Alycia Fridkin leads two JQT Mental Health Support Series workshops: Facing Emotions and Healing Relationships on March 30, and Queering with Our Kids on April 6. (photo from JQT Vancouver)
JQT Vancouver is hosting two supported and spiritually grounded workshops in partnership with JFS Vancouver, as part of the JQT Mental Health Support Series: Facing Emotions and Healing Relationships on March 30, and Queering with Our Kids on April 6. Both three-hour, free gatherings will be held from noon to 3 p.m. at Little Mountain Neighbourhood House.
In the first workshop, participants will explore how they have been wrestling with some relationships since Oct. 7, 2023. Drawing on open-hearted sharing, deep listening and collective wisdom, they will process this tension and arrive at insights together for how to manage the emotions within themselves and with their families, friends, colleagues and other people in their lives. The goal of this gathering is to listen to one another, as participants share their lived experiences navigating relationships in conversation around Israel and Palestine and/or being Jewish. Come learn how to build capacity as a community to create an intentional, supportive, safe and healing space for diverse voices to be heard.
The second workshop is for parents of queer/trans youth and queer/trans parents to share, listen and learn from one another as parents in the Jewish community. The goal of this gathering is for participants to listen and learn how they can support themselves and their children facing tensions in the Jewish and/or queer/trans communities. This could include issues related to Israel and Palestine, gender diversity and sexual orientation. The workshop aims to build capacity as a community to create an intentional, supportive, safe and healing space for families and caregivers.
Both workshops will be led by Alycia Fridkin, an experienced facilitator on equity issues and a member of the Vancouver queer Jewish community, who led JQT’s Listen & Be Heard a year ago.
Fridkin is an equity and anti-racism consultant who supports individuals and organizations to address inequities in health care and other sectors. She has facilitated engagement sessions and workshops on systemic racism, whiteness and white fragility, meaningful involvement, stigmatized topics such as substance use and decriminalization, and the Palestine/Israel conflict. Her training includes a PhD in interdisciplinary studies and a master’s in health science, and she is a certified transformational coach.
To register for either or both workshops, and for information on JQT, its events and activities, visit jqtvancouver.ca.
Australian TV personality Erin Molan at Schara Tzedeck in Vancouver March 19. (photo by Pat Johnson)
Security was tighter than usual at Congregration Schara Tzedeck when Australian media personality Erin Molan spoke to Vancouver’s Jewish community March 19.
The non-Jewish commentator has become a lightning rod for anti-Israel activists since becoming a vocal voice in support of Zionism and Jews, particularly after Oct. 7, 2023. She is dumbfounded by the controversy.
“If you said to me two years ago, there’s going to be a terror attack, Hamas will slaughter 1,200 people, they will take hostages, they will burn children … you are going to come out very strongly and publicly and condemn those actions and you’re going to support the victims of those atrocities and that’s going to be controversial and you will be in the minority, I would have said you are dreaming, there is no chance in hell,” Molan told the audience. “But here we are.”
Since that October day, Molan has lost the four jobs she held in Australian journalism – her main gig as a commentator on Sky News Australia, a radio position, a column in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and a regular magazine spot. Molan has not explicitly said she was fired for her pro-Israel views.
“Pure coincidence, of course,” was her response to a direct question put to her by Amir Epstein, executive director of Tafsik, the organization that brought her on a cross-Canada tour.
In February, she became host of 69 X Minutes, a news program conceived and funded by Elon Musk, which airs on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Molan received a loud ovation for her comments on US President Donald Trump.
“You might love him, you might hate him,” she said. “Would I want him to marry my daughter? No. Do I think that in some ways he is the right person for this time given the alternative? Absolutely.”
She said Trump is shaking up a situation that demands new approaches.
“At least he’s throwing something different out there,” she said. “How many two-state solutions do you want to give the Palestinians? How many chances do you want to give? What are we up to, eight? Eight more chances for the same people that, at the last ceasefire, came on TV seconds after the ceasefire began and said, just FYI, we will do Oct. 7 again at the first available opportunity.
“You can’t keep doing the same thing,” she continued. “That’s insanity.”
Her assertion that Trump’s disruptive tactics are right for the time and place come in part from watching, she said, every second of available recorded footage from Oct. 7. Many of the perpetrators wore body cameras, in some cases livestreaming their attacks.
“I thought I understood how depraved they were, well prior,” she said. “I’d seen enough, I’d heard enough, I knew that they were probably as low as you could get. Watching the raw vision [recorded footage] gave me the next-level understanding of who you are dealing with and … I left there saying, there is no way you can coexist with those people.
“I watched a video of a dad jumping out of a window with a 4-year-old under his arm and then maybe a 6-year-old running beside him,” she recounted. “Just that fear on his face that … he knew that they were coming. He was not going to be able to do anything, but he was doing whatever he could. The terrorists killed him, then went to the fridge with two kids covered in blood, shaking, [having] just watched their dad killed and then pulling drinks out and they’re laughing. I watched their faces as they hacked the head off a young man. That, to me, is what I can’t ever forget, the joy that they derived in what they were doing. Two little girls and a little boy being burnt alive – they shot their parents and then they burnt them alive. I just don’t think you can keep pretending that this is just a dispute over land or this is just two countries that don’t really get along well. No, there are not two sides to this. They are evil, depraved, bloodthirsty murderers who will never, ever stop. So, whatever the solution is moving forward, it cannot have Hamas in existence at all and, from there, I don’t know, but I think you’ve got to try something different.”
