Et tu, Toronto?

[citysparrow]

I suppose it was too much to hope that our city would be exempt from the rising tide of antisemitism, intolerance, and xenophobia that seems to be sweeping the world. But I did hope. And so I was shocked, saddened, and disappointed to hear that yesterday there was a bomb threat at a Jewish school and JCC in downtown Toronto. There was no bomb, but of course the authorities had to take the threat seriously. Buildings were evacuated, schools on lockdown, traffic rerouted. There was no bomb, but the threat itself is an attack - a violation of what should be safe space.

This week, after a hiatus of several months, I've been working on the Torah project. I volunteered to use my Photoshop skills to fix imperfections in the scanned images of the needlepoint panels. I volunteered to do it because, as I've explained elsewhere, I enjoy working with Photoshop and I have a fondness for projects that are audacious, ambitious, and somewhat daft. But in these times, suddenly, even Photoshop feels like an act of defiance.