Leadership and Future of the Community

Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of AskV of anythingthing. Thrilled today to have Professor Gil Troy with us a leading historian of the United States, American presidential historian and also of Zionism He's a senior fellow at the JPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, which is a think tank about Jewish issues of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. He's a distinguished scholar in North American history at McGill University. He's the author of Many books, I think eight at last count Um on history, is that right? Now about fifteen, but it's okay. About fifteen. Well, I think there's eight on my shelf who's That means I have more to buy Including about Zionism. He has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Newwek, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Hill The Jewish journal commentary, Did I miss one s good. I missed a few. And he is a sought after historian and teacher. And today we're going to take this time with Gill to dive deeper into the history of Canadian jewelry. We've done an episode on that. Wow, did we get emails? There is an incredible tension in Canadian jewelry that we immediately saw in the responses, and they were really rich and good and interesting and important responses And we're going to keep talking about Canadian jewy because Canadian jewely are going through a very difficult time right now And so we're going to today talk about this moment, this moment of rising anti Semitism, measurable anti Semitism,, violence, shootings, bombs, arson, against synagogues, against schools, what it feels like to be Jewish and Canadian right now, where this all comes from and who the community is, who are Canadian Jews how they found themselves at this current impasse. Before we get into it, I want to tell you that this week's episode is sponsored by the Feinberg family who asked me to read this beautiful dedication. Today we honor our mom and grandma, Sandy Dento on her seventy fifth birthday Inspired by her parents, Regina and Saul Muskowitz, Holocaust survivors from Poland, Sandy has devoted her life to strengthening Israel and supporting the Jewish people While rooted in the Detroit Jewish community, her impact reaches far and wide Guided by her belief that Jewish strength, learning, and unity are essential to our future. She leads with conviction, generosity, and deep care for others We are so proud of the example she sets and the difference she continues to make We love you and celebrate you today and always Love, Arin, Julie, Noah, Ari and Raya S bird Sandy, happy birthday, and thank you to the Feinberg family for that wonderful and very sweet dedication I'd also love to invite everyone to join our Patreon and subscribe to our sububstack. If you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about, especially this topic and many others, that's where those conversations happen. That's where we draw the questions from that we tackle on this podcast. You also get to take part in monthly live streams where I answer your questions live That's at patreon d. com slash Ashaviv anything Or Javiv Gur. sububstack. com thoseose links are all going to be in the show notes. Gil, how are you Good first of all, happyirthday, Sand And second, I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you because I just have to say, I really appreciate you're not just defending Israel and Zionism and the Jewish people You're defending Western civilization. You're defending liberalism,'re defending Americanalues, Canadian values. And I just want to say Hakar To a little acknowledgement of good that you've really done amazing work We do absolutely defend that story of the annglophone liberal world. So thank you for that. And of course, it's shared. I read you, your three volume of Hertzel Zionist writings abbsolutely indispensable on my shelf. People need to buy it. These are, you know, a lot of the resources are things that also I've read. A lot of the resources on Zionism are things that you have produced over the years. Let's get into Canadian jewelry. Before we start talking about the history of Canadian jewelry and sort of leading that history into understanding this moment When people think of the Jews of North America, they usually think about American Jews because there're six, seven, eight million Cad excuse me, American Jews and maybe a quarter million to four hundred thousand depending on who's doing the count the Canadian Jews. The scale is so different. What makes Canadian Jewish history very different? from American Jewish history. We think of them the same. they sound the same What makes them nevertheless different? and then we're getting to really telling that story of Canadian Jewish history personersally U I had the privilege of being hired as a profess of History of American history at McGill University in nineteen ninety. I came up thinking that I was going to an extension of the United States of America. I learned, for example, that I'm not even supposed to say American history because it's history of the United States of America because America North America includes Canada as well. And it was living in Montreal for almost twenty years. I learned a lot about the richness of the community I learned also about some of the pathologies in Canada. and I think We have to understand the two and maybe this is the best way to frame it When I lived in Montreal until two thousand seven When we came here to Israel Sabbaticical and never left But I've been back and forth a lot and have very strong ties. There' still. I always talked about Crystal ball I would say when we were at Federation meetings, when we were at I rou from Jewish education center meetings, like the ones that we were part of on Zoom. I say you don't need to hire some kind of analyst know what's going to happen to Candate Canadian Jews in the future, just look south And look at the crystal ball of America, meaning that the United States of America, American Jewry is much more assimilated than Canadian Jews, has much lower levels of education and literacy than Canadian Jews, has far fewer American Jews going to Israel and is less Zionist than Canadian Jews. and that was a way of saying compliment to the Canadian Jews about the richness of the identity, the richness of their institutions, and that still holds Unfortunately today I see situation of what I call the dueling crystal balls. that while Canadian jury internally is still strong. And American jewury, let's say, has an intermarriage rate of seventy percent. Canadian jury. When I was there it was sixteen percent, that's about thirty percent, twenty per to thirty percent So you see the strength I say to American Jews Look north And you have a crystal ball there. We don't want to see the Europeanization America that we've seen in Canada and to speak a little controversially. I sometimes call Canada Europe of North America and I called Quebec the Ireland of North America, and I'm not saying it in a complimentary way Canada decided they want to be the first post national country. That was the previous Prime Mister Trudeau Canada has l in, and I'm all for healthy immigrants, but has led in So many Muslims, many of whom, not all of whom, but many of whom are extremists that now Canada is about five percent Muslim of two point five million Muslims. And the study show that fifty two percent of them hold anti Semitic attitudes And so what we're seeing is what they called in the Atlantic Monthly, the Pugram But it's not the polpogrrum. I call it the not so politegrrum Not only because we're seeing Arab street theater. Coming to Canada, coming to Montreal, coming to McGill, coming to Toronto. but we also see progressives joining in And, unfortunately Base support For Israel that you see in the United States of America, even today We going back over thirty is seventy percent of Americans have traditionally supported Israel. Even twenty thirty years ago, only forty percent of Canadians supported Israel And there's always been a certain kind of perfect storm of Anti Semitism among many Quebecers I don't want to overgenalize anti Semitism among progressives. Anti Semitism among elites in Canada that made Canadian Jews, despite their incredibly rich and proud history a little bit less welcome And multiculturalism, on the one hand, allowed the internal community to flourish but also sometimes kept those walls higher than they should have been even before the crisis of twenty twenty three. parse all this out. I want you to say you only have a six hours right? We only have five hours. and at some point, we want to talk about the arc of the history. But you know what? if we never get to it because this is urgent, We'll do it next time parse all this out. Europeanization I think I know exactly what you mean, but I want you to say exactly what you mean to make sure that I do Europe always had these wild insane swings of ideology, the fascism and the communism, and all that German romanticism about you know, third world ism is a lot of kind of romanticized indigeneity borrowed from this old German discourse of the nineteenth century. and all these like this European intellectual world that kept producing tyrannies and genocides and terrible, terrible things And we've had on here Hussein Nabu Bakar Mansur, who who who his Hypesis his theory of the case of anti Semitism in the Arab world and of a lot of the political failure of the Arab world is that in the age of imperialism, the Arab intellectual eles imbibed Not Arab ideas, not Muslim ideas, those European ideas. And produced in Egypt built on models that are actually German models that led to state failure, like communist regimes in Europe, like fascist regimes in Europe America was always free of that. I think, I feel. mayaybe I'm romanticizing because It was radically individualistic. It was Christian to the end. It's secularizing quickly, but three generations after Europe, maybe five generations in some senses after Europe secularized. And so America has always had this cultural protection of this traditional sort of radical individualism born in a religious tradition, you still had churches on every street corner. and that was a kind of cultural bulbark against that adoption of these radical ideologies Canada For some reason didn't have that protection, Canada wasn't conservative enough in its radical individualism to not fall for those ideologies, That's my sense of it what does Europeanization mean? And then we'll get to all the rest.ight. Okay, so just I'll define the term and then I'll try to unpack it. So what I mean by Europe Europeananization is that post World War II Europe took a turn traumatized by World War and World WarIo, and the horrors that European culture and all these powerful ideologies had generated and this strong sense of nationalisms culminating in German nationalism had generated the Europe Europe the European phenomenon of today, the EU of today is a very different Europe than the kind of Europe you're talking about. It's not a Europe of rich ideologies. It's not a Europe of passion. It's a Europe of post traditionalism post nationalism and of a kind of u universalism And with that, we've seen a weakening of the national identities and then a Welcome Again, there's certain Muslimen immigrants who come and they just want to live their lives and that's a great thing. But there are some who come with that xic hybrid And I wouldn't just blame the West because it was a hybrid of Western ideologies with jihadist ideologies that became so toxic And we've seen in Sweden, we've seen in France that they don't have the the myellin sheath on the spinal cord to resist So what I'm seeing in Canada. right now, when I say Europeanization is this spike in Let's call it Islamist immigrants Be I wanted I don't want to overly generalize about Muslim immrants but Islamic immigrants coming into a country that no longer has a strong sense of self Now what are we talkking about I'm sorry. I want to just we have polling from Britain. I've been dealing with Britain a lot. I've been reading a lot from Britain over the last month because of the violence spike and violence there Um We have polls of Islamic community Muslim communities and the anti Semitic sentiments in those communities very, very high higher than any other group in Britain, probably I think any other group, I think every other group, including the far right, I think at this point. If I'm wrong people will write that in and then I'll know more, which is great. But One of the fascinating points that these studies have found is that the more you call yourself British, the more you feel Brit The more you integrate into British society, the more British people you know who are not part of the Muslim community the less anti Semitic you are by a huge margin by a huge, huge margin. And so integration and a sense of deep British identification the is the Muslim community, that's the part of the Muslim community that is not rapidly anti Semitic And the more cloistered they are and the more Islamist they are, the more politically Muslim they are in their identity and sense of self, the more likely they are and in vast a majority, just a majority, are more likely to be deeply anti Semitic. and we're not talking anti Israel. We're talking the Jews system. The Jews did nine hundred eleven, That's what we're talking about. So U Is that the basic story of Can in Canada, there isn't that sense of being Canadian. That kind of integration is a good correlation. So in Jesse Brown's piece in the Atlantic Monthly the he called it the Plyporum because his argument was that you have this rabid group of Islamists who and progressives who are highly anti Semitic. and other Canadians are just too polite And so they're politely not standing up and sort of out of respect for this one minority, they're actually sacrificing the basic decency toward a second minority And I give a slight twist Because having looked, for example, in twenty seventeen In twenty ten, in two thousand seven in two thousand at Canadian polls showing even then that there was an animus against Israel. sixty three percent of Canadians in twenty seventeen said that BDS is you know boycotts are acceptable Part of the problem is that you also have, well you have many, many, many decent Canadians, you also have a Canadian elite a Canadian leadership class CBC and what we saw, especially in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, the mayors of Montreal and Toronto who simply were not only not standing up against the harsh Islamists and the harsh progressives because they're too polite because they agreed And so that's part of the reason why it's a different dynamic. But and that's why I see what I call the Europeanization. Now, just this week in the National Post which is center right like the Wall Street Journal of Canada, they have a headlined, Many Canadian Jews have lost their sense of belonging in a country they no longer recognize and they talk about This sense of Vvertigical. What happened to Canada Now to go a little historically We have to distinguish between the United States of America and Canada The story of America is a story you were telling about individualists about pioneers going out And even though they needed their covered wagons, they needed to go together, ultimately it was about the individual pioneer The Western idea. And Americans were united. by their great ideas by the great texts like the Declaration of Independence Canadians were different. Now Canadians, now I'm really going to get in trouble We're in a much more colonial situation, right? Because the You know, one of the things about Canada is that the loyalists who survived the American Revolution fled north Canada remained intertwined with the British Commonwealth Deep into the twentieth century you can still find, you know, when I left Canada in two thousand seven, twenty ten, I didn't you know, Queen Elizabeth's face was on the currency. Canada It's the story that Canadians told wasn't if Individual pioneers going, it was about the government. settling the lands. So you start with a slightly more collectivistic and slightly less individualistic story You start with a story which is less about rebelling from the crown and isn't defined by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What's the Canadian formula order. and good government That is a formula for decency And the Canada that I knew The canida I love, the Canada that welcome me candid that gave me a tremendous platform and tremendous satisfaction as a professor of history at McGill University, and American history. I was dung about Jewish up then Canada that was Deent Canada that at that point was sometimes people say dull, I never used that word, but was decent and was about just giving everybody their own little space. And the multicultural idea then was to say, let the Italians of Montreal be Italian and speak Italian fluently. and the Greeks of Montreal be Greek and speak Greek fluently let the Jews thrive. And they did. And it's a very important point to emphasize how well Jews have done intellectually, ideologically, Jewishly, Culturally Persally, financially in Canada, and many still do. So the Europeanization that I'm seeing is that Canada, the decent, and of course, they used to call Toronto, Toronto the good That decency has now under that pressure of these Islamists and of these progressives And again, this kind of underlying Distain for Jews in a broader elite society. and then in Quebec, we have this different dynamic of a kind of French Canadian disdain for Jews has led to this perfect storm and has led to the spike in anti Semitism And many Canadian Jews saying wait a minute, what's happened What's happened to the Canida Iew in love What' happened to the candidate that allowed me to thrive Okay, let's u Let's get into the history Who are Canadian Jews? Where do they come from? How did Jews get to Canada? What happens to them over those, I don't know, one hundred and fifty years that there are Jews in Canada in one way or another Before I get to origins, I'm just going to drop two hints, which is that the two most important dates are one post nineteen forty five, the big surge in population after World War two And to nineteen seventy six, when Quebec started having its rebellion that led to all these linguistic issues and many Jews went from Montreal to Toronto but we'll get to that a framing Put juice aside I'm a young history professor at McGill University I go to a museum in Montreal and they have a short Wonderful. tun about the origins of Montreal I love going to history museums and I go to the museum in Boston and I go to the museum in Philadelphia and I group in New York and you get these beautiful little again, three minute, five minute videos about Paul Revere rioting and about the Declaration of Independence being signed in Philadelphia and about the ideas The defining ideas again life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And this short little video about The origins of Montreal was about settlement about seearching for gold about The riches of North America luring many people to Canada. I think that's a really interesting way in because Canada, as I was arguing, is a much less ideologically driven country. It's a country