An employee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver (JFGV) has been fired from her job after publicly disagreeing with the Federation’s CEO at a meeting between the organization and a group started by Israeli expats who oppose the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms.
Maytal Kowalski, 40, had been working at the JFGV for almost a year as a marketing and communications manager for the Jewish Community Foundation, but she did not attend the meeting with UnXeptable in a professional capacity. She learned about it from the UnXeptable email list, and attended “as a private member of the community,” she said. Aside from UnXeptable, Kowalski is affiliated with other progressive Zionist organizations, including JSpaceCanada and the New Israel Fund.
The JFGV declined to comment on this story saying that privacy considerations prevent them from commenting on individual employee matters.
During the July 24 meeting, Federation CEO Ezra Shanken told the group from UnXeptable that it was difficult to exert much influence on the judicial reform issue from outside of Israel, beyond just passing along the concerns of the local community. Kowalski recorded the meeting, although participants were asked not to do so. She provided a copy to The CJN.
“When you look at the steps that have been taken, we’ve done most of the things that can be done from this vantage point,” Shanken said. “We as a Federation are in a unique spot in the sense that we are imbued with the ability to go and speak directly to high-level people in Israel, but through that… we have to show them that we are willing to be middle-of-the-road players and to understand where everybody’s coming from while getting across our point.”
Shanken continued speaking, acknowledging that the JFGV’s responsibility to represent the entire Jewish community would leave many of the meeting’s attendees frustrated. He also said that the Federation shared many of their concerns, but reiterated that they were choosing to communicate them to the relevant people in Israel in a moderate manner.
At this point, Kowalski, who was not registered to speak, interrupted Shanken to share her thoughts.
“I’m sorry. It is not true. There’s so much Canada could do. We could change our vote at the UN. Canada could join the West Bank Consortium and could deal with the occupation. We could support the [Standing Committee on] Foreign Affairs study that CIJA [Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs] has tried to cancel, that’s going to happen in the fall. There are so many things that international pressure can do that can change the reality on the ground,” she said.
“It is not about conversations behind closed doors. It is about taking concrete government action, it is about building political power and standing up and saying, ‘We will not stand for dictatorship in Israel. We will not stand for the end of democracy in Israel.’ There is so much more that you can be doing.”
The next day, Kowalski was invited to a meeting with her manager, Becky Saegert, as well as the head of human resources, where she was fired. Kowalski also recorded that meeting.
“You spoke to your employer about our work in a manner that was unprofessional and disrespectful in public, in front of community members, representatives from other organizations, staff and leadership. That behaviour… violates both a respect in the workplace policy and your employment agreement,” Saegert told her at the meeting.
Saegert also said that Kowalski had screamed and had only stopped speaking when the moderator asked her to. However, based on a recording provided to The CJN, while Kowalski spoke passionately, she did not appear to be screaming. She also stopped speaking of her own accord and received applause for her statement.
Kowalski, who is Canadian-Israeli, told The CJN she took exception to Shanken’s claim that it was difficult to exert much influence on the judicial reform issue from outside of Israel. She added that in her statement at the UnXeptable meeting she spoke about Canada and not about Shanken or JFGV because she did not want it to come across as a personal attack on her boss or her employer. However, she believed it was relevant to speak about ways in which Canada could potentially influence what happens in Israel because of the relationship between Federations, CIJA, and the Canadian government.
“So this isn’t an issue of ‘Ezra Shanken should do this,’ or ‘the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver should do this.’ It’s about how we actually pull levers and exercise our political power through that advocacy agent (CIJA) to affect change in the most beneficial way.”
This was not the first time there had been tension between Kowalski and the JFGV based on her desire to express her political views. In November 2022, Kowalski had told her manager that she wanted to write an op-ed about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent election, but her manager told her she was not allowed to.
In January, Kowalski was also told she could not give an interview to CBC on behalf of JSpace. That same month, Idit Shamir, the Israeli Consul General in Toronto, met with a group from JSpace that included Kowalski, and posted a photo with the group on Twitter. Kowalski was told that she would need to ask for permission next time she wanted to do something “in the community.”
Kowalski said she had been very open about her political affiliations during the application process, and was frustrated that she was not being permitted to express herself as a private individual. The next time that she wanted to write an op-ed, she decided to review her contract with an employment lawyer, who told her that nothing in it prohibited her from doing so.
On April 26, The Times of Israel published an op-ed by Kowalski titled “Patriotism is More Than Fireworks,” about how her love for Israel motivated her to fight for changes. The next day, Kowalski’s manager, Becky Saegert, told her she would need to inform the JFGV before writing any further op-eds. Kowalski asked for this in writing as an addendum on her contract so she could review it.
Kowalski also told Saegert that she was upset and confused by the request to ask for permission whenever she planned to do something “in the community,” and doubted that she would need to ask about, say, giving a d’var Torah at shul. Her manager agreed. Kowalski also told Saegert the request made her feel “policed” and “singled out.”
“Because I wasn’t identifying myself as an employee of the Federation or connected to the Federation in any way, I felt it essentially amounted to me being asked to report to my employer about what I do in my personal life. I just wanted some understanding in writing that specifies the parameters for when and why I report back. …I wasn’t saying, ‘no,’ necessarily, but what I was being asked was so broad and vague,” Kowalski said.
Kowalski felt the meeting had ended on a friendly note. However, during the meeting in which she was fired, her manager described that interaction as combative.
“I know you’ve raised concerns about whether your politics are a fit here. And I want to be very clear on this point. We have many staff with a wide range of political views and they express themselves in a respectful manner without undermining the organization,” Saegert said during the meeting. “This is not about politics, it’s about behaviour that’s affecting your professional relationships.”
Kowalski believes that she was in fact let go for publicizing her political beliefs.
“There was constant tension around me expressing my political views. I felt they are open to hiring people with diverse viewpoints as long as you do not make those diverse viewpoints known within the workplace,” she said. “It was like, ‘well, we need a token progressive, but don’t talk about it and don’t make it known.’”
Kowalski says she is disappointed with how her political expression was handled. She believes in much of the work that Federations do in building strong Diaspora communities and says that maintaining a connection to Israel and Zionism is very important. In fact, she says she was hoping to open up that conversation in a way that would improve the relationship between Diaspora Jews and Israelis.
“So I have no problem working for an organization where I don’t believe in everything they do. I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere where I believe in everything that they do. But having the conversations and challenging each other and challenging ourselves, and doing so really vulnerably and really bravely, I think is really important,” she said. “I think that’s important anywhere that someone works. But I think it’s exceptionally important in the Jewish community.”
Community organizations have a responsibility to include a wide range of viewpoints, she said.
“You have decided to be the person who represents the Jewish community, which includes me. And you’re going to have to figure out a way to make my worldview and my politics and my Zionism also be a part of this Jewish community.”
