Canada has changed dramatically in the past half-century. In two years, we will mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation. When we last celebrated such a momentous landmark birthday – in 1967 – it was a time of perhaps unprecedented optimism and belief that the world was better for having Canada in it. Yet, even in that celebratory year, the culmination of a decade of upheaval both positive and negative, no one could have predicted the Canada we would build in the next generation.
It was in that decade that Canada’s immigration laws – which since the 1920s had been notoriously stringent and oriented almost exclusively to white migrants – became part of the multi-hued world. A royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism opened the door to viewing Canada outside the British colonial and cultural prism through which it originated in 1867. Within a few short years, the ethnic mix of the country would expand the concept of multiculturalism, opening up an exciting new amalgam of peoples from around the world, though not without some significant social challenges. Even so, for a country whose demographic face has changed so dramatically in a relatively short amount of time, we have adapted to it in ways that should inspire pride.
It has been said that Canadians, polite and welcoming to strangers by reputation, are also self-critical in ways almost unknown in other countries. When there have been incidents of which Canadians should be ashamed – and, as in any country, there have been plenty – we do have a tendency to self-castigate.
On the other hand, sometimes not quickly or adequately enough. As we wrote in this space last week, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on the catastrophic history and legacy of the Indian residential schools program highlights one of this country’s worst open sores – and that confronts only one portion of this country’s treatment of indigenous peoples. It took too long to reach this point of truth and reconciliation and it remains to be seen if action and genuine reconciliation will be the result. It is worth repeating, in this Canada Day edition of the paper, that it is our responsibility as Canadians to ensure that the recommendations of this report are not ignored or dismissed.
And Canada has a legacy of racism and antisemitism. Not just a legacy, but an active problem in many places and in many contexts. But, in a country as diverse as ours, in the year 2015, we as a collective are doing pretty well at getting along.
It has not only been the comparatively speedy and dramatic shift in ethnic demographics that has changed Canada. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been the lynchpin for judicial and legislative changes that have altered the face of the country and the day-to-day lives of its citizens. From the start, the entrenched equality of women was a significant constitutional right. By the 1980s, when the Charter took effect, it may have seemed ludicrous that a woman would not be considered legally equal – but let us not forget that the country to our south had spent a chunk of the previous decade arguing over precisely that point and the effort to entrench in the U.S. Constitution an equal rights provision failed, leaving women constitutionally unequal to men.
Court interpretations of the Charter have led to some of Canada’s most stunning progressive steps, including marriage equality. Yes, it was the courts (successive provincial decisions and then the Supreme Court of Canada) that made marriage equal, but Parliament quickly acceded (not that they had much choice) and public opinion is now overwhelmingly on side. Numerous less prominent cases have swung on the Charter’s provisions and while our American cousins fret over judicial “overreach” or “activism” when courts interpret the laws of the land (as is their constitutional role in both countries), Canadians seem to accept and even admire our Charter and its impact on the country. Polls, reliable as they may or may not be, suggest that 82% of us like the Charter.
Canada has sometimes been seen as an unnatural country, not one united by language or race or even geography, because we’ve got too much diversity for any of these to be a unifying factor. But we have found things to unify us.
In a world where diverse people stuck within random national boundaries seem to have too often sought out differences, accentuated them and fought over them, Canadians have accepted our lot as destined to share this space – and found our own ways to coexist, to identify the things that unite us, even celebrate the things we do not share in common, and make the best of it.
We are not perfect. No country is. Jewish tradition says that God created an imperfect world and it is humanity’s responsibility to strive to repair it. Perhaps, in a constitutionally mandated non-denominational way, this is also the role of successive generations of Canadians: inherit a country and strive to make it better. On Canada Day this year, may we rededicate ourselves to this sacred task.
Earlier this month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released the summary of its compendious report on the history and legacy of the Indian residential schools system. As the testimony of more than 6,750 witnesses to the commission demonstrated, that dark history, which lasted more than a century, has had catastrophic impacts on individuals and communities across the country.
There has been some controversy over the commission’s use of the term “cultural genocide” to describe the process by which the schools intended to eradicate the vestiges of First Nations culture from the children. However, as the summary document notes, “the central goals of Canada’s aboriginal policy were to eliminate aboriginal governments; ignore aboriginal rights; terminate the treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious and racial entities in Canada.”
There were 3,201 registered deaths of children in residential schools, but estimates are that nearly twice that many died – a proportion, the commission notes, that about equals the fatality rates of Canadian soldiers in the Second World War. Only half of registered deaths cited a cause, most commonly tuberculosis. Pneumonia, influenza, fire and suicide were also too-common causes of death among the children.
Over more than 100 years, an estimated 150,000 children were confined to the constellation of 139 schools, most of which were run by churches acting on behalf of the federal government. There are about 80,000 living survivors.
Traditional clothes were removed and discarded, native languages generally forbidden. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse permeated the schools, as witnesses recounted harrowing experiences at the hands of white authority figures.
Even the ostensible purpose of the schools – education – was usually sublimated to forced labor, in which children were used to run the facilities that incarcerated them.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the Canadian government’s role in residential schools, but the commission explicitly urges the country to move from “apology to action.”
There are 94 recommendations in the TRC’s report, including that the government should acknowledge that the state of aboriginal health today is a result of previous government policies. On education, the report urges legislation on aboriginal education that would protect languages and cultures and close the education gap experienced by First Nations peoples. It calls for a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. It asks for a national council for reconciliation to report on reconciliation progress and an annual State of Aboriginal Peoples report to be delivered by the prime minister. A statutory holiday should be created, the report says, to honor survivors, their families and communities, and memorials, community events and museums should be funded.
“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you a path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing,” Judge Murray Sinclair, the commission chair, said in releasing the report.
The commission’s recommendations are a call to action not only for the government but for Canadian citizens. We must ensure that we as individuals and collectively as Canadians take seriously the commission’s findings and that our governments act in ways that respect this history and ameliorate its impacts as much as possible.
Six Jewish organizations – Ve’ahavta, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism, Reform Rabbis of Greater Toronto, the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus and the Toronto Board of Rabbis – issued a statement of solidarity and action acknowledging the residential schools experience and its contemporary consequences.
As Jewish Canadians, we have devoted ourselves to remembering and educating about our own history and it is heartening to see our communal organizations acknowledging and standing up for the experiences of other communities. We, too, can join in the reconciliation process in many ways, beginning with the very small act of signing the solidarity pact, which can be found at statementofsolidarity.com.
The pact’s call to action includes a commitment “to meaningful public education in the Jewish community and beyond, and outreach to indigenous communities to guide us to help improve the quality of life of indigenous peoples.” At press time, its events/initiatives section asked visitors to “stay posted,” but it is up to all of us to make sure that we act in solidarity, not merely voice it.
All Canadians have an interest in making sure our government and society is held accountable for our past and that we do everything possible to ensure a better future for aboriginal Canadians. Because of our own history, Jewish Canadians have perhaps a special role in seeing this process through.
The 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta falls on June 15. It is a significant document not only in the history of England and the history of democracy, but also in the history of the Jews. There is a surprising (to some) aspect to the seminal document of British constitutional monarchy.
If you tune into the right channels on the wireless this weekend – don’t you love how that word has gone from archaic to high-tech in less than a generation? – you will probably hear much about the anniversary of this pivotal document. You might not hear about the Jewish angle to the story.
The Magna Carta emerged, effectively, as a constitutional document in the days when constitutional limits to the rights of kings were unknown. England’s King John was confronted by 25 barons who weren’t so happy with their relationship and, lo, faced with the threat of insurrection, he became the accursed monarch who, with the stroke of a quill, under duress, set the stage for the limitations of divine right that have resulted in the reduced British monarchy we see today.
Eight centuries ago, the king had his barons and knights, the nobles had their vassals and so on down the feudal pecking order. And then there were the Jews.
Jews in England at that time, and in many places at other times, existed outside the carefully proscribed feudal system. There were advantages to this exclusion – who wants to be a serf? – until there were not. The king was the protector of the Jews, which seemed like a sweet deal – until it was not.
Like nobles, Jews had a direct relationship with the monarch. Unlike nobles, they had little in the way of leverage when the relationship went south. For the masses, there was nothing endearing in the Jews’ special relationship to the king.
The Magna Carta is a document that, for the first time, set limits on the rights of the king in his relations with his nobles and, by extension, theoretically anyway, his public. Appropriately enough, it also outlined the relationship between the king, nobles and Jews.
