This too shall pass!

“This too shall pass.”

Going through a divorce is a cataclysmic event, even if you were the one to initiate it.  I felt like my world was totally crumbling.  With my furtive looks around the room, I was trying to assure myself that no other calamity would jump out from a corner and onto my back.  As a sufferer of generalized anxiety disorder, I can assure you that this literally has a paralyzing effect.  You’re unable to make any decisions as you assume the next step will be incorrect.  It’s called catastrophizing.

My friend Nancy, whom I met in teacher’s college, was a big comfort to me.  She would listen to my doubts and fears for hours and then very patiently say platitudes which were meant to be comforting.  “This too shall pass.”  I really wanted her to stop saying that as I knew if it meant that the dark times shall pass, then inevitably the good times will also pass.  I was in a downward spiral.

That did pass. We all survived the divorce.  Had I known what it would have been like, I may have not chosen to go down that path.  Now with the concerns of my eroding relationship with my youngest daughter, Nancy has once again said – This too shall pass.

Yes, it will pass and my relationship with my daughter will heal but it will never be the same. A level of trust has been broken.  I will be cautious before I stick my neck out.  I will protect my heart first.

This is the same level of heartbreak I’m feeling with the world in general.  Suppose everything were to go back to the days prior to October 7^th and that there’s the Great Apology for all the antisemitism, I could never extend the same level of trust as I once did to our country’s leaders, to the passively complicit university systems, to the friends who disappeared and to the silent majority who never said anything in defence of the Jews either in the diaspora or in Israel.  Israel did not choose this war.  Those who were kidnapped were not exclusively Jewish nor even Israeli.  Yet with all the false accusations, masked Jew hate, the damage has been done.

When there is no trust, there is also no sense of security or personal safety.

Although I’m not Jewish, antisemitism is having a direct impact on my life.  I’m married now to a wonderful man, Simon, who happens to be a secular Jew.  It should be as unremarkable as that to say who happens to be Jewish, as it would be to say he also happens to be a retired pathologist with more than 30 years’ service to the health care system in Ontario, Canada.

However, you want to define him, Jewish, doctor, a Jewish doctor, is irrelevant. He’s a brilliant kind caring man who is dedicated to living a productive life, filled with personal values and being an understanding and compassionate spouse for his anxious-ridden husband who is sometimes very difficult to live with since his neurosis often overflow into their daily life.

The Judaism played a very little part in our lives together.  It comes up as a cultural aspect and only because I’ll often ask questions.  I’m curious about my partner and want to know things of his childhood which includes him as a child, adolescent and young man.  I want to hear of his days in Hebrew school as well as decipher the mangled Yiddish expressions used by his parents, third generation British Jews of Polish Ashkenazi descent.  We relish the word-play while finding the similarities with German, which happens to be my first language, even though I was born here in Canada.

His Judaism was such a small part of our relationship, but not insignificant.  It added spice to our differences, as did my German Catholic ethnicity, that makes our relationship unique.

In the weeks after the October 7^th Massacre in Israel, the wave of antisemitism grew into a tsunami.  Unpredictable as to the damage it would wreak, it also brought a secondary wave of paranoia for just about every Jew in Canada and the United States as they felt the sure and stable ground beneath their feet, tremble, shift and crack.  There was no more taking personal security for granted.  The paranoia was not only contagious, as I caught it as well, but it seemed to invade every corner of the mind and every aspect of daily life.  Many Canadian and American Jews contemplated aliyah, immigrating to Israel.

We have all our paperwork completed and submitted to the government of Israel but haven’t taken that final step.  Even though Israel does not have gay marriage, they recognize legally married gays from other countries.  However, the thought of moving to a country that was in an active conflict, basically a war zone, seemed ludicrous to many of my non-Jewish friends.  For Simon, it was a very logical step.  At least in Israel, you know who the enemy is and you know from which direction the bombs were coming.  As he would often repeat: “Better a punch in the face than a knife in the back!”

The knife in the back. That’s how he felt in Canada.  The government and city officials consistently failed to act on what was assumed to be “peaceful protests” which often bordered on riots or vigilantism.

You didn’t know which was worse?  The angry Canadian-Arabic radicals were burning and stomping on Israeli flags. Down at City Hall, during that first winter, they were shouting aggressive antisemitic slurs into the camera as Toronto’s Mayor, Olivia Chow, was unsuccessfully milking a public relations moment with her promotion of the free public skating in Nathan Philips Square. Mayor Chow would laugh off the awkward hijacking of her publicity stint by claiming what we’re seeing is “Democracy in action.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow: “Democracy in action.” (Image courtesy of Global News, Toronto, Canada) Click to play video recording

There was the obvious lack of control in what should have been a very scripted public relations moment promoting the idea of a “small-town community” in an alleged world-class city. These ugly intrusions were aired without being edited to the embarrassment of the demure and reasonable Torontonians.

