Left to right, Susan Skemp, Ken Charko and James E. Taylor are making a movie about Dunbar Theatre’s history. (photo by 5U54N & J4M35 Productions)
To celebrate Dunbar Theatre’s 80th anniversary, the theatre is making a short film about its history to enter into film festivals around the world and for film and music awards in Canada. One of the goals is to raise awareness of the theatre, one of the few independent theatres still around.
“Our short film will showcase all eight decades the theatre has been playing movies for the Dunbar community. With the use of old movie clips, newsreels, actors, models, music and their resident ghost, Delores, we intend on making a very entertaining film,” said Susan Skemp (producer, writer and songwriter) in an email to the Independent.
The production team includes Skemp, Ken Charko (executive producer and owner of the Dunbar Theatre) and James E. Taylor (director, writer, editor). One of the many participants in putting together the film is Jewish community member Adam Abrams, who will voice one of the newsreels.
“I came up with the idea to make the film last December when Ken Charko and I were discussing what to do to celebrate the theatre’s 80th,” Skemp explained. She said she suggested making a movie about a movie theatre and Charko liked the idea; then Taylor joined the production team as director.
“We have assembled a wonderful group of people and I have likened us to Orson Welles and his Mercury Players group,” said Skemp.
“My idea for the script really came from the theatre and the people from the community who have passed through its doors and the films that have played on the screen. Even though the film is a history of the theatre, our goal is to make it as entertaining as possible,” she stressed. “The fact that the theatre has a ghost helps.”
The crowdfunding goal to bring the film to fruition is $20,000. Contributions to the fundraiser at fundrazr.com/campaigns/fxGG2 come with different perks for each donation level: from a DVD and an invitation to a red-carpet screening ($25), to those items plus two tickets to any film at the Dunbar ($100), to a film credit as an associate producer ($500), to listing as a producer ($2,500).
There are a few remarkable things that one notices when looking at the press material for Scratch, which is being presented by Theatre Plexus at Havana Theatre until June 13.
First, the play itself. Part of the story is in its title, which refers to the protagonist, a teenage girl who loses her mother at the same time as she is dealing with an egregious case of head lice. The other part is in the script by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman: the original mounting of the production by Toronto’s Factory Theatre in 2008 was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding new play.
Second, Theatre Plexus. A relatively new company, it has gathered a small but experienced cast and production team for this show, its third.
“Theatre Plexus started somewhat organically, born out of the necessity of having an umbrella under which to put my personal projects,” explained actor and producer Caitlin McCarthy. “The first show I produced in Vancouver was 8 Girls Without Boyfriends in 2013, but it wasn’t until the following year when I applied for the Vancouver Fringe that I came up with the name. I was performing a show I had written, called Saudade. It occurred to me that I had a mandate (personal and professional): it was important to me to produce work with a strong female voice, and I preferred intimate theatre spaces. I know a staggering number of talented female actors who just don’t get stage time in Vancouver as often as they should, and I want to help remedy that. Scratch has four women in it out of a cast of six, and these women have scenes together that aren’t just related to a male protagonist. In fact, it’s a young, female protagonist.”
McCarthy plays that young protagonist, Anna, and it was one of the aspects that drew her to the play.
“I picked up a copy of Scratch because I liked some of the monologues – as an actor, I am always looking for good Canadian monologues, and Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman is based in Toronto. I was struck by how tender the play is – and how it presents grief from multiple angles. I also like that the play has a sense of humor and, though it is a play about loss, it is ultimately uplifting. Also, as I mentioned, there are four women in it (and, of course, two wonderful men) and I am an unapologetic feminist when it comes to choosing and casting plays.”
The co-producer of Scratch is Stephanie Izsak, who is also playing the character of Madelyn. Izsak is one of the many members of the production team affiliated with Langara College’s professional theatre training program, Studio 58. This is another remarkable aspect of the local production.
“Steph and I knew each other from Studio,” explained McCarthy of the connections, “and we approached the incredible Genevieve Fleming to be our director – I had gone to school with her…. Eileen Barrett did go to Studio, but I knew her from a playwriting group, Genevieve had seen a lot of Markian’s [Markian Tarasiuk] work while he was a student, we all knew David Bloom as the solo show teacher, and Jeff [Elrick] was recommended by the faculty as he’s still a student. So yes, there is a Studio 58 community to easily draw from, but we didn’t exclusively cast from a Studio pool. I feel so lucky to have Tamara McCarthy and Flo Barrett on board – now that I know them, they will definitely be part of the community I try to work with!”
The process from idea through casting to opening night on June 4 has taken some time, said McCarthy. “Steph approached me two years ago to work together, and I thought of Scratch as a project we could do. It took us a long time to find a venue we liked before we decided on the Havana. I wish there were more independent venues in Vancouver! The lack of space in this city has certainly given rise to some very creative site-specific theatre, but I wish there were more small, traditional theatre spaces to do plays.
“Once we booked the Havana (back in November), it all started to fall into place. We assembled this wonderful group of like-minded artists who felt like the play resonated with them, and we got everything in order for rehearsals to start.”
One of those artists is the aforementioned Bloom, who is a playwright, director, actor, producer and teacher, with a wide range of theatre and television credits, and a Jessie award for Palace of the End with co-directors Katrina Dunn and Mindy Parfitt.
“When Genevieve Fleming asked me to be in Scratch, I said yes very quickly because I liked the writing, and I knew that several scenes would be challenging to play,” Bloom told the Independent. “The other reason I said yes, though, was that I like and admire all the people involved in the project. Four of them are former students and our stage-manager/lighting designer is still one of my students. Theatre Plexus is a fledgling theatre company whose mandate is to do intimate plays with a strong female voice, in small spaces. I’m working with a great group of smart, talented people. How could I possibly say no?”
Bloom said he got into acting “by accident” in Grade 10, as a favor to a teacher.
“In elementary school, I had written and performed sketches with friends,” he explained, “but by high school, I had decided to be a writer; acting was not on my radar. Our drama teacher was short on men for a production of Twelfth Night and he asked me to take on the small role of Sebastian. I was not a popular kid, and I got laughs and applause. It was like catnip to me. I felt a rush during those two performances stronger than any drug. The truth is, I got into acting for exactly the wrong reason: ego gratification. I’ve never had that feeling quite like that again, and it’s no longer what I look for from theatre.
“At a certain point in my 20s, I came to believe in theatre as a spiritual/humanist practice. (The history of the art form has often been deeply entwined with various societies’ religious practices, as well as a way of channeling difficult, dangerous and thrilling ideas.) One of my more embarrassingly naive statements in my early 20s was, ‘Acting is like a priesthood. It’s like practise for being human!’ I understand how ridiculous and self-important that sounds. Luckily for my mental health, I’m also drawn to theatre’s ability to skewer pomposity, especially in myself. There’s something very freeing about being willing to look like an idiot in front of thousands of people.”
“There’s a sense of community that happens when a group of people with limited resources decide to work together to make a performance. It’s intimate and intoxicating.”
Bloom produced his first production at 17. “Nobody had told me that I couldn’t do it, so I did. I’ve continued in that vein ever since. I’d fall in love with the idea of a show, invite friends to my house to talk about it, and the group would create its own momentum that drove us to produce shows in crappy little spaces (the Firehall before it was a theatre, on the set of other people’s shows at midnight, whatever was available). There’s a sense of community that happens when a group of people with limited resources decide to work together to make a performance. It’s intimate and intoxicating. The people involved develop a sense that they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Like most human endeavors, it’s an illusion,” he said, referring to Waiting for Godot, which examines human beings’ need to try to “create meaning for themselves in a meaningless universe.”
This need led Bloom, among other things, to start his own company. “Humans are social animals and we crave a sense of belonging; we need to believe our lives are meaningful. As a result, we’re easily manipulated (street gangs, political parties and xenophobic movements all manipulate that need). It’s also a source of community, sacrifice and some of the best qualities of humanity. I bonded with a group of people who shared my obsession and formed the Grinning Dragon Theatre Company in 1991. We changed our name to Felix Culpa about 15 years ago. Latin for “happy fault,” it is a reference to eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge (my co-director Linda Quibell is a very lapsed Catholic). The focus of the company’s work is the power of language and its unique ability to explore complex subjects such as morality, beauty and the subjective nature of truth.”
