Israel – Page 83

Festival highlights diversity

Chef Michael Solomonov samples the wonders of the Levinsky Market in Tel Aviv. (photo from israelicuisinefilm.com)

The 28th Vancouver Jewish Film Festival starts next week. New this year is an all-ages weekend of films at Rothstein Theatre, which follows the Nov. 3-10 festival screenings at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Not new is the diverse selection of thought-provoking offerings.

With the festival opener, In Search of Israeli Cuisine, foodies will get their fix and then some. Guided by Michael Solomonov, the chef-owner of Philadelphia’s Zahav restaurant, the viewer is taken on a global food tour all within the confines of the tiny state of Israel.

Is there even an Israeli cuisine, the film asks. Yes, says food writer Janna Gur. “It’s perhaps a nascent cuisine, a baby cuisine, but a very precocious baby,” she says.

Israeli cuisine, Solomonov says, is made up of “traditions that were brought here and also that were born here.” He asks one market vendor how long he has had a spice shop. The reply: “Four hundred years.”

The food of Israel mirrors the history of the country, particularly its economy. In the years after independence, cuisine was defined by economical, modest recipes that incorporated the agricultural resources of the new state. In the 1980s, when the economy boomed, Israelis traveled more and wanted at home the kinds of flavors they found abroad.

Philosophically, Israeli food developed alongside the new identity the people were creating for themselves and their country. People were ashamed of the past and embarrassed by the foods of their parents. Israel’s “new Jew” was supposed to leave sad history behind and create a new post-galut civilization.

“In Israel, when you say Polish cooking, it’s another way of saying bland, boring, guilt-ridden kind of food,” says Gur.

Yet, the effort to abandon the past was both successful and, thankfully, unsuccessful. Tradition, in fact, integrates change through adaptive cookery. The centrality of Shabbat has defined Jewish and, therefore, Israeli cuisine, because of the necessity of developing recipes that can cook slowly for up to 16 hours. And, even though most Israelis are not religiously observant, Shabbat can still be a sacred family experience. One person explains that watching American TV, where families gather twice a year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, seems foreign, because every Jewish mother wants her daughters and sons with her every Shabbat.

Also unlike in most of North America, the film illustrates mouth-wateringly that a vegetarian in Israel can eat like royalty with endless options.

Politics also intervenes. During the Oslo peace process, Palestinian restaurants flourished in Israel. “Food makes peace,” says an Arab-Israeli chef. But there are also accusations of cultural appropriation.

“They often accuse us of stealing it,” chef Erez Komarovsky says of Israeli cuisine. But food knows no borders, he contends. “Food is not political. Food is what is grown on this land by the people who are living in it. If they are called Palestinians or Israelis, I don’t care. I don’t think the tomato cares.”

“Israeli salad is actually Arabic salad,” Gur admits. “What makes it Israeli is the way we use it.” That means eating it three meals a day and, for instance, stuffing it in pita with schnitzel.

The evidence about what defines Israeli cuisine is not entirely conclusive. Though Komarovsky claims to know.

“The essence of the Israeli taste is lemon juice, olive oil and the liquids from the vegetables,” he says. “And this is the taste that you miss after two or three days when you go abroad.”

– PJ

Liberation after the Holocaust was not unalloyed joy. It was complex, emotional terrain that involved coming to terms with the reality of the extent of the destruction of European Jewish civilization, individual family members and entire communities. This mix of emotions is clearly shown in Magnus Gertten’s documentary Every Face Has a Name.

photo - Hinda Jakubowicz stepping off the ferry in Malmö on April 28, 1945 — Hinda Jakubowicz stepping off the ferry in Malmö on April 28, 1945. (photo from everyfacehasaname.com)

Gertten took a film that was shot of arrivals to Malmo, Sweden, on April 28, 1945, and obtained the list of 1,948 passengers who arrived that day. Then he set out to put names to faces.

Elsie Ragusin was an Italian-American New York girl visiting her grandparents in Italy when the war began and they could not return home. When the Nazis occupied Italy, she and her father were arrested as spies and she became, as she says, the only American girl in Auschwitz.

She looks at her face on the film and says: “There, I’m thinking: ‘Can this be true?’” The smiling people handing out food seemed unreal to her. No one had smiled at them in the camps.

Gertten, a Swede, was moved to make the film when he saw parallels with the faces in footage of refugees arriving in Europe today. “Who are they?” he asks.

Fredzia Marmur, now of Toronto, sees herself on film, at age 9, wearing the same cloth coat she wore when her family left the Lodz ghetto. “There I am again,” she says of a little girl beaming into the camera.

The other women in the screen were together with her in Ravensbruck and, while Marmur admits she didn’t know what was happening, she took a cue from those around her. “I saw that everybody seemed happy, so I decided to be happy too,” she says.

Siblings Bernhard Kempler and Anita Lobel, 8 and 10 in 1995, try to reconstruct their thoughts at the time. Bernhard survived dressed as a girl and the pair stuck together, avoiding all others through their time in hiding and at Ravensbruck.

“It looks to me like I’m somewhere between happy and frightened,” says Bernhard. “A mixture of hope, a mixture of relief, a mixture of ‘Can I trust this?’ and some fear.”

He recalls his reunion with his parents. He was in hospital and the staff gathered around to watch what they expected to be a joyful scene. It wasn’t. His response, he recalls of meeting his parents after years of separation was, “Who are these people?” He suspects his parents wondered, “Who is this child?”

