The following is a transcript of Episode 180 of the Identity/Crisis Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Yehuda: Hi everyone, welcome to Identity/Crisis, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, creating better conversations about the issues facing contemporary Jewish life. I’m Yehuda Kurtzer, we’re recording on Thursday, March 21, 2024. This episode of Identity/Crisis is sponsored by the Howard and Irene Levine Family Foundation in appreciation of the Hartman Institute’s initiatives to prepare summer camp counselors to create meaningful and relevant educational programming about Israel at camps across North America this coming summer. 

So I want to start today’s podcast in a slightly unusual way with a bit of a history lesson. So Zionism and American Jewish support in general for Jewish state was and has been a majority position by Jews in America for about a century, but that was not always the case. In the early years of the movement, the late 19th and early 20th century, American Jews, like most diaspora Jews around the world, were opposed to Zionism and you could understand why. 

There were many features of Zionism that seemed implausible. Many diaspora Jews, though worried about anti-Semitism, were not on the verge of picking up and leaving, much less to what they imagined to be a backward and unknown wilderness in the Middle East. And for American Jews in particular, who were striving for assimilation and acceptance, the idea of supporting a Jewish state somewhere else was widely seen as creating a risk that they would be seen as disloyal to America.

There were a lot of historical and political forces which led to the gradual embrace by American Jews of support for Zionism. And sometimes I’m skeptical about great-men-theories-of-history that attribute disproportionate credit to single special individuals. But in the case of American Jews and Zionism, according to a lot of historians, it’s reasonable to claim that the conversion of Louis Brandeis to Zionism, and then his subsequent leadership of the American Zionist movement, may have been the strongest singular force in turning the tide for American Jews. Brandeis became a Zionist right around the time he became a Supreme Court justice and a prominent justice at that. So given the precarity of American Jewish political identity and Brandeis’s renown, he exercised huge influence in helping to change the course of American Jewish leaders in their support of the Zionist project. 

But I’m particularly interested in Brandeis’ lever, the key instrument that he used to enable the rise of American Jewish Zionism, and that was an organization that formed early in the 1920s out of the nexus of previously existing Zionist organizations who had agreed to work together in concert despite their differences for the previous decade. That organization that coalesced came to be known as the Zionist Organization of America. 

If you gasped at hearing the name of the ZOA as the organization that Brandeis led for a long time in this crusade to make American Jews Zionists, you’re probably not alone. Today’s ZOA is a far cry from Brandeis’ outfit. Brandeis was a crusader for social justice, for progressive values. Brandeis advocated for America to live up to its liberal ideas. He’s best known for his work on the court in advocating for freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and for an anti-corporation bias. Brandeis argued extensively in his writing and in his speeches that these liberal American values were not at odds with his Zionism but essential to them, in some ways laying the foundation for today’s liberal Zionism. Brandeis insisted that not only was there no contradiction between being a good Zionist and a good American, but there was no contradiction between supporting the liberal values, which he saw as essential to the American project, and supporting those same values as essential to what he hoped for out of a Jewish state. The ZOA of that time embodied that argument in its policies and its approaches. 

Today’s ZOA is not that. Under the leadership of Mort Klein for the past three decades, the ZOA has become an outspoken gadfly, a right-wing Zionist organization that makes no apologies for its right-wing politics, including at times opposing the government of Israel, as it did during the Oslo process, embracing the Trump administration, which brought them into good graces during the Trump years as an unlikely Jewish communal kingmaker, and at other times famously berating a lot of fellow Jews, including other Zionist organizations, even those with whom it participates in coalition. 

The ZOA of today is a fraction of its size from the 1930s, but it’s probably noisier than it was in the 1930s, and definitely more controversial. And you’d have to wonder, what would Brandeis or Rabbi Stephen Wise, also of the old ZOA, what would they think if they came back from the dead to see what their august organization had now become? 

I thought about Brandeis and the transformation of the ZOA almost immediately when I heard about a curious court case taking place in Canada. David Matlow, a long-time Jewish leader and a Zionist, I think probably more of a liberal Zionist, perhaps, but my feeling is if you own the world’s largest collection of Herzl memorabilia, and you chair the UJA’s annual campaign, you get to call yourself a Zionist. 

