Ben Schwartz and Jessica Kirson are on the lineup of this year’s Just for Laughs Vancouver.
Just for Laughs Vancouver, which runs Feb. 15-24 at various venues in the city, features several members of the Jewish community.
All three of Brett Goldstein’s shows Feb. 16-18 at Queen Elizabeth Theatre have almost sold out. Goldstein was a co-executive producer, co-writer and co-star of Ted Lasso. He is also the creator and executive producer of the comedy Shrinking, alongside Jason Segel and Bill Lawrence, and of Soulmates, with Will Bridges. Goldstein is host of the podcast Films to be Buried With, which finds him in conversation with guests as they discuss the films that have shaped them.
Rafi Bastos performs at the Rio Feb. 17-18. Many of his viral stand-up clips come from nightly performances at the Comedy Cellar. In his home-country of Brazil, he was one of the first comedians to pioneer the art of American-style stand-up comedy. He has starred in movies, had his own talk show, been an infield journalist and hosted reality show Ultimate Beastmaster. He is co-founder and owner of Comedians, the largest comedy club in South America.
Ben Schwartz and friends take to the Orpheum stage Feb. 18. Schwartz is part of the cast of The After Party, as well as the second season of Space Force. He was in the comedy series House of Lies and Parks and Recreation. As a writer, he has published four books and written television shows and movies for many major studios.
Jessica Kirson is at the Vogue Feb. 18. Her countless comedic character videos have racked up more than 200 million views on social media. She produced the feature-length documentary Hysterical. In addition to her one-hour special, called Talking to Myself, she is a regular on This Week at the Comedy Cellar and has appeared on many other shows.
At the Rio Feb. 23-24 is Catherine Cohen, best known for her comedy special The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous. She can be seen in the feature film At Midnight and in the upcoming series What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding. In 2021, she published her first book, God I Feel Modern Tonight, a collection of comedic poetry.
Comic, podcaster, writer and actress Annie Lederman will be at the Biltmore Feb. 21-22. Lederman is co-host of the podcast Trash Tuesdays. Most recently, she can be seen in the documentary miniseries The Comedy Store, alongside Jay Leno, David Letterman, Joe Rogan, and many other Comedy Store legends. She wrote and starred in Stand Ups, Impractical Jokers and Borat, among other things.
The full JFL lineup and tickets are available at jflvancouver.com.
Lemon loaf using a recipe by Jo-Anna Rooney, creator of A Pretty Life in the Suburbs. (photo from aprettylifeinthesuburbs.com)
So, a husband walks into Costco … with no shopping list. And what happens? He comes out with $200 worth of steak, a 10-pound bag of lemons (which, by my calculations, will make about 300 whiskey sours), 12 jars of capers, eight boxes of latex gloves, a snow blower, two big boxes of chocolate truffles and 98 rolls of toilet paper.
I am left wondering: what the hell am I supposed to do with a snow blower? We live in an apartment in Vancouver. And we’re not the caretakers. I ask my husband, “What’s up with the snow vehicle?” He just shrugs. Like, maybe he plans on relocating us to Winnipeg? “It was on sale,” he says.
I continue my interrogation. “So, are you planning to resell it on Facebook Marketplace, since you have it on good authority that there’s going to be a monstrous snowstorm coming to Vancouver? Or did you buy it as a gift for our cousins in Michigan?”
Just when I think he’s going to take up the challenge of my inquest, he demurs. I guess it’s not the snow hill he wants to die on.
My very next thought is: what the heck am I supposed to do with 10 pounds of lemons? Don’t say “make lemonade,” because, well, that’s seasonal. I consult with my BFF, Google, and she tells me that the best thing I can do with lemons is make lemon loaf. By now, she’s figured out that I love old school recipes. Being the compliant (and lazy) baker that I am, I gather my ingredients and have at it. Despite that it’s a classic 1960s/1970s dessert, I’ve never made it before. But, since everyone tell me a chimpanzee could make it (like that’s supposed to make me feel better about myself), I can hardly sidestep the challenge.
Long story marginally shorter, my husband and I demolished the whole lemon loaf in less than 24 hours. OK, make that 12 hours. I’m pleading the fifth. Wow, look what I just did with the math there. Anyhow, I baked, I fought, I ate. The fighting came into play when the last piece of lemon loaf was left.
LEMON LOAF (a recipe by Jo-Anna Rooney)
1/2 cup butter (or margarine) 1 cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup milk zest of 1 medium lemon (but not the juice) ** juice of 1 medium lemon 1/4 cup granulated sugar
Preheat oven to 350°F and then prepare an eight-inch-by-four-inch loaf pan by lining it with parchment paper. Set it aside.
With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, one at a time.
In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Then add half of the milk. Add the remaining flour mixture. Mix in the remaining milk and lemon zest. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
While the cake is baking, combine the juice from one lemon with 1/4 cup granulated sugar.
When the cake is baked, take it out of the oven and pierce holes in it with a thick bamboo skewer or a sharp knife – make sure to pierce to the bottom of the loaf so the lemon juice mixture can get right down into the cake. Pour the lemon juice/sugar mixture over the warm cake. Let it sit. This cake is even better the next day, and there is no need to refrigerate it.
Tip: I used parchment paper, like the recipe called for, but, next time, I’d just grease the loaf pan and bake it that way. The parchment paper allows for easier removal from the pan so that you can present it prettily on a plate, but who are we kidding, it won’t last a day, so just eat it straight out of the loaf pan. You’re welcome.
