April 25, 2011: Commemorations and celebrations – A busy time of the Jewish year

By Michael Regenstreif

This is one of those particularly busy times of the Jewish year.

I’m writing this column just before we celebrate Passover. By the time you read it, the seder nights will have passed. Although the issue is dated April 25 in keeping with our official Monday publication dates, we have timed the production of this issue so that we go to press before Passover and so that the newspaper will arrive – if Canada Post cooperates – in Ottawa subscribers’ homes on April 21, the first of the intermediate days.

Less than a week after the end of Passover, we’ll gather, Sunday, May 1, 7:00 pm, at the Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building, for Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah Commemoration featuring keynote speaker Ada Wynston, a child survivor of the Holocaust whose many years of dedication to Christian-Jewish dialogue, and for recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations, led Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands to honour her with knighthood.

On Sunday, May 8, 7:30 pm, Yom Hazikaron, the memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, will be marked at the Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building.

The solemnity of Yom HaShoah and Yom Hazikaron give way to the celebrations of Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.

Although Yom Ha’Atzmaut actually falls on May 9 this year, Ottawa’s major Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration will be at Lansdowne Park’s Aberdeen Pavilion on Tuesday, May 10, beginning at 5:00 pm and continuing through the evening with activities for all ages.

Goldstone and Dylan

Speaking of Israel, a major conclusion of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report, that Israel committed war crimes by targeting civilians during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, has now been disavowed by none other than Richard Goldstone, the retired South African judge who chaired the UN fact-finding mission.

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” Goldstone wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on April 1.

Goldstone now says the evidence shows that Israel did not target civilians during the conflict.

The Goldstone Report has been a major factor in the delegitimization campaign against Israel since its release in September 2009. Goldstone, who is Jewish, became a hero to the anti-Zionist hard left. No more. Anti-Zionist activists have turned on Goldstone as quickly as they embraced him.

Another current target of anti-Zionists is legendary folk-rock singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Dylan has announced that he’ll return to Israel on June 20 to perform a concert at Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv. This despite the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign applying heavy pressure on artists not to appear in Israel.

Actually, Dylan has been a target of anti-Zionists at least since releasing “Neighborhood Bully,” his 1983 allegorical song about Israel and the Jewish people that left no doubt as to where he stood.

April 11, 2011: The Passover legend continues to inspire movements for freedom

By Michael Regenstreif

Welcome to “the Passover edition” of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – the issue that precedes the first seder which falls, this year, on April 18. We’ve included several Passover features and a couple of our columnists focus on Passover themes.

One of the Passover features is a very interesting piece on page 17 by Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Berman, both of whom are well-known leaders of the Jewish Renewal movement. One thing they point out is that the universal lesson of the Passover legend, of rising up and overcoming slavery, has not only resonated with Jews these past 3,000 years, it has also inspired other religions and secular liberation movements.

When I was a 10-year-old in 1964 watching the modern American Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Summer unfold every night on the news, I quickly understood what it was all about because I heard leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. speak about, and take inspiration from, the same lessons I had learned in Torah study at my Jewish day school, and around the seder table every Passover.

It’s not at all surprising to me that the Passover legend is now providing inspiration to people who have been rising up this year against some of the brutal Arab dictators, who are being referred to as modern-day pharaohs.

And, perhaps, it should come as no surprise that some of those dictators, like Syria’s Bashar Assad, are saying that the protesters are being duped by Israel.

Three thousand years after the Exodus in the Passover legend, we still live in a world where modern-day pharaohs dominate many countries, where true freedom remains a dream for billions of people, and where millions still live in actual slavery. The journey begun by Moses continues.

Federal election

I’m writing this column during the first week of the official campaign leading to the federal election on Monday, May 2. (The unofficial campaign, of course, has been on for months.)

During the week of April 11, the Communications and Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa will hold roundtable discussions with Ottawa-area candidates from the Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic Parties on issues of concern to the Jewish community. I will be reporting on those meetings in our April 25 issue.

