The Toronto District School Board recently released a Staff Report entitled, “Affirming Jewish Identities & Addressing Antisemitism.”
The report summarizes what the TDSB heard during consultations with Jewish community organizations, students, faith leaders, the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, and others.
It serves as an update to the Anti-Hate and Anti-Racism Strategy presented to the Board in March 2023 and reflects the perspectives and recommendations shared throughout the consultation process.
On February 12, the TDSB Planning and Priorities Committee will be asked to receive the report.
Mark Sandler, Chair of ALCCA (in his personal capacity), and Rabbi Michael Dolgin have filed a joint submission in response to the report, affirming its positive components and their importance in implementing a timely and robust strategy to enable Jewish students, teachers, and staff to be safe. Their submission also addresses those who refuse to acknowledge anti-Zionism as a contemporary form of antisemitism affecting TDSB’s community.
Read the full submission below:
Dear TDSB Trustees,
We wish to comment on the Toronto District School Board Staff Report dated February 12, 2025, entitled, “Update: Affirming Jewish Identities and Addressing Antisemitism and the Combatting Hate and Racism Strategy” and urge that it be received and implemented.
We appreciate that it is the product of a broad listening campaign, bringing into focus the identity and experience of the Jewish community serviced by the TDSB. We support much of the language contained in the Staff Report, and see it as a positive first step, if appropriately implemented by the Board, to address the high levels of antisemitism experienced by Jewish students, faculty, and staff of the Board.
In particular, the Report:
(a) Describes in some detail how Jewish students have experienced antisemitism in a variety of ways, and how they have been adversely impacted as a result.
(b) Correlates 12 examples and experiences of antisemitism described by participants in the consultations with records of such events reported through the Racism, Bias and Hate Portal.
(c) Recognizes in the section entitled “What We Heard,” how anti-Zionism has emerged for many community members as a contemporary form of antisemitism, and that demonization of Israel, Israelis and Zionists has been normalized in many spaces, exacerbated by social media platforms.
(d) Identifies as an action and priority in addressing school climate and culture the impact of geopolitical protests (e.g., walkouts, flags, symbols) on the school environment to ensure Jewish/Israeli students and staff feel safe and supported.
(e) Identifies claims that all Jewish/Israeli students/staff are colonizers and complicit in a Settler-Colonial narrative as harassment.
(f) Identifies as an action and priority in employment equity engaging unions and professional organizations to support Jewish staff, including staff who believe they are not supported due to their Jewish identities and/or Zionist ideologies.
(g) Identifies as an action and priority in student learning strategy providing professional development to train teachers in delivering content related to or about genocide to avoid harmful comparisons.
(h) Identifies as an action and priority in professional learning providing such learning for staff and Trustees to deepen understanding of antisemitism, including modern manifestations such as anti-Zionism.
(i) Identifies as an action and priority in school-community relationships, partnering with diverse Jewish organizations to support Jewish identities and lived experiences, including those addressing Holocaust education and antisemitism.
(j) Reinforces the inclusion of the IHRA definition of antisemitism into the TDSB’s Equity Policy.
(k) Refers to the Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism (which explains how the IHRA definition can effectively be utilized by educational institutions).
This strategy will undoubtedly be met by its opponents with claims that it immunizes Israel from criticism, suppresses pro-Palestinian speech or caters to the “Zionist or Israeli lobby.”
Sadly, these claims distort, and in so doing, invalidate, the lived experience of antisemitism by Jewish students, teachers and other staff. Receiving and acting on the report does not represent taking on the conflict in the Middle East. We have no interest in the TDSB adopting a political position nor does this strategy affirm any particular political viewpoint.
However, as cited in the Report, Zionism is a very common element of the identity of members of the Jewish community served by the TDSB.
Zionism is merely the belief in Jewish self-determination through a Jewish homeland in our ancestral lands. Many Zionists also believe in Palestinian self-determination as well. Research reports that 91% of Jewish people in our locality identify with the State of Israel as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people and affirm Israel’s right to exist. Eighty-eight (88) percent of organizations consulted reflected that position and addressed how anti-Zionism amounts to a contemporary form of antisemitism, expressing deep concerns, articulated in the Report, about events on or around TDSB schools and offices. This represents extraordinarily high levels of community consensus about what antisemitism is, and how it is being experienced. In order to be properly inclusive of the Jewish community, Jews and Zionists must feel that the public-school setting is a safe place.
Our primary interest (and the strategy’s objective) is to ensure that Jewish students, teachers and staff are no longer marginalized, targeted or demonized for any reason, including because they support the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland and regard its existence as a Jewish democratic state as part of their core identity.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by 44 countries, including Canada and by many others, including the Ontario government, specifically states that criticism of Israel of the same type as directed against any other country is not antisemitic. The definition and its illustrations address those who demonize all Zionists (including the 91% of Jews who support Israel’s existence) as racist.
Students, teachers and staff should not be compelled to exist in a poisoned environment created when others in TDSB’s community discriminate against them for being Jews who support Israel’s existence or by imposing collective responsibility on Canadian Jews for Israel’s conduct.
Regardless of one’s geopolitical views on the Middle East, no Jewish student, teacher or staff should be excluded, shut out from social groups, alienated, labelled online or in-person because they believe in Israel’s right to exist.
Opponents of the strategy will note the objection by many community members to the inclusion of anti-Palestinian racism in TDSB’s anti-discrimination and racism policies. Let’s be clear on this issue. We oppose discrimination against any Palestinian student, teacher or staff because they are Palestinian or merely because they hold a “pro-Palestinian view” on the Middle East conflict. But anti-Palestinian racism has been introduced to TDSB in a manner that labels as racist anyone who challenges Palestinian narratives about the creation of Israel, or Palestinian claims of entitlement to the whole of “occupied Palestine”. In our view, APR was not evidence-based or defined in a way that truly addresses anti-Palestinian discrimination. Instead, it represents another way to demonize Zionist Jews and their allies. The only existing definition to date of APR is that put forward by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association. It advances a geopolitical agenda, rather than representing a tool to address discrimination.
In summary, although any document can be improved, the proposed strategy, as articulated in the Appendix to the Staff Report, represents an important first step in combatting antisemitism at TDSB. It is only a first step. Its ultimate success or failure will depend on whether it is implemented in a timely and robust manner.
We are prepared to work with the TDSB to enable every school to be a safe environment for all students, teachers and staff. We commend Staff for this Report and hope that it will be received by the Committee and acted upon.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark Sandler,
Chair, Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism
Rabbi Michael Dolgin
Senior Rabbi, Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto and Chair of Reform Rabbis of Greater Toronto Taskforce on Antisemitism in Public Education
--
Please note that this submission represents Mr. Sandler’s personal views and not the views of every member organization of ALCCA.