November 2, 2009: Barry Fishman – Remembering our friend and editor emeritus

By Michael Regenstreif

I wish I’d had the chance to have known Barry Fishman before his health was compromised. The editor emeritus of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, my predecessor at the Bulletin editor’s desk, passed away, October 22, after a courageous and dignified three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often called Lou Gehrig’s Disease after the legendary New York Yankees slugger who was diagnosed with ALS in 1939.

Barry and I first met on July 3, 2007, when I came to Ottawa to be interviewed for the position of assistant editor of the Bulletin. He was then the editor of this newspaper and I was a Montreal-based freelance journalist and broadcaster. I had seen an ad for the job in the Canadian Jewish News and the required qualifications seemed tailor-made for me.

When I came to Ottawa for that interview, I didn’t know that Barry had ALS, or that the job had been created with the idea that an assistant editor would work with Barry for as long as he could keep working, and then, possibly, take over the reins as editor of the Bulletin.

I started working as Barry’s assistant editor on July 30, 2007 and liked him immediately. I quickly found out that everybody liked Barry immediately. He was that kind of guy.

So, when he told me he had ALS, I was deeply saddened knowing what he would face in the too-short months and years ahead.

ALS is a terrible, fatal disease that, over a period of a few short years, progressively robs a person of all voluntary muscle control and the ability to function physically, all the while leaving the mind intact. A few years ago, I saw the effects ALS had on one of my uncles.

Barry and I worked closely together over the next seven months. I brought the requisite skills and experience needed to do the job when I was hired, but something very important I got from Barry as his assistant editor was an invaluable understanding of what the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is, of what the Bulletin means to the Jewish community of Ottawa, and of how this newspaper serves the community. As I came to learn from Barry, the Bulletin is a community newspaper for which community is its very essence.

The progression of Barry’s illness was all too obvious. Two summers ago, when we began working together, he could still drive his car and move around using a walker. Within a few months, though, he was confined to a wheelchair. That winter was the snowiest in many years, which meant Barry couldn’t get out much. He continued to work from home. I’d meet with him there once a week or so and we consulted several times a day by phone and email. By February 2008, as ALS continued to rob him of his ability to function independently, Barry stepped down as editor of the Bulletin. Appointed editor emeritus, he stayed involved as long as he could, offering his always-valued advice, editing my columns and, most impressively, overseeing the special Israel at 60 section we published on May 5, 2008.

And, even when it got past the point when he could maintain his involvement, Barry’s interest in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin never wavered.

I watched Barry face the progression of his illness with a determination that was truly awe-inspiring. I never heard him complain about the rotten hand he was dealt. His concern for others, and for his community, remained paramount. He was a great friend and will always be missed.

On behalf of all of us at the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, I extend our deepest condolences to Barry’s wife, Phyllis, to his sister, Susan, to his extended family and to his many friends.

October 19, 2009: Interfaith dialogue – Building bridges between our communities

By Michael Regenstreif

Last month, I attended a lecture and panel discussion at Library and Archives Canada that featured Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.

It was a disturbing, thought-provoking evening.

Bawer is an influential gay American author and cultural critic who left the United States in 1998 because of the increasing influence of fundamentalist Christianity on the public discourse in that country. But, in moving to Europe – he now lives in Norway – he says he found an even more insidious brand of fundamentalism there in the form of radical Islam, which has misappropriated multiculturalism and used it to stifle western liberalism and openness. Bawer warned that the influence of radical Islam has also been growing here in North America in recent years.

Bawer pointed out that the stifling of western liberalism is being accomplished in various ways from overt terrorism and violence – for example, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh after he made a short documentary, Submission, detailing the abuse of Muslim women – to abusing human rights tribunals. Recent examples of that in Canada have included complaints against Ezra Levant at the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, and against columnist Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine at the Ontario Human Rights Commission for Steyn’s article, ‘The Future Belongs to Islam.’

Bawer also pointed to the new book, The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, about the Danish cartoons controversy, mentioning that the publisher, Yale University Press, was intimidated into removing the cartoons from the book, thus depriving readers of actually seeing what the book was talking about.

Brigitte Gabriel – an Arab Christian who grew up in Lebanon and is now an American – is another speaker with a message similar to Bawer’s. As noted in the article on page 4 of this issue of the Bulletin, Gabriel will be in Ottawa on November 5 as keynote speaker at this year’s Choices event presented by the Federation’s Women’s Division.

But, while the threats from radical Islam that Bawer and Gabriel warn us about are real, and we must remain vigilant against them, we must not lose sight of the fact that extremists do not represent the Muslim mainstream and that there are people and organizations dedicated to building bridges between our communities.

Two such people from Jerusalem, Rabbi Ron Kronish and Mohamad Sibdeh, a kadi (Sharia court judge), will be in Ottawa on Sunday, October 25 to talk about how Muslims and Jews, as communities and individuals, can, and do, talk and work together. As noted in the articles on page 13, there will be Rabbi & Kadi events in the morning at Temple Israel and in the evening at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre.

