In the mid-1970’s Jews in North America, across all generations, were vibrant, alive, seemingly electric with activism, purpose and conviction on behalf of the permanence and security of Jewish life wherever situate.
Jews around the world shuddered with fear in May 1967. That nearly eviscerating fright was evoked by the blood-curdling threats by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser and his fellow Arab League strongmen – all of whom were encouraged and supported by the Soviet Union – of slaughter, murder and destruction of the 19-year-old Jewish State of Israel. The fear we felt then was neither ill-founded nor exaggerated. The threats against the young State were unceasing. Each day Arab governments promised increasingly violent atrocity against the Jews of Israel. How could a population of 2.5 million Jews withstand an onslaught from the military forces of the 100 million people in Arab world?
But as we know, the tiny Jewish State, on June 5, 1967, pre-empted the onslaught and won what would become known as The Six Day War. In vanquishing the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and their confederates, Israel breathed drama, currency and modern relevance into the words of the Psalmist: “We shall not die; because we shall live!”
The near universal activism in the mid-1970s by Jews for the sake of other Jews, was in large measure an existential sigh of relief in response to the horrible feeling of vulnerability and imminent catastrophe that had swept through our hearts only a few short years prior. In a sense, it was a collective taking of responsibility one for the other.
In the words of Daniel Held, Chief Program Officer of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto that we published in this space last week, countless Jews in those days “stood tall and proud as Jews” in massive campaigns proclaiming everywhere to the world that henceforth, we will defend Jews, Jewish life, Jewish history, Jewish dignity and Truth itself.
During the mid-70s, the campaign in support of the struggle of Soviet Jews for their freedom typified the newly invigorated imperative of the collective taking of responsibility one for the other. Despite the long odds against the cause, communities of Jews across the world persevered. Non-Jews of conscience and good will joined in the effort. There was no giving up.
That same sense of a united, collective responsibility and purpose is much in need today as Jewish communities across the West confront the alarming growth in the manifestations of hatred of Jews and of Israel. The propagators of this newly rising, shameless hatred are deliberate about their intentions to wipe away from the Holy Texts and libraries of knowledge and scholarship, all evidence of a Jewish past and a Jewish present that stake a claim to the Land of Israel. But we must not let them.
In the coming days and weeks, Jews around the world will be celebrating three epochal events of the modern Jewish calendar:
On 4 Iyar, we commemorate Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day for the fallen of Israel).
On 5 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Israel’s Independence Day).
On 28 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (The reunification of Jerusalem [in 1967 after the Jordanian army had cleaved the Old City from the new city in 1948, expelled all Jews from the Jewish quarter of the Old City and destroyed every vestige of Jewish life there.]).
The propagators of antisemitism will do their utmost to bring our celebrations to ruin. Let us defy them. Let us ensure that we stand tall, proud and strong as Jews, against their plots.
As GAJE noted last year concerning this very subject, “each of us, in every generation, is a trustee for the Jewish wellbeing of our young children and guardians of the wider Jewish future. We accept and honour these responsibilities because it is right and important to do so and because our forebears did so for us. Even as we hope our children and their children will do so for the descendants that will follow them.”
It is the role of our system of formal and informal Jewish education to reinforce what our children learn at home and help foster the marvellous feeling of Jewish belonging and peoplehood into rock solid permanence through time immemorial. It is GAJE’s role to do our utmost to try to help make formal Jewish education affordable for all the families that seek it for their children.
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The spirit of the mid-70s is well captured by a stanza of a poem/song written by Robbie Solomon of the Jewish folk-rock musical group Safam. The song they sang was called Leaving Mother Russia. It became the rallying cry for the Soviet Jewry movement and even an anthem of sorts for Jewish activism and courage. The song helped inspire the energies of the movement. The movement ultimately succeeded.
“I send my song of hope
To those I left behind
I pray that they may know
The freedom that is mine
For in my darkest hour
Alone inside my cell
I kept the vision
Of my home in Yisrael.
My friends we know what silence brings,
Another Hitler waiting in the wings.
So, stand up now and shout it to the sky,
They may bring us to our knees but we’ll never die!…..
We are leaving Mother Russia……”
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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
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
April 17, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 