The City of Moncton intends to imminently install its large metal Hanukkah menorah outside city hall after council voted on Dec. 4 to reverse a controversial ban on the display of religious symbols on civic property.
In a unanimous vote at a public session of city council, local lawmakers agreed to halt their “insensitive decision” taken last month to stop all forms of religious displays at the municipal building.
The turnaround came with several apologies, including from the mayor, Dawn Arnold, who was at the centre of a firestorm of criticism that erupted last week after news came to light of Moncton’s unexpected policy change, taken just a week before Hanukkah.
“We deeply regret the emotional distress caused by our insensitive decision,” the mayor told council on Monday. “We remain committed to fostering and supporting an inclusive and diverse city where all members feel at home and represented.”
Moncton’s Jewish community was informed on Nov. 30 that the city could no longer permit a menorah to be erected outside city hall—despite the traditional event having taken place there using the city-owned candelabra for nearly 20 years.
A similar veto would apply this season to the Christian holiday manger installation on the same site, which depicts the birth of Jesus.
It was all part of the city’s new no-religious symbols policy, adopted during a closed session of council in late November. Jewish leaders were told the change was designed to help Moncton comply with modern equity, inclusion and diversity requirements. The City of Moncton had just hosted a Social Inclusion Summit on Nov. 20, with the mayor listed as one of the keynote speakers.
According to Leigh Lampert, a Toronto-based lawyer who is a director of Moncton’s Tiferes Israel synagogue, the policy change also came about in part because of the city’s “bizarre” interpretation of a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on religion’s place in local government. The high court found that the practice of having a Christian prayer recited before the start of a Saguenay, Que., council meeting violated the human rights and freedom of religion of atheists.
“Following significant public input, the City of Moncton has done the right thing and reversed an earlier decision to ban the menorah and Nativity scene at city hall,” Lampert said in a written statement to The CJN after Monday’s council meeting. “Canada is a better place when we are all made to feel welcome and safe.”
Several days ago, after the Jewish community in Moncton was told the menorah lighting was to be called off, their leaders launched a public protest. They contacted members of the news media, including The CJN, and other Jewish organizations. Letters urged the mayor and councillors to change their minds.
Lampert was concerned about the lack of transparency in how the new policy was adopted without public debate—but also because he felt his native city was also being highly inconsistent.
Not only did Moncton officially sponsor the annual Royale Greater Moncton Santa Claus parade on Nov. 25, but a city Christmas tree was erected at Lewisville Park.
Meanwhile, holiday-themed decorations in the shape of angels and stars are now displayed on municipal streets.
“Someone then offered if we’d like to have [the menorah] in a city park, which seems to fly in the face of the argument if you’re separating church and state,” Lampert told The CJN, adding that he personally likes seeing Christmas decorations. “By definition, once you start picking and choosing which artifacts are allowed and which aren’t, that, by definition is discrimination.”
Daniel Bourgeois, a city councillor who represents Ward 2, also publicly apologized Monday for his “incompetence” concerning the original vote to ban religious symbols on city property made at last month’s initial closed session. Bourgeois told council he “dropped the ball” because he thought the whole issue would eventually come up for debate in a public meeting, where he would move that the city recognize all faiths, not ban them.
However, he said he was later informed the decision was a legal matter that needed to stay in camera.
“My sincere apologies for dropping the ball on those three issues and the impact that it has on the Jewish community especially, but the other faith communities, and the atheists, and everybody else in the city, for the reputation that now we have to wear on our shoulders for a long time, trying to recuperate and rebuild bridges with all the headlines and newspapers and everything else,” Bourgeois said.
“I think we’ve learned a lesson that next time, let’s take our time, let’s really hammer out the preferences and make sure that by the time we get to the public, we get a better understanding of what all the issues are, rather than a knee-jerk reaction.”
The motion to immediately display the menorah and the Nativity scene outside city hall came from city councillor Dave Steeves, who is also a Baptist pastor.
A few days earlier, Steeves posted on his Facebook account that he opposed the ban.
