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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Roxy was her name. Before I even met her, that was her name.

She was a black lab and boxer mix, and a rescue. I drove out to Woodstock with two of my sons to get her, and the owner – an old-time Ontario PC, who recognized me as a damn Liberal and joked that I couldn’t have her – had already called her Roxy. It fit. So Roxy she was, right from the very start.

She looked like a lab, but she was tall and slender, and she ran like a racehorse. She had these beautiful brown eyes, and they told you she was a gentle dog. She never bit anyone or growled at anyone, because she loved people, basically. People loved her, too, as it turned out.

I would bring her to work to our Bloor Street offices, every single day. Often, I’d go looking for her, and I’d find her with her head on the lap of one of the political consultants who worked for me. They were having a lousy day, they’d tell me, and then they’d feel Roxy’s head in their lap. She knew.

Roxy was an empath. The dictionaries say an empath is “someone who is highly attuned to the emotions of others.” Except she wasn’t a someone, per se. She was Roxy, my dog, and she had this truly extraordinary ability to know when you were sad or lonely or lost, and she would just sidle up to you and put her head on your lap. And you’d feel better, because she would console you.

I had no closer companion for nearly 15 years of my life. And, in all that time, she asked for nothing at all, other than to be loved back. And love her I did.

Roxy was with me every minute of every single day. I took her everywhere, and everyone who knew me knew Roxy, too.  She was with me through marriage breakup, pandemic isolation, child disownment, betrayals and losses, and lots of crises. You know how it is: people always say they’ll check in, and they’ll help you out, and that they care and all that. But then they often just disappear on you.

Not Roxy. Roxy the empath would always always always be there, head on your lap, looking up with those brown eyes. Knowing.

When my Mom was dying, Roxy knew that was happening, too. She’d linger by me, watching. And when I would go to sit at her bedside, my Mom would ask about her, because she loved Roxy. “She is such a sweet and gentle dog,” my Mom would say. “She has a soul.”

Is that true? Can a dog have a soul? In my religion, Thomas Aquinas said that animals do not have souls. I guess that may have been true for Thomas Aquinas’ dog, but I don’t think it was for mine. Roxy had a soul. That was why she was an empath, I think. That was how she knew what people were feeling, what they were holding inside. She felt what they felt.

If she was here, right now, she would of course know what I am feeling and she would console me. But she is not here.

It is later. We are back from the vet – Picton Animal Hospital, who were wonderful – and I am writing this. I am weeping, and this time – for the first time in such a long time – Roxy will not be consoling me.

She is not gone, however. She is in the next room. She is with my Mom, head in her lap, and Roxy the empath is making my Mom smile. And I can hear my Mom laughing.

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