Saturday, September 14, 2024
Friday, September 13, 2024
Saturday, October 7, 2024
Friday, September 6, 2024
I understand there is some trepidation as we approach the Ten Days of Repentance, which include not only Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur and all the emotion that comes with these Holy Days, but also the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre.
I want to reassure everyone that we are all feeling it to one degree or another. So we will bring our heavy hearts and many questions and we will do what Jews have also done. We will try to make sense of this moment in our lives, against the backdrop of Jewish history, and informed by Jewish wisdom of sacred texts. And we will do so, together.
Many are asking for the link to the sermon I gave last Kol Nidre. No one – including me — could have foreseen how our world would change just a few days later, but looking back now, we can see that the vulnerability was already evident. Here is the link, if you wish to revisit where we were a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFFOOiftML4
In addition, I’d like to call your attention to the many meaningful ways we will be commemorating the first anniversary of October 7. Some are of these opportunities are online, some in person, some hybrid. Some are geared for children, others for teens and adults. Some are just for our congregation, others for our city or for the global Reform Movement. Click here for our October 7th Commemorations
Let us do our utmost to lift one another’s spirits and chart our way forward – together.
Shabbat Shalom.
By Eric M. Roher
Due to current global events, Ontario school boards are experiencing an influx of families arriving in Canada from all over the world, including Israel. Community organizations, such as the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto (UJA) and the Jewish Immigrant Aid Service (JIAS), play an invaluable role in advocating and supporting these families. More than ever, it takes a village to assist these new families to Canada to integrate into our community.
In a recent example, at least 40 Israeli families who recently arrived in Canada, were applying for their children to attend schools with the York Region District School Board. These families arrived in Canada under temporary immigration measures introduced by Immigration, Refugees and Immigration Canada (IRCC). As part of the temporary residency measures introduced by IRCC, the families are permitted to apply for an open work permit upon arrival in Canada. These families were anxiously seeking to settle in York Region and register their children in local schools. In many cases, they are living with friends, staying at an Airbnb or renting an apartment.
Initially, the school board took the view that one of the parents needed to have an approved work permit before allowing their children to attend York Region schools. This rule was based in an internal interpretation of the Education Act by school board administrators. Based on this interpretation, the children of these 40 families would likely not be able to attend York Region schools this fall.
Then, the UJA and JIAS went to work. This internal school board interpretation of the Education Act seemed unreasonable in the circumstances.
The UJA sought a legal opinion on this issue on an urgent basis. The UJA has organized a number of Toronto lawyers to provide legal advice on a pro bono basis when these urgent circumstances arise. In reviewing the language of the Education Act, it was clear that a parent would qualify if they had a work permit or was “awaiting determination of an application for a work permit under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.” In other words, under the law, the parents needed to demonstrate that either they had an approved work permit or that they had applied for a work permit in order to qualify to have their children attend York Region schools without being charged a fee.
The UJA and JIAS organized an urgent meeting with York Region school administrators. UJA and JIAS strongly advocated for these families and confirmed the legal opinion. The school board then consulted with the Ministry of Education for their advice and guidance on the interpretation and application of these Education Act provisions.
After a careful review of the matter, the Ministry of Education concluded that UJA’s interpretation of the legislation was correct. The Ministry confirmed that if these families could demonstrate either that one parent had a work permit or could provide evidence that they had applied for a work permit, their children could attend York Region schools at the beginning of this school year without payment of a fee.
On August 30, 2024, the Friday before school was scheduled to start, the school board sent a directive to its school administrators, school support staff, superintendents and Reception Centre staff confirming that “Upon presentation of a duly accepted work permit application by IRCC, the students may be registered for schools as Pupils of the Board – Dependent of a Work Permit Holder for Ministry of Education funding purposes.”
The families are required to go to the Reception Centre in York Region prior to being registered at their local school. They are still required to demonstrate proof of residency of the student living with their parent(s)/guardian(s).
It should be recognized that children have a right to an education in Ontario, regardless of their immigration status. Despite laws that have been passed to prevent discrimination, undocumented students continue to face barriers in accessing public education. Undocumented children and families are disproportionately impacted by policy requirements for families to provide documentation. It is also clear that there are inconsistent practices among school boards across Ontario.
This is one good news story in larger picture of global upheaval and change, where the diligence, compassion and persistence of UJA and JIAS staff assisted the children of these Israeli families to attend York Region schools for the beginning of this school year. These community organizations play an invaluable role in advocating and supporting new refugees coming to Canada in seeking a better life.
By the Archives Committee
Holy Blossom’s Archives Committee has spent August exploring High Holiday highlights from the past for publishing on Instagram and Facebook. In the lead up to the High Holidays this year, we’d like to share them with our whole Holy Blossom congregation.
