Yasam (Israel Police Special Patrol Unit) Master-Sgt. Ran Gvili z”l was buried on Jan. 28 in his hometown of Meitar. The last remaining hostage from the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, his body was brought back to Israel on Jan. 26. After 843 days, the clock in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square stopped ticking, and the displays of the kidnapped at Ben-Gurion Airport and the National Library of Israel were removed. For the first time since 2014, not a single Israel Defence Forces soldier or civilian is being held hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Two years, three months and 20 days after Gvili, 24, fell in a battle at Kibbutz Alumim near the Gaza Strip, the hero was given a fitting military funeral. Thousands of police officers, IDF soldiers and residents stood in silence along the streets of the Beer Sheva suburb as the funeral procession passed.
The service was attended by President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Police Commissioner Daniel Levy and Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef, alongside senior political and security figures. The sombre ceremony was the first funeral of a hostage from Oct. 7 attended by the prime minister.
Netanyahu eulogized Gvili: “He considered his injured shoulder meaningless because he believed with all his heart and strength that the security of the state rested on him and the shoulders of his comrades.
“He saved lives – many, many lives,” said Netanyahu.
The prime minister also announced that a new town, Renanim, would be established near Meitar in Gvili’s memory.
Addressing the family, Herzog apologized on behalf of the people of Israel, saying: “I’m sorry we were not there for him. I am sorry that, along with so many other families, you had to wait so many long, agonizing days for the return of your loved one.”
He added: “Without hesitation and without asking, again and again, [Gvili] said, ‘Here I am,’ and went into the line of fire to protect us.”
When the attacks began at 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, Gvili was at home, where he had been recovering from a broken shoulder sustained in a motorcycle accident. As news began trickling in of kibbutzim and cities near the Gaza frontier being overrun and their residents massacred, he decided to join the battle. Though on medical leave, he reached for his gun and his uniform, and went to help.
His father, Itzik Gvili, told Ynet News that his son “just put on a uniform and said to me, ‘Abba, I’m going.’ I said to him, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ and he answered, ‘What do you think? Do you think that my friends will fight alone? I’m going to help them.’ He didn’t ask me. Rani can’t be stopped.”
Driving west toward the carnage at the Nova music festival, Gvili rescued an estimated 100 people fleeing the rave. He then engaged in a battle with dozens of Hamas gunmen near Kibbutz Alumim, killing 14 terrorists before being fatally shot when he ran out of ammunition. At 10:50 that morning, he texted friends that he had been shot in the leg.
For months, Gvili’s family held out hope that he was alive and being held hostage somewhere in the Gaza Strip.
His mother, Tali, told Haaretz in November 2024 that the family had received photos from Oct. 7 showing him arriving unconscious at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and later in Zeitoun on the back of a motorcycle, “but they aren’t conclusive … in this situation, hoping for a miracle feels reasonable.”
Gvili’s body was recovered by IDF search teams following a months-long intelligence operation. Under combat conditions in the northern Gaza Strip, some 700 bodies were disinterred at al-Bats Muslim cemetery in Shuja’iya and Gvili’s was identified by IDF dentists after carrying out the forensic examination of 249 corpses. Many noted that the word ran (singing) has a numerical value in gematria of 250. Gvili was still wearing his uniform, and he was buried in it rather than in shrouds as is customary for civilians.
According to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, “Ran had a passion for motorcycles, enjoyed gatherings with friends, cherished moments with his sister and brother, and relished playing the guitar while sipping lemon arak.”
Gil Zoharis a journalist and tour guide based in Jerusalem.
At rallies held across Canada after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and during the Israel-Hamas war, there were protesters holding antisemitic signs and hollering antisemitic slogans. Bill C-9 would amend the Criminal Code to strengthen existing hate-related offences. (photo from Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism)
Parliament resumed last month after its winter break and one of the bills on the agenda for the new session could have significant repercussions for Jewish Canadians.
While Jewish organizations welcome most components of the proposed legislation, the most important message that its passage would send is that political leaders take hate crimes seriously, according to Jewish organizational spokespeople who were interviewed by the Independent.
Bill C-9 would amend the Criminal Code to strengthen existing hate-related offences. But legal experts and advocacy agencies admit there is no quick fix for the explosion of antisemitic rhetoric and violence in Canada and around the world.
The proposed legislation, which is now in committee stage, would create new offences for intimidation and for intentional obstruction of access to religious or cultural institutions, schools, daycares, seniors residences and cemeteries. It would also create a new hate-crime offence tied to crimes motivated by “hatred,” add a definition of “hatred” and create an offence related to publicly displaying certain hate or terrorist symbols in ways that promote hatred. If passed, the law would remove the requirement of provincial attorneys general to approve police-laid charges and instead place that decision on Crown prosecutors.
In a rare joint statement in December, five national organizations – the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, B’nai Brith Canada, the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, and Canadian Women Against Antisemitism – welcomed the bill. They also called for additional steps, including increased funding for community security and closing gaps in the country’s anti-terror laws. The statement further called for existing laws to be more vigorously and consistently enforced.
Despite the advocacy of community voices, and existing and proposed legislation, many Canadian Jews feel that antisemitic rhetoric and acts are getting worse, not better, and that few of the actions taken to stanch them are having the desired outcomes.
In British Columbia, for example, Vancouver police recommended charges against Charlotte Kates, a Vancouver resident who publicly called the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks “brave and heroic” and who led a rally in chants of “Long live October 7.” The recommendation has been on the desk of BC’s attorney general for more than 18 months. In an interview with the Independent late last year, Premier David Eby committed to providing an update on the case. Despite repeated follow-ups, the premier’s office has not yet responded with an explanation as to why no action has been forthcoming.
The Independent interviewed leaders in Jewish advocacy organizations, and a clear consensus emerged that expressions of political will may be as important as any particular piece of existing or new legislation.
While many people may feel things are on a downward trajectory, Dylan Hanley, senior vice-president, public affairs, for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, noted some areas of progress. For example, though the situation on Canadian university campuses is not perfect, he said, there have been improvements in terms of how administrations respond to problems.
