Vehicles at a standstill alongside the ancient walls of Jerusalem’s Old City on April 24, as drivers honor the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. At 10 a.m., sirens sounded throughout Israel, and pedestrian and car traffic stopped to remember. (photo from Ashernet)
Author: Edgar Asher
מספר היהודים החיים כיום בעולם
נתוני הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה בישראל: 14.4 מיליון יהודים חיים בעולם ומהם כארבע מאות אלף נמצאים בקנדה. (צילום: Cynthia Ramsay)
הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה בישראל פירסמה בימים האחרונים דוח על מספר היהודים החיים כיום בעולם. הנתונים בנויים על הערכות בלבד של המדור לדמוגרפיה וסטטיסטיקה של היהודים באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, מתבססים על שנת 2015, ומתפרסמים כרגיל לרגל יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה.
אם כן כיום לפי הערכה של המדור לדמוגרפיה וסטטיסטיקה באוניברסיטה העברית, חיים בעולם כ-14.4 מיליון יהודים. זאת לעומת 16.6 מיליון יהודים שהיו בעולם ערב מלחמת העולם השנייה ומאורעות השואה הקשים. לפיכך העם היהודי למרות השנים שעברו שבעים ושתיים שנים, לא הצליח לחזור לגודלו לפני אירועי השואה, שהביאו להשמדת שישה מליון יהודים. יצויין כי גם בשנות העשרים של המאה הקודמת חיו בעולם כמו כיום כ-14.4 מיליון יהודים.
מטבע הדברים ריכוז היהודים הגדול בעולם (44 אחוז) נמצא בישראל ועומד על 6.33 מיליון. אחריה המדינה השנייה עם מספר היהודים הגדול ביותר כרגיל היא ארצות הברית, שבה גרים עם 5.7 מיליון יהודים. המדינות הנוספות בעולם בהן יש את הריכוז הגבוה ביותר של יהודים אחרי ארה”ב הן: במקום השלישי צרפת עם כ-460 אלף יהודים, במקום הרביעי קנדה עם כ-388 אלף יהודים, במקום החמישי בריטניה עם כ-290 אלף יהודים, במקום השישי ארגנטינה עם כ-181 אלף יהודים, במקום השביעי רוסיה עם כ-180 אלף יהודים, במקום השמיני ברזיל עם כ-120 אלף יהודים, במקום התשיעי גרמניה עם כ-117 אלף יהודים, במקום העשירי אוסטרליה עם כ-113 אלף יהודים. לפי הערכות לא מבוססות במקום האחד עשר נמצאת דרום אפריקה ובה חיים כ-80 אלף יהודים.
והיכן קיימות הקהילות הקטנות של יהודים בעולם: באיראן למשל חיים כעשרת אלפים יהודים, בבירוביג’ן חיים רק כחמשת אלפים יהודים, ביפאן חיים כאלף יהודים בלבד, בבהאמס חיים רק כשלוש מאות יהודים ואילו בקוריאה הדרומית יש כמאה יהודים בלבד.
על פי סקר של ההסתדרות הציונית העולמית שנעשה לאחרונה יש גידול משמעותי ביותר באנטישמיות ברחבי העולם, ואחד מכל שלושה יהודים חש את הצורך להסתיר את יהדותו. ועוד ממצאי הסקר: 85 אחוז מהיהודים היו עדים לאנטישמיות במהלך חייהם, 50 אחוז מיהודי המערב (מדובר על מדינות אירופה וצפון אמריקה) חוו אירוע אנטישמי במהלך השנה האחרונה, 73 אחוז היו עדים לאלימות פיזית ו-70 אחוז מיהודי אירופה חגגו לבד את החגים בשל הפחד מפעילות אנטישמית.
יש לזכור שיש גם כיום בישראל המפוצלת מאוד מבחינה חברתית כיום יהודים שונאים יהודים ובצורה גלויה. להלן סיפור מזעזע: יהודי תושב ירושלים בן 55 נחקר החודש במשטרת ירושלים לאחר שהביעה תמיכה ברורה בהשמדת יהודים אשכנזים. אותו ישראלי נחמד כתב בין היתר בדף הפייסבוק שלו: “אני מדמיין שיש לי את הכוח של היטלר, יושב על כסא עם בקבוק יין ומכניס אותם אחד אחד לתנור של אלף מעלות, ודואג שייצאו אפר. כמה שאני שונא אותם אלוהים”. האזרח הירושלמי לא התבייש להוסיף עוד מילות חמות על היהודים האשכנזים: “היטלר צדק שעשה מאימא שלכם סבון, והוא צדק שחיסל אתכם זבלים בני זבלים”. חברת פייסבוק חסמה מייד את הפרופיל של האזרח היקר. המשטרה המשיכה לחקור אותו והודיעה כי יוגש כתב אישום חמור נגדו.
ומהן תגובות הגולשים לאור הנתונים על מספר היהודים בעולם?: “הדת היהודית מזמן סיימה את דרכה. זה רק שאריות”. “בגלל ההתבוללות של היהודי בעולם. לולא זאת היה מספר היהודים כפול! ההתבוללות הגדולה ביותר באמריקה!”
