This is an emergency High Holidays edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

The tractate of the Talmud known as Yoma states that anyone asking for forgiveness before Yom Kippur must make at least three sincere attempts to make amends.

And if the wronged person does not grant forgiveness after these three sincere attempts, then the person asking forgiveness is effectively off the hook. They are no longer obligated to keep trying to force an outcome that the other person doesn’t want.

Two important lessons can (but likely won’t) be applied when it comes to my three-year-old Doorstep Postings column doing its duty of covering yet another big stupid political controversy that, as per usual in the Canadian way, has been boiled down to a dispute over etiquette. The first involves not seeking apologies or redress from someone who clearly can’t be bothered.

In the matter of the Official Jewish Community versus Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, the petition-rousing charges involve insufficient empathy displayed by the mayor in failing to attend the Oct. 7 anniversary vigil in North York, failing to issue a statement (a most serious crime of our times), followed by an increasingly ridiculous series of excuses for why she couldn’t be there. The invite got lost in the mail. She was tired after a bike lane meeting. Her staff failed to inform her. And finally, “It doesn’t matter.”

If we can look past our hurt feelings over this latest snub for just one moment, permit me to suggest the possibility that we don’t need to spend all this time demanding that Olivia Chow be sensitive to the needs of the Jewish community, because she’s made it clear that she doesn’t consider it a priority. We don’t need to ask apologies from her. She doesn’t need to pretend to apologize to us. After the previous Oct. 7, not every politician is going to like us AND THAT’S OK because luckily, we can work to elect other politicians at the appointed time.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve seen Olivia Chow attend Jewish events like the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee’s annual CJPAC Action party before, or the initial vigil held immediately after Oct. 7 of last year at Mel Lastman Square. Then, as now, she had somewhere else to be first—which is why she came late. Then, as now, the crowd was split between those who were upset by her lack of attentiveness, and those who didn’t want her there at all. (Who remembers how she was booed at Mel Lastman Square when she actually did show up one year ago?)

For my part, when she did come to the CJPAC Action Party, I made three honest and sincere attempts to get her on the record about her intentions for the Jewish community should she become mayor in a byelection being held three weeks later. I asked the staff member who was with her for comment. I asked her Jewish chief of staff, Michal Hay, for comment. And, because we are virtually acquainted, I even asked Michal’s spouse to help me get any kind of comment! None of this mattered because all three asks were not answered.

And so, I concluded that Olivia Chow has decided that since she is not her predecessors John Tory or Rob Ford, she is setting a different tone with respect to the Jewish community. So why should there be an endless vidui (the religious confession most prominently expressed in synagogues on Yom Kippur) on the part of the Jewish community, beating our own breasts in an attempt to getting a politician to love us?

But there is also the other lesson from our Talmudic tale, and that is that the attempts to give or gain forgiveness must be sincere. Trying to get Olivia Chow—or other politicians who may or may not believe that skipping Jewish events puts them on the right side of history—to reconsider is a waste of time not only because they might not be interested, but because we might not genuinely want them to reconsider.

Does anyone honestly expect Chow to make a wholesale conversion to standing with the community at its most pro-Israel? Is it honestly fair to her for us to expect one? How well did it serve the Jews of Toronto to hedge their bets between an assortment of right-wing and centrist candidates last year during the abrupt byelection that saw Chow become mayor? Wouldn’t it make so much more sense to pick a horse as soon as possible and stick with it until the next time around?

Let us hope that this year, Yom Kippur will not just be an exercise in empty apologies and promises (and requests!) to do better. Instead, after a discarded calendar of fruitlessly obsessing over hurts, may we not only be inscribed in the Book of Life, but may we also realize that we have the power to decide which politicians shall be raised and which shall be lowered!

 Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings.