Claudia Segovia’s creations are colorful, whimsical monsters. (photo from Claudia Segovia)
It took Claudia Segovia a long time to find her niche. “I always liked art,” she said in an interview with the Jewish Independent, “but I’ve been primarily a dancer, drawing on the sideline. When I got pregnant 17 years ago, I couldn’t dance, so I started drawing much more. I also always liked sewing, so I experimented with textile art, tried different techniques: finger puppets, smaller pictures, drawings, collages, sewn little monsters. Nothing seemed to fit, until I began painting. I have only been painting for a few years but I know that’s my direction, that’s what I want to do.”
Segovia’s solo show, Intuitive Mythology, opened at the Zack Gallery on Aug. 17. It is awash with colorful, whimsical monsters. Painted as large pictures or crafted as fabric dolls, the artist’s monsters are full of contradictions. They are childish and philosophical, ugly and charming, spout big ideas or cavort like spoiled brats.
Claudia Segovia (photo from the artist)
“I don’t decide what I paint,” Segovia said. “First, I let my intuition flow and play with colors and figures on canvas for the background. Then, when it’s done, I try to see what shapes are there, what creature emerges from within. Once the creature is realized, I work to fulfil its life. Only then, I try to understand its meaning. For me, it is the most important part. Sometimes I see my siblings there, sometimes a timepiece, sometimes a totem pole. It is as amazing to me as it is to the viewers. Each piece is a surprise. What does this creature mean? What words come up? What questions does it answer?”
For this show, Segovia doubled each of her painted monsters as a hand-made fabric doll. “After I finished the painting, I worked on a 3D textile sculpture. I try to match the fabrics to the texture and colors of the painting. I display my sewn creatures in front of the paintings, as if they are coming out of the canvases, into life.”
Each of her monsters has a story to tell, if only the viewers would listen. All of them are unique, sweet and tart fruits of Segovia’s imagination.
“I have a passion for little monsters, the ones that are funny and different. I don’t like realistic art,” she admitted. “Sometimes, I write words on my monsters. My intuition guides me.… I’m inspired by the Mexican folk art, especially Alebrije – painted wooden sculpture from Oaxaca. I visited the town once, when I was younger, and talked to the artists. I do similar things with my monsters. It’s not on purpose, it just happened.”
Segovia started selling her little sewn beasties long before she started painting them. “My son was about five,” she recalled. “I wasn’t painting yet but I was making the fabric creatures. I emailed all my friends and they emailed their friends and, eventually, a couple of gift shops expressed interest. Now, three stores in B.C. carry my monsters and my smaller pictures and collages. One is on Granville Island, one on Main and one in Victoria.”
She feels excited when someone buys her art – and it’s not about the money. “People buy it because they love my piece so much they want to take it home,” she explained. “It feels wonderful.”
Unfortunately, like many artists, Segovia can’t make a living with her art. “It helps,” she said, laughing, “but to pay the bills, I teach. I teach art and I teach dancing. I love teaching.”
“I don’t teach computers anymore. Now, I only teach what I love: dancing and art. And I concentrate on my painting.”
Before she immigrated to Canada from Mexico, Segovia taught computers. Her educational background includes training in computers, as well as in art and dancing. “I did it in Canada, too, for a few years,” she noted, “before the high-tech crash in 2001. Then, when no job in the computer industry was available, I started teaching dance and art, choreographed a few pieces. I don’t teach computers anymore. Now, I only teach what I love: dancing and art. And I concentrate on my painting.”
As with her own work, in her art lessons, Segovia lets intuition take the reins. “I’m interested in the creative process, not the technique,” she said. “When I come to a school to teach, my lessons depend on the supplies. Scraps of fabrics? We’ll make aprons. Snippets of paper and old magazines? We’ll make collages. I look at what they have and think, What can we make of it?… My favorite art student’s age is from 6 to 9. Such kids engage easily. I think that must be my real age inside, too, about 8 years old.”
Segovia is a respected teacher in Vancouver, teaching art and dancing at Arts Umbrella, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. For more information about her, visit claudiasegoviaart.blogspot.com. Intuitive Mythology runs until Aug 31.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Dorrance Dance will perform at the Rothstein Theatre on Aug. 30. (photo from Vancouver International Tap Festival)
“It would be like a jazz festival presenting Oscar Peterson,” said Sas Selfjord, executive director of the Vancouver International Tap Festival. She is so proud that tap dancer Michelle Dorrance is headlining her festival that she compared Dorrance to the great Canadian jazz musician. “Michelle Dorrance is the ‘it’ girl,” she said of the artist who takes the stage Saturday, Aug. 30, at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre.
The dance festival is now in its 15th season and it’s time to celebrate. A weekend of professional performance and a fundraising gala are on the schedule that runs Aug. 28 to 31.
With this, the festival’s 15th edition, Selfjord said, the Vancouver International Tap Festival “is one of the top two or three in the world. With that reputation,” she said, “we can attract any artist we want. That’s a very egocentric statement, but it’s true. People want to be part of the Vancouver festival, so that is the legacy.”
