Month: March 2020

Food as great as views

Courtney Hazlett in Malta, one of the many places she has visited to record her Netflix program Restaurants on the Edge. (photo from marblemedia and OutEast Entertainment)

For producer Courtney Hazlett, traveling around the world for her new Netflix series, Restaurants on the Edge, has been an unforgettable, rewarding experience.

The premise of the show is to take struggling restaurants that have incredible locations with breathtaking views but ordinary or subpar food, and turn them around. A team of experts – chef Dennis Prescott, designer Karin Bohn and restaurateur Nick Liberato – come in and transform the establishments into magical eateries. The show is co-produced by marblemedia and OutEast Entertainment, which is a company run by Hazlett and her husband, Steven Marrs.

“We go around the world with a team of experts and, in a positive way, find restaurants that aren’t living up to the beauty of their location and help change that,” said Hazlett, who is also the show’s creator. “We change the décor, menu and business model. We want to add menu items that speak to that destination.”

Hazlett, who lives in Los Angeles, came up with the idea for the program while eating outdoors at a restaurant in Venice, Calif.

“We often go to places where the better the view, the worse the food,” she told the Independent. “That was the seed. I thought, we can go around the world, find restaurants that aren’t living up to the beauty of their location and help change that. My initial impression was, because of the spectacular view, restaurant owners felt they didn’t have to go all out with the food. But that wasn’t the case. It’s not that they aren’t trying, it’s just that a lot of restaurant owners are in over their head.”

In helping decide what changes needed to be made in each restaurant, Hazlett said they first went to social media to see what people were saying about the establishment. They looked at reviews on Tripadvisor and Yelp and read the comments patrons made.

“What I was most passionate about was the storytelling aspect,” she said. “We went out and met people who lived there. In some ways, the story of community shows up on the plate.”

Since it’s being aired on Netflix, it must be a global show, Hazlett explained. “We had to show as many corners of the earth as we could. It’s a lot of globetrotting.”

In Season One, released on Netflix in Canada last week, on March 14, the team traveled to Malta, Hong Kong, Tobermory (located in Ontario four hours north of Toronto), Costa Rica, Austria and St. Lucia.

Hazlett said Tobermory looked like the Caribbean, with gorgeous blue and green water, underground caves, cliffs and ancient forests. Tobermory is almost completely surrounded by water, with Lake Huron on one side and Georgian Bay on the other. The team chose to make over a seasonal restaurant called Coconut Joe’s.

“The owner was a sweet guy who was struggling with the business,” she said. “He loves to travel and wanted to make a restaurant inspired from his travels. That main inspiration was palm trees, and he wanted to have menu items reflecting any place you would find a palm tree. He had about 30 items on the menu – from Thai to Caribbean food, all over the place. The décor was tiki but not in a good way. The restaurant owner’s busy season is only eight weeks of the year because it’s so far north. Since we filmed the episode in the busy season, he had to shut it down one and a half of those weeks in June.”

The designer’s goal was to transform Coconut Joe’s from tacky tiki to chic tiki. The chef’s goal was to celebrate local food as well. At the end of the restoration, the owner was grateful and thrilled with the results.

Season Two, also released on March 14 in Canada, brought the team to seven more destinations, including wine country in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. There, they chose to transform the Outboard Waterfront Pub.

“The owners of the restaurant are such an integral part of the story we tell and, in this case, we were thrilled to include a father-daughter team, Campbell and Anne Stewart,” Hazlett said. “Campbell is hoping to retire sooner rather than later and leave the restaurant in Anne’s hands, and Anne, when we filmed, had an infant. So they’ve got a lot on their plate.”

Hazlett said she has always loved food and cooking. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, she earned a degree from Tulane University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She went on to work at People magazine and OK! magazine, then was a correspondent for MSNBC, covering pop culture for MSNBC, as well as Today, Morning Joe and more, before running entertainment teams for NBC News Digital.

“Around 2012, I started producing,” said Hazlett, who moved from New York City to Los Angeles. “Then I started to develop content and, in 2014, created the production company OutEast Entertainment. ABC just ordered a medical drama pilot from us called Triage; it’s directed by Jon Chu, who directed the upcoming film In the Heights.”

Although Hazlett is Jewish and raises her children Jewish, she was born Christian.

“What happened is my mom never knew her father and, later in life, found out he was Jewish, and it unlocked something in me,” she explained. “Growing up, I always gravitated towards Judaism. My husband of eight years [Marrs] was a lapsed Catholic and we both converted. For us, as we started to lean into the Jewish traditions, it became such a centring force for our family. Over time, we started to keep Shabbat and celebrate Jewish holidays. We wanted our kids to grow up Jewish – they go to religious school and we are super-active in our temple. Converting became an easy choice for both of us and it made a lot of sense.”

In keeping with her Jewishness, Hazlett would love to find a location and restaurant in Israel. “Next season, I would love to film in Israel and other Jewish places,” she said.

Hazlett admitted it was a lot to ask an owner to close down his or her restaurant while her crew did renovations, especially if the restaurateur had a cash flow problem. “But, on the flip side, being on Netflix is great advertising for them,” she said, adding that they don’t compensate the restaurants, but they do pay for the cost of the makeovers. “In fact, I received notes from the restaurant in Malta that he has had more than 2,000 people reach out to him because of the show. That’s a lot of new customers!”

Alice Burdick Schweiger is a New York City-based freelance writer who has written for many national magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day and The Grand Magazine. She specializes in writing about Broadway, entertainment, travel and health, and covers Broadway for the Jewish News. She is co-author of the 2004 book Secrets of the Sexually Satisfied Woman, with Jennifer Berman and Laura Berman.

We’re all in this together

Does it seem like people are behaving more kindly this week? Maybe it’s the sunshine. But maybe it’s the realization, amid all the alarming news and concerns over the spread of coronavirus, that we are all, truly, in this together.

