Vancouver rabbis privately met with Justin Trudeau to tell him 'Jewish Canadians are not safe'

Just two months after Justin Trudeau held a closed-door meeting with Toronto’s Jewish leaders, the Canadian prime minister spent an hour last week doing the same thing at a Vancouver synagogue, Temple Sholom. Trudeau met privately with four leading community rabbis and the local Federation’s chair of the community security committee. Sources tell The CJN the meeting was arranged in advance by the Liberal MP for Vancouver Granville, Taleeb Noormohamed. While there are 10 members of the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver, the meeting was kept small. Several told The CJN they received criticism from their community for attending, because the meeting came a week after the Liberal government supported an NDP motion on March 18, in the House of Commons, that resulted in halting arms sales to Israel, resuming funding for UNRWA, and—before the language was hastily amended—would have seen Canada unilaterally recognize Palestine as a state. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom explains why he felt it was important to “take the prime minister to task” on a half-dozen key issues.

What we talked about:

• See and sign the petition to stop the B.C. Ministry of Education from including the Nakba (meaning “The Catastrophe”, what Palestinians call Israel’s 1948 War of Independence) in the provincial social studies curriculum
• Watch Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s speech at Beth Israel Beth Aaron synagogue in Montreal on March 26, 2024
• When Justin Trudeau quietly met with Toronto Jewish leaders in Jan. 2024—and why some rabbis left dissatisfied, on The CJN Daily

Credits:

The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.