Holy Blossom’s first Rosh Hashanah service, held on the third floor over this drugstore. Jewish year 5616
Did you know that it was only towards the middle of the 19th century when Jews began to find their way to Toronto? In his authoritative history of Toronto Jewry, Stephen Speisman tells us that an 1846 census recorded just 12 Jews here. They came primarily from England, but also Germany and the United States, and many returned to those places too. By 1849 those early settlers established the first Jewish communal organization, a burial ground which came to be called “Jews Cemetery”. The land was legally purchased but the initial organization behind it faded from the record.
Just a few years later, an 1851 census noted 57 Jews in Toronto and 77 more in the vicinity of the city. In 1856 local merchant Lewis Samuel and 16 other founding members decided to create a formal synagogue to support that growing Jewish life. In the space of three weeks they canvassed other Jews, rented a third-floor room above a drug store at the southeast corner of Richmond and Yonge Streets, borrowed a Torah scroll, and on September 29th held Rosh Hashanah services. It was the Jewish year 5616.
Rosh Hashanah 5784
168 years strong, still blowing the shofar and still growing along with a growing Toronto Jewish community
That congregation was Holy Blossom, the first lasting Jewish communal organization in the city of Toronto. According to census figures for Toronto, Jews in the city now number almost 190,000 and are almost half of the entire Jewish population of Canada. Toronto is one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel and larger even than many Israeli cities.
Now that our students have returned to campus, our Holy Blossom Temple Advocacy Committee is highlighting an important initiative from Hillel Ontario. Add your voice in demanding that University Presidents protect Jewish students and hold demonstrators accountable. You can sign Hillel’s open letter to University Presidents here.
On September 22nd, Hillel Ontario and Stand With Us are offering in-person training for university students who want to become campus advocates. Learn how, when and where to engage and disengage. Get advice from legal, security, and campus professionals on building alliances and finding allies. Please share with the university students in your lives! They can register here.
On September 26th, The Canadian Friends of Hebrew University of Jerusalem are bringing politician and diplomat Michal Cotler-Wunsh to Toronto. Ms. Cotler-Wunsh was a member of the previous Knesset and, in a speech that went viral, powerfully defended Israel at the United Nations. You can learn more and register for the event here.
Finally, please mark your calendars for the community-wide memorial on October 7th which is being put together by UJA. Holy Blossom Temple is one of the co-sponsors of the event. More details will be made available in the coming weeks. Register here.
The news of last Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night) hit hard, upon learning of the deaths of Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Ori, Alex and Almog at the hands of their captors in Hamas captivity.
Among them was a beautiful Israeli-American young man who had made aliyah with his family at 7 years old, a yoga teacher and student of occupational therapy at the Hebrew University, a young father who will never meet the newest of his two babies …
As our Talmud teaches us, to save a life is to save an entire world, and it is crushing to think that these six universes have been snuffed out.
This is especially in the midst of our tradition commanding us “u’v’charta b’chayim”, to choose in life, these famous words that we will hear chanted at Yom Kippur in just a few weeks.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this injunction this week as we process the pain and grief at the loss of the hostages.
One moment comes from Sunday evening when Cantorial Soloist Lindi Rivers and I were both at the community vigil at Earl Bales Park. It must have been close to a thousand people, who’d only been given a few hours of notice to gather. We sang, we said Kaddish, and we heard from a young woman called Ma’ayan, whose cousin was Carmet Gat z”l, and who was getting on a plane to Israel later that night to be with her family. Perhaps, I thought, this is what it means to choose life: to be in community, to be in relationship with other people, and to find comfort and compassion in being together and acknowledging each other’s tzures and stories.
Another idea is from a poem I read at Shabbat services, just that very Saturday morning before the news crashed over us like a wave. It comes from a book called “BaZman: From Time to Time – Journeys in the Jewish Calendar” by Rabbi Professor Dalia Marx, a friend of our congregation. It is her kavanah, intention, for the Hebrew month of Elul we now find ourselves in. It reads:
In moments of great stillness,
When we contemplate things which no mouth can utter,
At that hour, let us deepen the insight that we have.
Let us look inward.
Let us lift up our lives as if we were lifting a bucket from a well.
It is incumbent upon us to strive for self-understanding.
It is incumbent upon us to balance the forces working in our souls.”
As we enter Elul, let this be what it means to choose in life: to choose introspection, reflection, and contemplation of a better future. May it mean that we can always find wellsprings of hope, the bucket from which we can refresh our souls, even when they feel broken.
May the memories of Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Ori, Alex and Almog be for a blessing.
Saturday, August 31, 2024
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Founded in 1856, Holy Blossom Temple is Toronto’s first synagogue with a rich history of tradition and modernity in our religious and spiritual expression.