This turned out to be a problem. The Bible forbids “usury,” the application of interest on loans “to your brother.” Christians, under a widespread interpretation, would not lend with interest to other Christians. The ironic corollary to this is that Christians did not lend at all, or at least not often. Jews, on the other hand, forbidden from owning land, banned from many of the crafts guilds, were seriously limited in their professional options. Jews found niches as butchers and in some other fields, but moneylending was a lucrative option where few options existed. It was also a dangerous position for a socially vulnerable group. Who doesn’t love a lender in the brief period of time when you need money? But who needs the demands for repayment?
At a time – the first time – when the king was being held to account, being in cahoots with the monarch was not a summer day in Yalta. Or Dorset, as the case may have been.
Since Jews could not own real estate, debtors who died saw their estates confiscated by the Jews’ protector, the king. The Magna Carta codified that, if a subject died indebted to a Jew, the obligation owed would revert to the king, but without interest. Likewise if the Jewish debt-holder dies – if the Jew to whom money was owed died before the debt was repaid, the interest would be forgiven.
Another clause specified that debts were to be paid through liquid assets, not through land, which meant that the king could not expand his real estate holdings through his relationship with Jews, thereby reducing the value to the king of this special relationship. And new taxes were imposed on Jews that exhausted the community economically, further reducing their worth to the monarch.
When John’s son, Henry III, was on the throne in 1253, he declared: “No Jew remain in England unless he do the king’s service, and that from the hour of birth every Jew, whether male or female, serve us in some way.”
By the end of that century, the last Jew was expelled from England, a consequence, in no small part, of clauses in the Magna Carta and their intended and unintended consequences.
Germany’s foreign minister was in Gaza the other day, surveying the miserable conditions there, including the lack of repair to the thousands of homes and other buildings damaged or destroyed during the Gaza War last summer – Operation Protective Edge, as it is formally called by Israel.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German diplomat, was one of a steady stream of Western representatives who have trudged through the Hamas-controlled enclave since the end of major hostilities last year. He said the success of repairs to Gaza requires that Israel open the borders to the free flow of materials required for the project – and he’s right.
But, he also made the case very clearly that Israel cannot be expected to live up to that part of the bargain as long as missiles keep falling into Israel from Gaza-based terrorists. And, of course, he was right again.
While much of the world seems to think that Israel’s policies toward Gaza are spite-motivated efforts to drive the residents of that place into despair, they are actually founded on legitimate defence requirements. Materials intended for civil reconstruction in Gaza – not just since last year, but since Hamas seized the Strip and even before – have been misappropriated and turned into weaponry, tunnels and other infrastructures for further terrorism. Steinmeier, however, is one of too few among world leaders who recognize, or at least publicly acknowledge, this reality.
After Operation Protective Edge, nations gathered in Cairo to pledge funds to restore the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. In sum, $5.4 billion was pledged by countries worldwide. However, a new report says that barely one-quarter of the pledges made in Cairo have been realized.
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) released a report last week titled Charting a New Course: Overcoming the Stalemate in Gaza. It set out the results of the top seven donor countries and their record of delivering.
The most generous pledge – $1 billion – came from Qatar. The amount received to date from that country is $102 million.
The second-place European Union pledged $348 million and has handed over $141 million.
The United States comes closest to their pledge, having delivered $233 million on their $277 million pledge.
Oil-rich Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which each pledged $200 million, have delivered nothing.
Turkey, whose leader has made grandstanding theatrics around Gaza a cornerstone of his country’s foreign policy, has likewise delivered not a dime of the $200 million pledged, according to the report.
Seventh-place Saudi Arabia, which pledged $500 million, has given just $48.5 million.
In their defence, the idea of throwing good money after bad in Gaza could reasonably lead donor countries to hesitate. There has been precious little evidence that funds flowing into Gaza will be applied to the projects for which they are intended rather than being used by Hamas warlords to strengthen their own fiefdoms or launch new assaults against Israel (not that the latter concerns some of the donor states).
However, while some voices, like the new United Nations Middle East peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov, acknowledge that the Gaza terror regime needs to lay down its arms, he and others most vocally blame Israel’s blockade for all the problems facing the people of Gaza.
The AIDA report, for example, outlines actions deemed necessary to alleviate the misery of Palestinians in Gaza that seem to recognize that there is plenty of blame and room for improvement all around. But at the top of the list were things Israel needed to do, such as “lift the blockade and open all crossings into and out of Gaza” and “allow free movement of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory,” as if there were no legitimate security concerns behind the unfortunate policies that prevent the free movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza.
The first step to resolving a problem is acknowledging its root. There are numerous reasons why the people of Gaza continue to suffer, and Israel’s policies are among them. But they are neither alone among the reasons nor the lynchpin upon which resolving the problem rests.
When we see online memes saying that a Canadian is more likely to die from an interaction with a moose than a terrorist, we can justifiably relax and even admire the characteristics of a country where a gangly antlered mammal is more to be feared than the kind of ideological threats rampant around the world.
The moose meme is part of a campaign that views the federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper as fear-mongering, trying to drive voters back to the Conservative party lest more “soft on terrorism” parties come to power in this fall’s election. The Conservatives’ weapon at hand is Bill C-51, which is seen by critics as a bludgeon against a mosquito.
It may be true that in the history of our country moose have been more deadly than terrorists, but times change. Moose are not mobilizing globally to attack civilians across the West. Vigilance tempered by pragmatism would seem to be in the Canadian tradition.
The difficulty of balancing overreaction with being prepared has been most evident in the mixed reaction to Bill C-51 from Canada’s opposition parties. Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats voted against the bill; Justin Trudeau’s Liberals voted for it but Trudeau said he would make changes to the law if he forms government.
Canada has blessedly not suffered the magnitude of terrorist or hate-motivated violence seen in Europe recently, including the brutal Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cache attacks. But we have seen so-called “lone wolf” violence in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, where warrant officer Patrice Vincent was killed and another Canadian Forces personnel was injured, and in Ottawa, where Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was killed while standing guard at the War Memorial.
Barring a stunning reversal in a Conservative-dominated Senate, Bill C-51 will become law in the coming weeks. The legislation will make it easier for government departments to share information about Canadians across jurisdictional silos. It will also give police new powers to “preventatively” detain or restrict individuals who are suspected of plotting a terrorist act. It bans the “promotion of terrorism,” gives the public safety minister the right to add people to the country’s “no-fly list” and increases the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
CSIS is Canada’s spy agency and until now has had a role limited to observation. C-51 would expand that role to something called “disruptive” powers, allowing agents to act more directly in ways that are not fully spelled out.
Critics also fear a loss of individual privacy as, for example, tax information that is now secluded in the Canada Revenue Agency could be shared with other government departments.
These concerns are justified, particularly those that increase the powers of CSIS, which has been criticized for lacking adequate civilian oversight.
Some Canadian Jews, including the recently deceased Alan Borovoy, have been among Canada’s greatest civil libertarians and bulwarks against government overreach in individual lives. With a history deeply affected by totalitarian governments, some in our community may have a special sensitivity to legislation that threatens to impinge on individual rights. Because this is not an exact science, it will always be a matter for disagreement, with some arguing that security legislation goes too far and others declaring it absolutely necessary.
At the same time, though, terrorist attacks and hate crimes in Europe have been disproportionately directed toward Jewish people and institutions. Statistics on hate crime incidents in Canada also indicate that Jewish people and institutions are vulnerable to acts of hate in numbers disproportionate to population.
Most Canadians may be more vulnerable to a moose than a terrorist, but Jewish Canadians understand that terrorism needs to be taken seriously. Of course, so do civil liberties.
Canadians across the country will rally against Bill C-51 Saturday. Even so, it will almost certainly become law. When it does, concerned Canadians should pressure the government to improve civilian oversight of our spy agency, which is perhaps the most crucial measure needed to ensure the law does not lead to lawlessness by government officials.
We should also strengthen public vigilance by supporting organizations that monitor and measure government intrusions into private spheres, such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
And we should do all we can to ensure that Canada remains a place that is both safe from a collective standpoint – and secure in terms of our individual liberties.
Rolling Stone magazine recently completely retracted a story purporting to delve into an incident of gang-rape on the campus of the University of Virginia. The story was so devoid of basic journalistic processes and fact-checking that it is destined to go down as an object lesson in journalism schools for years to come.
Other incidents, less egregious but still dubious, popped up in the last few days.
Social media was ablaze last week over news that the federal government was preparing to criminalize critics of Israel, specifically by applying Canada’s hate laws against supporters of BDS, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.
