Page 2-TTie Canadian Jewish TJews/Thursday, September 14, 1989
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must talk
RABBI W. GUNTHER PLAUT
I have been increasingly distressed over the mounting divisions in our Jewish community.
Thus, Orthodox and non-Orthodox leaders rarely "if ever speak to each other seriously about religious matters. They are likely to denounce each other in public, from the pulpits or through statements that appear in the media. But rarely are there occasions, when they sit down together to ! listen to each other. There was a lime when this was different, when such leaders;WOuld be civij and even respectful of each other's points of .view, without at the same time giving up any of their own convictions. _1 have to-go to the United States in Order to participate in that kind of enterpHse. Some time ago. a few rabbinic colleagues and 1 had a quiet evening vyith one of America's most influential Orthodox savants, a Rbsh Yeshiva in New York, and listened to him explain his view of our religious differences and how to deal with them. He in turn listeried to our view of the same subject. We agreed to think about what we had heard and, to start with, try and lower the decibels of argument in our. respective camps.
Sometimes this listening takes place jn public. On several occasions I have participated in round-table discussions with present or former heads of Orthodox, Conservative and Reconstnictionist rabbinic organizations, and invariably the Jewish public is appreciative of these attempts at civil discourse. In fact, people are starved for it;
Rabbi Plaut
ree
respect
What these m^tings have in common is this: we da not attack someone else's position but explain our own. When, in doing so, we have to disagree we do so with respect —thereby making a very important point, namely, that those who are on the other side are just as serious iand concerned for God, Torah and Israel as everyone else.
1 have before me an invitation4o take part in another such venture, this time in New York City, at the famed 92nd Street Y.And, as I was fram-. ing my response, I wondered why we here in Canada are all loo frequently so shrill and uncivil in our relationships.
Yet there are exceptions, and 1 aim glad to note them. One of them is the forthcoming dinner to honor Rabbi Gedaliah Felder, one of our most learned scholars, who unfortunately has for some years been stricken with a.debilitating illness. I was happy to receive an invitation to be present, and 1 expect to go, to render my respects to a leader who, in another day, tried to exemplify how basic differences in religious matters can be handled with discretion, decency, and decoriim.
Forum for rabbis
Back in 1961, wheni first arrivedih Toronto, I noted that — in contrast to Minnesota whence 1 had come — there was no iforum.where rabbis could speak with each other, no group where they could meet informally and work together on furthering the welfare of the community. It was surprisingly e^sy to convince the leading personahties, to participate in a Rabbinic Fellowship, and Rabbis Felder, Stuart Rosenberg and Walter Wurz-burger joined me in establishing it. Some of this eariy effort still survives in the Toronto Board of Rabbis, but the bulk of Orthodox rabbis in the city no longer participate in it..
It is different in Montreal, where the Board of Ministers continues to function. as an important gathering place for divergent opinions and joint ef--fort. Why there and not in Toronto? The latter city now has-the largest Jewish population in Canada — in factjieariy one half of all Canadian Jews live in" metropolitan Toronto. It does piir community no credit that the religioijs leadership of Orthodox synagogues and institutions on one side, and of non-Orthodox on the other, have no cmverse with each other.
Perhaps the occasion of paying tribute to Rabbi Felder will give some of the local geclolim food for thought.
Scholarly book explores complex relationship
: . By. -ANCIL KASHETSKY
TORONTO -
For David Goldberg, a book exploring Canadian policy towards the Arab--Israeli conflict was long overdue.
Goldberg, a political .science teacher at York University, believes the ingredients of Canada's foreign policy in the Middle East are now too complex formany Canadians to understand, including Jews who traditionally have lobbied on behalf of Israel.
This, together with the paucity of .scholarship on the subject, prompted Goldberg, a Canadian for-eign policy specialist, to co-edit The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the, Arab-Israeli Conflict with David Taras, director of the Canadian Studies program at the University of Calgary. The book is published by McGill-Queens University Press.
The essays by a number of leading Canadian academics, diplomats and legalists offers an in-depth account of Canada's policy toward Zionism and Israel from the 1930s to the current intifada.
The editors chose the title to reflect the current situation in Canada where four rnajor groups, or "domestic players," care about the Middle East in different and conflicting ways, Goldberg told The CJN.
"The Jewish lobby is now in conflict with the Canadian Arab lobby, corporate Canada, leading church groups and the media, as well as government bureaucrats," he .said.
Churches critical
Church groups, particu-. larly the United Church, the Canadian Council of Churches, and the Canadi- ^ an Council of Catholic Bishops, have been critical of Israel, he adds. "Many Canadian politicians as well as academics support the Palestinian cause for .so-called humanitarian reasons. They believe there should be a Palestinian state without understanding the complexities of the situations."
Goldberg said the anthology eschews emotionalism and is based instead on scholarship. "Taras and I worked with some very good jjcople who were not afraid to put their integrity in the book. It's must read-. ing for anybody seeking a deep understanding of Canadiaii policy towards Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict."
He noted one glaring deficiency in the book, namely the absence of a chapter on the Canadian Arab ' lobby. "Not one Arab "Scholar wanted to write on the subject be-^^ cause of the internal sanctions which operate within the Arab community. They don't like people who break rank. After all, the
book, although scholarly, was put together by two Jews."
The idea for the anthology began to germinate at the time of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Goldberg .said. "It was then the domestic conflict began to emerge with the appearance of the Canadian Arab lobby."
The final chapter of the anthology, Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, is he said, a fa.scinating debate between Irving Abella and politicarscientist John Sie-gler,. about what Canada
should do regarding the Middle East. "It too is must reading for anybody who wants to understand Middle East policy."