Molan’s experiences with domestic partner violence have influenced her approach to the Oct. 7 attacks – and provided a contrast between the way she, as an Australian woman, is perceived differently from Israeli women.
“I was in a couple of very violent relationships that resulted in me being hospitalized a lot,” she said, noting that she shared the story for the first time publicly only a few months ago.
When Molan did so, she said, “all the feminists in Australia … were public and effusive in their sorrow and their praise for my bravery, for sharing.”
She said, “These were the same people who deny what happened to Israeli and Jewish women on Oct. 7, the same people who have not said a word about any of it. [They are] completely OK with Hamas raping, slaughtering, killing women.”
She experienced firsthand the very different reactions to her, “an Irish Catholic girl,” and to the rapes and murders of Israeli women, she said.
While she said everyone should be speaking up in support of Israel and against Hamas and global antisemitism, she had particularly harsh words for Islamic community members and leaders, not least because Islamic extremism hurts Muslims, she said.
“They should be at the forefront of this fight,” she said. “Where are they? That’s what’s really disappointed me in this space. There’s the odd one or two and they are incredible and they’re brave and they’re powerful, but … this was a perfect opportunity for [Muslim community organizations] to come out and say, ‘That’s not who we are, that doesn’t represent us or our religion.’ But, instead, they tried to downplay it, they tried to make it OK, they tried to normalize it.”
Molan has been critical of Canada’s now-former prime minister Justin Trudeau, as well as leaders in her own country and elsewhere, who she says have allowed the bar to be lowered on acceptable discourse.
She cited the example of a hate rally at the Sydney Opera House, hours after the atrocities in Israel, during which people expressed antisemitic chants and threats.
“If I were in power, if I were the leader of a nation and that had occurred on my watch, you could not have held me back in terms of what action I would have taken,” she said, adding that this was a moment when hateful and potentially violent people were gauging what would be accepted and what would not be accepted in society.
At that point, Molan said, leaders should have come down hard and police should have acknowledged that support for terrorism and incitement of violence against identifiable groups is illegal, freedom of speech notwithstanding. In Australia, Canada and elsewhere, she said, that did not happen.
She credited the Jewish community worldwide for their collective reactions to the challenges they face.
“You would be justified in being the most hateful people in history,” she said. “You would be justified in having hearts full of hate and no one could ever judge you for it. Every time you gather, all you say is, ‘Bring them home.’ That’s it. Every gathering I’ve seen of Jewish people since Oct. 7, the only focus there has been ‘Bring them home. Bring our people home.’ The other side, every gathering is ‘Intifada,’ ‘River to the sea,’ ‘Death to Jews.’ How can the world not see the stark difference between these two groups of people?”
Schara Tzedeck’s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt opened the event with a prayer for the hostages.
Mijal BenDori, vice-president, community planning, partnerships and innovation, of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, thanked the Vancouver Police Department, hired security and the community volunteer group Bitachon for keeping British Columbia’s Jews safe.
The event was co-sponsored by Federation, Schara Tzedeck and Tafsik, a new national organization that Epstein said targets “the Islamists, the Marxists, the communists, the keffiyeh Karens, the Jew-haters.”
His group, he said, has a number of projects in development, including an app to identify and remove anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate graffiti; a group called LGBTJew, to provide a place for queer Zionists; and a support group for people who have been alienated by their Jewish families for their support of Israel.
Among the activities in which Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Dr. Shiran Reichenberg, left, took part while she was in Vancouver was a lunch and learn at Lawson Lundell LLP, hosted by Peter Tolensky. (photo from CFHU Vancouver)
Dr. Shiran Reichenberg, executive director of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem law faculty’s Clinical Legal Education Centre, was in Vancouver recently, as part of a professorship exchange with the University of British Columbia.
The exchange program started in 2010, with funding from Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and members of the local legal profession and judiciary. From 2013 to 2019, it was named in honour of Mitchell Gropper, QC, and, since 2021, in recognition of the Koffman family’s financial support, it has been formally called the Morley Koffman Memorial Allard School of Law UBC and Hebrew University Law Faculty Professor Exchange Program.
Koffman was an alum of UBC law school in 1952. He practised at Freeman, Freeman, Silvers and Koffman, and was awarded Queen’s Counsel in 1986. His firm, Koffman Kalef, was established in 1993.
One of the founders of the exchange program was Bruce Cohen, whose career has included, among other things, almost three decades as a BC Supreme Court justice. In the CFHU and UBC announcements of the Koffman family’s donation, Cohen says, “Given the high level of respect and regard for Morley’s reputation in the legal, university, Jewish and general communities as a wise counsel and recognized leader it is perfectly appropriate for the program to be named in his honour as a reflection of the importance placed by him and his family on scholarship, professionalism and tikkun olam.”
On the CFHU website, Cohen notes, “The ability of the program to operate in the initial few years of its existence was due in large measure to Morley’s assistance.”
The CFHU Vancouver organizing committee for the exchange program consisted of Cohen, Sam Hanson, Peter Hotz, Shawn Lewis, Randy Milner, Phil Switzer, Peter Tolensky, Dina Wachtel and the late Allen Zysblat. The annual exchange even operated during the pandemic, albeit virtually.
Dr. Shiran Reichenberg, left, visits Temple Sholom’s Oct. 7 memorial with the synagogue’s Associate Rabbi Carey Brown. (photo from CFHU Vancouver)
Reichenberg’s February-March visit to Vancouver was for just over two weeks, during which time she taught a course at UBC and spoke to various groups, including at Lawson Lundell LLP for a lunch and learn hosted by Peter Tolensky and at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, as well as at Temple Sholom for a lunch and learn organized by the Sisterhood, said Wachtel, vice-president, community affairs, at CFHU.
