Toronto Jewish community leaders host heritage month celebration

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Amid anti-Israel encampments on university campuses that have led to new concerns about Jewish student safety, leaders from across Toronto, including Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce, met on Wednesday night to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month.

“I think it’s not just about the promotion of our Jewish Heritage Month,” Lecce told a packed crowd at an art gallery in midtown Toronto last night, “it’s about the solidarity of the Jewish community.”

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Lecce recalled one of his first Passover seder dinners recently with Paul and Gina Godfrey, who hosted the event, and how the experience underscored a “message of resilience and endurance.”

“The idea that even through the tribulations, where for millennia, history would suggest your people should not or could not have existence, here you are; here we are, standing strong, proud of the Jewish people, proud of the Jewish experience you have built for 200 years,” the minister continued referring to the history of Jews in Canada.

National Post contributor and human rights activist Avi Benlolo spoke shortly after Lecce about his new book, Never Surrender, and the importance of those words following October 7 and the rising levels of antisemitism seen in Canada and around the globe.

“It’s not about giving up or giving in,” Benlolo explained to the audience. “What happened on October the seventh has only emboldened the Jewish world.”

“Jews, worldwide, are recommitting themselves to Judaism and to Israel. This is an incredible thing,” Benlolo added.

Gina Godfrey, an artist and the gallery owner who hosted the event, said she was splendidly surprised by the turnout. (Her husband, Paul Godfrey, is the founder of Postmedia.)

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“It actually was an art show that mushroomed,” she quipped.

While speaking, she was greeted continuously by friends, artists, and even the occasional prospective buyer intrigued by the Jewish-themed paintings hanging from the walls. She’d been tipped off to the idea of Jewish Heritage Month by a colleague, Ian Leventhal, an executive with the Baycrest Foundation.

“I looked it up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is something that goes worldwide.”

Godfrey said she has grown alarmed by the constant anti-Israel demonstrations around the city and thought the commemorative month would serve as a much-needed dose of optimism.

“We want to celebrate, right? So this is what this is about. This is the beginning,” she told National Post. “This is a prototype, because now I am putting together a non-for-profit called, Judaic Heritage Project, that hopefully will carry it on every year.”

Raheel Raza, the president of the Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism, attended the speeches and applauded the initiative.

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“It’s important for every community to celebrate their heritage, especially those of us who are immigrants,” Raza said. “Right now, for the Jewish community, with the turmoil it is in right now and the world lashing out at them, I think anything that is positive, is extremely important.”

The event came against the backdrop of a joint statement by Kamal Khera, the federal diversity and inclusion minister, and Deboray Lyons, the special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, which celebrated the occasion.

“The history of Jewish people in Canada is an integral part of our country’s story. Canada’s Jewish population is the fourth largest diaspora in the world. It encompasses a broad range of traditions and heritage from every region and continent. Canada’s Jewish heritage has shaped our country and enriched our culture in many significant ways,” the two wrote in an official statement Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, antisemitism has been on the rise for years in Canada. Jews are among the most targeted groups for hate crimes in the country despite only making up approximately 1 percent of the population. Antisemitism has no home here. We all have a role to play in calling out hate in all its forms whenever and wherever we see it.”

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