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Achieving the Impossible: Commemorating the 120th Yahrzeit of the Sdei Chemed
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Hanukkah is a Yom Tov that commemorates Klal Yisroel facing impossible odds and overcoming them. How appropriate that the 19th-century gadol, Rav Chaim Chizkiyahu Medini, known as the Sdei Chemed, passed away just before Hanukkah, since in his own lifetime, the Sdei Chemed lived this concept of achieving the impossible.
His Early Years
Rav Chaim Chizkiyahu was born in 1834 in Yerushalayim. His father, Rav Refoel Asher Eliyahu Medini, was a respected Sephardic talmid chacham, descended from a family that had been in Yerushalayim for generations. In fact, some scholars believe the name “Medini” derives from the word “medina,” indicating that its bearers were legal residents at a time when Jews often faced restrictions on living in Yerushalayim.
The young Sdei Chemed devoted himself wholeheartedly to learning and retained all he learned in his photographic memory. He married his wife, Rivka, while in his teens and continued his dedication to Torah learning. He received semicha at the young age of 19.
His father, Rav Refoel, advised him, “Learn Torah, learn Torah, and learn Torah! Spend your days and nights learning. Be a yirei shamayim and have ahavas Hashem. Above all, heed the words of Hashem and follow them.” His father assured his son that if he followed this guidance, he would not need to worry about finances, as Rav Refoel would provide for the Sdei Chemed and his new wife.
This promise held true until tragedy struck.
In 1853, his father suddenly passed away, leaving the entire family without financial support. At 20 years old, Rav Medini found himself responsible not only for himself and his wife but also for his entire family. Completely ignorant of money matters, the Sdei Chemed had no idea where to turn. Yet, Hashem was guiding him towards the next step on his life’s journey.
To New Shores
The Sdei Chemed turned for guidance to the future Rishon Litziyon, Rav Chaim Abulafia (1775-1861), who was a close friend of his father. Rav Abulafia recommended that the family move to Constantinople and live with wealthy relatives who resided there and would be proud to support the young and brilliant scholar. In this way, the Sdei Chemed would be able to continue learning.
When he arrived in Constantinople, his cousins welcomed them. Recognizing his greatness, the community asked the Sdei Chemed to serve as the city’s dayan, but he refused, preferring to devote his time to study and writing. It was in Constantinople that he published his first work, Michtav L’Chizkiyahu.
Although his cousins were initially generous, when the Sdei Chemed became seriously ill some time after his arrival, they began to see him as a burden.
Realizing he could no longer rely on them, the Sdei Chemed began tutoring children for a few hours each day while continuing to devote most of his time to Torah study. Over time, he became the most sought-after Torah teacher in Constantinople. He was highly respected as a gaon in Torah with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, and as a rebbi who could teach Torah to children and adults on any level.
The Sdei Chemed and his wife, Rabbanit Rivka, in Crimea
An Invitation for the Rabbinate
By 1866, Rav Medini was so well-known that even visitors to Constantinople sought him out to learn from him. One such visitor was a wealthy businessman from the Crimea, who was impressed not only by Rav Medini’s Torah knowledge but also by his regal bearing. The businessman approached Rav Medini and offered him the position of Chief Rabbi of the Crimea.
At that time, the Jewish community of the Crimea was in the process of rebuilding itself following the devastating Crimean War.
The Crimean Jewish community, known as the Krymchaks, was unique in that they were neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic. They had been largely cut off from the broader Torah world and had experienced a steep decline in religious observance. Additionally, the Crimea was home to a significant Karaite population, which was actively promoting its misguided theology.
Rav Medini recognized the tremendous challenge of accepting the position of Rav under such difficult conditions. Additionally, the Jewish businessman informed him that the Jewish community in Crimea had not had a rabbi in 40 years! Yet, despite their limited knowledge, the Jews there expressed a strong desire to keep Torah and mitzvos. The businessman assured Rav Medini that if he accepted the position, the community would support him and help him bring about a renewal of Torah observance in Crimea.
Incredibly, Rav Medini accepted the position and moved to Karasubazar (modern-day Bilohirsk), meaning “market on the Karasu River.” In 1867, after a nearly two-week boat journey, the Sdei Chemed arrived in Karasubazar, where he would remain as Chief Rabbi until 1899. At that time, the city had a Jewish population that was 20% of its approximately 13,000 residents.
