memoir – Page 11

Reflecting on New York

Raised by American parents in Montreal, Adam Gopnik moved, with his Canadian wife Martha, to New York City in the 1980s. There, he began a career as an art critic, editor and writer for such publications as GQ and The New Yorker, and with Knopf publishers. At the Stranger’s Gate: Arrivals in New York (Knopf, 2017) is his chatty memoir of those years.

There are many figures from the art and publishing worlds in this book, appearing in harmlessly gossipy anecdote after name-dropping anecdote. Gopnik is an amusing artist of the character sketch, as shown in his depiction of his wife.

“Someone once called her in print the most innately polite person she had ever met, and the truth is that in each of us natural sociability had been overlaid with Canadian politeness, and hers with a further code of Icelandic courtesy, producing a veneer of politeness so extreme that many took it for disingenuousness – which of course, in another way, it was.”

He can also neatly capture entire generations through their relationships to something inanimate.

“My grandparents had belonged to a check-cashing generation, proud to be engaged in it,” he writes. “To have an institution as large as an American bank in effect endorse their signature on a little bit of paper as equivalent to money meant to be taken seriously as a citizen. My parents, in turn, were credit card cultists – they loved having them, signing them, showing them, using them. For those who came of age in the boom times after the Second World War, the whole notion of credit, of sharing in a limitless improving future – of being trusted to buy now and pay later, since later would be so much richer than now – had some of the same significance that the notion of being trusted with checks had for my grandparents.

“We, in turn, generationally, had regressed, I realized,” he continues, “back into a cash economy – we used checks just to pay the utilities. The [bank] machines were one more instrument of that infantilization; we went to the machines for something that felt, at least, like our allowance.”

As much as the individual characters who inhabit the pages, the protagonists are often the miniscule homes the Gopniks inhabited – and the insects and rodents with whom they cohabited. He credits their first tiny apartment, at least in part, for their marital contentment.

“One reason we didn’t fight was that the studio was so small, so small that you could never get sufficient perspective for the fighting to happen. In order to really have a quarrel, you have to sort of step back three steps and eye the other person darkly. There was just no room for that. We were on top of each other, not in that that sense – well, in that sense, too, at times – but we were also colliding with each other all the time. I don’t have any mental image of Martha from those years, except as a kind of Cubist painting, noses and eyes and ears.”

A later loft apartment seemed too sweet to be true in a New York of radically rising rents, a suspicion that appeared fulfilled when thick, dark liquid began dripping from the ceiling.

“For the next two weeks, the ceiling kept hemorrhaging,” Gopnik writes. “Sometimes, we would wake up and find it dripping slowly, slowly. At other times, it would really be coming down, as though a whole new vein had been opened, or else as though – and this thought struck us both about the same time – a new corpse had just been stowed away under the floorboards upstairs.”

“That’s not blood,” a neighbour told them, “it’s just molasses.”

The building had been a candy factory at the turn-of-the-century and for inexplicable reasons it would sometimes ooze ingredients. Gopnik decided to find this charming: “It was thrilling, like the moment when they opened up the Dead Sea Scrolls and found them pristine. Sugar syrup from a century ago, bubbling out of the walls, and still so sweet.… I felt happy; I was living on the big Rock Candy Mountain.”

The couple were less charmed by another discovery. A pest control officer announces: “You got them, all right. You got the big boys. You got the super-rats.”

“What do you mean, the super-rats?” Gopnik asks.

“‘Well, let’s put it like this,’ He thought for a moment. ‘These rats, if you see one, they look at you like you the problem.”

Leaving the apartment, Gopnik homes in on two of the phenomena of the 1980s that impacted his life in the Big Apple.

“The two great technological gifts of the ’80s were the Walkman and the hyper-developed sneaker, which, together, turned walking into an all-encompassing emotional activity,” he writes. “For a long time in the 1980s, I seemed to do nothing but walk around Manhattan. The modern sneaker, rising from Nike and Adidas, constructed with more architecture inside than most apartments, now allowed even the flat-footed to stride, Hermes-like, on what felt like cushioned air.… And then the Walkman made every block your own movie.”

Eventually, like rats in a too-small apartment, the couple became overwhelmed by the city and they left to raise a family where there are lawns and gardens.

This is a highly sentimental book, which is not a bad thing, especially for a New York-o-phile. Some shortcomings are too-frequent hackneyed phrases (“dense as a hockey puck,” “impossibly beautiful women”), the oddly repetitive use of some esoteric words and a style that sometimes evokes Lake Wobegon, Minn., more than New York, N.Y. In other words, it’s a cute book, which may sound like faint praise, but, given current events, that can be a refreshing break.

House no longer home

South Side Hebrew Congregation. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)

“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the L-d breathes on this poor grey ember of Creation and it turns to radiance – for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light.” (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004)

Once I had turned onto Chicago’s Congress Parkway, I shut off Waze. I told myself that, from here on, I could navigate from long-stored memory. My destination: my old South Shore neighbourhood. My objective: by means of an on-site visit, to share recollections of my Chicago-based formative years with our four Israeli-bred children, so they could have a real sense of where I came from and why I am the way I am.

I expected the community I’d lived in from birth until halfway through my adolescence to be much changed. It’s a fact of life, people change, places change. Certain relatives and friends, however, discouraged my visiting where I’d grown up; some even informed me the local press had renamed the area Terror Town.

Consequently, with a bit of trepidation, we drove into South Shore to begin my guiding and reminiscing. South Shore (named for its proximity to the southern shore of Lake Michigan) had been a middle-class neighbourhood. Some upper-middle-class (probably closer to the lake), some lower-middle-class, lots of solid middle-class.

As I explained to my children, when I was growing up, my area was a religiously mixed Caucasian neighborhood, but we got along with our non-Jewish neighbours. I played with the Christian kids on our block.

