On July 10, at Givat Olga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, centre-left, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sample water that has just been purified to the World Health Organization standard in the Galmobile. In February 2015, Gal Water Technologies Co., from nearby Caesarea, launched the mobile water purification system. The small vehicle, the first of its kind in the world, weighs 1,540 kilograms, operates on a 12-volt electric supply and can be set up in less than half an hour. It can connect to almost any water source. (photos from Ashernet)
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החלטות ממשלת ישראל פוגעות
הכותל (צילום: Golasso)
יו”ר מועצת המנהלים של הג’ואיש פדריישן: “החלטות ממשלת ישראל פוגעות במרקם היחסים המיוחד בין הקהילות בקנדה לישראל”
“ההחלטות האחרונות שהתקבלו על ידי ממשלת ישראל פוגעות מאוד מרקם יחסים המיוחד שקיים בין הקהילות בקנדה לישראל”. דברים חמורים אלה נאמרים על ידי יו”ר מועצת המנהלים של הג’ואיש פדריישן של מטרו ונקובר, קרן ג’יימס. זאת, בתגובת להחלטות הממשלה על הקפאת מתווה הכותל שהיה אמור לאפשר להכשיר את החלקה הדרומית, שם יהיה ניתן לקיים תפילה שוויונית. וההחלטה בנושא חוק הגיור שקובע כי כל הגיורים יהיו רק במסגרת הרבות הראשית בישראל, וכן תהיה בחינה של כל הגיורים שכבר קיימים. משמעות הדבר שיהודים שמשתכיים לזרמים שונים ביהדות דבר שמאפיין את הרוב הגדול של יהדות התפוצה, יהדותם לא תהיה מוכרת על ידי ישראל. אם כן גל המחאות הקשות נגד החלטת הממשלה שהתחיל בקרב יהודי ארה”ב מתפשט גם לקנדה. יש לזכור שבקנדה יש כיום את הקהילת היהודים השלישית בגודלה בעולם, מחוץ לישראל.
ג’יימס (ילידת 1952) כיום היא אשת עסקים שגרה בוונקובר, ועבר נמנתה על נבחרת השחייה של קנדה לאולימפיאדת מינכן שערכה ב-1972, בה נרצחו תשעה ספורטאים ושני מאמנים של נבחרת ישראל על ידי טרוריסטים.
ג’יימס ביקרה בחודש שעבר בישראל כולל אצבע הגליל, במסגרת השותפות של שש קהילות יהודיות בקנדה (מוונקובר, אוטווה, קלגרי, אדמונטון, וויניפג והליפקס) עם האזור שבצפון. השותפות בין הקהילות לאצבע הגליל כוללת קצאת מיליוני שקלים לטובת מערכות החינוך והרפואה באזור, וכן פעילויות משותפות עם אחד עשר בתי ספר באזור, משלחות נוער ותורמים רבים. ג’יימס מזכירה שהקהילה היהודית בוונקובר מקיימת מערכת יחסים מיוחדת עם אצבע הגליל לאורך עשרים השנים האחרונות, שכוללת השקעות כספיות גדולות, על מנת לשפר את איכות החיים של התושבים המקומיים. “במהלך שנים אלו נבנה גשר חי בין שתי הקהילות, שכולל חברויות רבות של בני משפחה אחת גדולה, של עם אחד”.
ג’יימס מוסיפה: “כל זה עומד בניגוד מוחלט להחלטות ממשלת ישראל בנושא מרחב תפילה שיווני בכותל ובנושא חוק הגיור, שמעניק לרבנות שליטה על הגדרת מי הוא יהודי. ובכך מעמיד את הסטטוס של אלפי יהודים בסימן שאלה”. היא מדגישה כי החלטות הממשלה בסוגיות חשובות אלה פוגעות במשמעות התפיסה של מה זה להיות עם אחד, והממשלה שולחת מסר לרוב היהודים בצפון אמריקה כי היא איננה מכירה ביהדותם. “זה מעמיד את המשך תמיכתם של יהודי התפוצות בישראל במצב של סיכון משמעותי. ולכן המצב כרגע הוא חמור ביותר”.
לדברי ג’יימס היא משתייכת לאחד מבתי הכנסת הגדולים ביותר של ונקובר, בו גברים ונשים יושבים ומתפללים ביחד. וכן נשים חובשות כיפה וטלית אם כך הן חפצות. לא מעט גברים ונשים מבית כנסת זה עשו עלייה לישראל. סגנון תפילה זה המשותף לגברים ונשים הוא הנורמה המקובלת עבור מרבית היהודים החיים בצפון אמריקה. ג’יימס מסיימת בדברים אלה: “אני מאמינה כי הזהות המשותפת של כולנו כעם יהודי אחד, ללא קשר לזרם היהדות אליו כל אחד מאתנו בוחר להשתייך, גדולה ומשמעותית לגשר על כל שוני באשר הוא”.
יצויין כי הקונסולית הכללית של ישראל בקנדה, גלי ברעם, שלחה מברק למשרד החוץ בישראל כי קיבלה מסרים חריפים מבכירים בקהילות היהודיות בטורונטו וונקובר, שמזהירים כי שתי החלטות הממשלה יחמירו את הניכור כלפי ישראל, בקרב הדור הצעיר של יהודי קנדה. לדבריה אחד הרבנים בקנדה אמר לה כי סטודנטים יהודים אומרים שמה שישראל עושה זו אנטישמיות”.
Bittergirl is seriously funny
In Bittergirl, Cailin Stadnyk, Katrina Reynolds and Lauren Bowler play women who have just been dumped by their boyfriends – maybe they can get back their men if they lose some weight? (photo by Emily Cooper)
Have you ever taken part in an aerobics class and wondered how many of the women in it were trying to lose weight to get a boyfriend back? The sad truth is, there are probably many, eagerly trying anything to return to the way things were, even if the way things were wasn’t all that great.
Bittergirl: The Musical takes aim at countless breakup truisms from the perspectives of three different women, reminiscent of the sharp wit in Mom’s the Word and the relationship charades of Sex in the City. Their varied responses to being dumped are hilariously insightful.
