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Preparing for High Holidays

We have a new rabbi at Shaarey Zedek, our Winnipeg congregation. This is exciting as well as reassuring for many people. Why? Well, Rabbi Carnie Rose is the son of a rabbi and professor who lived in Winnipeg for many years, Dr. Neal Rose. His brother, Kliel, is a rabbi at Congregation Etz Chayim, another nearby congregation in Winnipeg. So, while Rabbi Carnie is new as a rabbi in Winnipeg, he is also a deeply familiar entity. He became a bar mitzvah at Shaarey Zedek. He went to kindergarten with the synagogue’s current executive director.

This addition to our congregation is welcome, as Rabbi Anibal Mass and our chazzan, Leslie Emery, carry a heavy workload. They are still working hard, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes a new hire can offer support and everybody gets more breaks. I’m only observing this as a congregant and as the child of a Jewish professional. Sure, I serve on a committee, I show up to services, but I can tell there’s been a lot of work lately.

On a practical level, moving from the United States to Winnipeg is a big change. My family wanted to be supportive – after all, we too moved from the United States, in 2009 – so we’ve been helping Rabbi Carnie get his library in order. He’s got, as you might imagine, lots of books. These all got miserably jumbled in the move. While this has got to be stressful, he’s handling it all with good humour. We’ve taken pleasure at getting to look at and learn about all sorts of resources in Hebrew and English that we hadn’t seen before. Some books are like old friends, as I studied them as an undergraduate or in graduate school, but, to be honest, my books aren’t in nearly such good condition.

This experience mirrors many Jewish volunteer activities I did as a kid. As the child of a Jewish education director, who then went on to be the administrator (executive director) of my childhood congregation, Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va., I spent many afterschool hours folding the weekly paper bulletin handed out on Shabbat, moving books or setting up chairs. While attending services or religious school were important activities, for me, the relationships I made with the rabbi and the staff and other congregants as we did these small jobs were the most meaningful ones. Along the way, I met many important guests, though it’s all a bit blurry now. For instance, I sat next to Elie Wiesel once after he spoke at our congregation. What I remember particularly is how formal and dressed up we were. Also, the dessert was good! I was allowed to stay up way past my bedtime.

Now, I’m proud that my kids are finding their way towards making their own community connections. One of my twins has gone to morning minyan many times this summer. He’s the only teen there and gets a lot of positive attention this way, including exchanging ideas with a retired provincial court judge. This judge also happens to be the father of my son’s elementary school principal, so we’re always on good behaviour with him!

My other twin isn’t getting to morning minyan much, but instead he volunteered for full weeks at a summer camp and daycare, helping little kids. He also helps on the synagogue tech team, doing accessible subtitles for prayers that are projected on screens as part of our service. This job is an important one, as it enables people to keep up with the service even if they are having a hard time hearing what’s going on or cannot read Hebrew. He’s been asked to help during the High Holidays. It’s a big honour and responsibility for a 14-year-old.

These commitments are important because they embody both the Canadian emphasis on volunteering and the Jewish one. When I was a teen, I lived for a year on a kibbutz. Volunteering was considered deeply valuable and important. Being the first to volunteer was a moral virtue. Yet, when I hear Winnipeg kids discuss accruing volunteer hours for school credits, it’s seen as an onerous requirement. Perhaps, for some, this requirement doesn’t have great value. On the contrary, in our household, we see these experiences as offering so many learning and growth opportunities.

While we moved books, searched for lost volumes and organized sets of Talmud and commentaries, we also saw the bustle behind the scenes as the congregation gets ready for Rosh Hashanah. There’s so much pageantry to the High Holidays. It’s a big deal. Some members jockey for important honours or specific seats and we listened with interest. We just wanted seats near the back, near where our kid would be in the tech booth. When I mentioned this to the new rabbi, I suggested that maybe different things matter to us. After all, I joked, I didn’t need to show off a new hat. (My mom always said this was an important part of High Holiday services when she was a kid in the 1950s!)

As for honours, we love a quiet summer Shabbat, when sometimes our kids get asked to read or are called up for an aliyah because no one reserved them in advance. These spur-of-the-moment experiences, where we might help out and take part in services, feel like the right spot for us. It may take months of practice to chant one part of the Torah portion, but we try to aim for a week when not much is happening.

A strong community is one where we can all contribute and help. Yes, big donors and fancy new hats are often part of the High Holidays. Big monetary donations keep the heat on, and status matters to many. However, a synagogue, and the Jewish community, must function throughout the year.

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to evaluating how we’ve behaved in the past year, and how we’ll make amends. To me, the most important reflections aren’t about where we are or how we behave specifically on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In every regular weekday morning minyan, we also say “ashamu” – we are guilty. We work on ourselves all the time. Perhaps, while it’s important to have good intentions when it comes to the High Holidays, it’s also key to think about each day beforehand, and afterwards, too. Elul’s a whole month of reflection. Valuing one another and our community means making every day count.

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.

From the archives … JCC, 1937

It was the big black square on the cover of the June 11, 1937, Jewish Western Bulletin that caught my attention initially. Then, as I flipped backwards and forwards through the archived papers, it was the weekly drama – that kind of left me hanging – and the sheer bluntness of tactics that drew me in to the JWB’s coverage of the 1937 campaign to raise funds for a second unit of the Jewish Community Centre, then located at Oak and 11th. (The building still exists, the home of the BC Lung Association for a long time now.)

The campaign action plan came out of a shareholders’ meeting in March of that year, at “which over one hundred men of the community were present,” according to the March 12, 1937, JWB, the JI ’s predecessor. I’ve no idea who the shareholders of the centre were. Nor if any women were at that planning meeting, but Lillian Freiman Hadassah, Council of Jewish Women and the Schara Tzedeck Auxiliary were among the organizations that helped solicit and collect pledges.

The appointed campaign committee set a quota of $12,500 (or $271,217 in today’s dollars) and collections were divided into three divisions: donors of $100-$250 (Group A), $25-$100 (Group B) and up to $25 (Group C). The “keynote” of the campaign was “that each give according to his ability,” and every organization on the committee committed “its intention of getting whole-heartedly behind the task ahead.” Meanwhile, “The proposal submitted to shareholders by Schara Tzedeck Congregation of taking over the building has been tabled for a period of three weeks.”

While that proposal obviously fizzled out, I couldn’t find any later mention of it. As I’ve often found when looking through the paper’s archives, it’s easy to find when things start, but harder to find out how they ended up. What is clear is that there was a hard push to raise the $12,500, and, while the March 12 article noted that, “possibly, for the first time in community history, there is no division of opinion concerning the necessity of and the urgent need for doing constructive work for [the] community Centre,” the JWB did feature some disparate views as soon as the next issue.

