Tag: culture

Festival unites sparks of light

The Options Israeli music cover band closes the Festival of Israeli Culture on May 26. (photo from the JCC)

This year’s Festival of Israeli Culture takes place May 21-26, with the main event at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver the afternoon of Lag b’Omer, May 26.

Falling on the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer, between the second night of Passover and Shavuot 49 days later, Lag b’Omer is a celebration amid tragedy. It commemorates the end of a plague that is said to have killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef’s students during the Bar Kochba rebellion against the Roman Empire in the second century. Only five students survived, one of whom was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the sage who wrote the Zohar, among other things. Jewish tradition states that, after Rabbi Shimon offered his last kabbalist teaching, he died, on Lag b’Omer, having requested that his death not be mourned. For Rabbi Shimon, death means a soul has taken its place with God.

Among the traditions of Lag b’Omer are bonfires (perhaps in remembrance of fires the Bar Kochba rebels lit to relay messages), weddings, a boy’s first haircut, singing and dancing.

“I felt that it is so sensitive to be celebrating when there is such a complex and sad situation going on in Israel,” Nomi Zysblat, organizer of the annual JCC festival this year, told the Independent. “But, after researching the meaning of Lag b’Omer, I really see it as our community coming together with our individual sparks of light, a way of staying together, of communicating, a collective medura [bonfire or campfire] of strength and warmth.”

This year’s festival will be on the quieter side.

“We thought about this a lot,” said Zysblat. “Is it OK to ‘celebrate’? Is it safe? After many conversations, we decided that we need a gathering, we need to feel safe, we need to remember and we also need to be proud. We aren’t having a huge event, it’s going to be slightly more intimate … more gatherings and community enjoyment rather than huge events, both for the general feeling and also for security reasons. We aren’t flaunting but are also still wanting to enjoy being together.”

On May 21, there will be a dance party, kibbutz-style, at the Anza Club (tickets, $15). The night will be hosted by DJ Guy Hajaj, who will showcase modern and alternative Israeli music.

“He’s had a show for 10 years on Israeli radio and also a popular music blog, among other things,” explained Zysblat. “He DJs at events in Israel throughout the year but has been based in Vancouver for six years.”

photo - On May 23, Moshe Bonen performs a sing-along-style show with festival organizer Nomi Zysblat
On May 23, Moshe Bonen performs a sing-along-style show with festival organizer Nomi Zysblat. (photo from the JCC)

On the afternoon of May 22, the JCC parking lot will become an arts space where kids/teens can participate in a collaborative mural project led by Zohar Hagbi, a local Israeli artist. And, on the evening of May 23, the JCC atrium will come alive with music in a sing-along-style show led by musician and former Israeli radio broadcaster Moshe Bonen with Zysblat (tickets, $10, include a glass of wine).

“I have a music degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston and used to write and perform my own folk/rock music back in the day,” said Zysblat. “But, my favourite thing in the world to do when I was living in New York was to go up to the Bronx to Moshe’s loft and sing while he played his grand piano. He is an amazing player and accompanist.”

Zysblat’s professional background is both in music management and in the food industry. She started her own company 12 years ago – Paletas, which makes and sells natural popsicles. She got the idea while living in New York, discovering the icy Mexican treat at a grocery store. 

“After she brought the idea to the restaurant where she worked as a cook in Brooklyn and created unique desserts for the restaurant’s menu, she realized that it could be a lot of fun to make them in Israel,” it says on the company’s website. “Naomi went on a trip to Mexico to learn from local paleteros, their method and tradition, and get inspiration for special and different flavours, then came back and opened her small business here in Tel Aviv.”

“I was born in Jerusalem to Canadian-born parents – my dad was from Calgary and my mom is from Vancouver,” Zysblat told the Independent. “We grew up visiting our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins every summer in Canada so it’s like a second home to me. I even spent a few sabbatical years my parents took here in Vancouver, and attended school here. I knew this was an experience I wanted for my kids as well and, after Oct. 7, realized there’s no better time to come here. My husband Adi always loved BC because he was a mountain biker and beer brewer, so it was a win-win.”

It’s not surprising then that a nature walk is also part of this year’s festival. On the morning of May 25 at Central Park in Burnaby, there will be a walk led by young community madrichim (leaders). The terrain is suitable for all ages and abilities. There will be songs, stories, snacks.

At the festival’s main event at the JCC on May 26, there will be food trucks (Planted and Meet2Eat), a marketplace (jewelry, glass work, flower arrangements, photography, home decor, Israeli popsicles and jachnun, a Yemenite Jewish pastry), DJ’ed Israeli music, Israeli dance shows (troops from across Metro Vancouver, including Or Atid youth dancers), a drum circle, wine-tasting, arts and crafts, a gaga pit, face-painting, and dance, art and hummus workshops. In the Zack Gallery, the Tikun Olam Community Art Installation is already on display. The day closes with a performance by the Options, a group of local Israelis who cover Israeli rock and other songs. 

For more information, visit jccgv.com/ event/festival-of-israeli-culture. 

Klezcadia a June highlight

Veretski Pass – Joshua Horowitz, left, Cookie Segelstein and Stuart Brotman – will be joined by clarinetist Joel Rubin to present the world première of music from their new album, Makonovetsky’s Scion. (photo from Klezcadia)

Victoria will host Klezcadia, a hybrid klezmer and Yiddish culture festival showcasing a West Coast lineup of musical mastery and mavenry. Running June 4-9 in-person and online, there is no charge to attend.

