poetry

A multidimensional memoir

With her latest book, Olga Campbell sets out to leave a legacy, one that encompasses the trauma of the past but also the richness of the present and hope for the future.

Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson is Campbell’s third book. Her first, Graffiti Alphabet, comprised photographs of graffiti she found around the Greater Vancouver area. Her second, A Whisper Across Time, was her family’s Holocaust story.

The first essay in Dear Arlo is about Campbell’s parents, Tania and Klimek. They lived in Warsaw. “They were surrounded by family and friends and had much to look forward to,” writes Campbell. “Then, in 1939, everything changed. The Nazis invaded Poland from the west, the Soviets from the east. Life as they had known it stopped.”

Klimek would be arrested by the Soviets first, a pregnant Tania two weeks later. They were sent to different Russian prison camps. They survived, but the baby didn’t, nor did any of Tania’s family, most notably, her twin sister and parents, Campbell’s maternal grandparents.

“Several months after their release from the prison camps, my parents found themselves in Baghdad, Iraq,” writes Campbell. “By that time, my mother was pregnant with me and could go no further. I was born in Baghdad on February 14, 1943.”

Eventually, after living in both Palestine and the United Kingdom, the family came to Canada. It wasn’t an easy life, learning a new language and new culture, or a long one for Campbell’s mother, who died at 52 of cancer.

image - A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson, which features letters, art, poems, essays and recipes — A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson, which features letters, art, poems, essays and recipes.

Campbell shares her stories and wisdom with readers as a grandmother speaking to her only grandson, Arlo, with whom she obviously has a special relationship.

“I am writing this book as a legacy for you,” she writes in the first letter to Arlo. “A multidimensional memoir. A compilation of my writing, my art and a few family recipes. These writings and art are my responses to events in my life. The losses, trauma, grief … and the joy, happiness and love. It’s about the angst and awe of life, which is ever-changing, full of challenges but also magical.”

Brief letters to Arlo are spread throughout the memoir, which is gloriously full of Campbell’s artwork – painting, mixed media, sculpture and more, all of it in colour. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she has had many exhibitions since deciding to become an artist in her 40s, having started her professional life as a social worker. She has participated in the Eastside Culture Crawl since its inception almost 30 years ago, and has been a consistent part of the West of Main Art Walk (Artists in Our Midst) as well.

In addition to the art and letters in Dear Arlo, Campbell includes some of her poetry and essays. She shares how she came to write her second book, her experiences dealing with intergenerational trauma, her path to spirituality, how she found courage, and more.

She writes about losing her husband, in 1994. “Along with him, my plans and dreams for the future also died,” she writes. He died of a stroke at 49 years old – the pair had been together for 32 years, married for 26 of those years.

She shares the story of how she came to have her current dog, Nisha. “I was very sick in September 2019 with what my doctor now believes was COVID, before anyone had heard of COVID,” writes Campbell. Struggling many months with breathing difficulties, she turned, in desperation, to Ganesha, a Hindu god. “My wish to him was to remove all obstacles to my physical, emotional and mental well-being.”

A couple of days later, there came a knock at her door. Two work acquaintances were there, asking if she could adopt a rescue dog. Campbell did, and Nisha “was extremely timid, jumping, trembling and shaking at every sound, every movement. I held her all day every day for the first week to calm her down and get her used to me. She is still a little timid but every day she becomes more brave. She is playful, full of fun and great company,” writes Campbell. “She did remove all obstacles to my physical, emotional and mental health.”

Another uplifting essay is the one on how Campbell has “never come of age.” When she paints and creates with friends, she feels like she is 5 years old, she says. When with her teenage grandson, she also feels like a teen, and sees “the wonder of the world.”

image - A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson — A page from Olga Campbell’s memoir Dear Arlo: Letters to My Grandson.

Campbell has role models, older friends and neighbours who still have bucket lists and exercise regimes. Having traveled much herself – Myanmar, Morocco, Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Laos, Turkey and other places – she now wants “to do inward travel. To get to know myself and others around me. To find the mystery inside. To nourish relationships with the people I know and with new people that I meet.” She wants to have different adventures: “Creative adventures, people adventures, spiritual adventures.”

There are more than a dozen recipes in Dear Arlo – from an apple torte that a 5-year-old Arlo bet Campbell she wouldn’t make (which she did but he never ate); to cabbage pie and Russian salad, recalling when Arlo was teaching himself Russian; to broccoli and cheese soup, vegetarian meatloaf and ginger apple tea, in response to Arlo’s request for some recipes.

Campbell is grateful for many things.

“I have had a good marriage and a wonderful family – my lovely daughter, her loving partner and my wonderful grandson Arlo,” she writes.

“I have dealt with losses and tragedies in my life, including the premature death of my husband, but I survived, and now I am happy. Those intense feelings of sadness that I grew up with no longer plague me. I can be triggered, but on the whole, I am fine.”

The memoir ends as it begins, with a letter to Arlo, who, says Campbell, has been “the best grandson I could ever have imagined.”

She writes, “The past provides us with valuable lessons that we can use to inform our present and future. A sense of connection and continuity with the people who came before us. This adds a depth and richness to our lives. I look forward to having many more adventures with you.”

We get to see Arlo grow up, in photos throughout the book. And the photo placed squarely in the centre of this last letter is perfect: Arlo in the driver’s seat of his new red convertible, toque on, giving a thumbs up, smiling, with Campbell beside him, also bundled up for a cold drive, but also with a big smile.

To purchase Dear Arlo or Campbell’s previous books, visit olgacampbell.com.