Advocates of free speech were up in arms – and rightly so. BDS is a movement that seeks the destruction of the state of Israel, in the guise of a one-state solution, and is discriminatory in its targeting of products, people and ideas based on their national origin. It is the contemporary equivalent of book-burning. It is deserving of scorn and contempt. But it is not deserving of legal prohibition in a country that respects free expression.
As it turns out, the very idea that Canada was about to criminalize the BDS movement and its supporters was fabricated almost from full cloth by CBC reporter Neil Macdonald. Macdonald, who has been the subject of years of complaints for anti-Israel bias for his reporting from the Middle East and Washington, had a brief (and somewhat snarky) email exchange with a spokesperson for Canada’s department of public safety.
The exchange began because Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney, in a speech to the United Nations, promised to take a “zero tolerance” approach to those who boycott Israel. Macdonald demanded clarification of what “zero tolerance” meant.
In the email exchange, the spokesperson cites hate speech legislation, as well as laws around mischief involving religious buildings, and she noted the security infrastructure program that funds communities, such as the Jewish community, to improve security in communal buildings.
The response from the government was probably inadequate and Macdonald should have gotten a comment directly from the minister explaining what he meant by “zero tolerance,” and not used boilerplate from a civil servant (something he himself acknowledged in his exchange). Instead, he went ahead with an inflammatory story that was more conjecture than news, but which had the effect of rousing the reliably tetchy anti-Israel crowds.
This, too, could be an object lesson for future (and current) journalists. As could a story more visible than either of these: the story that Pope Francis declared Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas an “angel of peace.”
The story of the old terrorist being dubbed an “angel of peace” by the head of Roman Catholicism alarmed those of us who have been impressed with Francis’ approach to world affairs. However, the fault did not lie with the pontiff but with the media.
What Francis said was that Abbas could be an angel of peace – if he made peace with Israel. What the Pope said to Abbas – “May you be an angel of peace” – is a far different thing than what was reported. It was a wish, not a declaration. And it is a wish we could not more heartily share.
Journalism struggles today in the changing landscape of media, tighter budgets, fewer staff doing more tasks – we understand all this. But when some of this country’s and the world’s leading voices of reporting get things so wrong, the institution of journalism suffers even more.
In a world where information (and misinformation) has never been so plentiful, what readers really need are the critical tools to discern fact from fiction and half-truths. In a world of 140-character attention spans, though, do we hope for too much?
Portrait of Max Malit Grossman, circa 1926, copied from the book The Jew in Canada. Grossman’s mimeographs were the start of it all. (photo from Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia L.00011)
From 1930 until Abraham Arnold’s arrival in 1949, there was a new editor and/or publisher of the Jewish Western Bulletin every couple of years. Arnold lasted 11 years, Sam and Mona Kaplan about 36 all told. My first article ran in the JWB on March 28, 1997. I was listed as a contributor for the next year, becoming editorial assistant in May 1998, and assistant publisher that September. When Kyle Berger, Pat Johnson and I bought the paper, they graciously agreed that I become the publisher. Since that first issue, June 4, 1999, I have held that title. That makes 16 years. The second-longest term in the paper’s history.
For more than 10 years, I’ve been the sole owner of the Bulletin / Independent. While Kyle still contributes occasional articles and blogs, Pat is on the editorial board with former editor Basya Laye and me, and contributes weekly. I have worked with countless talented and kind people, many of whom have stuck with me, the paper and the community through some tough times, especially since the 2008 economic downturn. It is us, a handful of people, along with a few regular freelance writers, who get this paper to press every week. It is a labor of love for all of us. We do it for very little pay.
Financial struggle is as much a characteristic of this paper as is its Jewish character and its communal foundation, though that is one tradition I would happily leave to the dustbin of history.
Reviewing the 85-year history of the paper affirms my conviction that it is an absolute treasure, one of immeasurable value to Jewish life and this community. Yet, it is largely taken for granted. True, it has its admirers – thank you to all the organizations and businesses who advertise, and to all the readers who subscribe, donate or support our advertisers. But, on the whole, it is undervalued. And it has been almost since Day 1.
The newspaper got its start in 1928 as a mimeographed newsletter whose goal was to generate the funds and enthusiasm for a Jewish community centre. It succeeded in that regard, though the JCC would experience existential difficulties more than once in its life. Today, thankfully, the JCC is a strong and vibrant fixture in the community. When the mimeo became a tabloid in October 1930, its name was borrowed from a 1925 publication that was well-loved but, evidently, not well-funded, as it didn’t last for long.
More than one editor of the JWB has exhorted readers to pay their subscriptions and pleaded with organizations to buy advertisements. The relationship between editors and readers was much more contentious and frank during the 1930s and 1940s than it has been since. Reading these editorials every time I organize a special anniversary issue – this is my fourth – I am both saddened and heartened by the fact that, at their core, the issues remain the same.
This year, I have been particularly affected by the missives of editor and publisher Goodman Florence as he neared what turned out to be his last several months with the JWB. In the latter half of 1948, he starts to air some of the dirty laundry that has obviously been accumulating between himself and the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council that took over control of the paper when the Jewish Community Centre, Jewish Community Chest and Hebrew Aid Society formed it in 1932, as well as other community organizations and even readers.
In August, he tackles head on the idea that readers have somehow gotten that “the Bulletin is a highly profitable proposition and is fought for. Such is not the case.” He points out that “subscriptions pay for only postage, paper and addressing, if it does that much. An attractive, newsy and acceptable publicity medium such as the Bulletin, is expensive to produce and its cost must be borne by advertisers.” This remains the case today.
That October, Florence’s one-year contract was coming to a close. Among his “many problems and many anxieties” is “the matter of the financial loss so far sustained in publishing for the community” under the terms of his contract, which he describes as “hastily arranged.”
He sums up his difficulties in being the publisher of an Anglo-Jewish weekly in November of that year, yet still holds hope that the situation is improving. In January 1949, he writes about all the ideas he has for the paper’s future, with only “a few final details” to be organized regarding a new contract. “I am hoping in the coming year to be able to devote more time and space to national and international affairs and will express a viewpoint in ‘editorials’ – and will endeavor to get prominent members of our community to also take their ‘pens in hand.’
“It will be my continued policy to assist every organization now in existence and which might come into existence, so long as the purpose is lawful and of good intention – to place itself before the public in as accurate a light as possible.”
After talking about an increase in the price of subscriptions and new help in finding advertisers, Florence concludes, “For 1949 I hope with your cooperation to make of our paper ‘one of the best’ – and to help build a progressive integrated community – and to spread the story of its good works throughout the land.
“For the opportunities of the past and the promise of the future, I wish to say, ‘Thank you.’ I will continue to do my best to serve you well.”
Less than a month later, his farewell editorial was published by the new team at the helm.
“Readers want world news, features, editorials . . . officers of all local organizations want their activities to be publicized. Up to date, I have not yet been able to completely sell the simple fact that to do all this requires considerable revenue,” Florence writes. “Some headway has been made in recent months, and there are now signs that more organizations are becoming aware of the need to place advertising that would be considered commensurate with the amount of news publicity their various activities require. There are signs also that more of the Jewish business men are coming to realize that there is after all some virtue in advertising in the Bulletin and doing business with the members of this growing Jewish Community.
“My decision [to leave] was arrived at after I realized that I had not been getting sufficient advertising support, and that without such assistance, progressive development could not be undertaken. I feel certain that now that the position has been drawn to your attention, the new publishers, Abe Arnold and Asher Snider, will get the support necessary to continue the venture, and I bespeak for them your utmost cooperation.”
When I look at the state of the publishing and newspaper industry today, I take heart that there have always been challenges and, despite the often-dire-sounding editorials of Florence and many of the paper’s other editors and publishers, here we are today. Many recessions have come and gone. Heck, the newspaper survived the Great Depression. Will it survive the internet? I certainly hope so, and not just because I would like to own a successful business.
I have looked through the physical pages of almost every JWB and searched through them online (multiculturalcanada.ca/jwb) ad nauseam for various people and events. I have read every single copy of the JI. Every time I look back at the articles and images in the papers, something surprises me, something sparks my imagination, something makes me think or makes me laugh.
I don’t know anyone who owns a community newspaper or any similar business. When I read that other editors, publishers and owners of the paper have had similar concerns, challenges and joys, there is a sense of solidarity, of not being alone. When I read about what various people in this community have had to endure, what they’ve accomplished, I am inspired. When I attended the rededication of the Jewish section of Mountain View Cemetery earlier this month, I felt like I had personally known many of those buried there. My connection to this community through its newspaper of record for 85-plus years is that strong and goes back that far.
