Tag: The Storytelling Festival

Inspiring songs and stories

Inspired by Story and Song – this was the topic of the JSA Snider Foundation Virtual Empowerment Series session held on Dec. 2, in partnership with the Louis Brier Home and Hospital.

Jewish Seniors Alliance co-president Gyda Chud welcomed the 45 Zoom participants, as well as the 35 Louis Brier residents, who joined to hear Shanie Levin’s stories and Myrna Rabinowitz’s singing.

Rabinowitz opened with a Chanukah song in Yiddish, “Drei Zich Dreidele” (“Spin Yourself Dreidel”), which was followed by Levin reading Sholem Aleichem’s Hanukkah Gelt (Hanukkah Money). In this story, Motl and his brother take part in the beloved customs of a favourite holiday: the lighting of the chanukiyah, eating potato latkes, playing dreidel, and the gift of gelt.

In the course of the program, Rabinowitz sang songs in Hebrew, Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish. She sang “Oh Hanukkah,” a song in Judeo-Spanish about the holiday’s eight candles, as well as more personal songs, including one she wrote on the occasion of her grandson’s birth and one she wrote for her father. She offered the audience a treat by singing the classic and sentimental Yiddish song by the Barry sisters from the 1950s, “Wie Nemt Men a Bissele Mazel?” (“Where Can You Get a Little Luck?”).

Levin chose the story by Abraham Karpinowitz titled Jewish Money, from the book Vilna My Vilna, which is a volume of his work that was translated into English by local storyteller Helen Mintz. Karpinowitz was known for his detailed and vivid descriptions of the city of Vilna and the odd characters who lived there.

The Spice Box is an anthology of Canadian Jewish writers and Levin read an illuminating story written in 1968 by Larry Zolf, who was a CBC personality and writer for the program This Hour Has Seven Days. The story, Boil Me No Melting Pot, Dream Me No Dreams, deals with the difference between the American and Canadian immigrant experiences.

Preposterous Papa, the final story read by Levin, was an excerpt from a book by Lewis Meyer. Meyer’s father grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, which had very few Jewish families. Unable to commute to the synagogue in the larger city, his father bought a house and converted it into a chapel, offering a place for the few Jewish families in nearby towns to socialize and pray on High Holidays.

Rabinowitz ended the program with an upbeat song in Yiddish, the title of which translates as “We Are All Brothers and Sisters.”

Nathalie Jacobs of the Louis Brier thanked the performers and expressed her wish to partner again with JSA in the future.

Tamara Frankel is a member of the board of Jewish Seniors Alliance and of the editorial committee of Senior Line magazine. She is also a board member of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Naomi Steinberg’s Storytelling Festival is fast approaching

Naomi Steinberg (photo by Diane Smithers)

Clearly, creativity and community involvement run in the Steinberg family. In the April 25 issue of the JI, readers heard from Myriam Steinberg, artistic director of the upcoming In the House Festival. This week, her sister Naomi Steinberg talks to the JI about her work as the executive director of the Vancouver Society of Storytelling, which is hosting its 20th Storytelling Festival June 13-15 at various venues around the city.

The Storytelling Festival presents tellers and stories from across the spectrum of custom and culture and this year’s theme, A Cabinet of Curiosities, is in keeping with the festival’s mandate of multiculturalism and education. Close to 30 storytellers will be highlighted over the course of three days. There will be First Nations stories, a Persian epic called “The Shahnameh,” family time stories and a panel discussion on storytelling for social change.

Storytelling is the oldest form of social communication, the oral tradition of passing down fables, legends, fairy tales and myths from generation to generation. It makes us aware of our history, provides an environment to share experiences and can be an effective tool for education and change. Steinberg is passionate about her craft, which she emphasized involves being able to listen, as much as being able to tell.

“A teller is a visual artist who paints with words and carves air with her/his tongue.”

“I do not want to denigrate digital storytelling, but the oral format is its own high art form. A teller is a visual artist who paints with words and carves air with her/his tongue.” As far as the local Society of Storytelling is concerned, she said, there are two aspects to storytelling, the actual telling, the entertainment piece, and then its application in the community setting to encourage social change, the educational piece. “We run the biannual festival and then in the in-between years we focus on a community project,” Steinberg explained. “We are also committed to bringing storytelling into schools.”

Last year, the society was involved with the St. George Rainway Project, a community-driven initiative to recall an historic waterway in Mount Pleasant. Last fall, 13 student stewards were selected from Mount Pleasant Elementary School to guide the community through the area and tell the story of the lost stream within the street right of way along St. George Street from Kingsway to East 13th Avenue. Part of the project was to build a storyteller’s bench at the headwaters of the creek – to leave a legacy to the neighborhood. “It was a day of community engagement and learning and showed what green redesign of a block could bring,” Steinberg said. “It encouraged dialogue and debate amongst the residents of the area. It was a great success.”

Another project was based on the five elements: air, earth, fire, metal and water. “We worked in five different communities, each focusing on exploring one of the elements through storytelling and community participation,” she explained. “We ended with a bike/bus tour to each of the five areas to view the projects. It was a unique way of highlighting the outreach possibilities of storytelling.”

Storytelling is also about preserving one’s culture. Yet different cultures can put a different spin on the same story, an example of that, Steinberg noted, is the story of the North Shore Twin Peaks – known as the Lions. “In the 1880s, British immigrants, who constituted the majority of British Columbia residents, commemorated their colonial roots by naming the two peaks after the famous crouching Lions of London’s Trafalgar Square. However, even before one British foot touched West Coast soil, the aboriginal peoples had their own mythology of the ‘Twin Sisters,’ who helped save their tribe from extinction by making peace with a warring neighbor tribe and, for this deed, were immortalized and set forever in a high place as the two peaks.”

There was very little “the Wandering Jew” could carry with him to preserve his memory as he was forced out of his home in various countries, so he took his stories, with their wisdom, humor and pathos.

Storytelling knows no ethnic or cultural boundaries; every culture has its folklore. Judaism is no exception. There was very little “the Wandering Jew” could carry with him to preserve his memory as he was forced out of his home in various countries, so he took his stories, with their wisdom, humor and pathos.

The position of a storyteller was often revered in a society. Steinberg laughed as she talked about the night she told her grandparents that she was a storyteller, in response to a query about what she was doing for a living.

“I was afraid to tell them and was very surprised when they congratulated me for being part of an honorable tradition, that of a maggid. This was an endorsement at the highest level for me.”

Steinberg has traveled around the world telling stories and presenting workshops. Of all the stories she has told, her favorite is based on an Iraqi-Kurdish Jewish fairytale called “The Wonderful Healing Leaves” from a book of Jewish folklore edited by Howard Schwartz.

After four years with the society, Steinberg said she is leaving for a year and a half abroad to gather material for her upcoming Fringe Festival production that explores the French roots of her maternal grandmother.

About why people should come to the festival, Steinberg said, “They will get a deepened appreciation of Vancouver, its landscapes, its indigenous population and its various cultural communities. They will be entertained and they will see that storytelling is fun, educational and simple, you don’t need a lot of props to participate.”

As to the future of oral storytelling, Steinberg was emphatic, “Nothing replaces heart-to-heart, face-to-face, breath-to-breath interactions. Even when you are just listening to a story, you are using more than your ears, it is an emotional experience that involves your heart and soul. The digital world is not going to take over this form of communication, ever.”

For more information and a list of the festival’s storytellers and venues, visit the website vancouverstorytelling.org.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.