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First, Do No Harm: How Dr. Newman’s Valedictorian Speech to U of M Graduates Got History So Wrong
Ed. note: This post was originally published in May, but given recent events in which the president of PARIM (the Professional Association of Residents and Interns of Manitoba) was forced to resign his position by the board of PARIM for criticizing remarks made by Dr. Gem Newman during his valedictory address to graduating medical students at the U of M, we thought it appropriate to repost this article to our home page.
By DOUGALD LAMONT I am compelled to respond to Dr. Gem Newman in his delivery of a valedictorian address to the medical graduates of the University of Manitoba medical school, which was shockingly ignorant of history.
Dr. Newman’s understanding is challenged by the facts of history, on every topic he touched on: Canada, Settler-Colonialism, the relationship with Indigenous people, and Israel’s founding.
It was a disservice to his peers, and to informed decision-making around the current crisis.
If we want a more just and peaceful world, we need to press for political solutions. I personally favour an immediate cessation of hostilities and release of Israeli hostages, and humanitarian aid to Gaza with oversight from the International Community. That is why we need a political process to peacefully negotiate a new political arrangement. If it is a two-state solution, I believe it must emerge from this process. It should be self-evident, just from the point of view of practical politics, that a single state that consists of two populations who are in the midst of a horrific war, will likely face insurmountable obstacles in trying to work and govern together.
Reasonable people should be able to agree that Israel should continue to exist, that the Palestinian people should be free, that the fighting should end, and those who have violated the rules of war should be held to account. To be blunt, neither side has a monopoly on virtue.
International Human Rights Law “prohibits attacks directed against civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks, namely those that strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”
I also believe it’s reasonable to assert that the current leadership of Israel and Gaza should have no place at that table, given that they are responsible for the current crisis. The intelligence failures alone around October 7 should disqualify the current senior Israeli leadership, just as the attack of October 7 should disqualify Hamas.
Declaring recognition of a Palestinian state, with no defined or agreed-upon leadership or borders, short-circuits any such political process.
That is because while some support a two-state solution, others quite clearly favour a “one-state” solution that would essentially spell the end of the State of Israel. I have never seen the term “Zionist” tossed around as such a slur, as a kind of shorthand for holding an unacceptable view.
A Zionist is basically someone who thinks the State of Israel should exist – and the state of Israel does exist. Before Israel’s founding, debating whether or not it should exist was hypothetical. Now that it does exist, debating whether it should or not can be credibly interpreted as an existential threat.
For Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. This, too, is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to.
That is why the lack of clarity around some slogans seems to be calling for more conflict, not for a peaceful resolution.
When asked about the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” some have shrugged and said that it was Israelis who first came up with the slogan. This is true, but that is because the State of Israel does stretch from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinian territories do not. It would require Israeli territory for Palestine to reach from the river to the sea, which again, can suggest that Israel will just become Palestine.
Dr Newman should know that for Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. That is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to, and have been promising for decades.
If we want a more peaceful and just world, we should strive to achieve those ends in ways that are peaceful and just, and that requires a political path.
It is not that the history is better than you might expect – it is worse.
The Nazi Holocaust was Modelled on the U.S. Killing of Indigenous People and Seizure of their Lands
There is an important link between the treatment of Indigenous North Americans and the Nazi Holocaust. Hitler believed that he could turn Germany into the a world dominating empire by emulating the way the United States had killed indigenous people and taken their property, except Hitler’s goal was to exterminate every Jew in the world.
“In the Nazi state, Lebensraum became not just a romantic yearning for a return to the East but a vital strategic component of its imperial and racist visions. For the Germans, eastern Europe represented their “Manifest Destiny.” Hitler and other Nazi thinkers drew direct comparisons to American expansion in the West. During one of his famous “table talks,” Hitler decreed that “there’s only one duty: to Germanize this country [Russia] by the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins.”
As Nazi troops moved across Europe and the Soviet Union, Jews were rounded up, their homes, properties and businesses stolen. Some were murdered on the spot, lined up and shot.
Some were stuffed into the backs of trucks with the exhaust piped in, and driven back and forth until everyone inside was dead. Others still were gathered up, put on trains and sent to death camps where they were killed in factories purpose-built for killing human beings. Their stolen belongings were used to finance their own deaths, and the gold was retrieved from their teeth.
Jews were targeted by the Germans for complete extermination wherever the lived in the world, based both on pseudoscientific race theory about the supposed supremacy of the imagined “Aryan” race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish global influence.
Jews were being rounded up and slaughtered in the millions, and as refugees, had no place to go. They were refused entry to country after country, including Canada.
That is one of the very major reasons the creation of the State of Israel cannot be compared to settler colonialism by European or Asian empires colonizing Africa, Oceania, the Americas. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 occurred with the support of the United Nations, as well as the global left. The historical reason for that is relevant.
Clearly, after the Second World War, it created pressure for Jews to have their homeland, so that they would not always face being a minority in a country when, because of their stateless existence, they had faced pogroms, slaughter and discrimination for millennia.
The Palestinian Cause was Undermined Because its Leader was a Nazi Collaborator
There is no question that the at the time of the creation of Israel, the credibility of the Palestinian cause was undermined because Mufti Amin al-Husseini, the leader of Palestine, was a Nazi Collaborator. Al-Husseini received personal financial aid from the Nazi government, participated in Nazi propaganda broadcasts, and worked to find recruits for the Nazi SS.
In 1941, Al-Husseini travelled to Berlin and on November 28, met with Hitler.
“Al-Husseini began the conversation by declaring that the Germans and the Arabs had the same enemies: “the English, the Jews, and the Communists.” He proposed an Arab revolt all across the Middle East to fight the Jews; the English, who still ruled Palestine and controlled Iraq and Egypt; and even the French, who controlled Syria and Lebanon.
(The British had secured a mandate for Palestine at the Paris peace conference in 1919, and made halting attempts to create a “Jewish national home” there without prejudicing the rights of the Arab population.) He also wanted to form an Arab legion, using Arab prisoners from the French Empire who were then POWs inside Germany.
He also asked Hitler to declare publicly, as the German government had privately, that it favored “the elimination of the Jewish national home” in Palestine.
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to “lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart”:
- He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
- At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
- As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.
In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.”
Al Husseini’s work was actively financed by the Nazi government.
“From spring 1943 to spring 1944, Husseini personally received 50,000 marks monthly and Gailani 65,000 for operational expenses.” [Rashid Ali al-Gaylani was the Prime Minister of Iraq]. ”In addition, they each received living expenses averaging 80,000 marks per month, an absolute fortune. A German field marshal received a base salary of 26,500 marks per year.”
Along with other Arab broadcasters, al-Husayni disseminated pro-Axis, anti-British, and anti-Jewish propaganda from Berlin to the Middle East. In radio broadcasts, he called for an Arab revolt against Great Britain and the destruction of the Jewish settlements in Palestine.
Al-Husayni spoke often of a “worldwide Jewish conspiracy” that controlled the British and US governments and sponsored Soviet Communism. He argued that “world Jewry” aimed to infiltrate and subjugate Palestine, a sacred religious and cultural center of the Arab and Muslim world, as a staging ground for the seizure of all Arab lands. In his vision of the world, the Jews intended to enslave and exploit Arabs, to seize their land, to expropriate their wealth, undermine their Muslim faith and corrupt the moral fabric of their society. He labeled the Jews as the enemy of Islam, and used crude racist terminology to depict Jews and Jewish behavior, particularly as he forged a closer relationship with the SS in 1943 and 1944. He described Jews as having immutable characteristics and behaviors. On occasion, he would compare Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli. In at least one speech attributed to him, he advocated killing Jews wherever Arabs found them. He consistently advocated “removing” the Jewish homeland from Palestine and, on occasion, driving every Jew out of Palestine and other Arab lands.
Al Husseini was directly involved in recruiting for the SS.
