Jewish National Fund – Jewish Independent

A space for men to talk

Matt Zerker, the founder and chief executive officer of tethr, spoke at a July 8 webinar organized by JNF Future. (screenshot)

Matt Zerker, the founder and chief executive officer of tethr, an online community for men aimed at promoting honest and open conversations about mental health issues, spoke at a July 8 webinar organized by JNF Future, a branch of the Jewish National Fund aimed at adults aged 25-45.

Called The (Not So) Hidden Men’s Mental Health Crisis, Zerker’s talk touched upon some troubling numbers and outdated beliefs still too prevalent within the male population. Citing a study, he said 40% of men feel they have nobody to turn to when they have a problem associated with mental health. He added that the vast majority of suicides are committed by men, and many men continue to believe it is not masculine to discuss personal problems with others or to go to therapy.

To illustrate his point, Zerker relayed an anecdote related to men who do seek help: “When a man goes to therapy, he tells the therapist, ‘Doc, I am not like other guys.’ ‘Why?’ asks the doctor. ‘Because I’m here,’ answers the man.”

A chartered financial analyst, Zerker worked for seven years as a portfolio manager at a hedge fund in Toronto. Despite his outward success, he felt unfulfilled in his life, with little motivation to work, and he struggled for years with his personal and professional relationships. He resorted to substance use and found himself deeply depressed.

In late 2018, a friend told him of a men’s group. “It was amazing because it did not deal with solving problems but with finding space for one another and listening to what I was going through,” he recounted.

In April 2019, he went on a men’s retreat. “The morning after the first night of the retreat, I woke up to a feeling of peace. The panic attacks and the tightness in my head and body I had experienced for months prior were gone,” he recalled.

He returned to work after the retreat and felt he did not belong in the office any longer, so he quit his job, with no fallback plan. Soon thereafter, the idea to build a platform where men could connect with one another and speak openly about the issues they were facing as men hit him “like a tidal wave.” Thus, tethr came into being.

“I felt there was a need to build a space where men feel comfortable talking about these issues,” he explained.

Since its inception, tethr has established partnerships with Men’s Health Research at the University of British Columbia; HeadsUpGuys, a resource for men battling depression; and Movember, a charity devoted to men’s health.

Quoting a study by Dr. Michael Kimmel, which stated that 93% of men do not identify with the way masculinity is portrayed in the media, Zerker contended that men are holding themselves to an impossible standard.

“The normative framework for masculinity in our culture is self-reliance, stoicism and the idea of being the unwavering provider. It is an outdated, heavily indoctrinated belief in us as to how we should act as men and is reinforced in movies and commercials,” he said. “As men, we are trained to out-alpha, out-male each other. There is the fear that, if we say something to another male, we will be seen as a ‘lesser man.’ Everything becomes about how we look as opposed to how we feel. We externalize things.”

This can lead, Zerker maintained, to a lack of connection with friends, family and, mostly, with oneself. Men become unable to be truly authentic, he said. For a lot of men, he argued, this can come out in anger and frustration. “You show me an angry man and I’ll show you a sad, wounded boy inside,” he said.

Zerker urged men to be softer, more caring and more reasonable with themselves, and to not set impossible standards. He also encouraged men to reach out to other men and find out how they are doing during the pandemic, i.e., making a plan with another man whom one can trust to have a conversation that is more personal than talk of politics or sports.

“Most men feel like they cannot be the ones who make the first step, but they are thankful when someone does,” Zerker asserted.

For more information, visit tethr.men or download the tethr app on an iPhone or Android device.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

We need to act earlier

Drs. David Fisman, left, and Jacob Moran-Gilad discuss climate change and future pandemics. (screenshots)

The Jewish National Fund of Canada recently brought together Toronto-based epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman and Israeli clinical microbiologist Dr. Jacob Moran-Gilad to discuss the relationship between climate change and potential future pandemics.

“It is important to remember that there are a lot of linkages,” said Fisman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a physician at Michael Garron Hospital. Both climate change and viruses like COVID-19 share similar drivers, such as human population growth, environmental degradation and the need for expanded food production, he explained.

Rising temperatures around the globe create a more fertile breeding ground for infectious diseases and accelerate their evolution, he said. Furthermore, climate change is exacerbated by the tearing down of natural environments, which then brings humans in closer proximity to animal habitats – increasing the chances of diseases being passed on to humans from other species.

“We do have a lot of mouths to feed on the planet. Intensive factory farming has been a driver of some really important challenges in infectious diseases,” said Fisman.

It is crucial to act early, Fisman argued. “With climate change, there are different time scales than with the pandemic. You want to shut down the carbon increase way early. If we wait until we are in the soup, it comes with great cost,” he cautioned.

Trade and travel have been around throughout history, he acknowledged. The difference now, he said, is “turning the dial up on temperature, which makes everything worse.”

