MONTREAL — “If you ask me what I’m most proud of after 20 years, it’s that we have survived,” says Frederick Krantz, founder and director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR), an independent, pro-Israel, largely voluntary foundation.
CIJR, which is guided by academics but geared to the needs of the community’s grassroots, publishes the daily ISRANET Briefing and the biweekly Israzine, among other online and print English and French publications intended to disseminate accurate information and fair comment about the Middle East and Jewish issues. It also maintains a huge physical and online archive of articles and papers on the same topics and runs programs for university students, including training in how to advocate for Israel on campus.
Krantz is proud of the fact that CIJR is able to do so much with a small staff and a very tight budget. The institute has just two year-round staff members headed by Jacqueline Douek, three student interns (two of whom are working only through the summer), and an archivist, a six-month position made possible by a Quebec government grant.
Otherwise, CIJR relies almost entirely on funding from individuals, and that amounts to just enough to get by annually, Krantz said. It receives no money from the organized Jewish community, a circumstance that Krantz still doesn’t understand after two decades.
“What we are doing is unique in Canada. We are recognized internationally, but still there is no support.”
CIJR celebrates its 20th anniversary with a formal gala dinner – the first in its history – Aug. 27 at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim at 6 p.m. The honorees are veteran international Jewish leader Isi Leibler and his wife Naomi Leibler, world president of Emunah, and Alan Baker, who is shortly leaving his position as Israeli ambassador to Canada after four years. They will receive CIJR’s Lion of Judah award.
Theo Caldwell, president of Caldwell Asset Management Inc. and a current affairs columnist for the National Post and Toronto Sun, who has frequently defended Israel, will be recognized as CIJR’s Golden Magen David honoree for outstanding person of the year.
Isi Leibler is a former senior leader of World Jewish Congress who was forced to leave the organization a few years ago, when he called for an investigation into alleged financial irregularities that eventually proved to be justified. The billionaire Australian businessman and prolific writer now lives in Israel, where he chairs the Israel-Diaspora committee of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs.
Krantz, a New York-born, Concordia University professor of the history of the Renaissance, who spends more time in Italy than in Israel, did not set out to create a think-tank or a lobby group.
But he was incensed by what he saw as biased media coverage against Israel during the first intifadah in the late ’80s. He was convinced that the Arabs were waging a campaign to divide Diaspora Jewry and that the community needed to put up a united public front. Krantz felt that leadership was not coming from the organized Jewish community.
He started to write letters and articles to the Gazette and other papers. He noticed some fellow academics, notably Harold Waller and Julien Bauer, were taking similar action, and suggested they co-ordinate their activities.
Soon, the professors were being invited to speak at synagogues and community groups, and Krantz became aware of the hunger for information in the Jewish community about what was going on in the Middle East.
The professors launched a daily newsletter call Responsa, which was sent by fax connected to a computer, the leading technology of the day.
“We spent $800 on that machine, which was a lot of money at the time,” Krantz recalled. For the first couple of years, CIJR operated out of Krantz’s basement as a volunteer effort. Responsa soon became Israfax, which continues to be published today as a quarterly digest.
One of the first non-academics attracted to CIJR was Baruch Cohen, who at 88, continues to come into work as the organization’s volunteer research chair. The Romanian-born Holocaust survivor saw in CIJR a means of concretely expressing his passionate devotion to the continuity of the Jewish people.
“CIJR is a gem,” he said. “A powerful voice against ‘shtadlanut’ [appeasement], an uncompromising defender of the rights of the Jewish people and the rights of the State of Israel. CIJR plays an essential role on the international political landscape by offering consistent, valuable and clear analysis of the Jewish world, the Middle East and Israel.”
Cohen and Krantz found each other after a letter by the former was published in The Canadian Jewish News in August 1988, expressing his concerns about a federal government-sponsored symposium that brought together a select group of Arab and Jewish Canadians at Montebello, Que. Krantz also opposed the clandestine meeting.
The CIJR’s first “office” was a room at the Canadian Zionist Federation’s headquarters, then on Décarie Boulevard. “I chain-smoked a pipe at that time, and Baruch threatened to leave if I didn’t quit. I said I need nicotine to write, but I did quit. Baruch was just too valuable to us,” Krantz said.
Although his personal views are hawkish, Krantz has always insisted that CIJR be open to a broad spectrum of opinion on Israel, but he draws the line at Peace Now, whose open criticism, he feels, is detrimental.
“Jewish unity has always been our key value. And that means not criticizing Israel publicly. Internal debate in the community is all right, but we should not be publicly questioning the legitimacy of its democratically elected government,” Krantz said.