Rabbi J.L. Zlotnik summed up those concerns in a March 19 article: the quota was too much, given other community concerns and organizations that also needed financial support; and the quota was too little, given that actual building costs are almost always larger than planned, and the community would, therefore, become even more indebted as a result.

“After a period of ten years, twenty thousand dollars are still to be paid before this building can truly be called our own,” wrote Rabbi Samuel Cass in the March 31 issue, about the existing centre, while also pointing to the need for a second unit. He observed, “First, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past,” so the second unit should “be paid for in cash to the very last penny, before the first sod is turned. Second, the campaign must go beyond the amount necessary to erect the contemplated addition.” Lastly, he said, the whole community must agree that the debt on the first unit be paid off “even speedily, and at a near time.”

The advice seems to have gone unheeded. In the same March 31 paper as Cass’s article, the page 2 headline read, “All Organizations Endorse Second Unit Campaign.”

The next edition’s cover blared, “2ND UNIT CAMPAIGN IN FULL SWING,” with the news that more than $3,000 had come in on the campaign’s first day, “collected from twenty men.” The building plans were also outlined in the April 9 paper: a two-storey building with a balcony was envisioned. The lower floor would be a gymnasium and banquet room, with “kitchen, showers, wash room, steam rooms, cloak-room, etc.” The upper floor would house an “Auditorium and Ball Room, cloak-room and lounge.” The balcony would be divided into small meeting rooms. “This present building is 33 feet 11 inches on 11th Ave. The addition would be 47 feet 9 inches or more than 40% larger,” the article stated.

By the April 23 issue, the A Division quota was “already assured.” A couple of weeks later, in the May 7 paper, a completely fictional piece was published on the cover, titled “Will You Make This Dream Come True?” It was written as if the second unit of the centre had opened, with a banquet, a highlight of which was the announcement of a $5,000 gift from an anonymous donor to pay for all the unit’s furnishings and appliances. The article imagined what meetings and other banquets were already being held in the new building and the great number of athletics classes available now that “the use of the gymnasium was available to all persons in the Community.”

By the end of May, though, the JWB was asking whether everyone had “done their share.” By June, the optimism hit a wall.

The cover of the June 11 issue featured the large black square that caught my eye. The label-sized caption with a white background read: “700 Jewish families in Vancouver can and must give towards the building of the Second Unit of the Community Centre.”

The dramatic editorial choice was explained in the June 18 paper:

“The editorial staff of the Bulletin was bombarded with heated criticism for allowing such a hideous, melancholy, morbid and depressing thing to appear on the front page of the paper. Jewish people in all walks of life shouted words of rebuke, prominent Jewish business men cried ‘Shame, Shame,’ and Jewish society matrons muttered ‘Oh, how awful, it nearly frightened me to death.’

“No one, however, said ‘That little message in white, standing so pure, apart from that black hideousness was TRUE. Every body should give to the Centre – How we need that second unit – How essential it is to our Youth to have a proper meeting place.

“What our Community needs is more players, and less bench criticisizers. More workers, and less kickers.”

It concluded: “If you have a conscience, if you have the true community spirit – come through and show it. If you haven’t already given your contribution to the Second Unit – Mail it in to the Centre – tell them this article made you feel your responsibility. If you have given your donation, send in notification to the Centre to have it doubled. No matter what you give, make it as much as you can afford. Don’t let us be criticisers – LET’S BE BUILDERS.”

Over the summer, a couple of meetings were held about the centre. There was a large notice on the cover of the July 2 paper about a July 5 meeting, but I couldn’t find a report in the paper about what transpired. Nor could I find out how the Sept. 22 “mass meeting” on “the Future of Vancouver Jewry” went – its Sept. 14 front-page notice declaring that “By your attendance … YOU SHALL BE JUDGED!”

There are no August or October 1937 papers in the bound archival collection I have, and I don’t know if they were lost to history or never published. Until June 1937, the reporting had been detailed and consistent, but the next mention of a campaign, in the Nov. 12 paper, is “the Recent Centre Drive” – not the second unit drive. In this campaign, there were seven grades, ranging from Grade A ($500 and up) to Grade G ($1 to $49). The Grade A donors were listed by name in that paper, the Grade Bs in the next issue, the Cs in the next, through to the Gs in the Dec. 24 issue, wherein the committee was congratulated for its work and the community for its “whole-hearted support to the campaign.”

Since there is no useable digital archive of the paper, sadly, my time-limited flipping came across no more mention of a second unit. The editorial two years after that campaign, on June 23, 1939, started, “Much water has gone under the bridge since our Centre Building has been re-financed. Inside and outside improvements on the building, in addition to the Amortization Plan itself has gone forward.

“Never have local Jewish efforts been more active, and the response greater, nor has the attendance within the building itself been so large. Much of the success is due to the liberal atmosphere of the Centre itself, which means the use of this building for any and all worthy Jewish efforts with but one thought – helping others to help themselves. One shudders to think of what might have happened to Jewish efforts in our city had not our fellow-Jews responded to the call for funds when it was made.”

The editorial also noted: “Some, however, have through oversight or neglect failed to send their payments in as yet.” It was hoped that “the pledgors in arrears will … see that their respective remittances are made … upon receipt of the notices.”

As far as I know, the second unit of the Oak and 11th JCC never materialized. It would be more than two decades later that a new centre would be built, at Oak and 41st, opening in 1962.

A complicated family legacy

Neshama Carlebach comes to Vancouver for Selichot at Congregation Beth Israel on Sept. 13. (photo by Michael Albany)

After more than two decades, Neshama Carlebach returns to Vancouver. But not for a concert.

The award-winning singer-songwriter will lead, with her band, a musical service at Congregation Beth Israel for Selichot, the night of Sept. 13. The holiday – whose name translates as forgiveness, or pardon – marks the beginning of a period of penitential prayers that runs through Simchat Torah. In addition to participating in the service, Carlebach will speak with Rabbi Jonathan Infeld about her father, the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, his spiritual and musical legacy, and also the pain caused by the sexual misconduct of which he was posthumously accused.

In January 2018, Carlebach wrote a blog on the Times of Israel that addressed the allegations against her father, who died in 1994. She also shared that she had been sexually abused as a child by one of her father’s friends. Writing that blog, she told the Jewish Independent, “was one of the most painful and soul-wrenching things I have ever done. I was standing at the edge of a precipice, holding the truth of my own pain, the pain of others, and the love I still carry for my father, who was no longer alive to respond. The world was shifting in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and I felt an overwhelming need to finally speak and honour the voices of those who had been hurt and silenced – including my own.