Hanley also said credit should be given where due, and intelligence agencies and law enforcement have, crucially, prevented several potential disasters from happening in Canada. More must be done, however, including additional immigration screening around connections to terrorist groups, and maintaining vigilance around foreign interference in politics and civil society, he said.
Further investigation is required around possible foreign support for domestic agitators, said Hanley. Although there is no solid evidence, there has been much speculation about external funding of anti-Israel activities, especially given the apparent preparedness of domestic groups immediately after the 10/7 attacks, he said.
“Has anybody shown us the smoking gun?” Hanley asked. “No. Do we suspect at least that there are foreign funds going into some of these campaigns? Sure.”
Ensuring government support for community security is an ongoing issue, as funding is cyclical. But Hanley noted that, while this support is necessary, it is also a response to the problem, which requires leadership and action that gets at the root of the issue – radicalization combined with a major increase in antisemitism.
The proposed changes contained in Bill C-9 are largely a step in the right direction in his view, but Hanley says no single approach can eliminate the underlying problem of antisemitism and hatred.
“None of these things are silver bullets on their own,” he said. “And we don’t want to raise community expectations that there is a silver bullet here.”
The Jewish community is feeling very alone, he said, and is looking for someone to fix the problem. The consensus among all those interviewed for this story is that political leadership must set the tone.
“I think the biggest piece – and we deliver this message at every level of government in every interaction – is we need to see clear leadership on this,” Hanley said. “We need our leaders to come out and say, clearly, this isn’t OK. You can’t target communities in Canada because of anger or frustrations from conflicts going on overseas, and what starts with our community isn’t going to end with our community.”
Even before Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitism was an increasing problem in Canada – this photo comes from a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ post about Ontario’s 2022 election. A lack of political will at all levels of government is one reason the problem continues to worsen. (photo from cija.ca)
Jewish Canadians are frustrated with what appears like constant buck-passing, he said.
“The university says, ‘Well, actually, this is the police’s job.’ The police say, ‘Well, you know, we haven’t gotten any political cover from the city.’ The city says it’s the province. The province says it’s the feds,” Hanley explained. “And then you go around in the circle again and the feds say, ‘We don’t get involved in law enforcement in individual cases.’”
Aron Csaplaros, BC regional manager for B’nai Brith Canada, echoed several of Hanley’s comments and lauded the Bill C-9 provision that would create a law that most Canadians probably think already exists.
“In Canada, we do not right now have a freestanding hate crime offence,” he said. Instead, the Criminal Code prohibits wilful promotion of hatred and public incitement of hatred. At present, acts motivated by hate are usually prosecuted under general offences like mischief or assault, while bias or hate can be treated only as an aggravating factor at sentencing.
With Bill C-9, prosecutors would be able to lay a specific hate-crime charge that makes bias or hatred part of the offence itself. This means that prosecutions can centre explicitly on antisemitic or hateful motivation, and sentencing may be more severe because the hate element would be built into the crime rather than treated as secondary.
Bill C-9 would also create a prohibition against harassing people outside religious institutions.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression and protest,” said Csaplaros. “But, at the same time, those rights cannot come at the expense of the freedom of others.”
His views about the way things are handled – or not – are similar to Hanley’s.
“I think there’s a lot of passing the buck and finger-pointing going on between various levels of law enforcement and government,” said Csaplaros.
Like the other spokespeople the Independent interviewed, Csaplaros said he is not criticizing law enforcement.
“Law enforcement really needs to be empowered. They need to ensure that officers are using all of the resources available to them,” he said. “That means that all levels of government –federal, municipal, provincial – need to support law enforcement by ensuring clear directives and ensuring that they have the mandate.”
Officers on the frontline may need more awareness of the laws and the extent or limitations of those laws, he said. Crown prosecutors and the
judiciary might benefit from refreshers as well, he added.
Education is key, he said, not just for people at the frontline of law enforcement but for all Canadians. B’nai Brith is calling for a national digital literacy campaign so that all people, but especially young people, have the tools to be able to differentiate fact from fiction, disinformation from legitimate disagreement.
Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said education is a core mandate of her organization. In this context, she has seen how the realities facing Jewish Canadians are questioned or discounted.
The centre educates a broad range of audiences, including law enforcement, government officials and civil society leaders. Almost invariably, she said, when trainers show statistics of antisemitic hate crimes, hands shoot up in the audience to contest the numbers, to question the methodologies or otherwise call into doubt the prevalence of attacks on Jews. Part of this, she believes, is due to the pervasiveness of the myth of the “powerful Jew.”
“This sort of racist understanding of the Jew has compromised the ability of the society to really understand that, in fact, we are the targets,” she said.
Even when people are not challenging the evidence, said Kirzner-Roberts, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between approaches to antisemitism and reactions to other forms of racism.
“The response that we so often hear is, ‘Well, it’s a free country,’” she said. “This is not the kind of expression that you would get if the target were, in my opinion, anyone other than Jews.” This societal double standard is a challenge, she said.
Like the others interviewed, Kirzner-Roberts believes that leadership and political will are crucial to turning the tide. That includes legislation like Bill C-9 and also enforcement of existing laws. “There is a lot of legislation already that is being far underutilized,” she said.
Systemic issues, though, are addressed by leadership at the political level.
“We’re seeing a lack of political will across the board, and I’m talking here [about] cities, provinces and on the federal level,” said Kirzner-Roberts.
In addition to addressing the rise in hate-motivated crime and closing loopholes in existing laws, she said, Bill C-9 is important because it drives home the message of political will onto police and prosecutors.
The federal government announced last week that they are eliminating the office of Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.
The announcement came in conjunction with the decision to eliminate the similar office of the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, and the announcement that there will be a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion.
It is hard to find fault with the hope expressed by the government that the new council, which will be comprised of prominent Canadians from academia as well as experts and community leaders, will foster social cohesion, rally Canadians around shared identity, combat racism and hate in all their forms, and help guide the government’s work in fighting racism. However, cutting the one position in Ottawa explicitly committed to addressing antisemitism just doesn’t seem wise.
Given the precipitous rise in antisemitism in Canada, we might assume that the office of antisemitism was not a great success. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to measure success and failure on these matters. Perhaps things would have been markedly worse without it. In any event, for what was no doubt a barely negligible cost in the bigger scheme of the federal budget, the office was at least a nod toward taking the matter seriously.