Bloom said he has been teaching since 2000, and it suits him “to a T.” The students have to create a one-person show and perform it before they graduate from Studio 58. “I feel blessed to have this job,” said Bloom. “It means that once a week, eight months a year, I have to think about what theatre is, how many different forms it can take and also how to solve specific challenges brought up by the imagination of wonderfully talented young minds. They regularly do work that astounds me. Then they go out into the world and, within a few years, many of them are far more successful than I am. I guess there’s a kind of legacy in that. Also, for awhile, they think I’m really smart, and that brings me right back to the egocentric pleasures that got me into the profession in the first place.”
A member of the Jewish community, Bloom described his family as “secular, intellectual, socially conscious.” He said, “My father is one of Canada’s great physicists. His sisters are, respectively, a mathematician who devoted most of her career to studying how math is taught (not well, in her opinion) and a school principal who pioneered methods of working with disabled children. They grew up on St. Urbain Street and other streets in that Montreal neighborhood, and they all went to Baron Byng High School.
“My father doesn’t remember Mordecai Richler from the school, but when my aunt met him, Richler remembered my father, something I get a kick out of. Long before I read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, my father had told me all the stories in the first chapter about ‘Flanders Field’ high school (for example, the teacher who would start each year asking the students, ‘How does a Jew write the letter S?’ and then draw a $ on the blackboard).
“Much of my work is an attempt to understand how human beings can treat each other so vilely. I am often attracted to artistic work that goes to very dark places. I’m also drawn to stories about people who are not accepted by mainstream society, whether they be Jews, queers, radical thinkers, dissidents, melancholics, eccentrics, Muslims, the list goes on.”
“It’s a little morbid,” continued Bloom, “but I first felt deeply Jewish watching an episode about the Holocaust on the amazing BBC documentary series World at War. I realized that Hitler wouldn’t care that we weren’t religious, didn’t follow the dietary laws, that my mother had converted when she married my father. Something about being the ‘other’ landed for me that afternoon and I was stricken. On many levels, the rest of my life has been colored by that. Much of my work is an attempt to understand how human beings can treat each other so vilely. I am often attracted to artistic work that goes to very dark places. I’m also drawn to stories about people who are not accepted by mainstream society, whether they be Jews, queers, radical thinkers, dissidents, melancholics, eccentrics, Muslims, the list goes on.
“My father told me that his mother sent him off to school every day with the admonition, ‘Ask some good questions!’ He explained to me that you would get the best out of your teachers if you challenged them and their ideas. It was acceptable, even essential, to challenge intellectual (and other) authorities because it would make them work harder. I was often a trial to my teachers, as you might imagine, but the best of them had a deep impact on me.
“There is a long history (one might say a talmudic history) of Jews being argumentative, especially with people we love. I consider myself part of that tradition. I love that about us as a people, and I love our love of literacy and our tendency to be stubborn and tenacious. But my instinct to challenge extends to challenging actions of myself, my fellow Jews, the state of Israel and the whole patriarchal, monotheistic basis of the religion…. There are probably many Jews who would not consider me a ‘real’ Jew,” he concluded, “but I believe myself to be true to our culture and the values of intellectual and spiritual inquisitiveness that have made us simultaneously unpopular and essential around the world for thousands of years.”
Tickets for Scratch are $18, with Saturday matinées $10, and are available at brownpapertickets.com. Partnering with Theatre Plexus on the production is the Living Through Loss Counseling Society of British Columbia. “All of the proceeds collected will go to counseling and group therapy for women at risk,” said McCarthy. “It’s very important for me as a producer to question what my contribution is to society – larger than just the theatre community. Grief is such a central part of this story and an inevitable part of human life and I believe this play has the potential to unite people in processing a very universal experience. Because what else is theatre for than to witness our own humanity and bring us closer together?” LTLCS will be holding a talk-back on Tuesday, June 9.
Dance Centre’s 12 Minutes Max features works from five up-and-coming choreographers on June 12. Pictured here is Con8 Collective: Charlotte Newman, left, and Georgina Alpen. (photo by Andy White)
An abundance of riches. Scotiabank Dance Centre’s 12 Minutes Max on June 12 showcases the talents of five up-and-coming choreographers – three of whom have Jewish community connections.
Started in 1994, 12 Minutes Max was redesigned and relaunched last year, “with a strong focus on choreographic development, critical feedback and dialogue.” In a season, there are three modules and the June show features artists selected from these sessions, with each performance lasting 12 minutes or less. Among the artists featured are Caitlin Griffin, Charlotte Newman (Con8 Collective) and Naomi Brand.
Griffin was featured in the JI last August for a piece that was influenced by her time in Israel in 2013 with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, as part of its Dance Journey (Masa) program.
An exploration of the impact of war on women, what was then called The Way They Walked Through the World featured three dancers, and pairs of army boots played a central role. In 12 Minutes Max, Griffin’s work is performed by Delphine Leroux and set to Bach’s Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann.
“The work has evolved significantly from last September’s showing in several ways,” Griffin told the JI. “The process I went through of collecting choreographic material and experimenting with the boots has distilled my areas of interest and inspired new curiosity about the themes of conflict and femininity. While I am still working with the boots in other offshoot projects, in this incarnation, here or there focuses on the established movement vocabulary, transplanted into a classical music environment without boots. It has become a study of the potential within the movement. It is the development of one layer of my continued interest in the material.”
Griffin said The Way They Walked “served as an invaluable project to create a sketch of my interests and goals in this stage of my artistic development. Since then, I have been selecting small seeds from within that larger sketch and developing them into their own short solos. Ultimately, I may use them in combination in a more developed, longer work, but for now I am learning a lot by seeing them as individual studies to explore and cultivate my creative process.”
Con8 Collective’s Newman is new to the JI. Born and raised in Seattle, she moved to Vancouver to study at Simon Fraser University, graduating last year with a BFA in dance. She told the JI that she hopes to call Vancouver home “for the foreseeable future.”
Con8’s contribution to 12 Minutes Max is Vanilla to the Touch. Created and performed by co-artistic directors Newman and Georgina (Gina) Alpen, in collaboration with Robert Azevedo and Elliott Vaughan, it is described as “a quick-thinking, tongue-in-cheek look at growing up in West Coast suburbia, pulling from experiences of bras, boys, rolled-over jeans, juice boxes and more.”
“Like many young girls, I started dancing around the age of 3 and simply never stopped,” Newman said about the beginnings of her career. “In the past 20 years, I have had amazing opportunities to work with varying groups of dancers, in the context of performances, festivals, site-specific creation, music videos and more. I am especially passionate about choreography. I love investigating movement through the lens of our own physical limitations and strongly believe in the power of sharing ideas, concepts and questions through sharing movement.”
Newman said she “grew up with many cultural connections to Judaism.”
“I have many fond childhood memories of Chanuka dinners of endless latkes, Passovers with friends and Shabbat dinners at my grandparents’ house,” she shared. “Only in the past few years, having moved away from my family and many of these rituals I took for granted, have I become more cognizant and questioning of this identity – how do I want to bring Judaism into my own life? On this journey of exploring my own Jewish heritage, I had the amazing opportunity to join in the gift of Taglit-Birthright on a 10-day trip to Israel in May of 2014. The trip was eye-opening, thought-provoking, inspiring and pushed me to continue investigating how Jewish culture fits into my life as young adult – a question I’m still answering.”
She’s also exploring dance, of course, and its manifold permutations and meanings.
“Con8 is a play on the word ‘connate,’ meaning existing from birth and uniting to form a single entity,” she explained. “Gina and I feel these definitions truly encompass the collective’s artistic values – we strive to constantly explore through an innate creativity and unite the collective’s collaborators to make a stronger body of work as one.
“We also embraced the idea of a ‘con,’ meaning a confidence trick. Throughout our choreographic process, we often explore physical games, tricks and rules that lead to very specific movement choices and rhythms, leading to secrets within the performance that the audience will never see.
“Among many similarities,” she concluded, “we share the same birthday – May 8.”
Con8 leans toward “extremely detailed and stylized pedestrian movement that has been brought into the framework of dance performance,” said Newman. “Tight unison, rhythmical timing and a playful attack to serious movement exploration complement this movement vocabulary.”