Selfjord said anyone who has ever enjoyed tap, even in old movies, will appreciate the festival’s artists. “Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelley, the Nicholas Brothers, these are people we revere in the highest regard,” she said. “Their work is a subset and that work is always carried through in everything that a tap dance artist does, except we give our own relevance to it … there could be a little bit more hip hop, there could be some breakdancing, there could be, you know, innovative combinations that no one has ever heard.”
In addition to Dorrance Dance on Aug. 30, the festival features two other professional performances, on Aug. 29, also at the Rothstein. First is LOVE.Be.Best.Free, choreographed by Danny Nielsen with an all-male cast. Selfjord remembers encountering Nielsen years ago. “I remember he was at our very first festival and what was he, 14? He’s now an internationally revered artist.”
Travis Knight (photo from Vancouver International Tap Festival)
Second on the Aug. 29 ticket is Lisa La Touche’s Hold On, the debut of a work commissioned specifically for this festival. “Lisa was here from the get-go,” said Selfjord. “Now she’s in New York and she’s revered.” Hold On has an all-Canadian cast of dancers.
Selfjord is also proud of Travis Knight, one of the performers in Hold On. Knight has been a tap consultant with Cirque du Soleil and performed at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics. He has toured with the Australian show Tap Dogs. Knight “is one of Canada’s top artists,” said Selfjord, “and I remember he came to our first festival. He took a Greyhound bus and came out on a scholarship from Montreal. He is one of Canada’s amazing, talented, generous artists.”
The gala fundraising and awards event, which takes place Aug. 28 at the Holiday Inn Downtown Vancouver, benefits from the sculpting talent of local ceramics artist Suzy Birstein. The local artist – who once chose dancing class over Hebrew school – was commissioned to design the awards to be presented. Birstein, who dances with the society during the year, was given the task of coming up with fancy ceramic shoes to honor some of those who have made the society great. “They pretty much gave me carte blanche as to what I wanted to do,” said Birstein. “So, I’m making shoes, like miniature shoes, not just like tap shoes. They’re just kind of in my style,” she said, referring to her own internationally known approach to sculpture.
Three of the 15 individually crafted awards – created by Suzy Birstein – that will be given out at the Aug. 28 gala event. (photo from Suzy Birstein)
Each of the clay shoes will bear a special feature. “They’ll all have something that looks like a tap on the bottom of them,” she said.
Rounding out the weekend is Tap It Out on Aug. 31, where, according to the schedule, “everyone in Vancouver is invited to experience the tap phenomena themselves … when more than 100 dancers take to Granville Street,” and a performance by four youth ensembles that night at the Rothstein Theatre.
The festival idea began in the late 1990s when Selfjord took a trip to Minneapolis on behalf of others in the Vancouver tap world “to see what we could do to help build community and engage the community at large, and we thought a festival” might be the idea.
In Minneapolis, she encountered “two of tap’s greatest legends,” the Nicholas Brothers. To some, they are the greatest tap dancers who ever lived. Born in 1914 and 1921, the two became famous as children and opened at the Cotton Club in 1932. They made films throughout the 1930s and ’40s that showed off the prowess of the dancing team, which combined tap with ballet and acrobatics.
Meeting the brothers, said Selfjord, “turned me right on my head. I thought, how am I sitting having a brandy with the Nicholas Brothers and talking to them and engaging them? I was just so motivated by having access to artists of that calibre, that just set the stage to come home and to do the festival, so we did.”
When Elan Mastai’s father said hello to a pretty stranger in a Jerusalem café some four decades ago, it was the only English word he knew.
She was born in Chicago and grew up in Vancouver, and had lived in London the previous few years before trekking to Israel to explore her Jewish heritage and teach English, of all things.
It worked out pretty well for both of them. They relocated to Vancouver, got married and started a family. Now, their 39-year-old son has channeled their youthful bravado into his screenplay for What If, a warm and refreshingly grounded romantic comedy that opens in as-of-yet-unspecifed Canadian cities Aug. 22 with its original title, The F Word (F as in friend).
“The idea of moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language, different legal system, different everything, and having to start my life from scratch, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine doing that,” Mastai said in an interview. “But that’s what my father did. And he did it for love. That is a big part of the kind of things I like to write. I think in my DNA are the things that people do for love. And that’s all over this movie.”
The film imagines just-dumped Daniel Radcliffe meeting Zoe Kazan at a party, only to learn that she’s in a serious, long-term relationship. Say, there’s no reason they can’t be friends, right? It just requires a little honesty on his part and a lot of clarity on her part.
If only things were that simple, well, there’d be no movie. The film has great fun poking and prodding the central characters until one of them takes a leap of faith – and a transatlantic flight – that results in nothing I can reveal here.
“I love the romantic comedy, but it can sometimes be a bit of a debased genre because it’s a very phony genre at times,” Mastai said on the phone from Toronto, where he lives with his wife and children. “The ones I love – and they’re the ones that most people love – have something real and relatable to say about human interaction.”
Mastai’s childhood was happily marked by a Shabbat dinner every Friday night, where his large family would convene and debate the issues of the day. Everyone had strong ideas of right and wrong, but there was plenty of grey to debate, as well.
“In my personal heritage, I had all the different versions of the Jewish experience in the 20th and 21st century,” Mastai explained. “Whether it’s American Jews, European Jewry, Sephardic, the beginning of Israel, it was all literally sitting around my dinner table when I was growing up.”
