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'We're not going to cower': Jeweller offers free Star of David necklaces to Jews, others
A Toronto-area jewellery store owner wants Zionists to be loud, proud and unafraid, and is forsaking more than a million dollars in retail sales to help them show it.
Jack Berkovits of Omni Jewelcrafters is giving away, for free, 18,000 Star of David necklaces to anyone, Jew or gentile, who’ll give their word that they will wear it openly and publicly.
“I’m of the opinion that the vast majority of people in Toronto do not hate us, and certainly not to the point where they want us to leave or they want us to die,” he said. He says “radical Islamists” have a plan to “intimidate us, to have people believe that everybody wants us gone. We have to counter that plan.”
The necklace giveaway idea came to him after about a half dozen people over the course of a few months approached him at the store, some calling him a “baby killer,” when they noticed the sign Am Yisrael Chai (the people of Israel live) on the wall, put up a few days after the October 7 attacks.
“I want everybody, Jew and non-Jew alike, to tell the world we’re not going to cower,” said the former radio host.
The necklaces, available as of Aug. 20 and which ordinarily retail for $70 each, come in three sizes: small, medium and large.
The offer comes at a time when a growing number of Jews have made the opposite calculation, deciding it is safer to fade into the crowd than to be visibly Jewish.
A U.S. study from last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said 40 per cent of Jews now are “less likely” to wear anything identifiably Jewish.
Julie Glick, Toronto-based visual artist, said that she wears her Star of David necklace “sometimes” when going out, but “conscious of the situations that I wear it in” — including restaurants and medical appointments, where she refrains.
“I just make sure that nobody’s gonna, you know, spit in my food, or drop something on the floor, or whatever they might want to do. Sabotage something. And it’s sad, but these are the things that cross my mind now,” she told National Post.
She noted that being “proud and visible has also resulted in kindness and support from people I barely know,” and she applauds the Omni initiative as “wonderful.”
Vaughan-based Ron Furman, owner of Alef Tutoring, says for him, wearing Judaica is circumstance-dependent.
“I refuse to be ashamed of being Jewish. At the same time, I’m not naïve. I understand that there are extremists who dehumanize Jews and view us as legitimate targets,” he said.
When the war first broke out, he was living with his former girlfriend, “who was understandably worried, especially with her young son in the home.” The two had conversations over removing their mezuzah from the front door “over safety.” He told her: “I would not allow fear to erase my identity.”
“There is a difference between being cautious and being ashamed. There were times when I chose not to wear my Star of David while walking around certain parts of downtown Toronto, not because I wasn’t proud, but because I didn’t want to invite unnecessary confrontation. That’s very different from hiding who I am.”
Berkovits told National Post he faces similar considerations.
“For the first time in my life, I’m actually contemplating whether I want to go to the parking lot every night wearing a yarmulke.”
Josh Russell of Vaughan, Ont., who assists autistic adults, took off his house mezuzah shortly after the October 7 attacks. “I had seen news about things about antisemitism growing in Toronto,” he told National Post. “I have a wife and one daughter. I felt the safest thing to do was to take off the mezuzah off the front of our door.”
Vandalism attacks at BAYT synagogue near his home, and mezuzahs ripped off neighbourhood doorways increased his unease. He’d change gears if he “knew that the government was kind of taking this a little bit more seriously … I don’t think that there’s been any kind of real movement in terms of trying to dial down the antisemitism that occurs in the city.”
Gayle Kertzman, a staffer at Beth Tikvah shul in Toronto, said she developed a heightened sensitivity after the synagogue had been hit with attacks and vandalisms, including an attempted arson and an in-person intrusion that required security intervention.
“I used to wear a Jewish star,” she said, “but when I go outside of the synagogue, I hide it. I don’t want to be a target of hate, whether it be verbal or physical. And when I feel like I’m in a safe space in the city, then I pull it back out… I don’t know if it’s in my head or not, but I’m like, ‘are people looking at me differently?’”
The director of the shul’s programs, events and community relations, and a grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, added that “it’s very important that I stand up against hate, even though I’m terrified of it. There is a generational trauma, and maybe that’s why I have this like anxiety and fear of not wanting to show my star. I’m really conflicted.”
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