Front Burner - Two Jewish parents on recent school attacks

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Over the past few months attacks that hit Jewish schools, community centres and synagogues have shaken Canada’s Jewish community.For some Jewish-Canadian parents, there is now a question of whether it’s safe to send their children to Jewish schools.“Right now, it's a bit fraught to be very Jewish out in the broader world,” says Kim Werker, a Jewish-Canadian mother with a 13-year-old son. We speak to Werker and another Jewish-Canadian mother about these concerns, how they’ve been coping and how challenging it has been to talk to their children about the war in Gaza and antisemitism in Canada.Help us make Front Burner even better by filling out this audience survey.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. I told them the truth, like exactly how it happened. You know, two people came and showed up to school. They feel that they want to show they are against who we are.

I don't think it's new to them because, you know, Jewish history is filled with, unfortunately, all of this. A couple weeks ago, Haya Rabins had to tell her two daughters, one seven, the other four, that the Jewish girls' school they go to north of Toronto was shot at. No one was inside Base Hamushka at the time, but on a typical weekday, this is a place where girls go to class, play outside. Haya found herself having to explain what happened to her kids. My seven-year-old, I was very proud of her response, but when, it'll be a little bit of a shock to you but when I told her what had happened

at first she said like I don't understand like God is taking care of us why why are you so worried mommy but I think that when she went into school and she saw I think she that's when it hit her a little bit more that like someone had come into the school that she spent so much time and violated that sense of security and safety. The Toronto police, including the hate crime unit, are investigating the incident. But say it's too early to tell whether the shooting was a hate crime or a terrorist act. That same week, there was gunfire at a Jewish school and synagogue in the Cote d'Anais neighborhood in Montreal. A few days later, there was a fire in the doorway of a Vancouver synagogue. Congregation members say it happened about 10 minutes before someone was going to be inside.

According to Jewish advocacy organization B'nai B'rith Canada, there have been 29 incidents targeting Jewish institutions since mid-October. They include attacks like the ones I just mentioned, but also vandalism, bomb threats, broken windows. Today, we're talking to Jewish parents about how they're grappling with these attacks, what conversations they're having with their children about anti-Semitism, and how they're navigating all of it. navigating all of it. I'm here with Kim Worker. She's a Jewish parent to a 13-year-old in public school in Vancouver. And I'm also joined by Mel, a Jewish parent of a six-year-old who goes to a Jewish day school in Toronto. And we're not using Mel's full name because she's worried about being

subjected to harassment and the safety of her child if she speaks publicly about anti-Semitism. Kim, Mel, I want to thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner today. Thank you so much for hosting this conversation. Yes, great. It's so important. So thanks for having us. I know this is not easy to talk about, and so I really, really want to thank you for being here. So I just described a number of attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues in the country. At one point, there was a week where there were three such attacks in three different provinces. And Kim, maybe I'll start with you here. What goes through your mind when you hear about them, about attacks like that? I mean, sadly, what goes through my mind is not again. I think it's really sad that I wasn't surprised. This has been going on a long time.

I attend a synagogue in Vancouver that was destroyed in the 1980s by a firebombing, right? This is what we're experiencing now is not new. Jews experiencing antisemitism goes back millennia, right? It's not new. And it is new, though, for our generation. And I think every time I hear about something like this, I feel simultaneous relief that nobody was hurt. That's great, but it's also terrible that an entire community, I mean, across the nation, I think, you know, for every incident that happens at one Jewish institution, we feel it everywhere. My fear at the same time that I feel relief that people were okay, is that maybe next time they won't be. Right. You're bracing. You're bracing for that news.

Mel, let me bring you in here. How worried have you been about your kids' safety? Oh, very much so, especially when you hear these situations coming up because they happen to get in schools. especially when you hear these situations coming up because they happen to be at schools. I don't know why anyone would target a school or a synagogue, especially when you don't know, if anyone's there, you don't know people's feelings towards this war. There are a lot of Jews who might disagree with what's going on, and yet you're shooting these institutions where that should be safe spaces. So I fear for my child because he also goes to a Jewish school. Now we've been very fortunate where we've had an administration who has really put our kids'

safety front and center. So we do have additional security. We have police presence. It's not the norm. You don't see that in public schools, but it's become a sense of reality in our world to ensure that we feel safe as parents sending our kids there. But it definitely still puts that fear in the back of my head. Mom guilt, like, you know, should I be sending him? I have all of those feelings day to day. It's just become part of my, you know, everyday activities that go on in my brain, essentially. How much space in your brain do you feel like this takes