When he arrived, he found the spiritual situation to be dismal. Few Jewish children could read Hebrew, and even siddurim were almost non-existent in the city, let alone other sefarim. The community was largely ignorant of halacha and minhagim, and the task that lay ahead for Rav Medini was enormous.
Yet, the Sdei Chemed rose to the occasion. His first major project was to establish a yeshiva to serve the entire Crimean Peninsula. He also prepared a simplified siddur and copies of it were sold as quickly as they could be printed. The Sdei Chemed created easy-to-understand pamphlets on halacha and minhagim that covered nearly every aspect of Jewish life. These pamphlets were distributed throughout Crimea, providing halachic guidance for every Jewish home.
Over the years, thousands of children attended the yeshiva, and they and their families became completely observant. Under his direction, Crimea experienced a renewal of Torah observance, replacing the assimilation and ignorance that had prevailed until then.
During his time in Crimea, the Sdei Chemed was a sought-after poseik, receiving visitors and letters with dozens of shailas each week from around the world.
Rav Medini had one son and three daughters. Tragically, his only son died in 1868. In his memory, Rav Medini wrote a sefer titled Or Li. His son’s death was devastating for Rav Medini, and he became very ill and even lost his eyesight temporarily. Yet, with a tremendous desire to continue his work in Karasubazar, Rav Medini had a complete recovery. His three daughters all married observant merchants who helped support the Sdei Chemed and his projects.
Magnum Opus: Sdei Chemed
It was during his almost thirty-three years in Karasubazar that Rav Medini wrote the greater part of his magnum opus, the Sdei Chemed. (Chemed was an acronym of his name, Chizkiyahu Medini.) The work is an encyclopedia of halachic topics, and includes numerous teshuvos on each subject in the order of the alef-beis.
Rav Medini possessed a remarkable photographic memory, and when he learned a sefer, he would memorize it as well. In his brilliance, he not only memorized the sefarim but also arranged them in his mind in an incredibly organized fashion. Rav Medini directed his immense wisdom and knowledge toward his sefer, the Sdei Chemed. The work is mind-boggling in its breadth and scope.
The Sdei Chemed lacked an index for many years, making it challenging to find the topic one was looking for. Today, it has an index, yet some observe that the index needs an index! Similar to the Minchas Chinuch, which was a closed book for many years until it was republished and reorganized by Machon Yerushalayim, the Sdei Chemed is challenging to learn because it has not yet been reformatted in a similar way.
Throughout his life, Rav Medini was renowned for his tzidkus. There was a period in his life when he spent or gave away every last coin he had daily, and would then begin the next day with nothing. This practice left a lasting impression on those who knew him, demonstrating both his care for others and his tremendous level of bitachon.
Both Jews and non-Jews throughout Crimea revered the Sdei Chemed as the “Holy Rabbi,” and all sought his blessing. In fact, when an order was issued in 1887 to expel all foreign nationals from Crimea, Rav Medini was allowed to remain, due to the intervention of high-ranking government officials and well-known Russian non-Jewish academics on his behalf.
Rav Medini remained in Crimea for decades, because he believed that no one of stature would replace him to teach Torah and guide the community.
Time to Return Home
In 1899, Rav Medini decided to leave for Eretz Yisroel, intending to spend his final days there. Despite the pleas of the Crimean Jews and his own painful separation from his children and community, he remained steadfast in his decision. Though he had not lived in Eretz Yisroel for most of his life, he wished, at the very least, to be buried there.
Nearly the entire Jewish community of Crimea, comprising tens of thousands of people, gathered at the docks to bid farewell to Sdei Chemed as he left. They wept as he departed on a boat across the Black Sea towards Eretz Yisroel.
When the Sdei Chemed arrived in Eretz Yisroel in the early summer of 1899, he was greeted with tremendous joy by the rabbanim and community members. They danced around him, joyfully welcoming him home.
He chose to reside in Yerushalayim and remained there for two years.
When he first arrived, the position of Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim was vacant, and he was asked to become Chief Rabbi. Rav Medini declined, hoping to reside there as a simple Jew, but he found it difficult to withstand the pressure from those seeking his leadership.