According to festival director Laura Rosenberg, Klezcadia intends to position Victoria as a focal point for klezmer and Yiddish cultural tourism. In conjunction with the music, the six-day event will present classes, workshops, lectures, demonstrations and open rehearsals conducted by artists, language faculty and other guests.

“Klezcadia’s audiences can expect cutting-edge performances – including three world premières – by some of the world’s leading klezmer artists. Additionally, participants at any level of experience will have opportunities to attend classes, workshops and presentations by these same artists and their Yiddish-language colleagues,” Rosenberg told the Independent.

“Our guiding principle is to make the safe in-person attendance experience and the virtual attendance experience as equivalent and rich as current technology allows, as well as to give the same level of respect to all attendees,” she said.

Some of the featured artists will be Veretski Pass, a Bay Area trio that will perform with clarinetist Joel Rubin; Vancouver musician Geoff Berner; and Jeanette Lewicki in her new show as Pepi Litman, an early 20th-century Yiddish theatre drag star.

Comprised of Cookie Segelstein (violin), Joshua Horowitz (19th-century button accordion) and Stuart Brotman (bass), Veretski Pass offers a wide mix of East European influences. Reuniting with Rubin, they will present the world première of music from Makonovetsky’s Scion, their new album for the Borscht Beat label. 

Berner, a singer, songwriter, accordionist, novelist and political activist, will stage the première of Second Fleet, the Yiddish song cycle he recently co-wrote with Canadian writer Michael Wex, author of the bestseller Born to Kvetch, a humorous and scholarly look at the Yiddish language.

Lewicki will transmit the spirit of Litman, the original “drag king” of Yiddish theatre, in another première. The Pepi Litman Project will examine the time when a groundbreaking performer literally “wore the pants,” led her own touring troupe, turned taverns into theatres, and tested societal boundaries with her satire. Litman toured Europe and reportedly North America, too, singing, in male garb, at spas, inns and private homes in small towns and large cities alike. 

Some of the talks and workshops on offer at the festival are The Barry Sisters: America’s Yiddish Swingsters, with Andy Muchin, the host of the Sounds Jewish radio show on PRX; Yiddish Through Song Lyrics, with Seattle-based Marianne Tatom, a Yiddish teacher and klezmer musician; and Yiddish Through Conversation, with Sasha Berenstein, a multi-instrument musician and fellow with the Yiddish Book Centre’s Yiddish Pedagogy Program. 

On June 5, Christina Crowder of the Klezmer Institute will speak about the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project, an international endeavour connecting participants with the work of important klezmer musicians from the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

The festival will take a walk on the vilde side on June 8 with what organizers describe as “musical mash-ups, klezmer-adjacent adventures, song parodies, unusual instruments” and offering the forecast “you never know what will pop up in this clearing in the klezmer/Yiddish jungle.” The evening will feature Seattle neo-vaudevillian Mai Li Pittard, as well as local klezmer bands Kvells Angels and the Klezbians. A new klezmer ensemble, Kvells Angels, gave a concert last fall at the University of Victoria in which they performed works previously unavailable to musicians. The Klezbians, meanwhile, are a well-known band of “chutzpah-licious” musicians, and the group goes back many a year.

Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El, under whose auspices Klezcadia is being produced, will host the finale concert at the Cameron Bandshell, located in Beacon Hill Park. The closing concert will be a gift to the city in celebration of the congregation’s 160th anniversary. 

Festival organizers have made a concentrated effort to ensure that all participants enjoy a safe experience. The hybrid environment, they stress, will prioritize the well-being of immunocompromised and high-risk participants, for both those onstage and in the audience. Indoor activities will include protective protocols, such as supplemental air purification, required masking and daily onsite COVID testing. 

“Klezcadia was inspired by deep listening to an online meeting of immunocompromised and high-risk musicians and Yiddish-language enthusiasts in early 2023,” Rosenberg said. “During the first two years of the pandemic, they had finally felt included in the klezmer/Yiddish community, since everyone’s only option was to gather online.”

The same groups felt marginalized again when most festivals returned to unmasked, in-person formats. Through dialogue with these groups, Rosenberg realized, Victoria had a chance “to become a host community for an inclusive form of cultural tourism.”

Rosenberg said her 45-year arts administration career came in handy when building a music festival from the ground up; she had already done so with two other festivals. It has been a year’s worth of full-time work to plan the format, bring in the artists and teachers, scout venues, initiate community engagement and, importantly, raise the money.

Locals seem eager for the festival to start. “I am optimistic based on expressions of pride I have heard from Victoria residents, on how quickly Klezcadia’s in-person registration reached capacity and on the eagerness of local tourism-sector businesses to be included in our visitors’ guide,” Rosenberg said.

People from more than a dozen countries have signed up to view events streamed online.

For more information, visit klezcadia.org. 

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Egypt faces many struggles

Twenty years in the making, Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum is in a soft-opening period, with a section of the 81,000-square-metre site open for limited guided tours. (photo from Grand Egyptian Museum)

In biblical times, the Patriarch Jacob led his family to Egypt, the granary of the ancient Near East, to escape famine in Canaan. By the Roman era, the Nile River Valley and Delta – enriched by the Nile’s annual flooding with alluvial mud – had become the breadbasket of Rome. King Herod built an artificial harbour at Caesarea to facilitate the crucial maritime shipment of wheat to the imperial capital. Today, the once fabulously wealthy country is an economic basket case.

President Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his military-industrial kleptocracy blame the country’s high birth rate for the inability to feed Egypt’s burgeoning population of 110 million people. Taking a page from Keynesian economic theory, the regime – which toppled Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup d’état – has triggered a free fall of hyperinflation and devaluations while building mega-projects to stimulate the country’s broken finances.

The country’s annual rate of inflation soared to 36% in February, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said on March 31. The Egyptian pound, called the guinea, traded at 20 to the American dollar as recently as 2020. Now, one needs 52 to buy a greenback in the flourishing parallel market. In the past 24 months, a crippling shortage of foreign currency has caused prices of goods and commodities to more than triple, forcing low- and middle-income Egyptians to further tighten their belts.

The result? Strained services, a bloated bureaucracy, a huge government budget and a staggering deficit.

Compounding the economic misery, Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the resulting Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have driven away tourists from the land of Pharaonic wonders and spectacular coral reefs. Houthi rockets targeting shipping in the Red Sea have shrunk revenue from the Suez Canal, which is down 40% this year versus the same period in 2023. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago has driven up wheat prices and made subsidized bread – a staple for most Egyptians – more costly.

Notwithstanding Egypt’s inability to repay its current foreign debt of about $165 billion, el-Sisi’s immediate financial problems were eased in recent weeks thanks to a bailout, more than $23 billion provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the European Union.

At the same time, the United Arab Emirates launched a rescue plan to prop up its ally through the Ras el-Hekma deal announced last month. The vast real estate project envisions a new city on the barren shores of the Mediterranean Sea near the site of the pivotal Second World War battle of El Alamein. It was concluded in exchange for $24 billion in cash liquidity and $11 billion in UAE deposits with the Central Bank of Egypt, which will be converted into Egyptian pounds and used to implement the project, reported Reuters.

Where then has Egypt invested, or perhaps squandered, its largesse?

One expensive pet project has been to expand the quasi-governmental Egyptian Railway Authority’s network of standard-gauge train tracks. The system, the oldest in the Middle East, dating back to the 1854 line between Alexandria and Kafr el-Zayyat on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, now extends across 10,500 kilometres. A further 5,500 kilometres are currently in construction, including high-speed lines from Alexandria west to Mersa Matruh, Cairo south to Aswan, and Luxor east to Safaga via Hurghada.

Equally ambitious are plans to expand the country’s clogged highways. Transportation Minister Kamel al-Wazir, who took over the accident-plagued portfolio from Hisham Arafat following the 2019 Ramses Station train disaster, in which 25 Cairenes were killed and 40 injured, plans to complete 1,000 bridges, tunnels and flyovers this year.

Key to the plan to clear Cairo’s traffic woes is to complete an ambitious, shimmering new capital 50 kilometres east of the megalopolis, whose population is estimated to be more than 22 million people. The so-far-unnamed New Administrative Capital, under construction for nearly a decade, is located just east of the Second Greater Cairo Ring Road. It includes more than 30 skyscrapers, the most striking of which is the 77-floor Iconic Tower – the tallest building in Africa. Equally noteworthy are the 93,000-seat soccer stadium, the Fattah el-Aleem Mosque, accommodating 107,000 worshippers, and the Nativity of Christ Cathedral, which has room for 8,000 Copts.

To date, 14 ministries and government entities have relocated to the New Administrative Capital, but the city remains a largely lifeless white elephant with few residents.

Apart from these vast infrastructure projects, Egypt has been burnishing its cultural heritage. In 2022, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquity launched the Holy Family Trail, stringing together some 25 stops along the celebrated route that Jesus, Mary and Joseph took to escape King Herod’s wrath. Last year, the government restored the medieval Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fostat (Old Cairo), the home of the Cairo Geniza. The long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza near the Pyramids is scheduled to officially open this summer – though no date has been announced.

photo - The top part of the Merneptah Stele, inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more”
The top part of the Merneptah Stele, inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more.” (photo from Grand Egyptian Museum)

Twenty years in the making, the GEM is currently in a soft-opening period, with a section of the 81,000-square-metre site open for limited guided tours.

Touted as the largest archeological museum complex in the world, the GEM will house more than 100,000 artifacts. It will showcase the treasures discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. Other highlights will include a restoration centre, an interactive gallery for children and the Khufu Boat Museum.

King Tut’s funerary possessions had been on display at downtown Cairo’s Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, a hopelessly inadequate leftover from Britain’s colonial rule. There, a decade ago, I wandered in sensory overload gawping at the Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders. As if guided by divine providence, or perhaps Ra or Isis, I stumbled upon the Merneptah Stele – a three-metre-high piece of black granite inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE, which was discovered in Thebes in 1896 by archeologist Flinders Petrie. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more.”

For me, it symbolizes the cold peace Israel and Egypt have enjoyed since 1979. Though few Israelis would wish to repudiate that historic agreement, many share the sentiment of Eitan Haber, the confidant of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said: “The Egyptians don’t like us and – why deny it? – we don’t like them.” 

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Cultural constellations

Lindsey Tyne Johnson has a new show at the Zack Gallery: The Irish Mazzaroth & Hebrew Spelled Backwards. It comprises two separate parts.