Matlow is part of a lawsuit against an organization called the Toronto Zionist Council because he asked to join the council and his membership was denied. This was ostensibly, but we’ll learn today over his political views, the Toronto Zionist Council has now tacked significantly rightward. But it raises the same question: What about these organizations, which once represented the mainstream of our community and their identities today? 

I will say part of me has mixed feelings about this because organizations are allowed to evolve. Organizations should be allowed to evolve. And even if we feel nostalgic about the old ZOA or TZC, all organizations need to adapt or risk becoming irrelevant. But there’s more at stake here, and it’s about language.

I think the Matlow lawsuit is ultimately about language and categories of identity that really matter to a lot of us. You know, a few years ago, a Democratic member of Congress here in the states went on an attack on Twitter against Zionists because she was responding to some outrageous comments said by the ZOA. It may have been reasonable for her to believe that the Zionist Organization of America truly represented American Zionists, and I assume the same is the case in Canada, where many people will reasonably assume that a Toronto Zionist Council speaks for the Zionists, and in this hyper-partisan and fragile political moment, these issues of representation matter. In general, we never can resolve fully who speaks on behalf of the Jews or the Zionists, and it should be no surprise that sometimes a version of that question might lead us to find ourselves in court. 

David, thanks for coming on the show today and for talking about this. And maybe start, just tell us a little bit about more background of the lawsuit. Our listeners can probably read a little bit about it, although I’ve only seen one major newspaper article which was in Haaretz. Tell us where this lawsuit originated and what led you to the point of bringing litigation against the Toronto Zionist Council.

David: The Toronto Zionist Council was established in 1942. It was a successor to an unincorporated organization that started in 1907. And for much of its history, it was a central place for Zionists of all kinds. It started by having a Zionist building in downtown Toronto, and as the community moved further north, a series of buildings ultimately resulting in it acquiring a plot of land and building a four-story building in Toronto in the early 60s called the Toronto Zionist Center.

When it was incorporated in 1942, its articles, and the articles are what creates the organization, said that the purpose of the organization was to unite all interested persons within Toronto in carrying on, promoting, and enlarging and propagating the idea and ideals of Zionism in accordance with the principles, aspirations, and policies of the Zionist movement in Canada and/or Zionism in all of its ramifications. 

And ramifications in this context means a subdivision of a complete structure like branches of a tree. So it was saying the organization is to promote Zionism in Toronto and be open to all kinds of Zionists to work together and work in the city of Toronto. 

What’s happened over the last 30 or 35 years is the organization became controlled, some might say hijacked, by a group with a singular perspective of Zionism. And to be clear, that perspective, a right-wing oriented perspective on Zionism, the greater Israel, the settlement enterprise, all of that, I’m not saying that’s not an element of Zionism, a perspective of Zionism, it is, but it is not the only one. 

And in fact, in the 90s, the organization amended its bylaws, which essentially said to become a member and a director, at the time it was a closed shop, to be a director, you were a member, a member-director, so it was a constituency of four or five people, but to join the organization, you and every organization to which you belong had to have precepts which were consistent with those of the organization. The precepts were not written down, that we’ve been able to find, but it is clear by the nature of the people who were involved, the perspective and the precepts.

This was something that troubled me greatly when I tripped over it. So how did I trip over it? So a bit of background, my family has been involved in Zionism in Toronto. My mother was the president of Hadassah, whose office was at this Zionist center building. My father founded the Toronto branch of the Association for the Soldiers of Israel, whose offices were in this building.

My wife took Hebrew lessons in this building. I went to a synagogue that had services in that building. It was an active place and it has fallen into tremendous decline. And I came across this story and was reminded of it during the pandemic.

Like all good lawsuits, this story started with me picking up a challah. There is a bakery in the Zionist Center building and during the coronavirus period, when you ordered something from the bakery, you went around the back and they would open the door and slip the challah out. They were protecting themselves, were totally understandable. But that building looked to me like it has gone into tremendous decline. There was construction equipment, it looked like a garbage dump, the building looked that it hadn’t been maintained, and when they opened the door to pass out the, pass through the challah, I looked through and it gave me a visibility through the building into the lobby, which looked like it was stuck in 1975. 

