JNS
“We have to be shoulder to shoulder with our community, working together to make sure that our governments understand what we’re going through,” Noah Shack told JNS.
Noah Shack is still new enough in his second month on the job as CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs—the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA—that the walls of his office in Toronto’s modernist Lipa Green Building are bare. But the items on his desk offer a hint at his motivations.
A small Israeli flag emerges from an orange bucket, alongside pens and highlighters. A “Zionist vibes only” mug sits across his desk from a copy of the 2014 book “The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel.” On a windowsill, photos of his kids flank paintings of theirs, including one that says “happy Mother’s Day.”
The 41-year-old Ottawa native told JNS that combating Jew-hatred, which has surged in the country since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is a major focus of his. And it’s not only about Jews.
“It’s fundamentally a Canadian issue,” he told JNS. “If our community can’t thrive here, it means there’s a fundamental corrosion of Canadian values in this country, and it’s a very different place for everyone.”
Thinking holistically is necessary to keep Jews safe, according to Shack, who formerly served as CIJA’s vice president for the greater Toronto area and national policy director.
“It’s not going to be the lobbyists alone that carry the day,” he told JNS. “It has to be a partnership between the professionals in Ottawa and dedicated community members, who can speak authentically about what this current moment means for them and their families.”
To Shack, advocacy is a team event.
“We can’t do it alone. We have to be shoulder to shoulder with our community, working together to make sure that our governments understand what we’re going through, the solutions we’re putting forward, and that there’s an entire community of support, Jewish or not, pushing back against the hate we’re experiencing,” he told JNS.
The first major initiative that CIJA has launched under Shack’s leadership is an online “action hub” that helps members of the community contact elected officials and join CIJA campaigns.
“The idea is to create a central place where people can go, find opportunities to put their hand up and take action, and to start to, in a more intentional way, build a movement for the community to be active participants in CIJA’s advocacy,” he told JNS.
Power of the total community
An early interest in global affairs and public policy set Shack on a path that took him to the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and to the London School of Economics, where he earned a master’s with distinction in the theory and history of international relations.
In London, he studied the Iranian nuclear program. Subsequently, in Washington, where he worked at the Middle East Institute, he told JNS that he learned to navigate the “bubble” of U.S. policy circles and test his ideas among leading experts.
He found his work back home to be the most formative.
“Canada is a very different place with a different role in the world,” he told JNS. “Coming to understand that history of engagement between Canada and Israel was transformative for me.”
Most recently, he served as vice president for countering Jew-hatred and hate at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, where he worked with law enforcement, schools and community partners to promote inclusion and security.
Disagreement within the Jewish community comes with the job, he told JNS.
“The notion that we will be uniform in any way is laughable,” he said. “There will always be multiple views about the best way to move things forward. We want to think creatively about how we can harness the power of the total of our community.”
“My approach is about mutual respect and understanding that people will approach problems differently and seek out different solutions,” he added.
Shack told JNS that CIJA is waiting for an April 2024 legal case to unfold in the Federal Court of Canada in which families who lost relatives on Oct. 7 are pushing for a judicial review of the federal government’s decision the prior month to resume funding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.
Israel has documented ties between UNRWA staff and Hamas, and several of the former took part directly in the attacks on Oct. 7.
Under Canadian law, it is illegal to fund groups that are linked to terror, and CIJA has said that the government violated its anti-terrorism laws and statutory obligations. The government moved unsuccessfully to dismiss the suit.
“The time has come for there to be alternatives considered by the government of Canada in terms of humanitarian aid, in terms of support for Palestinians who may be suffering,” Shack told JNS. “Canadian taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be going to support an organization that is so complicit with Hamas terrorism and the hostages.”
‘Essential ingredient’
As he builds coalitions, Shack told JNS he is also looking outside the Jewish community and partnering with ethnic groups and convening faith leaders for joint action against hate. That’s an “essential ingredient” to fighting Jew-hatred, he told JNS.
Those with personal connections to Jews report having twice as favorable views of Jews, and they have “significantly more willingness to identify antisemitism and higher likelihood of being vocal and standing against it,” he said.
He wears his Jewish identity on his head, he told JNS.
“I’ve worn a kippah for many, many years. It’s about being a proud and visible Jew in this moment where there’s so much fear,” he said. “If I’m in a position of community leadership to be able to stand tall and proud being very outwardly Jewish, I think that’s an important thing to do.”
