In the span of a few days, three Toronto-area synagogues were hit last week by gunfire. Temple Emanu‑El in North York was struck during Purim, with 20 shots fired into a building where the rabbi was still inside. Days later, Shaarei Shomayim near Bathurst and Glencairn, and Beth Avraham Yosef of Toronto in Thornhill, were both shot at in the middle of the night, their doors left pocked with bullet holes but, by good luck or bad aim, no bodies.
Police aren’t yet sure if the incidents are linked, but they’re clear about one thing: they’re hate‑motivated. They’re also being lived as hate‑motivated; every Jewish parent now drives past their synagogue’s doors and quietly re‑calculates how many seconds it would take to get their kids out if the bullets came at 11 a.m. instead of 11 p.m.
If these were “just” three attacks, that would be horrific enough. But they’re part of a long, rising line. In 2024, Toronto Police logged 443 hate‑motivated incidents, a record high and a 19 per cent jump over 2023. Forty per cent of those incidents—177 cases—targeted Jews, who make up under four percent of the city’s population. Since 2014, hate crimes have risen by more than 300%.
The escalation after October 7, 2023, has been brutal. Toronto Police say antisemitism now accounts for more hate crimes than any other bias category, with over half of confirmed incidents aimed at Jews. Calls related to hate crimes rose 93 per cent in the months following October 7 compared with the same period a year earlier, and there have been nearly a thousand such calls since then. Community advocates calculate a 144 per cent rise in anti‑Jewish hate crimes since 2021 alone.
That is what “we’re scared” looks like when you turn it into a spreadsheet.
Toronto sells itself as the city where everyone belongs: 250 ethnicities, 170 languages, more residents born outside Canada than in. Yet in our same city, year after year Jews remain the single most targeted group for hate crimes. The posters at Pearson say “Diversity is our strength”; the plywood on synagogue windows says, “But not everywhere.”
In Ottawa, successive Liberal governments have tried to frame antisemitism and Islamophobia as twin evils, equal and opposite, joined at the podium and in the press release. Of course, both are real, both vile, and both demand serious action; Muslims in this country have been murdered while walking with their families or praying in mosques. But “both” does not mean “the same,” and pretending it does erases what is specific and acute about the Jewish experience right now.
When more than half of reported hate crimes in Toronto are aimed at Jews, year after year, that’s not a rounding error. When bullets are hitting synagogues three times in a week, the message being heard in Jewish homes is not “the government cares about all communities equally,” it’s “no one wants to say out loud that our community is under extraordinary, particular pressure.” Solidarity can hold two truths at once: Muslims are at risk, and Jews are uniquely and statistically at the top of the hate‑crime ledger in this city.
I’ve never viewed my Jewish friends as victims. If anything, they play an outsized role in so many vital aspects of the city. They’re leaders, not victims. But starting after Oct. 7 and peaking last week, they have repeatedly said: “I feel alone.” “Where is everyone?”
Like many of my Jewish friends, I think Benjamin Netanyahu is a terrible leader and Israel’s actions in Palestine (and now Iran) are less invasions and more slaughters of the innocent.
But please don’t tell me that because of this, a Jew living in Toronto deserves to be shot.
So if you’re not Jewish, here are a few things you can do to help.
- Say something. “I saw what happened at the synagogues and I’ve been thinking about you” lands differently than a “how are you?”
- Show up where it counts. Attend an open house, a vigil, a public event at a synagogue or the JCC.
- Challenge the lazy takes. When friends or colleagues reduce Jews to a proxy for Middle East politics, gently push back and remind them that local Jews are your neighbours, not a foreign policy file.
- Learn the basics. Take 30 minutes to read a short primer on antisemitism in Canada so you understand why this feels historic, not episodic, to your Jewish friends.
- Be visibly allied. If your kids’ school has had antisemitic graffiti or incidents, email the principal, not to rage, but to insist on a clear, public response.
- Keep checking in after the news cycle moves on. Fear doesn’t track the headlines; it tracks the sound the building makes at 3 a.m. when you think you heard a car slow down.
None of these will stop a bullet. But all of them tell a small, embattled minority that they are seen, not just counted.
Finally, a very practical question: why on earth can’t every one of Toronto’s 129 synagogues have a dedicated, monitored camera pointed at the street? If police can flood downtown with surveillance before a parade or a protest, surely they can manage license‑plate‑catching cameras around the buildings that keep getting shot. We live in the age of surveillance; surely drive-by shootings are child’s play for facial-recognition software. If someone fired shots in the night at St. James Anglican Cathedral or St. Michael’s Catholic Basilica, the hue and cry would be long and loud.
Civil libertarians will warn about the risks of a more watched city. But Jewish Torontonians are already living in a more watched city—they are the ones being watched through rifle sights.
Meanwhile…
1. As others see us. Pew Research asked people in 25 countries to rate the morality and ethics of others in their country. In 24 of those countries, people said: “Yes, we’re great and good.” In fact, Canadians scored at the top of the heap; 92% of us think the rest of us are honest and moral. The one country whose citizens think ill of each other is the United States. . Say no more.
2. Preparing your…garden for spring. For old age…for the next James Bond…for staying in an Airbnb…and finally, preparing for the Overton Window…your sea lanes for oil tankers.
3. The rise of…Japanese Italian restaurants…of new flight tracking software…of tech companies more powerful than many countries…of earning a living standing in line…and of goats as firefighters.
4. Don’t you just hate it when they bomb your hotel? What to do when you’re staying in the Fairmont Palm Hotel in Dubai and Iran bombs it? Complain online.
5. Trips to the edge of your world. We still have room at The Canada Summit atop the Rocky Mountains Aug. 30 – Sept. 3 with speakers Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert and Cynthia Wesley- Esquimaux.
Join us also on a Turkish gulet and at The Kardamyli Festival in Greece this Fall with the entire front page of British public intellectuals.
6. AI beats your condo board. A friend of ours wrote her resignation letter from her condo board. Then she asked AI to write a funnier version.
While AI can now do lots of things better than humans, so can chimpanzees.
7. What is Trump’s reason for bombing Iran? Historian Tim Snyder says it’s simple: personal corruption. But historian Robert Pape thinks it’s the “smart-bomb’ trap.
8. Toronto’s new convention centre is five times bigger than its current one. At least if Premier Doug Ford has his way. He wants to fill in parts of Lake Ontario to make sure we get a 2 million square foot facility, slightly smaller than Chicago’s McCormick Place, the largest in North America.
9. A rich retirement plan. This 7-minute animated short from The New Yorker is nominated for a 2026 Oscar.
Speaking of animated, Judi Dench was born to play Queen Victoria. And speaking of rich, it seems the Breaking Bad Effect is alive and well: if you have a cancer diagnosis, chances are 14% higher you’ll commit a crime.
10. The best of world music comes to Koerner Hall. Belize’s Garifuna Collectivewith special guest Mis Blandine perform on April 2. Tickets 25% off. (Promo Code: RAMSAY25).
11. Let’s never forget…what a monster Ayatollah Khamenei was…that some species come back from the dead…that suicide lurks always…that some people take things that are perfectly fine and make them worse…and that parenthood means a tangle of things.
12. What I’m liking: This post of life’s great moments. Plus Dark Winds, on Prime. Now in Season 5, starring Zahn McClarnon as a Navajo Nation Police Chief and executive produced by both Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin.