Hillel Montreal’s new president, lawyer Michael Bergman, left, has made more than just a little activist noise in court over the last several years.

It is 54-year-old Bergman who, most recently, has been trying to stop
Quebec officials from destroying the 1995 Quebec referendum ballots,
over 86,000 of which were spoiled.

It was also Bergman who, a few years ago, was set to go to court to help Montrealer Baruch Tegegne, a Jewish native of Ethiopia, obtain a kidney transplant that a Montreal hospital refused to perform.

Perhaps most importantly – at least from the vantage point of the Jewish community – Bergman took a front-and-centre role by launching legal action on behalf of Jewish students at Concordia University after a violent demonstration prevented former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking, and in an effort by Concordia’s radical student union to cut off Hillel’s funding there.

Hillel ultimately was fully reinstated. But it was standing alongside those students in principled solidarity over many painful and trying months that made accepting the presidency of Hillel Montreal something Bergman did not really have to think about.

“It was an honour for me,” he said in a telephone interview. “I was asked, and it was an honour.”

Until September 2002, the time of the Netanyahu affair, Bergman, who succeeded Allan Levitt as president, was connected to Hillel mostly by proximity, when he studied at the law faculty just up the hill and one block over from Hillel House on Stanley Street.

An alumnus of Chomedey High School,

Bergman, at only 19, was McGill law’s youngest ever graduate.

In his experience with Jewish students, Bergman came to appreciate their level of commitment and identity, even if they inevitably seemed to on the losing side of the public relations war in media and on campus.

“They are a credit to the Jewish people and to society,” Bergman said, “dedicated, responsible, and ready to go the distance.”

Things have changed – at least a little – in the over five years since Netanyahu had to cancel his speech at Concordia after pro-Palestinian students rioted. Leadership of the Concordia Student Union executive is no longer in the hands of radicals, and local campus corridors have been relatively calm.

At the same time, Bergman says, certain things are not quite as moderate as purported to be. “Our adversaries have changed tactics. They are now more user friendly, and appear to be more ‘mainstream,’ while still preaching the same anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish views.

“Frankly, in certain ways, they are making inroads,” Bergman said, referring to the Israel apartheid weeks that seem to be gaining momentum across Canada. “It is remarkable that this can be taking place in this day and age,” he said. “It basically is a propaganda week.”

Bergman’s vision as president, he said, will be to make Hillel more meaningful for Jewish students as they take firm hold of the 21st century.

“It needs to be more meaningful for today’s youth,” he said, “to figure out how to be a Jew in today’s modern society.”

There is indeed a Jewish collectivity, Bergman said, which must remain connected, and affirm its indelible bond.

It is Bergman’s view that “every Jewish person is a leader, even if you follow even yourself.

“Jewish students have become more proactive because they are now more sensitized, but it is an ongoing struggle. It’s getting together resources and people, encouraging leadership, expressing Jewish values and informing them in the modern world.”

Hillel was obliged to transform itself from its historical legacy as a club for Jewish students to something more proactive, even though Jewish students have paid a price on campuses for being responsible and moderate.

As Hillel Montreal president, Bergman vowed to be “persistent, tenacious and dedicated to the tasks at hand.

“That is what I do. If I take on a job, I go after the objectives.”