“When the SS decided in February 1943 to recruit among Bosnian Muslims for a new division of the Waffen-SS, SS Main Office Chief Berger enlisted al-Husayni in a recruiting drive in Bosnia from March 30 and April 11. On April 29, Berger reported that 24,000–27,000 recruits had signed up and noted that the “visit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had had an extraordinarily successful impact.” Both al-Husayni and the SS repeatedly referred to the success of the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division (also known as “Handschar”).”
After the Second World War, the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division was charged with war crimes and the killing of over 5,000 Jewish and Serbian civilians. In the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, hundreds of its members fought against Israel.
All of this is critical historical context for Zionism of the time, and for the creation of the State of Israel. There can be no question that Al Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis meant that his cause was treated with considerably less sympathy.
None of this negates the present-day mistreatment and injustice towards present-day Palestinians, but it does mean that their experience does not mirror that of Indigenous people, nor is the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 comparable to other “settler colonial” states, like South Africa, or Canada.
- As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.
In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.”
- At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
Tommy Douglas, Eugenics and Provinces’ Role in the Canadian Colonial State
This brings me to my second point about Dr. Newman’s valedictorian speech, which was his citing Tommy Douglas as a moral beacon in a speech where he also mentioned Indigenous health outcomes.
While Douglas enjoys a reputation as a paragon of political virtue, he and his party are responsible for one of the most horrifically damaging colonial systems for Indigenous people in Canada in the last 70 years: provincial child welfare systems. This is in addition to his promotion of eugenics-based sterilization, another aspect of his political career that is minimized and ignored
For all of the claims that the left in Canada is “woke,” the role of progressive politicians and parties in our country’s profoundest tragedies is not just forgotten and unknown, it is buried.
The New Democratic Party was created as a successor to the CCF party. While the NDP is today seen as a party of labour, and the “working man,” the CCF, as social gospelers, were evangelical Christians, often British, who promoted eugenics and forced sterilization as a low-cost solution to poverty, mental illness, and disability, and they did so for years.
In 1933, Tommy Douglas published his Master’s thesis from McMaster University, “The Problems of the Subnormal Family,” based on his time working at the Weyburn Mental Hospital. Weyburn Mental Hospital was not a small-town facility – at the time of its construction, it was the largest building ever built in the British Empire.
In the Making of a Socialist, Douglas passed off his thesis in a later interview as being on the subject of “Christian sociology,” when it endorsed the segregation and forced sterilization of people he deemed to be inferior.
Douglas’s thesis topic, in his own words was that:
“The subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense. Surely the continued policy of allowing the subnormal family to bring in to the world large numbers of individuals to fill our jails and mental institutions and to live upon charity is one of consummate folly.”
Douglas starts his thesis this way:
“The problem of the subnormal family is chiefly one for the State. Since the state has the problem of legislating in the best interests of Society, and since we have seen that the subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense, it is, surely the duty of the State to meet this problem.
The suggested remedies which the state might effect are three in number:
1) The Improvement of Existing Marriage Laws;
2) Segregation;
3) Sterilization of Unfit, and Increased Knowledge of Birth Control.
He elaborates:
“Sterilization of the mentally and physically defective has long been advocated, but only recently has it seeped into the public consciousness. From the day when Plato wrote his Republic to the present, eugenicists have advanced various solutions to the problem of the defective, but sterilization seems to meet the requirements of the situation most aptly.
For while it gives protection to society, yet it deprives the defective of nothing except the privilege of bringing into the world children who would only be a care to themselves and a charge to society.
4.) Another effect of the abnormal family is the cost of maintenance: It may be a mercenary view to take of the problem, yet in view of mounting taxation, it is of importance to the average citizen to know the effect of the subnormal family on his tax bill.”
Douglas did not drop the subject. In 1934, Douglas proposed it with the youth wing of the CCF, and the next year, 1935, Douglas was elected MP for the first time.
The power of Douglas’ carefully cultivated political reputation is so great that for many, it creates a cognitive dissonance so profound that it is dismissed. They puzzle as to how a person they so greatly admire could have advocated for forced sterilization.
The question as to how Douglas and other eugenicists could express such concern and apparent love while also calling for sterilization is because they see people who are poor, mentally ill or who break the law as defective, and subhuman, because of their particular brand of radical Christian ideology. Treating people as subhuman means treating them as animals, where the usual rules of human morality no longer apply. It is a kind of cruel pity – and instead of alleviating suffering, they opt for ending it.
Douglas was not a young man – He was an adult, in his 30s, calling for forced sterilization and segregation, just as his political mentor and family pastor, J. S. Woodsworth had done.
J. S. Woodsworth, Sterilization and the Bureau of Social Research
In 1909, Woodsworth published “Strangers Within Our Gates,” which was blatantly racist, ranking various groups according to their capacity to integrate into Canadian society.
Woodsworth’s treatment of Blacks is subhuman. He favorably cited U.S. progressive John R Common, who Woodsworth quotes saying, “The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery.”
Woodsworth also endorsed Residential Schools as the solution for dealing with First Nations, favourably citing the Methodist Principal of the Brandon Residential School, where dozens of children had died, who said that “Both Church and State should have, as a final goal, the destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”
Throughout the 1910s, Woodsworth ran the “Bureau of Social Research,” which publicly promoted eugenics and forced sterilization across Canada’s Western Provinces. Woodsworth’s editorials calling for eugenic sterilization were printed on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, and were considered as official recommendations to provincial governments.
According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Sterilizing the ‘Feeble-Minded’: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada 1929-1972, Woodsworth’s work directly informed the adoption of sterilization policies in Alberta.
“The eugenics platform was championed in western Canada by a number of influential social reformers including J. S. Woodsworth, a Winnipeg-based proponent of the “social gospel.” Woodsworth was concerned with the declining quality of immigrants arriving in the west. He translated his personal fear into a public crisis, spreading the idea that no segment of Canadian society would be left untouched by the influx of thousands of immigrants of inferior stock from central and eastern Europe. In time, his policy recommendations turned to eugenics and sterilization programs” (Chapman 1977: 13).
In 1928, Alberta and BC both passed forced sterilization laws. Researchers have directly attributed Alberta’s decision to adopt forced sterilization to Woodsworth’s advocacy. One of the Alberta MNA’s at the time who supported the bill, William Irvine, was a close friend and colleague of Woodsworth’s. When Irvine was later elected as an MP, it was in his office that the CCF was founded.
From 1929 to 1972, when the Alberta eugenics board was finally disbanded, the Board saw 4,800 cases of proposed sterilization and approved virtually all (4,739) of these; 2,834 sterilization procedures were eventually performed, the majority on females.
That was not the only questionable judgment that Douglas made in his political career. In 1935, when Douglas won a seat as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for the first time, he did so with an endorsement from the radical right Social Credit Premier of Alberta, which was considered by some to be fascist. The creator of the “Social Credit” economic philosophy, Major Douglas, was explicitly anti-semitic.
The endorsement was arranged for Douglas’ by a key member of his campaign team, Daniel C. Grant, who had been the chief organizer for all of Western Canada for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan.
Grant had been a driver for J J Maloney, the head of the Ku Klux Klan, and had worked in Manitoba as a recruiter and organizer. In 1928 in Winnipeg, Grant had delivered a speech saying that
“The Klan strove for ‘racial purity. We fight against intermarrying of Negroes and whites, Japs and White, Chinese and Whites. This intermarriage is a menace to the world. If I am walking down the street and a Negro doesn’t give me half the sidewalk, I know what to do.” He then lashed out at the Jews and said that “The Jews are too powerful … they are the slave masters who are throttling the throats of white persons to enrich themselves.”
A 1974 biography by Doris Shackleton, a former CBC reporter and NDP staffer, entitled “Tommy Douglas” openly acknowledged Grant’s work organizing for the KKK.
