I had the privilege of seeing Mark Leiren-Young’s play Bar Mitzvah Boy when it premièred at Pacific Theatre in 2018. It was funny, edgy and insightful, and well-acted by Gina Chiarelli and Richard Newman. It contained a lot of local references, making it even more special.
What I see from the Playwrights Canada Press edition, which was published in 2020 and arrived at the JI sometime in 2021, is that Leiren-Young’s notes on various aspects of the play allow productions to change certain references and pronunciations to localize the action, thereby making it special no matter where it is performed. For instance, the audience first meets Rabbi Michael Levitz-Sharon, who is in her mid-30s to maybe 45 years old, on a jogging path, “dressed in sweats and a ball cap for a local sports team.”
The next scene: in the rabbi’s office, there sits a man in his mid-60s or older, Joey Brant, “decked out in prayer regalia – including tefillin, which are on incorrectly.” This is our first hint that he, despite initial appearances, is not a rabbi or a religious Jew. When Michael arrives, Joey assumes that the relatively young woman in running gear doesn’t belong at the synagogue – and certainly isn’t the congregation’s spiritual leader. This exchange sets the tone for the essentially two-person play that unfolds. The other cast member is Sheryl, the receptionist, who is never seen, only heard. As described by Leiren-Young, the actor of this role (which was Jalen Saip in 2018 at Pacific Theatre) should have “the accent you want the woman who runs your local deli to at least pretend to have.”
I love having these types of stage direction “made public.” It is a completely different experience to read a play than to attend it in person. It’s almost like listening to the acoustic version of one of your favourite pop musicians – if they are able to sing on key and play their chosen instrument skilfully, they really are excellent at their craft. Similarly, if the words of a play still make you laugh and cringe and move you emotionally in other ways, with no cues from actors or audience members, it is a very well-written play. Bar Mitzvah Boy in book form made me do all those things – I chuckled a lot throughout, and also got teary near the end. Michael and Joey (the bar mitzvah “boy,” btw) are both dealing with some serious, raw issues.
Since I finished the book, I’ve been revisiting some of the many topics it covers. I’ve thought about my own beliefs about Judaism and faith, what happens after we die, what makes a good friend, parent or spouse, how people navigate challenges differently, the ways in which a congregation (or any other group) can be both supportive and trying at the same time.
Leiren-Young dedicates the publication to his mother, Carol Leiren: “I guess it was worth sending me to Talmud Torah.” For viewers or readers of Bar Mitzvah Boy, it certainly was worth it – thank you.
A basketball game may not be able to bring about world peace, but at least one game has acted as a bridge to increasing mutual understanding and empathy.
The graphic novel The Basketball Game (Firefly Books, 2022) is based on the National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name. Written by Hart Snider and illustrated by Sean Covernton, it is based on Snider’s memories of his first year at Jewish summer camp. It proved to be a unique experience.
It was July 1983. The camp was Camp BB Riback in Pine Lake, Alta. Snider was 9 years old and “totally homesick,” finding refuge in the comic books he had brought with him. That is, until he meets Galit. (The book is dedicated to his “partner, collaborator, inspiration and best friend, Galit,” his daughter and his parents.)
For young Hart, Camp BB made him feel at home. “Even both my parents went to this camp,” he writes. “It was a tradition in the community. It was a place to just be ourselves … and that was important because back then, growing up Jewish in Alberta wasn’t always so easy.”
Back then, in Eckville, Alta., the winter before Snider’s first summer at camp, teacher Jim Keegstra, “also the town’s mayor, was fired by the local school board.
“Believing the curriculum was ‘incomplete,’ Keegstra had been teaching Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories in his classroom – that Jewish people had an international plot to control the world and were to blame for everything that’s wrong.”
But one Eckville parent, Susan Maddox, “noticed her 14-year-old son had some strange new opinions.” She looked through his notebooks, then filed a complaint with the school board.
Meanwhile, more than a thousand people attended a rally at the Edmonton Jewish Community Centre to figure out how to respond to the situation. One of the ideas proposed – by then Camp BB director Bill Meloff, z’’l – was to invite some of Keegstra’s former students to the camp for a “day of fun and fellowship,” which included the title’s basketball game.
(Text by Hart Snider / illustrations by Sean Covernton)
In a brilliantly drawn sequence, the team players are depicted as their negative stereotypes, how they see one another. Blue Team – a horned demon, a world-controlling banker and an evil wizard – versus Red Team – a skinhead, a Nazi and a member of the KKK. The game is intense. Then, an opposing player compliments Hart’s shot. “Thanks, man,” says Hart. The game continues, kids versus kids, no more monsters.
“Looking back, it’s amazing that it happened at all,” writes Snider. “That Keegstra’s students were invited to the camp, and they actually came.”
