I did not expect to leave synagogue on Shabbat thinking about work culture, professional ethos and community values. But my Rabbi Meir Dubrawsky as usual, planted something that stirred around in my brain. He was commenting on the current global conditions. When he got to the plight of world Jewry, he used the term ’pro-semitic’ to describe people who love their fellow Jewish person. He commented that the opposite of anti-semitism is not tolerance, but the love of people who are Jewish.
The word pro-semitic is, on one level, simply a logical construction: if ‘anti’ means against, then ‘pro’ means for. But in practice it is something more. It is a reminder that our language shapes not just how we describe the world, but how we move through it. When we name our ideals affirmatively, when we say what we are ‘for’ something rather than only what we are ‘against’, we hand ourselves and each other something to reach toward.
That is the deeper sermon. Not just about Jewish relations, and not just about professional courtesy, but about the fundamental orientation we bring to our values. Are they fences, or are they horizons? Pro-semitic suggests the answer: face toward the light, and walk towards it. Don’t foster darkness and build hatred.
I recently attended a judge’s retirement dinner. After years of COVID sheltering, it was such a nice time, an opportunity to connect with dear colleagues. I saw so many old faces. It was such a pleasure. But, a few times as I was talking to one lawyer, I saw from a distance another lawyer that I wanted to say hi to. When I mentioned that to the lawyer in front of me, they said “Oh I don’t talk to that @#$*)!”. This happened again later that night.
I drove home that night thinking how sad it is that we may have unintentionally fostered darkness and built hatred. When hatred is the noun and tolerance is merely its absence, we have already conceded something important – we have made exclusion, cancellation and rejection the default behaviour. This is not unique to lawyer relations or Jewish relations. Think of how many of our most important values are defined. We use words like “non-adversarial,” “uncivil” and “without prejudice.” These terms are framed as withholding an action, as a subtraction, and the removal of a flaw rather than as a wilful affirmative, chosen behaviour.
The Rabbi’s word challenges that entirely. To be pro-semitic is not a call to refrain (from hating Jewish people). It is to lean toward them – toward their culture, their history, their contributions, their humanity. It is active positioning, not a relenting acceptance. It is a stance, not an absence. Now consider professional life. We spend enormous energy discouraging incivility, rudeness in meetings, dismissiveness toward colleagues, micro-aggressive tones and mean-spiritedness in the workplace. In our profession, we need codes of conduct, we are directed to practice directions about civility and issue warnings about disrespectful communication. All of this is aimed at restraining the negative. But what if, instead, we described the goal in terms of what we are reaching for?
The word we already have for this is ‘collegial’. To be collegial is not simply to avoid being rude – it is to bring warmth, generosity, and genuine regard to one’s professional relationships. A collegial workplace is one in which people are invested in each other’s success. It is pro-semitic in structure: it names the affirmative ideal rather than the failure mode. The difference in practice is more than semantic. When we tell someone “don’t be that way,” we show them the basement floor of acceptable conduct. When we invite them to be collegial, we hand them a tall ceiling to aspire toward. One approach limits human behaviour; the other shapes interpersonal culture.
There is good reason, both psychological and practical, to believe that framing values positively produces better outcomes than framing them as prohibitions. Prohibition-based thinking activates a person’s sense of constraint. It asks them to monitor themselves for failure, to police their impulses, to hold something back. Affirmation-based thinking does the opposite – it activates aspiration. It asks a person to become something, to move toward an ideal, to make a choice that reflects who they want to be. To muster their energies to improve relationships.
This is why the most durable moral traditions in human history have generally led with virtues rather than commandments against vice. Courage, generosity, justice, compassion – these are positive claims about how to live, not merely lists of things to avoid. They give people something to work toward, and that turns out to be far more motivating than a fence marking where they must not cross.
Pro-semitism, as my Rabbi used it, belongs in this tradition. It does not ask people merely to check their prejudices, suppress their hostility or not throw a brick into a synagogue window. It extends an invitation: to learn, to appreciate, to connect, to support, to stand alongside. That is a richer moral ask and a more achievable one, because it gives people a forward-looking direction to walk towards – together.
PS. The photo above is me today popping into the Yorkville Jewish Centre on my way to the office to see my Rabbi Meir Dubrawsky for the ‘Mega 100 Guy Tefillin Wrap’ as a display of Jewish pride and unity and to kick off my day by praying and wrapping tefillin – which I generally do every day at home when I pray for peace, civility and social justice in our community and to thank G-d for all my blessings in life.
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