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Last month, I wrote about the tiff at TIFF – the Toronto International Film Festival – over the selection of Tel Aviv as this year’s featured city in its new City to City program spotlighting the cinema of a different international city each year. A group led by John Greyson and Naomi Klein protested the selection of Tel Aviv with a declaration painting Israel as a brutal, repressive apartheid regime.

A number of major film artists lined up behind the protesters and a number of others lined up in support of Tel Aviv.

Surprisingly, given her long record of pro-Palestinian activism, one of the major film artists supporting Tel Aviv is Vanessa Redgrave. In a letter she co-authored for publication in the October 22 issue of The New York Review of Books, Redgrave opposes the TIFF protest saying the “citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged.”

Redgrave and co-authors Julian Schnabel and Martin Sherman, all noted leftists, slam the protesters for referring to Israel as an apartheid regime. “We oppose the current Israeli government,” they write, “but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter.”

Redgrave further parts company with leftists like Klein who seek to delegitimize Israel. “If attitudes are hardened on both sides, if those who are fighting within their own communities for peace are insulted, where then is the hope? The point finally is not to grandstand but to inch toward a two-state solution and a world in which both nations can exist, perhaps not lovingly, but at least in peace.”

The same crowd that protested Tel Aviv at TIFF also tried to intimidate the masterful singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen into cancelling his September 24 concert in Tel Aviv. Cohen, whose grandfather, Lyon Cohen, was the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, stood up to the negativity of the anti-Israel boycotters and turned his concert into a benefit that raised $2 million for groups promoting peace and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

October 5, 2009: Steady growth predicted for Ottawa’s Jewish community

By Michael Regenstreif

Since 1981, Ottawa’s Jewish population has been growing at rates far greater than Canada as a whole, and an analysis and projection by UIA Federations Canada (UIAFC) – the national body linking Canada’s Jewish federations – predicts the growth of Ottawa’s Jewish community will continue to far outpace the national average, which will be reflected in the Canadian censuses to be conducted in 2011 and 2021.

Linda Kislowicz, CEO, and Andrea Freedman, national director of planning and development of UIAFC, were in Ottawa, September 22, to present the Ottawa-oriented findings of the UIA National Task Force on Jewish Demographics to a gathering of lay leaders and senior staff of Ottawa’s various Jewish agencies and organizations. Kislowicz and Freedman were on a national tour speaking to such gatherings organized by the various Jewish federations across the country.

As Kislowicz explained, the data was based on past censuses and the projections were based on assumptions the conditions and trends – birth and death rates, immigration, migration within Canada, etc. – that led to the changes between the 1991 and 2001 censuses will continue to be relevant between 2001 and 2011 and again between 2011 and 2021.

Kislowicz said the task force believes in the accuracy of the projections, but cautioned that a multitude of social, political, economic and other factors could come into play, which could have an effect on what the censuses of 2011 and 2021 actually reveal. She added that it’s not so much the precise numbers that are important in the projections for the future, but rather the trends they show.

In 1981, the Jewish population of the Ottawa area was 9,355. It increased to 11,605 by 1991 and 13,450 in 2001. The task force predicts the Ottawa Jewish population will reach 16,230 in 2011 and then 19,279 in 2021. The projected growth of the community in the 40-year period from 1981 to 2021 will be more than 106 per cent. The task force projects the Jewish population of the entire country will have increased to 394,300 in 2021 from 313,865 in 1981, an increase of about 25 per cent in the same 40-year period.

There are a number of projections in the study that will have important implications for the community as we plan for the future – including necessary planning for greater numbers of children, youth and senior citizens. The study’s projections show steady, incremental growth in the numbers of children and youth and dramatic growth in the number of seniors in the coming years.

The growth in the number of children suggests that the capacity of the Jewish educational system in Ottawa will need to increase to meet the needs of families in the community. The study projects that the number of children aged 14 and under will rise to 3,336 in 2011 and 3,982 in 2021 from 2,690 in 2001.

Already, the Federation has placed a high priority on the Jewish educational system in Ottawa and has been working with the two schools on the amalgamation of Hillel Academy and Yitzhak Rabin High School to create an institution of the highest standard covering kindergarten through Grade 12.

With a goal of attracting an increased proportion of the community’s children to Jewish day school, and with increasing numbers of children in the community, there is potential for tremendous growth in our Jewish educational system over the coming decade.

The most dramatic growth the study projects in Ottawa’s Jewish community is in the number of seniors.

There were 795 Jews aged 65 to 74 living in Ottawa in 2001. The Jewish population in that age group is expected to have more than doubled by 2011 to 1,746 and to have almost doubled again by 2021 to 3,351.

These increases suggest the need for expanded programming aimed at an age group that remains active and engaged. They also suggest a tremendous potential for the engagement of volunteers who have reached retirement age, but are still eager to stay active and contribute to the community.

The study projects there will be 720 members of Ottawa’s Jewish community aged over 75 in 2011. This is actually a slight decrease from the 790 shown in the 2001 census. However, that number is expected to almost double between 2011 and 2021 to reach 1,324. Clearly, there will need to be long-range planning for the needs of increasing numbers of older seniors in the coming decades.