“Simultaneously, my career was, in many ways, canceled. Doors closed. Invitations disappeared. People I loved and trusted turned away from me in anger, some even accusing me of betraying my father and his legacy. Perhaps just as painful was watching my family’s music – music that has brought meaning to so many – be rejected and erased.

“Acknowledging my father’s transgressions broke my heart,” said Carlebach, “but it was time for me to speak out – to stand with those who were hurt and to be a part of the possibility of healing, and for the belief that we must be honest to be whole. We must hold space for truth, even when it shatters the fabric of the life we once clung to.”

From the age of 5, Carlebach’s father invited her to share Chassidic stories for his audiences and, by age 15, she was performing alongside him. Since her first album in 1996, she has released 10 records and, worldwide, is one of the bestselling Jewish artists. She is also an advocate for religious pluralism and human rights, as well as being a community leader in other respects. Living in New York with husband Rabbi Menachem Creditor and their five children, she is in the midst of writing a memoir, as well as studying to become a rabbi at the Academy for Jewish Religion.

In 2026, a documentary about Carlebach’s family will be released, with the support of Jewish Story Partners. The blurb on JSP’s website reads: “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, ‘the Singing Rabbi,’ ignited the spiritual landscape for legions of Jews in a post-Holocaust world. Soon after his death, he is accused of sexual abuse. Thirty years later, with intimate access to his family, inner circle, and his victims, Carlebach Project Untitled grapples with a complicated legacy and how – or whether – to separate the art from the artist.”

“I was just 20 when my father died and, in many ways, I was still a child,” Carlebach told the Independent. “He wasn’t just my father; he was my rabbi and my closest friend. Losing him was like losing my grounding in the world. And when, years later, I began to fully confront the complexities of his life and the pain that others experienced because of him, the grief became more complicated. My career crumbled. I lost community. I lost friends.

“I think what helped me to continue was the music and my connection to God. Even when I wasn’t able to sing professionally, within my own heart I sang and I prayed.

“I still carry and honour my father because I am his daughter and because I believe that love and accountability are not opposites,” she said. “Music has a life of its own, it has always been bigger than the entity which creates it. The legacy I hope I’m building now with my sons is one rooted in truth, in justice, in faith and in love. I choose to believe these are the things he wanted for me, and for the world.”

photo - On Selichot, Sept. 13, Neshama Carlebach will speak with Rabbi Jonathan Infeld about her father, the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, his spiritual and musical legacy, and also the pain caused by the sexual misconduct of which he was posthumously accused — On Selichot, Sept. 13, Neshama Carlebach will speak with Rabbi Jonathan Infeld about her father, the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, his spiritual and musical legacy, and also the pain caused by the sexual misconduct of which he was posthumously accused. (photo by Joan Roth)

It was after the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that Carlebach began creating music with her sons, Rafael and Micah.

“To share the sacred legacy of our family with them, and to witness their light, their depth and their gifts has been one of the greatest blessings of my lifetime,” she said. “My Rafael sadly can’t be with us in Vancouver, as he is starting college, but my Micah will be! We will also be joined by my longtime musical collaborators, pianist and musical director Seth Farber, bass player Brian Glassman and drummer Joe Nero.”

The video Carlebach created with her sons – Invincible Spirit (In Solidarity with Israel), an interpretation of the song “Am Yisrael Chai” – is on YouTube.

“Originally written in support of the Soviet Jewry Movement, ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ has been an anthem of the Jewish people for over 50 years,” Carlebach wrote in a Times of Israel blog last year. “The melody and words have brought energy, sustenance and unity whenever it’s been sung, often in response to hardships facing the Jewish world. In times of need, it is simultaneously a call to action and a prayer, a defiant cry and a message of reassurance. The words, translated as ‘The People of Israel Live,’ were set to music by my father in the 1960s and embraced as part of the Jewish canon. Today, since the horrors of Oct. 7, they have once again become a constant refrain in the Jewish community.”

In another blog, Carlebach, who was born on Simchat Torah, explains why she decided to become a rabbi. “After Oct. 7, Simchat Torah, my heart, my essence and my birthday changed forever,” she wrote. “My Jewish identity and desire to learn have never been stronger. I feel a greater sense of urgency to do my part and bring meaning and holiness to our communities, both in the diaspora and Israel.”

She shared with the Independent the importance of participating in the event at Beth Israel.

“Selichot is the beginning of the High Holy Day season, our holiest time of year,” she said. “It is when we begin to turn inward and ask ourselves the hardest questions: Who have I been? Where have I fallen short? What do I need to repair – in myself, in my relationships, in the world? It’s a time of vulnerability, of accountability and of profound possibility.

“I’ve always envisioned that, on Selichot, the Great Gates of Teshuvah – of Return – first begin to creak open, but slowly, almost in a whisper. Selichot is softer than Rosh Hashanah, more intimate than Yom Kippur. We gather, often late at night, to begin to open our hearts as a community – with prayer, with song, with tears. It’s a time for truth and tenderness.

“It will be incredibly meaningful to gather with the Vancouver community in prayer and in conversation this Selichot. This is the kind of gathering I love most!” she said, commending Rabbi Infeld and the Beth Israel community for being “open and brave enough to engage in this complicated topic.”

“Every year, we work hard to make sure that our Selichot service and program makes a difference in people’s lives,” said Infeld. “The topics are often not easy to discuss, but, every year, people leave the synagogue looking at a situation from a different perspective and as better human beings because they came. We love when people discuss the content of what they heard at the synagogue after Selichot. We believe that this year that will happen as well. Shlomo Carlebach is extremely well known, but the underbelly of the person and his personality are extremely important for us all to discuss – and there is no one better in this world to do that than his daughter, who is also extremely musically talented.”

To invite Carlebach was “a natural choice,” he said, given that the event will honour Harley Rothstein.

“Since we had decided to honour Harley for his many years of service this year, I decided I wanted to do something very special from a musical perspective,” said the rabbi.

“Harley is one of the most humble and generous people I know. He is a constant supporter of our synagogue in many ways. We have been honoured to have him lead services over the years. He has a fabulous voice with great kavanah [intention/devotion],” explained Infeld. “He has a magical ability to engage people in congregational singing and to help engender a warm feeling among all the participants. Harley has gone above and beyond by helping to teach the next generation of service leaders. One of his most important aspects of leadership each year has been the Selichot service with our ba’alat tefillah [prayer leader], Debby Fenson.”