Perhaps the new office will have profound impacts that the two eradicated offices did not. The problem is that, in so many ways, antisemitism is different in form and content from other forms of racism. It needs and deserves to be recognized and treated in ways that reflect this meaningful difference.
It is a symptom of the problem of antisemitism itself that this basic recognition of difference elicits condemnations of “Jewish exceptionalism,” or worse. It is an unavoidable truth, though, and the unique challenges of antisemitism are not addressed when elected officials, commentators, academics and antiracist activists seem congenitally incapable of condemning antisemitism without couching that condemnation in a basket of other biases and bigotries that deserve their own condemnation.
It should be reason for concern that the homogenization of antisemitism is now being institutionalized in an agency that lumps biases against Jews – which Statistics Canada says account for 70% ofreligiously motivated hate crimes and almost one in five of all hate crimes in the country – into a catch-all council dealing with a vast range of social ills. (The fact that antisemitism is grouped with “religiously motivated hate crimes” is a problematic but common misnomer for another editorial.)
A second, seemingly unrelated story in the news last week should amplify this concern.
In a minor political coup, Doly Begum, the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party in the Ontario legislature, blindsided her leader by suddenly resigning her legislative seat and announcing she would run federally – not for their federal counterpart, the NDP, but for Mark Carney’s Liberal party.
Political commentators have had a field day poking the entrails of Ontario’s NDP and wondering what it might mean for the federal Liberal government’s left flank as some people ponder a snap election this year.
Those attuned to other nuances of the story soon found that Begum has been one of the Ontario legislature’s most vocal anti-Israel voices, with a particular inclination toward the “genocide” claim. Given that provincial governments have precisely no foreign policy responsibilities, Begum’s fixation on this issue suggests she may bring a very particular agenda should she be elected in the upcoming by-election.
There is no way that the prime minister, the Liberal party and anyone else involved in these headline-topping machinations was not aware of their new recruit’s repeated and inflammatory comments on this topic.
The welcoming of Begum into the Liberal fold seems like another message to Canadians about this government’s approach to Israel and Palestine and the inevitable fallout of that conflict on domestic harmony.
Coming on the heels of the federal government’s recognition of a “state of Palestine” last year, it is hard to imagine the latest developments as anything short of a slap in the face to Jewish and pro-Israel Canadians, and anyone who cares about combatting Jew-hatred.
Were you part of the pandemic sourdough bread baking craze? I’ve been baking bread for around 40 years, but I’m not a sourdough baker. Maintaining the starter was something I couldn’t manage. Although I’ve made many kinds of bread, including weekly challah (twin teens eat a lot!), I found using store-bought yeast was fine. Besides, my biology professor husband disliked the colourful, dangerous things he saw growing when I tried to maintain a starter long ago. He supports our bread habit as we buy one pound of dried yeast at a time.
My approach isn’t exact. However, I produce bread that rises and tastes good even without a recipe. I don’t use all the technical terms that I saw on the internet during the pandemic bread-baking phase. I stick to basic ingredients and easy methods. Bakers have used these successfully for thousands of years.
All this seemed familiar when I started studying the Babylonian tractate of Menachot. Menachot delves into the exact ways the rabbis thought meal (grain) offerings should be measured, cooked, burnt and sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbis who discussed this mostly lived long after the Temple was destroyed. They’d never seen Temple offerings but they still discussed detailed recipes and techniques for proper sacrifice.
I remember the many online discussions about sourdough science. These were often people who, while baking beautiful pandemic sourdough, had never made bread previously, as I had. Of course, all of us would be shamed before our ancestors who, using a wooden bowl ripe with wild yeast, turned out bread consistently, day in and day out, to feed their families.
You might think, well, this isn’t for me if I don’t bake bread. Perhaps you never have worried about the ancient grain offerings in Jerusalem, or the “shrewbread” that became our modern equivalent, challah. All these discussions came to a head in Menachot, page 18a.
A question arises about whether a specific offering is fit (acceptable) and why. First, we learn about a meaningful teacher-student relationship between Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua and Yosef the Babylonian.
Yosef the Babylonian learns something from Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua that doesn’t seem entirely right to him. He questions his teacher several times. After multiple repetitions of a simple answer, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua finally gives Yosef the Babylonian more information. He recalls another contradictory teaching from Rabbi Eliezer that agrees with what Yosef the Babylonian remembers.
Yosef the Babylonian erupts in joy. Both men are emotional, moved by the experience they’ve had, where careful analysis brings them important understanding and resolution. Yosef the Babylonian is relieved – he had worried that what he’d remembered was a mistake because he couldn’t find anyone else who recalled what Rabbi Eliezer had taught. Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua cries, filled with wonder. They celebrate Torah study, which maintains an intellectual genealogy of teachers and students by the historic transmission of knowledge. It’s a careful recounting of discussion and disputes, rather than just a simple, reflexive answer.
Menachot 18a, like bread-baking, shows that, if we get bogged down in the technical details, we can also be swept up in the transformation that occurs when we get everything – that we study or bake – right. This story is about mistakes, forgetting, misinformation and complex opinions. This tractate might describe how to do defunct sacrifice recipes correctly. It’s also about how we transmit important knowledge. We need to keep the facts straight, without forgetting anything, and synthesize complex opinions.
This is relevant today. We’re struggling daily to keep track of what’s happening in the world. Is it legal? Is it ethical? How does it affect us? In an age of “instant” information, diminished international reporting, social media disinformation campaigns and simplistic interpretations, it’s no wonder that we need to work hard to figure out what’s happening. It’s just as important now to do one’s own footwork. We must ask questions and analyze information carefully, just as when Yosef the Babylonian sat with his teacher, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, sometime between 135 and 170 CE.
We can get swept up in the technical aspects of our lives, whether it’s sourdough baking or legal proceedings. Yet, we also have that practical compass that guides us. I know intuitively, after decades of practice, how to throw together flour, salt, water and yeast, when to add sweetness, oil or eggs, and why. It’s a gut feeling, as deep as my internal moral compass that reacts when I see something wrong happening. Perhaps it’s how Judaism, my family or my community has shaped me, just as environment shapes all of us. Perhaps it’s an innate sense of the worth of each human being, as we are made in the image of the Divine. We know when things are going off the rails, and when we need to keep asking the hard questions to make change.