Chevron, at that time, was a quiet city and seemed like an ideal place for him to spend his days and complete writing his Sdei Chemed. He decided to move there. Shortly after he arrived, Chevron’s two chief rabbanim, Rav Eliyahu Mani and Rav Yosef Franco, passed away, and the community pleaded with him to become their rav. Recognizing the need and realizing he could lead this smaller community and complete his sefer simultaneously, Rav Medini agreed and served as the rav of Chevron until his passing in 1905.
Despite his advanced age, Rav Medini established a yeshiva in Chevron and supported it with his meager funds, even drawing from money he had set aside for the publication of the Sdei Chemed. When asked how he could do such a thing, he responded that a living Torah scholar is more valuable than a book.
Due to the reputation of the Sdei Chemed, the yeshiva attracted some of the finest young scholars in Eretz Yisrael. One of his students was the renowned Rav Avraham Chaim Naeh.
In Chevron, the Sdei Chemed also focused on the needs of the community as a whole. Each day, he would stay in the shul, saying Tehillim for an hour between Mincha and Maariv along with the rest of the community. When someone asked him why he did this instead of learning, he responded, “If I neglect this community minhag, the whole value and importance of that hour spent saying Tehillim will become meaningless to the kehilla. That is why I must be present — to give it significance.”
Rav Medini’s integrity and greatness earned him the respect of even the Arab inhabitants of Chevron. Due to his influence, many attacks on Chevron’s Jews were averted. When the local rulers summoned the Sdei Chemed for a public tax meeting, they treated him with great respect, apologizing for the summons and occasionally asking for his blessing.
In 1905, Rabbi Medini became very ill. The Rabbanim of Chevron composed a special tefilla, titled “A Prayer for Chizkiya in His Illness,” alluding to the great King Chizkiyahu, who had been gravely ill, recovered, and was granted 15 more years of life. The Sdei Chemed was niftar shortly thereafter, just before Chanukah on the 24th of Kislev. He is buried in Chevron.
A False Accusation
Looking back at his life, the Sdei Chemed offered his own insight on the tremendous siyata dishmaya he had, in what is probably the most famous story about the Sdei Chemed.
It was well known that the Sdei Chemed was outstanding in his Torah learning, and one of his contemporaries became envious of him. In a fit of jealousy, he bribed the non-Jewish cleaning girl to accuse the Sdei Chemed of trying to assault her in the beis midrash. She agreed and ran into the streets shouting that the Sdei Chemed had attempted to act inappropriately to her.
The onlookers were shocked, and yet, the Sdei Chemed ignored the whole scene and continued to learn with tranquility, despite being publicly libeled and shamed. Unsure of how to handle the situation and certain that the Sdei Chemed was innocent, the Rav of the community ordered the cleaning girl fired.
A while later, this cleaning girl had no money left because the bribe money was used up. She also could not work, since, due to this incident, no one would hire her to clean their homes. She approached the Sdei Chemed, admitting that she had made up the whole story because another man had bribed her to accuse him. She suggested that she would tell the entire story in public, that the Sdei Chemed would be cleared, and that she could then have her job back.
Taken aback, the Sdei Chemed thought it over. He realized that although the lady’s confession would clear his own name, it would be a terrible chillul Hashem regarding the man who had bribed her. Therefore, the Sdei Chemed responded that instead of creating a public spectacle, he would find her a new job.
Years later, the Sdei Chemed told over this incident to a talmid. He related that after it occurred, he felt his eyes were opened to learning to a much greater extent than before. He mused that it was either because of his own self-restraint in the face of such humiliation or because of his concern to prevent chillul Hashem that Hashem had granted him so much hatzlacha. The Sdei Chemed also conjectured that it was in this merit that his sefer, Sdei Chemed, was so widely accepted.
Most of us are not capable of writing a Sdei Chemed nor leading an entire community back to Torah and mitzvos. Yet, the Sdei Chemed’s life reminds us that some things that we consider impossible can be within reach if we want it enough. One hundred and twenty years later, this legacy continues to shine brightly.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA, from 2007 to 2020. He is a popular speaker and writes for numerous publications on Torah, Jewish History, and Contemporary Jewish Topics. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org
A version of this article was printed in Hamodia’s weekly newspaper on December 10, 2025.
