Week of April 17.

Kudos on the new design

 

Kudos to all of you! The new CJN is fabulous! Interesting, informative, easy to read and so “with it”. You have all done an outstanding job!

 

Patricia Starr

Toronto, Ont.

 

Lessons from the election

 

As a native Montrealer who returned to this wonderful city after a 29-year absence, I strongly urge the leadership of Jewish Montreal to build on Quebec’s election results and not just exhale a sigh of relief.

The results of this pivotal vote must not be taken for granted. Montreal’s Jewish population may well continue to lose individuals and families. A Liberal win, no matter its size, just buys time to get out.

Recall Quebec premier Robert Bourassa’s ride to victory with a Liberal majority in 1985, only to see subsequent Parti Québécois victories. The nature of politics being what it is, no one party provincially or federally, is re-elected in perpetuity. Voters get tired, they get upset, and human nature being what it is, they eventually opt for change.

My advice to those in the leadership of Jewish Montreal: building on the current Liberal win means focusing on helping people, no matter their age and vocation, get jobs and stay to build a life here.

It means also making every person count, in what he or she can contribute through their time and expertise, to Jewish communal life. It also means being open to new ideas and fresh faces. Because there’s an old saying in Yiddish that translates: “If you don’t want it, you don’t need it.”

 

Dorothy Lipovenko

Westmount, Que.

 

Passover and the election

 

Just as Passover teaches us to cherish our freedom and not be slaves to our impulses, so, too, does it teach us to respect other people’s rights to their freedom, including the right to wear religious headgear in the workplace. In their attempt to control other people, the Parti Québécois encroached on this right and exercised a form of enslavement.

This Pesach, Jews in Quebec can breathe a sigh of relief and truly celebrate zman cheruteinu, the time of our freedom from tyranny and religious oppression!

 

Mordechai Bulua

Montreal

 

Pollard held hostage

It is obscene that the release of Jonathan Pollard is being made conditional on Israel releasing 400 convicted Muslim terrorists.

Pollard’s incarceration is a blight on the American system of justice, and abuses every fundamental principle of justice and precedent.

Some years ago I was retained by Pollard as his Canadian counsel. On his behalf, I spoke to many synagogues urging that his sentence for supplying secret information to an ally was even more stringent than those sentences meted out for American citizens who gave secret information to enemies.

One of the shocking aspects of the Pollard trial, one that has not received the publicity that it should have, is that there had been a plea bargain arranged between the government and Pollard and his first wife.

Subsequently, and quite improperly, then-U.S. secretary of defence Caspar Weinberger sent a note to the trial judge urging that Pollard be dealt with in the harshest possible terms. Such actions in Canada by a member of the government would have resulted in an immediate acquittal and firing of the official in question.

That, of course, never happened.

At a convention of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists in Israel, I introduced a resolution condemning the American judicial system with respect to this particular case, with regard to the harshness of the sentence, the flawed judicial process and the fact that there would be no way that Pollard would have any further worthwhile secret information to reveal upon his release.

By every legal standard Pollard should have been released years ago.

Once again, the Palestinians are extracting a concession from Israel to extend the futile Middle East peace talks and giving nothing in return.

 

Bert Raphael

Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association

Thornhill, Ont.