You could infer that all this refers to the current US upheaval, but it also relates to many other issues. For instance, at home, recent research found that Canadian Jews weren’t wrong about the CBC’s bias in reporting on the Israel-Hamas war. Statistical analysis indicates that yes, headlines, interviewer choices and perspectives lacked objectivity. If you, like me, questioned the CBC’s reporting over the last two years, just like Yosef questioned Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, this information is reassuring.
Farther away, Israelis care passionately about democracy. Israelis ask their government tough questions, including protesting its poor record in protecting Arab citizens and its failure to provide a sufficient inquiry concerning Oct. 7. Regarding Iran’s upheaval, the Islamic regime’s repression means protesters risk murder, injury, torture and rape. Brave questioning of authority and pursuit of truthful information aren’t specific to one culture or country.
Yosef the Babylonian doubted himself. He repeatedly nudged his teacher. He worried that he’d made a mistake, but then bravely sought clarity to understand the bigger picture. We, too, can be so persistent that authority figures, like our teachers and government officials, must answer with thorough responses. Let’s not get bogged down in the technical details. It’s not whether you say that your bread dough rests, or uses an autolyze. Rather, listen to your gut. Go for the big questions. Think hard. Act to take the moral high ground. We all deserve something better. Let’s hope soon to break bread together, in peace and safety, with emotional, deep discussions.
Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
Resilience and determination were the themes at an International HolocaustRemembrance Day commemoration at the Bayit synagogue in Richmond Jan. 27. It was the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Marie Doduck, a child survivor who was the youngest Jewish orphan admitted to Canada after the war, spoke of her survival story, as well as her life in Canada, and she urged vigilance in the face of rising contemporary antisemitism.
Doduck was born Mariette Rozen in Brussels, Belgium, in 1935, the youngest of 11 children. She was 5 years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown in 1940. She and her siblings were scattered across the city and countryside, hiding with non-Jewish families, in convents and orphanages, and at times assisting the resistance. While her parents and three of her siblings were killed, eight survived, a remarkable number given that an estimated 85% of Belgian Jewish children were murdered.
In 1947, she immigrated to Canada as a war orphan and, with three of her surviving siblings, was brought to Vancouver. Her memoir, A Childhood Unspoken, was published in 2023. (See the Independent’s review of the book at jewishindependent.ca/an-intense-urgent-read.)
Doduck spent the war years being shuffled from one place to another, even serving as a messenger between her siblings and for the resistance, because of her photographic memory.
“I lived mostly in darkness, literally in hiding places where the Nazis could not find me,” she recounted. “When I returned to Brussels years later, I could not recognize the city in the daylight, for my Brussels was a place of darkness.”
Her survival – and that of seven other siblings – is a result of series of near-miracles and near-misses.
“At one of the orphanages, the mother superior hid me in a rat-infested sewer after one of her nuns found out that I was a Jewish child and reported me to the Gestapo,” she said.
After liberation, Doduck was one of 1,123 orphans sponsored by Canadian Jewish Congress to migrate to Canada. Her adaptation to life in Vancouver, while smoother than many of the children, was very difficult.
“When I first tried to tell people what happened to me, they said, ‘Forget the past,’” she recalled. “We all find our own ways of dealing with pain. I became more resilient and learned from life’s harsh lessons to depend only on myself. I, as a child, had a strength to go on despite the mistrust, fear and pain that I then felt. I went on. I went on because I would not consider the alternative. Those lessons are, in a significant way, responsible for whom I am today.”
Doduck explained that the word “holocaust,” which came into the use in 1950s, originally meant a sacrifice burnt entirely on the altar. She contrasted her own experience with that nihilistic image.
“The person you see before you tonight, Marie Doduck, is a happy Jewish mother, a successful businesswoman, an author, a grandmother, a great-grandmother,” she said. “I’ve also been president of my synagogue and on the board of many Jewish organizations in our community.”
Marie Doduck mingled with attendees after the International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Bayit. (photo by Pat Johnson)
She is a co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).
Doduck’s personal story of success and happiness is replicated among countless survivors of the trauma of that time.
“Although our childhood was ripped away from us, we survived and continued and we thrived,” she said. “We have achieved so much for ourselves, our families, and for our community. And I and many others will continue to speak about our stories and to remember, to acknowledge those who perished, who cannot speak for themselves. It is estimated that only 11% of Jewish children who were alive in Europe in 1939 lived to see 1945. As many as 1.5 million of the six million Jews cruelly murdered by the Nazis were children under the age of 18.”
Doduck said the world needs to learn from the past.
“No society is immune to the danger of prejudice, antisemitism and racism, and we must work together to stand up when we see injustice in the world around us,” she said.
She explained that the vision of the VHEC is a world free of antisemitism, discrimination and genocide, with social justice and human rights for all.
“This noble idea can only be achieved when governments, schools, educators and organizations work together hand-in-hand to teach future generations about the danger of racism and discrimination,” Doduck said. “Together, we must remember the past and pass on the teaching of the Holocaust together.… We must make ‘never again’ a reality, not just an ideal.”
Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, took exception to the term “survivor” to describe people like Doduck.
“They’re not survivors. They’re thrivers,” he said. “Survivors just get by. Survivors are what they thought we would have as a Jewish people after the Shoah. They thought we would have a group of survivors who could not make it in the world beyond the Shoah.”
The lives of these individuals defied expectations, he said.
“We have thrivers that not only found meaningful relationships, not only built families, not only had kids, but cured diseases and became artists and won Nobel Prizes,” said Shanken. “They did for the world, but the world didn’t do for them.”
The countries where survivors made their homes and contributed so much have become rampant with antisemitism, he said.
Shanken called on those in the room, especially elected officials, to demonstrate clear leadership.
“It is critical that people understand what is in bounds and what is out of bounds within our society…. I know it’s hard as politicians to get that done,” he said. “But I have to tell you, please, on our behalf, keep doing as much as you can because we need you.”