She said, “Vanilla to the Touch began months ago as a radically different idea. With each new process, Gina and I use rehearsal space as a blank slate – in the beginning of a process, no idea is knocked down and, in a few minutes, we’ll be tossing out ideas one after the other as fast as we can. This process leads to hours of ultimately discarded material, many physically impossible and improbable proposals, and the usual bruises and bumps. We feed off of the other’s energy so hungrily, every rehearsal feels like play. In the midst of this process – around late February – we realized we had about four hours of movement to mold into 12 minutes, thus beginning the second phase of trying on, molding or discarding existing movement as we narrow our vision.
“In Vanilla to the Touch, as we are both performing the entire time, we relied on the eyes of collaborators for their outside perspectives and questions. Through the constant process of cutting, reconstructing and questioning, each movement has a meaning and each phrase was chosen with an exact specificity in mind.”
Unlike Newman, fellow Jewish community member Brand didn’t start dancing at a very young age.
“I danced a bit recreationally and in my teens was a part of a dance group run by a contemporary dancer who focused on modern dance and contact improvisation and got us choreographing on each other,” she explained. “I didn’t take a ballet class until I was 18 and so I often feel that I came to dance technique late.
“My interests in dance have always been diverse. A mentor of mine instilled in me early the importance of having a wide range of skills in order to increase your chances of being successful in the art form and so I have pursued dancing, performing, choreography, teaching and writing in order to have many avenues. I attended the dance program at the University of Calgary, where I earned my BA and an MFA in choreography, and where I also taught for a number of years after graduating.”
Originally from Toronto, Brand said, “I grew up with a secular Jewish identity. I recognized early on that a disproportionate number of artists, writers and progressive thinkers that I admired were Jewish, and that there was a connection between Jewish culture and creative thinking. My parents raised me with very strong values for learning, encouraging me to ask lots of questions and be curious, and also for social justice, family and community, values that I attribute to Judaism. These are values that have permeated my work as a dance artist. I try very consciously to make work that speaks to the relationship between the individual and the community. In my teaching practice, I encourage students to be inquisitive and inclusive, and use dance as a metaphor for how we could be in the world.”
Brand moved to Calgary when she was 19. After 10 years in the city – where she was a recipient of the 2012 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation’s emerging artist award – she said, “I was looking for a change, new opportunities and challenges, and so I relocated to Vancouver in 2013.”
For 12 Minutes Max, Brand is presenting Re:play, performed by Walter Kubanek and Hilary Maxwell. It is described as “an intricate duet that looks at action and reaction in the space between two bodies.”
In addition to being a choreographer, Brand is a writer, as well. “I think that my process in writing and in choreographing are very similar,” she said. “A lot of my training has been as an improviser and so I am most comfortable in the initial stages of generating ideas, jotting things down and spewing material out. Both choreographing and writing are about problem-solving to me. Once I have material to work with, it is about piecing things together, arranging, rearranging and searching for some kind of logic in what I have created. It’s like figuring out a puzzle, when at first you see a perhaps incompressible mass of ideas, words or moments and, then, through playing around with it, a structure or logic reveals itself. I rarely know what exactly it is that I want to say until it is made.”
Brand is also on the board of the Training Society of Vancouver, which has as its focus the quality and sustainability of contemporary dance.
“The field of dance is changing just as culture is changing,” she said. “What it means to be a professional dance artist today is completely different from previous generations, where the company structure was pervasive. Nowadays, everyone has to forge their own path and, in Vancouver, I see many fabulous examples of dancers with tons of drive pursuing their work and making their own opportunities. I have always been interested in being connected to dance from numerous different angles, as a performer, teacher, choreography, writer, advocate and administrator. For me, this diversity keeps me interested and engaged and able to keep perspective on my work.”
12 Minutes Max is at the Dance Centre, 677 Davie St., on June 12, 8 p.m. Tickets ($28/$22) are available from Tickets Tonight, 604-684-2787 or ticketstonight.ca. For more information on all the performers and works featured, visit thedancecentre.ca.
This photo is among the images in The Face of the Ghetto: Pictures Taken by Jewish Photographers in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1940-1944, produced by the Topography of Terror Foundation, Berlin. The bride on the right is Bronia Sonnenschein; beside her is her groom Erich Strauss. The second bride is Mary Schifflinger with husband Ignatz Yelin. Blessing the couples is Chaim Rumkowski, head of Lodz Ghetto’s Jewish council. Only Sonnenschein survived the Holocaust. She passed away in Vancouver in 2011. (photo from Yad Vashem Photo Archive)
The Face of the Ghetto: Pictures Taken by Jewish Photographers in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1940-1944, opened last week at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Produced by the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin, among the traveling exhibit’s photographs was a surprise – a photo with a local connection.
“Unidentified in the photo caption but recognized by our education director [Adara Goldberg] during her research about this exhibit, Bronia Sonnenschein is depicted in the photo to my left,” said VHEC executive director Nina Krieger in her remarks at the opening on May 14, directing attendees’ attention to an image “showing a double wedding ceremony presided over by Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Council of Elders in the Lodz Ghetto. Bronia was the sole survivor of those shown in this photograph. A multilingual secretary in Rumkowski’s office and a survivor of Auschwitz, Bronia passed away in 2011 but is fondly remembered by so many of us.
“Bronia, who stood maybe ‘this’ tall,” continued Krieger, indicating a measure of about shoulder height, “was a giant in terms of her dignity, her resilience, and her dedication to sharing her eyewitness testimony with tens of thousands students as a VHEC outreach speaker.”
About the Topography of Terror Foundation, Krieger explained that it “is mandated to transmit the history of National Socialism and its crimes, and to encourage people to actively confront this history and its aftermath. A distinctive indoor and outdoor museum, the Topography of Terror is located on the very grounds previously occupied by the primary institutions of Nazi persecution and terror: the SS, the Gestapo secret police and the Reich Main Security Office ran their central operations from the site.”
Krieger provided context for the exhibit. “Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis imposed a ghetto in the city of Lodz, which they renamed Litzmannstadt. From 1940 to 1944, more than 180,000 Jews and 5,000 Roma and Sinti lived in the ghetto’s cramped quarters, with many working in factories that supported the war effort.
“Ghetto residents were not allowed to own cameras, yet Lodz is the most documented of all the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. Some of these images were taken by perpetrators, often trivializing the terrible conditions in the ghetto and attempting to justify the exploitation of Jewish forced laborers. Others – and the focus of this exhibit – were taken by a handful of Jewish photographers, commissioned by the local Jewish council. While instructed to document the productivity of the war industry for the Nazis, the photographers also captured – at great personal risk – intimate moments of family, childhood and community.”
The Face of the Ghetto exhibit is here as a result of VHEC’s partnership with the German Consulate General in Vancouver and the sponsorship of the German government. Consul General Herman Sitz was at the opening and said a few words, as did Sonnenschein’s son, Dan. Drawn from a collection of 12,000 images held by the Lodz State Archives, one of the intimate moments captured is the one in which his mother appears.
“Last Friday was the historic 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day,” said Sonnenschein, addressing those assembled. “May 8th was personally very meaningful for my mother, as it was the date in 1945 on which she was liberated from the Nazi horror. For her, the bitterly harsh years had begun on March 13, 1938, when Germany annexed a largely welcoming Austria, immediately setting off intense persecution of the Jewish population.
“My mother, with her sister and parents, were among the longest-held prisoners in the Lodz Ghetto, from its formation in spring 1940 until its so-called liquidation in August 1944. Unlike many deported there from other places, they had fled Vienna after the notorious Kristallnacht, and were living under great stress in Lodz when the family was forced from their new home into the ghetto. They were later joined by a beloved aunt of my mother who was deported from Vienna. Her cherished elderly grandmother was deported elsewhere and murdered soon after.
“My mother, with her German-language and office skills, worked as a secretary in the ghetto’s Jewish administration,” he explained. “The photo in this exhibit shows her being married to Erich Strauss, who had been deported from Prague with his mother. The other bride in this double ceremony was Mary Schifflinger, my mother’s fellow office worker and good friend, whose groom’s name was Ignatz Yelin. Shown in the photo blessing the couples is Chaim Rumkowski, appointed head of the Jewish council by the ghetto’s masters in the German administration.