In 1929, Grant and the KKK had helped elect the Conservative-Progressive coalition government in Saskatchewan, which had earned him a patronage post in charge of the labour office in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where Douglas met him. Grant was fired when a new government was elected, because they didn’t want KKK organizers working in the labour office.
There have been various attempts to minimize Douglas’ promotion of eugenics, saying that his views were changed by a trip to Germany in 1936. In fact, Douglas went to Germany because he wanted to see one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies.
In a 1956 interview, published in the book “The Making of a Socialist,” Douglas explained – when asked about his 1936 trip to Germany the year after he was elected a Member of Parliament:
“[Interviewer] You were in Europe for how long?
[Douglas] About three months. We went from Switzerland to Nuremberg, because I wanted to see the great annual festivity Hitler put on each year there. It was frightful. I came back and warned my friends about the great German bombers roaring over the parade of self-propelled guns and tanks, Hitler standing there giving his salute, with Göring and the rest of the Nazi bigwigs by his side.
There was no doubt then that Hitler was simply using Spain as a dress rehearsal for an attack on other nations.
[Interviewer] It was with very great difficulty that people were able to appreciate the anti-Semitism that was going on in Germany. Did you yourself see any examples of it?
[Douglas] I didn’t see any. Most of it was over by the time I got there.”
To suggest that in 1936, most of the anti-semitism in Germany was over defies reason and evidence.
“The New Residential Schools” Tommy Douglas and the creation of provincial child welfare
These are just some of the reasons that holding up Tommy Douglas as exemplar of political purity, is “problematic”. It is far from the only example of Douglas’ historic association with damaging policies that has been whitewashed.
The reality of Canada as a colonial state is that provincial governments have played a direct role in the mistreatment of Indigenous people, in areas of jurisdiction that the provinces themselves asked for, and Tommy Douglas is one of the people responsible.
Again, in Shackleton’s biography, Douglas describes how, in 1951, the Federal Government began to shut down residential schools, “after a series of negative reports,” that at the urging of the CCF and Premier Tommy Douglas, the federal government transferred responsibility for First Nations child welfare to provinces.
The result has been 70 years of provincial governments seizing Indigenous children from their families and never returning them, in numbers greater than the total yearly attendance of Residential Schools.
The “60s scoop” meant thousands of children across Canada were taken from their homes and adopted out across North America and around the world.
“The department of Indigenous Affairs indicates that the number of Indigenous children adopted between 1960 and 1990 was 11,132,” though some research suggests it was over 20,000.”
CFS has been described by Cindy Blackstock as “the New Residential Schools” and the scale of it across Canada is colossal.
In the last decade, the number of Indigenous children apprehended and in custody of CFS in Manitoba alone exceeded the total population of every single residential school across Canada. By 2013, the province of Manitoba had 11,000 children in the custody of CFS.
According to the Lancet, it was the highest apprehension rate in the world. That is more, in a single province, than the entire “60s scoop” across Canada over 30 years. If that weren’t bad enough, governments in Manitoba and British Columbia also seized federal child allowances intended for those children.
This horrific policy is the direct cause of Indigenous misery, and shorter life expectancy. Over half of the homeless population in Winnipeg were at one point wards of CFS. Canadian provinces took Indigenous children from their families, took their money, and left them on the street at the age of 18 with no supports. Our jails, our runaways, our gangs, and tragedy after tragedy have the common thread of CFS involvement. Because CFS is not just about looking after the safety children, it has always also been about controlling and threatening parents.
That’s why the top five of 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are all concerned with children in provincial child welfare systems.
This absolute catastrophe of a social policy was conceived of, created and sustained, by provincial governments for decades, and directly contributed to the relentless trauma that provincial governments have inflicted on Indigenous people, and about which there is a deafening silence.
Why are children being seized? Largely because of First Nations and Indigenous poverty and neglect. Why is there Indigenous poverty? Because, for decades, provincial governments across Western Canada have approved megaprojects – dams, mines, oil and gas – much of it on First Nations land.
In Manitoba, there are dams that have destroyed Indigenous communities’ self-sufficiency by destroying the environment. Entire communities flooded out of existence, dammed rivers destroying lakes that were the source of successful commercial fisheries, wiped out by Hydro and the Government of Manitoba, without compensation.
What’s more, provincial governments are funded on a per capita basis – for every person who lives within their borders, including on reserve, yet provincial governments like Manitoba exclude First Nations from receiving that funding.
Indigenous people in Canada consistently face the most discrimination in provincial systems, and when a catastrophe or a tragedy inevitably happens, the response has always been to defend the system. Indigenous deaths in ERs, in jail, in CFS or as victims of crime are blamed on the victims.
Together, provincial governments’ combined budgets are larger than the federal government, and Indigenous Canadians face terrible discrimination from provincial governments in economic supports, education, health, justice, child and family services and natural development.
Because the federal policies are the same everywhere: it’s the provincial policies that are different, which is why child and family poverty, and Indigenous incarceration in Manitoba are so much worse than any other province.
So, when Dr. Gem Newman lectures his fellow classmates on the injustices of Canada’s treatment of First Nations, he should know that one of the direct causes of homelessness, mental health, and forced poverty in Manitoba and across Canada is the direct result of decades of seizures of Indigenous children, which are a direct consequence of a policy brought in by Tommy Douglas to replace Residential Schools.
Tommy Douglas and provincial governments created some of the most damaging modern policies Indigenous people in Canada have experienced – and are still experiencing, every day.
As a valedictorian and as a doctor, Dr Newman is an authority, and he says a doctor’s advocacy is in a doctor’s job description. Advocates and authorities have a responsibility to work from evidence. That is why it is paramount for an authority, whether they are practicing medicine or politics, to ensure they know what they are talking about. Slogans are not solutions, and Dr. Newman’s facile understanding of history is a disservice to his audience.
It has to be said Dr. Newman’s ignorance about this should not be a surprise, because there is an effective conspiracy of silence which makes it a forbidden topic in Canada, because it is politically inconvenient.
Notably, it highlights the hypocrisy and moral double standards at work among high-profile Canadian progressives, Naomi Klein being the most prominent.
On Freedom of Speech, Civil Disobedience on Campus on Beyond
I write all of this as a strong supporter of freedom of expression, on and off campus including protest, investigative journalism, whistleblowing, satire, parody, speaking truth to power, and calling out corruption. I have personally done all of them. Rights have never been about doing and saying whatever you want, wherever and whenever.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out the circumstances where you are guaranteed rights to free expression. The Charter generally only applies to Government, not universities, except in Alberta, where courts ruled otherwise.
The reason for this is university autonomy. Universities are workplace and a place of research and education, where the goal is to work to an ever greater understanding of the world, and that has always required discernment. It is not a public square or an unmoderated internet forum, and if you don’t abide by the rules, you do not have a right to stay.
A simple example of speech that can get you removed from campus is plagiarism. The university sets out rules around free inquiry and academic freedom, but you can’t plagiarize.
This is important in the context of campus protests and civil disobedience. Protestors are not being silenced because of the content of their speech, nor are they choosing to break unjust laws to show how unjust they are.
The distinction here is one that was drawn by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King. He was in favour of direct action and civil disobedience by having people be willing to be arrested and jailed, and face the consequences and punishment, because the unjust law they broke was asking for service at a segregated coffee shop, or sitting at the front of the bus. They actively discouraged and called out anyone who broke other laws as undermining the cause.
The laws that are being broken in this instance are ones that apply to everyone. It is not about the cause or the message, at all. It is about trespassing, or blocking a highway, or ignoring a court order.
There is a basic mistake that many commentators and protestors are making. When protestors say they mean “peaceful,” they think that if it is non-violent, that it must ,by legal definition be peaceful, and legal. You do not have to be violent to be “disturbing the peace.” Blocking highways and spamming 911 lines are not violent, but both are against the law, for obvious reasons, because someone could die. Canadian Supreme Court Precedent makes it clear, there are limits to protest, because other people have the right to be free from disruption.
