Lauren Kramer – Page 10

From simple to spectacular

Food writers are privy to a lot of recipes, and many of them, sadly, are repeats of ones already widely familiar, with small variations in ingredients. Infrequently, though, we get access to a compilation of recipes by a skilled author with an innovative eye and a dash of culinary talent, and the result is nothing short of inspiring.

That’s Daniella Silver’s The Silver Platter (Artscroll, 2015) in a nutshell. Silver has none of the accolades of a celebrity chef – she doesn’t call herself a professional and she never spent a day in culinary school. Still, what she lacks in education she more than makes up for in passion and ingenuity in her work. Her recipes take common, easily obtained ingredients and put them together in spectacular new ways that highlight their flavor and versatility. Lay your hands on The Silver Platter and you feel an urge to get into the kitchen and start cooking.

A mother of kids with allergies, Silver is sensitive about gluten and notes whether each of her recipes is pareve, gluten-free, freezable and if substitutions could make it appropriate for Passover. She collaborated with Norene Gilletz to write this book and adds “Norene’s Notes” at the end of each recipe. That’s great because Gilletz is a no-mess, no-fuss chef who offers great tips on food storage, easy cleanup tricks, uses for leftovers and substitution possibilities.

Each recipe has a color image of the prepared dish on the facing page and all look incredibly tempting. I have a weakness for salads and vegetarian dishes, so I loved the panko-topped bok choy with edamame, the shaved corn and asparagus salad, and the kale salad with roasted sweet potatoes. Eye candy abounds and, in almost every recipe, the ingredient list adds new flavors to old staples. For example, lentil cranberry salad; mango chicken with leeks; parsnip latkes; and roasted squash with red onion and pears.

The Silver Platter is eye candy in the best sense of the word. This is a recipe book that will earn its chefs heaps of praise as they create easy dishes with ingredients that are mostly kitchen staples. That means no hunting the grocery stores for that odd ingredient you’ve never heard of before. Nutritional information for each dish is listed in the appendix and more than half of the 160 recipes, which cover fish, meat, poultry, desserts, appetizers and soups and salads, are gluten-free and Passover-friendly.

This book is a keeper on the recipe shelf. Kudos to Silver on her winning combinations in a recipe book that will inspire even long-dormant chefs to get cooking. Here is but one example, straight from The Silver Platter.

BALSAMIC-BRAISED BRISKET
(meat, Passover, gluten-free, freezes well, yields eight to 10 servings)

1 beef brisket (4-5 lb /1.8-2.3 kg)
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 can (6 oz/170 g) tomato paste
2 tbsp honey
3 bay leaves
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3/4 cup dry red wine or water

Coat a large roasting pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add brisket; sprinkle with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. Rub brisket with spices to coat on all sides.
In a large nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Sauté onions for five minutes, until softened. Stir in parsley, tomato paste, honey, bay leaves, vinegar and wine. Simmer for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Let cool.
Pour sauce over, around and under the brisket. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least one hour or overnight, turning occasionally.
Preheat oven to 325°F. Bake, covered, for three to three-and-a-half hours or until meat is fork-tender. Calculate 45 minutes per pound to determine the cooking time. Discard bay leaves. Let cool.
Refrigerate several hours or overnight. Discard hardened fat from gravy. Trim excess fat from brisket. Slice against the grain to desired thickness.
Reheat, covered, in pan gravy at 350°F for 25-30 minutes.

Norene’s Notes

Slow cooker method: season brisket and prepare sauce as above; add to slow cooker insert coated with nonstick cooking spray. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator. Place insert into slow cooker; cook on low for eight to 10 hours.
Ask your butcher to cut a very large brisket (8 lb/3.6 kg) in half. Total cooking time will be the same as for one 4 lb/1.8 kg brisket.
Brisket should be cooked “low and slow,” with lots of onions. The internal temperature should not rise above 180°F on a meat thermometer; after it reaches 200°F, the brisket will become dry.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

A fun family weekend away

At the Hands On Children’s Museu, children learn many things, including just how large a bald eagle’s nest is. (photo by Lauren Kramer)

Most small Jewish communities decrease in size over the summer, but not Olympia, Wash. The city’s Jewish population swells by up to 600 as youth from all over the Pacific Northwest and as far afield as Las Vegas converge by bus and plane on Camp Solomon Schechter, a Jewish camp founded 60 years ago.

I ventured to Olympia, a five-hour drive from Vancouver, on a stormy, grey Friday in November, looking for a weekend away from home. Camp Schechter’s sunny season was well behind us and any leisure activities were going to be determinedly indoors. Still, I witnessed a city of 48,000 with a lively, active Jewish community, two synagogues and a Chabad presence.

We stayed in the downtown core and were thrilled to attend Friday night services at Temple Beth Hatfiloh, a Reconstructionist synagogue housed in a beautiful building on 8th Avenue downtown. The rabbi was out of town and the service, led by lay leaders and attended by locals and a good turnout of comparative religions students, was filled with song. Afterwards, at the Oneg in the dining area, I learned that the building had once been home to the Church of Christian Science and was purchased, renovated and converted into a synagogue 12 years ago. Walk the sanctuary, with its high ceilings, elegant aron hakodesh and stained glass windows and you’d never know it started its life as a place of worship for another faith.

photo - Temple Beth Hatfiloh, a Reconstructionist synagogue housed in a beautiful building on 8th Avenue downtown — Temple Beth Hatfiloh, a Reconstructionist synagogue housed in a beautiful building on 8th Avenue downtown. *(photo by Lauren Kramer)*

Olympia is a stately, historic city filled with soaring examples of Greco-Roman-style architecture and irresistibly browsable bookstores, galleries and boutiques. Washington’s version of Victoria, it spreads in an elegant square on either side of Budd Inlet, its beautiful state buildings on a bluff over the ocean and its 278-foot capitol dome visible from most everywhere. There are daily tours of the capitol dome and we gladly joined one led by Ed Smith, a 30-year history teacher whose father had once served in the legislature. He primed our small group on the ornate granite, European marble, carved masonry and more than 300 Tiffany lights and chandeliers that decorate the palatial interior. It’s an impressive place and one that certainly lends gravity to Washington’s history and the business of lawmaking.