But, ultimately, I didn’t know any of those people. I was born in Moncton and grew up in Winnipeg. My immediate family now lives in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor and I came to Vancouver from Ottawa in 1992. My Winnipeg-based aunt had lived here in the 1960s. After I got my MA and a job – i.e. once it looked like I was staying awhile – she connected me with the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir via her longtime friend and former musical colleague Claire Klein Osipov. It was one of my first connections to the Jewish community here and it has, obviously, led to other connections, including being the editor of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia’s annual journal The Scribe for the last seven editions.
I’ve always liked history, and I love having 85-plus years’ worth of it at my fingertips. It wasn’t until this special issue though that I decided to do a search for my aunt’s name – she passed away last fall.
My searches yielded more than a dozen results from 1962 through 1966, including the birth announcement of one of my cousins, her third son. And there was a photo of her, which was published twice, once with the wrong caption, a correction being noted in the following week’s paper. I knew that Aunt Chickie (married to Nathan Frankel at that time) was involved in the Peretz Centre and that she accompanied Claire on the piano, but seeing some of the committees she was on, the events she helped organize, the music she performed … seeing her face – I can’t describe the feeling, except to say, once again, this newspaper is such a vital resource in ways that I’m still discovering after almost 20 years working here.
S.A. Goldston, in the JWB.
The JWB had two fifth anniversary issues, one in 1934, another in 1935. In the first, editor S.A. Goldston writes, “It seems hard to realize that time has flown so quickly. We all remember well the small mimeographed copy first issued in the office of Max Grossman, and we wonder how many thought that the day was not far distant when it would grow to a regular weekly newspaper.”
He wonders whether the Bulletin had “filled the mission for which it was first intended? Is it any use today?” He leaves the answer to readers, “for naturally we are somewhat prejudiced in our personal views on the matter.
“The paper was first produced to act as the voice of the Community and to bring its readers in closer touch not only with the happenings in its own surroundings but with Jewry all the world over – to awaken Jewish consciousness, and if possible to create a deeper sense of unity among the Jewish residents of this City. In this way we can, without exaggeration, say [we] have been fairly successful.”
I love this last sentence, which, to me, shows clearly Goldston’s great humility. Yet his purpose is grand: publishing news of all the city organizations and devoting “considerable space to world happenings,” trying “hard to preach through the columns of this paper the absolute necessity of a United Jewry not only in Vancouver but throughout the world…. We have also, during the past year, continued to spur on our readers in civic, philanthropic and educational services and have received congratulations from non-Jewish communities on our work.”
But, he notes, as others would, “There are two things apart from the reading matter that is necessary to make a paper a success…. We need subscribers and advertisers.”
Of the advertisers the paper did have, he says, “We get a very fair share…. But we also owe a duty to every advertiser who uses our columns. We must give them our patronage whenever possible. They have confidence in us and [we] must show that this confidence is not misplaced. We would therefore respectfully suggest that in making your purchases those who advertise in the Bulletin be given preference.”
Goldston and his colleagues have “the great ambition of doubling the size of the paper,” which was then eight pages, within the next year. He asks for help in getting there, saying he has “much to be thankful for,” despite his “failing health,” and is proud to hold the position of editor.
The very next issue carried a front-page obituary. Goldston had passed away suddenly, at age 63. According to B.C. Archives records, he died April 11, 1934. His given names were Sim Alfred.
David Rome, in the JWB.
In the 1935 editorial marking “Five years of the Bulletin,” editor David Rome echoes some of Goldston’s remarks. He, too, speaks of gratitude and writes that the Bulletin’s “being taken as a matter of course by Western Canadian Jewry” is “the greatest compliment that can be offered to it,” showing that it “is not a freak venture but part of the life of its readers.
“But this sometimes blinds its readers to the phenomenon of a relatively small community successfully publishing a weekly newspaper for a number of years. Those who are daily in contact with the workings of the community publication realize fully the efforts that have to be made to maintain the standards set and to elevate them.”
Rome thanks all “those anonymous workers who have devoted unselfishly of their time and energy for this community enterprise. The Bulletin is a fairly big business and it needs a large amount of work and application to run this business. This devotion was given it by the members of the [Council’s Bulletin] committee and it is no more than fitting that thanks be given to them for their work.”
He notes that this anniversary of the paper also marks the first year since Goldston’s passing: “It is not at all an exaggeration to say that he worked beyond the limits of health, and the community should honor his memory and recognize his sacrifices for the community newspaper.”
Somehow I feel that, with every issue of this paper, we are honoring the people in this community who have made – and are making – sacrifices for whatever people and causes that are important to them. Every event, interview, photo, birth announcement, obituary … everything that gets recorded is proof of existence, of purpose, of being part of something larger than oneself.
This newspaper has always had a grand, even grandiose, view of the impact it could have on the community. But, looking back at 85 years – 90 if you count the original Bulletin, 87 if you start at Grossman’s mimeo – I’d say it has exceeded even the grandest of its expectations. And I’d like to see it continue to do so, whether or not I’m involved. But, as pretty much every publisher of the paper will tell you, “There are two things apart from the reading matter that is necessary to make a paper a success….” The future of this community treasure is, quite literally, in your hands.
The community has always enjoyed a good contest, JWB, December 1948.
Paging through 85 years of this newspaper reveals a stunning consistency of recurring phenomena, repetitious concerns, familiar family names, perpetually unresolved issues across decades and a solid tradition of community-building from generation to generation. The reporting across the decades reveals a comfortingly familiar refrain of the paper rallying the community to support the UJA Campaign, the Home for the Aged, Israel Bonds,
Hebrew University, Talmud Torah, Histadrut, summer camps, and the full range of communal organizations and causes, many of which continue to thrive today. Individuals are fêted for service to the community, for becoming bar or bat mitzvah, for graduating from university.
So perpetual are some of the issues facing the community and the Jewish world that headlines could be plucked form one decade and dropped unobtrusively onto the pages of the paper many years earlier or later. For fun, try to guess the years when these headlines appeared: “The past year will long be remembered as one of stress and strain;” “Jews must help Israel regain ‘positive image’”; or “Religious storm in Israel.” (Answers: the 1931 Rosh Hashanah issue editorial; 1985; 1950.)
Or these ones: “US won’t accept Likud position on territories”; “The trend of the time is toward the elimination of useless and duplicating organizations”; or “… it has been said that our loyalties are divided. That, in being Zionists, we fail as Canadians.” (Answers: 1977; 1925; 1929.)
Of course, some headlines are unique. On Nov. 3, 1988, the paper’s headline blared: “Israel achieves UN victory.” This was about a failed attempt led by Arab states to have Israel thrown out of the General Assembly.
Philanthropy is a continuous thread joining the decades. As early as 1930, the editorial was acknowledging that “The residents of the Vancouver Jewish Community doubtlessly at times become impatient with the term, ‘A worthy cause’” … before inveigling upon readers to support another commendable undertaking.
Warning of the dangers to communal well-being at the start of the Great Depression, an editorial in December 1930 takes a very Keynesian tone: “The foolish philosophy of tightening the purse-strings during a business depression, although the purse-holder is still well able to spend, becomes a selfish and heartless philosophy when applied to philanthropy. To deny assistance to those who are gripped in the vise of illness or need when the horizon looks darkest, is to display a false attitude to the charitable ideal.”
Pressure, sometimes not at all subtle, urged readers to give generously to the community chest campaign. “Larger Pledges Needed for Success of Chest,” the headline of October 9, 1936 read. “Open Your Door to Your UJA Canvasser,” pitched an issue in 1951.
Also unsubtle, but justifiably so, was the ominous plea for the 1940 campaign aimed at sending aid to the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe: “Vancouver Jewish External Welfare Fund seeks support for Jews in Hungary, Poland, Germany and Romania … Tomorrow may be too late.”
Running in 1930, this headline nevertheless could have been from any decade in the paper’s history: “Bronfman Family Create Scholarship.” In this case, it was for the Talmud Torah and a Jewish orphanage in Winnipeg, but more than half a century later, the Bronfman family was instrumental in the creation of the Birthright-Israel program, which has sent thousands of young Jewish Canadians to Israel.
The paper routinely stressed the community’s loyalty to the Crown, JWB, May 1939. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth are pictured here.
In decades when Jewish allegiance to Canada was sometimes implied or openly expressed, the paper routinely adopted a highly patriotic tone. From heralding King George VI to lamenting his death with pages of editorial, there were also major assertions of Jewish allegiance to the new Queen Elizabeth II at the time of her coronation in 1953. Meetings of Jewish communal officials with elected leaders, including prime ministers, have been prominently reported, including just weeks ago when Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with Sephardi Canadians in Ottawa.