If protestors are arguing that the injustice is so great, that they must break the law for justice to be done, then this is exactly the motivation behind what is known as “noble cause corruption” in policing. It’s just as unacceptable.
Freedom of expression is protected because it is powerful, and it is powerful for good and for harm. That’s why accuracy – especially at a university – matters. It means weeding out the lies, manipulation, dishonesty and deception. It means recognizing that human beings are contradictory, and flawed. It means working hard not to deceive others, or yourself, while we live in a world where armies of people are paid to deceive us, and recognizing that there may be more than two sides to every story. Two bitter opponents on either side of an issue can both be wrong.
“Resistance” that takes the form of attacks on civilians is just as unacceptable as reckless military actions that result in civilian deaths. Neither are morally or strategically defensible: to the contrary, they only further radicalize and inflame the situation.
Dougald Lamont (B.A., M.A) is a graduate of the University of Manitoba and a former member of the Board of Governors. He is the past MLA for St. Boniface and the former Leader of the provincial Manitoba Liberal Party from 2017-2023.
Local News
Jewish Child and Family Service CEO Al Benarroch talks about stress and resiliency in the Jewish community after October 7
By BERNIE BELLAN On Thursday, October 14, Al Benarroch was the guest speaker at the Remis Luncheon Group, which meets every Thursday between May and September at the Gwen Secter Centre.
I had the privilege of introducing Al.
Al Benarroch was born in 1964, the youngest of four sons born to the late Solomon and Mary Benarroch, originally from Morocco, who came to Winnipeg in the early 1960s. (Al’s brothers are: Rabbis Yossi and Yamin, and Michael.)
Al attended Talmud Torah and Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate, and went on to obtain his B.A. from the University of Winnipeg. He pursued graduate studies at Lakehead University in clinical psychology, followed by a career as a therapist and in social services.
For the past 26 years Al has been working at Winnipeg’s Jewish Child and Family Service (JCFS), including serving as Clinical Director (for 15 years) before moving into his current position as President and Chief Executive Officer (for the past 11 years).
Al also contributes to our community’s religious life as the regular chazan for Yom Tov at the Chevra Mishnayes Synagogue in the North End’s Garden City neighbourhood.
This past May, Al and his brother, Rabbi Yossi Benarroch, were honoured by JNF Canada at this year’s Negev Gala for their service to the community.
Al told the audience of some 40 individuals who were at the Gwen Secter Centre on August 14 that he wanted to talk about how JCFS has helped members of the community deal with the ongoing anxiety many have been feeling since the events of October 7, 2023. The following is a transcript of Al’s remarks – edited somewhat.
“I have dedicated my 36-year career – including the past 26 years working for the JCFS – to helping clients suffering from mental health problems. In Israel today, it is estimated that 70% of Israeli children are suffering from PTSD. You would be hard-pressed to find a family in Israel that isn’t experiencing trauma from the events of the past 18 months of war – and a lifetime of stress from the constant threat of rocket fire and terrorism.
”I want to talk about the impact the last two years have had – not just on Jews – but I didn’t know I was going to be in the company of judges and lawyers – also my Grade 7 math teacher!
“As Bernie mentioned, my family came to Winnipeg from Morocco in the 1960s. Winnipeg’s Jewish population really began to grow in the late 1800s.
“It didn’t matter where you came from – there was a long history of antisemitism. The term ‘wandering Jew’ fits the story that a lot of people here brought with them.
“History has a short memory and history tends to repeat itself. I’m willing to bet that most of you here remember the Kennedy assassination moment – and probably you can remember where you were when you heard about the assassination.
“Then, for a lot of us, we can remember exactly where we were on October 7, 2023 when we heard about the Hamas terror attack. For me, I was in synagogue – on Simchas Torah.
“The world continues to find reasons to hate Jews. Sometimes it’s a little more underground, sometimes it’s right on the surface, but we’re now at a time and a place where we’re hearing it, reading it, watching it – breathing it.
“It isn’t the first time in our history we’ve seen this happen – and it won’t be the last time; yet, we’re still here.
“What I wanted to talk about today then is how we deal with what’s been happening and how we’ve been able to show resiliency.”
Al asked the audience: “What does that mean to you when you hear the word ‘resilient’?”
Someone said: “Bouncing back.;” someone else said, “being able to handle bad news;” a third person said “reframing something.”
Al responded: “Reframing something – somehow taking the negative and either coping with it, being able to bounce back from it, being able to energize from it, somehow help us carry forward.”
“Before I came to work in the Jewish community I spent 11 years as a clinical psychologist in northern Manitoba going back and forth to First Nations reserves. I heard many, many stories of deepest tragedy. Oftentimes I would say to someone: ‘How are you still here – with the tragedy that you have told me?’ The human potential is astounding.
“When I think of the Jewish people, we are living examples of that.”
Again, Al asked the audience: “When you think of Jewish and resiliency, what comes to mind?”
Someone said: “spirituality;” someone else said “family support;” a third said “be careful who you trust.”
Al acknowledged the significance of all three suggestions, and launched into a story about one of his staff who attended a conference held in Israel after October 7 where the subject was post traumatic stress. He displayed a picture that staff person had taken of a wall outside the building where the conference was held. The picture was of this sentence: “Our wounds are centuries old but so is our resilience and our strength.”
“Unfortunately,” Al continued, “we’ve had lots of experience with trauma.
“We’ve always turned back to the kinds of things you’ve spoken about – for the community to be unified, to family, to our historical values, because unfortunately, we’ve had lots of experience with trauma and with displacement. But somehow we’ve come through it and we’re still here. And so, really, in the last couple of years our agency has really tried to focus and distill down what are those things that have kept people positive and going, and how can we somehow bottle that so that we can help support people in the community that have been challenged at this time? Yes, loving kindness; yes, doing good for others – despite what we’re experiencing, can be very, very important and very empowering.
“So understanding the impact of antisemitism – I’m going to go through some of the things people have been telling us that they have been feeling. This is not anything specifically out of textbooks. This is about the anecdotal stuff that we have been hearing in our community, from our community members that come from many walks of life, whether they come from Israel, whether they come from Argentina or Russia, or have been Canadians for four or five generations.
“It’s things that we have been hearing and oftentimes it’s probably what people were hearing in Germany post World War II. It is probably what people were hearing in Russia during the times of pogroms – in Poland and in Eastern Europe. And probably what was being heard at the times when the Canaanites and the Edomites and the Amorites were invading the land of Judea and in Israel 3000 years ago in the times of the Kings.
“But when we understand the impact that it has, and when we really take the time to reflect and talk about it openly, we can now have a better communal understanding of what is going on and how we can support each other. Because one thing that happens during stress responses or during traumatic experiences is people tend to withdraw and they think they’re the only ones going through it, and that can be a very lonely and isolating place to be. As Jews, we tend to sometimes do the opposite, and we come outward and come together. We talk about it in our synagogues, we talk about it in lecture groups, we talk about it around the dinner table and with our peers, and that is very different.
“So what does a typical stress response or acute trauma response look like? When we are exposed to something traumatic, and I’m not saying that it necessarily needs to be what happened on October 7th – God forbid – I’m saying, it could be the acute death of a loved one.
“It could be the sudden onset or a diagnosis of an illness. It could be having taken a fall down the stairs or having been in a car accident or something like that. We tend to talk about the ‘four Fs, the fight, the flight, the freeze, and the fawn.’ Now, many of us may have already heard about fight or flight.
“You get into a – you know – the bear is in front of you in the woods, and you think: ‘I have a couple of options here. Am I gonna fight this bear or am I gonna run away from this bear?’ Many of us will freeze – we’re not sure. You think of the deer in the forest -they will freeze and then they’ll run away, right?
“So many different species have different reactions and then recently, in research, this idea of ‘fawning’ – in terms of how we emotionally process and react to the stress. So when we talk about fighting – that’s an interesting one. We might experience things like anger or frustration and just feel like clenching, and we just wanna lash out in some way.
