Jewish Book Festival

Israel’s complexities

Noa Baum, one of the presenters at this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, is a professional storyteller who, in recent years, has dedicated herself to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She has taken a long road to get to where she is today.

Baum was born in the late 1950s in Israel and grew up in the “golden age” of Zionism, where, despite the many challenges and flaws of the young state, the shadow of controversial wars and of the occupation had not yet darkened the Israeli self-image.

book cover - A Land Twice Promised As recounted in her 2016 debut work A Land Twice Promised: An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace, Baum grew up with both a deep love of Israel and a keen sense of Jewish vulnerability and the wounds of the Holocaust. The narrative she grew up with about Israel centred on the heroism of its citizen army (“our boys,” she repeatedly calls them) standing up to the bewildering, relentless hatred of the Arab countries. She was deeply shaped by the experience of living through the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a child.

Over the years, she developed a more nuanced view. She came to face the existence of a hateful, right-wing extreme in Israel and was bitterly disappointed by the actions of the Israeli government in the 1982 Lebanon War, particularly Israeli complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Her brother, himself named after an uncle who died defending Israel, also suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome from the Lebanon War, leading to a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

When Baum left Israel to move with her husband to the United States to support his career, she left with her simplistic narratives shattered, but an enduring deep love of Israel and the Jewish people.

In her youth, Baum had passionately loved acting and storytelling and, in the United States, she became a professional storyteller. As a tale-spinner, she played it safe, however, presenting upbeat material and folktales and not touching on the conflicts and contradictions of modern Israel. All of that began to change when she nurtured a relationship with another mother, a Palestinian she calls “Jamuna” in the book. As a result of their friendship and the advice of storytelling mentors that she needed to stop shying away from difficult material, Baum began listening to Jamuna’s heart-wrenching stories of growing up Palestinian in the land of Baum’s dreams, with an eye to telling Jamuna’s stories.

“Hearing how the soldiers of the IDF, ‘our boys,’ were to a young Jamuna the source of terror and hatred, was heartwrenching,” Baum told the Independent.

Baum began touring with a one-woman play called A Land Twice Promised, wherein she delivered monologues from the perspectives of herself, her mother, Jamuna and Jamuna’s mother. The show aimed to bring healing and be a contribution toward peace. As one would expect, it was received in many different ways. Baum was called a “traitor” and told she “should be ashamed” of herself; others said she had described their own Israeli or Palestinian experience perfectly. Both Israelis and Palestinians said the show was not balanced enough. One woman from Nigeria said the show made her realize Jews were human beings; others said they’d never felt compassion for Israelis before seeing the show. Some said it was the first time they empathized with Palestinians.

“In the beginning, it was terrifying,” said Baum. “Audience reactions would throw me into bouts of anxiety.”

Gradually, she developed the ability to process the diverse reactions and became confident in what she was doing, and she continued to actively evolve the show based on audience feedback that she solicited.

In 2015, after doing the show for 14 years, Baum was approached by someone interested in making it into a book. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse, though she had never written before. “I’m not really a writer,” she said. “I come from the world of performance, I’m a speaking artist.”

Despite Baum’s lack of writing experience, A Land Twice Promised is a moving, lucid memoir that powerfully evokes the Israeli experience in the last decades, and Baum’s personal and familial struggles to come to terms with it.

The book provokes empathy and insight, and will lead most readers to embrace a view of Israel and the Palestinian conflict that is both complex and compassionate. The book has received favorable reviews and even won many commendations, including one from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Shipler, writer of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land.

Baum will speak at the book festival on Nov 29 at 6:30 p.m. For tickets and the full festival schedule, visit jccgv.com/content/jewish-book-fest.

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.

What made your list?

Robin Esrock contemplating ancient wonders in Turkey. (photo by Paul Vance/EWM)

Read about Robin Esrock’s visit to a fountain of youth in Colombia, his rail journey across Siberia, his diving lessons in Papua New Guinea. Esrock has traveled to more than 100 countries and, as he writes in the introduction to The Great Global Bucket List, the hybrid guidebook and essay collection “draws together the best of these adventures.” What’s more, Esrock hopes that you won’t just read about his exploits, but make plans for your own.

Esrock is one of the many writers participating in this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs Nov. 27-Dec. 1. The local author and journalist has not only been featured in the Jewish Independent before – for The Great Canadian Bucket List, among other things – but has written for the paper as well, so it was nice to catch up with him in anticipation of his Nov. 27, 5 p.m., presentation at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, appropriately called Travel Dreams.