Moran-Gilad, chair of Israel’s national advisory committee for microbiology and member of the country’s epidemic management team, went through some of the possible ways to prevent the next pandemic.

“We are now all experts in flattening curves – as compared to four months ago – which shows how effectively we can disseminate information,” Moran-Gilad observed.

While not discounting the severity of COVID-19, he said it has not been the pandemic that people who study infectious diseases have been preparing for, one known in the scientific community as Disease X, which would cause a mortality rate of 10 to 30%.

“COVID-19, in this sense, can be viewed cautiously as a drill to the real thing,” Moran-Gilad said, adding that a pandemic of much greater magnitude “could occur in one year, 10 years or 100 years from now.”

About COVID-19, he admitted, “The dynamics of the disease are still not clear. Without a vaccine, we are going to see coronavirus with us for a couple of years.”

Moran-Gilad advocated for investments in scientific research in the area of pathogen discovery, to understand the viruses in animal hosts better, which, he said, could help prevent the global economy from experiencing the losses encountered this year. He recommended, as well, that further studies could examine whether human exposure had taken place before the outbreak emerged.

He warned, though, of the propensity of academic research in high-quality journals to stop printing papers on diseases once they recede from public consciousness. He said this happened with SARS and Ebola, and expressed hope that the legacy of COVID-19 would be a continuation of studies on the virus “or we will find ourselves unprepared for the next pandemic.”

Returning to the proverbial pachyderm in the room – climate change – the doctors did offer a glimmer of hope: action on the environment would bring with it a health dividend. Riding a bike instead of driving a car, for example, has health benefits and reduces emissions.

Extreme weather events also have a deleterious impact on health, and thus we would be acting in our own self-interest to address climate change, the scientists said. They noted that, in the Canadian response to COVID-19, all governments had to do was ask people to maintain a two-metre distance from one another and wear a mask in public, and people mostly did as instructed. The desire, then, would be that similar policy guidelines could be used to ward off environmental disasters.

In his closing remarks, Fisman praised the Japanese approach to fighting the pandemic by avoiding closed and crowded spaces. He also called into question the opening of bars in certain regions of Canada before opening schools. And he stood for an aggressive testing approach.

“There are vaccine candidates that look amazingly promising,” said Fisman. “It’s very hard to fly and land an airplane while we are building it. A positive outcome of the current pandemic would be if vaccine development could be done proactively.

“Our ultimate challenge as scientists,” he concluded, “is to show people what an alternative universe looks like and why it is important to take early and immediate action.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Reflections of a lone soldier

Joel Chasnoff spoke at a Zoom event presented by Jewish National Fund of Canada on June 1 and he’ll speak at a CHW Montreal Zoom event on June 21. (photo from APB Speakers)

Michael Levin grew up in Philadelphia, joined the Israel Defence Forces as a lone soldier and died in a battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. At that time, most Israelis weren’t familiar with the concept of a lone soldier – a legal term for a volunteer, usually (but not always) from outside Israel, who enlists to defend the Jewish state.

Levin’s death at 22 came just days after he returned hastily from his leave back home in the United States when he learned of the start of the Second Lebanon War. He flew back to Israel, hitched a ride to his platoon in Lebanon and took up the fight against the Iranian-backed terrorists. He was killed in an intense firefight in the Hezbollah-controlled village of Aita al-Shaab.

His grieving mother, Harriet Levin, was concerned that her son’s funeral would not have a minyan to say Kaddish and so, on arriving in Israel, she asked a few people to come to the military cemetery to ensure a proper Jewish burial. On her way to Mount Herzl, traffic was so congested she feared she would be late for her son’s funeral but, when she did get there, she discovered that the few people she had asked to spread the appeal for a minyan had shared the news widely. Media picked it up and more than 10,000 Israelis showed up to pay their respects.

It was a turning point in the Israeli consciousness, according to Joel Chasnoff.

Chasnoff is a stand-up comedian and writer who shared his own story of leaving his Chicago-area home two decades ago to become a lone soldier. In a Zoom event presented by Jewish National Fund of Canada June 1, Chasnoff, who now lives in Israel, spoke of the changing understanding of lone soldiers – and his reflections on now being the father of soldiers. A decade ago, he chronicled his experiences as an IDF volunteer in the book The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah.

Today, lone soldiers are a better understood phenomenon in Israel and supports are in place that were not when Chasnoff volunteered in 1997. There is now a network of Lone Soldiers Centres – commonly called Michael Levin Centres – around Israel, to help overseas volunteers adapt and smooth their way to a successful integration, coordinate holiday and Shabbat homestays and deal with the myriad complications that arise for a newcomer to Israel.

Chasnoff shared comedic experiences, including the challenge of proving he was indeed a lone soldier without Israeli parents, when government officials insisted that Levin’s father had never left Israel after his first visit in 1976. The stakes were basic – a lone soldier’s salary at the time was $160 a month instead of $80, plus a few privileges. But it required a sheath of documents from the States to prove that his father was indeed an Illinoisan, not an Israeli.