“I didn’t know who I was for a long time after that,” he says.

The film intersperses images from 1945 with those of present-day refugees arriving (some alive, some dead) in Sicily. A small but disturbing 1945 scene is ostensibly happy – women receiving clothes in Sweden – but the camera shows their nakedness, as if, even on liberation, their right to privacy was not granted.

People couldn’t always tell who they were seeing in the film. Judith Popinsky recognized four of the five young women who formed her surrogate family in Auschwitz after their families were murdered on arrival there. Only after some self-convincing did she determine that the fifth woman must be her.

“You encountered so many nameless faces throughout that period in time,” she says. “No one remembers them anymore. They lived anonymously. They were buried anonymously. At least now some of them have their names restored.”

– PJ

In One Rock Three Religions, the rock in question represents the city of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount – which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif – is the literal rock, where the two historical Jewish temples existed and where al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock now stand. The film captures the glory of diversity and the tragedy of division that coexist in the holy city.

photo - Dome of the Rock is indivisible from a human – versus political – perspective — Dome of the Rock is indivisible from a human – versus political – perspective. *(photo from facebook.com/onerockthreereligions)*

Divisibility in a political sense has been mooted several times. The 1947 Partition Resolution saw a Jerusalem under international governance. The city was divided, from 1948 until 1967, with East Jerusalem under Jordanian occupation and West Jerusalem in Israel. However, Kanan Makiya, author of The Rock, insists that, from a human standpoint, it cannot be separated. “How do you cut a rock?” he asks. “Jerusalem belongs to more than one faith. No one person, no one faith can claim it.”

When the Temple Mount was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, some soldiers raised an Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock. Gen. Moshe Dayan ordered it taken down and handed the keys to the Wakf, the Muslim religious authority. This was both a symbolic and a practical decision, particularly in contrast with the exclusion experienced from 1948 to 1967, when Jews were forbidden from the holiest Jewish sites.

The documentary focuses on the contending claims and assertions of rights. The founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council says he has not seen Jerusalem because he will not stop at checkpoints and be searched “by soldiers that I consider occupiers.”

Some religious Jews say that, because the Temple existed where al-Aqsa Mosque now stands, they should be able to pray there as well as at the Western Wall. A Palestinian diplomat calls this a provocation.

Former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold contends that Palestinian and other Arab leaders frequently incite their followers with allegations that Israel is attempting to undermine or destroy the mosque and its environs. And the film features the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations repeating the incendiary falsehood that the Jews are trying to build the Third Temple in the place of the Dome of the Rock. Some Muslims are quoted denying any Jewish connection to the location.

This sort of denial, recently codified by UNESCO in a resolution that erases Jewish and Christian historical ties to the holy site, is evidence that strength through diversity in a place of such importance is often more wishful thinking than reality.

– PJ

photo - AKA Nadia is far more complex and compelling than you might first assume — AKA Nadia is far more complex and compelling than you might first assume. *(photo from 2teamproductions.com)*

When you read the sentence-long review of AKA Nadia on some sites – “A happily married mother of two seems to have the perfect life, until her hidden past comes to light” – you make a few assumptions. Namely, that the two-hour film is a fairly fast-moving tale of deception and drama. The opening scenes, in which a host of events happens, back this up: lively protagonist Nadia (Netta Shpigelman), a young Arab girl, graduates school in Jerusalem and secretly marries her lover, a PLO activist; they move to England where, fairly quickly, he’s caught by the authorities and she’s left alone, branded a terrorist and with no easy way of returning to Israel.

It’s not until half an hour in that the movie reveals its style – thoughtful and slow-moving, far more complex and compelling than you might first assume. When we were first introduced to Nadia, it was in East Jerusalem in 1987. We’re now reacquainted with her 20 years later, in the city’s west. Having fled England, thanks to a young Jewish woman’s passport, she’s completely (and secretly) rebuilt her life, as a Jew called Maya. And this is where the movie focuses the bulk of its time, perhaps too much time, on her new roles: successful dance choreographer, mother of two and wife to a Jewish official at the Ministry of Justice.

It’s only to be expected that this pleasant middle-class family life shatters when her past catches up with her. And every aspect of the subsequent relationship breakdown is well-acted and artistically produced. You feel for both husband and wife, and of, course, you’re forced to think of the bigger picture, too – religious identity in Israel and the ramifications of being Jewish versus Arab. Even after the movie ends – which it does a little abruptly – you’ll be left contemplating these issues for days.

– RS

My Home doesn’t shy away from its aim: showing how much minorities in Israel are typecast. It starts by stating that minorities (mostly Muslims, Christians, Bedouins and Druze) make up 20% of the population, but are often viewed by the outside world as all being Arabs who resent the Israeli “occupation” and the Jewish “apartheid state.” To show this is far from the case, the documentary follows the work of four people, one from each of the minority groups listed above.

photo - A scene from My Home, in which Muhamed Kabiya undergoes an ID check in Jerusalem — A scene from My Home, in which Muhamed Kabiya undergoes an ID check in Jerusalem. *(photo from ruthfilms.com)*

The result is a slightly disjointed, but incredibly interesting portrayal of people who are all different, but united in their bravery. There’s a Greek Orthodox priest and a Lebanese Christian, both promoting integration by “others” into Israeli society. But the two people who really resonate are Wafa Hussein, a Muslim Zionist and school teacher preaching acceptance of all ethnicities, and Mohammad Ka’abiya, an Israeli Bedouin who prepares Bedouin teenagers in his village for Israel Defence Forces service, having served himself.