(Text by Hart Snider / illustrations by Sean Covernton)
That’s the thing. Someone had to extend the invitation, and someone had to accept. An illustrated reproduction of an actual newspaper clipping from 1983 notes that attendance at the camp was voluntary and that a preliminary survey indicated that about 10% of Eckville Junior-Senior High School’s 186 students “would be willing to attend.”
Here we are, almost 40 years later and, as Snider notes in his introduction: “Racism, conspiracy theories and antisemitism are spread every day on social media and other platforms. The hate that Keegstra taught in his classroom is now found in memes, videos and forums. Over and over again, we are challenged with the question, how do we deal with fear and prejudice?
“I hope we can continue to find common ground and have empathy for each other, but, most importantly, I hope that parents and kids keep talking to each other.”
The book, intended for readers 12 years old and up, includes more on the Keegstra trial, discussion questions and a glossary.
When Toronto poet Simon Constam emailed me with a request to read his debut collection of poetry, Brought Down, he described it as “notable because it addresses people’s daily experience of God and the Jewish religious tradition.” He noted, “it is provocative and well-written as can be attested to by the reviews of it thus far.” Indeed, the reviews I’ve read have been highly complimentary – and justifiably so.
I am neither religious nor a poetry buff, yet I found Constam’s poems engaging. I liked his challenging and questioning manner. At 70+ years old, he has wisdom gained from life experience that includes approximately a decade in which he followed Orthodox Jewish observance. His knowledge of Judaism infuses his writing and I had to look up a few names and concepts, even though there is a glossary at the end of this 61-page volume.
What I greatly appreciated about these poems is the theme that runs through most, if not all, of them: the title idea of “brought down,” as it refers to what we inherit from our ancestors, whether we’re talking about traditions, rituals, genes, coping mechanisms, etc. The lens through which Constam explores these ideas is his Jewishness. In “Yerushalmi,” for example, he writes:
“Today I seem to have the face of a man I briefly stared at, on a bus on Rehov King David in the fall of 1969. / I wear the same clothes, dark jacket, dark shirt, rough tan trousers, dust-scuffed brown boots. / The mirror shows me, grizzled, unkempt, stocky, stoic, almost seventy. / My face is the face my grandfather wore. / My parents, aunts, and uncles swore the resemblance is uncanny. My history is clear. / I was one of Titus’s captives marched through Rome in chains. I collected all my things in a sack to flee from Ferdinand and Isabella along the Jew-choked roads. I missed my fate in Kielce and Bialystock. I hid in the forests by Kishinev.” It ultimately concludes: “I am the inheritor of a furious history that only in this place can I never deny or forget.”
In his struggles with God, Constam contemplates what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be human. While this all sounds quite serious, and it is, there is humour in this collection and, ultimately, it is hopeful. As much as he takes God to task, Constam is calling on all of us to question ourselves, and to accept our responsibility for the state of the world.
I always look forward to reading whatever Adeena Karasick writes, even though I know I won’t understand all of it. To be generous to myself, I’d say at least 20% of her latest publication, Massaging the Medium: Seven Pechakuchas (Institute of General Semantics, 2022), went over my head – or will require a few more reads and some discussions with friends to get the most out of it.
Massaging the Medium is part of the Institute of General Semantics’ Language in Action series, which “publishes books devoted to creative modes of expression that can open the doors of perception and foster better understandings of the nature of language, symbols, communication and the semantic, technological and media environments that we inhabit.”
The preface is written by Maria Damon of the University of Minnesota. She explains, “For anyone still unfamiliar with the format, pechakucha – Japanese for ‘chitchat’ – is a highly stylized presentation form that comprises a public speech accompanied by 20 slides for visual demonstration, each of which is shown for 20 seconds, while the speaker addresses their (his/her) topic. Initiated in 2003 by a pair of architects working in Japan, the format (trademarked and copyrighted, by the way, in true contemporary entrepreneurial style) has spread to encompass a worldwide enthusiasm for a storytelling/info delivery style that relies on the visual as much as, or even more than, on the verbal.”
Given Karasick’s “dazzling linguistic pyrotechnics on page and stage,” writes Damon, the pechakucha format is ideal, “as the propulsive energy that characterizes her writing and reading style is given sharper urgency for being trapped in a small temporal space…. These seven tours de force of serious play celebrate meaning and unmeaning, communication and miscommunication, the happy errors/eros of semantic and sonic slippage, the glories of the im/p/precise.”
This description is better than I could ever give. I had to look up several terms, such as ’pataphysical – “a ‘philosophy’ of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry intended to be a parody of science,” according to Wikipedia. “Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the ‘science of imaginary solutions.’”
