Shabbat Message - November 13, 2020
This message has 914 words and will take about 4 minutes to read.
As this week took shape, and the uptick in COVID cases, combined with new provincial health orders, affected our partners, one thing became clear: the first call they make is often to our Jewish Federation.
Whether it’s an anticipated revenue stream that has been crushed by (important and necessary) new gathering restrictions, or an office that needs to be renovated to keep staff safe and healthy, we get the call. And we feel privileged to be the ones on the other end of the line, because that’s what we’re here for.
As we go through the next phases of COVID restrictions, we’re here, we’re prepared, and we’re convening our partners on a regular basis to stay abreast of the latest impacts on them and what they see on the horizon.
I’ve often said that community is made up of those who choose to participate. As former Prime Minister John Turner was fond of saying, “democracy doesn’t happen by accident.” Well, neither does community. It takes individuals who show up, get involved, and give back.
On that note, we want to thank the 333 women who participated in Choices last Sunday, and the event co-chairs who made it a night to remember: Courtney Cohen, Leanne Hazon and Sherri Wise. One unexpected—and heartening—outcome was that so many guests donated the $54 they would have normally spent on their event ticket that they generated over $10,000 for the Community Recovery Fund!
Earlier this week, we spoke to a community member who had never given to the Annual Campaign before. She donated an incredibly generous $500. It was wonderful, and we were so thankful. Then, the next day, she called back to tell us that she couldn't stop thinking about how the community had been affected by COVID, and donated an additional $500 to the Community Recovery Fund. If you haven’t yet made your gifts, it’s easy. Just click here.
Our campaign chair, Jonathon Leipsic, reached out to thank her personally, which is just his style. No one cares more deeply about community than Jonathon. Today, we got a glimpse of how that commitment spans generations in the Leipsic family, when the Jewish Independent published an interview with Jonathon and his father, Peter. They are the first father and son we know of who are chairing annual campaigns at the same time in their respective communities, Greater Vancouver and Winnipeg. You can read the article here.
Remembrance Day took on special significance this year, as we all found new ways to honour those who served and continue to serve our country. While the right thing to do was to reflect at home, it was yet another reminder of how much it means to be able to gather in person.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the embassy of the Netherlands shared the produced documentary, 75 Years Later: The Sounds of Freedom, featuring none other than our community’s own Joe Segal, a WWII veteran who helped liberate the Netherlands.
Major-General Ed Fitch (retd) of Victoria, who serves on the national Board of our advocacy agent, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), wrote a piece on behalf of B’nai Brith and the Jewish War Veterans of Canada that he presented as part of a Remembrance Day commemoration. Here is a short excerpt from his comments on Canadian participation in WWII: “…Canadian Jews volunteered well in excess of their percentage of Canada’s overall population. Of those 1.1 million Canadian Veterans it is estimated that about 33,200 are alive today. If the percentages hold true, then only about 600 of that Great Generation of Jewish Veterans are with us today… and their average age is over 92.”
In a very personal act of remembrance, Dr. Robert Krell, a child survivor and active member of our community, wrote an article for The Globe and Mail honouring his “Christian Vader” and the soldiers who freed them. You can read A Dutch family hid me from the Nazis: I owe them my life on our Facebook page.
We honoured not only veterans this week, but also two giants of the global Jewish community: Rav Dovid Feinstein z’l and Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z’l. We know that many of you admired these great men, and you can find the eulogies given at their funerals by clicking on their names.
There was a lot of work that progressed this week on battling hatred and preserving human rights, which is of particular importance during COVID. On Tuesday, CIJA presented to the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism and briefed its members on our ongoing response to the prevalence of online antisemitism. CIJA also shared the perspective of the Canadian Jewish community on combating hate groups in Canada at another meeting with other faith-based and anti-racism organizations, and I was invited to observe a federal/provincial meeting on human rights.
We want to thank the federal and provincial governments for continuing to address systemic racism, and how it has been exacerbated by the pandemic. We are pleased to see that many of the issues to which we and our partners are dedicated, like housing and combating hunger, are being viewed as human rights, and that the additional impact of COVID is being recognized. After all, our campaign theme is times COVID-19, because we see hunger x COVID-19, housing loss x COVID-19, and on and on. Thank you to those of you who have made your gifts to the Annual Campaign and the Community Recovery Fund. If you haven’t yet had a chance, know that you will be supporting critical work all across our community.
Shabbat shalom.
Ezra S. Shanken
Chief Executive Officer