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The real Jewish story of Ceuta, Spain’s migrant-magnet neighbor to Morocco
For all of us who don’t know much about geography, international political crises are always welcome. Since the start of Trump 2.0, we have been discovering places we never knew existed, but now present existential threats. From straits — think Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab — to islands — whether Greenland or Heard and McDonald — we now have, along with higher gas and food prices, a better appreciation of our world.
Late last week, yet another obscure part of the globe was suddenly brought, this time without our president’s assistance, to the attention of western media: Ceuta. A city of approximately 83,000 inhabitants, Ceuta is ensconced on a peninsula which, though attached to the Moroccan coastline, is nevertheless under Spanish rule, even while it enjoys a significant amount of autonomy.
As we now know, Ceuta was also the magnet that, starting on July 30, drew about 72,000 young Moroccans who sought, mostly by swimming, to reach its beaches and, from there, perhaps reach Europe. That nearly 100 young men and women drowned in the effort — one that moreover proved naught for those who reached Ceuta as nearly all of them were obliged to return to Morocco — adds a heartrending chapter to the complex history of a city where tragedy has long mixed with comity.
Founded two millennia earlier by the Phoenicians, Ceuta was successively ruled by the Romans, Ottomans, Portuguese and Spaniards. In 1492, when the kingdom expelled its Jewish population, a few thousand crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Ceuta, where they managed to avoid the bloody reach of the Inquisition. Yet they were not the first Jews to make their home on this tip of North Africa; as early as the 11th century, the Spanish-Jewish poet Abraham Ibn Ezra refers to the Jews of Ceuta in one of his poems. For the next few centuries, the small community lived in relative peace alongside its Christian and Muslim neighbors, a continuation, argues the historian Veronica Viviana Reyes, of the medieval “al-Andalus,” that brilliant and brief moment of cultural convergence between the three “peoples of the Book.”
Come the mid-20th century, the steadily dwindling Jewish community received reinforcements with the arrival of a few hundred Sephardic Jews who left their native Morocco in the wake of its independence from France. Earlier that century, several hundred Indians, mostly Sindhi, who were subjects under the British Raj also arrived in Ceuta, drawn by the city’s busy trading and commercial opportunities. Though the statistics are approximate — Spain does not require citizens to list their religion — about 58% of Ceuta’s population is Christian, 40% is Muslim, and the remaining couple of percentage points comprise its Jewish and Hindi communities. [ As a result, this ancient city attached by a thread of rock and soil to North Africa has accomplished a remarkable feat: the braiding of four distinct faith communities into what the locals call convivencia, or peaceful coexistence.
Yet, as last week’s event revealed, convivencia is a fragile thing. The influx of Moroccan youths on the beaches and streets of Ceuta, though over as quickly as it began, has become the gift that does not stop giving for the extreme-right media and politicians in countries bordering Spain. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s ethno-nationalist party the National Rally, demanded that the French government “reinforce its border controls.”
Not to be outdone, her second-in-command, Jordan Bardella, warned that these “invaders will soon be on our streets.” Going a step further, the extreme-right prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, called for Spain’s suspension from the Schengen Accord—the guarantee of free movement of citizens across the borders of European Union nations — and resurrected immigration controls for Spanish citizens, although Spain does not share a border with Italy. (This geographical fact did not deter Mette Fredricksen, the prime minister of distant Denmark, from voicing her support for Meloni.)
Inevitably, the old chestnut of a Jewish conspiracy has also been resurrected. Public figures, ranging from antisemitic fantasist Candace Owens, through the former director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, to the Spanish actor Javier Bardem, have posted or reposted wink-wink, nudge-nudge claims that Israel orchestrated the mad rush of Moroccans towards Ceuta. The reason cited for this nefarious feat is Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to embarrass the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, who has been one of the harshest European critics of the war in Gaza and a proponent of a more liberal immigration policy than his European peers. The Moroccan government’s irritation over Spain’s support of Algerian claims to the western Sahara makes this baseless claim seem more reasonable.