“Never mind that he had raised me in the U.S. and I have a very strong and good relationship with my dad. The Israelis believed that my dad was actually living in Israel the whole time and I was just trying to pretend that I was a lone soldier to get the extra $80 a month,” Chasnoff said.

His decision to join the IDF was sparked by a visit to Israel as a teenager.

“I got off the plane,” he said, “and, you know, you’re 17, your hormones are raging. What’s the first thing you notice being a teenager coming to Israel? How beautiful the Israelis are. The women were all tan and fit, the men were these hunks with muscles and crew cuts. It’s so odd because they have the same roots as we do, right? Except they look like supermodels and we look like Jews. How does that happen? That’s not fair.”

The soldiers he met were just a year older than he was.

“They were 18, and they had machine guns and berets and Ray-Ban sunglasses and forearms like bricks,” said Chasnoff. “And then there was me, slathered in sunscreen, wearing a fanny pack … stuffed with lactose pills.”

One of the eye-opening things Chasnoff discovered about the Israeli army, he said, is how democratic it was.

“I would even say insanely democratic,” he said, noting that soldiers argued about orders and fought with their superiors. “People ask me what’s it like in the Israeli army. I think the best way to describe it is, imagine a bunch of Israelis running an army. That is the Israeli army.”

This is why one of his platoon-mates was a darling among commanders: he didn’t speak Hebrew. The young man was raised in an evangelical Christian home in Oklahoma, but, at a certain age, learned that his mother had converted from Judaism. One thing led to another and he volunteered for the IDF.

“So, they made him a tank gunner,” Chasnoff said, “because, to be a tank gunner, you basically need to know six words – stop, go, left, right, forward, back. Tim was one of the best soldiers in our platoon because he didn’t have the Hebrew to argue back. When the commander would give orders, the guys would argue. Tim, by not having Hebrew, just did what he was told. And was an excellent soldier for that reason and one of our commander’s favourites.”

Unfortunately, a lack of Hebrew can be deadly in moments of military conflict. Chasnoff said some casualties in conflicts in Gaza may have resulted from linguistic challenges and he believes the military is doing a better job ensuring fluency in such situations.

While lone soldiers is a term associated with overseas volunteers, Chasnoff said that about half of the 6,000 lone soldiers are Israelis, mostly Charedim whose volunteer service or other factors estrange them from their families.

While lone soldiers were not so much in the Israeli consciousness a few decades ago, they are now a welcome oddity.

“I think, when you get a lone soldier in your platoon, people are very excited about it,” Chasnoff said. “Everyone wants to bring him or her home to show the family the sort of strange character who came all the way from New York City or Sydney, Australia, or whatever. People are really interested in what motivates them to serve, so they are invited. It’s very, very different than the old days.”

Addressing the broader differences between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, Chasnoff riffed like the comic he is.

“We grow up with this myth that Israelis are, you know, just like us. They are Jews and we are Jews and we’re one big happy family. And then you get to Israel and you realize the Israelis are nothing like the American Jew. They speak their minds. They shout. They argue,” he said. “You’ll never be with an Israeli and wonder to yourself, ‘I wonder what she really thinks about me right now.’ I’m married to an Israeli for 21 years and I can honestly say that once in those 21 years has my Israeli wife apologized to me because, in the Middle East, apologies make you look weak and nobody wants to look weak. We had one huge fight where she actually apologized and it wasn’t even a real apology, it was an Israeli apology: she came up to me a few days later and said, ‘Yoeli, motek, I am sorry you’re such an idiot.’”

He also has plenty of material about growing up Jewish in America.

“My mom was actually one of these Jewish mothers who – let’s be honest – they have a special ability to worry about every situation,” he said. “You give them any scenario, they will figure out the potential thing that could hurt you in that scenario.”

For their annual family visit to Texas to see his paternal grandparents, Chasnoff’s mother would book the family on two separate flights so that, if a plane went down, the entire family wouldn’t be lost.

“That’s a typical Jewish upbringing,” he said.

When his zaidie gave him a jersey with the number of his favourite player and his own name, Joel, on the back, Chasnoff’s mother refused to let him wear it outside the house because a stranger would know his name.

“And, because he knew my name, I would think he knew me, so I would go with him,” he said. “You know why? Because I’m an idiot. That’s why there are no Jewish athletes. Not that we’re bad at sports, our mothers won’t let us wear the jersey.”

Readers will have another chance to hear Chasnoff speak this month. CHW Montreal is hosting a Zoom BBQ with the comedian on Father’s Day, June 21, at noon, Pacific time. Visit facebook.com/chwmontreal and click on Events for details. Funds raised benefit hospital workers at the Shamir Medical Centre and Hadassah Hospital in Israel.