Notably, the travails his grandparents had survived did not mitigate their sense of humor. “To me, the sensibility at the core of the film is very Jewish in terms of that legacy of Jewish humor, whether it’s Billy Wilder or Woody Allen or Nora Ephron or Charlie Kaufman or William Goldman,” Mastai said. “Wit and humor as a tool to defuse awkwardness and tension, and that prizing of intelligence, and the prizing of ethical behavior – these are things that were part of my Jewish upbringing, and I tried to bring those to the characters.”
We may think that a successful screenwriter, more than anything, must have a fabulous imagination. Mastai’s triumphantly demonstrates in What If/The F Word that heart and intelligence are sufficient to engage an audience in the romantic travails of a couple of ordinary people.
“All the way through it, I wanted to write what I thought of as an ethical romantic comedy,”
Mastai confided. “A comedy where people aren’t making these crazy, cockamamie schemes or twisting the truth or hiding things from each other. Everybody’s trying to do the right thing. That feels very Jewish to me because of how I was raised, that you can try to do the right thing, try to make ethical decisions, and still make a total mess of your life. Because that’s the way life is.”
Michael Foxis a San Francisco film critic and journalist.
Weapons recovered from a Hamas tunnel. (photo from IDF/FLICKR)
“One hundred Israeli schoolchildren killed in Hamas attack.” Israelis say this would have been just one of many similar headlines announcing untold loss of civilian life had Operation Protective Edge not been launched last month. The goal of the operation was to silence the seemingly endless barrages of Gaza rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns, and to detect and destroy the vast network of underground tunnels dug beneath Gaza and into Israel by the Islamist Hamas terror organization.
As details of the tunnel system became public, Israelis were at once fascinated and infuriated to learn specifics of the intricate Trojan-horse-like network lurking beneath their communities; an engineering feat so potentially lethal that the national discussion is rife with unsubstantiated worries about terrorist plans for the execution of “an Israeli 9/11.”
Frequently heard were comments like, “Surely the high-tech nation should have the ability to detect tunnels!” while others ask how such an elaborate feat of engineering and construction could have proceeded right under the noses of the military in a security-savvy country with vast counter-terrorism experience.
In October 2013, Israeli army intelligence located entrances to one such tunnel just a couple of hundred metres from the entrance to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, a collective community in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
On a tour of that network, standing at ground level, one can see the tunnel split in the middle, its branches extending deep into the earth, with one entrance/exit nearly a mile away – through Israeli territory and into the Gaza Strip – and the other a mere 600 metres (almost 2,000 feet) to the right: exiting into Israeli territory.
Moving closer required man- oeuvring through a steep downward 46-foot trek, assisted by the steadying hand of an IDF officer to navigate the distance from the surface to the underground passageway itself. Crawling through the deceptively small opening and out of the desert’s summer heat into the coolness of the subterranean concrete-encased structure, it was surprising to find myself standing upright, able to see far enough to sense the vast distance it covers. Though visibility was limited by the dearth of ambient light, helped only slightly by the lighting unit attached to our camera, the immense dimension of the tunnel was perceptible, the elaborate nature of the structure striking. From the sophisticated construction to the array of cables, conduits, finished ceilings, communication lines and pulley systems, it made sense that each tunnel was estimated to have required several years and millions of dollars to build – mostly by hand, with jackhammers and shovels.
Also discovered in many of the recently destroyed tunnels was a variety of weapons, army uniforms, motorcycles, chloroform and handcuffs: macabre “kidnapping kits.”
The Babani family at New York’s JFK airport, moments before they boarded the plane to Israel. (photo by Shahar Azran via Nefesh b’Nefesh)
Despite tensions surrounding the war in Gaza, 338 new olim (immigrants) from the United States and Canada departed on an aliyah charter flight to Israel on Aug. 11. The special flight is a joint venture of Nefesh b’Nefesh, the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, and Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency for Israel, JNF-USA and Tzofim Garin Tzabar.
Among the olim are Nir Babani and Luz Arroyave with their daughter Antonia from Vancouver. “We’re going to miss our family and the peaceful environment of Vancouver. We’ll miss the quality life there,” said Arroyave.
The large group of olim includes 37 families with 107 children. The passenger list also includes 65 olim moving to the Galilee and the Negev as part of the Nefesh b’Nefesh and Keren Kayemeth L’Israel Go North and Go South programs. Altogether, the olim will be settling in every part of Israel, from Ma’alot in the north to Eilat in the south. Included in the group of olim are 109 young men and women who will be serving in the Israel Defence Forces.
The olim hail from 27 states and three Canadian provinces, from Arizona to Quebec, and range in age from a six-week-old baby to a 93-year-old great-grandparent in a family of four generations making aliyah together.
“I find it profoundly inspiring that we have a 747 jumbo jet filled to capacity with people from the North American Jewish community making aliyah, especially at such a challenging time,” said co-founder and executive director of Nefesh b’Nefesh Rabbi Yehoshua Fass. “To see that Jews everywhere, young and old, religious and secular, are determined to fulfil the dream of helping to build the Jewish state is truly amazing.”
