On behalf of JNF Canada (JNF), I wish to respond to allegations made by Independent Jewish Voices Canada, longstanding opponents of JNF Canada, as well as the opinion piece you published [“Tax troubles start year,” Jewish Independent, Jan. 11].
With regard to the substantive issues that have
been raised about our projects in Israel we wish to reiterate our position.
• JNF has in the past carried out projects
mainly of a charitable nature, such as parks, playgrounds and recreational
facilities on land owned by the Israel Defence Forces. Our charitable funds
never flowed to the IDF. The charitable funds were directed toward the hiring
of indigent labourers to construct these projects. These expenditures represent
under one percent of our expenditures over the past decade.
In your coverage, you suggest that we took
action based upon an alert from the CRA. This, in fact, is not the case.
Rather, it was our legal counsel who advised us several years ago that the
indirect association with the IDF may be misconstrued or criticized by the CRA,
so we ended our participation at that time. We have not for several years
carried out projects located on IDF land, and we continue to operate in
accordance with CRA regulations governing our status as a charitable
organization. We stopped these projects on the advice of counsel well before
this issue was brought to the public’s attention by a group trying to
sensationalize it.
• With regard to projects located in disputed
territory, JNF is committed to continuing to work with CRA to ensure we are in
full compliance.
• Finally, in terms of governance and
reporting, JNF operates in compliance with the Canada Income Tax Act. We have
Israeli staff on site to direct our projects in Israel and regularly report on
our activities.
Thank you for highlighting our work and for
acknowledging that “Israel is Israel, is large part, thanks to JNF.” We take
pride in having supported the building of water reservoirs, collaborated with
dozens of educational institutions, built numerous recreational/educational
facilities, planted millions of trees and supported pioneering research in
green technology. Key projects for this year include supporting a trauma centre
in Sderot, a project to feed Israel’s hungry, the rehabilitation of the Be’eri
and Kissufim forests, and more.
JNF’s management and lay leadership are
committed to improving our operations. For the past number of years, we have
been making changes to strengthen our governance and controls. What will not
change, however, is our commitment to helping build the foundations of Israel’s
future. We will always stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel to
benefit the social service and environmental fabric of the state of Israel.
Lance Davis is chief
executive officer of Jewish National Fund Canada.
The landmark synagogue before being
dynamited by Jordan’s Arab Legion in 1948. (photo from Wikipedia)
A cornerstone laying ceremony was held May 29,
2014, for the rebuilding of the Old City of Jerusalem’s Tiferet Yisrael
Synagogue, which was dedicated in 1872 and dynamited by Jordan’s Arab Legion in
1948.
Speaking nearly five years ago, then-Jerusalem
mayor Nir Barkat declared, “Today we lay the cornerstone of one of the
important symbols of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. The municipality
attaches great importance to the preservation and restoration of heritage sites
in Jerusalem, and we will continue to maintain the heritage of Israel in this
city.”
Citing Lamentations 5:21, Uri Ariel, housing
minister at the time, added, “We have triumphed in the laying of yet another
building block in the development of Jerusalem, a symbolic point in the vision
that continues to come true before our eyes: ‘Renew our days as of old.’”
The two politicians symbolically placed a stone
salvaged from the ruined building, and construction was supposed to take three
years, according to the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the
Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem Ltd. (JQDC), a public company under
the auspices of the Ministry of Construction and Housing.
Fast forward to Dec. 31, 2018, and the exercise
was repeated, this time with the participation of Jerusalem minister Zeev
Elkin, construction minister Yoav Galant, deputy health minister Yaakov Litzman
and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon. But, this time, according to the JQDC, much of
the project’s NIS 50 million (approximately $18 million Cdn) budget has been
secured, in part thanks to anonymous overseas donors. With the Israel
Antiquities Authority’s salvage dig of the Second Temple period site headed by
Oren Gutfeld completed, work can now begin in earnest.
Fundraising to purchase the land for the
Tiferet Yisrael, also known as the Nisan Bak shul, was initiated in 1839 by
Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn, Ukraine, (1797-1850) and his disciple Rabbi
Nisan Bak, also spelled Beck (1815-1889). While der Heiliger Ruzhiner
(Holy Ruzhyner), as his Chassidim called him, purchased the hilltop in 1843,
the mystic didn’t live to see construction begin.
A model of Tiferet Yisrael. (photo from Jerusalem Municipality)
His ambitious plans in Jerusalem reflected his
grandiose lifestyle in Sadhora, Bukovina, in Galicia’s Carpathian Mountains,
pronounced Sadagóra in Yiddish. There, he lived in a palace with splendid
furnishings, rode in a silver-handled carriage drawn by four white horses and,
with an entourage, dressed like a nobleman, wore a golden skullcap and clothing
with solid gold buttons, and was attended by servants in livery. This unusual
manner was accepted and even praised by many of his contemporaries, who
believed the Ruzhiner was elevating God’s glory through himself, the tzadik
(righteous one), and that the splendour was intended to express the derekh
hamalkhut (way of kingship) in the worship of God.
In one incident, described in David Assaf’s The
Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin (Stanford
University Press, 2002), the Ruzhiner’s Chassidim noticed that, notwithstanding
that their rebbe was wearing golden boots, he was leaving bloody footprints in
the snow. Only then did they realize that the gold was only a show and his
shoes had no soles. Indeed, he was walking barefoot in the snow.
Rabbis Friedman and Bak were motivated by a
desire to foil Czar Nicholas I’s ambitions to build a Russian Orthodox
monastery on the strategic site overlooking Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Bak
consulted with architect Martin Ivanovich Eppinger. (Eppinger also planned the
Russian Compound, the 68,000-square-metre fortress-like complex erected by the
Imperial Russian Orthodox Palestine Society west of the Jaffa Gate and outside
the Old City, after the czar was outmanoeuvred by the Chassidim.)
Bak, who both designed the massive synagogue
and served as its contractor, spent more than a decade fundraising and six
years building it. Inaugurated on Aug. 19, 1872, he named the three-storey
landmark in honour of his deceased rebbe.
According to a perhaps apocryphal story, the
quick-witted Bak was able to complete the ornate synagogue thanks to a donation
from Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. In 1869, while visiting Jerusalem
en route to dedicate the Suez Canal, the emperor asked his subjects who came
from Sadhora in the remote Austrian province of Bukovina why their synagogue
had no roof. (In 1842, having spent two years in Russian prisons on charges of
complicity in the murder of two Jewish informers, Rabbi Friedman fled to
Sadhora and reestablished his resplendent court.)