After I made the lemon loaf, I realized it was almost time for dinner. Not feeling particularly inspired, I browsed through my mother’s old National Council of Jewish Women Cookbook from the 1960s, hoping for a quick fix. Honestly, I have no idea how housewives raising families in the ’50s and ’60s managed to come up with a different dinner day in and day out for decades. Donna Reed, with her poodle skirt and kitten heels. How did she do it? I can only surmise that she wasn’t serving Michelin Star meals every night. It was probably more like shepherd’s pie, liver and onions, fish sticks or TV dinners (if the kids were lucky). Then I saw it: tuna noodle casserole! Thankfully, it wasn’t my mom’s version, which tragically included chow mein noodles and canned mandarin oranges on top. I want to gag just thinking about it. My version was neat but not gaudy, and it practically made itself. Once again, you’re welcome.
TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE
2 cans of tuna fish 1 can of mushroom soup approx. 1 cup frozen carrots and peas approx. 1 cup grated cheese (any kind) pasta of your choice (enough for a few people) Panko crumbs salt & pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Boil pasta as per the package and grate the cheese.
Once the pasta is ready, drain the water and add the mushroom soup, tuna, peas and carrots, and salt and pepper. Mix it all together. Pour it into a large casserole dish and top it with the grated cheese and Panko crumbs. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the cheese bubbles and gets slightly brown.
Sure, you could fancy this up using Gruyere cheese and organic, gluten-free pasta, with chopped up fiddlehead greens instead of carrots and peas, but, seriously, why would you want to? Stick to the KISS principle – keep it simple, silly. The proof is in the pudding: my husband and I both loved it. Judging by how he hoovered it down, he probably wouldn’t mind if I made it at least once a week. Hmm … maybe that’s why he just bought 36 cans of tuna at Costco.
I’m fully aware of how unsophisticated this recipe is but, hey, I never claimed to be a connoisseur of food. I did, however, claim the title of accidental balabusta. And it fits, right? Bon appetit!
Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.
Left to right: Rabbis Susan Tendler, Hannah Dresner, Philip Bregman, Carey Brown, Andrew Rosenblatt, Jonathan Infeld, Philip Gibbs and Dan Moskovitz in Israel last month. (photo from facebook.com/jewishvancouver)
Eight Vancouver-area rabbis recently visited Israel where, among many other things, they handed out cards and letters prepared by Jewish day school students and members of Vancouver’s Jewish community to soldiers and other Israelis. The response, according to one of the rabbis, was overwhelming.
“I saw soldiers taking these cards and then dropping down to the sidewalk and crying,” said Rabbi Philip Bregman. “Holding them to their chest as if this was a sacred piece of text and just saying, ‘Thank you. To know that we are not forgotten….’”
The rabbis’ mission included the delivery of thank you cards to Israeli soldiers. (photo from facebook.com/jewishvancouver)
Bregman, rabbi emeritus at the Reform Temple Sholom, was almost overcome with emotion while recounting the experience, which he shared in a community-wide online presentation Dec. 17. The event included seven of the eight rabbis who participated in the whirlwind mission, which saw them on the ground for a mere 60 hours. Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt of the Orthodox Congregation Schara Tzedeck was part of the mission but did not participate in the panel because he extended his time in Israel.
According to Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, who emceed the event, the Vancouver mission was unique in Canada and possibly in North America for bringing together rabbis from across the religious spectrum. The close connection of most local rabbis, facilitated by the longstanding Rabbinical Association of Vancouver (RAV), set a foundation for the mission, which took place in the second week of December.
The eight rabbis transported 21 enormous duffel bags, filled with gear like socks, gloves, toques and underwear, mostly for military reservists.
The rabbis delivered warm clothing, including socks, to Israeli soldiers. (photo from facebook.com/jewishvancouver)
Shanken, who visited Israel days earlier with Federation representatives and five Canadian members of Parliament, said nothing prepared him for what he encountered there. Bregman echoed Shanken’s perspective.
“It’s one thing to have that as an intellectual understanding,” said Bregman, “It’s another thing when you are actually there to witness the absolute pain and trauma. People have asked me how was the trip. I say it was brutal.”
The reception they received from Israelis was profound, several of the rabbis noted.
“I’ve been to Israel dozens of times,” Bregman said. “People are [always] happy to see us. Nothing like this.”
Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, senior rabbi at Temple Sholom, said the mission was to bear witness and also was a response to what rabbis were hearing from congregants about the centrality of Israel in their lives. He told the Independent that he was able to connect with two philanthropists in Los Angeles who funded the mission. Rabbi Carey Brown, associate rabbi at Temple Sholom, and Rabbi Susan Tendler, rabbi at the Conservative Beth Tikvah Congregation, in Richmond, handled logistics, with input from the group.
The unity of Israelis was among the most striking impressions, said Brown.
“It’s so all-encompassing of the society right now … the sense that everyone’s in this together,” she said. The unity amid diversity was especially striking, she noted, when the rabbis visited the central location in Tel Aviv known as “Hostage Square.”
Brown said Israelis asked about antisemitism in Canada and seemed confounded by the fact that there is not more empathy worldwide for the trauma their country has experienced.
Tendler reflected on how Israelis were stunned and touched by the fact that a group of Canadians had come to show solidarity.
The rabbis were able to experience a microcosm of Israeli society without leaving their hotel. At the Dan Panorama Tel Aviv, where they stayed, they were among only a few paying guests. The hotel was filled with refugees from the south and north of the country who are being indefinitely put up in the city.
Several rabbis spoke of incidental connections in which they discovered not six degrees of separation between themselves and people they ran into, but one or two.
Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel, who is chair of RAV, told of being approached by members of a family staying at their hotel who heard they were from Vancouver. They asked if the rabbi knew a particular family and he replied that he not only knew them but that a member of that family had just married into his own.