Diverse DOXA festival offerings
In the very talented ensemble of The Road Forward by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John, left, and Jennifer Kreisberg. (photos from National Film Board of Canada)
This year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival features several films with Jewish community connections. They explore a wide range of topics: First Nations activism, Fort McMurray and the oil sands, real-life mermaids, bigotry against larger people, and being a freelance journalist in the Middle East. They will make you question your assumptions, ponder the various ways in which humans find connection, and introduce you to ideas, people and places you probably didn’t know existed.
Opening the festival, which runs May 4-14, is The Road Forward. In the very talented ensemble of this musical documentary by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John and Jennifer Kreisberg. As many of us do, St. John and Kreisberg have multiple cultural heritages that form their identity; in their instances, First Nations and Jewish are among them. In addition to performing, Kreisberg also composed and/or arranged many of the songs; the main composer is Wayne Lavallee.
The Road Forward began as a 10-minute performance piece commissioned for the Aboriginal Pavilion at the 2010 Olympics, and premièred as a full-length theatre show at the 2015 PuSh Festival. The documentary has mostly traditional components – interviews, archival footage, news clips – but these are broken up by a number of songs, which add energy and emotion to the film.
The documentary uses as its starting point the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, which were established in the 1930s, when First Nations people were not permitted to meet and organize. The groups’ “official organ,” the Native Voice, was the first indigenous-run newspaper in Canada.
“The idea was to honour B.C.’s history, so I started researching and reading online and came across the archives of the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the oldest Native organization in the country. Their parent organization, the Native Fishing Association, is located in West Vancouver, close to me,” explains Clements in the press material.
The Road Forward touches on many issues along its journey to current-day First Nation activists, who carry on in their ancestors’ paths. Though their goals are varied – some fight for particular legal or policy changes, others for restitution and reconciliation, yet others for their own voice and place in the world – they are all seeking justice, equality, understanding.
The songs highlight the immense struggles. As but two examples, “1965” is about the decades upon decades that First Nations have been denied the basic rights that most other Canadians have long enjoyed, and “My Girl” is a heartbreaking tribute to the aboriginal women who have been murdered along British Columbia’s Highway 16, the “Highway of Tears.” The Indian Constitution Express, a movement organized by George Manuel in 1980-81 to protest the lack of aboriginal rights in then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s plans to patriate the Canadian Constitution, receives somewhat more attention than other activist achievements, and the song “If You Really Believe,” based on a speech by Manuel, is quite powerful.
The May 4 gala screening of The Road Forward is the official launch of Aabiziingwashi (#WideAwake), National Film Board of Canada’s Indigenous Cinema on Tour. For the length of 2017, NFB is offering films from its 250-plus collection to all Canadians via [email protected]. The film also runs on May 10 and Clements will participate in a Q&A following both screenings.
* * *
Limit is the Sky follows a handful of 20-somethings who have moved to Fort McMurray to follow their dreams. A few years before the price of oil plummeted in 2015 and the 2016 wildfire decimated the northern Alberta city, the average family income in “Fort Mac,” was $190,000 a year, according to the film. Working on the oil sands was where the real money lay, but others were drawn to the college or to places that serve the oil workers (and others), such as hairdressing salons and restaurants.
Most striking about the population we meet in Limit is the Sky is their diversity: they not only come from other Canadian provinces and the United States but from much further afield. The seven young dreamers featured include Max, from Lebanon; Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years); and KingDeng, a former child soldier from South Sudan, who had to help support his wife and children (in Edmonton) while at school in Fort McMurray.
“I was looking for young people who’d just recently arrived in Fort Mac, full of hopes, dreams and naïveté,” says filmmaker Julia Ivanova in the press material. “I wanted to walk the viewer through their ups and downs in a place where the men seem tough and the women even tougher. I wasn’t looking for tough characters, though: sensitivity and beauty – both inner and physical beauty – were important to me.”
Ivanova, who has Jewish roots, migrated to Canada from Russia many years ago.
“Being an immigrant myself,” she notes, “I could feel what was at stake for these young people and the challenges they face on a very intimate level.”
The main filming ran from fall 2012 to spring 2015. She felt welcomed by the people in the city, though not by the industry. “That was a brick wall I hit over and over again,” she says. “There was no filming of anyone allowed, anywhere, period.”
By the end of the film, most of the millennials featured had left the city, along with many others. “The town felt almost deserted, compared to how I had seen it in 2012 and 2013,” says Ivanova. “So many people were leaving. There was so much anxiety. I went to all the places I loved – and they’d all changed.”
Ivanova’s film shows the hope, the drive, the challenges, the loneliness of her interviewees. The dynamics are much more complex than one might assume of a city that relied on the oil sands for its prosperity. The environment is of crucial importance, obviously, but people matter, too, and this documentary shines a necessary light on that fact.
Limit is the Sky screens May 5.
* * *
Falling into the who-ever-would-have-thought category, Ali Weinstein’s Mermaids introduces viewers to real-life mermaids, of a sort.
Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy. Vicki and a group of former Weeki Wachee Resort (in Florida) swimmers recall their mermaid days, including a show for Elvis and a 50th anniversary performance. Being a mermaid helps Cookie, who was abused as a child and has mental health issues, manage life, and she and her soulmate, Eric, who makes her mermaid tails, are married in a mermaid wedding, after being together for some 30 years. Last but not least, Julz, a transgender woman who was bullied as a child and disowned by her father, discovers acceptance and love in a Huntington Beach, Calif., mermaid group.