It was less than fascinating for a 6-year-old, though, which is why our next stop was the very antidote: the Hands On Children’s Museum of Olympia. These days, almost every city has a generic children’s museum – but this one is far from generic. “Our goal was to only feature exhibits from the Pacific Northwest, things children might see in their own back yards,” said Jillian Henze, communications manager for the 28,000-square-foot museum. Best suited for the 3-to-8-year-old crowd, this innovative space delves into the farm to fork eating experience, the Puget Sound waterway, the forest and the lifecycle of water. Children learn how currents flow, how large a bald eagle’s nest really is, how water and wind pressure work, how to build a house and where food comes from. My daughter Maya had to be dragged out of the museum at closing time.

We left Olympia the next day for Grand Mound, 20 minutes away and home to Great Wolf Lodge, Washington’s equivalent to Disneyland. The massive indoor waterpark is a kids’ paradise, with waterslides that sweep riders on circuitous watery journeys, a large wave pool and two well-designed water play structures – one for toddlers and the other for kids 7 and younger. There’s easily enough entertainment in the waterpark alone for a half-day. But, once you dry off, there’s more to do in the rest of the resort. Around us kids were running about with wands, pointing them at treasure chests and learning their way around a game that lasts four to six hours and occupies them for the duration of their stay. Great Wolf is a hedonistic kids’ experience from which parents emerge looking flushed and exhausted from the combination of heat, chlorine and noise. By contrast, their kids come out starry-eyed and determined to return.

We took the long road back to Olympia on Old Highway 99 to get a glimpse of Tenino, a sleepy city with a fascinating history. I was anxious to learn about Tenino’s sandstone legacy, which dates back to 1888 with the discovery of a large deposit of sandstone – a valuable commodity in the pre-concrete era. In the four decades that followed, Tenino quarries supplied sandstone for buildings in San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., among other places. The quarries closed in the late 1920s but one of them, the Tenino Stone Company Quarry, was deliberately flooded with water from natural springs by the City of Tenino. It became a 95-foot-deep swimming pool with terraced walls that bear evidence of its history. Unfortunately, most of that history remained an enigma because the doors of the Tenino Depot Museum, usually open on the weekends, were shuttered when we were in town. That’s the problem with sleepy cities, particularly in November. They tend to go into a long hibernation.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

If you go …

For general information on Olympia, surf to visitolympia.com
The Hands On Children’s Museum is open daily until 5 p.m. and admission is usually $10.95 US, but is free on the first Friday evening of every month from 5-9 p.m.: hocm.org or 1-360-956-0818
Free tours of the Washington State Legislative Building run every hour on the hour from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on weekends
You have to stay to play at Great Wolf Lodge, where accommodation starts around $210/night for a family of four to six people, and includes water park passes: greatwolf.com or 1-866-798-9653

Welcoming new rabbi

Rabbi Hannah Dresner wants “to come to know my congregation and the culture of Jewish Vancouver, to understand what the needs are and draw from our great tradition.” (photo from Rabbi Hannah Dresner)

Vancouver’s Congregation Or Shalom welcomed Rabbi Hannah Dresner as its spiritual leader this summer, recruiting her from Berkeley, Calif., where she was working part-time for Congregation Netivot Shalom, teaching niggun and meditation, and traveling broadly to hold spiritual retreats.

Dresner, a mother of three who grew up in Springfield, Mass., was ordained in January 2014 and worked previously as a visual artist and professor of fine arts. At Northwestern University, she taught painting and visual aspects of directing for graduate students in theatre direction.

“My artwork has always had a spiritual content, but I felt I needed further enrichment in developing the content of my work,” she said of her decision to seek ordination in the Jewish Renewal movement. “I began to study, got caught up in the study of Chassidic texts and became very enchanted with the imagery and worldview. I see the resultant shift of my professional energy to the rabbinate as another aspect of being an artist. I’m building my life as a work of art, and this is just another way of reaching people in a more direct manner.”

Her spiritual leadership at Or Shalom comes at an important time, she added, because it follows the recent death of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish Renewal. Dresner has tremendous respect for the congregation’s founding rabbis, Daniel Siegel and Hanna Tiferet Siegel, and for Laura Duhan Kaplan, the rabbi who stepped back just over a year ago. “I consider them to be visionary people and I feel like, because of its strong rabbinical leadership in the past, Or Shalom is a community that’s primed and ripe for learning – head, heart, body and spirit,” said Dresner, who took over the congregation’s spiritual leadership from Louis Sutker, rabbi during the transition period.

Dresner grew up the child of a Frankfurt-born mother with an Orthodox background, and a father from the American Midwest, from a highly assimilated family. “Ours was a hybrid family that embraced an observant culture and engaged in a lot of social activism,” she noted.

She plans to develop Or Shalom’s musical davening program and Shabbat observance, to strengthen its b’nai mitzvah program, and to present varied adult education programs “that reach out not just to enrichment of our intellects but also offer points of entry that are more heart-centred.”

This fall, there is a midrash program on women in the Bible, beginning with the character of Tamar. Another new program is on spiritual eldering. “It will begin with a life review and talk about an evaluation of our lives, looking to the end of life with the perspective of wanting to live into our very fullest selves,” she said.