This summer, 2,000 olim are expected to have made aliyah with Nefesh b’Nefesh on eight different flights. Since the beginning of the year, about 1,600 olim have made aliyah with the organization. Since 2002, Nefesh b’Nefesh has brought nearly 40,000 olim to Israel from the United States, Canada and England.
Bard on the Beach’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one cheeky dream. (photo by David Blue)
Summer in Vancouver brings the sun and, with it, things like beach time and bike rides, barbecues and picnics. It also brings the magic of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan world under the red-and-white tents of Bard on the Beach at Vanier Park.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Bard. And, true to form, it serves up an interesting mix: re-mountings of two previous hits, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, under the big tent, with the lesser-known Cymbeline and the non-Shakespearean Equivocation on the newly minted Howard Family Stage at the Douglas Campbell Studio Theatre. This week, the JI reviews Dream and Cymbeline.
You can never really go wrong with presenting one of the Bard’s most beloved comedies and this year’s production of Dream is no exception, as director Dean Paul Gibson ramps up the frenzy to produce what can only be described as a very raunchy, in-your-face romp. This is one cheeky dream.
There are four story lines to follow: the wedding preparations of the duke of Athens to Hippolyta; the “looking for love” riotous journey through the fairy-studded woods of the four young star-crossed lovers; the feud of the fairy royals, Oberon and Tatiana; and, finally, the play within a play (Pyramus and Thisbe) presented by the local tradesmen in honor of the duke’s wedding and acted out under its own little red-and-white tent.
Kyle Rideout as Puck, the mischievous servant of Oberon, and Scott Bellis, as Bottom, the bucktoothed, red-nosed, nerdy know-it-all of the working class, stand out in the reprisal of their 2006 roles in this large ensemble cast. Naomi Wright breathes new life into the role of Tatiana while Ian Butcher is a very sexy Oberon. Chirag Naik, Daniel Doheny, Claire Hesselgrave and Sereana Malani beautifully play the young lovers Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena. It is refreshing to see these up-and-coming thespians make their mark on the Vancouver stage (watch them in the future!), but it is veterans Bernard Cuffling, Allan Morgan, Andrew McNee, Allan Zinyk, Haig Sutherland and Bellis (who does double duty as a lovesick ass – the animal, not the human kind) who are the hits of the show with their take on Pyramus and Thisbe. The prolonged death scene played by Sutherland and Bellis will have you in stitches, although there is a raised eyebrow moment thrown in for good measure – keep your eyes peeled.
The visuals make this production pop, from the set to the props to the costumes. Set designer Kevin McAllister has created his own dream with a large seashell-like shape framing the ocean and mountain vista that is Bard’s trademark. Umbrellas play a pivotal role in the opening scene with Tatiana’s oversized umbrella bed providing the focal point. Mara Gottler’s costumes are sartorial delights to behold, punk meets Goth meets Victorian era meets contemporary with a plethora of tutus, corsets, bustles, sheer skirts and some very interesting footwear. Then, there is the music by husband-wife sound design team Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe, which hits the spot with the likes of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” “At Last My Love Has Come Along” and “I Put a Spell on You,” tunes synchronized perfectly with the action. Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg brings it all together with bespoke choreography for the doo-wapping fairy chorus.
From left to right, Shawn Macdonald, Anton Lipovetsky and Benjamin Elliott in Cymbeline. (photo by David Blue)
Shakespeare wrote Cymbeline in his twilight years. It is an eclectic retrospective of his repertoire, including the allegedly unfaithful wife and villain in Othello, the sleeping potion from Romeo and Juliet, the murder plots from Hamlet and Macbeth, the heroine disguised as a boy of As You Like It, the bloody beheading in Titus Andronicus, the missing brothers of A Comedy of Errors, the list goes on. Perhaps Will thought putting these all together would be fun, but his creation is a jumbled goulash with a dizzying array of plotlines that have more twists and turns than any rollercoaster ride. This may well be why the play is so rarely produced. That being said, director Anita Rochon’s production – which she characterizes as a “tragedy gone right” – is very entertaining and hits the right balance between gravitas and farce.
Seven actors play 18 roles with all the costume changes taking place in view of the audience. Clad in beige fencing outfits, the actors signal character changes by the addition of colorful pieces to their neutral palettes – a red sash here, a green doublet or muffler there.
The story starts with the girl-meets-boy scenario. That is, royal girl (Imogen, played beautifully by the only female member of the cast, Rachel Cairns) meets plebian boy (Posthumous, played by Anton Lipovetsky) and secretly marries him. Father (King Cymbeline, played by Gerry Mackay) frowns on the relationship and banishes the boy. Meanwhile, his second wife, the wicked Queen (Shawn Macdonald) plots to have her son, the scheming Cloten (also played by Lipovetsky), marry Imogen and then poison both the girl and her father so that Cloten can become king. The speed picks up with the runaway bridegroom, a wager to test the fidelity of the chaste Imogen, disguises, a sleeping beauty, a battle, a beheading, mistaken identities and long-lost brothers. Without giving away the ending, the good news is that, measure for measure, in this production, despite much ado, all’s well that ends well.
