Chiune Sugihara, 1941. This year’s Raoul Wallenberg Day event includes the screening of Persona Non Grata: The Story of Chiune Sugihara. (photo from Vilnius-Green House exhibit)
On Sunday, Jan. 19, the 15th annual Raoul Wallenberg Day event pays tribute to courageous actions by diplomats Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden and Chiune Sugihara of Japan. During the Second World War, they engaged in selfless acts of civil courage, at grave risk to themselves and their families, to rescue many tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
This year, the Vancouver-based Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society focuses on the story of Sugihara. The event features a showing of the biographical film drama Persona Non Grata: The Story of Chiune Sugihara. As a consular official for Japan in eastern Europe during the Second World War, Sugihara saved thousands of refugees by issuing transit visas that allowed people to escape Nazi German forces. Once reviled in Japan, today Sugihara is considered a hero, with museums and a memorial site.
The keynote speaker on Jan. 19 is George Bluman, a local descendent of Sugihara visa recipients and an international expert on Sugihara’s life. Some of those saved by his visas ended up in Vancouver and other parts of Canada.
When possible, the Civil Courage Society also presents an award to an individual associated with British Columbia who, at significant personal risk, helped improve the lives of others while defying unjust laws or norms, past or present. Past recipients include Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh, Chief Robert Joseph and Mary Kitagawa. Their stories inspire Canadians to act with courage and live by their moral values.
This year’s event – sponsored by the estate of Frank and Rosie Nelson, and supported by several organizations and volunteers – is being held at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and it begins at 1 p.m. Admission is free; donations are appreciated. A reception follows. For more information, visit wsccs.ca. New volunteers and nominations for the Civil Courage Award are always welcomed.
Musician Myrna Rabinowitz, left, and Jewish Senior Alliance’s Shanie Levin. (photo from JSA)
The theme of this year’s Jewish Seniors Alliance-Snider Foundation Empowerment Series is “Be inspired!” and the first of four sessions was called Be Inspired through Story and Song.
Held at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture on Nov. 29, Gyda Chud, co-president of the JSA, introduced the two presenters, referring to each as “a gift to our community”: storyteller Shanie Levin, who is a member of JSA’s executive board and on the editorial board of JSA’s Senior Line magazine, and singer-songwriter and guitarist Myrna Rabinowitz.
Rabinowitz opened with the Yiddish song “Abi Gezunt” (“As Long as You’re Well”) and the audience echoed enthusiastically the refrain, “As long as you’re well, you can be happy.”
Levin followed with a story by Kadya Molodowsky, the first lady of Yiddish poetry. A House with Seven Windows is about a proud, strong heroine in the mid-19th century who embraced the dream of “normalizing” Jewish life through a return and settlement in the land of Israel.
Other songs by Rabinowitz included the Yiddish translation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as well as “Sleep Little Boy,” a Yiddish song that she wrote eight years ago for her first grandson. She ended with the Yiddish rendition of “Sunrise Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof (Tog Ayn Tog Oys).
Tall Tamara by Abraham Karpinowitz, both sympathetically comic and painfully tragic, was another inspiring story of Vilna’s poor and the unexpected dignity available to one woman through a chance contact with Yiddish literary culture.
Levin also shared Ted Allan’s Lies My Father Told Me, about the relationship between a 6-year-old child and his grandfather that transcends the differences in ages with deep connection. This story was made into a Golden Globe-winning film of the same name.
The last story Levin read – If Not Higher by I.L. Peretz – was about a rabbi who demonstrates that doing good deeds on earth may be a more exalted activity than doing God’s will in heaven.
Chud thanked the performers and urged the audience to attend upcoming JSA events, the next one being the screening of the movie Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Jan. 15.
Marilyn Berger, who initiated the Light One Candle project and designed a card to help JSA celebrate Chanukah, encouraged the audience to spread the light and make a special donation to help JSA continue its peer support program, as well as its advocacy work.
Dr. Yosef Wosk, right, with Max Wyman, 2017. (photo by Fred Cawsey)
The Yosef Wosk Poetry Initiative at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, which began in 2009, marked its 10th year with a celebratory gathering of artists and poets and with the publication of a commemorative book earlier this year. In addition, the Yosef Wosk Poets’ Corner, along with the adjacent Poet Laureates Garden, was inaugurated on the newly renovated top floor of the downtown central Vancouver Public Library – it was named in recognition of Dr. Yosef Wosk’s decades-long support of the VPL.
Wosk was an early major donor to the redevelopment of the eighth and ninth floors and the roof of the central branch of VPL and was asked to serve as honourary chair of the VPL campaign in 2018/19. The architect for the renovations, as for the library itself, was Moshe Safdie, while Cornelia Hahn Oberlander designed an extensive garden to complement her roof garden that crowns the award-winning structure.