We live in particular times that may be defined – especially as exemplified by some political leaders and their followers – as uncharitable, xenophobic, chauvinistic, mean-spirited and self-interested. These attitudes have been demonstrated, among other ways, in the attitudes of many people toward migrants from other places. These ideas trickle down to the way we treat one another – in traffic, in online interactions, in schools and workplaces, in voting – behaving in ways that take into consideration only (or mostly) our own well-being at the expense of the well-being of others. There are magnificent exceptions, of course, everyday acts of kindness and gestures of humanity great and small. But our age, it can probably be agreed, includes a lot of pettiness, intolerance and plain old snark.

Our parents or grandparents understood the meaning and necessity of sacrifice for the greater good. The communal effort during the Second World War, on the home front and among those serving, was a generationally defining undertaking. While wars, sadly, have continued, in our corner of the world, the burden has fallen on an increasingly smaller number of people – those families with members in the service. But, for at least a generation of North Americans, we have not been called upon for an unavoidable collective sacrifice for the greater good. Again, this is not to say that many people are not sacrificing for the greater good – individuals are devoting themselves to causes greater than themselves, including climate change, but they are doing so by choice. They may be driven by desperation, fear, environmental justice or other motivations, certainly, but, ultimately, it is voluntary.

Then along comes a virus with apparently incalculable potential to cause illness and death and we realize that we are not so separate after all. While they have resisted on issues like climate change, governments worldwide have stepped up (some of them more slowly and irresponsibly than others) and taken seriously the science that predicts grave consequences if we do not take urgent actions now. And individuals, in the first days of what will be an unprecedented period of unknown duration, appear surprisingly amenable to following government-issued restrictions on behaviour for the hope of long-term health, not only for themselves but for those who are more vulnerable due to age or underlying health conditions.

There is nothing good about a global pandemic. But good things happen when people act in unity to advance collective well-being. Individuals and groups have responded with astonishing immediacy when called upon to act. Places of public meeting, including restaurants and cafés, have faced the painful but unavoidable truth that they have to temporarily change their service model. This will have untold economic and social impacts as staff are displaced, with concentric circles as these workers lose purchasing power and these realities ripple through the economy, already suffering multiple unknowns and slowdowns.

In our community, synagogues and communal organizations have adopted stringent and unprecedented measures, many canceling live services and opting for alternative venues like online learning.

We witness the immediacy of these factors’ economic ripples. As our community cancels public events, advertisements are understandably pulled from our newspaper. As a result, we have made the choice to cancel an additional issue next month, and not publish for two weeks, April 10 and 17, rather than the scheduled one-week hiatus. We will have a healthy Passover issue on April 3 and we urge you to support our work and celebrate the holiday by considering advertising or inserting a greeting message in that issue or in the ones resuming April 24 and after.

In the meantime, as we come together to confront this very serious challenge, we are reminded, as Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz writes in this week’s issue writes in this week’s issue, we do not do so as Canadians or Chinese or Italians or Israelis. We are people living in different places who face the same pathogens and the same reality.

In Jewish tradition, the value of pikuach nefesh, of saving a life, overrides almost every other consideration. Among other things, this suggests that we should view our current situation through a slightly altered lens. While all of us should be doing everything we are advised to avoid getting the virus, we should be doing so not only, perhaps not primarily, for our own health, but in order to prevent us transmitting it to another person. For many of us who are younger or do not have underlying health concerns, COVID-19 could be a very unpleasant inconvenience. For others we know and love, it could be far more serious.

The top advice we have received is to wash hands with soap frequently and thoroughly, and also to stay home to avoid physical contact as much as possible. Some people are suggesting we treat these days like Shabbat. Spend time with family. Read books. Take a walk. Engage in passive activities. Turn off electronics for a time to avoid the noise of the world which, at this time, is particularly loud.

And be kind to one another. If you know of a senior or other person whose health could be endangered by going out, do their shopping. See what else they might need. Call your family and friends. Set up a virtual dinner party or a play date for your kids. Since you’re not spending money on restaurants and theatre, consider donating to charity and arts organizations.

This is all good advice. But we suspect, given some unscientific observations of kindness and communal care in the last few days, that most of us already know what to do.

For more information and latest updates from Canada’s public health authorities: canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19.html.

Voice thoughts, feelings

Yesterday, I cried in my car. You shouldn’t worry – I was parked at the time. I share this not for sympathy or even empathy. I share this because these are harrowing times, we all feel the tremendous weight of worry:

For ourselves, if we are relatively young, we know the vast majority of cases are mild to moderate, but some aren’t.

For our aged parents, if we still have them.

If we are older, we worry, as the danger increases with age, though, interesting to me, I have found among many of our elders a rationalism and calm that, if I wasn’t freaking out so much worrying about them, I would take comfort in.

For some, the worry is compounded, as they are beyond our reach in other cities or countries.

For our children, as normalcy evaporates. I told my children the other night, as we canceled plans for our son’s birthday party at the movies, that they will tell their own children how they survived the pandemic of 2020. And they will. The vast, vast majority of all of us, even the aged, will survive this. But we will be forever changed by it – I hope for the better.

For our city and country, as it attempts to “flatten the curve.” I long for the days when that phrase was most often rendered in my head as I looked in the mirror at my belly or hips.

I’d say that I worry for our world, as this pandemic is truly global, but the sweep of this virus is so vast that I can’t wrap my head around the whole world experiencing this crisis all at once.

If ever we needed a reminder that there are no true borders, that what happens here effects people over there and vice versa, this is an example.

Refugee crises. Climate change. Economic disparity. And, now, a pandemic. We are all connected.

There are no Chinese COVID-19 victims, or Italian or Israeli or Iranian or American or Canadian – there are just people living in different parts of the world all with the same fears, uncertainty, worries and prayers for healing. Just people, just human beings – there is nothing so different about any of us – except perhaps age, which is only a matter of time – that protects any of us more than the rest of us.