up in a day? These worries, that mom guilt that you just brought up? Oh, a good chunk. I drop them off in the morning and, you know, the security guards are at the door, but I instantly think the worst every morning. I try not to congregate outside for very long because you don't know what someone could do. It is a busy corner that the school is situated on. And so that takes a good chunk of my mental capacity. And then switching to the social media elements of how much time I spent scrolling and just trying to stay up to date with what's going on. It's taken a lot of mental energy for me personally. I want to come back to that in a couple of minutes. But Kim, let me just bring you in here on that question of additional security. Since October 7th, have you seen more security at your synagogue? And if so, what has that been like for you?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've always had security at the synagogue. But I mean, we went to synagogue the morning of October 7th. My son's bar mitzvah was at the end of 2023. And so we were attending synagogue a lot as he prepared for his bar mitzvah, which, you know, takes place. He leads one of the Saturday morning Sabbath services. And so we went to synagogue that day and we left the synagogue and there was a police car, possibly two, I can't quite remember, outside the synagogue, which is not at all normal. And I remember he looked at me and he said, well, why are the police here? Did something happen? And I said to him, well, something happened in the Middle East. And when violence happens in

the Middle East, haters come out here and the police are here to make sure that doesn't happen at our synagogue today. And I feel like in the months since then, while police presence has been on and off at the synagogue, the feeling that we have that haters come out here has not abated. And it's, you know, sadly, something that I feel like I've been preparing my whole life for. This is what Jewish parents do. Something happens. We have that moment of panic of do what do I send my child to Jewish day camp today? You know, I remember we sent our child to the Jewish Community Center for day camp several years ago when there was a spate of bomb threats. Do we do we keep him home home and let the fear win,

or do we send him? And I feel like this is the generations of Jewish parental thinking all the time. And for the most part, we send them. We send them. We trust in each other. We trust in our community. We trust that this violence is coming from a vanishingly few people, however dangerous it is. And so we continue every day to choose to trust to live in our society out loud. But it's really difficult. Look, I am not Jewish, but I am a mom. And you guys are describing a real weight to me. I must feel like such a weight.

Yeah, you're going to make me cry. Because, you know, my little guy is sick. And so even today, he's like, why is the post here? Because they come some days and not others. And, you know, in the back of my head, I'm like, are they here because there's been a threat and we don't know about it? Or are they here just because they're doing, you know, a random patrol? And, you know, they're here just to secure our school. And, you know, we'll leave it at that

because he's too little to understand. Like, he's asked some questions, but, yeah, it's hard. It's very hard. I'm going to go. organization empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples,

I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Take me through some of the conversations that you've been having with your kids since October 7th. Kim, I know your son is older, right? Yeah. He's in grade eight. And so, you know, what have they been like? What have you been talking about? Are you talking about the news? Yeah. I mean, we always talk about the news in my family. He's grown up. I feel like I'm an old soul. I always have the radio news on. So, you know, he'll come in and out of the room. We're always talking about the news. This news is, it's complicated for me

because I don't want him to carry that burden. You talked about us carrying a weight as parents. He's at this kind of beautiful age where he's getting more sophisticated. He understands more his role as a human being in the world. But at the same time, he's only 13. I feel like if he were 16, he'd also be feeling that fire to be involved with, you know, fighting all of the injustice in the world. I know I was when I was 16. And so right now he's in a bit of a bubble. But we talk about things. We have family in Israel. A cousin of mine traveled all the way here during the war for his bar mitzvah. And so we talked about her experience. We talked about how amazing it was that she spent weeks trying to find a flight because it was so important to her that she come here for us and to celebrate with us, even at a time when she has been so overwhelmed and life is so difficult in so many ways for her.

And so he knows that he's growing up with these connections to the broader Jewish world. And I think that's very typical in the Jewish community. There are so few of us relative to other ethnic groups. And so that Jewish world is very small. And we've been talking with him about that and about the complicated space it is where my relationship to my Jewish identity has always been very intimately related with seeking justice in the world. I've been very active in activist spaces for progressive causes through my synagogue, activist spaces for progressive causes through my synagogue in secular spaces, but very rooted in my Jewish identity and values. And, you know, we've been raising him in that context and knowing that right now it's a bit fraught to be very Jewish out in the broader world. You never know

if somebody is going to come at you for nothing other than the fact that you're visibly Jewish. And so we try to talk to him about that without transferring the weight we carry onto him. We want him to live without that weight for as long as he can. Mel, your child is a bit younger, six. What kind of conversations might you be having right now? Yeah, our conversations have been more high level. So even like starting on October 7th, my husband and I woke up and saw the news and instantly were like, there's going to be a war. This is not going to go well. And our little guy walked in and, you know, was like, what's going on? We changed it because of that moment, we didn't know how to address it with him and over time you know as that those extra security measures came into place at school

and either kids were talking about it at school again i think every parent has a different approach to how they're dealing with it and what they're telling their children um he's asked a few more questions so we asked him the question like like, would you want to go to Israel? And he said, no, because they take people or there's a war. There's, you know, bad people who want to hurt us. And that doesn't come from us. That's coming from, you know, things he's hearing. So we address the questions when he asks.

