Don’t write off the Liberals

In his column, (“Why Jews will continue to support the Tories”) Michael Taube predicts that Jewish voters in Canada will continue to mark their ballots overwhelmingly in favour of the Conservatives.

It is probably too early to make such a prediction. The party is getting a new leader in 2017 and it is possible that he or she will rub the Jewish community the wrong way. Beyond that, the next federal election in Canada is not until 2019. That is a lot of time for Jewish voters to evaluate how the Liberals handle the economic situation in Canada and to see what they do in foreign affairs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already shown himself to be loyal to Israel and the fight against anti-Semitism. The new government has voted against anti-Israel motions at the United Nations and the prime minister himself, a man who despises racism in all forms, has spoken out against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and other forms of hatred against Jews. That, coupled with pictures of Trudeau wearing a kippah, lighting Chanukah candles and getting along with his counterpart in Israel, may just shift some of the Jewish vote back to the Liberals.

Joshua Ram

Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Que.

The Shoah was different

I am a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, and I would like to comment on an article written by Bernie Farber, “The genocides are different but the pain is the same.”

I wonder how Farber can compare the harsh treatment of the children in northern Canada to the systematic killing of Jewish children by the barbaric German soldiers. One-and-a half million Jewish children were killed just because they were Jewish. You probably have seen the image of a child with his hands in the air and a German soldier pointing a gun at him. Is this harsh treatment? This child likely didn’t survive.

I believe Farber should have refreshed his memory on the history of the Holocaust before comparing the genocide of the indigenous, Armenian, Rwandan, or other peoples to the Jewish tragedy of World War II. The pain is not the same.

You should amend your article after you brush up on your history.

Samuel Wishinski

Ville Saint Laurent, Que.

The politics of kashrut

I hated reading this headline: “Does marijuana need a hechsher” and then this line in the article: “Any product which is ingested… must bear kosher certification, council executive director Rabbi Saul Emanuel told The CJN.”

Nothing “needs” a hechsher. A hechsher symbol just assures a nervous public that the food was made in accordance with halachic law.

If it wasn’t supervised, but made the same way, would it still be kosher? This question is rhetorical. The answer is yes.

But wait! If we don’t need kosher certification on this, maybe we won’t need the guy who said that everything that is ingested must bear kosher certification? And then he might be out of a job! Sacre bleu! This is a slippery slope indeed.

Only a Jewish newspaper would ask the guy who does the job whether we need his job, and then when he says yes, we say, “Well I guess that’s that.”

Yigal Rifkind

Toronto