Parm Bains, member of Parliament for Steveston-Richmond East, sent greetings from Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Kelly Greene, member of the BC Legislature for Richmond-Steveston and minister for emergency management and climate readiness, brought greetings from Premier David Eby. Also in attendance were fellow MLAs Hon Chan (Richmond Centre), Steve Kooner (Richmond-Queensborough) and Teresa Wat (Richmond-Bridgeport).
Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, in attendance with city councilors Laura Gillanders, Kash Heed, Andy Hobbs, Alexa Loo and Bill McNulty, read a proclamation from the city. He noted that there are fewer Jews in the world now than there were in 1939.
Doduck was joined in lighting memorial candles by three fellow survivors, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Miriam Dattel and Regine Fefer. Brodie and Dave Chauhan, chief superintendent of the Richmond RCMP, also participated in the candlelighting.
Sherri Barkoff, vice-president of the Bayit, emceed the event, which was presented by the Richmond Kehila Society, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the VHEC, the Bayit, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
Rabbi Levi Varnai welcomed guests to the event, Cantor Yaakov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim, Café McMullen, program officer at the VHEC, spoke of the organization’s work, and violinist Lior Perry played before and during the ceremony, including a piece from the film Schindler’s List.
Dr. Gloria Gutman thought interviewees would have refused to place themselves in situations where they might be targeted or victimized, like rallies or Jewish events, but that wasn’t the case. “People felt more comfortable and secure when they were actively part of the Jewish community,” she said. (internet photo)
There’s been lots in the media about Jewish students feeling intimidated, but we tend not to think about older people,” Dr. Gloria Gutman told the Jewish Independent about a recent study she conducted with Dr. Sharon Avidor on the experiences of older Canadians since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel. “We really want to raise awareness of older people among service providers and the general community, and let them know that the impact is really on all of our community.”
Gutman, a lifelong Vancouverite, is vice-president of the International Society for Gerontology, director emerita of the Gerontology Research Centre at Simon Fraser University and professor emerita of SFU’s department of gerontology. Wondering how older members of the Canadian Jewish community were coping in the aftermath of Oct. 7, she reached out to the local Jewish community in summer 2024 for help in recruiting participants for the study she conducted with Avidor, a psychologist in the faculty of social and community sciences at Israel’s Ruppin Academic Centre. Their findings were published in the Canadian Journal on Aging last fall, with the title, “I No Longer Can Say ‘Never Again.’”
Avidor and Gutman interviewed 15 older adults, including Holocaust survivors and Russian immigrants to Canada, and 11 service providers. Respondents were not just deeply affected by the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war, but experienced the public discourse as anti-Israel and at times antisemitic, upending their sense of safety and belonging.
The study found that Holocaust survivors and their offspring, older Russian emigres to Vancouver and LGBTQ+ Jewish seniors were more impacted. Almost everyone interviewed felt a deep connection with Israel, and personally affected by Oct. 7. Many felt isolated from non-Jews in their communities and were shocked at the lack of support they encountered outside of the Jewish community, as well as by the extent of misinformation proliferating about Israel. Given their experiences of antisemitism and discrimination, many were frustrated by the notion that Jews were considered a part of the white majority.
Interviewees were apprehensive about publicly displaying their Jewish identity and felt deeply offended by the anti-Israel vitriol expressed in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. They felt a strong need to connect with others in the Jewish community, as connecting with like-minded people provided solace at a time when their social circle was shrinking to almost exclusively Jewish friends.
Prior to the study, Gutman thought interviewees would have refused to place themselves in situations where they might be targeted or victimized, like rallies or Jewish events, but that wasn’t the case. “People felt more comfortable and secure when they were actively part of the Jewish community, and some who had not previously been involved came out of the woodwork after Oct. 7, getting comfort from engaging in community-based events,” she said.
Many of the LGBTQ+ respondents were in a somewhat different situation, alienated from LGBTQ+ groups because of “belligerent, negative, and even hateful comments about Israel, sometimes personally aimed towards them because of their Jewish backgrounds,” notes the study, while also not feeling comfortable attending events with an unequivocal pro-Israel view. Thus, Avidor and Gutman write, many in the LGBTQ+ community “were given to experiences of loneliness and isolation.”
Holocaust survivors said they were retraumatized by Oct. 7 and what has followed – the study’s title comes from a survivor who used to end her talks in schools with “never again,” but told Avidor and Gutman, “My recent talks are that I no longer can say never again.”
Emigres from the former Soviet Union felt especially vulnerable. One of the service providers for members of this group described why this was the case: “Because they came, you know, after Holocaust, after everything they’ve been through in Soviet Union, it was terrible. It was terrible. Antisemitism was terrible. And I know my parents went through all this too: wouldn’t be able to be accepted to a university or a good job because of their last name. So they all have these previous traumas and experiences.”
Some of the seniors had robust coping abilities because they had overcome immense struggles in the past. “We heard things like, ‘we’ve lived through this before and will live through it again,’” Gutman said.
Her hope is that this research will raise awareness of the impacts of Oct. 7 on Jewish older adults, particularly among service providers.
“Ours is one of the few studies, to our knowledge, to explore the effects of antisemitism among older adults, often a less vocal and less salient group in society,” she said. “The Oct. 7 attack, the Israel-Hamas war and perceived antisemitism and anti-Israeli rhetoric, have had profound effects on Jewish older adults living in Canada, and this must be recognized and given appropriate attention.”
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.
Danny’s Farm is a leading Israeli centre for holistic healing, offering animal-assisted trauma care, among other services. (photo from Danny Stirin)
After Canadian-Israeli media personality Shai DeLuca was critically wounded in 1996 during his service in the Israel Defence Forces, the instructions from his peers were as blunt as they were unhelpful: be a man, move on.
The injury – that left him with temporary loss of use of his legs –kept him in hospital and rehabilitation for nearly a year, in an era when post-traumatic stress was rarely named, let alone treated. “Back then, PTSD wasn’t understood the way it is today,” said DeLuca. “No one had language for it. No one recognized the symptoms.”
At the end of July 2025, DeLuca traveled to a ranch southeast of Rehovot, Israel, with a Canadian organization supporting IDF veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, families of Oct. 7 victims and Israelis living with trauma caused by terror. What began as just a visit to Danny’s Farm, a unique therapeutic centre, turned into a revelation.