“We might speak out in the context of what’s going on in the last few years. We might want to activate ourselves by speaking out and talking about it. We might want to engage in some activism. I don’t know if anyone here has attended any of the Wednesday rallies on Kenaston. It’s a large group of people; there have been as many as 300 coming out, holding Israeli flags, holding the pictures of hostages because they have this feeling that by doing that I’m doing something and I’m not just sitting idly by. (Instead of) just sitting at home and dealing with the stress and the anxiety in my own head, I’m actually getting up and doing something. It may be by putting up an Israeli flag in your window – or flying one in your car.
“It may be that when there’s an opportunity to have a conversation with somebody about their opinions of what’s going on, and you can engage in that in some way. For some it might actually be physical confrontations, and we don’t like to do that. We want to avoid that. The flight response often presents itself as fear, anxiety, strain…and in those circumstances, often we will see people disengage.
“They’ll avoid, they’ll withdraw and they will become almost, I wouldn’t say paranoid would be the word, but hyper vigilant. You know, if you reflect (upon things that may have happened) – and we don’t need people to disclose, but you may be walking through a shopping mall and you may see or hear something and you think, ‘oh my goodness,’ and you don’t want to speak out. You don’t want to say anything because you may feel unsafe to do so. Some people may be doing things like hiding their money in the beds, taking down their mezuzahs in their homes – because they don’t want to expose themselves publicly. So their response to the strain and the stress is to withdraw – in order to gain a sense of safety.
“We all like to feel in control of our lives and in control of our destiny, and when these things happen it takes the control away from us and essentially we try to find ways to regain physical and emotional control. For some that might be speaking out – activism; for some that might be withdrawing, saying, I’m going to work on my personal safety and my family’s safety.
“For some it’s freezing; it comes from the sense of feeling numb – or even just feeling exhausted, as the strain continues. We’re starting to hear now from people that ‘I’m just exhausted at watching the news. I’m exhausted at having to constantly defend myself or defend our people or defend what is going on in Israel.’
“And for many, it’s becoming very challenging, and so people will feel stuck. They might – the word they’re using, (and) I’m using here, is ‘disassociate.’ But what they may do is they may try to turn it off. ‘I don’t want to think about it. I’m gonna think about other things.’ And they may shut down. So they don’t want to talk.
“They’re just tired of it already. It’s been going on for a long time. Almost two years is a long time for us to constantly be dealing with the media and the newspapers. And hearing what’s going on all the time. Sometimes you just try to turn it off. But then we also have some reactions that could be…where we overcompensate, and that may come from a place of guilt.
“For some, it might be things like ‘I wish I could do more, but I live in Canada, what can I do? I can’t go to Israel… I can’t join my CJA or my federation…what can I do?’ And people feel very helpless in those situations.
“So what they may end up doing is they may end up overcompensating by trying to seek approval.
“These things are happening to us. [We’re constantly trying to seek approval. So these are the reactions that we may see. It’s not necessarily any one or the other. It could be a combination. It could be a progression over time. And so this is typically what we may see when somebody has experienced a traumatic or a stressful kind of experience.
“And, as they carry on over time, these things sort of evolve in and out of each other. Is there anything here that doesn’t make sense right now or make sense? So I’d like to talk a little bit now (about) what we as a community have been experiencing since October 7th. Again, our community got hit very, very quickly, like most others.”
“We heard of the news in Israel (on October 7, 2023) and within three days there was a rally happening at the Asper Campus outside. Some 2,500 people showed. It was a very, very empowering thing. We had a group of students here from a high school (in Israel – Danciger High School in Kirtyat Shemona) who happened to be here for their annual exchange program. And – to watch their response to what happened and to see that they were able to engage in positive singing and dancing and rallying was truly, truly remarkable – the way Israelis from Israel were reacting as opposed to the way Western North American Jews were reacting.
“Something happened thousands of miles away. So, some of the things that we did immediately (were to) say we needed to hear from community members (and) that we (JCFS) were going to be available, we were going to have social workers and be available to hear from people. We wanted to get in front of the trauma response, in front of the stress response.
“And, over time we started hearing things like: ‘We’ve been experiencing more hostility in our public Jewish spaces.’ How many of you have been to synagogue lately – and there’s been a police car in front of your car? Right. Folklorama is going on right now, and I’m comforted to see that there have been six or seven or eight police cars at the Israel pavilion, even though there’s nothing expected, thank God to happen. But to know that people are feeling this way and that that kind of a response is required, is something that people are experiencing. They’re feeling it in their schools, whether you’re in a Jewish school, in synagogue, in the workplaces, we have been hearing from public school teachers and students that they have changed the way they are speaking out or talking or publicly displaying their Judaism in some of their workplaces. And, it’s been something that we have tried to help schools address when certain incidents have come up in their schools. (There’s also) social media – something that is brand new in the war on antisemitism.
“The bombardment that people have (on the internet)… it has become almost like an addiction to constantly be checking your social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. These are all very valid news sources, but you know, people are getting all sorts of information, real and fabricated, from social media and accepting it as fact, as truthful.
“These social media sites are also created in a certain way that the more you look at something, the more it thinks that’s what you want to look at, and the more it continues to feed you, those sorts of things. There are these, these mathematical algorithms behind the scenes that continue to feed what you want.
“So, imagine if you have been looking at things related to antisemitic incidents in New York or Australia or London or Paris, or Toronto – all of a sudden your news feeds on your Instagram and Facebook are going to constantly be popping up with things related to that. That has a severe impact on people psychologically.
“We’ve been hearing that happen a lot. We’ve been recommending that people take vacations from their social media. Restrict the amount of time you are spending on it. Some people have been spending hours and hours and hours a day. You know, you could watch the news. In the old days, we watched the news at 6:00 PM and 10:00 PM Right? That’s true. That was it. We read the newspaper, now it’s 24/7 available and people have become obsessed with it. (On) the flip side, all of a sudden I’m getting all of these feeds from Al Jazeera and I don’t know where else about all the anti-Israel and antisemitic stuff – through the lenses of the other side.
“The psychological impact (of) social media has been very, very profound and so we’ve been targeting that quite a bit. People (who) have been out in public fear public displays of their identity… People have been very, very concerned about whether they should wear their kippahs outside.
“Maybe I’ll switch to a hat or a cap. I don’t want (to be) careful of what shirt I’m wearing, what t-shirt am I wearing? For some – it’s the opposite. They’re displaying very proudly.
“I can tell you (though) and I can disclose (that) the Benarroch family is a very traditional religious family. My wife’s fears have been very legitimate on her part. She’s afraid. And so, I wasn’t gonna argue and I said, ‘We’re gonna take down the mezuzah and we’ll put it back up at its right time.’ In her words, it was: ‘You know what – we have 13 other Mezuzahs inside the house. I think we’re okay. So, I say: ‘ Pick your battles.’
“These are the things that people are going through. We have had people telling us that they have been directly receiving threats because they’ve been identified as Jewish. There’s been vandalism to people’s homes (and) in public places. I mentioned the increased security concerns.We’ve just become hyper vigilant. We’re looking over our shoulders a lot more in 2025. Something we didn’t think would’ve happened post Holocaust, you know? These are very, very real things that people have been telling us.
“We’ve been observing these same things. People have been isolating themselves much more socially. This compulsion to check social media all the time – it actually has a new name; it’s called ‘Doom Scrolling,’ where people are scrolling through their phones and constantly seeing these doomsday kinds of things, you know, about what’s happening in other communities and even what’s happening in our own.
“They’ve had very difficult times engaging in conversations with colleagues, with other community members, with friends, with family. We have been hearing situations – you know, like ‘ My sister and I, we don’t talk to each other anymore because she thinks this and I think that.’ It’s been destroying friendships, it’s been tearing families apart.
