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Commemorating Yom Hashoah
More than 400 community members gathered Wednesday evening for a moving Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) ceremony at the JCC, convened by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In a Jerusalem Post interview this week, Elie Wiesel was asked if he was concerned about the memory of the Holocaust fading as the survivor generation passes away. His response was that through literature and historical accounts, academic courses and film, there is so much more discussion about the Holocaust today than ever before. As a result, he feels strongly that the memory of the Holocaust is not in danger of fading away. This past weekend, 14 teens from the Lower Mainland left on March of the Living, a two week trip to Poland and Israel, thus widening the circle of witnesses to the Holocaust in our community.

Israel at 64
As we look ahead to this coming week’s commemoration of Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Remembrance Day) and celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), I can’t help but be struck by the multiplicity of views and feelings raging about our Jewish homeland in the news and around the world. A young country whose existence today is nothing short of a miracle, Israel is a country of contradictions and paradoxes that inspires and infuriates, clarifies and puzzles, all at the same time. As I learned from Avraham Infeld, the Jewish educator who for several years led Hillel International, our relationship with Israel only makes sense if we understand it in a family context. As family, we can love but not always like, and still end each day bound together as we were when it started.

The recent publication of Peter Beinart’s book, The Crisis of Zionism, has gotten a lot of press in recent years. An articulate critic of Israel, the wake of his book has fueled many recent debates within and beyond the Jewish community. Daniel Gordis recently shared a response to Beinart’s views that I found most compelling. In critiquing Beinart, Gordis places our relationship with Israel in a meaningful context. He would be the first to acknowledge that there is what to criticize about the modern State of Israel. But he would also demand that we do so understanding the basis of our relationship with Israel, and how central it is to our identity as Jews.

With my oldest daughter in first year university, our family is experiencing these issues in a different and more personal way. When she participated in a meeting last week in which Jewish students debated whether and how Yom Ha’atzmaut could be celebrated on campus, she realized the extent to which her Jewish peers on that campus don't understand the basis of their own relationship to Israel in the same way she does.

In the context of our Vancouver family relationship, I invite you to join us Wednesday night as our community gathers together to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. I can guarantee that the 1,500 or more of us won’t all agree on many things about the exciting and perplexing 64 year old country. But, we can agree that miracles, warts and all, she is ours. And we can celebrate our own community’s long and historic connection of love and support.

Parashat Shemini
This week’s parasha closes with a description of the basic laws of kashrut, Jewish dietary law. The Torah delineates which animals are inherently considered treif (not kosher), and also provides the basis for separation of meat and milk. Rabbinic interpretation later expanded the basic restrictions into a much more fully developed system. While rabbinic interpreters have provided many different rationales for the laws of kashrut, most agree that they serve as a means of setting the Jewish people apart, making them unique among the nations.

We live in a time when many Jews are alienated from the observance of kashrut, and indeed from the concept of particularism it reinforces. But there is, I believe, inherent wisdom in a tradition that builds into the daily essential act of nourishing ourselves a reminder that we have a unique collective identity that is bound up with a set of values and beliefs.

Shabbat shalom!