“These five people were all transported, in the usual dreadful way, to Auschwitz, where Rumkowski was killed. Soon after, the others were sent to a less well known but no less brutal concentration camp called Stutthof. There, Mary and her husband were killed, Erich Strauss and his mother were killed, my mother’s father and aunt were killed. As my mother once said, it was a killing field.
“Other photos of my mother in the ghetto may be seen on the internet, along with such photos of my Aunt Paula, who also married in the ghetto, to Stan Lenga,” continued Sonnenschein. “Unlike my mother’s first husband, my Uncle Stan survived and the couple was reunited after the war, being a part of my close family in Vancouver along with my maternal grandmother, Emily Schwebel. The local Jewish Family Service Agency gives an annual Paula Lenga Award in my aunt’s memory for exemplary volunteer service.
“My mother was also an exemplary volunteer, in her case, in Holocaust education. She began this late-life career, first under the auspices of the Canadian Jewish Congress and then with this centre, for over two decades compellingly conveying the suffering imposed on her and so many others for, as she put it, the crime of being Jewish. She often quoted Elie Wiesel’s saying: ‘Not every German was a Nazi but every Jew was a victim.’
“Although we no longer can experience her vibrant presence,” concluded Sonnenschein, “we are fortunate to have many recordings of my mother, as well as a book, to help her testimony live on.” Included in those recordings, he said, is one of her talking about the photo in The Face of the Ghetto exhibit, and related matters. The photos he mentioned of his mother and aunt can be found at google.com/culturalinstitute, searching for “Bronia Sonnenschein” and “Paula Lenga.”
In conjunction with the exhibit, the VHEC has developed a school program and teaching resource to engage students. “Visiting school groups will explore topics such as resistance to dehumanization; the unique experiences of children; and the complex role of Jewish leadership under Nazi occupation,” said Krieger, noting that several of the volunteer docents were at the opening. “Volunteers are central to our work,” she said, “and it’s my honor to acknowledge and to thank our docents for everything that they do.”
Krieger also thanked the VHEC staff – present were Goldberg, designer Illene Yu, archivist Elizabeth Shaffer, collections assistant Katie Powell and administrator Lauren Vukobrat – and the installation crew, Wayne Gilmartin and Adam Stenhouse, as well as the consul general.
The Face of the Ghetto is on display at the VHEC until Oct. 16.
– With thanks to Nina Krieger and Dan Sonnenschein for providing electronic copies of their remarks.
Portrait of Max Malit Grossman, circa 1926, copied from the book The Jew in Canada. Grossman’s mimeographs were the start of it all. (photo from Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia L.00011)
From 1930 until Abraham Arnold’s arrival in 1949, there was a new editor and/or publisher of the Jewish Western Bulletin every couple of years. Arnold lasted 11 years, Sam and Mona Kaplan about 36 all told. My first article ran in the JWB on March 28, 1997. I was listed as a contributor for the next year, becoming editorial assistant in May 1998, and assistant publisher that September. When Kyle Berger, Pat Johnson and I bought the paper, they graciously agreed that I become the publisher. Since that first issue, June 4, 1999, I have held that title. That makes 16 years. The second-longest term in the paper’s history.
For more than 10 years, I’ve been the sole owner of the Bulletin / Independent. While Kyle still contributes occasional articles and blogs, Pat is on the editorial board with former editor Basya Laye and me, and contributes weekly. I have worked with countless talented and kind people, many of whom have stuck with me, the paper and the community through some tough times, especially since the 2008 economic downturn. It is us, a handful of people, along with a few regular freelance writers, who get this paper to press every week. It is a labor of love for all of us. We do it for very little pay.
Financial struggle is as much a characteristic of this paper as is its Jewish character and its communal foundation, though that is one tradition I would happily leave to the dustbin of history.
Reviewing the 85-year history of the paper affirms my conviction that it is an absolute treasure, one of immeasurable value to Jewish life and this community. Yet, it is largely taken for granted. True, it has its admirers – thank you to all the organizations and businesses who advertise, and to all the readers who subscribe, donate or support our advertisers. But, on the whole, it is undervalued. And it has been almost since Day 1.
The newspaper got its start in 1928 as a mimeographed newsletter whose goal was to generate the funds and enthusiasm for a Jewish community centre. It succeeded in that regard, though the JCC would experience existential difficulties more than once in its life. Today, thankfully, the JCC is a strong and vibrant fixture in the community. When the mimeo became a tabloid in October 1930, its name was borrowed from a 1925 publication that was well-loved but, evidently, not well-funded, as it didn’t last for long.
More than one editor of the JWB has exhorted readers to pay their subscriptions and pleaded with organizations to buy advertisements. The relationship between editors and readers was much more contentious and frank during the 1930s and 1940s than it has been since. Reading these editorials every time I organize a special anniversary issue – this is my fourth – I am both saddened and heartened by the fact that, at their core, the issues remain the same.
This year, I have been particularly affected by the missives of editor and publisher Goodman Florence as he neared what turned out to be his last several months with the JWB. In the latter half of 1948, he starts to air some of the dirty laundry that has obviously been accumulating between himself and the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council that took over control of the paper when the Jewish Community Centre, Jewish Community Chest and Hebrew Aid Society formed it in 1932, as well as other community organizations and even readers.
In August, he tackles head on the idea that readers have somehow gotten that “the Bulletin is a highly profitable proposition and is fought for. Such is not the case.” He points out that “subscriptions pay for only postage, paper and addressing, if it does that much. An attractive, newsy and acceptable publicity medium such as the Bulletin, is expensive to produce and its cost must be borne by advertisers.” This remains the case today.
That October, Florence’s one-year contract was coming to a close. Among his “many problems and many anxieties” is “the matter of the financial loss so far sustained in publishing for the community” under the terms of his contract, which he describes as “hastily arranged.”
He sums up his difficulties in being the publisher of an Anglo-Jewish weekly in November of that year, yet still holds hope that the situation is improving. In January 1949, he writes about all the ideas he has for the paper’s future, with only “a few final details” to be organized regarding a new contract. “I am hoping in the coming year to be able to devote more time and space to national and international affairs and will express a viewpoint in ‘editorials’ – and will endeavor to get prominent members of our community to also take their ‘pens in hand.’
“It will be my continued policy to assist every organization now in existence and which might come into existence, so long as the purpose is lawful and of good intention – to place itself before the public in as accurate a light as possible.”
After talking about an increase in the price of subscriptions and new help in finding advertisers, Florence concludes, “For 1949 I hope with your cooperation to make of our paper ‘one of the best’ – and to help build a progressive integrated community – and to spread the story of its good works throughout the land.
“For the opportunities of the past and the promise of the future, I wish to say, ‘Thank you.’ I will continue to do my best to serve you well.”
Less than a month later, his farewell editorial was published by the new team at the helm.
“Readers want world news, features, editorials . . . officers of all local organizations want their activities to be publicized. Up to date, I have not yet been able to completely sell the simple fact that to do all this requires considerable revenue,” Florence writes. “Some headway has been made in recent months, and there are now signs that more organizations are becoming aware of the need to place advertising that would be considered commensurate with the amount of news publicity their various activities require. There are signs also that more of the Jewish business men are coming to realize that there is after all some virtue in advertising in the Bulletin and doing business with the members of this growing Jewish Community.
“My decision [to leave] was arrived at after I realized that I had not been getting sufficient advertising support, and that without such assistance, progressive development could not be undertaken. I feel certain that now that the position has been drawn to your attention, the new publishers, Abe Arnold and Asher Snider, will get the support necessary to continue the venture, and I bespeak for them your utmost cooperation.”
When I look at the state of the publishing and newspaper industry today, I take heart that there have always been challenges and, despite the often-dire-sounding editorials of Florence and many of the paper’s other editors and publishers, here we are today. Many recessions have come and gone. Heck, the newspaper survived the Great Depression. Will it survive the internet? I certainly hope so, and not just because I would like to own a successful business.
I have looked through the physical pages of almost every JWB and searched through them online (multiculturalcanada.ca/jwb) ad nauseam for various people and events. I have read every single copy of the JI. Every time I look back at the articles and images in the papers, something surprises me, something sparks my imagination, something makes me think or makes me laugh.
