May 22, 2017: Thank you, Brenda, for everything you’ve done for the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin

By Michael Regenstreif

There are unsung heroes in almost any organization or workplace – people who work behind the scenes, outside of the spotlight, and whose effectiveness is vital to the success of the operation.

The week this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press has been an emotional one for us at the Bulletin as this is the final edition of the paper that has been laid out by our own unsung hero: Brenda Van Vliet, our production manager since January 1995.

Brenda has been on the job at the Bulletin for more than 22 years. For every issue, she has created the pages, laid out the ads on the pages (and, often, created the ads), and laid out the columns and articles – always making sure, somehow, that everything fits on the page the way it is supposed to.

She has taken the stories, photos and columns sent to her by the editor and prepared them for publication – always checking copy for any errors that may have slipped by. She has printed long-sheets of every page for proofreading and constantly updated mini versions of the newspaper that are continually referenced, and she’s uploaded the page files to Performance, the company in Smiths Falls that prints the Bulletin, always keeping in contact with the printers to ensure there are no technical errors in the files.

Some of the steps I’ve described are complicated processes. You can’t, for example, just throw a photograph on the page – they have to be converted to the right formatting for newsprint reproduction. And sometimes – particularly when we’re dealing with developing stories – changes and corrections have to be made to stories or columns right up until the last minute.

Brenda has done all of this, and much more, through 427 editions – and several design changes – of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, with constant grace and true devotion to the newspaper and to her colleagues.

I’m the third Bulletin editor with whom she has worked. She was hired by editor Myra Aronson in 1995 and continued with the late Barry Fishman and then myself.

On my first day on the job, almost 10 years ago, Barry told me how important Brenda had been to his own success as editor. And, from that day, I have relied on Brenda’s expertise, assistance, “corporate memory” and genuine friendship.

Thank you, Brenda, for everything you’ve done for the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. Have a great retirement! Working with you has been a very special experience. We’re going to miss you.

And, Thank You, Francie

I’m also going to miss working with Francie Greenspoon, the senior director of communications and community relations at the Jewish Federation of Ottawa since 2004, who is also retiring at the same time as Brenda.

Francie’s office was right next to mine and we often worked closely together over the years in making sure that important stories got told in the pages of our Jewish community newspaper.

Francie was of invaluable assistance to me when I arrived from Montreal in 2007 to work at the Bulletin – in guiding me through learning about Ottawa’s Jewish community and about the organizations, agencies, schools, congregations and people who make the community what it is.

From helping me identify someone in a photograph I didn’t recognize, to letting me know about important stories that should be covered, to being someone to bounce ideas off and discuss the issues of the day in the news, to being an advocate for the paper within Federation and the community, Francie has been a great colleague to work with.

And all I’ve mentioned here is Francie’s interaction with the Bulletin. Her work with Federation is a much bigger story.

Thank you, too, Francie, for so much. You will be missed. Best wishes for a great retirement!

May 8, 2017: Generation to generation – some issues are perennial

By Michael Regenstreif

A story and a column in this edition of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin got me thinking about how some issues of concern to the community are perennial – even if every new generation that comes along thinks that certain concerns are unique to them.

The story is Louise Rachlis’ report about a presentation delivered by Linda Kislowicz, president and CEO of Jewish Federations of Canada – UIA, on the results of a national survey of Jewish baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964). That is the demographic group to which I belong, so the survey’s questions and answers are of personal interest.

The column is Stephanie Shefrin’s “Modern Mishpocha” on page 22.

I was specifically taken with this observation of Stephanie’s: “We think that what our community is going through is unique to now, that it’s our fault, that we need to strike a new committee or devise a new program or do better outreach. All those things are probably true to some extent, but the underlying challenges and fears have been there for decades.”

Stephanie made that observation by looking at issues of the Bulletin published about once every 10 years beginning in 1945, and noticing that many of the concerns faced by Jewish mothers of young children over the generations are the same or similar to many issues faced by Jewish mothers of young children – such as herself – now.

I had a similar observation six years ago after attending one of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s openOttawa events.

The openOttawa process was a series of meetings and reports aimed at engaging young Jewish adults in the community. It was the beginning of what is now the Federation’s well-established Emerging Generation division.

In my May 30, 2011 Bulletin column, I noted that “while the openOttawa discussion was fascinating, 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. And mine was hardly the first generation to have that discussion.”

