August 21, 2017: To de-legitimize the media is to de-legitimize the institution of democracy

By Michael Regenstreif

The country’s leader stood in front of a large crowd of fervent supporters and denounced the media as “left-wing” purveyors of “fake news.” The media are “thought police,” he said, and “God forbid if you think differently from them!”

Currently under investigation, he pointed to “an obsessive, unprecedented witch-hunt against me and my family, seeking to overthrow the government.”

We’ve come to expect such statements from U.S. President Donald Trump whenever he holds a campaign-style rally for his supporters. But, it wasn’t Trump speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv on August 9. It was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a crowd of Likud Party supporters bussed in from all over Israel.

Netanyahu is currently facing two corruption investigations – for allegedly accepting gifts illegally and bribery – which directly affect him, and there are two other investigations in which he could be implicated. As well, his wife, Sara Netanyahu, is facing investigation for allegedly diverting state funds to pay for personal expenses.

Netanyahu’s response to these investigations, it seems, is to copy from Trump’s playbook of blaming the messenger and attacking the media. And, just as we’ve seen so many times at Trump rallies, members of the media attending the Netanyahu rally in Tel Aviv were subject to threats of violence from some of the prime minister’s more fanatical supporters.

Although their systems of government are different, the United States and Israel are both democracies and in democratic societies leaders must be held to account if they break the law and must face investigation if there is evidence they have broken the law. And, freedom of the press – to report the news and to offer commentary – is an essential component of any democracy. When leaders seek to divert attention from their problems by scapegoating or attempting to discredit legitimate media outlets or media practitioners, they are, in fact, attacking the institution of democracy itself.

Netanyahu insists there is nothing to the corruption allegations, that they are just a “fake news” conspiracy in the same way that Trump insists similarly about allegations of Russian collusion in his 2016 election campaign. And, maybe, that’s what the investigations in Israel and the United States will determine and put the issues and allegations to rest.

However, police and other investigative bodies must do their jobs and the media must report on investigations and findings. Democracy depends on it.

July 24, 2017: Hannah Moscovitch’s poignant story of Jewish refugees

By Michael Regenstreif

The Canada Scene Festival at the National Arts Centre (NAC) has been a highlight of this summer in Ottawa. Celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday, the festival presented a wide selection of first-class music, theatre, dance and visual arts productions by Canadians from across the country.

As a music lover, I attended some wonderful Canada Scene concerts at the NAC. But the absolute highlight, for me, was the magnificent production of “Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story,” a musical theatre piece created by playwright Hannah Moscovitch, who grew up in Ottawa, singer-songwriter Ben Caplan and director Christian Barry of the Halifax-based 2b theatre company.

As the show opens, we meet Caplan as The Wanderer, the play’s narrator, a constant presence who sings the songs (most of which Caplan co-wrote with director Barry), tells stories, jokes with the audience, dances, and even puts on a tallit to perform a wedding. Caplan, bearded like an Old-World Chasid, is larger than life on stage playing The Wanderer with seemingly wild abandon – like a cross between Tevye and Tom Waits. While Caplan is definitely the star and always on stage, he also fades into the background when necessary.

“Old Stock” tells the story of Moscovitch’s great-grandparents, Chaim and Chaya, Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitic pogroms. Fresh off the boat in 1908, Chaim, 19, who had lost his family in a pogrom, and Chaya, already a widow at 24, meet briefly in a line to see the doctor at Pier 2 in Halifax (the forerunner to Pier 21), the entry point to Canada for immigrants and refugees from Europe at the time. Chaim was sent to the line because he had a rash and typhus had to be ruled out before he could be admitted into the country. Chaya was there because of a cough that, she insisted, was not tuberculosis.

The story picks up again in Montreal. Chaim, who was smitten with the cynical Chaya at first meeting, arranges a match with her through her father, and we see their hard life unfold in early-20th century Montreal. Although “Old Stock” is often very funny, it is a refugees’ story filled with great tragedy (and, ultimately, joy).

In addition to Caplan, there are four other musicians on stage including clarinetist Chris Weatherstone, violinist Mary Fay Coady, Graham Scott on accordion and keyboard, and Ottawa-based drummer Jamie Kronick. The songs and music – encompassing klezmer, folk, cabaret, rock, and even free jazz styles – are central to the play and are brilliantly performed by Caplan, who adds his banjo and guitar playing to several of the numbers, and the band.