Weinstein intersperses these stories with brief summaries of long-told mermaid tales, “from the 3,000-year-old Assyrian figure of Atargatis to the Mami Wata water spirits of West Africa.”
It really is a fascinating documentary, showing just how resilient and resourceful the human spirit is.
Mermaids plays twice during DOXA, on May 6 and 13, and Weinstein will be in attendance at both screenings.
* * *
Think of the cartoon villains and the hapless sidekicks. How are they often portrayed? As fat, dumb and/or oversexed? If those weren’t your first thoughts, think again. The documentary Fattitude convincingly shows how widespread bigotry against larger people is – so much so that it can be overlooked, until pointed out. Then, you wonder how you ever missed it.
From the old woman in the candy house that eats Hansel and Gretel, to Star Wars’ Jabba the Hut, to the evil squid in The Little Mermaid, these are just a few of the villains. Then there is the heavyset and dumb Hardy, sidekick to thin, smart Laurel; the stereotypical chubby best friend in so many movies; and the archetypal black nanny, forever cast in the caring, subservient role. Miss Piggy is a more complex character, both strong and confident in herself, but also sex-crazy over Kermit. And, in the entire Star Trek franchise – where have the larger people gone?
From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes. When all put together, it’s quite depressing. However, Fattitude is a rather upbeat documentary, as its interviewees are spirited, determined and intelligent enough to effect some change, mainly via social media.
Filmmakers Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Lieberman speak to almost 50 people and, to a person, they provide an interesting perspective, connecting the body images depicted in films, television shows, cartoons, magazines and advertisements with their effects on viewers and on our perceptions of ourselves and others. The film discusses the links between race, socioeconomic status and weight, as well as the reasons why Michelle Obama’s campaign to end childhood obesity was misguided.
Fattitude screens May 9.
* * *
Being a journalist in a war zone seems dangerous and frightening, and it is. But it is also tedious and lonely. At least this is what it seems from watching Santiago Bertolino’s Freelancer on the Front Lines.
Bertolino follows Toronto-born, Beirut-based freelance journalist Jesse Rosenfeld as Rosenfeld hustles to get story ideas and budgets approved, waits in sparse hotel rooms for fixers to connect him with interviewees, and ventures into Egypt during its post-Arab Spring elections, the West Bank during an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and to Iraq, where they witness the fight against ISIS from the front lines.
Some of the more disturbing images are of the bodies of Palestinians gunned down in a home by undetermined executioners and the corpses of dead ISIS fighters dumped in the back of a truck, as well as tied to its back bumper. In another memorable part, Rosenfeld yells questions to a caged Mohamed Fahmy, when Fahmy and two fellow Al Jazeera journalists were on trial in Cairo. (Fahmy, who holds both Canadian and Egytian citizenship, spent almost two years in jail of a three-year sentence.)
Rosenfeld has strong views and isn’t afraid to share them, though he struggles to make eye contact with the camera when he makes his pronouncements. Some of the best exchanges in the film are between him and Canadian-Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky, who hold different opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Freelancer on the Front Lines screens May 13 at Vancity and will include a post-film discussion.
For tickets and the full DOXA Documentary Film Festival schedule, visit doxafestival.ca.
Dialogue needed
Robert Singer, chief executive officer of World Jewish Congress, addressed more than 100 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver donors at an event hosted by Gary Averbach and sponsored by Garry Zlotnik of ZLC Financial. (photo from WJC)
The professional head of World Jewish Congress says Diaspora Jews and Israelis are too wrapped up in their own worlds and need to strengthen the dialogue between the two components of the global Jewish community.
Speaking to the Independent during his first-ever visit to Vancouver, Robert Singer said relations remain strong in terms of Diaspora support for Israeli organizations. Programs like Birthright, through which young Jews experience Israel, and Masa, which offers young adults gap-year, study-abroad and other opportunities, also enhance connections. But there must be more person-to-person contacts like these, he said, which foster real conversations across the divide.
“I’m not sure that both sides are talking,” said Singer. “I think both sides are busy with their own stuff. Israelis are busy with stuff in Israel and Diaspora Jews are today busy with their survival, in many cases, both financial and community survival.”
World Jewish Congress is an organization that can facilitate dialogue, he added.
WJC was founded in Geneva in 1936 and now represents Jews in 100 countries, focusing on issues including protecting the memory of the Holocaust, advocating for the recognition of the experiences of Jews from Arab lands, combating antisemitism and encouraging interfaith dialogue. The Congress is headed by Ronald Lauder, president of the executive committee. Singer, who has been the chief executive officer of WJC since 2013, previously served 14 years as the director general and CEO of World ORT, one of the largest nongovernmental education and training providers in the world. Singer was born in Ukraine and made aliyah at age 15.
While in Vancouver, Singer met with rabbis, representatives of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and other communal organizations. He also met with Russian-speaking members of the community and said he was impressed with Vancouver’s flourishing Jewish life. He acknowledged that British Columbia’s Jewish community faces challenges common to many similar-sized communities.
