Fellow Toronto Jews: the world is not ending for us. Neil Diamond taught me this.

Good news, fellow Toronto Jews. The world is not ending for us. Neil Diamond taught me this.

At the Mother’s Day matinee of A Beautiful Noise at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, I estimate the audience was 95% non-Jewish. The show itself was very Jewish, with some Yiddish, a l’chaim, and the theme that the singer’s angst expressed in his songs resulted from the fear and loneliness instilled in him by his parents from the antisemitism they experienced in Europe before coming to America.

2,000 people loved a musical about an obviously Jewish performer sharing a very Jewish experience.

I am certainly not saying one performance means that the Jewish community has no problems. It certainly does. But they must be viewed in context. Are there 70, 700 or even 7000 people that are actively acting to intimidate us? There are over 7 million people in the Toronto census area. Of course one such hater is too many, but it is not a significant slice of our fellow Torontonians.

Are there serious and dangerous incidents? Yes. But are the police being successful in arresting the culprits. Mostly yes.

There has been a wave of recent international podcasts which comment on and inflate our fear. We are sharing on social media every slight which makes it feel like every moment of Toronto Jewish life in Toronto is a horror. It is not. We are complaining that ten marauders with a Palestinian flag intimidate us at a Toronto street corner and hold whole Jewish neighbourhoods hostage. It’s not ideal, but if we ignore them maybe they will go away. Let’s try that.

We do need to work to make things better. We need to vote out those who don’t support us. We need to fight for our rights in schools, universities, unions and professions. But in doing so, let’s not suggest that our world is ending.  Let’s stop talking about the need to move to Panama.

Let’s go on with our lives and work to make things better. Go to a show, a ball game, ride the subway, go to a restaurant and you may see that Toronto is mostly unchanged. Most of our fellow Torontonians are not thinking about, watching or caring about Israel and its haters.

Despite the problems, it is a privilege to live in Toronto. Let’s be proud of being Canadians, Torontonians and Jews. That may be a better response to the haters.

As Neil Diamond might say: “I am [Jewish], I said,” “I can find strength and safety [here] and then I rise again.”