Moreover, when it came to schooling, my parents likewise wanted my brothers and me to be broadly exposed, meaning we attended both Chicago Board of Education public schools (not Jewish day schools) and a five-day-a-week afternoon Hebrew school and Hebrew high school. But, even though we attended a public school, there were different rules for different people. For instance, a special bell rang in our elementary school one day a week at 2 p.m., signifying that practising Catholic kids were free to leave for catechism lessons. When we missed school for a Jewish holiday, we had to return to school with a note from our parents explaining why we had been absent. Needless to say, we had to make up whatever work or tests we missed.

Significantly, in those days, Chicago had other forms of “acceptable” discrimination. Jews and other minorities were not allowed to live in certain areas and were not given membership in certain clubs. The nearby South Shore Country Club was one such restricted place. In the late 1960s, when the rules changed (because of hard-fought anti-discrimination legislation), one of my parents’ closest friends, a history professor, was belatedly invited to join. He relished responding, “I don’t want to belong to any club which hadn’t wanted me.”

Now that I had the chance, I wanted to see the inside of the club. It had been converted into a municipal public park, golf course and cultural centre, close to where former President Barack Obama’s library will be constructed. Either the grounds had not been maintained at their previous level or the previous standard had been over-imagined, but I was underwhelmed by what I saw. Spontaneously, my children – who have all visited the remains of Nazi concentration and death camps – commented the club’s gatehouse reminded them of the entrance to Auschwitz.

Though we had lived in a mixed neighbourhood, there was a Jewish community centre, plus seven synagogues (representing various streams of Judaism) within walking distance of our apartment – more than in my current Jerusalem neighbourhood! Because my parents had “shopped around” until I was about 6 years old for the synagogue that best met our family’s needs, I was acquainted with just about all of them.

photo - Deborah Rubin Fields went to Hebrew school five days a week in this building owned by South Side Hebrew Congregation. The Men’s Club also met there. For awhile her grandfather was the president — Deborah Rubin Fields went to Hebrew school five days a week in this building owned by South Side Hebrew Congregation. The Men’s Club also met there. For awhile her grandfather was the president. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

Now, as I drove my children through South Shore, I saw that South Side Hebrew Congregation, Congregation Habonim, Congregation Bnai Bezalel, Congregation Agudat Achim and South Shore Temple had become churches. Beth Am Congregation was now a school. The buildings by and large looked the same, except for the signs identifying the churches that now occupied the premises, and the occasional cross on the windows. The brick menorot were still on the façade of Torah Synagogue and the mikvah, but at least part of the complex had become a beauty supply shop.

I recalled one story from my club at the Jewish Youth Centre. My group went for a picnic supper at Rainbow Beach. My neighbour and friend, D., disregarded our warnings, returning home with what she called a gift for her mother, a long-dead alewife. When D. entered her apartment complex, the rest of us raced to the back of the building to snicker at D.’s mother screaming about the smelly fish.

And, speaking of social functions, my old synagogue, South Side Hebrew Congregation, played a social role, as much as it did a religious role. It wasn’t just a place for praying, as are many Israeli synagogues, it was a place to meet up with people with whom we shared a common core. For synagogue members like us who felt like part of a minority group, SSHC offered a sense of belonging, of comfort and of security.

Hence, every Shabbat morning, I went to the junior congregation. One our Hebrew teachers, Mr. Wolfson, with his heavy eastern European accent, directed our tefillot. My parents often went to the adult service. I have lots of good memories about SSHC, especially listening to Sparky Rosenstein, the president of the shul trying, but never really succeeding in blowing the shofar; stringing fresh cranberries and popcorn to hang in the giant communal sukkah (though we traditionally ate dinner in the sukkah of family friends, wrapped up in our coats, as Chicago was so cold already); walking around with a flag, apple and chocolate Kisses on Simchat Torah; and going up on the bimah to get the cantor wet when we started reciting the prayer for rain.

Years ago, I had gone on tours of old Jewish neighbourhoods with Prof. Irving Cutler. Back then, I had marveled at how Jews had established themselves in so many of Chicago’s districts. Yet now, seeing what had become of the Jewish institutions of my childhood, I was saddened no one had stayed around to keep them going. I whimsically thought it was too bad the Jews of South Shore hadn’t called on the Golem to protect these synagogues. Of consolation was the fact that people have continued to use most of the buildings as houses of worship.

During the entire trip, way-back-when scenes flooded my mind. Many I shared with my family. If the content wasn’t always complete, the emotion was. And this feeling my children will always have and it will be enough.

“… the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).

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.

Granirer exhibit, book linked

Pnina Granirer’s current art exhibit, which is at the Zack Gallery until Dec. 12, features work highlighted in her memoir, Light Within the Shadows. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Pnina Granirer has always been an experimenter. She enjoys trying new artistic techniques, forms and directions. Consistently ignoring the trends, she has forged her own path towards meaning and beauty.

Granirer’s memoir, Light Within the Shadows, was launched on Nov. 16, as part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. The event was held in conjunction with the opening of her solo show at the Zack Gallery. As the exhibit includes some of the same paintings and drawings Granirer highlighted in the memoir, it serves as a mini-retrospective of her artistic life.

“People often told me, you had such an interesting life, you should write about it,” she said in an interview with the Independent. So, she did. “I wrote bits and pieces over the years, but my painting always interfered. I’d get distracted by a painting or a series and I would forget what I wrote before. I realized that I couldn’t paint and write at the same time.”

The concept of time is significant. “Time is what differentiates visual art from any other creative expression, like writing or music,” she explained. “According to some research, people in a museum spend an average of three seconds in front of a painting. But, to read a book or listen to a symphony or watch a movie, they have to spend hours. The same is true from the creator’s point of view. When I look at my painting, I see everything at once, all the details. I know what and where I have to fix. But, when I looked at my manuscript, I needed to read from the beginning to remember the details I had written in the previous chapters. I needed time.”

