Laura Rosenberg and Andy Muchin co-founded the Victoria Jewish Culture Project with Farley Cates. Here, the two participate in the group’s 2021 Passover seder (screenshot)
In late 2019 and early 2020, before the pandemic struck and lockdowns took effect, a group of friends in Victoria gathered to talk about forming a cultural group – a havurah, or casual and friendly meeting place for people to discuss art and social events through a Jewish lens.
As COVID hit, with everyone at home and in-person meetings impossible, the group, which had called itself the Victoria Jewish Culture Project, held its first gatherings over Zoom. These days, the VJCP, under the leadership of members Laura Rosenberg, Andy Muchin and Farley Cates, still meets weekly and for Jewish holidays over Zoom.
“As a result of what at that time felt like an interim, for-the-moment format, we started having a variety of events on Zoom, including holiday celebrations and commemorations, as well as a weekly discussion group,” said Rosenberg. “I am shocked to note that here we are almost four years in.”
The discussion group at first would meet to go over the Torah portion of the week. Once the biblical cycle was complete, the group shifted to different social and cultural topics from week to week. While most of the VJCP attendees are based in Victoria, they have active members elsewhere. Because their meetings are held on Zoom, geography does not pose a barrier.
“We have an active Zoomer from Salt Spring Island every Saturday,” said Muchin. “For some of our holiday events, we have people pop in from various places – relatives of friends, friends of friends, even my sons played roles in our Zoom Purim spiels, from different American cities.”
“VJCP is basically a group of people who generally view things from a secular humanist perspective. The biggest thing we are offering right now is the opportunity for some discussion among people of different backgrounds,” said Cates. “We want to look at things critically and think things through.”
Rosenberg said, while she was excited about a weekly discussion group four years ago, she neveranticipated it would end upbecoming such an important venue for the exchange of ideas and a catalyst for many of the other events the group has organized. Holiday celebrations have included a drag Purim spiel, co-sponsored with the Klezbians band and an outdoor Tashlikh ceremony at Esquimalt Gorge Park.
“It has been a generative force and this, I think, is something which will continue to be a core activity for this group, and [it will] continue to generate ideas and thoughts that can bring a number of different activity spin-offs,” Cates said.
“I would go so far to call the Saturday morning a ritual we have developed for ourselves. It is really a part of my Saturdays. There’s always a critical mass of people,” said Muchin. “It is a great ongoing connection for us in addition to being a wonderful way to explore issues.”
“What we are trying to do,” explained Cates, “is reflect on what the Jewish community is faced with, as well as what other communities are faced with, and what the world is faced with generally.”
Since the events of Oct. 7, the members of VJCP have expressed gratitude for having a “safe haven” in which civil and open discussion can take place.
“We have a forum where we can discuss these things that were obviously deeply painful and could have been very divisive, but we could discuss them in a respectful manner – even when, as individuals, we did not always agree,” Rosenberg said.
Aside from the VJCP, Rosenberg, Muchin and Cates have been engaged in various aspects of Jewish cultural life and beyond for a long time. Rosenberg plays concertina for the Victoria-based, all-female klezmer ensemble Kvell’s Angels. She is also the newly appointed director of Klezcadia, a klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival run through Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El. The festival will have its inaugural season in June 2024.
For the past 13 years, Muchin has been the host and producer of Sounds Jewish, a weekly radio show that airs on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and is distributed on PRX, a web-based radio platform. As well, he is active with the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival (VIJFF) and has written for several Jewish publications.
Cates has been co-director of the VIJFF for four seasons. Outside the Jewish community, his “pet project” is Theatre Inconnu, the longest-surviving alternative theatre company on the island, where he serves on the board. Furthermore, he is involved in various cultural activities in the Victoria area, such as a performing arts centre on the West Shore and the Arts & Culture Colwood Society.
The VJCP says the group is open to new members and welcomes suggestions for activities or programs others are interested in pursuing. They are holding a Hanukkah party over Zoom on Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. For more information about the event and/or the VJCP, write to [email protected].
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
“Jerusalem Market, 1959,” watercolour and pencil, by artist Pnina Granirer, a graduate of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Granirer will have a table of her artwork for sale in the atrium of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Dec. 3, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., as part of the Chanukah Around the World party marketplace. The works will be unframed, priced from $100 to $500, with all proceeds being donated to Israel, in the hope that the donation will help it in its hour of need. For more on Granirer, go to pninagranirer.com.
The party is a joint event with multiple community partners: King David High School, Vancouver Talmud Torah, Richmond Jewish Day School, PJ Library, Camp Miriam, Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, and the Kollel. In addition to the marketplace, it will feature games, iSTEAM activities, food, arts & crafts, museum displays, entertainment throughout, a community singalong and a JCC membership sale. Visit jccgv.com/jcc-chanukah-carnival.
Joshua Greenstein, vice-president of the Israeli Wine Producers Association, showcases the array of wines produced in Israel. (photo from IWPA)
The world of wine in Israel, perhaps the oldest wine-producing region in the world, has become collateral damage of the atrocities that occurred on Oct. 7. To raise awareness, and in support of Israel and Israeli wineries, the Israeli Wine Producers Association (IWPA) is asking consumers to “Sip for Solidarity.”
The massacre has had an immediate, concrete impact, particularly on picking, sorting and winemaking teams. Harvest had begun shortly before the attacks, which meant that the sorting, crushing and fermentation processes were, in many cases, done under the constant threat of attack and bombardment. For many wineries, production teams have been hollowed out, as the young men and women who normally would be shepherding the crucial winemaking process have been called up to help defend the nation.
“Winemaking has its own schedule, unlike other industries, where you can pause production or run with limited staff. Grapes grow and ripen when they do. The winemaking process is very hands-on. Without staff, many wineries face an impending crisis,” said Joshua Greenstein, vice-president of the IWPA, a trade organization promoting 30-plus Israeli wineries through wine education and events.