Campbell’s artwork is on display at the Zack Gallery Jan. 8-27, with an artist reception Jan. 9, 6-8 p.m. Campbell speaks as part of the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Jan. 23, 7 p.m., in the gallery.

Knowing how precious life is

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz speaks at the Nov. 24 launch of her latest book, Hidden Vision: Poems of Transformation, which she wrote under the name Jagna Boraks. (photo by Rhonda Dent)

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz launched her latest book, Hidden Vision: Poems of Transformation, written under the name Jagna Boraks, at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery Nov. 24. Co-presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the JCC Jewish Book Festival, the event featured Boraks-Nemetz sharing some of her poems – on themes of identity, resilience and remembrance – with musical accompaniment by Wendy Bross Stuart.

Divided into six sections, the poems in Hidden Vision travel from the Holocaust to after the pandemic, from a nadir of human experience to a zenith of hope and gratitude.

In her introduction, composed shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Boraks writes, “Destruction is the opposite of creation. To survive in this world, in any crisis or situation, we need to strengthen ourselves and each other – spiritually. We begin by respecting ourselves and others.

“Understanding that each human life matters, and that each culture and creed are all a part of the world’s flowing river. There is greater strength in this belief than hatred and intolerance.”

The book begins in the spring of 2020, when the world was in the throes of COVID-19 and all that it brought – isolation, fright, shifts in personal and professional behaviour, and, of course, widespread sickness. In the poem “My Street,” written on March 29, 2020, Boraks confronts these issues:

“I will not wait like the brides / I will unlock my door and step outside / where the air feels fresh and crisp / breathing deeply I will begin my walk / towards life.”

Further on, she looks towards her literary influences, one of whom is Adam Mickiewicz, regarded by many as the national poet of Poland, but who also had an impact on the literature of neighbouring countries. In “The Autumn Muse,” inspired by Mickiewicz, Boraks asks: “has anyone ever written an ode / to old age – when the bird of youth / becomes time’s vulture / lurking in mid-air / its malevolent claws seeking to destroy?”

Within the later sets of poems, there is a poignant tribute to Alex Buckman, who, like Boraks-Nemetz, had been an ardent campaigner for Holocaust education in British Columbia. Buckman passed away in Warsaw in 2023 while on a March of the Living trip, where he served as a mentor to young students. In a tribute titled “In Memoriam for a Friend,” Boraks writes: “you chanted your life’s song / like the thorn bird / which sings till his heart might break / you chanted your fear of the dark / as you sang to the children / to appease their fear / as you sang to the students / to teach them lessons / of those barbaric times / when human life was cheap.…”

Despite countless social ills, personal struggles and humankind’s propensity for cruelty, Boraks ends the compilation on an upbeat note. For example, her poem “Hope” reads: “but father time in tune with God / will move the frozen earth into the sun / there – flooded by the light / a new earth will bear fruit / a new man woman and child / will behold the magic of a spring day.”

photo - The launch of Hidden Vision at the Zack Gallery drew a standing-room-only crowd — The launch of Hidden Vision at the Zack Gallery drew a standing-room-only crowd. *(photo by Rhonda Dent)*

Born in Warsaw, Boraks-Nemetz is a child survivor of the Holocaust. She lived in and escaped the Warsaw Ghetto, then hid in Polish villages under a false identity. Her family came to Canada in 1949.

Boraks-Nemetz graduated from St. Margaret’s School in Victoria, going on to study at the University of British Columbia, where she earned a bachelor of arts, then a master’s in comparative literature. Upon earning a certificate in ESL from George Brown College, she taught English, before eventually teaching creative writing at UBC’s Writing Centre, from 1980 until 2015.

Boraks-Nemetz’s previous volumes of poetry are Out of the Dark, Garden of Steel and Ghost Children. She has also penned three award-winning young adult novels: The Old Brown Suitcase, Sunflower Diary and The Lenski File. The Old Brown Suitcase was placed on the recommended reading list for BC schools.

In 2017, Boraks-Nemetz published Mouth of Truth, a novel exploring a family’s past and the trauma of the Holocaust. She has also translated the works of Polish poets Andrzej Busza (Astrologer in the Underground) and Waclaw Iwaniuk (Dark Times).

To order Hidden Vision, contact the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre at [email protected] and 604-264-0499.

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

Haiku signs in the bathroom

This summer, our main event was a road trip. My husband had a conference at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Since we met at Cornell as undergrads 30 years ago, we thought it might be worthwhile to make this a family trip. We hadn’t been back in 20 years.

When you go back to old haunts, they might not be what you expect. There were so many new campus buildings. I took our twins on a campus tour where a 19-year-old guide talked about economics (her major), business and start-ups. When she asked the alumni in the group about their majors, I told her I was a double major: comparative literature and Near Eastern studies. She said, “So interesting!” in a tone that made it clear she thought I was ancient and bizarre.

I didn’t feel at home in Ithaca, which I used to feel was “my place.” My kids found holes in Cornell’s sustainability mantras that I used to deeply respect. While trying to dry clothing by draping it in the back of the car, for example, they pointed out there were no clothes lines in the dorms where we stayed or outdoors. When we went to buy the obligatory university sweatshirts, they couldn’t believe the campus store stocked tons of branded items made entirely of synthetics – manufactured from petroleum and likely made in poor working conditions.

When we visited a renovated cafeteria, where I had eaten with my husband when we first met, we had to go to the washroom. Each stall had a short message posted. It explained what not to throw down the toilet. It also explained what had happened to require the message to be posted. It was the soul of brevity, a haiku of sorts, but it answered every question that a smart-mouthed adolescent student might ask.