Mystery photo … Feb. 28/20

Two unidentified people on the left with Gail and Michael James on the right holding a certificate at a Jewish National Fund event. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.12042)

If you know someone in these photos, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected] or 604-257-5199. To find out who has been identified in the photos, visit jewishmuseum.ca/blog.

Mystery photo … July 19/19

Lil Shapiro with three unidentified men, at a Jewish National Fund event, 1960. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.11896)

Friendly below the radar

At the JNF Negev Gala April 14, left to right: comedian Elon Gold, JNF Pacific Region president Bernice Carmeli, Ambassador Ron Prosor, JNF Pacific Region executive director Ilan Pilo and JNF Canada chief executive officer Lance Davis. (photo from JNF Pacifoc Region)

The diplomatic cold shoulder Israel has received from African, Asian and Arab countries has been thawing in recent years, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations says the situation is even more encouraging under the radar screen.

Ambassador Ron Prosor, who was the Jewish state’s representative at the world body from 2011 to 2015, spoke at the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s Negev Gala Sunday night.

The UN General Assembly is a den of hypocrisy, Prosor said, citing the presence of the most oppressive countries on committees dealing with human rights. The UN Human Rights Council has been dominated by states with the world’s worst human rights records. Moreover, the council, which is supposed to be concerned with human rights abuses all over the world, has a specific article that singles out only one country for routine, ritual denunciation.

“Surprise, surprise – Israel,” Prosor said. “The structural and institutional bias against Israel is unbelievable. There is stuff that I can’t even invent. The Saudis chairing the conference on the status of women. The Iranians … they’re deputy chairs on nonproliferation and arms control.

“What is amazing is not the bad guys,” he continued. “The bad guys are easy to explain. What is really difficult to explain is the so-called like-minded countries.”

European nations and some of the other democracies that make up a minority of the countries at the General Assembly routinely side with despotic regimes against Israel. In such a situation, small victories count heavily. Prosor took heart when countries opted to abstain from votes rather than side against Israel.

He shared an anecdote about Pablo, the ambassador of Panama, an apparent reference to Pablo Antonio Thalassinós.

“‘Pablo, are you with us on this vote? Are you going to vote for us?’” Prosor recounts asking. “‘No. How can I vote? The Arabs are threatening me. What do we do?’ I look at Pablo. He looks at me. I say, ‘Pablo, I feel you’re beginning to catch the flu.’” In the story, the Panamanian begins to cough.

Prosor shared stories of similar conversations with other ambassadors, convincing them to abstain or not show up for votes, and even making him their proxy vote in these latter instances.

While a great many votes relating to Israel are still deeply lopsided, he said, ambassadors like him have helped some others understand that abstaining is better than a no vote.

“The United States of America moves the embassy to Jerusalem. The Europeans take the Americans to the General Assembly,” Prosor said. “One hundred and thirty-nine countries vote against, 32 countries vote for and 21 countries have huge navigation problems finding the General Assembly. Huge navigation problems. Not coincidental.”

Behind the scenes, Israel is not the isolated pariah it appears, he contended.

“In essence, Israel talks with everyone,” Prosor told the audience at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. “The only ones we do not talk to, or I didn’t talk to, are the Syrian ambassador and the Iranian ambassador. We talk to countries that you guys would be amazed. First of all, most of the Arab countries, countries that we don’t have diplomatic ties with. As the Germans would say, we don’t have to kiss each other on the main road.”

For example, Prosor said, India’s relationship with Israel has grown very warm in recent years.

“The ambassador of India loves Israel,” he noted. “India votes against Israel in every committee and every subcommittee. When we hit the atomic reactor in Syria, the ambassador came to me, ‘Ron, amazing work. It’s good that you showed them.’ Then he goes over to the Security Council [and says], ‘We absolutely condemn Israel.…’ So, there is a difference between relations and voting patterns.”

Relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab world are changing dramatically, he said, due to shared concerns over the Shiite theocracy in Iran.

“I can tell you that what you see happening now in the Arab world, the Sunni world, is something that has been prepared for many years,” he said. “What you see now is not because the Sunni world – the Saudis and the others – really give a toss about the Palestinians. They fear that the rope is tightening around their necks because of Iran and they have decided they have coinciding interests with Israel. I don’t care why – this is an amazing opportunity for us to coordinate and cooperate.”

Prosor remains defiant despite the pillorying his country continues to receive at the world body.

“We have nothing to be ashamed of. They have [things] to be ashamed of,” he said of Israel’s critics. “Political structures, attitude toward women, gays … we have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Of the 193 countries at the UN, he noted, only 87 are democracies. Twenty-two are members of the Arab League, 56 are part of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and 126 countries are part of the so-called nonaligned group. By contrast, Israel is the only country at the UN that is not a part of any regional grouping. This means Israel cannot sit on any committees or subcommittee of the body.