In the library world, Wosk – who has established more than 400 libraries on all seven continents over the past 20 years – was able to fund more than 50 new initiatives in 2018/19, including 20 libraries in remote Himalayan villages and 37 in Jewish communities throughout the world.
As a writer and publisher, Wosk’s work has appeared in a number of publications. Most recently, these include having curated and written the preface for Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal, featuring photographs by Gidal from Wosk’s and the Israel Museum’s collections (Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem and New York, 2019). He also initiated and funded a biography, written by Christopher Best, of Faye Leung, the effervescent pioneer in the Chinese and real estate communities, affectionately known as the Hat Lady (Warfleet Press, 2020).
Wosk’s essay “On the Wings of Forever” was published in the online Ormsby Review this year in collaboration with the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars. The editor’s preface notes that: “With prose as profound and learned as it is clear and accessible, here Wosk examines and appreciates the role of museums and museum workers in the digitizing modern world. It’s not gloom ’n’ doom. Instead, he outlines what he calls ‘a stirring vision, one of innovative technology on a human scale, heart-centred and soul-sized.’”
In collaboration with the Canadian Museums Association, Wosk helped transform the President’s Award into the President’s Medal; he also commissioned the medal and wrote the introduction in the booklet that accompanies the honorific, which was first awarded in 2019.
The province-wide Max Wyman Award for Critical Writing in the Arts, which was inaugurated by Wosk in 2017, formed an alliance this year with the VIVA Awards (the Shadbolt Foundation), which will begin in 2020.
In academia, Wosk was reappointed this year as an adjunct professor in humanities at Simon Fraser University and completed four years as a Shadbolt Fellow at SFU, where he was recently named a Simons Fellow.
During the year, Wosk served on 11 boards in the Jewish and general communities in areas such as education, medical research, museums, libraries, literature, business and the arts. These boards have included the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board, CHILD Foundation, Museums Foundation of Canada and Pacific Torah Institute. He was also an ambassador for the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and is completing a second term with the B.C. Arts Council.
Breanne Harmon at the 41st Annual Business / Arts Awards. (photo from Business / Arts)
On Nov. 7, Vancouver-based Green Thumb Theatre, in partnership with TELUS, was awarded the Community Impact Award sponsored by KPMG at the 41st Annual Business / Arts Awards Gala, held at Meridian Hall in Toronto. The Business / Arts Awards recognizes and celebrates partnerships between business and the arts, and profiles exceptional volunteers and leaders in the business and arts community who have made a significant impact on the arts in Canada.
Breanne Harmon (née Jackson) is general manager of Green Thumb. She was born and raised in Richmond, and was an avid and active member of both Beth Israel USY and Vancouver Hillel at the University of British Columbia, where she graduated with her bachelor of fine arts in theatre production and design.
Since 1975, Green Thumb Theatre has been a staple in many schools across Canada. Each year, they tour to hundreds of schools and communities, and bring professional productions to students who may otherwise have no exposure to theatre in their communities. For the past 13 years, TELUS has been a committed partner, supporting Green Thumb in creating and executing relatable, educational, artistically excellent and relevant theatre for young audiences. Throughout this partnership, TELUS has supported the development of plays that address important social issues, including bullying, homophobia, drug addiction, respectful relationships and consent.
“By bringing live professional theatre that addresses social issues youth face on a daily basis directly into their schools, we can continue to reach thousands of youth with our programming each year, making a lasting impact on those who see our plays,” said Harmon.
Green Thumb Theatre is the third theatre company – and first theatre for young audiences and touring company – to be awarded the Community Impact Award. This is the first time Green Thumb Theatre has been recognized by Business / Arts.
Left to right: Chana Rivka Bitton, Miriam Feigelstock, Baila Shapiro, Shira Oirechman and Ora Yeshayahu. The biggest event of the Tzivos Hashem year is a Shabbaton in New York, the highlight of which is an international competition called Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos, where kids from around the world compete in their knowledge and understanding of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah, as codified by Maimonides. (photo from Tzivos Hashem)
Walking into the Lubavitch Centre at 41st and Oak Street a couple of months ago, I witnessed a hub of activity so vibrant with excitement it was practically humming. Every available space was brimming with excited children, from little ones to newly minted teenagers. Engaged in drawing, listening intently, and engrossed in a whole variety of activities, I knew these kids had to be connected to Chayolei Tzivos Hashem.
Make no mistake – Chayolei Tzivos Hashem (CTH or Tzivos Hashem, for short) is serious business. According to Tzivos Hashem Vancouver coordinator Riki Oirechman, it’s an educational program for Jewish children ages 3-13, founded in 1980 in New York by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Tzivos Hashem focuses on teaching about kindness, good deeds and refining our character to become better people and more effective influencers in our community. The program aims to increase Jewish identity and provide children with Chassidic Jewish learning through informal activities and songs.