That’s why I cried in my car, and I share it with you because I learned from that cathartic cry that it is OK to be scared, it’s OK to cry. Not because I did it, and I don’t want to be the only one crying in my car, where the kids can’t see me, but because I felt a lot better after – and you might, too.

There was a cartoon that was being passed around on the internet, I guess we call that a meme. It was of a couple looking at their computer and the caption was, as the man turned to his wife over his shoulder, “That’s odd: My Facebook friends who were constitutional scholars just a month ago are now infectious disease experts….”

I thought it was funny.

I know very little about the science of all of this, though I am trying to keep up. British Columbia’s Dr. Bonnie Henry and Dr. Patty Daly and their teams are incredible in their competence and expertise, but I know almost nothing about science that is helpful here. But I do know a little bit about prayer.

What I would like to offer, what I think might be of help, is the power of prayer. Not to change God, not to change the course of this virus. Though this is a natural evil, I do not think it is punishment from God or within God’s control. My faith doesn’t work like that.

I want to suggest and teach for a moment the power of prayer not to change God, but to change each of us.

Sarah Hurwitz writes in her book Here All Along about the power of prayer. She describes a form of Chassid prayer called hitbodedut. The word, which sounds a bit like the last name of one of the former Democratic presidential candidates, refers to a practice of self-secluded Jewish meditation popularized by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810).

The practice, as he taught, is an unstructured, spontaneous and individualized form of prayer and meditation through which each individual establishes a close, personal relationship with God through a free-flowing monologue. Where some people go out into the woods and make a primal scream, Jews, at least Jews who are students of this practice, go out into the woods and kvetch.

Not only kvetch, but thank and question and plead and wonder and acknowledge. You unload your thoughts and angst without stopping to think or formulate them. You just talk to God. It’s a stream-of-consciousness practice that takes some practise, but, like the cry in my car, it can be incredibly cathartic and remarkably revealing of your inner thoughts and feelings.

It’s not unlike the famous Jewish folk story of the young uneducated shepherd who comes to the synagogue to pray. Not knowing the prayers of the established liturgy, he sits in the back row and sings the alphabet over and over again. (Maybe he was also washing his hands?) The men of the synagogue confront him: “Why do you disturb our prayers with your gibberish?”

The boy explains, “I don’t know the prayer. But I wish to thank God for my sheep and the stream, for the warmth of the sun and the silver moon that keeps me company when I sleep. I am singing the alphabet and surely God can put the letters in the correct order to make the prayers.”

In this worrying and frightening time, give voice, actual voice, to your thoughts and feelings, your fears and your anxieties. Not to change God, not to stop the virus, but to change yourself. To give you insight and courage, and patience and perspective, and confidence and hope, and calm and gratitude. In doing so, you might just find your prayers, not those in the siddur (prayerbook) but the prayers that are deep in your soul. Go out into the woods – they tell us the virus is not as communicable outside – and talk to God.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught: “Those who honestly search, those who yearn and fail, we did not presume to judge. Let them pray to be able to pray and, if they do not succeed, if they have no tears to shed, let them yearn for tears, let them try to discover their heart and let them take strength from the certainty that this, too, is a high form of prayer.”

Talk to God, cry to God, be silent with God, it’s all prayer, and it all helps. I know it is helping me; I pray that it will help you.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and author of The Men’s Seder (MRJ Publishing). He is also chair of the Reform Rabbis of Canada. His writing and perspective on Judaism appear in major print and digital media internationally.

Jewish microbe hunters

During the Nazi regime, all references to the great physician-chemist Paul Ehrlich were suppressed. In the 1990s, he was featured on the German 200-mark bill. (photo from the internet)

In the 17th century, the Netherlands was a country of great tolerance, having welcomed the Jews driven out of Spain and Portugal, including renowned physicians. Not coincidentally, this was the Dutch Golden Age, a time of breathtaking advances in the arts and sciences. It was there that the first microscopes were invented. To the eyes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in the town of Delft in the 1670s were revealed a veritable zoo of subvisible microorganisms previously inconceivable to even the most fevered imagination.

Throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th, there was speculation among medical men about the possible relation of microorganisms to disease. Certain varieties of these tiny beings seemed to appear in the organs or blood of patients with certain diseases. But there were endless questions: Could these creatures, so primitive, come into being by themselves (“spontaneous generation”)? Were they the cause of disease or were they the product of the diseased body? Could a pathogenic microbe of one disease transform into that of another disease? In diseases known to be infectious, were microorganisms the culprits, transmitted from a diseased body to a healthy one, there to germinate?

A breakthrough heralding the Heroic Age of the “microbe hunters” came in 1840 with the publication of Pathological Researches by the Bavarian medical doctor Jacob Henle, a descendant of rabbis. Using technologically advanced microscopes and deductive analysis of case histories, Henle declared to the medical world: “Contagion is matter endowed with individual life which reproduces itself in the manner of animals and plants, which can multiply by assimilating organic material and can exist parasitically on the sick body.”

A year later, the Polish-German Jew Dr. Robert Remak published the first of his observations that cells – of any living organism, including microbes – can arise only by division of parent cells. Thus, Remak helped put to rest the concept of “spontaneous generation.”

photo - Microbe hunter Ferdinand Cohn in the front piece of one of his books
Microbe hunter Ferdinand Cohn in the front piece of one of his books. (photo from the internet)

Humankind’s war against transmittable diseases accelerated dramatically in the second half of the 19th century. In the German city of Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) the botanist-microscopist Dr. Ferdinand Cohn published his Bacteria, the Smallest Living Organisms in 1872. As the undisputed master of the classification of subvisible life, Cohn elucidated that, while a microorganism of one disease may undergo various transformations, it remained the microorganism of that specific disease and not of another.

Robert Koch, a student of Henle and a protégé of Cohn, of Protestant background, discovered the tuberculosis bacterium and elucidated the mysterious life cycle of the anthrax bacillus.