While his career as an intrepid traveler only started after a bike accident – from which he received a broken kneecap and, eventually, a $20,000 insurance settlement that was “just enough,” he writes, “if used sparingly, to book a solo one-year adventure around the world” – he had traveled before.

“My first trip overseas was to Israel when I was 11, on a discovery tour, with my family and grandparents,” he told the Independent. “It was a hop-on, hop-off bus trip to tick off Israel’s greatest hits. I did a European bus tour after high school, memorable in that I can’t remember much of it, a two-month stint to a kibbutz, and then backpacked up East Africa to Zanzibar. I didn’t get malaria, but I did get the travel bug. I lived in London for a couple years and used that as a base to visit various odd spots in Europe, but the idea of traveling around the world always seemed like an impossible dream. Once it finally manifested, the result of a modest insurance settlement for my accident, I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long.”

The accident occurred as Esrock was approaching his 30th birthday. On that first yearlong trip, he visited 24 countries and was “published in newspapers on five continents.”

He writes, “A year later, my Hail-Mary pitch for a TV show landed on the right desk at the right time and, seven months later, I found myself as a co-host, writer and producer for a 40-part adventure series filmed in 36 countries. Funded by television networks, I was tasked with seeking out experiences that conformed to my bucket list criteria: Is this destination or activity unique? Is it something I will never forget? Will it make a great story? Is it something everyone can actually do?

“Tick off all those subjective items, and the journey began.”

These were the same criteria Esrock used to compile his shortlist for The Great Global Bucket List. Then, he said, “I had to cut 27 chapters for size in my book, but, fortunately, I have a Bucket List blog (globalbucketlist.com) to find them a home, and add new experiences. In my book, you’ll find far-flung adventures (Antarctica! the Galapagos! the Azores! the Amazon!) but you won’t find the Eiffel Tower or Tower of Pisa. This is a book of inspiring stories and photographs, not a guide to popular tourist traps.”

In addition to experiencing many a far-flung adventure over the last decade or so, Esrock has also found the time to start a family. How has that changed his travel plans?

photo - Robin Esrock camping in Antarctica — Robin Esrock camping in Antarctica. (photo by Jeff Topham)

“There seems to be a subtle flow in the career of travel writers: you start with hardcore budget travel, transition into hard adventure, then soft adventure, romance, family, cruise, food, wine, spa, and end up in golf!” he said. “I don’t take the risks I once did, or have the energy to sleep in roach hotels. People have become more important than ever and, since I’ve managed to tick off so much, I’m very drawn to unique experiences. My kids are a little young (3 and 3 months) to start ticking off a family bucket list, but I’d love to take them to countries like India, Cambodia, Israel and Turkey, where locals embrace children. Disneyland can wait.”

And his own bucket list?

“Write a novel that explains, in an entertaining way, everything I have learned on my journey. Raise my kids to be curious and up for anything, so they can join me on future adventures. And I’d love to get to the five ’Stans on the Silk Road in Central Asia, which has a rich history, few tourists, and is undergoing a fascinating modern transformation.”

Esrock added, “There’s too much bad news out there. The 24/7 news cycle dictates that bad news must be happening somewhere, all the time. The goal with my bucket lists, and with my career in general, is to provide some much-needed good news. In all my journeys, I’ve never been robbed, attacked, violently ill or had my organs harvested (at least to my knowledge!). The world is far more welcoming, reasonable, peaceful and beautiful than you’d imagine.

“Some people see bucket lists as a silly, ultimately harmful pastime that creates unrealistic goals. I see them as a mechanism for positive inspiration. You don’t have to go sandboarding on a volcano in Nicaragua or cage swim with crocodiles. You just have to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do, even if it’s just fixing the garden. We don’t have nearly as much time as we think we do. Every chapter in my book concludes with ‘Start Here,’ and an online link to practical info for readers to follow in my footsteps. More important, I think, is to start now.”

For the full book festival schedule and tickets, visit jccgv.com/content/jewish-book-fest.

The idea behind a bucket list is that life is finite and, if there are things we would like to do, we should do them while we can. The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival opens the night of Nov. 27 with San Francisco-based writer and psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom in conversation with Vancouver psychotherapist Larry Green. The title of Yalom’s most recent book, Creatures of a Day, comes from Marcus Aurelius’ The Meditations, to which Yalom refers more than once in his writings, and from which he quotes at the beginning of his latest book: “All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral – both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.” Creatures of a Day is a collection of 10 stories based on his patients’ experiences with loss and illness, and their – and Yalom’s – efforts to live a life of both meaning and pleasure.