The progress of the play loosely follows the five stages of death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The stages of the breakups are denial (he made a mistake), second-guessing (I could have done something differently), manipulation (I’m going to make him love me), reflection (I should have seen the warning signs) and acceptance (I’m over him, I’ve moved on).
The three women – played by Lauren Bowler, Katrina Reynolds and Cailin Stadnyk – are known only as A, B and C, as though these trials and tribulations are those that belong to every woman, not a specific person. Jewish community member Josh Epstein plays D, all three of the dumpers – the husband who wants to join the RCMP, the live-in partner who just “has to go” and the boyfriend who’s lost his “magic.”
Epstein delivers the stereotypical reasons why he needs to get out of each relationship: “I feel trapped,” “I can’t give you what you want” and the ridiculous “We’ve got to be birds flying higher.”
The lame rationales elicit howls of laughter at the familiarity, especially when one of the women initially thinks that the “talk” her boyfriend wants to have will lead to a proposal.
Not surprisingly, the women stand there, stunned into silence, not demanding further explanation, but meekly mumbling things like, “I understand,” even though they don’t – another conventional reaction it is sadly not surprising to see depicted.
After their men leave, the women think about what they might have done differently to save their relationships – “Maybe if I wore plum eyeshadow,” “Maybe if I didn’t talk to my mother so much” and “Maybe if I worked out more.” This last statement segues into an hysterical scene of the three women working out with various gizmos and in different types of classes in a desperate bid to get in shape and win back their men.
The women also reflect on the warnings signs they missed. He wears socks with sandals. He cries at Celine Dion songs. He growls during sex.
Especially comical is a scene where the women run into friends and they are forced to admit they were dumped. The standard, “You’re better off without him” or “If you guys couldn’t make it work, what chance do the rest of us have?” hit the mark on how insensitive people can be, much to the enjoyment of the audience. The rapid-fire delivery of the lines, the women playing off each other brilliantly, is a sight to see and hear.
As the musical progresses, classic girl-group songs of the 1960s and ’70s complement the dialogue. Thinking about their first dates leads into “And Then He Kissed Me.” The initial breakups prompt a rendition of “Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This.” When the women hope they’ll have a chance to renew the relationship, they sing “When Will I See You Again?” And who hasn’t felt the difficulty of moving on because there’s “Always Something There to Remind Me”?
The strength of the play is in how the writing spotlights those moments we all know so well and that sound so absurd when depicted one after the other. Being reminded of one’s own failed relationships, watching the play is like watching a good comedian – often funny and, despite being cringeworthy at times, you want to stay to the finale.
As with the different stages of death, the women finally accept their situations and move on with their lives, singing such lyrics as “you don’t really love me; you just keep me hanging on,” there are “too many fish in the sea” and “I will survive.”
Bittergirl is actually an autobiographical play written by three Toronto actresses who had, indeed, just gotten dumped by a husband, live-in boyfriend and short-term partner. The positive reaction to the play led to the 2005 book Bittergirl: Getting Over Getting Dumped. After that, the writers added the songs, accompanied by an all-female band onstage, and the musical was born.
Besides the sharp, insightful writing, these women (and Epstein) can all belt out a tune, making the performance a hit from the beginning to the (not so) bitter end.
Bittergirl runs at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until July 29. For tickets and more information, visit artsclub.com.
Baila Lazarus is Vancouver-based writer and principal media strategist at phase2coaching.com.
Marketing of technology
Yonatan Avraham, student ambassador of HUstart, left, and Tamir Huberman of Yissum are two of the four speakers who will be participating in Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech on July 16. (photos from CFHU Vancouver)
“I have always loved the thrill you feel while creating your own project, seeing it grow and being responsible for the outcomes – and the satisfaction you feel while convincing a stranger to give his or her resources (time or money) for your product,” said Yonatan Avraham, student ambassador of HUstart, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s entrepreneurship centre, about what excites him about being an innovator and entrepreneur.
Avraham is one of four speakers who will participate in Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech, which will take place on July 16 at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. The event is being hosted by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, the Jerusalem Foundation and JCCGV. Avraham will be joined by Lior Schillat of Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research; Maya Halevy of Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem; and Tamir Huberman of Yissum, HU’s technology transfer company. The Jewish Independent’s interviews with Schillat and Halevy appeared in last week’s issue (see jewishindependent.ca/jerusalem-a-high-tech-hub).
“All of the speakers are coming from Israel especially for this tour in Western Canada. We will be in Vancouver on July 16, Calgary on July 17 and Edmonton on July 18,” said Dina Wachtel, Western region executive director of CFHU, of the tour, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem.
“Tamir is going to give a talk on Friday, July 14, at Simon Fraser University titled The Power of Social Networks: Boosting the Marketing of Innovations, organized by Fred Popowich, executive director of Big Data Initiative at Simon Fraser University,” she said. “Part of our mandate is to create these living bridges between Hebrew U and our local universities; hence, this is part of this initiative.”
Huberman is Yissum’s vice-president of business development and director of information technology. At the JCCGV, he will talk on Marketing Innovation: Changing Israel and the World.
In the press material, Huberman notes, “As the only university in Israel with a school of agriculture, research in non-GMO hybrid seeds at Hebrew U is changing the way millions of people eat now and into the future.” He also notes that Mobileye, which recently sold to Intel for $15.3 billion US, was founded by HU Prof. Amnon Shashua.
Yissum “operates on a royalty-based model which channels proceeds from successful products back to the researchers, their labs and the university itself,” he explains. It also generates funds “by attracting corporations to collaborate with Hebrew University labs to find the answers the businesses are seeking.”
About what B.C. (and other) universities could learn from HU, Huberman told the Independent, “I believe that the top lessons are how to be more effective and how to remove barriers for doing business. In most cases, tech transfer companies around the world are [viewed] as a bureaucratic entity that complicates things. The greatest lesson is making adaptations that would make things simpler for the companies that want to do business with us…. The second lesson is the realization that, for each new technology, there either has to be someone in the world that would be interested in acquiring a licence, or someone in the world that knows the technology does not have a chance. It is the ‘job’ of the tech transfer to find that ‘someone’ and, from my experience, the best way to do that is by using social networks. The revolution of social media allows getting fast replies from people all around the world, even if you’ve never met them.”
Huberman has always loved innovation and, he said, “it was a big dream of mine to be an inventor and work with new inventions.”
While working for the company Medis from 1996 to 2002, he was exposed to the world of patents and the process of writing patents as an inventor. “After my own experience as an inventor,” he said, “I knew I had to find a place that works with new patents at a massive scale.”
It was his “strong passion for new patents and ideas that was the top reason for joining Yissum,” he said. “Second was the opportunity to work with some of the most brilliant researchers in their fields. Third was my realization that there was something missing at the time before I joined Yissum, which had to do with the very low use of the internet in order to expose the technologies from the universities to the world.
“Before I arrived at Yissum, I made a simple search using freely available patent databases and saw that only a small fraction of the patents I found [were] on the tech transfer websites. When I realized this, I had a vision of changing how tech transfer companies worked…. My dream materialized when I created the first portal for all the technologies at Yissum and later created the ITTN website (Israel Technology Transfer Organization). ITTN was the first website in Israel that allowed all of the inventions from academic institutions in Israel to be found in one central portal.”
He added, “I believe that there is a lot that can be done to make a better and faster connection between companies seeking talent or innovation to the offerings of universities…. [B]uilding a portal that connects more universities in Israel and the world could help make that matching much more efficient.
“Another realization is that tech transfer companies traditionally showcase technologies and I believe that this is not the best approach…. [T]he portals should focus on the researchers and their capabilities, rather than just the patents that a small portion of them invented. We have multiple examples of companies that were interested in researchers that we did not even know [because] they never had any patents.”
One of the jobs of HUstart – of which Yissum is part, along with HU’s science faculty and business school – is to provide “practical education, support, mentorships and connections needed” for students and others “to become effective entrepreneurs.”
Avraham is a third-year physics student at Hebrew U and is in the first cohort of the new Physics and Entrepreneurship program, which connected him – during his second year of study – with his business partners. Avraham and fellow students Michael Levinson and Tom Zelanzy co-founded the start-up Gamitee, which “links social media and shopping websites, making it possible for friends to easily invite others to join them in a shopping experience.”
Avraham has other ideas, such as one for an “infant sleeper that monitors a baby’s vital signs, a technology that could potentially prevent SIDS.” And he and his wife – who is an archeologist – also run a tutoring business. In Vancouver, he will speak on The Making of a Serial Entrepreneur.
“I think they have a lot of similarities,” he said about physics and building a tech start-up. “In both, you need to solve complex questions and problems that are comprised of several independent factors. Both of them are professions that people rarely choose. And they are both very, very hard to understand. I think my physics background [increased] my range of abilities needed [to be] an entrepreneur.”
Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech is open to the public. Tickets are $45, though students who register at the CFHU office can receive a free ticket. For tickets and the speakers’ bios, visit cfhu.org, email [email protected] or call 604-257-5133.
An out-of-hand hobby
Si Kahn plays at the folk festival, which runs July 13-16. (photo from sikahn.com)
While Charlotte, N.C.-based folk musician Si Kahn – who’s coming to play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next week – may have called the United States home for most of his 73 years, he spent about 12 of his first 16 months of life in Canada. His father, Rabbi Benjamin Kahn, was sent to Montreal by B’nai B’rith in 1944 to help set up the Hillel Foundation at McGill University, which he did for just over a year before being called back to Pennsylvania State University.
“I like to say that I don’t have a single negative memory of my time in Montreal,” said Kahn, whose father eventually became the international director of B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation (1959-1971).
And Kahn’s Canada cred goes back further.
“After my paternal grandfather, Gabriel Kahn, deserted the czar’s army and walked across Europe, he was a pick-and-shovel labourer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, helping build the ‘northern spur’ through the [Canadian] Shield towards Timmins,” Kahn told the Independent. “He was also a hod carrier in Winnipeg, helping build the Royal Alexandra Hotel, carrying 100 pounds of bricks or mortar up 10 or more storeys on his shoulders.”
Kahn tells his grandfather’s story – and that of many other members of his family – in the musical Hope. The song “Crossing the Border” highlights the border-crossings of his grandfather’s journey from Russia: “He got passage to Nova Scotia / Got married in Manitoba … Then he moved down south of the border / By the mills on the Merrimack River / He pumped gas and kept store for a living / Raised up his daughter and sons.”
Gabriel and his wife, Celia, settled in Lowell, Mass., said Kahn, who wrote about his Jewish roots and their influence on his music in an article called “The Chords that Bind.”
“When I was growing up … our family sang together,” he writes. “On the Sabbath and on holidays, we would stay at the dinner table long after the food and dishes had been cleared, and we would sing. Because musical instruments were not allowed on the Sabbath, we sang without instrumentation – but not without accompaniment.”
From his paternal grandfather, he learned “the fine points of creating a rhythm section, using only two basic variations (closed fist and open palm) of the basic hand-on-table technique.” From his parents, he and his sister, Jenette – whose career in the comic book industry included being president of DC Comics for more than 20 years – learned “the rudiments of high and low harmony, made up as you go along.”
The songs they sang were mostly prayers. “We sang a little bit in Yiddish, too, folk and story songs from the Old Country, which in this case meant almost any place in Europe,” he notes. And, despite his not understanding most of what he was singing, he did understand “what the songs really meant to us as Jews, as a family, as people in the world. They were our bond, our unity, our affirmation, our courage. They were our way of claiming our rhythmic and harmonic relation with each other and with our community. Our songs reinforced our solidarity, our sense that we could overcome the obstacles in our path.”
As for when his musical career began, Kahn told the Independent, “You might say I ‘turned professional’ in 1974. I had just turned 30 years old a few months before I recorded my first album, an LP titled New Wood, which was released in 1975 on June Appal Records.
“One of my first paid public performances was in 1979 … at the second-ever Vancouver Folk Music Festival. I’d led traditional labour and civil rights songs at rallies and demonstrations and on picket lines, but Vancouver was one of the first times I played my own original songs in public.
“While I do consider myself a professional musician, and while I’m a longtime member of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), music has always been a very part-time vocation for me. My lifetime identity and work since I was 21 years old has been as a civil rights, labour and community organizer.
“I once told a reporter that my music is ‘a hobby that got out of hand.’ That’s really an accurate description. I typically do no more than three festivals and a dozen concerts each year at most. Most of my appearances are benefits for progressive nonprofits,” he said, adding that he’d be performing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival house-party fundraiser on July 12.
