— Feature, Musings —12.07.2024 11:55 AM
my latest: Saturday people, Sunday people
On Google, the listing for the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, now says: “Temporarily closed.”
But that’s not quite true, is it? It’s closed for good. At 4:10 a.m. on Friday, the synagogue was set on fire while some Orthodox worshippers were still inside. They got out in time, thank God, but the Adass Israel Synagogue is now gone. All that remains is some charred bits of wood, and some religious texts, reduced to nothingness.
The synagogue was at the sunny corner of Glen Eira Avenue and Oak Grove in Melbourne’s Ripponlea neighborhood. It’s a nice neighbourhood, by all accounts.
Pretty much everyone in political office swiftly offered lots of thoughts and prayers, and the police have said predictable things about the two men who destroyed the synagogue. (They were wearing masks, surprise surprise.)
What struck me, however, was something else: how much the Adams Israel Synagogue looks like other places of worship in so many other places – Synagogue Brunnenstraße in Berlin, Mordechai Navi Synagogue in Armenia, Oldenburg Synagogue in Vienna, the Rouen Synagogue, and on and on.
Schara Tzedeck synagogue in Vancouver, too, along with Congregation Beth Tikvah synagogue in Montreal, and quite a few in Toronto. The synangogues are architecturally dissimilar, but they all have lots of tall fences and security cameras. All of them.
Here’s how they are similar: all of them have been firebombed, or set on fire, since October 7, 2023. All of the ones named, above, and too many others to list here. And, guess what? You would have needed a magnifying glass to find a mention of the Melbourne synagogue fire in Canadian media the next day.
As such, we have reached that point where actual news is no longer news. That is, something that is disturbing has become less disturbing – because it happens so often. That’s what we have observed with attacks on Jews, and Jewish places of worship, in the 428 days since Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Jews in Israel on October 7: evil has become banal, per Hannah Arendt.
Why? Why has it become so difficult to rouse people from their slumber, when places dedicated to love are being set ablaze – in the above cases, literally? Why?
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I’ve never understood attacks on any religion and I don’t think I ever will.
All religions are essentially doing the same thing, just with different forms of expression. It’s just ordinary people trying to coble together a sensible explanation of the vast unknown, with a respectful nod to ancient culture and traditions. If they’ve found some satisfaction in that, good for them. It’s more enlightenment than I’ll ever know.
Yes, occasionally some leaders get carried away and try to overreach their position of influence, but that is just human nature. It’s no reason to attack a local place of worship.
The chickens are coming home to roost. When a Conservative MP stood up in the house and asked for unaminous support for a motion condemning the attempted arson of church, he was shouted down by Liberal and NDP members. At least 85 Roman Catholic churches have been vandalized or set ablaze since 2021. Our Prime Minister’s response was that these acts are “understandable”. So why would anyone think that a synagogue would be immune to similar acts of hate? I would say most Canadians are apathetic to what is going on with organized religion these days, and don’t care about people of the Jewish faith in particular. The MSM, the Laurentian Elites, etc were so damn smug and sanctimonious about JT becoming PM. They couldn’t wait to see Stephen Harper leave. As H.L. Mencken has said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”. What goes around comes around my friends.