Seizing the moment, Bak replied, “Your majesty,
the synagogue has doffed its hat in your honour.” The kaiser, understanding the
royal fundraising pitch, responded, “How much will it cost me to have the
synagogue replace its hat?” and donated 1,000 francs to complete Tiferet
Yisrael’s dome, which was thereafter referred to by locals as “Franz Joseph’s
cap.”
Tamar Hayardeni, in “The Kaiser’s Cap”
(published in Segula magazine last year), wrote that, while the kaiser
made a donation, the dome was in fact completed with funds provided by Rabbi
Israel of Ruzhyn’s son, Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov of Sadhora (1820-1883).
In the winter and spring of 1948, the dome
served as a key Haganah military position and lookout point for the Jewish
Quarter’s outgunned defenders.
Children were recruited for the battle for
Tiferet Yisrael. Some as young as 9 built defence positions. The “older” ones –
12 or so – carried messages, food, weapons and ammunition. Some were killed,
including Grazia (Yaffa) Haroush, 16, and Nissim Gini, 9, who was the youngest
fallen fighter in the War of Independence. Like the others who fell in the
defence of the Jewish Quarter and were buried there, his remains were exhumed
after 1967 and reinterred on the Mount of Olives.
Badly damaged by heavy shelling, the synagogue
was blown up by Jordanian sappers on May 21, 1948. A few days later, following
the neighbourhood’s surrender on May 25, the nearby Hurva Synagogue – the main
sanctuary of Jerusalem’s mitnagdim (anti-Chassidic Ashkenazi followers
of the Vilna Gaon) – met the same fate.
With the rebuilding of the Hurva completed by
the JQDC in 2010, Tiferet Yisrael became the last major Old City synagogue
destroyed in 1948 not rebuilt.
Hurva is a stone-clad, concrete and steel
facsimile of its original structure, updated to today’s building code and
equipped with an elevator. The same is planned for Tiferet Yisrael.
The reconstruction of faux historic synagogues
has not been without critics. Writing in the Forward in 2007 as the
Hurva was rising, historian Gavriel Rosenfeld, co-editor of Beyond Berlin:
Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past (University of Michigan Press,
2008), noted the manifold links between architecture, politics and memory.
“The reconstruction of the Hurva seems to
reflect an emotional longing to undo the past. It has long been recognized that
efforts to restore ruins reflect a desire to forget the painful memories that
they elicit. Calls to rebuild the World Trade Centre towers as they were before
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks represent a clear (if unrealized) instance of this
yearning. And the recently completed reconstruction of Dresden’s famous
Frauenkirche – long a heap of rubble after being flattened by Allied bombers in
February 1945 – represents a notable example of translating this impulse into reality.
“And yet, the reconstruction project is
problematic, for in seeking to undo the verdict of the past, the project will
end up denying it. Denial is inherent in the restoration of ruins, as is
frequently shown by the arguments used to justify such projects. In Dresden,
for example, many supporters of the Frauenkirche’s restoration portrayed
themselves as the innocent inhabitants of a city that was unjustly bombed in
1945, thereby obscuring the city’s longtime support for the Nazi regime and its
war of aggression during the years of the Third Reich. Similarly, the physical
appearance of the restored Frauenkirche – despite its incorporation of some of
the original church’s visibly scorched stones – has effectively eliminated the
signs of the war that its ruin once vividly evoked.
“In the case of the Hurva,” writes Rosenfeld,
“the situation is somewhat different. If many Germans in Dresden emphasized
their status as victims to justify rebuilding their ruined church, the Israeli
campaign to reconstruct the Hurva will do precisely the opposite – namely,
obscure traces of their victimization. As long as the Hurva stood as a hulking
ruin, after all, it served as a reminder of Israeli suffering at the hands of
the Jordanians. [Mayor Teddy] Kollek said as much in 1991, when he noted: ‘It
is difficult to impress upon the world the degree of destruction the Jordanian
authorities visited upon synagogues in the Old City…. The Hurva remnants are
the clearest evidence we have today of that.’ Indeed, as a ruin, the Hurva served
the same kind of function as sites such as Masada and Yad Vashem – which, by
highlighting the tragedies of the Jewish past, helped to confirm the Israeli
state as the chief guarantor of the Jewish people’s future.
“At the same time, however, it seems the
Hurva’s existence as a ruin conflicted with the state of Israel’s Zionist
master narrative: the idea that, ultimately, heroic achievement triumphs over
helplessness. In fact, in the end, it may be the project’s ability to confirm
the national desire to control its own destiny that best explains its appeal.
Israel faces many intractable problems that make present-day life uncertain.
But, in the realm of architecture, Israelis can indulge in the illusion that
they can at least control and manipulate the past. In this sense, the Hurva’s
reconstruction may express deeper escapist fantasies in an unpredictable
present.”
Rosenfeld’s theorizing about architectural
authenticity made little impression on the JQDC chair, Moti Rinkov. Indeed the
JQDC, together with the Ben-Zvi Institute, recently published High Upon High,
in which 12 historians trace Tiferet Yisrael’s history. Rinkov noted at the
second cornerstone ceremony: “The renovation and restoration of the Tiferet
Yisrael Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter is one of the most important and
exciting projects I’ve taken part in. Rebuilding the synagogue is, in fact,
raising the Israeli flag in the Jewish Quarter. It’s truly a work where they’re
restoring the crown to its former glory and restoring glory to the Jewish
people.”
The rebuilt Tiferet Yisrael, together with the
Hurva, will engage Jerusalem’s skyline not as authentic landmarks but, as
Rosenfeld noted, “postmodern simulacrum.”
The other Tiferes Yisroel
In 1953, Rabbi Mordechai Shlomo Friedman, the
Boyaner Rebbe of New York, laid foundations for a new Ruzhiner Torah centre in
west Jerusalem to replace the destroyed Tiferet Yisrael. Located on the western
end of Malkhei Yisrael Street between the current Central Bus Station and
Geula, the downtown of the Charedi city, the Ruzhiner yeshivah, Mesivta Tiferes
Yisroel, was inaugurated in 1957 with the support of all of the Chassidic
rebbes descended from Friedman, who was the first and only Ruzhiner Rebbe.