In such a context, he said, humour and sarcasm go a long way. Elon Gold, a comedian who followed Prosor on the bimah Sunday, remarked that the ambassador was funnier than he was. Prosor shared stories of what seem like diplomatic pranks.

“There are six [official] languages at the United Nations,” he said. “One of them is Arabic. I had, on my team, Arab speakers. I decided to tell them that they have to speak and respond in the different committees in Arabic. Suddenly, someone presses the microphone and, in Arabic, bashes the Arabs. Arabs don’t know what’s happening. Europeans are surprised. They don’t know where it’s coming from.”

Overall, the ambassador said, things that are not clearly visible bode well for the future.

“Under the radar screen, there is huge support for Israel,” he said. But, he warned of evolving tactics by Israel’s enemies to weaken it.

“The battle that we are in may be the toughest battle that we’ve been in since the beginning of the state of Israel,” he said. “They tried to take us out with military means and that didn’t work out. They tried economic boycotts. Today, they are trying to put a wedge between Israel and the Jewish communities abroad, going after the mutual values that we all respect, that we all live with. It’s lies, half-truths, Chinese torture – drop, drop, drop – and we have to be out there and call it and fight it and not look away. We have to confront it and work together.

“Inside the United Nations, I saw flags of 193 countries,” he concluded. “I saw 15 flags with a crescent on them, 25 flags with a cross on them but only one flag with the Magen David, and we should all work, every day, to make sure that this flag flies strong, high and proud in the family of nations where it belongs.”

photo - Funds from the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s Negev Gala will support an animal-assisted therapy centre in the city of Sderot — Funds from the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s Negev Gala will support an animal-assisted therapy centre in the city of Sderot. *(photo from hanof.kkl.org.il)*

In addition to comedian Gold (see story, jewishindependent.ca/jnf-gala-features-comic-gold), the evening featured a few speakers, including Sanford Cohen paying tribute to the philanthropic work of honourary event chairs Bob Markin and Ralph Markin at a gala dinner before the main program, and JNF Pacific Region president Bernice Carmeli offering remarks at the dinner and during the program. Schara Tzedeck’s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt spoke about humour in Jewish theology. Actor and writer Josh Epstein emceed. Shannon Gorski chaired the event and Shirley Hirsch was convenor. Ilan Pilo, Jerusalem emissary and executive director of JNF Pacific Region, recognized past president David Goldman.

Funds from the event will support an animal-assisted therapy centre in the city of Sderot, where children and adults live with post-traumatic stress disorder due to years of rocket and mortar attacks from nearby Gaza. The project was described to the audience by Lance Davis, chief executive director of Jewish National Fund of Canada.

JNF gala features comic Gold

Elon Gold performs in Vancouver on April 14 at the JNF Negev Gala. (photo from elongold.com)

Comedian Elon Gold loves doing charity events, especially Jewish ones. The Independent caught him for a phone interview as he was on the road – with his family – to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to do gigs for the Adelson Education Campus and then the Israeli-American Coalition. On April 14, he will be in Vancouver to co-headline, with Ambassador Ron Prosor, the Jewish National Fund, Pacific Region, Negev Gala. The event raises funds for Sderot Animal-Assisted Therapy Centre.

“I feel like I’m doing a mitzvah by making my people laugh. And I’m also helping this cause that’s really important, and Israel is really important to me,” said Gold. “And we’re living in a highly antisemitic time, it’s dark out there, so anything I can do to bring light into our world and make my fellow Jew happy, I’m there for it.”

Gold’s resumé is impressive. He starred in the television series Stacked and In-Laws, had a recurring role on Bones and on The Dana Carvey Show. He guest starred just recently on HBO’s Crashing and, longer ago, on shows including Frasier and The Mentalist. He has appeared in films, his one-hour Netflix special, Elon Gold: Chosen and Taken, is available on Amazon and his show Elon Gold: Pro-Semite premièred at the Montreal Comedy Festival. He has made multiple appearances on The Tonight Show and his July 2018 segment on The Late Late Show With James Corden – how, like everyone else, Jews love sex, money and food, but just in a different order – has been watched and shared by countless people on the internet, as has his routine on why Jews shouldn’t have Christmas trees and so many others.

Despite all of his accomplishments and his years in the business, Gold still gets excited about his work, and he shared what he described as a “wow” moment, one of the best days of his life, almost immediately when talking with the JI.

“Yesterday,” he said, “I was filming a scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David…. It was really, truly a dream come true.”

But Gold didn’t take his being hired by David as a sign that he had “made it.”

“The truth is, I have been a guy with lucky breaks and hard breaks for the last 20 years,” said Gold. “This is another achievement, and one that’s beyond anything I would dream of…. I’m gratified in the sense that I finally feel like I’m in a place, not where I’ve made it, but where I actually have fans, and my clips are viral and people are sharing my bits on Facebook, WhatsApp or whatever. I did the James Corden show and, again, that doesn’t mean I’ve arrived … but what’s cool to me is that I did that set and then everyone’s sharing it, especially Jews. My biggest fans are my people.”