The political and rhetorical theatrics have little to do with reality. Europe is not being overrun by what Marion Maréchal, a politician to the right of her aunt Marine Le Pen, described as a “veritable invasion” by “hordes of young Moroccans.” Or, for that matter, what her Spanish homologue, Santiago Abascal, the leader of the extreme-right party Vox, insisted was “an act of war” against Spain and, by extension, Europe.
This frenzied response deliberately ignores the fact that not a single Moroccan migrant entered Spain — a strait, after all, runs between Spain and Ceuta — and have nearly all been returned by Spanish soldiers and police to Morocco. Tellingly, residents of Ceuta have also used the word “invasion,” but with greater nuance. As a journalist for Le Monde reported, none of the locals she interviewed described the Moroccans as enemies. Though frightened by the sudden and massive influx, they also understood the migrants were not seeking “to rob them,” but instead to find a better future. Besides, as one Ceutan, Rachel Gomes, observed, she has Muslim in-laws. “This does not make for problems. Four cultures exist here — Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian — that live together remarkably well.” If only a similar convivencia reigned among the members of the European Union.
The post The real Jewish story of Ceuta, Spain’s migrant-magnet neighbor to Morocco appeared first on The Forward.
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Ad for Republican Colorado governor candidate depicts Jewish opponent with horns
An attack ad on the Jewish Democratic candidate for governor of Colorado has depicted him with red horns, drawing condemnation from the state Democratic party — and the apparent approval of the Republican nominee.
Invoking an ancient antisemitic canard that Jews have horns, the ad, created in support of Republican nominee Victor Marx and circulating on various social media platforms, called the Democratic nominee and Colorado’s current Attorney General Phil Weiser “the next threat to Colorado.”
The Colorado Democratic Party said on Facebook that the graphic was “antisemitic and disgusting” and called on Marx to disavow it.
Instead, Marx engaged with a post on X accompanied by the image, calling on Republicans to stop attacking each other, “unite, stay focused, and win.”
Throughout his campaign, controversy has followed Marx, a minister and author who some have categorized as a Christian fundamentalist. Others have called him a fabulist. On the campaign trail, Marx has claimed to be the first American into Gaza during the war with Israel, boasted about performing exorcisms by phone and said his stepfather forced him to kill a man at the age of 7.
A fellow Republican party member also formally accused him of accepting unlimited campaign contributions through his online merchandise store.
The Marx campaign did not respond to an inquiry by the Forward.
Weiser, who attends a Conservative synagogue in Denver, defeated U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination in July. He also did not respond to an inquiry.
Polls show Weiser with a sizable lead over Marx. The Colorado governor’s seat has been held by a Democrat since 2008, and term-limited incumbent Gov. Jared Polis is also Jewish.
The post Ad for Republican Colorado governor candidate depicts Jewish opponent with horns appeared first on The Forward.
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Suspected arson gutted Montreal’s trendiest kosher restaurant. The city’s Jews say they saw it coming
Howard Szalavetz’s phone buzzed around 3:15 a.m. Saturday, startling him awake. It was news no landlord wants: a retail building he owned was on fire. Nöam, the kosher restaurant that anchors it, was burning.
He threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and hopped into his daughter’s Ford Bronco. The drive was only five minutes, but each one felt like an eternity. Police and fire crews had cordoned off several blocks around Montreal’s Décarie Boulevard, forcing him to abandon the car and run the rest of the way on foot. Eventually, they let him through.
“It was insane,” he recalled in an interview Sunday. “There were 80 firemen.” The building he’s owned since 1987 — home to a car wash, an auto repair garage, and Nöam — was engulfed. The restaurant’s section, a wood-frame extension, “went up pretty quickly.”
By the time the fire was under control around 8 a.m., the restaurant was gutted top to bottom. The car wash and auto repair suffered less damage and plan to reopen this week.
Video of the fire that burned down Noam, a popular Kosher restaurant in Montreal pic.twitter.com/gVvvTVvcRQ
— Benyamin Cohen (@benyamincohen) August 2, 2026
Szalavetz and police were able to pull footage from a security camera mounted to the exterior of the auto repair shop. In it, a figure appears on the restaurant’s wood deck, bends down and lights a fire with what looks like a can of accelerant. The man’s face wasn’t hidden, but the footage was too poor in quality to make out much more.