While Reichenberg regularly attends international conferences and lectures, this was her first time in Vancouver and, she said, “It was a very, very different experience to teach an intensive course for two weeks, each class three hours.”
Reichenberg, who is also the director of the Clinical Legal Education Centre’s Children and Youth Rights Clinic, said the course she gave here focused on the development of children’s rights and covered international documents, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other agreements, like the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
“We got very deep into several aspects of the convention and main principles, mainly best interest [of the child] and the right to participation. We talked about youth at risk, in criminal proceedings, in care proceedings,” she said.
Reichenberg graduated with her bachelor and her master of laws from the Hebrew University. She also studied in London, England, having received the Leonard Sainer Chevening Scholarship for LLM studies at University College London. She became interested in children’s rights law when she was a second-year student and participated in the Clinical Legal Education Centre’s Street Law Program, which is still part of the Children and Youth Rights Clinic she now directs.
“Each of us was put in a different residential care facility for youth at risk,” said Reichenberg, who was placed with a locked facility in Jerusalem. “When we entered this place and got an explanation about the girls and their life and what happened to them, it changed the course of my life. I stayed and I did another legal clinic in my third year of law school: representation of children’s rights, of children in court proceedings.”
In doing her PhD, Reichenberg focused on the right of youth at risk to participate in care proceedings, and her research included interviews with some of the girls from the Jerusalem care facility.
Children’s rights have their origin in labour law, Reichenberg said.
“Children, from the beginning of humanity until maybe the Industrial Revolution … died a lot, so parents didn’t get attached to them that much,” she explained. “And they were also considered as property of their parents, mostly their fathers, so they were sold, they were used to work, they were part of supporting the family; they weren’t what we consider them today. There is evidence that, in ancient times, children weren’t even given names, just numbers, because they died so much.”
But when children came to be working in mines and in factories, for example, “legislation gave them rights, to work only 12 hours a day and sleep at night, and things like that,” said Reichenberg, adding that the invention of the printing press, which meant that people needed to learn how to read, was an impetus for the establishment of schools.
The first child-related labour laws were English laws, passed in the early 1800s. The first youth court took place in the United States in 1874, and it involved the first case reported of child abuse, said Reichenberg. “[Mary Ellen McCormack] was abused by her stepmom and when the people wanted to help her, there was no law that protected children, so they used the law that protected animals from abuse.”
The Children and Youth Rights Clinic is one of nine offered by the Clinical Legal Education Centre. There are also clinics on climate change and environmental law; human rights in cyberspace; multiculturalism and diversity; representation of marginalized population groups; criminal justice; international human rights; the rights of people with disabilities; and wrongful convictions.
The centre can take a maximum of 140 students, with each clinic having, on average, 16 to 20 students.
“We have many more people who want to enrol than the places that we can give,” said Reichenberg, explaining that the clinics must be kept relatively small, given that they are working on legal cases.
“Each clinic is taught by a lawyer and there is a maximum number of cases that one person can handle, so we can’t have too many students,” she said. “Also, it allows us to have in-depth discussions in our classes with our students. And we always sit in a circle and there’s always dialogue, and it’s something that can be accomplished only in small groups.”
The Clinical Legal Education Centre takes a three-pronged approach. It handles upwards of 1,000 cases a year, providing legal aid and representation to individuals from marginalized groups. It also works for policy change, through test cases and position papers, for example, and offers public lectures and workshops to raise awareness, increase knowledge and promote discussion.
Since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the centre has taken on an increased role in teaching and advocating for human rights. It has represented groups like the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in front of different United Nations bodies, for example, and has been operating Hamal Hevrati (War Room), a Facebook page providing legal aid to vulnerable populations, which has handled about 100 inquiries to date.
As well, the centre serves diverse clients and has a multicultural staff and student body, all of which include members of the Palestinian minority.
“We are not in war with the entire Palestinian people, we are in war with Hamas, and there is a difference,” said Reichenberg.
“So, we help those who need our help. And we work together, we study together,” she said.
It’s been hard, she admitted. “But we have to believe in working together and living together because none of us is going anywhere and we have to live together and work together for a long time … we have to find a way to do that and this is what we do.”
Reichenberg is proud of how the centre has adapted to the situation.
“In class, we have students who came from military reserves, still with their uniforms and their weapons. We have Arab students who have family in Gaza, which they haven’t heard from,” she said. “We have students who lost people they loved on the 7th of October and since. I personally have a student who I loved deeply and he died in the war, in his military reserve [service] in Gaza. And, also, in the staff, as I said, we’re a mixed staff and a lot of emotions came out on the 7th of October and we did a lot of preparation for staff, how to work with the students in this environment.”
While it’s not perfect, Reichenberg said, “it is certainly an amazing thing to see how everyone is sitting together, learning together, doing legal work together, for the same goal.”
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the term “genocide” in 1944. (photo from Arthur Leipzig Estate, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, via ushmm.org)
Anna-Mae Wiesenthal was in the United Kingdom recently and passed a table in Dublin that was accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. She engaged the people at the table in conversation.
It was a small act of dialogue between a few individuals, but it reflects what Wiesenthal views as a vital act in mutual understanding.
Encouraging conversations like these is one of the reasons the Vancouver educator recently led a course at Temple Sholom on the definition of genocide.