Lipovetsky is definitely the stand out in this show as he juggles his three roles – the third being Arviragus, one of the brothers – seamlessly morphing from one character to the next. He even manages to have two of his characters on stage at the same time. Bob Frazer plays the snakelike seducer, Iachimo, who literally slithers out of a chest of drawers to do his dastardly deed. Anousha Alamian has a small but dialogue-heavy role as the long-suffering servant of Posthumous, and Benjamin Elliott also plays various smaller parts, including one of the brothers and he gets the juicy beheading bit, but his main role is as sound designer and composer of the original music played by various cast members on banjo, accordion, mandolin and drum.
Pam Johnson’s set is stark and sleek, with many pieces doing double and triple duty – a chest becomes a table, a bed, a desk. Locations are identified by flag standards, blue for England and red for Italy. Gottler’s austere costumes, in contrast to her fanciful creations in Dream, complement the simple setting, and Cheyenne Friedenberg and fight director Nicholas Harrison conspire to present some very fancy footwork.
The bottom line is that you can’t go wrong with any of Bard’s offerings for its silver anniversary year. See one or two or all, but see at least one. The festival runs to Sept. 20. For more information and tickets, visit bardonthebeach.org or call the box office at 604-739-0559.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Sarah Haniford’s granddaughter, Alice Campbell, with Schara Tzedeck Synagogue Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt at the unveiling of Sarah’s headstone. (photo from Jewish Cemetery at Mountain View Restoration Project)
“You live as long as you are remembered.” – Russian Proverb
Fifty people gathered together on Aug. 3 to remember and honor the life of Sarah Goldberg-Haniford at the Jewish Cemetery at Mountain View. As Alice Campbell, Sarah’s granddaughter, said in her opening remarks to the family and friends there for the unveiling of the headstone, “a bridge to the past is a pathway to the future.”
Campbell shared some of the highlights of her grandmother’s life, which began with her birth in 1878 in Glasgow, subsequent marriage in 1890 to Louis Haniford (Ljeb Hanoft) from Poland, journey to Winnipeg in 1902, then to a farm near Hanna, Alta., in 1907.
Sarah Goldberg-Haniford’s headstone. (photo from Jewish Cemetery at Mountain View Restoration Project)
Life was very hard for Sarah and Louis, with the harsh climate and work on the farm, to which they were far from accustomed, having been in the watch-making business up until the move. In 1922, Sarah, who had by then given birth to nine children, was in very poor health, and Louis, not knowing what else to do to help her, sent her to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. Unfortunately, her health deteriorated and she passed away here, all alone, on Oct. 6, 1922.
As Jewish custom dictated, Sarah was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Mountain View. After her death, according to Sarah’s wishes, Louis moved his family of the seven surviving children away from the farm, to the town of Hanna. With Sarah’s passing, Judaism disappeared from the Haniford family until October 2012, 90 years later, when Campbell discovered through genealogical research that Sarah was buried at Mountain View Cemetery. Beryl and Christi Cooke, Sarah’s granddaughter who lives in Kelowna and great-granddaughter who lives in Vancouver, went to the cemetery for the first time.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Shirley Barnett had just embarked on her project to restore the Jewish Cemetery at Mountain View and their paths collided. In October 2013, along with 146 other unmarked burials, Sarah’s life and death were recognized, with the placing of a temporary marker as the first step in restoring the Jewish cemetery to its former significance in the community. With this mitzvah, the plan to place a permanent monument was born.
Among those attending the Aug. 3 ceremony were 25 family members, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren, none of whom had ever known Sarah – and many of whom had not seen each other in at least 15 years. Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt and Rev. Joseph Marciano, along with members of the Vancouver Jewish community, were witness to the unveiling of Sarah’s headstone. Sarah brought everyone together and, in doing so, helped rekindle her family’s connections to each other and to Judaism.
A group of Herzliya Science Centre students working on Duchifat 1 in the clean room with Dr. Ana Heller. (photo from Herzliya Science Centre)
In Israel, high school students helped launch a satellite into space – something typically reserved for university students.
“The Herzliya Science Centre (HSC) is the science campus for Herzliya’s middle and high schools,” explained Dr. Meir Ariel, the director general of the centre, which opened in 2007.
Some 1,500 students attend HSC advanced labs, studying and experimenting in physics, chemistry, electronics, biotechnology, computer science and robotics. “The jewel of the crown is our space and satellite lab, the only lab in Israel where high school students can design and build satellites and send them into space,” said Ariel.
This lab is attended by 40-50 of the brightest, most dedicated students from various schools in Herzliya and beyond.
“Duchifat 1, the first Israeli nano-satellite, weighing less than one kilogram, required multidisciplinary knowledge – from electronics to software, communications, thermodynamics and astrophysics – to construct,” he said.
Students wanting to participate began in Grade 9, with a two-year training period that provided the basic scientific knowledge needed to become candidates for membership in the space and satellite lab.
“Teenagers aren’t intimidated by technology and have little fear of failure,” said Ariel. “The success of the team relies on the ability of its members to be creative, innovative, disciplined and, most importantly, highly motivated.”
Collaboration with the Israel Aerospace Industry was crucial for the project’s success. Each team was led by an experienced engineer. Students not only learned from their mentors, but they were also exposed to state-of-the-art technology, tools and developmental procedures.
