Page 4 - The Canadian Jewish News, Friday, May 13, 1977
Editorial
TheCanadian jewisiinews
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GJG presidency
Two able men who have many times demonstrated their fitness for responsible leadership posts in the Jewish community are offering themselves as co-presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress at the Plenary Assembly in Montreal. They are Rabbi W. Gunther Plant and Professor Irwin Cotler.
There is nothing in the CJC constitution that permits a joint presidency, probably because such a situation was never envisaged as likely to come to pass. But constitutions are not sacred, untouchable documents, and when circumstances warrant — as we believe they do in the present instance — then a simple amendment to the CJC constitution would pave the way for Canadian Jewr>- to have the services of two outstanding leaders, instead of one. We hope that in the main the delegates will see it in this light, though it is clear that opposition will come from those who see no merit in a divided presidency. In any event, the delegates will have the last word.
The joint statement issued by Prof. Cotler and Rabbi Plaut. who have worked well together in other activities, speaks of a desire to serve Jewry and the wider national interest by "sharing the burdens of leadership."' We believe there is much to be said for this point of view. The tasks confronting the Canadian Jewish Congress are growing more onerous, and a leadership shared by two of our most respected members seems to us a praaical method of dealing with the burdens of office.
The 18th plenary is a testing time for Canadian Jewry. What comes out of the sessions devoted to numerous pressing problems will go far tow ards influencing our future course of action. Lwrning over the deliberations is the shadow of Quebec and the future of the Jewish community there. We have been challenged as never before and to be true to ourselves we must respond with every ounce of our energy to the demands posed by a dramatically changing societv.
Guest Editorial
Politics of language
By HARRY EDEL & HENRY SREBRNIK
~ -J
Language alone cannot be a guarantee of cultural survival for any national group, and there are nations like the Jews who have maintained their cultural heritage within the framework of a diversity of languages. There are also nations with common languages yet having diverse cultures — for example. England and the U.S.. Holland and South Africa.
Attempts to use language as a means by which to 'reconquer' the economy can only be understood as a smokescreen. To use language in this sense thus refers, in fact if not in word, to people's ethnic and racial origins; such usage, if not explicitly racist, is certainly discriminatory.
A statement such as the one recently made by the Conseil des Hommes d'Affaires Quebecois (CHAQ). to the effect that the linguistic policy of the Levesque government is "the first step in the economic reconquest". is clearly unacceptable. Just as clearly to be rejected is the notion, implied in various parts of the White Paper on Language, that mere language retraining is only a first step and that "affirmative action" type measures, would follow, "to reflect." in business firms, "at everv- level and in even,- function of their personnel the-ethnic make-up of the population of Quebec". ,
Such a statement has no place in a 'Language White Paper". To apply affirmative action today is tantamount to forcing people not responsible for the establishment of an unjust system to accept such responsibility
on an ethnic basis.
The Quebec government — indeed, the entire French-Canadian nation living in Quebec — must also realize that they have absolutely no precedence or prior rights to Quebec by virtue either of their ethnic majority or because they arrived, and conquered, earlier.
It must be understood that "everyone, regardless of language or ethnic origin of Quebec, is inherently entitled to remain and nourish and enjoy equal respect before the law. The PQ government must realize that, while pursuing its goal of making Quebec a French-speaking entity, it must do so not only in a generous but above all in a realistic and practical way. Specifically, this means more than merely paying lip service to the idea of making the French language the lingua franca; it also requires making concrete, institutional provisions for French language training. A simple example: intensive French immersion courses can be established, along the lines of the proven ulpan system in Israel.
Finally, the PQ should immediately take steps to clearly define certain key words so that they do not. whether by calculation or inadvertence, serve as code words of discriminatory practices against non-French Canadians living in Quebec.
The word 'francophone' should mean, simply, anyone who can communicate in French.
The word 'Quebecoi^' should refer to anyone who resides in Quebec. Henry Srebrnik and Harry Edel teach at Dawson College in Montreal.
A severe c
Reports emanating from many quarters indicate that the Jewish family is undergoing severe strains. Marital breakdowns, separation and divorce are now serious problems for the Jewish people. Across the denominational spectrum the incidence of divorce among Jewish couples has become alarming.
How often does the modern rabbi have to officiate these days at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs where separated parents look on at their progeny from distant pews? The rabbi of yesteryear who used to spend his time adjudicating questions of Jewish law, now must spend, a disproportionate amount of his pastoral w;ork in counselling troubled spouses.
