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Jan. 11, 2013
Kootenay celebrations
Traditions and commitments grow community.
JAN LEE
Large, brightly lit menorahs were a common sight in larger cities in British Columbia this Chanukah season. In Richmond, Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna, Jewish communities gathered to celebrate the Festival of Lights in public squares, parks and open doorways, offering testimony to the fact that public celebrations have been a part of this Jewish holiday for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
For two rural B.C. Jewish communities however, “going public” is still a new and uncertain experience.
In Silverton and Nelson, members of the Kootenay Jewish Community Association opened their doors to the wider Kootenay communities, as part of a process of combating antisemitism and educating others about the Jewish traditions of the season. Although both communities have hosted small celebrations before, this year’s two regional events represented an effort by members to openly publicize that there were, in fact, Jewish communities living in the Kootenay regions.
In Silverton, Carla Nemeroff and a small cadre of local students, volunteers and artists put on the town’s second annual Chanukah celebration at the Silverton Art Gallery, which Nemeroff runs. Silverton is located in the Slocan Valley on a more remote stretch of Highway 6, an hour’s drive north of Nelson. The small mountain community doesn’t seem like the most likely place to find a Chanukah celebration. Still, Nemeroff said this year’s event received about 45 visitors, which is a large gathering for the area. Visitors from as far away as Castlegar, some two hours away, braved mountain roads in order to celebrate the first night of Chanukah.
“Castlegar is quite a coup,” Nemeroff acknowledged in an interview after the event. “We usually never get anyone [from that far away].”
The highlight of the evening was a performance by Ontario klezmer musician and storyteller Allan Merovitz. Merovitz, who also performed at the Nelson event, educated audiences on the conflicting halachic views of sages Shammai and Hillel as to how many candles should be lit on the first night. He also shared a story about a poor-sighted cook, a rabbi and an opportunistic bear that gets more than its portion of holiday latkes – a story that seemed oddly fitting given the Slocan Valley’s rustic surroundings.
“Having a show in Silverton is almost like having [one] in your living room,” Nemeroff said, who noted that last year’s smaller event had elicited several questions from visitors who had never before seen a menorah lighting. “This year,” she added, “some of those same people came back.”
There are a few intermarried families in the Silverton and adjacent New Denver area. A small number have children, but most, Nemeroff said, “haven’t taken Chanukah that seriously over the years.” She attributed this in part to the lack of accessibility to information on Jewish customs in her area, one of the motivators to her decision to organize a public Chanukah event this year.
According to Nemeroff, acceptance and teaching of multicultural values is still a growing phenomenon in some parts of the Kootenays. Her efforts to ensure that Jewish traditions were introduced to school-aged children in her area were successful when her son was in preschool, but became difficult when he entered kindergarten, she said.
“The teachers were afraid of it. They said, well, we’re not allowed to teach religion in the school. I said, this isn’t religious. This is about a dreidel. This is about a latke. It’s just about our culture.”
Out of that experience, said Nemeroff, came the area’s first Chanukah celebration in 2011. She describes this year’s event as part of “a continuum” that has helped to initiate more local interest in Jewish events. She is hoping that by broadening the discussion about multiculturalism she will help encourage interest in other local cultures as well, such as those of the First Nations, who are an integral part of Kootenay history.
In Nelson, about 70 people turned up on Dec. 15 to celebrate the last night of Chanukah. According to Nelson resident Anath Grebler, the Kootenay Jewish community comprises about 100 families that are spread out across eastern British Columbia. Most are intermarried families that continue to maintain a link with Jewish traditions. A few families maintain kosher traditions, shipping their kosher meats in from Vancouver, and several provide the organizing backbone for Nelson’s quiet Jewish community.
Recognizing the Kootenays’ diverse Jewish perspectives, Grebler said, is the first step to creating a successful and inclusive Chanukah event – especially in a community that does not as yet have a rabbi or a synagogue.
“There is a certain Kootenay spirit out there, which is explorative, which is daring, which is questioning, which is sometimes removed from Judaism,” said Grebler, who is often called upon to provide the spiritual component to the program.
While many families were drawn to the event by the bright festivities, there were others who expressed appreciation for Grebler’s Renewal-based explanations of why Jews continue to light the Chanukah menorah. She said she felt that it was important to ensure that Chanukah’s religious and historical links were acknowledged in the event.
“Why did I want to start the event? Because I wanted to stand in front of them and say shalom. I wanted to say bruchim habayim. I wanted Hebrew to be part of this exchange.”
In fact, maintaining that link with the community’s Hebrew roots was as just as important, Grebler said, as their efforts “to build bridges with the larger [Nelson] community.”
She said she felt her own attempts to reach out to spiritual leaders of other local communities were often prevented by a lack of public understanding and demonstration of Jewish values and traditions. However, efforts like this year’s Chanukah festival served as important steps to educating those who wished to learn, as well as connecting with the rest of the Jewish community.
Most of the community members interviewed were reluctant to point toward any specific antisemitic events as motivating factors for the public event in any way. All agreed, however, that it was a concern globally, if not regionally.
“I think [antisemitism is] to some level an issue everywhere,” said Grebler. “There are undercurrents everywhere.”
Helen Pengally, who helped create the organizational foundation of the community more than 20 years ago, said that she received “an extremely antisemitic scroll” in her mailbox some years ago. While she “felt threatened [and] scared” by the incident that was later blamed on a traveler who happened to be passing through the area, it seemed to be an isolated event. She identified herself as an “extremely visible member of the [Jewish] community” and agreed that hosting a public event could help dispel attitudes of distrust or wariness.
“I think that’s true in any community where they begin to make Judaism appear to be accessible to the greater community,” she said.
Phil Mader, also from Nelson, noted that there had been some concern about “ugly” depictions of the Star of David that had been scrawled on parking meters and walls around Nelson. He said he wasn’t sure whether they were meant as antisemitic or anti-Israel statements, but that they had been removed.
Mader agreed that having a public event was an important step to increasing acceptance of Nelson’s Jewish community.
“I was very pleased that the non-Jewish community was invited,” Mader said. “I thought it was a very good idea.”
However, he wondered whether the people who most needed to learn about Jewish traditions would actually be the ones who turned up.
“The thing is, it’s preaching to the converted. The people who usually come are … very open to new things,” he said.
Just the same, publicizing the event, both before and after its occurrence, he said, was critical as it “reminds people who are closed-minded that there are those in the community who are not.”
“We can never know what such an announcement does,” Grebler said. “On one hand it definitely informs them that Chanukah exists and that Jewish people are present and that they are part of the community. So it is good that we dare to speak.”
Jeff Shecter, another founding member of the community, feels the most important thing for the Jewish community is to stay connected.
“I don’t think we have to do things in response to others,” Shecter said. “We just have to do what we have been doing for thousands of years: celebrate our traditions and celebrate our festivals, and not hide from [them]. We have been a society that gives credibility to all peoples’ backgrounds and faiths and traditions. This was an opportunity for us to be more public.
“We’re trying to revitalize, to reinvigorate, to keep those traditions alive,” Shecter continued. “We have to assert ourselves as a vibrant part of the Kootenays, or Nelson, however we are going to describe our geographic area.
“We’ve had bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, different lifecycle events. Rabbis have come and gone, but we’re growing. Every time we do some type of lifecycle event, it’s a feather in our cap and so far as other Jews, they’ll say, there’s things happening there.”
Jan Lee’s articles on Jewish culture and traditions have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism, and on Suite101.com. She is also a contributing writer for TheDailyRabbi.com. Her blog is multiculturaljew.blogspot.ca.
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