Hebrew Spelled Backwards debuted at the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2023. It is a series of illustrations in which the artist explores her Jewish heritage.

“When the show finished in Kamloops, the Zack Gallery director contacted me,” Johnson told the Independent. “But the show had only seven pieces, and the Zack Gallery is large. It needed more art.”

At about the same time, Johnson decided to delve deeper into her ethnic roots. “My mother’s family were Irish Jews,” she said. “Not a usual combination. I went to Ireland in February 2024 to find out more.”     

She was fascinated by what she discovered. “Jews appeared in Ireland in the 1500s,” she shared. “Later, antisemitism forced many of them to leave, but they came back again. Then, there was a wave of Jews who came to Ireland and Northern Ireland from Russia in the beginning of the 20th century – they were escaping pogroms. Someone tricked them, sold them tickets to New York, but delivered them to Ireland instead and kicked them off the ship there. Some persisted in traveling to America, but others settled in Ireland. And then, there were the Jewish children escaping the Holocaust in Europe, Ireland took them in.”        

When Johnson visited the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin, she found a number of her ancestors. “Their names were all written up in the Book of Irish Jewry there,” she explained. “The museum staff asked me if I wanted my name to be added to the new edition of the book. Of course, I said yes.”

The second part of the show, Irish Mazzaroth, started taking shape in her mind while she was in Ireland. The 12 black and white illustrations on the gallery walls reflect Johnson’s take on the zodiac’s traditional imagery. Mazzaroth means constellations in Hebrew.

Both Jewish and Irish lore have a long record of zodiac interpretations, from Greco-Roman mythology to the Zodiac Wheel, the centrepiece of the sixth-century mosaic at Beit Alpha in Israel. 

image - “Virgo” by Lindsey Tyne Johnson, part of Johnson’s solo exhibit at the Zack Gallery until May 9
“Virgo” by Lindsey Tyne Johnson, part of Johnson’s solo exhibit at the Zack Gallery until May 9.

Johnson, a young Canadian artist, has succeeded in meshing seamlessly Celtic symbolism and Jewish mysticism into a series of computer illustrations that are uniquely hers. 

“I started the first one in January. I finished the last one just before the show,” she said. “Each one is a well-known astrological sign, and each involves some aspects of both Jewish and Irish culture.” 

Every illustration is a whimsical little story, a playful tale that connects all earth cultures to one another. The images are clean and austere, uncluttered by unnecessary details. The twin girls in Gemini smile at the viewer. In front of them are Shabbat candles and a challah. Behind them, a leafy tree rises in the Irish countryside. Their quiet joy is unmistakable. 

On the other hand, the lone girl in Scorpio is solemnly considering the riches of ancient books in the famous Old Library in Trinity College in Dublin. She seems breathless with excitement at the abundance of choices in front of her, her braid curling up defiantly like a scorpion’s tail. The Jewish thirst for knowledge is given form in the context of the historical Irish library.

In another famous location in Dublin, the Temple Bar pub, Johnson features, in Virgo, an Irish Jewish woman playing a fiddle, merging lively Jewish klezmer and Celtic tunes.

image - “Leo” by Lindsey Tyne Johnson
“Leo” by Lindsey Tyne Johnson.

In Leo, the backdrop is grimmer. It depicts the Crumlin Road Gaol, hinting at the political strife in Ireland, while the man in front reminds us of the story of Daniel and the lions. “One of my distant relatives worked as a prison guard there,” Johnson said. 

The frames of every illustration are identical: a rounded rectangle of Celtic knots, tied together at the top by a Magen David, which also emphasizes the affinity of two cultures.

The Irish Mazzaroth & Hebrew Spelled Backwards is on display at the Zack Gallery until May 9. To read more about Johnson and Hebrew Spelled Backwards, go to jewishindependent.ca/artfully-exploring-heritage. 

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Immersed in animation

Alex Greenberg’s family experience drove his work for the Dallas Holocaust Museum. (photo from Alex Greenberg)

It was a winding road for Alex Greenberg to become head of animation at a leading creative technology firm in Vancouver. 

Born in Moldova, Greenberg and his family made aliyah in 1990, when he was 11 years old. After a “pretty regular childhood” in Israel, high school graduation, military service and a bit of travel around the world, Greenberg settled down to study animation.

“Unfortunately, two months into school, the director of the school took the money and split,” he said. “My luck. All the money was gone, the money I got from my [military] service.”

He started looking for schools in Canada and the United States where he could continue his studies. He discovered the Art Institute of Vancouver and moved here, by himself, in 2003.

Fast-forward … Greenberg is immersed in immersive technology. As head of animation for ngx Interactive, he has his finger in many projects – including one that shares the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and which, of everything he has worked on, is closest to his heart.

Founded more than two decades ago in Vancouver, ngx’s 80 or so employees, according to the company’s website, help clients “reimagine what’s possible in physical and digital spaces.”

“We work with four main sectors,” said Greenberg. 

The museum sector is a big one. The company took part in a major re-envisioning of the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK. It reopened last year featuring 41 multimedia exhibits, including an artificial intelligence-powered portrait experience, an animated projection wall featuring some of the gallery’s most stunning portraits, interactive touch screens, and documentary films produced by ngx.

The medical sector is another area and, if you have ever taken your kids or grandkids to BC Children’s Hospital, you may have seen the interactive aquarium ngx developed for the emergency room so that young patients and their families have something to take their minds off the stressful reasons for their visit.

