June 30, 2014: City Hall exhibit portrayed terrorists as ‘artists, activists, writers and leaders’

By Michael Regenstreif

By now, Invisible, the multi-media exhibit by Palestinian-Canadian artist Rehab Nazzal, has come and gone from the City of Ottawa’s Karsh-Masson Gallery at City Hall.

The exhibit was an installation that included a wall of photographs and several film clips, including one without sound and another that was just a soundtrack with no visuals other than subtitles, all meant to convey the artist’s interpretation of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation or of the brutality faced by Palestinians prisoners in a Negev prison during a military raid.

Most controversially, the exhibit also included “Target,” a slide show of quickly changing names and faces, which the exhibit brochure explains “are portraits of lost artists, activists, writers and leaders.”

While the whole exhibit could easily be interpreted as propaganda art meant to paint all Palestinians as innocent victims, it is the slide show that led Israeli Ambassador Rafael Barak to speak out, and for such organizations as the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the Canadian Coalition Against Terror (an alliance that includes a variety of Muslim, Christian, multicultural and other concerned organizations), as well as many individuals, including parliamentarians, to ask the City of Ottawa to remove the exhibit.

Looking at the slide show – I spent a morning at the gallery examining all facets of the exhibit – it seems obvious that Nazzal was portraying these so-called “artists, activists, writers and leaders” as innocent martyrs killed by Israel.

The fact of the matter is that these are portraits of people responsible for some of the most heinous acts of terrorism. Two of them, as Federation Chair Steven Kimmel and President and CEO Andrea Freedman pointed out in a letter published in the Ottawa Citizen on June 19, were Abu Iyad, the leader of Black September, who was responsible for several major terror operations, including the massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich in which 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer were murdered; and Dalal Mughrabi, who led the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 in which 38 people, including 13 children, were murdered.

Another, Khalid Nazzal, the artist’s brother, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was responsible for multiple acts of terrorism, most notoriously the Ma’alot massacre of 1974 in which 25 people, including 22 children, were killed and another 68 injured.

There are many other examples of terrorists who are memorialized in the slide show, too many to name here.

Mayor Jim Watson, in refusing to remove the exhibit from the City Hall gallery, cited the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and said “the artwork and the artist herself benefit from the Charter protection of freedom of expression,” and removing the exhibit “would constitute an infringement on the artist’s right to freedom of expression.”

However, as Kimmel and Freedman pointed out in their letter, the Charter clearly states that the rights and freedoms it delineates are subject to reasonable limits.

The City’s response to the controversy was to post a sign at the galley entrance explaining that its exhibits are “selected by an independent professional arts jury” and that “points of view or comments conveyed … do not represent those of the City of Ottawa.”

Now, while it is entirely appropriate that selections for public galleries be made by juries at arm’s length from government, I know, having sat on arts juries (specifically music juries, not visual arts), that such juries also operate within clearly defined guidelines. There are boundaries that should not be crossed and juries need to be aware of them and to act responsibly in their decisions.

And such boundaries have nothing to do with Charter freedoms.

Freedom of the press, for example, does not mean that anyone is free to say what they want in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. It means that we have the freedom to set the boundaries of what gets said in our newspaper. Similarly, the City of Ottawa needs to set boundaries as to what may be exhibited in its gallery.

July 22, 2013: Academic collaborations and the arts are ways to find solutions

By Michael Regenstreif

In my May 20 column, I noted that Stephen Hawking, the renowned British physicist, cancelled his participation in the Israeli Presidential Conference and endorsed the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, BDS tactics are counter-productive to a search for peace and the achievement of the two-state solution. The BDS movement is aimed at the delegitimization of Israel and only serves to harden attitudes and drive the parties further apart.

Hawking’s was probably the highest profile endorsement the BDS movement has had since rock artist Elvis Costello cancelled a concert in Israel three years ago.

In fact, when I read Hawking’s announcement that he was cancelling his June trip to Israel, I was reminded of Costello’s announcement in 2010. Neither Hawking nor Costello had strong enough convictions that they rejected their invitations to go to Israel. Hawking, who has been to Israel several times before, had accepted Israeli President Shimon Peres’ invitation to the conference months before. Likewise, Costello had accepted the booking to play two concerts in Israel. But both cited implicit or explicit pressure to cancel their trips to Israel.

When Costello caved to that pressure, he said “merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung,” suggesting that performing in Israel might be interpreted as support for current Israeli government policy.

That’s a ridiculous leap of logic. If Costello wanted to advocate for peace, he should have gone to Israel and done that.