To solve this dilemma, she stopped painting about four years ago to concentrate on writing. “I wanted to tell my story and, for that, I needed words. Painting wasn’t enough anymore,” she said.

Granirer started by reading a number of memoirs. She took creative writing classes. She delved into history and studied old family photographs, while researching her family roots. And she wrote.

“By 2015, I had a very long manuscript, but I still didn’t have the ending. Then, in June 2015, we visited Romania, the country of my birth, for the first time in 65 years. When we came back, I ended up in a hospital. Had two surgeries. Suddenly, I knew what the ending was. I was fortunate. Serendipity is the new motto of mine. Of course, my life was not all roses, but I cherished everything good that happened to me.”

A consummate professional in everything she does, Granirer knew that finishing a manuscript was only half the job. “I needed to structure it in a way that would make sense,” she said. “I decided on a story in three acts to highlight the three stages of my life, three languages, three countries: Romania, Israel, North America.”

She also had to deal with one of the most important considerations for any memoir writer: the people who feature in the book, especially the ones who are still alive. Granirer was very sensitive about the issue. “When you write a memoir,” she said, “you have to think about other people’s feelings, of course, but it was my book, my life. I tried to avoid offending anyone, but I felt I had to be as honest as possible. I didn’t lie. If I couldn’t say anything nice about someone, I often skipped that person. I did mention some disappointments in the book but, mostly, I focused on how lucky I was.”

After that, it was time for test readers. “I asked a few people to read the manuscript, and the feedback was very encouraging. Then I found a wonderful editor – Pat Dobie. She did a stellar job. She cut off about half the text, everything that wasn’t my story, but rather historical background or stories of the other members of my family. Pat said it takes the reader away from my story. She also rearranged some sections and paragraphs to make the flow better.”

The next step – publication. Again, Granirer embarked on a period of extensive research. “I thought about traditional publishing and contemplated looking for an agent, but I didn’t have the time,” she said. “I’m in my 80s. When you send a book to an agent or a publisher, you have to wait for a year to get an answer, and it might not be a yes. But, even if it is, and they accept it, it would take another year or two until publication.”

To skip that waiting time, she published the book herself, with the help of Granville Island Publishing. “They were great,” said Granirer.

Yet more research was needed to choose the right title and the right cover. Of course, the cover would be one of her paintings; that was never in question. It was an artist’s memoir after all. But which painting? After browsing through her archives, Granirer finally picked the painting that became the cover. “It has my son’s footprints, when he was young, like a child’s journey. It seemed fitting,” she explained.

Selecting which illustrations should accompany each of her story’s three phases was another crucial task. “Some of the paintings I included are still in my studio, others have been sold, but I have the JPG files,” she said.

Now, she is deeply involved in the next stage of the publishing business – promotion. As she does everything in her life, she approaches it with panache and determination. In her publishing endeavour, like in her art, she is aiming for total success.

Granirer’s art is at the Zack until Dec. 12.

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

Granirer paints with words

I am the proud owner of a Pnina Granirer work. More importantly, I am privileged to know the wonderful human being who is Pnina Granirer. After reading Light Within the Shadows: A Painter’s Memoir, I now know more about her art, its influences and styles, and her life, its joys and challenges. I also discovered that she writes as beautifully as she paints, and has a warm sense of humour.

Each chapter features a relevant quote from people throughout history, something they said or, most often, wrote; people as diverse as Roald Dahl, Anne Frank and Shakespeare. In these and her own words, Granirer imparts not only her life story but her philosophies on creativity, education, identity, family, business.

“There are people who plan their lives meticulously, step by step – I have never been one of them,” she writes. “Of course, I had goals, but these were like signposts to be reached one by one, short-term endeavours without a specific plan for the faraway future. I rather liked the idea of floating along, steering my boat from time to time and hoping that I would reach my destination, whatever it was meant to be.”

And the 82-year-old has experienced many destinations on her continuing journey. In a May interview with the Vancouver Sun, she talked about having written a book twice the size of what was published.

“There were a lot more historical references, many stories about family members and some more memories – it was too long and had to be cut,” Granirer told the Independent.

About the possibility of another book, she said, “I’m thinking about this and how I could use some of the chapters that have been cut, but, at the moment, I’m far too busy with getting through with the exhibition. I need a quiet space in order to begin thinking about writing and hope that I’ll begin doing just that early in 2018.”

Granirer will do an artist’s talk at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery on Nov. 16 to open an exhibit of her work mounted in conjunction with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival because the occasion also represents the launch of her memoir. The event is sponsored by National Council of Jewish Women. This is especially appropriate because one of the topics that Granirer explores in her memoir is the difficulty of being a mother, a wife and an artist. About the 1970s, when her two sons, David and Dan, were young, she remarks, “I had little contact with the visual arts community in general and its avant-garde segment in particular. I didn’t have much time for forging professional ties, as my world consisted of my husband and my sons, who were a great source of joy and a well of inspiration for my art.” In this period, she not only produced much work, but also took on teaching.

Her memoir – which includes pages of colour photographs of her work – is divided into three acts. It takes readers from Romania, her birthplace and where she grew up, surviving the Holocaust; to the safety of Israel in 1950, to where first her father, then the family, fled from the dangers of communist Romania; to the United States in 1962, where her husband Eddy, a math professor, could find work, as the recently initiated American-Russian space race saw Americans “pouring money and resources into research, hoping to be the first to put a man on the moon…. Mathematics, the cornerstone and essential building block of scientific research, was suddenly in high demand all over North America.” Three years later, the Granirers would make their way to Vancouver.

