Closing remarks, Yom Hashoah

Holocaust Rememberance Day
Beth Ezekiel Synagogue, Owen Sound
Sunday April 16, 2023

Closing Remarks
There are only about 15 million of us left now worldwide, according to statistics compiled by Wikipedia. The Jewish population hasn’t recovered from the attempt to exterminate it three generations ago. Fifteen million. That’s out of eight billion people. What threat do we pose?

Jews represent less than one per cent of the Canadian population, yet according to Statistics Canada, Jewish Canadians are the number one targeted religious minority. We are the second most targeted group for hate crimes overall in Canada. We are mystified by it all.

But we aren’t the only victims of hate today. Our LGBT brothers and sisters regularly suffer discrimination and abuse, as do our indigenous communities, and visible minorities.

Hate is an insidious thing. We can’t get the haters to unhate. All we can do is to force it back into the shadows and back into the fringes of society where it belongs. Because as soon as we allow it to become normalized, we become complicit in what happens.