Likewise, Tendler ran into people who went to the same summer camp she did and the rabbis found many other close connections.
“The idea [is] that we are spread out but, at the heart of it all, we honestly really are one very small, connected people,” said Tendler. “We are one family, one community and that was the most important, amazing thing of all.”
Close connections or not, the rabbis were welcomed with open arms. Rabbi Philip Gibbs of West Vancouver’s Conservative Congregation Har El told of how he was walking past a home and glanced up to see a family lighting Hanukkah candles. They insisted he come in and mark the occasion with them.
Gibbs also noted that the political divisions that had riven the society before Oct. 7 have not disappeared, but that the entire population appears to have dedicated themselves to what is most important now.
The rabbis met with scholars, including Israeli foreign ministry experts and many ordinary Israelis, including Arab Israelis, as well as the writer Yossi Klein Halevi, who told them that many Israelis feel let down by their government, intelligence officials and military leadership.
The rabbis traveled to the site of the music festival where 364 people were murdered, more than 40 hostages kidnapped and many more injured on Oct. 7. They saw scores of bullet-riddled and exploded vehicles. All of them will be drained of fuel and other fluids before being buried because they contain fragments of human remains that ZAKA, Israel’s volunteer rescue, extraction and identification agency, could not completely remove from the vehicles.
Rabbi Hannah Dresner of the Jewish Renewal-affiliated Or Shalom Synagogue was not the only rabbi to compare the mission with a shiva visit.
“I was just so amazed at the care that was being given, that each of these vehicles was now being siphoned of any remaining flammable materials so that each one of them could be buried according to our halachah,” Dresner said, “so that none of the human remains would be just discarded as junk. I found that overwhelmingly powerful.”
Relatedly, the group visited an exhibit at Expo Tel Aviv, which recreates the music festival site and features unclaimed property from the site, including the historically resonant sight of hundreds of pairs of shoes.
The visiting rabbis went to an exhibit at Expo Tel Aviv, which featured unclaimed property from the music festival site where hundreds were murdered. (photo from facebook.com/jewishvancouver)
The rabbis visited Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than 100 people were murdered, and saw the devastation and destruction, some of it not from Oct. 7 but from days after, when explosives planted on that day detonated. It was also at this kibbutz that the Israel Defence Forces found a copy of the Hamas playbook for the atrocities.
“It sounded as if it could have been written by Eichmann or Hitler,” said Bregman. “[The intent] was not only to destroy the body but to destroy the mind, the soul, the psychology, the emotional and spiritual aspect of every Jew.”
The plan included strategies for setting fire to homes in order to force residents out of safe rooms, then specified the order in which family members were to be murdered – parents in front of their children.
As part of their mission to Israel, Vancouver rabbis visited kibbutzim that were attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. (photo from facebook.com/jewishvancouver)
While the trip may have had the spirit of a shiva visit, the mood of the Israelis, Dresner said, was “can-do resourcefulness.”
“It’s felt to me over the past couple of years that Israelis have been kind of depressed,” she said, referring to divisive political conflicts. “But they are full force embracing their ingenuity and turning the energy of the resistance movement into this amazing volunteer corps to supply really whatever is needed to whatever sector.”
Groups that had coalesced to protest proposed judicial reforms pivoted to emergency response, she said, ensuring that soldiers and displaced civilians have basic needs met and then creating customized pallets of everything from tricycles to board games, bedding and washing machines, for families who will be away from their homes for extended periods.
The rabbis also went to Kibbutz Yavneh and paid their respects at the grave of Ben Mizrachi, the 22-year-old Vancouver man and former army medic who died at the music festival while trying to save the lives of others. They had a private meeting with Yaron and Jackie Kaploun, parents of Canadian-Israeli Adi Vital-Kaploun, who was murdered in front of her sons, an infant and a 4-year-old.
On the final evening of their visit, the rabbis hosted a Hanukkah party for displaced residents of Kiryat Shmona, the northern Israeli town that is in the Vancouver Jewish community’s partnership region.
At the party, Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Brown spoke with a woman whose two sons are in Gaza fighting for the IDF.
“I told her that we do the prayer for tzahal, for the IDF, in our services in our shul,” Brown said, “and she was so surprised and touched, and she said, ‘Keep praying, keep praying.’”
“Constellation” by Rosamunde Bordo. (photo by Sol Hashemi)
Every true artist at the start of their career undergoes a period of intense search: for their voices, for their themes, for their artistic expressions. Rosamunde Bordo is at that exciting stage now. She is searching. Her show at the Zack Gallery, Morning Star, reflects her creative explorations.
A professional artist today, Bordo has always loved art.
“As a child, I went to a school with a strong art program. I painted. I played saxophone. My parents always encouraged my interest in art,” she said in an interview with the Independent.
Rosamunde Bordo’s solo exhibit, Morning Star, is at the Zack Gallery until Feb. 7. (photo from Rosamunde Bordo)
After a bachelor’s in liberal arts and print media at Concordia University in Montreal (2014) and master of fine arts degree in visual art at the University of British Columbia (2020), Bordo teaches printmaking at UBC. But her artistic interests range much wider than printmaking. Her newly emerging passions include the creation of installations and woodworking.
“I started woodworking last spring,” she said. “In this show, I use different woods: maple, cherry, walnut. I’m fascinated by the process of turning wood into sculptures. In a way, woodworking is similar to printmaking. Both use technology but, unlike two-dimensional printmaking, woodworking offers three dimensions. In woodworking, I try to find the story of the material, try to immerse in material-based research to investigate the self as a created subject.”
Bordo began woodworking when she started her ongoing installation project, The Denise File.