The much touted strength of the Jewish fainily. with its traditionally firm marriage bonds between husband and wife, is being sapped by the marital dislocations that have become a part of the modem Jewish life cycle. Two generations ago. divorce among Jewish couples was a rarity that carried with it much opprobrium. Today, divorce among Jewish couples is common and it occasions neither reproach nor scorn.
It would be easy to attribute the rise in marital instability to the general weakening of the religious ethic in modem society. Doubtless that is a factor. But divorce
By TOBA KORENBLUM [First of two parts]
TORONTO —
While Jews formed the vanguard of the women's liberation movement in the last two decades, it is only now, paradoxically, that their own communal organizations are slowly recognizing the changing status of women in society.
Yet. in Canada, only a select few have women at their helm in a volunteer or professional capacity. Exclusive of wo-men's-only groups, there is no national or regional organization with a woman president, no Zionist body,, nor Israeli university, and only an isolated number of synagogues. Canadian Jewish Congress, touted as the Parliament of Canadian Jewry, hasn't a single national officer who is a woman.
There are only a handful of women in poshions of power in the Jewish "civil
service" or professional cadre — the majority, executives or administrators in the educational or social service field.
In religious life, the attitude ranges from Reform congregations which favor female ritual irivolvement to many Conservative and Orthodox synagogues where women are still disenfranchised.
The reason? According to a cross-section of women in organizational life, it's the women themselves who haven't had the will, along with traces of discrimination in mixed groups where the elite roles have been a male preserve.
"Women have been used — and abused."' says Clara Balinsky, national president of the 116,000-member Hadas-sah-WIZO. "Organizations want to use svomen. but it's still a question of male chauvinism. They'll let the women do the nitty gritty 'women's work*, like chairman of the arrangements committee. But, when
Italian-born Modigliani drew artistic inspiration from life of destitution
ByROCHELLECARR
Paris on May 13. 1906 was a haven for budding artists. One such artist, who had arrived in the French capital at the beginning of the year, was the colorful Amedco Modigliani from Leghorn, Italy.
Modigliani attained the summit of artistic recognition; unfortunately most came after his early death at the age of 35 in 1920.
Flaminio Modigliani, a small businessman and his wife, Eugenia Garsin Modigliani of Spanish descent, had three other children besides their artist son. The eldest, Vittorio Emanuele. was a lawyer and politician. Hissocialist activities at one time landed him in jail and at other times earned him a seat in the Italian Pariiament. As well, there were Margherita and Umberto, an engineer.
But history best remembers the youngest, known to family and friends as Dedo. Even before his Bar Mitzvah he began showing a great interest and talent in art. Influenced by the artistic atmosphei'e of Italy, Modigliani studied in various places including Florence and Venice.
By the time he reached Paris he was caught between a desire to be a sculptor and the sometimes easier means of earning a livelihood from painting. With his ever-present corduroy jacket he wandered between Montmartre and Montparaasse painting, sculpting, meeting people like his Jewish artist friend from Vilna, Chaim Soutine. or going to Gertrude Stein's where the portly lady held court for budding, yet rnainly impoverished, writers and artists.
like Modigliani.
Although the world of art and the bohemi-an lifestyle of Paris* artists in those days occupied most of his time, he never forgot his Jewish birth, to the point where he vociferously attacked French anti-Semites like Edouard Drumont.
While in.France. and to a lesser extent in Italy. Modigliani produced such famous works as the Standing Nude 1908, the Jewess 1907. the Beggar of Leghorn 1909. the Bride and Groom 1915 and numerous portraits of people he knew, all the while living a life heavily influenced by the drugs and alcohol that were so readily available in the world in which he moved.
This, plus poor nutrition, as a result of an in-and-out state of poverty, as well as signs of tuberculosis complicated by a lesion on a iiing from an earlier bout of typhoid, caused his early death. Some argued that his wild life helped the artist in him to create the long cylindrical necks, the pathetically sad eyes and the exaggerated oval faces seen on fiiany of his paintings.
This is "Portrait of the Young-Girl Elvira" done by Aniedeo Modigliani, 1919.
Hadassah President Clara Balinsky
it comes to important decisions, women as a rule are not represented."
She dismisses the charge from some quarters that w'omen have displayed a lack of interest in assuming leadership roles. "Many women are very interested, but they're never asked." she says. "You absolutely have to fight. You have to be a clawing woman to get to the top."