The latter two have been labeled traitors by their communities because of their activism, but persist in striving for coexistence. And this is an aspect of the documentary that must be applauded – there is no sugar-coating the discrimination minorities face: “as an Arab, you wake up in the morning and tell yourself, ‘I have a lot to deal with today.’” But, the film ultimately is a heartening look at the complexities, both good and bad, of calling Israel “home.”

– RS

For tickets to the festival, visit vjff.org or call 604-266-0245.

Rebecca Shapiro is associate editor of vivalifestyleandtravel.com, a travel blogger at thethoughtfultraveller.com and a freelance journalist published in Elle Canada, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and more.

Young leaders arrive

Left to right are shinshiniot Yael Miller, Dana Salmon, Shahaf Shama and Danielle Favel. (photo by Michelle Dodek)

For the second year in a row, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver is providing our community with a burst of ahavat Yisrael, love for Israel. The shinshiniot – who are doing sh’nat sherut, community service, locally – are back. While there were three young women participating last year, this year’s enthusiastic group numbers four.

The shinshiniot program is part of Gesher Chai (Living Bridge), which Jewish federations across North America use to form person-to-person relationships between young Israelis and Diaspora youth. Based on the first run, Lissa Weinberger, manager of Jewish education and identity initiatives and the woman dealing primarily with this program, said, “We have changed a number of things this year based on our observations and experiences. It seems like putting the girls in pairs in their volunteer assignments is a really good idea.”

After a period of adjustment and integration into the community, the shinshiniot were paired off in mid-September. Danielle (Dani) Favel and Shahaf Shama work together during the weekdays in three community organizations: the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, King David High School and Richmond Jewish Day School. Vancouver Talmud Torah takes up most of the time of the other two shinshiniot, Dana Salmon and Yael Miller.

On weekends, Beth Tikvah Congregation will have Shama, Salmon will help at Congregation Beth Israel and Miller and Favel will team up at Temple Sholom. Last summer, the shinshiniot divided between the region’s summer camps and the JCC’s Camp Shalom. Where they will be placed this summer has not yet been determined.

The shinshiniot bring with them experiences from their diverse family backgrounds and the different parts of Israel in which they live.

Salmon is from Ma’ale Adumim, a suburb of Jerusalem and has a family from Iran, Syria and Iraq. Shama’s family is also Mizrahi, with a little North African added; she grew up with her three siblings on Kibbutz HaZore’a near Haifa.

Miller and Favel are both of Ashkenazi descent, but with very different roots. Miller, who hails from Modi’in – the historical base of the Maccabees in the Chanukah story – was raised attending a Reform synagogue, a rarity in Israel. Favel’s parents both made aliyah because of their devotion to the Habonim Dror youth movement, one parent from Scotland and the other from Australia; she grew up on a small kibbutz called Kadarim with a view of the Kinneret.

The creativity and energy this group brings to their tasks are palpable. Although they are stationed in certain locations for the bulk of their volunteer work here, there will be community-wide events on which they will collaborate. Most notably, events around Lag b’Omer, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut. They also have individual passions they hope to be able to share with young people here.

“I would like to start some musical bands,” said Salmon. “I play the guitar and sing and would love to share Israeli music with people in Vancouver.”

Favel has musical aspirations as well. “I’ve been singing in a choir since I was 9,” she said. “I’d love to start a choir here that would sing Israeli songs.”

Miller has hopes of starting a teen pen-pal program, replacing the pens with computers, of course, while Shama hopes to marry her love of cooking and dressing up with her North African roots. “I want to bring [my experience of] the tradition of Mimuna to Vancouver,” said Shama. “The food, the traditional dress, the incredible celebration is something I would like to share.”

Not only do the shinshiniot share with the students and young people with whom they are volunteering, but also with the host families who welcome them into their homes. Shama started sharing her enthusiasm and talent for cooking immediately, said her “host mother,” Jennifer Shecter-Balin.

“This is our second time hosting a shinshinit and we really like it,” said Jackson Balin, 10. “You get a nice fun person from Israel living with you for three months. I like the culture and they teach you, you teach them.”

Balin said Shama makes Israeli salad for the family every evening and has made other delicious Israeli dishes as well.

Other ways in which the shinshiniot are contributing to our community are by providing Israeli dancing and cooking classes, and conversational Hebrew for youths who usually only get to speak Hebrew at home with their parents. The fact that they are recent high school graduates is a bonus for their ability to connect with local teens.

“Shinshiniot coming here enhances our experience, builds relationships and understanding for our kids, and it has an impact in our community and theirs back in Israel when they return,” said Federation chief executive officer Ezra Shanken.

Federation is still looking to fill some of the host family spots: if interested, contact Weinberger at [email protected] or 604-257-5104. For more information on the program or to contribute to Federation’s annual campaign, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Michelle Dodek is a Vancouver-based freelance writer whose 10-year-old son Max helped interview the shinshiniot. Having hosted one last year, he very much looks forward to hosting one soon.

The process of integration

Dr. Solly Dreman (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

With the large numbers of refugees and immigrants making their way to Winnipeg and elsewhere in Canada, Winnipeg Friends of Israel invited Dr. Solly Dreman, a Winnipegger who moved to Israel in 1964, to speak on the topic.

