Sam Bob is one of seven šxʷʔam̓ət, cast members. The play will run at Firehall Arts Centre March 3-11. (photo by David Cooper, design by Dafne Blanco)
Vancouver theatre director David Diamond, who founded the Theatre for Living 36 years ago, is hard at work this month on a play titled šxʷʔam̓ət(home), about reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians. Eleven performances are scheduled March 3-11 and Diamond says anyone that has any interest in a healthy Canada will find the play interesting.
“I don’t think we necessarily understand where we live but I think we all have a vested interest in living in a healthy country,” he reflected. “The tagline for the play is, What does reconciliation mean to you? Our hope is that we’re asking real questions about how to engage in this (reconciliation), in an honourable way that isn’t a repetition of colonization.”
Diamond was born in Winnipeg and has lived in Vancouver since 1976. Why did he choose the subject of reconciliation for his latest play? “Some of it is just paying attention to what’s happening in the world,” he said. “The Theatre for Living has a long history of working with indigenous communities throughout Canada and the reconciliation issue has gained a lot of prominence in the last couple of years. It feels important to ask these serious questions about reconciliation at a time when a lot of people are questioning whether the process in Canada is even valid.”
The issue of reconciliation has many layers, he added. “Sometimes people want to imagine there’s a solution – but, of course, there isn’t one, there are millions of smaller things that need to happen, that make up larger solutions. We have a lot of conversations to have internally about legacy, colonialism and the reality of the country we live in. Some of those conversations are internal to indigenous communities and only then can we get to the conversations in between communities. All of that has to occur in order for reconciliation to be an honourable, honest and real thing.”
Diamond has been involved in the subject of reconciliation for decades. “I’ve been very privileged and honoured to be invited into conversations on issues that arise out of colonialism and to work with indigenous communities,” he said. “The best thing a production like this can do is ask real and challenging questions, questions that we legitimately don’t have answers to. And then, because the theatre is interactive at every performance, to navigate a very deep conversation every night, that helps transform people’s relationship to the issues.”
Theatre for Living is collaborating with Journeys Around the Circle Society for this production, which began with a workshop and creation process on Jan. 30. It’s the same procedure Diamond has followed for many of his larger shows over the past few decades. Diamond strives to produce interactive theatre that challenges perceptions and creates social change, and this performance will consist of life-based stories woven together, as well as challenges to the audience to make reconciliation respectful and real.
Performances of šxʷʔam̓ət will be held at the Firehall Arts Centre, and tickets cost $15, with matinées priced at two-for-one. The trailer can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=1Srk5Vlvueo and more information can be found at theatreforliving.com.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.
In Wrestling Jerusalem, which is at Chutzpah! March 1 and 2, Aaron Davidman tries to understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (photo by Ken Friedman)
Most of us have an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how many of us have listened to others’ perspectives, really considered them and tried to understand them? Aaron Davidman has. And he will share his emotional and thought-provoking journey with Chutzpah! Festival audiences March 1 and 2.
Written and performed by Davidman, Wrestling Jerusalem, directed by Michael John Garcés, is Davidman’s personal journey, as an American Jew, to understand a situation that is often polarizing and over-simplified. The play gives voice to 17 different characters – all performed by Davidman – who represent the breadth, depth and complexity of the conflict; its political, religious and cultural aspects.
As personal as it is, however, Davidman was commissioned to write the play by Ari Roth, who, in 2007, was the artistic director of Theatre J, which is based in Washington, D.C. After 18 years with Theatre J, Roth founded Mosaic Theatre Company, also in Washington, in 2014, and is still its artistic director.
“He asked me to write a solo performance piece investigating the deaths of Rachel Corrie and Daniel Pearl and reflect on the public conversation in America about the Israel-Palestine issue,” Davidman told the Independent about the commission. “The play started there and, as I developed it, it became much more personal and those two subjects no longer relevant to my investigation, which became about the multiple perspectives and competing narratives at the heart of the conflict.”
Davidman is not only a playwright and actor, but also a director and producer. He received a master of fine arts in creative writing and playwriting from San Francisco State University and is a graduate of the University of Michigan; he received his theatrical training at Carnegie Mellon University.
Davidman was raised in Berkeley, Calif., he said, “by Jewish-identified but not religious parents, with a social justice context.”
In an interview with CJN, when Wrestling Jerusalem had its Canadian première in Toronto in November, Davidman said he “fell in love with Israel as a Jewish homeland” when he first visited the country, in 1993, at age 25. “I spent six months living there and had a really incredible spiritual and Jewish identity-forming experience. That story is in the play,” he told CJN.
In the process of researching, writing and performing Wrestling Jerusalem, Davidman told the Independent, “My views about the importance of engagement have deepened, as has my conviction that understanding the ‘other’ is a vital part of the process of reconciliation.”
The play, which premièred in 2014, has also been made into a feature film, directed by Dylan Kussman, which was released in 2016.