Kahn heads to Orillia, Ont., for a July 7 performance at the Mariposa Folk Festival. From there, he’ll come to Vancouver for the folk festival, but also “to do some organizing work for Musicians United to Protect Bristol Bay.” It’s a cause he’s been helping on a volunteer basis since 2010 – the campaign’s goal is “to stop the Pebble Mine, and to protect permanently Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a cultural and environmental treasure, and one of the world’s last remaining great wild salmon fisheries.” He has donated all of the income from his 18th CD, called Bristol Bay, to the musicians’ group.
About combining music with activism, Kahn said, “The defining moment for me came when I was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta in the summer of 1965, when I was 21 years old, during the Southern Civil Rights Movement, which was very much a singing movement. That was when I first began to understand the usefulness of music in movements for social justice.”
Among Kahn’s many achievements in the social justice arena was being, in the early 1980s, an initial organizer and the founding national board chair for the Jewish Fund for Justice, the predecessor to Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He has written three books on community organizing.
“I see myself as an organizer, which I consider a specific type of activism, rather than as an activist,” he explained. “Organizers work to bring people together so that they can use the power of numbers to counter the power of money, authority and/or force.
“In any organizing campaign, in any campaign for justice, there will be competing sets of ‘facts.’ Whether our facts are more accurate/truthful than their facts isn’t nearly as important as whether, through organizing, we can build enough collective power to persuade those who have the ability to make the change, or changes, we’re asking for to meet our demands.”
On the topic of truth, Kahn said, “For me, there’s a difference between accuracy and truthfulness. Take, for example, the story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Is that story accurate in the literal sense? But it should be told and retold truthfully, meaning that it’s our responsibility to transmit the story as it was told to us, whether verbally or in written form.
“My question is whether, in the real world, it’s even possible to differentiate,” he said. “If someone believes something passionately, it’s more than likely that no amount of either ‘facts’ or ‘alternative facts’ is going to persuade them to change their mind.
“Minds are more likely to be changed by experience. One of an organizer’s roles is to help the people she/he is working with have experiences through which they achieve a sense of possibility, that the world might be different for them and for others like them.
“This is also one of the places where storytelling can be useful. Years ago, I was in an audience listening to former U.S. senator Paul Simon. I don’t recall the specifics but, at one point, he was challenged on his support for legislation concerned with disability rights. He could have answered with facts/statistics (or, for that matter, with ‘alternative facts’). Instead, he said, ‘Let me tell you about a young man I know,’ and proceeded from there.”
In the musical Hope, there is a song called “Dreamers,” the chorus of which calls for us to “honour the dreamers.”
“I consider myself a ‘practical radical,’ someone who helps people work towards what at least appear – based on careful analysis and strategic thinking – to be achievable goals,” said Kahn. “If that’s being a dreamer, dayenu.
“There are many things I’d like to see in this world we share that I just don’t see as possible. I may be wrong in that judgment. But, if I’m going to help people organize themselves in order to achieve a goal they share, I need to believe there’s at least one and hopefully several practical paths to achieving that goal.
“The ‘dreamers’ I honour are those who not only have a dream, but who do everything they can to make it real.”
For the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s 25th anniversary, Kahn wrote the song “For Canada,” which recalls the Underground Railway, the slaves making their dangerous way here: “When all hope was failing, think what strength it gave / To dream about a country that no longer held a slave….” A country to which, “… my own father’s father came with willing hands / To bend his back and lay the track across this wild land….”
And it was on his way home (by car) from his 1979 festival appearance that Kahn wrote “Plains of Canada,” the lyrics of which show his affection for the country – an affection that endures.
And so, too, does his love of singing and performing.
“Vancouver resident Josh Dunson, who was my agent for over 30 years until his retirement from the music business, once told me that what I bring to my musical performances is my many years’ experience as an organizer. That’s a very perceptive observation and a good description of what I try to do in the musical part of my life and work,” said Kahn. “When I’m planning a concert, when I’m on stage, I’m doing my best to help those who are listening feel that they’re not so much a passive audience but active participants. Sometimes this means singing along, sometimes it means thinking about what they’re hearing and applying it to their own lives and their own work. It’s that possibility that still excites me even after all these years.”
This year’s folk festival, once again at Jericho Beach, starts with a free concert the night of July 13, and then there are day and weekend passes that can be purchased for the performances July 14-16. For tickets and the full schedule, visit thefestival.bc.ca.
The two sides of surrogacy
Jennifer Clarke with three of her children. (photo from Jennifer Clarke)
By the time Cyrus and Pam Mizrahi met in the summer of 2015, Pam had already gone through menopause, yet they wanted to have kids. After getting married in December of that year, the couple decided to explore their options.
“We both wanted to have children and Pam was not in a condition to have babies, so it was adoption or a surrogating program,” said Cyrus.
They chose surrogacy, Cyrus explained, because with “surrogacy you have all sorts of options when it comes to having your own kids or children. Adoption is different. You take babies from another parent.”
The Mizrahis did some research and opted for an agency in their home city of Boston, called Circle Surrogacy, an established firm that connected them with a surrogate from the City of Surprise, Ariz. Though they would have loved to have found a Jewish surrogate, none was available at the time. They consulted their rabbi.
“We contacted the rabbi who officiated our wedding,” said Cyrus. “He approved it and said it was a great idea. He said that what is more important is how we bring up our babies – providing Jewish education and raising them Jewish, if we want them to maintain a Jewish identity. It’s certainly important, of high importance, to us.”
The next step was working with the laboratory to produce the embryos. The Mizrahis wanted a boy and a girl. Luckily, both embryos took, and the twins were born on May 17, 2016.
“The first thing we did when the babies were born was we had the bris for the boy, of course,” said Cyrus. “I’ve taken them to shul a number of times and I’ll continue doing that. We have a kosher kitchen at home. We’re not Orthodox, but we observe to some degree. We’re hoping to send them to Jewish school and provide them with a Hebrew education.”
He said, “We named them after my parents’ Hebrew names. Our son is named Sol for Solomon (but only Sol) and our daughter is named Alexa. Sol is after my father – we have the tradition that we can name him after someone who is alive – and his middle name is Michael, named after my wife’s uncle. Alexa is a Hebrew name, named after my mom.” (It is an Ashkenazi custom to not name a child after a living person.)