In the Sept. 19 lecture at the Asper Jewish Community Campus, Dreman drew from his own experience and expertise, using the work he did, along with colleague Dr. Ava Shinar, on immigration in the 1990s to illustrate an optimal way of integrating immigrants into Israeli society, which could be applied to other countries.

“I did the workshop with her over a decade ago, but the implications are certainly relevant to the contemporary problems occurring in the world today, and to immigrant and refugee populations all over the world,” said Dreman.

“Immigration is widely recognized as a stressful event which increases psychological vulnerability,” he explained. “Researchers have noted that adolescent immigrants … we know that many terrorists are in that age group … constitute an extremely high-risk population. In adolescence and late adolescence, there’s a need to cope with profound physical, psychological and social transformations. And, in those adolescents who have become immigrants and [are] in a strange and often unwelcoming environment, the uprootedness and difficulties in establishing a solid base of identity and meaning could have disastrous results. Indeed, the violence evident today in such places like Paris, Nice, Brussels, Orlando, San Bernardino, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, testifies to this. Youth confronted with a strange environment and difficult economic conditions, as well as lack of purposefulness in their lives, often latch onto causes and groups that implement terrorism and violence in the international community.”

Dreman also discussed other issues.

“In the 1990s,” he said, “with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a mass exodus of over a million Soviet Jews to Israel. Soviet students comprised about 10% of the student body at Ben-Gurion University. They were competing for limited resources, such as dormitory space, scholarships and, eventually, opportunities for employment.

“There were many negative stereotypes and attitudes prevailing between the native Sabra students, who were born in Israel, and their Soviet counterparts. As far as the stereotypes that Israelis had toward the Russians, well, they often viewed them as manipulative, clannish and corrupt … while the Russian students perceived the Israelis as loud, aggressive and uncouth.

“The Russians, in that first year of the workshop, we also heard some terrible things they had to say about the Ethiopians, referring to them as subhuman, subspecies, monkey-like, etc.”

With the extreme alienation between Sabras and the immigrant students – to the point of outright violence and fist fights – Dreman needed to find ways of reducing tensions and bringing understanding, cooperation and solidarity between the groups.

He said it was important to create an atmosphere where each group could participate in an evolving melting-pot culture, where each side would begin to listen to and understand the other. As such, he and Shinar created a two-credit academic course that eventually became a four-credit, year-long course because of its popularity.

“So, students were given an award for their participation and for completing course assignments,” said Dreman.

He explained, “The syllabus described it as being designed to help students learn about their family and individual transitions in the face of such phenomena as birth, adolescence, illness in the family, divorce and death … but with a particular emphasis on aliyah immigration.”

Normative aspects of immigration and transition were discussed in an academic context, so participants could then discuss their own experiences in a non-threatening atmosphere and place those experiences in an appropriate context, in an effort toward understanding what they themselves were going through.

At first, due to the Israelis’ fluency in Hebrew and the Russians’ more reserved manner, the Sabras monopolized the class. But, after a few sessions and with a little prompting, the Russians became much more comfortable and vocal.

“What we wanted to do was create an evolving identity,” said Dreman. “Emphasis was placed on joining the new culture, but space should be provided for the immigrant representatives to give expression to their culture of origin, needs and expectations. On the educational level, awareness workshops should be introduced in citizenship classes in elementary schools, high schools and colleges. It is also critical that government and volunteer groups work together to help promote immigrant absorption.”

Dreman recognizes that the work they did in Israel had many atypical factors working in its favor, but said the attitude of creating a type of melting pot should yield a good result in most cases. As well, while the workshops had some factors going for them, like participants with a common Jewish identity, working with young adults (18-to-24-year-olds) posed challenges that are less common with older immigrants, such as extremism and radicalization.

Dreman wanted to be very clear in differentiating between immigrant and refugee populations, noting the difference “between immigrants who want to immigrate and refugees who are exiled and may not necessarily want to.

“The purpose of our workshop was to make the hosts and the new immigrants understand where the other person is coming from, to create a merging of cultures and understanding in order to ease the process of assimilation,” he said. “I think the beautiful thing is that it was based on reciprocity. It was very successful. In the workshop, at the beginning, people hated each other. At the end, almost all had befriended people from the other group.

“If people knew that the immigrants had a real desire to be part of the hosts’ community, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for mutual understanding,” he added.

According to Dreman, the setting also plays a significant role. “In one of the projects we did, we sent kids out in one of the groups to interview Israelis – native Israelis – concerning their attitudes towards Russians. We sent them to a marketplace, a competitive marketplace with pedlars. And, another group, we sent to interview Israelis in Dizengoff Centre, which is upper-class…. How did the native Israelis describe the Russians in the marketplace? ‘Swindlers, crooks, gamblers, prostitutes, bastards.’ What about in the centre? They described them as ‘wonderful, contributing to the nation,’ and so on.

“In Europe and North America, if somehow they could take select groups of people who host immigrants and let them have that encounter and spread the gospel – ‘Hey, they aren’t that bad,’ that sort of thing – there is no reason it would not be successful.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Whose holy site?

When organizers of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival select the films they will screen, timeliness is probably among the considerations. They could hardly have known they would hit the nail on the head so perfectly with One Rock Three Religions. The film explores the contending claims for the world’s most in-demand religious real estate: that which Jews call the Temple Mount.