A third area is themed attractions, which have engaged audiences in such diverse spaces as Vancouver’s Science World, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, Jurassic World in Beijing and the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai.

Their corporate and institutional work, another core area for ngx, includes an interpretive exhibition in the pharmaceutical sciences building at the University of British Columbia, where visitors explore the world of health, and a project for Roche Canada, in the Toronto area, where the global pharmaceutical company has an interactive space for employees to engage with the Roche brand story.

Other projects help visitors explore cultural institutions like the Citadel Heritage Centre in Halifax, Indigenous cultural storytelling at Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatoon, and interpretive exhibits about nature at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.

Greenberg’s specific role in ngx projects is lighting and look development.

“When you are working on a project, there’s a certain style to it, lighting, a certain mood, something that will convey the story,” he said. “We don’t just create these experiences to make them look cool. There’s a lot of thought that is being put behind them, thinking about the colours and thinking about the movement and [in the case of the BC Children’s Hospital virtual aquarium] how kids are going to interact with it to help them relax.” 

In his seven years with the company, one project stands out among the rest for Greenberg.

Visitors to the Dallas Holocaust Museum, in Texas, enter a room that transforms into a home in eastern Europe at the start of the Holocaust. Survivors share their testimonies as the home becomes no longer a refuge but a backdrop for the projection of scenes of atrocities. Then the screen rises and a holographic version of a survivor engages with the audience.

Hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors using 360-degree cameras allow for the realistic perspective of meeting these individuals in person. The project, called Dimensions in Testimony and developed in partnership with Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, introduces school groups and other museum visitors to a different survivor and their experiences each week of the year.

“This was one of the most impactful projects that I ever worked on,” Greenberg said. “You feel like you’re sitting in their living room. As you hear the story, the room begins to change. Lights going off, you hear marching of the boots outside, the rooms become slowly, almost unnoticeably dilapidated, just to show that the people were driven out of their homes and these homes are left with nothing but memories and a few photographs.

“After that introduction, the screen goes up and there’s a hologram production of that survivor. That’s the technology that the USC [Shoah] Foundation has developed. You can ask a question – for example, ‘What was your favourite sport when you were little?’ – and that would trigger a story where the survivor will be talking about where he used to play soccer with his friends when they were little.”

The project was close to home for Greenberg, whose grandfather lost his entire family in the Shoah.

“There was a big part of me in that experience,” said Greenberg. “I can tell and I can educate other people, people that are coming to this museum and people around the world that still don’t know what the Holocaust is, don’t know what a genocide is. It’s almost like I was telling my story.” 

Celebrating two new years 

It would be fun to be a fly on the wall at Vancouver Talmud Torah on Feb. 14 as Richard Ho reads from his book Two New Years, illustrated by Lynn Scurfield, and discusses it with the children. Being that the story is based on his own life experience, he will likely be quite animated (pun intended) and his enthusiasm, combined with Scurfield’s bright, colourful and joyful art, will no doubt hold their attention.

image - Two New Years book coverHo has several kids books to his credit and, according to his website, more on the way. Two New Years highlights the differences and similarities between Rosh Hashanah and the Lunar New Year, both of which he celebrates.

The book notes the differences first: Rosh Hashanah takes place in the fall, is based on the Jewish calendar and began in the Middle East, and the Lunar New Year generally falls in spring, is based on the Chinese calendar and began in East Asia. “They represent different peoples with different histories, cultures and traditions,” he writes. “But in many ways they are also alike.” The many similarities include that each holiday is a chance to “try on new beginnings,” to “bring family home” and “remember the ancestors who live in our hearts,” to eat “foods that symbolize togetherness and the heartfelt sharing of good wishes,” among several other things.

In the author’s note, Ho shares that he converted to Judaism as an adult and that “the blending of two cultures was a conscious choice” for him. These days, he revels in experiencing both new years through the eyes of his children. “The best part?” he asks. “They’re not alone! All over the world, families with mixed backgrounds are blurring the barriers between cultures and customs. With the guidance of parents, grandparents and extended family on all sides, many children are weaving an increasingly diverse tapestry of celebration.”

The book features an eight-page illustrated glossary that’s as interesting to read as the story: it explains what a lunisolar calendar is, and some of both holidays’ rituals and symbols. It is followed by questions that readers can use to facilitate a discussion with others about their own traditions.

Ho’s presentation at VTT is part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival (jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival). 

Jewish comedy history

“Jews have always turned and continue to turn to humour as a cultural touchstone and a way to make meaning,” said Dr. Jennifer Caplan, author of Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials, which was published earlier this year.

photo - Dr. Jennifer Caplan spoke Dec. 3, as part of the L’dor V’dor lecture series organized by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple
Dr. Jennifer Caplan spoke Dec. 3, as part of the L’dor V’dor lecture series organized by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple. (photo from Kolot Mayim)

Caplan, who is an associate professor and the Jewish Foundation Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, was the second presenter of the 2023-24 L’dor V’dor (Generation to Generation) Zoom lecture series organized by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple. On Dec. 3, she spoke about the past several decades of Jewish humour. Similar to the approach she took for her book, her presentation explored the changing relationship to Judaism of four generations of Jewish funny people.

