In the aftermath of October 7, Jay Ginsherman and Jacob Weiss, two Toronto natives, co-founded “Ha’ikar,” a discussion group for the Jewish community that focuses on collectively processing antisemitism and Jewish experiences. The two spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday about bringing their idea to fruition, the need for Jewish unity, and why talking is so important.
“After October 7, I was just feeling really angry and lost, and I felt like there was something that could be done,” Weiss told the Post. “I felt like within the Toronto community, nobody was talking about the antisemitism that became rampant pretty fast.” People focused on the conflict (with good reason), but “there wasn’t really anything we could do from Toronto to affect that,” he explained.
Weiss imagined that others in Toronto were feeling similar complex emotions, so he reached out to Ginsherman, his childhood friend. Ginsherman did have some experience in facilitating events, but mostly on the topic of LGBTQ issues or the Jewish queer community in Toronto. He was also feeling complex emotions, so when Weiss reached out to him in January 2024, asking if he’d be interested in starting a discussion group together, he jumped on the opportunity.
They met with the executive director at their synagogue and told her their plans.
“We started off with just six people,” Ginsherman told the Post. The next one had around 15 people, and it kept growing. Sometimes, they’ve had almost 20 people. “At the start of it, we were really just figuring things out as we went on. But over time, we became pretty confident as facilitators.”
The pair developed a format where they would meet the day before the group and discuss what had happened in the news, both in terms of the Middle East and also local issues in Toronto, such as antisemitic graffiti, artists making statements, a protest, or an arrest being made or not being made. They would then make a list of six to eight questions to ask the group.
While Ha’ikar started with 19-40 year olds, the two eventually decided to open a separate group for over 40s.
“When we started meeting with the older group, we found that even they had really experienced limited overt antisemitism over their lifetime,” Weiss said, adding that the new antisemitic experiences were unprecedented for them. “Everybody was trying to learn how to live with this, including us. It’s been a real experience I don’t think either of us ever anticipated.”
“Sort of similar to during the [Covid-19] pandemic, people started calling this the new normal,” added Ginsherman. “I’ve been referring to this as the old new normal. The normal we knew [pre-October 7] wasn’t the norm of the Jewish experience throughout time. We’re kind of going backwards to what most of history was like.”
While they originally thought that the two generation groups would be best separated, they have trialled four joint sessions and found them to be very successful. “We created one for both, the older and younger generations, 19 to 40, and then 40 plus. We have them sit in a kind of pattern [so different ages are integrated]. And we noticed that the generations have much more in common than we expected.”
Ground rules include steering clear of geopolitics
There are ground rules, however, which are that they mainly try to steer clear of geopolitics. “We added a guideline saying that we’re keeping it local,” said Ginsherman. “We know issues in the Middle East will come up. But we’re not going to solve the conflict tonight, we’re not going to solve the war, so we’re not going to be discussing what should the IDF be doing or what should Hamas’s response should be.”
“Our goal was to have as open a conversation as possible but still putting our foot down at extremism on either end of the political spectrum,” said Weiss.
They also added a rule about not using dehumanizing or demonizing language about a group of people after they went to a non-denominational, left-leaning synagogue that had previously had issues with fights between extremely anti-Zionist and super-Zionist members. The two want to avoid such a thing occurring in Ha’ikar.
“That’s why we refer to it as a brave space, not a safe space,” said Ginsherman. “Everybody comes in with some bravery that they’re going to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and learning how to do that.”
In terms of antisemitism in the city, Ginsherman said it has, of course, risen since October 7, but that there has “always been an underlying antisemitism in Canada.” Weiss added that many of the participants’ friendship groups have changed completely, with people turning against them since the start of the war.
“Anti-Israel sentiment has become so normalized, like it’s not really as much a niche anymore.”
There has also been an uptick in vandalism, including bricks thrown at windows and signs set on fire. A Jewish-owned coffeehouse downtown had its windows broken multiple times. There is, of course, fear in the community. Members of Ha’ikar have told Weiss and Ginsherman that they drop the pin to a location nearby when taking an Uber to synagogue.
“Sometimes at some of our sessions people introduce themselves, their name, their pronouns and then on a scale of 1 to 10, we ask, ‘How afraid are you?’ And it ranges from like sometimes four, sometimes five.” Someone once said nine. Many have stopped wearing their Stars of David necklaces and don’t tell new people they are Jewish.
The Post noted that, as well as the two age groups that Ha’ikar already includes, there is of course a major problem with antisemitism in schools. Will they open up groups to teens?
“We’re actually scheduled to do that at,” Weiss confirmed. “We talked about it, and I think it’s definitely something we’ve been prepared to do. It’s just never come to fruition. But then somebody asked us if we could.”
The session will take place at the start of the new year.
Looking ahead, the two anticipate that some of the tension, especially around the Middle East, may start to die down.
“It’s still boiling, but it’s at a turning point, and we’re kind of anticipating the general population sort of caring a bit less about being overtly anti-Israel,” Weiss said. “So now we want to shift our focus to really uniting the Jewish community across denominations.”
“In Toronto, the two major parts of the population are either secular Jewish or they’re modern Orthodox,” Ginsherman continued. “Reform is very much a minority in Canada, especially Toronto. And there is a lot of, I wouldn’t say animosity, but distrust between different denominations.
“I think in Judaism, or Jewishness, we’re about unity, not uniformity.”
“There’s a big divide, and I would like to see people sit down together and talk it out,” concluded Weiss.