The site of the First and Second Temples, the latter destroyed by the Romans after 70 CE, is also the location of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, holy sites for Muslims. The Western Wall, adjacent to the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, is the holiest site on earth for the Jewish people. The Temple Mount also holds significance for Christians. This is not breaking news.

But the 58-member executive board of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, earlier this month passed a resolution – with 24 countries in favor, 32 against or abstaining and two absent – that uses language that exclusively recognizes the Muslim history of the area, implicitly erasing Jewish and Christian claims to the space. (Canada is not part of the board.)

Denying Jewish claims to the Temple Mount is not breaking news, either. This form of historical erasure has been going on for decades.

In the film, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles and a rabbi emeritus of Vancouver’s Schara Tzedeck, notes that the supreme Muslim authority in Jerusalem published for decades a visitor’s guide to the site. From 1924 until 1953, the guidebook made clear that the location was indisputably the site of Jewish temples. The 1954 iteration of the guide omitted the Jewish connection to the holy place for the first time. Some Arab and Palestinian figures, including Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, have made it their business to deny the historical and archeological truth ever since. The denial of a Jewish connection to Jerusalem has come to coexist with the denial of Jews to a right to self-determination in our unceded ancestral territory, as part of a global phenomenon of denying Jewish history.

It may be naïve to get on our high horses and pretend that UNESCO’s appalling denial of Jewish (and Christian) connections to the Temple Mount is some new low in global attitudes toward Israel. This is nonsense, certainly, but only on a continuum of nonsense that defines the anti-Israel movement globally.

We can take some solace in the fact that the vote was not passed by a majority. As well, on the positive side, this “theatre of the absurd,” as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called it, at least forced the hands of a few leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who promised to find out why his country’s representative abstained from the vote. Even UNESCO’s own director-general, Irina Bokova, said: “Jerusalem is the sacred city of the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.… To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.”

In the end, it all amounts to bubkes for Israel. Israel will continue to provide, as the VJFF film demonstrated, access to all religious sites for all peoples, to say nothing of continuing to be the educational, scientific and cultural exemplar it is. If only UNESCO contributed as much.

Determination key to continuity

“The power above is set in motion by the impulse from below, even as vapor ascends to form the cloud. If the community of Israel did not first give the impulse, the One above would not move to meet her, for yearning below makes completion above.” – Zohar, Genesis 35a

I have always believed the secret of Jewish survival is exemplified in the life of my grandmother, of blessed memory, who I never met. She died when my mother – the second youngest of 11 children – was only 7 years old. Young as she was, my mother, Sarah Rebecca Opas, never forgot her mother, or the spirit of Yiddishkeit she left behind.

My grandmother’s name was Mila and she was betrothed to my grandfather David from the age of 3, when her parents in Plotsk, Poland, called her in from playing to tell her that, when she grew up, she was to marry the little boy next door. This was back in the early 1800s when betrothals were arranged by parents as a matter of course.

It was the time of pogroms in Europe and, when he reached the age of 17, David informed his parents he was leaving for the New World and had secured a job on a ship. “What about Mila?” he was asked. “I will send for her when I get settled,” he assured them. “No you won’t, you’ll take her with you.” So, Mila, then 16, and David were married by the rabbi before sailing to the New World, which David believed to be America, but was in fact Australia.

The ship took six months to reach Port Adelaide in Australia. David was hired to be a handy man on the vessel, and his first job was to look after the food. As there was no refrigeration then, the whole supply of meat was lowered on cables into the ocean, where the salt water would preserve it. However, he failed to secure it properly, and it all sank to the bottom of the sea – no meat for the crew for the entire trip. His next job on board was to sew any sails that had been torn in the strong winds. He had no idea how to sew, so his young wife did it for him, as well as keeping the captain and crew’s clothing repaired.

Before they reached Australian shores, Mila was already expecting her first child.

Both having come from Orthodox homes, it was a terrible shock to them when they landed. No synagogues, no kosher butchers, no established Jewish communities. They settled in a little country town, Bombala, near the border between Victoria and New South Wales. David opened a store to provide fodder and dry goods to the farmers in the surrounding districts and, gradually, as they learned English, the business prospered enough to give the family a comfortable lifestyle.

But Mila’s heart was always sad, because she did not know how to keep her family Jewish, as there were no other Jews for them to meet and marry. So, she made a plan.

Mila had heard that there was a small Jewish community in the city of Sydney. As each of her older children turned 18, she would travel to Sydney and stay there until she found a Jewish boy or girl willing to go back with her to Bombala and marry one of her children, sight unseen. Her love of her Jewish heritage was such that achieving this became the most important part of her life, and she was amazingly successful. Of the 11 children, only one of them married a non-Jew; there were no divorces. Sadly, Mila died of scarlet fever still relatively young, before the penicillin was invented that would have saved her life.

My mother and her little brother were raised by their older sisters, who by then were all married. They never let her forget her mother and the importance of remaining Jewish even in near-impossible situations where Jewish rituals are almost nonexistent.

In retelling my grandmother’s story to me so many years later, my mother always stressed that the Jewish soul is unquenchable. No matter how far one strays from observance, the spark remains and it is something precious that must be cherished and passed on from generation to generation. By making my home in Israel, becoming an observant Jewish woman, and being blessed with 18 Israeli grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren here, I hope my mother and grandmother can be at rest.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

Women mentoring women

Woman2Woman co-founders, from left, Efrat Dayagi, Keren Herscovici and Noya Lempert. (photo from Woman2Woman via israel21c.org)

Israeli actress Gal Gadot may be Wonder Woman on the big screen but Keren Herscovici, Noya Lempert and Efrat Dayagi – the initiators of a program for advancing women in prominent positions in their careers – are the true wonder women of Israel. They started Woman2Woman to help young women in top decision-making positions advance in their careers (in all fields) with some guidance from mentors who have already been there and succeeded.