My generation, of course, is the baby boomers who are the subjects of the survey, the results of which Linda Kislowicz discussed in her presentation.

There were no big surprises for me in the results of the survey. We want to be engaged in the community in ways we find interesting; we care about making a difference; and, like the generations that came before us, and like the generations that have followed us, we have changing understandings of how we define ourselves as Jews.

I suspect that, if the millennials are surveyed when they reach the ages we boomers are now, the results will be similar.

As I mentioned, some issues of concern are perennial. One of the major issues we’ve continuously covered over the years I’ve edited the Bulletin is Jewish education in Ottawa – and one of the most pressing concerns in recent years has been the fluctuating levels of enrolment in both day schools and supplementary schools. Although there have been some encouraging signs recently, enrolment levels have generally declined over the past couple of decades.

But, as I discovered when I was perusing archived issues of the Bulletin, this is not a new concern.

The February 7, 1941 issue featured an editorial entitled “Educating The Next Man’s Children” in which the author (the editorial was unsigned, but I believe it was written by Rabbi Oscar Z. Fasman, Ottawa’s community rabbi at the time) lamented that most parents in the Ottawa Jewish community of 76 years ago were opting to send their children to public rather than Jewish schools. Now doesn’t that sound familiar?

April 19, 2017: Syria and the world’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’

By Michael Regenstreif

I’m writing this column on April 7 just as this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is about to go to press.

April 7 is a significant date. In 2008, a unanimous vote in the House of Commons approved a motion put forward by then-MP Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice and legendary human rights activist, making April 7 Canada’s National Day of Reflection on the Prevention of Genocide.

The date was not random. Cotler specifically chose it because it was the anniversary of April 7, 1994, the start of 100 days of genocide in Rwanda that saw more than 800,000 Tutsi people murdered by the Hutu-dominated government – a genocide that the world community was aware of, but did not act to prevent or stop. As Cotler wrote in an op-ed published in the National Post last year on April 7, “Indeed, what makes the Rwandan Genocide so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocide itself, but the fact that it was preventable. No one can say that we did not know – we knew, but we did not act.”

In an op-ed for the Huffington Post that was also published last year on April 7, Cotler wrote about the principles of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P) adopted by the United Nations in 2005.

The R2P doctrine, Cotler wrote, “mandates international action to ‘protect a state’s population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.’ In a word, if such mass atrocity crimes are being committed, and the state where these crimes are occurring is unwilling or unable to act – or worse, is the author of such international crimes – the Responsibility to Protect arises.”

Cotler goes on to discuss the devastating humanitarian crisis arising from the civil war in Syria and the crimes against humanity committed by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. “Indeed, if mass atrocities in Syria – with 500,000 killed, 12.5 million displaced, five million refugees – are not a case for R2P, then there is no R2P.”

This week, on April 4, a year after Cotler wrote that article, the Assad regime launched a chemical weapons attack against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province. At least 100 people, including infants and small children were massacred as the world looked on in horror.

It seemed like a repeat of a 2013 chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Assad regime. A year before, then-U.S. president Barack Obama had warned Assad that using chemical weapons was the “red line” he must not cross, or the U.S. would act. Many commentators pointed to Obama’s failure to take military action in response to that crime against humanity as his greatest foreign policy failure. Others pointed to his diplomatic efforts to have Assad give up his chemical weapons stockpile as a great success in preventing both further chemical weapons attacks and American involvement in another Middle Eastern war.

Among those who vehemently opposed a U.S. response to the 2013 chemical weapons massacre was future U.S. president Donald Trump.

And, in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, Trump routinely ridiculed his opponent, Hillary Clinton, when she called for action in Syria.

It seems, however, that Assad held on to at least some of his chemical arsenal and may well have been emboldened by the Trump administration’s recent statements that regime change in Syria was no longer an American goal.

Then, last night [April 6], on Trump’s orders, 59 cruise missiles were launched at the Shayrat air base from which Assad’s forces launched this latest chemical weapons attack against civilians.

As I write, it is much too early to know if this missile response will make a difference in the Syrian civil war. Will it make a difference in helping to protect the Syrian people from Assad?

Trump said he was affected by the sight of the “beautiful babies” killed in the massacre. But it’s hard to forget that Trump’s policy has been to refuse to help any Syrian refugees. And, with all the controversy about Russia in recent months, Trump has had (at least, so far) nothing to say about Russian complicity with Assad in the Syrian civil war.