“Additionally, wine is usually something enjoyed when you go out to eat or to a party, and people in Israel aren’t feeling particularly celebratory these days,” Greenstein added. “It’s catastrophic not just for this year’s sales, but for the vintages harvesting now that won’t be ready for sale for years to come.”
To help the situation, Greenstein suggested, “Buy a bottle of Israeli wine. Not only will the purchase help the wineries, but we’re donating 10% of every case shipped from Nov. 1, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2023, to Israeli relief efforts. With the wine-consuming public’s support, these challenges are surmountable, and wineries will still craft wines that accurately and deliciously reflect the character of the vintage and of Israel, just as they always have.”
Left to right: Kara Mintzberg, Maurice Moses, Cyndi Mintzberg, Sheila Gordon (a friend of Haber’s), Gyda Chud, Grace Hann and Tammi Belfer, with Marilyn Berger in front. (photo from JSA)
On Nov. 19, Jewish Seniors Alliance held their Fall Symposium at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. The event honoured Serge Haber, JSA’s founder.
Haber passed away in October of this year at the age of 95. Throughout his life, he never lost his vision of there being in the community an organization that would see seniors helping seniors. He worked tirelessly to achieve this goal. Many of the speakers that Sunday afternoon mentioned that Haber would never take no for an answer. He managed by the force of his personality to involve people in the alliance and to find donors and foundations to support its work.
Gyda Chud, a former co-president of JSA, was the symposium’s emcee. She introduced Tammi Belfer, the current president, who welcomed the 50 people in the audience and the 22 watching online. Former JSA presidents Ken Levitt and Marilyn Berger spoke about what they had gained from working with the organization and what they had learned from Haber. Cyndi Mintzberg and her daughter Kara Mintzberg, cousins of Haber, representing the family, spoke of how much they enjoyed spending time with Haber. They particularly mentioned Shabbat dinners. Haber’s children, in Toronto and Washington, were watching on Zoom.
Two videos of Haber were shown. The first had been prepared for his 90th birthday, and featured a collage of photos from different periods and events in his life. Some showed him in Romania before the war; others in Montreal, where he married; and some from Vancouver, where he lived for many years. The second video was of a speech that Haber gave to the Fraser Health Authority in which he explained the importance of dealing with the loneliness that afflicts many seniors, and how the Peer Support Program of JSA can help with these issues by providing emotional support.
Rabbi Adam Stein of Congregation Beth Israel, who is a JSA board member, offered remarks on behalf of the synagogue, where Haber was an active member for many years. Stein described visiting him in hospice. Instead of talking about himself, Haber wanted to know how the rabbi and his family were doing.
Marie Doduck, another member of the JSA board, brought greetings from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, where Haber was active with the survivors group.
Grace Hann, the trainer for the Peer Support Program, described her first interactions with Haber, saying she was frightened of him until he took the training and easily fit into the group. She felt the force of his dedication and said she learned a lot from him.
Maurice Moses, a long-time friend, sang a moving rendition of “Eli, Eli.” He also led the group in the singing of the Partisans’ Hymn, which Marilyn Berger had suggested as a reminder of the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Belfer shared some of the JSA’s plans, including the possible hiring of an executive director and the organization’s 20th anniversary gala, to be held in February at Temple Sholom. She spoke again of Haber’s vision and of the three pillars of JSA – education, advocacy and peer support – and noted that there were donor cards on the tables, which people could use to donate to the Serge Haber Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver. The formal part of the event closed with the singing of Hatikvah.
Shanie Levinis a Jewish Seniors Alliance Life Governor. She is also on the editorial committee of Senior Line magazine.
“Dear Hostages, as the world rallies to celebrate your desecration I will not forsake you,” begins the poem written by Seattle-based multimedia artist and educator Loolwa Khazzoom. Posted on her Facebook page, with a #BringThemHomeNow poster featuring photos of Israelis kidnapped on Oct. 7, it continues, “My instinct is to deprive myself of oxygen / Because you are underground / And I will not forget you // But I know that you would dance / In the sun / If given the chance / So I now rise up / And dance for you.”
Many of Khazzoom’s songs begin as poems. In this case, she told the Independent, “I felt as if I could not breathe and as if I did not even want to breathe, out of solidarity with the hostages and with all of Israel, in particular, all the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre. It’s like I wanted to physically feel their pain and suffering, as a way of physically demonstrating that I would not forsake them or forget them.”
In a traumatized mental state, Khazzoom returned to the “healing tools of poetry and music,” which was another way she could show her solidarity and do her part in keeping the issue of the hostages in frontof people.
Similarly, Khazzoom and her band, Iraqis in Pajamas, recently released another poem-turned-song, “#MahsaAmini.” They did so this past Sept. 16, the first anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian “morality police.”
Finding out about Amini’s murder soon after it took place, from TikTok videos posted by Iranian women, Khazzoom “jumped into action.” She wrote to her political representatives, raised funds for United 4 Iran and reposted Iranian women’s videos on her feed constantly, to help boost the content’s views. “In addition,” she said, “a day after I found out about what happened, a poem with my feelings poured out of me, and I posted it on social media. Months later, I put that poem to a melody, and the band developed it into a full band song, which we released on the [anniversary of the] day of Amini’s murder.”
The death affected Khazzoom deeply for many reasons.
“First, the women in my family wore the abaya, the Iraqi equivalent of the hijab – Jewish women throughout the region were subject to Muslim dress codes, so it’s a Jewish issue, too,” she said. “Second, so many people assume that Islam is indigenous throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but it’s not. Arab Muslims rose up from the Arabian Peninsula and conquered the entire region, forcibly converting masses under the threat of death. So many indigenous ethnicities and religions predated the Muslim conquest, including Jews, Persians, Berbers and Kurds. The Iranian women protesting and burning their hijabs felt to me like challenging that Muslim conquest and awakening the ancient Persian warriors. Third, Persia is central to Jewish history and the origins of the Mizrahi community, dating back nearly three millennia ago…. And, lastly, the fire of these women, and the men who joined them, and their willingness to risk their lives for their dignity and freedom was just breathtaking and profoundly inspirational.”
