May 11, 2009: The Jewish Federation of Ottawa at 75

By Michael Regenstreif

Since arriving in Ottawa in 2007 to work at the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, I’ve spent my working days – and many of my evenings – immersed in the ongoing activities of the city’s diverse Jewish community. I’ve attended events, written articles and edited many more. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and get to know many of the great volunteers, lay leaders and professionals who make the Jewish community of Ottawa the dynamic community it is.

Working on a newspaper generally means your focus is almost always squarely on the present, the recent past and the immediate future. On a daily newspaper that means yesterday, today and, maybe, the next couple of days. On a community paper like the Bulletin, it’s the past couple of weeks, this week and what might be coming up in the next few weeks.

Every time I have a conversation with someone in the community, certainly every time I do an interview or attend an event, every time I do some research for an article I’m writing, or verify facts in an article I’m editing, I learn something new about this community. For the most part, though, I’ve been learning about the contemporary community and the relatively recent past.

But, while we’ve worked on this issue’s special section marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Community Council of Ottawa/Vaad Ha’Ir, the community’s umbrella organization now known as the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much about the history of the Vaad and Federation, about the history of Ottawa’s Jewish community and about so many of the people who have contributed to making this community what it is – from the visionary leaders who founded the Vaad 75 years ago to the 75 contemporary volunteers whose contributions are noted in the special section and who will be honoured on Wednesday, May 20 when the Federation officially marks the 75th anniversary.

Following the timeline of the Vaad and Federation, reading the articles about the history of the organization and about some of its major figures over the years has been fascinating. The Hy Hochberg Community Boardroom is down the hall from the Bulletin office in the Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building. I’ve attended many meetings in that boardroom without really knowing very much about Hy Hochberg and how important a figure he was to the Vaad and to Ottawa’s Jewish community. I now know much more about him and about so many of the other people so important to our community’s history.

It may take a couple of years of finding a few extra minutes at a time, but I’m going to go back and slowly work my way through the 70 years of Ottawa Jewish Bulletins that were published before I arrived. I’m going to do that partly because my interest in learning more about the history of the Ottawa Jewish community has been piqued, and partly because I’m already anticipating the 75th anniversary of the Bulletin coming up in 2012.

Today’s Jewish Federation of Ottawa is the central communal organization of a community that is religiously and culturally diverse. And, while there is so much diversity in the community and while so many people work on so many different aspects of Jewish life in Ottawa, the Federation is at the heart and soul of Ottawa’s Jewish public collectivity.

Planning for the special section marking the 75th anniversary of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa started several months ago when we began discussing the very idea of a special section and what it should include. A tremendous amount of work was involved in pulling it all together and I’d like to give my special thanks to a number of people who worked many extra hours above and beyond their normal calls of duty. From the Bulletin staff, Business Manager Rhoda Saslove-Miller sold the advertising that made the special section possible, while Production Manager Brenda Van Vliet did great work setting up and laying out the section and designing the ads that did not come in camera-ready.

Kristina Yovcheva, the Federation’s graphics and web co-ordinator, did a fabulous job designing the section cover and the timeline. Laurie Dougherty of the Ottawa Jewish Archives verified the historical data and found the photos from decades past. Laurie and Cynthia Engel researched and wrote the articles and Benita Siemiatycki of the Jewish Ottawa InfoCentre compiled the volunteer biographies.

And working with us through the entire process were Federation President Mitchell Bellman and Communications Director Francie Greenspoon.

Thanks to all involved.

August 25, 2008: One of the worst hate-sites on the Internet is Jewish

By Michael Regenstreif

Much has been made in recent years about efforts to stop the spread of hatred on the Internet. We’ve had articles in the Bulletin, for example, about Richard Warman, an Ottawa-based lawyer and activist who has been successful in having a number of antisemitic hate-sites on the World Wide Web shut down.

