In one of the key climactic scenes toward the end of The Sound of Music currently playing in Toronto, before the von Trapp family singers emerge onto the imagined stage of the Kaltzberg Concert Hall, five floor to ceiling curtain panels of crimson red bunting drop with sudden intrusive force as the backdrop to the upcoming scene. At the centre of each of the panels is a white circle in which the thick black arms of the crooked swastika reach to the edge of the circle’s circumference.
Even as theatre, the full, frontal, in-one’s-face view of the five large swastikas is shocking. For those of us for whom the swastika holds direct, personal family references, the sight of the unfurled symbols of evil sent a shuddering frisson of anger and rage through the heart. One hopes the symbols evoked a strong, if not quite similar reaction in most of the theatre goers of a certain age that day.
That we saw this performance merely four days after a howling throng of mostly masked thugs shouting for “intifadah right now” set upon The Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, undoubtedly boosted the emotional response at the sight of the swastikas on stage. For, in truth, what is the essence of the message that urges intifadah, if not the celebration of and a call to repeat the Nazis’ genocide of European Jewry?
Pro-Hamas ruffians and haters would refuse us the right to live in Canada. Indeed, more truthfully, they probably would refuse us the right to live. Period.
If our society’s civic leaders do not actively, substantively – not merely rhetorically – oppose the thugs, then those very leaders are effectively allowing the society, that they purport to steward, to be unmistakably diminished. At what point will the protections against being victimized by hate, that are embedded in our laws, be so hollowed out by overt political hypocrisy and unembarrassed lack of use, as to cripple those protections altogether?
Do our elected leaders no longer stand for the safekeeping of our laws-based democracy?
Do they no longer stand for the protection of the Jewish community within our democracy?
Earlier this week, The Canadian Jewish News reported that Ontario’s Solicitor General, Michael Kerzner, “publicly call[ed] out Toronto police handling of ‘unacceptable’ anti-Israel protests.”
Kerzner told the paper: “What prompted my letter today to the chief of police and to the police service board was two years worth of harassment, intimidation, and hate that’s been directed to not only the Jewish community, but to law-abiding citizens of Ontario that make up the 99.99 per cent of the population that simply wants to go about their lives and live safely in their own homes and communities.”
GAJE commends the Solicitor General.
But all of us have a role to play in fighting back against the haters and proponents of intifada. Our role, as parents and as grandparents, is to equip our children with the knowledge of what it means to belong to our remarkable ancient/modern people.
In his commentary on this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, Rabbi Marc D. Angel, of New York explains why: “Our continuity as a people is inextricably linked to our historical memory. We bring the past into the present; we project the present into the future. This is one of the great responsibilities of Jewish parents and grandparents—to imbue the younger generations with a sense of belonging to, and participating in, the history of our people.
“This is also one of our great privileges and a source of our deepest fulfillment as Jews.”
In other words, it falls to all of us to bring Jewish education to our children, so that they will want to – and know how – to bring themselves, in time, to the Jewish people.
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The CJN article is available at: https://thecjn.ca/news/ontarios-solicitor-general-publicly-calls-out-toronto-police-handling-of-unacceptable-anti-israel-protests/
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit to achieve fairness in educational funding, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com Thank you, in advance, for considering doing so.
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Shabbat shalom
Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
January 2, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 