that's less about these big ideas and much more about liivving a life And so yes We can go back to the seventeen hundreds and find Jewish fur traders. We can go to seventeen sixty and see that when the British take over after what we be called growing up the French and Indian Wars, we now called the Seven Years War. And two incredibly important things happen. One is that You now have the establishment of Canada eventually as a country that is going to be very tolerant is going to be very British in the best sense of the word And Jews are very quickly by the eighteen thirties going to have fundamental rights that they don't have in Europe You also have in Quebec the British saying, okay, we work because we're British and because we want to respect culture, we're not going to wipe them out and and that's why you have You can call it either the problems or the glories of today's French Canadian identity because they didn't they respected French Canadian society So the story basically of Canadian Jews up until the early nineteen hundreds is a story of Jews coming here and there U Mostly for better life. My own grandfather came to Canada in the early nineteen twenties came from Europe from Poland was partart of that amazing story of just wanting to get out of the hells of Eastern Europe And had an opportunity to come to Canada, and then he made his way to America because his parents and sisters had come in before. But the montreal that he came into in the nineteen twenties was a montreal that was vibrant, Montreal that had a rich Jewish culture, A Montreal that Mordehi Richler would later celebrate. culture that allowed Jews to thrive So Jews are thriving individually They're starting to create some of the major empires which are ultimately is most famous as the Bonran Empire which has its origins in the move of Eastern European Jews. So on the whole The shorthand is that even toil the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties There's a similarity between American Jews and Canadian Jews in that most of them are fleeing Eastern Europe Coming to the golden Medina. Two Medinas, the two countries they come to have slightly different accents And of course, in Canada, you also have to learn French Um We So a huge spike in Jewish immigration when there's a spike in Jewish immigration everywhere the biggest Kanazi immigration to Brit to France from Eastern Europe, right? which is after eighteen eighty one when the Tsar is killed and the Brums begin and they enter Canada And then Canada enters a period like the United States, like Britain, like most of the world off slowing immigration, of turning against immigration. In Canada was the very famous line by a Canadian parliamentarian. Zero is too manyerring Jewish. immigrants. tellell us about that story. So that Canada is open to Jews. It's just kind of open. It's generally open to everybody. And then Canada begins to close and that's sort of a lead up into World War two. the expression n is too many is basically saying, how many Jews should we accept Given as Hitler rises, given what's going on in the nineteen thirties, and Parliamentarian says none is too many and it became the title of the very famous book about Canada's failure to save Jews during World War twoI Now we know the whole world failed to save Jews in World War twoI. I want to stop and also acknowledge Canada in many ways was ahead of the United States and you had Canadians volunteering for the RAF for the Royal Air Force and fighting valiantly in World War two Before the december nineteen forty one, before America went in after Pearl Harbor. And so again, a little complexity. a little nuance What's interesting about the story is that you have this Prime Mister Mcenzie King and there's a fundamental sense of Not Torontnt of the good, not Canada, the boring but Canada the Waspi. This is not a story of French Canadians. This is a story of high church Anglos not wanting to bring the Jews in wanting to bring the other in, not bringing not wanting to bring the immigrants in. And by the way, when we talked about Europeanization, in the same way that there's a certain kind of c in a certain kind of European desire to fix their errors and their sins during the Holocaust One could almost make an ironic argument that Some Canadians unconsciously, more than consciously, are A toning for their sins of being so provincial and so narrow in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties by being overly open to some hostile forces now who are coming in as immigrants. There's a kind of irony of history there The big story, of course, in Canada that people talk about today is much more the what happened with the Natives and some of the horror stories of how natives were in were in orphanages and were abused What's the connection between the two It's a story of a Canada, especially outside Quebec that's very And again here I'm being a little gross and shorortthad, Wp and there's no room for the Jew in O Waspie Canada and So that leads to the high the closing of the immigration gates And And so the story after World War twoI is, oh my goodness, how do we let this happen And then you said that one of the big years is nineteen forty five,een forty five Why is nineteen forty five a big year? What happens in nineteen? So in general when you come to Montreal, when you come to Toronto and you meet a Canadian Jue was roots Like my grandfather would have had he stayed in their twenties or thirties, with roots in the eighteen eighties with roots. There's some I actually know one family that goes back to the seventeen hundreds, you go, wow. they're kind of unique in some ways. it's funny growing up in Queens surrounded by what I call Eastern European boat people. when we met children of Holocaust Survivor That was unique in Canada and sometimes when you meet someone who isn't part of that Holocaust story it's unique. But they're there, right? And so there's that long pre history we're talking about But starting with nineteen forty five and especially I think of the nineteen fifties You see Oh welcome of of Jews, especially in Toronto and especially in Montreal And there are differences between Toronto and Montreal, which can talk about. But fundamentally the big surge of the two communities Um and the big landing is post nineteen forty five. And if you ever do an episode on Australian jewelry, there's a lot to talk about about the parallels between Australian Jewish community and the Canadian Jewish community. In so some ways we get stuck comparing Canada and America because of the language and because of North America. But the first time I flew to Australia, I felt like I had flown thousands of miles to visit Montreal It's qu it's quite special in that way. Again, strengths and weaknesses. and British culture and richness and by the way, incredibly high percentages of Jewish day school participation both in Melbourne and Sydney and in Toronto and Montreal. So post World War II you get this way in fact, again to be anecdotal All when I was growing up My best friend and I used to always talk about the fact that all our grandparents had accents because they all came over on the boat is if there was one though boat that could have brought them all from eighteen eight in nineteen twenty four. And we said, our kids are going to have grandparents like my parents like his parents, maybe with New York accents, but not with Eastern European accents. You moveved to Montreal, as I did, and you marry as I did Montrealar, and we ended up with grandparents with heavy Eastern European accents, delightful Romanian accents. And that kind of tells the story of the power of that community. And so who are these people Many of them scarred M of them deeply tied to Israel Many of them with family in Israel And they come and both in Montreal and in Toronto To certainent of Vancouver, really is Munille Toronto. they create empires financially They create empires culturally They create empires educationally It's true that when I was in my trial in the nineteen nineties I looked around and I said, you know what I know very few Canadian Jews who are involved in corporations were leading corporations. There was still a kind of waspy distancing there. There were real estate empires, of course, the Barfland liquor emmpire that became an industrial empire. There's lawyers, there's doctors. They made it And the Mindrual Jewish community, the Toronto Jewish community in the fifty, sixty, seventies is a community on the way up. and a community less so than the American Jewish community, which isn't as Central to the growing culture of Canada But it's thriving Canadian jury Cry all jury will create people like Irwin Cotler who is one of the great human rights activists of all time who defended Mandela and Naton Sharansky and so many others and continues to the age of eighty six to be not just a friend and role model, but an inspiration to us all who understand, as we were talking about earlier, earlier that liberalism is not about the result, but liberal is about the process Liberalis is about making sure that the legal system works making sure that the political system works, making sure that people are respected you have People like Ris Weiss, an immigrant who who was part of the Holocaust story, who ultimately becomes one of the great intfellectuals and just one just gave the Jefferson lecture in Washington, DC. You have people like David Hartman who comes from New York, but spends eight critical forward beers in Montreal. So intellectually there's a richness there. Mordic H Richer, of course, becomes very famous. And you start seeing a community that while it may not be as integrated, as