Rosh Hashanah signifies the beginning of a great spiritual rejuvenation in Jewish culture. It is the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the eight High Holy days, culminating in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
The holidays this year are falling on one of the most fraught times in modern Jewish history. On Oct. 1, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Israel invaded Lebanon and Iran launched more than 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
During a Rosh Hashanah service, a designated member of the community will blow the shofar, a ram’s horn.
“The purpose of the shofar is to wake you up very intensely,” said Noah Ifergan, 26, a Jewish-Canadian studying at a Yeshiva educational institution in Jerusalem. “And you can say the same thing about missiles getting fired at you; it’s a major digression from the normal course of the world.”
This past Monday marked one year since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The attacks occurred on Simchat Torah last year, a holiday that takes place a few days after Yom Kippur and concludes the annual Torah reading cycle. For many Jews around the world, that infamous day has felt like a clean break from their previous lives.
Many Jewish-Canadians say they have been galvanized by events of the past year into strengthening their faith in both Judaism and Zionism.
“Look at our streets,” said Eton Ziner-Cohen, who lives in Toronto. “We know we are not welcome here, that we don’t have long. And so Israel is the only promise of a future that we have.”
“Last year was one of profound ontological homelessness,” he continued. “Wherever we lived, we were not welcome; our homeland was under attack, and our right to have a home — let alone to be at home anywhere — was gravely imperiled.”
But others say Israel’s actions have alienated them from their belief systems.
“When you use Judaism as a cover for your genocidal action and claim that you’ve this God-given right to do so, people are naturally going to hate the people — our people — that are doing the killing,” said Joe Pasternak, another Jewish-Canadian in Toronto.
Israel’s significance
Raphael Kay, a Jewish-Canadian currently completing a PhD at Harvard University, says that before Oct. 7 he never felt like he would be treated prejudicially because of his Jewish heritage. This past year changed that.
“I felt that there was a line being drawn from the situation with Hamas in Gaza, to the Israeli Jews as an oppressive force, to Jews worldwide as being the same,” he said. “[It felt like] there was a very clear narrative developing that we were these almighty, powerful and evil force. You could really feel it.”
Like so many campuses in the United States and Canada, pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments at Harvard, which Kay walked past almost every day.
“My experience with the encampments was actually that they were peaceful,” Kay said. “It was a mostly reasonable thing where people were just having conversations on college campuses.”
But he did feel animosity coming from friends on social media who were bashing Israeli actions in Gaza, he says. He tried to engage with them as best he could.
“[A] lot of the world didn’t understand the significance of the State of Israel, and what it meant to be surrounded by people who are taught to hate Jews from a very young age,” he said.
Belief in Zionism collapsed
Pasternak, of Toronto, says he did not grow up very connected to the Jewish faith. But he was deeply connected to Jewish culture and community, so the virtues of Zionism were instilled in him from a young age.
“You’re told about how one day you’ll go on Birthright in Israel,” he said, referring to an Israel- and donor-funded trip to Israel offered to young Jews around the world. “[A]nd [you’re told] that you have uncles in the [Israel Defense Forces], and that it’s the most beautiful country with the most beautiful women, where I could meet my wife,” he said.
But Pasternak, who is now 26, says that as he matured he began to doubt that Israel could be a promised land for him. The first major break occurred in 2022, when he learned about the Israeli military’s murder of Shireen Abu-Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist.
As the war unfolded this year, his connection to Zionism totally collapsed. “I felt like my culture and my upbringing was being appropriated as a tool of violence,” he said. Pasternak began showing up to pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Toronto, where he says he felt instantly accepted.
“I would be asked by these Arab men who I was, and I explained that I was Jewish, and not once was I harrassed or bothered … I feel as welcome with Palestinian and Lebanese people as I do with other anti-Zionist Jews at the protests,” he said.
Pasternak’s opinions about the conflict have been a tough pill for his Zionist family members to swallow. His relationship with his mother has reached a breaking point, he says.
But as the civilian death toll in Gaza has mounted, “some of [his family members] are starting to think that maybe I was onto something.”
“And now we’re coming up on Yom Kippur, we’re entering not just the Jewish New Year, but another year of continued genocide in Gaza,” he said.
‘Penetrating loneliness’
According to a September survey by the advocacy organization Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, 82 per cent of Jewish-Canadians say Canada is less safe for them now than before the Oct. 7 attacks.
Rabbi Steve Wernick says his Toronto synagogue is now spending half-a-million dollars a year on security. “We hear the calls for intifada in the streets,” he said, referring to pro-Palestinian protestors’ calls for an uprising against Israel. “During the Second Intifada in Israel, the introduction of suicide bombing killed over a thousand Israelis.”
“So when they protest in front of our businesses and our synagogues and our schools, what are we supposed to conclude they want to do?” he said.
When speaking to his congregants on Rosh Hashanah, Wernick says he spoke about the “penetrating sense of loneliness” and “post-traumatic stress” that has overcome the Jewish people since Oct. 7.
This sense of vulnerability was the one common theme that came up with everyone interviewed for this article.
Ifergan likens the Oct. 7 attacks — and the sound of the ram’s horn on Rosh Hashanah — to a thunderbolt. “There’s this idea in Judaism that you’re supposed to make a blessing when you hear thunder. It is an appreciation of this creation from God that wakes you up very harshly.”
“So we go on, with the resolve that our faith now be stronger than ever — and the visceral atonement engendered by the awareness that we grew complacent and forgot our faith, which translates into having forgotten ourselves,” Ziner-Cohen said.
“If we do not remember who we are, you can rest assured the rest of the world will never fail to remind us.”
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