As key musicians, Weatherstone and Coady sit with the band while playing music. But they also stand up and move to the centre of the set as the central characters of Chaim (Weatherstone) and Chaya (Coady). Their constant transitions from musicians to actors are seamless – thanks, no doubt, to Barry’s direction.

Based on the lives of Hannah Moscovitch’s paternal great-grandparents, “Old Stock” is a specifically Jewish story that many of us can relate to. My own grandparents arrived in Canada from Eastern Europe in that same era. It is also a universal story which will resonate with the successive waves of refugees and immigrants (and their children and grandchildren) who have continued to arrive in Canada over the 109 years since Chaim and Chaya Moscovitch got off the boat in Halifax.

The production was brilliantly staged and the play – which made me both laugh and cry – reminded me to appreciate the sacrifices and hard lives of my own ancestors.

The four-performance run of “Old Stock” at the NAC’s Azrieli Studio was all too brief. Chatting with Caplan at the opening night reception, I told him that I hoped the show would return to Ottawa for a longer run. He said discussions were underway to, hopefully, make that happen. I’m certainly anxious to see it again.

A warning though, “Old Stock” has mature themes and is not suitable for young children or those offended by profane language and/or frank references to sexuality.

June 26, 2017: My bar mitzvah year was historic

By Michael Regenstreif

I celebrated my bar mitzvah on April 22, 1967 on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat just before Passover. It’s hard to believe that a half-century has passed since I became a 13-year-old Jewish man.

My bar mitzvah year was historic. Every community, every school and every organization, it seemed, was in the midst of some significant project to mark Canada’s centennial. Expo 67, the biggest centennial project of them all, began its six-month run just a few days after my bar mitzvah.

As a Jewish community, we were happy to celebrate Canada’s milestone, and to virtually see the world at Expo. But our eyes were also on Israel, then just 19 years past its War of Independence. Another war seemed increasingly inevitable as Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, expelled the United Nations peacekeeping forces from Sinai and Gaza, and massed its troops near the Israeli border.

About six weeks after my bar mitzvah, on June 5, 1967, the war broke out. We feared for the very survival of the tiny country, the world’s only Jewish state. But, what would soon come to be known as the Six-Day War was over on June 10.

Israel had defeated the military forces of the surrounding Arab countries while capturing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan. Israel had secured its greatest ever military victory in its shortest ever war.

Israel and the Jewish Diaspora rejoiced particularly in the reunification of Jerusalem. The capital city had been divided since 1948 when the War of Independence ended with Israel in control of western Jerusalem and Jordan in control of eastern Jerusalem.

Eastern Jerusalem includes the Old City where sites like the Western Wall – a place holy to Jews for millennia – are located; a place which became forbidden to Jews. The Western Wall, or Kotel, was in the same city as the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, but Jews were forbidden to go there for the first 19 years of modern statehood.

As mentioned, we rejoiced in Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and, particularly, in the reunification of Jerusalem. If ever there was an underdog of a country, surely it was Israel – surrounded by hostile Arab countries with massively larger territories, populations and militaries. That Israel prevailed in the war seemed like a miracle.

By 1967, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, was four years into his retirement and widely regarded as the country’s elder statesman. Ben-Gurion, too, rejoiced in the reunification of Jerusalem, and felt Israel should retain the Golan Heights for strategic reasons, but said the rest of the captured territories should be given back. He understood there were would be unintended consequences to the military victory.

“If I could choose between peace and all the territories which we conquered last year, I would prefer peace,” Ben-Gurion said in a 1968 interview (footage from which is included in the documentary film, “Ben-Gurion: Epilogue”).

Israel eventually signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and returned the Sinai to Egypt. But, by the time of those treaties, Egypt had relinquished any claim to Gaza and Jordan had relinquished any claims to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem – leaving those areas to be settled in negotiations with the Palestinians.

Fifty years after the Six-Day War, Israel and the Palestinians have yet to reach the agreement they need to end the conflict with a two-state solution that ensures Israel the Jewish and democratic future it needs and ensures the Palestinians will be able to meet their own national aspirations.

While hopes of peace with the Palestinians have been raised and have fallen many times, recently, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman – who, as foreign minister when I met him a few years ago in Ottawa, was an uncompromising hardliner – recently said an agreement with the Palestinians is “far closer” than it has ever been before.

Asked why, Liberman credited the arrival of U.S. President Donald Trump on the scene and the realization by Arab countries “that their problem is not Israel. Israel can be a solution to the problem.

Can Liberman be right? We’ll see.