Granirer talks about luck throughout the memoir and, specifically, about a couple of “old hackneyed sayings” being true, that of being “in the right place at the right time” and of being “born under a lucky star.” “Events beyond our control do change the course of our lives,” she writes. And, while they don’t always do so for the better, Granirer chooses, at least in looking back, to appreciate her good fortune.

“Of course, I never even thought of being lucky at the time,” she admitted to the Independent. “One just lives one’s life as it comes along and only later, in retrospect, one sees the whole picture. Getting older allowed me to have a better perspective of the past and writing the memoir brought it all together. We kept saying for years how lucky our family was to live in Vancouver, but day by day there were ups and downs and the occasional complaints when unfortunate events happened – and they did. The memoir was a watershed for me and helped me see the serendipitous moments in my life when fate could have gone easily the other way.”

The light and shadows of the book’s title not only apply to the vividness of remembered moments and the darkness in which forgotten moments lie, but also the grey areas through which we must travel in life – the uncertainties, the aforementioned circumstances beyond our control.

When asked if she was a naturally optimistic person or developed into one, she said, “I probably am more of the former, although that does not mean that there are not times when I feel as if the world is collapsing on me. There have been hard times for me in the past, but somehow I seem to manage to get through. I just try to deal with the black thoughts, when they come. Nothing is really black-and-white, it’s through the shadows that we have to find our way.”

In addition to geopolitics, health and other uncontrollable issues, Granirer also had to negotiate the politics of the art world, in which she had to deal with many curators who “did not seem to be interested in art and artists, except as tools for enhancing their own careers.”

“… meeting someone who loves a painting and wishes to live with it, who wants to learn the details of its creation and is convinced that owning it will enrich his or her life, is the most rewarding experience for an artist.”

Nonetheless, she persevered – “Early in my career,” she writes, “I decided to follow my own course, regardless of the cost.” She did so, even as she realized that, in her profession, “being different was not considered an asset, but a liability.” Though admitting that all artists, including herself, crave recognition, she writes that “meeting someone who loves a painting and wishes to live with it, who wants to learn the details of its creation and is convinced that owning it will enrich his or her life, is the most rewarding experience for an artist.”

To mark her 80th birthday, in 2015, and her 50th year in Canada, Granirer gave many others a gift. “Established galleries usually charge the artist 50% commission for each work sold, in exchange for space and promotion,” she explains. “Why not invite the public … for 10 days and offer the commission to my collectors instead.” It was because of this generosity that I was able to buy my first Granirer.

After this exhibition and sale, Granirer and her husband headed back to Romania, 65 years after they had left the country. It was a meaningful visit with at least three serendipitous occurrences. But, back in Vancouver, she ended up in hospital. Sixteen days later, after two surgeries for diverticulitis, she made it home. “I counted my blessings and told myself how much worse it could have been,” she writes. “What if it had happened while I was in Romania?”

She returns to the memoir’s opening paragraph about getting older, in which she remarks, “Simple words like ‘later,’ ‘next year,’ ‘tomorrow,’ ‘not now,’ become risky, unsure and speculative.” But there is also much to look forward to, she says. At the time of writing, it was an international exhibit in Costa Rica and one in Spain. Currently, she’s preparing for the Zack Gallery exhibit and the launch of the memoir. The event takes place Nov. 16, 6 p.m., and admission is free. It will be a great opportunity to meet the artist – and pick up a copy of Light Within the Shadows.

It’s never too late to find love

It takes a brave, confident person to lay themselves bare before others, to openly analyze their choices in life and share what makes them happy, sad and concerned. In the essay collection Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic, local writer Max Roytenberg – with whom Jewish Independent readers should be familiar – is at turns funny, wistful, belligerent, humble, egotistical and sentimental. He’s everything we all are. In reading his stories, we learn about ourselves, as well.

The collection is divided into three parts – “Looking Back,” “Living the Life” and “Looking Forward.” In the first section, Roytenberg recounts stories from his childhood in Winnipeg, outlines the various jobs he had during his career and the cities in which he lived, and touches upon his first two marriages and some of their challenges. It ends with “The Kiss,” about how he – a widower in his early 70s by that time – finally managed to connect with the woman he had loved since his youth; she had long been an widow, too, and was about the same age. The second section is focused on their life together, and it is obvious from his writing that he is smitten and he is happy. While still upbeat and energetic in the third section, the pressure of time is ever-present, as he is now an octogenarian, and he is contemplating who he has become, what impact he has made in the world and how he should spend the rest of his life.

Roytenberg seems to be quite a character. He often refers to himself in the third person, as Maxie, and calls his wife Cookie, my Bride, rather than by her name. There are times when you want to pat him on the back – such as when he manages to push through a regulation change that was being held up by an official who may have been corrupt – and times when you want to shake him, such as when he is basically dismissive of a 28-year-long marriage. But then you want to hug him, because he stayed with and supported his second wife, Ruth, during her eight-year fight with cancer, and you want to jump for joy when he does make the move on his lifelong love, Cookie, and she says yes. By the third section, when he’s so honestly discussing whether he lived up to his own expectations, about winding down (though he also talks about the benefits of not having the time to dilly dally anymore), his children and grandchildren, his gratitude and what he might do tomorrow, it’s quite moving. He touches universal chords in many of his musings and, by the end of the book, you may or may not consider him a hero, but you’ll thank him for sharing a bit of himself with you. And maybe that bit will help you to see the hero in you.

A holiday for memories

When it comes to Rosh Hashanah, I’m a big fan. It’s hard not to love a Jewish holiday that’s all about spiritual renewal, deep reflection and heartfelt promises to work harder to present our “better selves” to those around us. But, as I move into my mid-40s, I’m realizing there’s more than that to the Jewish New Year – more than those deep brown challahs filled with sweet raisins, more than the novelty of dipping apples in golden honey and dripping them all over the tablecloth before a great meal. Rosh Hashanah is also a profound vessel of memory and, as I defrost my brisket, hunt for the best-yet new quinoa recipe and knead and shape my challahs, I’ll be thinking of the past.