“It is almost a work of detective fiction, written through physical space,” she explained. Using found postcards written to someone named Denise, Bordo “wanted to reconstruct who the elusive Denise is, to figure out what the letters meant, to show her essence through objects, sculptures and drawings.”
She built some wooden furniture for The Denise File – a screen and a chair – and wanted to do more, to explore all she could do with wood. Her current show, comprised mostly of several sculptures, has its roots in a Jewish magic class she took at her synagogue in 2021.
“I wanted to understand Jewish history, its mysticism and its superstitions,” she said.
Each figure on the gallery wall could have originated from the ancient writings of many nations.
“It could be ancient Hebrew or Aramaic or even Greek,” Bordo mused. “All the cultures in that region were interconnected. I see the entire show as a healing amulet, but I didn’t want to assign my own meanings to the individual figures. I wanted them to be mysteries for my viewers to investigate. I wanted the viewers to be detectives and I didn’t want to influence them with my personal vision, didn’t want to limit their imagination.”
That’s why she titled every “Constellation” figure with a number. “They could be stick figures – they are very simple – but I see them as constellations, stars connected to each other,” she said. “That’s why the show is called Morning Star. The world is a difficult place right now, and the morning star is a symbol of renewal.”
Bordo’s constellations are deceptive, looking a bit like wooden hieroglyphs, or perhaps molecular structures, each with its own character.
“The one with a leg sticking out of the wall – it wanted to be playful, maybe escape from the wall,” she said. “I was looking for harmony when I worked on them, but I didn’t want to force them into locked shapes. I wanted to give them their own personalities. Besides, I try to respect the wood I work with. It is alive. There are many ways one could interpret a wooden sculpture.”
In addition to the constellations on the gallery walls, there is also a video called Potion, which comprises four minutes of rotating green abstract patterns. Postcards with a single image from the video form another part of the installation. The text on the back of the postcards reveals the artist’s motto for this show: “Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars.”
There is also a small table with a slab of pink salt on it.
“Placing salt in your pockets and in the corners of rooms was a well-known Jewish superstition to ward off malevolent spirits,” Bordo said. The table with the salt stands in the corner of the gallery, hopefully repulsing malice. We all need that in our troubled times, she explained.
The show opened Jan. 5 and will be on display until Feb. 7. To learn more, go to the artist’s website, withoutimages.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.
Christopher Morris as Jacob in The Runner, which is at Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre Jan. 24-26. (photo by Dylan Hewlett)
Since this article was published, PuSh has canceled the production. For the statement, click here.
Among the offerings of this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is Christopher Morris’s The Runner, which runs Jan. 24-26 at Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.
The one-man play is dedicated to Jakoff Mueller, a ZAKA member in Israel who died in 2018. The main character is Jacob, an Orthodox Jew with the Israeli volunteer emergency response organization. In one of the emergencies depicted, Jacob helps an injured Arab woman before he tends to a soldier, and his choice has significant repercussions. The actor in the role – in Vancouver, it will be Morris – performs the whole 60 minutes of the play while walking/running on a treadmill.
The Jewish Independent interviewed Morris by email before the playwright stepped back from doing media after a scheduled Victoria run of the play was canceled due to pressure from protesters, who objected to the story being told “from an exclusively Israeli perspective.”
JI: Can you share more about your relationship with Jakoff Mueller, how you came to meet him, to be invited into his home, and how he contributed to writing of The Runner?
CM: I first met Jakoff in 2009 at a small get-together in the house I was staying at in Jerusalem. This was during my first research trip to Israel to write this play. The owner of the house was a friend of Jakoff and she thought it would be interesting for me to speak with him, seeing as I was doing research about ZAKA. Jakoff was an incredibly thoughtful man with a great sense of humour, and we hit it off. He invited me to come and visit him where he lived in northern Israel and I did, over many occasions during the research trips I made to Israel. Though no event or fact from Jakoff’s life is represented in the play, his compassion for valuing all human life and his spirit of questioning is in the play. The world was a better place with him in it.
JI: When did you start writing The Runner and when and where did it première?
CM: My curiosity with ZAKA began when I was a teenager in Markham, Ont., in the 1990s. I heard a media interview about the work ZAKA did and it really struck me. I kept thinking that ZAKA’s work would be an interesting premise for a play but didn’t know how to do it. So, in 2009, I made my first trip to Israel to begin researching the play. I spent nine years (on and off) writing it and it premièred at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto in 2018.
JI: You’ll be playing the role of Jacob, but I see in much of the material Gord Rand as the actor. Are you stepping in for him, does the role rotate, is he no longer part of the production?
CM: Yes, I’ll be playing the role of Jacob in Vancouver. The show had critical success when it premièred in Toronto, winning three Dora Mavor Moore Awards (best script, best production and best direction for the late Daniel Brooks). We were receiving a lot of interest to tour the show, so we rehearsed in multiples of every role in the production (actor, stage managers, director, designers) in the event that one person from the original team may not be available. Daniel Brooks rehearsed me into the role so I could play it when Gord wasn’t available. Over the years, I’ve played it on and off a few times and am really looking forward to performing the role in Vancouver.
JI: You’ve written a one-pager offering guidance for venues presenting The Runner. Is there anything you’d add to that, given the Israel-Hamas war? Not only because tensions are higher, but, for example, there are direct parallels in the description of victims in the mass grave in Ukraine [where ZAKA members, including Jacob, travel in the play] and what happened to Israelis on Oct. 7, which could be triggering.
CM: It’s always been important when presenting The Runner in collaboration with theatres to give some social context when the show is being presented. I am always available to the staff at the theatre to offer any specific insight about the play in the context it’s being presented in. PuSh and I have been in constant contact about how to support the play and the audiences who will see it in January.