The connection with the surrogate was very positive and strong. She has come to visit the twins and new parents three times within the past year.
“She lives far away, but she comes from time to time to visit us,” said Cyrus. “We’re always welcoming and it’s fine with us. We want to keep her as a friend in the family.”
With Cyrus having many relatives in Israel, he is anxious to take his kids for a visit there – and he and Pam are planning to do so when the twins turn 4 or 5 years old. “I have many cousins, first and second cousins,” said Cyrus. “A whole tribe. They are all over Israel – Petah Tikva, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, all over.”
As for the surrogate, her name is Jennifer Clarke. She teaches high school Spanish just outside Surprise, which is a suburb of Phoenix.
For Clarke, the idea of surrogacy arose a few years back when she saw an ad at her church posted by a couple who could not have their own children. They were seeking a surrogate, and Clarke thought to herself, “I can have babies so easily…. I have four. I’ve never had any problems or complications, and others can’t and really want kids. So, I thought I’d offer to do that if she’d cover the medical expenses…. I talked my then-husband into it – he did think I was crazy … but he was used to my crazy ideas and eventually was accepting of it. I approached the girl about it and they had just received confirmation of getting two children from Mexico, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, so they didn’t need a service like that any longer.”
But, as Clarke already had made up her mind to help, she began doing some research, looking for someone else she might be able to assist. Clarke found a few companies that provide surrogacy service and went through the extensive application process.
“They want to make sure you’re mentally stable and that you’re financially sound,” she said. “You can’t be doing this if you want money … they don’t offer very much. It’s mostly just expenses plus a bonus. You can’t be in it for the money.”
The application took about two hours to complete over the phone. The company also screens the surrogacy applicant’s friends and spouse (if there is one). Everyone gets at least one hour-long phone call, to try and ensure that the surrogate has a strong support system and that there will not be an issue with the spouse or anyone else close to the surrogate. If the applicant qualifies – including being given the green light by their doctor and obstetrician/gynecologist – a profile is created of her, which is shown to “intended parents” (IPs).
The company selects some potential surrogates who match what the IPs are seeking – including factors such as how much communication they want with the surrogate, what the surrogate’s habits are (for example, diet, activity level, etc.) – and shows their files to the potential parents. “They sort of match you like a dating service,” said Clarke. “It might take a couple of interviews to find someone who fully suits you, but then you get matched and start the process of hormone treatments, implantation and such.”
Having Our Baby: The Surrogacy Boom, a documentary by Vancouver filmmaker Nick Orchard, aired recently on the Documentary Channel in Canada. While there are some differences between Canada and the United States when it comes to surrogacy, it seems that both countries’ systems work to ensure that the surrogate is entering the arrangement with mainly altruistic rather than monetary aims.
According to Orchard, infertility is often a “disability, for lack of a better word,” that couples hide. Therefore, he said, “most people are unaware of how, for some couples, it’s a real problem – conceiving and having a child of their own. So, it’s a situation where couples and gay couples and, every now and again, some single people really want to have a child, but they can’t do it without help from someone else. That’s when they reach out.”
He said, “The surrogates are doing this because they very much want to help someone. What they are doing is incredibly selfless – to put their … in many cases … own lives on the line. There are dangers involved in having a baby and to do all of that, I find it quite incredible. That was one of the things that first drew me to the topic.”
Some of the costs involved in hiring a surrogate in Canada, according to Orchard, include $10,000 to an agency; $20,000 for a surrogate’s expenses; $30,000 in fees for the clinics doing the transfers, developing the embryos, and so on; and $30,000 in legal fees for agreements drawn up between the surrogate and the IPs, to reduce the risks of having a surrogate change her mind and keep the baby once the process is done.
“You have to really want to have a child and, of course, it’s never a sure thing either,” said Orchard. “You can pay that money and you create the embryo … you might have to get the eggs from an egg donor … who you cannot pay [it is illegal]. You can get the embryos created and implant them, but, in many cases, they don’t take on the first go-around. So, you’ve just lost $10,000 and you have to start all over again.”
For more information on Orchard’s documentary and some of the facts about surrogacy in Canada, visit cbc.ca/documentarychannel/docs/having-our-baby.
Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.
Happy Canada Day 150!
The Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, minister of justice and attorney general of Canada (MP for Vancouver Granville), at the Canada Day celebration in Douglas Park, which is in JI publisher Cynthia Ramsay’s neighbourhood. (photo from twitter.com/puglaas)
יום ההולדת המאה וחמישים של קנדה
(צילום: mint.ca)
קנדה זוהרת: מטבע לוני מיוחד הנופק ליום ההולדת המאה וחמישים
המטבעה המלכותית הקנדית החליטה להנפיק מטבע מיוחד ליום ההולדת המאה וחמישים של קנדה, שנחגג ביום שבת האחרון (ה-1 ביולי). במטבעה הוחלט להנפיק כשלושה מיליון מטבעות של שני דולר (לוני) זוהרים, ולהכניסם למחזור הכללי. מדובר באורות של זוהר הצפוני היחודיים לקנדה (ירוק וכחול) מעל שני חותרים אינדיאנים בסירת קאנו, באגם שמוקף בעצים. יצויין כי המטבע מורכב משתי מתכות והאורות שמכילים חומר זוהר יחודי בוהקים בלילה. במקביל הונפק מטבע זוהר לאספנים לחגיגות המאה וחמישים שנה עם ציור של דגל המדינה האדום לבן ומעליו זיקוקים (שעלותו 30 דולר).
קנדה היא בעצם המדינה הראשונה בעולם שהטביעה כבר מבטע זוהר וזאת כבר החל משנת 2004. המטבעות הזוהרים מעשי ידי המטבעה יועדו עד כה לאספנים בלבד ולא הוכנסו למחזור הכללי כמו המטבע הנוכחי.
המטבעה המלכותית הקנדית ממוקמת באוטווה ויש לה סניפים בווניפג וונקובר.
