TORONTO — A Toronto woman is spearheading what she hopes will be a GTA-wide awareness campaign for Gilad Schalit, to take place at Saturday morning services on Shabbat HaGadol, April 16.
Marlene Black Rattner’s painting of Gilad Schalit is on display at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto.
TORONTO — A Toronto woman is spearheading what she hopes will be a GTA-wide
awareness campaign for Gilad Schalit, to take place at Saturday morning
services on Shabbat HaGadol, April 16.
Marlene Black Rattner’s painting of Gilad Schalit is on display at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto.
Marlene Black Rattner – a teacher who spent more then 15 years in bank management before becoming a stay-at-home mom – told The CJN she has never taken on an activist role before, but that she is “pretty much fed up with the injustice of the terrorists. I think it’s time we all took a stand.”
Schalit, who was born in 1986, was abducted from his IDF unit by Hamas in June 2006. In an information sheet, Black Rattner noted that he has been held in isolation for just under five years, and – in contravention of international law – Hamas has not granted visitation rights, permitted correspondence or demonstrated humane treatment to him.
Black Rattner, who has a 20-year-old son, said Schalit’s abduction bothered her “to no end.”
But it wasn’t until last summer, when she read a column about him in The CJN called “Time to end the silence” that she was galvanized into action. Rabbi Benjamin Friedberg – rabbi emeritus of Beth Tzedec Congregation, where Black Rattner is a longtime member – was the author.
Another influence for her was hearing Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and MP Irwin Cotler speak at Beth Tzedec a few years ago. She was moved by hearing for the first time that “this is our watch” in history.
In addition to organizing the upcoming Shabbat initiative, last fall Black Rattner started an ongoing awareness campaign, and has gathered more than 450 signatures on a petition she prepared under the name “Concerned Canadians for Gilad Schalit.” She has been assured that it will be read in the House of Commons, she said.
To raise awareness for the petition, she prepared a multimedia display that has been rotating among Toronto shuls. An oil painting of hers, depicting Schalit under the banner, “Help Bring Gilad Shalit Home,” is on display at Beth Tzedec.
The Shabbat HaGadol date – the first Shabbat before Passover – was chosen because of its symbolic nature, Black Rattner said, referring to the theme of the Israelites’ freedom.
In a letter to rabbis and cantors that she sent to the Toronto Board of Rabbis, the Toronto Council of Hazzanim and the Vaad Harabonim of Toronto for distribution last week, Black Rattner said she knows that many local synagogues have ongoing awareness campaigns for Schalit and that synagogues have their own schedules and may not be able to participate on the same day. But, she added, “by the same token, I feel that if we as a total community can approach this together here in Toronto it will achieve a greater message.”
She said in an interview she hopes the Schalit family, and ultimately Gilad, will know about the effort “so that he can be brought home and made aware that he has not been forgotten.”
It’s not enough, she said, “but it’s better than doing nothing.”