Leiren-Young first literary laureate

In 2013, the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival in partnership with the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library announced a new initiative: the Jewish literary laureate project.

“It is a vision of Yosef Wosk,” said book festival director Nicole Nozick in an interview with the Independent. “He came to me at the end of last year, and we talked about it. The City of Vancouver has its poet laureate, Evelyn Lau. It’s a similar concept, only belonging to our Jewish community. The post is a two-year position, selected by our laureate committee, to be a literary ambassador to the community, spread love of the written word, raise the profile of Jewish writers, encourage reading and writing and promote multicultural exchange.”

Wosk described how he came up with the idea. “I remember hearing about England’s poet laureate when I was in high school. I was intrigued by the idea of poetry playing such an important role in society. A few years ago, I was privileged to be able to endow the position of poet laureate for the City of Vancouver. This helped to champion the place of poetry in our midst. Poetry presents us with a surprising rhythm that moves and inspires us in many ways. Poetry also has the power to condense a great deal of information and emotion into a few well-chosen and often surprising words.

“Once we witnessed the success of the Vancouver poet laureate initiative, I thought it was a natural extension to also stimulate poetry in more particular communities, such as the Greek, Chinese, Jewish, Italian, Korean and so on. Although poetry was my initial inspiration for this program, we concluded this was an opportunity to extend the program to include all forms of literature, such as non-fiction and fiction prose, plays, theatre, etc. Working with the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library and the Jewish Book Festival, we have taken the first step towards modeling a literary laureate program for one particular community. If this is successful, it can be replicated in other communities.”

Wosk discussed this project in relation to the current state of the publishing industry.

“Poetry partakes of the eternal,” he said. “In some ways, poetry is an antidote to a plethora of electronic media. Whether reading in the privacy of your home, in a café or in a gathering of poets, we are transported to surprising realms of mind and matter, emotion and spirit. Other forms of literature, like a family of diverse relatives, compliment poetry…. Today, more is being published than ever before. It doesn’t matter whether text is handwritten, printed or electronically mediated: they are all related forms of communication. It still serves the same purpose of transmitting information in one of several forms.”

The benefits of this program are manifold. “Certainly the laureates themselves will benefit by being able to share their creativity with the community,” said Wosk. “They will also receive an honorarium in recognition of their work and appreciation for their time. The community, from school students to other published poets, will be stimulated by the encounter with the literary laureate, who … we hope might act as a catalyst for writing in the community.”

Nozick emphasized that, despite the growth of digital media, people are still reading. “We want our laureate program to take reading to the next level, inspire more participation,” she said. “The particular activities are up to the laureate himself. Each laureate will bring his or her own unique strength and interests to the project. He will have a permanent office at the Waldman Library and work in collaboration with the library and the Jewish Book Festival. Our inaugural laureate is Mark Leiren-Young.”

photo - Mark Leiren-Young is the Jewish community's first literary laureate — Mark Leiren-Young is the Jewish community’s first literary laureate. *(photo from Mark Leiren-Young)*

The committee came together last year and brainstormed who would be the best writer for the position, she explained. “We selected Mark because he is a gifted, award-winning writer. He has experience writing across different genres, including playwriting, memoirs, documentaries, humor, and he is also good with people, able to connect with different generations.”

Leiren-Young commented on how important the position of laureate is to him. “For someone who grew up in Vancouver – and the JCC – it’s a completely unexpected and very cool honor. Yosef Wosk has launched several amazing programs, and I hope I can do justice to his vision for this one. The timing was amazing too. My latest book, Free Magic Secrets Revealed, actually starts at the Jewish Community Centre, and many of the key scenes take place in the JCC.”

Leiren-Young’s pilot laureate initiative is the Multi-Generational Media Lab Storytelling Project. It pairs King David High School students with seniors to share and hone their storytelling in a digital format.

“I recently served as the writer-in-residence for Vancouver Community College,” said Leiren-Young. “While I was there, I spent a bit of time with the oldest student on campus. I think he was in his mid-seventies. From the moment I met him – my first week at VCC – I kept asking if he had any stories he wanted to share. He kept telling me he didn’t have anything.