I don’t realize, until Rosh Hashanah rolls around, how vividly that past is available. I yank those memories from the recesses of my mind and daydream my way back to a 14-year-old self growing up in Cape Town, South Africa. Back then, Rosh Hashanah meant receiving a batch of my grandmother’s taiglach, a recipe I’m still determined to tackle and one that will take me, in spirit, immediately and joyfully, into her tiny kitchen. It meant hours in synagogue, listening to the deep baritone voices of the Rondebosch shul choir, and the wonderful melodies of the cantor, who we imported from Israel for that time of year.

It meant family discussions on who to invite to our Rosh Hashanah table, and long debates about whether we could tolerate, for another year, the uncle who arrived in his farm-stained overalls and fell asleep on the sofa before the meal was over. Or the aunt who was always asking for recipes (and never using them) and used fingers, rather than salad servers, to select the leafy greens she wanted on her plate.

There were wild cousins whose antics my parents weren’t certain they wanted unleashed in the house. And friends whose children my sister and I wanted nothing to do with and campaigned loudly for their removal from the guest list.

With hours before the festival’s arrival, as my mother’s culinary activities sent rich aromas wafting over the house, we kids were in charge of setting the table and removing from the dusty cabinet the exquisite glasses my parents had bought while on a Venice honeymoon 15 years earlier. We’d craft name tags and carefully position them around the table, ensuring we occupied the best seats in the house. And we’d decant the wine an elderly relative had made, pouring it carefully into the crystal decanter only used on such occasions.

At the time, I rolled my eyes at the list of chores, grateful for the reprieve from school but unappreciative, as only a teenager with little worldly experience can be, of the treasures at that table. The family members we’d lose as age and cancer robbed them of more time with us. The recipes I’d never have the foresight to record and the hugs and kisses I never cherished long enough.

What I did bring with me over the decades, that would follow me into married life with children, was an unbridled love for Rosh Hashanah and a determination to make it as memory-laden, meaningful and delicious as possible in my home. It’s why, this year and in the years ahead, I’ll spend hours on dishes I’d never normally prepare: sodium-filled chicken soup with kneidlach, tender brisket that will tempt even the avowed vegetarians among my kids and wafer-thin kichel biscuits, perfect with chopped herring. Maybe I’ll even summon the courage to attempt baking sweet, sticky taiglach, a recipe that requires copious amounts of syrup and hours of careful babysitting.

I’ll do all this and more in the name of memory, because it will conjure my own past, a continent and lifetime away, so vividly. And I’ll hug my kids extra-tight, subdued in the knowledge that, one day, they, too, will celebrate this holiday with their own families after I’m six feet under, hopefully cherishing the food and love-laden Rosh Hashanah memories of their own long-gone childhoods.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Students pen survivors’ memoirs

Dr. Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, spoke on behalf of the survivors who participated. (photo by Jennifer Oehler)

Emotions were high at a graduation event where survivors of the Holocaust and Langara College students who wrote their memoirs shared their reflections on the experience.

Writing Lives was a two-semester course and a partnership between Langara College, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) and the Azrieli Foundation. In the first semester, students learned about the history of European Jewish culture and the Holocaust. In the second term, groups of three students were teamed with a Holocaust survivor. Students interviewed the survivor, transcribed their recollections and wrote their memoirs, which were presented at the closing event April 20.

“These memoirs will be given to the survivors as gifts for themselves and their families, but they will also be archived and they may possibly be published, and they will also serve as legacies for the survivors, their families and perhaps the research community in general,” said Dr. Rachel Mines, an English instructor at Langara and coordinator of the Writing Lives project. “I’m also the daughter of survivors, so I know how important it is that the stories get told and kept as a legacy for the families and the children and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren and also for the community at large, which I think is something that this particular program has succeeded in very well.”

Dr. Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, spoke on behalf of the survivors who participated.

“I have been interviewed a number of times by different people, of different levels of experience. So, when I was asked if I was willing to be interviewed by some students from Langara, I thought, ‘Oh well,’” Suedfeld said to laughter. “It’s not going to be very interesting. They are probably amateurs who don’t really know what they’re doing.”

He was pleasantly surprised, he said.

“My expectations were not fulfilled at all,” he said. “They had fresh points of view, they had interesting ideas about the Holocaust, they had interesting questions – not the kind of routine things that I’ve gone through before with more professional interviewers who tend to ask the same questions the same ways. Some of the questions made me think about my own experiences in ways that I never had before…. The interviews were always interesting and lively, occasionally funny, sometimes a bit frustrating and rarely, but once in awhile, irritating. But, all in all, a very positive experience and I expect that most of my cohort probably had similar experiences, and I certainly hope that the students did as well.”

Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community.

“This class has been so much more than that in so many ways,” she said. “It’s been a life-changing experience and I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of it. This class has taught me the importance of personal perspectives and historical documentation. Memoirs put a more human face on history and they memorialize what our survivors have been through and create empathy that historical facts and figures just cannot…. These survivors represent living history. These memoirs are a way of honouring survivors and making sure that history will never forget them…. You cannot get that sort of visceral emotion and intense human connection from a book or documentary. This is a living, breathing human being in front of you opening up about their most intimate and painful memories. It is an experience I will never forget.”

photo - Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community — Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community. (photo by Jennifer Oehler)

She added: “I came out of this class with something I did not expect: hope. Amidst all their personal accounts of suffering and loss, our survivors still managed to impart upon us the importance of hope. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a life-affirming experience as talking to these survivors.”