With a smirk, I commented that this was still my kind of place – it offers the full explanation. As an adult, I’ve lived in places without the full explanation. Here’s an example: when an event is announced in Winnipeg, there is a start time, usually with a vague location, and the announcement just assumes everyone knows where it is. There’s also an assumption that you’ll know that, if food will be served, what kind of food, and what else is likely to happen. If there is a contact number at the end, it’s a postscript that reads, “If you are dumb enough to not understand this, call this person – but, guess what, they won’t know either.” Admittedly, I’m paraphrasing a little here, but, inevitably, if I call that number, the person is completely stymied by my questions. They wonder about why anyone would need to know what I am asking. They aren’t used to newcomers who might not know what to expect or who need all the details.

Maybe I’m just that annoying person who likes to know what I’m getting into, but when I hang out with relatives from bigger cities, their event schedule is full of the pertinent details. When I look at my sister-in-law’s fridge, in the DC suburbs, every single school event flyer or invitation has all the information. Maybe it’s a Type A thing? Even if they’re uptight, those are my people.

Recently, we had a visit with a local teacher here in Winnipeg and she mentioned a place run by two nice Jewish guys, called Friend Bakery and Pizzeria, which has delicious cinnamon buns. The bakery’s not near our usual activities. Out on an errand, we stopped in. We were greeted by the owners. They were welcoming, and open to our family deliberations. While we eyed the big $11 challahs, I said it was too bad that we’d already started ours in the bread machine – because it’s summer and I’m so not turning on the oven. The man nodded with understanding. We wished each other Shabbat Shalom. I got a little teary driving home. I had found more of my people.

Finding one’s “people” isn’t easy or without contention. Wandering around Ithaca on our trip, I encountered a Gaza war propaganda sticker with real venom to it. I was upset. For the first time ever, I unpeeled that sticker and threw it away. They might be free to spread misinformation, but I was just as free to see its harmful hate and throw it out.

Summer is for rest, reflection and productivity. I felt physically rested after spending many days in the car. Yet summer is also a time for growing things, embracing learning out of school and in the world. My kids saw lakes, gorges and waterfalls, ate lots of ice cream and watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the first time. (The movie is still funny.) The grandeur of steep craggy landscapes and huge lakes is still awe-inspiring.

My world has narrowed some since Oct. 7. I actively avoid encounters where I suspect my household might face hate or harassment. A friend and ally suggested that it must be even more upsetting when it happens in a place where I’m relaxed and least suspect it. The places where I used to feel safe are painful to be in.

Even so, I’ve felt love, support and outreach from unexpected places. Two close non-Jewish mom friends, who consistently wish me Shabbat Shalom, encourage me to vent and they listen with love. A few of my husband’s colleagues and friends’ parents just contacted us out of the blue to say they care and are thinking of us.

I don’t know “where we go from here” in the middle of a war, and the hate it’s stirred up. I think about the bathroom sign haiku with a weird fondness. It said everything that needed saying. I wish bigger, scarier times allowed for that kind of precise explanation and brevity, but I know it isn’t possible. Smart people disagree, struggle and work to find meaning. This is what Torah and Jewish rabbinic tradition models for us. The key is to keep it up, not lose hope, and to avoid the paralysis that comes with irrational fear.

When we find “our people,” they don’t always agree with us, and things are always changing. A long road trip can remind us that we’ve been stuck in ruts. But, sometimes, the GPS directions are wrong. We need our brains, a hard copy map and common sense to get out of tricky situations; autopilot doesn’t always suffice. However, our personal and historic experiences offer a roadmap of what has gone before and what might lie ahead. With that context, we can go forward: towards a new school year, a new Jewish year, new learning and better times.

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

Community milestones … Jewish Medical Association, Freilich & Karasick

Left to right: Drs. Larry Barzelai, Ran Goldman, Mor Cohen-Eilig, Marla Gordon and Maya Rosenkrantz. (photo from Dr. Marla Gordon)

The Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia held its inaugural event Monday evening, Feb. 12, at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, with 100 attendees in person and 20 via Zoom. Three speakers presented and all were inspiring, relaying hopeful words, with the broad message being to unite and stand together.

Dr. Dynai Eilig, an Israeli-born and -trained orthopedic surgeon who works and lives in Vancouver, traveled to Israel on Oct. 9 to work in Soroka Medical Centre’s trauma centre. He shared heartbreaking stories, but also stories of resiliency. He spoke about the 150,000 reservist army volunteers from outside Israel who came in the early days after Oct. 7.

photo - Dr. Dynai Eilig presenting at the inaugural event Feb. 12. (photo from Dr. Marla — Dr. Dynai Eilig presenting at the inaugural event Feb. 12. *(photo from Dr. Marla Gordon)*

Dr. Robert Krell, a retired child psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, explained the correlation between the rise of antisemitism now and that in Europe in the 1930s. He said Holocaust education is needed in all universities and all faculties and that medical and other educators must not resign from their teaching posts.

Dr. Yael Glassberg, an Israel-based pediatric gastroenterologist, joined via Zoom. She spoke on the child hostages who were released and her assessment and involvement with these children.

Planning for the JMA community-building event took place over a two-month period, led by pediatric emergency room physician Dr. Ran Goldman and elder-care physician Dr. Marla Gordon.

The Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia was started by Gordon and family physician Dr. Larry Barzelai in November 2023 as an attempt to get Jewish physicians together to support one another, especially in the current situation of increased antisemitism. The group has almost 300 members.

– Courtesy Dr. Marla Gordon

***

Eric Freilich was recently promoted to director of legal, private equity and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) at BMS Group and heads the Canadian legal team for the multinational insurance broker.