Such dramatic advances led to the discovery of links in the chain by which the various pathogenic microorganisms are transmitted, and then to measures to break those links: cholera by drinking water contaminated by sewage, sleeping sickness by the tsetse fly, childbed fever by the contaminated hands of doctors and midwives, malaria (literally “bad air” in Italian) by mosquitoes.

To such defensive measures were added an arsenal of aggressive weapons. In Berlin in the 1890s, the Jewish doctor Paul Ehrlich was instrumental in developing serums. The watery part of the blood (after coagulation) of an animal that has fought off a toxin-producing disease such as diphtheria contains powerful antitoxins that can be injected into a diphtheria patient. A brilliant and imaginative chemist, Ehrlich pioneered techniques for selectively staining specific microorganisms to distinguish them under the microscope. This principle inspired him to develop the world’s first chemotherapeutic agent – the arsenical compound Salvarsan, known popularly as the “magic bullet,” which homed in on and destroyed the spirochetes of syphilis. (Ehrlich’s coreligionist Albert Wassermann developed the blood test for the disease.)

A general optimism prevailed as the new century dawned that humankind would soon be free of all serious infectious disease. But there was a missing piece in the puzzle.

It had been known since ancient times that people who survived a given disease were wholly or partially immune from an attack by the same disease. In 1798, the English physician Edward Jenner showed that deliberate inoculation with the pustules of relatively benign cowpox (vaccination, from the Latin vacca, cow) protected the person from attack from the far more virulent and deadly smallpox.

Among the great triumphs in the war against transmissible disease was the development of a new kind of vaccination by the French chemist Louis Pasteur, a devout Catholic. Pasteur showed how inoculating a patient with killed or attenuated (weakened by drying or other techniques) pathogens such as rabies activated the natural immune system against a subsequent all-out attack by the fully virulent disease.

But here was the rub. Unlike the microorganisms of tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, syphilis and so many other diseases, no one had ever seen the agents of smallpox and rabies. Pasteur speculated that they were microorganisms beyond the range of the most powerful microscopes.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck showed how the fluid of an infected plant, after being strained through the finest filter, was able to infect healthy plants. This was an important breakthrough, but Beijerinck erred in assuming the culprit wasn’t composed of solid matter. He called it virus, Latin for poison.

That no one had seen a virus made the fight more difficult. Between 1918 and 1920, as the Spanish flu claimed more lives than all the battlefields of the Great War in the preceding four years, the medical profession mistakenly attributed it to an opportunistic bacterium, visible under the microscope.

The limit of what could be seen was dramatically pushed back with the invention of the electron microscope in the early 1930s, by which viruses, hundreds of times smaller than bacteria, were exposed to the light of day. It appeared that Pasteur was right after all in postulating that the agent of rabies was a microorganism.

image - One of several U.S. postage stamps commemorating the polio vaccines of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin
One of several U.S. postage stamps commemorating the polio vaccines of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. (image from the internet)

But not quite. Research later in the century showed that viruses – unlike living entities (organisms) – can’t multiply or reproduce on their own. Viruses turned out to be packets of genetic material – DNA or RNA – that penetrate, commandeer and destroy living cells in order to multiply.

Poliomyelitis, the dread crippler caused by an enterovirus, was checked in the 1950s (and is now virtually eradicated worldwide) thanks to two vaccines developed independently by the American Jewish medical doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. (The virus was cultured using the foreskins of circumcised babies.)

AIDS, hepatitis, SARS, Ebola and now corona – new virulent viruses keep emerging. And the weapons to fight them – vaccines, tests, serums, pharmacological “magic bullets” – are in the enduring spirit of the great Jewish microbe hunters.

Dr. Frank Heynick is the author of Jews and Medicine: An Epic Saga (KTAV Publishing House, 2002, still in print). There are some 500 publications of his in the United States and Europe, ranging from academic to popular-scientific, many on the history of medicine and allied fields, including the crucial Jewish role. He lives in New York and has taught the history of medicine at New York University.

A tribute to my father

Was it really 17 years ago that my sweet, beloved father, Sidney Civkin, passed away? The long row of empty Yahrzeit candles in my closet confirms it. The date was March 13, 2003. Dad was 86 years old. It was indisputably the saddest day of my life.

If you have a good one, you’ll know that there is something unique about a father-daughter relationship. There are secrets and bonds that no mother-daughter relationship can come close to. Don’t ask me why, I just know it’s true.

It’s no secret that my sister Linda and I spent more time with our father in the last three years of his life than we had up until that point – and he was always a very present, involved father. He’d been suffering with end-stage renal failure and was on dialysis for those last few years. And we were his primary caregivers, since our mother was not well by that point.

Our dad often said that, ironically, those were the best years of his life – precisely because he got to spend so much time with Linda and me. He loved to just hang out with us. Whether we were sharing a meal, having a coffee at Granville Island, or sitting in the den shmoozing, he was all in. Flattering to think that he loved our company above everything else.

There was no one who didn’t have an opinion about our father. Some knew him as argumentative, loud and assertive. Others remember him as compassionate, caring and erudite. I knew him as all of those things, and loved him more for it. He was my secret-keeper, my biggest fan, my adoring, supportive father. If anyone has ever loved me unconditionally, it was him.

Dad adored his work (he was an ear, nose and throat surgeon); devoured books; loved to golf; loved to cook; and took great enjoyment in playing bridge with his buddies. But, most of all, he loved his family. And he had a quirky, magnificent sense of humour. He was playful, outspoken and hardworking. And he adored off-colour jokes.

Dad was born in Winnipeg (“the Old Country”) in 1916, served in the Canadian Army as a medical officer, then moved to Vancouver in 1949, determined to escape the brutal prairie winters. He set up his medical practice in New Westminster and, even though we lived in Vancouver, he continued to make the commute for the next 37-odd years. He loved the small-town feel of New Westminster, his working-class patients and his colleagues. He’d found his place as a well-respected doctor who spent his life helping others.