Dresner is also planning a davening laboratory where congregants can learn parts of the liturgy and practise their davening skills.

“As a rabbi, I think about Judaism as a treasure chest that speaks to all our human concerns,” she reflected. “I want to come to know my congregation and the culture of Jewish Vancouver, to understand what the needs are and draw from our great tradition – halachic, agadic, liturgical and Chassidic – in answering our real, current, human questions and concerns. I think these are very deep wells of wisdom that remain alive if we keep them alive.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Housing woes in Vancouver

As housing prices in Vancouver continue to rise, people will have to be creative about, and flexible in, their living arrangements. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

Until recently, Naava Smolash was living in a collective house in East Vancouver with five roommates. The combined monthly rent for the 100-year-old character house, with high ceilings, fir floors and stained glass windows, was $2,700 and, though the inhabitants have changed over the past decade, Smolash has been a constant since she moved from Montreal 10 years ago.

What’s a collective house? “It’s people sharing spaces,” she explained. “We cook together, share our food and have a house bank account to which we all contribute money. It’s a small urban commune but the difference is that the members tend to be older, with families and professionals living together.”

Smolash’s fellow roomies, all in their 30s, included a scientist, a lawyer, an artist and a law student, while Smolash herself is a professor of English literature at Douglas College. In her spare time, she manages the Vancouver Collective House Network’s Facebook page. She estimates hers was one of 50 collective houses in the city, and that the residents of at least 10 of them are being evicted. Hers included.

Things changed this past summer when her house on Victoria Drive was sold for more than $2 million. A young family will be moving in and Smolash is stuck for a place to live. “There isn’t anywhere else we can afford,” she said. “This neighborhood is changing so quickly that only wealthy people can afford to live here, and I don’t think that’s what we want.”

She’s been talking with the Waterfront Consumers’ Cooperative, which suggested she and her roommates put in proposals for buying a house. “The problem is the co-op can’t buy a million dollar house and, even if they could, the mortgage would be $5,000 a month, which would make it unaffordable,” she said.

Smolash is feeling the panic. “We’re older, we can’t just keep moving,” she lamented. “And co-op houses tend to be rented to families, while a collective home has changing inhabitants.

“What we need is more cooperatively owned collective houses. We’re hoping that people who bought houses in the 1970s or 1980s will step up and sell it to the co-op for an amount the organization can afford. In so doing, they could create a legacy of affordable collective housing that’s cooperatively owned in East Vancouver.”

Michael Geller, a Vancouver architect, planner and developer, is sympathetic to her plight. “I think there’s a need for collective housing, and there’s a real problem here. But maybe this group should look at that $5,000 per month mortgage payment as a good way to go. While we’d like to think there’s some benevolent person in the community who might be willing to donate or reduce the price of a property, it’s been very difficult to achieve that in the past.”

Susana Cogan, housing development director at Tikva Housing Society, has a budget of $75,000 this year (down from $90,000 last year) to help subsidize the rent of those in the community who need it. “Right now, we’re helping 46 Jewish people,” she said. “Being Jewish is not a condition – we house low-income people, giving preference to Jews, so if there are two families with the same need and one is Jewish, we’d subsidize the Jewish family first.”

In February 2014, Adam M (not his real name), 57, and his wife moved to Vancouver from Montreal and the two, both shomer Shabbat, struggled to find jobs and affordable rental accommodation near the Jewish centre. Eventually, they found a one-bedroom apartment near Oak and 17th for $1,200. Tikva Housing is helping subsidize 38% of the monthly rent.

“People don’t like to ask for help,” Cogan said. “But, due to circumstances, they sometimes end up having to take it. Most of the needs arise because of unforeseen things – an illness, a divorce.”

In Adam’s case, the couple had arrived in Vancouver with some resources but depleted them before they were able to find affordable accommodation.

“Our rent subsidy program is supposed to help people for the short term, while they bridge their problems,” Cogan said, adding that each case is different, but one to one-and-a-half years is the average period of assistance.

Adam is grateful for help from the Jewish community in Vancouver but said more resources from donors are necessary. “I know a lot of religious people that would want to come and live in Vancouver with their families because of the lifestyle out west. The problem is, living close to the Jewish community is too expensive.”

Cogan said we definitely should not be encouraging people to come and live in Vancouver if they cannot afford it. Subsidies are scarce, she stressed. “We can’t assist everyone who comes here and we turn a lot of people away, only assisting those who have the most need.”

Right now, there are at least 50 people waiting for Tikva Housing’s help.

“Maybe next year we’ll have even less resources,” Cogan speculated. “But our goal is that if people come here and run out of resources, we don’t want them to be living on the street. We’ll help them find affordable accommodation.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Hang out, learn or engage

Hillel BC’s home on the University of British Columbia campus, the Diamond Foundation Centre for Jewish Campus Life. (photo by ThosGee via panoramio.com)

It’s been a tumultuous year on the University of British Columbia campus for Hillel BC, one filled with victories, but also with some disappointments. The Jewish Independent interviewed Hillel BC’s executive director, Rabbi Philip Bregman, on the challenges his organization has faced to date and on what is yet to come.

JI: What has the past year been like at Hillel?

PB: We’re seeing a resurgence of antisemitism the likes of which have not been seen for many years, and we’re seeing it right across the board of the 550 Hillels across North America. It has come primarily as a result of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. While incidents in the past would come and go, this one is a much more organized attack against Jews and Israelis on campus. And it’s not about boycotting products. The BDS movement is about three Ds: the demonization of Israel, the delegitimization of Israel, and the double standard that’s used with regard to Israel and the rest of the world. In this regard, the BDS movement has been fairly successful. On campuses in particular it’s created a real angst, a real discomfort for Jews, for Israelis. That’s its purpose.

