A Home Run, Pitch and Question for a New Year

The Home Run, Final Pitch, and Question for a New Year

When we heard that Boy George was coming to Vancouver, we knew there was an opportunity.

For nearly three years, Jews around the world have watched many of the voices we once expected to stand beside us choose silence, distance, or worse. So when someone consistently and unapologetically stands with the Jewish community, we notice.

Boy George has been one of those people.

My initial thought was simple. Perhaps a group of us would attend the concert at Vancouver’s PNE and find a way to thank him. To recognize someone who had demonstrated genuine courage at a moment when courage has often been in short supply.

Then the opposition began.

A few hundred extremists attempted to pressure organizers and make their presence felt.

What happened next was a reminder that loud and large are not the same thing.

Hundreds of extremists were met by thousands of Jewish and allied voices around the world. Our office and that of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs went to work. Letters were written. Community members mobilized. Friends and allies stepped forward. We were determined to ensure that the voices of negativity would not prevail.

Just as importantly, the leadership at the PNE got it.

They understood that communities should not be bullied into silence. They understood that friendship should not require permission. And they stood firm.

And then Rabbi Dan Moskovitz pointed toward the outfield fence. Like Babe Ruth calling his shot.

While most of us were thinking about how to thank Boy George at a concert, Rabbi Dan was imagining something much bigger. What if we brought him into the heart of the Jewish community? What if we didn’t thank him backstage? What if we thanked him from the bimah?

Never doubt Rabbi Dan.

Two days later, more than 700 people packed Temple Sholom for one of the most meaningful Jewish communal evenings I have experienced since October 7.

The event raised funds for our collective fight against antisemitism. It celebrated an extraordinary ally. It reminded us that friendship still matters and that solidarity still exists.

Others can tell the story of Boy George’s conversation with Rabbi Dan, his authenticity, his curiosity, and the powerful moment when he declared that “Jew love is true love.”

And just like Babe Ruth, Rabbi Dan connected.

The home run cleared the fence and landed in the middle of a packed sanctuary.

Boy George’s conversation with Rabbi Dan, his authenticity, his curiosity, and his declaration that “Jew love is true love” deserve a story of their own.

But I want to focus on what came next.

The final pitch.

Before the featured conversation began, Emet Davis stepped forward to deliver their final public remarks as Director of Stakeholder Relations for Jewish Federation of British Columbia’s combatting antisemitism initiative before beginning a new chapter, including marriage and a move away from Vancouver.

Emet’s story has become painfully familiar in the post October 7 world. What followed was honest, deeply personal, challenging, and hopeful.

Here was someone who had dedicated decades of their life to social justice causes and progressive movements. Someone who believed deeply in solidarity. Someone who discovered firsthand how quickly many of those solidarities could disappear when Jews became the ones in need of support.

Yet theirs is not a story about disappointment.

It is ultimately a story about purpose.

The remarks they delivered that evening were honest, deeply personal, challenging, and hopeful. They offered a powerful reflection on allyship, antisemitism, community, and the responsibility each of us carries in this moment.

Most of all, they reminded us that while institutions matter, this work ultimately belongs to all of us.

Emet reflected on allyship, antisemitism, community, and the responsibility each of us carries. Most importantly, they asked a question that I believe deserves to stay with all of us as we enter a new year:

What is my role?

I’ve chosen to share Emet’s remarks in their entirety because they articulate something many Jews have struggled to express over these past three years.

Read them slowly. Reflect on them. And then ask yourself the same question.

REFLECTIONS ON COMBATTING ANTISEMITISM & OUR COMMUNITY –
A CONVERSATION WITH BOY GEORGE AT TEMPLE SHOLOM ~ Emet Davis

September 9, 2026

I’m so honoured to say a few words tonight. Thank you, Rabbi Dan, Ezra, and everyone who worked so hard to make this event happen. And special thanks to Boy George for his allyship. I also want to acknowledge, with thanks, that 100% of ticket sales from tonight’s event will be directed to JFBC’s Combatting Antisemitism Fund.

Rosh Hashanah is almost upon us. Our year draws to a close, and we look toward a new year. It’s also a time for introspection. And I have a lot to reflect on this year.

I’ve spent nearly 40 years of my career engaged in purpose-driven work, mainly as a communications and campaigns strategist, advancing social justice causes that I believed in: women’s issues, prisoners’ rights, HIV/AIDS activism, queer rights, disability advocacy, environmental action, workers’ rights, and many others.

Most of those campaigns weren’t connected to my own lived experience. But that didn’t matter to me. Because I felt part of something larger, a broader movement to make the world a better place.

