Over the months leading up to last week’s mayoral election, a question circulated among some, or even many, Jewish voters in Toronto: does Olivia Chow have their backs?
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Chow → lead → backs
The question was largely rhetorical, informed by a widespread whisper campaign that she had chosen the wrong side in the unresolvable fight about whether or not there’s an equal sign between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
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she → inform → Semitism
I’ve known and reported on Chow for almost three decades.
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I → know → decades
The insinuation that she’s an anti-Semite is preposterous.
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she → ’ → ?
But that corrosive assumption — the source of which was in no small measure due to a tense election campaign — is out there, and needs to be addressed, given that she’s going to spend the next four years in the mayor’s office.
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she → need → office
Let me say that by “addressed,” I mean the following: in a place as diverse as Toronto, no one should be surprised that the horrors of Hamas’s murder and kidnapping of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent siege of Gaza, which killed some 70,000 Palestinians and left hundreds of thousands of people injured and destitute, ignited a wildfire of publicly expressed emotion: anger, fear, betrayal, endless arguments over definitions, and so on.
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which → let → definitions
However, in a multicultural city that boasts relentlessly about its deep dedication to pluralist values, our leaders must attempt to heal the deep civic divisions wrought by the war in Gaza.
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leaders → boast → Gaza
And this duty means finding the language and ideas to break through the echo chambers that have formed on either side.
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that → mean → side
The primary responsibility, to my eye, rests with Chow, who, as mayor of everyone in the city, must work harder to assuage the concerns of those Jewish Torontonians for whom the post-October 7 period has been filled with anxiety and a growing sense of isolation.
But that burden also sits squarely on the shoulders of figures like North York councillor James Pasternak, who backed Brad Bradford in the election and has become the de facto spokesperson for Toronto’s more conservative Jewish institutions.
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who → rest → institutions
They need to work together to build bridges, or at least take the temperature down.
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They → need → temperature
To achieve some measure of reconciliation, we should all try to move beyond unhelpful litmus tests in order to confront the most malignant manifestations of this fight: denial over the real fear engendered by repeated acts of harassment directed at Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions on the one side, and the free-flowing accusations of anti-Semitism on the other.
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we → achieve → other
What’s the appropriate role for municipal politicians here?
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role → ’ → politicians
I don’t expect or even want our local government leaders to wade into international affairs; whatever else you think about New York mayor Zoran Mamdani’s pronouncements, it’s absolutely not their remit.
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it → expect → pronouncements
They all have opinions one way or the other, but taking positions isn’t what they’re paid to do.
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they → have → what
They are, however, charged with sustaining safe and shared urban communities and this part of their job demands more attention than it has received in the past few years.
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it → charge → years
At the policy level, the city funds and to some extent directs the police, who, in my view, haven’t done a great job at curbing harassment directed against Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions.
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who → fund → neighbourhoods
Chow’s council did pass a bylaw restricting protests near religious and community spaces, which has since been eclipsed by similar federal legislation modelled on rules preventing the abuse of health care workers during the pandemic.
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which → pass → pandemic
Such measures serve to acknowledge the difference between legitimate political protest and garden-variety provocation.
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measures → serve → protest
Whether any of this has reduced tensions is debatable.
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reduced → reduce → tensions
The attempted mass shooting at a synagogue in Belleville, Ont., on the eve of Yom Kippur earlier this fall, merely served, entirely understandably, to heighten fears.
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shooting → attempt → fears
Some of the rhetoric in Bradford’s social media campaign further stoked those anxieties by recklessly branding many on the city’s progressive left as anti-Semites, including people close to Chow’s campaign.
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Some → stoke → campaign
As they move beyond a divisive election, our political leaders, on both sides, have to find ways to communicate the critical work of de-escalating and re-establishing mutual trust.
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leaders → move → trust
I don’t mean everyone has to agree on everything.
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everyone → mean → everything
But the city’s elected officials should be going out of their way to brainstorm ideas for repairing severed community relationships.
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officials → elect → relationships
As those who’ve gone through tough negotiations know, you don’t get to an agreement by fixating first on the most complex elements, drawing red lines, or lobbing accusations.
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you → go → accusations
Rather, you look for small wins at the margins and leverage those to build momentum.
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you → look → momentum
I’m under no illusion that many people will change their views of Gaza or contentious arguments, such as whether or not Israel committed genocide.
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Israel → ’m → genocide
But in terms of the social cohesion of the urban space we all share, our leaders — municipal and others — have a serious obligation to work together to achieve those small wins by re-engaging across political divides.
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leaders → share → divides
For generations, Toronto functioned incredibly well as a city that was home to immigrants from not just vastly different backgrounds, but also places and regions in conflict with one another.
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that → function → one
The way all this worked is that those old-country fights didn’t get a second life here.
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fights → work → life
True, newcomers bring their biases and grudges, but these didn’t become embedded in the civic dialogue that informed the way neighbourhoods and the city more broadly functioned.
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neighbourhoods → bring → way
The point is that Toronto has plenty of muscle memory when it comes to this kind of engagement, and I can’t think of a better opportunity to use it than the moment we’re now in.
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we → have → moment
The Aporia