It’s been a 25-year journey, said Gold of his career, “with all sorts of great highs, like yesterday, and huge lows, like having a sitcom that you pitched and created and started get canceled. There are so many lows, and then there is the daily rejection that is show business. And that’s why I’m so glad I’m a comedian and an actor. I get rejected all day in Hollywood at auditions, but then, at night, I’ll go to the Laugh Factory comedy club and I’ll have 300 people roaring, and that will validate [me] – I knew they were wrong! I knew I could do this. See, I’m funny. These people think so, at least.”

Gold said his resilience, his ability to keep trying, likely comes from stand-up. “Because stand-up is all about bombing and killing, and the killing is so worth it that even the terrible, dejected feeling of bombing [is manageable].”

As far as his career, he said, “I have no other choice. I don’t love doing anything else and I’m not good at anything else.”

Known for his impressions, he said, “I used to impersonate my teachers in eighth grade.” His goal wasn’t to ridicule people, he said, but to make even the teachers laugh.

He enjoyed making people laugh, and writing comedy. One of the first things he wrote, he said, was a Purim shpiel. “And I’ll never forget the feeling of having the entire high school laughing, and thinking, there has never been anything more gratifying than what I just did, I want to do this more. Everybody says it’s like a drug…. It’s so addictive. Once you get a taste of it, that’s it, you’re hooked. And very little can discourage a comedian [so much that they get] out of comedy; certainly not a bad set, because we all know that we all have them.”

A combination of things drives him.

“It’s probably disingenuous to say that I do this because I love to make others laugh,” he admitted. There is a selfish aspect to it, he said. While making people happy is a “key component” of why he does comedy, he said, “I also love everything about it… I love the process of having an observation and then writing it and tinkering with it and working on it. I love doing it and I love the fact that I have so much freedom in my days because I don’t have that nine-to-five job most people have…. I’m always working. At the same time, I’m always on vacation.”

Gold loves getting the laughs, and said that’s probably 70% of the reason he does comedy; the other 30% is making people happy.

“There is so much misery in the world,” he said, “to make people happy is a great thing, but it’s only a part of it.”

On the acting side, Gold said his favourite kind of acting is for sitcoms “with a live studio audience because you’re still getting the laugh but now you’re not looking at the audience and talking to them, you’re looking at your fellow actor … and, peripherally, you hear and see these people cracking up.”

Ultimately, he said, “I just love performing.”

The only “grueling part,” he said, is the memorizing “and the pressure of 200 people staring at you, saying, ‘You better know your lines, pal, because we’re all here and we all want to go home…. Acting is challenging, but it’s also just fun…. It’s fun to get into a character and just play.”

Gold, who is from the Bronx originally, recalled his first open-mic night at the Comic Strip Live in Manhattan; he was 16 years old. “Fortunately, I had beginner’s luck because I was doing impressions – my early act was all impressions – and impressions are like magic tricks, they just wow the audience.”

Despite being a touring comedian by university (he got a bachelor’s in economics at Boston U), it took years, he said, to develop his own voice, to figure out what he wanted to talk about and how to talk about it.

“I’m obsessed with Jewish stuff because I live such a Jewish life,” he said. “I’m an observant Jew, I keep Shabbos and all that stuff, keep kosher. So much of my life is in the Jewish world, I can’t help myself but to come up with observations about our traditions, our holidays, our rituals. A lot of what I talk about is what I live…. The other part of my life is being married, being a dad, so I talk about that.”

Gold and his wife, Sasha, have four kids, two sons and two daughters, ranging in age from 9 to 18. The couple is coming up to their 25th anniversary in June.

As he stopped to fill up his car with gas on the way to Vegas, he told the JI about why he likes performing at Jewish events, while simultaneously directing his kids to be quick about heading into the gas station, as they were running late.

“There are not a lot of comedians out there that will go that deep into the Jewish experience and, for me, there are not a lot of audiences I can share my Jewish experiences with,” he said. “I can’t do lulav and etrog jokes on James Corden…. At the same time, we’re raising money, we’re raising awareness for incredible organizations…. It’s all win-win for me – I’m raising money, I’m making money, I’m getting laughs, I’m getting to do material I don’t do anywhere else…. And I love Jewish audiences; I love connecting on more than just a human level…. We’re connecting about a shared experience that is almost indescribable to anyone else.”

For tickets to the JNF Pacific Region evening event on April 14, which will be held at Schara Tzedeck, call 604-257-5155.

JNF Canada explains position

On behalf of JNF Canada (JNF), I wish to respond to allegations made by Independent Jewish Voices Canada, longstanding opponents of JNF Canada, as well as the opinion piece you published [“Tax troubles start year,” Jewish Independent, Jan. 11].