Another of Iraqis in Pajamas’ releases this year was also intensely personal for Khazzoom.
“I wrote ‘The Convert’s Quest’ in response to some friends on social media sharing how hurt they were, coming under attack during the process of their conversion to Judaism. I had ample experience witnessing variations on this theme throughout my life – both first-person, seeing it happen to friends, and through my research as a Jewish multicultural educator. For decades, I felt very disturbed by this seemingly growing trend.
“I am the daughter of a Jew by choice, as my mother called herself, so the matter of conversion to Judaism is very personal for me,” she said. “I remember understanding very clearly as an Orthodox Jewish child that, according to halachah (Jewish law), once you convert, you are no longer to be called ‘a convert,’ but rather, a Jew, period. So, even from a religious Jewish perspective itself, I was very distraught by the ways that Jewish leaders and communities were rejecting or harassing converts, or even all-out forbidding people from converting. It all flies in the face of Jewish history, theology and practice.”
The band released “The Convert’s Quest” on May 24, on the harvest holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people and on which the Book of Ruth is read. It tells the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism, whom Jewish tradition teaches will be the ancestor of the Messiah.
“To me, Jewish converts are the lifeblood of the Jewish people,” said Khazzoom. “I have a provocative line in my song, saying that converts are ‘the most Jewish Jews of all,’ because they are intentionally and consciously practising the foundational precepts of Judaism, which so many either take for granted or do rote, as is often the case in the Orthodox Jewish world where I was raised. In addition, amidst life-threatening levels of racism and violence against Jews, converts choose Judaism…. Why would we reject, in any way, from subtle to blatant, someone with such a heroic Jewish soul?”
Even when delivered in a playful manner, Khazzoom’s song are serious to the core. The campy “Kitchen Pirate,” for example, “emerged from my choice to reject the conventional option of surgery, in the wake of a cancer diagnosis in 2010,” she said. “Instead, I chose to radically alter my diet and lifestyle. Simply by overhauling my diet, I cold-stopped the growth of the nodules, which remained stable for the next five years – neither growing nor shrinking – until I returned to my lost-love of music, following which they began shrinking.”
Khazzoom said her songs “are always questioning, always challenging, always defiant. Sometimes, it’s more explicit, other times it’s embedded in silliness, which, parenthetically, I also see as defiant. I am and forever will be a curious, playful and awe-inspired child. I think that, if and when we ‘outgrow’ that, we die inside. And I refuse to capitulate to that norm of expected behaviour once we enter adulthood. By way of example, to this day, at age 54, when I am flying in a plane, if there is nobody sitting next to me, I will stretch out my arms and pretend I’m a bird, during takeoff.”
Not everyone has appreciated this aspect of her personality. “I have constantly gotten into trouble for it and have been at odds with my family, my community and society at large,” said Khazzoom. “I have endured terrible loneliness and often even self-doubt as a result. But I always come back to my core. And all of my songs emerge from that place – that raw, gut-wrenching place of being fiercely alive and allowing the clash with everything around me, and then writing about it.”
It is this enthusiasm that Victoria-based band member Mike Deeth enjoys about being in Iraqis in Pajamas, whose third member is Chris Belin.
“Loolwa and Chris are both easy-going, creative people. The energy is very positive, which makes collaborating with them fun and organic,” Deeth told the Independent. “Further, I appreciate the passion Loolwa has for the subject matter she writes about. One thing I always struggled with as a musician is ‘What do I have to say?’ At the end of the day, I’m a privileged guy who has never had to face oppression, hate, war or genocide. I have a lot of respect for artists who have experienced darker parts of humanity and have the courage to bring that perspective into their art.”
Born in Toronto, Deeth, who is not Jewish, spent most of his adolescence in Calgary, and moved to Vancouver Island when he was 18. He first picked up a guitar a few years earlier and has been playing ever since. “I was in my first band at 18 and played in bands throughout my 20s. For the past several years, I have been mainly focused on recording,” he said.
Deeth got hooked on music production in his teens, getting his first digital recorder at age 16. “I still remember pulling all-nighters with friends trying to write songs and get ideas down on tape. Production was always fascinating to me, as I could layer parts together into something bigger than I could ever play on my own.”
Deeth and Khazzoom met a couple of years ago through a Craigslist posting. “She was looking for a guitarist to contribute to an early version of her track ‘The Convert’s Quest,’” he explained, complimenting Khazzoom on the fact that she “puts her full heart into her songs.”
“I recorded some initial guitar demos and, about a year later, we reconnected and worked up the current releases,” he said.
Deeth adds guitar to the songs and completes the mix and master of the songs when they are ready for those steps. Khazzoom sings, writes and plays bass, while Belin – who lives in Pennsylvania – composes the drum parts and performs them.
Among his other music ventures, Deeth has “played the guitar with Bryce Allan, a country musician here on the island, and recorded a few tracks with him. I also work closely with Jennie Tuttle, another musician from Victoria. We have been recording together for seven or eight years now.”
For Deeth, “recording is such an interesting combination of art and science. I get to be musically creative, but I also get to play with cool machines, solve problems and think about gain staging, compression ratios and other technical aspects. I thoroughly enjoy both the artistic and scientific parts of the process – they work my mind in different ways.
“I also love how each project starts as a blank canvas and ends with a new piece of music out in the world. There are an almost infinite number of possibilities when recording a track (all the possible settings on the equipment, the subtleties of different instruments) and it always fascinates me how each song takes shape during the process.”
“Mike has an exquisite sensitivity in his musical composition, performance and recording,” said Khazzoom. “He’s not only super-talented and -skilled, but he’s warm, upbeat, enthusiastic and professional. It’s a joy to create music with him. As is the case with our drummer Chris Belin, Mike has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of the songs I write, to the point that I feel he is playing back to me the sound of my soul. I have literally sat and cried after hearing the mixes.”
For more on Khazzoom, visit khazzoom.com. For more on Deeth’s production and sound services, visit glowingwires.com.