“Naturally, in my last week, he finally handed me a story about growing up in a small town. He had all these rich, detailed memories about his childhood, so after my residency was over, I contacted the community archive for the town Trail, B.C., so they could have access to and share his stories. But I kept thinking that if I’d known he was willing to tell his stories, I could have set him up with a student who could have interviewed him.”

The multi-media project is in the planning stage now. “Over the summer, we’ll be recruiting seniors, and I’ll work with them to focus on specific stories they want to share,” said Leiren-Young. “In September, when the school year begins, the high school students will be introduced to the project and will prepare their interview questions. The final presentation will take place during the Jewish Book Festival week in November.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Dov Elbaum talks on Israeli secular Judaism

Dov Elbaum speaks in Vancouver on March 30. (photo by Sasson Tiram)

Israeli journalist, writer and television host Dov Elbaum will be visiting Vancouver for a Cherie Smith JCCGV Jewish Book Festival-sponsored talk at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on March 30.

Starting his career in print media, Elbaum moved into book publishing and writing for television. Eventually, he moved in front of the camera; since 2007, he has hosted the popular parashat hashavua-themed show Mekablim Shabbat (Welcoming Shabbat). Elbaum is also involved in academic research and teaching on secular Jewish culture, and is the founder of the BINA Secular Yeshiva in south Tel Aviv. He is in Vancouver promoting the new English translation of his 2009 book Into the Fullness of the Void: A Spiritual Autobiography, and the Jewish Independent talked to him about his journey, Judaism in North America and Israel, and secular Jewish renewal.

JI: You have quite an interesting biography. While rejecting the ultra-Orthodox community you grew up in, you’ve remained deeply involved and curious about being Jewish. Where are you in your journey now?

DE: My journey from the world that I grew up in has been a long journey and it isn’t over yet. Still, I have gone through many significant points along the way. At the beginning, I was trying to get away, but today I find myself looking for a way to get to a renewed approach to Jewish culture, one that comes not through guilt or fear or obligation, but through love. And, when I approach Jewish culture in this way, through love, I see how my own path can help build connections to Jewish culture within secular Israeli society.

In the past in Israel, access to Judaism was through religious denominations, specifically Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. Today, I am trying to find a way for secular Israeli Jews to approach Judaism positively, and not through negative definition, sof, which synagogues they don’t go to, or which mitzvot they don’t observe. In doing so, I am trying to develop new, nontraditional frameworks through which secular Israeli Jews can explore and express their Judaism. This is my current station on my journey.

JI: On the one hand, tshuva (return), on the other, she’ela (“lapsed”). Can you comment on the macro meaning of these opposite phenomena in Israeli society and perhaps what the numbers are in the two directions?

DE: I don’t think anyone has exact numbers of hozrei b’she’ela and hozrei b’tshuva in Israel. I imagine that the numbers are similar in both directions, though I might tend to believe that there are somewhat more hozrei b’tshuva. This is due largely to the fact that institutions of hazara b’tshuva receive a great deal of funding from the Israeli government as well as philanthropy from Israel and abroad.

But let’s talk about these phenomena spiritually rather than sociologically. I don’t like use of the words she’ela and tshuva in the context of exit from or entry into orthodoxy. I think that the meanings of these words in Judaism are much deeper than their current sociological use. In spiritual terms, she’ela and tshuva should be processes in every person’s life, and not connected to any one movement, denomination or label.

JI: Many of the progressive movements in Judaism in Israel have their origins in North America. How do you see North American Judaism influencing the religious landscape in Israel and vice versa?

DE: I think that Israeli culture has received quite a lot of gifts from North American Jewish thought. And, yes, I believe it’s true that a lot of the spiritual renewal in Israel has received spiritual and financial support from North American Judaism. I can also say that we Israeli Jews must give credit and appreciation to North American Judaism for teaching us how Judaism can develop and can be understood pluralistically.

At the same time, I think a most meaningful laboratory for Jewish renewal can happen when taking place in the Hebrew language and in the landscape of Jewish culture and society, as found specifically in Israel. When these ideas of Jewish renewal and pluralism come into contact with Jewish Israelis, the impact is fascinating; [it’s a contact that is experienced] much differently and more intensely so than in the Diaspora. Thus, when North American Jews come to visit and engage with Israel, they can influence as well as learn a great deal from Israel. We have much to learn from one another.

