Just last month, he received Folk Music Ontario’s Estelle Klein Award, which is presented annually for “significant contributions to Ontario’s folk music community,” and he was the 2010 recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival’s Helen Verger Award, which is presented annually to “an individual who has made significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada.”

August 17, 2009: The Diab affair at Carleton should never have happened

By Michael Regenstreif

It was a shocking act of terrorism, almost three decades ago in Paris, when a powerful bomb, hidden in motorcycle saddlebags, was detonated, allegedly by the Special Operations cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in front of the Rue Copernic Synagogue.

Four people – three French men and one Israeli woman – were killed and about 40 others were injured. It was Erev Simchat Torah and the toll would almost surely have been much worse had the explosion come a few minutes later as congregants exited the shul after services.

Ottawans were shocked last November, when Hassan Diab, a part-time sociology professor at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, and a dual Lebanese and Canadian citizen, was arrested by the RCMP, accused by French authorities of perpetrating the heinous act.

Diab – who proclaims his innocence – was jailed until bail was granted under strict conditions in late-March. In January, he will face an extradition hearing to determine if he’ll have to return to France to face trial.

No one expected to hear much about Diab until the extradition hearing. But, then, late last month, news broke that Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology had hired Diab to teach introductory sociology to summer students beginning July 28.

The university should have anticipated the controversy that would result from hiring an alleged terrorist. As the Ottawa Citizen said in an editorial published July 31, “If he stood accused of sexual harassment you can bet no sociology department would ever have anything to do with him, but trying to kill Jews? Hey, it was a long time ago.”

Diab spent one day in the classroom before Carleton cancelled his contract and replaced him with another professor.

Just as predictable as the controversy of hiring Diab was the reaction of some of his colleagues to his firing. Thirty members of Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology signed an op-ed piece in the Citizen demanding his reinstatement, painting his dismissal as post-9/11 injustice and discrimination.

The French case is strong enough that Canadian authorities arrested Diab, jailed him for several months pending a bail hearing, then released him under the very strict bail conditions until the extradition hearing, which was determined to be justified.

Diab has not been convicted of the crimes to which he stands accused and must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. And, if he’s cleared of the charges, they should not be held against him. But that doesn’t mean he should be teaching first year undergrads – or PhD students for that matter – while standing accused of terrorism and multiple murders.

Intro to sociology is a course that can be taught by any sociology faculty member, and probably by most grad students in the department. Carleton did not owe this course to Diab. This entire episode, so predictable from start to finish, should not have happened.

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Twice since I’ve been at the Bulletin, I’ve done interviews with highly placed Israelis who spoke about the openness of Israeli society to its gay and lesbian community, of how Israel was unique among all Middle Eastern countries in this regard.

When I interviewed then-ambassador Alan Baker in April last year for our special Israel @ 60 supplement, he talked about that Israeli openness and pointed out that there were even Palestinian gays and lesbians who have sought asylum in Israel from the discrimination they faced in their own society.

Earlier this summer, retired-Admiral Abraham Ben-Shoshan, who now heads the Tel Aviv Foundation, visited the Bulletin office to talk about the city of Tel Aviv and the foundation. Ben-Shoshan mentioned the city’s live-and-let-live attitude, its openness to gay culture and such events as its very popular gay pride parade.

Sadly, that live-and-let-live attitude was put to the test early this month when a disguised gunman in Tel Aviv entered a community centre support group meeting for gay teenagers and sprayed the room with machine gun fire murdering two people and wounding five others.

Israelis were shocked by what is widely believed to be a hate-crime. To his credit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unequivocal in his statement that it was a “terrorist act,” that he rejected such “gratuitous hatred” and that the gay community in Israel had special needs that should be met with openness and sensitivity.