Eric grew up in Vancouver and is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, where he was a proud and active member of Hillel and of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. Following graduation from UBC, Eric moved to Toronto to work in the film industry. He then went back to school and received his doctor of law and a master of business administration from York University. He worked at two prominent Toronto law firms prior to going in-house, focusing on corporate/commercial work and mergers and acquisitions.

Eric has recently found his way back into academia, contributing to teaching courses on mergers and acquisitions and risk management techniques in transactions at the Schulich School of Business.

Outside of work, Eric’s strongest sense of identity comes from being the best father and husband he can be.

***

photo - Adina Karasick — Adina Karasick (photo from poets.ca)

photo - Ian Keteku — Ian Keteku (photo from poets.ca)

Adeena Karasick and Ian Keteku are the inaugural winners of the League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Award, which consists of two $1,000 awards, presented annually to two poets for a single poem or suite of poems up to 10 minutes in length.

Karasick won for the poem “Eicha,” featured in Aerotomania: The Book of Lumenations (bit.ly/aerotomania).

“Attuned to sound poetry’s domain, Adeena Karasick’s homophonic translation ‘Eicha: The Book of Lumenations’ unfolds as a dynamic interplay of acoustic and material expressions,” wrote LCP Spoken Word Award juror Eric Schmaltz. “Immersed in the intricacies of language’s auditory, textural and tonal dimensions, Karasick engages the original text, the Book of Lamentations, and brings it into dialogue with the multifaceted layers of our present. A simultaneous act of lamentation and ecstatic intertextual exploration, Karasick’s performance traverses sonic texture and electroacoustic manipulation to resound with a symphony of hope and sorrow.”

Keteku was honoured for the triptych: “Mr. Tally Man,” “the space between” and “The Light.” LCP Spoken Word Award juror Andrea Thompson called him “a master of spoken word,” noting: “With impeccable comedic timing and understated affect, Keteku’s performances are a triumph of wordplay and musicality, driven by wisdom and humanity – alive as a heartbeat.”

For more about the League of Canadian Poets, visit poets.ca.

Galilee goes free, or the tetragrammaton only knows why a poem in Adeena Karasick’s Aerotomania: The Book of Lumenations is dedicated to me

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Eruvin 53b), the Hebrew-speakers of ancient Judea were so precise in their speech that they would never describe a cloak they were trying to sell as merely green, but would tell you instead that it was the colour of newly sprouted beet greens trailing along the ground. Galileans, on the other hand, were less punctilious:

“What do you mean when you say that Galileans are not careful in speaking? It is taught: There was a Galilean who used to go about [the marketplace] asking, ‘Who has amar? Who has amar?’ They said to him, ‘Stupid Galilean, do you mean khamor [donkey] to ride or khamar [wine] to drink? Amar [wool] to wear or imar [a lamb] to slaughter?’ And don’t forget the woman who wanted to say to her friend, ‘to-i de-okhlikh khalovo, come, I’ll give you some milk,’ only to have it come out as ‘tokhlikh lovya, may you be eaten by a lioness?’”

Where the ancient Galileans seem to have had no choice but to sound like themselves, Adeena Karasick has elaborated, over 14 volumes of poetry, a sort of deliberate neo-Galileanism that sometimes bridges, sometimes leaps and, on occasion, just fills the talmudic chasm between utterance and meaning in a way guaranteed to drive any artificial intelligence program out of its simulated mind. As she says in the poem “Talmudy Blues II” that is dedicated to me in her new collection, Aerotomania: The Book of Lumenations (Lavender Ink): “… sometimes the letters rule over her / and sometimes she rules over the letters / cleaving to the light of infinite possibility.” (p.31)

Is Karasick cleaving to the light as she rules over the letters? Or do the letters ruling her do the cleaving? Have her consonants been endowed with the naissances latentes of Rimbaud’s “Voyelles”? Or, less goyishly, is Karasick turning Galilean imprecision into an aesthetic approach rooted in the modalities of elementary-level reading instruction – reading silently and reading aloud, the absorption and subsequent re-citation of a written text – as enacted in the traditional East European Hebrew school known as kheyder?

The basic level of instruction had three phases:

1. Alef-beys, literally, alphabet, in which students learn to recognize the consonants that make up the Hebrew alphabet, along with the sundry diacritical marks that take the place of alphabetic vowels. There are 11 of the latter, representing five vowel sounds.

2. Halb-traf leyenen, reading half syllables. Each diacritic is run, as it were, through all 22 of the consonants. So, for example, syllables formed with the vowel komets would be learned by reciting, “Komets alef, o; komets beys, bo; komets giml, go” … and so on, to the end of the alphabet, when the student would go on to the next vowel: “Pasekh alef, a; pasekh beys, ba; pasekh giml, ga.”

3. Gants-traf leyenen, reading whole syllables, i.e., combining the individual letters or syllabograms into words.

Karasick’s traffic is with the last two, the kheyder basics supplemented by the graphemically focused mysticism of Sefer Yetsira and Abraham Abulafia as refracted through a contemporary sensibility and range of reference: “The letter is matter which moves matter … these words are closer than they appear.” (p.31)

We see halb-traf in full flight in, say, the coda to “Eicha,” the long poem with which Lumenations opens: “In the eros of aching ethos / The caesura screams – / Through cirque’elatory sequiturs, resistances” and continues: “Here, her / in mired err / whose scar is clear // Hear her/here/whose heir / wears err’s // shared prayer / where // care is rare….” (pp.26-27)

All you have to do is imagine a phrase like “hear her/here/” in unvocalized Hebrew, רה רה רה, and then read it as “hair hare hoar,” to realize that Karasick’s poetry, like the airplane she anatomizes in Aerotomania, constitutes “a hybridized syncretic space between cultures and idioms / where that interlingual complexity doesn’t close down but builds dialogue” (p.83), a dialogue rooted in, but quickly soaring beyond, quotidian phonemic reality.

