In my family, it was always the “kosher Loblaws.” Featuring Ottawa’s only large kosher food section, the Loblaws location at College Square in the west end of the city is our destination several times per week for everything from groceries, to prescription refills, to challah bread for Shabbat. My Globe and Mail opinion piece published this weekend notes that as the only such store in Ottawa, it serves as both a place to see familiar faces and a reminder of the small size of the Jewish community here.

Last week, a 71-year-old man from Cornwall, Ont., is alleged to have entered the store and stabbed a Jewish grandmother multiple times in the back. The grandmother, well known in the Jewish community here, is thankfully now at home recovering. But the initial fears that this might be an antisemitic attack appear to have been borne out, as a review of the alleged attacker’s social media feed reveals a steady stream of antisemitic hate stretching back years. On Friday, Ottawa police announced they will be investigating the incident as a hate-motivated crime.

For the Jewish community, this means yet more security measures as grocery stores get added to a list that now includes synagogues, community events, schools, senior homes and campus lectures – a growing number of places requiring added security and secrecy to keep the community protected. For individuals, it means rethinking placing mezuzahs on the outside of doors, wearing a kippah or Star of David, or participating in Jewish events, given fears of heightened safety risks. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.

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Deborah Lyons, Canada’s recently retired envoy for combatting antisemitism, this week lamented that the effort to shine a light on increasing antisemitism in Canada had left her “despondent and despairing about the fact that it was hard to get people to speak up, to speak with clarity, to speak with conviction about what we were seeing happening here on Canadian soil.”

Jewish communities have long known silence. My The Hub opinion piece notes that at its worst, it has manifested in some communities as synagogue floors covered in sand to mask the sound of feet shuffling during silent prayers or by those hidden during the Holocaust to escape capture by the Nazis. In today’s Canada, silence comes in different ways. Some Jews quietly conceal their identity by refraining from displaying a Star of David or kippah, families remove mezzuzahs from their front doors to avoid telegraphing that it is a Jewish home, and the community avoids widespread promotion of events hosted in community centres due to security concerns.

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