By Howie Silbiger
There is nothing wrong with being comfortable. Jews have had enough centuries of being chased, blamed, taxed, expelled, beaten, restricted and murdered that nobody has to apologize for wanting a decent house, a good school, a stocked fridge and a Sunday morning where the biggest emergency is that somebody forgot to buy cream cheese.
Comfort was earned. In Montreal, it was earned by people who came here carrying trauma, old recipes, family photographs, numbers on their arms, North African warmth, European memories and the understanding that nobody was coming to build our future for us. They opened stores. They built shuls. They started schools. They created charities. They paid tuition when they barely had money. They sat through meetings that should have ended two hours earlier. They fought over everything, because of course they did, and still somehow built institutions that lasted.
That is Jewish Montreal. Loud, generous, suspicious, sentimental, political, exhausting, over-involved and still standing. It is not perfect. It never was. But it was built. Too many Jews who now benefit from that world forget that somebody had to carry the bricks.
The problem with comfort is not the comfort itself. The problem is that, after a while, it makes everything feel automatic. The school is there because it was always there. The shul is there because it was always there. The kosher stores are there. The camps are there. The Federation office is there. The rabbis are there. The teachers are there. The donors are there. The people who handle things are there. Without anyone saying it directly, a quiet little assumption settles in: somebody will take care of it.
That may be one of the most dangerous assumptions in Jewish life. Somebody will teach the children. Somebody will defend Israel. Somebody will answer the antisemites. Somebody will call the politician. Somebody will show up to the boring meeting. Somebody will write the cheque. Somebody will fight with the school board. Somebody will be the loud Jew, the difficult Jew, the one who says the thing everyone else is thinking but would rather not say because they still want to be invited to things.
It is a nice arrangement until it stops working.
Jewish life was never meant to run on autopilot. There is no passive version of Jewish continuity. You either carry it or it gets thinner. That does not mean every Jew has to live the same way, because if we ever tried to create one official version of Jewish life, the meeting would split into three committees, two lawsuits and one breakaway minyan before lunch. But a Jew has to be doing something. Learning something, building something, supporting something, teaching someone, showing up.
Otherwise, Jewish identity becomes a feeling, and feelings are not much of a foundation.
A lot of North American Jews were raised on feelings. A little Holocaust memory, a little Israel pride, a little family tradition, a little Yom Tov, a little food, a little “my grandfather came here with nothing,” a little “we survived.” Nostalgia is warm, but it does not form a strong Jew by itself. You cannot raise a child on chicken soup, survivor stories and an Israeli flag in the gym and then be surprised when he has no words the first time the world pushes back.
This is where Jewish education has to be discussed honestly.
For a long time, especially in many community day schools, Israel became the easiest glue. Judaism was harder. Hebrew was hard. Text was hard. Practice was hard. Obligation was hard. Israel was easier to package. Blue and white, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Yom Hazikaron, shinshinim, school trips, songs, soldiers, falafel, flags, “Am Yisrael Chai,” and a video from Jerusalem if the projector decided to cooperate.
Some of that was beautiful. A Jewish school that is embarrassed by Israel has lost the plot completely. Israel belongs in Jewish education. Zionism belongs in Jewish education. The return of Jews to their land is not some cute side topic to be pulled out when the regular teacher is absent. But in too many places, Israel became a shortcut. Instead of building deeply Jewish students, schools sometimes built emotionally attached Jewish students. They loved Israel, knew the songs, and cried at the ceremonies. They knew the slogans, but did they know enough Jewish history? Enough Tanach? Enough Hebrew? Enough exile and return? Enough of the story underneath the flag?
That is the gap. The problem was not too much Zionism. The problem was thin Zionism. Zionism as school spirit, Zionism as an assembly, Zionism as a day on the calendar, Zionism without enough Judaism underneath it. And thin Zionism collapses quickly when it is challenged, because it gives students emotion before it gives them roots.
