The Power of our Tradition
While current events can cause us dismay, we remind ourselves that our tradition has endured for thousands of years in the face of unimaginable adversity
Pride in our Tradition
On Friday night we attended our synagogue’s annual Pride Shabbat dinner. There is much to be proud of. A dynamic group, active members of our lay volunteer corps, organized and led the events of the evening. The program featured the personal stories of four members of our congregation. Hearing these stories expanded our understanding of the lived experience of members of our community whose lives and loves don’t fit into a traditional heterosexual framework. While this framework is the one that the rest of us find more or less comfortable, our community is open to Jews who find their comfort and fulfillment differently. We are proud that these people feel at home in our congregation, and that our congregation benefits from their strong engagement in many roles.
Our synagogue, the largest in Ottawa, is currently without a rabbi, but our lay leadership has stepped forward, with support from our Cantor and our board. We maintain a full schedule of activities, including weekly Torah study, morning and afternoon prayer every weekday, and a full traditional Shabbat morning service. Our lay volunteer Torah readers step up week after week. At our Tikkun Leil Shavuot (traditional study on the first night of Shavuot) on June 3, we spoke about our five and a half years studying Daf Yomi (Daily Page of Talmud), and last Shabbat morning we led the Torah study with a discussion of Masoret (tradition).
As we learn in Pirkei Avot (ethics of the fathers), Moses received the Torah from Sinai and the tradition was passed down by him to Joshua, from Joshua to the Elders, and from the Elders to the Prophets. From the Prophets it was passed to the Great Assembly (Knesset Hagadol). From the Assembly, pairs of scholars transmitted the tradition, culminating with Hillel and Shammai. Pirkei Avot was compiled by rabbis of of the first two centuries of the common era, known as the Tanaim who also compiled the Mishnah. The Mishnah was in turn discussed by the Rabbis of the Gemarah, known as the Amoraim. The Amoraim compiled the Mishnah and Gemarah together as the Talmud by the fifth century of the Common Era.
The layout of the Talmud was fixed in the age of the printing press, and consisted of Mishnah and Gemarah at the centre of each page, together with additional commentaries written over the last 1500 years, principally Rashi, along with other writings of the Mishnaic era (Baraitot and Tosefta).
Image: A page of Talmud from Masechet Rosh Hashanah in the standard layout ———Source: Alamy.com
In the 20th century the monumental work of Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael Steinsaltz translated the Talmud into modern Hebrew. His translation incorporated the commentaries into the text. That work has, in turn, been translated into English, which makes the study of Daf Yomi much easier for contemporary learners, such as ourselves.
Our message to the Torah study class, was that Conservative/Masorti Judaism is a branch of the eternal Jewish conversation. That conversation has continuously renewed our tradition, bringing the insights of new places and eras to bear on the legacy of Sinai. Conservative Judaism at its best is rooted in Halachah and open to the lessons of the contemporary world. Pride Shabbat is an example of how our tradition has the strength to thrive even as it incorporates new wisdom in our current time and place.
Zionist Elections in Canada
We have been engrossed for the past month in campaigning for the Canadian elections to the World Zionist Congress. We are running on the MERCAZ Canada list which will be part of a global MERCAZ caucus elected from wherever Conservative/Masorti Judaism has a presence. The World Zionist Congress chooses the management for the three largest Jewish non-profits in the world. These are the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and the Keren Kayement L’yisrael (KKL or JNF).
At the World Zionist Congress, MERCAZ works to preserve the law of return in its present inclusive form against those who would try to narrow the definition of who is a Jew. It works to direct KKL funding to projects which enjoy broad support across the Jewish world, such as reconstruction in the Gaza Envelope and the Lebanese border communities, as opposed to unsanctioned outposts deep in Judaea and Samaria. It works to ensure that shlichim (emissaries) sent out by the WZO are sent to summer camps operated by Liberal Jewish movements as well as those operated by Orthodox movements. In general we work for a big tent Judaism open to all Jews.
Antisemitism in Ottawa
The Jewish community has been shaken by the desecration this week of the National Holocaust Monument overnight on Monday. There are people in Ottawa who want the Jews living here to feel ashamed. They feel righteous defacing a monument to the six million Jews who were slaughtered in an act of unprovoked hatred. They believe in a false equivalency between the Holocaust and Israel’s just war of self-defense against Hamas, a contemporary enemy with the same objective (death to Jews everywhere) as the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Image: Canadian Holocaust Monument Defaced on Monday Morning ——Source: Canadian Press
This kind of event contributes to a growing sense of alarm among Jews in Canada at the normalization of acts of hatred and intimidation directed at Canadian Jews. A growing segment of the population believes that such acts are justified as long as they are done in the name of the Palestinians, and as long as the Jewish victims are identified as Zionists. This same segment demands that our government endorse the demonization and marginalization of Israel, along with the majority of Canadian Jews who support Israel’s just and necessary war against Hamas.
In the face of this we remind ourselves that the Jewish people have endured outbreaks of Jew hatred before, in many times and places. We have always found a way to survive, though the harm we have suffered has sometimes been unimaginably horrific. The harm Israelis are enduring today is real, but we are grateful that today Israel has an army. We are grateful to the brave fighters of that army who go every day into harm’s way to defend the land and people of Israel.
The hatred directed toward Canadian Jews is real. But we also have allies and there are many who quietly support us and understand that what is happening to us could happen to them as well. Therefore we remain confident and courageous and look with hope to our own tradition, as well as to allies who work to sustain rather than destroy the civilization which made room for the resurgence of Jewish pride and power in our own day.
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