ARC Ensemble (photo from Royal Conservatory of Music)
Over the span of three decades, the ARC Ensemble (artists of the Royal Conservatory) has provided a voice for exiled composers who had graduated from Europe’s finest conservatories and enjoyed successful careers, but were subsequently forced into exile by antisemitism and bigotry, their works forgotten. As it marks its 20th anniversary, the ARC Ensemble remains dedicated to the research, recovery and recording of the music produced by these extraordinarily gifted exiles.
It was Dr. Peter Simon, president and chief executive officer the Royal Conservatory of Music, who envisioned creating an ensemble showcasing faculty musicians as part of the RCM’s overarching mission to develop human potential. The conservatory is one of the largest music education institutions in the world. More than 500,000 students study its RCM Certificate Program through a network of 30,000 independent music teachers and its more than five million alumni include Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Shania Twain, Sarah McLachlan and David Foster.
Comprised mainly of the senior faculty of the Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School, with special guests drawn from its most accomplished students and alumni, the ARC Ensemble has become one of Canada’s cultural ambassadors. Its concerts and recordings have garnered multiple Grammy and Juno nominations.
“Over the past 20 years, the ARC Ensemble has done important work in ensuring that the contributions of composers who were marginalized under the 20th century’s repressive regimes are heard and given their due,” said Simon.
ARC has released nine recordings (on RCA Red Seal and, more recently, on Chandos Records), including six in its Music in Exile series. Through its quest to uncover neglected and forgotten 20th century composers, a growing roster of works is now entering the classical canon.
ARC Ensemble artistic director Simon Wynberg’s musical detective work might begin with a footnote in a biography, an old concert program, an email from a composer’s relative, or a suggestion from the network of musicologists active in the area of suppressed music. “Fortunately, many scores have survived and are hiding in plain sight in large library collections and archives,” he said.
Wynberg tracks down potential treasures scattered across the globe, from Israel to India, from Austria to Argentina, and resources closer-to-home in Bloomington, Ind., and Winnipeg, Man.
In recognition of his work with the ARC Ensemble, Wynberg was inducted into CBC Radio’s In Concert Hall of Fame and featured on a special broadcast on Sept. 24.
In resurrecting music forgotten from the boxes of library archives, the ARC Ensemble has created renewed appreciation for a growing list of gifted composers: for example, Ukrainian nationalist Dmitri Klebanov, who was suppressed under Stalin; Sephardi composer and musicologist Alberto Hemsi, who fled Turkey and Egypt to settle in Paris; and Walter Kaufmann, who found sanctuary in Bombay (Mumbai) and created a uniquely personal language by fusing Indian and Western traditions. As a directresult of ARC’s research and recording, Kaufmann’s works are now published by Viennese publisher Doblinger, and both European and American orchestras are now programming his works. Kaufmann’s Indian Symphony will be reintroduced to an audience at Carnegie Hall in 2024.
ARC’s Music in Exile series continued with the Nov. 17 release of a recording of premières by Robert Müller-Hartmann (1884-1950), who fled Hamburg with his wife in 1937 to escape rising Nazism, and settled in England.
“He was an émigré people knew about because of his relationship with [Ralph] Vaughan Williams, but whose music no one had explored,” said Wynberg. “When I met the composer’s grandson in Israel, he arrived with a huge sports bag and a backpack crammed with manuscripts and early editions of Müller-Hartmann’s scores, but the family had never heard a note of his music.”
Like so many of his contemporaries, in addition to his professional work as a composer, teacher, administrator and musicologist, Müller-Hartmann had a broad range of intellectual interests. He enjoyed considerable success in Germany with major conductors like Richard Strauss, Fritz Busch and Otto Klemperer performing his works. Fired from his post at Hamburg University in 1933, he taught at a Jewish girls’ school before fleeing to England.
In England, Müller-Hartmann spent much of his time in Dorking, some 25 miles south of London, living with Eugenia and Jacob (Yanya) Hornstein, friends from Hamburg. Through Gustav Horst’s daughter Imogen, he met Vaughan Williams, who became a valuable friend and colleague, and who intervened in Müller-Hartmann’s internment on the Isle of Man, where Jewish internees were obliged to live alongside Nazi sympathizers. Despite his connections to influential British musicians, Müller-Hartmann’s career stalled, and his music fell into obscurity. This was partly the result of the war and the economic privations that followed, his sudden death in 1950, and his modest and rather retiring personality.
The pieces performed on Arc Ensemble’s Chamber Works by Robert Müller-Hartmann, likely written in the early 1920s and mid-1930s, are examples of why Müller-Hartmann’s music deserves a place in today’s classical repertoire. Among Wynberg’s favourites are Two Pieces for Cello and Piano, and the Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 5, which is dedicated to Müller-Hartmann’s friend and legendary pianist Artur Schnabel. The recording also features Sonata for Two Violins, op. 32, characterized by the duet’s dramatic contrapuntal interplay; the Three Intermezzi and Scherzo for Piano, op. 22, short but technically demanding works for piano; and String Quartet No. 2, op. 38.
Every one of the exiled composers that ARC has introduced has both a compelling story of flight and exile, and a body of music of extraordinary range and quality. Twenty years on, with an alarming rise in antisemitism and new waves of cultural repression, the ARC Ensemble’s mission is a reminder of how easily lives and careers can be devastated by political and social oppression.
“My hope,” said Wynberg, “is that our introductions to these chamber works will encourage further research, exploration and adoption of music that has been unjustifiably ignored.”
In 2019, NASA astronaut and scientist Jessica Meir was part of the first all-woman spacewalk. According to : Jewish Women who Rocked the World, she “celebrated Hanukkah in space by wearing festive holiday socks and sending a Happy Hanukkah message to earth on social media.”
