June 15, 2009: Women are increasingly assuming top communal leadership roles

By Michael Regenstreif

The position of chair of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – or president of the Vaad Ha’Ir as it was known from 1934 until 2005 – is the pinnacle of lay leadership in the Jewish community of Ottawa. This month, Donna Dolansky became the 34th person in the Federation’s 75-year history to rise to that esteemed position.

A long record of accomplishment as a seemingly tireless volunteer and community leader is something that Donna has in common with her 33 consummate predecessors. Same gender, though, is something she shares with only two: Maureen Molot, who was Vaad president from 1991 to 1993; and Barbara Farber, who served from 1997 to 1999. The position has been a male bastion for 71 of the past 75 years.

The fact that almost all past presidents and chairs have been men is not unusual. Look at most Jewish communities and you’ll see that almost all, if not all, of their leadership positions have been male bastions for most of their histories too. With the exception of organizations that are specifically for women, it is only in recent decades that we’ve seen women realizing the top leadership roles in Federations and major organizations.

It’s also worth noting that, for the first time in this Federation’s history, both the chair, Donna Dolansky, and the vice-chair, Debbie Halton-Weiss, are women.

Like many other Jewish communities, ours has been evolving. Where it was once unheard of for women to attain such top leadership positions, they now do. And, while it is still a rare enough occurrence that we take note when a woman attains a position like Federation chair, it is becoming more commonplace. In another generation or so, we won’t.

Something else worth noting is that, this year, again for the first time, all three recipients of the community’s annual awards are women. At the Federation’s annual general meeting this month, Ingrid Levitz received the Gilbert Greenberg Distinguished Service Award, Estelle Gunner received the Shem Tov Community Volunteer Award, and Jennifer Kardash received the Freiman Family Young Leadership Award.

Although women in the top leadership positions may still be somewhat novel, women – as exemplified by Ingrid, Estelle and Jennifer – have long been at the forefront of community volunteerism. When the Federation celebrated its 75th anniversary last month by honouring 75 of our most accomplished volunteers, 45 of them – a significant majority of 60 per cent – were women.

* * * * * * * * * *

The non-Orthodox rabbinate is another area that has been opening up to women in the almost-four decades since the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1972. Women rabbis are now well accepted in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements.

There was an interesting item on the JTA wire recently about Sara Hurwitz, an Orthodox woman who had completed the studies needed to become an Orthodox rabbi. She studied under the guidance of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the director of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, an Orthodox yeshiva for men.

Instead of ‘rabbi,’ though, she was given a new title, maharat – an acronym for Manhigah Hilkhatit Ruhanit Toranit (spiritual, halachic and Torah leader). In other words, she is a rabbi in everything but name.

The JTA article went on to say that Rabbi Weiss and Maharat Hurwitz were founding a new school, Yeshivat Maharat, to train Orthodox women as maharats.

Will the very concept of women as clergy, even if they’re not called ‘rabbis,’ be accepted in Orthodox circles?

* * * * * * * * * *

In the April 27 Bulletin, we reported on the 2008 audit of antisemitic incidents in Canada from B’nai Brith Canada (BBC). There were, BBC reported, 1,135 reported incidents of antisemitism in Canada last year, a rise of 8.9 per cent from 2007. The number of antisemitic incidents in Canada, according to BBC, has risen every year but one over the past decade.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the United States has just released its own audit of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., a country whose population is about 10 times that of ours. The ADL reports there were 1,352 antisemitic incidents in the entire United States in 2008, a decline of seven per cent from 2007. It was the fourth consecutive year in which the ADL has reported a decline in antisemitic incidents in the United States.

Can it really be possible that, proportionately, Canadians are about 10 times more likely to commit antisemitic incidents than Americans?

Or, is it possible that B’nai Brith Canada and the Anti-Defamation League have very different approaches about how or when to define an incident as antisemitic?