The chapter Keeping Score, written by Goldberg, examines the level of satisfaction regarding Canada's Middle East policy of four main groups between 1973 and 1981. To Goldberg's surprise he found that among the four groups. Jews have the lowest level of satisfaction.
"This is mainly due to the government's failure to enact anti-boycott legisla-
tion in the face of the Arab boycott against Israel, as well as the media bias against Israel."
The fact that Jews makes news helps explain the media's fixation with Israel since the war in Lebanon, according to Goldberg.
He called the charges of dual loyalty in editorials of the Toronto Star and La Pres.se in March 1988. Ufarcical arid meanspirited, striking at the right of the community to express its opinions." The chapter he co-wrote with Taras, Collision Course, deals with
the ramifications of the Joe Clark speech. However, Goldberg said _ that Canada is still committed to Israel. The Canada Israel Comhiittee, he believes, has always been respected by the government as very professional, knowledgeable and relatively objective. "It is not impossible for Canada to produce an even-handed policy toward the region. Realistically, Jews should demand this balance and try to win as many battles as possible. That is the best we can expect."
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as Iron Curtain slowly tears
By ■ RICHARD COHEN
EAST BERLIN-
The Iron Curtain comes down here. And then it lifts in"Poland, descends in Czechoslovakia and lifts again in Hungary. The current situation Would have taxed the eloquence of Winston Churchill. In 1946, he coined the phrase "Iron Curtain" and said irstretched from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. Now it's^a drape that is shredded.
But not here, The East German regime is hanging tough, doctrinaire Communists to the bitter end. But ."the better end" seems to be on the horizon or, more specifically, just over the Berlin Wall. From there and from West Germany itself, come the television shows that 80 per cent of East Germany can see-- news, films and (a dubious gift of Western culture) a version of Wheel of Fortune. '
The quesfion once posed by a First Worid War era song — "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farrii after they've seen Paree?" must be occurring to East German leaders in a different form: "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the commune once they've seen West Germany?" And, increasingly, millions of East Germans have left — an estimated four million in the last year alone. Mostly, these are pensioners. Many return home, if only becaiise East Germany is where their pensions are.
But they cannot return thinking that this is a worker's paradise. East Germany has the most formidable and most successful economy in Eastern Europe, but that, really, is damning with faint praise. For many, life is cleariy better on the other side of the Wall — although others, accustomed to a non-competitive, non-market economy, see nothing but a rat race. .
More than the Soviet Union, far more than the other East Bloc states, East Germany faces a crisis of legitimacy. Unlike its fellow members of the Warsaw Pact, it is not a true national state. Poland is Poland — a people, a culture, a shared religion, a language, a hislory. But East Germany is just a part of greater Germany. Its reason for being is communism and without it, it cannot define itself. The legitimacy of the regime would vanish — its ethic and goals,. "Communism is still far away," the East German leader, Erich Honecker, told the Washington Post last month. Maybe. But the good life is just over the Wall.
At age 77, Honecker is not likely to turn reformer. He has been a Communist almost as long as.
there has been communism, and suffered greatly =
for his commitment — a Nazi concentration camp, e
for example. Others in the aging leadership =
\ suffered similarly. They are hardly now about to 5
slap their foreheads and .say, "Boy. were we =
wrong!" - . :■■'' =
Instead, the East German regime takes pride in e
having created the only Communist state where =
lines for food supplies are not the norm. Reform e
is for other Communist countries. "We are well- •=
advised if we do not just copy from othetS-Qcialist .. e
cpuntries," Honecker has said. A younger gener- e
ation of leaders might have different ideas, but they- e
are not yet in power — nor, as far as Western e
analysts can tell, even close to it. e
Meanwhile, the East German regime has =
opened escape valves such as trips to the West, e
and permits increasing emigration — 30,000 last e
year, an estimated 40,000 this year. In the view e
of both Germans and others, the Honecker re- =
gime can rely on the good sense and discipline e
-of'its people not to start trouble. Spontaneity e
is hardly a German characteristic. e
The view from Bonn, the West German capital, e
is that the East German regime cannot hold out in- =
definitely. It either must reform arid face a loss of e
legitimacy or stay the course and face a crisis. If e
the latter is the case, then the ultimate question is e
what the Soviet Union will do. It still stations . =
300,000 troops here. Will Russia, with its well- =
earned German phobia, countenance an unreliable e
or obstreperous East Gentiany?TheTlmnarig is~lhat s
it will not. The troops will move. s
But that is precisely the sort of crisis both the =
West and reformers in the East want to avoid. e Hungarians and Poles know without being told . e
that two things are forbidden: civil chaos and e
withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. What is true e
for Warsaw and Budapest is doubly true for =
East Berlin. A crisis here could spell the end of e
glasnost and perestroika — not to mention Mik- =
hail Gorbachev himself. Two incredibly punish- e
ing wars in this century have made Germany =
special to the Russians. Compared to Germa- e
ny, Poland and Hungary hardly matter. e
Who knows what term Churchill would have e
coined to describe the current situation in Central e
and Eastern Europe; Two things are certain. The =
first is that he would have come up with something. =
And the second is that a glance over the Wall would e
have left him feeling very much at home: once e
. again, -the^coming problem is Germany. =
(Copyright Washington Post Writers Group) =
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[Directors: . 1
Charles Bronfrnan, [Donald Carr, Q.C George A. Ck)hon,'Jack Cummings, — MurraV'B. Koffler. Albert. J. Latner. Ray D. Wolfe, Rubin Zimmerman .General Manager, Gary Laforet Editor, Patricia Rucker . V. ' . Advertising & Assistant~General Manager, Vera Gillman
vol. xxx, no. 19 (2,471)
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