He asked a question that there's a, you know, in our school, there's those kidnap signs and he asked what that meant. But again, really trying to keep it high level because I don't want to, you know, similar to what Kim said, put that burden on him of worrying about being Jewish and what that means and how people will treat him. I want to talk now more about you guys and how this has been for you. So, Mal, you mentioned a little bit earlier in the conversation that you are like scrolling social media. Just like tell me a little bit more about that, what that's like for you, what you're looking at, why you're doing that. Yeah, I think early days, I just couldn't stop. I just wanted to know what

was going on, wanted to hear all the stories, wanted to see, you know, the survivors, like, itching for the positive parts out of all of this. And now more recently, you know, I have found that I've deleted some friends along the way, you know, weren't open to conversations about what was going on and were very anti-Israel. So I've deleted a few people along the way. And now I'm actually finding it a bit more comforting because it's people who are posting about the hostages returning and a recent walk in Toronto and more of that positive, uplifting media that I do want to consume right now. But, you know, there's been lots of days where I'm like, I need to delete this. Like I could utilize this time way more effectively than, you know, scrolling through and finding what's out there. than, you know, scrolling through and finding what's out there.

You know, you mentioned friends that you felt like didn't want to engage. What was it that was upsetting for you? I think there's just some friends who, you know, I might be their only Jewish friend. And so they post anti-Israel commentary without seeing or asking about both sides, because they might have other friends who are in their feeds with that messaging. And so, you know, that's been hard because I do want to advocate. I just, at the same time, want to protect myself. So, well, I want to go and say, you've posted this and you are open to your opinions, but have you looked at the actual details behind what this post means?

I'm worried about them retaliating or getting defensive and attacking me for it. Yeah. And like when you talk about seeing sort of anti-Israel content, what would that look like to you? It's people writing, you know, globalize into Fada or river to the sea. Like those have connotations to wiping out Israel. And Israel is our Jewish state that we all feel closely to. I've only been there once in my life. But at the end of the day, that is the space that we have as Jews that we know we could go to. Kim, let me bring you in here. How do you feel when you see this kind of messaging? of a divisiveness in our society where we only talk about anything, not just this issue, but anything in black and white. And we have this habit that's become normalized to vilify people

we don't agree with. And so there isn't any nuance in conversation that we have in the public sphere right now. There is only what I believe and everybody else who's not only wrong, but a bad person. I find that to be really distressing. The issues about the diaspora relationship with, you know, the diaspora Jewish relationship with Israel and the entirety of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East is so complex and so personal to so many people who have very different experiences of it. I wish that we could have conversations that allow for that nuance. And I have seen since October 7th, such a rapid escalation in you're either on the right side or you can't even occupy the space with us in many different ways. The anti-Israel protests, you know, Mel mentioned some, like, you know, messaging around it.

You know, she finds very upsetting, like the river to the sea and, you know, globalizing the Antifada. If you speak to, I've been to many of the protests, and if you speak to the protesters, they say, like, this is anti-Zionism. It's not anti-Semitism. How would you respond to that, Kim? So something that definitely became very clear to me after October 7th is that the term Zionism is a very, very challenging term right now because it has been used by folks who do not have a relationship to the state of Israel in a way that most of the Jews, the vast majority of Jews I know, do not use it. And so the term has come to mean something. It's hurled as a pejorative. To be a Zionist is to be a racist. To be a Zionist is to want to wipe out Palestinians. It means that you're in favor of genocide. And that is, I've never met a Jewish person who feels that way.

And that doesn't mean that there aren't extremist Jews. We see them in the Israeli government, right? But the most Jews I know consider themselves to be Zionists because we believe in the importance of the existence of a Jewish state. And so when Zionist is hurled as a pejorative against me, where I consider myself to be pro-Palestinian, I have my whole life. I don't demonstrate in the streets right now because I don't feel safe as a Jew in those spaces, because I also believe in the existence of a Jewish state.