So I wanted to try and figure out what had happened. I asked around and determined that the organization had been somewhere between the 70s and the 90s taken over by a group of right-wing Zionists. And I acknowledge that right-wing Zionists is a form of Zionism, but it’s not the only form of Zionism. And they are excluding people who had a different perspective of Zionism from participating. And they did that by their bylaws, providing that if you wanted to be a director-member, because each director was a member and vice versa, you and every organization to which you belonged had to have precepts which were consistent with those of the organization. And even though they were not written down, one could have seen by the nature of the people who were involved, that it was for those who have a right-wing perspective,

greater Israel settlement enterprise and excluding people with another perspective.

Yehuda: And if I’m not mistaken, on top of the building they owned, there’s also a camp involved. Can you talk a little bit about the camp?

David: That’s correct. There’s a Young Judea Camp in Ontario, very popular camp, was founded in 1948, has hundreds of kids go there every summer, enjoy themselves, great camp. I never went there, but I do know from the community, people who go, it’s a very good camp and a Zionist camp. 

It was founded in 1948 and titled to the camp was put in the name of the Toronto Zionist Council. And so the Zionist Council owns the camp, but with the right-wing perspective of the members and directors, there’s a mismatch between the ideology and philosophy and objectives of the TZC board and members, and the philosophy of a Young Judea camp. And that has had consequences to the camp, because of a lack of alignment between what the board and members perceive as in the best interest of Zionism and what a Young Judea camp is trying to inculcate in its campers, and capital investment, lack of ongoing mentorship and involvement and care. And so that has had consequences to the camp, mostly the physical plant. I have not been there, but this is anecdotal in the community from what I’ve been told, which parallels the decline of the physical plant of the Toronto Zionist Center building.

And to me, it’s a microcosm of some of the issues that we’re having in our community, where an entity, a community organization was built by Zionists through their hard work, through financial contributions, through financial support, by guaranteeing mortgages and the like, it was then taken over by those with a certain perspective and allowed to decline because those who were in control of it have objectives that are separate from the purpose for which the organization was created, excluding people who have other perspectives from participating, and the lack of transparency and the lack of diversity has had consequences to two important community assets in Toronto.

Yehuda: Great, so that last word of what you just said, I want to zoom in on, which is assets. Meaning, if this were simply about a mouthpiece, a Twitter account, it sounds a little bit like it would be less of an issue, but it sounds to me like the Zionist council controls a four-story building in the heart of Toronto, which is presumably worth a significant amount of communal funds, as well as a camp. So what are you hoping will happen? Because even joining, potentially, as a member of the Zionist Council, should you win the court case that you should be allowed to join, still outs you at odds with the majority of the membership and leadership, and very difficult to actually turn around an institution as a single stakeholder. 

David: It’s not simply a matter of me joining. It’s a broader issue than that. It’s that the organization, the TZC, should have diverse membership, representatives of the various perspectives and iterations from religious right-wing Zionists to progressive to Artza, which is Reform, Mercaz. There’s a whole rainbow, as you know, and they should all be able to participate in it as members and then elect a diverse board and also to be a unifying force for Zionism in our city. This is what the Jewish world requires is places where we could work together and not be divided, and this was an organization that was created for that because of people and personalities it lost on its way, and it wanted to bring that back.
A properly constituted board, elected by diverse membership, which should include representatives, including Young Judea, who have the greatest stake in one of the assets, of the camp, will be more transparent, more open, and think more broadly about what’s best for the building, which, I should say, is mostly empty, and has had issues with rodents and other things we don’t like to talk about. 

And in terms of the camp, focus on the camp, what the organization has done historically since the takeover, between the 70s and the 90s, is, has taken the profits of the camp and used it to support organizations operating in Judea and Samaria, which has allowed the camp property to decline, in an area of super competitiveness in the camping world. You have to keep current and upgraded to give the campers the best experience. And the consequence of the misalignment of the TZC members with the camp has resulted in this. 