On Sept. 5, during the synagogue’s Shabbat with a Difference Kabbalat Shabbat service, the congregation will honour Fenson on her 20th anniversary with Beth Israel. On Sept. 13, she and Rothstein will lead Havdalah.

The Selichot event with Neshama Carlebach is open to the entire community. To attend, RSVP via bethisrael.ca.

Teaching about Shoah

Lise Kirchner, director of education of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, demonstrates the online exhibition Fragments in Focus: A History of the Holocaust (photo by Pat Johnson)

The school year that begins next month is the first in British Columbia to include mandatory Holocaust education in the curriculum. As teachers throughout the province prepare to address this challenging topic in the classroom, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre has unveiled a wide-reaching online exhibit to both assist educators and to launch students into independent exploration on the complex network of moral and historical issues the subject raises.

In October 2023, the BC government announced that Holocaust education would be mandatory in the Grade 10 social studies curriculum beginning in the 2025/26 academic year. Many teachers were already addressing the topic as part of Social Studies 10, which covers the Second World War. An elective course, Genocide 12, also exposes students to the history of the Shoah. However, this is the first year that it will be impossible for a student to complete Grade 10 in the province without some exposure to the Nazis’ attempts to destroy the Jewish people and other groups they deemed undesirable.

While mandating that the topic be covered, the ministry of education’s guidelines for learning outcomes are extremely vague. Lise Kirchner, director of education of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, said teachers have great flexibility in how to address the topic – and how much time to give it.

“The teacher can choose to spend four minutes, four hours or four months on the subject,” she said.

Given that many teachers will be seeking trusted resources to teach this material for the first time, the VHEC’s exhibit promises to deliver everything educators need to address the subject effectively, no matter how much class time they allocate to it.

“Over the last 18 months, the VHEC has been working with the ministry of education to articulate this new learning standard for Social Studies 10 and also to develop teaching resources to support educators as they implement Holocaust education in the classroom,” Kirchner told attendees at the VHEC’s annual general meeting in June, where she demonstrated the new online resource.

The exhibition is called Fragments in Focus: A History of the Holocaust. It has been produced with the support of the Digital Museums Canada investment program and the financial support of the Government of Canada. The website is in English and French and meets accessibility standards for people with disabilities.

The online exhibit showcases more than 160 primary sources, including artifacts, survivor testimonies and archival records from the VHEC’s collections, presenting the history of the era through these items.

Fragments in Focus explores Jewish life in Europe before the war, the Holocaust and its impacts, and postwar Jewish life. Users can explore digital 3D models of artifacts, engage with an interactive map and hear from survivors – most of those featured settled in British Columbia after the war – adding human faces and stories to the artifacts and the broader history.

Accompanying the Fragments in Focus exhibit are 20 integrated learning activities and a comprehensive teachers’ guide, providing everything required to navigate the exhibit, construct a complete unit on the Holocaust or supplement existing lessons using unique primary sources, according to the VHEC.

The VHEC’s education team is also available to support educators as they prepare to cover these topics, offering training workshops throughout the province.

Textbooks, which earlier generations might associate with high school, are mostly a thing of the past. Online resources have replaced most hard copy resources, making Fragments in Focus both relevant and accessible.

Historical introductions to each of the exhibit’s sections lead into artifacts, and students can then pursue their own explorations by finding out more about the individual associated with the item, their experience of survival and their life after the war.

For example, students can view a recipe book created by Rebecca Teitelbaum while she was an inmate in Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp. Risking her life, she stole paper, pencils and thread to compile the collection of favourite foods. The tiny booklet became a source of comfort for the women in Ravensbruck, allowing them to imagine a future of well-being and plenty.

The late Alex Buckman, Teitelbaum’s nephew and himself a survivor of the Holocaust, inherited the recipe book, which he eventually donated to the VHEC. During speaking engagements to young audiences, Buckman would share his aunt’s recipe for gâteau à l’orange and some students would make the cake at home, while sharing with their families what they had learned at school.

With the new exhibit, students can explore the recipe book, expand the image to see the stitching that held the book together, and then read transcripts of the recipes. More than this, they can then dig deeper and learn about the family’s story, of Rebecca’s survival and her reunification with her husband, Herman, and daughter, Annie. They can hear Buckman’s story of how he survived but lost both his parents and was raised by the Teitelbaums.

Students also can see the correspondence Rebecca received while in hospital after the war, informing her that both Herman and Annie had miraculously survived.

These artifacts and records help put this almost inconceivable history into context, said Kirchner.

“They now are reading these intimate letters between husband and wife, where they are dreaming of being together again with her daughter,” she said. “I think it brings a whole different dimension to how we understand history, the importance of these primary objects.”

The fact that almost all the objects have a BC connection adds richness to the experience, she said.

As director of education, Kirchner has led a team in bringing Fragments in Focus to fruition. Though the exhibit was in development before the province announced the curriculum change, the shift helped guide the VHEC team to make the resource especially responsive to the needs of educators and students.

Fragments in Focus is based on an earlier physical exhibit developed by former VHEC director of education Ilona Shulman Spaar, former executive director Nina Krieger and others, including Kirchner, who has been involved with the VHEC for about 25 years in various capacities.

“We mounted In Focus – we didn’t call it Fragments in Focus – as the first exhibition in the new renovated space,” Kirchner told the Independent, referring to a major upgrade to the museum in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Centre, which substantially increased the capacity to display items from the collections. “It was kind of a celebration of the fact that we had just digitized our entire collection – that was a very big project. With the new visual storage facilities, it gave us the ability to actually have multiple artifacts on display, over 100, so that was a pretty big deal for us.”

The ongoing digitization of the VHEC’s entire archives allows global audiences to access its collections. For BC students, starting within days, Fragments in Focus will open doors for self-guided learning.

“We give them just enough information so they can put it in context, but also pique their curiosity a little bit so that they start to see themselves as the ones that ask these questions and start to make sense of this history and to give it meaning. It’s taking ownership of that history,” said Kirchner. “We are just planting seeds and making sure they have enough information to ask the right questions and to see the complexity of that history.”

The online exhibit launched Aug. 20 at fragmentsinfocus.ca and is available to everyone.

The school year ahead

Back to school is a time of excitement and anxiety for parents and kids. It is a time of new beginnings. For Jewish people, it generally coincides, as it roughly does this year, with the new year and the High Holidays. This confluence creates a somewhat chaotic frenzy in many households.

Jewish tradition is deeply tied to cycles of time, weaving renewal and return into every layer of life. The turning of the calendar is reflected not only in Shabbat, the progression of holy days and the annual cycle of Torah reading, but also in agricultural rhythms, the monthly sanctification of the new moon and daily prayers mapping sunrise, midday and nightfall.