Tzivos Hashem Vancouver was established several years ago by Rabbi Shmulik Yeshayahu, Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld and Rabbi Schneur Wineberg and, since then, it has grown in size. Today, they count 50 children registered in the local program, and have plans to expand its hours. Currently, it is being held every Sunday at the Lubavitch Centre, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, in groups divided by age.
“It’s incredible to see how much the kids learn every week, and how much they enjoy coming,” said Oirechman. Parents even relate that their kids consider it the “highlight of their week.”
The Vancouver chapter of Tzivos Hashem was able to run the first two years thanks to a grant from the Phyliss and Irving Snider Foundation. This helped lay the foundation for the program. Since then, it is partially self-funded and relies on tuition fees for each student.
“The program is designed to give young children a sense of pride and belonging, a feeling of connectedness to other Jews,” said the Lubavitch Centre’s Rosenfeld. “It’s meant to instil in them an appreciation for what they do and inspire them to do even more.”
When asked what they learn, Rosenfeld said the curriculum includes things like a deeper insight into the Jewish holidays and following examples of role models from our ancient and recent history. The older kids learn Mishnah and Talmud. All of the learning is illustrated according to Chassidic theory, as taught by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
“We encourage the children to advance their knowledge, not just maintain it,” said Rosenfeld. “Constant review and reinforcement of the different concepts allows the kids to build on the knowledge they gain each week. Moreover, we try to channel the kids’ studies into the practical realm, having them translate their knowledge into action. Whether through class activities, such as visiting the Louis Brier Home with cards and hamantashen before Purim, or with doughnuts before Chanukah, the kids can keep track of their mitzvot (good deeds) through an online logging system.”
“The Sunday program,” added Oirechman, “teaches kids in a fun, highly interactive and hands-on way. Our lessons incorporate creative team challenges, unique arts and crafts, educational games, Tanya (the foundational work of the Chabad movement) and mishnayot (the oldest authoritative post-biblical collection and codification of Jewish oral laws), memorization, weekly missions, songs and much more. In the short time we have each Sunday, we instil and teach the kids important values.”
A group of Tzivos Hashem learners. (photo from Tzivos Hashem)
Tzivos Hashem is based on the Rebbe’s style of teaching, and offers children badges for missions based on things they accomplish in their daily Jewish lives – for instance, saying Modei Ani every morning, washing their hands before meals, giving tzedakah, saying Tehillim (Psalms), etc. Using the army and its ranks as a metaphor for how Tzivos Hashem is structured, the program enables children to learn at their own pace and get rewarded for it. Each student starts out as a private, but, as they do more good deeds and complete missions, they earn mitzvah badges. After collecting enough badges, they are awarded medals. When they get enough medals, they are promoted in rank. Think of it like a Chassidic Airmiles loyalty program; when the children complete missions every week and behave during the Sunday programs, they’re rewarded with mileage points.
A few times throughout the year, there is a prize store, where the students can use the points they earned to buy prizes online. The global headquarters of Chayolei Tzivos Hashem hosts monthly raffles, where children who have completed missions can have a chance to earn more prizes. There are monthly international webcast rallies, where recognition and honour are given to students who have gone up in rank. The physical prizes act as incentives to learn and do more but, in reality, the incentives are inherent, or self-generated: love of Hashem and commitment to Torah values and Yiddishkeit.
The biggest event of the year is a Shabbaton in New York, the highlight of which is an international competition called Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos, where kids from around the world compete, on stage, in their knowledge and understanding of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah, as codified by Maimonides. The competition motivates the children to review the mitzvot and commit them to memory.
Oirechman said the Tzivos Hashem program is adding to both to the quality and quantity of learning opportunities and resources available in Vancouver for Jewish children. For more information about the Vancouver Tzivos Hashem program, email [email protected] or visit their website, thvancouver.ca.
With the goal of living Torah-observant lives, kids in the program are steered to become “lamplighters” – igniting and spreading light wherever they go, through good deeds, acts of kindness and Torah study. Light is something that can be shared infinitely and it only takes a bit of light to extinguish darkness. And while, from my outsider’s point of view, the army metaphor sounds rather harsh, it actually reflects a message that couldn’t be gentler and more caring: to love and help your fellow Jew.
Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer, including with Chabad Richmond.
Lou Segal being interviewed by his daughter, Ramona Josephson, 2019. (photo from Ramona Josephson)
A few years ago, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia contacted my dad, Lou Segal, to interview him, as part of their mission to record the history of South African Jews living in Vancouver. It planted a seed in my mind. Why don’t I interview my dad, and record his voice for my family? So, with tape recorder in hand, we began. My dad (Lou) loves to tell a story and soon I had literally hours of tape.
