A community solidarity rally at Toronto’s Pride of Israel synagogue on July 31—one month after an antisemitic attack shattered the building’s front windows—should be a loud statement “to reclaim the space in the name of peace.”
That was the message from Olivia Chow, the mayor of Toronto, who was one of more than a dozen Canadian politicians to address an overflow crowd of at least 1,500 people at the North York synagogue. Chow vowed to continue working with the Toronto police and city council and staff to make sure the explosion of antisemitic hate crimes and attacks that have skyrocketed in the city since Oct. 7, 2023, “will be stamped out.”
Calling the June 30 attack on the synagogue an “act of hate”, the mayor acknowledged the wider psychological impact that these almost daily property crimes are having on her city’s approximately 190,000 Jews.
“And while the windows of the synagogue have been replaced, and the front door swung open tonight for all of us to reclaim the space in the name of peace, I know the pain remains,” Chow told the crowd. “It remains in the heart of a young mother who has to try and explain to their child what happened, and it remains in the community of elders, afraid that [the] dark history, which they fled to come here, might repeat itself.”
Chow’s appearance was greeted with some applause, but also with loud booing from the audience, as some expressed their anger over her perceived lack of support since the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Her early social media posts were the target of criticism from Jewish and also from Palestinian groups, although Chow did condemn the Hamas massacre of Israelis. Chow did not attend the 2024 UJA Walk With Israel in June, and did not appear at the raising of the Israeli flag outside of City Hall in May. (Chow spoke at a rally for the Bais Chaya Mushka girls school in late May, after a suspect fired shots into the front entrance of that building.)
Officials from the Pride of Israel synagogue say they decided to put this solidarity rally together only two weeks ago, shortly after worshippers arrived on the Sunday morning of the Canada Day long weekend to discover holes in their stained glass, shattered glass all over the lobby and rocks on the bimah.
The congregation launched an emergency fundraising campaign to help pay for repairs. They also hoped their low-key evening of solidarity would bring comfort to their own members. But, after more than a dozen synagogues, Jewish schools and retail businesses across the region were hit by graffiti or arson in the last few days, including the torching of a school bus, the rally suddenly took on a new urgency—one that the organizers admit they didn’t expect.
“We had never dreamed of this event being this big. It just blossomed,” Steven Bloom, chairman of Pride of Israel, told The CJN as the crowd was filing in. “I hope that everybody respects everybody that’s here tonight and we have an enlightening evening.”
Pro-Palestinian crowds protested outside
Bloom had good reason to be nervous.
Earlier in the day, pro-Palestinian protesters had posted on social media that they were planning to disrupt the event. And they did.
Before entering the building, all guests had to line up on the sidewalk on Lissom Crescent to be searched and scanned by passing through specially installed metal detectors. But tensions flared when synagogue personnel spotted a group of people in the line wearing black T-shirts printed with the words “Jews Say No to Genocide”. When they were told they would not be permitted inside, the protesters briefly occupied the front steps of the synagogue, plopping themselves down beside the security cordon and chanting.
Toronto police and private security moved in and forcibly dragged them off the property onto the nearby sidewalk, where some of the protesters remained through the evening, waving Palestinian flags.
“We came in wanting to listen and to also raise questions, because a lot of the politicians that are attending tonight’s event have actually been responsible for a lot of hate that has happened over the past 10 months to the pro-Palestinian community, including the Toronto Police Service,” said Gur Tsabar, a spokesman for the Jews Say No to Genocide group.
He has been a vocal supporter of the university encampments and critical of police raids on the homes of professors and labour leaders who participated in vandalizing a Toronto Indigo bookstore as part of an anti-Israel boycott after Oct. 7.
Several Jewish community members shouted at Tsabar and the protesters, while one woman waved a large Israeli flag and loudly sang a song in Hebrew directly at him.
“It makes me embarrassed to be a Jew,” Tsabar said.
“When I have fellow Jews that are behaving like this, it makes me feel like they’ve lost their source of Judaism, which at the foundation is that every person on the planet deserves to live with dignity and respect.”
Toronto police said Thursday that no arrests were made at the event.
However, the heightened emotions on display outside didn’t disappear once the event began officially inside the large synagogue auditorium. The emcee, Michelle Axelrod, had to remind the audience several times to refrain from booing and heckling some of the politicians, including the mayor and Ali Ehsassi, the Liberal MP for Willowdale, a Muslim MP who chairs the influential House of Commons committee on foreign affairs.