This is just one of the many “Fun Fact[s] to Mench’n” in this enlightening book written by the mother-daughter team of Rachelle Burk and Alana Barouch, and illustrated by Arielle Trenk. She’s a Mensch! is one of two books the JI received from Seattle’s Intergalactic Afikoman to review. The other is the perfect antidote to the “girl math” phenomenon popularized on social media, though hopefully kids under 9 aren’t engaging with that. Counting on Naamah: A Mathematical Tale on Noah’s Ark by writer Erica Lyons and illustrator Mary Reaves Uhles imagines Noah’s wife as being a genius in math and engineering.
Using the basics of the Noah story, Counting on Naamah offers a midrash of sorts. “A midrash is a tale that begins with a story from the Torah. Then it fills in the missing pieces to imagine the rest,” explain Lyons and Reaves Uhles at the back of the book. “The story of Noah leaves a lot to the imagination. What was it actually like to live on that ark? How did they take care of all those animals? And who was the generally unnamed ‘Mrs. Noah’? Counting on Naamah tries to answer these questions.”
The story begins when Naamah is a child, and uses her talents to help each of her three brothers – with market transactions, estimated herd transport times and archery angles. She has her own projects, as well, drafting plans for a desert sand scooter, for example.
When she meets and falls in love with Noah, the two become “impossible to divide,” but Naamah retains her agency and is a crucial help in building the ark, housing and feeding the animals, and more. And Noah knows just what to do to thank her.
Counting on Naamah is a charming story, creatively and colourfully illustrated. As is She’s a Mensch!, which is a nonfiction work that highlights 20 women who “rock!”
“Jewish women ‘round the world have talent, strength and smarts,” the book starts. “They shine like stars in every field from science to the arts.
“Jewish women through the ages have helped shape history. These mensches are authors and activists, athletes and adventurers, and everything in between.”
Indeed, the women featured range from writer Emma Lazarus in 1883 to Meir, in 2019. They include familiar – Golda Meir, Barbra Streisand, Ruth Bader Ginsburg – and less familiar names, like Marthe Cohn, who was a spy for France during the Second World War; Vera Rubin, who provided proof of dark matter in the 1970s; Nalini Nadkarni, who performed the first survey of rainforest treetops in 1981; and Judit Polgár, who became a chess grandmaster at age 15, in 1991. There’s a list of 18 honourable mentions.
Each entry in She’s a Mensch! has something different: unique drawings that connect the mensch to their chosen pursuit, a four-line poem and a short blurb about the mensch, often a fun fact, and always a mensch-related question to ponder, such as, How can you help others? (Henrietta Szold) What kinds of stories can you tell? (Judy Blume) and What great adventures do you dream of going on? (Cheryl and Nikki Bart)
Both of these books would make great Hanukkah gifts for kids of any gender. As would this year’s Hanukkah addition to Intergalactic Afikoman publisher Brianna Caplan Sayres’ and illustrator Christian Slade’s Diggers series, which has more than 10 books, and counting.
Where Do Diggers Celebrate Hanukkah? (published by Penguin Random House) would be a happy addition to a kid’s Diggers collection, or a fun introduction to the series. For the diggers, cranes, mixers, armoured trucks, tankers, dump trucks and food trucks, we’re asked to wonder what each does for an aspect of the holiday. For example, “Does Mom dig up the ancient jar that held the precious oil?” And the cranes, “Do they decorate their construction site with ‘Happy Hanukkah’ all around?” After a day of serving meals outside, do food trucks “serve sufganiyot and other food that’s fried?” Inquiring minds will want to know.
Theodor Herzl, during the First Zionist Congress, in Basel, Switzerland, 1897. (photo from mfa.gov.il)
Sometime before 1223, the first bridge spanning the Rhine River at Basel was constructed, funded through a loan to the town’s bishop by a Jewish moneylender. The bridge was a significant factor in the development of trade in the strategically located city, which is in northern Switzerland, near what are now the German and French borders.
The bridge lasted almost 800 years and was replaced between 1903 and 1905. There may be only one photograph in existence in which the original bridge can be seen – a photograph with another very significant Jewish connection. It is believed that the only place one can see the original Middle Bridge, or Mittlere Rheinbrücke, is in the famous shot of Theodor Herzl in a moment of contemplation outside the First Zionist Congress in 1897.
The bridge provides a sort of bookend to the Jewish story in Switzerland. While the bridge stood eight centuries, the history of Jews in Switzerland proved far less stable than the stone Mittlere Rheinbrücke.
Switzerland has a rightful reputation for natural magnificence – rolling green meadows, massive snowcapped mountains, glacial streams and rivers – as well as political stability and neutrality that have made it home to a host of international nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies. The prevalence of cheese and chocolate also give it a delicious reputation. History is not so agreeable.
Some of that history is told in Basel’s small but impressive Jewish Museum of Switzerland. When the institution opened in 1966, it was the first new Jewish museum in the German-speaking world since the Holocaust.
Basel itself holds a special place in Jewish history – for better and for far worse. Herzl, credited as the founder of political Zionism, was not one for false modesty. After his debut as convenor of the 1897 conference, he declared: “At Basel, I created the Jewish state. In five years, perhaps, and certainly in 50, everyone will see it.”
Herzl himself did not see it. He died in 1904. But, indeed, 50 years on, the United Nations passed the Partition Resolution and, a year after that, the state of Israel was created.
There are probably only about 1,000 Jews in Basel – there are around 20,000 in all of Switzerland – yet Basel stands out not only as the birthplace of the modern Zionist movement and home to the national museum of Jewish life and culture, but also has hosted the Zionist Congress 10 times, more than any other place.
Sadly, Basel is also on the Jewish historical map for far less rosy reasons. In 1349, an estimated 600 Jews were burned at the stake in Basel and 140 children were forcibly converted. This was just part of a series of pogroms in the 12th and 13th centuries across Switzerland, some based on blood libels or motivated by allegations of well poisonings at the time of the Black Plague.
Switzerland may have a reputation as being exceptional in Europe – neutral in foreign relations, and not a part of the European Union or most other multilateral bodies – but human-made borders and the majestic Alps seem to have done little to protect Swiss Jews from the horrors that have befallen coreligionists elsewhere on the continent across centuries.
