There is also a sizeable daycare operating in the Temple building, which itself sits some 300 meters from the office tower housing the Israeli consulate, the site of weekly and often twice-weekly, raucous and aggressive demonstrations for almost three years. The gatherings require a robust police presence and are often rife with genocidal slogans and antisemitic rhetoric, with an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hung on a construction barricade outside the building a few days ago.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Grushcow says a colleague from the U.K. reached out overnight, and knowing there would be questions from families with young children, offered a template to discuss issues like antisemitic attacks with children. \u201cHow horrible\u201d the rabbi said, \u201chow atrocious that we live in this world where we have a template to talk about this with children.\u201d Still, she says, \u201cI am not giving up on being a full-fledged Canadian, and a proud Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n
While expressing confidence in Marc Gold, a Temple member who was named to the Carney government\u2019s new advisory council studying hate and racism, Rabbi Grushcow, echoing Szlak\u2019s comment, says the challenge faced by any liberal society is how to address those who would want to harm it.<\/p>\n
In an email to the synagogue\u2019s members, she wrote, \u201cIf we don\u2019t name the danger, we cannot address it.\u201d Responding to antisemitism \u201crequires being proactive, not reactive. Naming the ways in which external conflicts are being imported. Recognizing that while criticism of Israel can be legitimate, when the Jewish State and those who love it are libelled, violence against Jews is the result.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attack comes a few days after the city\u2019s official opposition party Projet Montr\u00e9al announced it will push the administration to immediately suspend all institutional ties with the Israeli government, institutions, and municipalities, at the June 15 council meeting, \u201crecognize and denounce the apartheid regime imposed on Palestine and the genocide perpetrated there,\u201d and \u201caffirm its solidarity with the Palestinian people and all civilian victims of hostilities in West Asia, commonly known as the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
That party also featured many candidates in last fall\u2019s election who called for that and more, and who denounced the current administration\u2019s inclusion of candidates who are Zionists, notably and vociferously targeting current downtown Ville Marie city councillor Leslie Roberts.<\/p>\n
The Temple has been a singular example of Jewish congregational outreach, and interfaith dialogue in the province, and Rabbi Grushcow made a passionate defence of Jews, and Zionism in French media last year. Just last week, she hosted an online conversation with the New Israel Fund of Canada about \u201cIsraelis Fighting Settler Violence in the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says it doesn\u2019t matter how open-minded or progressive a community is. \u201cAntisemitism doesn\u2019t work like that. Antisemites are not parsing who\u2019s a good Jew and who\u2019s a bad Jew. We are Jews. And even if we were the most insular, most right-wing Jewish community, it would still be completely unjustified and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTemple will do what we do best,\u201d Rabbi Grushcow concluded, \u201clive a thriving, inclusive, joyous Jewish life\u2026We have weathered worse, and we will build better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Westmount Mayor Michael Stern told The CJN the town\u2019s public security officers were nearby. \u201cThey do a lot of patrols and as I understand it, they heard the breaking of glass. They were there and called the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic security officers and the police did a great job working together. They dealt with it exactly as they were supposed to and will continue to do so. They will ramp up patrols. Not that they were inadequate before, but they are ever vigilant regarding the Jewish institutions in the area. The Jewish community should feel safe and should continue to go about its daily business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Westmount has a public security force of some 28 people and a nearby police station with 45 officers, so the area is regularly patrolled.<\/p>\n
Temple member Charlotte Smoley says the news was \u201cdevastating, but also not surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says she was very moved by how the Temple community and the rabbi responded this morning. She says she is also heartened by how responsive the community is. \u201cIt\u2019s not reactionary, but responsive. Each time something happens, community security steps in and we educate ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is concerned, however, that incidents like this are not automatically investigated as hate crimes, \u201cand instead require a recommendation or a referral. There is a history in the city and there is data that can inform this.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a parent of children enrolled in the Temple\u2019s Torah school, she is of course concerned, \u201cbut I also remember during the second intifada the sight of police snipers on synagogue roofs.\u201d More recently, memories of shelter-in-place training for her children during the war with Iran remain fresh.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, I do have faith, faith in my community, in the people who stayed at temple all night last night, and I will be in temple tomorrow, as will my family, who are not members, standing in solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n
A joint statement from Federation CJA and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said this latest criminal incident is part of a \u201ctoxic antisemitic climate, fuelled by the importation of a distant conflict by extremist groups opposed to Quebec\u2019s common values. Opportunism, complacency, radical and anti-Zionist extremism, Islamism: these evils must finally be combated rigorously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Montreal Jewish community is tired of fearing for its safety and that of its children, they write. \u201cWe have already let the hanging of a Jewish effigy in our streets go unchallenged. We cannot wait for a \u2018Bondi Beach\u2019 to happen in Montreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Westmount mayor Stern says the arson attack \u201cis another sign that the Jewish community is at risk, and we need all levels of government to continue and increase their support for the Jewish community and continue to protect it. We\u2019re as vigilant as we can be. What happened, happened, of course, and we will continue to protect our people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federation CJA says there will be increased patrols in and around the Jewish community over Shabbat.<\/p>\n
![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Headshot-e1742321976617.webp\")
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Joel has spent his entire adult life scribbling. For two decades, he freelanced for more than a dozen North American and European trade publications, writing on home decor, HR, agriculture, defense technologies and more. Having lived at 14 addresses in and around Greater Montreal, for 17 years he worked as reporter for a local community newspaper, covering the education, political and municipal beats in seven cities and boroughs. He loves to bike, swim, watch NBA and kvetch about politics.<\/p>\n