“The transcendent themes of the piece remain front and centre now more than ever in a world that is growing only more polarized,” said Davidman. “This piece stands for understanding multiplicity and complexity as humanity’s best chance to live together.”
To facilitate understanding, talk-backs often take place after performances.
“We try to have community conversation – I prefer that term to ‘talk-back’ – after performances and screenings because the piece opens people up,” Davidman said. “They’ve just had a fairly unique experience concerning this topic and there is hunger to process it. It’s a densely written piece and unpacking it and allowing people to hear where they each are coming from in response has proven to be very useful and moving.”
As for advice for people wanting to try and move the public – or even personal – discussion to a more nuanced or empathetic space, Davidman said, “Listen deeply. Don’t know so much. Try to connect.”
Wrestling Jerusalem is at Rothstein Theatre March 1-2, 8 p.m., with audience conversations after both performances, featuring Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom and Aaron Davidman. For tickets ($29.47-$36.46), call 604-257-5145 or visit chutzpahfestival.com. The festival’s other theatre offering combines Cree storytelling, Chekhovian character drama and comedy, performed by Edmonton-based, award-winning improv troupe Folk Lordz – Todd Houseman and Ben Gorodetsky of Rapid Fire Theatre – on Feb. 22, 8 p.m., at Rothstein Theatre. The festival also features dance, music and comedy.
David Broza (below) will be joined by Mira Awad in concert on Feb. 28, as part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Nahum Leder)
Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza is returning to Vancouver – and he’ll be joined by friend and fellow Israeli, musician (and actor) Mira Awad. The two will perform in concert on Feb. 28 as part of the Chutzpah! Festival, which runs Feb. 16-March 13.
“I have known Mira Awad for about six years,” Broza told the Independent. “First time I saw her perform was at the Tel Aviv Cameri Theatre, which is one of the most important theatres in Israel. I was very impressed and started following her work. When I was ready to go into the studio to record the album East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, I asked her to come and sing a couple of duets with me.”
While Awad and Broza may have met only a handful of years ago, Awad told the Independent, “I grew up on Broza’s music and persona, and admired what he did.”
The two crossed paths on more than one occasion after their first meeting, said Awad. “Later on, we met several times on stages and in life, until he called me and asked that I collaborate with him on his album and movie East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem. I was proud to join him on that brave project, and we’ve been performing together since.”
East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, which features mainly Israeli and Palestinian musicians, was recorded over the space of eight days and nights in Sabreen Studio in East Jerusalem in 2013 and released the following year. Co-produced by musician (and actor) Steve Earle and music producer Steve Greenberg, the creative journey was filmed and made into a documentary by the same name, which also came out in 2014 – and is currently available on Netflix.
“(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” is among the songs featured on the album and in the film. As is clear from human history – and current events – peace, love and understanding are downright scary to some people. Nonetheless, Broza and Awad have dedicated their lives not only to music, but to peace and other social issues.
“I am a human being and I feel kinship with all other human beings. It is beyond my grasp how people can hurt other people like what is happening in the world,” said Awad. “I just cannot understand how one man can think that another is less than him, or deserves less. So, inequality and injustice, no matter where, are total obscenities in my opinion, and I feel obligated to do anything in my power to banish them.”
“I have always been involved in social activities, ever since I was a young boy,” said Broza, giving as an example his continuing work with people with disabilities and, in particular, with the Israel Sports Centre for the Disabled in Ramat Gan, which his father helped found when Broza was about 6 years old. “He would then take me along and ask me to help around,” said Broza of his father.
Broza also brings music to Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, which he discusses in the documentary East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem.
“The coexistence initiatives I have been involved with since I was 19,” he said, “are much due to my grandfather, Wellesley Aron, who, amongst many other initiatives, was one of the founders of the Israeli Arab village Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, where the essential curriculum for peace studies and conflict resolution is developed. So, when I recorded my first written song ‘Yihye Tov’ (‘Things Will Be Better’) and it became a big success, I joined in all activities … in support of the peace process which had just started, [in] 1977.”
On the peace front, both Broza and Awad – and many others advocating for peace – face strong and even dangerous opposition.
“I would think that Mira probably has more of an issue since she is very committed to finding a way and is ahead of the pack,” said Broza. “I have been at it for so many years that it has become part of my being. I also believe in working with everyone when it comes to coexistence and conflict resolution, so I don’t exclude either the Palestinian side or the settler side. Of course, I am not immune to controversial and sometimes harsh commentary and opposition.”
In an interview last year with British online media outlet Jewish News, Awad – who was born in Rameh, in the Galilee, in northern Israel, and whose father is Palestinian and mother is Bulgarian – describes her situation.
“You call me Israeli Arab – but I call myself Israeli Palestinian and even that causes controversy,” she told the paper. “If I say that I am Israeli Arab, then my fellow Palestinians think that I am trying to disown my Palestinian roots and if I call myself an Israeli Palestinian, then the Israelis feel offended. They say: ‘If you are so Palestinian, go live in Gaza.’