JI: Can you talk about the recent referendum on campus, wherein the SPHR (Students for Palestinian Human Rights) asked students to vote on whether or not they supported their student union in instituting BDS on campus?

PB: Again, it wasn’t about boycotting products. They didn’t even let the students know what products needed to be boycotted. It was just a blanket statement that was absolutely absurd. When SPHR did mention a couple of products, it became obvious that it was absurd that any of those would go forward. For example, SPHR said they were going to boycott Caterpillar, because its machinery has destroyed Palestinian homes. I pointed out to them that the new Student Union Building at UBC was excavated with Caterpillar machinery. Should that then be boycotted? They didn’t answer. The second product they said they wanted to boycott was Motorola Solutions. I pointed out that this company is responsible for the operating systems of all Androids, and asked, “Are you telling the student body and AMS [Alma Mater Society, the student union] that no one on campus can use anything but iPhones?” The third product was Sabra Hummus. I told them that, in 2000, the Strauss Dipping Co., which owned Sabra Hummus, sold 50% of its shares to Pepsi Cola, and that over 60% of the vending machines in the Student Union Building are Pepsi products. Again, they didn’t answer.

Initially, before it was circulated, we appealed the referendum on the grounds that it was creating toxicity on campus. The AMS ombudsperson agreed with us that it was a terrible resolution, but the AMS board didn’t even comment on her report, which was tremendously disappointing. So, the referendum went out to the student body, and there was a lot of intimidation with regard to signing it. Later, the AMS found a number of signatures on the ballots were illegal….

At the end of the day, the SPHR fell short of the quorum they needed to pass the referendum. They needed 4,100 signatures, which represents eight percent of the eligible voters at UBC. They got about 3,500 votes. However the anti-BDS movement got 2,700 votes, which was more than double the number of votes in the rest of Canada, voting against BDS.

This BDS movement that we’ve had to deal with this past year was all-consuming. I have a magnificent staff and some magnificent student leaders who really were in the trenches day in and day out. I was in constant contact with the UBC administration about this, letting them know that the BDS movement is not an issue of free speech but one of hate speech.

JI: What kind of relationship does Hillel UBC have with Muslims on campus?

PB: When I first introduced myself to the representative from SPHR and suggested we start a dialogue, she told me, “We have a no dialogue policy with you people. If we talk to you, we will be condoning your murderous and genocidal ways.” We have been successful in reaching out to other Muslim groups on campus, however, including the Muslim Students Association and the Pakistani Students Association. We’ve had all sorts of collaborative programs, some light and some heavy. The idea is dialogue, not agreement.

JI: How are Jewish students at UBC responding to the BDS movement?

PB: At Hillels across North America, probably no more than five percent of the Jewish students on any campus really get into this fight. But we have a Jewish student population of about 1,200 and half of those voted against the BDS referendum.

JI: Going forward, who are you most likely to reach out to on campus?

PB: In fighting this resolution, we quickly realized where we should spend our limited time, energy and manpower: with graduate students, science students, law and medicine. Most of the statements in favor of BDS were coming from students in liberal arts backgrounds, and we were not going to win their hearts and minds. We were looking for people who would look at this referendum critically and understand what it was really about – the demonization and elimination of the state of Israel.

In general, the greatest group of students on campuses today tends to be those that are apathetic. I believe in a vote there would absolutely be more people opposed to us than supporting us. But I think that because we were out tabling every day, sharing and distributing information, we got some of those people who thought of voting yes, but voted no. And most of it was respectful dialogue.

JI: What kind of place is Hillel at UBC today?

PB: Hillel is a big tent, a place where individuals come in and just hang out. Some want to learn and engage in other types of conversation, and there’s a vast array of opportunity no matter where you are on the spectrum of Jewish life. It’s also a place of fantastic food, so people come for our Wednesday hot lunches, known to be the best meal on campus. You don’t have to be engaged in any type of politics to be involved at Hillel, although last year that was very much a part of what we were doing. Hillel is also the place of dialogue with other groups, such as the UBC chaplaincy, which holds meetings in our facility every second week for ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and Buddhists. And we encourage other clubs to come and program with us.

JI: What are your fears going into the next academic year?

PB: My fear is that this issue will continue to come back. Birthright is only getting a fraction of the younger Jewish generation in their 20s and 30s to Israel. In various reports that have come out, when they’ve asked Jewish university students if it mattered to them if Israel did not exist, 50% said no, it did not matter. This group is buying into what they see about Israel in the media and what they hear on campuses from fellow students and professors.

So, I wonder, what’s the responsibility we have as parents, teachers, mentors to a younger generation? To allow something like BDS to run its course when you know it’s not in the best interest of student life, because it’s under the rubric of “free speech”? Where is the limit, the line? This is not about trying to shut down criticism of the state of Israel.

Still, I’m hopeful. Our tent at Hillel is big, we have phenomenal student leadership and we’re there to hear all sorts of opinions as long as they don’t endanger individuals on one side, or call for the eradication of the state of Israel. There’s a huge area in between. Our task is to continue to attempt to raise Jewishly proud, courageous, knowledgeable mensches.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

America’s pastime in Africa

Ruth Hoffman with baseball player Arthur Lusala, left, who today studies developmental economics at university, and coach George Mukhobe. (photo from Ruth Hoffman)

Vancouver baseball teens and their parents piled into the Rothstein Theatre on Sunday, April 19, for Opposite Field, a documentary by Jay Shapiro about a Ugandan Little League baseball team and its struggle to compete on the international stage.