May 25, 2009: Churchill’s ‘Seven Jewish Children’ is on the way to Ottawa

By Michael Regenstreif

Over the past few weeks, a number of Bulletin readers have been mentioning Seven Jewish Children: a play for Gaza by British playwright Caryl Churchill to me. The very short play, which takes about 10 minutes to perform, turned up in the news several times this month when productions ran in Montreal and Toronto. And it received a high-profile airing, May 3, on CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning.

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), the group that sponsored the Montreal production of Seven Jewish Children is bringing the play to Ottawa on Saturday, June 13.

IJV is a small group of Jewish activists who often act in solidarity with Palestinian groups opposed to Israel’s existence. IJV sent a delegation to the United Nations Durban Review Conference – the so-called Durban II Conference – last month in Geneva that was boycotted by Canada, the United States, Israel and a number of European democracies.

Despite years of build-up, Durban II pretty much fizzled out because so many of the world’s democracies stayed away out of concern that it would degenerate into the blatant antisemitism that marked the original Durban Conference in 2001. Many of the rest of the world’s democracies got up and walked out of the conference centre when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to invoke exactly the kind of rhetoric that turned Durban I into a sad farce.

Among the IJV delegates to Durban II was Diana Ralph, its Ottawa-based co-ordinator. After the conference, Ralph circulated an article about Ahmadinejad’s speech. “I heard much with which I agreed,” wrote Ralph, who went on to describe Ahmadinejad’s one-sided interpretation of Zionist history as “an accurate statement.”

For the trouble and expense of IJV’s sending a delegation to the Durban II Conference, Ralph was given the floor for almost three minutes in which she read a prepared statement.

“We denounce the campaign by pro-Israeli groups to destroy the DRC [Durban Review Conference] through disrespectful intimidation and fear tactics,” she said.

Almost comically, watching the video of Ralph’s speech, you can see the woman sitting directly behind her start to pack up her things as soon as Ralph begins to speak. The woman walks out about 20 seconds later.

Ralph condemned labelling any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, saying that such labelling is just a tactic to deflect attention from Israeli war crimes, “particularly in light of this country’s assault on the people of Gaza.”

In a presentation that was as one-sided as Ahmadinejad’s, Ralph went on to describe the Palestinians as “victims of apartheid, racism and crimes against humanity.”

And did IJV’s Ralph have any words of condemnation for Hamas terrorists or compassion for Israeli victims of terror in her statement?

Not a one.

Similarly, Caryl Churchill’s interpretation of Zionist history in Seven Jewish Children is one-sided. There are videos of the play to be found on the Internet and the script is available for downloading.

In seven brief scenes, adult voices debate what Jewish children should be told – “Tell her ...” “Don’t tell her ...” – as the vignettes evoke Europe just before and just after the Holocaust, Israel just before and just after independence in 1948, just after the Six Day War in 1967, during the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and during the recent war in Gaza.

Churchill never explicitly mentions the word “Israel” in her play, but she names it Seven Jewish Children. This leaves no doubt about her implications. It is Jews who go from being Holocaust victims to European colonists who displace an indigenous population, to occupiers, to killers who rule with “the iron fist,” all the while indoctrinating their children with propaganda that dehumanizes the helpless Palestinian victims.

When the play was produced in Montreal, the Quebec Jewish Congress – the recently rebranded Quebec Region of Canadian Jewish Congress – labelled it “antisemitic and full of hatred.”

In Toronto, B’nai Brith Canada unsuccessfully lobbied Mayor David Miller to have the production thrown out of Theatre Passe Muraille, a venue owned by the city.

Someone whose outspoken opinions on many subjects I frequently agree with, posted a Facebook message recently that she’d read Seven Jewish Children and didn’t see it as antisemitic. I’ve now read the play three times and watched online videos of two different performances. This time, I can’t agree with her.

The most astute analysis I’ve read of Seven Jewish Children, and about when and how criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism, is in a February column in the Independent by British novelist Howard Jacobson. That column, well worth your attention, is available online at tinyurl.com/cy6sdg.

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.