“So, I identify myself only as an Israeli and not Palestinian. It mixes things up when you say both. The mere fact there is controversy around the definition might show you just a little bit of the situation faced by Israeli Palestinians in Israel. We are walking a very thin line all the time.”
In the song “Bahlawan” (“Acrobat”) and in a TEDx Talk, Awad describes how she maintains her balance in life, using the metaphor of an acrobat, who, she explains, must keep looking forward, both in order to not fall, but also to potentially “fly” (again, metaphorically).
“When you believe in something, when your vision is clear, you are like a good acrobat, you look onto the horizon and keep your balance,” she told the Independent. “If you start looking down, and calculate your risks, you will certainly fall and be eaten by the wolves waiting for you to trip. I think both David and I have a clear vision for what we believe in and, therefore, we keep our balance.”
“Empathy is the key,” said Broza. “You cannot think of yourself as the one who knows better than the other. Must learn to listen, always. I learn all the time from being exposed to such diverse people. With music, there is only one way, and that is to harmonize, so we keep eyes and ears open and stay in tune together.”
“The evidence is there, everywhere, that people just want to live, go to work, raise their children safely and take them on the occasional holiday,” added Awad. “We just need to encourage these silent masses to participate in the change process, to push their leaders towards resolution that is good for humans on both sides of the fence.”
One of the ways in which Broza attempts to do this is through music, giving benefit concerts, performing in hospitals and in crisis areas, offering workshops, and participating in or leading other social-minded projects and collaborations. “It is the backbone of my world,” he said of music.
“Music is my personal therapy,” said Awad. “As a musician, I deal with my thoughts, pains, joys, through music. Nothing stays cooped up inside, it is all put out into the fresh air, where everyone can see and hear it. But, in addition, I really feel that music has an advantage, it aims straight to subconscious levels, where people have fewer defences and borders, therefore, we as musicians can penetrate where other change-makers cannot.”
Broza is “very much looking forward to returning to perform in Vancouver and finally to take part in the Chutzpah! Festival.” He said his show will cover songs from his 40-year career, including some of his biggest hits, such as “HaIsha Sheiti” (“The Woman by My Side”) and “Yihye Tov.”
“It also covers my Spanish albums and some of the American albums,” he added. “The highlight is my having Mira join me on our songs from the album and film East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, and she will be performing a couple of her own songs.”
For her part, Awad said she is “looking forward to arriving in Vancouver with this powerful collaboration. I cherish the friendship with David and the magic that happens when we are on stage together. I hope we convince all the people present how stupid and foolish all these disputes are, and that the things we have in common are way deeper than the stuff that divides us.”
David Broza and Mira Awad in concert takes place Feb. 28, 8 p.m., at Rothstein Theatre. For tickets ($43.75/$31.35), call 604-257-5145 or visit chutzpahfestival.com. Other music offerings include the Klezmatics 30th Anniversary Tour (Feb. 23), Marbin with the band MNGWA opening (March 3), Maya Avraham Band (March 7), Lyla Canté (March 9), Shalom Hanoch with Moshe Levi (March 8) and Landon Braverman and Friends (April 2). The festival also features dance, theatre and comedy.
Maya Rae performs on Feb. 23 at Frankie’s Jazz Club. (photo by Saffron Kelly)
Vancouver jazz singer-songwriter Maya Rae will celebrate the release of her debut CD, Sapphire Birds, on Feb. 23 at Frankie’s Jazz Club. The album was produced by jazz impresario Cory Weeds, and features an ensemble of some of Vancouver’s greatest jazz musicians, including Miles Black, who played piano and acted as musical director, Weeds himself on saxophone, Joel Fountain on drums, André Lachance on bass and Vince Mai on trumpet and flugelhorn.
Rae’s burgeoning musical career – she is only 14 years old – had its genesis in nothing particularly special: band classes at school, a few musicians on her mother’s side of the family. Yet, from these modest beginnings, she has arrived on the Vancouver scene with a beautiful, textured voice well ahead of her years and a first CD that showcases excellent musicianship, both hers and that of the experienced ensemble brought together by Weeds and Black.
“If I had a dime for every time someone tells me they have a 14-year-old with tons of talent,” Weeds told the Independent, “I’d have retired in Mexico by now. When I heard Maya, I was pretty wowed, pretty shocked.”
Weeds said he carefully scrutinizes projects that are brought to him. “I don’t do these things for the money,” he said, “I do it because it’s a project I believe in. Miles Black was the X-factor behind the thing. He helped Maya select the music and charted it. It’s rare that a project goes so smoothly. The whole band gelled so well the album practically produced itself. It was just a real pleasurable experience.”
