October 21, 2020: Is the Trump era about to end?

By Michael Regenstreif

I’ve just reread my “From the Editor” column written exactly four years ago today, and published in the October 31, 2016 edition of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

The subject of that column was the U.S. presidential election, in particular the candidacy of reality TV show star and real estate mogul Donald Trump.

“It’s been like watching a train wreck these last 16 months. Horrifying for too many reasons but impossible to look away from,” I wrote in a column that assumed Hillary Clinton would be elected president.

Even though my assumption that Trump would lose the election in 2016 turned out to be wrong (Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes but Trump won the presidency in the Electoral College), there is much in that column that could have been written today.

“It is astounding that the least qualified candidate (at least in modern times) to ever win a major party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency, a man with no experience in public service (and, apparently, little experience in paying federal taxes), still maintains a base of support of about 40 per cent of the American electorate despite all that he has said and done – and all that has been revealed about him,” I continued.

“As it has become obvious to all that he is losing the election, Trump has ramped up his attacks … most appallingly, on democracy itself.

“Trump has been complaining that the American electoral system has been ‘rigged’ against him and that the only way he can lose the election is if it is rigged. And he absurdly claims the American media has entered into a conspiracy against him,” a claim that Trump continues to echo four years later.

“It is a tradition in Western democracies that when the votes are counted and the winner of an election is determined, the defeated candidate(s) concedes the loss and the government proceeds to an orderly transition of power. But Trump is refusing to say he will concede a loss; only that he will accept the result if he wins,” a refusal he has repeated again in 2020.

“And, as a candidate for the most important office in the world, he has shown almost no real understanding of the myriad important issues he would face on both domestic and international fronts,” I concluded four years ago.

And while I was appalled at Trump’s attacks on democracy during his first presidential campaign (and again in this one), his attacks on democratic norms and institutions have been unrelenting during his time in office. Just a few of many examples include his vicious and baseless attacks on the mainstream media, and on people ranging from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to his Democratic opponents, former vice-president Joe Biden (who Trump says is the head of a “crime family”) and Senator Kamala Harris (who he calls a “monster”). On the world stage, Trump has repeatedly attacked the leaders of allied democracies while praising some of the world’s most brutal dictators, and he has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Accords during the global climate-change crisis, and from the World Health Organization during COVID-19 pandemic, the worst worldwide health crisis in a century.

Speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s policies have been a major factor in the United States having 20 per cent of the cases and 20 per cent of the deaths around the world despite having just four per cent of the world’s population; and even led to his own COVID case and many cases among his family, staff, inner circle and followers due to his lax masking and distancing behaviour, and his hosting of super-spreader events at the White House and on the campaign trail. Still, despite COVID striking literally in his own home as cases of the disease continue to spike higher and higher, he continues to claim the pandemic is all but over – thanks to him.

According to a new poll released earlier this week by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the vast majority of American Jews, 75 per cent, are set to vote (or have already voted) for Biden over Trump at 22 per cent – and that is not withstanding the fact that Trump has attempted to make Israel a wedge issue in the campaign stating that Jews who do not vote for him are disloyal to Israel.

“I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat – it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump said in remarks to the press in the Oval Office last year. He has also told American Jews that Benjamin Netanyahu is “your prime minister.”

Despite actions including moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and helping to broker diplomatic relations between Israel and two Arab Gulf states, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, a majority of Jewish voters (54 per cent to 42 per cent) indicated in the AJC poll that Biden would be better than Trump at strengthening U.S.-Israel relations.

As well, according to the AJC poll, the same proportion of Jewish voters (75 per cent to 22 per cent) that would vote for Biden over Trump also said Biden would better handle antisemitism than Trump.

Antisemitic incidents in the United States have increased greatly with perpetrators of hatred emboldened by the atmosphere Trump has, knowingly or unknowingly, seemed to encourage. These have included the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018 in which 11 Jews were murdered and six more wounded, and the Poway synagogue mass shooting in which one Jew was murdered and three others, including the synagogue’s rabbi, were wounded. Memories of Trump’s initial description of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people” after their chilling chants of “Jews will not replace us” remain strong for American Jews; as do his recent refusals to condemn the followers of QAnon, a discredited far-right conspiracy theory movement that incorporates old antisemitic tropes among its beliefs.