האם הייתה חצר? בטח שהייתה חצר: תושב נובה סקוטיה רכש בית עם חצר ופתאם התברר לו שהחצר לא שלו
ריאן מנינג, תושב הישוב הקטן סלומון ריוור באזור העיר הליפקס במחוז נובה סקוטיה שבמזרח המדינה, נדהם לדעת יום אחד שהחצר שצמודה לביתו איננה שלו. לפני מספר חודשים במהלך היום נקש מישהו על דלת ביתו של מנינג, והציע לו שירכוש את החצר שמאחורי ביתו. מנינג הנדהם מדברי האיש אמר לו נחרצות: “האם אתה השתגעת? החצר שייכת לי ולא לאף אחד אחר”. הוא אף הראה למציע את חוזה לרכישת הבית עם החצר שמאחוריו.
מנינג רכש את הקוטג’ והחצר הצמודה לו (שכולה מגודרת מסביב) בהליך מכירה, שהנוהל על ידי ההוצאה לפועל לפני כשלוש שנים. לאחר שהעביר את הכסף להוצאה לפועל הוא קיבל את מפתחות הבית וכן את מפתחות צריף קטן שנמצא בקצה החצר שמאחור. מנינג היה מרוצה מהעיסקה שעשה, תיכנן לבצע שיפוצים נרחבים בבית ומחוצה לו ולהשכיר חלק ממנו. אך כאמור הסתבר לו פתאם ביום בהיר אחד שרק הבית שייך לו.
בצר לו פנה מנינג לעורך דינו שיצא בינתיים לפנסיה, לסוכן הנדל”ן שתיוווך בעיסקה לרכישת הבית והחצר שגם הוא פרש מעבודה, לחברה שהוציאה את הבית למכירה במסגרת ההוצאה לפועל, לבעלים הקודם של הכנס והחצר, וכן לחברה שהייתה אחראית על שינוי שם בעלי הנכס ברישום בטאבו. למרות שכל הנוגעים בדבר הבינו את מצוקתו הקשה, אף אחד מהם לא הסכים לקחת אחראיות והם כולם אחד אחר השני, השיבו את פניו ריקם. מנינג הספיק בינתיים ללמוד כי הבית והחצר עומדים על מגרשים שונים וזה כנראה המקור לבעייה שנוצרה. הוא לא ידע מה הוא עוד יכל לעשות כדי להשיב לעצמו את החצר שרכש בכסף מלא.
בלית ברירה פנה מנינג לכתב של תחנת טלוויזיה מקומית של רשת החדשות הציבורית הסי.בי.סי, שהתחיל לחקור את הפרשה המסובכת לעומקה. לכתב התברר שקרתה טעות חמורה ברישום בעת הליך המכירה של הנכס, ובעצם רק הבית נרשם על שמו של מנינג למרות שהוא לא ידע על כך. הצדדים הקשורים בעיסקת מכירת הבית הבינו שכדאי להם להתעשת מהר לאור התערבות עיתונאי הסי.בי.סי, ואכן הם הצליחו להגיע להסכם עם מנינג שמקנה לו בברור בעלות חוקית על החצר שנגזלה ממנו. מנינג יכול עתה להירגע: מאחורי ביתו נמצאת באופן חוקי החצר שלו והוא יכול להמשיך ולתכנן את השיפוצים בכל הנכס. הוא יכול גם להגיד לעצמו: “מזל שיש תקשורת”.
DOTE dances across the street
LINK Dance Foundation will perform Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? at a few intersections in Vancouver during Dancing on the Edge. (photo from DOTE)
As part of this year’s Dancing on the Edge festival, which takes place July 6-15, LINK Dance Foundation will explore the age-old question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“The idea for Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? came about through various stages, like all things do,” said Gail Lotenberg, founding artistic director of LINK. “The germination to the actual realization was a process and it is still in development for the future.”
DOTE producer Donna Spencer invited Lotenberg to be involved in this year’s festival with a specific piece, but the timing wasn’t right. “So, I told her I had another idea for this year if she was open to it. We had a meeting and together we cooked up this piece,” said Lotenberg.
Leading up to the 2013 provincial election, she said, “I wanted to help attract young people to exercise their right to vote, so I spearheaded a dance performance at the intersection of Davie Street and Granville Street with signage from Rock the Vote BC.
“The dance did not deliver overt messages about voting (though there were subtle motifs in the choreography), rather it aimed to stop people in their daily lives to enjoy viewing a quick dance by an ensemble of dancers as they crossed a busy intersection. We had people stationed at the corners to hand out pamphlets with more specific information about voting day.”
The concept was introduced to Lotenberg in 2005 by a “close friend and colleague, Cara Siu, who came to Whitehorse, Yukon, when I used to live there. At that time, I was producing an annual festival called Dancing in the Streets. She came from Vancouver to make a dance at the intersection of two main streets in Whitehorse as part of the week of outdoor dance performances. I loved the idea and always knew I would use it again.”
For the 2017 incarnation, Lotenberg said she wanted to “include a large pool of less-well-known dancers in the community in a site-based work at intersections” and Spencer was all for it.
“In fact,” said Lotenberg, “it was her idea to involve young dancers from pre-professional training programs in the project. She also saw the benefit of having DOTE volunteers on the corners to provide more information to people about other shows they could see during the annual summer festival. Donna really helped to make the idea crystallize into what it is now, a work for eight dancers – mostly young dancers in the final stages of their training with the exception of two professionals. The two dancers who would normally be considered out of their training stage … will perform my core idea of a duet between pieces of white cloth to complete the show.”
Lotenberg, however, won’t be performing. “I will not be dancing in this work,” she said, “unless I’m wearing a chicken costume.”
She hopes “Intersection Interventions” will become “an annual part of DOTE, in the way Dusk Dances were a signature aspect of the festival for almost a decade.”
She said, “I believe in public art. I see myself as someone who evolved from the same fabric as the public frivolity movement of the 1990s – Unsilent Night, flashmobs, etc. These are acts of art that enhance our civic arena.
“I like art that engages people in community and invites people briefly into the humanizing experience of co-creating art. I don’t like art that does this by ignoring the principles of composition and virtuosity and esthetics, meaning they are inclusive but not very entertaining. So, I strive to find the duality that makes work provocative and pleasing to view, while at the same time offering some type of invitation to be an active rather than a passive participant.”