However, his six sons and grandsons founded their own dynasties, collectively
known as the “House of Ruzhin.” These dynasties, which follow many of the
traditions of the Ruzhiner Rebbe, are Bohush, Boyan, Chortkov, Husiatyn,
Sadigura and Shtefanest. The founders of the Vizhnitz, Skver and Vasloi
Chassidic dynasties were related to the Ruzhiner Rebbe through his daughters.
A grand synagogue built adjacent to the new
Ruzhiner yeshivah also bears the name Tiferes Yisroel. The current Boyaner
Rebbe, Nachum Dov Brayer, leads his disciples from there. The design of the
synagogue includes a large white dome, reminiscent of the original Tiferet
Yisrael destroyed in 1948 and now being rebuilt.
Alice Shalvi, an Israeli professor and
educator, has played a leading role in progressive Jewish education for girls
and advancing the status of women in Israel. Her autobiography, Never a
Native (Halban Publishers, 2018), reads almost as a personal diary.
Otherwise, how could this 92-year-old recall the most minute details of her
life?
The youngest of two children, Shalvi was born
in Essen, Germany, to Benzion and Perl Margulies, religious Zionists who owned
a wholesale linen and housewares business. In 1933, soon after Hitler’s rise to
power in Germany, their home was searched, prompting her father’s move to
London, England. The rest of the family followed in May 1934.
In London, Shalvi’s father and brother imported
watches and jewelry. When the Blitz began, they temporarily moved to Aylesbury,
50 kilometres north of London.
In 1944, Shalvi studied English literature at
Cambridge University. In 1946, she was sent to the Zionist Congress in Basel as
a representative of British Jewish students and, in 1949, after completing a
degree in social work at the London School of Economics, she immigrated to
Israel, settling in Jerusalem. She became a faculty member in the English
department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and she earned her PhD there
in 1962.
In May 1950, Shalvi met Moshe Shelkowitz
(changed later to Shalvi), a recent immigrant from New York, whom she married
in October of that year. They had six children between 1952 and 1967; Moshe Shalvi
died in 2013.
The 25th issue of Nashim: A Journal of
Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues (fall 2003) was dedicated to Alice
Shalvi, “who made the dream of a journal devoted to Jewish women’s and gender
studies possible.” When the concept of Nashim was first presented to
her, the special issue notes that Shalvi greeted it not only with enthusiasm
but as an idea whose time had finally come – she and her friends, pioneers of
second-wave Jewish feminism, had raised it long before. “Subsequently, as rector
of the Schechter Institute (1997-2001), [Shalvi] added her voice to the
approval process for the issue’s first publication. She has remained on Nashim’s
editorial board ever since, contributing her wise and warm guidance on issues
of editorial and academic policy and herself serving as consulting editor for
our issue on Women, War and Peace.”
In an interview by Elana Maryules Sztokman for
the Lookstein Centre at Bar-Ilan University some years ago – after Shalvi had
been awarded the 2007 Israel Prize for life achievement – Shalvi commented: “I
felt that, through the work we had done on behalf of women, an enormous change
had occurred in the status of women, in the self-image of women, in the
self-assurance of women and, most importantly – because that’s what the prize
recognized – in the awareness of the importance and centrality of the subject
of the status of women in society at large.”
Shalvi spoke about the Pelech School for Girls
and the Israel Women’s Network. “The school has created a generation of young
modern Orthodox women who are changing that entire social system within modern
orthodoxy,” she said. “The other thing I’m proud of is the years at the
network, which saw the largest number of legislative changes and reforms in
women’s status because what I call the ‘alumnae’ of the network were so
prominent in the Knesset.”
In her autobiography, Shalvi emphasizes “that
it’s all about the home,” and acknowledges the impact her parents had on her.
“What I saw at home,” she writes, “was an open attitude, observance but
openness. My mother always used to set an extra place at the table on Shabbat
in case my father brought home a stranger from synagogue, as was the custom in
those days. And, in my family, I learned about tzedakah in the very best sense
– always a readiness to help others, not only from my father, who did it on a
both public and personal level, but also from my mother.
“The other thing I absorbed was Zionism. It was
a strongly Zionist household, and my father was very active in the religious
Zionist community. From very early on, I knew that I would come on aliyah one
day. I didn’t know when, but it was definitely there in the future.”
When asked to convey one message to the next
generation, Shalvi said, “Reach for the sky and don’t give up. Don’t ever give
up. Even if you know you’ll never attain what you’re reaching for, persist.
Keep at it. I like to quote Robert Browning’s ‘Andrea del Sarto’: ‘Aye, but a
man’s reach must exceed his grasp / Or what’s a heaven for.’ Keep on striving
because, even if you don’t attain that goal yourself, the chances are that, for
the next generation, it will be easier.”
Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and
food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language
Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher
cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman
Journalist in Israel.
Dr. William and Ruth Ross (photo from Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University)
Dr. William Hy Ross tears up talking about the
motivation behind his philanthropic activities in Israel. Sitting behind a desk
in his room at the medical clinic he runs, over which hangs a watercolour
painting of the Mount of Olives, Ross said it is because of the grandparents he
never met, both of whom died in the Holocaust. “If we had a state back then,
that wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I would have grandparents.”
Ross met with the Jewish Independent
last week to talk about the projects the Ross Foundation has undertaken in
Israel, projects aimed at lifting up the underprivileged on the fringes of
society there. He was accompanied by Sagie Shein, senior program manager of the
Jewish American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Shein has acted as
philanthropic advisor to Ross, and was recently made the fund manager of the
Ross Family Foundation, in which role, he told the JI, he identifies
projects that will achieve the foundation’s goals in Israel, whether through
JDC or otherwise.
Ross and Shein met after Rabbi Shmuel Birnham,
formerly of Congregation Har El, introduced Ross to Prof. Jack Habib of the
Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem. Shein has now been working with the
Ross foundation for six years.
Ross is a surgeon and a clinical professor of
ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia. In 2012, he established
the Morris and Sarah Ross International Fellowship in Vitreo-Retinal Surgery,
which funds the training of ophthalmologists from Israel, including, so far, 12
Israeli Jews, three Israeli Muslims and three Israeli Christians.