Americanized as the American community has a real wealth from within. And it just kind of left alone Peace Order and good government. I mean One of the famous aspects of the Montreal community is also the North African immigration. Abs decolonization is happening. France leaves Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia. Those Jewish communities flee. They flee the rise of Islamism, they flee the rise of these post colonial Arab states, which turned violent against most of their minorities, not just the Jews And the Jews are running away. Now the majority go to Israel, huge numbers go to France. Many of them see in French speaking Quebec home. U tellell us that story. Is that a significant story? Are they very felt? I know that there are obviously Sfardi synagogues in Montreal and schools in Montreal, but Um, what is their story? In the five hour version, in addition to talking about forty five and seventy six, which we haven't gotten to yet, you would add fifty six because with the Souez campaign of nineteen fifty six, that's when many Jews in Morocco, which is French speaking, Algeria and others start having greater cris. I mean, the crisis had started obviously in the early forties and by the way, we're about to mark the eighty fifth anniversary of the Farahood the horrific gr in Iraq, which ends what twenty five hundred years of rich Jewish life there. So it's growing, but nineteen fifty six accelerates the process The real story goes to seventy five seventy six. So let's get to the Svartic community may after that critical moment in nineteen seventy six. The sixties. It's the seventies in America and also in Canada You have not Pimary Trudeau but you have the writ is the original prrime Minister, Elliot Trudeaogi, who who talks about having more respect Multiculturalism and also In the same way that blacks are asserting black power and Jews are asserting Jewish power, you see that French Canadians, who for a long time, and it's important to emphasize because I will have my criticism of them, but for until the nineteen seventies were disrespected by those same Canadian wasusps. were're disrespected by the British born types. We're disrespected and looked down by the Anglos the stereotype is that in the Bank of Montreal, president and the bank managers were always Anglos, but the bank tellers and the janitors were always Francos. And you have a majority French world there in Quebec, which again, the British out of respect for the cultural integrity of those people that now in the nineteen seventies starts emerging And in nineteen seventy six, you have a seeparatist movement And that leads to two different stories. One, the rise of Toronto. And two changes in Montreal, whereby this early immigration, which started in the nineteen fifties really takes off after nineteen seventy six Beck See, in America We're all obsessed with race. In Israel, we're obsessed with the Palestinians, Israeli. In Canada, it's all about language. When I first came to McGill for my McGill interview, and you know, you want to be impressive and you want to pretend that you know everything. they talk about anglophones I can figure that out that means English speakers, Francophones, French speakers. and they talk about allophones. I go, what the hell are they talking about? What's an alophone? An alliphone is people like my Romanian immigrant in laws who were neither English speakers are French speakers. But what's so fascinating is especially after nineteen seventy six, you're defined by your language to go to your question. after nineteen seventy six because immigration laws and we should emphasize also, we talk about Canada. justust like the United States has fifty states. and a federal system When I would lecture about American history to McGill students, They got. power of the federal system, and they got the power of states in the eighteen hundreds in the way that my American students didn't always get. Be America's become increasingly nationalized and centralized in Canada. there's a huge difference between living in Ontario and Alberta and TQbec Those are three provinces for those of us who don't speak Canadian So Quebec becausecause they set the language laws mostly and they set the immigration laws mostly Svardic Jews, Moroccan Jews start coming in. and When you go to Toronto On the whole, the community is very much like the community that I grew up with in Queens, which was Eastern Europeans my Eastern European, both people people, they're post Holocaust Eastern Europeans in Montreal You have this rich, vibrant, I think the numberers now about twenty percent community is Sardi And what's interesting about this fiding, I hate to over generenalize is that in my experience Most of my Anglo Canadian Montreal friends Spoke French They didn't speak it as fluently as easily as my Moroccan Canadian Jewish friends. that community speaks French and English so fluently. and fits in the same way that the Italians and Greeks do And so they have comeome and I should say they've been fascinating conversations as the anti Semitism By the way, this is a really interesting post twenty twenty three moment, post october seventh moment Until october seventh It was a Interesting conversation in Montreal. bringing in more and more French Jews Should we compete with Israel should be not shouldn't everybody decide by themselves? I really haven't heard much of that conversation unfortunately since october seventh, because things have really gotten that much worse. Now again, I would argue that I saw the anti Semitism growing in Quebec particularly and growing at McGill before that, but there really has been a horrific spike So what you see with the Morocan community, with As Fara community is their own institutions synagogues, schools I was actually quite surprised When I came to Canada, I learned the expression of the two solitudes which is the French and the English And in some ways in the Canadian Jewish community on one level, there are also two solitudes, although the next generation has done a much, much, much better job of breaking it down and of being much more integrated. Meaning Montreal, Toronto. meaning I mean mean in the Montreal community many many more of my u Anglo friends, My age. had never been at a Moroccan Shabat dinner They thought they had And they would tell me how they were close they had so many close friends. and then I would ask the question of, well, is there a difference or similarity when you say I there's just slight differences. And many of their kids s So so the younger generation is a little more integrated. The younger generation of Anglo Jews speaks French much better than their parents or certainly than their grandparents. And as I said, the Farti Jews speak, but also there are more institutions that bring them together, but still it's sometimes quite surprising how separate they are Now the other story is Toronto Montreal is the center of Canadian journey. And again, it's one of the great centers of intellectual and Jewish intellectual life and Jewish communal life. There's a rich Yiddish culture there. There are Jewish day schools to this day, there's Balk is which teaches Hebrew, English, French, and English in their curriculum Remarkable So so But starting in the nineteen seventies. Canadian Jews in Montreal. Eespecially because so many of them are not been have not been in Montreal for a hundred years know exactly where their passports are because they're holocaust. children or Holocaust survivers themselves They see what's happening And I'm sorry to say. They can smell the anti Semitism in some of the French nationalism, not all. but some of the French nationalists And so they flee to Toronto I have a good friend who was a Quebec legislator for many years And the first time I visited Toronto, I said I'm not you going to use names on purpose I said this is amazing. I was in Toronto. The Bank of Montreal that I mentioned, its tower is now in the heart of Toronto Montreo in the nineties and the two thousands was a bit of a sleepy regional capital likeike Denver It wasn't the center, It wasn't the New York it had been in the nineteen fifties, sixty seventies And my friend said, yeah, well, Toronto Po is the city that Renay Lvek built. Rene Lvek is the great Canadian Sparatist they' George Washington to a certain extent too overplayed a little bit. And so what he's basically saying is that Starting in the nineteen seventies and eighties, it wasn't only the Jews who left. that much of the capital many others And by the way, if we want to talk about anti Semitism, let's point down. that that is a really good case study teextbook example of that when the Jews felt uncomfortable for good reason and left. Montreal went down and Toronto went up And my friends in Toronto are going to be frustrated with the first part of this episode. So now let me go a little bit into the extraordinary community of Toronto. The fifty percent of Jews go to Jewish day school. intermarriage rate around twenty two percent. They had a ten year period in the Federation, just the Federation alone, where they raised a billion dollars. And it's not about the money It's about each of those dollars reflecting a real sense of commitment, a real sense of connectedness. and Toronto From the nineteen seventies, certainly eighties, nineties, changed My Montreal friends grew up in a world where they talked about Toronto not the good, but Toronto the boring Toronto the provincial, Toronto the narrow I was getting trouble with my proud Montreal Quebec wife because when I come back from Toronto and I see the vitality of the Jewish community and I see the vitality of theater scene. and I