“The main thing that struck me is the issue of assimilation and how to deal with this,” he said. “Being more inclusive, bringing more people of non-Jewish faith into the community, issues of education, issues of fighting BDS and antisemitism on campuses, and issues of relations between Israel and the Diaspora.”
Interviewed days after many young Jews blockaded the AIPAC conference in Washington, D.C., Singer rejected the idea that younger Jews are alienated from Zionism.
“It’s very different,” Singer said of the way young Jews relate to Israel. Previous generations, he said, were Holocaust survivors or their descendants who knew a world without Israel. “For somebody who is now 20 years old, all this is now either history or they just don’t remember the situation where there was a world without a Jewish state.” This generation cannot be expected to have the same visceral connection to Zionism, he said. “I think it’s just a different approach. Different technologies, different approach.”
He compared the suggestion of declining Zionism with the situation among young Israelis.
“In Israel all the time they say that the previous generation was much more patriotic,” he said. Yet, when young people are conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces today, more – not fewer – are requesting assignment to the most difficult combat and elite units, he said.
“It shows that this generation of young Israelis is at least as good as the people before them and I think it’s the same in the Diaspora,” Singer said, citing the Jewish Diplomatic Corps, a WJC program of about 200 young adults from 43 countries, including international lawyers, businesspeople, parliamentarians, professors and others who meet with government leaders and international agencies.
“They are outstanding young people,” said Singer. “I’m sure that, on an intellectual, Jewish and pro-Zionist level, they are at least as good as the leadership of the people who went before.”
On external threats, Singer said it is too soon to make a determination about long-range impacts of contemporary antisemitism. A new WJC study indicates an antisemitic comment is posted to social media every 82 seconds.
“It’s very bad,” he said. But, he added, it may be less a matter of growing antisemitism than attitudes that were already there merely finding expression.
The situation in Europe is concerning, he said. Antisemitic and neo-Nazi parties are seeing unprecedented public support in France, Germany, Hungary and Greece. “This is a real danger,” Singer said.
On the impacts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies, Singer said it is too soon to judge. He is impressed, however, that Trump’s appointee as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has adopted a very different approach from her recent predecessors.
While the United Nations General Assembly is a wasteland at present, Singer said, Canada and the United States should remain active there, “because there is a stage there and you can have some influence.”
Of the new Canadian government, Singer said he is pleased that relations between Israel and Canada remain close and that this is something that transcends politics.
First Vancouver Opera Festival
Caitlin Wood and Alex Lawrence star in Vancouver Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro. Jewish community member Leah Giselle Field performs the role of Marcellina in the production. (Emily Cooper Photography)
I am thrilled and honoured to have been chosen to lead Vancouver Opera into a new era,” said Jewish community member Kim Gaynor when her appointment as general director was announced prior to the start of this season. “Vancouver Opera already has a long history of excellent productions and a well-deserved reputation for innovation under Jim Wright’s exemplary leadership.”
As part of its vision for the future, Vancouver Opera is holding an inaugural opera festival April 28 to May 13. The event features a variety of vocal offerings for audiences, as well as workshops and other activities.
“Opera seasons are planned years in advance, so this festival was planned long before I joined VO,” Gaynor told the Independent. “However, I have brought 10 years’ experience managing the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and I am using this experience to shape the festival-going experience here. For example, we will have lots of opportunities to follow the development of young singers, and for audience participation, two things which were very popular in Verbier.”
Her resumé prior to managing the Verbier Festival includes managing director and co-founder of Austria’s Festival Retz, administrator of London, England’s Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and head of marketing administration at London’s Royal Opera House. She has worked at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, L’Opéra de Montréal and Canada Council for the Arts.
Gaynor, who was born and raised in Ontario, returned to Canada from Switzerland last year, arriving in Vancouver in September. She was here in time for another recent Vancouver Opera innovation – the smaller-venue, family-friendly production of Hansel and Gretel in November.
“Hansel and Gretel was a huge success with people of all ages,” said Gaynor. “The whimsical, enthusiastic performances from our young artists and the wonderful puppets charmed everyone who came. I heard so many stories about young people being literally on the edge of their seats throughout the whole performance, and this could lead to a lifelong love of opera. One thing I learned was that the intimacy of the smaller Playhouse theatre really appeals to audiences. They want to be nose-to-nose with the performers – up close to the action.”
The upcoming festival will offer more opportunities to get up close to the action, including a performance at Vancouver Public Library – called Opera Tales – featuring singers from VO’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program, who the audience will have a chance to meet after the show. One of these singers is Jewish community member Leah Giselle Field, who also will be performing the role of Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro. (For more on Field, see jewishindependent.ca/fairy-tale-reimagined.)
Among the other festival offerings are a video installation by artist Paul Wong, performances by vocal stylist Ute Lemper and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, an evening sing-along with the Vancouver Bach Choir, a film night, master classes for young singers, forums and discussions, preview talks and happy hours.
“We believe that the festival format will attract a new and younger audience who likes fast and furious action, because there will be something going on all the time during the 16 days of the festival,” said Gaynor. “At the same time, we are convinced that our main-stage operas, Otello, Dead Man Walking and The Marriage of Figaro, will appeal to our traditional audiences, who may only want to attend for an evening or two. In our next season, 2017/2018, which has just been announced, we are offering a season and a festival, starting with the ever-popular Turandot in the fall and closing the season with a spring festival.”