From 2008 to 2012, Lotenberg was an associated artist with Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue. The academic director of the centre then, Mark Winston, supported many of her endeavours, she said, “because he saw my work as a model for how to employ art as part of public engagement and how to construe social engagement as fertile soil for making art. I am grateful to Mark for that period of cross-pollination of ideas and expertise. He, too, is a Jewish person and together we mined the depths of what it meant to be Jewish and engaged in our mutual professions, he as a scientist and director of the CFD, me as a dance artist and director of a dance company.”
She said, “When I was a younger artist, there was a hierarchy in my mind that put work onstage above public-engaged art practice. Then I met Liz Lerman, a famous populist choreographer from the U.S., and I shifted my perspective to a less hierarchical model.
“I love seeing how dance can enter the public domain and engage people in something that lives between the opposing ends of a spectrum. On the one hand, you have pure social dancing that is non-performative but fully inclusive and, on the other end, you have very formal dance performance, which occurs on a stage with no apparent involvement from the audience except as witness. I love the in-between.”
Over the course of her dance performance and choreography career, Lotenberg has created many works that combine dance and activism.
“I’m a political person,” she said. “I grew up that way. As a Jewish person, I was taught to think in terms of how I could contribute to making the world a better place. I use my attributes as a choreographer to bring people together in a way that feels beautiful or powerful or profound or just fun.
“Take the Occupy Movement, for instance. I see something like that and I think, ‘Oh, imagine how easy it would be to occupy more space by getting people to not just stand around and chant but rather to do a square dance, which inherently takes up a lot more space.’ In occupying space with a square dance, people are using dance politically and the results are varied. People are having more fun. Authorities may not feel so threatened because the impulse is to relish life, not to be destructive, which is true of most political movements that are not hate-based. So, dance for me is an interface between the institutions we hope to shift and the people who are trying to have sway in shifting those institutions.”
Being Jewish has informed Lotenberg’s way of engaging with the world in various ways.
She said, “Being Jewish made me a political person and that feeds an aspect of my choreographic interests…. Being Jewish also surrounded me with people who embrace ritual and ritual is an important aspect of art. Being Jewish led to many opportunities to be in community through song and dance, and there is nothing more uplifting than that. In fact, I would say that these acts of sharing voice and song are what do connect me to my spirituality.
“And finally, I grew up as a New York Jew and my parents were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We moved to a town that was emerging as a leader in desegregation of schools, so I went to a school right from Grade 1 that was racially mixed.”
Lotenberg earned her bachelor’s degree at University of Michigan, was a dance teacher and skier in Crested Butte, Colo., for about five years and then did her master’s degree in history at University of Washington. In Seattle, she said, “I met a Vancouver boy, graduated, sold everything, moved here and then, within a year, we left for the Yukon.”
While Yukon was home from 1993, Lotenberg returned to Vancouver often for dancing. In 2007, she and her family moved to Bowen Island – “bad for my dancing career but otherwise wonderful,” she said.
Lotenberg took an approximately three-year break from dancing to be more present for her daughter, who has a learning disability, she said. “She’s good now. She’s strong and knows how to self-advocate for learning support that allows her to perform well in school. And, she basically is my happy place. But, I missed dance and being with other dancers – people who see and sense the world through a different lens.
“I feel gratitude at the opportunity to re-enter the dance milieu from the place I am today. I am grounded; I have a good job as a pilates instructor; I want to have my work seen and appreciated but that desire does not define me anymore. I am eager to share my work, but I feel strong and I feel confident and I trust that my work is valuable because it is honest and well-crafted and unique.”
Lotenberg is in the midst of developing a new stage work for next year’s DOTE in which she will be dancing.
“It is a piece I am challenging myself to take on because it feels important for me to step back into the dancing body to tell my story in a real and vulnerable way,” she said. “In fact, the application to show this work I’m describing is what actually led to having Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? happen at this year’s festival. Life is a beautiful journey that way. You sow seeds but you don’t always know how they will bear fruit.”
The promotional material for Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? asks the question, “Rather than walk, why not dance to get to the other side?” What can be gained from dancing, even if only across the street?
“Dancing is liberating,” said Lotenberg. “Dancing is frivolity and elemental connection (at the same time). Dancing is one of the first forms of art and, in some cultures, it is the glue that defines who they are, how they touch the earth with their feet and what is the rhythm of their heartbeat.
“I tried to leave dance and choreography to become a better mother. I did become a better mother but I also realized in that period that dance is essential to who I am.
“Dancing across the street,” she said, “is a way of celebrating life, is a way of being part of making the world a more beautiful place, is an invitation to be part of a happening that makes today just a bit more rich than yesterday or tomorrow.”
For the times and locations of Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?, visit dancingontheedge.org/program/chicken-cross-road. For the full DOTE schedule, visit dancingontheedge.org.
Jerusalem a high-tech hub
Lior Schillat of Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and Maya Halevy of Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem will speak at Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech on July 16. (photos from CFHU Vancouver)
“Hebrew University is probably the only university that ‘founded’ a state rather than vice versa, as the cornerstone for the university was laid on July 24, 1918, and, on April 1, 1925, the Mount Scopus campus was opened,” Dina Wachtel, Western region executive director, Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, told the Independent. “The contemporary history of the city of Jerusalem and the story of the Six Day War is intertwined with the story of the university – what better way to celebrate that than by bringing in four of Jerusalem’s change-makers?”
The July 16 TED Talk-style event at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver – hosted by CFHU, the Jerusalem Foundation and JCCGV – “is a celebration of the start-up nation and the role the city is playing in becoming a centre for innovation and technology,” said Wachtel. “Thus, it is also the story of how innovation improves the lives of humanity in this world regardless of boundaries of any kind: geographical, political, ethnic, religious.”
At the event called Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech, the speakers will be Lior Schillat, director general of Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research; Maya Halevy, executive director of Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem; Yonatan Avraham, student ambassador of HUstart, the university’s entrepreneurship centre; and Tamir Huberman, vice-president of business development and information-technology director of Yissum, the technology transfer company of Hebrew U. The Jewish Independent interviewed each of the presenters in anticipation of their Vancouver visit, and will feature Schillat and Halevy this week, and Avraham and Huberman on July 7.