I don’t know anyone who owns a community newspaper or any similar business. When I read that other editors, publishers and owners of the paper have had similar concerns, challenges and joys, there is a sense of solidarity, of not being alone. When I read about what various people in this community have had to endure, what they’ve accomplished, I am inspired. When I attended the rededication of the Jewish section of Mountain View Cemetery earlier this month, I felt like I had personally known many of those buried there. My connection to this community through its newspaper of record for 85-plus years is that strong and goes back that far.
But, ultimately, I didn’t know any of those people. I was born in Moncton and grew up in Winnipeg. My immediate family now lives in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto corridor and I came to Vancouver from Ottawa in 1992. My Winnipeg-based aunt had lived here in the 1960s. After I got my MA and a job – i.e. once it looked like I was staying awhile – she connected me with the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir via her longtime friend and former musical colleague Claire Klein Osipov. It was one of my first connections to the Jewish community here and it has, obviously, led to other connections, including being the editor of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia’s annual journal The Scribe for the last seven editions.
I’ve always liked history, and I love having 85-plus years’ worth of it at my fingertips. It wasn’t until this special issue though that I decided to do a search for my aunt’s name – she passed away last fall.
My searches yielded more than a dozen results from 1962 through 1966, including the birth announcement of one of my cousins, her third son. And there was a photo of her, which was published twice, once with the wrong caption, a correction being noted in the following week’s paper. I knew that Aunt Chickie (married to Nathan Frankel at that time) was involved in the Peretz Centre and that she accompanied Claire on the piano, but seeing some of the committees she was on, the events she helped organize, the music she performed … seeing her face – I can’t describe the feeling, except to say, once again, this newspaper is such a vital resource in ways that I’m still discovering after almost 20 years working here.
The JWB had two fifth anniversary issues, one in 1934, another in 1935. In the first, editor S.A. Goldston writes, “It seems hard to realize that time has flown so quickly. We all remember well the small mimeographed copy first issued in the office of Max Grossman, and we wonder how many thought that the day was not far distant when it would grow to a regular weekly newspaper.”
He wonders whether the Bulletin had “filled the mission for which it was first intended? Is it any use today?” He leaves the answer to readers, “for naturally we are somewhat prejudiced in our personal views on the matter.
“The paper was first produced to act as the voice of the Community and to bring its readers in closer touch not only with the happenings in its own surroundings but with Jewry all the world over – to awaken Jewish consciousness, and if possible to create a deeper sense of unity among the Jewish residents of this City. In this way we can, without exaggeration, say [we] have been fairly successful.”
I love this last sentence, which, to me, shows clearly Goldston’s great humility. Yet his purpose is grand: publishing news of all the city organizations and devoting “considerable space to world happenings,” trying “hard to preach through the columns of this paper the absolute necessity of a United Jewry not only in Vancouver but throughout the world…. We have also, during the past year, continued to spur on our readers in civic, philanthropic and educational services and have received congratulations from non-Jewish communities on our work.”
But, he notes, as others would, “There are two things apart from the reading matter that is necessary to make a paper a success…. We need subscribers and advertisers.”
Of the advertisers the paper did have, he says, “We get a very fair share…. But we also owe a duty to every advertiser who uses our columns. We must give them our patronage whenever possible. They have confidence in us and [we] must show that this confidence is not misplaced. We would therefore respectfully suggest that in making your purchases those who advertise in the Bulletin be given preference.”
Goldston and his colleagues have “the great ambition of doubling the size of the paper,” which was then eight pages, within the next year. He asks for help in getting there, saying he has “much to be thankful for,” despite his “failing health,” and is proud to hold the position of editor.
The very next issue carried a front-page obituary. Goldston had passed away suddenly, at age 63. According to B.C. Archives records, he died April 11, 1934. His given names were Sim Alfred.
In the 1935 editorial marking “Five years of the Bulletin,” editor David Rome echoes some of Goldston’s remarks. He, too, speaks of gratitude and writes that the Bulletin’s “being taken as a matter of course by Western Canadian Jewry” is “the greatest compliment that can be offered to it,” showing that it “is not a freak venture but part of the life of its readers.
“But this sometimes blinds its readers to the phenomenon of a relatively small community successfully publishing a weekly newspaper for a number of years. Those who are daily in contact with the workings of the community publication realize fully the efforts that have to be made to maintain the standards set and to elevate them.”
Rome thanks all “those anonymous workers who have devoted unselfishly of their time and energy for this community enterprise. The Bulletin is a fairly big business and it needs a large amount of work and application to run this business. This devotion was given it by the members of the [Council’s Bulletin] committee and it is no more than fitting that thanks be given to them for their work.”
He notes that this anniversary of the paper also marks the first year since Goldston’s passing: “It is not at all an exaggeration to say that he worked beyond the limits of health, and the community should honor his memory and recognize his sacrifices for the community newspaper.”
Somehow I feel that, with every issue of this paper, we are honoring the people in this community who have made – and are making – sacrifices for whatever people and causes that are important to them. Every event, interview, photo, birth announcement, obituary … everything that gets recorded is proof of existence, of purpose, of being part of something larger than oneself.
This newspaper has always had a grand, even grandiose, view of the impact it could have on the community. But, looking back at 85 years – 90 if you count the original Bulletin, 87 if you start at Grossman’s mimeo – I’d say it has exceeded even the grandest of its expectations. And I’d like to see it continue to do so, whether or not I’m involved. But, as pretty much every publisher of the paper will tell you, “There are two things apart from the reading matter that is necessary to make a paper a success….” The future of this community treasure is, quite literally, in your hands.
Luc Roderique as Usnavi and Sharon Crandall as Abuela Claudia in Arts Club’s In the Heights. (photo by David Cooper)
Even before the musical starts, the set draws you in. Then the music, the lighting, the actors, the choreography. It’s not that any one of these aspects is better than the other in Arts Club’s In the Heights, now playing at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. This is merely their order of appearance.
Ted Roberts has created three storefronts and an apartment with a backdrop of the George Washington Bridge. The sun comes up – thanks to Marsha Sibthorpe – as a graffiti artist plies his trade. He’s listening to music, but it takes awhile to realize that there’s a live band “living” above the bodega – directed by Ken Cormier, the music is such a part of the scene that you don’t really notice it until you find yourself moving to it, or the actors start to move to it. Enter Lisa Stevens’ choreography. It, too, is subtle, occurring in bits and bursts with a few professionally trained dancers who raise the quality across the board.
While other critics have found the music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and book by Quiara Alegría Hudes (who, according to the program, is of Puerto Rican and Jewish descent) wanting, I don’t need to be intellectually challenged when I go the theatre, and I don’t generally expect musicals to portray gritty realism, so I thoroughly enjoyed In the Heights. It was a refreshingly different cultural setting from other musicals and plays I’ve seen in Vancouver, and that made it easier for me to lose myself in it. While I’ll admit to drifting a bit near the end of the first half, the predictability of the story was a comfort, rather than an obstacle to my enjoyment.
There are two main plotlines. One centres around the bodega owner, Usnavi. He is a reluctant entrepreneur, having taken over the business when his parents died. He dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, but feels duty-bound to keep the bodega going, and he’s also got to think about his sidekick cousin, the wise-cracking Sonny, who helps him out at the store. Not only that but (of course?) he’s torn about leaving, as he is madly in love – but too shy initially to approach – Vanessa, who works at next door’s soon-to-be-closing hair salon.
The other plotline focuses on Nina. Returning home to Washington Heights from Stanford University, she is the pride of the neighborhood, yet she has fallen short. Having to work two jobs has caused her grades to fall and she’s lost her scholarship. Her parents’ car-service business is barely keeping afloat, so there’s no money to be had there. In addition to the tensions that arise when Nina tells her parents the truth about her school situation, there is the not-so-small matter of her being in love with Benny, who, while trusted by her parents, for whom he has worked for years, is not Hispanic.