Virtually every major artist who accepts a booking in Israel faces the same pressure Costello did. Many of them, though, reject it. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Diana Krall – who is married to Costello – are just a few of the artists who have since stood up to the BDS movement and performed in Israel.

Likewise, many academics have rejected the pressure Hawking caved in to. This month, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, which represents 97 institutions of higher learning in this country, signed a major agreement with the Association of University Heads of Israel to “work together in order to facilitate, promote and support international research collaboration between Israeli and Canadian universities.”

Academic collaborations and the arts are ways forward to finding solutions.

Rabbi Bulka honoured

A hearty Mazel Tov to Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka, whose legendary volunteerism and leadership, in our community and beyond, was recognized in a June 28 announcement from the Governor General’s office that he had been named a member of the Order of Canada “for his dedicated service to the community, notably in promoting interfaith dialogue, health and humanitarian causes.”

As Jewish Federation of Ottawa Chair Steven Kimmel noted, “Rabbi Bulka’s enormous dedication, enthusiasm and hard work, not only as rabbi of Congregation Machzikei Hadas, but also on behalf of the entire Ottawa Jewish community, Canada and Israel, have been tremendous. This special recognition is much deserved.”

KlezKanada

Another hearty Mazel Tov is due to KlezKanada, my favourite annual Jewish cultural event, which is celebrating its Chai anniversary from August 19 to 25.

Founded in 1996, KlezKanada is a wonderful, week-long celebration of Jewish culture that takes place every August at (Montreal’s) Camp B’nai Brith in the Laurentians near Ste. Agathe, about a two-hour drive from Ottawa.

Every year, hundreds of people of all ages attend KlezKanada in order to learn from a faculty composed of some of the best klezmer musicians in the world. Over the years, KlezKanada has expanded from its original vision to include many other forms of Jewish music as well as other Jewish cultural pursuits such as dance, theatre, visual arts, poetry, and film.

One of KlezKanada’s biggest success stories is Ottawa/Chelsea favourite son Josh Dolgin, who began performing Jewish music after attending KlezKanada. Known professionally as Socalled, Dolgin is now one of the world’s leading lights in Jewish music and is widely acclaimed for his highly original fusion of klezmer, funk and hip-hop music. The Socalled Band will be headlining the KlezKanada Groyser concert on the evening of Wednesday, August 21, an event that is open to the public.

I’ve attended several of the Groyser concerts in past years, and they are always a marvellous celebration of Jewish music. There are dinner-concert and concert-only tickets available.

Although most attend KlezKanada for the full week, this year, day passes are available for certain days.

Visit klezkanada.org for more information on KlezKanada and the possible ways you can participate.

February 6, 2012: Core community issues like Jewish education need to be addressed by every succeeding generation

By Michael Regenstreif

Last year in this space in our May 30 issue, I mentioned my attendance at the follow-up session to April’s openOttawa symposium, the initiative aimed at engaging Ottawa’s young Jewish adults with the community and providing assistance to the 20- to 35-year-old demographic group in their quest to find new ways to express themselves Jewishly that are relevant to them.

I mentioned that I couldn’t help but be reminded of how similar the discussion was – minus, perhaps, the Facebook, Twitter and website references – to discussions I was party to in Montreal during the 1970s and ‘80s when I was in that age group. I also noted that mine was hardly the first generation to have had such discussions.

Expressions like “the more things change, the more they stay the same” and “everything old is new again” become clichés because there’s a ring of truth to them.

I was reminded of that when I read the editorial, “Educating The Next Man’s Children,” which appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin 71 years ago this week in the issue of February 7, 1941.

The piece is about the importance of Jewish education to Jewish continuity and is an appeal to parents in Ottawa’s Jewish community to send their children to Jewish schools. Variations on the thinking expressed in that editorial more than seven decades ago are at the heart of the arguments on behalf of Jewish education in Ottawa made by today’s educators and community leaders.

Jewish education and ensuring the present and future viability of both day schools and supplementary schools are a high priority for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa in the face of declining enrolment over a period of many years. Witness both the Federation Report by Steven Kimmel and the From the Pulpit column by Rabbi Howard Finkelstein on the opposite page.

Ottawa’s Jewish schools of 71 years ago faced some of the same challenges faced by today’s schools. Some of the grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Jewish school students – and potential students – were likely objects of that 1941 appeal. I suspect today’s students will see similar appeals aimed at their grandchildren and great-grandchildren many decades from now.

Revitalizing and redefining Jewish life has always been the job of each succeeding generation and part of that process has been ensuring that Jewish education remains both relevant to contemporary times and true to its traditions. The community leaders and Jewish educators understood that in 1941; today’s community leaders and Jewish educators understand that even more.