It wasn’t my intention to write a book. But how would future generations know Lou’s story, and the lessons he has to share? And so the book Who’s Lou? A Loving Tribute to Lou Segal was born.
This is a story of a deeply spiritual man who governs his life with love and integrity; a self-made man who wanted to help others and, in so doing, became a pharmacist and entrepreneur; a man who is a role model and mentor to his four kids, 11 grandkids and five great-grandkids; a man who remains in constant gratitude for all his blessings; a 94-year-old man still in love with my 92-year-old mom!
Born in 1925 Yanishki, Lithuania, home to some 900 Jews, he set sail as a young boy on the Adolf Woermann with his mother and younger brother to join his father in South Africa. His father had left earlier to create a better life for them, after being attacked selling wares from his horse and cart. After a turbulent journey, they arrived in Cape Town, but there was no one to meet them. His father had mistaken the date.
Lou and Friedah Segal on their honeymoon, 1951. (photo from Ramona Josephson)
“I remember my mother holding our hands, wailing in Yiddish: ‘Where’s my husband?’” said Lou. “We were told we’d have to sail back to Berlin if no one came. Just as the ship’s horn blasted, an angel came on board. She said she was my mother’s sister and we were able to leave the ship. She belonged to a Jewish agency that provided assistance for Lithuanian immigrants.” If not for her, how different this story would have been.
Lou’s childhood was difficult. “My first days of school were traumatic. I arrived late in the school year, wearing my tzitzit. I could only speak Yiddish and, even though I was 7, I was put into the equivalent of preschool. I was so embarrassed. Antisemitism was rife and I was ridiculed and beaten up often. I had no one to turn to.”
The family originally lived in a poor neighbourhood and many of Lou’s friends were black kids and they played soccer together. He learned to speak Zulu and, later, this would save his life.
As the years went by, his father’s business prospered, and the family moved to nicer homes. Their last home in Pretoria is today the residence of the consulate of Madagascar.
When Lou was 16, he first laid eyes on my mom, Friedah, at Muizenberg, a popular beach resort and meeting place for young Jewish people. Lou’s eyes always tear up when he talks about my mom.” To this day,” he said, “I am still so in love with your mother. The minute I saw her, she mesmerized me. But it wasn’t mutual. Mom would joke that, as the years went by, I was always looking at her, but she was looking the other way.”
One of Lou’s brothers, Charles Segal, recently received the Guinness World Record for most recorded pianist. Lou can’t claim the same, but he finally won my mom’s heart after she saw him playing the piano as a guest entertainer at a party one night. The next day, she called him … and the rest is history. They were married some years later in Cape Town, after Lou graduated as a pharmacist. They had four children, Basil, Ramona (me), Darryl and Janine.
But tragedy nearly struck when Lou had a fire in his pharmacy. His delivery boy lit a cigarette in the dispensary and a bottle of benzene erupted into flames. Lou tried to stomp out the fire with his foot. His pants went up in flames and his skin was burnt to the bone. A customer rushed him to the hospital. He needed skin grafts on both legs. A teaching professor came into his hospital room one day and told his students in Afrikaans, thinking my dad couldn’t understand, that he would likely never walk again.
“My heart dropped,” Lou recalled. “I asked Mom to bring my tefillin to the hospital, and I put it on every morning and prayed to G-d. Miraculously, over time, the grafts started taking. After six months, I was discharged, and was gradually able to go back to my usual activities. To this day, I lay tefillin every single day. I believe it is one of the most important of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah.”
Lou’s family at the launch of Who’s Lou? (photo from Ramona Josephson)
Lou was a pharmacist but became a successful and respected entrepreneur. He was a branding whiz, was coined the ‘Man with Ideas’ and was so well known that the newspaper created a caricature of him.
“I always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. I had a deep knowledge of pharmacognosy and could formulate products from scratch using plants and natural ingredients. As time went by, I realized I could manufacture most products and so I started to create my own brand lines.” His products became household names.
In 1948, apartheid was introduced in South Africa and black people were forced to carry passbooks to restrict their freedom of movement. In 1960, they took to the streets in protest; stores were burglarized and cars overturned. The police opened fire and the bloodshed that followed is called the Sharpeville massacre.
“Demonstrations in Cape Town passed my drugstore,” said Lou. “Several blacks entered and were about to jump over my counter to attack me when a black man shouted in Zulu that I was his ‘doctor’ and they must stop. Over the years, I had tended to many black people who had come to my drugstore bleeding from fights. They’d promise to pay me later but I knew they never would. I had grown up with them and just wanted to help. I believe this man saved my life.”
Our family considered leaving the country but, after Nelson Mandela’s arrest, there was a false sense of security and life went on.