Gene Homel, an instructor in liberal studies at the B.C. Institute of Technology who taught part of the Writing Lives course, said evidence-based and factual history are important at a time when the veracity of events past and present are being called into question.

The collection and preservation of eyewitness accounts is what makes the Writing Lives project so valuable, said Ilona Shulman Spaar, education director at the VHEC.

“Some students told me that they would never forget the personal encounters that they had with their interviewees and that they will always carry them close to their hearts. Some even mentioned that this program was life-changing for them,” she said. “Some of the survivors shared with me that they greatly appreciated being part of this program. For them, too, it was a unique experience, as most of them never gave interviews to this extent or in such depth.”

Robbie Waisman, one of the survivor participants, said the greatest fear that Holocaust survivors have is what’s going to happen after they are gone.

“What you are doing gives us hope that it’s going to be remembered, to make this a better world,” he said. “So thank you.”

Serge Vanry, another survivor participant, said it was an experience that he hadn’t expected.

“I started out wanting to do this, but feeling uneasy about somehow getting involved in the past, a past that has been put away quite a bit,” he told the audience. “I was talking about events that I had forgotten, things that were difficult, things that were hard to live with and things that can haunt you. As I was looking back at the past, I started to discover a lot of things that I had forgotten – events, situations that really had disappeared for me.”

Turning to the students, he said: “You did extremely well and I am really thankful and I’ve really appreciated what you’ve done for me, for the things that I don’t want to forget, the things that need to be told again for me and for my family.”

Other survivors who participated in Writing Lives were Alex Buckman, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Jannushka Jakobouvitch and Mark Elster. Excerpts from student-participants’ journals have run in previous issues of the Independent (search “Writing Lives” at jewishindependent.ca).

Mines thanked the Azrieli Foundation, for expertise and materials that made Writing Lives possible, and the VHEC, “which has been crucial, essential, absolutely indispensable in supporting Writing Lives … through liaising with survivors, making their library available for research and as an interview room and, generally, just being generous in terms of their time, their advice, expertise and not to mention moral support.”

Mines added that she hoped this pilot project of Writing Lives would become an ongoing program and, in the days following the closing ceremony, she received the news that Writing Lives will indeed run again, starting in the fall semester.

Pat Johnson is a communications and development consultant to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

The importance of memoirs

This is the third of a three-part series on Writing Lives, a two-semester project at Langara College, coordinated by instructor Dr. Rachel Mines, in which second-year students are teamed up with local Holocaust survivors to interview them and write memoirs of their experiences before, during and after the Holocaust. The course is a partnership between Langara, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Azrieli Foundation. As part of their course work, students are keeping journals of their personal reflections on their experiences as Writing Lives participants. This week’s journal is entitled “The Importance of Memoir.” Here are some excerpts.

Our survivor has repeatedly stated that he and his peers greatly fear that, once they are gone, no one will remember what they went through. Survivors worry that, once they are no longer here as living testaments, their suffering and the people they lost will be forgotten. Our class, and other projects like it, is working to ensure that does not happen.

We must preserve the experiences of Holocaust survivors in written form so that, once they are no longer physically here, their story will be. We are not only archiving personal anecdotes, we are putting a human face on history. Facts are important for historical validity, but personal perspectives are essential in creating empathy. This program is chronicling history in such a way as to touch people and make them care about what happened to the Jewish people (and others) during the Holocaust. Empathy is one of the greatest tools in breaking down intolerance. Once we see the humanity in others, it becomes harder to hold onto prejudice and hatred.

Now, more than ever, it is vital to create this historic empathy. Prejudice and persecution are becoming ever more prevalent in our society, and it is up to us as a nation to halt such hatred. It is essential to remind the world what can happen when hatred is met with social apathy. These memoirs are a documentation of the horrors that unchecked hatred can lead to. I believe in the power of memoirs, the power of living history. I am honoured to be a part of such an important project at such a crucial time.

– Frieda Krickan

***

The first time I interviewed a Holocaust survivor, I was nervous, and rightfully so. My interview partner and I had been preparing for months before our first meeting but, nonetheless, when our interviewee arrived, I was so star-struck that I briefly lost my aptitude with the English language altogether. All I could manage to say was multiple renditions of the same sentence, thanking him again and again for his time and for agreeing to meet us.

Our interviewee, R., was gracious and didn’t miss a beat. He chimed in every time by thanking us in return just for listening and told us on multiple occasions, “I am so grateful for what you are doing. This is very important to make sure that the Holocaust never happens again.” His response surprised me but, the more I listened, the more I realized that this project meant more to him than just sharing his story; it was his personal call to tikkun olam, to repair the world the best that he can.

I learned that every Holocaust survivor’s greatest fear is not what you would expect. It is not death camps or gas chambers – instead, R. told us that their greatest fear is that no one will remember their stories when they are no longer alive to tell them. They are afraid that, with today’s ugly resurgence of antisemitism, everything they endured will be meaningless in the face of a society that cannot wait to forget. In a world that wants us to keep silent, it is every survivor’s hope that we raise our voices – that we proclaim the truth until our breath runs out. Our sacred duty is to empower the ones who can no longer empower themselves, and the key to making sure history never repeats itself is to tell their stories.

– Zoe Mandell

***

During this course, my group members and I spent a concentrated amount of time with a child survivor of the Holocaust. Time and time again, he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the Nazi regime…. His story is inspiring, heroic, terrifying at times, and very emotional. He tells his story with such grace, in such detail, that we could clearly visualize in our minds what he had experienced.