The story caught Shapiro’s eye several years ago when he learned about an American businessman, Richard Stanley, who was sponsoring Uganda’s first baseball field and creating a Little League team. It was comprised of tenacious youngsters, many from poverty-stricken homes and unable to afford the most basic baseball gear. But the Ugandan team proved you don’t need fancy equipment to be a winner. What they lacked in material possessions they more than made up for in determination and skill, eventually traveling to Poland in 2011 to play in the regional championships. There, they earned the right to compete in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn., where they would have been the first African team in history to participate.

Bureaucratic red tape forced the cancelation of their trip, when visas to the United States were declined due to insufficient documentation. One player in Opposite Field explained that unlike most families in North America, who possess and protect important documents like their children’s birth certificates, in Uganda this is close to impossible. Birthing clinics fail to record information and families struggling to feed their children have other priorities than obtaining and keeping the documents.

Enter Ruth Hoffman, a Vancouver accountant who heard about the plight of the Uganda Little League team in August 2011, not long after their visas were declined. A specialist in microfinance who has worked in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hoffman is a mother of three and well acquainted with baseball.

“My twin boys competed in Poland and their team made it to the World Series in 2006, something that became the highlight of their youth,” she recalled. Her sons’ trip had almost been canceled, too, as they were trying to fly to the United States at precisely the same time as the shoe bomber’s failed attack was discovered, stopping most international flights. Hoffman recalled hovering at the airport among the reporters, waiting desperately to get onto a flight. Determined as they come, she told her boys’ story to a reporter – that they were scheduled to play but couldn’t get a flight out to their destination. It quickly garnered media coverage with surprisingly positive results. “British Airways put the boys and their team on the first flight [possible],” she said.

With this experience in mind, if there was anyone could change the plight of the Uganda Little League team, it was Hoffman. First, she called the mayor of Langley, B.C., as the team had been scheduled to compete at the World Series against the Langley Little League team. She suggested they bring the Uganda team to British Columbia to play Langley. After further discussions with Uganda coach George Mukhobe, it was decided that the Langley team would visit Uganda, instead.

Shapiro and his cameras were there for the January 2012 trip, as were three members of Major League Baseball, Jimmy Rollins, Gregg Zaun and Derrek Lee, who felt compelled to join the unique journey. Hoffman partnered with a humanitarian organization, Right to Play, which encouraged her to leave a legacy for what became known as the Pearl of Africa series. Together they raised $155,000 for this trip, funds used towards education of the Uganda team players, equipment, improvement and construction of baseball fields and a player transportation fund.

It might have ended there but that was just the beginning for Hoffman. In Part 2 of the Pearl of Africa project, she raised another $40,000 for the Uganda team, funds that helped train Uganda softball and baseball coaches. Her goal for Part 3 is to raise another $20,000 for the Uganda Baseball and Softball Association.

Opposite Field tells some of this story, focusing mostly on the time leading up to the Langley team’s visit. Filmmaker Shapiro humanizes the team by focusing on individual members, their personal struggles and their motivations and goals. In the process, he takes viewers deep into Uganda, revealing a level of poverty unrivaled in North America. It’s a beautiful story with a happy, or happier, ending, one that’s still in the making.

View an excerpt online at opposite-field.com or look out for the entire documentary, whose Canadian rights have been purchased by CBC, on television.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Canadian Jews behind bars

Rabbi Zushe Silberstein (photo from cjnews.com)

When Rabbi Zushe Silberstein heard that the Jewish inmate standing before him in a Montreal jail was due to be released in just three days, he didn’t hesitate. “My daughter is getting married this weekend,” he said. “I would be honored if you could attend the wedding.” The prisoner stared at him, certain he had misheard. A rabbi inviting a newly released prisoner to a family wedding? It seemed impossible. But in the next breath Silberstein was offering to help arrange a suit if needed.

This conversation occurred two years ago and, that weekend, the former convict did indeed attend the wedding. The encounter was nothing extraordinary for Silberstein, who heads Chabad Chabanel in Montreal and regularly visits Jewish inmates in Montreal jails. “We bring them food and sandwiches, we daven, put on tefillin with them and celebrate Jewish holidays with them,” he said. There’s a seder at Pesach, a Megilla reading on Purim, menorahs on Chanuka and services on Rosh Hashana.

“My main thrust has always been to tell these marginalized Jews, you’re not alone, you’re not forgotten, there’s someone out there who cares about you. We’re there to comfort, to advise them and to show them the Jewish community cares about them.”

Fifteen years ago, the rabbi founded Maison Belfield as a halfway house for up to six men at a time, offering newly released Jewish inmates shelter, food, clothing, therapy and reintegration assistance. Aiding Jewish prisoners is a consuming task and one he takes seriously.

“The Rebbe teaches us not to forget any Jew, no matter where she or he may be,” he explained. “If there’s a Jewish person in need, we must care for them. It’s why my children and I have more than once traveled 14 hours to help one single Jew in jail. My Shabbos table often has former inmates gathered around it.”

Over the 30 years Silberstein has been involved with Jewish chaplaincy, he’s seen all kinds of Jews behind bars, “from a prominent lawyer to children from dysfunctional homes to people with substance abuse issues and those who are highly affluent,” he said. “Nobody is immune to falling into this kind of situation.”

He refused to disclose the number of Jews presently incarcerated in Montreal, saying only “one is too many,” and that High Holy Day services and Passover seders in the jails see an attendance of up to 10.

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) revealed that as of March 31, 2014, there were 177 offenders who identified themselves as being Jewish, representing 0.8 percent of the total offender population. That was up from 159 in April 2005. CSC engages Jewish chaplains, who regularly provide religious services, religious education programs and one-on-one counseling with Jewish inmates, said Julie O’Brien, media relations advisor for CSC. “If a Jewish offender has a rabbi, the chaplain will put the two in contact.” Chaplains may approve kosher diets for inmates who require them, a religious dietary policy that was first formalized in 1992.