Emphasizing the responsibilities of citizenship has been a recurring theme. In 1930, the editorialist noted: “Indifferent people are often heard to say, ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me what party is in power, so why should I vote?’ Such a statement is the furthest thing from the truth and reflects an attitude which is to be strongly deplored.”
Although allegiance to Canada has been conspicuous, so too has been this community’s deep connections to the Jewish homeland.
In 1930, the paper reported on the appointment of a commission “to investigate the Moslem and Jewish Claims to the Wailing Wall.”
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, anti-Jewish riots and pogroms in Palestine killed hundreds and shattered hopes of a peaceful existence in the Yishuv.
“As these words are written,” an editorial in 1936 lamented, “Palestine is again the scene of disorders, riots, bloodshed, sniping, isolated attacks and agonized mistrust, fomented hatred and international complications. The land of peace is again being ravaged by hate, and the eternal people of peace is again forced to consider problems of defence and even to raise physical means to ensure its own safety.”
These riots had the intended consequence of leading the British authorities to end Jewish migration to the Mandate. While met with outrage and agitation by Jews worldwide, the catastrophic historical impact of that decision would not be fully recognized until the endangered Jews of Europe suffered the Holocaust.
Even so, the paper recognized surprisingly early on the threat coming from Germany’s far right. In 1930, three years before Hitler took power, the Bulletin was already warning of the threat posed by the Nazis: “The Hitlerites, who, at the recent election in Germany made such tremendous gains, are marching to power on the wave of a dangerous and prejudiced nationalism. Their anti-Semitic policy is definite and has already manifested itself in many outbreaks and disorders of a most distressing kind.”
Concern for Jews all over the world has been constant in these pages. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the paper expressed fears for the Jews in China, noting that … “After Palestine, the United States and Latin America, China was the largest recipient of Jewish refugees in the 1930s.”
Jews and Christians packed Vancouver Lyric Theatre to overflowing after news of Kristallnacht signified what we now understand to have been the unquestioned beginning of the Holocaust.
By 1944, the realization of what had happened to European Jews was widely understood and an above-the-banner editorial held no punches: “To anyone working for one Jewish cause or another it becomes increasingly apparent that there are those among us who are SHIRKING THEIR DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES.
“Yes, there are those among us who are too busy with their own affairs to think of their fellow man.
“Many of our fellow Jews never care to remember that somewhere in the darkness of Hitler’s Europe thousands and thousands of men and women and children are hiding in basements, in walled ghettos and in dismal forests in an attempt to escape certain death, while we abide in the glorious freedom and abundance of Canada.
“At this moment half the Jews in Europe are dead. WHAT IN GOD’S NAME WAS THEIR CRIME?
“You know, and I know, that their only crime is that THEY WERE BORN AS JEWS.
“Do you ever stop to ponder that it is only a curious turn of fate that led you or your parents to leave Europe and that you or your children might otherwise be among those who were exterminated by the Nazi slaughterhouses of Europe. WE MUST LEARN TO FEEL THE PAIN AND SUFFERING OF THOSE POOR BROKEN, BLEEDING PEOPLE AND DENY OURSELVES, IF NECESSARY TO SAVE THEM.”
When the war ended and the camps were liberated, the local community came together, helping in different ways, special prayer services among them.
Awareness of the extent of the Holocaust – and the role of Jewish statelessness in allowing it to happen – was made plain immediately after VE Day in an editorial penned by M. Freeman, president of Vancouver Zionist Organization: “For the Jews who have managed to survive this holocaust, Palestine and Palestine alone stands out as their only refuge. Only in a Jewish fatherland will they be safe. Only in Palestine can they start the broken lives anew with hope of ultimate restoration. We can help make this possible. We betray our own birth-right if we do less. No Jew, whatever his shade of opinion can withdraw from co-operating with the resurgence of his people. If we gave everything we ever owned, it still could not measure up to what they have already paid.”
From 1945, the issue of Soviet Jewry made top news month after month until 1989, when a new revolution allowed Jews across Eastern Europe to emigrate, changing the face of Israel and Vancouver, among other places.
The pages of the Bulletin also show that global events had unexpected ripples for Israel and the Jewish people. In 1973, the paper noted that, with the ceasefire in Vietnam, left-wing and other protest groups were turning their attentions to “Middle East peace.”
The connection between Jewish British Columbians and Israel leaps off the pages of the paper (including before Israel was “Israel”). The passing of the Partition Resolution was reported with jubilance and, months later, the dangers facing the new state were downplayed, declaring “A Nation Reborn.”
In 1954, in an event typical of discussions in the paper and in the community in the intervening years – and continuing today – a forum at the community centre mooted “What does Israel mean for us here?”
After the 1967 war, before the moral and military practicalities of occupying the West Bank took over the pages, the paper celebrated news of a reunited Jerusalem: “After 1900 Years City of David Returned to Israel.”
The paper has also highlighted the achievements of Jews around the world, from the first Jewish governor of Oregon to the appointment of a Jewish American ambassador to Albania. In 1930, the paper hyperbolically declared: “Of interest to every Jew in Canada is the recent election of David Arnold Croll, 30-year-old Jewish barrister as Mayor of Windsor, Ontario.” This item may not have had the universal interest the author believed, but Croll did go on to serve in the Ontario and Canadian parliaments and became the first Jewish senator in Canada.
Closer to home, the chronicling of events and achievements large and small has been the paper’s life’s blood. “Hadassah Chapter has Successful Year,” said a 1931 headline. “Permanent Camp Site Purchased by Jewish Council Women,” in 1937, was the first of many articles about the birth of what became Camp Hatikvah, originally in Crescent Beach, near White Rock, which was deemed by the reporter to be “the finest bathing resort in British Columbia.”
Since its beginning, the paper has been reporting on community-held contests of various sorts, including photo and public-speaking competitions – the latter still held annually despite worries as early as 1966 that, “These days when the custom of watching television has caused sociologists concern over the possibility of mankind forever losing the art of conversation …” began one editorial.
And, through it all, the community and the paper has managed to keep a sense of humor. From 1958:
Scrap collector: “Any beer bottles lady?”
Lady: “Do I look like I drink beer?”
Scrap collector: “Well, any vinegar bottles, lady?”
Editorial in the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin, March 20, 1931.
The JI spoke with four friends of the newspaper from longtime Vancouver Jewish community families about the value and future of a Jewish community newspaper: Gary Averbach, Shirley Barnett, Bernie Simpson and Yosef Wosk. We asked each the same four questions and they replied by email. Their responses are printed below.
Not only are the community members interviewed here longtime Vancouverites but they have been involved in communal life for decades. The announcement on the right is from 1959, and comments on how a group of youth including Gary Averbach brought “AZA No. 119 back to its strength of a decade before.”
GARY AVERBACH
1. Is it important to have a Jewish community newspaper? If so, what are some of the reasons?
It’s difficult to answer this question because it seems so obvious that having a community newspaper is vitally important. We need a forum and a notice board for opinions and events in the community and, if there was not a publication dedicated to providing that forum and bulletin board, our community would suffer an irreplaceable loss.
2. What do you think the JI/JWB specifically has contributed (contributes) to the community?
For the most part, the JI/JWB has always been a bulletin board for the Jewish community, informing us about major – and minor – events and happenings. Whether they be reports on events that have occurred in the community – including the greater Canadian and worldwide Jewish community – or just informing us of births and deaths, b’nai mitzvahs and weddings, or local upcoming happenings. If not the JI/JWB, where would this come from?
3. In what ways, if any, is having a print version of value, versus only having an online publication?
For the next decade at least there will be a demand – albeit likely a decreasing one – for a printed version of the JI. That isn’t so much to provide for the very few people who still don’t or can’t use a computer, but to those of us who still prefer to hold a newspaper in their hands
4. Do you think that a Jewish community paper will be relevant for your grandkids’ kids?
I don’t even know what my grandchildren will be using to access their news in 10 years’ time, never mind what my great-grandchildren will prefer. But I’m fairly certain it won’t be print media as we now understand it. However, that in no way diminishes the need for a community forum and bulletin board giving a Jewish viewpoint on matters of local, national and international events – specifically items that directly involve Jews and, of course, Israel. So, whether it’s an online version, as we now know it, or some further refinement that we can barely imagine now, there will still be a need to inform our local Jewish community by the JI or some similar outlet.
