Eight attacks. That’s how many times Kehillat Shaarei Torah, the Toronto synagogue where I grew up, celebrated my bat mitzvah, and served as youth director, has been targeted. Once would have been too many. Eight times is a national disgrace.
I remember Kehillat Shaarei Torah as a place filled with warmth and community. Today, it stands behind a newly installed security fence, its windows repeatedly smashed and its property defaced with hateful messages — most recently just last week. This is the grim new reality for Jewish institutions across Canada.
My childhood synagogue is far from alone. Across Canada, Jewish institutions are under siege. Also last week, Chaim Mushka, a girls’ elementary school in Toronto, was shot at for the third time and Congregation Beth Tikvah, a synagogue in Montreal, was firebombed for the second time. These are not isolated incidents — they are part of a frightening pattern.
Canadian Jews, who make up less than one percent of the population, are the targets of over 70 per cent of all religiously motivated hate crimes. Despite these shocking statistics, the response from Canada’s leaders has been shamefully inadequate.
Politicians issue statements of sympathy, condemning the attacks and feigning outrage. Prime Minister Trudeau said he was “sickened” while Mayor Olivia Chow said, “Enough is enough.” But these words are meaningless when they are not accompanied by action. They’ve had well over a year to act — and still Jewish institutions are being attacked again and again.
The prime minister, premier, mayor, and every other elected official who claims to care about the tapestry of Canadian society, should spend a week working from synagogues like Kehillat Shaarei Torah or one of the country’s Jewish day schools. Maybe then, when they are on the receiving end of a tsunami of threats and violence, they will finally back up their words and act with the urgency this crisis demands.
So far, it has been divine intervention — or perhaps the random mercy of circumstance — that has prevented these attacks from ending in the kind of horrific tragedy witnessed by Jewish communities elsewhere, such as the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 where eleven were killed and six were wounded, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. This fragile luck, however, is not a substitute for government policy or action. Each new act of hate brings us closer to an unthinkable outcome, one that words of outrage and condolence will never undo.
Instead, antisemitism has been allowed to fester and grow. Canada is failing to learn from history. In 1930s Europe, antisemitism didn’t stop at destroying Jewish lives; it undermined the very fabric of society, paving the way for totalitarian regimes and eroding the democratic values we now hold dear until Canada and the other Allied powers went to war to destroy that threat.
Hate is a pollution that doesn’t remain confined to one group or one place. It spreads, infecting everything it touches.
That poison is already visible on Canada’s streets. Masked mobs draped in keffiyehs march through major cities, burning Canadian flags, vandalizing monuments, and intimidating anyone who dares to disagree with their ideology. What begins as targeted hatred against Jews inevitably grows into a broader assault on the freedoms and values that define our society.
These attacks do not occur in a vacuum. Each unpunished act of violence and each ignored plea for protection sends a dangerous message: that hatred and bigotry are permissible.
This global surge in Jew-hatred is inexcusable everywhere, but its prevalence in Canada is particularly shameful. Canada was the first nation to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy in 1971, later enshrining it in law through the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadians pride themselves on being champions of diversity and tolerance, yet today, what they are tolerating is violence and bigotry.
For over two decades, Kehillat Shaarei Torah was a second home for me. To see it attacked again and again is heartbreaking and terrifying. Jewish Canadians are resilient, but resilience alone is not enough. We cannot fight this battle alone.
Canada’s leaders have failed Jewish Canadians. They have failed to protect synagogues and schools from attack. They have failed to hold perpetrators accountable. They have failed to take meaningful steps to deter further violence.
Most damningly, they have failed to recognize that Jew-hatred is not just a Jewish problem — it is a Canadian problem.
If our leaders do not act — if they do not prioritize the safety and dignity of Jewish Canadians — it won’t just be the Jewish community that suffers. Canada, as a whole, will pay the price. Hate, when left unchecked, corrodes the foundation of any society.
History is watching. The Jewish community is waiting. The time for action is now.
National Post
Toronto native Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a nonprofit organization that partners with community leaders to combat Jew-hatred. She is co-host of the Boundless Insights podcast.