JI: When were the PuSh shows booked and, if there have there been other productions mounted since Oct. 7, what has reaction been overall?
CM: We’ve been discussing doing this show with PuSh for over a year and it was officially booked last May. We completed a run of the show from Nov. 2nd to the 19th, 2023, at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ont., and the reaction to the show was extremely positive. A few hours ago, it was publicly announced that the Belfry Theatre will not be presenting The Runner in March.
I support the conversations taking place in response to The Runner right now, I always think it’s important to discuss things. It’s hard to know how audiences will experience any play right now, let alone one set in Israel, like The Runner. But the power of this production, and why so many people have connected with it since it premièred in 2018, is that it’s a nuanced and thoughtful conversation about the preciousness of human life.
JI: Are you a member of the Jewish community? Either way, why did you choose to write a play about terrorism from the perspective of an Orthodox Jewish man?
CM: I’m not a member of the Jewish community. I was brought up Catholic but regard myself as an ex-Catholic (since the age of 13). I wrote a play about medical triage in the perspective of an Orthodox Jewish man because I wanted to write a play about ZAKA.
JI: I’m struck by what I interpret, perhaps mistakenly, as calls for humanity/morality only from Jews/Israelis, not from terrorists or people who see terrorism as a valid form of resistance. In the thinly veiled Gilad Shalit reference, for example, Jacob bemoans the un-Jewishness of Israel keeping the remains of dead terrorists in case of an exchange but he doesn’t seem to question the morality or humanity of the terrorists. Similarly, the only ones who seem to be called to account for killing in this play are Jews – presumably an Israeli shot the Arab woman in the back, an Israeli shooting an Arab protester leads to an Israeli boy being killed, a Jewish Israeli accidentally shoots another Jew when trying to shoot a terrorist, and another gunshot by a Jew, after a vehicular terrorist attack, has fatal consequences for a Jew.
CM: Because it’s a one-person show, Jacob’s view is a singular perspective, and I wrote about the unique situations he would be facing as a ZAKA member. Jacob is dismayed by all the violence that surrounds him and, throughout the play, he advocates for seeing all human life as equal. As a disempowered, isolated person, with limited interactions to people outside of his community, I believe Jacob feels his best bet to effect change is by addressing those around him.
JI:While ZAKA prioritizes victims over terrorists, other Israeli medical professionals are supposed to triage patients. In the play, an ambulance takes the Arab girl away and obviously keeps her alive. Why does no Jew in the play support Jacob or show him kindness?
CM: It is true that Israeli medical professionals give care to patients, like the ambulance described in the show that takes the Palestinian teenager away and a hospital which no doubt helped her with her wounds. When writing the complex character of Jacob, it was important to include examples in the play of how hard it was for him to connect to other people before he offers medical care to the teenager. This was important to create a complex human being and an interesting dramatic context. Jacob’s mother supports him and shows him kindness. As does the Palestinian teenager when he arrives unexpectedly at her door, and the Palestinian man who saves him by helping Jacob get to his car.
JI: There is a line in the play that has been highlighted by reviewers as powerful, and that’s [Jacob’s brother] Ari’s dictate about why he’s a settler on the land – “because it’s mine!” Again, this doesn’t come up in your play, but is relevant: the chant for Palestine to be free from the river to the sea. What hope do you see, or does Jacob see, if you’d rather – can one get off “the treadmill” alive?
CM: Though my play is set in Israel, I feel I lack the experience or expertise to offer a fully informed answer to the complexities of the overall conflict. But the biggest hope for me in the play and the only statement about life I feel I wrote (as opposed to the numerous questions I ask in the play) is Jacob’s description of how the Palestinian teenager treated him with kindness:
Her hand on my shoulder. Are you alright. That’s all that matters. Kindness. An act of kindness.
This is my offering for the complex world we live in.
To read my op-ed on the Belfry Theatre’s cancelation of The Runner, click here. To read other statements on the cancelation, including from Morris, click here.
For tickets to the PuSh Festival, which includes BLOT, co-created by Vanessa Goodman, and Pli, co-presented by Chutzpah! Festival, go to pushfestival.ca.
Christopher Morris as Jacob inThe Runner. (photo by Dylan Hewlett)
Since this article was published, PuSh has canceled the production. For the statement, click here.
The Belfry Theatre in Victoria has removed Christopher Morris’s play The Runner from its 2024 lineup. I can see why it did so – the threats of violence are real, and scary. But it was the wrong decision.
“The Belfry Theatre presents contemporary work, with ideas that often generate dialogue. That is why, a year ago, we decided to bring the much-acclaimed play, The Runner, to Victoria. However, we believe that presenting The Runner at this particular time does not ensure the well-being of all segments of our community,” reads the Jan. 2 statement.
Last month, a petition was started to remove the one-man play about an Israeli rescue worker whose life is forever changed after he helps an Arab woman, who may have stabbed an Israeli soldier to death, before attending to the soldier. A counter-petition was started by members of the Jewish community to keep The Runner at the theatre. At press time, the protest petition had more than 1,400 signatures, while the counter-petition had more than 2,400.
The Belfry Theatre invited people to come and discuss any issues surrounding the play. That Dec. 22 meeting dissolved into chaos, overtaken by protesters with bullhorns and anti-Israel signs. The Belfry building was subsequently vandalized with multiple stickers that said “trash” and anti-Israel sentiments, topped off with a red-spray-painted “Free Palestine.”
The threat of more violence – implied by the aggressiveness of the protesters at the December meeting and the defacement of the theatre’s building – was probably a main reason for the Belfry canceling the show. It seems that the protesters have successfully bullied the theatre into changing its programming. Instead of contributing to a safe space in which ideas could be presented, considered, discussed, perhaps agreed upon, perhaps not, the protesters have created an atmosphere of fear. They have put other creatives on notice – unless you reflect only what we believe, we will shut you down.