I also had to look up some of the names of people Karasick cites as if they’re old friends. While I’ve heard of folks like Jacques Derrida and Marshall McCluhan, and of Jewish texts such as The Zohar, my knowledge barely touches the surface. I think that’s part of why I have such fun with Karasick – I’ve no preconceptions going into my reading of her work and, while I don’t take it all in, I do feel as if my mind expands from the experience. She is at once academically rigorous, poetically versatile and sensically nonsensical, or nonsensically sensical (I’m not sure which would be most accurate).
In her introduction, Karasick notes that the seven pechakuchas comprising this book were originally created for and presented at academic literary conferences that took place during the period of 2013 to 2019. For a printed publication, she had to adapt them.
“The visuals,” she notes, “consist of both found and original collaged material which both speak to and against the text. And each of the original slides were embedded with audio and video clips, gifs, other forms of kinetic digital media such as montages of sound poetry,” pop songs, movies and more. “What is illustrated here, however, are stills from the digital live motion presentation and, although originally all consisting of 20 separate components, they are now of slightly varying length.”
I can’t even begin to simplify any of the pechakuchas, in order to give an example of their content and form. Best to experience them yourself. Not everything will land – I enjoyed the first few most – but they do offer the possibility of changing how you think about many things. The list includes but is not limited to language, technology, physiology, time, space, cyberspace, mysticism, consumerism, reality, truth. As does any good Jewish text, it will raise more questions than it answers.
It’s been eight years or so since I reviewed Mark Binder’s The Brothers Schlemiel, which recently has been reissued by Light Publications with the title The Village Twins, and written under Binder’s pen name, Izzy Abrahmson. I knew this story of Chelm would withstand the test of time for two reasons. First, we regularly publish a Binder/Abrahmson story in our holiday papers. Second, the stories are written in the style of Yiddish folk tales, which have proven staying power.
As Abrahmson explains in The Village Twins, Chelm is “a tiny settlement of Jews known far and wide as the most concentrated collection of fools in the world.” According to The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the “first publication of Chelm-like stories appeared in Yiddish in 1597, and were tales of the town of Schildburg, translated from a German edition. Hence, these stories first entered Jewish culture as Schildburger stories, and it is unclear when they became connected to the town of Chelm. During the 19th century, a number of other Jewish towns figured as fools’ towns, including Poyzn. Over time, however, Chelm became the central hub of such stories, the first specific publication of which occurred in an 1867 book of humorous anecdotes, allegedly written by Ayzik Meyer Dik. Later, particularly in the early 20th century, dozens of collections of Khelemer mayses (Chelm stories) were published in Yiddish, as well as in English and Hebrew translations.”
The Village Twins is one of the latest such collections, and it does honour to its literary ancestors, providing wisdom in the guise of absurdity. The novel can be read on many levels, including as pure entertainment, as the story of a particular family living in a particular era and as a series of parables (it’s 414 pages long, which, I admit, was a bit lengthy for me). It is part of Abrahmson’s Village Life series, which includes several publications and a podcast, but can be read as a standalone novel. I am proof that a person might enjoy, but does not have to, read or listen to the other stories to follow this tale of the Schlemiel family that is centred around twins Abraham and Adam, who cause trouble from the day they are born.
The brothers make full use of their physical similarity throughout their life, from incidences as harmless as pranks around town to more serious situations, such as avoiding being drafted into the Russian army. What I wrote in my 2014 review still stands: Abrahmson “has created characters with whom we empathize…. He ably manages some fine balances: writing about silliness without the story becoming stupid, and evoking sentimentality while not becoming saccharine….. As well, through the vehicles of comedy and fantasy, [it] touches on many serious topics, from poverty to racism, to ethics in business, to whom people choose to be, and more.”
According to the press release, The Village Twins has been updated and revised, though I can’t speak to how, as my copy of The Brothers Schlemiel has long since been passed on. Along with this reissue came Binder’s pen name “to distinguish the series from his other work. By combining his Hebrew name, Isaac, with his father’s Hebrew name, Abraham … Izzy Abrahmson was born.”
As an editor, dealing with a writer with two names is a little unwieldy and I sometimes feel like the villagers of Chelm, who, for “many, many years” couldn’t tell Abraham from Adam. But that doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of Abrahmson’s – or is it Binder’s? – storytelling. He has won multiple awards for a reason. Anyone who likes a good folk tale will delight in The Village Twins.
A Visit to Moscow is a beautifully illustrated and haunting graphic novel. In a brief 72 pages, it relates the story of an American rabbi who, on a 1965 trip to the Soviet Union, sneaks away from his delegation in Moscow to visit the brother of a friend – Bela hadn’t heard from Meyer for more than 10 years and was worried.
A Visit to Moscow (West Margin Press, 2022) is an adaptation by Anna Olswanger of a story told to her by Rabbi Rafael Grossman. It is illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg, who captures in her palette, in the angles of her images, in her use of light and shadow, scratches and blurs, the claustrophobic fear that existed in that era in the USSR.