By that time, we, like so many white South Africans, were enjoying a wonderful lifestyle in Cape Town. We went to shul as a family every Friday night, played tennis or lounged on the beach on weekends. Lou kept fit, swimming lengths in our pool, going to the gym, playing tennis. He was a Toastmaster and he and my mom had a large network of friends. They loved to party and took ballroom dancing lessons in our home.
But there was always an underlying level of tension and the turning point came in 1976, after the Soweto Uprising. Black schoolchildren took to the streets in the thousands, protesting the government’s insistence that Afrikaans be the official language in schools. It became bloody.
My older brother, Basil, and I felt there was no future for us in South Africa and we both independently immigrated to Vancouver. I recall, when Basil phoned to say he had arrived in Vancouver, Mom asked: “Vancouver? Where’s that?” Basil replied: “Look at the map. It’s as far north and as far west as you can go!”
Plaque representing Lou Segal’s top 10 “commandments.” (photo from Ramona Josephson)
My parents learned that they could bring our younger siblings on their passport if they immigrated before either of them turned 21.
“I was just 54 years old and at the prime of my career,” said Lou. “I had a business partner, and we were under negotiations to merge with two other companies to be listed on the Johannesburg stock exchange. I owned several large property holdings, both residential and commercial. There were strict regulations as to how much money you could take out the country. If you violated the law you could lose everything. But we had this deadline to move to Vancouver and be together again with our four kids, and that is what we decided to do. Family first!”
Our home in Cape Town later became the residence of the consulate of Lithuania.
Lou came as a retired man but he never retired. He still goes into the office, where he works with my younger brother, Darryl, manufacturing the HerbalGlo line of hair and skin products. Darryl wants to retire, but he can’t, because Lou still goes to the office.
Lou is a man who never raised his voice, but his life lessons and strong moral values are heard loud and clear by all who know him.
Who’s Lou? is filled with loving tributes from family and four rabbis who have officiated over the years at Congregation Beth Tikvah. We are so grateful to Barbi Braude for the hours she put into the concept and design of the book, which was launched in honour of Lou on Sept. 7 at a Kiddush luncheon at the synagogue. It is available at the synagogue library, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia and the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library.
Ramona Josephson is one of Lou Segal’s four children and is married to Ken Karasick. Her two children, Jaclyn and Marc, have brought Lou and Friedah four great-grandchildren. She is a happily retired dietitian and nutritionist and author of HeartSmart Nutrition: Shopping on the Run.
Left to right: Debby Altow, NCJW Vancouver past president; Cate Stoller, NCJW Vancouver president; Shelley Rivkin, vice-president, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver; Kasari Govender, B.C. human rights commissioner; Ezra Shanken, Jewish Federation executive director; and Etti Goldman, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (photo by Rochelle Garfinkel)
Newly installed B.C. Commissioner of Human Rights Kasari Govender spoke to members and guests of the National Council of Jewish Women of Canada on Nov. 21 at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Govender discussed a wide range of topics, including the connections her office will be making with similar bodies across Canada, her focus on the systemic issues affecting human rights in our province, and her welcoming of ideas for implementing forward-thinking and creative approaches to human rights issues. Govender’s presentation echoed the values and focus of NCJWC Vancouver section, which has a long tradition of innovation and creativity in the sphere of social action. For more information about upcoming events and programs, visit ncjwvancouver.org.
Irwin Keller will share some of his eclectic interests at Limmud Vancouver in March. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)
Irwin Keller is the kind of person most of us would like to be: curious about everything, smart, creative, always learning, always teaching. As one of the invited presenters for Limmud Vancouver ’20, he’ll be sharing some of his interests with the local community.
Keller’s first career was a long stint as a human rights lawyer specializing in AIDS and HIV-related discrimination. But, as a lifelong amateur musician, he also co-created the drag group the Kinsey Sicks. In 2006, he ended up serving as a lay leader for his congregation, which finally pushed him to go to rabbinical school, where he is now finishing up his training.
“I had always wanted to be a rabbi. When I had finished my undergraduate and was looking at applying to rabbinical school, in those days, there were no seminaries that accepted openly gay students,” Keller said. “I couldn’t do it unless I was willing to go back in the closet that I had just come out of – the closet was still warm – and I wasn’t willing to. It felt wrong. It was important for me to be in the rabbinate as who I was.”
Within just a year of deciding he couldn’t be a closeted rabbi, the AIDS epidemic began to tear through the gay community, and Keller began working on civil rights cases.
“Things can happen to people whether they’re legal or not. Often through some sort of ruse, or subterfuge,” he said. “As long as people didn’t want people with AIDS renting from them or working for them, they were going to find some way to get rid of them. That was our work.”
