Read the full story at Canadian Jewish News.
“Go to a dictionary,” Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky says to a group of university students as he paces back and forth across a spacious room, “and I want you type in the word ‘Muslim.’”
All ten students pull out their smartphones, the gentle sound of fingers on glass echoing through the shul-turned-classroom. It’s a late October night in Ottawa’s Finkelstein Chabad Jewish Centre, exactly a week after the building’s grand opening, and Rabbi Boyarsky is already running the first of eight weekly Sinai Scholars lessons.
“It says an adherent of Islam,” Lyanne Morris explains from the far-right side of the room. The political science major from the University of Ottawa sits just a few steps away from a blue curtain and the Torah ark behind it, which shares a wall with two large windows overlooking Friel Street in the city’s downtown core.
“So let’s say somebody is Muslim and their children don’t believe in the Qur’an,” Rabbi Boyarsky says. “Are they Muslim orthodox learners? They’re not. Now let’s type in Christian.”
Photo caption: Finkelstein Chabad Jewish Centre in Ottawa (Photo © Ashley Fraser)