A man pays his respects to victims of the Bondi Beach shooting in Sydney on Monday.Hollie Adams/Reuters
Dan Moskovitz is the senior rabbi of Vancouver’s Temple Sholom, and the author of the forthcoming book These Are The Things: Finding Meaning in a Distracted World.
In the book of Genesis, a father gives his teenage son a beautiful, distinctive garment. Joseph’s coat of many colours is not just a gift – it is a declaration. It marks him as visible, different, full of promise.
Jewish tradition understands that coat as far more than a symbol of favouritism. It announces identity in a world that does not yet know how to respond to difference with generosity. And it becomes three things at once: a source of pride, a trigger for resentment, and eventually, something Joseph must learn to shed to survive.
That ancient tension felt strikingly contemporary well before the deadly attack on the Jewish community in Sydney on the eve of Hanukkah; now, it is soul-crushing. Such devastating acts are part of a troubling global pattern that has forced Jewish communities everywhere to ask difficult questions about safety, visibility and resilience – questions that are far from abstract. The security guards outside our synagogues and community centres are not for show: There is real danger for Jews in Canada and around the world, and we cannot accept that as the price of being Jewish today.
Yet my faith in humanity is not diminished.
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For many Jews in Canada today, who comprise just one per cent of the population of this country, visibility has become complicated. Jewish friends and neighbours who once moved through public life with ease now pause. Some think twice before wearing a Star of David. Others hesitate before placing a mezuzah outside their home. And now I fear many will think twice about attending public menorah-lighting ceremonies.
These are not expressions of shame or distance from Judaism. Like Joseph’s coat, they are expressions of uncertainty about how that identity will be received – and the personal risks that could be involved.
The biblical story does not fault Joseph for loving his coat. Why would it? It reflects creativity, hope, and possibility. But it does show the cost of carrying a public identity in a society that reacts unpredictably to difference.
Joseph’s brothers respond by stripping him of the coat and throwing him into a pit, then sitting down to eat as though nothing has happened. It is a jarring detail that captures how quickly empathy can disappear and how abruptly safety can vanish, even among those once closest to you. Too many Jewish Canadians recognize that feeling today. Classrooms, streets, and workplaces have become spaces where Jewish identity can invite hostility.
This tension becomes especially visible during the Jewish festival of lights. The menorah is traditionally placed where it can be seen from the street. Visibility is not decorative; it is part of the practice itself. Light, in Jewish thought, is meant to spread outward, like good deeds. But now, many Jewish Canadian families are quietly asking: Should the menorah go in the window? Is it safe? Is it wise?
What the events in Sydney make painfully clear is that Jewish communities are being targeted not for how visible they are, but for being Jewish at all. Retreating into invisibility does not eliminate risk, however; it only makes Jewish life smaller. Security must be balanced with vitality, because a community that elects to disappear from public life has already absorbed the damage such hatred intends.
When a minority community begins to pull its symbols inward, it signals more than private fear. It says something about the health of the wider society. Jewish communities around the world watch one another closely. What happens in Sydney reverberates in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Safety anywhere affects confidence everywhere.
Canada prides itself on visible diversity, from Christmas lights to Lunar New Year lanterns to Ramadan’s glowing fawanis. A menorah should feel no different.
The aspiration is straightforward: A nation where a Jewish home can place a menorah in the window with the same safety and ease as any other seasonal symbol. This is not about special treatment: It is about equal confidence.
Such a society does not emerge by accident. It requires leadership and public institutions willing to take minority communities seriously before crises arrive. It requires clear policy, consistent enforcement and moral clarity that does not wait for violence to escalate.
Joseph eventually learns that identity endures even when the coat is gone. But a healthy society does not ask people to shed what makes them visible in order to feel safe. Like the menorah candles, where one flame kindles another, a healthy society together creates the conditions in which every community can wear its coat of many colours proudly. That should not require a miracle.