This work, which Keller describes as both holy and harrowing, led to the creation of the Kinsey Sicks. “Our community needed to laugh, needed to be delighted out of what we were experiencing every day.”
Momentum built and, after a few years, the group had an offer to produce their show off-Broadway.
“That was the point when we all quit our jobs. That was the last I ever practised law,” he said.
In all, Keller performed with the group for 21 years. Along the way, he taught himself enough Yiddish to be able to bring Yiddish music into the show, to both hilarious and touching effect. He had a recording of his great-grandmother singing the heart-tugging “Papirosn,” about an orphan boy trying to get by selling cigarettes on a street corner. Usually sung by women performers to mimic a child’s voice, Keller performed it in his drag persona Winnie, channeling the spirit of his great-grandmother and Yiddish theatre divas of a bygone era. You can watch it on YouTube: Keller playing a much older Jewish woman playing a young boy – gender collapses à la Victor/Victoria.
“Over the course of the maybe 18 years that I performed it, it was the most commented-on piece of music that we performed,” he said. “People were so moved – including non-Jews – that they were getting a window into Jewish culture that they were not getting from modern American culture.”
Keller’s U-turn into the rabbinate is perhaps long in coming, but not surprising. He describes both his civil rights law career and his drag performing career as holy work: the yin and yang of what a gay community needed at a devastating moment in its history. Moving onto the pulpit only took that energy to a different place.
“I moved to Sonoma County and joined a synagogue whose rabbi was in the process of leaving and there was a lot of turmoil. I volunteered to do some of the rabbinical work while they were searching,” he said. “But what came out of me was a lifetime of longing.”
And the congregation needed his brand of leadership, too. “I think my being the singing drag queen rabbi gave people a different kind of welcome,” he said.
At Limmud Vancouver, Keller will be sharing two more of his interests: Yiddish poetry, and queer readings of Torah. In a session on the Yiddish poet Itsik Manger, Keller will lead discussion on the playful Bible-inspired poem cycle known as the “Khumesh lider.”
“The way he plays with the looping of time, the anachronisms, in a way that is also invited by rabbinic tradition – there is no before or after Torah, everything can take place in any order,” explained Keller. “So you can get the Turkish sultan visiting Hagar, you can get Ruth and Polish peasants, and it’s still Torah.”
Keller’s other Limmud seminar will examine the story of Joseph.
“I try to identify where there are queer currents running through Torah,” he said. “I don’t specifically mean exclusively gay-themed moments, but moments that seem to suggest a certain kind of outsiderness and outsider outlook and alternative biography from what you’ve come to expect from ancient tales.”
Joseph falls into this category because of his distance from the normative family. Joseph spends most of his life at odds with a family that made him unsafe. His power comes when he is able to be away from this family and incognito, and his unmasking is both dangerous and liberating.
“What’s interesting to me here,” said Keller, “is that the rabbinic tradition finds him to be problematic. They have a tendency to locate his problematicity in his gender and sexuality. So, it’s not like we as modern people are for the first time noticing that there might be a queer angle to this story. For 1,000 years he’s been alarming the rabbis.”
Keller speaks of human rights, Jewish drag, Yiddish poetry and queer Torah with unflagging energy. But this isn’t even all. Get Keller talking about angels in the Jewish imagination, and it’s off to the races again: “There is a tradition around angels who densely populate all our mystical texts, as well as running rampant through Torah,” he said. “It’s interesting to me the worldview that holds angels as present in every space and every function. Every natural force is controlled by an angel, every period of time. Every hour of the day has an angel that oversees it.”
Perhaps another year, Keller will share more at Limmud about angels. In the meanwhile, his joyous brand of learning and thinking will be available in two presentations on March 1 at Limmud Vancouver, held at Congregation Beth Israel. Registration is now open at limmudvancouver.ca.
Faith Jonesis a librarian and Yiddish translator in Vancouver. She is a regular teacher and attendee at Limmud Vancouver.
On Oct. 30, members of different cultural groups gathered to discuss issues facing seniors. (photo from JSA)
Aging Across Cultures Dialogue Tables included an Oct. 30 gathering hosted by Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver at the Unitarian Centre.
The B.C. Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture has provided funding for a focused review of services, concerns and challenges faced by organizations providing help to multicultural seniors in the Lower Mainland. In addition to the JSA, Jewish Family Services and the Kehila Society were among the groups represented, which also included ASK Friendly Society, B.C. Community Resources Network, Kitsilano Neighbourhood House, United Way-Better At Home, Collingwood Neighbourhood House, COSCO, 411 Seniors Centre Society, Gordon Neighbourhood House, Marpole Neighbourhood House, Simon Fraser University Gerontology Research Centre, Vancouver Seniors Advocate, Seniors Brigade Society of British Columbia, Seniors First B.C., South Granville Seniors Centre, Tonari Gumi, Vancouver Native Health Society, and West End Seniors Network.
