Shavua Tov. I hope everyone in Montreal had a wonderful Shabbat. After spending Shabbat in Jerusalem, I would like to echo the famous words of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.” Jerusalem being home. This morning I had the privilege of Davening the Shabbat morning services at the Kotel. What a beautiful Minyan made up from Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Hasidic, Unaffiliated and Secular Jews, all joining together at the Western Wall to pray together in a spirit of Jewish Unity.
Unfortunately Shabbat ends and the real world returns. I would like to reflect on a tragic event that took place in Jerusalem tonight. There was an arson attack on a bilingual school in the Pat neghbourhood. By “bilingual,” I mean Hebrew and Arabic. Scrawled on the building was graffiti stating, “Death to Arabs,” Kahana was right” and “There is no coexistence with cancer.” Our nation has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitism for as long as we have existed as a people. How dare we ever become racists! It is offensive to every man, woman or child who perished in the holocaust that we should use the same words that Nazis used towards us. Yes there are serious issues of peace and coexistence at this moment. But let us never ever become the perpetrators of racist violence or intimidation.
Tomorrow I will be traveling to Acre (Akko) and meeting with Sheikh Samir Assi, the Imam of the al-Jazaar mosque in the city. I hope to ask him for his thoughts on what we can do to begin building bridges instead of tearing them down. I look forward to returning to Montreal with a mission and a vison for our community as to how we can play a role in bringing much needed peace between the Jewish and Islamic communities.