“Duchifat 1 served as a pedagogical platform, allowing high school kids from all over Israel to communicate, send commands, receive telemetry and experiment with a real satellite,” said Ariel. “Its other mission was search and rescue from space via its APRS transponder.”
Dr. Meir Ariel, HSC director, at the pre-launch briefing. (photo from Herzliya Science Centre)
Duchifat 1 was successfully launched into space aboard the Dnepr launcher a couple of months ago, on June 19.
“To reduce costs, Duchifat 1 was actually a ‘hitchhiker’ aboard a rocket that carried bigger satellites into the same orbit,” said Ariel. “Since then, Duchifat 1 has been orbiting around earth and is being tracked from the ground station at HSC by the same high school students who built it.”
Shenhav Lazarovich, 19, was one of the students who helped build Duchifat 1. She heard about the opportunity during an open day at Handasaim Herzliya High School, when learning about HSC.
“The first meeting with Dr. Anna Heller was something I won’t forget,” said Lazarovich. “She entered the room and said she’s leading a project with a goal to build a Pico satellite that will be totally designed and programmed by high school students. In that moment, I decided I want to be one of the team.”
Lazarovich had two major responsibilities in building Duchifat 1 – buying and upgrading the lab equipment (including satellite parts) and serving as the programming team’s EPS (electronic power system) programmer.
The other student on Lazarovich’s team was Ori Opher, who was responsible for finding solutions to various battery-related problems, like low battery discharge time and battery thermal issues.
“The battery is the heart of the satellite and needs to work at its best to fulfil the main goal of the satellite – saving lives (as an SOS signal transmitter),” said Lazarovich.
The satellite was launched by Dnepr 1, a Russian missile converted for space launching use. At this launch, it had 37 satellites from countries around the world.
The mission patch of Duchifat 1. (photo from Herzliya Science Centre)
“It was an amazing experience,” said Lazarovich. “We gathered around with 37 teams all over the world and watched how our ‘baby’ made its way to fulfil its destiny. Anna [Dr. Heller] has been working on this project for more than 10 years and I was there for the last four.
“When we got signals from space, all of us started crying and laughing. We’re one of the first teams to receive satellites signals from space, not to mention the youngest team in the launching program. The excitement, the energy, is something I can’t describe with words.”
Yarden Carmel, 17, decided to take part in the Duchifat 1 project about three years ago, after switching to a different high school, where one of the mandatory classes was Satellites and Space.
“We were having our guided tour and, in one of the stops, they had Dr. Anna Heller, the project lead, talking about the project,” said Carmel. “She said something I’ll always remember, that she ‘isn’t looking for mathematicians or science geniuses, but for students with fire in their eyes.’”
Carmel and his team worked on the memory management of the satellite. “Duchifat 1 got some kilobytes flash memory, like those used in the portable flash drives, but with much less memory capacity,” he said. “Our mission was to find an algorithm that would hold the information the satellites generate (like life status) and receive (like stress signals from earth) for the longest time without being overwritten by new information.
“It had to be enough time for it to be able to fly above our ground station in Israel, so we could download all the data. It might sound easy, but remember we’re dealing with much less memory capacity than in a normal PC or a Mac. We have less than one megabyte to work with and it took us a few times to get the best algorithm.”
Carmel, who also will help build Duchifat 2, still recalls being rendered speechless when seeing the live footage of the missile going up. “It even rocked the HQ building we were in,” he said. “We were all either crying with happiness, staying stressed and silent, or just repeating, ‘Here’s Duchifat!’ and ‘We made history!’”
Duchifat 2 is one of a network of 50 miniature satellites built by university teams all over the world. “The satellites will be launched in 2016, with a mission to perform atmospheric research within the lower atmosphere (between 200 and 380 kilometres altitude), which is the least explored layer of the atmosphere,” said Ariel. “Duchifat 2 is the only satellite in this network built by high school students. All [the] other 49 satellites were built by universities.”
“During these difficult times in Israel,” said Lazarovich. “I’ve wanted to say that the key for a better future is science and education. Combining these on both sides will result only in good to the whole region and the entire world. Science is an endless source for development and making the world a better place.
“When adults are asked to do a big task, they always think about why it’s not possible to do [so].… When children [are] asked to do a big task, they just do it. They don’t see the limits that adults do. And, even if they do, they are not afraid to just try it anyway.”
The launch video, and other Duchifat 1 videos, can be seen on YouTube.
Last Sunday, I took my two daughters to the Vancouver Pride Parade.
Though I was certain my four- and seven-year-olds would enjoy every ounce of the many colors and sounds, and the energy of the parade itself (few events produce the same level of spirit as a Pride Parade) a day of fun wasn’t my prime motivator.
I had seen a posting on Facebook from Yad b’Yad, a community-based group that rallies local members of all sexual preferences each year to represent the Jews of Vancouver in the parade.
Pride: In so many ways!
I decided that with everything going on in Israel at the time, combined with the dramatic presence of antisemitism spreading across the globe, never was there a better time for me to teach my children about tolerance, acceptance, diversity and pride.