I have heard many stories of those who survived, and the stories they tell of those they lost. I have learned what it was like for a child survivor from Paris, a teenage survivor from Amsterdam and an adult survivor from Warsaw. I have heard the stories of their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters: how they watched their father get shot, or saw their mother walk toward her certain death, or said goodbye to a brother they knew they’d never see again. Telling their stories, writing their stories, is not only a therapeutic technique, but a preventative one. It is important for those who survived to tell as many stories as they can, not to let the memory of their loved ones perish like they did during that awful time in history. It is important to tell the story of their loved ones to keep their memory alive in as many beating hearts as possible. And it is important to tell the stories of the Holocaust, for both survivors and those who perished, to stand up and say, “We survived. We won’t forget. Never forget. And never let it happen again.”

– Marni Weinstein

***

During and after each interview my group conducted with R., he thanked us multiple times. He thanked us for taking the time to listen to his story, for writing his memoir, and even for sharing parts of our lives with him. Every time he thanked us I was taken aback: why was he thanking us for listening to him, when we were the lucky ones? We were being given the opportunity not only to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak but to write a memoir that would continue his legacy throughout time. At first, I struggled with his gratitude; I was almost uncomfortable with how genuinely thankful he was that we were spending time with him and listening to his story. Yet no matter what I said, he was grateful.

It took me quite awhile to grasp exactly why R. felt the need to continually express his gratitude. In fact, R. did not grow up in a world that accepted the events of the Holocaust as facts and wanted to learn more about it. He grew up in a world where no one wished to speak about the Holocaust and its events were contested. He did not conceal his experiences only because they were too painful to revisit, but also because no one wanted to listen.

Not only did those affected by the Holocaust lose their families, their homes, their childhoods and years of their lives, but in many cases they lost their voices. For years, the world refused to listen and, because of that, we lost many valuable stories. Memoirs are important not only because they give survivors the opportunity to share their stories, but because, on a very small level, they begin to give a voice back to the voiceless. Although we can’t bring those survivors back and prove to them there are people who care and will listen, we can make sure the survivors who are still alive do not go unheard.

– Lucy Bogle

Family History series launch

Don’t Break the Chain is the first publication of what the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia hopes will become a Family History series.

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia has released the first book in what it hopes will become a Family History series. Don’t Break the Chain: The Nemetz Family Journey from Svatatroiske to Vancouver was published in collaboration with the Ben and Esther Dayson Charitable Foundation, and was researched by Shirley Barnett and Philip Dayson.

photo - Abraham Nemetz, Toba Nemetz, Esther Wosk, Bill Nemetz (driving), Chava Wosk holding baby Sonny, and Abrasha Wosk; taken at the hollow tree in Stanley Park, 1927 — Abraham Nemetz, Toba Nemetz, Esther Wosk, Bill Nemetz (driving), Chava Wosk holding baby Sonny, and Abrasha Wosk; taken at the hollow tree in Stanley Park, 1927. *(photo from nemetzfamily.ca/gallery)*

Barnett described her family as founders and workers behind the scenes of the Vancouver Jewish community.

“One of my mother’s sisters helped build Congregation Schara Tzedeck, the Louis Brier Home and funeral chapels, while another sister founded Jewish Family Services and visited the poor, people in prisons and mental hospitals. My mother ran charity events for Jewish Vancouver from the age of 18 and her brother started Camp Hatikvah,” she said. “They brought a lot of strength to the community. The next generation, which was mine and included 23 of us, has made significant contributions to Jewish Vancouver, too.”

There was plenty of raw material to draw from for the book, given the fact that Barnett’s six brothers had created memoirs and Dayson had begun creating family trees 25 years ago. The project became challenging when she opted to include charts and photographs of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I established contact with members of the family I never knew, siblings who’d had arguments and people estranged from the family, and it took a very soft approach, getting them to respond with photographs,” she explained. “I wasn’t looking to mend fences or interfere in anyone’s life, I just wanted to write a book!”

photo - A Congregation Schara Tzedeck testimonial evening in honour of Abrasha Wosk, 1977. Left to right are, in the back row, Joyce and Sonny Wosk, Esther and Hymie Aheroni, Rosalie and Joe Segal, and, in the front row: Abrasha and Chava Wosk — A Congregation Schara Tzedeck testimonial evening in honour of Abrasha Wosk, 1977. Left to right are, in the back row, Joyce and Sonny Wosk, Esther and Hymie Aheroni, Rosalie and Joe Segal, and, in the front row: Abrasha and Chava Wosk. *(photo from nemetzfamily.ca/gallery)*

Ultimately, with the assistance of graphic designer Barbi Braude and Facebook, she was able to source all the photographs required to complete the book.

Michael Schwartz, director of community engagement at the JMABC, said the Nemetz family journey would resonate among many other Jewish families in Vancouver.

“The story of leaving Europe, getting here and eventually bringing their family to Canada has parallels for many in our community and is a fascinating tale,” he said. “The Nemetz family has a very interesting history and many siblings of the early generation have accomplished great things and had an important impact on the community as a whole.”

The museum is hoping to partner with other families who are interested in creating similar books. Barnett described the creation of the book as a joint venture. “My brother and I contributed the money to the museum and archives, which then allowed us to use their name, resources, and to co-publish this,” she said. “I’d like to see the Wosk, Groberman and Waterman families – all large, extended families with deep roots in Vancouver – do a book like this.”

The launch of Don’t Break the Chain is being celebrated at a hosted brunch at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on April 2, 11 a.m. If you are interested in attending, call the museum 604-257-5199.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Decembers of my childhood

This story comes from the book Life Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas (Read the Spirit, 2015).

***

My father used to take showers with the lady next door.

It was all pretty kosher. We rented half of a “duplex” house at 89 University Avenue in Providence, and the Winn family occupied the other half. “Duplex” means different things in various places; in Providence, a “duplex” was a house with two separate entrances and two mirror-image units. Ours had three floors and a basement suitable for Cub Scout den meetings.