“Thirty years ago, the provincial government refused to allow kosher food and we had to pay $30,000 to provide it to Jewish prisoners,” recalled Silberstein. “Eventually, under threat that we’d go to the Supreme Court of Canada, the federal and provincial governments … provided that kosher food at government expense, after the minister saw that we were serious and would not give up. Today, in Quebec’s prison systems we have excellent cooperation for the needs of Jewish prisoners.”

O’Brien said the CSC ensures spiritual accommodation to assist offenders in practising their religion or spirituality as fully as they desire within the correctional setting, up to a level generally available to people in the community. The Jewish community also has representation on the interfaith committee, an advisory group on religious and spiritual practice for inmates in CSC institutions.

Funding for the visits to Jewish inmates and to support the expenses of Maison Belfield is direly needed, Silberstein said. “Prayer books cost money and so does the seder, the tefillin and the food we bring to Jewish inmates each week. Our halfway house is also an expensive proposition, with a mortgage and heating to be paid and the costs of regular living supplies in addition to food, clothing and therapy.”

When Chabad of Richmond recently replaced its High Holiday prayer books and was looking for a new home for its several hundred older versions, Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman posted on a Chabad site that he was ready to pass them on. The first request came from Rabbi Binyomin Scheiman in Illinois, founder of the Hinda Institute (formerly the Jewish Prisoners’ Assistance Foundation), which aids the families of incarcerated Jews, arranges visitations and helps with the re-entry process after they are released. “We estimate there are up to 150 Jews incarcerated in the state of Illinois and these High Holiday prayer books are so important,” he said. “For Jewish inmates, Rosh Hashana is a time in their life when they’re very open, and repenting for mistakes they’ve made in their lives. The prayer books are an extremely generous contribution.”

In general, Jewish prisoners are very marginalized within Jewish communities, sometimes even demonized, Scheiman said. “It’s even worse than being forgotten – they and their families are sometimes shunned by the community.” He works closely with the Aleph Institute, which was founded in 1983 and has branches in many different states. Its goal is to provide professional services to nearly 4,000 men and women in U.S. federal and state prisons and their approximately 25,000 spouses, children and parents.

No such organization exists in Canada, though various rabbis in different parts of the country carry out initiatives of their own. Baitelman visits the six to 12 Jewish inmates in Metro Vancouver jails from time to time and tries to send Purim packages to them. In Vancouver, semi-retired Rabbi Dina-Hasida Mercy has served as the Jewish chaplain to Pacific region federal prisons since 2012 and takes weekly excursions into the Fraser Valley to meet with the small number of Jewish inmates and any other inmates who want to talk to her. “There are definitely people in my group that are not halachically Jewish,” she said.

A basic need they all share is for a kind, listening ear, one that won’t judge them and report on them, she explained. She’s also committed to practical projects, including the delivery of donated prayer books and general Jewish literature into the federal institutions. As a woman visiting men in jail, Mercy said she’s never felt physically threatened. “The guys tend to be fairly protective of their chaplains,” she reflected. “In many ways, the prisons are far safer than the city streets because the inmates have been called to task for their offences and are monitored, whereas out in the community you have people who might still be in their crime cycle.”

There isn’t enough support and understanding for inmates in the Jewish community and the wider community in general, she said. “It’s a societal perception that bad guys are put away and should stay away, but these people need to find jobs and take a place in the community when they come out. Many have just committed incredibly stupid mistakes in judgment with terrible consequences, but they need our help to reintegrate into community.”

What’s needed, she said, is a halfway house based on Jewish values, a place that might offer a job bank, educational opportunities and perhaps even a little business. “Inmates need a way to regain their self-sufficiency. They come out of prison with $80, which is barely enough to get you from the Fraser Valley into Vancouver. As a society, we need to work on our compassion for people who want to rebuild their lives and, yes, it means doing things that are not comfortable for us.”

Rabbi Menachem Matusof, head of Chabad in Alberta, has visited Jewish inmates in Alberta jails for the past 27 years. He estimates there’s six to 12 incarcerated in his province and also finds funding a challenge. Sometimes, there are conflicts. One year, he brought a mobile sukka to the Jewish women’s jail in Calgary, where an inmate was incarcerated for murder. In an interview for the Jewish Star, Matusof was asked why he would bother doing this. “Murdering is a much bigger issue than sukka and lulav,” he was told. “My response was this: because someone committed a crime one time, this means s/he should not do another mitzvah? What does one have to do with another? The murder was being handled by the courts. Meanwhile, this is still a Jewish individual who needs help, and we’re here to help them at whichever level they need.”

Another painful instance of conflict involved a former mashgiach in Calgary who was a child molester. Prior to the man’s imprisonment, Matusof recalled being worried the man would turn up to services. “I disallowed him to come to Chabad House and told the community I would call the police in the middle of Yom Kippur if he walked into shul and even laid eyes on a child,” he said. After the man was jailed, the rabbi decided that as a community rabbi it would be best to send another rabbi to visit him.

Still, most of the Jewish inmates Matusof visits he described as “sweet, wonderful people who unfortunately got caught in bad situations. It’s not our place to judge.”

There are also schemers, and Matusof gets requests from non-Jewish inmates who want to speak about possible conversions to Judaism. He always waits until they are released from jail, “but once they’re out, they no longer have interest!” Other inmates claim they are Jewish and want kosher meals. “We talk to them and find out immediately if they’re telling the truth,” he said. “Most of the time, I’m not fooled.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. A longer version of this article can be found at cjnews.com, where it was originally published.

