Dear community members,

This week, I had the honour of representing the Jewish Federation of Ottawa on a panel at City Hall focused on kindness, joining fellow community leaders as part of Ottawa’s Kindness Week, an initiative first launched by Rabbi Reuven Bulka, z”l.

It was a meaningful opportunity to sit alongside Imam Ahmed Elemam and retired Reverend Anthony Bailey for a crowd of community leaders from across our city and reflect on questions that feel especially urgent right now: how community institutions can proactively foster inclusion and understanding; how we respond when hate or discrimination occurs; and how we build resilience, trust, and connection across communities for the future. These are critical questions for the Jewish community at a time when we are strengthening our safety and security, and rebuilding with intention, the inter-community relationships that are vital to a resilient and connected future.

As I listened and shared, I felt deep pride in the work Federation and our Jewish community leaders are doing every day, often quietly, and with real impact.

I spoke about our leadership in interfaith dialogue through the Capital Region Interfaith Council (CRIC). Under the leadership of Federation’s Director of Advocacy and External Affairs Jodi Green, CRIC is focusing on what our faiths have in common, how we can grow together, and how we can tackle big challenges together. CRIC’s upcoming new initiative, Scroll Smarter, is an interfaith teen program focused on social media safety and digital responsibility, hosted at the Soloway JCC on February 28. Click here for more info.

I reflected on our commitment to education as a pathway to empathy. This includes Holocaust education programs that invite public school students into Jewish spaces such as synagogues and the SJCC. This past November, Federation hosted a travelling exhibit in Jewish community spaces to create opportunities for respectful engagement and learning across communities. The experience fostered empathy, understanding, and kindness by connecting students to real human stories and shared responsibility. 

We also discussed how critical it is to recognize the humanity that connects us all and our shared values across religions and cultures. A great example of this is the work that Federation’s PJ Library undertakes in sharing books and educational resources that demonstrate Jewish culture, values, and traditions, as well as universal themes of kindness, inclusion, empathy, and community. As part of a special outreach initiative, PJ Library distributed more than 200 educational kits to public schools, which helped to foster understanding, normalize differences, and build inclusion through education. 

I also raised the importance of our faith communities coming together for acts of kindness and to address societal issues in the Ottawa community that impact all of us. I am proud to highlight another PJ Library program aiming to engage the next generation, teaching children to practise hands-on acts of caring for others. In partnership with Jewish Family Services, youth and their families will assemble care packages filled with essential items and a personal message to uplift those in our community who are unhoused. Please consider donating or signing up here.

What struck me most during the panel was how small actions can have an increasingly big impact, whether on one life or throughout the community: approaching each other with a smile, engaging with each other from a position of openness, and welcoming each other into our faith and communal spaces. Imam Elemam spoke passionately about not letting acts of hate define how we view our city and how we view our Ottawa community. There are so much strength and kindness in our city, and our Jewish community plays an outsized role in that. I was proud, alongside Federation's CEO Adam Silver, to sign the Mayor’s Kindness Pledge on behalf of Jewish Federation of Ottawa and Jewish Ottawa and encourage you all to commit to undertaking acts of kindness within our wonderful community and with our friends and neighbours across the city. We will all be safer and stronger because of it. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Danya