According to a 2013 report by the Pew Foundation, called A Portrait of American Jews, 42% of American Jews thought that having a sense of humour was integral to their Jewish identity, said Caplan. In the survey, in terms of what American Jews deemed important to their identity, a sense of humour came out far behind Holocaust remembrance and intellectual curiosity, just under support of Israel, and well ahead of belonging to a Jewish community or eating traditional Jewish food.

“The report set off little bells in my brain which pushed me to say that there’s something here and that there’s something I want to think about,” she said.

There were Jewish commentators who pointed to the Pew survey as an alarm bell for the dangers of the rise of cultural Judaism. To Caplan, the TV show Seinfeld, which premièred in 1989, encapsulated what worried some about the culturally Jewish experience.

“It was this group of people who seemed Jewish, even though Jerry (the title character) is the only character on the show who is actually Jewish,” she said. “They all sort of felt Jewish, but they never did anything Jewish and nobody ever went to synagogue and they didn’t even have a menorah like Rachel and Monica did in their apartment on Friends.”

In Caplan’s view, this fear of cultural Judaism aligned with the way that Jews were being portrayed in popular comedy and media, as Seinfeld led to a boom in Jewish sitcom characters – in shows like Mad About You and Anything but Love, for example. She thought there was something important in the way Jewish comedians were using Judaism in their humour to think about themselves and their Jewish identity, and what it means for them to be Jewish.

Moving forward to the present and, according to Caplan, one finds that the younger generation, the millennials, are even more culturally tied to their American generational cohort and less so to being the grandchild or great-grandchild of Jewish immigrants.

“It’s a story about comedy and it’s a story about the way that Jewish comedians have related to Judaism in their comedy, but it’s also a story about Americanization. It is a story about the way that Jews in the United States became more and more embedded within their broader cultural milieu,” Caplan said, explaining the thought process that led her to write her book.

Caplan pointed out that counterculture, in Jewish comedy, was represented in the 1950s – a time generally associated in the popular sense with Leave It To Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet – by books like those by Philip Roth. His works, well before the broader 1960s counterculture movement, were critical of institutions but defensive of the Jewish community – viewing organized religion as something that was hurting Jews, but seeing the need for Jews to be protected.

What intrigued Caplan was that the pendulum had swung in the other direction for Generation X. “What I found was a fascinating reincorporation of Jewish ritual into the writing and the movies and the comedy of Generation X comedians. Jews themselves are being made fun of, but their engagement with Judaism is actually the thing that humanizes them,” she said.

In the 2001 film Kissing Jessica Stein, for example, the characters can be perceived as stilted, neurotic, self-absorbed Jewish caricatures, yet scenes at a Shabbat dinner and a wedding ground the characters and are not the subject of ridicule.

“It’s not that Generation X suddenly believes in God more than the previous generations did. It’s that they believe more in the power of ritual and tradition because it binds you. You’re not doing it necessarily because you have some sort of theological belief,” Caplan said.

As for millennials, among whom the oldest in the cohort is presently 42 years old, their story is still being written, she said. 

“It seems as though they are willing to ridicule both Jewish identity and Jewish religious interaction at various times, depending on what suits the comedy,” she said. “They neither have a sense of oppression about their Judaism, nor do they have a sense of embarrassment about their Judaism.”

Caplan is currently researching and writing her next book, Unmasked: Jewish Identity in Comic Books.

The next speaker in the L’dor V’dor series is psychotherapist and author, and member of the second generation, Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone on Jan. 14. Firestone will talk on the topic Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma. For more information, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com. 

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Educating differently

Ada Glustein’s passion for learning and teaching shines through in her self-published memoir Being Different. (photo from Ada Glustein)

Duke’s father would beat him. Tien, a refugee from Cambodia, had witnessed unimaginable violence. Louise was in and out of foster care because her father had drug addictions and her mom was emotionally unstable.

These are just a few of the countless children Ada Glustein encountered in her time as a teacher. Many of her young charges – she taught kindergarten mostly – faced harsh conditions at home and adult-sized problems. She shares her and their experiences with kindness and compassion in her memoir Being Different: From Friday Night Candles to Compassionate Classroom, which she self-published last year. She dedicates the book to her “parents, grandparents and ancestors whose struggles and strengths brought them to Canada, where at last they found their place to call home.” She also writes, “To my children and grandchildren, whose journeys bring the hope for a future of respect, social justice and belonging for all.”

While Glustein was born and raised in Ottawa, her Jewish Orthodox grandparents and parents came from Russia, from an area that became Ukraine. Part 1 of Being Different – Where I Am From: Stories of Home and Community – is about Glustein’s family and her early years. “Though my parents considered themselves to be modern,” she writes, “to me they seemed to live in a world caught between the old and the new.”

From her perspective, her father believed she asked too many questions and her mother fretted too much over her safety. But they came from a different time and place, more traditional and more dangerous. “My family comes from a place where the grass is greener somewhere else. Any place that is not Eastern Europe, not within the Pale of Settlement. Any place to leave behind the pogroms and the poverty, the losses of children who died in childbirth or wasted away from consumption. I do understand the silence,” she writes.

“But I also understand the richness of life’s difficult experiences and their inevitability. To allow those experiences to touch me, even to hurt me, helps me to live a full human life, to live with the reality of how things are.”