But the roughest reception was directed at Ya’ara Saks, the Liberal MP for York Centre, who is an Israeli-Canadian and currently the minister of mental health and addictions.
As Saks took to the podium, she began by sharing a personal story about why the Pride of Israel’s recent hate crime experience hurt her so deeply: her own grandfather Max loved attending this synagogue every day to pray.
Then, one audience member stood up holding the now-infamous photo of Saks posing with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and holding his hand.
Another person was escorted out of the room, but not before he called out “Stop Funding UNRWA”, referring to the Liberal government’s decision to resume sending aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians. Israel and other human rights NGOs claim members of UNRWA took part in the Oct. 7 massacres and have also been complicit in hiding hostages, storing Hamas weapons in their homes and schools, and teaching antisemitic material to their students.
Despite being interrupted by booing several times, Saks reminded the crowd that Jewish tradition teaches that hatred of each other and hatred of others is believed to be part of the reason for the destruction of both the First and Second temples. (Jews around the world are preparing to mark the solemn anniversary of these tragedies on Aug. 12-13, during the commemoration of Tisha b’Av.)
“There is no doubt that everyone in this room continues to feel the immense pain and grief from October 7,” Saks said. “You’ve made your voices clear that you disagree with me on some of those things. And that’s OK. But what we are unified on as Jews is that the State of Israel, its existence—not its survival, its existence, its right to be in the world—is not up for debate.”
The rally was being held on the eve of the 300th day of captivity for Israel’s hostages, and Saks, who declared herself “an unapologetic Zionist, the granddaughter of Israelis and a Jewish mother in this community,” vowed to continue advocating for the release of the hostages.
Loudest cheers for Lantsman
The loudest ovation was for Melissa Lantsman, deputy leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative Party, and the MP for the nearby riding of Thornhill. Lantsman excoriated the Liberal government for encouraging the conditions in which these hate crimes are perpetrated by “a loud and radical minority in our society” who have been carrying out shootings at Jewish schools, spraying signs and buildings with antisemitic graffiti, unleashing what she called “genocidal chants” outside the meeting, and lighting suspicious fires at Jewish places of worship.
“They’ve been encouraged explicitly and implicitly by a much larger group of Canadians, including people in our own government, including those who tonight I reluctantly share the stage with—and this shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but it has become one since the government started kowtowing to the radical wing of their party, a government that hears the pleas from synagogues and community centres like this one and responds with silence.”
Then Lantsman took direct aim at Saks herself for making that controversial diplomatic trip to the headquarters of Mahmoud Abbas nearly five months ago.
“And instead of banning terrorists and standing up to them, they hold their hands—and I will say this… caressing the hand of a Holocaust-denying terrorist, who is in the 19th year of his four-year-term, whose mandate and his entire rule has been to celebrate the murder of the families and friends of people in this room, is unforgivable.”
A lineup of politicians who spoke, several of whom are not Jewish, reminded the audience why they are allies of the Jewish community. Stan Cho, Ontario’s minister of tourism, said his parents named him Stanley after the Jewish lawyer who helped bring the family to Canada from Korea. Laura Smith, the MPP for Thornhill, thanked her Conservative colleague MPP David Piccini for attending, adding that Piccini, who is the minister of labour, has a grandfather who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948.
Marco Mendicino, the Liberal MP for Eglinton-Lawrence, who was dropped from cabinet a year ago, was one of only three Liberal parliamentarians to vote against a March 18 watered-down NDP-led motion that halted arms sales to Israel, renewed funding for UNRWA and, until last-minute Liberal amendments, would have unilaterally recognized Palestine as an independent country. (Anthony Housefather, the MP for Mount Royal, and Ben Carr, of Winnipeg, also voted no.)
Mendicino, who is Italian-Canadian, told the crowd why he went to Israel on a three-day solidarity mission with Jewish leaders and other federal politicians in early November 2023, shortly after the massacre of 1,200 people near the southern border with Gaza.
“I went there to go and bear witness so that we would never forget that it is Hamas who are the terrorists, not Israel,” he said, rallying the crowd. “Understand that those who deny, those who forget, are doing a disservice to our democracy.”
After listing some of the hate crimes that have targeted Jewish areas in his own riding, Mendicino expressed support for the residents of the nearby Avenue Road and Highway 401 neighbourhood, where pro-Palestinian roadblocks during the winter eventually prompted Toronto police to order it a no-protest zone and begin making arrests.