Also in 2012, he and his wife, Ruth,
established the Ross Family Scholarship Program for Advanced Studies in the
Helping Professions, which funds education for nurses and social workers
serving in the underserved peripheral communities of Israel. Their
contributions have gone to select students at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) and
they have been recognized as founders of the university, in honour of their
contributions. The Ross Foundation appears on the walls of BGU’s Marcus Campus
in Be’er Sheva.
In 2016, the Ross Foundation
extended its activity to another initiative –
the Project for the Advancement of Employment for Ethiopian Immigrants, which
supports the education of engineers, web developers and others.
“Israel is a fantastic success story,” said
Ross. “You hear about the start-up companies, etc., but there is a whole fringe
society who doesn’t have any of those advantages.”
Ross spoke to the JI about the
particular importance of supporting Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel.
“When they’re done serving in the army, they often end up in dead-end jobs,” he
said. “We are providing living expenses for them in a way that is a
game-changer, allowing them to get jobs as practical engineers and in other
needed industries.”
Ross and Shein explained that, even when given
support to pay for education, many underprivileged Israelis cannot afford to
stop working and go to school full-time. The Ross Foundation’s initiatives give
recipients a stipend that allows them to stop working and complete a course of
education. The foundation is also supporting other communities facing
challenges in the workplace, like Arabs and Charedim.
“JDC empowers all Israelis as a social
innovation incubator, developing pioneering social services in conjunction with
the Israeli government, local municipalities, nonprofits and other partners to
lift the lives of Israel’s children at risk, elderly, unemployed, and people
with disabilities,” Michael Geller, JDC’s director of media relations, told the
Independent.
Operating since 1914, JDC has provided “more
than $2 billion in social services and aid to date,” he said.
The JDC funds and organizes experimental
programs in the hope that the government will see their success and launch
similar efforts.
“We’re looking to pilot programs that can be
adopted by the Israeli government,” Ross said.
“In 2020,” added Shein, “the foundation is
expected to further expand its activities to additional programs based on the
foundation vision.”
“Hy and Ruthie Ross really get Israel,” said
David Berson, executive director of Canadian Associates of BGU for British
Columbia and Alberta. “They speak the language of social impact and they lead
by example. I am so impressed and moved by their understanding of the human
equation for social change. Great training, proper guidance and supportive
accompaniment can lead to gainful employment.
“As a social worker who trained and worked in
Israel with some of her significant social challenges for two decades years, I
know that Hy and Ruthie really understand the most critical needs of Israel. It
is also an honour for me to be able to partner with JDC Israel, one of Israel’s
most noteworthy agencies of real social mobility and empowerment for Israel’s
most at-risk populations.”
Ross summed up the strong belief that drives
his philanthropy in Israel simply: “I believe every Jew has an obligation to
support Israel in some way.”
Matthew Gindinis a freelance journalist, writer and
lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for
the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been
published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He
can be found on Medium and Twitter.
Gabriella Goliger’s Eva Salomon’s War is an intriguing novel. (photo by Ben Welland))
Award-winning Canadian author Gabriella Goliger has written Eva Salomon’s War (Bedazzled Ink Publishing, 2018), an intriguing novel set between the rise of the German Nazi state and the founding of the state of Israel – two complex historical phenomena whose aftershocks we are still experiencing. But, for Eva Salomon, those huge events are mainly engines moving her own story forward from timid German-Jewish adolescent to courageous Israeli young woman. The novel takes us through many intricacies of the competing historical strands that form the background of Eva’s life. Readers familiar with various bits and pieces of the history can connect the dots through her eyes.
Written as a first-person bildungsroman, the book opens as the Nazis close in on the Jews, who are wondering which of the many possible responses to embrace. Should they stay and resist? Stay, pray and keep their heads down? Should they emigrate, and, if so, where? Should they join the movement to build a Zionist workers’ state in Palestine? So many choices, so many unknowns, and so much peril attached to each decision.
Eva’s beloved older sister, Liesel, immigrates to a socialist kibbutz in the Galilee. Sixteen-year-old Eva and her embittered, widowed father migrate to Tel Aviv. We know what happens to the relatives who feel too old to make the trip.
The character of Eva is loosely based on Goliger’s own aunt. Letters between Eva and Liesel give us many illustrative details of Jewish life in Palestine in those years. In Breslau, they had enjoyed middle-class lives. In Palestine, they quickly have to learn working-class skills and they have to adapt to their shabby new realities among people with no time for pity or introspection.
Kibbutz life is physically harsh but relieved by the high level of ideological commitment between the comrades: “I sleep in a tent and the food is plain, but I never have to think about where my next meal is coming from. Everything is communal and allotted to me, down to my shoes and socks.” Eva flees the misery of life in her father’s tiny flat and finds a place to live with Malka, a Hungarian Jewish seamstress who helps her accommodate to her reduced circumstances.
Malka transforms Eva from a ragged miserable waif to a well-dressed young woman who can make her way in the vibrant, uncertain Jewish Palestinian world. Eva learns the meaning of “ein breirah” – no choice – a theme resonating not only throughout the novel but throughout the decades to the present day as one formative part of Israeli Jewish culture.
Eva finds work as an ozerit (cleaning lady) and starts putting together a life of sorts. She finds a music shop that affords her a bit of pleasure – “my refuge, my paradise” – phonograph records feeding her delight in classical music and her longing for romance. Fittingly, it is where she meets Constable Duncan Rees of His Majesty’s Palestine Police. Their romance encapsulates many conflicting layers of identity, culture, desire and belonging.
Throughout the novel, most of the characters are rent by doubts and competing loyalties. Only the fanatics of all stripes know certainty. The portrayal of Eva’s unbending Orthodox father, seemingly bereft of feeling for his wayward daughter, I found puzzling. We never see anything through his eyes, never understand his inner realities.
Eva is at war with her father, with all rigid religious and political belief systems, with her situation of loving the wrong person, and with her own competing claims of duty. Her personal war intersects with the fighting in Europe, the fighting between Arabs and Jews, the infighting between the various Zionist factions and, crucially, with the growing resistance to the British presence in Palestine.
Eva is a Jewish refugee. Duncan is charged with upholding British laws controlling Jewish immigrants. Despite the growing cultural-personal-political tensions, Eva enjoys their romance. She experiences pleasure and the delights of physical intimacy, which she keeps secret as much as possible. “The more he was my secret, the tighter, I felt, was our bond.” Their emotional intimacy is harder to sustain. One feels it can’t last and I wondered throughout how Goliger was going to handle it (no spoiler here).
