ON CANADIAN JEWISH CONGRESS

“Memory,” Oscar Wilde said, “is the diary we all carry about with us.” As with people, an
organization’s memory is a vital record which its dedicated members, staff and lay leadership
proudly carry over the years. Not merely historical nostalgia, institutional memory acts as an
essential GPS, whose data inputs are the organization’s ethos and foundational principles, to
guide the path of its present and future courses. Without this critical asset, organizations have no
grounded direction, underscoring the old observation that if you don’t know where you’re going,
any road will take you there.

The notion of building on institutional legacy becomes especially relevant as the winds of
change swirl about Canada’s main Jewish advocacy organizations. In this context, I was
thinking in particular about the venerable organization called Canadian Jewish Congress
(CJC).

The CJC that Canadians of all kinds have historically valued, and our community gratefully
relied upon, acts today upon a legacy of nine-plus decades of advocacy. Today’s team of
dedicated staff and volunteers stands on the shoulders of giants and carries on its good and
necessary work not just for the Jews of Canada but for the advancement of human rights and
social justice for all Canadians. That is how 90 years of institutional memory is both honoured
and infused with contemporary meaning.

CJC recognized early on that working to enhance and promote core Canadian values of equality,
human dignity and respect for diversity would create a society in which all, Jews and non-Jews
alike, could flourish and prosper. With both adjectives in its name, CJC has, over the decades,
grounded this holistic approach to advocacy in traditional Jewish values and teachings for the
betterment of Canadian society.

This grand experiment in collective community advocacy began in the aftermath of the First
World War, with Europe reeling and Jewish communities, particularly in the East, in desperate
straits. This uncertain milieu created a hothouse environment for the earlier twentieth century
phenomena of rising Jewish nationalism and support for Zionism to evolve more quickly. These
critical factors inspired Canadian Jewish leaders to found a domestic body capable of
representing the interests of all Canadian Jews and coordinating their humanitarian efforts
towards those overseas. The first Plenary of CJC was held March 16-19, 1919, in Montreal, with
209 delegates in attendance from cities and small communities across Canada and over 2500
spectators.

After an initial burst of activity, CJC faded from public view during the 1920s and early
‘30s. However, the rise in antisemitism in Canada, paralleling Hitler’s rise in Europe, motivated
Canada’s Jews to re-convene Canadian Jewish Congress and establish it as a permanent body.
The second CJC plenary was held in Toronto in January, 1934. Since that time the organization
has continued without pause to serve the interests of the Canadian Jewish community and to help
create a Canadian society built on justice and equality.
Thus, for example, CJC worked to help shape almost a century of human rights and anti-hate law
and public policy toward eliminating antisemitism and Holocaust denial but also racism and
discrimination of all stripes and the promotion of human rights across the board. This continues
today in regards to creative ways to combat hate on the Internet of all kinds and to expand the
“fence of protection” around vulnerable minorities while safeguarding the fundamental nature of
expressive rights in Canada.

Similarly, since the inception of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, CJC has been in the
forefront of advocacy for a variety of s. 15 equality causes. Its Supreme Court intervention in
the case of Delwin Vriend helped get sexual orientation “written into” the Charter as a
prohibited ground of discrimination.

Congress has always operated under the notion that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want
to go far, go together. As part of its modus operandi, CJC has worked with both established
ethnocultural communities like the Chinese, Italians and Greeks as well as new Canadian
communities like the Somalis in common cause against hate and in favour of human rights and
human dignity. More recently, this legacy of partnership has extended to enhanced relations
with Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. CJC was also a pioneer in the field of inter-faith dialogue
and this important effort continues today with outreach efforts to newer faith communities
growing in Canada.

CJC has weighed in with Jewish perspectives over the years, often with our federation partners,
on a variety of national social justice issues, sometimes at the cost of criticism from those within
the community with a narrower view of community advocacy that these were not “Jewish
issues”. These include: poverty, homelessness, disability issues, HIV/AIDS, child care, refugee
and immigration policy, capital punishment, and employment equity. Jewish tradition impels
CJC to help “repair the world” and such advocacy meets this obligation.

CJC has lobbied successive governments to prosecute Nazi war criminals and enablers found in
Canada, but always couched this advocacy in Canada’s larger obligations to morality and justice.
Thus, CJC continues to push for action against the likes of Rwandan and Balkan genocidaires
found residing in our country.

Similarly, CJC has, as a natural function of its community’s history, promoted Holocaust
remembrance and the battle against the deniers of memory in Canada and abroad. This
understanding of genocide, especially on the part of Holocaust survivors living here, prompted
CJC to establish a Darfur Action Committee which continues to urge the Canadian government
to maximize its efforts to end the humanitarian disaster in that region of Sudan.

In a strictly non-partisan way, CJC has focused its advocacy efforts in key areas of
communication and relationship-building. Advocacy is not like manufacturing widgets, where
production and sales bottom lines dictate success or failure. It is all about investing time in
creating and nurturing relationships with key interlocutors to eventually carry the day, even if
that day is far down the road from where you began. On occasion, something you push for sees
the light of day in short order, but typically it takes time and consistent effort to achieve success.
There are generally no quick fixes.
As the future unfolds, the dedicated staff and lay leaders of Canadian Jewish Congress look
forward to building on this longstanding record of success in whatever new form the organized
Jewish advocacy structure takes. There are many more pages to pen and entries to write in the
diary of CJC’s memory.

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