I’ll never forget the night Dad passed on. My life shattered, not just momentarily, but for a few years. I was 47 years old, single, and I’d just lost my best friend. I know that sounds odd, but our relationship was everything to me. I grieved as though I’d invented the concept. I felt like no one’s heart could be broken quite like mine. It wasn’t just an emotional pain. It was intensely physical for me. In the blink of an eye (it wasn’t really, because he had been sick for three years, but death never seems inevitable, even in the very second before it happens), my world splintered into a billion pieces. I was inconsolable.

My grief consumed me, at home and at work. The mere thought of my father set me to tears. It was like a floodgate had not merely opened, but exploded. Seventeen years later, I still think of my father regularly, but the tears are no longer a daily occurrence. Yet, I still can’t believe he’s no longer here with us, physically. He certainly is in spirit. They say that, when the soul leaves the body, it can still connect with loved ones, except it’s in a spiritual way. And we have lots of that. Naturally, I miss the physicality of giving my dad a hug and kiss. I miss looking at his smiling face. But we still connect mightily and often. I can feel his presence in my dreams and, when I see or hear particular things, I just know it’s my dad sending me a message. I know he’s always checking in on me, looking out for how I’m doing.

Grief is a funny thing. It ebbs and flows. It intrudes at the most inopportune times, and announces its presence with a deafening blast. It creeps into your consciousness when you least expect it, and always takes its sweet time getting comfortable. Grief never gets an invitation – it always just crashes the party. Grief never gets easier; it just gets different. The edges blur, the points soften, but the tangible sense of loss never goes away. Seventeen years later, at age 64, I still feel like an orphan.

There is much truth to the adage by Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My father always made me feel loved and supported. His pride in me was a source of great comfort. Naturally, there were times when he said or did things that angered or upset me, but they never eclipsed his unconditional love for me. I have always been sure of that.

If I had to distil my dad’s legacy into a nutshell, it would be this: be kind to people and help them when you can. Give graciously of your heart, and always try to do the right thing. It’s a tall order. But I’m up for the challenge. Thank you, Dad, for everything.

Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer, including with Chabad Richmond.

 

Chai Lifeline in the city

A group of nine Jewish boys from Toronto was in Vancouver recently, courtesy of Chai Lifeline Canada. (photo from CLC)

A group of nine Toronto boys, aged 10-15, recently enjoyed a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Vancouver, courtesy of Chai Lifeline Canada, a national charity that supports the families of children or parents who suffer from serious illnesses.

The boys – each of whom has a sibling or parent who is sick – were invited on the trip as a diversion to their family challenges and as an opportunity to bond with other kids in similar situations. Students of seven different Toronto schools, the boys didn’t previously know one another, but came back from the Feb. 28-March 2 trip with strong, new friendships, said Chai Lifeline caseworker Shmuel Rosenberg.

Welcomed by the Vancouver Jewish community, the boys arrived in the city to a group of local boys handing out care packages and then joined them for an excursion to a trampoline park.

A special Shabbat was hosted by Congregation Schara Tzedeck, where the Toronto boys had the opportunity to bond with more of the local community and experience a walking tour of the city, led by Schara Tzedeck’s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt. Other weekend highlights included skating on the top of Grouse Mountain and hiking amid spectacular views.

Based in Toronto, with an office in Montreal, Chai Lifeline Canada has nearly 600 volunteers helping more than 2,000 family members nationally. The organization provides dozens of free initiatives to help give children stability and their families a sense of normalcy. Initiatives include counseling, tutoring for children missing extended periods of school, family retreats, sibling programs similar to that of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and summer camps for kids. For more information, visit chailifelinecanada.org.

החיים בעידן הקורונה

(Paul Sableman)

בזמן שווירוס הקורונה ממשיך להשתולל ולהשפיע על החיים בקנדה, הפדרציה היהודית של אזור מטרו ונקובר הוציאה הודעה לחברי הקהילה.

לדברי מנכ”ל הפדרציה עזרא שנקן, יש חשיבות עליונה לשמור על הבריאות של כולם בקהילה היהודית. הוא מוסיף כי אמנם הרבה השתנה בימים האחרונים והמצב הוא חסר תקדים וגם נזיל ביותר, אך חשוב להזכיר כי על פי פרסומי המרכז לבקרת מחלות – הסיכון לקנדים מהווירוס נותר נמוך.

שנקן אומר כי הפדרציה תמשיך לעקוב אחר המלצות רשות הבריאות בכל מה שקשור להחלטות לגבי אופן פעילותה, מאירועים קהילתיים ועד לסביבת המשרדים שלה. וכן בדפוסי העבודה עם השותפים שלה. הפדרציה נמצאת בקשר שוטף עם רשויות הבריאות, והיא השתתפה בשיחת ועידה שניהלו הפרמייר של מחוז בריטיש קולומביה, שר הבריאות של המחוז וד”ר בוני הנרי, עם ראשי הקהילות השונות.

 הממשלה הפדרלית וקצין בריאות הציבור הראשי של בקנדה הודיעו על שורת צעדים חדשים, כולל מגבלות נרחבות יותר לטיסות, והמליצו לאנשים להגביר את ההתרחקות החברתית ולהימנע ממפגשים לא חיוניים.

כל אירועי הפדרציה היהודית בוטלו עד לסוף חודש מרץ. הפדרציה תבחן את המצב כאשר המלצות חדשות יועברו על ידי רשויות הבריאות.

 הנהלת הפדרציה מאפשרת כיום למרבית העובדים שלה לעבוד מהבית, ומקיימת יותר ויותר פגישות באמעוות הטלפון או בווידאו.

הפדרציה מעדכנת את התוכנית העבודה העסקית שלה להמשך הדרך. כך שאפשר יהיה לסמוך על הארגון לאור התפתחויות נוספות עקב וירוס הקורונה.