On Oct. 30, Gyda Chud, co-president of JSA, welcomed participants, emphasizing advocacy, reflection and rejuvenation as illustrated in a new JSA video outlining its community services. Grace Hann and Charles Leibovitch, from JSA’s peer support services, were the facilitators for the multicultural dialogue tables. Liz Azeroual of JSA documented on flip charts the ideas and concepts put forth by the participants.
Whatever the needs of seniors in general, discussants agreed that the situation is worse for immigrants and for women; many must choose between either eating or taking their medications. Immigrant women are less likely to be accepted for financial aid. Literacy is an issue, especially when applications for help are online, and navigating the system is more difficult when English is not your first language.
Without family advocacy, many seniors are left to fend for themselves. They need places to meet other seniors who have similar language, customs and experiences. In care facilities, many immigrant seniors are forced to eat unfamiliar foods. Immigrant seniors, especially women, need advocates to get their needs met, but community-based organizations working with seniors often are not well-funded, so help is minimal. The medical system is not structured to treat the multiple problems of seniors.
Loneliness and isolation are among those issues. Family groupings are now much smaller, and young families do not live in the same area as their parents or grandparents. Some seniors are abandoned by their families, or by the death of friends and colleagues. There is a lack of social support, transportation and financial aid to address these problems. Health issues such as depression, fractures that limit mobility, and degenerative hearing and sight increase isolation. LGBTQ+ seniors may also be underserved and isolated. There is a need for better communication all round.
Low-income seniors often move into single-room facilities, if they are available, or some become homeless, living in cars or couch surfing, as they cannot afford higher rents.
Paid caregiver turnover and the deteriorating quality of some care facilities has led families to care for their loved ones at home without adequate financial support. Caregiver burnout is a major concern and accessing certain types of care is a huge challenge: palliative care, for example, requires a physician’s referral.
Population movement and growth, and changes in the healthcare industry, are taking place without adequate planning for the changing needs of the senior population. For all workers, including professionals, who come from a non-English-speaking country, language training is necessary and difficult. Families need paid work in stable jobs and so do seniors. Volunteers are hard to recruit and retain, even though it is meaningful work and can lead to other jobs. In addition to language, many new Canadians need to learn more about technology and Canada’s corporate and general culture. In many areas, discrimination is an issue faced by new Canadians.
All Canadians need to plan for retirement, which is becoming costlier, as the population ages and services become more expensive. Various healthcare agencies need adequate funding to keep the elderly out of hospitals, and the links between different levels of health care and social services (clinics, hospitals and nonprofit agencies) need to be strengthened in order to keep this population from falling through the cracks. Access to transportation is a big part of this, and caregivers should be remunerated for providing home care for seniors. Cultural and ethnic care facilities could play a larger role in reducing isolation, offering spaces where language, food and culture are familiar and where families of seniors can meet.
Seniors housing was considered the highest priority. The need for more single-room affordable housing units, more cooperatives, more roommate pairing services and stricter legislation for affordable-housing vacancy rules were discussed. It was also believed that immigrants and 55-to-65-year-old seniors needed more access to Canada Pension Plan and Old-Age Security.
At the end of the discussion, Dr. Gloria Gutman, from Simon Fraser University’s Gerontology Research Centre, stressed the needs for groups to keep communicating at all levels to help resolve these major seniors’ issues.
Pamella Ottem, MSN, worked for many years in the field of gerontology. As a retired nurse, she has volunteered in the Fraser Health Authority hip replacement program. At Jewish Seniors Alliance, she is a member of the board and chairperson of the peer support services committee.
Lillian Boraks-Nemetz and Senator Murray Sinclair. (photo by Jerry Nussbaum)
A succession of unjust Canadian laws piled one upon the other in the last part of the 19th century, enabling the federal government to take indigenous children from their homes and eradicate their cultural identities. The full scope of those laws – and their impacts on generations of First Nations people to today – was outlined by Senator Murray Sinclair, former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who spoke at the University of British Columbia last week.
The impact of residential schools and the laws that created and sustained them was the theme of Sinclair’s talk, which was presented by the UBC faculty of education and the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada.
Prior to Sinclair’s presentation, Vancouver author Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, a board member of the Korzcak association and a child survivor of the Holocaust, contextualized the lecture in the spirit of Korczak’s legacy.
Korczak was an educator and pedagogue who ran orphanages, including one in the Warsaw Ghetto, where Boraks-Nemetz was also confined. Korczak was a respected figure in Polish society, considered by many the originator of the concept of children’s rights.
