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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, October 22, 1992-Page 13
Opinion
Gh to be on Bathurst on a Sabbath day
By J. B. SALSBERG
Ican't lie to you, my esteemed and highly regarded readers. I am depressed by the world we live in at this moment in time. And that disturbing feeling I don't even wish on my worst enemy, let alone on nice, humane and kindly people like you, and all the rest of our readers, surely are.
So, quite often I choose to be silent and try to cover such silence with all kinds of excuses. .
What's so wrong with the world that I should be so upset by it, you may ask?
Yes, the world may be proceeding the way it always did but I belong to the segment of human beings that really believed that "we" can and will liberate all of mankind from hunger, want, oppression and murderous wars.
We didn't, of course, succeed; nay, we failed . .
So why a Jewish person like myself who, aside from the usual pain caused by the loss of near and dear ones, can be considered as very fortunate in many, if not most, ways?
I find it so hard to accept the world as it is and live in peace with it. It must be the."Jewishness" which is a very significant portion of my Jewish heritage.
„Maybe it's because from my earliest childhood 1 was taught to pray for and to expect the coming of Messiah? (Is that why 1 catinot but be a
friend of the Lubvavitch chassidic movement?)
But, let's turn our backs on all such troubling thoughts and let's enjoy a leisure walk on Bathiu^t Street, Toronto's main Jewish thoroughfare, on a midsummer Saturday (Shabbes) afternoon, as I did a few weeks ago.
On most days of the week Bathurst Street, especially from St. Clair Avenue northward to the city limits, becomes mainly the heart of Toronto's Jewish community. A pedestrian or automobile driver (including the bus service, of course) will, if he or she is an observant person, be fascinated by the unfolding panorama of our multi-faceted Jewish lifestyles.
He will be attracted to the massive, but architecturally different, oldest two Jewish synagogues, the "Conservative" Beth Tzedec and the "Reform" Holy Blossom Temple. Continuing northward, past Eglinton Avenue, the observer will soon witness the Orthodox EritzChaim school complex, facing the Jewish National Arbeter Farband's BiaJik School at Viewmount and the Shaarei Shomayim complex on Glencairn at Bathurst.
From then on Bathurst Street again changes its complexion. After passing a block or two of "old country "-style small retail shops, the chassidic world really lakes over, after passing the Lawrence Plaza. "
It is northward, from that plaza, that I very much like to observe and, as much as possible, to get to know. , ,
Before sunset, on a midsummer erev Shabbes (from midday to candle lighting time) that part of Bathurst Street reminds me of a Warsaw erev Shabbes* a month before the outbreak of the devastating Second World War.
When I see hundreds of young and old, many in their traditional, old-country dress (especially the young lads) pacing determinedly and self-assuredly to their various chassidic prayerhouses. I'm deeply moved and find myself wishing, without words, that they be spared the undeserved ordeal of their forerunners in Warsaw. If I'm on that chassidic part of Bathurst Street on a midsummer Shabbes afternoon my mind usually recalls the great Hebrew and Yiddish poet Chaim Nachman Bialik's marvellous and very moving poem about a midsummer Shabbes in a typical. East European shtetl.
If my memory doesn't fail me, it went, in my humble prose version, like this:
The world sleeps in quiet silence. Father has his Sabbath afternoon nap and mother nods nearby, but my heart (says the young maiden) is aflutter. Why? Because every Sabbath, when the sun moves westward, my beloved comes to drink
Salsberg
water from the well that faces our house. The world slumbers, as do fields, forests, trees and all their branches. That's when her beloved comes to drink the cool waters from the well that faces her home . :
Well, r won't even suggest that the pious young lads, dressed in their traditional, bid country Sabbath clothes, who walk leisurely on north Bathurst Street towards their respective places of worship on such a Shabbes afternoon, are conscious of the age-old Jewish traditions of Eastern European Jewry. But I, the observer, am aware, arid I like, if weather permits, to join them in their leisurely midsumnier Sabbath walk, past the closed Jewish merchants' stores on Jewish-populated Bathurst Street.