זה הזמן בשנה בו ארגונים קהילתיים רבים מנהלים אירועים לגיוס תרומות. הפדרציה נערכת לדבר עימם בימים הקרובים, על תוכניותיהם השונות ובודקת כיצד ניתן לעזור להם.

 מספר טיולים בינלאומיים מאורגנים הושפעו מהקורונה, והמצב מסובך עקב הגישות השונות בהן נוקטות מדינות שונות, כאשר מגיעים מטיילים ממקומות שונים בעולם. לכן צעדת החיים נדחתה. גם נסיעת בית הספר התיכון המלך דוד לישראל נדחתה. הפדרציה הבטיחה לעזור בסיוע כספי לבית הספר כדי לתכנן מחדש את הטיול. במקביל מתבצעת עבודה עם השותפים בישראל כדי להתמודד עם הסדרי הדחייה והמשמעויות הכספיות.

הסוכנות היהודית הודיעה כי היא היא מבטלת את הסיורים בצפון ישראל, ונציגיה, לאחר שישהו בבידוד בן שבועיים בישראל, יחזרו למשפחותיהם לקראת חג הפסח. הפדרציה עוזרת לקרן הקיימת בהליך הטיפול להחזרת הנציגים מישראל לוונקובר.

וירוס הקורונה משפיע על אנשים בקהילה היהודית ובכלל בדרכים שונות ומשונות. האיגוד העברי להלוואות חופשיות של ונקובר הכין תוכנית חירום, להלוואות של עד אלפיים דולר, כדי לענות על צרכיהם של מי שהושפעו כלכלית וצריכים עזרה כספית דחופה.

הפדרציה היהודית נמצאת בהליכי תקשורת קבועים עם בעלי עניין מקומיים, ארציים ובינלאומיים כדי לקבל תשובות, בנושאים השונים לאור הבעיות שנוצרו על ידי וירוס הקורונה. זאת כדי לקבל החלטות מידיות, לשתף את חברי הקהילה היהודית במידע ולספק תמיכה למי שזקוק לה. בפדרציה מדגישים כי הארגון מחוייב להבטיח שהליכי התקשורת שלה, הפעולות והמעשים פתוחים ושקופים לכל.

בפדרציה רואים בכל מידע בנוגע לניקיון והגיינה חשיבות עליונה. לכל אחד מחברי הקהילה יש תפקיד להפיץ מידע מדוייק ואמין בנושא וירוס הקורונה. במקרה הצורך למי שזקוק לעזרה, יש לבדוק את האתרים של הרשויות השונות ומערכת הבריאות של המחוז.

בתי כנסת רבים וארגונים קהילתיים אחרים פעילים מאוד בתחום האינפרומציה במצב מיוחד זה, שנוצר נוכח התפשטות וירוס הקורונה. למי שקשור לארגונים אלה מומלץ לבדוק את המידע שהם מספקים כל העת בנושא.

Talking helps reduce stigma

Left to right: Peggy Allen, Shelley Karrel, Shelley Rivkin, Jordan Bowman and Howard Harowitz. (photo from JACS Vancouver)

The capacity for transformation and healing was front and centre at the event Optimism and Hope: Erasing Stigma of Mental Illness, Addiction and Homelessness.

Co-sponsored by Jewish Family Services (JFS), Tikva Housing and Jewish Addiction Community Services (JACS) Vancouver, the panel discussion on Feb. 26 was held at Temple Sholom. It featured Shelley Rivkin of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Abbotsford entrepreneur and volunteer Peggy Allen, and Jordan Bowman of Last Door treatment and recovery centre in New Westminster.

Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz welcomed those gathered by talking about the Aleinu prayer, which, he said, asks us “to go out into the world and do what we’re praying for. And so, if I can make a request of all of us, myself included, it’s to go out from this room and to do and to share what we’ve learned and what we’ve heard tonight with our families and with our broader circle. That’s our shlichut, that’s our sacred mission, beyond just coming here today to get what we need for ourselves.”

JACS Vancouver board chair Howard Harowitz briefly described the missions of each of the event sponsors before introducing the night’s speakers, beginning with Rivkin, who shared the stories of a few community members who have been impacted by the risk of homelessness. She prefaced her remarks by saying homelessness is not limited to people living on the street or who live in shelters. Rather, the growing concern in our community is “relative homelessness, the lack of suitable, consistent and predictable housing,” she said.

She also noted that “it is not a natural equation that addiction, mental health and homelessness are faced by all people” in need. “Each person has to be approached individually and uniquely,” she said, then listed six sources of support in our community: JFS, Tikva Housing, Yaffa Housing, JACS, the Kehila Society of Richmond and the community’s synagogues.

Originally from Regina, Sask., Allen has lived in Abbotsford for a long time. She lives in an area where homeless people have gathered since the Salvation Army moved into the neighbourhood in 2004. A wife and the mother of two children, the situation was very difficult initially. She shared stories of her young granddaughter witnessing people having sex and shooting up, and of being chased out of her home by a crack addict.

“I was quite a happy person and then the homeless moved in and I changed forever,” she said. “I got angrier and angrier and angrier and I ended up making, in 15 years, I made 463 calls to the police. And they came every time and did nothing, because what are they going to do?”

Allen said she became very depressed. Then, she was invited to a meeting at city hall about the homeless. She challenged attendees to come and see the extent of the problem for themselves, and two women from Fraser Health took her up on it. Over coffee, Allen shared with them her concerns and, despite her self-described antagonism to them, they invited her to speak at a meeting of the Drug War Survivors, a peer-based user group that participates in the development of harm-reduction policies, among other things.

Reluctantly, she agreed. Expecting an audience of maybe 10 drug addicts, “there were 110 of them,” she said. “I look around and I open my mouth and I just let it all out. I don’t know what happened, it was a miracle, really. I talked about my father and I talked about him beating my mother so desperately,” waking Allen’s sister, who was told to return to bed by their mother, and did. “That’s what we were raised with,” said Allen. “I had never spoken about it, and I just let it all out,” including how she was kicked out of a school in her teens for selling drugs.