I should say that as a result of the pressure brought by the lawsuit and other factors, there has been a change of the board, really the day that the Haaretz article came out. So there are new board members. It’s not clear that they reflect a diverse perspective of Zionism, time will tell, and they in turn were elected by 11 members, we are told. We don’t know how they were appointed, where they came from, and also don’t reflect diversity. So it’s not about me joining the board, it’s about restoring the organization to its historical purpose as a unifier, and with diversity, the Zionists of all stripes in our community can decide what’s best for the building and give proper deference to the camp and allow it to operate and reinvest its profits in its own camp facility.

Yehuda: Yeah, and I’ll come back to the little nugget you just shared about transfer of funds settlements, because I actually believe, if I’m not mistaken, that that runs afoul of Canadian tax law, and that the organization lost its tax-exempt status for a period of time, because I think that’s illegal activity. I hope I’m not making all of that up, but I’m pretty sure I read something about that. 

David: There was a related organization called the Zionist Organization of Canada Foundation that lost its tax status in 1995 because it offended Canadian tax policy by providing funding beyond the Green Line. That organization was a sister to the Toronto Zionist Council and funneled funds through the Toronto Zionist Council to the Yesha Council and other things.

is not acting against Canadian tax law, under our claim, it is acting against its responsibilities because in no sense is supporting organizations in the West Bank, or maybe even in Israel, promoting Zionism in Toronto. We need to promote Zionism in Toronto, we need to get kids on Birthright, and March of the Living, and MASA, and your great programs, and whatever it might be, from progressive to religious Zionist, all of that, and that would promote Zionism in our own community, and that was the purpose for which the organization was established. 

Yehuda: So let me ask you two devil’s advocate questions about this approach. One is, this happens all the time in Jewish life; I remember in Boston, we lived there for a while, there had been a long-time Conservative synagogue that lived in a neighborhood where for long time people had moved out, or it was very small. And over time, Chabad families moved into the neighborhood, and they realized that the way to take over the synagogue was to become members of the synagogue, and now it’s a Chabad synagogue. 

This happens. Organizations have one identity at a period of their life and then, whether it’s because of mismanagement, or you can call it pernicious, that people come in and do this, or it’s just for 50 years, no one really paid attention to what was going on to the Toronto Zionist Council, and lo and behold, somebody else decided to use the vessel that is the organization for its own purposes. 

What do you say to somebody who says, okay, you’re nostalgic for a version of the Toronto Zionist Council that once was, and you’re eager for a version of the Toronto Zionist Council that doesn’t exist. But tachlis, this is what this organization has become, and even though it may once have had a charter in a particular direction, you know, stakeholders and its leaders can move that charter to be whatever they want it to be, because that’s the nature of organizational life. 

David: So from a narrow legal perspective, they could have changed the charter, but they didn’t. And so the articles remain exactly as written in 1942, and they have existing rules to our understanding that anyone who subscribes to the Jerusalem program of the World Zionist Organization is permitted to be a member. And so there is an existing framework which has not been changed to our knowledge. And so whether that was sloppy or whatever it was, so that’s from a pure legalistic point of view. 

From a more substantive point of view, the purpose of the organization, and I think the current directors would say the same thing, and probably the prior directors, was to promote Zionism in Toronto. So the question is, what is Zionism? And Zionism is many things, it’s always been many things. I’m a Herzl person, as you indicated at the outset. And from his day onward, there were multiple perspectives and we have to learn to work together to advance what we share and park the things that we don’t share off to the side. Especially at this time, we share more than we don’t share. 

And here is an opportunity in our community, with, hopefully, the goodwill of the new directors, and if not with the goodwill, then with the help of the court system, and I hope we can settle this without ultimately needing to go to trial on this, for the simple point of enabling Zionists of all kinds to work together, because that’s what we need, and the converse is, if a right wing organization is perceived to be Zionism, then that will dissuade many in our community for wanting anything to have to do with Zionism, and nobody who is involved in Zionism wants our situation in Toronto to be made worse.

So the question is, how can we work together to make it better? There is an existing framework. Yes, there’s nostalgia for a history, but there’s also a legal framework that exists. It’s like if you were elected to the board of the diabetes foundation, you can’t say, well, I think curing heart failure is more important. You can do what you wish in your own organization. This is an organization for a purpose with significant assets.