October 7 exposed that very quickly. Suddenly, Jewish students needed more than a flag and a song. They needed language. They needed knowledge. They needed to understand why Jews are not foreigners in their own story. They needed to know that Israel is not a public relations problem, not just a summer destination, not just a place where cousins live, and not just the subject everyone gets nervous about at school assemblies. Israel is part of Jewish memory, Jewish survival, Jewish argument, Jewish pain, Jewish hope and Jewish responsibility. If a young Jew only knows Israel as a feeling, he can be shaken when that feeling is attacked. If he knows Israel as part of the larger Jewish story, he has somewhere to stand.
The same problem shows up in a different way with self-defence. There are Jews now taking Krav Maga, boxing or other self-defence classes who do not keep or even know what Shabbos is. People who do not keep kosher, do not go to shul unless someone died or a kid is having a bar mitzvah, and could not find the page in the siddur if their lives depended on it. Yet they are learning how to get out of a wrist grab, how to keep their balance, how to notice exits, how to protect themselves in a parking lot.
There is something funny there, but not really. A Jew who will not sit through davening will still learn how to defend himself. A Jew who has not opened a Chumash in years will still understand, somewhere in his body, that Jewishness is not just food, memory, jokes, family stories and a last name. It is something people have hated for a very long time. It is something that can follow you even when you are not practicing much of anything.
That instinct means the comfortable Jew may have drifted from practice, but he has not completely drifted from identity. Under the Costco runs, the mortgage, the kitchen renovations, the vacations, the job, the summer plans and the general North American sleepiness, there is still something there. He may not have the words for it. He may not have the education, he may not have the observance, but he knows enough to understand that being Jewish is not only decorative.
Still, it would be a sad Jewish future if the gym ends up doing what the school, shul and home failed to do. Self-defence has its place. Sadly, maybe more of a place than we wish. But a Jew needs more than the ability to block a punch. He needs something inside worth defending. A Krav Maga class may build confidence, but it cannot replace Jewish literacy. A Yom Ha’atzmaut program may build emotion, but it cannot replace Hebrew. A Holocaust unit may build memory, but it cannot replace Jewish pride.
That is where comfort failed us a little. It turned too many Jews into consumers of Jewish life. We want the school, the shul, the camp, the rabbi, the program, the Israel connection, the security, the advocacy, the statement, the event, the pride. Then we complain when it is expensive, inconvenient, disorganized or not exactly what we wanted. But Jewish life is not a product. It is not Amazon Prime with kugel. It is a responsibility, and responsibility is not always convenient.
Comfort can make a people into an audience. We watch Jewish life, comment on it and are sometimes proud of it. Of course, we criticize it, forward articles about it and tell our children it matters. But at some point, the question is whether we are actually carrying it.
Montreal Jews should understand this better than most. This community was not built by people waiting for Jewish life to become easy. They built schools because children needed schools. They built shuls because Jews needed shuls. They built charities because people were poor. They built senior homes because people got old. They built newspapers because the story had to be told. They built camps, youth groups, kosher stores, libraries, cemeteries and community centres. They argued, obviously. This is Montreal. If two Jews agree on something here, a third one will form an opposition group by lunch.
But they built.
Comfort should have made us stronger. It should have given us space to learn more, teach better, build deeper, support our institutions properly and raise children who know who they are before the world tries to define them. Instead, in too many places, comfort made Jewishness lighter. Easier to wear, easier to outsource and easier to take off.
The comfortable Jew does not have to disappear. They just have to stop being passive. Enjoy the house, the vacation and the good school. Enjoy the fact that your grandparents would look at your life and think you had landed on another planet. Most importantly, the comfortable Jew must remember where the comfort came from.
Our ancestors didn’t work so hard, risk so much and sacrifice so Jews could become thinner versions of themselves. They did so because they dreamed that, unlike them in the ‘old country’, Jews in the ‘new world’ could build without fear, learn without hiding, support institutions, raise children with backbone, love Israel with depth, practice Judaism with seriousness, and live without becoming lazy about being Jewish.
The danger of the comfortable Jew is not that they have a good life, let them have it. The danger is that they forgot a good Jewish life still has to be Jewish.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on truetalkradio.com and Political Hitman on Israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the Editor in Chief of The Montreal Jewish News.