After her remarks, audience members lined up, but she didn’t know why, so she started to leave. “As I’m walking out, the first guy comes up and hugs me. They were all standing there to hug me,” she said, holding back tears.

One of the men recognized Allen from secondary school. He shared with her that he was raised with such anger that he went down the path of drugs, whereas she – who his family warned him about as a teen, since she sold drugs – did not. He said to Allen, “I see now that I, too, can change my life.”

This interaction, she said, changed her life. “I went home, and I was walking up the driveway to get the mail and this crazy lady that lived on the street and was a huge drug addict and was nasty and did not like me, she came running up my driveway swearing and yelling at me with this other guy. I was so emotional, I went running at her, I don’t know what I was going to do, and I stopped. I changed my mind. I turned around and I went home. And my life changed. Everything on our street is still happening and nothing has changed much there, except me.”

Allen started giving to the homeless. She joined the city’s Business Engagement Ambassador Project, which works to build relationships between Abbotsford residents, business owners, homeless and others to strengthen the sense of community. “What I do is I speak all over the place and raise money to help them help themselves,” she said of those who are homeless.

The project is a year-and-half old and she described it as a success. One aspect in particular that is working, she said, is that the program pays homeless people to clean up area businesses and parks.

The last speaker, Bowman, now 22 years old, has been clean for just over four years. He is a youth program support worker at Last Door, the centre at which he was set on the path of recovery.

Bowman said he had a good upbringing, went to Jewish summer camp and day schools, was into sports, has lots of friends and has a great family. Having lost his mother to cancer when he was 10, he said, “That was obviously tough, but by no means do I point my finger at that and say, ‘that’s when I started using drugs.’”

He described his life as normal, living with his dad and brother. There were no indications, he said, that he would become an addict. Addiction does not discriminate, he said, and people need to know that. His family, he said, were completely surprised to find out about his drug use and were “unversed in the topic of addiction.” Luckily, he had a cousin who works as a drug and alcohol counselor and “she saved the day” when it came to him seeking help.

At age 14, Bowman started to experiment with marijuana. He couldn’t say exactly why he started using harder drugs, but perhaps he had just gotten in with the wrong crowd. He described the process as progressive. “It went from using once in awhile to using every day, to doing whatever it takes,” he said.

“I’m not going to get too much into the things I did to get to get high every day but it definitely involved a lot of stealing from the people very close to me. It didn’t matter if you would love me, if you would hate me, if you were older, if you were younger, if I had the chance, I would try and rip you off if I was with you, and that was the reality of my life.”

From age 16 to 18, he was using opiates every day, while still going to school, while still trying to cover up that he was an addict. “I wanted help, but I didn’t,” he said. “I wanted help because I knew in my mind that I could be a better person than I’m being right now but, in the other part of my mind, I was scared and I wanted to keep getting high.”

The breaking point came when he stole a significant amount of money from his brother. From that day, when his brother reacted with love rather than anger – Dec. 22, 2015 – the efforts at recovery began, with the help of his father, brother, cousin and others. There were a few false starts, a couple of detox and treatment centres, before he landed at Last Door in mid-January 2016. He has not used drugs since.

Waiting times and the cost of treatment were among the topics discussed in the question-and-answer period. Giuseppe Ganci, director of community development for Last Door Recovery Society, was in the audience. He explained some of the different levels of care, ranging from assisted living residences, for which there are minimal guidelines, to treatment centres, which will have psychiatrists and other professionals on site. The definitions of the levels differ between regions in the province, he said, making the system hard for people to understand and, therefore, access.

“The problem is,” he said, “you always hear there are not enough beds in British Columbia. That’s actually a myth. There are so many beds. Last Door runs probably at 80% capacity every day [and has] for years. We have about 100 beds and only 35 of them are funded [by government]; the rest, there’s no funding for them, so it’s a shortage of funding for treatment, it’s not a shortage of beds.” This means that people who can afford it are able to get treatment within 24 hours, rather than join the queue of six to eight weeks or longer, he said.

After a couple more questions, Harowitz wrapped up the event. Addiction is not a choice, he stressed, citing JACS speaker Steve Whiteside. “It’s not a weakness of character, it’s not anything other than any other kind of disease that people have,” he said, challenging the audience “to keep the conversation going.”

Israeli pucksters visit

Members of the Hockey Academy of Israel. (photo from Kyle Berger)

The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, along with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, played host earlier this month to 27 young hockey players from Israel’s Northern District who were in town for an eight-day visit.

The stops for the athletes, ages 10 to 14, on their March 5-13 Vancouver trip included a fundraising exhibition game against the JCC league (which had some former NHL players in attendance), the JCC Purim party March 9, which had a hockey workshop for kids in the gym, and a Canucks game on March 10, where Vancouver took on the New York Islanders. The Israeli junior players also had a practice skating session with Barb Aidelbaum, one of Canada’s top power-skating coaches, and ate meals at the Israeli-owned Chickpea and the Palestinian-run Aleph restaurants.

The co-ed group, comprised of youth from a variety of backgrounds – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze – is part of the Hockey Academy of Israel (HIA). Situated in Metula, Israel’s northernmost town – along the border with Lebanon – the HIA (formerly the Canada-Israel Hockey School) was started in 2010 thanks to the drive and ambition of a local Israeli apple farmer and hockey aficionado, Levav Weinberg, and the initial financial support of Canadian media mogul Sidney Greenberg. Presently funded by donors from around the world, the HIA sees as its goal to make hockey fun and affordable for kids who otherwise would not get the opportunity to play.

Since its inception a decade ago, the HIA has witnessed a growing passion for the game in Israel and now boasts more than 400 young players in its academy, all of whom play at the Canada Centre in Metula, home to the only full-sized hockey rink in Israel. This is the second time a group from the HIA has visited Vancouver, a trip that was organized by the JCC and financially supported by the Jewish Federation. Members of the HIA also have visited other NHL towns, such as Ottawa, Pittsburgh and Winnipeg.