Then there was the corpulent Cabbagetown matron, waddling with a determined gait up Sumach Street or down Sackville Street, affixing inflammatory posters to street lighting standards. The “Free Palestine” and “Stop the Genocide” reproductions had lurid graphics that would never be seen or read by any members of the Israeli Knesset in the heart of this distant gentrified residential enclave, an ocean and continents away.

Cabbagetown – heritage homes – Victorian rowhouses

So, who has this message for?  Them!, you know…the Jews or Jew-lovers. The absurd importance this white woman, seething in privilege, felt she had while exercising her might in this gentrified neighbourhood of Victorian homes in central Toronto, named in honour of the former Irish ghetto of the mid 20^th century where cabbages for food were grown in the front yards. The gentry appropriated the name in order to evoke a sense of cachet for their uppity cluster of heritage homes.  She proudly wore her keffiyeh like a shawl she just bought at Holt Refrew’s, over her very Canadian Hudson Bay coat.

Cabbagetown homes with Palestinian flags – Hostages lives matter too

This too shall pass. Or will it?

I was more than a little surprised when Simon said he signed up for the gun course. Shocked would be a better word as Simon presents more like a soft-spoken academic than a gun-slinging sheriff.  In Canada, to use a firearm, you must get at least an unrestricted Possession and Acquisition firearms licence.  To acquire this, you are required to take a full day, 8-hour, intensive course, at the end of which, you take a test, written and practical in which a failing grade is something like anything below 80%.  Just a quick thought here, would I want a surgeon operating on me who merely achieved 80% on his practicum?  Probably not.

What on earth was he thinking?  That he was going to purchase a firearm for self-protection!  Currently in Canada, you can only purchase rifles and shotguns.  Pistols and handguns were now restricted weapons that could only be inherited. Possession of a pistol necessitated a second day of instruction for the “restricted” firearms certification.

My knee-jerk reaction was that there is no way that a gun would come into this house without my ability to handle it as well.  I could have easily told him that this was all crazy and that we shouldn’t even be entertaining the notion that we would use a firearm in self-defence, but instead, I also surprisingly and unexpectedly signed up for the course.

We took the course, on separate days, and we both passed.  I became so intrigued by the subject matter, that I signed up for the restricted firearms course which I also passed. I would never have access to a pistol, but I was intrigued with possibility of obtaining that additional qualification.  It must be the teacher in me.

We’ve both obtained the federal identity card, issued by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which we could present at any firearms store or firing range.  He had toyed with the notion of paying the instructor to take us to the firing range and teach us some target practice, but we’ve run out of time here in Canada.  All our other plans have sucked up every spare moment.

Firearms Licence – Possession and Acquisition

I was not in any rush to go to any shooting range.  I had experiences as a young teen with my father trying to teach me on how to use his shotgun.  He had these firearms in the house as we lived out in the Bush (a forest of malnourished trees and lots of scrub) in Northern Ontario.  He would only use the gun-shot noise to scare off any dangerous animal such as a bear, if it came too close to the house.

In the gun course, we never actually fired any rifles. We just learned about the safety aspect such as how to load and unload the firearm as well as where to point it when not in use.  The one most useful item that I did acquire in that course was the confidence in knowing I would be able to unload the firearm safely of its bullets.

There was also a little reassurance in the clarification of the different laws concerning firearms.  The most notable fact I discovered was that, regardless, you would be charged by police when firing a firearm within city limits. The use of a firearm as protection would only fly as a defense if the court deemed that you used “equal or lesser” force.  That really seemed to me like too much of a precarious judgement call when hastily using a firearm as my first line of defense against a home invasion.

Fortunately, this adventure never progressed passed the acquisition of the license which is now really a moot point.  We are leaving the country, and the licence will serve no purpose.  We’d never use it in Canada and I’m sure the license is void in Mexico, or even in Israel.  But it was an achievement.  It did fulfil the purpose of making us believe that we were being proactive with respect to self-preservation, instead of waiting around for the knife in the back.

This too shall pass but now we feel better prepared for what we were going through.

We’ve since switched to other activities which have given us self-confidence and the feeling of empowerment.  Simon has made a serious commitment to weightlifting.  He has always had great biceps and an expansive chest but now they are incredible.  Most men have difficulty finding dress shirts that fit their expansive stomachs.  On Simon, the top buttons of dress shirts seem to be ready to pop while his biceps are precariously encased in the sleeves. He can deadlift a one-time best of 315 lbs.  (143 kgs)

Simon and his personal one-time bests: 315 lbs (143 kgs) deadlift and 225 lbs chest press (102 kgs)

Meanwhile, I ended up in boxing.  While we were touring a smaller gym, a less expensive gym closer to the house that we would use on weekends, I saw these punching bags dangling from the ceiling.  I was so frustrated at the time with pent-up anger from the devolution of humanity, the thought crossed my mind that I might like to take a not-so-innocent punch at those bags to relieve some frustration.  I mentioned my impulse when seeing these bags to my trainer, Adam, from the expensive gym, and discovered he had experience with boxing and could teach.  Although it has begun with sparring, it will never progress to competitive boxing.