There is also a heat wave, a blackout and a death, and poverty, gentrification and other social issues are hinted at, however, none of these underlying elements rises to the foreground. In the Heights is light, fun fare and I, for one, won’t complain about that. The actors all do a great job at spitting out their lyrics clearly, staying on key and dancing in step; the musicians hit all the right notes. I left the Stanley in a better mood than I arrived, and that, to me, means it was a musical worth seeing.
In the Heights is on stage until June 7. For tickets and information, visit artsclub.com.
From the JI pages
Lisa Stevens, the choreographer and assistant director of In the Heights, grew up in Vancouver, and readers of the Jewish Independent / Jewish Western Bulletin have followed some of the highlights of her career, even her pre-career.
She was part of the Grade 1 classes being fêted at the Shalom Yeladim celebration led by Rabbi Wilfred Solomon and Dr. Sheldon Cherry that welcomed the young students enrolled at Beth Israel School and Talmud Torah in 1973, and she shared her bat mitzvah on May 30, 1980, at Beth Israel with Lisa Goldman. She was winning dance competitions by 1977 and teaching by 1986, when she was reported to be “the youngest choreographer in Canada,” at age 18.
Stevens opened her own dance studio in 1987 and her students were winning awards by 1992. In 1993, two of them “beat out 3,000 dancers to win the national finals (duo category) of the Sega Video Dance Contest.”
Off to London, England, in 1996, the JWB also caught up with her once she’d moved to New York. Stevens returns regularly to Vancouver to work on productions here and, no doubt, to visit family and friends. On more than one occasion, she’s taken time to chat with the paper and for that, we are appreciative.
Eran Riklis, director of Dancing Arabs. (photo from Mongrel Media)
Dancing Arabs, which was part of the most recent Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, has its general release on May 15. A multilayered coming-of-age story, the screenplay is by Sayed Kashua, who wrote the novels on which it is based, and it is directed by Eran Riklis.
While called Dancing Arabs, the film is a combination of Dancing Arabs and Second Person Singular, two novels with very different tones.
“I read a first draft that Sayed wrote before I joined the project and it was much more Dancing Arabs and it was much more kind of a comedy,” Riklis told the Independent in a phone interview. But that changed. The first part of the movie, “which was almost pure Italian comedy,” became a way to draw in the audience, “maybe taking away any preconceptions or resistance that an audience might have when it comes to see a film, where it has all the opinions in the world about the Arabs, and this and that.”
Riklis wanted the audience “to fall in love with the character and then, when the film changes its tone and it gradually becomes more and more dramatic … you can’t walk away because you love this character and you want to root for him, you want to join him on his journey.”
With the novel Dancing Arabs being autobiographical, Riklis said he had to remind Kashua that the film was a different entity. It was about Eyad, “and even though there are reflections of reality, the grandmother and the father, whatever it is, it still is a new life, which is true of almost any film that deals with a real story at least partly.”
The challenge was “to do something which is at once meaningful and yet communicative, and striving to reach a wider audience. For me,” said Riklis, “all my films, or most of my films, deal with, let’s say, not easy issues, but I always try to … remember that this has to be a good story.”
Reaction to his films has varied. “If you look at The Syrian Bride, for instance, it had a very warm reception everywhere, both in Israel and worldwide. Lemon Tree was very tough in Israel because it was a little bit too close to home, and then really about sensitive issues, and yet it was probably my biggest success worldwide.” The response everywhere to Dancing Arabs has been “very emotional,” he said, which makes him happy because it means people “understand that this film comes from a place of respect and love and honoring the subject, as complicated as it is, but nobody’s trying to manipulate you here. There is a manipulation in the sense of filmmaking because that’s what filmmaking is about, but I think, emotionally speaking and intellectually speaking, this is a democratic film: it’s like, here are the facts, here’s the situation, here’s a story, here’s the person … and you judge for yourself.”
“… here we’re talking … about a minority that is 20 percent of the country. That’s 1.6 million people…. This is a major thing and, not only that, they’re not in Afghanistan, they’re living right in the middle of the country, next to us, amongst us, with us, and yet they’re invisible.”
When asked what sets Dancing Arabs apart from his other films about the region, Riklis said, they “have dealt with either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the regional conflicts or the Druze conflict, whatever, but here we’re talking … about a minority that is 20 percent of the country. That’s 1.6 million people. It’s not like you have some people living on the hillside with two camels. This is a major thing and, not only that, they’re not in Afghanistan, they’re living right in the middle of the country, next to us, amongst us, with us, and yet they’re invisible.”
The novels’ treatment of an internal conflict within Israel “was something that I felt was close to home,” said Riklis. “It’s important enough, and it’s getting more important by the minute. I can see what has happened between the time I shot the film and now. The internal tensions and the growing gap within Israeli society, both within the Jewish one and between the Jews and Arabs inside the country, I felt it’s time to shed a light.”
Riklis and Kashua worked on the script for about a year, on and off, not only because of the material but because they were both busy. Kashua was not involved in the filming process.
“In a strange way, even though it was not an easy film to make on many levels, when I look at it now, I feel it was one of my easiest films,” said Riklis. “That’s because, emotionally, I was so much into it. People ask me, how can you create an Arab family? Well, first of all, I had Sayed writing, so it comes from a very authentic place, but also, once you step in, you say, well, this grandmother is my grandmother, this father could be my father. It’s very easy for me … well, not easy, but, I go back to using respect and knowledge and making sure you get your facts right, at least emotionally, then it’s not so difficult for me because when I watch people, when I look at people, I don’t see color and race, not even age, I don’t really care.”
As with many books, much of the action in Kashua’s novels takes place in the protagonist’s mind. “I think the answer is simplicity,” said Riklis about transforming that style of writing to the screen. “It’s almost like just tell the story, just go with your characters, put them in interesting situations, make sure that every situation is a step forward.
“At the end of the day, I think a director, and almost everybody, is a slave to the story in terms of making sure the story keeps being interesting, keeps being reflective, keeps moving forward.”
“One thing I’ve discovered – but it’s me and another million directors, I think, or at least the good directors have realized – that every inch on the screen is significant. You can sometimes convey 10 pages of text by the color of a shirt. There are so many elements that you put together and I’m really careful with that in terms of what a person is wearing … what’s his environment and what other people are doing and what he’s looking at. And then you have the camera, the kind of lens that you choose and the lighting. There are so many elements that support you but also mean that you have to take responsibility and make sure that they really serve the story. At the end of the day, I think a director, and almost everybody, is a slave to the story in terms of making sure the story keeps being interesting, keeps being reflective, keeps moving forward.”
Music plays a big role in both books, and also in the film.
“It’s funny,” said Riklis, “because there were a lot of things in the script where it was like, ‘Naomi [Eyad’s Jewish girlfriend] and Eyad go to a concert in a club in Jerusalem,’ and we didn’t dig into it…. Then I found myself Googling myself to death to find what was popular in the late ’80s in Israel.” He came upon a song from a controversial rock opera, with explicit lyrics about rape and the Palestinians, and it became “a totally different scene. Suddenly, it’s emotional, and suddenly Naomi’s not feeling comfortable and Eyad is not feeling comfortable, and it has its own message and it’s brutal, and yet it’s not.
“Same thing went with, for instance, Joy Division, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ which came from me.” Riklis had seen Control, a film about the British band. He said, “Ian Curtis, the lead singer, was epileptic and used to collapse on stage and at some point couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide at a very young age – I felt, wow, this is the song for Yonatan, this is exactly a reflection of Yonatan’s life.” A peer who Eyad helps with his schoolwork and eventually befriends, Yonatan has muscular dystrophy.
There were other sound choices, as well. For example, where the script says Naomi and Eyad go to a movie, “I realized that following the scene where Eyad carries Yonatan to the bathroom, which is a very emotional scene, and he carries him almost like it’s a very Christian or Jewish image … my next cut I knew was Naomi and Eyad at the cinema and I didn’t want to see a clip from a movie, I wanted to listen to it. Then I said, OK, what’s appropriate here?… I thought about Wings of Desire, the Wim Wenders film, which in Hebrew is called Angels of Berlin. I said, what we need now, what Yonatan needs now, maybe Eyad as well, is an angel to protect him and to maybe keep him alive. And so I said, maybe it would be beautiful if they [are] listen[ing] to this monologue from the film, the beautiful voice of Bruno Ganz. Even though it’s in German, it’s just purely emotional.