At the end of the tour, ranch owner and chief executive officer Danny Stirin sensed something about DeLuca and asked a pointed question – why had he not dealt with the mental after-effects of his injury?
“I felt like I didn’t even need to say a lot and he understood what I meant,” recalled DeLuca. “He said, ‘the moment you’re ready, just message me. I will be there with you every step of the way.’”
The visit was “life-changing” for DeLuca and returning to the farm later allowed him “to understand parts of my own story buried for years.”
DeLuca credits Stirin as “the person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I’ve been carrying for so many years.”
Danny Stirin, left, and Shai DeLuca in conversation. DeLuca credits Stirin as “the person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I’ve been carrying for so many years.” (photo from Shai DeLuca)
Since its inception in 2016, Danny’s Farm has become a refuge for Israelis grappling with trauma, be it from war or terror. At first glance it looks like a ranch – stables with dozens of horses and many small animals about – but amid the pastoral view is a clinic, recognized as a leading Israeli centre for holistic, animal-assisted trauma care. Treatment rooms for art, music, bodywork and complementary medicine sit alongside the barns, and a multidisciplinary staff of psychologists, social workers and emotional-therapy instructors anchors the work with patients. The farm treats some 1,500 people each week.
Even before Oct. 7, the farm was treating children with special needs, survivors of sexual violence, and adults with complex trauma, filling a gap in an under-resourced mental-health system. Since the Hamas attacks and ensuing war, it has become a safe zone for reserve soldiers, evacuees from the south and north, and families coping with loss, dislocation and rocket fire.
For Stirin, the farm grew out of his own brush with crisis and a decision about what kind of fulfilment he sought professionally. “It’s like there’s a point in your life when you’re looking for a purpose,” he said, adding that he wanted the farm to be a tangible example for his children: “so they can see that somebody is going with his heart, all the way.”
A deeper motivation, though, was to help other people with their pain. “I felt that I have to hold the hope for others having a crisis, as I did,” he said.
Stirin’s choice to place animals at the centre of this work came from his childhood. “Since I was a boy, I had a long attraction to animals. All my life I was near them,” he said.
Born in Argentina to a grandfather who worked as a “gaucho,” or cowboy, he grew up with horses and dogs and carried that bond into adulthood. “I realized in the best way, the very powerful way, I felt the energy of the healing, just being near the simplicity of these creatures,” said Stirin.
On the farm, that idea has been formalized into a program that pairs equine therapy with group and individual treatment, and specialized tracks for traumatized children and families. The model, developed in partnership with the resilience organization Tkuma and supported by various funders, is designed to give long-term structure to people who might otherwise never access, or have access to, sustained care.
If there is a single principle guiding Danny’s Farm, it is that trauma is both ubiquitous and intensely personal. “The human soul is very fragile, and very different from one to one,” Stirin said. “The trauma … it plays with you. It can come in all kinds of different ways, shapes.”
Because the nature of trauma depends on a person’s personality, history, physical and mental structure, he said, therapists must approach treatment with “a lot of flexibility.”
“Each one needs something else. That’s what I believe,” he said.
For veterans like DeLuca, who was told to tough it out, the encounter with this kind of care was “liberating.”
Coming back to the ranch last month to introduce visiting media to the farm, he said he found at the farm the space to see his injury “through a different lens,” as part of a story that “did not have to end in silence.”
He said, “With PTSD, the challenge is not closing the door, but opening it, and dealing with it. And what Danny did was [tell] me that I don’t have to keep that door closed.”
Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com. His trip to Israel was co-sponsored by the Or Ofir Foundation.
Zusman Kiselgof, member of S. An-sky’s ethnographic expedition, recording folklore in Kremenets, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), 1912. Four events relating to the An-sky expedition take place in Vancouver Feb. 20-22. (photo from YIVO)
On Feb. 21, Or Shalom hosts Christina and the Zamlers in a special concert, as part of the congregation’s Light in Winter music series, co-sponsored by the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture and KlezWest.
Christina Crowder (photo from Peretz Centre)
Presenting pieces ranging from lively freylekhs to elegant mazurkas, Jewish wedding melodies to nigunim, Christina Crowder (accordion and tsimbl) and Pacific Northwest klezmer performers Jimmy Austin (trombone) and Mae Kessler (violin) will take the audience on a musical journey. Joined by Ashkenazi dance leader Maia Brown, they will draw from a repertoire of music gathered from shtetls across the Russian Pale of Settlement more than 100 years ago.
Along with the band’s musical performance and dance session, Crowder will recount the remarkable story of this trove of Ashkenazi music manuscripts, how they came to be collected, largely forgotten and then “rediscovered” in 2017.
The story begins in 1912, when Yiddish writer and ethnographer S. An-sky, with funding from the Russian government, led a collecting “expedition” to approximately 70 shtetls in the Pale of Settlement. Aware that traditional ways of Ashkenazi life were fading and that people were emigrating, An-sky was determined to gather and preserve both tangible and intangible aspects of the Ashkenazi cultural legacy.
Jimmy Austin (photo from Peretz Centre)
While not against “modernity,” he believed in the importance of Jews knowing their own history and traditions in order to maintain their identity in a changing world. Members of the project took photographs, collected ceremonial and everyday objects, compiled folk tales and noted local lore.
Collecting music manuscripts was an important part of the project. Music played a prominent role in community life, not only for entertainment or religious purposes, but to accompany and set the tone for many lifecycle experiences, especially weddings. Professional musicians in the shtetls offered more than 1,000 handwritten manuscripts with original and traditional compositions.
When the Russian government withdrew funding in 1914, with the onset of the First World War, the An-sky expedition ceased to exist. The collection appears to have been stored in different locations at various times and, although relatively intact, its location was either uncertain or access was consistently denied.
However, in 2017, the music collection, stored at the Vernadsky National Library in Kyiv, became accessible. This was the result of a series of serendipitous events, beginning when two attendees at a Tokyo klezmer workshop met, one of them fluent in Ukrainian. She was allowed to view some of the collection at the library and copy 600 manuscripts to a memory stick.