Rae agreed. Asked if working with such seasoned musicians was intimidating, she said it wasn’t. “It was great; we had so much fun. They were so helpful, and they taught me a lot. It was an incredible experience to work with musicians like that.”
Weeds admitted to hesitating before releasing the album on his own label, Cellar Live, due to Maya’s youth. When he heard the finished project, though, his hesitation vanished. “You’d have to be an idiot not to put this out,” he said. “The talent’s there and, when the talent is there, age is irrelevant.”
The CD features two original songs, the title track “Sapphire Birds” (about her family) and “So Caught Up” (about the obsession with appearances among teenage girls). The album also features some excellent covers of standards like “I Feel the Earth Move” and “Summertime”; and surprises, with some smooth and skilled scatting from Rae. Rae’s singing is delivered with strength, precise phrasing and nuance, and is alternately delicate and full, easily holding the listener’s interest throughout the album.
The CD release will be a benefit concert, with proceeds going to Covenant House, a local nonprofit that serves homeless youth. Last April, Rae held a benefit concert at Temple Sholom to benefit Syrian refugee families. “In March, I was asked to open for Champian Fulton, and so I had a band and a set list all worked out, and then I heard my synagogue was sponsoring two Syrian refugee families and that seemed like an important thing to support,” Rae explained. (For more on last year’s concert, see jewishindependent.ca/jazz-to-benefit-refugees.)
Rae also sings once a month at Louis Brier Home and Hospital, accompanied by guitarist Sami Ghawi. She tells a heartwarming story about an incident that happened there recently involving Kenny Colman, a well-known jazz vocalist who was a longtime friend and colleague of Frank Sinatra, among others, and who now lives at the Louis Brier.
“We have an open mic when we perform there,” Maya said. “Kenny came to watch the show, and he joined us and sang. He has advanced Parkinson’s, and they said he hadn’t sung in the eight months since he’d been there. It was very emotional for everyone.”
For more on Rae, visit facebook.com/mayaraemusic. While reservations are now closed for the Feb. 23 show, there will be limited tickets available at the door.
Matthew Gindinis a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.
Ken Levitt, president of Jewish Seniors Alliance, and Leah Deslauriers, coordinator of JCC Seniors and L’Chaim Adult Day Centre. (photo by Binny Goldman)
On Jan. 25, a treat awaited all who attended the screening at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver of filmmaker Julie Cohen’s The Sturgeon Queens, the story of New York City’s legendary fish store (and restaurant) Russ and Daughters.
The documentary was presented by the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver in partnership with L’Chaim Adult Day Centre, and was the second session of the 2016/2017 JSA Snider Foundation Empowerment Series. With the theme of Nourishing Tradition: Food, the Doorway to our Culture, this year’s series is being co-hosted with the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.
JSA president Ken Levitt welcomed the crowd with a groissen dank, todah rabah, big thank you to all involved, which set the tone and taam (taste) for what was to follow. Michael Schwartz, coordinator of programs and development of the JMABC, shared the news that the museum will soon be starting a Supper Club, which will take place at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, where the museum resides. He noted the important role that food plays in keeping traditions alive, in passing them on to future generations.
Case in point is Russ and Daughters. Four generations have not only kept the appetizer shop alive – selling smoked fish, lox, herring and sturgeon – but grown it into a restaurant, as well. Stan Goldman introduced the film on behalf of JCC Seniors. He said it was at Russ and Daughters that he tasted smoked fish for the very first time.
According to the film, Cohen first discovered the renowned fish store in 2007. Upon realizing that “the daughters,” sisters Hattie (Russ Gold) and Anne (Russ Federman), were still alive, Cohen flew to Florida to interview them. The Sturgeon Queens is a feel-good documentary about the start of the shop, which Joel Russ founded in 1914. Russ had come to New York at age 21 and, starting in 1907, used a pushcart to sell his herring. He went on to sell the fish using a horse and wagon, before finally opening his store. He enlisted his daughters – who were in their early teens at the time – to help him. The sisters became full-time workers and eventually partners with their father in the business.
Russ’s addition of “and Daughters” to the name of the shop was unusual for those years. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) states in the film that this move made her very happy, seeing this was an enterprise where daughters counted.
The Lower East Side, where Russ and Daughters has always been located, was the area in which immigrants arriving in New York first settled. And fish is what they ate – it was healthy and, more importantly, relatively inexpensive, as they struggled to make their way. Now, it is eaten not only because of its taste, but because it connects many to their ancestors; it is a comfort, or “emotion,” food, whose appeal goes beyond taste. Russ and Daughters customers sense this as they enter the shop, which seems to offer this same feeling.
The documentary was made to celebrate 100 years of Russ and Daughters, which survived many turbulent times, including the 1970s and 1980s, when things were most dire for them economically. The family still strives to maintain the traditions, quality and history of the shop, working to enrich the lives of their customers, who not only come to buy the food, but to linger and chat.