Wiesenthal holds a master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies and is about to defend her PhD dissertation in the same discipline. Both degrees are from Gratz College, in Pennsylvania. She retired last year as a teacher at Vancouver’s King David High School.
The three-class course at Temple Sholom addressing the emotionally and academically challenging topic of genocide comes at a time when
Israel is being accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity in Gaza. The topic has immediate resonance. Wiesenthal’s intention, however, was to take a more nuanced approach to the subject.
“My goal when I retired is to continue to be an educator in different capacities,” she said. After discussions with Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, she put together the course, which ran on three consecutive Wednesdays, ending March 19.
The focus, she said, was an examination of the concept, introducing students to when and why the term “genocide” was coined, in 1944, by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, and looking at its definition, examining the wording and identifying problematic components.
In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined “genocide” as: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions intended to destroy the group in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
“The word ‘intent’ in the definition is problematic,” Wiesenthal said, as an example of the exploration the class undertook. “How do you prove intent?”
The goal of the course, she said, was “to come out possibly with more questions or appreciation for the complexity of the definition.”
The small group of students analyzed the 10 Stages of Genocide, a framework developed and introduced in 1996 by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, to help identify the warning signs of genocide and prevent it before it escalates.
These steps include classification (dividing people into “us” versus “them” based on ethnicity, race, religion or nationality); symbolization (assigning symbols or names to distinguish groups, such as the yellow Star of David for Jews in Nazi Germany); discrimination (dominant groups deny rights to a specific group, often through laws or policies); dehumanization (the targeted group is compared to animals, vermin, insects or diseases to strip them of their humanity); organization (genocidal acts are planned and coordinated, often by governments, militias or extremist groups); polarization (propaganda and hate speech are used to drive society further apart, making violence seem justified); preparation (authorities or groups begin making lists, planning logistics and even building camps or weapons for mass killing); persecution (victims are identified, isolated and deprived of rights, for example, forced deportation, concentration camps, starvation); extermination (the mass killing of the targeted group begins, often justified as “cleansing” or necessary for national security); and denial (perpetrators cover up evidence, deny crimes, blame victims or rewrite history to avoid accountability).
“It’s not always linear,” Wiesenthal said of the 10 stages. “Some of the stages can overlap, some of the stages may not necessarily be present, but it’s a way to identify and help you predict. If we see conditions of the stages unfolding then perhaps we can predict more accurately that there is groundwork being laid for genocidal actions.”
While Wiesenthal wanted to encourage depth of understanding on the topic, its immediacy – with Israel being accused of genocide by groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – led some students, and the Independent, to pressure her to comment on current events.
“What do we say when somebody says Israel is committing genocide?” Wiesenthal asked. “I could ask a question like: What is your understanding of genocide? What does that mean to you?”
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, Wiesenthal noted, they have the military capacity to have done so on the first day of the war. This is perhaps the most immediate, if not entirely nuanced, response.
“You can make all kinds of arguments about how there was or wasn’t enough humanitarian aid and food trucks entering Gaza,” she said. “The fact is there were food trucks entering.”
There could be legitimate discussions about what Hamas did with that aid once it entered Gaza. But, she said, the larger issue is that governments that plan on committing genocide do not provide victims with humanitarian aid, nor do they provide vaccines for children, as Israel has done.
Military experts, such as John Spencer, who specializes in urban warfare, has said that the civilian casualty ratio in Gaza is “historically low for modern warfare” and cites Israeli Defence Forces estimates that 50-60% of Gazans killed have been civilians, well below the 80-90% of civilian casualties typical in modern conflicts.
Spencer has praised the Israeli military’s efforts to minimize non-combatant harm, citing mass warnings to Gazan civilians, providing evacuation and relocation directives to reduce casualties, and the use of “roof knocking” techniques before airstrikes.
While Israel has been condemned for using 2,000-pound bombs in urban areas, Spencer has claimed that these are standard for penetrating fortified underground structures, like Hamas’s extensive tunnel networks, and contends that their use is not intended to cause unnecessary destruction but to legitimately and effectively serve military objectives.
Wiesenthal turns the genocide narrative around, noting that Hamas has explicitly dedicated itself to committing genocide against Israelis and Jews, both in writing and in its repeated expressed statements.
“It is part of Hamas’s charter and something they verbally repeated, that their goal is to get rid of Jews, and their readiness to commit Oct. 7 over and over again,” she said.
This goes to the challenging issue of intent on the part of both Israelis and Hamas, she added.
“If given the opportunity, Hamas [has said it] would kill every Jew in Israel and destroy Israel,” said Wiesenthal. “Israel is not targeting the Palestinian people or the Palestinian population in Gaza. Their campaign is solely directed at the terrorist organization Hamas, which is existentially threatening Israel. Israel is responding to a genocidal attack.”
In a March 2 lecture called Jewish Innovators Who Changed the World, Jonathan Bergwerk spoke about the lives and psychology of prominent historical figures.
“I’m especially interested in what makes these people tick,” said Bergwerk, the author of the Audacious Jewish Lives series, which covers a diverse selection of individuals who have left their mark on the world.
Jonathan Bergwerk, author of the Audacious Jewish Lives series, spoke March 2 as part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2024/25 Zoom series Kvell at the Well. (PR photo)
Bergwerk was the latest speaker in Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2024/25 Kvell at the Well Zoom webinar series. He began his talk by referencing the number of Nobel Prize winners who have been Jewish – at least 214 of 976 individuals (and 28 organizations), with Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and Jonas Salk among them.