This year, as we move from the beginning of the school year through the procession of holidays, we approach the anniversary of Oct. 7, and the terrible realization that the surviving hostages in Gaza have been held for nearly two years – as well as the continued reality facing Israelis, Palestinians, Jews worldwide and everyone who cares about human life.

As the new school year begins, Jewish families have additional anxieties, knowing as we do that the public school system – not least some teachers’ unions in Canada, including the one in British Columbia – in many cases have not only failed to address the unique challenges faced by Jewish students but exacerbated existing problems while creating new ones. Almost everyone has heard anecdotally of insults and distress faced by Jewish students in public schools, and the situation on post-secondary campuses locally and internationally has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for most of the past two years.

Additionally, this school year marks the first in which British Columbia’s education system officially mandates the teaching of the Holocaust. Most students did learn about the Holocaust before, but it had been left up to the discretion of individual teachers. Now, the Social Studies 10 curriculum requires that the topic be included. (See jewishindependent.ca/teaching-about-shoah.) This is something that the Jewish community and others have long promoted.

It does, however, create new openings for challenges. Given the allegations of genocide in Gaza, and overheated rhetoric against Israel in the public discourse – often invoking the memory of the Holocaust, the mantra “never again” and the appropriation of Jewish historical experiences for political advantage – there is a real possibility that individual teachers in the comparative privacy of their classrooms will attempt to inculcate anti-Israel narratives in the guise of genocide education. We expect there will be reports of inappropriate comparisons made between the Jewish experience in the Shoah and current tragedies in the Middle East – and we know that most such incidents will never be reported.

It should never have come to this with regard to antisemitism, but powerful new generations of Jewish leaders have been forged on university campuses and, yes, in high schools and even elementary schools, rising to occasions they should never have had to meet, but doing so in ways that often have surprised even themselves. As tough as the past two years have been, all evidence so far points to young Jews continuing to rise to every challenge.

When all is said and done, we hope that the next generation of our community grows up stronger, smarter and more determined, individually and collectively. To students and parents: May you go from strength to strength this year and always.

What to do with all our stuff

Recently, I was in the car with one of my twins and we were discussing how easy it is to accumulate too much stuff. We’d just had a conversation with a neighbour who mentioned that his sibling had moved into their parents’ house as an adult. It was a large, old home, now sadly so full of stacks of papers and other belongings that one had to turn sideways to navigate some of it.

I commiserated with my neighbour, misunderstanding the level of hoarding. I imagined how hard it must be to move, as an adult with a household, into a home already full of one’s parents’ belongings. Alas, our neighbour said, it was a mental health issue. It’s sometimes referred to as a hoarding disorder or Diogenes syndrome. It was serious.

In the car with my kid, we found ourselves understanding how people get to this point. He said, quite astutely, that our society pushes “more, more, more.” We both agreed that it is hard to resist the siren song of acquisition that we’re constantly hearing. Choosing to stop, clean, tidy and cull things and acknowledge what we don’t need is even harder than resisting new acquisitions.

I was faced with my own “hoarding” scenario. My personal, free email account is more than 20 years old. Suddenly, I got a warning about a month ago that the storage on these accounts would be slashed dramatically. I could choose to pay a fee every month or delete a lot of messages. My husband got a similar warning, but his account was not as old or big as mine. Even so, we commiserated, because deleting some of these saved emails felt painful. Save the baby photo elsewhere and then delete the message? One by one, it didn’t seem to make a dent. Eventually, I figured out how to move older messages to a folder on my computer and I didn’t have to delete messages from people I’d loved who have now died; I didn’t have to cull every family photo.

Still, this exercise made us look around. My kids, about to start high school, decided that they didn’t need about 75 books on their shelves, acquired over the years from Scholastic book fairs, PJ Library and elsewhere. They are making plans to sell or donate the books.

Each kid, getting ready for a new school year, worked to empty out enormous middle school binders. They recycled tons of paper. They acknowledged that we no longer needed a Grade 5 workbook leftover from those pandemic days of learning at home. Both kids realized we needed to make space in their backpacks: for new intellectual growth and a new school year.

As my kids grow physically this summer, I’m knitting as fast as I can to make them new sweaters for winter but I’m knitting a sweater now out of “stash” yarns that I acquired when they were infants. Both kids are now bigger than me. The sweaters I make from now on will likely be too big for me when they outgrow them.

This is a balancing act, of course. It’s normal in our household to get some new things for a new school year, even if we reuse the old stuff, too. This celebration of something new even has a word for it in Modern Hebrew. We might say “Tithadash!” or “May it renew you!” when you see someone with new belongings.

At the same time, I’ve been studying the Babylonian tractate of Avodah Zarah. It explores how Jews are to interact with non-Jews or those who might worship idols. One of the concepts it covers is whether one can reuse anything that might have been used by someone who engaged in idol worship. This is a complicated topic. It involves both “decommissioned” idols and whatever was used to sacrifice to the idol. One also must consider whether any of these items might be ever “reused” in Jewish worship or sacrifice, in the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. It goes even farther, examining what one does about an idol created by Jews in the first place, like the Golden Calf. The tractate is sometimes confusing because it’s in so much detail.

That said, I returned to something else the text seemed to be telling us. In some cases, these items can be reused. The underlying message explores what we waste or throw away, versus how we can give things “new lives” even if their first use wasn’t ideal.

Nobody is worshipping idols at our house, but we’re discussing reuse, as well as the acquisition of new things for the upcoming school year. I see 14-year-olds evaluating their lunch bags and considering making themselves new ones. There was a pile of shirts in the give-away pile after we cleaned up today. I even saw a completely tidy sock drawer. This may never happen again!

I’m not sure how to always resist or even push back against our consumerist culture. However, the talmudic debate over physical leftovers from idol worship and what might be used again and/or refurbished made me realize that this struggle isn’t new. Just as we hope our kids are off to learn more with each school year, we also hope they’ll hold onto the good, sweet things that they embodied at younger ages, too. New, shiny ideas and things are tempting, but there’s something powerful and potentially meaningful about reuse, too.

Encouraging “another way”

Interim leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada Don Davies, centre, with Itai Bavli and Avril Orloff of Vancouver Friends of Standing Together. (photo from Vancouver FOST)

This summer, Vancouver Friends of Standing Together has been holding weekly vigils in front of City Hall to continue the call for the return of the hostages, an end to the war in Gaza and an end to settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“We organize rallies, vigils and information sessions to raise awareness of the situation in Israel/Palestine and promote ‘another way’ that is not exclusively pro-Israel or pro-Palestine but pro-humanity,” Avril Orloff, who started the Vancouver Friends of Standing Together (FOST) chapter, told the Independent.