JI: In a lecture given by Micha Goodman, he suggests that Judaism in North America has been influenced by Abraham Joshua Heschel’s teachings, which were focused on the human experience. On the other hand, he says that Yeshayahu Leibovitch detested this approach, instead putting God at the centre regardless of whether this made Jews themselves feel spiritually enriched. Is this a good metaphor for Judaism in North America versus Israel?

DE: I don’t agree. I love and appreciate Micha Goodman, but I think such a metaphor of North America equals Heschel and Israel equals Leibovitch is not so precise. In fact, in recent years, I would say that Heschel’s ideas have had a much stronger impact in Israel [than those of] Leibovitch.

I don’t think that Leibovitch’s ideas had such a tangible impact on broader Israeli society. He voiced an important voice and many have been interested in his ideas, but still I don’t see the impact so directly on the ground. Heschel’s ideas, on the other hand, have had a very significant impact. Today, I feel that most of the secular Jewish renaissance movement in Israel feels closer to Heschel than to Leibovitch.

JI: There seems to be an awakening of interest in secular Jewish learning in Israel with BINA, your organization, and many other secular Jewish midrashot that have opened in recent years. Why is this happening now?

DE: I can think of a few reasons. First of all, I think that the assassination of Prime Minster [Yitzhak] Rabin in 1996 shook Israeli secular society profoundly. Secular Israeli society started to feel that they were losing hold on the country, and losing it to a particular group of religious Israelis whose mindset they no longer understood, whose world they no longer understood. Hence, a renewed interest in Judaism and the world of Jewish religion.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, secular Israeli society has been in an ongoing process of being emptied of the values upon which Israel was established. And now, the vacuum has expanded so much that secular Israelis have come to realize that if we want to continue to live in this wonderful and dangerous place called Israel, it needs to be clear to us what we are doing here. If a person doesn’t understand his or her role or purpose in this place called Israel, he or she won’t last here long. So, secular Israelis are starting to ask each other the most elementary questions of identity and purpose, and are going back to the old sources.

JI: Given all these movements, it seems possible to be both secular and connected to Judaism, but can there be continuity of such a connection over generations?

DE: First of all, that’s a great question. How do we pass these ideas and values to the upcoming generations is one of the deepest and most essential questions of Judaism. Take a look at the Sh’ma: “… and you shall teach them to your children and speak of them….” The Sh’ma asks us to make our values present in daily life. And I believe therein is the solution. In Israel, it is also easier. We speak Hebrew and live the Jewish calendar and, through the language and calendar, we can make Jewish culture present in a very tangible way. In Israel, it’s easier to be a secular Jew than in other places, because the language and the place make it easier to actualize Jewish culture in daily life without being religious in a traditional or halachic sense.

JI: Is there a manner in which knowledge and ownership of Judaism in Israel translates to political power?

DE: In the last elections, the Jewish secular renaissance in Israel earned a certain amount of political entrance through the election of MK Ruth Calderon and a few other MKs … that have understood the power and influence that this movement has, and they have seen fit to give expression to it…. The ignorance among the general public regarding the possibility of having a profound Jewish identity without connection to traditional organized religion is still widespread, and we have a lot of work to do, especially with everything that relates to public awareness and the establishment of new secular yeshivot that should receive government funding just like any other educational institution, which is something that has yet to happen.

JI: Can you talk about/explain the popularity of your show Mekablim Shabbat?

DE: I think it’s been popular because of all the things we’ve just mentioned. Israeli society has been thirsty for years for Jewish content without vestments of religion. On the show, I try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be religious in order to approach the Jewish canon, to read and explore it, to ask questions about it and about life, and to use it in order to think and to express ourselves. Israeli society has been very thirsty for meaningful Jewish content, but they don’t want it all wrapped up in religion. When I present it … without religious garb, they can connect to it.

JI: What would you like to share with the Vancouver community when you are here?

DE: That the time has come for these two different movements … to come together and think about how we can contribute to and learn from one another. We must learn from one another’s knowledge and experiences and explore how we can strengthen one another, and not let certain negative forces control and dominate the global sphere of Jewish culture and spirituality.

I look forward to opening up a dialogue and exemplifying some of the fruits of our labor in Israel through a re-reading of the Jewish sources, specifically one of the most-read texts in the Jewish tradition – the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the Passover Haggadah.

Maayan Kreitzman is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.

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Tickets for Dov Elbaum’s March 30, 6 p.m., talk at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver ($14/$10) are available at the centre, 604-257- 5111 and ticketpeak.com/jccgv.