Message to Vancouver

Masha Shumatskaya’s visit here was part of an American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee tour of North American cities. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

All Masha Shumatskaya wants is for the fighting to stop so she can go home. The 24-year-old Jewish Ukrainian English teacher was living and working happily in the city of Donetsk until April 2014, when pro-Russian separatists arrived two hours north of her hometown and declared their intention to form a people’s republic.

Until that moment, her life had been quite ordinary. Shumatskaya, a slender beauty with gentle eyes, was one of some 15,000 Jews in Donetsk, a city that boasts a Jewish community centre, a Chabad-run synagogue, a kosher café and various Jewish youth and cultural groups. “I never once experienced antisemitism growing up there,” she said. “I was never afraid to say I was a Jew.”

By May 2014, the pro-Russian separatists had moved into Donetsk and were threatening the safety of civilians. They bombed the Donetsk airport and the violence forced the closure of many schools and business offices in the city. Shumatskaya and her friends began making plans to move to other cities in Ukraine, such as Kiev, Odessa and Kharkov. She chose Kharkov, five hours’ drive from Donetsk, leaving her parents behind.

But Shumatskaya is one of the lucky ones. There are some 7,000 Jews still living in the war zone in Ukraine, many of them elderly. They’re dependent on the Joint Distribution Committee’s aid for food, medical support, rental subsidies and basic necessities.

Shumatskaya was in Vancouver recently as a guest of JDC, where she met with Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver representatives and media to tell her story. With her was Michael Novick, executive director of the American Jewish JDC in Bellevue, Wash. “The situation in Ukraine has become a high priority for the JDC,” he said. “It’s not just the Jews, mostly elderly, still living in the conflict zone, but also the 2,500 Jews who’ve fled and need assistance, and another 60,000 Jews we’ve been helping all along with basic humanitarian supplies.” The JDC estimates the cost of its monthly relief for these Jews to be more than $387,000 US.

The political unrest has had widespread effect. The Ukrainian economy has plummeted, the purchasing power of the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, has dropped more than 50 percent and inflation is between 25 and 30 percent. “A year ago, the average pension of an elderly person we were assisting was equivalent to $150 US. Today, that same pension is only worth $50 US,” Novick said. “People have lost their jobs, their businesses, and Jews who could previously take care of their own families are now coming to the JDC’s Hesed welfare centres.”

The JDC has 32 Hesed welfare centres in Ukraine, and 160 of them across the former Soviet Union. Among those Jews requiring their services in Ukraine, Novick said they represent “the poorest Jews on earth, living in really dire conditions. For them, the lifeline provided by Hesed in terms of supplemental, basic humanitarian assistance, is vital.”

He added that the emergency funds being supplied by JDC are not part of its budget. “But the situation in Ukraine is so dire that we’re not waiting – we’re simply spending money and hoping that individuals, federations and foundations that meet Masha and hear about this story will come to our assistance.”

Shumatskaya’s 10-day visit to North America included stops in Seattle, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York. Last year, JFGV made a $25,000 grant to JDC for its various programs.

As she looked to the future, Shumatskaya was uncertain what it would hold for her. “I feel attached to Ukraine and I feel some responsibility to help with what’s going on there,” she said. “If I had to leave Kharkov I don’t know where I’d go. But I know that I don’t want to become a war refugee again. Once in my life was quite enough.”

Her message to Vancouver’s Jewish community is twofold: a reminder that Jews are responsible for each other, and one of gratitude for the support she and her fellow Ukrainian Jews have all ready received.

“Without that support we literally would not have survived,” she said. “I wish we could finish this need for assistance fast, but it’s out of our hands. We’re praying every day that we can live in a peaceful country without the assistance provided by the JDC.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Brief Kauai vacation tutorial

The path to Nounou Mountain is a gentle incline through a forest of magnificent Norfolk pine trees. (photo by Lauren Kramer)

There were only a few items in my grocery basket so, when the cashier asked me for $100, I insisted on seeing the receipt. There it was, a single loaf of ordinary brown bread – no seeds, nothing fancy – listed at $7.50. There had to be a mistake, I thought, walking the loaf to the returns department of a Kauai K-Mart. But no, I was told. That was the price. A loaf that would cost $1.99 anywhere else in the United States was $7.50 on the island of Kauai.

We’d come as a family to enjoy a week in the December sunshine of the tropical island and learned quickly it would be anything but an inexpensive vacation. Our first shock was when we’d tried to book a furnished house or flat, thinking it would be a perfect way to avoid the cost of eating out every day. We checked the usual sites: vrbo and airbnb, and the listings showed beautiful accommodations, close to the beach and within our budget. So we booked air and went back to the website to secure a place to stay. That’s when we discovered that all those listings were controlled by agencies and, though they appeared “available” online, when you actually tried to book them, you discovered they weren’t. The “hard sell” began the moment I called the agencies. “There’s nothing left on the island,” the agents would say by way of introduction. Then, after a moment’s pause … “All I have left is this apartment at $350 per night.” Pictures of said apartments showed rooms last updated in the 1970s, tiny places that looked entirely unappealing. We learned visitors to Kauai book their accommodation up to a year ahead, sometimes more. And they pay premium prices for their island sunshine.

After many hours scouring online we found accommodation at a modest three-star resort, where we crammed four people into a tiny room and filled the excuse-for-a-refrigerator with snacks, lunch and breakfast foods. Still, the mostly lousy dinners we were forced to eat in restaurants, dining on food that was consistently overpriced, were memorable only for their pitiful quality.

photo - The Napali Coast on the island’s north side is one of Kauai’s great beauties — The Napali Coast on the island’s north side is one of Kauai’s great beauties. *(photo by Lauren Kramer)*

Kauai Vacation Lesson 1: Book early, ensure you have a kitchen, then visit Costco in Lihue and stock up.