As in other places, Swiss Jews were limited by law as to the professions they could pursue. A range of deliberately demeaning regulations were in place, including homes built with separate doors for Jews to enter. Jews were forced to pay what amounted to protection money to authorities.
Early in the 17th century, almost all Jews were expelled from Switzerland. Physicians were a professional exception and Jews were allowed to remain in just two villages.
After Napoleon invaded Switzerland, a series of political reforms began, some better and some worse for Jews.
Jews were formally permitted to settle anywhere in Switzerland after a referendum in 1866 resulted in a slight majority of Swiss endorsing equal rights for Jews. (The Swiss have a mania for referendums, even on issues of basic human rights.)
Migrants then came from middle and eastern Europe, especially after pogroms in Russia in the 1880s. More came from Germany after Hitler came to power, in 1933, but Switzerland, like the rest of the world, eventually slammed the doors shut, in 1938.
Swiss banks, with their uniquely secretive policies that protect the illegal and immoral, have been forced to reconcile, to an extent, with their complicity with the Nazis, as well as their profiteering from the assets of Jews who, because of the Holocaust, never reclaimed assets they had deposited for safekeeping as turmoil roiled their homelands.
Seemingly an oasis of stability and reason in a continent aflame in fascism, Switzerland nevertheless was steadfastly determined to prevent Jews from finding haven there. After the Anschluss, when Hitler’s army invaded and absorbed Austria, Jews from that country desperately tried to enter Switzerland, but mostly were met with rejection. Likewise, after the Nazis swamped France and the Low Countries, refugees from those places were similarly spurned.
In all, about 23,000 Jews were admitted to Switzerland – but only as a country of transit. The Swiss authorities even prevailed upon the Third Reich – successfully – to stamp German passports issued to Jews with an unmistakable scarlet letter “J” to make it easier to identify and reject potential Jewish border-crossers.
In the 1990s, as Swiss actions during the Second World War and the Holocaust were the subject of international attention, a backlash to this critical historical assessment led to an upsurge in antisemitic rhetoric and what a study indicated was a substantial reduction in inhibitions against racist expressions toward Jews. More recent public opinion polls suggest the Swiss are among Europe’s most antisemitic populations.
An old and unresolved sticking point for Swiss Jews has been the banning of kosher slaughter, which was outlawed in 1874 and remains prohibited to this day. Since 2002, the Swiss government has allowed the importation of kosher meat, but ritual slaughter remains illegal.
For all its significance in Zionist history, Basel appears to have no commemorative plaque or similar tribute marking either its centrality in the birth of the modern Zionist movement or of Herzl’s association with it, although the museum celebrates the connection.
The Jewish Museum of Switzerland is located in a nondescript side street about a 20-minute walk from the Basel train station. It is open Monday to Thursday, 1-4 p.m., and Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The permanent exhibition explores Jewish culture, religion and history through an impressive assemblage of ritual objects, documents, household items and testimonies. The current exhibition, Literally Jewish, which runs into next year, explores how Jews have been perceived depending on the time, language and attitude, including, as the introductory material says, “from derogatory to valourizing, ideological to idealizing.” Adult admission is 10 Swiss francs – about $15.50 Canadian – making it one of the more affordable attractions in a country where everything is gobsmackingly expensive.
The Ben-Gurion family in their Tel Aviv home, 1929. From left: David and Paula with youngest daughter Renana on Ben-Gurion’s lap, daughter Geula, father Avigdor Grün and son Amos. (photo from National Photo Collection of Israel / Government Press Office)
David Ben-Gurion, who died 50 years ago, insisted Israelis needed Hebrew names. The process was controversial – but the outcome is clear.
The 50th anniversary of the death of David Ben-Gurion will be marked Dec. 1. The first prime minister of Israel is generally remembered in noble terms, though we live in an era when heroes are being toppled from their plinths. His actions in times of war and peace have been parsed by historians – fairly and unfairly, as seems inevitable – but Ben-Gurion’s legacy among Zionists appears generally secure. Those with ideological axes to grind will grind, but the esteem in which most Israelis and overseas Jews view “the Old Man” remains largely favourable. However, an aspect of his policy that affected people in a very personal way has come in for a reconsideration in the past couple of decades, though it is hardly the stuff that will make or break a reputation. It is the Hebraization of names.
Ben-Gurion was a fierce advocate of Israelis (or, before 1948, Palestinian Jews) adopting names that reflect their new reality and that, by extension, turn their backs on the past and the diaspora. Ben-Gurion himself was born David Grün (or Gruen), changing his name to the Hebrew Ben-Gurion (son a lion cub) in 1910. By 1920, at the latest, he had become an evangelist for Hebraizing names and, when he was in power, he insisted that leading military and political figures adopt Hebrew names.
Ben-Gurion did not start this trend – though he is perhaps most closely associated with it because he was in a position to make it the force of law and custom. He instituted an administrative order that senior military figures and diplomatic officials representing Israel abroad must have Hebrew names. Others, like Golda Meir, he browbeat into the change.
Of course, Jews – and others – have been changing their names since the dawn of migration. People have frequently altered their names when moving to a new society, in order to fit in. Iberian Jews migrating en masse to the Low Countries after the expulsions of the 1490s are an early, well-documented example. Jews arriving on North American shores routinely changed their names, but so did non-Jewish migrants. It was not necessarily (or only) antisemitism that name-changers sought to outrun, but differentness in general. There are stories of French newcomers changing from Boisvert to Greenwood.
Dara Horn, in her book People Love Dead Jews, emphatically debunks the long-held belief passed down by generations that their family names had been changed at Ellis Island (or whatever entry point was appropriate to the story). No, she argues, that didn’t happen. The changing of names by Jewish new Canadians and Americans was, she contends, done by the migrants themselves and represents a sad realization that the Goldene Medina might not be the refuge from antisemitism they had hoped.