“Although the events of A Visit to Moscow are set before my time, the overall spirit of the Soviet Union feels very similar to what it was throughout my childhood when I lived there. I didn’t have to make a big leap to connect to the time period,” writes Nayberg in a section at the end of the book, where we get to see some of her preliminary sketches.
Olswanger knew Grossman, having collaborated with him on writing projects since the early 1980s. “One of our first projects,” she writes, “was a Holocaust novel with a character based on his cousin, a leader of the Jewish resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. As we planned out the storyline, Rabbi Grossman told me about an incident during a trip he made in 1965 to the Soviet Union, where he met a young boy whose parents were Holocaust survivors. The boy had never been outside the room he was born in.
“We never finished the novel, and then, in 2018, Rabbi Grossman died.”
Years later, Grossman’s daughter sent Olswanger a box of writings that Olswanger and the rabbi had worked on. It inspired Olswanger to revisit the story. But she didn’t have the whole story, so, on the suggestion of her editor, wrote A Visit to Moscow as historical fiction.
The main part of the book is incredibly moving. The tension as the rabbi makes his way to Meyer’s last known address is palpable in both text and images; the KGB are an ever-looming threat. When he arrives, it takes the rabbi time to gain Meyer’s trust and for Meyer to let the rabbi into his flat, where he meets Meyer’s wife and their son, Zev, who has never left their home. The rabbi promises to get them all to Israel.
Visit to Moscow is a powerful, if incomplete, story, written by Anna Olswanger and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg.
This core of the novel is well-written, easily understood and powerful. Unfortunately, this mid-section is bookended by ambiguous scenes. At the beginning, Zev hovers from heaven over his dead body, which is laying somewhere in a mountain range. In the throes of dying, he remembers the story of the rabbi’s visit, which leads into the main story, after which we see young Zev on a plane, remembering the ride and Israel’s beauty. In the midst of this, he wonders, “And later – was it years later? Was he a young man?” In the next panel, a fire burns in the aforementioned mountain range and the text reads: “He remembers a sudden flash. A burst of black smoke. Burning metal.”
I first thought that he and his parents had been killed in a plane crash on the way to Israel, so close to freedom but never reaching it. After madly flipping pages back and forth in the book, trying to figure out what I’d missed, I found what I was looking for in the About the Contributors section: “For over 25 years, Rabbi Grossman visited Zev and his family in Israel. He saw them together for the last time in 1992, the year Zev died at the age of 37, a husband and father, while on reserve duty with his army unit in Lebanon.”
A tragic ending either way, but at least Zev got out of his room and got to live more fully for those 25 years. “Every time I visited Zev in Israel,” wrote Grossman, “he was smiling.”
A Visit to Moscow could have benefited from a few more pages, to make the transition of Zev’s journey from the Soviet Union to Israel more understandable, and to include some aspects of his life in Israel, even if they were fictional. Olswanger and Nayberg have created something special, but it feels incomplete.
Ida Halpern, right, with Chief Harry and Ida Assu in Cape Mudge, 1979. Chief Assu was the son of Chief Billy Assu. (Image J-00562 courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)
In 1947, ethnomusicologist Dr. Ida Halpern and hereditary Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs Billy Assu and Mungo Martin, among others, began a decades-long collaboration. They recorded more than 300 sacred and traditional songs that otherwise would have been lost because of the Potlatch Ban and the suppression of Indigenous culture in general. The exhibit Keeping the Song Alive explores these preservation efforts and highlights how these songs are inspiring Indigenous artists today.
Co-developed by the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art and the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, Keeping the Song Alive is at the Bill Reid Gallery until March 19. The exhibit is co-curated by Michael Schwartz, former director of community engagement with the Jewish Museum, and Bill Reid Gallery’s Cheryl Kaka’solas Wadhams, a practising artist who also is an active member of the local Kwakwaka’wakw Cultural Sharing Group and a participant in the Kwak’wala language program through the First Nations Endangered Language Program at the University of British Columbia.
Ida Halpern with her audio recorder, circa 1960. (Courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)
“I first learned about Ida Halpern at a B.C. Museums conference in Victoria in 2017,” Schwartz told theIndependent. “My colleagues at the B.C. Archives shared the news that they had recently submitted the Ida Halpern Collection to be considered for inclusion in the Canadian UNESCO Memory of the World register. The collection was inscribed in the register in March of the following year but, at that conference, I was inspired by the story of Ida Halpern and thought it would be an excellent topic for an exhibit or project by the JMABC.
“A few months later, I ran into [curator] Beth Carter from the Bill Reid Gallery and we agreed to collaborate on the exhibit. Doing so would expand the possibilities and improve the final project, which definitely turned out to be true. Shortly thereafter, we brought in Cheryl Wadhams, who brought lived experience and essential connections as a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw community.”