Price sticker-shock aside, we were quickly bowled over by Kauai’s lush beauty. Drive around the island and there are exquisite beaches around every corner, the palm tree-lined stretches of sand you see in brochures, lapped by warm water that makes swimming pure pleasure. We had brought boogie boards and snorkel gear, and spent our days exploring beaches on different parts of the island. In Poipu, which has the island’s busiest beach, we snorkeled over the shallow reefs, while in Port Allen we marveled at a massive monk seal, stretched in languid repose on the shore. In Wailua, the kids surfed for hours, riding small-but-strong waves onto the beach before venturing back for more. In Princeville, we watched a massive turtle swim leisurely, oblivious to the swimmers and snorkelers nearby. With sunscreen and a picnic lunch in hand, the hours spun by beneath the Hawaiian sun, a perfect tonic after the grey, cold winter back home.

photo - Endless stretches of white-sand beaches with tumbling waves means there’s no shortage of space for kids to boogie board or snorkel — Endless stretches of white-sand beaches with tumbling waves means there’s no shortage of space for kids to boogie board or snorkel. (photo by Lauren Kramer)

Kauai Vacation Lesson 2: The beach is all you really need.

“You have to see Waimea Canyon,” folks told us. We had good intentions of visiting the “Grand Canyon of Kauai” but when we started out and learned it would be close to two hours each way, four kids fighting in the back seat, the canyon felt a whole lot less appealing. Instead, we contented ourselves with a hike up Nounou Mountain, through a forest of Norfolk pines with ringed trunks that felt straight out of a fairytale. The hike was exhilarating and muddy, taking us past locals’ back yards, where orange trees hung heavy with ripe fruit. Never has fruit theft felt more appealing – though we kept our hands to ourselves. Later, at one of Kauai’s farmers markets, we had ample opportunity for tasters. We purchased $5 coconuts from a young man who wielded a machete and expertly sliced them so we could drink the sweet milk before devouring the soft interior. And we gratefully accepted samples of colorful rambutan, miniature apple-bananas, massive avocados and Kauai-made chocolate spreads, jams and honey. There’s a farmers market somewhere on the island every day of the week and when you find one, it’s a great opportunity to interact with locals and stock up on fresh local fruit and vegetables. Just don’t even think about bringing them home. Produce export is strictly monitored at the airport and we even witnessed the confiscation of a small container of peeled mango someone had tried to save for the flight.

The only time we opted for a group excursion with a local tourism vendor, we wished afterwards that we hadn’t. The kayak tour we took mentioned a paddle upriver and snorkeling in a secluded cove. What it didn’t mention was that the river was very unremarkable, and that we’d need to commute an hour each way to reach the excursion. The disappointing outing robbed us of a precious day on one of the island’s better beaches and our dinner later that night, at a Hanalei restaurant, represented a new low in our island eating experience.

Kauai Vacation Lesson 3: Rent a car, buy a guidebook and explore on your own.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Add culinary flair to Pesach

Grilled salad with chicken is one of the many tempting dishes in A Taste of Passover.

Every now and then, there’s a new recipe book that blows you away with innovative, easy-to-make dishes combined with tantalizing photographs that render you hungry within a couple minutes of flipping through the glossy pages. A Taste of Pesach (ArtScroll, 2014), a project of Yeshiva Me’on Hatorah (in Roosevelt, N.J.), is one such book. It promises to reinvent your Passover menu and inspire you with creative culinary twists and turns during this hungry time of year.

Many schools and communities have tried the same technique of compiling a recipe book and selling it as a fundraiser, and that’s how this one had its genesis seven years ago. But while most of those fundraiser books have a short lifespan before they’re recycled or mislaid, A Taste of Pesach is unlikely to follow the same trajectory. For one, it’s a gorgeous book you can’t wait to page through and one you’d be proud to hand over as a gift to a newlywed child or close friend. For another, it’s chock full of irresistible culinary eye candy, with recipes that are for the most part easy, calling on ingredients that are readily available. Look through the book and you find yourself murmuring, “Hmm…. I can do this.”

The mothers who volunteered the 150-plus recipes for A Taste of Pesach are a diverse group but they all want the same things at the end of the day, write the editors in the book’s introduction. “Food that will get rave reviews, user-friendly, visually attractive recipes with accurate cooking times and yields and recipes that have broad appeal and that work. We’re just like you,” they write.

Most of the recipes don’t require a huge spirit of adventure in the kitchen, but rather call for a minor stretch in their use of different ingredients than you might typically incorporate. The sweet potato crisps salad, for example, is a lettuce-based green salad to which strips of fried sweet potato are added as a garnish just prior to serving. The image of this dish is so tempting, it makes you want to reach in and steal a piece of crisp off the topping. This is true for the majority of the recipes, each one prefaced with a photograph and categorized by chapter into appies, soups, salads, fish, poultry, meat, sides, dessert, cake and cookies, and gebrokts. The recipes are accompanied by handy tips on how to make their preparation easier and faster, or how to plate it most attractively. There are traditional old favorites like gefilte fish, chremslach and kugels, and more modern twists or reinvented dishes like unstuffed cabbage, pastrami and spinach-stuffed chicken and cashew-butter muffins.

Extra eye candy is offered in the chapter headers, which display images of seder plates reflecting different times, styles and tastes. Passover is not a time of year that usually excites Jewish taste buds, but A Taste of Pesach promises to add flair, creativity and innovation to your table – without stretching your culinary skills to their limits.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article originally appeared in Canadian Jewish News.