see the vitality of the restaurant scene. I go, wow, it's a really fun city. and then I have to be quiet Toronto really emerged both Jewishly and more broadly until the last couple of years All right, let let's get into this moment. Before we do, let's define one term that you've used many, many times and so have I anti Semitism Um Anti Semitism in Quebec, anntiemitism that we've seen now. annti Semitism that often has expression as anti Israel sentiment, delegitimization of Israel sentiment, not crriticism of Israel sentiment, which you know, who isn't a fan of that, but That was meant sarcastically, hold the emails But but very seriously actually, obviously the argument made by so many people who want to justify protests outside of synagogues is that you, the people who conflate is criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews are actually which Jews sometimes do are actually nobody seriously conflates criticism of Israel with they conflate obsessive criticism of Israel. that can't possibly see any other crime on earth and the formation of mass movements around Israel in the definitional sense that the role that Israel plays in progressive politics, which China doesn't play and no other no other issue, no other civilizational space, no other crime, no other war, nothing. Nothing plays except Israel. And yes, that is already a prejudice, and it's structurally identical to the way obsession about Jews, the role it played in European society in the past and in a great, many Muslim societies today. So there's so much to say, but nevertheless, when you use the word, what is it that you mean by the word? and then we'll get into this moment And I specifically want to bring forward a poll and and talk about What Canadians actually think and what Canadians actually think, by the way, non Jewish Canadians about the state of the Jews, the condition of the Jews, because it turns out quite a few Canadians are worried for the Jews who are not Jews So what do you mean by anti Semitism? Esentially you used this word obsessed and obsession. And that's the word that I added to my vocab to my definition of anti Semitism after october seventh But I saw october seventh And obviously we can see throughout history is that anti Semitism. is a targeting of The Jew orr Jewish institutions or Jewish phenomena at the Jewish st. in an obsessive way. And I sometimes distinguish between anti Semitism, which is the theory. So my lovely historian colleagues wouldn't hur a fly. But they buy into the antis Semitism conspiracy and they buy into the anti Semitism rhetoric And that encourages the actual Jew hatred So I recently came out with a booklet with the JPPI, the Jewish Put Policy Institute, and it's the essential guide to Zionism anti Zionism, anti Semitism and Jew hatred So I tend to use antisemitism to mean the broader theory, the broader phenomenon. But I hate the fact that it sounds so scientific And Jew hatred is I call it an ugly term for an ugly phenomenon and you hatered is the actual action Now So it's very simple. And by the way, I have a very hard time doings a whole other conversation with the IRA definition, the IHRA definition because I don't know anybody who can quote it. And if you can't quote a definition it doesn't So anti Semitism is u is you mean because it's pages So long, right? We need you're asking me for so is that definition is? It's an obsession with the Jew Jewish institutions, the Jewish state Jewish phenomenon as a key to all the world's problems and an acting out of that which often expresses itself through the volence of Jew hatred Now, when we talk about this antiemitism anti Zionism I have to say, I have less less patience for it It's not on me to distinguish between anti Semitism and anti Zionism. It's on them My feminist friends don't sit around saying, you know what Those misogynists are really good at heart Why don't we figure out a way to make them feel a little more comfortable? My African American friends don't sit around and say, you know, those KKK guys, they really look good and white And I love NASCA racing. Maybe we should figure out a way to make them feel comfortable If you truly truly are an anti Zionist, but you're not anti Semitic. The burden of proof isn't on me and it's not on us and it's not on you for all the good work you do. It's on them And why? becausecause they are the ones who keep on conflating the term They are the ones who keep merging the files. and you've said it already and you've said it repeatedly in your episodes ideologically Go to goo to Hajin Amin al Husseini, go to the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood. Go to the Hamas charter, G to the PLO, which gave out Mine Kampf in its training camps. Again and again, the Palestinian national movement. notice I don't say the Palestinians. I say the Palestinian national movement and anti Zionists and progressive anti Zionists ideologically targeted the Jews and the Jewish state And if in the middle Ages, the Jew was the Dujour Today it is the Jewish state That's ideologically And as we've seen in Hebrew beforeall, actually, Tchnically As you pointed out When something happens in Israel and I hate Israelis And I hate what happens in Israel and yet I attack a Jewish kid with a quipa or on his head, or I attack a Jewish day school or I attack a Jewish synagogue as is happening in Toronto, as is happening in Montreal, That shows that they have conflated the two terms. They have merged the files So I call that in this book, The tells of the bigot Bigot shows how obsessed they are. The big it shows how they keep on merging the two. But at the same time, it's important to point out how central Zionism is a Jewish identity and central Judaism is Zionist identity And I will make no apologies that, but that's all of the conversation Okay, so that was a valuable clearing of the table so we can talk about the rest. I want to lay out there was the BIM polling and there were many, many other polls. and I collected some of them together. These are simple Google searches. Go to your favorite AI, make sure to ask for links, check those links so the AI isn't hallucinating. and here's what people will find Um, First of all, most Non Jewish Canadians, the overwhelming majority. I think it was eighty three percent in the Bim polling positive attitudes toward Jews. They say Jews, great people. No problem with Jews. or that's what they tell bolsters. Maybe that's what they know they're supposed to say, Maybe that's Canadian politeness. eighty three percent, positive attitudes towards Jews, a great many by the way of the rest are didn't answer donon't knows The negative attitude toward Jews are a small minority And they correlate strongly also with racist sentiments generally. In other words, if you're the average Canadian who says bad things about Jews, you're quite likely to say bad things about Blacks, bad things about Muslims, bad things about immigrants, bad things generally about about minorities and other groups of people. So that's the general Canadian Story And yet, we have unbelievable spikes of anti Semitic incidents, whether it's harassment, vandalism, violence, outright violence, shootings at schools and community centers and synagogues, bombings or attempted bombings, arson, huge numbers of spikes. Babareth, Canada recorded six thousand eight hundred incidents in twenty twenty five that it now that's includes online harassment. Okaykay? So it's it's it's all the things that that have They have evidence for that people have sent them, that they have that they've gone online and seen it or the violence in the streets. But the point isn't the number, the hard number. Maybe it's many more than that. People don't necessarily report every time they you know, peopleople come after them with anti Semitic claims online, But it's up ten percent from twenty twenty four. twenty twenty four is up one hundred forty five percent from twenty twenty two And there's data from that's from the Jewish community, from Ne Brit, there's data from the police. The Jews are about one percent of the Canadian population They are by far the most targeted religious group in Canada, discernible religious group. In twenty twenty four, one percent of the population accounted for seventy percent of what police classify as religion motivated hate crimes nationally That's seventy percent for one percent of the population. When a lot of Canadian progressive politicians are willing to talk about anti Semitic attacks after the shootings at schools, they have a hard time not doing so. then they they have this Madening tendency to say anti Semitism is wrong and so is Islamophobia And the problem with that A is that you just said anti Semitism is not wrong. What you just said is e You know, violence happens, hatred happens. If you can't say antiemitism without saying Islamophobia, you are not talking about antisemitism. you are refusing to talk about, you are in fact minimizing antiemitism. It works the other way too. If there's a massacre by a horrible evil racist of the Muslims that's a mosque, You don't then get to say, there's also anti Semitism in Canada. That is a minimizing of the crime. And that is done to Jews not routinely, almost always in progressive spaces, almost in every case. Well, it also doesn't fit the data. If seventy percent of religion motivated hate crimes, by the way, in Toronto in twenty twenty five The Toronto Police Department said that that was eighty two percent of religion motivated hate crimes are target Jews, meananing there's much less space. for the much larger Muslim community to be targeted for hate crimes, Jews are overwhelmingly target of hate crimes