By succumbing to the pressure, the Belfry has perhaps protected its staff and its building – the importance of which cannot be understated – but a dangerous precedent has been set. On the larger world stage, we have seen how screaming down other viewpoints, vandalism and worse violence, misrepresentation and misinformation, can win the day. The success of such tactics in Victoria is another reminder, if we needed one, of how easily freedoms can be removed. How easily voices can be silenced.
Accuracy and context matter, and the petition includes neither.
The petition describes The Runner as “a story of Israeli settlers in a dehumanizing exercise of whether Palestinian and Arab life is of value.” Its writers “demand[ed]” the Belfry “remove The Runner from [its] 2024 lineup,” claiming that it “features the violent and racist rhetoric of Zionism from an exclusively Israeli perspective.” They cite two unattributed, non-contextualized sentences from the script that ostensibly support their position.
The play is not about Israeli settlers, it does not celebrate Israeli settlers or militant Zionism. Jacob – a volunteer from Jerusalem with ZAKA (Israel’s nongovernmental rescue and recovery organization) – is the main character, the hero, the one the audience is rooting for, along perhaps with the Arab woman he helps save.
The quote chosen by the petitioners is spoken by Ari, Jacob’s brother, who is portrayed as a rabid settler nationalist. He is a jerk, and an awful brother. People like Ari do exist, but one of the points of the play seems to be that he is not the model human, that his views are not what people should think.
The petitioners have one aspect of the play almost correct: it does focus on Israeli perspectives (plural), as the main character is Israeli, and so are his mother and brother, and his colleagues. And I will admit that I had trouble with this aspect of the play, too. I felt that The Runner only asked questions about Israelis’ morality, that it disparaged Jews’ claims to the land, that it depicted every Israeli character other than Jacob harshly. While terrorism is shown, the terrorist characters aren’t held to any account, in my view, and there are no moral demands made of them.
I am proud that the petition to keep The Runner in the Belfry’s lineup was initiated by members of the Jewish community. I believe in Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, at the same time as I believe in the right of people to criticize, question and protest. In a democratic country, I don’t see the need to attack people or destroy property to voice an opinion, especially not about the arts. It is no wonder there are multiple conflicts taking place around the world – even in Canada, where we enjoy multiple freedoms and are relatively rich in resources, we find it challenging to be open, civil and respectful of diversity.
If The Runner had encouraged violence or discrimination, I might have signed a petition against it, too, and even joined a rally, but I hope that I would have chosen to critique it instead, to share my point of view instead of trying to silence Morris’s. I certainly would not have chosen to threaten or commit violence against people or property.
Several aspects of The Runner bother me, but I think it is an excellent piece of work because it has taken up more of my brain space than almost any other play, movie or performance that I’ve seen or book or article I’ve read. It has made me angry, thoughtful, sad, and I continue to contemplate my various reactions. It has literally kept me up at night. In this respect, Morris has done his job extremely well. People should see this play. I sincerely hope the bullies will not succeed in silencing the PuSh Festival’s presentation of it as well.
For my interview with Christopher Morris, click here. To read statements about the Belfry Theatre’s decision to remove The Runner from its lineup, click here. For more on the Victoria situation, see thecjn.ca/news/runner-play-victoria.
Dr. Ted Rosenberg (photo from BC College of Family Physicians)
Ted Rosenberg has stepped down from his post as a clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, citing an unsafe environment, following his repeated attempts to have the school do more to address antisemitism.
In a Jan. 1 letter to UBC, the award-winning geriatrician, who has taught at the medical school for more than 20 years – prior to that, he had a position at the University of Manitoba – wrote that because the faculty has failed to address concerns, he had “no choice but to resign.”
A tense atmosphere developed following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks when a petition titled “A Call for Action on Gaza” first appeared at the faculty of medicine and was signed by more than 225 of its students. The petition went beyond calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Rather, it condemned Israel as “a settler colonial state,” accused it of “collective punishment through indiscriminate bombing of civilians” and claimed that “Palestinian people have been continually abused, traumatized and killed by the settler state of Israel and its Western allies for over 75 years.”
In a Nov. 29 letter to UBC president Benoit-0Antoine Bacon, medicine faculty dean Dermot Kelleher and other top officials at the university, Rosenberg wrote, “This petition and other similar statements on campus, as well as the inaction by UBC, makes me wonder if antisemitism has become systemic in this institution.”
While praising UBC’s efforts to redress discrimination and promote diversity and inclusion, he asked, “Why do these efforts for diversity and inclusion come to an abrupt halt when it involves ‘including and protecting’ Jewish/Zionist students and faculty?” According to Rosenberg, the petition not only made him feel unsafe but also traumatized a medical student “who was left distressed, anxious and sleepless after reading it, and enduring the hostile reactions of colleagues and faculty.”
A Dec. 21 letter, co-signed with 283 other physicians – both Jewish and non-Jewish – stressed the growing polarization at the medical school due to events in the Middle East.
“This is resulting in hate speech, student intimidation and the feelings of many students and teachers that they are working in a toxic environment. Several of us have expressed concerns to you in writing and are waiting for specific responses,” the letter read.
The letter also called into question the validity of the anti-Israel petition, emphasizing that it contained several inaccuracies, caused deep divisions within the medical student community, and was one-sided and unrelated to medical care.
In requesting a response from university leadership to take action to protect the integrity of the medical school and the safety of medical students and staff, the letter urged that those who signed the petition “be made aware of the significance of their choice of contentious language.”
