The Canadian Jewish News welcomes your feedback on all our web articles and podcasts, and appreciates our community of engaged readers and listeners. The aim with Letters is to offer a forum for public feedback, and to showcase the range of viewpoints in the Canadian Jewish community. These are letters to the editor from readers or podcast listeners, not staff editorials. Letters are vetted and are edited for clarity.
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This letter is regarding Mitchell Consky’s August 11 Campus article, “Jewish education group warns that identity politics are fuelling antisemitism in Ontario schools.”
As a former school principal, I fully support the tenets of the report sent to Minister Calandra by the Jewish Educators and Families Association (JEFA). Discrimination and racism have no place in our schools. All schools within the province should be teaching the same curriculum, using the same core materials developed by the Ministry. All teachers should be trained on how to teach the approved classroom materials.
Change at all levels in our education system is needed, but it will take time. We need a new generation of teachers whose training and understanding of student learning will align with the notion of “let schools be schools”. There will never be teacher-proof teaching; but we can hope for teachers who view the learning needs of their students as their top priority. Until then, we must put programs in place to support our students. There must be legitimate processes for students, school staff and parents to voice their concerns and be heard. There must be consequences for students and staff who bully and belittle any student in a school. Most importantly, teachers who abuse their position of trust must be removed from our school districts.
Phyllis Levin, Toronto, Ont.
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I am writing regarding Mitchell Consky’s August 8 Campus article, “TDSB trustees muzzled by provincial takeover during busy back-to-school period.” Consky cites the complaints of trustee Shelley Laskin and former trustee Gerri Gershon over the long-overdue takeover of TDSB by the province. That’s a bit rich, since nothing substantive has been done to tackle antisemitism in the board for years, despite complaints of Jewish parents. Nothing stopped the board from reinstating Student Equity Advisor Javier Davila after he posted a link to the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine website in resource materials he shared with teachers. Nothing kept teachers from marching off their students to participate in a rally where they were encouraged to chant “From Grassy Narrows to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Nothing has stopped teachers’ unions from offering professional development sessions in which Israel is accused of endless crimes. Nothing has returned the focus of TDSB to non-political teaching, and nothing the board has done has stopped teachers from indoctrinating their students in the teachers’ political biases.
Gerri Gershon is completely wrong when she pronounces, “No organization can eliminate politics from the classroom.” Teachers can simply be told, “You are in a position of trust. Leave your political opinions at home, or you will be fired for unprofessional conduct.” If the province can make that principle stick, our school boards can return to teaching reading, writing, math, and unbiased history. That’s their proper role—not indoctrination.
Marjorie Gann, Toronto, Ont.
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The following two letters are regarding Alex Rose’s August 13 news story, “Women in Black take their protest over Israel’s actions in Gaza to the streets.”
So, a group of self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ (according to the sign) called Women in Black are taking their protest over Israel’s actions in Gaza to the streets of Toronto—including a “lot of Jewish women” according to organizer Michele Landsberg, a veteran journalist and social justice activist. Hmm… as the Saturday Night Live Church Lady character used to say: “Well, isn’t that special.”
If these women want to be really productive, why don’t they start an organization akin to Birthright Israel called Birthright Gaza where these publicity-seeking participants can discover a new meaning to their personal Palestinian identity and connection to Gaza’s history, culture and education. I would suggest getting to Gaza by way of Egypt, where they’ll be welcome with open arms. I’ll even contribute some of my Air Miles.
David Honigsburg, Toronto, Ont.
The Women in Black protesters believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made the world dangerous for Jews, has deepened antisemitism everywhere and that their protests will reduce antisemitism.
Russians in Canada are not being attacked for Russia’s atrocities in the Ukraine; Chinese Canadians are not being persecuted for the Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs. Only the Jews are being held collectively responsible for the actions of Israel, a foreign government, and are being assaulted on the streets of Canada. That is the work of antisemites.
Blaming Jews including the only Jewish state for crimes committed against Jews everywhere is as old as the hills. Antisemites and antisemites alone are responsible for antisemitism.
As to being frozen out of long-standing friendships and silenced, Zionist Jews are just as victimized if not more so than antizionist Jews. Just look at the universities, professional organizations and unions. Nobody has a monopoly on social and political ostracism as a silencing tool either as a perpetrator or a victim.
Philip Berger, Toronto, Ont.
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Ed. note: the last letter is a general response to our coverage, and not to a specific article.
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Yet VE Day—8 May 1945—a seminal event in our history, went entirely unobserved by The CJN. When I inquired why, I was informed that The CJN had published commemorative content for the occasion, “including the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and of Bergen-Belsen,” along with other “other modern-day stories about the Holocaust.”
Observing the liberation of the death camps in Europe, and other Holocaust-related stories, is not in my view a substitute for observing VE Day and the role of Canada’s Jews in that victory. They fought for Canada and hoped to make it a better place after the war. There were heroes among them that the Canadian Jewish Congress celebrated at the time. Congress also paid them extraordinary tribute after the war in a publication that had no match in the Jewish communities of other Allied nations.
But who still remembers Montreal’s William Henry Nelson, the only Canadian Spitfire ace in the Battle of Britain and feted as our first Jewish Canadian war hero? Who now remembers Hamilton’s Albert Garshowitz who perished on the celebrated dam buster raid in 1943?
Thousands of Jewish Canadians took up arms against Nazi Germany, and hundreds died. They fought alongside their fellow Canadians and brought not only victory to our country but the liberation of others. So few remain that it falls to their descendants to remember. But that responsibility can’t just be only for those of my generation, now also growing old, for whom the war and its losses were formative.
The CJN is sometimes so focussed on Israel and the Holocaust that we don’t hear enough about the strengths of Jews in Canada past and present. I can’t think of a better place for Jews to be living in than Canada, and that is not an accident. Our forebearers helped to make it that way, our servicemen and women fought to make it that way, and we in our time still need to struggle to keep it that way. Those struggles are never over. But in doing so we need to remember and celebrate our achievements, and we need to remember and honour the sacrifices of Canada’s Jews in wartime. Not only those who didn’t come back, but their families who received the dreaded official cable “we regret to inform you.” We often say “never again” and “lest we forget” but apparently those sentiments didn’t apply this year.
Not everyone forgets. You will see it here and there—the photo of a young man wearing an army beret above the counter of a Halifax deli, the row of photos of southern Alberta’s wartime servicemen in the Calgary JCC. But it is our institutions that must take the lead in reminding us. How many synagogues and JCCs maintain a wall of honour for their war dead? What does it say that Canada’s leading Jewish news organization ignored VE Day instead of taking the lead?
The CJN was not alone in this omission, if other Jewish organizations took the trouble to observe the historic day, I must have missed it. But there is still time. This summer marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, November 11th will be another important occasion to mark the end of the war.
Peter Usher, Clayton, Ont.