Adi Keidar, one of the chapter’s co-administrators, said, “If you are willing to accept that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live freely and safely on this land, I will be standing with and supporting you. Someone told me, ‘if you need to choose between pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, it is obvious for me, as a Jew/Israeli where I stand. However, if I knew and trusted that there is another way, I would choose both.’ Standing Together, for me, brings that other voice.”

“I joined the FOST group in June 2024 because it reflects my values and my belief that finding a just solution to the conflict is the only way forward,” Itai Bavli, also a Vancouver FOST co-administrator, said. “I care about all people living between the river and the sea and believe that both peoples can thrive if given the chance. I support Israelis and Palestinians alike and believe they both have the right to live freely and safely. Which means ending the occupation and supporting a Palestinian state. For me, it’s a responsibility I carry.”

Currently, there are nine local co-administrators, who play active roles as their other work and responsibilities permit, Orloff explained. “We try to divide up responsibilities, so no one is overburdened,” she said, noting that everyone involved is a volunteer. “We meet on an ad hoc basis as needed to brainstorm ways to increase awareness, bring out the voice of Standing Together and address issues that come up.”

Standing Together is an Israeli grassroots social movement made up of Jewish and Palestinian citizens that, according to its website, “envision[s] a society that serves all of us and treats every person with dignity. A society that chooses peace, justice and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. A society in which we all enjoy real security, adequate housing, quality education, good healthcare, a liveable climate, a decent salary and the ability to age with dignity.”

Since the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, Standing Together in Israel has been organizing demonstrations – attended by tens of thousands – calling for a hostage deal and a ceasefire agreement. They also have been engaging in public campaigns “aimed at re-humanizing the discourse, retaining humanity, mourning all lives lost and rejecting violence on social media in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.” Last May, they launched the Humanitarian Guard initiative at Tarqumiyah checkpoint to protect “aid trucks headed to Gaza from attacks by extremist settlers that come out to attack the trucks.” This month, they started a campaign to collect food and humanitarian aid for residents of Gaza.

In addition to the eight chapters of Standing Together that operate in Israel, there are Friends of Standing Together chapters worldwide that have formed since Oct. 7. The chapters in the diaspora raise awareness of and funds for Standing Together, as well as offer a local communal space for people who share the movement’s values and goals. Orloff is an ambassador for ST’s global crowdfunding campaign and recently surpassed her personal goal of raising $6,000 for the movement.

“I started the Vancouver FOST group in February 2024, when I first learned about Standing Together and discovered they had support groups around the world,” said Orloff. “I was drawn to ST because I felt that a lot of groups advocating for either Israel or Palestine focused on only one side or the other, which seemed short-sighted to me. Standing Together’s stance, by contrast, is that, with seven million Jews and seven million Palestinians living ‘between the river and the sea,’ none of whom are going anywhere, the only sustainable future is a shared one grounded in equality, security, peace and justice for all.”

Orloff, Keidar and Bavli said they appreciate that ST is about more than ending the war and that it’s “a broad-based social movement that goes beyond the specifics of Jewish/Palestinian issues to encompass social change at all levels of society, from the bottom up.”

“One of the biggest concerns and confusions I had on Oct. 7 and the events that followed was the rise of hate and polarization on both sides,” said Keidar. “It was rare that I could agree with much that was said, and I was constantly trying to hold two thoughts at the same time. I felt alone and was not seeing the benefit of supporting one side – it felt wrong and unjust and it didn’t fit my values.

photo - Adi Keidar at one of Vancouver Friends of Standing Together’s vigils — Adi Keidar at one of Vancouver Friends of Standing Together’s vigils. *(photo from Vancouver FOST)*

“When I learned about Standing Together, it was the closest group that I felt spoke to my values and beliefs, as their focus is not one side or the other but humanity, which was the voice I felt was drowning in the hate that was brewing. I wasn’t willing to accept just one side. I believe that the only way to get out of this cycle is by compassionately seeing both sides, taking responsibility, finding the people that speak these values and bringing their voices out.”

Keidar participates in the weekly Bring Them Home rallies. Both she and Bavli spoke at a BTH rally this summer to raise the voice of Standing Together, to show “that it’s possible (indeed, necessary) to support both Israel and Palestine, and remind people that the immediate end of this war is only the beginning of the work to build a shared society in which all peoples live in peace and security.”

Vancouver FOST does local community-building through their WhatsApp group, social events (for example, film evenings, picnics, in-home gatherings), rallies and other activities. They raise awareness on social media via Instagram and work to build their membership, liaising with Standing Together and FOST groups globally. They meet monthly on Zoom with other Canadian FOSTs and build relationships with groups that share ST’s values and principles, like Women Wage Peace and various faith organizations. They have started doing outreach to Canadian politicians.

“We have endorsed Canada FOST’s Call to Action to the Canadian government and politicians to advance key priorities,” said Orloff, “including taking urgent diplomatic action to permanently end the war in Gaza; providing long-term support for peace and equality, not war; and supporting solidarity and partnership in our own society.”

The group organized and hosted an event in June last year, which brought Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson to Vancouver to talk about their book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other. (See jewishindependent.ca/not-such-a-great-divide.) They have plans to host an information table at the University of British Columbia in the fall.

In an email, Orloff, Keidar and Bavli described Vancouver FOST as being “for more than we’re against. We don’t argue about terminology or labels or traffic in simplistic black-and-white ‘solutions,’ but are comfortable living with complexity and difference. We love to have juicy discussions, but, more than talk, we’re about supporting action that will bring about real, practical, sustainable change. We aren’t pro-Israel or pro-Palestine but pro-humanity,” they reiterated, “and we don’t see this as a left-right divide or an Israel-Palestine divide, but a divide between those who want peace and life for everyone and those who traffic in death and destruction. We’re here to offer a different way of thinking about the conflict and a different path forward, not to convince people that we’re right.”

Orloff said group members aren’t “settling for simplistic, one-sided solutions that make heroes of one side and villains of the other, but recognize that geopolitical issues have history and context that create layers of complexity, compounded by historical and intergenerational trauma on both sides. What I tell people is that, in this ongoing conflict, there is no win/lose: it’s either win/win or lose/lose. If we don’t find a way to justice, equality, peace and security for all, there won’t be justice, equality, peace or security for anyone.”

“We are involved with Standing Together,” the three co-administrators stressed, “because of deep feeling for Israel and the people living in the land. Many of our FOST members are Israelis who are heartsick at what Israel is doing in Gaza, the West Bank, and to its own Palestinian Israeli citizens. We believe in Israel’s promise and want to hold Israel to its highest ideals. There is no other way. It’s our responsibility to bring about the change.”