Nicki Russ Federman, who runs the establishment now, along with Josh Russ Tupper, said there was never anything glamourous about the store, that it was just hard work, but that Hattie and Anne had set the stage for their grandchildren to take over. Russ Federman was a health professional and Russ Tupper a lawyer, but they decided, after almost a decade away from the store, to return and make sure that Russ and Daughters continued.
Herman Vargas, who has been with the shop for almost 30 years now, is fluent in Yiddish and feels part of the family. The New Yorkers who frequent the shop also feel part of something, that they are connected to a living piece of the city’s history – some of the film is even narrated by several seniors who were gathered together by Cohen. Molly Picon, Zero Mostel and Morley Safer are just a few of the famous people who have come to the shop according to the documentary.
“It was powerful to watch the expression on my grandmother’s face as she watched the movie – she was watching her life affirmed,” says Nicki Russ Federman in the film. On Jan. 25, as the audience at the JCC watched, we, too, felt just how entwined are food, family, love and tradition.
When the JSA’s Shanie Levin thanked all those who made the screening possible, she asked if the film had been enjoyed and was greeted by a huge round of applause. Over coffee, tea and a nosh, comments overheard were “It warmed my heart!” and “It made me happy to be Jewish.”
The next session of the Empowerment Series takes place March 8, 11:30 a.m., at the Unitarian Centre and will highlight Israeli cuisine. For more information about it or the JSA, call Rita Propp at 604-732-1555, email [email protected] or visit jsalliance.org.
Binny Goldmanis a member of the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver board.
The cast of Crossing Delancey, left to right: Jonathan MacDonald (Sam), Nina Tischhauser (Izzy), Joan Koebel (Bubbie), Helen Volkow (Hannah) and Jon MacIntyre (Tyler). (photo by Tracy-Lynn Chernaske)
Many of us are still looking for our bashert, our soul mate, that one person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives. Sometimes, our family and friends try and guide us in our quest, sometimes we go it alone, double-clicking away in cyberspace, hoping to make the perfect connection and, sometimes, we hire a professional, a matchmaker. While that last approach may seem old-fashioned and outdated, it can work – as the latest offering at Metro Theatre, Crossing Delancey, charmingly illustrates.
Set in New York in the 1980s, playwright Susan Sandler’s romantic comedy has five characters. We meet 30ish yuppie bookseller Isabelle (Izzy) Grossman, who lives and works Uptown and is enamoured of Tyler, a non-Jewish local author who often drops by the shop to check on his book sales. Meanwhile, back on the Lower East Side, on the main thoroughfare, Delancey Street, Izzy’s grandmother, Ida Kantor, has retained matchmaker Hannah Mandelbaum to find the perfect match for Izzy. What follows is a smorgasbord of Jewish humour peppered with witty Yiddish sayings – the evening’s program contains a glossary of the Yiddish words and phrases used in the play and it is a good idea to read it over before the show begins – as we follow the action to what we expect to be a predictable ending. Or is it?
On stage, the action alternates from Bubbie’s kitchen to the New Day Bookstore to a park bench. The curtain rises on the warm glow of the kitchen with Izzy (Nina Tischhauser) visiting Bubbie Ida (Joan Koebel) for their regular Sunday night tête-à-tête. Ida is the quintessential Jewish grandmother, doting on her granddaughter, making sure there is lots of food on the table (her claim to fame is her kugel), regaling anyone who will listen with tales of her youth, and being an all-around busybody. The night’s conversation leads to a discussion about loneliness and finding a mate. Izzy is adamant that she is a modern woman and does not need a man to feel whole. Bubbie, who continually reminds the audience in a number of melodramatic asides of what a beauty she was in her prime and how she had three marriage proposals, begs to differ. Bubbie makes it clear that her goal, in whatever life she has left, is to find her granddaughter a husband, so that Izzy will have true happiness. Enter Mrs. Mandelbaum (Helen Volkow) with her collection of photographs of eligible men. What a catch she has lined up for Izzy – Sam Posner (Jonathan MacDonald), the pickle man who runs the local deli – “a real mensch, a college graduate, a nice boy, goes to shul every day and, you could do worse.”
Unfortunately, Izzy is a bit of an intellectual snob and finds Sam bland and unromantic, so she shuns his attentions while focusing on Tyler Moss (Jon MacIntyre). Despite Izzy’s frosty attitude, Sam is smitten after their initial meeting and persists, using gastronomical courtship – an assortment of the “best pickles in New York” and chocolate cake – to woo her. He tells Izzy the story of a man whose life took a dramatic turn when he changed the type of hat he wore and that, although her Uptown life was “sociologically a million miles away” from Delancey Street, she, too, could change her style. The next day, a hat box arrives at Bubbie’s and Izzy has a new accessory – but will she wear it?