The existence of a camp in an area that has frequently made headlines for regional animosities has shown that much good can arise from sport. Many lasting friendships between players of different ethnicities have been formed at the academy.

“There are few things in the world that bring people together the way sports can,” said Kyle Berger, sports coordinator at the JCC and local delegation head for the Maccabi Games. “Sports bonds teammates together, it bonds countries together and, in some rare cases, sports can even bring peace and unity when such things seems almost impossible. This is the magic of the Hockey Academy of Israel, which brings both Jewish and Arab youth and their families together in the name of hockey.”

The HIA says it has found that, as passion for hockey grows in a region surrounded by political conflict, so too grow the bonds and respect these teammates from different cultural and political backgrounds have for one another.

Berger, along with other members of the Metro Vancouver Jewish community, has visited the hockey academy on several occasions, starting in 2012. He told the Independent that he “was blown away” by what he saw when he first arrived. “I had no idea as to the extent of the passion and the intensity the hockey academy has created for the game in Israel, and how much it has done to unite people of different cultures,” he said.

Hockey in Metula, which was featured in the 2013 TSN documentary Neutral Zone, has had a short, yet storied, history. Before the HIA was created, Canadian coaching legend Roger Neilson taught a camp in Metula in the late 1990s and played an integral role in establishing a fervour for the game in Israel.

The HIA is presently coached by Torontonian Mike Mazeika, who believes “the main goal of the academy is to integrate Jewish and Arab kids together, playing hockey, so that they can understand each other and make a difference for the future. Is that going to get us peace in the Middle East? No, probably not. But, if you don’t start small and take small steps, you’ll never be able to take a big step.”

The JCC and Jewish Federation were helped in various ways to support the HIA’s visit, including by host families, sponsors or venue/activity donors. For more information, contact Berger at kyle@jccgv.bc.ca or 604-638-7286.

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

Celebrate spring with music

Wendy Bross Stuart leads singers Lisa Milton, Kat Palmer and David Urist in the JSA program With a Song in My Heart, which takes place March 29 at the Peretz Centre. (photo from Wendy Bross Stuart)

This year’s Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver Spring Forum features a concert with music director and pianist Wendy Bross Stuart and singers Lisa Milton, Kat Palmer and David Urist. The program, called With a Song in My Heart, takes place March 29 at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture.

“We are planning a program of Jewish-related songs all pertaining to our love of music,” Bross Stuart told the Independent. “‘With a Song in My Heart’ is a famous song by Rodgers and Hart (Jewish writers) from the 1929 musical Spring is Here. Very true that, by March 29, spring will indeed be here!

“We will include that song in our program as an ensemble piece,” she said. “We will have duets – in Yiddish – ‘Her Nor Du, Sheyn Meydele’ and ‘Vu Ahin Zol Ikh Geyn’; and many solos from Jewish-themed musicals, for example Rags, Milk and Honey, The Rothschilds and a song that was deleted from Fiddler on the Roof!”

Bross Stuart has contributed to more than a dozen seasons of Theatre Under the Stars, as conductor, music director and pianist, and has been music director and pianist for many other theatre companies, including the Arts Club, the Electric Company, Famous Artists, Touchstone Theatre, Presentation House and Snapshots Collective. She has composed numerous choral arrangements and recorded four CDs of Jewish music with soprano Claire Klein Osipov.

Of the ensemble that will join her on March 29, Bross Stuart said, “These three singers are very accomplished. They must have an opportunity to sing what inspires them, but which also fits into the theme of the program.”

She noted that Milton is Klein Osipov’s younger daughter. “She spent many years observing her mother’s performances and rehearsals. She knows all the arrangements I created for Claire – perfectly. When I accompany Lisa, it’s magic,” said Bross Stuart. “I see and hear Claire! What a delight!”

In addition to being an award-winning musician, Bross Stuart is an ethnomusicologist. She has written two books – Gambling Music of the Coast Salish Indians and, with John Enrico, Northern Haida Songs. She and her husband, Ron Stuart, collaborate in the making of documentary films shot in South Africa.

“Ron and I just returned from two-and-a-half months in Cape Town, where we started working on our eighth documentary there,” said Bross Stuart. “This one is called Gugulethu Warriors – Making Things Right! It’s a documentary based on the grassroots efforts of township residents to cope with the social issues of crime, safety, unemployment and community cohesion.”

The Stuarts established Cultural Odyssey Films, notes the website culturalodysseyfilms.com, “to provide a platform for the production and distribution of documentary films about contemporary cultural groups and individuals committed to social change.”

The Stuarts also formed WRS Productions, which has numerous producing credits, including the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s annual community commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Bross Stuart said that, while preparing for the JSA Spring Forum, she, Milton, Palmer and Urist are also working on the Yom Hashoah commemoration.

“After that,” she said, “I jump into rehearsals for Theatre Under the Stars’ upcoming production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Perry Ehrlich’s Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! – year 26!

Bross Stuart is a co-founder of the Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! musical theatre program, which is held at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver every summer. The deadline for youth to apply to this year’s sessions is April 1.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Bross Stuart recently adapted an indie pop song. “I just completed a new choral arrangement,” she said. “Of one of my daughter Jessica’s new songs. A first for me!” (The original “Simple Little Song” can be heard at jessicastuartmusic.com.)

As to why she is making the time to perform at the JSA forum, Bross Stuart said, “The JSA is run by a group of very talented, diligent, kind and caring individuals. They provide a wonderful service to the community, where we share with one another. It is my pleasure to contribute to this.”

With a Song in My Heart starts at 2 p.m. on March 29. Refreshments will be served and underground parking is available at the Peretz Centre – cars must enter the alley from 49th Avenue, as 45th is closed to traffic. The nominal cost of the event is $5. For more information and to register, call 604-732-1555 or email office@jsalliance.org.