When nearby shops that were closed over the weekend reopen Monday, investigators hope to gather additional footage. Szalavetz said a camera damaged in the Nöam fire might also contain more information.
Szalavetz’s father survived three concentration camps and lost much of his family in the Holocaust. He died in 2021. “Thankfully he didn’t see this,” Szalavetz said, “because this is how Europe started.”
The Nöam fire is the latest in a rapid drumbeat of attacks on Jewish targets in Canada. Last week, in Toronto, a gunman fired at the windows of one branch of Kiva’s Bagel Bar, a Jewish-owned bakery chain, about an hour after vandals had shattered the glass front of another location. In June, a man smashed a window at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, a Reform congregation in Montreal, and tried to start a fire inside.
That same month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged that two-thirds of all religion-motivated hate crimes in Canada are directed at Jews. “Canada’s civic compact,” he said, “is failing Jewish Canadians.” B’nai Brith Canada recorded 27 violent antisemitic incidents in the first six months of 2026 — nearly triple the count for all of 2025.
Deborah Lipstadt, the noted Holocaust historian and former U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism during the Biden administration, said the Nöam fire was “utterly predictable.” Carney, she said, “does not have the chutzpah” to stand up and declare, without qualification, that antisemitism has no place in Canada.
“If this is not a wake-up call, I don’t know,” Lipstadt said. “Do more people have to die for it to be a wake-up call? How much more do you need? Spare me your pious sympathies and sincere regrets.”
A vigil and a crowdfunding campaign
By Saturday, Szalavetz said he’d fielded some 150 calls — more, he said, than he gets on his birthday. Montreal is home to an estimated 90,000 Jews, but Szalavetz said it still has the feel of a “shtetl,” and word traveled fast: a vigil drew a crowd outside the burned restaurant Saturday night, and the community plans on launching an online crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the two owners and roughly 30 employees, since insurance can’t cover the full scope of the loss.
Brothers-in-law Meir Azerad and Ynon Cohen opened Nöam in August 2024, transforming what had been little more than a car wash’s waiting room into a polished, sit-down kosher restaurant. They named it for Cohen’s brother, Noam, who had died years earlier and had dreamed of opening a restaurant of his own.
They turned out wood-fired pizzas at 1,000 degrees, two minutes a pie. Expanding the menu to include Mediterranean and Italian, Nöam grew to a following that surprised even its owners, and had a waitlist most weeknights. The partners had just spent a year renovating a second floor to keep up with demand.
Among the social media posts circulating Saturday morning was one from Francine Goldberg, a lifelong Montrealer, that quickly went viral. The fire broke out on Shabbat — the one day, she wrote, “we are forbidden to kindle a flame. Somebody kindled it for us.”
Politicians were quick to respond. Anthony Housefather, a Jewish member of Parliament who represents the area, demanded the fire be investigated as a hate crime. Police say they have not yet established a motive.
The Mamdani angle
But for many Montreal Jews, official statements have started to feel beside the point. Goldberg calls them “the typical Hallmark pleasantries: ‘Oh, it’s horrible, and it should never happen.’”
Goldberg, who works at a medical clinic in downtown Montreal, said she’s received more hate mail this year than at any point in her life. She doesn’t think Carney is an antisemite — just a politician counting votes. “There are far more of them than there are of us,” she said. Jews make up approximately 1% of the Canadian population.
Jesse Brown, a Canadian Jewish journalist who has tracked the country’s antisemitism surge since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, sees the same pattern from a different angle.
When Carney announced a new council to combat hate this summer, Brown called it “disingenuous” — the council had already existed for months, under a different name, and included members with histories of anti-Israel advocacy. More pointedly, Brown said, Carney has refused to name the actual cause. “This is happening because of this global movement against Israel,” he said. “Jews in Canada are being targeted in the name of targeting Israel.” Naming antisemitism, he argued, is easy. Naming anti-Zionism as its engine is the part no Canadian politician has been willing to do.
Goldberg sees this dynamic playing out beyond Canada’s borders. In New York, Zohran Mamdani was elected the city’s first Muslim mayor in January and recently to called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal” and “the architect of a horrific genocide.” His win in the U.S. city with the largest population of Jews has been widely read as evidence that anti-Zionist politics can win elections across the country.