There is an upward thrust to the book, from the dust and cracked earth of “Eicha,” the recasting of the biblical Lamentations (eicha means how, as in, “How sits the city solitary”), through the rising rabbinic commentary of “Talmudy Blues II,” a romp through ways of thought – words, that is – that now stand in place of the things destroyed: Jerusalem and the Temple (known in Hebrew as the Holy House).

An excursus on the idea of house follows, then “Checking In II,” i.e., checking into the Aerotomania flight by stowing readers’ cultural baggage for the duration of their stay on the plane. Having shaken off our dust (Isaiah 52:2), we emerge from the fog of our associations. Our lumen is come (Isaiah 60:1); we rise through the ether to embrace The Shining.

As the dedicatee of “Talmudy Blues II,” it behooves me to say something about the poem. A continuation of “Here Today Gone Gemara” from Karasick’s 2018 collection Checking In (Talonbooks), “Talmudy Blues II” consists in large part of elaborations of dialogue (and dialect) culled from our ongoing conversations about the ways in which the Talmud is reflected and refracted in Yiddish. “Carpe verbum,” reads the epigraph to “Here Today” – pluck that word like it’s a Sabbath chicken, clear away the excrescences and bite into the thing itself, ever mindful that the Hebrew davar means both word and thing, utterance and entity; my honeyed words solidified into raw material, ore for Adeena’s gold, one davar turned into another. But, as it says in the Talmud (Megillah 15), “Whoever credits a davar to the person who said it brings redemption to the world.”

Amen. Thou hast conquered, O neo-Galilean.

Michael Wex is author of three books on Yiddish, including Born to Kvetch. His songs have been recorded by such bands as the Klezmatics, and he has translated The Threepenny Opera from German into Yiddish. His one-person shows include Sex in Yiddish, Wie Gott in Paris and Gut Yontef, Yoko. I Just Wanna Jewify: The Yiddish Revenge on Wagner was recently revived (on Zoom) by the Ashkenaz Festival. His most recent major project, Baym Kabaret Yitesh, a recreation of a 1938 Warsaw Yiddish cabaret, was the surprise hit of Ashkenaz 2022 in Toronto. Bas Sheve, the long-lost Yiddish opera restored by Wex and composer Joshua Horowitz, was the not-so-surprising hit of the same festival. This book review was originally published in New Explorations: Studies in Culture & Communication, Vol. 3, no. 2 (2023).

Openings in wake of COVID

Inscribing what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might call espace vital (the space we can survive), Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings (2023) is an exploration of openings in a (never quite) post-COVID world. Written by poet, performer and cultural theorist Adeena Karasick and visualized by designer/author and vis lit creator Warren Lehrer, both the title poem and “Touching in the Wake of the Virus” track the trepidations and celebrations of openings read through socioeconomic, geographic and bodily space.

Both poems explore a range of intralingual etymologies laced with post-consumerist and erotic language, theoretical discourse, philosophical and kabbalistic aphorisms. They foreground language and book-space as organisms of hope – highlighting the concept of opening and touching as an ever-swirling palimpsest of spectral voices, textures, whispers and codes transported through passion, politics and pleasure as we negotiate loss and light.

In this first collaborative book, Lehrer choreographs Karasick’s words on the stage of the page through typographic compositions that give form to the emotional, metaphorical, historical and sonic underpinnings of the texts. Together, the writing and visuals engage the reader to become an active participant in the experience/performance of the work. The book also comes with a soundtrack recording (via QR code) of Karasick reading the poems with music composed and performed by Grammy award-winning composer and trumpet player, Sir Frank London.

Produced in a smyth-sewn, three-colour foil stamped, three-piece hardcover binding, printed on acid-free paper, Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings bridges the gap between art book and trade publication that will speak to lovers of poetry, philosophy, art, design, new media, performance, and anyone trying to navigate opening and touching in the wake of pandemics and other mass maladies.

Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings can be purchased from most online booksellers.

– Courtesy Lavender Ink

This year’s book award winners

The fourth edition of the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards, presented by the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, culminated in a May 24 event at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver at which the winners in six categories – fiction, non-fiction, memoir/biography, children and youth, poetry, and Holocaust writing – were announced.

Winning the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for fiction was Simon Choa-Johnston for House of Daughters, a stand-alone sequel to The House of Wives. Based on the author’s family, this multi-generational family saga opens when Emanuel Belilios, a wealthy Jewish opium oligarch, suddenly leaves Hong Kong, and his junior-wife, Pearl, blames Semah, the senior-wife. Pearl kicks Semah out of the mansion where the polyamorous trio had lived and shuns everyone, including her daughter. This is a story of passions and regrets, wealth and survival, set in Eurasian Hong Kong’s high society.

In the non-fiction category, the Pinsky Givon Family Prize went to Alan Twigg, editor of Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal, a selection of letters between Israeli Tim Gidal, a pioneer in photojournalism, and Vancouver scholar and art collector Yosef Wosk. In the late 1920s, with his handheld Leica, Gidal was able to travel in interwar Europe, capturing rare images of Polish Jews prior to the Holocaust. Wosk first encountered Gidal’s work in a magazine in 1991 – the photo “Night of the Kabbalist” captivated him. Wosk was determined to meet the photographer and eventually did. The two became close and the letters – selected by Twigg from hundreds the friends exchanged over two decades – both memorialize Gidal as an artist, scholar, historian of photography and “hero among the Jewish people,” and also capture the essence of Gidal and Wosk’s friendship.