So some (if not many) readers of this column will ask: what happened to J.B.? Is he going backward? Has he entered his second childhood? Has he become coriservative with a small "c"?
And the answer is "no" to all the above questions.
But, the state of the world does trouble me keenly. It is still a vale of tears instead of a high plateau full of sunshine and brotherly love. Messiah still tarries. Just when we heed him so bad-
ly...
In the meantime, thank heaven for Bathurst Street and all the Bathurst Streets of Jewish communities everywhere. Amen.
By RABBI W. GUNTHER PLAUT
Saturday, Oct. 3 (which Jews observed as Shabbat Shuvah) a portion of German industry celebrated the invention of rocket propulsion and the birth of the space age. The Globe and Mail published my article on that subject on Oct. 2, and 1 want readers of this column to know the substance of that piece.
Celebrating the invention of the V-1 and V-2 rocket of unlamented meinory strikes me as a hugely insensitive action, bordering on the obscene.
Of course, the way the matter is put by the supporters of the observance sounds innocent enough: it is supposed to be merely a celebration of a technological invention which has had an enormous impact on modem technology. Germans were indeed the early proponents of rocket propulsion and taught the world that it could be operative not only on land but in the air as well. Today jet airplanes and space vehicles are the direct descendants of this invention. There would be no reason to deny a nation that has for many years been in the forefront of innovative ideas and their translation into reality the pleasure of reminding everyone of their achievement.
Except — and this is the problem — that the first application of the New Age technology was demonstrated by way of wartrime and civilian
murder.
It was World War II which ftielled the energy of German scientists, just as in the United States it led to the development of the atomic bomb and Project Manhattan. In 1942, with the ground battle in Russia stalled and the Lift-waffe's assault on Great Britain a Standoff, German scientists put the first rocket-driven bombs into the air. Called V-1, they were monsters whose flaming tails could be seen from the ground, for the bombs resembled miniature zeppelins both in appearance and lumbering pace. Their aim was poor and their low altitude made them susceptible to destruction by the British.
So the German iarmy created a newer version. Called V-2. it was the real ancestor of today's jet engine, propulsion. The bombs were lauched high into the aUnosphere, where they disappeared from sight, only to descend unheralded, accompanied by an eerie sound and followed by massive detonation.
They were not anti-military weapons but designed primarily to destroy British morale. Their surprise was total; there was no \yorkable defense. I heard the "swish" and saw their effect for the first time when, on my way to the front in 1944, I visited niy parents in England. The V-2 missiles rained on a blacked-out Lon-
Rabbi Plaut
don with devastating effect, while never revealing when the next one would strike. The bombs were my first taste of war. Worse was to come.
In April 1945, the Nazi armies were on the run. I was serving with the American 104th Infantry.
and we had crossed the Rhine over the Remagen bridge. When a few days later we were advancing to central Germany we came upon the little town of Nprdhausen.
We knew from our briefings that the V-1 and V-2 bombs were manufactured here, deep down in the belly of the beautiftil Harz mountains, safe from Allied aerial attacks. We expected to find the factories deserted, and they were. But some of the people who had worked there were still to be found, a few kilometres down the road, in Dora concentration camp, behind barbed wire. That is where we came upon them, thousands upon thousands of dead lying about unbiiried, niingjed.with sprinklings of semi-dead. Dead or barely alive, they did not look as if they had ever been ordinary human beings. They were hardly recognizable now, skeletons with crinkled skin drawn over their bones. They had literally been worked to death and were then burned in the ovens which were still smoking — though the SS had made their get-away in time, leaving their ghastly evi-
dence behind. In Dora and Nordhausen, 20,000 prisoners of all sorts, mostly but not exclusively Jews, had met their fate. Reckoned all in all, the V-1 and V-2 bombs had taken more lives before than after they were launched; the civilian destruction paled before the inhumanities of Dora.
But before or after, the angel of death had been the first beneficiary of the new technology. That is why any "celebration" that has the remotest relation with Dora/Nordhauseri is an obscene perversion of values.
