Victoria synagogue gets hate mail
‘Deranged racist’ targeting Canadian cities, rabbi says
Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El is the latest Canadian synagogue to receive anti-Semitic hate mail calling for the death of Jewish people.
“It looks like some really deranged racist from outside Calgary, based on the postmark, targeted seven Canadian cities and 10 synagogues with a really ugly message of hate,” Rabbi Harry Brechner said Wednesday.
“This happens, but not all the time. We’re in the world. We’re targets, yes, for that kind of stuff.”
The letter depicts a bloody Star of David with a swastika at its centre and the words: “Jewry must perish.”
Generally, the synagogue just tosses hate mail away. This time, however, because synagogues in other cities were targeted, Brechner called Victoria police.
“This incident is uglier than usual,” he said.
On Tuesday, the congregation held a public lighting of the menorah in Centennial Square for the last night of Hanukkah.
“We took the original copy [of the letter] to the police and we took a photocopy of it and we actually burned it using the light of the Hanukkah,” Brechner said.
The rabbi is concerned that publicizing the letters is “giving energy to something negative.”
“It gives it more life and more power and certainly more power than it deserves,” he said.
“It could create a narrative that’s not helpful. I don’t believe the whole world is out to get us. Clearly, it’s not a secret that we have more security in the synagogue than any of the other downtown houses of worship.”
The synagogue has a buzzer system and people have a heightened sense of awareness, he said. “If you see a bag that’s been left, you contact somebody.”
Still, the last graffiti message scrawled on the synagogue wasn’t hateful — it was done by street people thanking the congregation for giving them socks.
“There’s much more of that, than this,” said Brechner, who has been a rabbi in Victoria for 16 years.
Const. Matt Rutherford confirmed that Victoria police are investigating and are aware of the incidents in other cities.
Synagogues in Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton and Kingston have received similar letters, said B’nai Brith Canada.
Michael Mostyn, the organization’s CEO, said the hate messages are deplorable.
“Sadly, we’ve seen the swastika make something of a comeback this year, defacing the walls of high schools, university campuses and public property,” he said. “Today, it is more imperative than ever that we condemn this symbol of racism and hatred.”
Staff Sgt. Frank Partridge of 32 Division in North Toronto said officers are “absolutely” treating the incidents as hate crimes.
“This is something that’s happening in real time — today, yesterday — it’s happening in [other cities], so there’s a linkage there,” Partridge said.
There were 1,728 anti-Semitic incidents reported throughout the country in 2016, according to B’nai Brith’s statistics. That’s a 26 per cent increase from 2015 and the highest number of incidents ever seen by the organization, which has been tracking antiSemitism for 35 years.
B’nai Brith does not yet have statistics for this year.
Police across the country received more reports of hate crimes against Jews than any other religious, ethnic or racial group in 2016, according to Statistics Canada data.
“Unfortunately, some [people] feel emboldened at this moment in history to express hate toward identifiable groups and Jews in particular,” Mostyn said, pointing to the high-profile neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, and a series of antiSemitic posters put up on university campuses in Canada.