So, is the Trump era about to end? Two weeks before the American election in 2016, the polls indicated a Clinton victory over Trump and now, two weeks before the 2020 election, polls indicate a Biden victory. Looking deeper at the polling, particularly in the swing states that Trump won by tiny margins four years ago, I suspect the ultimate result this time will be different than it was last time.

September 16, 2020: A Rosh Hashanah like no other

By Michael Regenstreif

With the arrival of Rosh Hashanah on Friday evening, we are completing an old year and beginning a new year in what has, and what continues to be, among the most challenging times that most of us have ever experienced.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is a vastly different place than it was last Rosh Hashanah. Our day-to-day lives have been upended by months of lockdown and restrictions, by too much illness, and by too much grief over the much too many lives lost to the virus.

A year ago, none of us knew that our everyday protocols would be so different. We wear masks to cover our noses and mouths, and we maintain tiny social bubbles. For more than six months, those of us who can do so have been working from home. The final three months of the last schoolyear were done online and the new schoolyear is taking place with previously unheard-of precautions and restrictions for many students and continues online for others. As an arts lover, I haven’t been to a theatre or concert venue in more than a half-year (and who knows when I next will) and sports fans haven’t been to arenas or stadiums to cheer their favourite teams in that same time. And those examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what is different.

As I write, in mid-September, the number of COVID-19 cases is rising at worrisome levels in Ottawa, in Ontario, and in Canada – and at shockingly alarming levels in many parts of the United States.

The COVID-19 situation in Israel has become so bad that Israelis will spend the High Holy Days period in a new lockdown due to the prevalence of new cases there. Israel, with a total population 60 per cent the size of Ontario’s, had 5,523 newly confirmed cases on September 15. By contrast, here in Ontario, we had 251 newly confirmed cases that same day – and we’re rightfully concerned about that.

In Ottawa’s Jewish community, agencies charged with caring for our most vulnerable – including Hillel Lodge, Tamir, Jewish Family Services and the Ottawa Kosher Food Bank – have done stellar jobs of caring for their clients in crisis circumstances these past six months and, I’ve no doubt, will continue to do so until the pandemic ends. These agencies and so many others in our community, receive crucially important financial support from the Jewish Federation of Ottawa Annual Campaign, which is now underway. Click here to see the 2021 Annual Campaign video.

It’s now been six months since the pandemic forced us to suspend the print edition of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin and we’ve received many phone calls and emails from loyal subscribers asking when we’ll be back in print. The answer is we don’t know yet. We will return as soon as possible – all subscriptions will be extended for the number of issues we missed printing – and in the meantime we will continue to publish new articles and columns here on our website. There is new content almost every business day, so do check back often. We announce all new articles and columns on social media, so like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

Typically, the High Holy Days mean our congregations are filled to capacity and many of us enjoy large gatherings of family and friends. This year is very different with some congregations holding services with limited attendance while others have moved their services to online platforms, and many family gatherings are much smaller than usual. Hopefully, by next year, we’ll be able to enjoy the holidays again as we would like to.

So, please stay safe and well in these challenging times.

Shana Tova Umetuka.

May 14, 2020: Three people I knew have been lost to COVID-19

By Michael Regenstreif

The past two months have been difficult on all of us. Our regular day-to-day lives have blurred to memory as we endure social distance and isolation – what I’ve come to call “house arrest” – in our necessary efforts defeat, or at least flatten the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So many of my regular activities – like going to work at the office, exercising in the Soloway Jewish Community Centre gym, seeing friends, attending concerts at the National Arts Centre, eating out at favourite restaurants, etc. – have been on hold these last 63 days with who-knows-how-long-still-to go.