With regard to the substantive issues that have been raised about our projects in Israel we wish to reiterate our position.

• JNF has in the past carried out projects mainly of a charitable nature, such as parks, playgrounds and recreational facilities on land owned by the Israel Defence Forces. Our charitable funds never flowed to the IDF. The charitable funds were directed toward the hiring of indigent labourers to construct these projects. These expenditures represent under one percent of our expenditures over the past decade.

In your coverage, you suggest that we took action based upon an alert from the CRA. This, in fact, is not the case. Rather, it was our legal counsel who advised us several years ago that the indirect association with the IDF may be misconstrued or criticized by the CRA, so we ended our participation at that time. We have not for several years carried out projects located on IDF land, and we continue to operate in accordance with CRA regulations governing our status as a charitable organization. We stopped these projects on the advice of counsel well before this issue was brought to the public’s attention by a group trying to sensationalize it.

• With regard to projects located in disputed territory, JNF is committed to continuing to work with CRA to ensure we are in full compliance.

• Finally, in terms of governance and reporting, JNF operates in compliance with the Canada Income Tax Act. We have Israeli staff on site to direct our projects in Israel and regularly report on our activities.

Thank you for highlighting our work and for acknowledging that “Israel is Israel, is large part, thanks to JNF.” We take pride in having supported the building of water reservoirs, collaborated with dozens of educational institutions, built numerous recreational/educational facilities, planted millions of trees and supported pioneering research in green technology. Key projects for this year include supporting a trauma centre in Sderot, a project to feed Israel’s hungry, the rehabilitation of the Be’eri and Kissufim forests, and more.

JNF’s management and lay leadership are committed to improving our operations. For the past number of years, we have been making changes to strengthen our governance and controls. What will not change, however, is our commitment to helping build the foundations of Israel’s future. We will always stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel to benefit the social service and environmental fabric of the state of Israel.

Lance Davis is chief executive officer of Jewish National Fund Canada.

NDPer sponsors anti-JNF bid

Ayalon Canada Park in the Ayalon Valley is one of the projects JNF supports. (photo by Guy Asiag, KKL-JNF photo archive)

A member of Parliament has agreed to sponsor an e-petition that calls on the government to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF).

This is the first time an MP has lent support to an effort to rescind JNF’s tax-exempt charitable status in Canada and marks the latest development in a long-running battle by those opposed to the JNF’s charitable status.

Quebec NDP MP and national revenue critic Pierre-Luc Dusseault has agreed to sponsor petition E-1999, which, as of this writing [Jan. 21], had garnered more than 1,400 signatures. It went online on Jan. 9 and will close for signatures on May 9.

E-petitions are an official system whereby petitions that are sponsored by an MP and receive 500 signatures will be tabled in the House of Commons. The government must then respond within 45 days.

It was submitted by Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV), which is considered an outlier within the Jewish community, due to its support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

On its website, IJV calls itself “a grassroots organization grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism and advocates for justice and peace for all in Israel-Palestine.”

The JNF was recently the subject of a scathing story by the CBC, which reported that the charity was under a Canada Revenue Agency audit for using charitable donations to build infrastructure for the Israel Defence Forces, “in violation of Canada’s tax rules.”

The JNF responded by saying that it stopped funding projects on Israeli military bases in 2016 and that the projects only “indirectly” involved the IDF, because they were for children and youth on land owned by the IDF.

In a subsequent interview with the CJN, JNF Canada’s chief executive officer, Lance Davis, said the charity is working with the CRA on its review and issued staunch defences of JNF’s financial transparency and donor accountability.

The e-petition, which is addressed to the minister of national revenue, says JNF Canada “engages in discriminatory practices, as its landholdings are chartered for exclusively Jewish ownership, lease and benefit, as noted by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, a former attorney general of Israel and the JNF itself.”

It says evidence “strongly indicates” that JNF Canada violates the Income Tax Act, common law and Canada Revenue Agency policy over its IDF-related projects.

As well, it claims the charity violates Canadian and international law “by enabling physical changes within occupied territory, thereby helping Israel effectively annex land within occupied territory, and, in the case of east Jerusalem, deepen control over land already annexed illegally.”

“Notably,” it adds, “the JNF Canada-funded Canada Park was built on the lands of three Palestinian villages destroyed following the 1967 war in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

It also accuses JNF Canada materials of depicting “occupied territory as part of Israel, a representation that runs contrary to Canadian foreign policy and international law.”

It calls on the minister of national revenue to revoke JNF’s charitable status, if the charity is found to violate the Income Tax Act, or CRA guidelines and policies.

It was initiated by Rabbi David Mivasair, a longtime IJV activist now based in Hamilton, Ont. He called the e-petition “part of an ongoing process” to hold public officials accountable.

“It’s incontrovertibly factual that JNF Canada is in violation of Canada’s tax laws,” Mivasair claimed. “It has been for decades. It’s been reported for decades.”