Further explaining why the festival concept is being embraced by VO, she said, “Festivals are, by definition, a celebration and people, in general, love to celebrate. We will not only be celebrating opera, but the human voice and all of its expression, from throat singing to choral. Festivals offer the chance to mingle and meet lots of other people who share the same passion. This chance to come together with like-minded people creates an atmosphere which is hard to create in a normal season. But I don’t think festivals are a more attractive model, just a different model, and VO is in the mood for change.”
One of the attractions of moving back to Canada was that Gaynor would be closer to her mom, who lives in Oakville, Ont. One of the appeals of moving to Vancouver was the opportunity to be outside. While circumstances have made that difficult so far, she has found other fun things to do around town.
“Honestly,” she said, “it seems like it has either rained or snowed every day since I arrived (until about two days ago)! I am normally a person who loves the outdoors, so my highlights have been discovering the North Shore mountains and walks along the Seawall with my dog (a 3-year-old border collie). That was before I broke my leg badly at the end of January falling off my horse! I am also finding some great spots for brunch in my neighbourhood around Main and 12th, and have been discovering all of the fantastic cultural organizations in town.”
Gaynor was born in Hamilton, Ont., but the family moved to nearby Burlington when she was six months old.
“We lived almost in the country in Burlington, in a house with a big yard with a small forest behind. More importantly, we were less than a kilometre from a horse farm, where I discovered my passion for riding. My father was a passionate amateur pianist and we had a baby grand piano at home. I got my love of classical music from him.”
Gaynor’s father was a Holocaust survivor.
“My father was one of the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped from Western Europe to England on the Kindertransport,” she said. “He lived in London from 1938 until 1954, when he emigrated to Canada and met my mother, who is not Jewish. He even changed his family name, which was Geier, but sounded too German in postwar Canada and that, combined with his accent, was a handicap. So, he took the last name of his movie star idol – Mitzi Gaynor. Unfortunately, he died quite young, only 53 years of age.
“I know my father’s life was in every way coloured by having lost his family in this way but, like many Kindertransport children, he spoke very little about it to his children. I learned much later, after his death, that a part of his family escaped Austria and made it to Palestine. I was able to find them and went to meet them in 1996. I have often wondered how life would have been different if I had been born and raised in a Jewish family in Austria, or in London. But I have close ties still to the family who adopted my father in London, and to his relatives in Israel and this has enriched my life immensely.”
While she doesn’t “practise any religious traditions in a formal way,” Gaynor said, “I feel quite close to Jewish culture and traditions because of my family and friends, but also I have participated many times in Jewish celebrations, weddings, a few bar mitzvahs and even a bat mitzvah. I also remember some very poignant things from my childhood, such as my father criticizing my mother for not being able to make good matzah ball soup. Clearly, he had some things he missed from home!”
For festival tickets, call 604-683-0222 or visit vancouveropera.ca. For Tanya Tagaq tickets, contact Ticketfly at 1-888-732-1682 or ticketfly.com/purchase/event/1412206.
Joni Mitchell for millennials
Left to right, Andrew Cohen, Sara Vickruck, David Z. Cohen and Anna Kuman are among the cast of Circle Game: Reimagining the Music of Joni Mitchell. (photo by Tyler Branston)
Andrew Cohen and Anna Kuman, a Vancouver-based husband-and-wife team who are both composers and choreographers, will debut Circle Game: Reimagining the Music of Joni Mitchell this month at the Firehall Arts Centre.
The genesis was Mitchell’s 70th birthday in 2013, Cohen told the Jewish Independent.
“There was a lot of press that caught our attention,” said Cohen. “After that, it seemed like her music started following us around, popping up everywhere. We started researching her – her music, her lyrics, her impact on Canadian art and culture. We opened that can of worms and very much found a spark of something. We decided to see if we could take her poignant and meaningful and topical lyrics and reimagine them.”
The pieces Cohen and Kuman came up with are diverse re-arrangements of Mitchell’s material.
“We sat down on the piano to dissect and distil her songs,” said Cohen. “We threw in some harmony or a different drum beat. We came up with 20 different arrangements. Some are mash-ups, some are whole but more acoustic and unplugged, some are indie rock sounding or Latin.”
“We made a conscious effort to make the songs sound as if they were released today,” explained Kuman. “It’s the music of our parents’ generation, but we realized how poignant it still is for us. The social and political issues are repeating themselves. We wanted to change the sound so people could leave their preconceptions about the music of baby boomers behind.”
Kuman points to “Fiddle and the Drum” as a song that really resonates with today’s news cycle. “In that song, the line, ‘once again, America my friend,’ resonates powerfully,” she said.
The song lyrics include the following lines: “And so once again / America my friend / And so once again / You are fighting us all / And when we ask you why / You raise your sticks and cry and we fall / Oh, my friend / How did you come / To trade the fiddle for the drum? / But we can remember / All the good things you are / And so we ask you please / Can we help you find the peace and the star?”
While working on the project, both had songs they found personally meaningful. A song that sticks out for Cohen is “A Case of You.”
“The way we do it is very unique and will be unlike anything you’ve seen or heard before,” he said.