Solidarity: standing with people because their fight for justice mattered, even when it wasn’t my own fight.

Combating antisemitism has been unlike any other social movement I’ve encountered in my career.

Some of that is because antisemitism is such an old form of hate. It mutates insidiously over time.

Some of it is because of the sophisticated campaign surrounding October 7, not only the Hamas attacks themselves, but the narrative that followed: terrorism and violence portrayed as revolution and liberation; indigeneity portrayed as colonization.

And those narratives have been adopted and amplified far beyond Hamas’s traditional supporters, by politicians, political parties, activists, labour unions, academics, and sometimes, other Jews.

But the broader reason this social movement is unlike anything I’ve ever known before is because, this time, it involved my lived experience.

And that broader movement, that solidarity network, largely disappeared.

But not entirely.

I have been deeply moved by the courage and tenacity of allies who have held firm to principles of love, acceptance, and inclusion. People who have refused to submit to relentless internet shaming, who have continued to support us even when it was difficult or unpopular.

Including, in our own community, the outstanding work of Upstanders Canada.

And, of course, the unapologetic support for the Jewish community expressed by our guest of honour: Boy George.

We need more of that.

And we need to hold ourselves to that same standard. Because solidarity isn’t passive. It asks something of us. To show up, to speak out, and take action.

Before working in Jewish community, I really had no idea about the infrastructure and social safety net that had been constructed to support and nurture Jewish life, identity, pride and resilience across our entire lifecycle.

Child care, schools, camps, fitness and sports, family services, housing, seniors programs and care, and so much more.

And, through our partner CIJA, government relations and advocacy. This is highly sensitive and crucial work, including the recent Action Hub campaign to demonstrate community support for Boy George’s recent concert at the PNE.

Our extraordinary infrastructure was constructed to ensure: Never Again.

But suddenly, after October 7, that infrastructure wasn’t enough. It couldn’t shield us from the scope and intensity of the vitriol and violence we are facing today.

And it brought me back to a fundamental framework we used in the labour and social justice movements: the difference between a servicing model and an organizing model.

The traditional servicing model says: we provide funds to the organization, and we expect the professionals to carry out the work for us.

But an organizing model says something different. It says: every individual has a role to play.

This doesn’t mean abandoning our servicing model. We need the safety net we’ve built, the professional expertise of our agencies.

We need to transition to a hybrid model.

We must use our incredible existing infrastructure to give our community the resources, tools, training and support they need to become self advocates and community organizers themselves.

That is exactly the rationale behind JFBC’s Combatting Antisemitism Fund.

The Fund is not some opportunistic way to grow our servicing infrastructure, with more Federation staff people.

It is the exact opposite of that. It is about expanding community capacity by supporting grassroots movements to fight, from the inside, where anti Jewish hate lives and grows.

We can no longer outsource our defense.

But we are still in the early stages of this work. Currently, we have over 700 affiliated activists doing outstanding work across our province.

To strengthen these efforts, we need our community showing up everywhere: in schools, on post secondary campuses, in health care, in arts and culture, in labour unions, on community boards, and in municipal, provincial and federal government.

Because if we aren’t there to reflect our realities, others will distort them.

And here is the uncomfortable truth: our opponents have been doing exactly this for decades.

So as we enter this new year, my call to our community is simple:

Don’t just donate. Organize.

Don’t just support. Show up.

Don’t just be a bystander. Get into the rooms where it is happening.

And don’t just ask what our institutions can do for us. Ask yourself: What is my role?

Be an organizer.

Be an activist.

Be an ally.

There are cards on your seats. You can scan the QR code on the blue side to learn more about JFBC’s combatting antisemitism initiative. And you can scan the code on the reverse side to contribute to the Combatting Antisemitism Fund.

L’Shana Tovah.

May it be a sweet and peaceful year.

As Rosh Hashanah approaches, Emet’s question feels particularly relevant.

The Jewish community has spent generations building schools, camps, community centres, advocacy organizations, social services, housing programs, and countless other institutions that nurture Jewish life. Those institutions remain indispensable.

But perhaps the lesson of the past three years is that institutions alone are not enough.

Boy George demonstrated what allyship can look like from outside our community.

Emet challenged us to consider what responsibility looks like inside it.

One delivered the home run.

The other threw the final pitch.

Both reminded us that solidarity is not a feeling. It is an action.

It requires people to show up.

It requires people to speak up.

And it requires people willing to step onto the field when it matters most.

As we prepare to enter a new year, may we all have the courage to answer the question Emet asked that night:

What is my role?

L’Shanah Tovah.

May it be a sweet, healthy, peaceful, and hopeful year ahead.