“A number of times in my life, I’ve felt that I’m really in need of a mentor, and that’s what our initiative is geared toward, answering this need,” said Dayagi, a lawyer. “You can’t just cold-call someone and say, ‘So-and-so told me to call you for advice.’ I’ve sought something like this program and I would have loved a connection like this with a mentor.”

Herscovici, Lempert and Dayagi say theirs is different from other female empowerment initiatives because they don’t see women as underdogs.

“We’re not coming from the stereotypical place where women need help because they are in a lower place,” said Lempert, a doctoral student in clinical psychology. “We’re coming from a place where women have a ton of potential and we want to help them take that potential as far as possible; not from weakness but from a place of strength.”

“Ideally, there shouldn’t be a glass ceiling but, in reality, there is. The ceiling still exists. So, as long as it is there, we need to talk about it,” the women said, finishing off one another’s sentences.

Herscovici, Lempert and Dayagi are graduates of Unit 8200, the Israel Defence Forces’ signal intelligence division, known for producing an unprecedented number of startup entrepreneurs, as well as alumni with problem-solving, leadership and top managerial skills. They saw that, although women comprise half the soldiers in the unit, as 8200 alumni progress in their civilian careers, fewer women are staying in the lead. Since each member of the trio is moving full steam ahead on her individual career path, they wanted to know why other women – including those who were officers in the army – were stalling before reaching their destination.

They said they found that even the most talented woman can stumble on self-planted obstacles.

“There are many factors that can hold a woman back – family, society, discrimination – but we found one of the main reasons is they don’t believe in themselves,” said Dayagi. “There are many women who have amazing potential but feel their womanhood is stopping them from reaching the top of their game. If we know that we have the potential to succeed – and not belittle ourselves with, ‘But I’m a mom’ or ‘I’m a woman,’ or compare ourselves to men by saying, ‘Well, I’m a woman, I won’t get that position’ – then there’s no reason not to succeed.”

“We want to take the young women who are just setting out and to make sure that they continue on the path of leadership and success. We connect them with women who have already progressed a long way,” added Herscovici, a master’s student in operations research.

The program matches a young woman at the beginning of her career with a mentor in a senior position in her chosen field of expertise and sets up one-on-one sessions and group meetings.

The first four-month mentorship program, which concluded in August, accepted 20 of the 80 23-to-33-year-old applicants coming out of Unit 8200. Among the many volunteer mentors were former Treasury director-general Yael Andorn, manager of Kodak Israel Einav Aharoni-Yones and global head of human resources at Amdocs Karmit Shilo. The second program will be open to all success-minded women, not just those who have served in Unit 8200.

“We’re not aiming to change the world – we want to change how women see themselves and their worth,” said Dayagi. “We want women to embrace the idea that they can succeed in any industry.”

Herscovici said the programs are part of a bigger overall goal. “Our mission is to have an influence on the future,” she said. “We are among the few to offer personal, woman-to-woman mentors. We also have a variety of careers, not just high-tech and not just entrepreneurship, but different fields such as financing, law, science and others. We want to create a professional network of women mentors.”

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

New Safdie-designed campus

Israel Antiquities Authority’s new 36,000-square-metre, three-level National Campus for Archeology of Israel, designed by architect Moshe Safdie to descend like excavation strata, is still under construction. (photo by Ardon Bar Hama, Israel Antiquities Authority, via Ashernet)

Located on Museum Hill in Giv’at Ram between the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, the facility will allow the public to see some of the tens of thousands of archeological items presently being held in store rooms and to watch, through windows, conservation being carried out on a variety of national treasures. Twenty-six donors, together with a significant contribution from the state, made it possible to go ahead with the $105 million project, which is expected to be complete in about a year’s time.

Finding joy

From the solemnity of Yom Kippur, we move into the season of rejoicing, Sukkot. As with many of our traditions, this one has multiple layers. The shelters for which the holiday is named represent temporary dwelling places, the transitory generations on the way from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land and, by extension, the impermanence or fragility of Jewish security.

It would be an understatement to say that the creation of the state of Israel 68 years ago changed Jewish perceptions of ourselves and our place in the world. The existence of a Jewish state presented an alternative for Jewish people living in places of repression and danger. For Jews living in free countries, like Canada, Israel is a source of pride but also the source of a deeply complicated and often challenging reconfiguring of our identities. Diaspora Jews, prior to the success of Zionism, were subject to the changing winds and whims of local populations and leaders. For a few years after the War of Independence, Israel was widely admired around the world as a model of what a new country can be. This was also a time in history when antisemitism may have been at its lowest ebb, or at least at its least visible. For emerging postcolonial states in 1950s and ’60s Asia and Africa, Israel’s head start provided a template for independence and progress.

After the 1967 war, though, the perception of Israel morphed from a model for post-colonialism to one of neo-colonialism, and Palestinians replaced Jews as a cause for progressive peoples. In the time since, Diaspora Jews have often been placed in the position of defending (or not defending) things that Israel does. Yet it remains a haven for Jews who are threatened in their homelands, including, incredibly, in parts of Europe. For those Jews who feel safe in our countries, Israel is also a beacon – of Jewish diversity, knowledge and technological innovation.