Harper speaks at gala

Dr. Robert Krell will be honoured at the Sept. 7 gala of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation’s Western region. (photo from CSZHF, Western region)

Ilan Pilo had recently arrived in Canada from Israel in 2013 when he attended a Jewish National Fund gala in Toronto honouring Stephen Harper, Canada’s then-prime minister. Pilo thinks it may have been the largest kosher dinner ever on Canadian soil – but what struck him most was the rapturous enthusiasm among attendees for the country’s head of government.

“Harper was, and has been, one of the most genuine and strong allies and voices on behalf of Canadian Jewry and Israel,” said Pilo, now Western Canada executive for the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation.

Pilo will dine again with Harper, when the former prime minister is the keynote speaker at the first-ever gala of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation’s Western region, which takes place Sept. 7.

“In these challenging times, we all deserve to get some hope and strength by having a strong ally like him speaking in front of us,” said Pilo. “We all were astonished and so proud to hear his great support, his genuine support for Israel, and just now we need it more than ever.”

The gala, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation, will see the Kurt and Edith Rothschild Humanitarian Award bestowed upon Dr. Robert Krell.

The founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Krell is a child survivor of the Shoah and a renowned Vancouver-based psychiatrist, academic, author and educator, who has devoted his life to supporting survivors, educating on genocide and combating intolerance. In 2020, he was inducted into the Order of Canada.

The Kurt and Edith Rothschild Humanitarian Award is named in memory of the late Kurt Rothschild, a Canadian philanthropist, Jewish community leader and co-founder of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation. Along with his wife Edith, Rothschild devoted his life to strengthening the Jewish people, the state of Israel and institutions like Shaare Zedek Medical Centre in Jerusalem; he also served as president of the World Mizrachi movement. The award recognizes exceptional individuals whose integrity, leadership and service have left a meaningful impact both locally and globally.

Krell told the Independent that he has felt a special connection with Shaare Zedek Medical Centre in Jerusalem since he read Dr. Gisella Perl’s 1948 memoir, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz.

Imprisoned in the death camp, Perl, a gynecologist, was forced to work under the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele in the camp’s women’s infirmary. She performed countless life-saving – but excruciating – procedures without anesthesia, including secretly conducting abortions to save pregnant women from certain execution. Later, while serving in the maternity ward at Shaare Zedek Medical Centre, she would say a silent prayer before every delivery, “God, you owe me a life.”

“So, Shaare Zedek has been on my mind for a long time and, therefore, to be asked to be an honouree of that particular hospital talked to me,” Krell said.

The hospital’s maternity ward delivers 20,000 babies annually – by comparison, that’s three times as many as Vancouver’s BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre. About 1,000 of those newborns are premature and the Sept. 7 gala is the culmination of a campaign to generate revenue to purchase five new $50,000 incubators for the Jerusalem hospital.

Krell is especially honoured, he said, to receive the award in the presence of Harper.

“It’s a great honour to be with someone who is truly admired for their statesmanship,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a statesman in Canada.”

Pilo noted that Krell’s selection for the award was unanimously supported by the award committee, which was chaired by Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, and included Dr. Arthur Dodek, Marie Doduck, Shannon Gorski-Averbach and Dr. Jonathon Leipsic, as well as Pilo.

“We were aiming to find the right person to be awarded for the first time ever with the Kurt and Edith Rothschild Humanitarian Award in the Western region,” Pilo said. “The committee agreed, without any hesitation, that our award recipient should be Rob Krell, since he is renowned for support of Canadian Jewry and Israel. His lifelong efforts at preserving the memory of the Holocaust and his dedication for children, which aligns with our incubator drive, [made it] so natural that he is the right person to receive this award.”

Pilo credited the foundation’s national executive director, Rafi Yablonsky, for securing the former prime minister’s presence at the celebration, which will be emceed by Dr. Marla Gordon. Dinner co-chairs are Yael Segal and Carol Segal. Community partners for the event are the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, Congregation Schara Tzedeck, the Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia and the Jewish Independent. Tickets are at hospitalwithaheart.ca.

Battling disinformation

Why do international media outlets seem intent on repeating the Hamas narrative? According to British military expert Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox, there are a few key factors – including antisemitism.

“The first [factor] is a human desire not to admit when they are wrong and we don’t understand how powerful this is because it means that they have to admit that they have been wrong for the last 18 months,” he told JNS during a visit to Israel earlier this year.

Fox continued: “The second reason is the power of the narrative. Once you have achieved the dominance of your narrative, it is very, very difficult to present another narrative. The third one is antisemitism. While everything is not antisemitism – and I am really wary of saying that it is – certainly there are biases.”

Fox was a panelist at the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism hosted by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs in Jerusalem on March 27. As a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society who served as a top officer in the British army from 2005 to 2021, he is an authoritative voice supporting Israel, explaining how the Israel Defence Forces operates, and fighting disinformation about the Israeli military and its terrorist enemies.

In December 2024, Fox released a report under the auspices of the Henry Jackson Society titled “Questionable Counting: Analyzing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza.” The report presented clear indications that Hamas was padding casualty numbers. Despite this, he said, many in the media repeated, without question, whatever Hamas put out.

Fox is not the only publisher of a report that backs Israeli data with empirical evidence. On March 18, he pointed out, British historian Lord Andrew Roberts presented the All-Party Parliamentary Group report on the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. The 318-page report lays bare the depravity of the Hamas attack in detail.

“The immediate reaction online is that it’s biased,” Fox said. “Lord Roberts is not Israeli, Israel is not his area of focus and everything is meticulously referenced. Yet, it has been utterly dismissed out of hand, and that is absolutely astonishing.”

He added: “Of course, there will be a strong counter campaign with Qatari money. I had the same thing with my report. The final aspect is that the Palestinian campaign has 10 times the supporters that Israel does. It’s a numbers game, ultimately.”

Is antisemitism in the form of anti-Zionism, or what some call “Israelophobia,” ingrained in some media institutions?

According to Fox, the answer is yes. “It is institutional with the BBC. Twice this year [as of March] they have had to put out major apologies breaching their own impartiality guidelines – when they platform Hamas royalty in a documentary about kids in Gaza or when they email the Israeli embassy asking for a speaker who is specifically anti-Netanyahu,” he said.

“There are three parts to an apology: ‘I am sorry, it’s my fault and I will do better.’ They haven’t really done that third part at all. It is endemic and institutionalized.”