For Kuman, it was “Down to You,” which she described as “a story song.” In the lyrics, Mitchell “really painted a picture, a specific narrative. The way that we staged it in the workshop is that movement really evokes the emotion of the song. The arrangement that Andrew came up with is totally a cappella, yet really full.”
Cohen and Kuman are both in their 20s and are “proud East Vancouverites.” Cohen grew up going to Congregation Beth Tikvah in Richmond, and his parents were longtime members of the Beth Tikvah choir. Both he and his brother were in Perry Ehrlich’s ShowStoppers.
“We grew up at the JCC,” Cohen said, referring to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. “Anna taught tap at the Dena Wosk School [of Performing Arts], and we both taught there for years at Gotta Song! Gotta Dance!”
Both Cohen and Kuman are members of Temple Sholom, where they were married by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz.
When Cohen and Kuman started the process of composition, they were dating and not yet married. They did a workshop together, pitched it to Capilano University and were given a three-week residency and the time and space to experiment. This is their first foray as co-directors and co-collaborators.
“We got great feedback from the musicians and did a workshop presentation and invited people in the industry that we respect and we wanted to hear what they thought,” said Cohen. “The feedback was overwhelming and amazing. We knew we definitely had something – the spirit of our generation with the words of Joni Mitchell. There was some constructive criticism that we took and incorporated, too. It was great to have the roses and the thorns of a feedback session.”
“We will be the first to tell you how lucky we feel to be able to work with this calibre of talent,” said Kuman, referring to the musicians they are working with. “They are all multi-instruments who wail like nobody’s business and will sing to break your heart. We had a fairly extensive audition across the country, a ton of incredible talent came out for the show, but we settled for this six because they have the right skills and the right mix.”
The ensemble features Rowen Kahn (Superman: Man of Steel), Scott Perrie (Godspell), Adriana Ravalli (Rock of Ages), Kimmy Choi (Avenue Q), Sara Vickruck (Love Bomb) and David Z. Cohen (Heathers: The Musical). Together, they will play 18 instruments.
“We’d both like to encourage everyone to come out and see the show, whether you’re a Joni fan or not, or whether your mom is a Joni fan or not!” said Kuman. “We think it will be a great way to bridge the generation gap. What we hope we’ve accomplished is making the hits of 30 or 40 years ago sound like the hits that you’d hear on the radio.”
Circle Game runs April 29 to May 20. For tickets and showtimes, visit firehallartscentre.ca.
Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.
The reach of humour
Director Ferne Pearlstein with Mel Brooks. (photo from Tangerine Entertainment)
Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanours marked the first time that many people heard the philosophical proposition, expressed by Alan Alda’s character, that “comedy is tragedy plus time.”
I’ve always cited “the Woodman” as the source of the insight, probably because it’s consistent with a Jewish worldview. In fact, another Allen, the late, great comedian, composer and TV host Steve Allen, described the phenomenon in a 1957 magazine interview. Maybe he picked it up from somebody else; in any event, this is what he had to say: “When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.), he said, ‘Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment?’ The answer is ‘No, but they will be pretty soon.’”
Ferne Pearlstein’s wonderfully entertaining and provocative documentary The Last Laugh asks a gaggle of comedians, as well as the viewer, if there might be one subject that defies Allen’s thesis. Seventy years on, is the Holocaust still off limits for purveyors of punchlines? Are there subjects that cannot and should not be the subject of jokes? Or are some of the functions of humour – healing, confronting uncomfortable truths from oblique angles, challenging stereotypes – applicable even in the case of targeted genocide? Finally, as the great wit Hillel famously asked his students at a late-night yeshivah improv set, “If not now, when?”
Pearlstein puts the question to a group of sharp Jewish humourists, interspersing their incisive comments with a parade of clips from films and TV shows that comprise a kind of Rorschach test for the viewer. The expert witnesses include Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Gilbert Gottfried and Larry Charles, who grapple with the topic with both hilarious and discomfiting results. As you’d imagine, given their ethnic backgrounds and line of work, they’ve given the matter considerable thought over the years.
Mel Brooks, who displayed unimaginable chutzpah and courage in conceiving and producing The Producers 50 years ago, cites Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant The Great Dictator to illustrate the power of mockery and ridicule to cut the Nazis down to size. Another interviewee provides a reminder that humour played an important role in the camps, providing a brief escape from bleak reality and a way of maintaining one’s humanity and dignity.
But it’s another matter altogether to mine the camps or victims for laughs. (Here’s where the late Joan Rivers makes an appearance with a jaw-dropping one-liner from some archived late-night show.)
Of course, one of the jobs of comedians is to step over the line, in order to impel us to consider where the line is. (Come on down, Sarah Silverman.) And, given the prominence of the Holocaust in shaping the identity of at least two generations of American Jews, it is a taboo that needs to be examined.
Too soon (to use the catchphrase du jour)? About time, I’d say.
Pearlstein implicitly acknowledges two important caveats, however. The reality of the Holocaust can’t be ignored or subsumed in a theoretical discussion of contemporary attitudes, and those who endured the camps should be allowed to comment on what’s funny.
Stalwart survivor Renee Firestone acts as a thread and guidepost throughout The Last Laugh, reminding us of the deadly toll of the Holocaust as well as the determination and, yes, good humour required to create a satisfying life after the darkness of Europe.
