Show packs emotional punch

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

From the perspective of being a singer in the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir, The Family Naiman concert that took place at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture on June 16 started out much like any other. The dress rehearsal – where we ran through the dozen-plus songs, hearing the intros and endings of the narration that would be interwoven with them – gave no indication that the afternoon would be particularly emotional. But when it all came together on Sunday, it took a great deal of effort to get through the final number, Leon Dubinsky’s “We Rise Again,” without disintegrating into a puddle of tears.

The tone was set with the opening song: a section of “Ikh bin a Yid” (“I am a Jew”), written by Itzik Fefer with music by Vladimir Heifetz. Pride in being Jewish was an overarching theme of the afternoon, as was the importance of knowing one’s family history – and of passing on your memories and traditions to the next generations. These themes carried through to the second half of the annual spring concert, which featured guest performers Claire Klein Osipov and her daughter, Lisa Osipov Milton, accompanied by Wendy Bross Stuart. The duo sang Yiddish favorites and songs from musicals, kibitzing between pieces and interacting in a fun, friendly way with the audience, encouraging them to sing and clap along, making it clear once more why the veteran performer is so beloved – and not just for her rich soprano voice – and how her daughter has followed in her footsteps.

Part of the impact of The Family Naiman was in the fact that one of the narrators, Daniel Neuman, is the son of its writer, Victor Neuman, who is also a longtime choir and Peretz member. The other narrator was Chloë Smith, whose sister, Maia Smith, played the oboe on “Song for the Mira” (by Allister MacGillivray, arranged by Stuart Calvert). These young people grew up in the Peretz Centre community, and it was moving to see them have such prominent roles in the performance.

In The Family Naiman, Victor Neuman mixes humor and gravity to relate his family’s story. It is a tale that is particular to the Naimans/Neumans, but whose elements would be intimately familiar to most Ashkenazi Jews. While the details of the story, and how it is written, make it fascinating, it is this universal aspect that made the lyrics of the final song, “We rise again in the faces of our children,” take on the faces not only of Neuman’s family members – projected images accompanied the performance – but of our own families, of the larger communities we form, of the challenges we have all faced, are facing and that lay ahead: the idea of survival in general, that it is something awe-inspiring.

“My name is Yadja Weinryb. It is 1937. I am 20 years old,” begins The Family Naiman, Smith narrating. “We have lived in Warsaw all our lives and for most of that time life has been reasonably good – at least as good as it can be for Jews in this country. We were a fairly well-off family but growing up I knew of Polish gangs who roamed the streets of Warsaw beating up or killing any Jews they found. My parents grimly tolerated it. Was there ever a choice? Their attitude was that in a situation such as this, a Jew has to wait for better times and keep his head down in the meantime. I could never stand that attitude. Things have to change and they are changing. The answer to all our troubles lies in the east.”

When the polizei come to the Weinryb home to arrest them for being Bolsheviks, “‘What?’ said my father, ‘Bolsheviks?... Bolsheviks in my home? What are you talking about? There are no Bolsheviks here. We know the laws. We are not revolutionaries.’” So confident is her father that, when the police reach Yadja’s bedroom, he jokes, “Maybe there’s a Bolshevik under the bed.” Lo and behold: “Disaster! All my magazines and literature from my membership in the Young Communist League came pouring out from under the bed. It was a communist onslaught. My mother’s face was white. My father lost his voice completely for a moment or two. I had kept it all a secret from my parents. Humiliatingly, my mother had to convince them she knew nothing about it because she never cleaned my room.

“‘Are you meshugena?’ my father screamed at me finally. ‘How could you do this to your family?’ My father was so outraged with me, the police were convinced my parents knew nothing about it and they only arrested me. I spent a week in jail for communist activity. But that was alright. A lot of my friends were there, too.”

Two years later, Yadja meets Cheshik Naiman, a fellow communist, “and what a talker! He seems to know something about everything – but I’m really not sure whether he knows everything or just has an opinion about everything.” The audience gets to meet Cheshik, too, as narrated by Daniel Neuman. As the story progresses, songs of love, freedom, work, oppression, comfort, peace and fellowship emphasize what is happening in the text. Conducted by David Millard, with Elliot Dainow on piano, the choir seemed inspired by the meaning that the narration added to their repertoire.

When Victor Neuman left his spot in the choir and stood at the podium to pick up the story himself, the fact of his existence when so many others in the “story” have died, is a statement in and of itself. His epilogue, set in May 1996, covers brief remembrances of decades prior, stories his mother told him of their arrival in the “big, beautiful land” of Canada, family that survived the Holocaust, those who didn’t. We find out that his father Cheshik (Chester) died in 1986, his brother Aaron (Andy) in 1988, and that his mother has just died. He relates an amusing exchange he’d had with his mother more than once about turning off the lights when leaving a room: “Don’t waste the light,” she’d admonish. And, on this fond memory, Neuman ends the story. Leaving his mother’s home after her death, he thinks, as he turns off the lights, “‘This one’s for you, Mom.’ And I hit the switch. Then I locked the door and went home to my family – and hers.”

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