One of the vilest hate-filled sites I’ve come across recently is actually a Jewish site located at masada2000.org. The site, which refers to all Arabs as “a cancer” who should be removed from Israel and from the territories – which it considers to be part of Israel – is run by followers of the late Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn rabbi who founded the extremist Jewish Defense League in New York in 1968 before moving to Israel where he formed the Kach political party.

Kahane ran for election to the Knesset as leader of Kach in 1976 and 1980, but failed to win enough votes for even one seat. In the 1984 election, Kach finally garnered enough votes for that single seat and Kahane became an MK. Over the next four years, Kahane’s racist rhetoric so offended most Israelis that he was banned from running in the 1988 election and Kach was outlawed. Kahane, who was jailed several times in both the United States and Israel for his activities, met his end in 1990 when he was murdered in New York City following a speech.

Although Kahane was killed, his movement has survived on the fringes of Israeli and Diaspora societies. Baruch Goldstein, the American-born doctor who massacred Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron in 1994, was a follower of Kahane. So, too, was Yigal Amir, the Israeli assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. Both Goldstein and Amir are regarded as heroes by Kahane’s followers. Since the mid-1990s, both Kach and its offshoot, Kahane Chai, have been designated by both Israel and the United States as terrorist organizations.

One of the most despicable sections of masada2000 is something called the Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening List. You can figure out the acronym the site likes to use for itself from the capitalized letters in its name.

The list, more than 7,000 names in length, is McCarthyesque in the way it designates “self-hating” Jews. Virtually every leftist you’ve ever heard of is on the list. Names you’d expect like Norman G. Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. But one need not be anti-Zionist like Finkelstein or Chomsky to be on the list. It overflows with the names of prominent Zionist Jews, including many North American rabbis and Israeli politicians, who are listed because they have advocated peacemaking with the Arabs. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel and a former prime minister is on the list. So is Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister. Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, a former deputy minister of defence and the daughter of Yitzhak Rabin, is there. So is Yuval Rabin, her brother.

Thomas Friedman, the astute New York Times op-ed columnist is on the list along with several Canadians including Rabbi Dow Marmur, rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and Victor Goldbloom, the first Jewish cabinet minister in Quebec, a former federal commissioner of official languages and the current Quebec regional president of Canadian Jewish Congress.

And if it weren’t enough to be slandered as a self-hating Jew just by having one’s name on the list, many of the entries are annotated with disgustingly racist and/or homophobic commentaries.

The whole masada2000 site is shameful. What it truly exposes is the Kahanists themselves. They are Jews with a philosophy as ugly as the Ku Klux Klan’s.

* * * * * *

I’m very excited about Mira Sucharov’s new column – Values, Ethics, Community – making its debut in this issue of the Bulletin. Mira, an associate professor of political science at Carleton University, has lately been one of our book reviewers and was assigned to review a collection of essays for this issue called Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice. Her review – which is on page 28 – gives us much to think about as a community, as segments of the community, and as individuals. I invited Mira to use the review as a starting point for a new Bulletin column. She accepted and her initial column appears opposite the review.

There is no one way to respond to most, if not all, of the issues, questions and concerns that Mira raises, and will raise, in this and future editions of the Bulletin. While we’re always open to letters about anything that appears in our pages, we’re particularly interested in your response to the issues Mira will be raising. E-mail is the best way to send your letters. My address is mregenstreif@ ottawajewishbulletin.com.

Another new feature we’re beginning in this issue of the Bulletin is a series of community volunteer profiles being written by Benita Siemiatycki of the Jewish Ottawa InfoCentre.

Finally, this edition of the Bulletin marks the final appearance of Saul Silverman’s Global Shtetl column. For the past eight years Saul’s column has explored the often-fascinating Jewish Internet. On behalf of everyone at the Bulletin, I’d like to express our deep appreciation to Saul for his columns and insights as we continue to learn our way around the global shtetl the Internet has turned our world into.