And it operates a summer camp. So every summer, there’s a responsibility to these campers to give them the best camp experience in the perspective of the Young Judea movement to which the camp belongs.

Yehuda: So here’s the second version of that devil’s advocate argument, which is, I am frustrated all the time in the American Jewish community by organizations, and I could list a bunch, but I’m not going to, who I feel have lost their way. Maybe not as overtly or as explicitly as you believe about the Toronto Zionist Council, but who I feel have just, they own a piece of communal real estate, by which I mean literally and figuratively, they own assets, but also they are seen as responsible for a certain, piece of the communal agenda, and I think that they’re mismanaging it terribly. 

And it would be great to have an invisible hand, in your case, I guess it’s the court system, that would reallocate those resources towards the leaders, the organizations that actually could do it correctly.

But the real answer that I’ve just learned over the years is, you have to just start anew and do it yourself. I know the assets are a strong argument, but what happens when someone just says, David, start the new Toronto Zionist Council. Call it that, the next entity that can achieve this mission. And if the answer is just, well, it’s easier with the assets, that’s fine too, but that does feel like the kind of, I don’t know, market capitalism response to this is, you feel betrayed by your institutions, instead of trying to take them over, you just try to defeat them. 

David: The answer to that is it depends on the situation, and one would have to look at every particular situation to see what is right and what is achievable. Things may be right, but not achievable in this particular case, given the history, the facts, the documents that have been made available, the letters patent, which I talked about. There is a legal case here.

But more importantly, as a Herzl collector, as a studier of Herzl, I talk about Herzle all the time on webinars and other programs, and I conclude my remarks by saying the magic of Herzl is that he saw an issue, he was concerned with anti-Semitism, and instead of kvetching about it and whining about it and saying, well, wouldn’t it be good if someone did something about it, he went ahead and did something about it. And all he did is the subject for many other shows or many books. 

So I say that very often. And then I found myself in the position where I found something that was just unjust. It wasn’t right. I have no stake in this game. I didn’t go to Young Judea camps. I’m not a real estate person. I have no interest in what’s going to happen with that building. It is just not right. And it does a disservice to the cause of Zionism in our community. 

This lawsuit started in August of 2022, so it proceeded October 7th. So people are saying to me, well, how can you be divisive by having a lawsuit? You’re being divisive. And my answer is, how can trying to eliminate divisiveness Itself be divisive? It’s exactly the opposite. 

So there’s a principle, there’s the injustice of it. And there is the ability to do something good for our community. I should say, it’s not just me. I have a co-plaintiff, a gentleman named Robbie Feldman, we needed two plaintiffs under the Charities Accounting Act. So that’s a detail that your listeners are not going to care about, but we’re doing it because we think it’s right and our community will benefit from it.

So people out there who are facing similar circumstances, and I dare say there must be many out in the landscape. I started with doing research to see if there was a case, and I retained an expert on charity law who said this was wrong. There is a case, and under this act and that act and this approach and that approach, you can try and change it. So in this particular case, I can try and change it. There may be others that are so buttoned down and cleaned up the way the takeover happened that there’s nothing you can do about it. And those, don’t waste your time. But in this one, there is an avenue and I’ve taken it. 

Yehuda: There’s something scary at risk here because, you know, you could win or you could lose and you might win or lose on procedural grounds, which sometimes when that happens, it’s that we don’t learn anything necessarily about the larger issues that are at stake in something like this.

But if one of the issues that’s actually at stake is that this comes to define the terms of what is Zionism or who gets to speak on behalf of Zionism, one of the risks of losing is that a Canadian court will effectively say, these guys speak on behalf of Zionism. And I think, you know, if what partly makes me anxious about that is that America and Canada, as Jewish communities, are so close to each other, but the default position for American Jews is the kind of liberal Zionist position. And that’s not the default position really for Canadian Jews. Canadian Jews code a little bit further right when they tend to describe their Zionism. 

So this is connected, I think, may not be for you, but it feels connected to a much larger urgency, which is helping Canadian Jewry see the biodiversity that’s possible within Zionism. And it’s a little scary to think that one result could be, no, this group and their reactionary politics get to actually be the, they’re consistent with their bylaws because they are in fact speaking on behalf of Zionism. 