Yes, there were a few questions I had to be prepared to answer – like when one of the participants handing out freebies to the crowd placed a couple packs of Trojans in my seven-year-old’s hands. I responded to the expected, “What’s this, Daddy?” with an abbreviated version of how she wouldn’t be enjoying this parade if Daddy had those eight years ago. A quick shrug of the shoulders and she was back to watching “princesses” roller skate down the street to roaring cheers.
The value gained in that experience, led by the conversations I had explaining the importance of the parade, was what made me most proud. That’s because one of the scariest things I see when I look closely at Israel’s Middle East problem is the amount of education-themed hatred being passed on to children in the region. Cartoon characters who preach killing Jews and manipulated curricula that offer false truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all but guarantee this crisis is not likely to end until well beyond my days.
Outside of the Middle East, the Hamas propaganda machine – which has clearly become their most powerful weapon – has helped spread hatred and bigotry around the world and, in some cases, just down the street from our own homes.
Like many other people I know, I have found myself walking around my country, my city, wondering how many people around me would like to shame me and my family because of something they once saw on TV or read on Facebook.
I’ll always do all that I can debating with and educating folks via various social media outlets. But the most important thing I can do for the future is teach my kids. Teach them to love. Teach them to accept. Teach them to continuously open their minds to the many choices free people have in this world.
It’s entirely possible that watching half-naked men and women prancing up Robson Street is not for everyone (say, what!?). But I encourage parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends everywhere to do something unique, outside of the box, and, especially, meaningful to provide your youth every chance to identify the difference between right and wrong. They will see it all on Facebook one day. Better they are prepared to figure it out for themselves when they do.
Gaza, July 28, 2014: An Israel Defence Forces soldier examines a newly revealed tunnel in the Gaza strip. (photo by IDF via Ashernet)
It’s been awhile since I’ve written. There’s a story I’ve been meaning to share but, unfortunately, circumstances have led me to write a different story entirely, about “the matzav.”
“The matzav” means, literally, “the situation,” but it’s used to refer euphemistically to a current bad security situation in Israel. You say it in a half whisper, the way our parents used to say, “cancer.”
“How’s business going now, with – the matzav?”
“We’re going up north for a few days because of – the matzav.”
“My mother-in-law has been with us for two weeks, thanks to – the matzav.”
It’s definitely not an easy time to be in Israel, though now, more than ever, there is no place I would rather be.
I didn’t grow up in a particularly Zionist household. Most of what I know about Judaism and Israel I learned in college. People used to say to me that being in Israel is like being with family, and making aliyah is like coming home. My family never shoved in front of me to get on buses or overcharged me for souvenirs, so I guess I just couldn’t relate.
I got a little taste of the family thing when I was visiting Israel 12 years ago on a mission during the Second Intifada, when tourism was at an all-time low. I went to the falafel stand in the Old City by the Cardo with my 10-month-old son. There were no other tourists to be found. The owner, who was usually just interested in taking orders and keeping the line moving, insisted on holding the baby while I ate. This was like my family – not always warm and fuzzy, but there for you in hard times.
These are hard times. There’s been a constant barrage of rockets in southern Israel for weeks, keeping the population within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter. As I wrote these words, four people were killed by a rocket fired from a playground in Gaza. This morning, a man on the radio was saying that he’s terrified to shower or even go to the bathroom for fear a siren will go off.
Another woman was asleep and didn’t hear a siren. She only heard the rocket hit her house. She is being treated in the hospital for wounds to the head, legs and knees, but no treatment will cure the fear you can hear in her voice, unable to speak in full sentences.
On the other side of the border, the suffering in indescribable and the media images haunting. I feel torn apart by my pain for the Palestinian losses on the one hand and the need for us to defend ourselves on the other. Then there’s the sadness for the soldiers who are trained to minimize civilian casualties, but who find themselves hurting innocent civilians, behind whom the cowardly terrorists hide.
Our “adopted” lone soldier Danna tells us stories of what her friends see who are serving in Gaza – hospitals and UN schools hiding weapons and terrorists; gunmen literally hiding behind families; terrorists shooting with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.
As Golda Meir said to Anwar Sadat just before the peace talks with Egypt, “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”
Before the war started, I got a call one Friday afternoon.
“Hi, Emily. We’re thinking of cancelling the partnership minyan this week, but I just want to check with you, because I know you worked hard on your speech.”
“Oh, well, sure … but why?”
“We just thought it would be better for the whole community to pray together tonight because of, you know – the matzav.” (Pause) “Did you not here what happened?”
That’s how I heard about the three kidnapped soldiers.
You would think all three of them were from our kibbutz, the way people spoke of them and cried and prayed for them and organized around helping their families. The whole country was suddenly one big family. One big, sad family.
At school, the teachers held special meetings with their pupils to help them digest the news and share their feelings. They had a meeting in the evening to help parents with how to talk to their kids. All this despite the fact that the three boys were from a different part of the country and not at all connected to our school or our region, except that here everyone is connected. At these times, we’re all cousins, brothers, sons.
The news a few weeks later – that the boys were killed – hit hard. I was out for the day to Beit Shean with my son Abaye to get braces on his teeth. Abaye is very sensitive to “the matzav” and I try to keep him away from the news most of the time so we can share things with him in our own way, but there was no escape. The news was on in the dentist’s office, and staff and patients were openly crying. Afterwards, we went for ice cream and the ice cream shop was playing the tape over and over again. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen.