A 2020 grant from the B.C. Arts Council made it possible for Schwartz and his colleagues to visit the Kwakwaka’wakw communities in Alert Bay, in Campbell River and on Mudge Island. They did so in early summer of this year.
“The impact is still revealing itself,” said Wadhams of guest curating the exhibit. “In general, it is causing me to think more deeply about my relationship with my community. Our research helped me to reconnect with community leaders back home in Alert Bay. Living in the city, this is so important to me.”
In addition to the historical elements, Keeping the Song Alive includes contemporary art, artist talks, Kwakwaka’wakw dance and drum group performances, and more.
“We were honoured to receive permission from the families to share certain songs,” said Wadhams. “All of the artists in the show are directly speaking to the recordings, the Potlatch Ban, or the contemporary flourishing of Kwakwaka’wakw potlatches. Barb Cranmer is an influential filmmaker whose important films are all based on our culture.
“We first approached Sonny Assu as the great-great-grandson of Chief Billy Assu,” she said. “He has explored the ideas behind these recordings for several years and created a new work for the exhibition. Andy Everson is also sharing a personal family story in his work. Maxine Matilpi supports the community with her beautiful regalia and her deep cultural knowledge.”
Several Kwakwaka’wakw community members and cultural leaders are featured in the exhibition, said Wadhams. “They speak directly to the value of the recordings and their meaning for the community. They are the leaders of today who are teaching our youth for the future.”
“At a time when historic injustices are in the spotlight and racial tensions and hate crimes are high, stories of cross-cultural collaboration can soothe and provide inspiration,” said Schwartz, who described the exhibit as a “capstone” to his time at the Jewish Museum. (He recently became a director of development at Ballet BC.) “The JMABC’s last physical exhibit was in 2015, Fred Schiffer: Lives in Photos. Eight years later, it’s nice to produce another one,” he said.
In an interview with the CBC in 1967, which can be found on the Royal B.C. Museum website, Halpern describes the preservation of these local Indigenous songs as a project close to her heart.
“Some have suggested that Ida’s experience fleeing the Holocaust informed her work, and that this experience may have given the chiefs confidence in trusting her. But it’s difficult to know for certain,” said Schwartz. “It is apparent in her writing that she felt other academics had misrepresented and oversimplified this musical tradition and she sought to remedy this perceived wrong.”
Ida and Georg Halpern fled Vienna shortly after Kristallnacht and, by way of Shanghai, made their way to Vancouver, said Schwartz. “Ida had been a promising pianist as a teenager and intended to pursue a career as a performer, but a spell of rheumatic fever landed her in the hospital for a year, making her practise and training impossible. Her health restored, she studied musicology at the University of Vienna during a time when the field was flourishing and some of the best minds in the discipline were teaching there. It was a transformative time for her.
“Arriving in Vancouver, Ida set out to record and analyze the song traditions of local Indigenous nations,” he said. “She spent close to a decade building trust and often spoke of all the time she spent in kitchens, helping the women prepare food for community events. These efforts paid off when she was invited by Chief Billy Assu to record him singing 100 songs at his home in Cape Mudge.
“Over the course of a week, the two recorded 88 songs, complete with explanations of the history, meaning and significance of each song, when it was to be sung and by whom. This encounter was the initial spark for Ida’s research. Assu was a widely respected leader and his endorsement opened the doors for her to meet with other Indigenous leaders, including Mungo Martin and Tom Willie.
“Selections from these recordings were later published through Smithsonian Folkways Records, through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, giving them an audience far beyond the academic community. Many of the people we worked with in developing this exhibit spoke to the importance of these records and the fact that they were many people’s first encounter with their own tradition.”
Hereditary Chief K’odi Nelson was one of the people the research group met in Alert Bay, said Schwartz. “He’s an extremely kind and welcoming person, who told us about the classes his mother and aunties started to teach the children the old songs. In the early days, they couldn’t persuade any of the elders to come sing in person, so his mom swiped a copy of one of the Folkways records from the band office. K’odi had a visceral memory of being about 5 years old and hearing the needle drop as he waited behind the curtain to start dancing.”
Kwakiutl: Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest was published in 1981 by Folkways Records.
It is important to note that Halpern and the chiefs’ recordings were made during the Potlatch Ban, Schwartz said. The ban came into effect in 1885 and was in place until 1951.
“By working with Halpern, the chiefs were breaking the law and putting themselves at risk,” he said, “but they saw the necessity to do so. Their children were distancing themselves from their cultural tradition and showing a lack of interest in learning the old ways. Members of the community felt it was safer to assimilate and blend into the dominant society. The chiefs feared that their tradition would die with them; by recording with Halpern, they were essentially crafting a time capsule, making it possible for a future generation to reconnect with the tradition, which we’re seeing happen now and over the past decade.”