The Promised Land, as our historical narrative tells us, was not a place of permanent joy. Twice the Temple would be destroyed and the people dispersed. The impermanence of Jewish sovereignty, even after the ancient return of the exiles, would carry on another two millennia until 1948. The sukkah is a symbol, too, of that impermanence.

And yet, it also represents a joyfulness based on our people’s adaptability and willingness to find a unity and presence even in places and times of disunity and impermanence. And, at the end, we observe Simchat Torah, a celebration of the written word that many believe is the very reason a homeless people were able to maintain cohesion and continuity through generations of dispersion.

A new consul general

Left to right: Nico Slobinsky, director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific Region; Galit Baram, consul general of Israel to Toronto and Western Canada; Sara Lefton, vice-president of CIJA, Greater Toronto area; and Judy Zelikovitz, vice-president of CIJA University and Local Partner Services. (photo from CIJA-PR)

“There is never a dull moment,” Galit Baram, the new consul general of Israel to Toronto and Western Canada, told the Independent. “It is a whirlwind of names, people I should meet and new faces to remember.”

Baram said adaptability and versatility are key in the life of a diplomat, and her relish for her job comes through when speaking with her. Baram, who is married to a fellow diplomat and has two children, arrived in Toronto to replace D.J. Schneeweiss, the former consul general, in August. “I am looking forward to this new chapter, this new adventure,” said Baram.

Baram was born in Jerusalem. She has previously served as counselor for public affairs and coordinator of academic affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. (2009-2012); counselor for economic affairs in Cairo (2006-2009); and counselor for political affairs in Moscow (1998-2003). Most recently, she was the director of the Department for Palestinian Affairs and Regional Cooperation (2013-2016).

Baram’s first posting was in Moscow. This was particularly exciting for her, she told the Independent, because of her Russian-Israeli background. “For me, this was closing a circle representing my family and my country,” she said.

Her favorite Russian novelist? Leo Tolstoy, she said, the late works. Her single favorite Russian novel is Mikhail Bulgakov’s underground classic, The Master and Margarita.

Russia has one of the largest diplomatic communities in the world, and her time there was a great learning experience, she said. With 1.6 million Russians in Israel, the relationship between the two countries is an important one.

After Russia, Baram spent “three fascinating years in Cairo.” There, she was involved in bringing Israel and Egypt’s business sectors together. She left full of respect for businesspeople on both sides, she said. During her tenure, an important trilateral agreement was signed between Israel, Egypt and the United States, the Qualified Industrial Zones Agreement, which led to strengthening of economic ties and the mutual exchange of expertise.

In Washington, Baram brought her talents to bear on increasing academic cooperation between Israeli and American universities, before returning to Israel to head the Department for Palestinian Affairs and Regional Cooperation. Her duties focused on building aspects of civil society and cooperation between Israelis, Palestinians and neighboring countries. One of the key issues she sought to address was water.

“Water is going to be a central issue in the region,” said Baram. “Israel is leading the world in desalination technology, since the 1970s, and, in recent decades, has increasingly shared this technology around the world. Regionally, we supply water to Jordan (since 1994) and to the Palestinians. We are more than willing to share with more neighbors in the region.”

Baram also worked with a long list of Israeli nongovernmental organizations that cooperate across the Middle East in bridging the gap between different countries and groups of people, particularly young people. “We need to show that the young people can live together,” she said.

“I believe that, when it comes to the Middle Eastern region, education is a key element in regional stability,” she explained. “Jews, Arabs and Palestinians need to learn about each other. Animosity, mutual suspicion and ignorance are major problems. The best way to overcome this is to bring together young people and to bring together communities, and to build mutual understanding.”

Baram said she feels very comfortable in Canada – “Israel and Canada have very friendly and close relations, very warm,” she said. “There are many similarities between us. Both countries are very multicultural, and are always growing and changing. Canada and Israel share many important values in the spheres of human rights, democracy and pluralism. I am happy to say that Israeli diplomats feel very warmly welcomed in Canada.”

Baram added that she is very impressed with Canada’s Jewish institutions and their activities, and has found the community to be very well-organized and warm.

Baram hopes “to expand tourism and business connections between Israel and Canada, to invite Canadians to Israel to look for opportunities together, and to maintain close relations between the Jewish Diaspora and Israel.”

She said she has every intention to travel Western Canada as soon as possible, and plans to visit Vancouver soon to get acquainted with the Jewish community here.

She also added, “I would like to take this opportunity to say shanah tovah, a peaceful and successful year in Israeli-Canadian relations, and peace and happiness and health to us all.”

Baram and the consulate in Toronto can be followed on Facebook and Twitter as “Israel in Toronto.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Canadian tributes to Peres

The Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 1994 in Oslo, from left to right: Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. (photo by Saar Yaacov, GPO)

A towering figure, one among the founding generation of Israelis, Shimon Peres served as president, prime minister and in various key cabinet posts. He died Sept. 28 at the age of 93. Canadians joined in the international chorus of leaders mourning his death.

“Every so often, our lives are graced by the presence of truly remarkable individuals. They teach us invaluable lessons about compassion, fairness and generosity. They give us innumerable memories and a life of service that changes societies for the better,” said Gov. Gen. David Johnston.