“They have received over 100 times the number of Nobel Prizes than might be expected. That’s astonishing,” Bergwerk said, noting that Jews comprise just 0.2% of the world’s population.
Across fields, one finds seemingly inexhaustible lists of influential Jewish contributors: literature (Franz Kafka, Arthur Miller, IB Singer), cinema (Louis Mayer, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick) and music (George Gershwin, Barbra Streisand, Leonard Cohen).
Bergwerk argued that, to understand the Jewish drive for innovation, one might have to go as far back as the Hebrew Bible and the story of Jacob encountering a “man” (angel, perhaps) who tries to stop him from returning home.
“The act of wrestling enabled Jacob to confront his stealing and lying, and to accept responsibility for who he had been,” Bergwerk said. “He learned that it was through struggle, and not by running away from conflict, that he could become the person he was meant to be.So, our life’s purpose – our Jewish challenge– is to discover who we truly are.”
In Bergwerk’s view, the Torah is replete with innovators who had a clear vision and swam against the tide of society’s expectations. Moses, though unable initially to speak clearly, became an inspired and decisive visionary, developing the fundamentals of monotheism and condemning idolatry.
Other “audacious innovators” include Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, the first person not to blame others when things went wrong; Ruth, the Moabite, who went against the norms of a patriarchal society by leaving her people and supporting Naomi; and Elijah, who discovered “that God’s presence and guidance came through quiet, intimate moments of reflection and humility.”
Bergwerk included Jesus of Nazareth in his talk.
“Jesus was an observant, but unconventional, Jew, who was driven by profound beliefs in God, ethics and social justice. He was independent, courageous, an inspirational and charismatic revolutionary, who attracted committed followers,” Bergwerk said. “His teachings challenged religious and societal norms. He tried to be a radical reformer, but always operated within the boundaries of Judaism.”
As Bergwerk moved from the Hebrew Bible through history to present times, a lengthy catalogue of Jewish innovators was provided. Baruch Spinoza, the Rothschilds, Karl Marx and Theodor Herzl were but a few, though scores of others could have been chosen.
Having researched more than 100 such people, Bergwerk suggested possible reasons for the seemingly disproportionate level of Jewish success.
First, Jews are perfectionists, he argued. Though perfectionists are often disappointed, by setting unrealistic goals and expectations, they carry the drive to improve the world in the face of setbacks.
Next, he said, finding themselves as outsiders and not fully accepted has, at times, served as an advantage.
“Oppression, migration and desperate poverty were often creative forces,” said Bergwerk. “They also led to a focus on study. Jews have often been successful in the secular world because Judaism so strongly values learning.”
His third argument was the encouragement in Judaism to challenge tradition and to think independently. Here, he shared the anecdote of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, whose mother, instead of wondering if he received good grades in school, wanted to know, “Did you ask a good question today?”
“Judaism, at its best, is a challenge to the world on how it can be improved. Many Jews dared to ask difficult questions, challenged the status quo and strove to leave the world better than they found it,” Bergwerk said. “Their story is truly inspirational. The message I take from these audacious Jews, is that we are being properly Jewish when we, like Jacob, are wrestling with our own challenges, and so contributing in ways we never thought possible.”
Bergwerk emphasized that this wrestling should not only be with ourselves, however, as that does not build community. Rather, one needs to take personal responsibility, as well as act as part of a community and take collective responsibility.
“We should live the Jewish values of learning, justice and tikkun olam – to strive to shape society for the better,” he said. “That’s what we have done for the last 3,000 years, and the world definitely needs us to carry on providing that hope today.”
The final speaker in this year’s Kvell at the Well series is Mordechai Pinchas, a scholar and scribe who serves communities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Pinchas will share stories from his career on April 6, 11 a.m., in a talk called Torah Tales:Adventures in Scribal Art. To register for this free Zoom webinar, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
Three members of the BC Jewish community have recently been announced as recipients of the King Charles III’s Coronation Medal, which recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region or community of Canada, or have made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.
Maytal Kowalski (photo courtesy)
JSpaceCanada executive director Maytal Kowalski received for honour for building spaces for respectful and collaborative dialogue between Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian communities in Canada. She is also the co-founder of Press Pause Collective, specializing in inclusive fundraising and marketing.
Danny Redden (photo courtesy)
Danny Redden, president of Royal Canadian Legion Shalom Branch 178, was recognized for the significant contribution he has made to his community. Redden is also national president of Royal Canadian Legion Tuberculosis Veterans’ Section and a member of the Dominion Executive Council, the national governing body of the Royal Canadian Legion.
Zena Simces (photo courtesy)
Senior consultant, author and leader Zena Simces was given the medal in recognition of her “extraordinary dedication, selflessness and service to community and country.” The acknowledgement noted: “Your contributions have made a significant impact on the lives of those around you and have set an inspiring example for others to follow.” Simces has more than 30 years of experience in the health, social services, education, justice and employment areas in government, not-for-profit and private sectors, and is the author of You Can Make a Difference: A Guide to Being a Great Consultant.
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Klal Israel Sephardic Orthodox Synagogue members celebrate with Rabbi Yoseph Hayun. (photo courtesy)
It is with great joy that Klal Israel Sephardic Orthodox Synagogue in Vancouver announces the formal ordination of Rabbi Yoseph Hayun by the Israeli rabbinate.
Born in Israel as the youngest of nine siblings, Hayun emigrated with his family from Libya in 1949. In 1982, he served as a soldier in the Israel Defence Forces and participated in the First Lebanon War. Over the years, he built a warm and loving family, including three sons and three grandchildren.
