TORONTO — Amir Gissin, left, Israel’s consul general in Toronto, is launching an outreach effort to bring together the GTA’s secular Israeli and local Jewish communities for this year’s High Holidays.
At a meeting at the consulate last week, Gissin told about 20 synagogue and Israeli community representatives that he was inspired by an Israeli project called Yom Kippur L’Kulam (Yom Kippur for Everybody).
Rabbi Michael Melchior, then Israel’s minister of the Diaspora, initiated it for secular Israelis with minimal exposure to synagogue, Judaism or Jewish communal life.
Its Yom Kippur services, which began in five synagogues and has expanded, offered a “friendly environment” and an educational component.
Gissin wants to establish a similar program because children of Israelis here are being lost “not just to the Jewish people [but] to Israel.” As far as he knows, it’s the first time the program, or a form of it, will be used outside of Israel.
For Israelis without close ties to Judaism, going to synagogue here is intimidating or costly, he said.
But for some of them, Yom Kippur synagogue attendance is “an important feature of their life, even if that’s the one connection they have to Jewish communal life.”
Gissin said there is “a very strong core” of the GTA’s estimated 60,000-plus Israelis integrated into Jewish life, citing 800 Israeli day school teachers as an example. “We’re not talking about all Israelis; we’re talking about those we’re about to lose.”
Rabbi Reuven Tradburks of Kehillat Shaarei Torah said the initiative is “something many of us have thought about for years.”
Rabbi Michal Shekel, executive director of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, said she was glad about the initiative because she’d spent the summer talking about outreach to Israelis. She said she hoped the meeting would result in contact with Israeli organizations that could help.
Gissin said there are many cultural differences between Israelis and Canadian Jews. Several attendees mentioned the fact that tickets are required for entry to virtually all synagogues here on the High Holidays.
Rabbi Yisroel Landa – spiritual leader of the Beth Chabad Israeli Community Centre in Thornhill, which serves the Israeli community – said that Israelis feel if a guard at the door asks for tickets, “in their mind this is not a synagogue… this is a movie theatre.”
Rabbi Harvey Meirovich, who will be at Beth Tzedec Congregation for the coming year and who has taught secular Israelis in Jerusalem, said that in his experience, secular Israelis find tefillah (prayer) intimidating or irrelevant. However, he added, they are drawn to synagogue on Yom Kippur seeking a spiritual connection and asking “the tough questions we all ask… about life and its meaning.
Gil Koren – director of national sales for the Ethnic Channels Group, umbrella to 12 ethnic channels including one in Hebrew – said that while it’s important to reach out to Israeli kids, “you have to target the parents” as well. Koren, who immigrated here four years ago, grew up in South Africa and lived in Israel for nine years.
Nir Sela – former director of the Israeli House, a division of the consulate – told The CJN that two years ago he received about 20 inquiries about High Holiday services from Israelis here.