Part 1 of Being Different is about Glustein’s efforts to understand her place and who she is within her family. Part 2 – Where Do I Belong? Lessons at School – takes that exploration of identity and differentness into the broader world, where Glustein has to confront Christmas plays, lecherous older men, peer dynamics and a mix of teachers with different approaches, among other life lessons. In Part 3 – Becoming a Teacher: Finding My Way Home – we see how Glustein translates what she has learned into being an educator. And, honestly, if only every teacher could be like Glustein – not because she is perfect, but because she cares, and is continually learning.

Glustein graduated from Ottawa Teachers’ College, completed her bachelor of education at the University of British Columbia and her master of arts at Simon Fraser University. She taught for many years – in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver – and also became a faculty associate and sessional instructor at SFU, where she taught teachers. After she retired, she became a member of two writing groups and has had several of her works published. Being Different won a silver medal for Canada-West Region, non-fiction, in this year’s Independent Publisher Book (“IPPY”) Awards, and deservedly so.

Being Different is charming and heartbreakingly honest, written in short, crisp chapters, giving it a sense of immediacy. It is a call for all of us to be more patient with one another, to keep an open mind and to understand the impact our actions have on other people, especially children. In her openness about her own imperfections and missteps, Glustein is also asking us to be kind to ourselves. A more accepting and inclusive world begins with us, after all.

Being Different will be engaging to any reader – it will foster many a childhood memory – but should be a must-read for anyone interested in becoming an educator. It is available on Amazon.

The first step is the to-do list

Yesterday, I shared my to-do list with a friend via email. She responded with “Ahh! I’m tired just reading this!” What I didn’t mention is that I had to do all this plus other chores, thrown in, which I had either forgotten to write down or were such household habits that I didn’t list them. For many caregivers who work and manage households, this sounds familiar. It’s the list that is the first step. Write it down. Name the obligation. Then release yourself from trying to remember it all. Finally, cross it off the list later.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Studies have shown how much of this organizational and emotional labour falls to women. For example, a recent National Public Radio piece from the United States covered research by economists, which showed that women (mothers) were almost always contacted by schools first, no matter which parent was designated as the “first contact” on the emergency form. The social media chatter that followed remarked on how female medical residents or surgeons, working hours away from their children’s schools, were still called first even though the primary caretaker was the father. In the study itself, one economist described the mental load of planning ahead for “if the school called” and how women’s workload could be managed in such situations. She noted that, even though her husband was the vice-president of the Parent Teacher Association, the school always called her first.

In economic terms, women then self-select for lower paying, more flexible work simply to manage these challenges, resulting in lower income and fewer opportunities for career growth. Societal obligations placed mostly on women create a lifelong effect on earning power and household income.

This morning, as I bake bread, make chicken broth in two slow cookers, write this article and air out the house with fans because of an unexpected drop in temperatures due to a rainstorm, I time everything to fit into the hours between when I drop kids off at 9 a.m. and pick them up at noon for their half day of camp. This is, of course, not a specifically Jewish problem, but aspects of it are in our house.

We have twin 12-year-olds, with both kids doing b’nai mitzvah lessons at the same time. These kids come with different challenges. Like all learners, they may need different supports to master chanting trope. Amid the meltdown tears last night, it became clear that what was necessary was for each kid to have 15 minutes to practise separately every day with me. As the crying continued – and I include myself in the crying – my partner tried to help.

This is when you might wonder why all this falls to me, and you’d be right to ask. My partner told us that the year before his bar mitzvah involved a lot of crying. He was so overwhelmed that he quit playing drums at school, because he couldn’t manage both things. His mother had been given no Jewish education. She couldn’t read Hebrew and didn’t know the prayers. His father worked late every day, coming home at 11 p.m. My twins’ dad was truly on his own, with a cassette tape. He never learned the trope and struggled with short-term memory issues. Mastering his bar mitzvah portion took him a long time. As an adult, he never gained some of these prayer skills. A demanding job means now is not the time for him to catch up. The obligation’s all mine.

We’ve now been married for 25 years and I just learned last night about this tough path my husband took towards bar mitzvah. By comparison, I had supportive parents with some Jewish literacy, plus we attended services regularly. I was self-directed as a learner. Mastering everything for my bat mitzvah was interesting and challenging but not a struggle. I continued learning through university and graduate school and beyond, as I continue to study Talmud when I can. We chose a bilingual Hebrew/English elementary school for our kids partially because it would make bar mitzvah study easier for them.

Few people see what my lists of work and household obligations look like. I tell even fewer people about fitting in 20 minutes of Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud every day. When I mention the Talmud study, I’ve been asked why I bother. The minutiae of discussions of Jewish law that rabbis conducted so long ago is of no interest to most. Sometimes, if the person wants to know why, I explain that I learn things about Jewish tradition, history and daily life from these debates.

I also admit to myself that I find some reassurance in these pages. Although the specifics might have been different, life’s minutiae is pretty much the same. The rabbis struggled over multiple daily tasks, relationships and household concerns in many of the ways I do. They sweated the details, even if they didn’t do them all personally.

If everything works out, in June 2024, my kids will step up to the bimah (pulpit) and become bar mitzvah boys, which is a huge lifecycle event. Between now and then, practising with them will be another part of my to-do list. Good study habits mean you do a little every day until, suddenly, you learn something new. Just like my lists, nothing is insurmountable if you name it, take it step by step, and cross it off the list when the task is complete.

