'Sheltering and hiding' not the answer, despite more hate crimes, Sudbury synagogue leader says

With hate crimes on the rise, members of the synagogue in Sudbury, Ont., say running away from antisemitism is not the answer for the city's Jewish community.

Greater Sudbury Police are reporting that officers investigated 33hate-based incidents last year, up from 10 the previous year.

The breakdown suggests 20 incidents were directed with racial intent, and nine of those incidents targeted Jews, specifically.

The numbers in Sudbury follow a national trend.Statistics Canada says the number of police-reported hate crimesacross the country rose by 72 per cent from 2019 to 2021. According to the StatsCan report, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated experiences of discrimination in Canada including hate crimes.

Emily Caruso Parnell, president of the board at Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue in Sudbury, told CBC News that she's heard members talk of explicit antisemitic actions such as people saluting, Nazi-style.

"It doesn't really surprise me what the data is showing," Caruso Parnell said. "It's obviously alarming and concerning, but it's not particularly surprising."

The numbers are especially troubling, shesaid, when taking into consideration the city's "tiny" Jewish community.

"For people in communities that are experiencing this kind of upswing in hate crimes and in prejudice, I think there's sort of one of two choices that you can make," Caruso Parnell said.

"One you can kind of try to avoid identifying in those ways. And that's obviously easier for some people than it is for others."

"If I want to pretend that I'm not Jewish, it's not that hard for me to pretend that I'm not Jewish," she said. "But it's not that easy if you're Indigenous or if you're Black. You can't just hide that in the same ways."

The other option, Caruso Parnell said, is to "dig into how joyful" those communities can be.

"I'm really hoping that the way people respond is not by hiding, not by sheltering and avoiding that kind of public-facing part of our identity, but to really dive into that and to be more Jewish, to be more joyful about being Jewish."

"Because I don't think that sheltering and hiding is really the answer here," she said. "I don't think that's going to solve anything, and it's just going to make us feel more vulnerable," she added.

Hate crimes reported by Greater Sudbury Police Service by year.

Hate crimes under-reported

Greater Sudbury Police Det. Const. Mark Renford said hate-motivated crimes have always been under-reported.

"It has a lot to do with the history of the community and policing, especially when it comes to identifiable groups," he said.

"And that can be groups based on race, religion, sex, gender identity and things like that."

Renford said that people from marginalized groups have historically not trusted police to see a hate-motivated crime from their point of view.

He said part of the increase of hate crimes is because more people are reporting incidents to police than they would have in the past.

Reford said the police service has made efforts in recent years to revamp how it responds to hate-motivated crimes.

"We're making sure that we're on par with what everyone else is doing in the province to make sure that we can all come together and combat hate," he said.