The Cindy Roadburg Memorial Prize for memoir/biography was given to Marsha Lederman for Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed. In it, Lederman delves into her parents’ Holocaust stories in the wake of her own divorce, investigating how trauma migrates through generations. At the age of 5, Lederman asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents, and her mother told her the truth: the Holocaust. Decades later, her parents having died and now a mother herself, Lederman began to wonder how much history had shaped her life and started her journey into the past, to tell her family’s stories of loss and resilience.

Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman (with Susan McClelland) took the Diamond Foundation Prize for children and youth writing. In 1945, Robbie Waisman, then Romek Wajsman, had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured and had no idea if his family was alive. Along with 472 other boys, these teens were dubbed “the Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting and struggling for power. Few thought they would ever be able to lead functional lives again, but everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.

The Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for poetry went to Tom Wayman’s Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time, which explores the question of how to live in a natural landscape that offers beauty while being consumed by industry, and in an economy that offers material benefits while denying dignity, meaning and a voice to many in order to satisfy the outsized appetites of a few. A cri de coeur from a poet who has long celebrated the voices of working people, the collection also grapples with why “anyone, in this era so profoundly lacking in grace, might want to make poems – or any kind of art.”

Rounding out the awards was the Kahn Family Foundation Prize for Holocaust writing, which was given to But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Charlotte Schallié (editor) and illustrators Miriam Libicki, Barbara Yelin and Gilad Seliktar. But I Live is a co-creation of the novelists and four Holocaust survivors: David Schaffer, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp, and Emmie Arbel. Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators; in the Netherlands, the Kamps were hidden by the Dutch resistance in 13 different places; and, through the story of Arbel, who survived Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust. The book includes historical essays, a postscript from the artists and words of the survivors.

Each category in the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards was assessed by five jurors, in different configurations, from the following professionals: Linda Bonder, a retired librarian; Susanna Egan, professor emeritus of literature in English from the University of British Columbia; Dave Margoshes, who writes fiction and poetry on a farm west of Saskatoon; Norman Ravvin, a writer, teacher and critic living in Montreal; Rhea Tregebov, an author of fiction, poetry and children’s picture books, and a retired professor in the UBC Creative Writing Program; Elisabeth Kushner, a librarian and writer living in Vancouver; Karen Corrin, former head librarian of the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library at the JCC; Nicole Nozick, former executive director of the Vancouver Writers Fest and former director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival; and Anita Brown, who is working with the Waldman Library.

Daniella Givon, chair of the awards committee, introduced the May 24 event, sharing a bit about the awards and thanking all the sponsors and participants for the high calibre and diversity of the submissions. The winning authors then said a few words, and Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival, closed the proceedings with more thank yous, and an invitation for everyone to purchase and enjoy the books.

– Courtesy Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival

We are inheritors of history

When Toronto poet Simon Constam emailed me with a request to read his debut collection of poetry, Brought Down, he described it as “notable because it addresses people’s daily experience of God and the Jewish religious tradition.” He noted, “it is provocative and well-written as can be attested to by the reviews of it thus far.” Indeed, the reviews I’ve read have been highly complimentary – and justifiably so.

I am neither religious nor a poetry buff, yet I found Constam’s poems engaging. I liked his challenging and questioning manner. At 70+ years old, he has wisdom gained from life experience that includes approximately a decade in which he followed Orthodox Jewish observance. His knowledge of Judaism infuses his writing and I had to look up a few names and concepts, even though there is a glossary at the end of this 61-page volume.

What I greatly appreciated about these poems is the theme that runs through most, if not all, of them: the title idea of “brought down,” as it refers to what we inherit from our ancestors, whether we’re talking about traditions, rituals, genes, coping mechanisms, etc. The lens through which Constam explores these ideas is his Jewishness. In “Yerushalmi,” for example, he writes:

“Today I seem to have the face of a man I briefly stared at, on a bus on Rehov King David in the fall of 1969. / I wear the same clothes, dark jacket, dark shirt, rough tan trousers, dust-scuffed brown boots. / The mirror shows me, grizzled, unkempt, stocky, stoic, almost seventy. / My face is the face my grandfather wore. / My parents, aunts, and uncles swore the resemblance is uncanny. My history is clear. / I was one of Titus’s captives marched through Rome in chains. I collected all my things in a sack to flee from Ferdinand and Isabella along the Jew-choked roads. I missed my fate in Kielce and Bialystock. I hid in the forests by Kishinev.” It ultimately concludes: “I am the inheritor of a furious history that only in this place can I never deny or forget.”

In his struggles with God, Constam contemplates what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be human. While this all sounds quite serious, and it is, there is humour in this collection and, ultimately, it is hopeful. As much as he takes God to task, Constam is calling on all of us to question ourselves, and to accept our responsibility for the state of the world.

Explore Persian culture

Arash Khakpour and Alexis Fletcher première All my being is a dark verse (working title) Nov. 9-10 at the Rothstein Theatre. (photo by Peter Smida)

This year’s Chutzpah! Festival, which takes place Nov. 3-24, highlights Persian culture. The decision to feature Persian artists and stories – which was made well before the protests that erupted in Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police last month – seems even more important and relevant now.