“This isn’t anything that we had expected. You know, we might assume – my brother, my sister, my best friend – must feel and think the way I do. And when we start to question our thoughts and our information about things, sometimes we don’t know how to speak and we become very emotionally distraught about having these difficult conversations with people we’ve been close to or people that we thought we trusted, or that we thought we knew better than that over the course of our lives. There’s a collective grief that we feel…
“We’ve heard some very interesting things coming out of Holocaust survivors. We have a program for Holocaust survivors going on every second Thursday (at the Gwen Secter Centre), which is why you’re in here (the board room of the Gwen Secter Centre) every second Thursday. We’ve been hearing things like this feels a lot like Germany before World War II. We’ve also heard people saying things like, you know, what could anyone do to us again that the Nazis didn’t already do to us?
“So, what have we been addressing? We’ve been trying to target a fear – the anxiety and that general sense of feeling unsafe that people have been naturally experiencing… a very normal reaction. It’s a normal reaction to an event and to events that have been happening, but it’s in the context of our historical knowledge of what’s happening.
“We’ve been addressing the frustration and the exhaustion that people have had from their overexposure to information, from what they feel are failed efforts to be able to effectively advocate or make a difference. People have been feeling guilty about not being able to change anything going on in the world.
“The emotional toll of this – to consistently try to have to defend one’s Jewish identity, has been something that we have been trying to target. So we’ve been running – over the last few years, a lot of very different programs. We ran a program called ‘tikvah”‘- for ‘hope,’ and we didn’t wanna bring people into some big therapeutic intensive session to talk about their feelings. No, we wanted to bring people into a space which was safe, which was non-threatening.
“So we invited Hebrew-speaking Jewish women. They were the first ones to come forward and say they wanted help. We ran a program that had about 85 people and we had little blank wooden Hamsas – about the size of my hand, and they could cover them and paint them in tables of eight. And on each table we had topics for discussion.
“At the end of the session, we took them through some meditative experiences for helping to calm them and, and sort of bring them down in terms of their emotional, – what we call their emotional activation. What we were trying to do was teach people skills so that they could find ways to relax themselves and relax their muscles and relax their brains, even though they were being bombarded by ongoing stress and ongoing challenge.
“And that’s kind of what we look at doing. So there’s something in the research and in the literature that we call this dichotomy between trauma and between what we’ve talked about: resilience. So a few of you mentioned it. What is resilience? Resilience is that ability to cope – that ability to empower oneself towards positive things.
“In spite of the spite of, and in the face of those challenges, what we have found in the research is that there have been some unhelpful ways, some non-positive ways of coping, and it comes under three categories. We have the kind of people who take on victimhood – ‘Who? Me? I feel powerless.’
‘There’s nothing I can do. I am stuck. I feel overwhelmed.’I think that that’s a role we collectively fell into after the Holocaust. You know, you have to feel sorry for us and be nice to us because we lost 6 million Jews in World War II. Well, that’s not working anymore for the Jewish people, clearly people don’t care what happened to us 75 years ago, or a thousand years ago, or even two years ago. That’s not working. So victimhood is one thing that happens, and it’s not a necessarily a positive way of coping.
“People can take on a persecutor kind of role, which is where they begin to blame and criticize and try to take control over others – right? You did this, you’ve done that. It’s your fault. You have done this to us…also not a very effective way.
“And then there’s the rescuer who looks at solving the problems. ‘We’re going to fix the problems’. And what those people tend to do is they neglect themselves. While they’re trying to help everybody else and they end up crashing and burning emotionally and exhausting themselves, and that’s not a healthy way either. So what has the literature we’ve been looking at say, and how do we flip this around?
“How do we break those cycles that people tend to fall into that have to do with victimhood or these various negative ways of dealing with stress and conflict? And how can we flip it into resilience? How can we take those experiences and despite them, move forward in positive ways? And so, many people will say things – like, ‘This happened to me. I learned from it, and I’m going to take it forward and do something good, something positive.’ So, we can shift from a victim to a survivor and what they call a creator role. We acknowledge the challenge. You know what, this is hard. This is difficult. I feel stressed. What can I do with that? I can now turn it around and take action.
“I can get involved in things. I can write articles, letters to the editor. I can take part in committees and… I can pray. I can delve into my community and become more active and involved. And we saw that happening. I think in the months after October 7th, I think synagogue attendance started to go up.
“Think of the number of people who attended rallies. They were being proud about what was going on in terms of the unification of the Jewish community…. how the amount of Jewish unity worldwide increased exponentially, after October 7th. I don’t know who it was in history who said something to the effect of, ‘If you want to destroy the Jewish people, leave them alone.’
“Every time in our history when we’ve had persecution, we’ve risen to the challenge and we’ve come together as a community. And that goes all the way back to the days of Kings in the Bible. We can shift from a persecutor role where we are accusing to a challenger role where we can start challenging people about their opinions.
“So, you’re telling me that Israel did X, Y, and Z. What is your proof? Let’s engage in a conversation about this. That is based on where you’re getting your facts, where I’m getting my facts, and maybe we can speak as two human beings trying to come to a consensus with each other about these very difficult things.
“It could be something about just setting boundaries and knowing who you can speak to about these things and who you can’t, because there are those who are never gonna change their opinion – so we might have more success banging our heads into the wall – right? than having conversations with certain people.
“So. why should we bother with them? Let’s bother talking to those that we may have some ability to make some movement with or educate about things. That’s when we want to encourage people towards growing towards inviting people in so that they can experience the beauty of what a Jewish community is like and all the positive things that we have, though we’re not perfect… Then we can shift from the role of a rescuer where we just want to fix all the problems to what they call a coach, where we wanna support others…towards positive growth and change, and I think that’s what JCFS has done in terms of opening up our counselling services and offering these things to the various members of the community, looking for it, where we can take the knowledge and experience that we have and we can help people in the community grow and understand where they’re coming from and what they’re experiencing, so that they can continue to experience positive joy in their day to day life and not be consumed.
“Some people have asked what kind of counselling programs we have? We’re offering three to five free sessions for people through our program. We’re calling the program ‘Unity in Community.’ People can come in and they can talk about what’s bothering them.
“About a year and a half ago, one of my therapists knocked on my door and they said, ‘Al, I just had a very interesting request. Somebody wants to come in for counselling because they’re having a lot of emotional torment about what’s been going on. They’re Muslim and they can’t speak out in their own community. What should I do?’
“I said, ‘Do you think that it’s a safe situation? The answer was ‘yes,’ so I said ‘Talk to them.’ That’s what we do as Jews and since then, I think we’ve helped about five or six Muslims come in very confidentially and privately – to be able to talk about what they’re feeling strain and can’t speak about it in their own communities. And they have felt comfort in the Jewish community. So, I look at that and I say, that’s about building bridges. Again, that’s based on a very core Jewish value. And so, we talk about our resilience as Jews – that we have an ability to cope.
“Why are we gathering here today? It’s a group of people coming together in a Jewish place as Jews to talk about maybe Jewish things, maybe not Jewish things. It doesn’t matter. We’re coming together as people to be together, and so we think about Victor Frankel, who was a psychiatrist before World War II, who lived through Auschwitz. He distilled down all of the suffering that he was witnessing and experiencing in Auschwitz, and he tried to understand: ‘Why did some people survive and why some people did not survive?’ and he drilled it down to one very simple thing: Those that found hope and meaning – even in the worst of events, survived. He has this one quote – that we’re no longer able to change the situation, and so we are challenged instead to change ourselves. It’s in an individual’s ability to say: “What can I take from what is happening to me and turn it into something positive and find that positive piece that can be understood?’
“In the Yeshiva world we have a phrase that we say, when something bad happens…this is also for good. Something good is gonna come of this, whether it is our experience or a new relationship. Press forward finding positive meaning, and that’s the nature of the Jewish people.