As I mentioned in my April 24 column, it has been particularly hard for me not being able to visit my mother in Montreal. Aside from regular visits, we’ve already missed being with her on several special days – including Passover seder nights and Mother’s Day – and we’ll miss being with her next week to celebrate her 92nd birthday.

The sheer numbers of people we have lost to the pandemic have been devastating and nothing personalizes it more than learning of the death of someone you know. In my last column, I mentioned that three people I knew in the U.S. had died of the virus. These were vital, brilliant people who I knew through my lifelong involvement in the folk music scene. All were people I first met in the 1970s. I’d like to tell you a little bit about them.

I met Hal Willner, the son of a Holocaust survivor, backstage at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1977. We knew a lot of the same people and quickly became friends over shared musical interests. Hal was just beginning his career as a record producer and he would eventually earn a well-deserved reputation for conceiving and producing a series of brilliant multi-artist concept albums as “Stay Awake,” featuring artists like Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt and Ringo Starr performing sometimes strange but wonderful versions of songs from old Walt Disney movies; “Rogues Gallery,” featuring equally strange but wonderful versions of traditional sea chanteys by famous and obscure rock stars and folk singers; and wonderful tribute albums to the likes of Fellini film composer Nino Rota, jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, folk music collector Harry Smith, and Leonard Cohen, among others.

Hal also worked at Saturday Night Live producing the background music used on the show’s comedy sketches, a job he’s had since 1980. Hal died on April 7 in New York City, the day after he turned 64.

As some may know, I host a folk music program once every four weeks on CKCU, the community radio station based at Carleton University. For many years, before I moved to Ottawa, I hosted a similar weekly show in Montreal on CKUT, the community station at McGill. It was on visits to Gene Shay’s folk radio program in Philadelphia in the 1970s that the seeds of my wanting to do my own show were planted.

I spent quite a bit of time in Philadelphia between 1977 and 1982 and one of the first people I met there was Ivan Shaner – better known as Gene Shay – an advertising executive who had begun hosting a weekly folk music show on Philadelphia radio in the early-1960s. Also, in the early-‘60s, he co-founded the Philadelphia Folk Festival, still one of the most important folk festivals in the U.S., and was its main-stage MC.

I became reacquainted with Gene in the 1990s. By then I was also hosting folk music radio programs and we would see each other often at folk music conferences. In fact, Gene and I were on several panels together at conferences and also kept in touch via email. Until he retired in 2015, Gene was one of the deans of folk music radio in North America and a mentor to me and to many other folk music radio hosts around the world.

“Everybody focuses on Gene Shay, but I would love it if somebody would focus on Ivan Shaner, the man. Because he was the most wonderful, supporting, loving father who was always, always there for me,” one of his daughters told the Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia’s Jewish newspaper. Gene was 85 when he died on April 17.

Finally, there was John Prine, a legendary singer-songwriter who began performing in Chicago folk clubs while still working as a mailman in the late-1960s.

I only met John a few times over the years. I got to hang out with him a couple of times and saw him do a few concerts. I also interviewed him a couple of times – once for radio and once for the Montreal Gazette.

I was introduced to John backstage when he came to perform in Montreal for the first time in 2001 and mentioned that we’d met once before, about 25 years earlier. John looked me up and down and said something like, “Oh yeah, Steve Goodman introduced us at Mariposa.” He was absolutely correct. (I already knew Steve, another legendary folk singer from Chicago, who was John’s closest friend. Steve died of leukemia at age 36 in 1984.)

When my wife Sylvie and I were on vacation in Florida in December, John was doing a concert nearby at Ruth Ekerd Hall in Clearwater and we went to see him. It was a fabulous show but I didn’t try and go backstage to say hello because I knew that John was scheduled to be at the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa this coming July, that it would be easier to connect then. But that was before this horrible pandemic hit. John – who had survived two bouts with cancer – was 73 when he died on April 7.

Many thousands of people have been lost to COVID-19 – but knowing even just one of them personalizes the terrible toll this disease has taken. Condolences to all who have lost family or friends.