After moving to Vancouver in 2005, he entered the construction field and began contributing to the local Jewish community. In 2013, he joined the Sephardi synagogue Beth Hamidrash and, in 2017, was elected as its president. At the same time, he served as acting rabbi for a period.
Hayun’s desire to deepen his Torah knowledge and lead a community inspired him to begin independent rabbinical studies in 2020. He co-founded the Klal Israel community with friends and continued advancing his studies with the Chief Rabbinate in Israel.
In September 2024, he was officially ordained as a rabbi by the Chief Rabbinate, marking a significant milestone in his spiritual and communal leadership journey. The celebration event was attended by community members and rabbis from the Vancouver Jewish community.
In his new role as rabbi, Hayun will continue to serve the Klal Israel synagogue, providing spiritual leadership, teaching Torah and offering halachic guidance.
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Michael Zoosman (photo courtesy)
Michael Zoosman has been awarded the Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, one of the oldest Jewish social justice organizations in Canada and the United States. The honour was given to Zoosman in recognition and celebration of his long and deep commitment to ending capital punishment.
In 2020, Zoosman and Abraham Bonowitz co-founded L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, which has 3,800 members, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and is an online forum for learning and action. Zoosman also sits as an advisory committee member at Death Penalty Action.
The recognition gala event for this year’s awardees is scheduled for May 20 in New York City.
Artist Mari Sue Baga listens as Rabbi Shmuly Hecht talks about a painting of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that she made in his honour.(photo from Okanagan Chabad House)
On March 9, the Chabad Living Library officially opened its doors to the public. The afternoon event was attended by members of the Okanagan Valley community and beyond, celebrating the launch of this new addition to the cultural and educational landscape of the region.
One of the highlights of the event was the unveiling of an original artwork by local Jewish artist Mari Sue Baga. The painting, entitled “Living Legacy,” depicts the Torah as a living, breathing guide, illustrating the timeless wisdom that inspires and shapes Jewish education throughout one’s life.
Artist Mari Sue Baga’s painting, entitled “Living Legacy,” hangs in the Chabad Living Library. (photo from Okanagan Chabad House)Artist Mari Sue Baga’s “Living Legacy” has been made into a card. (photo from Okanagan Chabad House)
Baga spoke about her work and shared her inspiration behind the piece. She also surprised Rabbi Shmuly Hecht with a painting of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Menachem Mendel Schneerson) that she had made in his honour. She presented it to Hecht, thanking him for his service to the community.
Hecht is the rabbi and emissary of Chabad to the Okanagan Valley. He spoke to the crowd about the significance of the library and its mission. He described a library as an inexhaustible source of wisdom, emphasizing that Jewish sacred literature, passed down by the sages, offers endless lessons to illuminate life’s path. He also explained that the Chabad philosophy – blending intellectual growth with emotional harmony – is embodied in the new library’s offerings.
“The essential thing is the deed,” Hecht concluded, encapsulating the library’s focus on both knowledge and action.
“In a small Jewish community, you’ve got to be creative, and keep finding new ways and avenues to engage and inspire,” he said. “The library was a perfect idea and just what the community needed. Our vision for the future is to make the library go mobile, and offer its services to communities all throughout the several-hundred-kilometre radius of space that we service, so we can include more Jewish people in the impact.”
The launch featured a variety of activities for all ages, including crafting sessions for the children. Guests were treated to sushi prepared by Jewish sushi chef David Dodgson & Co. Live music from Isaac Bloom and fellow University of British Columbia Okanagan students set a lively tone, enhancing the celebratory spirit.
A unique feature of the library is its double play kitchen – one for meat and one for dairy – designed to teach children about kosher kitchen practices in an interactive way. The library also features approximately 100 children’s books that instil Jewish ethics and morals, relevant to families of all backgrounds and affiliations.
For adults, the library’s collection of more than 1,000 books offers a treasure trove that spans a wide range of subjects, everything from Jewish heritage to practical life lessons aimed at helping individuals grow and thrive.
Guests were invited to explore the library’s exclusive collection of books that can’t be found anywhere else in the Okanagan Valley. The library is also fully automated, with all the books input online. Members get a card with a QR code and the system reminds the member in two weeks to return the book. Everyone who became members of the library during the launch event (or signed up online prior to it) were gifted a special item, made possible by local Jewish photographers Andrew and Arlene Simpson.
In a game of Jewish Jeopardy, participants competed in teams for a chance to win a Star of David necklace. However, because of the team format, organizers decided to hold a raffle for all those present instead, and the winner of the necklace was Ezra Cipes.
The new library houses a 150-year-old yarmulka donated by Jerry Cohen, housed in a glass frame. Cohen, 91, was present for the dedication.
Rabbi Shmuly Hecht and Jerry Cohen look at the 150-year-old yarmulka that Cohen donated to the library. (photo from Okanagan Chabad House)
The event was possible thanks to the generosity of many individuals and families whose contributions helped bring the library to life.
The library’s offerings are not only about the books – it’s about creating a space where the community can learn, grow and connect. One of the visions is for community members to come by on Friday and pick up challah, wine and other Shabbat items, along with some books to make Shabbat more meaningful and more enjoyable. There’s also a little Judaica gift shop shelf.
Hecht concluded the launch event by reminding the community of the wisdom shared by Jewish sages: “Don’t say, when I have time, I will study – perhaps you will never discover that you actually have time.” He encouraged all to seize the opportunity to enrich their minds and souls through the library’s collection.