“One organization in Israel that I’ve had the privilege of meeting several of their staff and of their leadership is called Natal. And Natal is essentially the centralized post-traumatic stress response agency for all of Israel.
“There are smaller ones, but Natal is the overarching one. I’m just going to quickly go through their 10 commands for self preservation. What are some of the things that a person can do during difficult and stressful and painful times to be able to somehow ground themselves and bring themselves back down to a state where they’re feeling calmer and able to function?
“One thing is awareness. Just being aware of what you’re going through emotionally, and physically. One thing we do know is that when we experience stress, it’s not just in our mind that we’re thinking about these things. It physically affects us in our bodies. Our stomach gets turned into knots, our muscles cramp up. We might wake up feeling aches and pains and it’s not just us getting older. How can I relax it through my breathing, through meditation, through just even paying attention to it and we’re able then to help ourselves to regulate.
“So, regulating our body… we do that. We can practice our breath, we can practice muscle relaxation. We can practice grounding ourselves.
“Journaling and writing things down can be a very powerful way of getting them out from here. And then we take that book and we put it down on the nightstand. Now, all of the things we’re thinking about – they’re in the book. I can put them over there for now.
“Social connections – like this, coming together in meaningful ways. We feel a connection. It can normalize the way we feel… You know, it must be normal because a few of us are feeling that way.
“Self-compassion – people need to be good to themselves. They have to nurture themselves as well, recognizing that we’re human and that these reactions that we’re feeling are normal. It’s said that a post-traumatic stress response is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation, right? So, knowing that if I’m staying up at night. if I’m watching the news too much, if I’m stressed, I’m depressed – it’s normal, given what’s going on. And so we have to give ourselves permission that that’s okay. Identifying what drains us is our mission. Sometimes that could be people, sometimes that could be activities, and we wanna avoid those.
“Getting up, doing a routine, going to certain activities and keeping a certain normalcy and routine to your life helps you feel like might have some control over things. Finding meaning, as we just talked about, do activities that are meaningful. You know, I like to play golf. I don’t get to do it enough, but when I play golf, I’m usually with my friends or my brothers. That is very meaningful.”
At that point, Al said he was willing to take some questions. There were a few questions – mostly about how upsetting it is when some Jews criticize Israel.
But, I decided to voice a dissent to the notion that it’s only what’s happened to Israel that is causing many Jews to feel stressed out. I said: ‘I don’t know if any other people in this room will agree with me, but there is a lot of criticism of Israel among Jews. I circulate among a lot of Jewish people who feel totally uncomfortable with the kind of line that you’ve been giving that we have to give support to Israel.’ “
Al responded, saying: “I didn’t say that.”
I continued” “With what’s been going on, there are a lot of Jews who feel very marginalized, feel excluded from the mainstream, especially as expressed by the Jewish Federation. I don’t know if someone is going to approach Jewish Child and Family Service and ask for counselling because they feel so guilty about what’s been going on in Israel towards the Palestinians and Gaza. I just wanted to put that out there. This has kind of been a kind of one-sided delivery on your part, where all you’ve talked about is the stress that people are feeling – worrying about what’s been happening in Israel and antisemitism. Sure, that’s legitimate – but there are a lot of Jews who are stressed out by what the Israeli government has been doing.”
Al answered: “My intent today was not to give a political message. This was about finding comfort in your community, wherever you may stand. We have had people come for counselling who are challenging with exactly what you’re saying. They don’t agree with the policies of Israel. They don’t agree with the politics of what’s going on. They don’t agree with how long this war is going on. They’re getting their news from the same media sources as everybody else, and they’re very troubled by what they’re hearing and seeing. Our job is not to convince people that everybody has to think a certain way.
“Our job is to help people find comfort and to find some stability and to find some sense of homeostasis with those experiences they’re having so that they can function better with their families, so they can function better in their workplaces, so they can find ways that they can continue to feel like they’re making a difference in their own personal lives.
“If I had a solution for solving all those other problems, I don’t think I’d be standing here today. I’d be standing somewhere else having that conversation. But some of your concerns are probably better raised with CIJA, with our Jewish Federation. I’ve been one who’s spoken out very openly in my social circles. I don’t agree with the formal Jewish community’s approach, you know of what in the US is AIPAC or what In Canada is CIJA. I don’t agree with all of it. It’s something that still falls on the heels of victimhood…and trying to criminalize things and punish people. You don’t get people to come to your side by punishing them.
“You know, governments come and go, right? So, I mean, people are having a very hard time being able to differentiate the politics of what’s going on with their love for Zion and Zionism. It’s been challenging people’s Zionism because things are getting so immersed into politics.
“Your average person doesn’t have the intellectual, emotional capacity to, to deal with that on a day to day basis. So these are the kinds of channels we’re seeing all on the hook. Talk to Federation. I’m going to a meeting on September the 15th. They won’t agree with me necessarily, but we can have a very intelligent dialogue.”
Local News
Shalom Square montage
Shalom Square – the Israel Pavilion at Folklorama wrapped up another successful week on Sunday, August 17. Despite having to contend with protesters who positioned themselves across the street from the Asper Campus several evenings during the week, the crowds continued to pour in.
Here is a montage of photos taken by Keith Levit on Friday, August 15.
Local News
Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Synagogue hosts moving farewell for departing rabbi Yossi Benarroch
By MYRON LOVE It was a bittersweet evening Sunday, July 27, as about 300 members of Adas Yeshurun Herzlia and other community members gathered at the synagogue to express their appreciation to retiring Rabbi Yossi Benarroch for his service to the congregation – and the larger Jewish community – over the past nine years.
Although Benarroch had officially retired at the end of July, he had already returned to his family in Israel. The congregation paid to fly him, his wife, Elana, their daughters Ruchama and Tiferet and Tiferet’s infant daughter, Agam, back to Winnipeg for the moving tribute evening.
As this writer noted in an interview with Yossi Benarroch earlier this year, his assuming the spiritual leadership of Adas Yeshurun Herzlia was a match made in heaven. He grew up in our community, one of four sons of the revered Solomon and Mary Bennarroch. The future rabbi earned a physical education degree from the University of Manitoba in 1984, following which he made aliyah. He studied at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva (among others), receiving smicha in 1991. In 1999, he and his wife, Elana, and their children moved to Vancouver.
He and his family were back living in Israel in 2016 when the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia pulpit became vacant. “I saw it as an opportunity to fulfil what I felt was my obligation to give back to the community which had given me so much in my early years,” he says.
A second motivation was that he would be able to spend more time with his aged parents and two brothers in Winnipeg.
In his remarks on the 27th, Rabbi Benarroch thanked many people in our community who had played an important role in his life. First and foremost, he thanked his wife, Elana. While she didn’t want to leave Israel, he noted, she understood how important this was to him.
The arrangement that they agreed upon was that he would spend blocks of nine weeks in Winnipeg followed by three in Israel. He always made sure to be home (Israel) for Pesach, Sukkot and half of Chanukah. Now, nearing 68 years old, and with his parents both having passed away, Yossi Benaroch feels that it is time to go back permanently.
“I really appreciate the sacrifice that Elana was willing to make – giving up the love of her life for nine months a year for nine years so that I could fulfill my lifelong dream to return to and give back to the community I love so dearly.”
It was also very important to him, Rabbi Benarroch added, that some of his children were able to meet his community in Winnipeg and see what this community meant to him.
Among the many individuals he thanked were the late Dr. Earl Hershfield who – as president of the congregation – persuaded him to come back here; current president Jack Craven; long time congregational leaders Abe and Barbara Anhang; and members of the congregation as a whole – who welcomed him into their homes and lives.
“I have felt a tremendous love here,” Rabbi Benarroch said. “I can honestly say that in nine years, I never had a single argument with anyone in the congregation.”
He noted how much he cherished being able to spend time with his family in Winnipeg – his late parents, his brothers, Michael and Albert, his nephews and nieces and cousins.