Schwartz was quick to point out that the recordings weren’t the only way that the traditions were kept alive during the Potlatch Ban.
“Kwakwaka’wakw leaders violated the ban or navigated tightly around the edges of it in various ways, including by holding gatherings under the guise of Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners,” he explained. “While technically not a potlatch, they were opportunities to undertake the ‘business’ of the potlatch: namings, agreements, honours and so forth.
“These creative solutions in the face of attempted erasure brought to mind for me the story of Hanukkah,” said Schwartz, “How the dreidel was used as a mask for study groups, and the old adage that an idea can’t be killed.”
About the importance of keeping these songs alive, Wadhams said, “Speaking to the singers in the Urban Dance Group, and also back home, I have learned that they find them so valuable. They have them on their phones and listen on YouTube, Spotify, all the time. Living in the city, I started my journey 25 years ago to learn the songs and dances. Having access to these songs really made it possible for me to connect in a new way with my ancestry.”
To watch the Nov. 2 opening celebration of the exhibit and for more information, visit billreidgallery.ca.
When someone loves what they do or is passionate about a certain topic, it’s obvious. In the case of a book, if this someone is also proficient with words and excels at writing, their enthusiasm figuratively jumps off the page and inhabits the reader, getting them as excited as the author. This is how I felt reading Jonathan Berkowitz’s latest book, Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You(FriesenPress). Excited about the wonder that is language – in this case, the English language.
With the help of his wife, Heather, Berkowitz has compiled a collection of essays adapted from his segments on CBC Radio 1’s North by Northwest over several years as the Word Guy. Noting that people “perceive the spoken word differently from the written word,” he writes: “Adapting the radio columns into written essays requires a sensitivity to the difference between listening and reading. Heather has that sensitivity, not to mention a keen sense of style and grammar.”
North by Northwest host and producer Sheryl MacKay has written the book’s foreword.
“I first met Jonathan when he came in to talk about the National Puzzlers’ League convention, which was taking place that year in Vancouver,” she writes. “I was struck right away by his enthusiasm, his depth of knowledge (in the field of puzzles and beyond), his sense of humour, and by the fact that he could identify patterns in words and numbers everywhere. It’s like a superpower he has!
“I immediately asked him to do a regular column on the show. Jonathan, who is always up for a new adventure, agreed and, for the next year, he was our Puzzling Professor. Every month, he’d appear on the show and introduce listeners to a different kind of puzzle, talk about its history and then challenge them to solve a few. It was such fun and so mind-bending!
“The next year, Jonathan changed focus a little and became the Word Guy for the show. Each month, he takes us on a radio journey through some of the vagaries of the English language. As Jonathan owns more dictionaries and language reference books than anyone I know, he’s well equipped to lead this particular expedition!”
In Tales From the Word Guy, Berkowitz admits that his favourite books are dictionaries, followed perhaps by thesauri (I admit that I Googled the plural of thesaurus). “In fact,” he writes, “thesaurus comes from Latin, meaning ‘treasure,’ and the first dictionary definition of thesaurus is treasury or storehouse. Indeed, what a treasure house it is.”
Words have always been a passion for Berkowitz, but he is also a fan of numbers and mathematics, having chosen a career as a statistician. With his facility for words, numbers and problem-solving, it is no wonder that MacKay, in 2015, invited him to present puzzles on her show. I never heard him in that role, but I did very much enjoy the book those puzzles led to: The Whirl of Words, also published by FriesenPress. (See jewishindependent.ca/playing-with-words-and-more.)
Berkowitz’s breadth and depth of knowledge can be overwhelming at times. To build off his metaphor of this latest book as a box of chocolates, you might get the equivalent of a sugar rush if you read too much of it in one sitting. While the chapters are short, amusing and easy to read, there is just so much information “filling,” from the erudite to the silly to Berkowitz’s trademark puns. (Among those he shares is one of his favourites: “The only thing flat-earthers have to fear is sphere itself.”)
I learned so much in Tales From the Word Guy. For example, I knew that A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are vowel letters – but also sometimes W?! Berkowitz gives the example of the “uncommon word, cwm, a synonym for cirque, [which] means ‘a deep steep-walled basin on a mountain usually forming the blunt end of a valley.’ Linguists sometimes refer to Y and W as semivowels,” he writes. “Conversely, U and I sometimes represent consonants, as in quiz and onion, respectively.”
I can understand the U being considered a consonant in quiz, but remain confused about the I in onion. But in a good way. I enjoy having my mind challenged, my assumptions upended.