And she's not optimistic about the prognosis, "as long as the hierarchy of men is going to allow decision-making by the professionals...They are partly afraid the women will become too greedy for their own power."
Illustrating an example of neglect of the women's contribution, she points to the recent meeting of a lO-man delegation with, Premier Rene Levesque, "We were never asked for our opinion." she says annoying-
Notes one woman pioneer in the community, who preferred to remain anonymous: "Men are still in the infantile stage; they are an unenlightened group. And women still have the same old fears. They still carry the enslavement and they love it. The majority are much too afraid. They haven't enjoyed freedom long enough to appreciate that they should have rights."
It is not only a question of discrimination against women, she adds. "I won't mind living until I find Congress and Mount Sinai elect a poor man. Man likes power and he doesn't want to give it up; no more than the rich want to give power to the poor.'*
Ena Greengarten is the young executive director of the Friends of Pioneering Israel, and a member of the rare breed of women in such posts in the Jewish community. There has been little change in Jewish organizational structures, she says, to allow women representation in high-echelon roles.
(Some of the exceptions have been Eva Dessen, national director of the Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East, and Norine Daniels, a volunteer, who was the first general campaign manager for Israel Bonds in Toronto, and presently vice-president of the organization*s Ontario Region.)
Although positions are available for members of women's groups, explains Ms" Greengarten. "at times their participation is looked at as token...basically there is an unconscious discrimination, that is the same as in the general community..."! don't think young educated women will sit back any more," she says. "They are pushing; for a more active role."
President oif the Toronto Zionist Council, ' Helen Smolack, sees a greater measure of liberalization than the other spokesmen
Dr. Reva Gerstein
were willing to acknowledge. "Women are not only tolerated," she says, "but they are no longer even token. It's no longer a time of teas and luncheons. Women are looking for challenge and something to get their teeth into, something that captures the imagination."
One of a nucleus of Jewish female educators in the city. Roselyn Garber sees a new trend developing toward the hiring of women careerists in the community. Principal'of Temple Emanu-El's religious school, she says she has never encountered opposition as a professional. A number of Reform congregations — Holy Blossom, Solel and Har Zion — and day schools have women in the posts of principal or educational director.
As far as lay leadership is concerned, Mrs. Garber says women "have bedn given second best. Men are not recognizing the fact that women can do the job.**
■ "There is definitely discrimination within the synagogue." says Esther Goodbaum, president of the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, representing 15 sisterhoods in Ontario.
A self-confessed "woman from the old school", she notes there is considerable resistance on the part of men to women participating in religious services, despite the Rabbinical Assembly's motion that women can be included in a minyan.
There has not been a woman heading any of the 15 synagogues within her jurisdiction and miny of the institutions do not allow women the vote. "Still." she says, "very underhandedly, the women are running the synagogue, raising more money than brotherhoods, which are just a status thing, and they are getting the mortgage off the synagogue"s back."'
(Henrietta Chesnie broke tradition as Canada's first woman to head a synagogue — Holy Blossom. In Ontario, Rochelle Simons leads Cambridge's small Orthodox B'nei Israel, and Connie Reisman is president of Ottawa's Teniple Israel.)
The degree to which women have been allowed representation in organizatipiial life depends on the strength of the Orthodox vote, says Dr. Reva Gerstein, a former national presiident of the National Council of Jewish Women.
"The histor>- and roots of the Jewish people, back to the shtetl. do carry this thing of the man being more dominant."
One of the first women to address a synagogue from the pulph (at the McCaul St. shul). Dr. Gerstein says irotiically she was accepted "because of my scholarship and knowledge, not my sex."
[Next: The crisis in volanteerism]
among Jews occurs both among the most assimilated and among the most piinctili-ousiy Orthodox. This suggests that thei;e are reasons for marriage break-ups which go beyond the dimension of religious belief or practice.
Jews, of course, even the most sequestered among us, do not live in hermetically sealed environments. To choose to live in a Diaspora situation is to risk the dangers inherent in society. With the advantages of material rewards and spiritual blessings as well come also less desirable practices.
It would have been foolhardy to believe that the Jewish community could resist the social pressures against the family which have risen in the last two decades. The advent of women's liberation, the search for the meaning of self, the availability of work for women — these are but a few elements in the equation which explains why there are so many divorces today.