“When the festival was offered the opportunity to support the creation of a new dance work by Alexis Fletcher in collaboration with Arash Khakpour, two Vancouver artists I admire and enjoy working with, I began to explore the resonances between Persian artists and stories of both Jewish and Muslim background,” Jessica Gutteridge, Chutzpah! artistic managing director, told the Independent. “These communities are culturally rich and have been intertwined for a very long time, while at the same time in lesser and greater political tension over the course of history. The festival’s mandate includes exploring what Jewish culture has in common with non-Jewish communities, and bringing artists of different backgrounds into conversation, so I thought it would be interesting to pull on this thread and bring Jewish and non-Jewish artists and culture into a themed programming thread.”

photo - On Nov. 14, Jacqueline Saper, author of From Miniskirt to Hijab: A Girl in Revolutionary Iran, will speak and answer questions about Jewish life in Iran pre- and post-Revolution — On Nov. 14, Jacqueline Saper, author of From Miniskirt to Hijab: A Girl in Revolutionary Iran, will speak and answer questions about Jewish life in Iran pre- and post-Revolution. *(photo by Beking Joassain)*

The two main programs of the thread are the Nov. 9-10 world première of Fletcher and Khakpour’s All my being is a dark verse (working title), which was developed through an artistic residency at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre, and the Nov. 23 concert by Israeli singer, songwriter and actress Liraz Charhi.

Two digitally streamed programs round out the offerings. On Nov. 14, Jacqueline Saper, author of From Miniskirt to Hijab: A Girl in Revolutionary Iran, will speak and answer questions about Jewish life in Iran pre- and post-Revolution. And, on Nov. 21, Israeli chef Ayelet Latovich will present “a menu drawn from the Persian Jewish heritage of her mother’s family, which includes her grandmother, Kohrshid Hoshmand, a well-known and beloved figure in the Iranian community in Tel Aviv.”

“The festival has always provided public outreach opportunities, ranging from master classes to workshops to public conversations with artists,” said Gutteridge about these events. In addition to the Persian-themed outreach, Chutzpah! is partnering with rice & beans theatre’s DBLSPK program to offer a public workshop of Tamara Micner’s new Yiddish panto-in-progress, Yankl & Der Beanstalk.

photo - On Nov. 21, Israeli chef Ayelet Latovich will present a menu drawn from the Persian Jewish heritage of her mother’s family — On Nov. 21, Israeli chef Ayelet Latovich will present a menu drawn from the Persian Jewish heritage of her mother’s family. *(photo by Sarit Goffen)*

“We have a broad array of workshops to choose from as well,” Gutteridge continued. “David Buchbinder, Mark Rubin and Michael Ward-Bergeman will lead a creative workshop focused on making intercultural connections. Edith Tankus will bring clowning techniques for self-expression in a workshop tailored to parents and caregivers. Liz Glazer will lead a workshop on how to tap into your funny side and create comedy for the stage. And Maya Ciarrocchi will lead a series of workshops sharing the practice of Yizkor books as a means of remembering and mourning the lost people and places of our lives, that will lead into the final performance of the Site: Yizkor project.”

Life, love, longing, death

All my being is a dark verse is inspired by the poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967), whose poetry was controversial enough in its expression of personal freedom to have been banned for almost a decade after the establishment of the Islamic republic in 1979. The project combines Farrokhzad’s poetry, the work of local artist Nargess Jalali Delia and the dance choreographed and performed by Fletcher and Khakpour. The shows will include a program of Persian storytelling curated by the Flame.

“I discovered Forugh’s poetry through Nargess, when I was helping her prepare for a visual art exhibit in 2020,” said Fletcher. “Nargess had a painting that captivated me, which I learned was inspired by Forugh’s beautiful poem, ‘Inaugurating the Garden.’ When I read the poem for the first time, I was moved to tears and felt so much of my own life inside Forugh’s words. From there, I started to research the work of this poet and felt viscerally connected to her work. When I began dreaming of creating a response through movement, I approached Arash – an artist I greatly admire and have always wanted to work with. We decided to create and perform together, and to bring together a mix of Persian and non-Persian artists to complete our team, including costume design, original music composition, lighting design, and translation work between Farsi and English.

“Both Arash and Nargess have welcomed me into their culture, language and their very personal connection with Forugh in the most generous of ways,” said Fletcher.

“I am excited to connect with an artist who comes from a completely different movement background from my own, and yet who shares so many of the same interests and curiosities about the place that dance holds in the world, what it can offer and how it can bring people together in unique ways,” said Khakpour.

“Growing up in Iran,” he continued, “I was reading Forugh’s poems at the young age of 11, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to because her open-minded and dark-natured poems were not seen as ‘appropriate,’ and this experience had a profound effect on me. Forugh’s words were a revelation to read, something that someone wrote so many years ago and yet which seemed to speak directly to my fears and desires as if the words were both coming from me, and as if they were meant only for me.

“After moving to Canada at the age of 15,” he said, “I lost that connection to Forugh’s poetry, but now I am at a place that I feel the need to reconnect to her work again and integrate my love for her work, the knowledge and the sentiment it awakens in my dance practice.”

Currently, the pair are working with four of Farrokhzad’s poems: “The Wall,” “Reborn,” “Inaugurating the Garden” and “Window.”

“Forugh’s work is full of life, love and longing, yet full of death,” explained Khakpour. “I know from growing up in Iran that many people around me talked about her work as a forbidden reality, too forward, or too much – and the ways in which we should be talking, and the ways in which we should not be talking, as men and women. Forugh defied all of these binaries and all of this drew me to her magical poetry and body of work.

“As I was growing up, I have felt that similar feeling of defying the norms about myself, in terms of pursuing a dance career at all, as a man, which has many stigmas attached to it in my culture. I feel the same now as an artist at times.

“Forugh awakens the courage in us to be courageous,” he added. “This has always drawn me to Forugh’s work; her rigorous, rebellious nature has inspired many generations of artists since her death. Her writing, although being specific, is also timeless, transcends across cultures, and is full of humanity and love that goes beyond borders and ideologies. She longed for a world that could address and heal humanity’s pain.