“That’s the way I work,” said Riklis. Whether it’s the music, films “or even the news clips that you see in the movie, they always give you another layer. For example, Eyad comes to Edna’s and Yonatan’s house for the first time and he’s left alone in the living room. On television, there’s a report about a suicide terrorist who drove a bus into a ravine and dozens were killed.… The reality outside is on TV and yet he goes to the window and he watches and he hears the Arab prayers coming from the Old City. It’s almost like he’s looking at his own [life], like his older life is calling him back. And yet, he’s in this fancy apartment in west Jerusalem.”
Riklis admitted, “It’s interesting, I think, when people see the film for the second time – they discover so many things they haven’t seen the first time.”
Torah scribe Rabbi Moshe Druin writes one of the scroll’s final letters with the help of a Temple Sholom family, who won the honor by lottery with five others. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz uses his cellphone to allow the rest of the congregation to witness the writing. (photos by Cynthia Ramsay)
On Sunday, May 3, Temple Sholom completed a new Torah in honor of its 50th anniversary. Florida-based sofer (scribe) Rabbi Moshe Druin was assisted by more than 1,000 hands in writing the scroll and there were so many people who contributed to the project that Temple Sholom Rabbi Dan Moskovitz noted at the siyum hasefer that the congregation had also written “a new Torah of volunteerism.”
Gratitude and community were the words of the afternoon, as the combined blast of several shofarot brought the excited crowd to order. Project co-chairs Anne Andrew and Jerry Lampert offered their thank you’s to all those who helped with the project that began in October 2014, including more than 100 volunteers working more than 1,200 volunteer hours. Siyum co-chairs Kevin Keystone and Marnie Greenwald added their appreciations, while also explaining the logistics of the upcoming parade of the Torah, to be headed by the band Balkan Shmalkan.
Alex Konyves led two groups of kids in song, Rabbi Carey Brown told a short story about letters as prayer, and synagogue president David Schwartz spoke of the many impacts of the project on the congregation. “I am very pleased to report,” he added, “that we have raised to today over $336,000. We’d love to make our double-chai goal of $360,000.” A scroll of dedication will be created and those who make a dedication before June 1 will be included on it.
Schwartz also announced that Moskovitz’s contract had been renewed to June 30, 2021, at the last board meeting. The congregation applauded, cheered and rose to their feet before Schwartz could conclude, “with great joy and without hesitation, he accepted our offer.”
The klei kodesh – Moskovitz, Brown, Cantor Naomi Taussig, Rabbi Philip Bregman, emeritus, and Cantor Arthur Guttman, emeritus – then joined the congregation in a responsive reading.
Prior to the ceremony, Moskovitz and Druin, who had just arrived in Vancouver, went to the Louis Brier Home and Hospital to scribe the Torah with the congregation’s most senior members. Moskovitz also shared that the Torah’s rollers, its mantle and wimple were created by congregation members Michael Kliman, Leni Freed and Julia Bennett, respectively. “This Torah belongs to all of us, on so many levels,” he said.
Druin expressed his hope that the Torah would provide reassurance “that you are all part of this community through this Torah … [and] that God is here with you, with this Torah, for you, for your children….”
Just as there was a lottery for the first six letters of the Torah, there was a draw for the last six – each representing a decade of the synagogue and one for the next generations, explained Moskovitz. After the Torah was completed, it was dressed and paraded north along Oak to 54th, east for a bit, then a “legal U-turn,” as per Keystone’s instructions, back the synagogue to take its place in the aron kodesh.
Dr. Rania Okby was in Vancouver last week, speaking to several groups, including students at King David High School. On May 1, she addressed a small gathering at the University of British Columbia.
Fittingly, this latter talk was held in the Clyde Hertzman Boardroom of Human Early Learning Partnership, which is, according to its website, “a collaborative, interdisciplinary research network” whose “research explores how different early environments and experiences contribute to inequalities in children’s development.”
Okby spoke about traditional and environmental factors that affect the health of Bedouin women in Israel. Currently doing a one-year obstetrics fellowship at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre at University of Toronto, Okby is a graduate of the Centre for Bedouin Studies and Development, Ben-Gurion University (BGU), and is part of the staff at Soroka University Medical Centre and faculty of health sciences at BGU, specializing in high-risk pregnancy.
David Berson, executive director the B.C. region of Canadian Associates of BGU, welcomed guests to the Hertzman Boardroom and presented a brief video of the Israeli university, while UBC professors Adele Diamond and Judy Illes chaired the event. Sally McBride of HELP gave a brief overview of her organization.
In introducing Okby, Diamond highlighted the difficulties of crossing between cultures, which can make “you no longer feel at home in any one because you’ve tasted a little bit of the other, and so you’ve changed. Not only is she forging a balance between Bedouin life and Western life, but she’s also forging a balance between being the mother of two girls, ages 7 and 5, and having an incredibly active career. And, she’s not only doing that, she’s forging a balance between clinical work, teaching and research.” To do any one of these things would be a job for a lifetime, said Diamond.
Okby’s presentation offered insight into some of the health challenges facing her community. “As Bedouin women, we are discriminated in Israel on three levels,” she said. First, by living in Be’er Sheva, which is a community on Israel’s periphery; second, by being a minority with a Jewish majority; and, third, by being women in a male-dominated culture. These and other conditions – such as the rapid change from being a semi-nomadic people to living a more stationary, Western lifestyle – influence both the physical and mental health of Bedouin women, and she went on to explain in what ways.
Defining a Bedouin as “someone born and raised in the desert,” Okby said there are Bedouin living around the world. “Being a Bedouin is a lifestyle, so it has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with nationality,” she said. There are 200,000 to 220,000 Bedouin in Israel, about half living in recognized villages; the other half not. The Bedouin comprise about 25 percent of the total population in the Negev, and are a diverse group.
In the early years of Israel, explained Okby, about half the Bedouin did not agree to leave their land to settle in cities, and these tribes are still in a dispute with the government over land ownership. People who live in unrecognized villages are not permitted to build permanent homes, so live in metal houses. There is no, or little, electricity, access to health care or public transportation, few roads and a lack of educational infrastructure.
Okby presented a statistical picture of the situation of Bedouin women: 6.2 years average education, 14.5% never went to school, 10.4% have higher education, 10% are working women, the average age of marriage is at 18.6 years old and the number of children per woman is 6.13. “When I started medical school 18 years ago, the number was 10, so things are improving and the numbers are decreasing, but still it’s a lot of [children],” she noted. Consanguinity, marrying within the same family, is 60 percent, while polygamy is 34 percent, “which has a bad influence on the mental and psychological health of the women and the kids.”
Issues such as post-partum depression, which affects one in three Bedouin women, are a challenge to treat, as the general view of psychiatry is not positive among Bedouin communities. Another major health concern, said Okby, is high infant mortality: 12% among the Bedouin compared to 6.6% among the Arab and 2.8% among the Jewish populations of Israel. “These numbers – you cannot ignore it, it is very clear,” said Okby, attributing the high rate to genetic disease or malformation, among other factors. Because of their religious beliefs, most Bedouin women won’t terminate a pregnancy beyond 17 weeks, even if prenatal screening detects problems, she said.
In addition to traditional factors, environment-related ones also affect infant mortality, including infectious disease and hypothermia. From ages 1 to 4, there are 12.7 Bedouin kids per thousand births who die from trauma compared to 1.9 in the Jewish community, and most of these Bedouin children are living in the unrecognized villages. The injuries result from a lack of awareness as well as way of life, cooking on open fires, for example.
Then there is the increasing incidence of Western illnesses, like diabetes and obesity, which are affecting the Bedouin, with lesser activity, poor knowledge about nutrition, and poverty. “About 30% of the diabetic patients don’t have enough money to get their medication, they have to choose medicine or food.” As well, Bedouin women are more at risk of breast cancer, and the average age of diagnosis is higher than in the Jewish community.
“There are lots of obstacles for the Bedouin women for better health, but there are lots of things to do, and lots of things are being done,” said Okby.
There are two main groups who can improve the situation: the Bedouin and the Israeli government. The other two important players, she said, are BGU and Soroka hospital.
