Page 5 - Shalom Toronto Lifestyle Passover 2020

UNITED we are BETTER
Coalizion is an initiative to retake the bridges that the anti-semitic, anti-zionist and BDS speeches have seized
was a cold afternoon in Montreal, the It rain had just stopped and I was walking in a deserted alley towards Fairmont Ave. The silence was only broken by the sound of my steps and a tin can I accidentally kicked while I was observing the surroundings. Old houses with evident decay, torn trash bags with their contents spread on the
way, and silence.
Few steps ahead, a red brick wall caught my eyes - it was part of a huge construction. I walked further to the front of the building. The new facade didn't match with the rest of the building, and the worse part was that this poor architectural style seemed like an arrogant and cheap way to try to erase history. I was looking at the original building of the B’nai Jacob congregation with its modernist extension. The inscription in the arch of the façade is partially visible. The lateral views remain intact while the rear of the building reveals a tracing of the former circular window.
Back in Toronto, that image doesn't get out of my mind. How can we lose so much terrain? How can we see our history being torn apart in our faces and do nothing? Also, you don't need to go far to see public demonstrations against our faith and culture. Toronto & The GTA have hosted demonstrations of anti-semitism with a strong representation on university campuses. This is why I decided to start the Coalizion project.
Coalizion is an organization with a mission. Fight anti-semitism with a different attitude. Show to the world the amazing culture we have. To that, we want to create a group of leaders with various Jewish backgrounds to be responsible for events to organize Shuls and communities. We want to find middle grounds for groups of people to enjoy together the biggest blessing we have - The Jewish life.
With a huge list of Jewish events happening in Toronto every day, most of the Shuls are doing an admirable job offering the communities opportunities, and organizations like B'nai Brith, also promote great activities, but we have a lack of communication between communities, and we (Toronto and GTA) are isolated from our small neighborhoods. So, our mission will be to transform Toronto and the GTA into small distinct places for our communities.
How can we fight anti-semitism with that? Well, this is just the first step, making our communities stronger and unified. Next step. We want to show the world how amazing we are, and to accomplish that we will organize a series of workshops and social programs to talk about culture, lifestyle, food and more, to the non-Jewish audience. 90% of the Jewish content on social media is about attacks and war - let's show the world our amazing talents, our joy of life, our songs, foods, and ingenuity.
Let's be the light to the nations!
Speaking about transformation, our secondary objective is something bold. In the last 40 years, there has been a trend occurring at a small pace - The B'nei Noah.
The term Bnei Noah has several definitions, and the meanings evolved over the centuries (just like with other terms: “goy” in the Tanakh is used to denote nations, including the Jewish nation, while the Talmud is used solely to refer to individual non-Jews). So Bnei Noah may be used to denote either the origin or the religion [of a nation]. As far as their origin, all people on earth are the Bnei Noah, i.e. descendants of Noah. From the Jewish perspective, all non-Jews are called the Bnei Noah.
Anderson Magri, Author
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SHALOM TORONTO Passover 2020 Page 5