“The timing of this, just days before Hanukkah, is extremely insensitive and callous towards members of the Jewish community,” he wrote.
His motion was carried unanimously.
“We look forward to uniting with Monctonians as they celebrate and we celebrate over the coming weeks,” Dawn Arnold, the mayor, told council.
Monday’s vote doesn’t guarantee the future of religious symbols in Moncton after this year—as councillors also voted to send the matter to the city’s social inclusion team for further study. Officials were told to report back by August 2024, after which time council will evaluate what to do in the future.
The outcry over the short-lived ban prompted the largest volume of email that councillor Bourgeois had ever received about a municipal issue.
He estimated receiving 80 messages from Jewish people from Moncton and beyond, and some included words he described as “extreme.” Replies included comparing the policy to the genocidal actions of Hitler against Europe’s Jews during the Second World War.
“It has gone to the extremes of calling us Holocaust deniers and close to Nazi Germany,” Bourgeois said in an interview, hours before Monday’s council meeting. “You know it testifies to the hurt, to the visceral passion with which [they] are hit.”
The president of Moncton’s Jewish community, Francis Weil, said he felt the uproar over the city’s original unexpected decision actually went too far, in some cases.
“I know that all the councillors and the mayor are good people,” Weil said after Monday’s vote. “Some have been called all kinds of names that they do not deserve.”
In Weil’s view, the trouble was caused by faulty legal advice the city councillors received about how to interpret the Supreme Court ruling.
“The main problem comes from people who give wrong legal advice,” wrote Weil. “We live in a society that is too heavily built on how to interpret the rules.”
None of the apologies from the mayor or city councillors went as far as to actually link their short-lived religious symbol ban to the current spike in worldwide antisemitism after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent declaration of war.
One borough in London, England, temporarily called off its planned menorah ceremony due to fears the event would become a target for anti-Israel protests.
Moncton’s Jewish leaders said they too questioned the timing of the menorah decision last week and specifically asked city officials whether it was connected to the situation in the Middle East, according to Leigh Lampert.
“Deep down, I would like to make very kind assumptions about everybody and I would like to make the assumption this decision has nothing to do with anything going on worldwide. We asked that very question and there was no real answer other than ‘Oh, it’s something we’ve been talking about for years’,” Lampert told The CJN.
But the unfortunate timing of the potential symbol ban was not lost on the thousands of people who signed a petition decrying the city for making Moncton’s Jewish community feel “marginalized and unheard” at a time of surging antisemitism.
“The removal of our menorah feels like another blow to our already embattled community,” wrote the petition’s organizer.
The petition has subsequently been updated with the word “Victory.”
Suzanne Trites, who represents New Brunswick on the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, told the councillors before the vote on Monday that they had a historic responsibility to stand with Moncton’s Jewish community.
In her view, this became even more important after Oct. 7, but also after Canada apologized in 2018 for turning away a boatload of 900 German Jewish refugees in 1939, and because of the terrorist attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 that killed 11 worshippers including a retired Canadian academic, Joyce Fienberg.
“Many of you before us have deemed it unnecessary and insignificant to allow the lighting of the menorah this year, a year when our hope and support and encouragement of our Jewish citizens should be at its highest peak,” Trites said.
Moncton’s menorah controversy has also sparked an outpouring of support for the Jewish community from many corners–support that is likely to continue despite the policy reversal.
Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi vowed his suburb of Montreal would erect a second menorah this season in solidarity.
Melissa Lantsman, the deputy leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, on Monday challenged all mayors across the country to show they stand behind the Jewish community, in the face of an unprecedented wave of antisemitism.
“It’s not over until they put two menorahs up in every public square,” Lantsman told the crowd of about 20,000 people at Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Her words were taken to heart by at least one non-Jewish ally who attended that same event, Avideh Motmaen-Far, the president of the Council of Iranian Canadians.
“I, too, will be lighting a menorah and place it in my window,” Motmaen-Far said Monday, receiving loud cheers from the crowd. “May we be each other’s light, Am Yisrael Chai.”