To make things better, more education (of men and women) is needed, said Okby, as are systematic changes: for example, increased public transportation and doing prenatal screening before 17 weeks. Already, the age for mammography screening has been reduced to 40 (from 50) and there are mobile mammography units. As well, folic acid is being added to the bread made and sold in Bedouin villages.
Regarding BGU, Okby spoke of its Centre for Bedouin Studies and Development. When it started 18 years ago, there were only five female students, she said. There are now 265 women and 167 men in the program, said Berson.
The program has developed and now, among the changes, it includes a preparatory year, said Okby, to help with the cultural transition from community to university. And there are others helping in the region, such as the Arab Jewish Centre for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation-Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (AJEEC-NISPED), whose contributions Okby highlighted.
In the discussion period, it was noted that the Negev comprises 60% of the land of Israel, but only about seven percent of the population. Until recently a neglected part of the country, the army is relocating its main base there and other developments are literally changing the landscape.
“This is a really important side of Israel,” said Berson, “even though there are a lot of challenging issues with the Bedouin population, there is a lot of really good news, a lot of hope here, and it really dovetails with what’s going on in the desert with Ben-Gurion University.” He said that people who haven’t visited Be’er Sheva in the last few years would “be shocked to see the changes taking place there.”
Innovators Lunch speaker Brian Scudamore with Kate, left, and her mother, Wendy, who received supportive services from Jewish Family Service Agency in a time of need. (Adele Lewin Photography)
The 2015 Innovators Lunch raised almost $296,000, with more expected. The total was boosted by speaker Brian Scudamore, founder and chief executive officer of 1-800-Got-Junk?, donating back his fee to the Jewish Family Service Agency.
On April 29, 545 people came out to hear Scudamore speak at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver. They also watched a video featuring several people who had been helped by JFSA’s programming and service provision, one of whom, Michael Narvey, addressed the crowd. The audience also heard from JFSA board chair Joel Steinberg, Beth Israel Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, day-of-event co-chairs Megan Laskin and Hillary Cooper and senior management consultant Richard Fruchter. Shay Keil of Keil Investment Group, which was a co-presenting sponsor with Austeville Properties, introduced Scudamore.
Though Scudamore dropped out of high school and out of university, he said, “I love to learn. I love asking questions, meeting people and learning why they are successful, what motivates them and drives them in life. It just happened to be that school did not work for me.”
So, he became an entrepreneur, with a focus on vision, people and systems. He illustrated the importance of these three things in the story of how he became a businessman.
In summer of 1989, he was one course short of high school. Knowing he wasn’t going to complete that course, he talked his way into Langara College, one of the four colleges he would attend briefly. His vision at the time was to go to college and that’s what he did. However, he had to find his own way financially, as his parents weren’t going to fund his studies, given his history: “I don’t think it was a good ROI [return on investment],” he admitted.
While waiting in the line of a McDonald’s drive-through, Scudamore noticed that pickup truck in front of him had the hauler’s phone number on the side. He thought, “What a great idea. I had a thousand dollars in the bank, took 700 of it to go buy a pickup truck of my own.” He spray-painted his number on the side and parked it in different locations around the neighborhood. “Mobile billboards got me business and, within two weeks, I had a business that was humming and making money.”
The experience of building something, his interactions with customers and having fun inspired him to consider business as a future. “My grandparents, my Jewish grandparents … ran a small Army Surplus store in a fairly impoverished area of San Francisco downtown. I used to go down every spring break, summer, Christmas holiday, Chanukah, go work at the store, and I loved it. I loved watching how they treated people. They were the only store on the street that wasn’t robbed once a week. In fact, in their history, they were only robbed twice because I saw that they would give an ear to anyone who came in…. They would never give money, but they would give love, attention and time of day to somebody. They developed a group of friends in the community and the word out on the street was that you just don’t mess with the Lorbers, they’re nice people.
“I learned that business wasn’t just about ringing the cash register and making money. It’s never been that for me, and thank goodness for the influence of my grandparents. For me, business is having fun, bringing people on board and building something special together.”
By 1991, he was at the University of British Columbia. Bored, he made a deal to sell his business, which fell through. This failure taught him “that the low moments precede the highs.” And something good did happen. He grew the business and, in 1992, on the advice of his then girlfriend, he told his business story to the press. The result: a front-page article in the Province. He described it as a “full-sized ad, for free…. I’m going to systematize this and start doing more.” That day, he not only “felt like a rock star,” but he got “100 phone calls in 24 hours.”
In 1993, he finally sat down with his dad to tell him that he was dropping out of university. He incorporated his business, went from one to three trucks and was at about half-million dollars in revenue by 1994.
He had 11 employees but nine of them weren’t the right fit, he said, so he fired them all. He took full responsibility for not being a good leader, for hiring the wrong people. He apologized, and learned from the experience. Among the most important lessons: “it’s all about people.”
He spoke about The EMyth, “the most incredible business book” he’s ever read, which recommends running your business like a franchise even if you don’t plan to make it one. Franchises tend to be more successful, he explained, because they are based on systems of best practices that can be replicated. He followed that direction and, in 1997, hit a million dollars in revenue.
He joined the (Young) Entrepreneur Organization. For him, “it was a way to learn from others, other businesspeople, entrepreneurs that had been successful. I could understand what works and what didn’t, and that filled my thirst for knowledge.” He also actively sought out mentors and people on whom he could rely for advice.
In 1998, he was “bored” and wanted more. He wrote a short list of possibilities, or goals, including “being the FedEx of junk removal,” being “on the Oprah Winfrey Show” – “I envisioned a future that was so crazy, but I started to read it and I’m, like, my craziness actually seems real to me. I could see the vision, the picture in my mind, and I latched on to it and I said I will make this happen – not if, I hope to, want to, will try to, I will make this happen, and I crystal-balled the future.”
At the time he wrote down this vision, he had almost 10 paycheques written to himself that he couldn’t afford to cash, and there were employees who quit over his new direction. Nonetheless, he began to learn about how to franchise. He spoke to many people, he got over hurdle after hurdle, including having to find out who owned the phone number 1-800-Got-Junk and buying it once he did – from the Idaho department of transportation – as he’d already designed the logo with the number. The first franchise was created in 1999 and it made $1 million in the first year, “because we had the systems.”
In the next several years, the focus was on franchising and also on systematizing the media aspect, which had proven so useful before. “Fortune magazine did this three-page feature and we had 506 inquiries in the first week, and I’ll say the first week was Thursday to Sunday.”
He asked his employees what they could imagine with regard to growing the business, with the caveat that they would have to take responsibility for bringing the idea(s) to fruition. The company also works with employees to help them set and accomplish personal goals and, in 2004, 1-800-Got Junk? won British Columbia’s best company to work for contest. They immediately set upon figuring out how they could win it again, not for the sake of winning, but to keep improving the business and the work environment.
At $100 million in sales in 2006, the rollercoaster descended, he said. They dropped $40 million in revenue and he had to fire his best friend – “thankfully he knows it was the right decision.” They were both quick shooters and the business needed a more cautious partner. In the end, the entire leadership team was changed, dozens of people laid off, “partially because of mistakes we made, partially because of the recession. It was awful.” Three and a half years of rebuilding, however, turned things around.
Scudamore has learned to embrace mistakes, to learn from them, and he encourages his employees to do so, as well. “If you’re not making mistakes, if you’re not getting out of your comfort zone and taking risks in life, you’re not living,” he said.
Once he found the right-hand person who best complemented his strengths and weaknesses, Eric Church, the business expanded into other companies, such as Wow 1 Day! Painting and You Move Me. He also expanded personally into other areas, such as becoming involved in Free the Children with his family, thanks to Lorne Segal. He “didn’t have this sense of philanthropic community” when he was a kid, but his daughters, now 10 and 7, believe they “can actually change the world.”
He said, “I believe that we all have a purpose to do something great in our lives and we’ve all got to get to building something, a family, community, charitable organizations and business.… I think, again, it comes down to, ‘It’s all about people.’ Can you inspire people, can you find the right people and treat them right?”
One thing Scudamore loves about community, “is people helping other people.” He concluded, “I don’t know if everybody knows their purpose and what they’re doing. I often believe sometimes you need to be a little crazy to think you can change the world, but I think that we’re all a little crazy, and I know that we can.”