Firestone inspires us to consider the highest and best use of memory and, in the context of the film, to see humour as a constructive way of remembering and revisiting tragedy that instils strength. Over and over, The Last Laugh eschews glib analysis in pursuit of deeper truths. And those are always the best punchlines.
The Last Laugh airs on PBS April 24 (check local listings).
Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Fighting for children
Bernard Richard, left, Cindy Blackstock and Jerry Nussbaum. (photo from Janusz Korczak Association of Canada)
As executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, Dr. Cindy Blackstock initiated a human rights complaint against the Government of Canada, alleging that the country discriminates against First Nations by consistently underfunding child welfare services on reserves, a complaint her agency filed jointly with the Assembly of First Nations. After nine years of waiting for a decision, Blackstock, who is also a professor of social work at McGill University, was attending a graduation ceremony when she received an email with an attachment bearing the decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
“I read the first words of the decision and it said, ‘This decision is about children,’ underlined. I knew it was a good decision,” Blackstock told an audience at a Richmond hotel April 12, where she was honoured with the Janusz Korczak Medal for Children’s Rights Advocacy.
She left the ceremony and went home to put on her gumboots and collect a teddy bear, named Spirit Bear, who she said had witnessed the nine-year process with her. Then she bought a bouquet of flowers and drove to Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery.
“I walked through the snow down a little valley to a modest tombstone with the name Peter Henderson Bryce on it,” she recalled. Bryce was a federal civil servant in the Indian Affairs Department at the turn of the last century who blew the whistle on Canada’s treatment of indigenous peoples, particularly alerting the government and the public to the mortality rate of 14% to 24% at residential schools and a 42% infant mortality rate on reserves. His report, The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921, was never made public by the government and Bryce was fired.
“He sacrificed his career and was retaliated [against] for it, but he would not be silent,” said Blackstock. “He kept talking even if nobody was listening because he knew that it was our job as adults to stand up for kids, to love children more than we fear for ourselves.”
At the cemetery, she read the tribunal decision, which determined that Ottawa discriminates against children on reserves by spending less on child welfare solely because of race and national or ethnic background. As a result, the decision stated, First Nations children suffer adverse impacts from funding service gaps, delays and denials.
After she read the ruling at the gravesite, she looked back up the hill from where she had just walked.
“And I saw the one set of footsteps in the snow and although those were made with me and my gumboots and the Spirit Bear, I knew that they also had the spirits of people like Dr. Korczak, of all the families who had stood up to protect their kids and hide them in the bush or prayed for them when they were in the schools, of the people, the non-aboriginal people like Dr. Bryce, who had been allies of justice for the children. So, I hugged his tombstone and I said, ‘Justice, Dr. Bryce, finally justice.’”
Blackstock, a member of the Gitxsan nation in northern British Columbia, said she was honoured to have her name mentioned in the same sentence as Korczak, who is viewed as the founder of children’s rights. Before she was presented with the medal by Jerry Nussbaum, president of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada, Korczak was described by Lillian Boraks-Nemetz of the Korczak association as “a children’s advocate, their doctor, their friend and teacher.”
“He penned his own index of children’s rights, which is reflected in the United Nations Charter,” she said. “His Warsaw Ghetto diary and other writings inform us how he, through self-examination and experience, became a man with deep concern and compassion for a child’s welfare, a child’s healing not only of the body but also of the soul.”
Korczak ran his orphanage in Warsaw as a microcosmic laboratory, Boraks-Nemetz said, “where he practised and researched his philosophy on how to love a child and on children’s rights. There, he conducted a child’s court, where children expressed their grievances in front of the judges and jury made up of children.”
She spoke of her own experience implementing Korczak’s theories.
“When my children were small, my own children, I adopted this method partially and invited my own children to the family room once a week where they would express their grievances to us, their parents,” she said to laughter from the audience. “We would hear them out and discuss solutions to all sorts of problems and this worked very well, as our children needed to gain confidence in themselves and to express their feelings and thoughts, to be treated fairly with an acknowledgement of their rights to justice.”
Korczak’s philosophy, she said, was that 100 children are 100 human beings – “not some day, not ‘not yet,’ not tomorrow. They are human beings now.”
She then told the story of Korczak’s ultimate heroism.
“He would not desert the 200 orphans he cared for in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War,” she said. “This was at the time when the orphanage was marked for Nazi deportations of Jews.… Korczak was offered a reprieve from being deported, but he said, ‘My children need me’ and went with them to Treblinka death camp, where they all perished.”
Boraks-Nemetz quoted Irena Sendler, a Polish rescuer of ghetto children, who said, “When, on Aug. 6, 1942, I saw that tragic parade in the street, those innocent children walking obediently in the procession of death and listening to the doctor’s optimistic words, I do not know why, for me and for all the other eyewitnesses, our hearts did not break.”
Bernard Richard, British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth, said some might think it difficult to make comparisons between a Polish Jewish man who died in the Holocaust and an indigenous Canadian woman who is still living – “and kicking, some would say.”
“But Cindy Blackstock is being given the medal for children’s rights advocacy because her work – and her life – has embodied the spirit of the man for whom the medal is named,” Richard said. Throughout the nine-year process, he added, “She was tenacious, and persistent, determined, passionate and committed, all characteristics shared with Janusz Korczak.”