Like many women, I get bogged down by the minutiae. I wish I could share more of the household labour and emotional load. Even men who try to assume more of these tasks have to struggle against the societal expectations our culture wields. Step by step, we make change in our lives, our lists and our expectations for one another. It’s not a sprint. You can’t cram the night before to pass this exam. Life is a series of chores, moments, obligations and, well, joys.

Early this morning, I leashed up the dog while I sang the first Haftorah blessing aloud. I try to put the melody into the twins’ heads while donning my shoes and raincoat as I head out. Each step makes a difference to hopefully hit one very big milestone ahead.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Designing the 12 tribes

Artist Anna Marszalkowska stands in front of “Levi,” which is part of her Tribes series, which is on exhibit at the Zack Gallery until May 4. (photo from Anna Marszalkowska)

The challenge of visually depicting the tribes of Israel has attracted many famous artists over the centuries. For example, on the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel, Salvador Dali, inspired by descriptions in the Torah, created a series of watercolours, “The Twelve Tribes of Israel.” Before that, in 1962, Marc Chagall made his famous stained-glass windows, “The Twelve Tribes,” for a synagogue in Jerusalem. Anna Marszalkowska, a local Vancouver artist of Polish origins, fits easily into this august company. Her solo show, The Tribes, opened at the Zack Gallery on March 29.

Marszalkowska grew up in Poland, but studied graphic design and worked as a graphic designer in London, England. “Diversity is what made my design path exciting,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “I started my career as a freelance web and graphic designer and then moved to video design and editing, as well as motion graphics and animation.”

Five years ago, she and her husband moved to Canada, but they lived and worked in the eastern part of the country. They relocated to Vancouver two years ago.

“We came here during the pandemic,” she said. “We wanted to try something different. For an outdoor person like myself, this is a great place. The nature is beautiful, and everyone is very friendly.”

She also changed the direction of her professional life. “I work with artists in the movie industry, but not as an artist myself,” she said. “I understand artists because of my past as a graphic designer, but I wanted less time at the computer screen. I wanted to free my creativity for more personal projects, which was hard to do while working as a graphic designer. Then, my creativity was fully engaged in my professional activity, but, on the other hand, I was limited by clients’ requirements. After a full day of work … I was often tired, I wanted to relax. Now, my creativity is freed. I have more time for my artistic experiments. I started abstract painting and I love it. Just me and a painting – it calms me.”

But even while working full time as a graphic designer, she still found energy to search for her individual style and themes. One of them was her Tribes series. “In 2010, I completed a print production course, and this series was the result.”

The series consists of 12 large digital prints, each one corresponding to one of the tribes of Israel. Although Marszalkowska’s version is an entirely modern take, it involves ancient symbolism, which originated in the Hebrew Bible. The artist conducted deep research for this project, and the end results are simultaneously stunningly simple and visually compelling.

“I had a blog before and, when I put the images online, many people expressed their interest. They wanted to buy one or several or all of the images.”

For the artist, this body of work has meaning beyond its commercial success. “It was a personal journey. I was searching for my Jewish ancestry. My grandmother grew up in a town in Poland where most citizens were Jewish before the war. She might have been part Jewish herself, but after the Holocaust, I had no one to ask.”

Instead, she studied the Bible and tried to interpret the narratives within a cultural context. “The symbols of the tribes are by no means fixed,” she explained. “Every artist could have their own interpretation, as the biblical texts describe the sons of Jacob allegorically.”

In her interpretation, the traditional symbols are given a contemporary, stylized appearance. “I explored the relationship between geometric shapes and lines,” she said. “I used repetition and symmetry to keep balance in each individual design and all 12 together.”

She also leaned towards a minimalistic approach, where a symbol of the tribe is centred on a one-colour background, with no other embellishments to attract a viewer’s attention. “In the original design, I had an ornamental frame around each image, but I got rid of them. I think less is more,” she said. “COVID made me realize that my focus should be the meaning, not the decorations.”

“Benjamin” by Anna Marszalkowska.

In most images, the background colour palette reflects that of the tribe, except for Benjamin, the youngest. “His symbol is a wolf,” Marszalkowska said. “He represents all colours of all tribes. To reflect that, I placed a ‘rainbow’ above the wolf. I think it is his spirit or maybe his song, Or his breath. It would depend on your own interpretation.”

In some of the designs, she incorporated photography for texture. “I used Adobe Illustrator to combine my photographs with my digital illustrations,” she said. For Simeon, her symbol is a tower, and she put her photos of bricks to good use in her pictorial tower construction. For Zebulun, whose symbol is a ship, she employed photos of water. “Issachar’s symbol is a donkey with a burden,” she said. “I used my photos of wood for the donkey’s load.”

When different sources offered different visual symbolisms for a tribe, the artist’s scholarly touch led her towards her own esthetic. For example, in the case of Levi, some documents don’t count him as a tribe and don’t offer any symbols for him. Historically, the Tribe of Levi wasn’t given any land, but its men served as religious leaders and teachers. Maszalkowska decided that Levi’s description as God’s Chosen Tribe warranted its own image: a breastplate of a high priest. The breastplate is embedded with 12 gemstones, each inscribed with the name of one of the tribes in Hebrew.

“Overall, the series is an invitation for everyone to embark on their own journey, to reflect on their own purpose and fulfilment,” said Maszalkowska. “Ultimately, I hope that my art will connect with the viewers and inspire them.”

Tribes runs until May 4.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].