Each of the five cast members is strong but Volkow really shines. She is the stereotypical yenta with her cat eyeglasses, capri pants and oversized bosom (safely ensconced in a floral polyester top). She nails the New York accent and mannerisms.
Tischhauser adroitly handles Izzy’s metamorphosis from fantasist to realist in her choice of suitors, while MacDonald is an understated but effective beau, playing his role with calm and self-assurance. Koebel puts her heart and soul into Bubbie’s character and does a nice job with the Yiddish-heavy dialogue and the song and dance numbers. MacIntyre comes across as the stiff, self-absorbed man his character is.
One thing that Metro does particularly well is sets and this one does not disappoint. Divided into two, one side of the stage houses the bookshop; the other, Bubbie’s intimate apartment kitchen. The mood lighting and music, a mix of 1980s hits and klezmer tunes, bring it all together.
Kudos to director Alison Schamberger, with technical advice from decades-long JI contributor Alex Kliner, for bringing this light-hearted fare to Vancouver audiences.
A quintessential Jewish play with Yiddish humour, free parking, an upstairs bar and lounge, what’s not to like? Just go and enjoy – a nice pick-me-up for the January blues.
Crossing Delancey runs Thursdays through Saturdays, at 8 p.m., with two Sunday matinées, at 2 p.m., on Jan. 29 and Feb. 5. For tickets and more information, go to metrotheatre.com or call 604-266-7191.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
“April 5, 2006, Reflected Embers: Cerulean, Cadmium Red, Yellow and Orange.” One of the sunsets Jack Rootman captured in oil over the space of a year.
For three decades, Jack Rootman combined two of his passions: medicine and art. Last year, after 43 years of practice as an eye surgeon, he retired and finally could dedicate himself completely to his art.
“This is the first opportunity I had in my life to paint whenever I wanted,” he said in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “I like painting in series. It allows me to explore my chosen theme from different viewpoints, but it was not easy when I could only paint a few hours a week. Now I can.”
His latest series – of sunsets – comprises his new show at the Zack Gallery. Called Contemplating Sunset: English Bay, the show opened on Jan 19.
“I began the series just before I retired,” said Rootman. “My studio is in English Bay, and I watched sunsets there almost every day for years. Every night of the year, people come to the beach to watch the sunset. It’s become almost a ritual. Of course, more people come during the summer months than in winter but, in any weather, a sunset inspires people to enter a spiritual mood. Couples embrace. Everybody often stays silent, no small talk. Sometimes, people sing or salute the setting sun with their raised hands.”
Several years ago, Rootman started taking photographs of the sunsets he witnessed. “I also took colour notes for every photo. A camera doesn’t always reproduce the exact colours of sea and sky, so I noted the oil paint names.” Examples of his notes, which mix in with the images’ titles, are: “January 31, 2010, Serene Mist: Cobalt Violet, Ivory Black, Ultramarine Blue” or “June 12, 2015, Final Moment: Lavender and Lilac.”
“As the months go by, the position of the setting sun moves across the azimuth, from the far left in January to the far right in July,” observed Rootman, whose series covers a full year. “After the summer solstice, the sunset position starts to move back, gradually month by month. Sunsets also take longer as the days grow longer.”
Rootman started the series at the beginning of last year, after he had accumulated a great number of photographs. He wanted to depict the best sunset for each month.
“No sunset is the same,” he said. “Even on the same day, when I took photos every few minutes, the view is different. The sky, the sea, the clouds, the colours change almost every moment.”
That’s why he never tried to paint on site, because the sunset is constantly in flux. The best artistic approach, he explained, was to paint inside his studio, to capture the moments using his hundreds of photos as inspiration.
“I wanted to characterize the nature of light of both sky and sea, to paint a series of portraits of individual sunsets, as if they were persons,” he said. “Sunset always has an emotional impact on its human watchers, and I painted them, too.”
Indeed, some of the paintings at the Zack Gallery are populated by people who are sharing the sunset with the artist; most of them have their backs to him.
One of the most interesting features of a sunset over water is that, exactly as Rootman depicts in this series, at a certain point, the sea becomes a mirror, reflecting the sky above.
“You might notice that the sea is always a different colour than the sky,” he said. “It is because the sea reflects what is up, directly over it, but the artist looks at the sky and paints the sideway view. We don’t see what is above that distant sea on the horizon. We only see what is in front of our eyes. The entire sunset is like a sequence of visual effects in a movie.”
Rootman considers sunsets an intimidating subject, “a colossal challenge,” perhaps because of their fluid, “visual-effect” nature. Many artists over the ages have tried painting sunsets, but not many have succeeded. One of his friends, an Israeli artist Yasha Cyrinski, wrote in an email exchange with Rootman: “The subject matter you chose is quite challenging to say the least. A subject devoid of irony.”
But Rootman is never afraid to tackle a challenge.
“I have done landscapes and portraits on commission, and portraits are much harder,” he said. “When I paint a portrait, I want to capture the essence of a person, his emotional subtext. When I painted sunsets, I wanted to catch the ephemeral moment of what a sunset is.”