“Shimon Peres meant so much to Israel, to Jewish people in Canada and around the world, and to the friendship between our nations. He called Canada an extraordinary friend during his state visit to our country in 2012, and I remember quite clearly the impression he left on me as a socially conscious man, driven by his love of Israel,” Johnston stated. “Though he is no longer with us, I hope that the legacy he left – as former president and prime minister of Israel and as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient – will let us strive for a better, more peaceful world. He will be missed and remembered by all those whose lives he has touched.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement saying, “Shimon Peres was, above all, a man of peace and a man dedicated to the well-being of the Jewish people.

“Over the course of his long and distinguished life, Mr. Peres made enormous contributions to the founding and building of the state of Israel. He was devoted to promoting understanding between his country and its neighbors, and shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to create peace in the Middle East.

“Mr. Peres was an internationally respected statesman and a great friend to Canada. He visited our country often, and helped build relations that remain strong to this day.

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Peres – and to the people of Israel. His legacy as a tireless advocate for peace will not be forgotten.”

Rona Ambrose, leader of the Official Opposition Conservative party, stated, “Few have accomplished more for the advancement of Israel and the Jewish people than Shimon Peres. His legacy spanned more than six decades in public service and as a political figure. He was a man who was the architect of Israel’s robust defence strategy, and someone who also won the Nobel Peace Prize in an attempt to find peace with the Palestinian people.

“Israel today is a steadfast ally to the West and all those who cherish democracy and pluralism. Israel’s strength is due in no small part to Shimon Peres and his foresight in advocating for peace while ensuring the nation he loved had the means to protect itself and its citizens in a turbulent world.

“Shimon Peres’ relationship with Canada was strong and lasting. In the 1950s, he visited Canada to secure assistance for the fledgling state. This soon cemented the special relationship between Canada and Israel, and he paid tribute to Canada on his 2012 visit when he said Canada is ‘an extraordinary friend’ and ‘never indifferent, never neutral.’”

Businessperson and former diplomat Arie Raif knew Peres well. He considered the Israeli leader his mentor and first met him as a teenager in the Israeli Knesset. Peres was a visionary, an elegant individual who never lost the common touch, who felt just as home with cooks and workers as with prime ministers and diplomats, he said.

Raif recalled an incident as a youth, when Peres visited the staff at the Knesset before Passover. He greeted them all with a warm embrace and wished them a happy holiday. Raif was able to meet the future prime minister, president and cabinet minister because his mother was the sous-chef in the Knesset at the time. Later, he would go on to work with Peres, and he opened the Canadian Peres Centre for Peace Foundation in Toronto.

Peres’ like will never be found again in Israel, Raif said. He possessed unique qualities that can’t be duplicated. As someone born in Europe, he brought something to Israel that the do-it-quick Israelis are lacking – a long-term vision for the country and the region.

Raif credited Peres with promoting peace and convincing his colleague, then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, to agree to the Oslo accords and shake Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s hand. That was something Rabin resisted for a long time.

Raif noted that, while a committed advocate for peace, in his earlier years, Peres played a key role in ensuring Israel possessed the means for its defence. In the 1950s, as director of the Ministry of Defence, “he made sure Israeli security forces got the best available weaponry and, according to the foreign press, he was the one who negotiated with the French for unconventional weapons” – Israel’s nuclear plant.

Canadian Jewish organizations also paid tribute to Peres.

“President Shimon Peres was a visionary, statesman, philanthropist and a giant of Israeli life whose private and professional accomplishments over seven decades read like the history of the modern state of Israel,” said David Cape, chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “As a strong proponent of conflict resolution who earned a Nobel Prize for his efforts, Peres embodied the timeless aspiration of the Israeli people for a future in which their children will live in peace and security.”

“Shimon Peres was a vital force in shaping Israel,” said Julia Berger Reitman, chair of Jewish Federations of Canada-United Israel Appeal. “His contributions in the political and security fields are unparalleled. He was one of modern Israel’s defining figures.”

Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre issued a statement offering its condolences and JSpaceCanada, a progressive Zionist organization, issued a statement saying it “mourns the passing of Shimon Peres, a source of optimism and inspiration for Israel and for the worldwide Jewish community…. He is mourned not only by Israel’s allies throughout the world but also by members in the Palestinian leadership who seek real peace.”

Meanwhile, Montreal MP Anthony Housefather addressed Parliament, noting that, “rarely does a man embody a country, but Shimon Peres was indeed such a man. He was a part of every bit of Israeli history, big or small, since before the nation was founded.

“Israel and the rest of the world lost an exceptional human being … a great statesman who dedicated his life to promoting peace and dialogue. He was a source of inspiration to many people all over the globe, myself included. Through his enduring commitment to the principles of justice and human dignity, he always worked in the best interest of his people.”

Also addressing Parliament, Toronto MP Michael Levitt said, “the international community has lost a giant.

“Shimon Peres was a peace builder, a public servant who embodied the boundless energy, optimism and desire of Israelis to seek peace in a region fraught with immense challenges.

“In his 66 years in public life, President Peres dedicated himself to fostering peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as exemplified in his leadership role in forging the Oslo accords.

“President Peres’ contributions extend far beyond peace and diplomacy. He was a driving force for innovation, inspiring Israelis to dream and think big. Unquestionably, his influence contributed in no small part to the rise of the ‘start-up nation.’… Israelis have lost a founding father, but his legacy will continue to shine.”

– A longer version of this article and more national Jewish news can be found at cjnews.com