David: There’s always that possibility. Litigation comes with uncertainty. But I relish having the discussion anywhere, anytime, that Zionism includes that, but is not only that. Right from Herzl’s day, there’s always been the labor Zionists, the religious Zionists, the communists, the revisionists, that’s the soup, the mixture that is our strength and our power, and we can’t be afraid to advance that principle in court, in discussion, on calls such as this, for fear that we may not win that argument. To me, the argument is unassailable. Zionism is diversity. It’s always been and that’s what has made it work. And somehow that’s been lost a little bit. 

And by talking about it, hopefully not at a trial, but if necessary, at a trial, I would relish the opportunity for people to understand that there are an array of perspectives of Zionism. It seems sometimes that it’s been co-opted by one version that’s loudest and may be in control of the Israeli government at this time or from time to time, but that’s not the entire universe and we’ve got to stand up and say, that’s not the case, and figure out how we can articulate that. 

And in this particular case, significant benefits will ensue for our community by successfully making the argument that Zionism is diverse and we’re better off and stronger for it and don’t be afraid of it. It’s our strength.

Yehuda: Let me ask you the last question on, basically connects to this, which is, you know, I was with you in Toronto earlier this week, so for our listeners, that was a week ago, and it was a tense time actually to be in inside and around the Canadian Jewish community. There was the prospect of some very significant calls coming out of the Canadian Parliament initially for a Palestinian state. Ultimately that was attenuated, but ultimately emerged with something that was something of a ceasefire statement. Although, I would say editorially, relatively speaking, an okay ceasefire statement. It was a ceasefire that was meant for all sides. Sometimes the ceasefire seemed to focus entirely on Israelis putting down their weapons and stopping the fighting, the ceasefire call that appealed to the return of the hostages. And there were in fact Jewish, and I think would self-describe as Zionist, members of parliament who voted on behalf of the resolution and experienced, at least in many of the circles that I was traveling in the Canadian Jewish community, tremendous anger and hostility being directed their way.

I’m curious whether you think there’s a future in the Canadian Jewish community for the kind of pluralistic Zionism that you’re hoping for. It feels like such a hard moment to advocate for that kind of pluralistic Zionism because those choices have really immediate, political consequences today and our community is in a kind of solidarity moment that it wants standing with Israel and standing with the Jewish people to reflect a very narrow and particular kind of politics.

So I’m curious how you map what I agree with as like Zionism is this big pluralistic discourse against a marketplace of ideas right now and politics in the Canadian Jewish community that wants to think about its options much more narrowly. 

David: When the marketplace of ideas seems to be limited, then we push people out from the market. And so it’s in our own interest to open ourselves up to diverse views because we’re so small, the Jewish people in total, 14. 7 million or whatever, and in Canada 400,000 that we can’t afford to push people people away because they don’t agree with a certain perspective and have no ability to voice their other perspectives.

There are other perspectives. My perspective is not relevant to this case or to this issue at all. It’s really about the strength of diversity and the concern with having the voice of Zionism in Canada being a certain perspective and excludes everyone else. And if they don’t have a place at the table, they’ll go to another table.

Those who are pushed out of our community setting can be our greatest adversaries, because if you’re pushed out from a progressive perspective at the Zionist table, then you can join those who are haters and then be emblematic, here we have a, someone went to Jewish day school and went to camp Ramah or whatever, and still is against Israel because they have no ability to voice it within our community settings. And that’s one of the dangers of what we’re experiencing here in Canada and I dare say in other places in the world. 

I’m not naive enough to think that simply adding diversity to the board and membership of the Toronto Zionist Council will cure that problem, but it could be a symbol to our community that we can sit around the same table with different perspectives. We may not agree with each other, but we will hear each other and we’ll work on the things that we share because we need to be together to deal with the situation we find ourselves in now and going into the future. I’m summoning the historic past of the Toronto Zionist Council to position our community to be able to deal better in the future.

Tessa: Thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to our guest this week, David Matlow. Identity/Crisis is brought produced by me, Tessa Zitter and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was produced with assistance from Sarina Shohet and edited by Gareth Hobbes at Silver Sound NYC, with music provided by so called. 

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