Antisemitism Then and Now

Just over a year ago, my wife and I and another couple were out for a walk in Toronto and found ourselves having to escort a Jewish woman back to her office building. It was too dangerous to let her navigate her way back on her own through the large groups of people chanting for the genocide of Jews.

Initially I thought the threats were an outlier – a momentary surge of anger in the heat of the Israeli-Gaza-Hamas conflict. And I thought unrest would quickly calm down, after all we live in Canada that extolls the value of tolerance and respect for minorities. We even have laws on the books that are supposed to protect people from such threats.
 
Yet here we are a year later. And it has only gotten worse. 
 
It seems that almost weekly I see reports of people marching in the streets saying horrible things about Jews and calling for their elimination. Violence continues to be carried about against Canadian Jews and their places of work and worship, all the while terrorists targeting Jews are publicly praised as heroes.
 
But little is done by government to stop such actions.
 
Previously scholars have looked back at Canada’s response to the rise of antisemitism in Nazi Germany and had mixed reviews of Canadian responses to blatant and violent antisemitism then in Europe. 
 
Which begs the question – what about now? Are we any better than previous generations? I would say no.
 
If the events of the last year are any indication, Canadians face a troubling rise of antisemitism. In the 1930s, the threats and violence directed towards Jews was in Nazi Germany. Now, the threats and violence directed towards Jews is in Canada.
 
Of course, a significant difference in the two situations is that while Canadians could do little to alleviate the plight of Jews who lived in Germany then, we Canadians could do a significant amount to protect the Jews who live in Canada now. 
 
Sadly, based on the last year's events, I envision a future having to escort yet even more Jews home at night.




For further reading on Canadian churches and past antisemitism:
 

• Davies, Alan and F. Nefsky. How Silent Were the Churches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1997.
• Genizi, Haim. The Holocaust, Israel, and the Canadian Protestant Churches. Montreal/Kingston/London/Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002
• Davies, Alan and Marilyn Felcher Nefsky. “The Church of England in Canada and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era, 1933-1945.” Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal 10, 1 (Fall 1988): 1-19.  
• Nefsky, Marilyn. “The Cry that Silence Heaves.” (unpublished paper  presented at the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History, 1983: accessed online: http://csph.ca/papers/1983-nefsky.pdf )
• Nefsky, Marilyn F. “The Shadow of Evil: Nazism and Canadian Protestantism.” In Antisemitism in Canada, edited by Alan Davies, 197-225. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1992.
• Shantz, Mary-Ann. “Kingston Christians and the Persecution of European Jews during the Nazi Era.” In Canadian Society of Church History Papers (1992): 5-18.