“This is what the Kristallnacht looks like in the 21st century,” Mendicino said, referring to the 1938 antisemitic rampage in Germany and Austria against Jewish residents that heralded the beginning of the Holocaust.
“And when we say ‘Never again”, it shouldn’t just be a hashtag. It can’t just be words once a year, it certainly can’t just be tweets and posts from politicians. That’s not what this community needs. This community needs support, it needs support and solidarity.”
Ontario Solicitor General Michael Kerzner tapped into the frustrations and feelings of unease that have risen to the forefront in the wake of escalating incidents of violence in recent weeks.
“We remind those that may not share our love for everything our community has become, including taking our rightful place on the metaphorical quilt of Ontario, that… some things have to matter. The rule of law must matter. Understanding, tolerance, must matter, and our inherent right to live safely in our communities must matter,” Kerzner said. “And the right to wake up our kids in the morning and check in on our parents and our seniors and see everybody go off during the day and come home at the end of the day and have a place to pray safely—this must matter.”
Anthony Housefather, the Montreal-area MP who was recently appointed special advisor to the prime minister on the Jewish community and antisemitism, came from Ottawa to be the keynote speaker at the event.
Housefather acknowledged that local Jews are feeling angry as the community lives through what Toronto police confirmed in recent days: the doubling of hate crimes between 2022 and 2023.
“I come to you in a city where Toronto police have disclosed that Jews are the victims of 37 per cent of all hate crimes, when we make up about four percent or five percent of the population,” Housefather said. “Montreal and Toronto are competing against each other for the city where it’s most difficult to be Jewish—the two cities [where] our communities started, that we’ve been there from the beginning, and we can’t accept that.”
While he is aware that many people feel their police forces and elected officials aren’t doing enough to keep Jews safe, Housefather maintains the existing laws are mostly adequate, if they are being properly enforced. He thinks the federal government could still play a role.
“We can also amend the Criminal Code to create a new intimidation offence to stop people from being allowed to block access to or exit from community centres, schools and places of worship,” Housefather suggested.
He also hopes to take the best laws from across Canada and encourage other provinces to adopt them, pointing to the Ontario trespass rules, which helped the University of Toronto and other campuses force the dismantling of many of the pro-Palestinian tent encampments that began dotting the country in late spring.
The same applies to using the expertise developed by the Toronto police force’s expanded Hate Crimes Unit, which he hopes can be shared with law enforcement teams across the country who don’t face the tsunami of 1,556 reports of hate crimes that Toronto police have responded to since Oct. 7.
Housefather also wants to see a national meeting of provincial attorneys general and justice ministers convened, along with senior prosecutors, so they can develop uniform guidelines on what cases would be classified as a hate crime and how to make the cases stick in court.
Even though education comes under provincial jurisdiction, Housefather has been using his newly created role to tackle one of the most pressing issues: how to make Jewish university students and staff feel safe when classes resume six weeks from now.
He is pushing for universities to enforce their own codes of conduct. He also wants a one-stop system brought in to handle complaints about racism, so students no longer find themselves bounced between departments.
“Nobody in our community cares anymore what level of government is responsible. They just want words to be translated into action.”
Organizers with the Pride of Israel said they owed a nod of thanks to their city councillor, James Pasternak, for originally suggesting they put on the solidarity event. Pasternak urged the congregation to be strengthened by the turnout.
“The Pride of Israel had its windows broken and its confidence shaken. But this strong minyan must know that we will stand here in unity for its endurance and safety,” Pasternak said.
Despite the mayor’s assertion that the synagogue’s windows have been fixed, in fact they remained covered by sheets of plywood. Thanks to community donations, the synagogue was able to order some new glass at a cost of $13,000. These panels are scheduled to be installed on Aug. 6, said Steven Bloom, the synagogue chairman. He couldn’t say yet when the doors were to be repaired, as they are still waiting for estimates from suppliers.
The office is also applying for federal funding from the public security ministry for communities at risk. Funds from the security infrastructure program to pay for security cameras, physical protective measures and guards usually arrive more quickly, after a building has actually been the target of a hate crime, as Pride of Israel has been.
“We’re hoping with all the politicians here tonight, that they will voice what they have done, what they can do and what we can do as a community to make it safe for us here in Canada,” Bloom said.