The Chabad Living Library is a project of the Okanagan Chabad House. It is open Fridays and Sundays, 11 a.m. -1 p.m.; and Tuesdays, 5-6:30 p.m.
Those interested in becoming a member or learning more about upcoming events and programs, contact Okanagan Chabad House at 250-575-5384 or office@jewishokanagan.com.
Rose’s Angels co-founder Courtney Cohen, left, with May Stefanov, tenant relations coordinator with Tikva Housing Society. (photo from Rose’s Angels)
Rose’s Angels recently completed its 12th year of giving, donating collected items to 14 Richmond not-for-profits, including Richmond Family Place, Colt Young Parent Program, Mamas for Mamas, Turning Point Recovery Society, Jewish Food Bank, Tikva Housing Society and Pathways Clubhouse.
Rose’s Angels, which operates under the auspices of the Kehila Society of Richmond, was created in 2012 by Courtney Cohen and co-founder Lynne Fader, in memory of Cohen’s grandmothers, Rose Lewin and Babs Cohen, who were both philanthropic and believed in giving back to community.
This year, an abundance of personal care items, non-perishable food, children’s arts and crafts, books and baby formula was donated. For many recipient agencies, baby formula and diapers are among their top priority items, and Rose’s Angels was able to give a large quantity of these items this year.
Donors, volunteers and other community members are integral to the success of Rose’s Angels. Letters were sent out to partner agencies, family, friends and others in January. Last month, monetary and physical donations were collected, Richmond Jewish Day School hosted a hygiene-item drive, and gift cards to grocery stores were purchased. Donations were then packaged and delivered by volunteers.
Cohen reflected on her hope to continue the legacy of her parents and grandparents.
“I hope to instil in my children the importance of tikkun olam (repairing the world) by focusing on one mitzvah at a time,” she said.
To learn more about or donate to Rose’s Angels, email rosesangelsevent@gmail.com or call the Kehila Society at 604-241-9270.
Tikun Olam Gogos’ O Canada! bags proclaim dedication to the ethic of improving the world in friendship with other nations, raising much-needed funds for grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa who are raising their grandchildren due to the HIV & AIDS pandemic. (photo from Tikun Olam Gogos)
As proud Canadians and fundraisers for the Stephen Lewis Foundation Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, Tikun Olam Gogos have launched a special edition line of O Canada! tote bags – determined to respond to the threats American tariffs pose to Canada, and to the suspension of USAID, which is devastating to the Gogos’ partner organizations in Africa.
According to Stephen Lewis, “Lives will be lost. Our best contribution at this perilous moment is to attempt to replace the resources that America has expunged.”
Tikun Olam Gogos’ response to the White House is to raise more funds by intensifying its efforts to handcraft and market its O Canada! line of large tote bags, zippered and drawstring pouches.
Tikun Olam Gogos (TOG) is part of the Greater Vancouver Gogos, which includes about 20 Gogo groups across the Lower Mainland. Gogo is the Zulu word for “grandmother” and tikkun olam is Hebrew for “repair of the world.” TOG is a volunteer group of grandmothers and grand-others (non-members who help out the group periodically) in Vancouver that was founded in May 2011 and is sponsored by the Sisterhood of Temple Sholom. Its mission is to raise awareness, build solidarity and mobilize support in Canada for grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa who are raising their grandchildren due to the HIV & AIDS pandemic.
In 14 years of operation, Tikun Olam Gogos has raised more than half a million dollars for the SLF Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. With its partners in Africa reeling from the withdrawal of other international programs, TOG is more determined than ever to fulfil its motto: “we will not rest until they can rest.”
Priced at $50, just $5 more than TOG’s original signature totes, the O Canada! bags proclaim dedication to the ethic of improving the world in friendship with other nations. So, wear your maple leaf and your heart proudly on your O Canada! tote. You are telling the world “Canada cares.”
To order your O Canada! tote bags, zippered pouches and drawstring pouches, visit tikunolamgogos.org or call Joyce Cherry at 604-261-5454.
For decades, conversations about antisemitism and racism have been running on separate tracks, Prof. Magda Teter told the Independent. But there is a connection, she said, and, in her March 4 talk at Congregation Beth Israel, she will explain that link.
Prof. Magda Teter, author of the forthcoming book Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Reclaiming Interrupted Jewish Lives, speaks at Congregation Beth Israel on March 4, 7:30 p.m. (photo by Chuck Fishman)
The lecture, called Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism, is co-presented by the synagogue and the Archdiocese of Vancouver. Teter, a professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is president of the American Academy of Jewish Research. She is the author of several books, most recently Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023). Her book Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (2020) won several awards, including the 2020 National Jewish Book Award. Other publications include Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (2011), Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (2006) and many articles (in English, Hebrew, Italian and Polish).
Teter has a new book coming out soon, called Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Reclaiming Interrupted Jewish Lives, which, according to the summary, “explores two places: Trent, in northern Italy, and Sandomierz, in eastern Poland … both had been sites of anti-Jewish libels falsely accusing Jews of killing Christian children, Trent in 1475 and Sandomierz twice – in 1698 and 1710; in both, the instigators of the Jews’ persecution left unique and extensive archives, both towns have physical remnants of these deadly affairs, and, finally, neither town has an existing Jewish population. Yet, centuries later, these anti-Jewish libels have not been relegated to the past; in both towns, their legacies still reverberate today.”