Of course, the parallels with the development of atomic energy aridihe devastation of Hiroshima on August 6, of that same year spring to mind. But the difference are equally apparent: Americans would not dream of celebrating the inven tion of atomic energy by identifying it in any way with the death of a quarter of a million Japanese. .
In fact, Leo Szilard, the man who more than anyone else was responsible for the bomb, knew early on that his invention was not a boon for mankind and tried his best to persuade the U.S. government not to drop the bomb. There cannot and there will not be an American observance of the invention of atomic energy, for the atom bomb is inextricably linked to it as is the desruc-tion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A similar reason should have moved Germans to skip this observance, and especially so because of the bitter memories of Dora.
[Cont'd, from page 11]
dadause instructs that the Constitution also be interpreted in a manner consistent with other characteristics which are expressed as objectives and princijples (not merely facts), namely, the vitality and development of the official language minority communities, and commitments to racial and ethnic equality, gender equality, human rights, etc.
5. Unlike certain other characteristics, gender equality is dealt with in three separate provisions of the Constitution (i.e., in the Canada clause and in sections 15 and 28 of the Charter). In fact, Section 28 exempts gender equality frorh the "notwithstanding clause."
Similarly, racial and ethnic diversity is addressed in several sections of the Constitution, i.e. in the Canada clause and in sections 15 and 27 of the Charter. Indeed, Section 27 stipulate^ that the Charter must be interpreted "in a'mannerbonsistent with the -preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians" so as to ensure that equality does not mean uniformity.
6. Linguistic duality would be mentioned only once in the Constitution, i.e. in the Canada clause. To counter any inference that the repeated references to gender equality and "multicultural rights" in tlie Constitution compared to a single reference to linguistic duality imply a weaker commitment to linguistic duality, balance is achieved by reinforcing the commitment to hnguistic duality through the addition of a commitment of governments to this value.
7. The additional commitment of governments to linguistic duality also serves to counter claims that the affirmation of the role of the government and legislature of Quebec to preserve and promote the distinct society implies an intention to undermine linguistic duality.
In ruling on the validity of laws challenged under the Charter of Rights, the Court must -first, determine whether a right (e.g. freedom of expression) is infringed. If affirmed it must determine whether the infringement -is a reasonable limit that is justifiable. To determine the validity of a limitation of rights, the courts have developed two
tests. First, whether the impunged legislation is intended to address an important legislative objective. Second, whether the legislative measure is proportionate to the objective (i.e. reasonableness).
In its well-known Quebec French-only signs jaw judgment, the Supreme Court ruled, in 1988, that requiring French violated freedom of expression but was valid nonetheless because (a) the promotion of the French language and culture was an important legislative objective; and (b) the requirement to use French on signs was reasonable. However, in. spite of the importance of promoting the French language and culture, the Court struck down the prohibition on the use of other languages, finding that to be disproportionate and unreasonable since it negated the linguistic and culhiral reality of Quebec. The Court added that it would even be valid to require the "marked predominance" of French on signs.
The Canada clause embodies the balance already recognized by the Supreme Court and would, in my view, result in the same judgment. The vitality and development of
the English-speaking community of Quebec and the commitment to cultural diversity, being fundamental characteristics, cannot be negated by the government and legislature of Quebec in the exercise of the historic role of preserving and promoting the distinct society.
The Canada clause, in recognizing the distinct society and confinning the equality of provinces, affirms our belief that equality does not mean uniformity. The affirmation of the role of the government and legislature of Quebec constitutes our formal agreement that the preservation and promotion of the distinct society within Canada is important and valid.
The Canada clause, with its varied elements, represents the Canadian.way. It declares a renewed commitment to a united Canada, strengthened by'our diversity It is a balanced statement of fundamental characteristics with a vjew to securing the rights of all Canadians.
The Canada clause is a conunitment to . Canadian identity.
Eric MaUorfis a Montreal lawyer and the founding president of Alliance Quebec.