“You’re an ice cream shop!” I wanted to yell at them, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole country was in mourning.
Then the rockets started in the south. Everyone’s hearts turned to the families under fire. Our kibbutz Google group filled up with suggestions of where you could bring food and supplies, requests to run programs, and even invitations to drive down south into the fire to help entertain kids in bomb shelters. There were so many projects being run out of so many places that volunteers had to quickly set up a committee to manage them all.
Our area happens to be one of the safest parts of the country. We haven’t heard any sirens. We haven’t even unlocked our bomb shelters. So, everyone is opening their homes.
Several families have come to our kibbutz for a break, and our youth group organized a camp for a week with peers from a kibbutz in the south. I heard on the radio about a resort nearby that has opened its doors to another kibbutz (200 people!), feeding and housing them and running programs for the kids. And these are just a few tiny examples. Every community is doing something.
Then there are the troops fighting in Gaza.
Tel Aviv, July 29, 2014: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the press conference announcing an extension of the Gaza operation. (photo by Ashernet)
Soldiers were sent to the border to defend our country from rocket attacks. Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to stave off a ground incursion, but the rockets kept falling and, it seems, there was work that could only be done on the ground.
When the army finally went in, they discovered a complex underground tunnel network that Hamas had built to infiltrate Israel. It seems they were planning a massive operation for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah – hundreds of terrorists were scheduled to appear from nowhere in kibbutzim and villages across the south, dressed in Israeli uniforms, for a mega terrorist attack. It’s chilling to think about what they might have done.
Several of the fatalities of this war, including the three kidnapped boys, have resulted from terrorists coming through these tunnels. They lead from private homes in Gaza right into Israeli neighborhoods, one ending directly beneath the dining hall of a kibbutz. It was reported that children on the kibbutz had been complaining they could hear someone digging under them, but adults hadn’t taken them seriously, because how could that possibly be?
So, now we are at war in Gaza until we get rid of the tunnels, of which 30 have been discovered so far, and many destroyed. Meanwhile, the number of fallen and wounded soldiers continues to rise, as well as, of course, the massive toll on both terrorist and innocent Gazans.
But I wanted to tell you about the efforts to support our troops.
Being the army of the Jewish people, the aid started with, of course, food. Fresh meals, cakes and treats – you name them. A renowned chef opened shop to provide gourmet cuisine for the soldiers.
At one point, we got the message that it’s enough food, and now could we please send personal hygiene products (soaps, deodorants, etc.) and “fresh towels with the scent of home”? In addition, children sent so many letters of love and support that the soldiers use them to wallpaper their tanks and living spaces. At the camp for Adin, my nine-year-old son, they changed the program this week so that every day was a different activity to support the soldiers – making gifts, preparing food and raising money.
And, of course, it’s difficult for soldiers to communicate with their families, so the radio has taken to running extra programs in which they can send personal messages.
“Hi Mom, Dad and, of course, my girlfriend Tal. I’m here to protect you and I’m fine, so you can sleep without worrying. I love you.”
And I’m sure Mom, Dad, Tal and half the country are crying with me.
Among the first losses of the war, we heard about the falling of two lone soldiers – people like our “adopted” daughter, who moved to Israel voluntarily to protect our country, who are here with no family. It made me sad to think these people would be buried alone, but what could anyone do? Their whole family is overseas.
A photo of one of these fallen boys, Sean Carmeli from Texas, appeared on the news in a Maccabee-Haifa soccer T-shirt. They were his favorite team. The team apparently shared my concern and made an appeal for people to attend his funeral. Twenty thousand people showed up!
You could call it a social media ploy, but I don’t think so. The next day, there was a funeral for the other lone soldier, Max Steinberg from California. I was afraid his funeral would pale in comparison to Sean’s, seeing as he wasn’t a major sports fan. But my fear was baseless. Thirty thousand people were in attendance. Those who were interviewed about why they came simply said that he made the ultimate sacrifice for them when he didn’t need to, and it was the least they could do.
Max’s family had never been to Israel before. I thought about my own mother, who did not want us to make aliyah, and who would never forgive me if, God forbid, anything happened to any of my kids. Max’s parents and siblings were overwhelmed by the turnout.
His mother Evie told the mourners, “We now know why Max fell in love with Israel. It was all because of its people. He was embraced with open arms and treated like family,” she said, “and, for that, we are eternally grateful.”
When his sister began, “We come from a very small family,” I held my breath expecting to hear her anger or sadness at having lost her brother. Instead, she continued, “But that seemed to quickly change after meeting people in Israel, who made it feel like one big family.”
This morning, I was out walking in the forest around the kibbutz when a new song came on the radio by Ariel Horowitz, son of one of Israel’s greatest singers, Naomi Shemer. The song is about the lone soldier Sean Carmeli. The writer had attended the funeral and was deeply moved. The chorus goes something like this:
20,000 people and you’re at the front. 20,00 people are behind you, Sean. Marching in silence with flowers, Two sisters and 20,000 brothers.
Sgt. Nissim Sean Carmeli and Sgt. Max Steinberg, and all our fallen soldiers will never be forgotten, because we don’t forget family.
Emily Singeris a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children, and live on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa.