I also enjoy being wowed and there are many “really?!” moments in this book, such as W being a vowel sometimes, albeit rarely. To name just a few of the other things that made me ooh and ah – the origins of the terms uppercase and lowercase; the number of words Shakespeare created (and some examples); and the name for and function of “um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” all those annoying sounds or words most of us unconsciously insert into our sentences when we talk.
But it’s not just the many fun facts that make Tales From the Word Guy such fun to read. Berkowitz shares a bit of himself, from more serious topics, like how his mother and father influenced his life, to his favourite, or most beautiful, words, his language pet peeves and his efforts at making up new words. It is easy to see why CBC’s the Word Guy is so popular.
Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You book launch with author Jonathan Berkowitz in conversation with Sheryl MacKay; adapted from radio by Heather Glassman Berkowitz. Nov. 29, 7pm, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. No registration required.
Tales From the Word Guy: Jonathan Berkowitz talks about his new book with Daniella Givon. Dec. 12, 7:30pm, at Beth Israel. bethisrael.ca.
Ben Caplan stars in Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. (Stoo Metz Photography)
Ben Caplan is narrator and co-creator (with Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch) of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. It is a fantastic show, well worth seeing, which was last in Vancouver for the 2020 PuSh Festival.
“The show hasn’t changed all that much,” said Barry, artistic director of Halifax’s 2b theatre company. “We have a brilliant new drummer and keyboardist working on the show and, on top of that, the team has more skill and experience just by virtue of having had more opportunities to refine our show through repetition. But, ultimately, the reason we are bringing [it] back to Vancouver is all about access. In January 2020, we were only able to perform six times at UBC as part of the PuSh Festival. It was a lovely run with full houses and boisterous responses, but we think there were many people who just didn’t have the chance to see the show. We were thrilled to receive an invitation from SFU to bring the show back, and to perform in downtown Vancouver.”
Suzy Birstein amid her work, some of which visitors to her studio will see during the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Britt Kwasney)
“I am most looking forward to healthily connecting with fellow artists and art lovers in real time, real space. Art is always more powerful in person,” artist Suzy Birstein told the Jewish Independent about the East Side Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Craft Festival, which returns to its traditional format Nov. 17-20. Some 400+ artists will open their studios to the public.
“The sense of community, commitment, excitement, inspiration, appreciation – all that brought me to Parker Street [Studios] and East Side Culture Crawl originally is happening again,” she said. “It feels like a renaissance.”
Photographer Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Adam P.W. Smith)
“After the two-year pandemic rollercoaster ride, I am thrilled we are back to a ‘new normal,’” said Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the Crawl, as well as a participating artist. “I do say ‘new normal,’ as we don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t really speculate how this year’s Crawl will play out. Personally, I am excited to get out and see all of the new and amazing art that has been created and to catch up with the artists. It’s also a real pleasure for me to meet members of the public as they share their enthusiasm for the event, the art and the connections they will be making with the artists.”
Birstein (clay, painting, sculpture) and Rausenberg (photography, Georgia Art Studios) are only two of many Jewish community members who will open their creative space to the public over the four days of the festival, which also features gallery displays, and artist demonstrations and talks. Other community members include, from Parker Street Studios, Shevy Levy (painting), Olga Campbell (clay, mixed media, new media), Mia Weinberg (painting) and penny eisenberg (drawing, painting); from Eastside Atelier, Lauren Morris (mixed media, painting), Ideet Sharon (assemblage, mixed media, painting), Stacy Lederman (mixed media, painting) and Karly Leipsic (mixed media); and, from the Arc, Lynna Goldhar Smith (installation, painting). Overall, festival-goers can explore about 68 buildings and studios in the Eastside Arts District, the area bounded by Columbia Street, 1st Avenue, Victoria Drive and the waterfront.
“This year’s event has a distinctly celebratory tone,” said Levy. “It is a reunion for Vancouver’s established art community, a chance to reconnect, to have meaningful discussions around art, not just with artists, students and educators, but with those who display art, like galleries and art management, and everyone who is excited to work together again.”
During the pandemic restrictions, painter Shevy Levy started a new direction with her abstract work. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Thinking of the last couple of years, she noted, “What was fascinating about the immediate impact of COVID-19 was the sudden loss of collective connection – both human (face-to-face) and the collective understanding of what the future might bring…. When we were forced to isolate, I appreciated the introduction of art to the digital and virtual world, and how it helped the art world, in many aspects, to find new ways to connect with society. However, now I understand how much I, like so many of my colleagues, urgently need constant interactions with the community – 2022 Crawl is here to fill some gaps.”
Goldhar Smith – a multi-disciplinary artist who has spent more than 30 years in theatre performance with painting very much in the background – is excited about the chance to show her visual art to a lot of different people. “I especially love the opportunity to see their responses to the work and engage in lively conversation when it’s possible,” she said.
Lynna Goldhar Smith (photo from Chutzpah!)