Dr. Blye Frank, dean of the faculty of education, University of British Columbia, left, and Jerry Nussbaum, president of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada, present an award to Stephanie Black, 2019 recipient of the Janusz Korczak Scholarship. (photo from Tiffany Cooper)
“Korczak observed and listened to children, never judging, criticizing or showing intolerance,” said Boraks-Nemetz. He cultivated their self-esteem and believed that children should grow into who they want to be, not who others want them to become.
“During the Nazi persecution, Korczak, when offered a reprieve from the depredations of the Warsaw Ghetto, he would not abandon his children in their last journey to the cattle cars heading for Treblinka, the death camp,” she said. “He refused, saying, ‘My children need me. I deplore desertion.’ He went with them and they all perished.”
Sinclair then painstakingly outlined the conspiracy of legal barriers to justice that the government erected to perpetuate what has been termed cultural genocide.
As the federal government began to expand Canada westward in the 1870s, it entered into treaties with the indigenous peoples. One of the demands indigenous negotiators insisted upon in exchange for being limited to reserves was that the federal government create and fund schools on those reserves.
Sir John A. Macdonald sent a representative to the United States to see how they were running schools for Native Americans. In direct repudiation of the treaties, the federal government opted for a similar system and his government created what they called “industrial schools.”
Sinclair said MacDonald believed that, if children went to school on reserves, “the kids would go to the schools in the daytime and they would then return home to their parents, who are nothing but savages, and we would be teaching those children basic skills that all children learn from schools and what we’re going to end up with at the end of the day is nothing but savages who can read and write.”
Because the government wanted to “do it on the cheap,” said Sinclair, “they decided to involve the churches, who were quite willing to get involved because it was great for the churches as well to gain numbers through their missionary zeal.”
Children were punished for speaking their languages and for talking with their friends and siblings, “because they wanted to break your ties to those relationships…. Everything was done in the schools to break down cultural bonds that existed in those children.”
Those who were not physically or sexually abused lived in fear that they would be, Sinclair said.
“And, of course, the children, when they came home, would tell their parents what happened in those schools,” he said.
The natural inclination to stop it from happening led to a cascade of legislative injunctions that took away the most fundamental rights of First Nations peoples.
“In the 1880s, the government passed the law that amended the Indian Act and said that it was an offence, a legal breach of law, if you did not send your child to a school when the Indian agent told you to send the child,” said Sinclair.
When parents tried to hide their children, the parents would be prosecuted and go to jail. Faced with the prospect of indigenous people taking the government to court over the issue, the government passed another law, making it impossible to go to court against the government for anything done under the Indian Act “unless you get permission from the minister of Indian Affairs first.” The government soon made it illegal for indigenous people to consult with a lawyer on anything relating to the Indian Act – with the punishment for the lawyer being disbarment. Then, another step was added, making it illegal for a white Canadian to speak to a lawyer on behalf of an indigenous person.
When it seemed parents might protest the situation, the government made it illegal, in 1892, for three or more First Nations people to gather together in order to discuss a grievance against the government of Canada. It was made illegal for indigenous people to attend large gatherings like the traditional sundances or the potlatch, “not just because of the religious aspect of it but also because, at these gatherings, that’s when Indians got together in order to discuss their grievances,” said Sinclair.
Fears of a violent uprising were dismissed by Northwest Mounted Police in documentation Sinclair has seen, which, he summarized: “We don’t have to worry about the Indians taking up arms against the government because we have their kids. They are not going to go to war against us.”
Children who returned from the schools were scarred and often unable to communicate with their parents in a shared language.
“Their ability to know how to hunt, fish or trap, which is what the communities depended upon, was lost to them,” said Sinclair.
Estimates are that about 35% of indigenous children attended residential schools, but the damage extended to the other 65%, who were taught in public schools the same white superiority/indigenous inferiority curriculum as those who were taken away.
When those children grew up and had children, they had no learned skills at parenting and were burdened with their own demons, said Sinclair. As a result, when child welfare systems were burgeoning in the 1950s, it was mostly indigenous children who went into care. It was, and is, disproportionately indigenous people who are incarcerated.
Indigenous Canadians have the highest suicide rates of any cultural group in the world, said Sinclair. High school dropout rates, substance abuse and violent crime affect indigenous Canadians in exponentially greater numbers than non-indigenous Canadians.
The problems will not be resolved, Sinclair said, by spending more money on child welfare, policing or incarceration. The education system and society must help indigenous young people realize who they are as Anishinaabe, Cree, Sto:lo or Mohawk.
“The educational system is just not giving them what they need,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, but, if we address that one aspect of how our society is functioning, we will see the most dramatic change that will resolve or redress the history of residential schools in Canada on indigenous people, on indigenous youth in particular.… It begins with recognizing that … indigenous youth, in particular, must be given their chance to develop their sense of self-respect first, and that’s going to take some time to do.”