The British White Paper on Palestine brings it all to a head. Tensions explode into violence all over the land, from many different directions, aimed at “traitors” to all the intersecting causes. For each faction, “we” are highly individuated and the others are an undifferentiated “they.” Eva, essentially an apolitical person, is helplessly caught up in the sectarian brutality.
One can’t help but read the novel through the prism of the tragic unfolding of events since 1948. Goliger vividly illustrates the human urgencies propelling Arabs and Jews in all directions, and the emotional realities behind all the ideologies.
Near the end, I was reminded of Anne Frank’s “In spite of everything, I still believe people are good at heart.” Eva reflects, “I believe a better world is dawning because … because ein breirah. I must.”
Deborah Yaffe lives in Victoria, where she formerly taught in the women’s studies department of the University of Victoria. An active secular Jewish feminist since reading Elana Dykewomon and Irena Klepfisz in the 1980s, she is grateful for the many Israeli individuals and organizations working against Jewish persecution of Arab Israelis and Palestinians.
Emanuel Lottem, left, and Sheldon Teitelbaum. (photo by Roni Sofer)
After four years of hard work, Sheldon Teitelbaum and Emanuel Lottem have completed the first instalment of Zion’s Fiction: A Treasure of Israeli Speculative Literature.
Today, Montreal-born Teitelbaum lives with his family in Los Angeles, but, before that, he lived in Israel for many years – starting with five years in the Israeli army, a period of service that included the 1982 Lebanon War.
“I lived to tell the tale and, when I came back, I received an offer from some local magazines and newspapers, including the Jewish Post & News [in Winnipeg], to write pieces for them, which I accepted, in addition to working on the night desk as a sub-editor,” Teitelbaum told the Independent.
Then, he was hired by the Weizmann Institute of Science as a writer, which he did for a couple of years before moving with his family to California. There, he began writing for the Los Angeles Times, as well as writing a number of articles for the New York Times, Wired, Entertainment Weekly and other publications, while also working at University of Southern California as a science writer.
About Zion’s Fiction, Teitelbaum said, “It is not a book of my stories. I have absolutely no apparent talent in writing stories. But, I have been involved in Israeli science fiction and have been reading it for 40 years. And, it occurred to me at a certain point that the local (Israeli) fiction had reached a level of confidence that merited the attention of the world. As a result, I called up my partner, Emanuel Lottem, who is Israel’s premier interpreter, translator actually, of science fiction … and, I Skyped him and said, ‘You know, I just want to lay down two words to you – Zion’s fiction.’ Apparently, his jaw dropped. It just says the whole story.”
Teitelbaum contacted science fiction grandmaster Robert Silverberg, who he has interviewed in the past, and pitched the idea. Silverberg was hooked and agreed to provide a foreword and to connect them with agent Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky Literary Agency in New York.
As it turned out, publishing houses were not interested and, if not for the last publishing house on their list, they would have had to wait even longer to see their idea in print.
Once they had a publishing house, next came the difficult task of determining what would go into the book.
“We actually had twice as many stories than we needed,” said Teitelbaum. “We decided to save them for the next volume. However, we had a book launching at the Israeli Science Fiction convention in September, and we met with the head of the Israeli Society for Fantasy and Science Fiction. In conjunction with them, we’d publish their newly released volume – a collection of the best of the best of the Geffen winners of the last 17 years.”
(The Geffen Awards are named after the late Amos Geffen, one of the first editors and translators of science fiction in Israel.)
“As you might know,” continued Teitelbaum, “translation is a hideously expensive engagement. And they were gracious enough to take on the initial translation with Emanuel, and I was ready to hunker down with the actual line editing.”
All 16 stories that were selected for the first volume of Zion’s Fiction have received positive reviews worldwide. They are very different from the kind of speculative fiction people read in the West, according to Teitelbaum.
For most Israelis, when it comes to science fiction, Teitelbaum said, “It’s a thing that’s extremely fragile – more fragile than you’d find anywhere else in the world … because, when Hezbollah bombs starts flying, everyone’s nose is to the ground … and there ain’t no room for the fantasy.
“Not to mention that Israel is situated at a crossroads fortress called Megiddo, which the Greeks gave the name Armageddon, which is a lodestone for apocalyptic worry and fretting all over the world … and especially in Israel, [where] nobody does a better job of trying to put off disaster by writing about it.”
The Israeli science fiction that is broadly popular is that which deals with near-future developments in society, with specific connections to what is going on politically.
In terms of readership, Teitelbaum feels Zion’s Fiction will appeal to academics, noting, “There are several Jewish studies programs in North America and Europe [interested]. As someone who volunteers at the local high school my kids went to, teaching science fiction as a course for senior English, I know that, if you want to get kids to read, this is one of the ways to do it.
“I also know that Introduction to Science Fiction in undergraduate classes has upwards of 600 people, and I’d hope this series would ultimately provide academics with a reason to fashion courses on the subject of the Israeli fantastique.”
Teitelbaum also thinks that Zion’s Fiction could serve as an excellent gift for anyone with a soft spot for Israel or an interest in Israeli writing, or for science fiction lovers wanting to explore a unique segment in the genre.
“Unlike American Jewish science fiction, which hits you over the head with issues of religion and intermarriage and, you know, all of the shtetl nonsense, Israeli science fiction is a lot more subtle,” said Teitelbaum. “It doesn’t deal with the Holocaust directly in most instances, although you can see that it’s an underlying theme.
“It takes place in the near future, rather than the far. It’s a little more realistic than you would find in American science fiction. It doesn’t concern itself with Jewish folklore from the old country. It wears its Israeliness easily. Its Israeli characters are identifiable as Israelis.”
Zion’s Fiction is widely available and has already been translated for sale in countries such as Japan, Korea and Russia, with interest expressed in Turkey and Germany. For more information, visit zionsfiction.com. To order the book, go to amazon.com.
There are many puzzling things about the book God is in the Crowd. It is published by a prominent Canadian publishing house (McClelland and Stewart) but was printed in the United States. It is written by an American-Israeli, Tal Keinan, who was the beneficiary of a first-class prep school education, Exeter, in New England, and was the recipient of an MBA from Harvard. His book is, in some ways, a hodgepodge of personal reminiscences of life in a broken family in America, encounters with various strands of American Judaism, and a passage to Israel, where he beat the odds and became a fighter pilot in the Israeli air force.