Marvin Bernstein, UNICEF Canada’s chief policy advisor, said Canada has a longstanding pattern of underfunding child welfare services for First Nations children living on reserves, affecting 165,000 First Nations children and their families. The tribunal decision on Jan. 26, 2016, was a turning point for the country.
“It’s clear to UNICEF Canada that Cindy has been on the right side of history from the very beginning and has left an enduring legacy of advancing First Nations children’s rights.”
Beyond the binaries
The concept of intersectionality recognizes that multiple forms of oppression and discrimination can impact individuals at the same time. For example, African-Americans experience systemically and socially both economic disadvantage and racial discrimination. Black women face an addition layer of intersectional oppression and black LGBTQ people add homophobia to the mix.
Intersectionality can be problematic for the Jewish community. As we have discussed in this space previously and will again, despite historical realities, Jewish people are often perceived by others as an advantaged, rather than a disadvantaged, minority. It does not take long on the sort of online forums where the term intersectionality is commonly used before stereotypes of Jewish power show up. Similarly, Zionism is seen by some not as the realization of an indigenous rights movement for self-determination that it is, but rather as a form of colonialism.
In one of the most self-evident examples of intersectionality’s potential blind spots, the intersection of Palestinian rights and gay rights begets ludicrousness like Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which makes common cause with extremists who throw homosexuals off roofs in order to condemn the perceived colonialism and myriad other “sins” of Zionism. Very frequently, in the discourse found in some far-left circles, antisemitism is dismissed because it does not fit the ideology of those who determine where the intersections are. Or, rather, it is made to not fit.
This is too bad, because selecting which humans are eligible for inclusion in a human rights movement based on immutable characteristic is, by definition, a human rights movement founded on false premises.
Of course, social theory and the real world are disparate points on a spectrum. A beautiful real-world example of something we might term intersectionality took place last week here in Vancouver.
Bernard Richard, British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth, spoke at the ceremony for the awarding of this year’s Janusz Korczak Medal for Children’s Rights Advocacy. He observed that it might be difficult for some people to see the parallels between a Jewish Pole who died in the Holocaust and a social worker and activist who is a Canadian First Nations woman. But the inspiring intersection of these two lives makes eminent sense.
Dr. Janusz Korczak, as regular readers know, was a hero of the Holocaust who chose to accompany the 200 children in the care of his orphanage to their deaths in Treblinka, despite the Nazis offering him a reprieve. But he is a hero not only for the way he died, but for the work of his life. Seen as the originator of the children’s rights movement, Korczak insisted on the recognition of children’s innate humanity – rather than merely their potential – and insisted on seeing children as individuals fully deserving of respect and self-determination.
Far away in time and place, Dr. Cindy Blackstock insisted on the rights of indigenous Canadian children. A human rights complaint she initiated, which took nine years to wend its way through the byzantine structures of federal institutions, resulted in a January 2016 decision that Canada has consistently discriminated against the 165,000 aboriginal children who live on reserves, and their families, by systemically underfunding services to those children and youth based solely on their identities.
Blackstock was awarded the annual Korczak medal for exemplifying the values of Korczak in advancing children’s rights.
In her acceptance speech, Blackstock spoke of walking in the footsteps of ancestors and others who came before. Korczak and Blackstock are both models for all who seek to advance the condition of children in the world. It is impossible to imagine what future greatness may be inspired by their examples. A Polish Jewish man, Korczak effectively invented a concept that is now entrenched in United Nations testaments to the rights of the child, affecting the lives of potentially every child on earth. An indigenous Canadian woman, Blackstock shepherded a human rights challenge that will improve the lives of every child living on reserves in Canada, and their families.
Someday, who knows when or where, these two examples will inspire some other individual to stand up where injustice and inequality intersect with some other group of people. Then that individual will themselves become a model for others.
UBC votes no to BDS
Votes were tallied late Friday, April 7, for the referendum on the University of British Columbia campus, wherein students were asked if they supported their union in a BDS campaign – and the answer was no. The “no” vote numbered 1,513 while 1,396 students voted “yes” to “boycotting products and divesting from companies that support Israeli war crimes, illegal occupation and the oppression of Palestinians.”
It was the second time in two years that a BDS referendum on campus was defeated and Rabbi Philip Bregman, executive director of Hillel BC, said he was thrilled. “In all honesty, this referendum is nothing more than a call for the elimination of the state of Israel,” he noted. “We had students from all over the university, Jewish and non-Jewish, join in the fight against this, and what’s important is that this was a clearly made statement.”
Bregman said the “yes” side had started out with 1,000 votes in their pocket because they had needed 1,000 signatures to make the referendum possible in the first place. “In the final analysis, they didn’t have enough votes, and they didn’t make quorum because only 5.5% of the students voted. In order for the referendum to pass, they needed votes from eight percent of the student body, over 4,300 votes in their favour, and they had to beat the ‘no’ side,” he explained. “They got neither.”
Stephen Gaerber, board chair of Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, praised the work of Hillel BC, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and StandWithUs Canada. “Kol hakavod to the students and student leaders who worked so hard to make the truth evident to the student body and achieve this positive outcome,” he said in a press release issued April 9. “Their efforts were instrumental in helping maintain a welcoming and inclusive campus environment for everyone.”
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published by CJN.