The exhibit Contemplating Sunset: English Bay continues until Feb. 19.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
It must have been a prodigious effort by editor Ezra Glinter to look through countless Yiddish Forward microfilms going back more than 100 years and come up with the superb collection of short fiction Have I Got a Story for You: More than a Century of Fiction from the Forward (W.W. Norton, 2016).
Unlike contemporary American newspapers, Yiddish papers, both here and in Europe, published fiction. Readers looked forward to the weekend editions, where they could find stories by their old favourite authors and newly emerging writers.
This new variegated collection, which begins with 1907 and ends in 2015, with contributions by 20 talented translators, including Glinter, has many of the famous names in 20th-century Yiddish belles lettres – Sholem Asch, David Bergelson, Avraham Reyzen, Israel Joshua Singer, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade. And, though even the lesser-known names were familiar for decades to the loyal Forward audience, they may not be so anymore, and the volume contains cogent and insightful introductions to each writer.
Have I Got a Story for You is a beautifully produced book, from the stunning, colourful cover, the fine introductions by Glinter and novelist Dara Horn and, of course, the lively fiction. Even the clever title, Have I Got a Story for You, resonates with Yiddish braggadocio.
The anthology begins with a story by Rokhl Brokhes, Golde’s Lament, published in 1907, about a woman who is tormented with jealousy because her husband has sailed to America with another woman posing as his wife, and concludes with a 2015 story, Studies in Solfege, by the current Yiddish Forward editor, Boris Sandler, about which I’ll tell you later.
First, we read stories about the immigrant experience, including one by Abe Cahan himself, the guiding spirit of the Forward (known in Yiddish as the Forverts) from 1903 to 1946, and humorous sketches by B. Kovner, who wrote for the paper for nearly 70 years of his 100-year life (1874-1974).
Some of the book’s most powerful pages, whose sheer force of imaginative and vivid prose overwhelms the reader, were written in Russia under wartime circumstances. Here we see gripping stories by Asch, Bergelson and I.J. Singer. Obviously, tales with such stress and suspense make New York-based fiction about collecting rent or about a lovelorn seamstress pale by comparison.
It is also noteworthy that, whereas stories by Yiddish masters like Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and Reyzen invariably pertained to Jewish life, in this collection, Yiddishkeit is at a minimum. One story by the very secular daughter of Aleichem, Lyala Kaufman, speaks of a woman who prays daily but doesn’t particularly like her assimilated son and daughter-in-law. She closes her morning prayer with a wish that “they die a horrible death.” Another story, by Zalman Schneour, tells of a little youngster who is tempted and finally succumbs to tasting pig meat.
In their Eastern European shtetls or cities, the rhythms of Jewish life were central to Jews’ existence. In the United States, with many of the early immigrants not committed to Jewish observance, the secularly minded Yiddish writers writing for a socialist-leaning paper like the Forward did not have Yiddishkeit at the forefront of their creative imagination.
Noteworthy, too, is that not one of the writers included in Have I Got a Story for You was born in the United States. One can understand that, early in the 20th century, the Yiddish writers would be European-born, but, as the decades progressed toward the mid-20th century, one would have expected at least one American-born Yiddish writer to emerge. But none did.
Also, if you look at the years of birth of the contributing writers, only one was born in the 1920s and none was born in the 1930s or 1940s. The two writers who were born in the early 1950s were Russians. This means that most of the writers who contributed to the Forward, at least those selected for this anthology, were born prior to 1910.
In A Treasury of Yiddish Stories (1953), edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, Grade, born in 1910, was the youngest author. And so it is curious to see in this anthology, published in 2016 – 53 years later – that Grade is still among the youngest. There are only three younger than he, Yente Mash (1922), Mikhoel Felsenbaum (1951) and Sandler (1950). Certainly the decimation of Jewry during the Holocaust and the repressive Stalinist regime in Russia had something to do with this gap.
(I should add, if only parenthetically, that in the magazine Afn Shvel, published by the League for Yiddish, one can read American-born Yiddish writers, in their 20s and 30s, publishing fiction and non-fiction.)
Full of Yiddishkeit, however, is the masterful novella by Grade, Grandfathers and Grandchildren. Set in an old Vilna shul between the two world wars, it tells of a group of old men whose children have assimilated. Their lives perk up when little boys come into the shul in the winter to warm up, and the old men start giving them private lessons. During summer, the boys disappear but their lives take on new meaning again when two yeshivah bokhers come into the shul to look for old texts and take on the oldsters as their students.
The last two stories in the anthology are by Russian Yiddish writers. Felsenbaum, now living in Israel, depicts a married Israeli Yiddish writer who goes to a Basel book fair, where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful woman. In the book’s last tale, Sandler focuses on a teenage boy who describes taking singing lessons from a slightly older girl; she also introduces him to the Indian love guidebook, Kama Sutra.