This latest campaign “is not something that I take any pleasure in doing, but feel is morally necessary to be done,” he added.

According to guidelines for MPs, no debate is permitted when a member presents a petition. An MP “may make a brief factual statement (referring to the petition being duly certified, to its source, to the subject matter of the petition and its request, and to the number of signatures it carries), but members are not allowed to read petitions nor are they to indicate their agreement or disagreement with them.”

In 2017, IJV submitted an 85-page complaint about JNF Canada to the CRA and the national revenue minister. That followed many other campaigns designed to pressure federal officials.

This is the first time IJV has submitted a parliamentary petition and it’s “just one way of drawing public attention to this,” said the group’s national coordinator, Corey Balsam. “We’re assuming [officials] will look into it and not much more than that. [But] it’s definitely a big step for our campaign.”

He said Dusseault is “not someone who’s very engaged [in the issue], but he heard the concerns and saw the evidence.”

Dusseault did not reply to the CJN’s requests for comment.

In a statement posted to its website, JNF called the e-petition “as empty and scurrilous as earlier efforts to delegitimize the outstanding work of the JNF and, by extension, the existence of the state of Israel.”

JNF said its outreach suggests “that those who are applying any degree of critical thinking see the petition for what it is and are dismissing it as not worthy of engagement.”

For Jewish National Fund of Canada’s response to the Jan. 11 Jewish Independent editorial, click here.

Tax troubles start year

In a perfect world, no country would need a military. Countries and people would live in peace; the kingdom of heaven, as promised by almost every religion, at last realized.

As ideal as that wish might be for the first editorial of a new secular year, it remains true that countries need militaries. Places like Canada, which have not been forced to wage war on home turf in 205 years, nevertheless maintain a military, with our soldiers serving various roles around the globe.

In Israel, on the other hand, the military is the one thing standing between the country’s citizens and oblivion. Like the militaries of every country, the Israel Defence Forces protects the country’s borders and citizens from external and internal threats. More controversially, as a result of Israel’s complicated history, the IDF also controls parts of the West Bank under a military rule that is the cause of much international criticism.

Some of this criticism comes from Canada, including from a Palestinian-Canadian, Ismail Zayid, who has been complaining for years to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) over his assertions that the Jewish National Fund of Canada has been in contravention of Canadian tax law for providing material support to the IDF.

Well, it’s more than assertions, actually. In stories splashed across Canadian media last weekend, there is plenty of evidence that JNF Canada was, until 2016, openly fundraising for projects that support infrastructure projects on Israeli army, air and naval bases. These include a “new planned IDF Training Base City in the Negev,” “helping the development of the Bat Galim training base complex area” and new mess hall-type facilities at two air bases. Funds raised at Edmonton’s Negev Dinner in 2014 were explicitly and openly allocated to developing parts of the largest military training facility in Israel.

In October 2017, according to the CBC, Zayid filed another complaint to CRA “in concert with an Ottawa professor, a Vancouver rabbi and a retired nurse.” The complaint is that JNF was ignoring rules that forbid Canadian charities from issuing tax receipts for contributions that go toward foreign militaries. CRA would not confirm details of the investigation to the CBC and JNF said only that they are engaged in confidential negotiations with CRA.

There is nothing stopping any Canadian from sending a cheque to Israel’s Ministry of Defence, news reports noted, but rules forbid doing so via a charity that provides tax receipts for it. This is admirable policy. Even if some Canadians would be perfectly happy seeing our tax policy support the IDF, would we be as pleased to see tax receipts issued for funds directed to the militaries of other countries with whom we don’t have as good a relationship?

Whatever one thinks about the morality of the IDF or its presence in the West Bank, the JNF appears to have made a naive or foolish mistake – not once but apparently about a dozen times. The head of JNF Canada said they stopped funding IDF projects after CRA alerted them to the issue in 2016. But how could an organization of this calibre have done so for so long, especially when it knew there were a series of complaints being lodged regularly around this very topic?

Since 1948, countless Jewish Canadians have supported Israel, including its military, in myriad ways. For four generations, young Jewish Canadians have enlisted, even in times of war, to serve in the IDF. Canadians of all ages have volunteered in the various roles the IDF offers to overseas friends of Israel. Most Jewish Canadians recognize the life-and-death necessity of a strong Israel, supported by a strong IDF.

The Jewish National Fund is the reason Israel is the only country on the planet that ended the 20th century with more trees than when the century started. Beyond reforestation, the number of extraordinary initiatives JNF carries out all over Israel makes it an integral part of the Zionist project. Israel is Israel, in large part, thanks to JNF.

Because of JNF’s critical importance, Canadian supporters must be confident that our support is going to an organization that is transparent and scrupulously adhering to relevant regulations. To ensure that the irreplaceable work the JNF does in Israel does not waver, JNF Canada must ensure that Canadians trust the decisions and leadership of the national organization.