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CAEF Community Impact Statement, filed with the Ontario Court of Justice

  • Writer: CAEF
    CAEF
  • 49 minutes ago
  • 4 min read

PO Box 77598, Sheppard Plaza PO, Toronto, ON, M3H 6A7


Community Impact Statement of R. Michael Teper

President, Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation

R. v. Kenneth GOBIN (Case No. 4911998249110029700) April 28, 2025


My name is Michael Teper.  I am the President of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (“CAEF”), a Canadian registered charity dedicated to eradicating antisemitism in Canada through public education and advocacy. We work closely with the nationwide and grassroots Jewish community organizations in Canada. 


On March 28, 2025, Kenneth Jeewan Gobin was found guilty of assaulting Tilda and Malcom Roll as they were walking home from Sabbath services at the Chabad synagogue at Bathurst Street and Flamingo Road in Vaughan.  He rode his electric bicycle from the street onto the sidewalk, nearly missing them, and spat at them as he rode by.  He shouted at them: “Hitler should have killed you all” and “Hitler should have taken you out”, or words to that effect.


The narrative of this encounter speaks for itself as just one more example of how, for the Greater Toronto Area’s Jews, antisemitic attacks are becoming a routine part of life in the big city.


Since October 7, 2023, the Jewish community in Canada has suffered assaults on its safety unlike anything in the past sixty or seventy years.  Jew-haters have firebombed synagogues.[1]  Jew-haters have repeatedly fired their weapons at a Jewish girl’s school in the Toronto area.[2]  Jew-haters have broken the windows of Jewish-owned delicatessens[3], Kosher restaurants[4] and of course synagogues[5], time after time.



The 2023 Hate Crime Statistical Report of the Toronto Police Service states that out of the 365 hate-motivated criminal occurrences reported, 130 of them, being 36%, were directed against Jews.[6]  By contrast, Jews constituted 4.5% of the population of Toronto, as counted in the 2021 Census.  In brief, we are targeted for a full eight times our demographic share of hate.   We therefore do not view Mr. Gobin’s violence in isolation, but against the backdrop of this epidemic of hate crime targeting Jews. 


The impact of Mr. Gobin’s assault must not be underestimated.  This assault was widely reported both in the general media[7] and in the Jewish press[8].  This assault with many other acts of violence and intimidation, both reported and unreported make Jews in the Greater Toronto Area, and across Canada, fear for what might happen to us as we go about their daily routines.


In this context, some Jews are giving up on life in Canada.  As evidenced by media stories such as this, they are leaving the country.[9]  Many Jews are afraid to drop off their children at the local daycare.[10]  Our institutions are constantly on the watch for graffiti and vandalism and break-ins.[11]  Our religious and community institutions are forced to divert their financial resources away from programming, maintaining and building our infrastructure, and direct these funds instead towards hiring security guards and police officers.[12]  Based on bitter historical experience, we feel that Canada “is on a very dark trajectory that will not end well.”[13]


But we Jews have the right, to stay in this country, to prosper and lead robust and meaningful lives, and to be Jewish in public.


We have a right to worship in synagogues on our religious holidays, and indeed every day, without fearing that by merely entering the building, we are risking our lives.  We have the right to walk to and from our synagogues without being accosted, spat on, and harangued that Hitler should have wiped them out.


We have the right to construct synagogues and community centers that are attractive and welcoming, not hidden by walls and fences and constantly patrolled by heavily armed guards, as is the case in many other parts of the world. 


We have the right to conduct events in our synagogues and community centers that are relevant to our communities, without having to conceal the location of the events until a few hours before they take place, for fear that the events will be disrupted by violent intimidation tactics.


We have the right to gather in large numbers at our synagogues and community centers to celebrate major life cycle events such as baby-namings, bar mitzvahs and weddings, without gambling that our celebrations could turn into tragedies, such as the 1994 bombing of the Associacion Mutual Israelita Argentina in Buenos Aires, in which 85 lives were taken and over 300 seriously injured.


We demand from Canadian society and all of its governments, including their judicial branches, the right to conduct our affairs in peace, without being chased down and assaulted by Mr. Gobin or any like-minded individuals.  We petition for that level of protection from our governments.  It’s not too much to ask.


We ask that the court ensure that justice consists of a fit and proper communication of the wrong done in this case to the Jewish community’s sense of security, and to the public.


Thank you for your consideration.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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