SHIRLEY BARNETT
1. Is it important to have a Jewish community newspaper? If so, what are some of the reasons?
Among Shirley Barnett’s many community involvements is helping Vietnamese refugees come to Vancouver. This article is from June 1984.
Yes, for sure. I would like more reporting of issues in the community rather than just of events.
2. What do you think the JI/JWB specifically has contributed (contributes) to the community?
Exactly that – a sense of community and interaction.
3. In what ways, if any, is having a print version of value, versus only having an online publication?
For me, for sure. I like to read it over a morning coffee, and still cut and clip.
4. Do you think that a Jewish community paper will be relevant for your grandkids’ kids?
Probably not.
BERNIE SIMPSON
1. Is it important to have a Jewish community newspaper? If so, what are some of the reasons?
It is extremely important for the Jewish community, which is spread throughout the province, particularly the Lower Mainland, to have a Jewish community newspaper. There is no question that the viability of printed media has been affected by easy access to online papers, however, it is noted that just about every ethnic community in British Columbia still has printed media, which is read primarily by the older generation.
This article from 1959 is but one of many recording Bernie Simpson’s participation in Habonim and other community organizations, including the Jewish Western Bulletin.
For example, in the Indo-Canadian community there are at least one dozen papers, half of which are in Punjabi. However, two of the most prominent papers, the Voice and the Link, have been in existence for more than 30 years, and are able to attract substantial advertising and are thriving within the community.
The Korean community has at least six papers, primarily in Korean. The Vietnamese community has at least four papers. The Chinese community has a countless number of newspapers, which attracts readers from the various regions from where the Chinese community has come, including Taiwan, Mainland China and Hong Kong.
Admittedly, however, those communities have far more significant numbers than the Vancouver Jewish community, and that may be the reason why those papers are more economically viable.
The Jewish community newspaper, by definition, helps promote a community by giving news as to various events that are happening, not only in Vancouver but in outlying areas.
It is also a vehicle to announce important fundraising activities and to give proper recognition to those who are honored in the community.
The reporting of international news particularly as it relates to Israel is important, and also the editorial content. I believe that we are fortunate in having editorial content that is objective. The letters to the editor, by and large, are articulate and represent, on occasion, a different view than the mainstream Jewish community may have, particularly with regards to Israel, and this view should be welcomed as it serves as a catalyst for thoughtful thinking on sensitive subjects.
The stature of the Jewish community would be diminished considerably in the eyes of the non-Jewish community if there was not a Jewish community paper. There is still the view that the Jewish community is well organized, speaks with one voice on contentious issues, is socially active in liberal causes and even responds to tragedies throughout the world, and I would think that the image of the community will be tarnished considerably if a community paper did not exist.
2. What do you think the JI/JWB specifically has contributed (contributes) to the community?
To a certain extent this question is partially answered by my response to Question 1.
I believe that this paper helps keep the community focused and together, and it takes into consideration all aspects of the political spectrum as it relates to the three levels of government and objectively reports what is happening in Israel.
We are indeed fortunate to have the publisher (working with various editors), who is an outstanding journalist as is evident by the many awards that the Jewish Independent has won.
If it would happen in the future that the Jewish Independent did not exist, then that void very well could be filled with a community publication that lacks the objectivity that the present Jewish Independent has. For a brief period of time several years ago, such a paper did exist, and it was quite clear what the agenda of that paper was. In the Jewish Independent’s small way, it does help the debate with regards to the peace process in Israel between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the concept of a two-state solution.
3. In what ways, if any, is having a print version of value, versus only having an online publication?
I think, at this point, the majority of the readership are still of the generation where they don’t naturally gravitate every day to their computer or their mobile to see what news comes out this week in the Jewish Independent.
Longtime members of the community have had ingrained in them that towards the end of the week, the Jewish Independent will arrive. It often stays around the house until the next edition. I would think also that it would be harder to get advertising revenue if you’re only online.
4. Do you think that a Jewish community paper will be relevant for your grandkids’ kids?
Frankly, I’m not terribly concerned about the answer to that question, nor is it really relevant to the present situation. I am a senior member of the Jewish community now; my grandchildren are 6, 3, 2 and 1. It’s impossible for me, who on my best of days has difficulty directing my attention to the immediate past, to focus on whether the paper will be relevant for my grandkids’ kids, which would be around 30 years in the future.
I don’t think that we should be too concerned about that question, but what we should be concerned about is how we can make the Jewish Independent more economically viable.
One obvious answer is an increase in subscriptions. Perhaps, an active volunteer campaign could be conducted by members of the community to try to sign up more subscribers. This will make it easier to get advertising revenue.
It may be that there should be “an advisory board” set up to advise the present publisher as to how to make the paper more attractive to advertisers and to readers.
There is a great deal of talent within the Jewish community (well-known reporters who are still active, retired reporters with national papers, etc.); this is a resource that perhaps should be called upon.
Also, an advisory committee of individuals – businesspeople – can lend help financially, if the situation arises.
RABBI DR. YOSEF WOSK
1. Is it important to have a Jewish community newspaper? If so, what are some of the reasons?
Yosef (“Jerry”) Wosk’s decision to donate funds to Vancouver Talmud Torah on the occasion of his bar mitzvah in 1962 drew the attention of editor Sam Kaplan.
Yes, I feel it is important to have a community newspaper. It helps to gather and focus information about the extended family that is the community. It covers diverse topics, such as social events, politics, education, births and deaths, special interest groups, as well as emotional and intellectual concerns.
2. What do you think the JI/JWB specifically has contributed (contributes) to the community?
The newspaper has tried to be a neutral newsgathering and dissemination site. It carries articles that represent the full spectrum of the community, thereby fostering information and conversation.
3. In what ways, if any, is having a print version of value, versus only having an online publication?
The value of a print edition is that it can be read on Shabbat, it is easily accessible to everyone, including technophobes. It is always open and easy to read. Articles can be cut out and distributed. Having a hard copy on your desk or table gives it an immediate physical presence and material voice. In addition, a newspaper or magazine laying around in a public common area or even in a private home will attract readers who may not open an electronic device and search for a particular media address. The electronic edition may provide a number of supplementary links and also be available through a quick search, but it does not negate the value of a printed edition.
4. Do you think that a Jewish community paper will be relevant for your grandkids’ kids?
Who knows? However, newsgathering and dissemination in one form or another has always been of interest to the human condition and, so, I project that a community newspaper will still maintain its value in the future.
The Feb. 5, 1931, editorial, “A cultural program,” in the Jewish Western Bulletin laid out some of the hopes, dreams and challenges to the beginnings of organized arts and cultural programming in the Jewish community of Vancouver. In many ways, today’s challenges echo the challenges of 84 years ago: arts and culture requires participation and support. They also require belief; belief that they form the bedrock of any healthy, sustainable community and are a way to celebrate and connect to the past while envisioning a brighter future.
The JI spoke with the directors of five mainstays of the local Jewish arts and culture scene in 2015 – the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, Chutzpah!, the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, the Vancouver Film Centre and the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir – and asked them the same five questions. Their responses follow.
CHERIE SMITH JCC JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL Nicole Nozick, director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The JCC Jewish Book Festival (JBF) was founded in 1984 by a small group of book club friends led by Vancouver writer and publisher Cherie Smith. The group decided to create a forum to showcase Jewish writers to Vancouver audiences. After Cherie passed away, the Smith and Rothstein families established an endowment fund in her honor to support the festival in perpetuity and placed it under the stewardship of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
The first book festival, Jewish Western Bulletin, May 1984.
The JBF – which celebrates its 31st year this November – has grown into a literary event of some magnitude, featuring award-winning international authors, showcasing Canadian writers, supporting local authors and publishers, and encouraging a love of reading across all generations. Despite its exponential growth, the JBF has not lost sight of its original core values and mission. The mostly volunteer-led operation echoes the passion of its original founders, many of whom continue to attend and support festival events to this day.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
I have always been an avid reader and, at a very young age, I recall making a solemn declaration to my classmates that “books are my best friends.” To this day, you’ll never find me without a book in my bag to keep me company wherever I may be. When the position of festival director presented itself in 2008, it was the perfect opportunity to marry my professional experience in management and production with my passion for reading and writing. Equally important, the part-time hours of the position allowed me to have the time I wanted to be with my young children.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
As bearers of the auspicious moniker “The People of the Book,” it is hardly surprising that literature plays such a significant role in the Jewish community, and our Vancouver Jewish community has shown itself to be more erudite than many in North America. The Vancouver JBF is on an equal footing in terms of participating authors, events, duration and audience as festivals from much larger Jewish communities, including Atlanta, Houston and San Diego. Further, the Vancouver JBF far exceeds other Jewish book festivals in Canada such as Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary in its scope, outreach and operations. This is testimony to our community’s passion for literature and learning, and the arts.
