In November, Cohort VI of the Executive Leadership Program gathered in Toronto for Mandel’s first-ever seminar in Canada. The program was designed in partnership with local educators and leaders to shed light on Toronto’s centralized Jewish ecosystem and examine how North American Jewish institutions and leaders navigate power, belonging, and vulnerability today. Fellows entered the week guided by inquiry questions that encouraged them to listen closely for how leaders map their communal landscape: who is understood to be at the “center,” who is positioned at the “periphery,” and what those dynamics suggest about the community’s ability to foster creativity, inclusion, innovation, and resilience.
The seminar began with a lecture from Professor David Koffman of York University, who offered a compelling analysis of how Jewish leaders draw on vertical and horizontal alliances to navigate communal challenges. He observed that Canadian Jewish leaders have become highly skilled at forging vertical relationships with those in positions of formal authority, such as members of Parliament, university presidents, police chiefs, and senior civic officials. These ties reflect decades of developing access and influence. Yet as these vertical alliances strengthened, horizontal relationships have weakened with other minority communities, civic bodies, labor groups, teachers’ federations, and faith-based networks, contributing to a dynamic in which Canadian Jews can feel institutionally influential but relationally disconnected from other communities.
Throughout the seminar, fellows tested the center-periphery framework against what they saw on the ground: a highly coordinated federation and Hillel system, vibrant grassroots initiatives such as Makom, Fenster’s Shvilim and No Silence on Race, and leaders navigating the shifting terrain of multiculturalism and rising antisemitism. Across encounters, a larger shared tension surfaced: what ultimately keeps minority communities safe—proximity to power, or solidarity with others who also operate outside its center?
In the months following the seminar, fellows have continued to reflect on how renewed solidarity with other marginalized groups might both help combat antisemitism and open new pathways for shared purpose, responsibility, and belonging within the broader fabric of American and Canadian societies.
-Karen Spira: Program Director for the Executive Leadership Program, Mandel Institute