“I think Alexis and I are drawn to Forugh and her work for these unapologetic tendencies and yet her humble nature of being, writing and expressing on the page. We strive for the same things in dance and choreography and long for a world that can address and heal its pain.”

“We both see dance as poetry in motion; a universal way of channeling poetry into the body and sharing that with the audience,” said Fletcher. “We believe this universality, along with the multidisciplinary and cross-cultural nature of this project, is a fertile ground that can draw new audiences to dance and connect different audiences to each other.”

Fletcher quoted from Rosanna Warren’s The Art of Translation: “The psychic health of an individual resides in the capacity to recognize and welcome the ‘Other.’” She explained that she and Khakpour “will use the act of translation as a practice of empathy; a way for artists and audiences to come together and lift the multiple veils of language, culture and ways of being that can obscure ‘the other,’ revealing the universality of our shared human experience, with language, visual art, dance and live performance as ways of ‘lifting the veil.’

“Expanding on the above,” she said, “we are curious about how we can use the practice of duet, including our partnership as performers, as a vehicle of exploration of ‘self’ and ‘other,’ and how this project can be a platform for this resonant conversation. This sparks our interest because, to execute duet skilfully and on an emotional level, one must delve into the other’s perspective more deeply…. We have the unique privilege of sharing this type of intimacy and connection with others as dancers because our bodies, especially in duet, are our physical and literal instruments: we must literally soften and yield our bodies and minds to give or receive the weight of another. We must take time to look into each other’s eyes and allow the other’s body to enter our private, personal space, learning what the impulses, dynamics, instincts and thought processes of that other person are. We must give each other patience and care for the relationship and choreography to work. We must acknowledge different subjective opinions and points of view. We feel that duet is a direct practice platform through which to investigate the myriad ways one can be in an empathic relationship with another.”

A dream come true

“Music in my life is the most important thing,” Charhi told the Independent. “When I started to create, to sing and to songwrite in Farsi, I knew that I had a message to be a little voice for the Iranian muted women. I knew that would be a continuation to the women from my family who are muted themselves. It wasn’t a question that I would do that. It’s not about me – I deeply feel I’m the pipe to tell a story.”

photo - Liraz Charhi gives a special concert on Nov. 23 at the Rothstein Theatre — Liraz Charhi gives a special concert on Nov. 23 at the Rothstein Theatre. *(photo by Shai Franco)*

On Oct. 7, Charhi releases her third album in Farsi. Called Roya – a vision, a fantasy, a dream – she recorded it with Iranian musicians in Istanbul. “It was an extremely emotional journey I cannot even express with words,” she said, “but we made a wonderful album with wonderful meaning and we all share the same dreams together.”

Charhi collaborated secretly with several Iranian artists – singers, writers, instrumentalists – on her second album in Farsi. Secrecy was necessary because of the political situation.

“Recording my album Zan (woman in Farsi) and collaborating with Iranian musicians was a dream come true,” she said. “I felt that I can give and be artistically freed, especially because I felt that we needed to meet and to create together. [That] we love each other with no boundaries is a fact we wanted to spread to the world. There are bridges we can build despite this crazy situation and we have the power to make a change.”

Charhi chose the name Zan for that album, she said, “because it’s all about women’s freedom I sing about. Struggling and, on the other hand, rejoicing, singing and dancing, making little by little resolution, which is very, very relevant to what’s going on today in Iran.”

Charhi’s first Iranian album was Naz, which, she said means “coquettish manners.” It has been described as a “rebellious soundtrack.”

“It’s about being a good Iranian woman, using all her charm and politeness to get what she wants from her man and still stay determined,” she explained.

Charhi’s parents emigrated to Israel in the 1970s, before the Islamic Revolution, and Israel is where Charhi was born, in Ramla, in 1978.

“My music is built out of layers of my heritage, Israeli and Iranian,” she said, “and so I knew always I wanted to use traditional Iranian instruments and to mix them with my psychedelic music that I love so much [from] the Iranian ’70s.”

She also has released two albums in Hebrew, one self-titled, the other Rak Lecha Mutar (Only You’re Allowed).

As an actress, Charhi garnered a nomination for best actress from the Israeli Film Academy for her role in the 2004 Israeli film Turn Left at the End of the World. She has acted in theatre, television and film, including playing the love interest of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the movie A Late Quartet (2012), the role of Frida Kahlo in a production by the national theatre of Israel (2017) and an Israeli Mossad agent in the Israeli TV series Tehran (2020).

For the full Chutzpah! schedule and tickets, visit chutzpahfestival.com or call 604-257-5145.

Poetry-art book launch and exhibit

Suzy Birstein’s “Ladies-not-Waiting: Harlequin Zsa Zsa.” (photo from ParkerArtSalon)

Suzy Birstein’s “Ladies-not-Waiting: Harlequin Zsa Zsa,” made of fired ceramic with glazes and lusters, is featured in the book the poetry project: where poetry expands upon a visual idea, published by ParkerArtSalon. The artwork is accompanied by a poem it inspired, written by Majka Pauchly: “I’m not home décor / I shift on the shelf, and plot / To make my next move.”

Beedie Luminaries students were invited to participate in the project by submitting a work of poetry, inspired by a selection of art provided by the ParkerArtSalon artists. The book launch and an exhibit of the poems with the corresponding artwork by the artists – who also include Miriam Aroeste – takes place at Gallery George June 1-July 3, Wednesday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m., with the official opening weekend June 4-5, 2-4 p.m., with artists in attendance. Visit parkerartsalon.com for details.

– Courtesy ParkerArtSalon