in Canada. Don't you dare talk about anti Semitism while also adding other attacks on other minorities as a way of not actually talking about anti Semitism, but pretending there isn't, in fact a problem here because everybody's heard. That that is okay Then I'm sorry, there's a tiny bit of a soap box and then I'ms important to you. It's important what you say There's a twenty twenty five Lig poll in which many Canadians see anti Semitic and Islamophobic behavior. The poll asked both because I guess you gota as becoming more frequent. forty five percent of Canadians said anti Semitic attacks and Islamophobic attacks are becoming more frequent. Most Canadians sixty percent still view Canada as safe Jews. and then I want to narrow it down There is a u The negative attitudes toward Jews Now let's get into the anti Semitism There is a concentration in specific subgroups that the pollink shows Quebec, especially Montreal and Quebec City Among political conservatives, the political right, people with no Jewish acquaintances tend to have less good attitudes toward Jews, younger people tend to have higher rates of anti Jewish sentiment, not anti Israel Anti Jewish specifically, males tend to have higher rates of antiurish sentiment and university students. tend to have higher anti Semitic views in addition to anti Israel views, but separate from Israel, just about local Jews We tend to have higher anti Semitic views than the general population And then we get to the Muslim community in Canada And here the disparities are huge, stark and very, very bright, and you can't pretend it isn't there. This is true in the Bim polling and in all polling that check this. Muslims in Canada hold significantly more negative attitudes towards Jews, I'm reading and Israel also Jews independently of Israel than the general non Jewish population. Brim describes this as by far the strongest among the groups surveyed Here's two examples and then I'll hand the baton over to you neearly half of Canadian Muslims. This is something you referenced way back at the beginning forty to fifty percent in different polling in different ranges and different ways of asking the question, consistently forty to fifty percent agree that in the Bim polling, quote, Jews are the cause of all the negatives involved in globalization. They were asked, Are Jews the cause of all the negatives involved in globalization? forty, fifty percent say yes In the general population, it's fourcent to five percent tenfold. It is half of Canadian Muslims and it has nothing to do with Israel. It's about Jews and economic problems and dislocation and globalization U then, obviously among you know, when they asked is Zionism racism, is Israel an apartheid state? are suicide bombings against Israeli civilians justified? Huge numbers among the Muslim community highigher numbers than anti Jewish sentiment in the general population, but nevertheless still below twenty percent, if I'm not mistaken. And then they asked specifically about boycotting Jewish owned businesses in Canada over Jewish community support, Jewish communal support for Israel There's the connection. Jews support Israel Can we boycotont their businesses sixteen percent of Canadians say yes. That I assume is where the progressive linkage happens forty one percent of Canadian Muslims say yes. What are you going to do? What are we going to pretend it's not happening? Are we going to talk about it as if it's not there? Last time I talked about Muslim anti Semitism in the UK I got a lot of people on Twitter on email Telling me, what are you trying to drive Islamophobia and divide our country? We're already dealing with this great divide Those sentiments are driving the great divine. That is not something that noticing those sentiments is doing. And the violence against the Jews, when you have arson, when you have actual shootings and it's overnight shootings, kids were not in the school in one of the cases. The next morning they find bullet holes in the school. Okay, but also there were attacks on synagogues. Ahabat when there were people in the buildings When you have the violence And the police released the names And the police go out of their way in Canada not to release the names as far as I can tell They're Muslim names. So When do we talk about this? I'm going to stop with the rant Bi I'm really scared Canadian Jews, not because there's a problem There's a problem Immigrants came with attitudes from their home countries. By the way, Muslims in Canada much lower rates of antiemitism than the countries they came from Canada did very good things to massively lower their anti Semitism rate to merely fifty percent silver line. I'm just saying, you bring people in and they come in and you know, the more they integrate into Canada, the less that anti Semitism will be because of that gap in In opinions, I assume, I hope we see that happening in the UK. presumably it'll be the same phenomenon, but only if you can see it onlyly if you can tackle it. So How bad is it Walk us up to october seventh and then from october seventh, How bad actually Act is it. and forgive me for the speech people came to hear you No, first, I just want to sit with it for a second because it's devastating. I did a cross country tour of Canada in february twenty twenty five. And I kept on saying This is not the candida I left and the candida that I loved. and a professor at University of Ottawa Profess of Women's St studies very much to the left, but Jewish said every Canadian Jewish professor has a story Every Canadian Jewish student has a story And she didn't mean a good story It is stunning. to see how pervasive it is It is stunning to see how deep it runs Un Fortunately So far It has not been Bandai Beach. Fortunately, it's been attacks on buildings and not on people so much But we saw stabbing in a loablz, which is one of the Canadian iconic Canadian supermarkets in Ottawa and there's a kind of growing threat and a growing terror that is simply unacceptable and the inability of people to call it out, I agree with you, it iss very problematic and the degree to which it reflects institutional right You saw this, by the way in New York Times and you spoke so eloquently about that I think it was last episode two episodes ago. We're seeing institional rot We're seeing ideological confusion We're seeing social dysfunction And we're seeing psychological distress. And this is a this is I call this ISIS actually, the ideological, social Institutional and psychological distress and dysfunction is what antiemitism is about. It is a warning sign to Canada There's some good news in their hills, right? You're talking about that there still are most Canadians who are decent And again, if we go to Jesse Brown's argument about the polite Pgrom He would argue that it's just they're being too decent to the haters as well I'm get a new one set. But he also has a devastating line And he talks about one person who resigned, I think, from his hospital A Jew And he says he did not resign because of the anti Semitic messages though He resigned because the university wouldn't do anything about And I think that's the real issue When we talk about fighting anti seemitism we have to two different directions. We particular the Jewish community, which we'll get to But within the broader community, There have to be two different framings One, this is not just an assault on the Jews, as I said earlier, this is an assault on fundamental Canadian values. This is an assault on the fundamental Canadian character. There's a fundamental assault on Canadian decency and the degree to which So many Jews I ask the question People talk about anti seemism all the time I mean Miami. I'm in Atlanta. I'm in New York. I say, has your threat level changed And most Jews Basically say no. If they're on a tight campus, they might say yes, but very, very rarely, especially in the last year When I speak to most Montreal Jews and most Torontoews, not all, I'm surprised at how many of them say, yes, my thret level has changed becausecause for example, for months after october seventh As many Toronto Jews walked to Tashul to synagogue on Saturday, Ky Bridge which many of them had to pass. there were people yelling and screaming at them It's not a poggram I wouldn' even call it a Pied Pggrom. It's just not Canadian And so the first thing that has to happen He's right, Eeducation is part of that, but it's a much broader thing. It has to be seen as and has to be framed as the Jew, not just the Jewish community but the broader Canadian community has to frame it as an assault on Canadian values. Now let me illustrate in two different ways The, um One of the smaller but important political parties is a party called the NDP, the new Democratic party And it just had its convention and its leader, its new leader is a rare a rare phenomenon in Canada, an anti Zionist Canadianew namedobby Lewis When he was elected And he was on stage. There was only one flag Weaving behind him It wasn't the Canadian flag, it was the Palestinian flag. And then you may have seen that there was this little piece that went viral because they had given out Ididentity cards, gender identity cards and color identity cards to different people And many of the speakers instead of speaking to substance, started quibbling about, well, I was disrespected because a white male got to speak before me and he claimed to be a white male who was trans, but he actually wasn't trans. And it became the sort of force of identity politics What's my point Two minute clip And that failure to have a Canadian flag did more reputational damage to the NDP than thirty two Beautiful articles and podcasts