It has been a pleasure to introduce our already well-read audiences to new writers – and to welcome old favorites. The festival’s focus on Israeli writers has had an important impact not only on our Jewish community but has had far-reaching impact on the community at large – both in Vancouver and across Canada. Etgar Keret, one of Israel’s foremost “new generation” writers credits his appearance at the JBF and subsequent interview broadcast on CBC’s Writers & Co. with his increasing success in Canada and sold-out speaking engagements in Toronto and Ottawa. (Keret will appear at the 2015 Vancouver Writers Festival.)
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The book publishing world has gone though unprecedented change and upheaval in recent years. Increasingly, sophisticated technologies that introduced us to tablets, smartphones and e-readers have taken a heavy toll on the simple pleasure of reading a book. In this new age of shortened attention spans and 140-character communication, fewer and fewer people are making the time and applying the focus required to read a book. This is evident not least in the closure of countless bookstores and the bankruptcy of many publishing houses. One of our most important challenges at the JBF is to keep books and reading relevant not only to our current society but to generations to come.
The JBF has adapted to these changing circumstances in order to remain current and vital. Examples include collaborating with Chapters/Indigo to introduce e-readers to our bookstore, changing the scope of the bookstore’s inventory, creating new programs that incorporate digital technology. The JBF also incorporated emerging technologies to showcase international authors: for example, Etgar Keret, whose opening night gala interview was presented via international video-conferencing.
Of course, other important issues such as budget constraints have a detrimental effect not only on the JBF but on many arts and culture organizations. In times of economic uncertainty, arts organizations often bear the brunt of decreased funding, as both government and private sector funding is impacted. At the JBF, we are very blessed to be supported by a loyal and strong donor support base who recognize the crucial role literacy and literature plays in our society. This generous base has helped to keep the JBF sustainable.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
Without the magic of art and culture in our lives, the world would be a drab and dreary place, indeed. Though misquoted, the great bard, William Shakespeare, declared that “music is the spice of life,” and he was right – though certainly his reference was to all of the arts. Reading a good book opens our minds to new worlds, feeds our souls, impacts us in the way that little else can.
***
CHUTZPAH! FESTIVAL AND THE NORMAN AND ANNETTE ROTHSTEIN THEATRE Mary-Louise Albert, artistic managing director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre (NRT), housed in the Jewish Community Centre, is a professionally equipped 318-seat performing arts proscenium theatre. It was established to enhance the cultural life of both the Jewish and general communities and is one of the Lower Mainland’s few mid-size proscenium theatres. The annual Chutzpah! Festival, Chutzpah!’s Creation Residencies, workshops for urban and rural youth and young adults program and Chutzpah!PLUS are our main professional programming activities.
Part of an ad in the JWB, February 2001. Current Chutzpah! Festival director Mary-Louise Albert is the dancer featured.
The Chutzpah! Festival, established in 2001 and named in honor of the late Lisa Nemetz, is one of the most respected international festivals in B.C. and Canada. Chutzpah! is known for presenting world and Canadian premières; supporting the creation of new work by way of multi-week dance residencies in the NRT with confirmed presentation of the residency work; and 2015 brought satellite dance festival residencies, youth workshops and performances to the North Island region of B.C., an exciting area of program growth and outreach.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
My first involvement in the Chutzpah! Festival was performing in the very first Chutzpah! in 2001. The founding artistic director of the festival, Brenda Leadlay, also put me on the poster. I was a professional dancer for over 17 years, and, after my second child was born, I left company life and freelanced as an independent dancer doing project and solo work, mainly. My company years had been with Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, Karen Jamieson Dance Company, Judith Marcuse Dance Company and apprenticing with Les Grands Ballet Canadian. My show in the inaugural Chutzpah! Festival was a shared evening with Toronto’s Kaeja d’Dance.
Shortly after this performance, I transitioned out of dance and studied arts management and business administration at Capilano University and BCIT. About a year after graduating from BCIT with a post-diploma of technology in business administration, the JCC hired me as the artistic managing director. My first Chutzpah! Festival as the AMD was the 2005 one, and I will never forget the fun photo shoot with Boris Sichon as the photographer snapped (I’m revealing my age) away for that year’s perfect poster image.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
For the past 10 years, Chutzpah! has been programming Israeli artists to the point where they make up the most numbers of our international artists. The importance of connecting Israeli artists to B.C. (and in most cases to Canada for the first time) helps develop an understanding of Israeli culture and the amazing complexities of its arts.
The exciting and entertaining multifaceted ways the performing arts accomplishes this understanding of Israel is a mainstay of the festival. No other festival in Canada programs the range or number of artists from Israel as we do. We have brought known artists and large groups such as Batsheva Dance Company, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Balkan Beat Box and the Idan Raichel Project, which we have presented in progressively larger productions. Many of our Israeli artists have been unknown to Canadian audiences, but we have still given these eclectic talented performers the opportunity to tour internationally, such as with Idan Sharabi and Dancers, Zvuloon Dub System, giving Yemen Blues and Maria Kong their first North American shows, Ish Theatre, Dudu Tassa, Itamar Boracov, Uri Gurvich and many more.
These artists perform in our home, the JCC, in the Rothstein Theatre, as well as off site and out into the general community. It is a sharing of Jewish arts and culture with the Jewish and general communities. The Lower Mainland Jewish community is integral in helping us with this and the loyalty of the Jewish community and its willingness to take a chance with artists they don’t know is so appreciated and keeps us going. When I looked out into the audience of our Chutzpah!PLUS concert with Ester Rada at the Imperial this year, my heart melted as I saw so many familiar faces. We can’t do what we do without this support.
Another area we are proud of is our commitment to programming world premières by B.C. artists, as well as our multi-week Creation Residencies. Supporting artists this way is paramount to artistic growth. This past year alone saw three world premières by B.C. artists and the year before we had three, as well.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
One of the biggest challenges is that with a festival the size of Chutzpah!, most artists (and, in particular, international artists) have to be programmed and committed to before most granting and donation revenue is secured, often one or two years in advance. Maintaining and increasing corporate and donor sponsorship is important to the sustainability of the festival. We have yearly support for our programming from government funders, such as Canada Council for the Arts and Canadian Heritage. A challenge is that we are a Canadian festival that programs many artists from another country, Israel. We are very grateful for annual support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Israel Consulate, for instance, who help us with expenses relating specifically to our Israeli programming, as they know how important our Israeli programming is to the community. And … the community helps us so much by attending shows!
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
The arts engage on multiple levels, such as opening up new dimensions and developing creative expression as a stimulus for spiritual and ethical understanding. Exposure to the performing arts allows for the nurturing of inventiveness as a tool to develop self-discipline, self-motivation and self-esteem. Participating in artistic activities helps to gain the tools necessary for understanding the human experience, adapting to and respecting others’ ways of working and thinking, developing creative problem-solving skills, and communicating thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways.
The strength of Jewish arts and culture embraces and promotes the blossoming of divergent forms and points of view, and shares it with audiences from diverse communities. Many Jewish artists connect us to the differing aspects of the Jewish Diaspora. Exploring beautiful tensions and contradictions in these juxtaposed, but parallel, experiences helps feed a rich and engaging life.
***
SIDNEY AND GERTRUDE ZACK GALLERY Linda Lando, art gallery director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The gallery began as the Shalom Gallery in the Jewish Community Centre; the then size of the gallery was 19’ by 40’ (760 square feet). The current size is 22’ by 40’, with excellent lighting and a high ceiling with skylights.
The Zack Gallery started life as the Shalom Gallery, JWB, May 1982.
In 1988, the gallery received a donation from the Sid and Gertie Zack family, and the gallery was renamed the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. At that time, the gallery was designed as part of the overall Phase II renovation project of the JCC.
The gallery has as goals: to create and promote a gallery of stature in which only high-calibre artwork (in all media) is shown, featuring artists of local, national and international reputation; to encourage the serious Jewish artist; to promote understanding of contemporary artistic concerns; and to participate in multi-cultural events.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
I have been an art dealer with a gallery presence in Vancouver for 30 years. It was time for me to make a change in my life, to have less responsibility and to become more a part of the community. At one time, I was a board member of the JCC and I was on the Zack Gallery committee for many years, as well, so I have always been drawn to the JCC and the gallery. As you can well imagine, I am very comfortable running the gallery, dealing with artists, having openings, etc.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
The Zack Gallery opened with a group show, JWB, June 1988.
