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JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

There were no photos allowed at the Ortigia mikvah, but here’s one of us at the Temple of Concordia, a Greek temple spared from Christian destruction through conversion to a church. (Getty Images)

Antisemitism Notebook was off last week because I was in Italy with my dad, where we got to see the oldest surviving mikvah in Europe on the Sicilian island of Ortigia. It was filled in by Jews trying to escape persecution in the 15th century and only rediscovered in the 1980s.

UP FIRST

Montreal's Jewish community gathered for a vigil on Oct. 9. Jewish institutions in Canada have faced a series of alarming vandalism, including midnight shootings and arson attacks. (Getty Images)

I have watched with alarm in recent weeks as a spate of antisemitic vandalism has swept Canada. A synagogue in Vancouver, where I went to college, was lit on fire last week, days after Jewish schools in Toronto and Montreal were shot at overnight. These incidents followed similar ones in the fall.


And it’s not just buildings.


Rabbi Lisa Gruschow, who leads a Reform synagogue in Montreal, said people have yelled “Hitler was right!” and “Jew!” at her congregants as they arrive for Shabbat services and that Jewish kids are being bullied in local schools.


“We’re not folks who go looking for antisemitism,” Gruschow told me. “But there’s something in the current rhetoric that makes people feel like Jews and Jewish institutions are fair game, and that's really disturbing.”


Zachary Kauffman, an audio journalist in Toronto, said that many Canadian Jews feel pressured to “denounce Israel publicly and loudly.”


“They just feel the gaze of suspicion on them all the time, like people are waiting for them to declare whether they’re a ‘good Jew’ or a ‘bad Jew’,” Kauffman explained.


The most acute difference between what’s happening in the United States and Canada is that here there seems to be a much broader — if still imperfect — understanding of the distinction between American Jews and Israel.


There are more than 7 million Jews in the U.S., compared to roughly 400,000 in Canada, and American Judaism is more associated with liberal politics. This extends to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with J Street representing a significant segment of liberal Zionists, and anti-Zionist Jews well-represented in organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.


That means even the fiercest opponents of Israel in the U.S. are more likely to know Jews who share their politics and who can help shape protests in a way that is sensitive to Jewish concerns, and counsel their comrades when, for example, a Jewish day school ends up on a list of targets.


The presence of Jews in the Palestinian solidarity movement here hasn’t prevented all instances of antisemitism among critics of Israel, of course. But whatever benefit they have provided seems to be largely missing in Canada.


“There just aren’t enough people to have critical masses across the ideological spectrum, so Canadian Jews end up being a lot more isolated,” Kauffman explained. “People who are very worked up about the Palestine issue are not interacting with Jews in their movements; there’s no representation for them.”


That has led to some ostensible condemnations of the antisemitic attacks that Kauffman said make things worse. “We’re not going to be able to fix anything right now until there’s a ceasefire,” Brian Masse, a member of parliament, said during a floor speech about antisemitism in March.


Gruschow said many community leaders' reluctance to unequivocally condemn the outbreak of Canadian antisemitism has been painful: “The disturbing implication is that somehow it’s deserved.”


READ MORE:

Bend the Arc tells Biden weapons sales to Israel are endangering American Jews

Members of Bend the Arc rally in New York City against Donald Trump in 2016. The group broke its long silence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, urging President Joe Biden to end some arm sales to Israel. (Getty Images)

When Bend the Arc was created 12 years ago, the group decided that it wouldn’t take any positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The organization was built to be a space where American Jews who aligned on liberal and progressive policies could come together regardless of their views on Israel and Palestine,” Jamie Beran, the organization’s chief executive, told me earlier this year.


That strategy worked for a long time. Bend the Arc’s assets have nearly quadrupled since 2015, fueled in part by its ability to harness Jewish opposition to the Trump administration. But it also became increasingly untenable as the community has polarized over Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and Bend the Arc broke its policy of silence in a letter to President Joe Biden Tuesday asking him to “stop providing offensive weapons to the Israeli military.”


One twist was the reason Bend the Arc says it was making the request: Jewish safety.


“The violence in Israel-Palestine has permeated our borders to the point where it jeopardizes our collective safety,” the group wrote. “It impacts Jewish life in the U.S. and the safety of Jewish and Arab Americans.”


READ MORE: OPINION | Israel’s war is making American Jews unsafe. So why are so many still supporting it?

NEWS & VIEWS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem last month. (Getty Images)

🇮🇱 Alleging antisemitism: The Associated Press looked at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasing tendency to accuse his country’s opponents of antisemitism, which has worried some observers that he’s weakening the power of the claim. “I’d be more selective than the government of Israel in choosing the people and bodies they tag ‘antisemitic,’” said Shmuel Rosner, a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem. (AP)


🖼️ Exhibit drama: Staff at a Seattle museum walked out to protest an exhibit on antisemitism they said “conflates anti-Zionism as antisemitism” and did not include Palestinian voices. The Wing Luke Museum aims to reopen the exhibit by June 30 with some new explanatory panels — though not everything the staff requested. “This exhibit needs to be true to what this exhibit was,” said Lisa Kranseler, director of the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, which helped produce it. (Seattle Times)


😢 Consolation from Chabad: Chabad’s female campus emissaries gathered in Israel last week to debrief after a harrowing school year for college and university professionals working with Jewish students. “There was one day when my shirt was wet because I was comforting so many crying students,” said Baila Brackman, who is based at the University of Chicago. (Times of Israel)


📕 Yearbook snub: The Jewish Student Union’s club photo was left out of a northern New Jersey high school yearbook, replaced with a photo of Muslim students, in what East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen called a “blatant act of antisemitism.” The school reprinted the yearbooks. (ABC 7)


⚖️ Students sue: Three Jewish students at the University of California, Los Angeles sued the school Wednesday, claiming that pro-Palestinian protesters had blocked their access to parts of campus in what was “effectively a ‘Jew Exclusion Zone.’” (Los Angeles Times)


🏛️ Holocaust museums adapt: Curators at Holocaust museums across the country are grappling with questions from students on field trips about the Israel-Hamas war, including what “Palestine” means and whether Israel is committing genocide. “It’s natural that when people are processing what they’re seeing in the world, to ask questions about Israel and Gaza,” said Bernard Cherkasov, chief of the Illinois Holocaust Museum. (New York Times)