“There has been a lot of scholarship about blood libels – the false accusations against Jews that emerged in the Middle Ages, charging them with killing Christian children,” said Teter. “Scholars, including myself, have analyzed the trials, the rhetoric, iconography and anti-Jewish works to understand how these anti-Jewish ideas emerged and spread. What is largely missing from this scholarship is the real, not the imagined, Jews – those Jews whose lives weredestroyed by these accusations. So, what this book is trying to do is to recover the lives of Jews who were subjects of these accusations and tell us about them, how they lived, rather than how they were imagined by their accusers. The tricky part of this is how you recover their lives from documents that were created for the purpose of showing Jews’ guilt and how cruel, heinous and hateful Jews were. So, this book is trying to do just that: to peel through the layers of hostility for the glimpses of lives that were destroyed. It matters. This allows us to wrest the story away from the Jews’ accusers.”
Teter, who isn’t Jewish, grew up in communist Poland where, she said, “Jewish topics were a taboo.” Nonetheless, Poland is “a country whose history is so tightly intertwined with Jewish history, so I was very conscious of Poland’s Jewish past,” she said. “I wanted to learn more.”
This led Teter to Columbia University, where she earned a PhD.
“One of the inspirations for me in taking on difficult topics is the arduous path of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and reconciliation in the aftermath of World War II,” she explained. “It was a process of hard and honest conversations. What these conversations and subsequent documents that emerged show is that hard truths don’t have to tear groups apart but can bring people closer together. But, I think, in the last several years, we have been losing the ability to talk to one another on difficult topics. We, as a society, tend to look for affirmation or we walk away, block or dismiss. We closed ourselves in comfortable bubbles.
“My last book picks up threads that may have been left unexamined in the history of antisemitism – the questions of power and domination,” she continued, referring to Christian Supremacy. “As for the responses, in general, people are initially taken aback by the book’s title … but then, if they are willing to read or listen, they become appreciative of my pointing to something that they had not noticed before. That’s my goal in teaching and writing – I am not looking for affirmation, I hope readers or listeners will leave with a few ‘new thoughts.’ I also hope to learn from the readers and listeners. Their questions often help me clarify my thoughts as well and often inspire ‘new thoughts,’ too.”
Teter, who became a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research in 2016, has served on the executive board and, at one point, as treasurer of the academy. She was elected president in 2022 for a two-year term, and is currently in her second and last term.
“It is the oldest organization of scholars in Jewish studies in North America,” she said of the academy, which was founded in 1920.
“While at the beginning it focused on amplifying the scholarship of the fellows,” she said, “since the beginning of this century, the academy has been focused on programs intended to cultivate the next generation of scholars. For example, the academy awards the annual Salo Baron Prize for the best first book in Judaic studies, runs the biennial summer graduate student workshop and the early career workshop for untenured faculty and, with the increasingly diminishing opportunities for graduate student research, the academy offers dissertation research grants.”
Last month, in an interview with The New York Review of Books – for which she has written – Teter was asked what responsibility historians have to be guided by what’s happening in the present. She cautioned, “We must allow the past to speak on its own terms, even when asking questions that are pertinent to the present.”
“We are all shaped by our own experiences and contexts,” Teter told the Independent. “We often ask questions that are relevant to our own lives. But these may be questions that people of the past did not ask. We have to try to understand their lives on their own terms. They did not know what we now know. They did not hold the same values we do. So, it’s OK to ask about how women or non-binary people were treated in the past, or how people thought about the environment, or how they responded to pandemics, but we should not try to make them feminists or environmentalists.
“Let me give you another example, the world is now animated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and many ask questions about how these different peoples engaged with each other historically, how they thought about one another – if they thought of one another. To find answers, we go to historical sources, but we have to read these historical sources on their own terms, not look only for examples that confirm what we already believe. We need to let them speak in the language and the values of the time in which they were created, not through the lens of now.”
There are other lenses too, and ways of connecting the past with the present. In a 2023 interview with JTA, Teter said, “Understanding Jews’ place in history and society, on their own terms but also on the terms imposed on them from the outside, holds much relevance today.”
“There are two vantage points from which Jews’ place in history can be seen: from the outside, and how Jews experienced their own lives,” she told the Independent. “The 2023 interview took place before Oct. 7 in the context of a recognition by the New York Jewish Week of my role in giving Jewish life in the Bronx more visibility, a borough that has now one of the smallest Jewish populations in New York but one that was, in the mid-20th century, proportionally, the most Jewish borough in New York, with nearly 50% of the population being Jewish.
“But that sentence from 2023 can be illustrated in 2025 in another way. Today, we are still reeling from the aftermath of Oct. 7. One of the main topics that concerns Jewish communities around the world is the rise of antisemitism. But when we talk or write about the history of antisemitism, we typically talk about what antisemites think or do – that is, we discuss it in terms ‘imposed’ from the outside, but what I am asking us to do is to also pay attention to Jews’ lived experiences, and not to refract that experience solely through the external lens. It is something that my forthcoming book is trying to do.”
When asked whether she was, in this moment, hopeful, despondent about or resigned to what humanity is capable of, Teter said, “We live in very dark times. I am very depressed when I look at the ruling elites, whether political or corporate. I am also despondent about the role social media is playing in our society – robbing us of our ability to talk to one another, to argue and reason with one another. I am most hopeful when I am with my students, when we have time to spend together and patiently wrestle with difficult topics or texts. When humans take that time to stop, read, think and talk, things can become better. Social media and the current commercial media environment push us to react without discernment.
Prof. Magda Teter’s talk at Beth Israel is a free event, but registration is required at bethisrael.ca.