The situation in the Jewish cornmunity is merely reflective then of what is going on in society in general. There can be no specifically Jewish solution to the problem and yet as a minority group wrestling constantly with hs survival, the Jewish people is now being faced with a challenge more severe than many of the persecutions of the past.
land hfta ioaed tfab cc^ to commemorate its 29th annhrersary. It highlights the theme: Brotherhood in Jerusalem, capital.of IsraeL The coin is in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
- By J. B.SALSBERG
I believe that the 18th plenarj-assembly will be the first one in the histonTof the Canadian Jewish Congress to be dominated by our worrisome concerns with domestic, purely Canadian issues.
This will, in no wise, indicate a lessening of intejrest or a diminution of responsibility on the part of Canadian Jews towards Israel or other international Jewish concerns. Those problems and challenges will, I'm sure, receive the ^ull attention they deserve from the assernbled delegates of the Jewish communities in this country.
1 am also certain that the representatives of bur people — from St. John's, on the Atlantic, to Victoria, on the Pacific — will not hesitate to assume all the financial, .moral and political respohsir bilities that are necessary to safeguard
issues
Israel and to protect the threatened Jewish communities elsewhere. Canadian Jewry will at this assembly, as it has always done before, uphold its'well-deserved record and reputation in the Jewish world.
But I suspect that this plenary assembly will-d6^ll4hat-more routinely — though no less sincerely — than ever before. And that will be the case because uppermost in the mind of every delegate will be the future of Canada and, more specifically, the future of the Jewish community in Quebec, the host of this assiembly and the community that cradled and-nurtured the Canadian Jewish Congress from its birth. It couldn't be otherwise and any pretense to the contrary would be an act of self-deception.
Should, the umbrella organization of Canadian Jewry deal with the crucial and immediate problem of Canadian unity, which is the concern of all Canadians?-In my opinion, the assembly can hardly avoid-this issue since, in addition to everything else, the futiire of fully one-third of all Canadian Jews — and the key third, at that — is directly and immediately involved.
It is true that Congress has always, and quite wisely, maintained a neutral political stance, except when the democratic rights or the safety and well-being of Jews at home or abroad were threatened. Beyond this, every ihdivid-ualJew in this country always feels free to exercise his rights as a Canadian to join with all other like-minded citizens of every race, faith or class to advance, his chosen politiwl-or-social objectives.
That is the way it should be. But who can logically argue that there is no special Jewish concern in the outcome of the present confrontation affecting the future of Canada? There definitely is such a special concern and we cannot pretend otherwise.
I incline to the view that Congress is not called upon to conduct an indepen-■ dent political campaign for a federalist Canada. That goal should be left to each Jewish persoh to pursue in unison with others and throiigh channels that are most appealing to him.
But the plenary session, assernbled at this crucial hour and in Montreal at that, wx)uldi in my opiriion, be fully justified in asserting, on behalf of all of us, the Canadian Jewish community's dedication to the cause ofone and undivided Canada. (Leaders of Congress need not
— be reminded by me that such a declaration would, of course, acknowledge the need for a re-negotiated federaiismthat would provide the requisites for safeguarding the linguistic, cultural and social rights and opportunities for French Canada^in Quebec and eise-
— where in this country.)
. ' And what of our kin in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec; they who are so profoundly and so directly affected by the challenge of separatism and extreme nationalism? It is, of course, their right and duty to formulate policies and to decide on the means to pursue them in the pirovince of Quebec. Fortunately, they have a well-functioning Quebec section of Congress, headed by experienced leaders whose roots go deep into the soil and history of Quebec. They
know best what needs to be done in their province.
It seems to methat within the framework of Congress' central position — for confederation — this plenary session can only express its confidence in the objectives of the Quebec Jewish community and pledge, to it our complete support. The decision-making must come from the' Quebec section of Congress.
And so, the Plenary Assembly will, as usual, listen to' Jewish dignharies, specialists and leaders from around the worid who will analyse, inform and prognosticate on what is unquestionably important to Jews around the world, including ourselves. Those men of prominence are worth listening to and they will certainly enrich our awkreness of things Jewish;
But, I am ready to wager that the most eagerly listened-to guest speaker will be Premier Rene Levesque of Quebec. AU-eyes and ears will be turned in his direction and with good reason. —I also believe that this will be the first time in the history of Congress that a Canadian poltticaJ figure will have -arcquired the complete focus of attention at a plenary assembly. This will be an important first in Canadian Jewish affairs and, as I have said earlier, with good reason....
But, be ye all of good cheer! I'm optimistic about our future in this country, and that includes Quebec. Remember also that this is the 18th Congress assembly and 18, as we aU know, equals Chai iand Chai as we also know means Life. So, to life!