“Hate is not welcome here.”
That’s the message shared in Winnipeg this year by its six professional sports teams through an initiative by the Rady Jewish Community Centre.
The initiative is the brainchild of Rob Berkowits, executive director of the centre. He was inspired to do something after antisemitic tweets by rapper Kanye West last year.
“He said some awful things,” Berkowits said, noting West’s tweets were shared by others who spread misinformation about the Holocaust.
While the tweets bothered him, he decided it wasn’t enough to just be upset. “I decided I needed to do something, not just about antisemitism but about hate of all kinds.”
Berkowits realized he couldn’t do anything to change West’s mind. “But I wondered what I could do in my own community?” he said.
His idea was to ask Winnipeg’s professional teams — the basketball Sea Bears, baseball Goldeyes, soccer Valour FC, football Blue Bombers, and hockey Moose and Jets — to dedicate one game during their regular seasons to promote the message against hate. All agreed to participate.
“Sports is a great platform to spread that message,” Berkowits said. “We may disagree on many things, but we come together to support our teams.”
From the start, Berkowits was clear he didn’t want freebies from the teams. “I went to donors and asked them to sponsor buying tickets so people could go to the games to share the message,” he said.
After securing tickets, Berkowits enlisted several local groups as partners: Folklorama, Winnipeg’s annual festival of cultural diversity; the Resource Rainbow Resource Centre, which nurtures inclusive spaces for the city’s LGBTQ+ community; and Anti-Racism in Sport.
The groups were invited to distribute free tickets to their members and supporters, and then to encourage recipients to make anti-hate signs to show at the games. At each game, teams shared an anti-hate message on their jumbotrons and through the public address system.
Earl Barish was one of the sponsors of the initiative. “I’m steeped in doing what I can to eradicate hate for all people,” said Barish, who served on the executive committee of Maccabi Canada and is a former chair of B’nai Brith Canada.
When Berkowits approached Barish and his wife, Cheryl, about supporting the initiative, “there was not a question in our minds that we would do it,” he said.
Sport, he noted, is a great platform to communicate the anti-hate message. “It’s a great way to share it with a wider audience,” he said.
For Berkowits, comments like that show why it was important for the centre to create the initiative.
“It reminds us of the obligation that we all have as members of Jewish community to affect positive change,” he said, adding the rise of antisemitism puts it even more sharply into focus.
“Antisemitism has been prevalent in our world for a long time, it is certainly not new,” he said. “That said, with the digital world that we live in now and the endless stream of user-generated content and social media influencers, expressing this type of hate is easier than ever before.”
Berkowits also has personal reasons for creating the initiative, including his Jewish faith.
“Like many others, I was raised to treat all people equally and to not stand by idly while good and kind people are targeted for simply looking different or having different beliefs from our own,” he said.
It’s also for his kids, Grayson and Avery. “It is important to me that my children embrace concepts and ideas that improve the society that we are all a part of,” he said.
“My sincere hope is that they are inspired by an initiative such as this or something else that they come upon during their personal journey and that they make a conscious decision to be a participant and not just an observer.”
The first anti-hate game was a Sea Bears game on June 15, followed by a Goldeyes game July 16 and an Aug. 3 game when the Blue Bombers played the B.C. Lions. The next anti-hate game is Sept. 20 when the Valour FC play Vancouver FC. Dates for the Moose and Jets games have not been finalized yet.