Keinan’s English prose style is exceptionally moving, literate and attractive. This is especially true in the section where he describes the rigours of his training and, later, in a discourse filled with self-reproach when he discovers that he has bombed the wrong target during an attack in Lebanon. The author’s thoughts on flying and his lyrical, almost poetical, style reminds this reviewer of French author Antoine de Saint Exupery’s book Night Flight, in which the rhapsody of flying is celebrated with fervour and a certain panache.
Among the many subjects that Keinan tackles in this strangely compelling personal journal is the current configuration of Israel’s population, which he sees as a tripartite collective composed of territorialists, theocrats and secularists. Although his predilection is for the third category, he has much to say about the religious origins of Israel and the Jewish people. In fact, he credits Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi with resuscitating Judaism after the destruction of the Great Temple of Jerusalem through his compilation of the Mishnah in the first century of the Common Era.
Because he finds the world Jewish community dangerously fragmented, and Israel unresponsive to smaller start-up enterprises, Keinan, who founded Koret, a fund for small businesses, and who is active in the Steinhardt Foundation (Birthright), proposes a very ambitious program to galvanize young Jews through, among other things, a vibrant Jewish summer camp experience, higher education in Jewish sources and a commitment to financial obligations to sustain these three essentials. His ideas are complex but he does provide extensive details to buttress his argument.
Those who look for logical and sequential ideas in this challenging book will be somewhat disappointed in its title, which claims that “God is in the crowd,” an idea the author promotes in ways that are not entirely clear despite the praise heaped on Keinan by six distinguished commentators whose views are on the back of the book jacket, as well as an endorsement on the front of the jacket by Lord Jonathan Sacks. This reviewer must have missed something in his reading of the chapters in which the author talks about “crowd wisdom.”
Based on an experiment to discern how many gum balls were displayed in a large glass container at one of his investment shows, Keinan suggests that the collective guesses were closer to the correct number than individual number choices and, from this observation, the author leaps into generalizations about how Jewish unity among Diaspora Jews was secured by “crowd wisdom,” no matter the geographical, religious or cultural disposition of the disparate communities. Keinan tends to annoy the reader by discoursing on this idea and then abruptly changing his agenda by addressing other concerns, and then returning to the “crowd wisdom” theme.
Despite the ambiguities in his discussion of “crowd wisdom,” Keinan has one section in this autobiographical memoir that merits high praise. During his service in the Israeli air force, the author developed a friendship and admiration for a fellow pilot – a secular kibbutznik who was a model for Keinan both in terms of aeronautics and moral compass. The friendship continued after their air force service and then, one day, years later, Keinan saw that his old buddy was wearing a kippah. Keinan writes with a heavy heart that the longtime friendship dwindled slowly and finally dissolved.
Arnold Agesis distinguished emeritus professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
The mikvah at Herodian, which was apparently built during the Second Temple period (530 BCE and 70 CE). (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
The Dark Ages weren’t given their name for nothing. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, sanitation virtually disappeared. During the Dark Ages – also referred to as the Middle Ages or the medieval period – few people bathed regularly. What did they do? Those who could, or were so inclined, covered up body odour with perfume.
Progress does not always move in a forward direction – the older, classical civilizations bathed far more than did medieval Europe. In the non-Jewish ancient world, the earliest unearthed bathing and plumbing systems date back nearly 6,000 years to the Indus River Valley, in today’s Pakistan. There, archeologists excavated copper water pipes from the ruins of a palace, as well as the remains of what appears to be a superbly constructed ritual bathing pool at Mohenjo-daro. And, in a find dating 3,000 years later, archeologists found a pottery pedestal tub on the island of Crete that measured five feet long.
By instituting a practice of daily bathing, the Romans improved the general level of sanitation. Baths, moreover, functioned not just to raise the level of hygiene, but also provided opportunities to socialize, to exercise, to read and, importantly, to conduct business. From 500 BCE until 455 CE, Roman public baths were common. Moreover, privately owned Roman baths were quite luxurious, often taking up a whole room. The comprehensive sewage system of the baths consisted of lead and bronze pipes and marble fixtures.
Now, note this contrast: until the 1800s, most water pipes in the United States consisted of no more than hollowed-out trees, and the first cast-iron pipes in the United States were imported from England. Only in 1848 was a U.S. plumbing code enacted, with the passage of the National Public Health Act. In 1883, both the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co. (now the American Standard Co.) and the Kohler Co. began adding enamel to cast-iron bathtubs to create a smooth interior surface. Kohler advertised its first claw foot tub as a “horse trough/hog scalder [which] when furnished with four legs will serve as a bathtub.” Kohler began mass-producing these tubs, as they were recognized as having a surface that was easy to clean, thus preventing the spread of bacteria and disease.
To give additional perspective, consider this finding: after the First World War, the United States experienced a construction boom, and bathrooms were fitted with a toilet, sink and bathtub – but, even in 1921, only one percent of American homes had indoor plumbing.
Since antiquity, Jews have maintained a relatively high level of sanitation, due in part to the prescribed hand-washing ritual before eating and to the religious practice surrounding the mikvah, or ritual bath. In Israel, the oldest discovered mikvah dates back to the Second Temple period, more than 2,000 years ago. In recent years, archeologists discovered Europe’s oldest mikvah – in Sicily’s ancient Syracuse, it goes back to the Byzantine period, or the fifth-century CE.
But two important questions need answering: how do we know bathing was so important and what is a mikvah? The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 57b, provides this insight: though anointing (oil) and bath (water) do not enter the body, the body benefits from them. Moreover, in Tractate Sanhedrin 17b, we learn that scholars were forbidden from residing in cities that did not have public baths.
Historically, municipalities often barred Jews from bathing in their rivers, and Christians blocked Jews from using public baths. Moreover, there was a fear that Jewish women might be molested in a general public bath. So, there was a need to construct separate facilities, and Jews built bathhouses, many with mikvot close by. Thus, Jews began to link the concept of the mikvah with physical hygiene.
Significantly, the mikvah was never a monthly substitute for a bath or shower. In fact, Jewish law calls for immersion only after one has bathed or showered. Oceans, rivers, wells and lakes, which get their water from springs, can usually serve as a mikvah. The common thread between these bodies of water is that they are natural sources. To traditional Jews, they are derived from G-d. As such, they have the ability to ritually purify.