While the IDF has faced criticism from journalists who are not being allowed into Gaza, with some saying this strategy has impaired Israel’s ability to present the facts on the ground, Fox backed the Israeli military’s position.

“If you give a journalist free rein in Gaza, they will either do what Hamas tells them or they will be killed – and that will be blamed on the IDF anyway. From a military perspective, you don’t want anyone filming an airstrike because they don’t have all the supporting data to report fairly without knowing what went into the targeting process.”

To illustrate his point, Fox said he had flown to Israel with Sir John McColl, a former British army four-star general who had been “very anti-IDF.”

“All week he was pushing the IDF like a hawk – and then came home and wrote an op-ed saying he was convinced Israel is doing everything it can to protect civilians, and that’s what the IDF should be showing journalists,” Fox said.

He added: “You can’t send journalists in with fighting troops; that is too dangerous. Fighting in Gaza is a 360-degree war. You have high-rise buildings, ground level, underground. As a soldier, I would probably refuse to take a journalist into that battle.”

Fox expressed concern that we are in a very dangerous information environment when many people turn to social media for information because of the 24-hour news cycle, and very often what is posted is not factual and has not been verified. In the rush to make the news cycle, journalists are also not fact-checking properly, he said.

“The fight against antisemitism is the most important thing to me,” he said. “The stories I hear from my friends are just shocking.”

When asked what communities around the world could be doing better, he said: “We are not going to stop 2,000 years of antisemitism; it is not something we can defeat. It is not easy, but I would work to bring the silent majority on to our side.”

He added: “From a British perspective, we need to make it about a community that is part of the country. The ‘Palestine’ marches are horrendous and very un-British. It’s about how we frame it.”

Rolene Marks is a journalist and commentator specializing in Israeli advocacy, global Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics for JNS.org. She is a member of Media Team Israel and Truth be Told, both dedicated to promoting accurate reporting on Israel. Additionally, she serves as the chair of WIZO’s hasbara division, where she leads efforts in public diplomacy and advocacy. This article was originally published on jns.org.

* * *

Marks’s two stops here

photo - Rolene Marks — Rolene Marks (photo from CHW)

Israeli journalist, advocate, and chair of WIZO’s hasbara (communications) division Rolene Marks is touring Canada this September with Just the Facts, about the current situation in Israel, the realities of the war between Israel and Hamas (and other hostile groups), and the resilience of the Israeli people. Marks stops in Vancouver on Sept. 12 for an event hosted by CHW and the Ohel Ya’akov Community Kollel, and also helps open CHW Vancouver Centre’s new year, on Sept. 14.

At the Kollel young professionals event, Marks will talk about the United Nations, Gaza and Israel-related topics, and the Canadian government’s agenda, as it affects Israel and the Jewish diaspora. She will dispel lies, misinformation and blood libels, sharing links for where people can find accurate information and sources, stressing the need for Jews in Canada to share accurate information on social media. As well, she will discuss WIZO’s work in Israel and the importance of belonging to CHW (Canadian Hadassah-WIZO).

To join the CHW-Kollel Young Adults Shabbat experience on Sept. 12, 7:30 p.m., go to chw.ca/just-the-facts. Registration is by donation.

The CHW Vancouver Centre’s opening luncheon and fashion show on Sept. 14, 10:30 a.m., will feature fashions from After Five and Maison Labelle, lunch and door prizes, as well as an exclusive pre-event meet-and-greet for sponsors with Marks, CHW national president Tova Train and CHW chief executive officer Lisa Colt-Kotler. Tickets ($96) are available at chw.ca/region/western-region.

– Courtesy CHW

Webinar on Syria and Iran

On Aug. 5, B’nai Brith Canada hosted an online discussion on the crises affecting Druze communities in Syria and the Iranian people, with a focus on the impact on these diasporas in Canada and potential actions by the Canadian government.

The speakers were Kiumars Rezvanifar, president of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association and founder of the Iranian Canadian Cultural Fellowship, and Jamal Sehnawi, an advisor to the Supreme Druze Council and a member of the Canadian Druze Society.

Rezvanifar said the recent violence in Syria’s Suwayda (Sweida) governorate could have resulted in “hundreds of thousands” of Druze deaths if the Israel Defence Forces had not intervened. He said the attacks included the killing of civilians and kidnappings, highlighting the case of a 5-year-old girl who was kidnapped, assaulted, and her family killed, allegedly by members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). He lamented that major Arab media outlets like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have downplayed the crisis, a silence he called “a moral issue.”

Independent casualty figures vary. The Washington Institute reported more than 800 dead and 900 injured. Reuters-verified footage and the Syrian Network for Human Rights cited more than 1,000 deaths, mostly Druze, including women and children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 182 executions by government-affiliated forces as of July 19. Le Monde reported 1,311 deaths, while Anadolu Agency cited at least 321 killed, including six children and nine women.

These attacks have deeply shaken Canada’s Druze community, said Rezvanifar, who estimated the Druze population in Canada at about 50,000, mainly in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton.

Sehnawi described the violence in Suwayda as “ethnic cleansing,” attributing it to the Syrian Ministry of Defence and Interior and to foreign fighters. He said the Druze community’s requests were for peace and recognition similar to that afforded to other communities worldwide.

Throughout the discussion, Sehnawi spoke about historical and cultural ties between Jewish and Druze communities, referring to Druze as “direct descendants to the sons of Jacob (Israel)” and noting traditions of service and community support.

The online conversation also addressed the situation in Iran. Rezvanifar spoke about decades of repression by the Iranian government, citing executions, censorship and the suppression of protests. He criticized European countries for “prioritizing economic interests over human rights,” noting that international attention often came “too late to effectively help the Iranian people facing brutal repression.”

In the face of internet blackouts and censorship, Rezvanifar praised citizen journalists, saying, “The Iranian population is tech-savvy and educated, constantly finding ways to circumvent restrictions.”

Rezvanifar alleged that Iranian regime operatives live openly in Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Richmond Hill (part of the Greater Toronto Area), claiming “thousands of visas may have been issued to regime members” and “fewer than 10 deportations have occurred in the past five to eight years.” These figures have not been independently confirmed.

He commented on the fact that it took repeated calls before Canada designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization in 2024. The measure had been sought by various groups since the January 2020 downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, which killed 176 people, most of them Canadian citizens or residents. Both speakers called for Canada and the international community to take action in support of affected communities.

“In real estate, it’s all about location, location, location,” Sehnawi concluded. “In this situation, it’s all about information, information, information.”

Uriel Presman Chikiar is a student at Queen’s University and serves as executive vice-president of external relations at Hillel Queen’s.