News from Kol Ami

Below is the speech Elaine Page gave on Saturday, November 1st at our Solidarity Shabbat

Shabbat Shalom – I would like to start off by welcoming all of you and thank you for #showingupforshabbat. To those of you from the Noor Islamic Cultural Center who have come today in a show of friendship, support and solidarity against hate. Thank you – your presence honours us. We have received beautiful and heartfelt messages of condolences, expressions of shared outrage, sadness from the Noor Centre as well as several other Muslim groups and we are so very grateful.

As you all know last Shabbat around this time of day- Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon; Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal. Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger, and Rose Mallinger were all doing exactly what you are doing right now. Attending a Shabbat service, to gather, to study to pray and to be together in sacred community. Their lives were snuffed out in an instant. What killed them was not a singular crazy man that had far to easy access to assault weapons, rather what killed them is the insidious ramping up of hatred spear headed by the far-right wing.

We as Jews have lived this story before. It is after all Holocaust Education Week. Closer to home and in more recent times we have lived it in a mosque in Quebec. We have lived it in a church in Texas and only a few days before the Pittsburgh massacre in Jeffersontown Kentucky an armed man tried to storm the First Baptist Church only to be thwarted by church security. Instead he went to the local supermarket and shot two African American patrons. Their crime was having the wrong skin colour.

123531. in all its strains is a disease and it is spreading. We in North America are no longer insulated or immune from the disease. It is here at our door and here in the house of god, and it has shaken us to our core.

Like you, I am horrified, heartbroken, angry and I am not ashamed to admit I am scared. In fact I have been scared for a while now. So much so that I have found myself hiding my Star of David necklace while in public places. I tuck it in underneath my shirt when I am on the subway platform or on a crowded street. I know that I am not the only in this room that feels that way. My star, like your mezuzah, your chai, your hamsha are all identifying symbols of your faith. It doesn’t feel safe to be openly Jewish anymore.

Many of us attended at the vigil on Monday night. Thousands of Jews and allies gathered to honour the dead, to publicly mourn and to stand in solidarity with Pittsburgh. It took courage to go. The thought that crossed my mind while I was there and I am certain crossed the minds of everyone in attendance, was how safe is it to be here? We were like fish in a barrel. One crazed lunatic with a gun could easily kill many of us before being stopped. We all felt vulnerable yet we made the decision to come in the face of the danger. We showed up. We all understood a singular core value. Hate cannot prevail.

1. say in earnest that I don’t understand blind hate. Yes of course you can give me explanations about how hate manifests itself, how propaganda and social media is its fuel. You can tell me all of that and I am certain that I would understand it as much as I understand calculus. Only calculous is provable and rational, hate isn’t.

I look to this community, my community. The Kol Ami community is predicated on the principle of Tikkun Olam – the Healing of the World and loving Acts of Kindness- this is who we are.

We are a community that gathers on Saturday mornings, feeding each other breakfast and studying together. And when a regular doesn’t show up we worry and reach out.

We are a community that sings together, prays for a better world together.

We celebrate when one of our children becomes a Rabbi, or a cantorial soloist, or has an extraordinarily high bowling score

We dance at each others simchas, and we support each other through tragedy.

We are writers – we are readers.

We are volunteers. We show up.

We gather at the home of a dying woman and watch on facetime as her and her husband renew their wedding vows from her hospital bed just days before she passes. And In their home we celebrate them even if they can’t physically be there

We arrange a meal train for the family that lasts for months. Meals lovingly prepared and served to a family in a desperate and tragic situation.

The Chavaruh has opened their homes on the last Sunday night of every month for the past eighteen years to share a meal and learn from each other.

We are bridge builders.

We annually open our doors and our minds to our neighbours, to learn about their religion, their practices, and to create understanding.

We host the first openly gay orthodox rabbi for a scholarly weekend.

We celebrate the extraordinary musicianship of our members at our annual coffeehouse.

We enter into a dialogue to discern how we can make our community more inclusive for our interfaith families.

We go to nursing homes, and to veterans wings and we entertain them with song and schtick.

We weekly acknowledge and embrace our Indigenous friends

We open our doors and our hearts to our Muslim and Christian friends and stand with them when hate touches their community.

We are lifelong friends.

We play baseball.

We participate in the Out of the Cold program.

We raise money for refugees.

We delight in our children and kvell with pride as they reach new milestones.

And so much more.

That is who we are – and that is who the members of Tree of Life are too, in fact that is what every congregational Jewish organization is. And so in that knowing – I simply cannot understand, cannot fathom what would inspire so much hate as to want us dead.

Upon reflection - As I name these things that we are – I feel a sense of overwhelming pride bursting forth and I hope that you do too. I am grateful to be part of this community. If this is what it means to be a Jew then I am proud to identify and be counted as one. No longer will I hide in the shadows. My star of David will take it’s rightful place – on top of my clothes and near my heart for all to see.

I claim my birthright, my heritage, my faith. I do so with the understanding that there is work to be done, and that it comes with responsibility. I cannot be silent. I must speak out when I hear the veiled, and the overt language of hate, of anti-Semitism, of bigotry and racism in all of its forms. I must support this community by showing up, not just for Shabbat but at other times too. I must become political – and respectfully challenge leadership on issues that threaten all of us who wear the moniker “other”. I must use my vote, it is my voice. Mostly though you and I need to continue to open our doors to the stranger invite them and teach them who we really are, and do so with love and pride.

We will heal.

We are stronger than hate.

Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon; Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal. Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger, and Rose Mallinger, may your memory always be a blessing and an inspiration.