So it's a very complicated here. So I think all criticism of Israel is valid. It's a democratic state. We can criticize governments and government actions, and I sure do when it comes to the Israeli government and have for a very long time. But when somebody tells me that Zionists are not welcome here, all I kind of hear there is that I am not welcome there simply because I am a diaspora Jew who believes the state of Israel should exist. I would really like to be able to engage in dialogue. I believe very strongly in a

two-state solution. I believe that Jews in the world won't be safe until everyone is safe, including and perhaps especially Palestinians. I believe that Palestinians should have exactly the same rights to security and self-determination that Jews should have exactly the same rights to security and self-determination that Jews should have. And that's not always a popular view in Jewish community either, right? I think we all could do with having some very challenging conversations respectfully so that we can learn to see the humanity and compassion in each other, which is very hard. And so I think I've said since, you know, the middle of October, I think the term Zionist is something that's become

too much of a lightning rod because the Zionists I know are horrified to be considered racist people in favor of genocide. I am. And yet we have no way of saying to someone, hey, you know, that really harms me when you accuse me of this. Can we talk? And there's no dialogue. So I don't know if that's particular. Like, I feel like I think you nailed it. Honestly, I don't think I could have answered it better because now I feel the exact same way. Maybe I'll try to wrap up this conversation by asking you both about the kind of support that you feel like you've received since October 7th. And you can take that question kind of any way you, in any direction you want, right? Like from your own community, from outside your community. Mel, do you want to go first? Yeah, I know support-wise, I feel like I do ensure that I have a group of friends that

are both Jewish and not Jewish. And I do feel that like right at the beginning, when all this started, I got on a FaceTime with my best friends from high school. And, you know, we are all Jewish, and we had a chance to like talk it out. And that really helped me. But where I do feel in the last few months that I felt supported is just allyship from others from outside of my Jewish community who have either liked the post or have checked in to see how I'm doing. You know, even a small ask has really gone a long way because it makes you feel like you're not alone in this at the end of the day. And then also, you know, being part of a Jewish school, we have a great community as well that I feel

very fortunate to have for myself as well as my child. And Kim, how about you? Support, lack of support? Yeah, very similar to what Mel described. You know, both from within the Jewish community, for sure. You know, I'm not a religious person. But it's funny, we like something I learned when we hosted an Israeli exchange student once. And what really with hammered home to me is that, you know, the synagogue is really the center of Jewish community in the diaspora. So I'm not a religious person, but I'm very involved in our synagogue and synagogue life. And I have felt such comfort there since October 7th, being in a room filled with people I don't have to explain myself to who I know are having their own individual experience, but

not altogether dissimilar from mine. And so there's, there's a comfort there for sure. But I've also, you know, I have three friends in particular who are not Jewish, who have not only reached out to me since October 7th, but engaged with me in such thoughtful, respectful conversation. They've been openly curious. They've explored their own, you know, their own political reactions, their own, you know, thinking about what's going on and really been honest with me about what they think. And it invited me to be honest with them in a very safe and supportive way. And I know many of my Jewish friends have not had the luck to have that from their non-Jewish friends. And one friend in particular, he sent me an email about three or four weeks after October 7th that made me realize

how much tension I had been holding because I read his email and I burst into tears because my reaction to it, and I can't even now remember exactly what he said, but my reaction to it was, if everything goes to hell, sorry, can I say that? If everything, okay, if everything goes to hell right now, then, and I have this vision of packing up my family and taking the long and arduous trip from Vancouver to Halifax, and he would hide us in his spider basement. And that's such a dramatic and melodramatic and almost hysterical reaction. But the relief that I felt knowing that he understood that we were experiencing something as Jews that was very different from anything he could personally relate to and that he saw that

and came to me with that and volunteered it. I had felt so seen and understood that I knew that even if the absolute worst happened, we would have that safe harbor. The relief that I felt in his understanding, I think, was something I wish more of my Jewish friends had from their non-Jewish friends. And there are also non-Jewish friends I haven't heard a word from. And that's, you know, that's fine. But I also have felt myself pull back from them a little bit, not because I don't like feel the support, but because I feel that maybe hanging out with them would be a minefield for me. I've been very protective of myself. I don't want to go out

to dinner and find myself in the depths of a very complicated and fraught conversation about this. I want to just go out to dinner and have fun with my friends. So that's been the feeling I've had about folks who haven't reached out. And I've been very, very grateful for my non-Jewish friends who have. And also, sorry, I just want to say one more thing. Yeah, please. As an adult, I don't want to come across as a victim, like, well, that's never the case. So to ask people for support, like I would never go do that. But I think, you know, if there's a message I want to share is that the effects of this are making me rethink some of my actions day to day, you know, putting out a long sign about a kid volunteer opportunity my kid had that I didn't do because there was Jewish on it. I'm rethinking about putting up our missiles that,

you know, there's things that I'm realizing that I'm doing and avoiding to not encounter any anti-Semitism. And that's where I think we need support is knowing that the people who are around us that we're comfortable with have our back and maybe won't be the ones to tear down by sign or write messages of hate. So that's the last thing I want to say. Yeah, exactly. want to say. Yeah, exactly. Kim, Mal, I want to thank you both so much for this, for your honesty, for just taking the time and agreeing to do this. I'm really, really appreciative. Thank you so much again for hosting this conversation. It's so important.

Yes, thank you so much. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.