Additionally, the letter called on the offices of equity, diversity and inclusion (at both the university and the medical school) to receive sensitivity training regarding Jewish issues and antisemitism, encouraged the university to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, and asked the university to form a clear policy on the boundaries of free speech, “having zero tolerance for any speech that crosses the boundary to antisemitic or hate speech or language used to incite violence, either openly or covertly.”
Both letters received responses from Dean Kelleher of the medical school. Rosenberg, however deemed them inadequate. In the resignation letter, he said they “did not address any of our specific concerns re: the medical student’s petition, antisemitism within the faculty, or concerns that politicization and polarization of the Middle East conflict are creating a toxic work environment.
“I checked the recommended links to your and the president’s statements on respect and compassion…. Two words are conspicuously absent from all these documents: 1. Jew(ish) and 2. Antisemitism.”
Rosenberg added that he searched the websites for the offices of equity, diversity and inclusion at the university and the medical school for “antisemitism” and did not find the word included among the several anti’s that were mentioned.
In his most recent letter, Rosenberg said he lamented the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides, but denounced the “oversimplistic ahistorical demonizing narratives and rhetoric” taking place.
Rosenberg also expressed the hope “that the faculty of medicine and UBC will recognize this serious threat of antisemitism/Jew-hatred and the dangers of politicization and polarization of the faculty and student body.”
In his concluding remarks, he advised the school to consult with the physicians who collectively wrote the school leadership in December. “They can work with you to constructively, collaboratively and proactively rectify this situation and ultimately help restore respect, compassion, empathy and trust among colleagues and students,” he said.
Rosenberg told the CJN that he is aware of other faculty members who have considered resigning because of the present atmosphere at the medical school. Since his letter, he also has heard from people at the faculty who are prepared to do more to recognize antisemitism – and to do something about it when it appears at the school.
In response to a request for comment about Rosenberg’s resignation, a spokesperson for UBC wrote, “The faculty of medicine and the University of British Columbia have been very clear that antisemitism, or discrimination of any kind, is completely unacceptable. We are committed to creating a safe and respectful environment for all of our community members and will continue to take steps to do so.
“In response to concerns raised by faculty and learners, the faculty of medicine is also working expediently to develop educational opportunities for inclusive learning and respectful dialogue within the faculty in areas that directly reflect our stated values, including how we address issues such as discrimination, harassment and hate speech,” they added.
Rosenberg, a Victoria-based physician who makes house calls, is an advocate for keeping the elderly in their homes for as long as possible. His company, Home Team Medical Services, aims to improve quality of life and increase independence for older people and their families. The company provides home-based health care for people 75 to 105 with physiotherapists, rehabilitation aides and care coordinators, in addition to a team of nurses and physicians.
In 2016, Rosenberg received the BC College of Family Physicians Award of Exceptional Contribution in Family Medicine.
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC. This article was originally published at thecjn.ca.
A still from the documentary Passage to Sweden, which will screen as part of the annual Raoul Wallenberg Day for Civil Courage event on Jan. 21.
This year’s annual Raoul Wallenberg Day for Civil Courage gathering, on Sunday, Jan. 21, held at Congregation Beth Israel, will explore and honour civil courage in Scandinavia during the Second World War.
Just over 80 years ago, in late 1943, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes had to confront moral choices, when Denmark and Norway dealt with military occupation by Nazi Germany. Many people defied Nazi policies that threatened the human rights and lives of their fellow citizens and residents.
In Denmark, thousands of Christian Danes risked their own lives, cooperating in the dramatic, swift and secret rescue operation. The Jews, who faced deportation and certain death at the hands of the Nazis, were ferried to safety in neutral Sweden. Their homes and properties were safeguarded until their return after the war. Sweden welcomed and aided the Danish Jews, risking its own status as a neutral nation.
In Norway, the site of significant armed attacks by Nazi Germany, hundreds of Norwegian police officers refused the orders of Nazi occupiers, a collective action that led to their imprisonment at Stutthof concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Poland. There, the Norwegian police maintained their solidarity as they acted to reduce the suffering of their fellow prisoners, including many Jews, such as the late Jennie Lifschitz, who settled in Vancouver in the early 1950s.
Finland and the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were also engulfed in the war, victims of the Soviet Union’s military occupation and, in the case of the Baltics, annexation and mass civilian deportations.
While Nordic peoples, like most Europeans, were not completely free of hostility toward Jews and other minorities, they offer a good example of civil courage, based on the belief that Jewish citizens and residents were their equals.
This year, at the local Wallenberg Day event, Vancouver Holocaust educator Norman Gladstone will speak about the remarkable rescue of Denmark’s Jewish population. Local researcher and author Tore Jørgensen will speak about the hundreds of Norwegian policemen, including his father, who refused to collaborate with the Nazi occupiers. Historian Gene Homel will introduce the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society and the City of Vancouver proclamation of Wallenberg Day.
As well, the documentary Passage to Sweden will be screened. The film covers the wartime courage of Scandinavians, including Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg, who acted courageously to protect civilians in Hungary, and was taken into custody by the Soviet army. His fate is unknown to this day.
The 19th annual Wallenberg Day on Jan. 21 at Congregation Beth Israel will be held at 1:30 p.m. Admission is free and donations will be gratefully accepted.
For more about the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society, which organizes the annual event, visit wsccs.ca.
– Courtesy Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society
In his ambiguously titled book Ordinary, Extraordinary: My Father’s Life, Vancouver lawyer and community leader Bernard Pinsky shares the biography of Rubin Pinsky. As the pages turn, the reader realizes that ordinariness and extraordinariness really do describe the tale of a life that veers from historically monumental to surprisingly, and gratefully, commonplace.