The Zack Gallery has supported Jewish artists for many years. There have been shows that relate specifically to Jewish and or Israeli themes, as well as shows by Israeli artists. The gallery is a venue for Jewish artists who are not necessarily mainstream to show their work. It is unique in the city. It is important to support the gallery, as arts and culture are a huge part of the glue that holds the community together.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
Artists are always underfunded/underpaid. Part of the cost of having a show falls upon the artist. Funding is always a challenge.
Community support would be wonderful. I would be happy if more people supported the gallery by coming to the many openings, talks, poetry readings, etc. That would be very satisfying.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
As I stated, arts and culture are community glue. They bring together artist and patron, student and teacher, ideas and realization. Creativity is what is left when there is nothing else.
***
VANCOUVER JEWISH FILM CENTRE Robert Albanese, executive and artistic director
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
Jewish films were first brought to Vancouver [by what is now known as the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre] under the umbrella of the Jewish Festival of the Arts, a community organization that was founded in May 1984. Films were sought out that showcased the diversity of Jewish culture, heritage and identity. In 1988, the Festival of the Arts morphed into the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival and, as demand from community organizations for Jewish film grew beyond an annual festival, the name was changed in 2013 to the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre to better reflect the breadth of offerings presented year round.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
In 2009, I was approached by the CEO of Jewish Federation and asked to take a meeting with the executive committee of the board of directors of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival. The board was conducting a search for a new executive director.
The Jewish Film Centre developed out of the Jewish Festival of the Arts Society, JWB, February 1989.
At the time, I had held the position of director of exhibitions for the Vancouver International Film Festival for the previous 10 years. I had also been a general manager for Cineplex Entertainment. I was a successful photographer with a background in film-set photography and had previously been the managing director of Montreal’s premier repertory cinema.
The offer from the board of the Jewish Film Festival would allow me to bring to the organization 30 years of professional experience in all aspects of the film industry. In addition to the executive director position, I would also be their artistic director. The opportunity to make a difference, to contribute to the arts in our community was the “icing” on a long career in the film business. The added opportunity to grow the organization was a challenge I was eager to undertake.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years?
The film centre has held an annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival for 27 years; it is the longest-running Jewish film festival in Canada. We have engaged our community by bringing the best quality films that inspire, entertain, educate and connect us to the diversity of Jewish culture. The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre was founded to preserve and showcase our Jewish culture, heritage, identity, and we reach all members of the community. Our annual film festival is presented in a mainstream cinema, a secular environment, and is open to all who want to attend. It is a major social event that brings the community together. Film is the most reasonably priced form of cultural entertainment available today.
Film accesses and engages the broadest community. We are deeply committed to outreach and we work tirelessly with community organizations to bring films to their stakeholders. Generally speaking, the film centre is an organization with the potential to reach the whole Jewish community.
It’s Jewish continuity through storytelling in today’s visually oriented world.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The film exhibition industry has changed dramatically in just a few short years. Everything is now digital, and the technology required for state-of-the-art presentation is very expensive. Film costs and venue rentals have risen through the roof; movie theatres with the proper screening equipment are in short supply. In spite of all of this, we have responded to the increased demand for more film presentations from our greater Jewish community. We travel to community organizations with projector and screen in hand to bring the films directly to them. We are co-presenting Victoria’s first Jewish film festival this November. We are facilitating film with the Okanagan Jewish community. We’ve facilitated numerous fundraising film events throughout the community for Jewish organizations of all kinds. All of the above means increased costs for us at the same time that our community in general is faced with aging infrastructures with large capital campaigns in place. That often means cultural entities are left struggling to attract funding from the community, funding required to keep us vibrant and relevant.
Our attendance has been growing year over year and is a direct result of the quality of both the films and the presentations. However, since relocating the annual film festival to the Fifth Avenue multiplex cinema we’ve seen a number of community members walk by our screenings to attend a “Hollywood” film in the next auditorium. The most obvious way to help is to attend the films we present; the old mindset of what constitutes a Jewish film no longer applies. The films we present are world class and just as good, if not better, than any other film showing in that multiplex today.
We always welcome more help from volunteers. Assisting us to bring our offerings to the community is a real way a community member can help.
Finally, we are soon launching our first-ever endowment campaign with matching funds from dedicated donors. We hope and trust the rest of our community will support this effort.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
There is a mountain of documentation from researchers all over the world about the benefits of having art and culture in one’s life. In my opinion, in the case of the Jewish Film Centre, we bring people together. Film opens a dialogue where none may have existed before. It can fill us with pride, self-esteem; it can literally break down barriers by allowing us to experience the life of the other. Film can help foster a sense of belonging and pride within a community. Film can preserve a collective memory and foster a continuing dialogue about the past.
The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre exists for this, we convene an inclusive community that celebrates, educates, entertains and inspires through thought-provoking films. We present the stories about the many diverse aspects of Jewish life. We aspire to be a cultural organ of the Jewish community in Vancouver, in British Columbia, and to act as a repository of culture for future generations.
***
VANCOUVER JEWISH FOLK CHOIR Donna Modlin Becker, program coordinator, Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture
1. Could you give a brief history of your organization?
The Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir of the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture was founded in 1980 by conductor/arranger/ composer Searle Friedman with the aim of keeping Jewish music alive and educating both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences to a world cultural treasure. The choir has about 25 members, both adults and seniors, and at present performs between eight and 10 times per year, both at the Peretz Centre and at venues within and outside of the Jewish community.
2. When did you become involved with it and what drew you to it?
Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir third season ad in the JWB.
In the late 1990s, I was looking for a choir to join, and found the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir. I was excited to be singing in Yiddish, which I grew up surrounded by, and pretty quickly felt very at ease with the other choir members. The older people reminded me of the grandparents I lived with growing up in a Jewish community in Brooklyn; politically, and in many other ways, I was very culturally comfortable in the choir. And it gives me great pleasure to be singing in the language of my ancestors – I feel I am honoring them with my music. And I love the beautiful minor mode of so much of the repertoire.
3. What are some of the ways in which your organization has contributed to the community over the years? ie. Why is it important for the community to have/support?
Some of the ways in which the choir has contributed to the community, in no particular order:
• Thanks to founder Searle Friedman and current director David Millard, the choir is keeping the Yiddish repertoire alive. (Not only to entertain the old people, but also for the sake of future generations, I think keeping our Yiddish roots alive and visible as long as possible is hugely important.)
Both Friedman and Millard have arranged traditional and contemporary Yiddish music (and other Jewish music) for choir. Over the years, the choir has focused more and more on Yiddish, and exposed audiences to a wide variety of songs in that language, as well as major works by Srul Irving Glick, Mordecai Gebirtig, Max Helfman and others.
• In addition to regular performances at the Peretz Centre, which include holiday celebrations and an annual major concert, the choir also performs a Chanukah concert annually at two seniors homes – the Louis Brier and South Granville Park Lodge. In the last few years, the choir has also performed its Pesach repertoire at the Louis Brier. We hear from the people who work with the residents at both venues that many people who are very cognitively impaired in other areas can still relate to music, and people who can no longer speak are still able to sing. The joy we feel in the audience at the Louis Brier as we offer them songs both familiar and new is palpable.
• The choir gives people who like to sing a chance to sing in some of the languages of our people – Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino and English – and an opportunity to socialize with other people who also enjoy singing this music. Many of the people in the choir have no other connection to the Peretz Centre.
• The choir has also performed at other venues, such as the Jewish Community Centre, the Richmond Seniors Centre, CityFest, VanDusen Festival of Lights, and the Federation of Russian Canadians. In this, we provide an outreach to the broader community, and expose wider audiences to Jewish music beyond modern Israeli or religious music or klezmer.
4. What are some of the challenges in keeping it going? Are there specific ways in which community members could help with those challenges?
The main challenge is cost. At present, the conductor, accompanist and three section leaders are paid on a weekly basis. We often have to hire additional voices for major concerts, as well.
Two major ways that community members could help with those challenges: join the choir, and come to the concerts! Another way: write support letters that the choir can use in grant applications.
5. What are some of the benefits, in your opinion, of the arts in general and why it’s important to have arts and culture in one’s life?
I touched on some of this previously in regards to stroke victims and other cognitively impaired people responding to music long after they are no longer able to respond to other forms of communication. But, in more general terms, what would life be without arts? The question is so huge; all I can think of to say is: “Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses, too.”