you and I could create and write It showed kind of assault on basic Canadianness the more we Mobilize a broader conversation about what is Canada going to be? and it's true about the United States America, it's true about England and it's true about France. What kind of country do you want to have The more we couldn into touch Shransk understood Ati Semitism, the gulag as almost a natural state. Well, he said, it makes sense. that when I'm in the Soviet gulag in the Soviet prison camp, they're going to use antiisemitism because they're a dictatorship And so anti Semitism is one of the tools of the haters But going tounch Ransky is freed and he comes to America. And he comes to Canada. And hears it at York University at McGill University at Harvard. there's anti Semitism. He goes, How could there be It doesn't make sense. Be anti Semitism is the tool the dictor And that's why I think we have to start understanding antis Semitism as The reflection of ISIS institutional problems, social dysfunction ideological psychological distress, the psychological distress, the anti Semites. I would never want to trade souls with them. Of course, they pass on stress as well The first thing we have to do is we have to frame it as a Canadian problem And the second thing we have to do, is reach out Fellllow Canadians I've paid taxes in Israel, Canada, and the United States, so I can say we wherever is convenient for the purpes of this conversation. in the in twenty twenty two. I'm sorry in two thousand two. During the worst days of the secondecond intofightle, long before twenty twenty three two thousand two A woman by the name of Elizabeth Comper talks to some of her friends. She lives in Toronto. And they Jewish women, she's an a Jewish woman, tell her about this growing anti Semitism they're experiencing then connected to the anti Israelism name And when her husband, Tony who is a major CEO of a large corporation, is shaving one day knowing that that's the best way to hold him hostage, she starts talking to Tony and says, We've got to do something about it. And they created this organization called Fest. anti Semitism today And what Fast did tap into BMO, Bank of Montro, which I've mentioned, Bell Atlantic, the big phone company, they tapped into the elite of elites of Canadian society and say, this is not okay. this is an assault on us And so in the same way you have to frame it as a Canadian issue We also have to mobilize forces within Canada And I'm sorry to say that we've seen that in the Conservative partarty There has been a very strong not just pro Israel standance but anti anti Semitism stance In the Liberal partarty, there hasn't been enough. And I don't want conservatives attacking liberals. I want liberals attacking liberals and saying What's going on here And so that would be my pushes And we have to start speaking to Prime Minister Carney and others saying, whatever you think about Israel, And your Israel policy, we're not going to talk about that That's a separate issue. We're not here to lobby about that. We're hard to h to lobby for basic Canadian values. What kind of a country is it? When Canadian Jews reported the National Post They're not just that they're afraid, but their identity has been shaken because they grew up in Tront of the good. They grew up in Canada, Canada the decent They worship in the church as they should of peace order and good government. Um Our last conversation on Canada, and this is not going to be the last and so there'll be more. So keep writing in those suggestions, people Last conversation on Canada with Kasey He critiqued the Canadian Jewish community's leadership. institutions. I know just enough about the Canadian Jewish community to know that this is not a single group. It's not one organization. They're competing organizations. They're people have many different views and opinions and strategies and they're holding different conferences and they have different and also that some of them work very hard and communicate constantly with police and with a Canadian politicians and leaders and also that they're small, and that just as a voting base They're not going to draw the attention of the politician like the half of the Muslim community that expresses these anti Semitic opinions in the polls And so all the limitations. Casey is nevertheless very, very critical of them. He thinks that largely they setat out this time. I hope I'm representing him correctly, if not, I apologize, Casey But but there was this critique. wasn' It wasn't the main issue, It wasn't what he talked about, but it was part of the critique. I got emails that agreed. You know, I got some Responses from Canadian Jewish organizations that said, we're actually working very hard. We're being very effective. This isn't fair. He doesn't necessarily he does his activism, but he doesn't know exactly what's happening in every organization and in every city and in every province and in every locality. And so it was not representative. I respect that, but for every email I got saying they're doing the work I got At least ten. saying We're we're out here. We're alone. We're now In American communities, this also happens Because these are big societies and communal institutions are basically gigantic charities and they're not you know representative government and they don't reach every Jew. And so of course, even if they're doing everything right, a lot of Jews are going to feel completely alone in this moment and in this violence. And it's you know, there's only so many times you can find bullet holes in the morning in your synagogue and not be afraid to go to your synagogue and that fear is deep and real and it's in the nature of terrorism That very little terrorism can produce a profound psychological effect. And so a lot of Jews are feeling under siege. and at the same time, certainly Jews who are most connected to the community, most likely to be going to a synagogue. They're the ones feeling under siege. And then they're always the you know NDP tiges are always going to roll out. What are you talking about? I got sixty Jews on this on this letter that say, we're not feeling under siege. Yeah, you probably also don't go to a synagogue all that much Stistically, don't now bring me the one who does. The Jews feel under siege I want to get your take on the community I love the Canadian Jewish community. I've had given talks, I've been visited Vancouver and Toronto, and some of these organizations do absolutely remarkable work on Holocaust memory, on tolerance education, work with schools, work with police departments. I know some of these people, I know they're wonderful fantastic people doing a lot They're also a tiny minority that doesn isn't able to drive the agenda of Canadian politics no matter how much it wants to, even if they want to. What's your take What's your take on the position of the community and on the leadership of the community institutions So first I would say to my Canadian Jewish leadership friends take the compliment The Canadian Jewish community is much more centralized, much more organized community So in the same way that I will give them acknowledgement of some of the strengths, when there's a problem and there's a big problem, as you pointed out, they're going to get the complaints And sometimes it's reasonable and sometimes not. I'll go into more detail My biggest frustration with the approached anti Semis both in Canada and in other countries has been this phrase that Iite to test called hardening the target The amount of money that has been invested in hardening the target, which means hiring police and making our synagogues into walled communities. And you go to the Mitrail Federation and you have to go through a machine that's as elaborate as a machine you'll go through to get ono the airplane at Bengorianirport I mean A, it breaks my heart that money is going there but B. It shows a kind of Get into the problem and a hunering down I spoke at I think I mentioned the name the synagogue believing synagogue in Montreal, the Sarsamine And I said, instead of hardening the target Where't we brow the target Farsher Mime is at the base of a Hill called Church Hill Street called Churchill, why is it called Churchill Because across the street from the Stam line are two other churches I said, whyy don't we as a community And I've said this in other places too to R Catholic and Protestant peers and say to them, you know, I'll make you a deal W' patrol on Sunday protect you when you need it and you'll patrol on Center Anchibot when we need it And they'll say, oh, we don't need it. And they'll say, okay, now we can start the conversation And that goes back to my broader point about making this a real has to this is not going be solved until it's seen as a Canadian issue rather than a Jewish issue. And it's not going to be solved if we start burrowing behind big bigger and bigger walls. At the same time, I totally understand and respect every principal, every rabbi, every president of the synagogue, every community, every federation leader has to worry most importantly about avoiding a Bandai beach. God, forbid about avoiding Uh bloodshit it's a problem There's a cultural issue that we Americans have with our Canadian brothers and sisters back in the day two thousand two thousand one two thousand two when I first came out of the closet from behind my clean name is Gil Troy and said, I am a Zionist and started talking about Zionism then I was told by the Canadian leadership then You know, anger doesn't work. We did a poll And Canadians don't like anger And so don't be so angry and don't use words like terrorism and Yasir Arafat. when they were