Interested in integrating her visual art practice with her performance practice, Goldhar Smith said, “I have been building installations in my studio to that end and so, among my paintings and prints, visitors will see the beginnings of more conceptual ideas in some of the physical objects and paper sculptures in the studio.”
Whether abstract or figurative, Goldhar Smith seeks to express the intangible qualities of human experience in her work. “If I paint a landscape, it is as much an emotional or psychological landscape as a place,” she said. “Yet, at the same time, if I paint an urban crow or a heron, it is more an expression of honouring the urban wildlife, and reminding myself that I am in their domain. I hope that makes sense. Whatever I paint, I am like an improvisational actor, responding to the moment, with one brushstroke informing the next. The meaning emerges after the fact. It is not so much I make my art, as my art makes me.”
For Goldhar Smith, the pandemic was a dramatic reminder “that we need to behave more responsibly, more cohesively, with more compassion and care for each other – with more understanding of our connection to each other – and to view ourselves as part of nature and part of one planet all together. Yet, we are so divided. If there was ever a time for artists to get focused, this would be it.
“Gloria” by Lynna Goldhar Smith (image from Chutzpah!)
“Artists, and art, have the privilege and responsibility of their voices,” she continued. “We need to use our voices to contribute to the global change that is necessary. We need to speak up with courage and make brave art.
“We need to be endowed with the respect that what we do is of great importance and we need to be valued, supported and encouraged because artists bring meaning and perspective and also disruption and confrontation with the status quo. We need to see how our art fits, not so much into the art marketplace, but as a central driver of change that can address the pressing needs of our time.”
Levy expressed a similar view.
“So many artists, myself included, produce artwork with an outcome in mind, such as an exhibition or career step,” said Levy. “The challenges of the past few years forced me to take the time to reflect on my own art practice, taking it to the next level by exploring new avenues and fresh approaches. I had to remove and free myself from that outcome. I was able to experiment and create work that connects me better to the meaning of being a better human and better artist, as opposed to a ‘professional artist’ operating within the structures of a commercial art world.”
Birstein also used the pandemic period for self-reflection. “The enforced isolation of the pandemic,” she said, “gave me the gift of time: time to create, experiment, reflect, all day, every day. This is a first in my art practice and I was very productive.”
Birstein created two bodies of work for two solo exhibits in 2021 and 2022.
“Tsipora: A Place to Land was exhibited at the Zack Gallery,” she said. “Tsipora is my Hebrew name, meaning Bird. Pre-COVID, the bird symbolized a freedom of spirit while taking flight. With COVID, it was a time to nest, to find a place to land.
“Frida: When I Have Wings to Fly was exhibited at POMOArts. Frida is a continuation of my art historical portraits, Ladies-Not-Waiting, inspired by Velasquez’ masterpiece ‘Las Meninas.’ This series speaks to Frida Kahlo as a symbol of feminine strength and empowerment: a person who transcended tragedy and transformed it into beauty. My sculptures and paintings invite the viewer to converse in intertwined stories of myself, my mother, Frida and other historic figures that embody resourcefulness, resilience and beauty.
“Materially, both bodies of work involved much experimentation with structural techniques, surfacing with fired and cold materials, addition of repurposed objects.”
For Levy, the last couple of years allowed her to start a new direction with her abstract work. “Slowly, I developed large-scale canvases that were marked by bold and expressive brushstrokes,” she said. “I am excited to share with the public my new collection, A Portrait of a Flower. My work demonstrates the flowers as a source of lines, shapes, negative space, gesture, colour and value, or another source of abstraction.”
The pandemic period also gave Levy the chance to explore more remote art communities. “Pre-COVID,” she said, “I used to share and exhibit my art within my immediate community. In the last two-plus years, I had more time to develop my social media presence and expertise. As an outcome, 2021 was the best year ever of showing and selling my work.”
Birstein also pointed to the technological silver lining of COVID. “With the necessity of communicating virtually while globally isolated,” she said, “I see the world of art opening in terms of compassion, imagination, inclusion, respect – all of this so apparent at this year’s Venice Bienale, from which I have just returned.”
In addition to the open studios Nov. 17-20, the East Side Culture Crawl features a multi-venue, salon-style curated exhibition called NEXT, which “explores the after-effects of living through a pandemic as we long for and ponder about what’s next.” There are also several other events. For more information, visit culturecrawl.ca.
What I see from the Playwrights Canada Press edition, which was published in 2020 and arrived at the JI sometime in 2021, is that Leiren-Young’s notes on various aspects of the play allow productions to change certain references and pronunciations to localize the action, thereby making it special no matter where it is performed. For instance, the audience first meets Rabbi Michael Levitz-Sharon, who is in her mid-30s to maybe 45 years old, on a jogging path, “dressed in sweats and a ball cap for a local sports team.”