Mae Kessler (photo from Peretz Centre)
While klezmer music has developed a following over the past many years, the number of known traditional Ashkenazi melodies was quite small, approximately 300 pieces. The recovery of the An-sky expedition’s repertoire has had a significant impact on the revival of klezmer around the world. The Klezmer Institute, of which Crowder is a co-founder and the executive director, has played an important role in helping musicians, the public and academics view and use the collection.
Through their Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project, volunteers have translated and transcribed more than 1,300 of the handwritten musical manuscripts, which have been digitized and are universally available onthe Klezmer Institute’s website (klezmerinstitute.org).
Maia Brown (photo from Peretz Centre)
In connection with the Feb. 21 concert event, which will take place at Or Shalom’s temporary home (Cityview Church), there will be two workshops offered at the Peretz Centre on the afternoon of Feb. 22 – one for musicians, led by Crowder, the other for dancers, led by Brown.In addition, at the Peretz Centre’s Fraytik tsu Nakht Cultural Shabbes and Potluck on Feb. 20, Jess Goldman will lead a discussion on An-sky’s ethnography expeditions and more.
Tickets for the concert and for the workshops are available at orshalom.ca and peretz-centre.org. Admission for the concert is a minimum donation of $18 (suggested amount is $36); both workshops are by donation; and the potluck and talk is $18 or a contribution of a food dish to the dinner (see peretz-centre.org for more information).
Ann Daskal is a member of Or Shalom, with an interest in facilitating community art and performance.
The 41st annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival opens Feb. 21 with award-winning novelist John Irving and closes Feb. 26 with award-winning singer-songwriter, composer and author Peter Himmelman. In between, a range of writers and topics are presented. As always, this year’s festival fulfils its mission, as expressed by director Dana Camil Hewitt in the program: “to expose the general community to a curated snapshot of recent Jewish literature and ideas.”
While Irving, the opening author, is not Jewish, his latest novel, Queen Esther, takes readers back to the era and place of one of his most popular stories, The Cider House Rules, which was made into a movie. He focuses this time on the Winslow family, who adopt Esther Nacht from St. Cloud’s orphanage in Maine. The 14-year-old Viennese Jew was born in 1905 and came to the United States with her parents, her father dying on the voyage, her mother a few years later. Esther was left at the orphanage as a little girl, but no one had wanted to adopt a Jewish child, until the Winslows.
The Winslows are, to say the least, an unconventional family and, among other things, don’t adhere to the antisemitic attitudes of the times. The novel sheds light on Esther’s background and we witness a bit of her life with the Winslows, but then she mostly drops out of the story, returning to Europe to reconnect with her roots and then settling in Israel. The bulk of the novel centres on Jimmy, Esther’s son, born and raised in true Winslow style – unconventionally.
Truth be told, Queen Esther is not Irving’s best novel, it rambles and doesn’t quite hit the right message, but it’s written with heart and a seeming desire to counter antisemitism and change the narrative about Israel. Irving fans will enjoy reencountering some old “friends,” like St. Cloud’s Dr. Wilbur Larch, and recurring themes, including chosen family, Vienna, wrestling and sexual politics.
Irving is in conversation with Marsha Lederman Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $36 ($65 with book).
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Politics and antisemitism are at the fore in Dr. Ted Rosenberg’s book Ayekha, Where Are You? Reading it will provide some healing for fellow members of the Jewish community, most of whom will know that Rosenberg resigned from the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine in 2024 (after a 30-year career there) because of the school’s refusal to do anything about the rampant antisemitism on campus, which escalated after Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. The situation was so toxic that Rosenberg no longer felt safe.
In his resignation letter to the faculty’s dean, Dermot Kelleher – sent after other attempts to warn UBC leadership of the problems – Rosenberg wrote:
“I lament the carnage and deaths of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians during this horrific war and this seemingly insoluble and interminable complex tragedy. I also understand and appreciate the strong convictions held by people on both sides of this conflict. However, oversimplistic ahistorical demonizing narratives and rhetoric, by either side, will do nothing to deepen our understanding, empathy, respect, or trust of one another, nor hasten a resolution of this crisis.
“One third of the medical students and some faculty have publicly expressed their contempt towards me, as a Jew. I cannot take the risk of being accused of implicit harassment or racism, which is indefensible, by a ‘triggered’ student. Unfortunately, I have no faith in due process in a faculty that does not even acknowledge the existence or presence of antisemitism/Jew-hatred, or my right to work in a depoliticized environment.”
The award-winning physician, who pioneered a home-based care model for the frail elderly and still practices medicine, wrote the dean, “It deeply saddens me to end my academic career on this note.”
There are so many Jewish academics, medical professionals and others who have been similarly mistreated, both by antisemitic actions and people’s fear of dealing with antisemitism. Reading more about Rosenberg’s experiences is akin to attending a group therapy session. We not only feel less alone afterward, but come away with some knowledge that might help us in processing all that’s happened in the last almost two-and-a-half years, and in confronting the antisemitism we continue to face.
Rosenberg talks at the Vancouver JCC Feb. 22, 1:30 p.m. (tickets are $18), and at the White Rock/South Surrey JCC at 4 p.m.
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Since Oct. 7, it seems that learning more about Judaism, its tenets, its folklore, has been a common way for Jews to deal with the trauma inflicted by that day, the subsequent war and the increasingly open Jew-hatred globally. For anyone who likes graphic novels, The Writer might be an invigorating and educational salve.
Written and created by actor Josh Gad and the Berkowitz Bros. production company (founded by Ben and Max Berkowitz) with art by Ariel Olivetti and letters by Frank Cvetkovic, the four-part series stars disheveled English professor and unreliable divorced dad Stan Siegel, the writer of the series’ title, who looks a lot like Gad. Stan’s “sidekicks” are his kickass mom Liz and his daughter Izzy. They encounter all sorts of demons, dybbuks, golems and other characters out of Jewish mythology, as well as various historical figures, while Izzy also must confront current-day antisemitism and racism – harassed by classmates for being Jewish and for being Black.
The Writer is an homage to the creators’ Jewish identities, to the comic books, science fiction shows and adventure movies they loved, as well as to Gad’s Holocaust survivor grandparents and to Boston, where the Berkowitz brothers grew up. While they didn’t grow up surrounded by Jewish mysticism, they were inspired when they discovered it and it “felt like home,” notes the afterword. “This story became a way for them to celebrate that heritage – the rich tapestry of Jewish storytelling in all its forms, from Ashkenazic to Sephardic, Beta Israelite, Hispanic, Asian and beyond.”
