When the World Changes in a Night

On the evening of October 17, 2026, I was in New Jersey, officiating my sister’s wedding. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Standing before those gathered, I said that we are living in a crazy world where moments of love like this matter more than ever. My phone was silenced. I was entirely present. Little did I know what was in store for me.

When the evening ended and I finally looked at my screen, Vancouver had changed.

The results came in: the incumbent mayor was defeated, 47.8 per cent to 32.7 per cent. ABC Vancouver, the party that had governed City Hall, was nearly wiped off the map. The sweep reached every level. Eight of ten city council seats went to candidates who had signed the Vote Palestine Vancouver pledge. The Park Board flipped to Vote Palestine-aligned candidates. The Vancouver School Board went nine for nine. Across all three bodies, eight of eleven seats targeted by Vote Palestine Vancouver were won by candidates committed in full or in part to that platform.

This was not a low-turnout protest. Voter participation topped 43 per cent, the highest in more than a decade. Vancouver came out. And this is what Vancouver chose. For a Jewish community already on guard, asking whether this city sees us as full and equal members, that number is not a comfort. It is the answer.

For a long time, the intrusion of pro-Palestinian extremism into institutional and political life felt like something happening in Montreal and Toronto, not here. We believed we were different. After Saturday night, we know we are not.

The outgoing council had been among the most steadfast defenders of the Jewish community in the city’s recent history. Weeks into its term, it adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. After October 7, 2023, the mayor did not equivocate: the city would always stand with the Jewish community. When a sitting councillor’s troubling social media history was raised publicly, the mayor called it out. The Integrity Commissioner investigated the mayor for doing so, while dismissing JFBC and CIJA’s formal complaint about that councillor’s conduct.

Through it all, the outgoing mayor’s home was spray-painted with “Free Palestine” and “Land back.” A bomb was threatened under his vehicle. Thirty protesters threw red-stained objects at his house. The city spent $226,000 protecting him. The movement that targeted him now governs the city he was protecting.

The candidate who received the most votes carried into office a social media history that Jewish organizations had raised publicly before election day. The posts, attributed to accounts under his name, contained explicit anti-Jewish content. He said he had been sarcastic. Voters, knowing this, chose him first.

Before the election, Upstanders Canada surveyed 557 BC candidates on seven basic questions about community safety, including security for threatened institutions, equal access and non-discriminatory grant conditions. Only 166 responded. In Vancouver, nine of ten councillors-elect did not answer. The one councillor who did respond was the sole member of the outgoing governing party to hold his seat.

Something genuinely new happened to this city. And yet, for the Jewish people, the dynamic underneath it is not new at all. The Passover Haggadah says it plainly: “In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us.” It is one of the oldest acknowledgments in Jewish life that our existence is contested, and that survival requires intention, not passivity.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “They do not hate us because of what we do. They hate us because of what we are.” His answer, echoed this year by Bret Stephens and Dan Senor at the 92nd Street Y in New York, is simple: build. Invest in Jewish schools, summer camps, community life. The response to those who would define us out of our own city is a Jewish identity so full and so rooted that no hostile council can touch its core.

We cannot control the hatred. We can control what we build.

On the morning of October 18, I flew home to Vancouver. As the Rockies gave way to the Purcells and we descended into the Fraser Valley, I felt a dark cloud of dread. The results. The sweep. The weight of what had happened to my city while I watched my sister begin her life with the person she loves. Then, somewhere over those mountains, something shifted. I said to myself: these are the moments we built this community for.

When city leaders openly attack our Jewish family and, in essence, tell us who an acceptable Jew is in their eyes, we have an answer. We say no to the old construct that seeks to define and limit us, that tells us our belonging is conditional. And we say yes to the world we have created because of it.

Less than 24 hours after the results came in, JFBC joined with CIJA and the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver to write a letter to the incoming mayor. We did not wait. We asked for a meeting from day one and told him clearly what our community requires of its city government. That letter is public. We are on the record.

Sometimes it takes those who threaten our identity to strengthen it.

Our schools are ready for your children. Our synagogues are ready to accept and protect you. Our JCC will always be a safe place, even though City Hall may not be.