A human-made mikvah must be built into the ground or built as an essential part of a building. There are two pools: one that contains collected rainwater and the other, the actual immersion pool, is drained and refilled regularly with tap water. The pools, however, share a common wall with a hole that permits the free flow of the water, so the immersion pool also receives rainwater.
When the Temples stood, the high priest immersed in the mikvah at prescribed times. But, today, when there is no Temple, for the Orthodox, the mikvah serves the following four functions: a woman uses the mikvah after menstruating and after giving birth; immersion in a mikvah marks the final step in converting to Judaism; before beginning to cook and eat from them, Jews use the mikvah to immerse new pots, dishes and utensils; and the mikvah is also used to prepare a Jew’s body before his or her burial. Men go to the mikvah before their wedding and before Yom Kippur, and many Chassidic men use the mikvah before each Shabbat and holiday.
Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The plague of Florence in 1348.” (photo from wellcomecollection.org)
It is speculated that up to 60% of the general European population died of the Black Death. There are no statistics as to how many Jews died of the plague, so it is hard to actually say that Jewish bathhouses or the Jewish practice of hand washing or other sanitation prescribed by Jewish law kept Jews safer than the general medieval public. Two points, however, may be stated with certainty:
In a number of instances, European Jews were blamed for the Black Death. As a consequence, beginning in November 1348 in Germany, Jews were massacred and expelled from their homes. In February 1349, 2,000 Strasbourg Jews were murdered. Six months later, Christians wiped out the Jews of Mainz and Cologne. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been eliminated.
Even today, comments on the subject need to be scrutinized for possible antisemitic motives.
As for today, in the Western world, there seems to be an obsessive amount of soap bars, soap liquids, no-soap cleaners, hand wipes and wet wipes. Can one over-clean? Yes.
In an interview with Global News earlier this year, Dr. Anatoli Freiman of the Toronto Dermatology Centre explained the negative consequences of excessive showering or bathing. “The skin can dry out,” he said. “But the message is, after the shower or bath, you need to pat yourself dry and moisturize to seal it.”
Prof. David Leffell, chief of dermatological surgery at Yale School of Medicine, gives these guidelines about keeping clean. “You don’t want to do the Lady Macbeth thing, where you’re scrubbing and scrubbing,” he told businessinsider.com. “The purpose of showering is to eliminate dirt.” This can be done, he explained, in less than a few minutes by focusing on the grimier parts of the body (armpits and groin) and not overdoing it with soap elsewhere. He advised using warm, not hot, water; aiming for a three-minute shower; and moisturizing while the skin is still damp.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Mattathias and the Apostate (1 Maccabees 2:1-25) in Gustave Doré’s English Bible 1866. The time has not yet come when we no longer need the warrior Maccabee. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Before the rebirth of the modern state of Israel and the unprecedented success of Jews in North America, Jews had very little to celebrate. After our triumphant Exodus from Egypt, it was more or less downhill and, in the competition between monotheistic faiths, we were always on the losing side. The God who chose us, to quote Woody Allen, was a consistent “underachiever,” at least when it came to looking after our interests.
One of the few exceptions in this tragic tale was Chanukah. For a moment, we won. Who we defeated and what we achieved are debated though. Were the Maccabees fighting a foreign, occupying force that wanted to deny the Jewish people their freedom and liberty, or was the war essentially a battle against Hellenization and assimilation? Was the miracle the military victory or a spiritual one? Before the 20th century, it didn’t really matter. We had won at something. Dayenu. The light of Chanukah illuminated the darkness that engulfed much of Jewish history, and gave hope that, one day, we would again prevail.
That hope came true in the 20th century, and both Israel and North American Judaism embraced Chanukah as the paradigm for their success. Each, however, tells a very different Chanukah tale and sees itself as combating a very different darkness.
Now, differences alone are not a problem, as long as they complement each other. In the case of Chanukah, however, these differences express a deep schism between Israel and North American Jewry. It is not hyperbolic to argue that, unless we learn how to share a Chanukah story, our shared enterprise and common identity are at risk.
In Israel, Chanukah is primarily a story of our military victory over an oppressive enemy that sought to destroy us. Zionists who wanted to re-form the Jewish psyche and heal it from its diasporic defeatism and powerlessness saw the foundation for the new Jew in the Maccabees of old – a Jew who was brave, a Jew who was willing to bear arms and, most significantly, a Jew who was victorious.
The Maccabean victory of the few over the many continues to serve as a dominant theme in Israeli discourse. In our experience, we continue to encounter forces of darkness who seek to destroy us. We are the light that they yearn to extinguish and, as we celebrate Chanukah, we recommit ourselves to the heroism and sacrifice that our survival requires and demands. If, in the past, our tradition commanded every Jew to see themselves as coming out of Egypt, in modern Israeli society, the demand is that every Jew commits himself or herself to being a modern Maccabee.
In North America, a very different Chanukah story is told. As paragons of religious tolerance, the United States and Canada have created an unprecedented environment for Jews to live and thrive as a powerful and beloved minority. There is no war of survival. Consequently, North American Jews have little personal use for the warrior Maccabee.
Through the North American lens, Chanukah celebrates the constitutional rights of all to religious freedom and to the fostering of religious tolerance. The war of the Maccabees was a battle against religious oppression, and the Maccabees were liberal warriors against the darkness of religious oppression and fundamentalism. Through the chanukiyah, which stands proudly side-by-side with the Christmas tree, Jews pledge to lead the fight to preserve the religious freedoms of liberal democratic life. The Chanukah light is the torch leading their way.
The beauty of religious symbols is that they have no inherent meaning, and the history on which they stand is but raw material to be molded by each generation and community in search of meaning and relevance. People in different times and circumstances will inevitably develop diverse understandings. The problem arises when these differences become expressions of value systems that are positioned as mutually exclusive.
A community is a collection of individuals who do not merely share common symbols. A strong and vibrant worldwide Jewish community is only possible if we share as well a set of common values. For North American and Israeli Jews to walk hand-in-hand, we cannot be alienated from each other’s values, but, quite to the contrary, we must respect and seek to embody them. In short, we must not only light the same candles, but strive to illuminate and overcome the same darkness.