Bulletin columnist Alan Echenberg notes below that the Montreal riding of Mount Royal is one of 10 “very ethnic” ridings across Canada that the Conservatives are looking to capture in this election. While Asian and South Asian communities dominate most of the other “very ethnic” ridings, it is the Jewish community that makes up more than a third of the population in Mount Royal.

The Harper Tories are banking on their solid support for the State of Israel and against antisemitism over the past five years to deliver the Jewish vote in Mount Royal – and in other ridings with identifiable Jewish populations.

I live in Ottawa West-Nepean and recently received a targeted mailing from John Baird drawing my attention to the Conservative record on Israel and antisemitism.

Alan raises the question of whether the Conservatives will win enough Jewish votes to take Mount Royal on May 2. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if they do, despite their having recruited former Montreal city councillor Saulie Zajdel, a well-known member of the Chabad Lubavitch community, as the Tory candidate.

The Liberal incumbent in Mount Royal is Irwin Cotler, a legendary law professor and international human rights lawyer, a former president of Canadian Jewish Congress and a former justice minister of Canada. There is probably no parliamentarian in the entire Diaspora with a stronger record on Israel and antisemitism than Cotler.

Happy Passover

On behalf of everyone at the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, I extend our best wishes to all for a joyous and happy Passover. Chag Sameach.

March 21, 2011: uOttawa theatre production fails as an exposé of antisemitism

By Michael Regenstreif

The Jew of Malta, a play written circa 1590, by Christopher Marlowe, is an ugly depiction of Jewish stereotypes that reflects the ingrained antisemitism of English society in the late-16th century, a time when there had been no Jews living openly in England for three centuries following the expulsion edict issued by King Edward I in 1290.

The title character, Barabas the Jew (named, no doubt, for the thief Barabbas, whose crucifixion sentence was commuted at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Christian New Testament), is a despicable caricature. Obsessed with money, he thinks nothing of committing both serial and mass murders. Barabas’ own daughter is among his many murder victims.

Playwright Marlowe was a contemporary of William Shakespeare and Barabas, apparently, inspired Shakespeare’s character Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Shylock, believe it or not, is actually a more sympathetic portrayal of a Jewish character.

I went to see the production of The Jew of Malta presented earlier this month by the University of Ottawa Department of Theatre Drama Guild. The uOttawa production was subtitled The Ugly Face of Antisemitism and, presumably, the play was chosen to expose how ugly, irrational and senseless antisemitism is. Ironically, and most probably coincidentally, the performance dates coincided with Israeli Apartheid Week, a campus event that many feel perpetuates antisemitism as a by-product of its campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel.

The intentions of the uOttawa theatre students were certainly honourable and worthy of applause.

A slide show in the theatre lobby before the performance and during intermission called attention to historic and contemporary examples of antisemitism and to some of the people like composer Richard Wagner and automobile manufacturer (and newspaper owner) Henry Ford who were responsible for it.

Sadly, though, the production failed – both as compelling theatre and as a lesson in the evils of antisemitism.

The first problem, undoubtedly, was with the text. Marlowe did not write his play, 420 or so years ago, as an exposé of antisemitism. He wrote the play to promote his own – and his society’s – antisemitism. There is nothing in Marlowe’s words that is at all critical of antisemitism.

I suppose there are ways The Jew of Malta could be approached that could be used to expose the senselessness of antisemitism (or any kind of prejudice for that matter). One way to do it might be with a dark production that would horrify an enlightened, contemporary audience.

But that was not the approach of director Tibor Egervari, professor emeritus in the uOttawa Department of Theatre and a Hungarian Jew who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, and his students.

They chose to present The Jew of Malta as some kind of comedy. And just as there’s nothing in Marlowe’s text that is critical of antisemitism, there’s also nothing in the text that is remotely funny. The comedy had to be found in the staging.

So, they staged it for laughs. Many of the male roles, including the lead role of Barabas, were played by women. While makeup was used to transform actress Kiersten Hanly almost effectively from the young woman she is into the old man she was playing, the high-heeled woman’s boots she wore throughout the performance broke any male spell she might have created. Most of the other actresses playing male roles made no attempts to transform their femininity.