I have resisted quoting delectable lines from this anthology till now, but can resist no longer. When the girl asks the boy if he knows what Kama Sutra is, he says the first thing that comes into his head: “Of course. It’s a type of Japanese wrestling.”
Curt Leviantis the author of two recent novels, King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son.
In The American Miracle, Michael Medved argues that the success of the United States is not based on random “happy accidents.”
Early America’s historical events could be seen as a set of dominoes falling conveniently into place, creating a thriving free and democratic nation, but Michael Medved believes there’s a divine hand that helped.
The Jewish nationally syndicated radio show host has just published his 13th book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic (Crown Forum, 2016), describing a dozen incidents from the 1580s to the American Civil War, in which a moment of crisis was successfully resolved, against great odds, and seemingly by chance.
“I think this is the first time someone has approached it from this angle,” he told the Independent. “The best explanation for the emergence of the United States as the dominant economic, military, even cultural power in the world … is not a pattern of happy accidents, because a pattern of happy accidents is still a pattern. The evidence, it seems to me, suggests very strongly that America is a product of intelligent design.”
One of Medved’s examples is that of Abraham Lincoln surviving six assassination attempts, with the seventh and final one coming only after he freed the slaves. Another such occurrence, according to Medved, involves Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s battle plans, which were etched on a cigar wrapper cover, discarded unknowingly by one of his infantry and later found by a Unionist soldier, radically turning the tide of the war and saving the union.
Additionally, writes Medved, Napoleon Bonaparte was to take command and possession of Louisiana to protect it against the British, but the harbour uncharacteristically froze over on that April day. It was part of a series of events that led the French conqueror to cede land four times the size of France to the Americans – later called the Louisiana Purchase – for the paltry sum of a penny an acre.
“With the United States – and with the modern state of Israel – there are clear moments of creation reflecting acts of will and providential acts of will,” he said. “It’s not based on tribe or blood or place of birth. It’s based on conscious decisions by generations of people to be part of this endeavour, and that makes the United States and Israel completely distinct from every other country on earth. It’s a much stronger argument for design rather than evolution.”
Medved’s other books have covered American themes as well, including The Ten Big Lies About America; The Shadow Presidents, a history of White House chiefs of staff; and Right Turns, an autobiography covering his path to becoming a conservative.
Part of the reason why he penned this recent book was not only to show that America’s founding had, as he sees it, a little help from above and has changed the world for the better, but “because we have lost that sense America is miraculous and astonishing,” he said.
“If you don’t look at America as providing grounds for gratitude, then you will look at America as providing grounds for guilt, and that is what our education system emphasizes now: we slaughtered native Americans, we exploited African slaves, we oppressed workers and we enslaved women.
“We’ve taken the heroism out of it, taken the nobility out of it,” he said. “We’ve taken the purpose out of it – and America is about nothing if it’s not about a sense of purpose.”
As to why America has been so particularly blessed, Medved posits a theory: the Founding Fathers were philosemites.
“John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, believed that one of the reasons for America’s distinctive blessings can be found in Genesis, Chapter 12, verse 3,” he said, explaining the section where God says He will bless those who bless Jews, and curse those who curse Jews.
In fact, he added, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin worked together to create what they hoped would be the great seal of the United States, featuring an image of Moses leading the people across the Red Sea.
“The founders themselves,” he said, “insisted that they were the instruments, rather than the authors, of the design.”
Dave Gordonis a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.
During the summer of 2014, Vancouver-based Cornfield Media produced a short film titled Note in the Oak, starring Carmel Amit and Moshe Mastai. Now feature-length, the production is seeking funds to complete some of the Jewish heritage and culture aspects of the film.
The short Note in the Oak was the official selection at several festivals: at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival in 2014 and, in 2016, at Roma Cinema DOC in Rome, Italy; Move Me Productions short film festival in Antwerp, Belgium; London Monthly Film Festival in England; Best International Independent Film Festival in Karlsruhe, Germany; and Reflections of Spirit International Film Festival in Erlangen, Germany.
The film’s plot was inspired by true events that took place in New Jersey in 2012. The hero is Joyce, a home-care provider. Following the death of a longtime patient, she goes on a quest to find his estranged son, Corry, to bring him to his father’s grave. The story mixes suspense, laughter, hope, heart and conflict. It also includes a slice of a Jewish culture.
During the past two years, the short has been developed into a feature film (100 minutes) and Cornfield Media is now ready to produce it this year. However, the feature script is not yet fully complete and some vital elements are still missing. This is where the producers are seeking community participation.
Cornfield Media needs help to secure some licensed Jewish artistic material – these poems and pieces of music are essential to the plot and without it, the story will be good, but missing some of the key Jewish elements it requires. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. For more information and to contribute, visit jewcer.org/project/nito343334.