Israelis must begin to fight against the darkness of religious intolerance. Religious freedom must be the foundation of Israel’s democracy, and Israelis must cease to vote primarily for the Maccabean leader who will lead us to victory against external foes, and instead seek a Maccabee who is devoted to creating a Jewish society where all forms of Judaism and all religions are supported and treated with equal respect. No North American Jew will in the long run have a relationship with Israel that does not strive to embody these values.
At the same time, the generation of North American Jews for whom the survival and power of Israel are a given, must learn to recognize and respect the real threats and dangers that their people in Israel experience every day. The time has not yet come when we no longer need the warrior Maccabee. While we share the same values of justice and peace, in the realities of the Middle East, their implementation is challenging at best. Israelis will not feel connected to a North American Jewry that does not appreciate the complexity of this reality.
As a people, we share the same Chanukah. To be a united people, we must learn how to share each other’s stories, share each other’s needs and values, and together fight to embody them in our lives.
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartmanis president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. This article was initially posted on the Times of Israel in 2015. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.
עמותת ידידות טורונטו תומכת בסטודנטים מהמגזר החרדי בישראל ומעניקה להם מלגות בשווי של עד שלושה עשר אלף ש”ח. המלגות מיועדות לסטודנטים חרדים בגילאי 20-40 שנמצאים בשנה הראשונה של התואר הראשון. תאריך הגשת הבקשות יסתיים ב-5 בחודש דצמבר, מספר המקומות מוגבל ואין צורך בשום פעילות חברתית התנדבותית לקבלת המלגה. התשובות יוענקו לסטודנטים שהגישו את הבקשות למלגות לפי מצבם הסוציו- אקונומי.
עמותת ידידות טורונטו עוזרת במלגות לסטודנטים חרדים כדי “ליצור אליטה אקדמית מקצועית רחבה באיכות ובכמות, התורמת רווחתה הכלכלית של החברה החרדית ולפיתוחה של הכלכלה הישראלית”. המלגות מיועדות לגברים ונשים המעוניינים לרכוש תואר אקדמי במוסדות המובילים להשכלה גבוהה בישראל. זאת כדי להעניק “מעטפת תמיכה וליווי במסלול הלימודים האקדמי, החל בשלבי ההכוונה ובחירת תחום הלימודים, ועד להשתלבות מיטבית בשוק התעסוקה”. תכנית החרדים באקדמיה פועלת ליצירת מסלולי לימודים ייחודיים ובעלי ישימות תעסוקתית גבוהה לחרדים.
תוכנית חרדים באקדמיה פועלת מזה שש שנים ובוגריה השתלבו בהצלחה בשוק התעסוקה המקומי. המלגות מיועדות לסטודנטים הלומדים בכל אחד מהמוסדות האקדמיים המוכרים בישראל (ומתוקצבים על ידי המוסדות להשכלה גבוהה). היקף המלגות נע בין ששת אלפים ש”ח ועד שלושה עשר אלף ש”ח. בין התנאים המקדימים להגשת הבקשות למלגות: על המועמדים להיות בגילאים המתאימים, להציג תחום הלימודים הנחשב לפורץ דרך (כמו חרדים לרפואה וחרדים לפסכולוגיה), עליהם להיות בעלי רצון ומוטיבציה גבוהה לקבל ליווי בתחום פיתוח הקריירה.
לפרוייקט תוכנית חרדים באקדמיה שותפים בין היתר: המשרד לפיתוח הפריפריה הנגב והגליל, אינטל, מבחר (מכללת בני ברק האקדמית), עמותת מרפא לנפש (מרכז סיוע ושיקום), אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה, המרכז האקדמי לב, האוניברסיטה הפתוחה, האוניברסיטה העברית וחברת מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות הישראלית (המתמחה בפיתוח ייצור של מוצרים ורכיבים למערכות תקשורת).
עמותת ידידות טורונטו (מיסודה של קרן פרידברג הקנדית) פועלת להעצמת אוכלוסיות מהפריפריה החברתית בישראל. תחומי העניין העיקריים של העמותה הם: ילדים, נוער וצעירים בסיכון, חילוץ מעוני של אוכלוסיות חלשות וטיפול רגשי, זהות יהודית, שיפור תדמית ישראל בעולם, חינוך, רווחה, בריאות ורפואה. העמותה מפקחת כיום על יותר ממאה ועשרים פרויקטים שונים.
קרן פרידברג עוסקת ברווחה ובצדקה ועזרה למי שנפגעו בעימותם צבאיים בישראל. ממשרדי הקרן ממוקמים ברחוב הביי שטורונטו – שם פועלת קבוצת פרידברג המתעסקת בתחום הפיננסי. את הקרן מפעילים ומנהלים אלברט פרידברג, ננסי פרידברג ויעקב פרידברג. הקרן תורמת ועוזרת לעשרות ארגונים ופרוייקטים שונים בקנדה ובישראל. סך הכל התרומות שלה נאמד ביותר מארבעים וארבעה מיליון דולר בשנה. כ-52 אחוז מהתמיכות מיועד פרוייקטים לרווחה, כ-41 אחוז לפרויקטים לחולים ונזקקים וכ-2 אחוזים לאזורי אסון.
חברת כריית המטבעות הדיגיטליים ביטפארמס מבקשת להיסחר בבורסת טורונטו
חברת כריית המטבעות הדיגיטליים הישראלית ביטפארמס הנסחרת בבורסת ת”א, מבקשת להיסחר גם בבורסה של טורונטו. בימים אלה הוגשה טיוטת תשקיף לנציבות ניירות הערך של מחוז אונטריו – במסגרת רישום מניית החברה למסחר בבורסה של טורונטו. ביטפארמס מעוניית לחשוף את פעילותה למשקיעים נוספים מחוץ לישראל, ובשלב זה טורונטו על הקו, לאחר שרישום מניית החברה למסחר בנסד”ק של ניו יורק לא צלח.
מנכ”ל ביטפארמס אומר: “קנדה נחשבת למובילה בתחום טכנולוגיית בלוקצ’יין וכן בנושא מטבעות דיגיטליים. אנו פועלים ומנוהלים מקנדה ולכן יש לנו יתרונות פוטנציאליים להיסחר בבורסה של טורונטו. הרישום בשתי הבורסות ת”א וטורונטו יכול להביא גם להפתחת דמי הניהול ושכר הטרחה, הנובעים מתפעול ודיווח בתחומי שיפוט שונים”.