killing people on the streets you grew up frright they were blowing up bombs, they were blowing up cafes and buses with bombs and suicide bombs, and I'm not supposed to be angry. And I said I'm a historian, but I don't know much But I can't think of in history one movement succeed without some righteous anger And Ellie Well actually came at the time without really knowing much about the Canadian Jewish community, although maybe he hadd been prepared or just had that Ellieuiseell genius. And he got up and he said You know, sometimes When you're against a threat like terrorism anger is the rational response And I think Canadian decency, I think the Canadian Jewish establishment has long feared that. and as you point out becausecause of the centralization of the organization, often the leadeers are often the fundraisers So yes, we know that you know, yelling and screaming and raising money to to to to reinforce cononcrete is going to get more money than Jewish education O one hand, but on the other hand, they're not They're not really climed and raised to be the kind of angry activists Maybe Casey isn int that I was back in the day when I was in Canada. and anger sometimes is important. So I do see this a kind of cultural issue which is their Canadianness Let's say, and also their Canadian Jewishness Um Why? Because it worked? And I see this in America too, when students say to me, Oh, you know Why don't reach out the anti Zionists? and why don' we reach out to the pro Palestinians? Andy the way I'm happy to speak to anybody who's wanting to talk to me about this, but I said, if they celebrated october seventh Where do weere's the common conversation But what's the great skill of American Jews? What's the great skill of Canadian Jews? We' been raised to fit in We've been raised to be accepted and drives us crazy that we're not popular So what are the things we have to do If you have to pivot and it just start raising tough jews We have to start talking, I hate the word resilience becausecause it's become a cliche. We have to start teaching students that when a bully comes after you, you don't run to the teacher even in Jewish day school You hit him back because there are fale bullies too We have to start haaving an ideological change And part of it also is lean into the great strength of Canadian jury. What's the great strength of Canadian jury? I've talked about the institutions, the education, the synagogues, the identity So let's double down on identity Let's make sure I call this pilates The stronger the core is. The more we're proud. the more we're confident The more we're tough and righteously angry when necessary The more we're also celebrating Israel and celebrating Zionism and celebrating Jusam, the better off we will be And I have a proof of this little experiment. and now I'm going to sound like an obnoxious spoiled a boasting father, but it just happens to be a fact that my son Yoni Yony Troy was recruited by the Montreal Federation because they understood the need to raise a new generation who were young and proud and free and not scarred by anti Semitism. and they turn to a An Israeli with Canadian roots My son and he's there working with the Hills And what he has done more and more is he says he evaluates every program based on just one thing. Does it advance a positive Jewish Zionist agenda And so for example, at McGill University on the second anniversary of october seventh this past year There were seventy Jews and non Jews Professors and students who gathered for Vigil. in memory what happened on october seventh and to show their righteous anger against it in one pro Palestinian burned an Israeli flag. And in fact, this time and it didn't happen two years ago The McGill police came in and removed that young man from being a hooligan and being a vandal Yoni's press release didn't mention The anti Semite and only mentioned The seventy So sometimes it's the story we tell There's a tension here. On the one hand, we have to fight back anti Semitism just enough that we don't feel like victims and we push back But not so much that they hijack the agenda John Pulsart said And you have to have some French to bring in the to make them respect us.. Jean Porssart said the anti Semite makes the Jew In Canada We have a perfect laboratory because we have such amazing institutions to show that the Jew makes the Jew. and the Zionist makes the jewke And the Jews make the Zionism. And our Zionism, and this is Zionism you've articulated so beautifully iss not anti anti Semitism and anti anti Zionism. It's a positive, proud, strong identity Zionism, which is Resilient enough and open enough to be critical and self critical but also can distinguish between true enemies and thoughtful critics. And but more important, focuses on the positive And so Are there ways in which I wish the Canadian Jewish community was stronger and angrier Yes, but do I see that it' somehere in some whereere in they their programming you not to I think part of the problem also has been that for decades, there wass a lot of denial. We all talk about the Canadian Jewish leadership I haven't heard enough. about Canadian lawyers mobilizing. I haven't heard enough about Canadian politicians, sorry, Jewish Canadian Jews, turning to their colleagues and mobilizing Canadian Jews and turn into the politicians. I think that it's easy to say, oh, the leaders of Federation and these rabbis who are so busy with so many other things should also do that. But I'd like to see more Prominent Canadians, more wealthy Canadian and Canadian Jews leveraging both their whatever power and money they have, and most important, their contacts They have to go to have the difficult conversations and turn to their friends and say, you know what Look at that National Post headline White people are under siege It's time to help for my sake but for Canada's sake And so it's very easy to pick on prominent leaders. I think we also have to look at, especially lawyers, I think could be doing more to really lean into because by the way, we should also point down we talk about the difference between U.S and Canada. Canada has hate legislation. Canada has and I don't always believe in it, R right? So I wouldn't be the perfect lawyer for this, but Canada has a much more elaborate infrastructure for fighting hate and fighting hate speech Let's use it Let's lean into it. let's turn to our experts, but let's not just make it about the Jewish community and the Jewish leaders. let's make it a broader fight Giltroy, thank you so much for joining me. O of just two quick comments as we sign off. One to the people who will write to me to say that this kind of conversation is not encouraging harmony in Canadian society Please include in your email everythingverything I got wrong and links to those polls that show other numbers and links to other events and links to I know that there are also parts of the Muslim community that come out openly and explicitly against anti Semitism and join the Jewish community in its fights that half are silent is not helpful to your case. Please write me why I'm wrong. I am eager to learn. This is not the last episode. there will be more D't write me to say I'm just wrong. That's not useful to me, and it's a waste of your time The second point is Canadian Jewish institutions At. inccredible in many ways. And my one big experience with them was this process that we were both involved in in the Federation's decision to write a new history curriculum for Montreal Jewish kids in their Jewish day schools. And I learned many things about the Montreal community. This curriculum, by the way, now exs. it's published, It's available. You have to go to the Federation, if you're a Jewish day school somewhere in I don't know, San Diego or Broward County, and you have to ask for it. It's some nominal fee for it. They don't want They want people to use it. they want people to be in contact with them when they use it. But I urge Jewish communities to go to the Montreal Federation and get This curriculum, it's a curriculum of what Jewish kids should know about their own history. You and I were both part of a kind of advisory process on this. They went to many, many people, including the educators of Montreal. I learned that the Montreal community is incredibly diverse from a very Yeshivish orrthodox day school through modern Orthodox all the way to Bundist secularist formerly socialist kind of day school, Sephardia and Ashkenazi and the whole diversity of the Jewish people. And this is a federation that said, you know what, ourur kids reach the college campus and they hear people screaming at them about their own story and we haven't taught them their story enough. And so we're going to get this done. And two years ago they started this process and now they have a curriculum There are some initiatives like this in the American Jewish community, which is much more than ten times bigger than the Canadian Jewish community and much more than twenty times richer than the American Jewish than the Canadian Jewish community and has a fraction of what the Canadian Jewish community has already produced. on this score of teaching our kids to face this moment. And so my very narrow experience with Canadian jewelry has been that they face a greater threat They are smaller and weaker and less able to affect their society at large because they're a smaller minority, but they've already done more. And you know That to me is incredible. It's possible that the gospel will come from the North for what American jewelry faces. Amen. Gel, thank you. Yeah. Thankk you so much for joining me. Thank you. Thanks, B the way. We'll talk more about this