In the months since his election, antisemitic hate crimes in New York have climbed sharply: NYPD data show Jews, roughly 10% of the city’s population, were targets in 55% of all confirmed hate crimes in the first half of 2026, with anti-Jewish incidents up 182% year-over-year in January alone.
Goldberg sees that rhetoric traveling regardless of the border. “That has a trickle-down effect on Montrealers,” she said. She’s watched a segment of the city’s progressive activists argue that Montreal’s own mayor should “follow Mamdani” and formally declare that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Her worry isn’t that Israeli policy is off-limits for criticism — she says she criticizes the Netanyahu government herself — but that mainstreaming anti-Zionism as just another respectable political position is what’s fueling the rise in antisemitism she’s living through.
Goldberg said that people keep telling her to consider moving to Israel. She isn’t interested. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “It’s exactly what they would want, so I’m not going to clarify their mission.” That doesn’t mean the fear isn’t real, she added: “It’s very, very dark. It’s dark times for us.”
‘A lot of gaslighting’
Brown pointed to a pattern that predates the fire at Nöam. Last August, an Orthodox man was beaten in a Montreal park in front of his three children; his attacker tore the kippah from his head and threw it to the ground. Quebec prosecutors ultimately determined it wasn’t a hate crime — the attacker was found not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
When pro-Palestinian protesters marched down Toronto’s “hospital row” in February 2024 and mobbed Mount Sinai Hospital, organizers said the hospital hadn’t been targeted; it just happened to be along the route. Brown calls this a recurring dynamic. “There’s a lot of gaslighting that occurs,” he said.
He expects something similar will happen with the Nöam investigation: police have video of the fire being set, but Canadian hate-crime charges require proof of motive that’s notoriously hard to establish. More likely, he said, if the suspect is charged with arson alone “then people who want to deny what is happening will say, well, ‘We have no proof that was antisemitism.’”
There’s already a template for how that skepticism plays out. In December 2024, a man threw a Molotov cocktail into Montreal’s Beth Tikvah synagogue; windows were smashed the same night at a nearby Jewish federation office. The man who pleaded guilty to three of six arson-related charges, Mohamed Ilyes Akodad, testified this summer that he’d been paid $15,000 through an anonymous contact on Signal to firebomb two buildings and torch a car, and that he didn’t know one of them was a synagogue. Prosecutors are seeking a two-year sentence; his lawyer is asking for a suspended sentence and home confinement. A judge is expected to rule Sept. 10.
Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Montreal’s Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, which experienced its own firebomb attack this June, has seen the pattern up close. “At this point, none of it feels surprising,” she said, “and that in itself is quite sobering.” Protective coatings on the synagogue’s windows kept the firebomb from getting through, and police apprehended the suspect that night. It could have been far worse, she said, “but we can’t just say ‘This is not who we are,’ because clearly this is who our society is right now.”
Still, she pointed to what happened the day after her synagogue was attacked: so many families showed up for a scheduled service that the congregation had to run two instead of one. She saw the same instinct play out in Toronto, where customers lined up outside Kiva’s Bagel the morning after the shootings there. “It shouldn’t take resilience to live as a Jew,” she said. But if the choice is between resilience and retreat, her community has made its decision: “We’re not going to give up or move away.”
Lipstadt’s message to Jews was also one of resilience, not despair. Asked whether Canadian Jews should consider leaving the country, she declined to answer directly. “That’s not my place,” she said. But she was unequivocal that Jews would endure. “We have survived worse,” she said. What worries her isn’t whether Jews will survive — it’s whether the societies around them will. “Will democratic society, writ very large, be okay?” she said. “I’m not so sure.”
Nöam’s owners Azerad and Cohen have said little publicly since the fire. Szalavetz described them as “very camera shy,” agreeing only reluctantly to a brief interview with a local reporter after Szalavetz pushed them to speak. “The world needs to know,” he told them. For now, what’s certain is the plan: rebuild in the same spot and reopen “bigger, better, newer” than before, said Szalavetz. He estimates that could take six months to a year. In the meantime, he said, he’s working on finding them a temporary home so the restaurant can remain open.
“Coming back is the goal,” Szalavetz said. “It’s my goal as a proud Jew. You’re not going to take us down.”
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