Schillat will talk about Jerusalem’s Population: What Does the Future Hold? But first, what about the Jerusalem of the past – what would have inspired a Canadian Jew to make aliyah 50 years ago?
Actually, said Schillat, in the 20th century, the biggest wave of immigrants from countries such as Canada came right after the Six Day War.
“If you’re Canadian and you’re making aliyah in ’67 and you’re choosing Jerusalem for your home, I guess the main reason you would do that would be because of the spiritual effect the glorious victory of 1967 would have on you,” said Schillat.
“If you are a bit more practical, you also understand that, with this victory, Jerusalem, for the first time since 1948, became again the centre of the country … centre in the geographical meaning and also the centre of attention as to what was going on in the country.”
Fifty years later, he said, while “we still haven’t reached some kind of stability in the situation in Jerusalem,” the city “is one of the most interesting … cities in Israel, and why is that? First of all, it’s Jerusalem, meaning it’s beautiful, it has stories that are in the heart of billions of people all over the world…. I would say the Jerusalem brand is stronger than any other brand in Israel, including the Israeli brand itself…. So, if you would come to Jerusalem, it would be because you want to spend your life in a way that is a bit more meaningful than … in any other city in Israel, in any other Western country.”
In Jerusalem, he said, “from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you live for something, for an idea. It’s true for everyone – of course it’s true for religious people, but it’s also … true for secular people. Life here just has much more meaning. You know, it’s not for nothing that Jerusalem is 10% of the Israeli population but 25% of civic society organizations are based here. And if you look at Israel’s biggest struggles or debates, many of them were generated from the Jerusalem society.”
Jerusalem is a completely different city than it was 50 years ago, said Schillat. “Jerusalem is one of the most advanced high-tech ecosystems in the world today…. When you look at the numbers, you see that, today, Jerusalem is considered among the 30 biggest ecosystems in the world. And some of the researchers even say that they would consider it for next year among the 20.”
It’s not the tech hub that Tel Aviv is, he acknowledged, but, in proportion to its population, Jerusalem rates high on the tech scene. And this shouldn’t be surprising, he said.
“People here are using their minds all the time, and high-tech is exactly that – it’s how you use your mind in order to create gain, in order to create technology that could help better the world…. The number of technological companies in this city has more than doubled in the last four years. The number of employees in high-tech is growing 15% every year for the last three years.”
Schillat gave as the best example of Jerusalem’s growing prominence in this area the recent acquisition by Intel of Jerusalem-based company Mobileye for $15.3 billion. Not only that, he said, but Intel also has decided to base in Jerusalem its international research and development centre for autonomous cars.
“I don’t see the Jerusalem of the future as being another New York or another Frankfurt or another Tel Aviv; it won’t be a financial centre. I see it as a city of knowledge; of creating fruits from thinking, from knowledge, from discussion. And I also think that Jerusalem is facing now the amazing challenge, and very hard challenge, of integrating into this group of thinkers and builders the more weak populations…. The real test for Jerusalem for the next 50 years would be, ‘Did you integrate the Charedi groups, did you integrate the Arab groups into this economic development model of a city of thinkers, or did you just go with this idea by yourself, meaning just a small elite group of thinkers went with it by themselves and left the majority of the city behind?”
One facility that is trying to integrate various population groups is Bloomfield Science Museum. Founded and operated by the Jerusalem Foundation and HU, the museum is supported by the national and municipal governments. Its website describes science “as a common language that disregards physical borders, cultural and religious differences and enables dialogue among participants with a common interest and diverse backgrounds.” Halevy will talk on the topic Raising a Start-up Nation.
“There is much research that shows that young kids love science and science classes,” she said, “but they don’t see themselves in a STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] career, mainly because they believe that having a STEM career is being a scientist, which they think it is to work alone in a lab, and can be relevant only to the best scholars. Our role is to show the variety of opportunities that STEM learning can open for them in a future career.”
Bloomfield serves as a lab and hub for education programs, she said. “As a lab, we develop new approaches, new pedagogy, new tools, and we test those with a variety of people, as we are also a hub for all the communities in Jerusalem.”
The museum collaborates with institutions around the world, as well. A current exhibit that will travel to Ottawa, among other places, is the Bicycle Exhibition 2 x 200. The new Canada Science and Technology Museum is set to open in November after extensive renovations and the exhibit is scheduled to arrive there after a few other stops.
The idea for the exhibit came when Halevy was on a visit to Ottawa in October 2015, at the request of then-Israeli ambassador to Canada Raphael Barak, “who wished to develop cooperation among cultural institutions from Canada and Israel.”
Visiting the museum while it was under renovation, Halevy saw the collection of bicycles it had in storage and learned that 2017 would mark 200 years since this invention.
“So we decided to focus our cooperation on a bicycle exhibition,” she said, “to use their collection and to add interactive exhibits – we are very experienced in this field – and the idea was that we will develop and build the whole exhibition in Jerusalem and later on it will travel to Ottawa.
“We were lucky to find two more partners, from Germany and Italy, that loved the concept of the exhibition and that wished to join us, so the tour will start in Jerusalem, will move to Bremen (July 2018) and then to Naples (July 2019) and will end in Ottawa (2020). We were also approached by other museums that wish to present the exhibition after the partners’ tour ends.”
Bloomfield signed a letter of intent with Ontario Science Centre last year. “The main idea is to develop our cooperation around the culture of innovation and to start developing this culture from an early age, as the future of both our economies is based today on innovation and entrepreneurship,” explained Halevy. “We plan to develop together an interactive exhibition and special programs for young children and youth and to connect them to each other. We wish to open the exhibition and launch the programs in 2018 – 70 years to the establishment of Israel. During my time in Toronto, I will have a meeting with the CEO and president of the Ontario Science Centre, Dr. Maurice Bitran, to discuss it more in-depth.”
As for other collaborations with Canadian institutions, Halevy said, “We might develop new collaborations on my tour, as I plan to visit my colleagues from Calgary and Vancouver.”
Jerusalem of Gold: Capital of Innovation & Tech is open to the public. Tickets are $45, though Wachtel said, “Students who are interested in coming to the event are welcome to register at our office and receive a free ticket.” For tickets, the speakers’ bios and other information, visit cfhu.org, email [email protected] or call 604-257-5133.