It was one of those enchanted afternoons in downtown Montreal, when the colors of spring announce the arrival of sunnier times after the long dark slog of winter.
As my friend and I strolled down Sherbrooke Boulevard on our way to visit my alma mater McGill University, we were interrupted by a loud group of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags.
We were in a happy mood; the drumbeats made us feel like dancing.
As we got closer, we were especially happy to see a sweet elderly lady holding up an Israeli flag.
It was her against the mob.
My friend and I quickly walked over to give her a hug. “We’re with you,” we told her. “We’re 100% with you.”
We took photos as if we were old relatives who had found each other.
Our jovial selfies, however, were quickly overtaken by the sounds of human anger.
It’s one thing to write about the animosity Jews have been facing on streets around the world – it’s another to come face to face with it.
That animosity shot up when the mob realized it was no longer just one quiet elderly Jew in their midst – now it was three animated Jews taking selfies with a flag they despised.
As they came closer and their energy felt more threatening, I did the only thing I could think of.
“Long live Israel!” I shouted with all the vocal timber I could muster, as my friend yelled “Down with Jew hatred!”
Our presence angered them, but so what? We were also free to express ourselves, and we were glad to show these Israel-haters that there is, in fact, such a thing as proud Zionists.
Their anger made no difference to me. The sun kept shining. I was still in a joyful mood.
But their rage was live and real. I was no longer on my laptop writing about Israel-hatred. Now I was on a street corner confronting that hatred. I could see the faces of hate.
If I could write in my columns about the need for a winning attitude, this was now my chance to show it.
“We always win,” I blurted out. “We win, you lose.”
Their anger was now mixed with a kind of confusion. They seemed flummoxed. This guy is calling us losers!
They yelled back things like “murderers,” while I repeated that “we always win, you always lose.”
The more I said we were winning, the more confident I looked, the more it drove them nuts.
I was aware, of course, that “Jews” and “winning” are not words that go together well these days.
But on the street, that didn’t matter. What mattered was our attitude. We showed the haters they didn’t have the power to anger us or sadden us or weaken us.
We weren’t just proud Jews and strong Jews. We were happy Jews. And happy people win.
The thing is, we really were in a great mood. It felt so good to be back in a city that held so many fond memories.
So, while the haters continued to yell and abuse their vocal cords, we continued on our merry way into our nostalgia tour. We visited the gorgeous McGill campus and found an old bookstore and vegan cafe in the village.
As I reflected that night on our eventful day, it struck me that an unfortunate side effect of our fight against antisemitism is that it puts us in a lousy mood – and for good reason! The global surge in Jew-hatred is a deadly serious matter.
It also struck me, however, that we don’t need to give our enemies easy victories, such as: You have the power to scare us, embitter us, depress us, unravel us.
They don’t have that power. Once we realize that, we can start fighting with a winning attitude.
I saw something later that night that further boosted my confidence. It was a quote from the late, great Charles Krauthammer, who also hailed from Montreal:
“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”
The hate mob that confronted us knew nothing about the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Maybe that’s why it drove them nuts to see such happy Zionists.
And we weren’t even faking it.