Most of the actual men in the cast played their characters as if they were gay stereotypes who stepped right out of La Cage aux Folles despite there being no references, at all, to homosexuality. Even the male character romancing the female prostitute acts like a gay stereotype.

The cast performed throughout the play as if they were in a Marx Brothers comedy. The difference, though, is that Marx Brothers comedies were written to be funny. There’s nothing funny in the The Jew of Malta. The whole idea of the production’s approach was obvious in the opening minutes; unfortunately, the play ran two-and-a-half hours.

The end result is that the play’s extreme antisemitism was so trivialized it became completely benign. Ultimately, the production was all about sight gags for yuks. The loftier, noble ambition of exposing “the ugly face of antisemitism” was lost.

March 7, 2011: It’s that time of year again on campuses

By Michael Regenstreif

I wrote in this space last issue about the protests in Egypt that ended the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. International news in 2011 has been dominated by the human rights and pro-democracy protests and revolutions that have been sweeping through the tyrannical, repressive regimes that dominate most of the Middle East.

As I write – on February 25 – the whole world is watching for the imminent fall of Moammar Gadhafi, the dictator of Libya and self-declared “King of Kings,” who seized power 42 years ago.

Unlike Mubarak, who finally realized the jig was up, Gadhafi, in a bizarre speech, February 22, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel characterized as a declaration of war on his own people, vowed to fight to the death. It may well come to that (if it hasn’t already by the time you read this).

Libya is currently in a state of chaos, if not civil war. Gadhafi’s forces – and, reportedly, foreign mercenaries – have killed thousands of protesters. Meanwhile, protesters have gained control of parts of the country and Libyan officials, including much of its diplomatic corps, are deserting Gadhafi like rats from a sinking ship.

With the world’s attention lately focused on the grassroots demands for democracy and freedom sweeping through Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran and other Middle Eastern and North African countries this year, campus true-believers in numerous cities around the world – including Ottawa – have been gearing up for their annual assault on what they regard as the real root of all evil in the Middle East.

Yes, it’s time again for Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).

Carleton University may have had a preview of IAW, February 17, when the CUSA (Carleton University Students Association) Council dealt with a motion in support of the international BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement attempting to delegitimize Israel. Specifically, the motion was a demand that the university divest from four companies involved in the Israeli economy.

According to various reports, Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at Carleton mobilized a group of about 100 supporters to demonstrate outside the meeting room, while the Israel Awareness Committee (IAC) sent a smaller group of about 40 students.

To make a long story short, the CUSA Council rejected the specifically anti-Israel motion in favour of another calling for the university to invest its funds ethically. When SAIA proposed an amendment calling for the divestment from firms doing business with Israel, it was ruled out of order.

That turn of events did not sit well with the SAIA demonstrators.

In a detailed account of the evening’s events posted on Facebook, IAC member Emile Scheffel wrote: “SAIA’s supporters began knocking with their fists on the doors and the walls, chanting ‘Shame’ and other indistinct slogans.

“The activists inside the room began berating CUSA executive and councillors, while those of us opposed to the SAIA motion remained relatively calm and collected … SAIA’s supporters in the hallway raised their volume and further escalated the situation.

“For a tense period of time, those who were there to oppose the SAIA motion did not feel safe leaving the room to face a screaming mob of anti-Israel activists.”

IAW is an obnoxious, wrong-headed event and is counter-productive to the efforts all people – on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian divide – who strive and work for a peaceful, two-state solution. It’s important to counter IAW propaganda with rational arguments and truth.

We should also bear in mind that, although SAIA and other IAW groups are loud, their supporters form a tiny minority on campus.

The SAIA website, for example, proclaimed last year’s IAW in Ottawa “a huge success with more than 80 people in attendance at each of our events.” Given the number of IAW events last year, those attendance figures account for just a fraction of one per cent of the students at uOttawa and Carleton. Well over 99 per cent of this city’s university students completely ignored IAW.

In a Huffington Post blog – tinyurl.com/dershowitz-IAW – last year at IAW time, Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz debunks the myths of Israeli apartheid and suggests a Middle East Apartheid Week on university campuses that would focus on the truly apartheid-like regimes that exist in places like Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and virtually every other Arab and Muslim country in the region.