If, in the discussion of things Jewish, someone were to use the term: “never again”, there would be few who would miss its significance.

In the Jewish world, the phrase refers to a cluster of convictions, personal and collective, that are closely related. In its most general sense, it means we will not stand idly by while others plan another Holocaust. More specifically, it means we will not tolerate anti-Semitism. We will not turn the other way when someone makes an anti-Semitic remark. We will not stand still and watch someone be embarrassed, insulted, attacked just because they are a Jew. It means we will not rationalize intolerable situations, unfair treatment. It means we’ll not fool ourselves into thinking that hatred of Jews, once become common, will somehow cure itself, dissipate, disappear, or turn out to be benign. We will not blame others for “being too Jewish” and thus rendering us less worthy by association and, hence, vulnerable.

“Never again” means we will not only challenge the stereotypes put forward by those who preach hatred of Jews - Jews are dishonest, Jews are cowards, Jews never work with their hands, are not athletic, can’t fight - but, equally important, will not, ourselves, quietly absorb these stereotypes and belittle our own worth.

Although not something that makes anyone particularly happy, among Jews, the concept of “never again” is a widely understood matter of principle and pride, a determination that has come to be part of all of us in the post-Holocaust world.

“Never before” is something else. Once familiar to many of us, it’s significance and the instinctive reaction it once brought have become vague, a part of the past. For some it has become something we didn’t expect to be forced to face again in our lifetime.

That’s why a short article, submitted as a guest column for The Ottawa Citizen toward the end of November 2003 caught my attention......caught my attention and bothered me in a way that many daily reports of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada or abroad did not. In contrast to the events in the external world, “never before” triggered an internal, very personal, visceral reaction that I had consigned to the past.

The article, written by a third year student at Carleton University majoring in journalism and human rights, described unhappiness with her perceived lack of balance in faculty political leanings and conventional student opinion. Most of it all it expressed a deep disappointment with the lack of tolerance for views, no more how honestly held or logically argued, that ran counter to prevailing views.


The article took exception to the fact that anyone appearing to question a set of loosely connected premises that began with a general inclination to the left and then ran, almost automatically, to: disagreement with American foreign policy, denunciation of President Bush, opposition to the war in Iraq, disagreement with anything identifiably American, non-acceptance of the State of Israel, and anti-Semitism - was not tolerated. A number of straight forward examples of this intolerance were presented - for example: refusal to explain why opposition to the war in Iraq had to be tied to blanket support for the PLO, or, why adherence to democracy and socialism was considered to be totally incompatible with support for the state of Israel whose association with both is so strong and so much more so than any which might exist in the Arab world.

In all of this the author did not seek to demonstrate the correctness of her own positions, (which, for the record, would appear to be right of centre philosophically speaking, pro-US policy in the middle east and staunchly supportive of the State of Israel), but, rather, to the fact that any attempt to defend this general position or any part of it was met with anger, animosity and, in the worse cases, thinly disguised hatred of her as a Jew. In other words, the article did not seek to set out the defence for a particular political position but, simply, to argue that a university, its faculty and its students, should be a lot more open to ideas that ran counter to the general trend, more tolerant of dissent and, above all, supportive of an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas and less prone to intolerance, anger and hatred.

In reading the article I automatically ticked off the instances where the author’s substantive position differed from my own and found that the disagreement was nearly total. This was neither new or terribly disagreeable experience. Having spent years as a university teacher, a student disagreeing, in whole or part, with my own views was hardly novel and, in my experience, often led to a constructive tension causing each side to examine, strengthen, re-state their position - which is very central to learning. What did bother me was the few, somewhat oblique references to the atmosphere of intolerance being described.

Thinking of Farshteinen, I contacted the author/student and asked if we could meet to discuss the background to her article. We did. I explained that I didn’t want to debate our respective positions on Bush, Iraq, the basis for a peace agreement in the middle east, etc., but, rather, to ask how she felt about the campus situation she had described in her article.

We spoke for the better part of an hour. She explained: how she, used to a world where Jews were a small and gradually decreasing minority, had never before, worried about that fact; how, she, having many Arab friends and an Egyptian room mate had never before thought any difference they might have would mean her views would be totally discredited, made suspect simply by who she was; how she, proud of her background, had never before made a deliberate point of hiding the fact of her Israeli parentage or connections; how, she had never before witnessed otherwise logical and intelligent people accept, without question, any criticism no matter how factually incorrect or illogical, of Israel or Jews in general; how she had never before found herself in a situation where she had been ashamed of fellow Jews who chose to hide their identity rather than run the risk of disturbing the world they lived in. How she had never before been made to feel fearful simply because of who she was.

As we spoke, we realized that neither of us was in the least defeated by the reality we examined and the world we now shared but, as I listened to the all-too-familiar list and remembered, how many times I had vowed “never again”, I felt a profound sadness that came with knowing that the determination that underlay that vow had not worked - that here, now, in front of me, was someone living the world that I hoped, and once sincerely believed, would not come again.