But changing one’s name to fit into a society already in progress, like America’s, was different than the situation of arriving in the pre-state Yishuv. This was not a matter of looking around for a local-sounding name and changing Moses to Murray or Lipschitz to Lipson. This required inventing a whole new lexicon of names. It was not the act of taking a common name in the new place, but of inventing entirely fresh first and last names.
The process was a legacy, ultimately, of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (né Perlman), who was the driving force behind the revival of Hebrew as a vernacular language. After making aliyah in 1881, he came to believe that the redemption of both the people and the land of Israel required a new language to replace Yiddish. This represented a rejection of the diaspora reality and mentality, and served to create a medium through which an eventual (hoped-for) ingathering of exiles from around the world, including places where Yiddish was not the Jewish lingua franca, could communicate. The revival of an ancient land would coincide with the revival of an ancient language, both modernized to meet the needs of a new type of Jew. Ben-Yehuda raised his son and daughter exclusively in Hebrew, which must have made for a somewhat lonely childhood, being effectively the only two people in the world to speak the language as a mother tongue.
As the language spread – in large part thanks to Ben-Yehuda’s continued perseverance in promoting it and inventing modern words where the ancient language lacked them – the application of the new tongue to family and given names likewise grew.
The repudiation of the diaspora took on an entirely new relevance after the Holocaust. Some who made aliyah resisted changing their names, being attached, as is understandable, to one’s family name. Even so, no Jewish surnames were particularly long-established in the first place, since the practice of Jews adopting inheritable family names was only a century old, or a little more, at that time. The Austro-Hungarian Empire required Jews to take surnames in 1789 and in the Russian Empire and the German principalities not until the following century. At that time, choosing a name followed predictable patterns for Jews and non-Jews: a variation on “son of,” (Aronoff, son of Aron; Mendelsohn, son of Mendel), a reference to a profession (Becker for a baker; Melamed for a teacher), or a connection to the town or region (Frankel, from Franconia; Warshavski, from Warsaw; Wiener, from Vienna).
The adoption of Hebraized names in Palestine and Israel took four primary approaches.
The first was the traditional use of patronyms or matronyms, which is probably the oldest form of naming. Yiddish names, but also names that were German, Polish, Russian, English or French patronyms could be Hebraized: Davidson to Ben-David, Mendelson to Ben-Menachem, Simmons to Shimoni.
A second approach was to choose a Hebrew name that sounded like the original name. In some cases, the new name had a (sometimes remote) connotation with the original, as in the case of Lempel (little lamp) becoming Lapid (torch). Levi Shkolnik would become Israel’s third prime minister as Levi Eshkol. This was more than simply a near-homophone. It reflected another trend in the process, which was to adopt a name that spoke to the commitment of the chalutzim, the pioneers, whose Zionism was deeply informed by a back-to-the-land ethos. Eshkol means “cluster of fruit,” so it did double duty, sounding something like the original and also having a kinship with the blooming desert.
A third strategy was basic translation. Goldberg might become Har-Zahav (mountain of gold); Silver or Silverman might become Kaspi; Herbst, which in German and Yiddish means autumn, could be changed to a Hebrew equivalent, Stav or Stavi.
The fourth approach took the pioneer spirit and connection with the land to greater depths (with or without the homophonic advantage of Shkolnik/Eshkol). Flora, fauna and geography of the new homeland were attractive new names that situated the migrants linguistically and geographically. The writer Carrie-Anne Brownian cites such examples as Rotem (desert broom), Nitzan (flower bud), Yarden (Jordan), Alon (oak tree) and Tomer (palm tree). Simply adopting a place name gives us Hermoni, Eilat, Golani, Kineret and many others.
Those whose names already had a nature theme were at an advantage. The Haganah commander Moshe Klaynboym changed his family name, which meant “little tree” in Yiddish, to Sneh, Hebrew for “bush.”
Not necessarily related to nature, but to the idealization of the Zionist spirit, some took names like Amichai (my people live), Maor (light), Eyal (strength), Cherut (freedom) and Bat Or (daughter of light).
Golda Meyerson, after prodding from Ben-Gurion, became Golda Meir. Interestingly, her rather emphatically Yiddish given name she kept, presumably making Ben-Gurion half-satisfied.
As refugees from the Middle East and North Africa began pouring into Israel in the 1950s and ’60s, the Hebraization of names came to be seen as Ashkenormative, the taking of one’s ancestral name being another indignity (alongside inadequate housing and social stigmatization, among other things) that different-looking newcomers faced in their presumed Promised Land.
It seems, for example, that teachers encountering “strange” Mizrachi and Sephardi given names took it upon themselves, in some cases, to assign kids new names based not on any Zionist ideological imperative but for the same reason Canadian teachers in the early to mid-20th century dubbed kids with “foreign” names new ones the teachers could more easily pronounce. In retrospect, some have complained that this phenomenon was an insidious part of a larger (conscious, unconscious or some of both) effort to force Mizrahim and Sephardim to comport to Ashkenazi expectations even in things as intimate as a given name.
Sami Shalom Chetrit, a professor at Queens College in New York, who is of Moroccan-Israeli origin, recalled in a Forward article by Naomi Zeveloff, feeling outraged when an Israeli elementary school teacher nonchalantly renamed him, along with other non-Hebrew-named kids.
“Alif, your name from now on will be Aliza,” Chetrit recalled the teacher declaring. “Jackie, your name is Jacob, and Michele, your name is Michal. She kept going alphabetically. Then she said, ‘Sami, your name will be Shmuel Shalom.’
“I went to my father, crying.… I really felt like something was stolen from me, something precious. I said: ‘They changed my name! They changed it!’”
Chetrit’s father taught the teacher something the next day, according to the story. In Arabic, “Sami” comes from the root “samar,” the father said, meaning “heavenly superior,” and that, the father declared, is “international.”
The tendency eventually faded out. When a million migrants from the former Soviet Union arrived in Israel, after 1991, almost none chose to, or were pressured to, change their names.