The tapestry is so rich and deep that it is hard sometimes to follow all that’s going on in an “episode” of The Writer, but it’s a wild ride, a world that’s wonderfully and colourfully drawn, where good battles all sorts of evil and unlikely heroes prevail.
The Berkowitz brothers are at the festival Feb. 23, 7 p.m. Tickets are $18.
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Himmelman closes the book festival on Feb. 26, 8 p.m. (tickets: $25), talking about his collection of essays, Suspended By No String: A Songwriter’s Reflections on Faith, Aliveness and Wonder, with Rabbi Dan Moskovitz. It might seem odd to have a rabbi lead a conversation with a musician, composer and visual artist, but Himmelman describes his book as being about faith, and shares what went into his decision to use the word “God” in it, as opposed to, say, “spirituality,” despite concerns from several people that its use might alienate readers. Hopefully, it won’t, as there is much insight to be gained from Himmelman’s observations, insights and perspectives on wonder, loss and gratitude. His playful sketches are a delightful complement to the text.
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Also appearing at this year’s book festival are, in order of appearance, writers Carol Matas, Lihi Lapid, Aron Hirt-Manheimer, Douglas Century, Yishay Ishi Ron, Yardenne Greenspan, Sasha Senderovich, Marina Sonkina, Claire Sicherman, Danila Botha and Janet Horvath. For tickets and more information, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.
Violist Rivka Golani joins Turning Point Ensemble on Feb. 21 and 22 for Concerti Premiere, which features two works written especially for her. (photo by Peter Beal)
World-renowned violist Rivka Golani joins Turning Point Ensemble on Feb. 21 and 22 for Concerti Premiere, which features two works written especially for the Israeli musician, who currently calls London, England, home.
The four main works comprising the ensemble’s program are the world premiere of Concerto for Viola – Rivka by TPE artistic director Owen Underhill, featuring Golani as soloist; the North American premiere of Musical Offering No. 2 “Golani” by Canadian composer Michael Pepa, also with Golani as soloist; the world premiere of Morning Twilight by Taiwanese-American composer Chichun Chi-Sun Lee, showcasing TPE bassoonist Ingrid Chiang; and the world premiere of Sauntersludge by Vancouver composer Eldritch Priest.
“TPE had a fantastic opportunity to perform with Rivka Golani on our May 2023 European tour,” explained Underhill as to how he and Golani first connected.
Pepa had proposed composing a new work for Golani and TPE for the ensemble’s concerts in Zagreb and Belgrade. “We were not able to rehearse with Rivka … prior to arriving on tour, so it was very exciting to put Michael’s piece together in the couple days prior to our first concert,” said Underhill. “Rivka was very interactive with and impressed by the ensemble, so you could say we hit it off together. She heard at that time in our concert a work of mine and asked whether I might be interested in composing a new work for her and TPE in the future. So, this is how the idea of working together again came about and my new concerto for her in particular.”
Turning Point Ensemble artistic director Owen Underhill wrote Concerto for Viola – Rivka for violist Rivka Golani, who plays with the ensemble in concerts at the Annex Feb. 21 and 22. (photo from TPE)
Golani, who was born in Tel Aviv, studied under violist and composer Oedoen Partos and became a member of the Israel Philharmonic, while also appearing as a soloist with other orchestras. She lived in Canada for more than a decade, from 1974 to 1987, growing her solo career and teaching at the University of Toronto (where she also taught in the 1990s) and the Royal Conservatory of Music. She still teaches, in London.
Over the years, Golani has performed widely as a soloist and as a member of various ensembles, and she has recorded extensively. She is also a recognized visual artist, with her paintings having been exhibited in several countries.
It was during Golani’s time in Canada that Pepa met her, so the two have known each other for decades.
“As a result, his piece and the solo viola part are very much in her character – dramatic, powerful and expressive,” said Underhill. “Also, there are two other important connections which are interwoven in the piece – references to J.S. Bach’s Art of the Fugue, which appears in a variety of ways through quotes and collages in his music, and also a second movement dedicated to his Ukrainian friends, which is based on the Ukrainian folksong ‘Plyve Kacha Po Tysyni’ (‘The Duck Swims Down theTissina’) and a Serbian folk melody, ‘Kolika je Nočca.’”
As for his work featuring Golani, Underhill said, “It is always a wonderful thing for a composer to work closely with a performer for whom you are composing. It was also fundamental to Rivka’s process to make it a collaborative project. Therefore, beginning in the fall and over the several months I was composing the piece, I would send her instalments and we would meet over WhatsApp and she would play through the music, suggest detailed changes and improvements, and she also made a few gentle requests, including asking for a cadenza before I wrote the third movement.As a result, I feel that the piece bears her signature and that it is also a unique work of mine that I could not have created without her input.”
According to Golani’s website, more than 350 works have been composed for her, including more than 80 concertos – “a record matched by no other violist in history.” Underhill’s Concerto for Viola – Rivka is the largest-scale work that he has written for TPE and the piece will be recorded by the ensemble after the live performances.
Concerti Premiere is Turning Point Ensemble’s third concert in their 2025/26 season. Written with bassoonist Chiang in mind, the piece Morning Twilight traces the emergence of the sun through five sections and two interludes. “Beyond its astronomical imagery, the concerto reflects Chiang’s personal journey of resilience in overcoming cancer, as well as Taiwan’s collective passage from historical darkness toward renewed international visibility,” notes the press release. Sauntersludge, which was written for the ensemble as a whole, is the only piece in the concert without a soloist.
“While we dedicate ourselves to performing works from the early 20th century to the present day, it is unusual for Turning Point Ensemble to have a concert consisting solely of premieres,” said Underhill in the press release. “It is a joy to be unveiling all this new music here in Vancouver.”
The Feb. 21 concert at the Annex starts at 7:30 p.m.; the Feb. 22 one at 4:30 p.m. For tickets ($45/adult, $33/senior, $19/student), go to turningpointensemble.ca.