I felt ridiculous in my newly purchased boxing gloves, during my first lesson.  What is a person of my age even thinking when he submits his sixty-year-old frame to a self-imposed pummeling?  Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever hit anybody before in my life, other than the attempted self-defence punch awkwardly lobbied at the school yard bully who felt I was the victim of the day.  Now, I faced my trainer, a former student from my high school where I taught.  I felt ridiculous, even paralyzed by the thought of hitting a student.

Adam, a former competitive hockey player, is a mountain of muscle at 6’5” (196 cm) and 200 lbs (91 kgs). Yet, I hesitated to hit him for two very deep-rooted principles.  I’d been raised not to hit people; hitting people is bad and was the last resort of people who couldn’t defend themselves with words. I’ve always prided myself on my expansive vocabulary and language abilities. As well, since I’m a rather tall male, I’ve not often felt threatened. I’m 6’2” and very fit for my age.  Secondly, I despise looking like a clumsy novice and am afraid to make mistakes in public.  Physical activity and sports had never been amongst my abilities.  I had discovered exercise late in life and now I was discovering a contact sport even later in life.   Riddled with doubt, I still hesitated.

Boxing with Adam.

After the first punch or two, I managed to overcome this hesitation. I realized that this friendly and gracious Colossus of the Aethos Wellness Centre was not made from glass and that my fist would never contact anything but the sparring pads. In fact, I quickly discovered that he’s punching back with the sparring pad. Now, several months later, I just let loose. I let it fly.  I’m into the footwork which intensifies the strength of the punch through the momentum of the whole body.  It’s an incredible aerobic workout that will leave you gasping for air until you figure out the breathing. It’s also empowering.  A five-minute session would leave me gasping and dizzy, and thinking I was about to faint.  My recent 45-minute sessions seem to pass by too quickly.  I know that I’ll be ready for Mexico City’s sparse oxygen content, due to the two kilometers above sea level altitude.

I don’t think I’d use boxing as my first line of defense when running away from the raging and rioting antisemites might be a safer bet.  However, the psychology of knowing you can defend yourself, that you would know what to do, even though you may lose, gives you so much personal confidence.  You know that you’d be able to successfully sucker punch somebody, or alternatively, take a combative posture and scare the assailant off…unless of course, he had a weapon.

I will let you know if I ever need to use it. For now, I’ll keep on practicing it as a form of exercise.  This search for empowerment and a form of self-defence in this, the Time of the “Knife in your Back”, has produced a pleasant bonus of good health.  The fitness found through boxing is a whole-body coordination of various muscle groups that require fast thinking.  I will never again make jokes about the “dumb” boxer.  I’ve discovered that this sport is as complex as the most sophisticated and strenuous beautifully executed Argentinian tango.   I’ve also discovered that boxing is the No. 3 sport in Mexico, preceded by soccer and baseball, and followed by lucha libre, so I’ve made my first steps into “adapting to the Mexican culture” – a requirement dictated to us by Senora Alejandro of the Mexican consulate.

I’m sure that this, the current iteration of Weltschmerz, will all pass, or it may not.  I’m just a little tired of waiting and seeing that there is yet another chapter in the 21^st Century Edition of the Divine Comedy.

People say you should try to live “in the moment”.  But that only lasts for a momentarily.  Invariably it works when your concentration is fixated on a pressing task.  For me, those moments used to be when I practiced hot yoga and was obsessed on maximizing the poses.  Now they happen when I’m boxing and the coordination of muscle, movement and breathing are key.  Both activities produce the aftereffects of the endorphin glow which prolong that feeling of well-being.

As many do, I miss the days of a World prior to October 7^th. But preceding that, I missed the innocence of the pre-Covid World. I also miss the era when Donald Trump wasn’t a house-hold name. There’s no winning anymore in this game.  I’d really like to believe that this too should all pass but I’m just afraid what will come up next to take its place.  Maybe if I were Jewish or raised Jewish, I would have much more resiliency or be able to take this in stride. I admire the resiliency of Jews to persevere and to celebrate life, despite facing millennia of persecution. Antisemitism – the world’s oldest hate.

Hate Speech in Toronto, Canada

Whether this passes or not, I have learned much about myself and about the relationships in my life.  Far fewer family members and friends than I thought have been supportive of our actions during this rise of antisemitism, but those, who have shown up, have given an unwavering gilded 110%. Relying on myself when the ground beneath me shifts and seeing the fortitude of others stricken by far worse circumstances, gives me the knowledge that all is not hopeless before Fate’s whims.