There are contemporary exceptions even to this, though. Anatoly Shcharansky, one of the most famous of the Soviet “refuseniks,” became Natan Sharansky on arrival in Israel in 1986. The American historian Michael Bornstein became the Israeli politician-cum-diplomat Michael Oren, having changed his name when he made aliyah in 1979.
Newcomers to Israel today are free to change their names – and free to keep their “galut” (“exile”) names. Israel, today, is an overwhelmingly Hebrew society, though. New arrivals do not present a risk of swamping the place with Yiddish, Arabic, German, Polish or English, as might have seemed a danger 75 years ago, creating a Babel where cultural unity was desperately needed.
In addition to the psychological impacts of adopting Hebrew names (and language) as a refutation of the diaspora that had so recently been the locus of calamity, there was the practical reality of finding commonality among wildly diverse new citizens. That has been achieved. Even sorbing a million Russian-speaking new Israelis after 1990 did not dilute the ascendency of the Hebrew language. For whatever criticisms the forced (or vigorously encouraged) adoption of Hebrew names might invite, there is no doubt the intended outcome has been realized. Ben-Gurion’s dream not only of a Jewish state, but a Hebrew one, is firmly in place.
Sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) for Hanukkah have come a long way, and now come in countless variations. (photo by Avital Pinnick / Flickr)
In Israel, sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) have gone through a major revolution. For years, they were injected with strawberry jelly and dusted with confectioners’ sugar. In a recent ad by a well-known Israeli bakery, there were 14 variations of sufganiyot, including the “classic strawberry jam.” Twelve are dairy and two are pareve (can be eaten with milk or meat dishes).
For the pareve offerings, there are colourful sprinkles, dairy-free chocolate and ganache (filling made from chopped chocolate and heavy cream). Among the dairy choices are “Raspberry Pavlova,” filled with sweet cream and topped with raspberry ganache, pavlova (a meringue named after the Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova), sweet cream and Amarena cherries; “Curly,” filled with cream and topped with Belgian chocolate and milk, dark and white chocolate curls; “Mozart,” filled with nougat-flavoured sweet cream, frosted with white chocolate strips and topped with Mozart cream (a chocolate liqueur) and chocolate curls; “Cheese Crumbs,” filled with cheese mixed with white chocolate and butter cookie crumb frosting and topped with cream cheese; and “Pistachio,” filled with pistachios, frosted with white chocolate ganache, and topped with pistachio cream and pistachio shavings.
Jewish law does not prescribe any special feasting or elaborate meal for Hanukkah as it does for other holidays. Maybe this is because the origin of Hanukkah is not in the Torah but in the Apocrypha, the books of literature written between the second century BCE and the second century CE, which were not incorporated into the Hebrew Bible.
The Books of Maccabees, of which there are four separate books, only say that the hero, Judah, “ordained that the days of dedication of the altar should be kept in their season from year to year by the space of eight days from the first and 20th day of the month Kislev, with mirth and gladness.”
So, where do we get all the food we eat? It is in the Talmud, where the so-called miracle of the oil burning for eight days is written. This myth was inserted to de-emphasize the miracle of military triumph and replace it with a more palatable idea, that of the intervention of G-d, which somehow would seem more a miracle than a fight of man against man, according to the sages of the time. (By the way, it is only within the past few years that children’s books about Hanukkah dare say the oil story is a legend or a myth.)
Practically every Jewish ethnic group has the custom of making and eating a form of food prepared in oil as a reminder of the “miracle” of the jar of oil.
The late Gil Marks wrote, in The World of Jewish Desserts, that doughnuts fried in oil, ponchikot, were adopted by Polish Jews for Hanukkah. The name is taken from the Polish word paczki, which led to the nickname ponchiks, the Polish name for jelly doughnuts. Ponchiks are similar to jelly doughnuts, only larger and more rich tasting, and were traditionally served on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent. They were made to use up shortening and eggs, which were prohibited during Lent.
Sufganiyot have a different history. In The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, Joan Nathan, an acquaintance of mine from our Jerusalem days and noted cookbook author and maven of American Jewish cooking, noted that she learned the origins of sufganiyot from Dov Noy (z”l), former dean of Israel folklorists.
Noy related a Bukhharian fable to Nathan, which says that the first sufganiya was a sweet given to Adam and Eve as compensation after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Noy said the word sufganiya came from the Hebrew word sof, meaning end; gan, meaning garden; and Ya, meaning G-d. Thus, the word means, “the end of G-d’s garden.”
According to Noy, this fable was created at the beginning of the 20th century, as sufganiya is a new Hebrew word coined by pioneers. Some say sufganiyot means sponge-like and that the doughnuts are reminiscent of the sweet, spongy cookie popular along the Mediterranean since the time of the Maccabees. Hebrew dictionaries say the word actually comes from the Greek word sufgan, meaning puffed and fried.
John Cooper, author of Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food, has another theory. He says Christians in Europe ate deep-fried pastries on New Year’s Eve, and Christians in Berlin ate jelly doughnuts. In that context, German Jews started eating apricot-filled doughnuts. When they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, they encouraged the population to eat the jelly doughnuts for Hanukkah.
One of my favourite pieces of research is the characteristics that sufganiyot are said to have:
• they are round like the wheel of fortune;
• they have to be looked at for what is inside, not for their external qualities; and
• they cannot be enjoyed the same way twice.
My research on the internet shows the calories for one sufganiya vary from 93 to 276, and gluten-free versions with rice flour are about 165 calories.
Whatever their origin – or number of calories – sample the real thing and you won’t forget it!
Sybil Kaplan, z”l, was a Jerusalem-based journalist and author. She edited/compiled nine kosher cookbooks and was a food writer for North American Jewish publications, including the Jewish Independent. We communicated regularly, but mostly in the leadup to a holiday issue. Not having heard from her in advance of this Hanukkah paper, we reached out, getting the sad news that Sybil recently passed away. It was a pleasure working with her for these past 20+ years and we will miss her. She always provided more stories than we could use, so, in this issue, we run a few we had yet to publish, honouring her in our way. May her memory be for a blessing.