The way the house was designed, the bathrooms on the second floor shared a common wall, tub alongside tub and toilets back to back. The insulation was fairly thick, but subdued sounds could get through, and soon after the Winn family moved into 91 University Avenue, my father and Ruth Winn discovered that they observed similar morning shower routines. The muffled knocking back and forth on the tiles at 7:15 a.m., then a cute neighborhood joke, is now a piece of family folklore.

My mother and Ruth became friends immediately; 40 years later and 400 miles apart, they still dearly love each another. Laughter is what started it all off, but it was a hurricane called Carol that really brought us all together.

For eight days, Providence was without electricity, and neighbors drew closer to one another. Cold food went into the Keoughs’ old gas refrigerator at 85 University Avenue, while our battery-operated radio was the source for news and entertainment. The Winns’ vast quantities of sporting equipment helped everyone pass the time until that late afternoon when we were sitting on our porches and my mother suddenly yelled, “The lights are on!” Everyone rushed inside.

The bonding held.

The Winns’ oldest son Cooper David Winn IV and I were classmates, though never best friends. Still, we spent lots of time together, as neighboring kids do, and some of the most memorable moments occurred around the December holidays. Chanukah at my house. Christmas at his house.

Mutual envy.

For me, Chanukah generally meant one gift from my parents per night, but factoring in additions from grandparents, other relatives and friends, I averaged 16 to 20 each season. Not bad. I would even feel a bit on the smug side as I walked to school in the morning reporting to Cooper on the prior night’s take.

That is, I felt smug until early Christmas morning, when I would race over to the Winns’ side of the house to inspect the mountains of presents, the massive quantities strewn about the living room, such a volume of stuff that even the recognition in later years that the haul included a suspiciously large amount of underwear and socks could not make me rationalize away my jealousy.

The feeling of Chanukah has remained with me: our old tin menorah and the look, the smell, the soft, smooth texture of its candles, sometimes dripping their orange wax across my fingers. There were the traditional songs, the latkes and applesauce, and our one decoration, “Happy Chanukah,” printed on colorful paper dreidels and placed across the dining room entryway. The sign was worn, faded, but it was our tradition, and for eight days it transformed the room into a chamber of happy expectation.

Most of my presents were modest. I loved to make Revell models of antique cars, and so something like a Stanley Steamer one night might be followed by a Stutz Bearcat the next. Another year it was accessories for my small American Flyer train set: one night it might be a new caboose, and another night a little building to place near the tracks. I remember categories of gifts, but the particulars have long faded.

Except for two presents that I’ve never forgotten.

The first was a 26-inch English bicycle. It arrived on the year when I went for the gold in the “eight small presents or one big present” option game. Friday was the designated night and, as soon as the candles were lighted and the songs sung, I dutifully complied with the “Close your eyes tight” directive. The waiting seemed to go on forever as I listened to my father’s grunts and a bumping noise coming up the cellar steps. When he approached the dining room, I heard the rhythmic, metallic sound of a spinning tire, and knew that my yearlong series of unsubtle hints had been acknowledged.

Later we went to synagogue and, before the service began, I stood in the foyer for what seemed like hours, watching as every person entered, brushing the snow off their coats and stomping their boots. I scanned the arrivals, looking for Joey or Sammy or Ricky or anyone else I knew. “Guess what! I got an English bike!”

Other Chanukahs, though, were not as festive. My parents constantly struggled financially, one of the consequences of my father’s checkered career and made worse, later, by the albatross of medical bills from my sister’s long illness.

My father was always involved in the paper business. During the eight years when we lived on University Avenue, he worked for at least six different companies in waste paper, paper chemicals and wholesale tissue. Each position would begin with optimism and end with him returning home one night carrying his electric typewriter.

He always bounced back, always landed another job somewhere, somehow. Yet the process was draining, and the weeks or months between paychecks grim. One of those dark periods coincided with Chanukah.

I knew things were tough that season. We didn’t starve, but everything had to be cut back as we tried to make do on the salary my mother earned fitting women into corsets at the Peerless Department Store. “I know it’s hard,” she would say, “but some day our ship will come in.” I believed her. Sometimes I could even visualize “our ship,” a small speck on the horizon slowly, surely heading right for us.

“Our ship,” burdened with riches, was still far out to sea when Chanukah began. This year, I knew, would not be like other years. The grandparents and a few of my parents’ friends came through, but, my parents explained, I would need to understand that they just couldn’t afford presents this time. Just this year. Next year will be better.

Chanukah overlapped Christmas, fortuitously. The Winns were busy with their preparations, so I didn’t see much of Cooper. I was glad school was already on vacation; there was no need to report to friends on my Jewish version of an empty stocking.

That Christmas morning I didn’t rush next door.

On the final night of Chanukah, my parents surprised me with a gift. It was a small one, they warned. Nothing very special. But I’d been so understanding of what was happening that they wanted me to have it. I felt a slight twinge of guilt over their sacrifice as I accepted the little package.

Inside the box was a plastic model for my collection, a replica of a Chris Craft cabin cruiser. Probably cost about $2.95. I glued it together the next day and, for years, until I went off to college, the little boat sat on a shelf in my bedroom. It was far from being my fanciest model. Long discarded, the thought of it means more to me now than it ever did back then.

When I look back on all those Decembers of my childhood, those often wonderful days of mystery, anticipation, celebration, I know for a fact that I received many dozens of presents over the course of the years. They form an indistinct blur. After all, a long time has passed.

In truth, of all those gifts, I can actually remember only two. Only two. One was 26-inch English bicycle. Shiny black, three-speed, with a headlight powered by a generator that spun alongside the tire and its own silver air pump latched to the frame.

The other was a plastic model boat.

Rabbi Bob Alper (bobalper.com) is a full-time stand-up comic, performing internationally.