Rabbi Benarroch also spoke about his positive relationships – friendships – with his rabbinical colleagues and the leadership at the Federation.
While Rabbi Benarroch noted that he is happy that he is going to be home full time now with his family – including three other children and numerous grandchildren – in Efrat, he added that he is not finished here quite yet. He announced that he will be back one more time to lead yom tov services.
The tribute for Rabbi Yossi Benarroch and his family on July 27 was not the only reason for celebration. The evening also marked the rededication of three of the six Talmud Torah Beth Jacob Synagogue stained glass windows.
Five of the windows were installed at the Talmud Torah Beth Jacob Synagogue – which was then located on Matheson Avenue in the North End (where it shared space with what was then the Talmud Torah School) – in May of 1970. Three of the windows were in commemoration of the late Rabbi Avraham Kravetz, Cantor Benjamin Brownstone and philanthropist Joseph Wolinsky – all of whom played an outsized role in shaping Jewish education in our community. According to an article I wrote for the Jewish Post at the time, the windows were created by Ron Henig, a Toronto-based artist. Marcus Bressler, a Talmud Torah past president, had seen Henig’s work in Toronto and persuaded the Simkin and Chait families to memorialize their loved ones by funding the installation of two windows in the Matheson Avenue shul. So eye-catching were the windows, some other members of the shul decided to have three more windows created in memory of Rabbi Kravitz, Cantor Brownstone and Wolinsky.
The windows moved with the Talmud Torah Beth Jacob Synagogue in 1997 to its new location on north Main Street after the community sold the Talmud Torah/Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate building and centralized Jewish private education in our community at the new Asper Campus.
Winnipeg artist Irma Penn created a sixth stained glass window for the Talmud Torah about 20 years ago at the new location.
Two years ago, facing declining attendance over several years, the Talmud Torah congregation merged with the 53-year-old Chavurat Tefila congregation – which was also dealing with declining attendance – at the latter synagogue on the Corner of Hartford and McGregor.
After the Talmud Torah building was sold last summer, three of the windows – the Irma Penn window and those that were dedicated to Joseph Wolinsky and the Chait Family followed the congregation members to the new Chavurat Tefila – Talmud Torah shul.
The Rabbi Kravetz, Brownstone and Jean Simkin windows were passed on to the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia congregation, where the Rabbl Kravetz “Shoah” window was rededicated in memory of the late Leon and Faye Raber by their children, Frayda and Label Raber.
In rededicating the “Shoah” window n memory of their parents, Frayda Raber pointed out that the window incorporates the Gorenstein (Faye’s) family’s relationship with the Adas Yeshurun shul from its beginnings in 1909 and their father’s survival of the Holocaust.
“Label and I grew up at the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia,” recalled Raber. “We went to elementary school here, attended junior congregation here, Shabbat and Yom Tov services, and celebrated our life cycle events. Despite living away, Label in Vancouver and me in Ottawa, the synagogue has remained our home away from home all these years.”
She added that her mother maintained her membership even after moving away in 2017 after Leon’s passing, and remembered the synagogue in her will.
Faye Raber passed away last September at the age of 103.
Frayda thanked Rabbi Benarroch for bringing the opportunity to refurbish the Shoah window to the family’s attention. “I believe that having this stained glass window displayed so prominently will help keep this part of our history in the forefront for current and future generations,” she said.
Abe and Barbara Anhang rededicated the two other windows – the Or V’Talmud Torah and Shir U’Shvacha windows – in honour of the Benarroch Family. As Barbara Anhang noted in her remarks:
“It was Shammai in the first chapter of Pirkei Avot who pointed out the necessity of daily Torah study, of saying little and doing much, and of receiving everyone with a pleasant countenance. These traits were second nature to Mary and Solomon Benarroch, who, when learning of Winnipeg’s search for a community shochet (slaughterer), jumped at the chance to leave Morocco and came to Winnipeg.”
Shlomo Benarroch, she noted, served as one of Winnipeg Jewish community’s shochetim for over 50 years. He was also a Torah reader, sofer (scribe), mohel (as needed), chazan and educator.
“He was a soft-spoken gentleman who said little but did much,” Barbara said, “and cared deeply about serving his adopted community.”
She described Mary Benarroch as “the consummate Jewish homemaker who provided a loving, supportive home for her husband, twins Yossi and Yamin, Michael, Albert, and their extended Canadian family. Her sons were her treasures.
”She succeeded in nurturing them to grow into observant, caring people who excelled in education and community service.”
Barbara went on to thank “Rabbi Yossi for his inspiring Talmud and parsha classes, his kashrut supervision at Schmoozer’s and Gwen Secter kitchens, Gunn’s Bakery, and Sunday morning Maimonides classes, bar/bat mitzvah preparations and drashas.”
She further thanked Elana Benarroch for her love and devotion in caring for their family in Israel while he was here, that made it all possible.
“Elana, we are all eternally grateful,” Barbar said. “Thank you. Both of you have shown us by example the joy of performing a mitzvah and that Jewish life cannot be sustained without Israel at its core.
“We were blessed to have you as our role models. Every one who had the honour of getting to know you and your dear parents, and seeing how you and they chose to live your lives, was, and is, changed for the better.”
Sid Halpern added his praise for the Benarroch Family: “We are honoured to rededicate these windows in the name of the Benarroch Family,” he said.
“Several weeks ago,” Halpern continued, “in his usual inspiring droshe, Rabbi Yossi in Parsha Balak, taught us that G-d sends us messages in different means from different messengers. The stained glass windows we rededicate today represent passionate messengers – visionaries who built the community we enjoy today with messages if our ears and eyes and hearts are open and receptive. Among the most consequential of these messengers were Shhlomo and Mary Benarroch, who created a new world for themselves in our community just as their community in their native Morocco was being largely destroyed. Their sons, Yamin, Yossi, Michael, and Al, continue to revitalize and inspire communities in Israel, Canada and the world.”
Halpern reIated that, in a reply to a question from his late wife Esther to Mary Benarroch how Mary had achieved such overwhelming success in raising her family, Mary’s response was “with love” which, Halpern noted, is the strongest force on the face of the earth, according to none other than Albert Einstein.
Halpern also had kind words for Faye and Leon Raber – whom he remembered as supporters and builders of Herzlia. “While Leon always sat in the back benches,” he recounted, “he and Faye were always on the front benches when the shul needed their support.
“It is great to have their children, Label and Frayda, with us whom I remember as regular attendees in their younger years and who were always respectful to and caring for their parents.”
Addressing Elana Bennarroch, Halpern said: “While we knew and felt your pain of aloneness for the past nine years, Rabanit Elana – especially in such stressful times, we want you to know how grateful we are to you and your family for lending Reb Yossi to us.
“This is a a time not for farewell but, rather, for Lehitraut, Reb Yossi and Elana, till we meet again Thank you Reb Yossi for your beautiful messages. Keep them coming from Tziyon from whence the Torah will come.”
Speaking on behalf of the Benarroch Family, Kim Bailey, wife of University of Manitoba President Michael Bernarroch, talked about the family’s strong connection with the Talmud Torah Synagogue.
All four brothers had their bar mitzvahs at the synagogue, she noted, her fasther-in-law was the long time Torah reader, and her mother-in-law was a part of the shul’s Emunah women’s group..
“One of my favourite memories,” Bailey recalled, “was listening to my father-in-law read the Megillah every year at Purim.
“That synagogue was central to the whole Benarroch family and they were beloved pillars of the Talmud Torah community,” she added.
While Solomon and Mary moved with the Talmud Torah after the congregation was forced to relocate, Bailey noted, they did move eventually move south to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
“I can imagine the members of the Talmud Torah who are no longer with us would be pleased to see that these windows have found such a beautiful new home and that they are being dedicated to the Benarroch family,” she said. “These windows are a reminder that while many things have changed in our community, the essential things such as Torah, prayer, song, love and respect for family and community don’t.”.