At 1 p.m., Jan. 28, Pinsky will officially launch the book, in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at a prologue event to the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. He will present in conversation with Marsha Lederman.
Pinsky’s book is based on videotaped testimonies that his father, Rubin, gave in 1983 and 1990 to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (which is co-presenting the Jan. 28 event), as well as family memories and what is clearly intensive research.
Rubin was born (probably) in 1924, about 100 kilometres north of Pinsk in what is now Belarus but was then Poland. Pinsky sets the stage beautifully, evoking shtetl life, where the smallest of the children slept atop the bakery oven in the tiny home after his father, Baruch, had baked challah and cakes during the day to eke out a meagre living.
After the German occupation, the Nazis quickly identified the men in the Jewish community who had leadership qualities and said they were needed for an important mission in a nearby area. They were marched just out of earshot and mass murdered. In a later selection, Baruch, his wife Henya and 10-year-old Rachel were marched off and never seen again.
Rubin and his sister Chasia were deemed useful for forced labour and spared the executions. Older brother Herzl had earlier been conscripted into the Red Army.
Every survivor narrative includes a series of unimaginable interventions, coincidences and happenstances, often made possible by acts of incredible daring by the survivor. Through a series of audacious escapades – they weighed off what appeared to be likelihood of certain death with the faint hope of survival – Rubin, Chasia and a few others escaped a selection process and fled to the forest. They lived off berries, roots, tree bark and what small game they could capture. In one instance, Rubin slew a timber wolf in a competition for the same rabbit.
The group connected with a diffuse but apparently well-organized network of Jewish and other partisan fighters. Despite the challenges of mere survival, Rubin and Chasia participated in anti-Nazi actions that included cutting telephone lines, destroying railway tracks and undermining the establishment of Nazi garrisons.
Typhus swept through the Jews in the forest. In the winter of 1943/44, Rubin was delirious with fever and expected to die. In one of the terrible choices people were forced to make in such situations, the partisan cadre decided to leave him behind to save the group. Chasia refused to go. The two siblings hid in a ditch and, to the best of her ability, she nursed him back to comparative health.
Each of these unlikely survival stories makes one wonder how many similar stories did not have the relatively happy ending Rubin’s did, how many survivor testimonies or second generation narratives were never written because the fever did not break, or the hero did not take a risk on a faint hope, or any of a million chance escapes or saving miracles did not occur in time.
In July 1944, the forest in which Rubin and Chasia had hid, fought and barely survived was liberated by the Soviet army. Concentration and death camps were repurposed into displaced persons camps after the war and Rubin and Chasia were in Bergen-Belsen. Chasia left and searched for three weeks, eventually finding Herzl and bringing him with her to Bergen-Belsen, where the three surviving members of the family were reunited.
Zionists tried to recruit them to go to Palestine, but Rubin knew that would be a continuation of the conflict, uncertainty and fighting he wanted to put behind him.
“Rubin therefore made up his mind,” writes Pinsky. “He needed a skill or trade in demand in America. He and Herzl made a pact. They would study together, each in a different trade, and go together to the New World. They would help each other and never be separated again.”
The story of how Rubin and Herzl (in the New World, he would be known as Harry) were able to migrate to Canada is another example of chutzpah – an hilarious drama of subterfuge – that has to be read to be believed. Chasia, whose marriage in the DP camp did not last, joined them soon after.
Rubin married Jenny Moser in 1951 and they would have three children: the author, Bernard, his older sister Helen and younger brother Max – all now mainstays of the Vancouver Jewish community. Rubin’s life in Canada was that of a hardscrabble entrepreneur – and not without its seemingly miraculous near-misses and fortunate endings.
As an appendix, Pinsky shares writings from a 2012 family roots trip back to Gzetl, where a dedicated teacher is keeping alive the memory of Gzetl’s Jews.
Pinsky’s memoir is indeed a story both extraordinary and ordinary, of what human resilience can summon in a world turned upside-down – and how the strength developed in unimaginable adversity can carry a survivor through challenges when life becomes, in comparison, ordinary.
Tamar Ilana & Ventanas play at the Rothstein Theatre Feb. 3. (photo by Ali Wasti)
The Chutzpah! Festival and Caravan World Rhythms co-present Tamar Ilana & Ventanas on Feb. 3, 8 p.m., at the Rothstein Theatre. Founded in 2011, Ventanas interweaves flamenco, Sephardi and Balkan music and dance. They have released three albums and have toured extensively throughout North America. They have been nominated for four Canadian Folk Music Awards.
The six-piece Toronto-based music ensemble is fronted by vocalist and dancer Tamar Ilana. They perform in more than 20 languages, including Ladino, Spanish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Hebrew, French, Romani and Arabic, drawing inspiration from worldwide themes such as migration and the questioning of one’s identity.
Ilana is a powerful and versatile Canadian singer and flamenco dancer of mixed descent, renowned for her ability to sing in multiple languages and collaborate with various artistic communities from around the world. Her childhood was spent gathering songs from small villages on the edge of the Mediterranean and dancing flamenco. (For more, see jewishindependent.ca/ventanas-come-to-b-c and jewishindependent.ca/ventanas-to-play-at-folk-fest.)
Ventanas’ band members are from across the globe and, together, in true Canadian fashion, they and Ilana intertwine their musical cultures to create an all-encompassing world of their own in which they lead audiences down the less-traveled paths of the Mediterranean, mixing in contemporary interpretations of ancient ballads, original compositions and new choreographies, inviting audiences of all backgrounds into their music.
For tickets to Tamar Ilana & Ventanas ($40 regular, $34 senior/student), visit chutzpahfestival.com or call 604-257-5145.
