Lorne Segal, chair, Courage to Come Back Awards. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
In its chai year, the Courage to Come Back Awards had a record night on May 5 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, with more than 1,500 guests and more than $1.43 million raised for Coast Mental Health.
In his address, Courage to Come Back chair Lorne Segal pondered the question of why the event is so popular. “Because,” he said, “at these awards, like nowhere else, we feel the extraordinary power of the ordinary spirit and the deep humanity so often lacking in our daily lives.”
He said, “We all shed a tear tonight and, whether it was a tear of joy, of hope, of love, it was not because we wanted to, but because we needed to. You see, we need to know that, even against the worst hand we could be dealt in life, we too can triumph. Because our six heroes tonight could do it, so can we.
“Each of us came into this room for a different reason, but we will all leave with our nourished souls tied together by one common thread: the unshakeable belief that, by seeing the very best in others – courage, faith, hope, endurance – we will somehow find the strength to face our own fears and achieve our greatest dreams. And for that, we need to thank our six superstars who are symbols of the possibilities which lie within us all.”
This year’s six honorees were Christy Campbell (in the physical rehabilitation category), Jemal Damtawe (addiction), Meredith Graham (social adversity), Dr. Barbara Harris, (mental health), Coltyn Liu (youth) and Tom Teranishi (medical). Since 1999, Courage to Come Back has now honored 103 individuals who have had the “courage to overcome serious adversity, change their lives for the better and move forward to help others do the same.”
Co-hosting the gala evening were Randene Neill and Kevin Evans, while Howard Blank emceed the fundraising portion of the proceedings. In his comments, Blank noted that Coast Mental Health helps an average of 12 clients a day and that its programs address three main pillars: housing, employment and support services.
The largest donation of the evening came from B.C. taxpayers, as Minister of Health Terry Lake donated $100,000 from the province on behalf of Premier Christy Clark and Minister of Finance Mike de Jong. The largest private donation came from Joseph and Rosalie Segal, who contributed $50,000. Many other individuals and companies made donations, several citing the Segal family as their example of what it means to give back to community.
There was no shortage of role models for giving that night, with the six honorees leading the way. There were many meaningful takeaways, including Liu’s statement: “Mom’s lesson: don’t feed the negative monster inside; rather, fight with a belief in yourself and for a reality you want.” And Graham’s reminder that, “sometimes, you can give what you didn’t get.”
“What part will you play,” she asked the crowd, “to change lives today?”
Romantics will appreciate most the linked stories of “The Folklorist” and “Chana-Merka the Fishwife.” In the first tale, Rubinshteyn heads to the Vilna fish market to collect material for YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute) because he knows that, if the “genuine language of the people” is not documented, “it would be a great loss for the culture.” Dedicated to his work, and a dedicated bachelor, he fails to notice that Chana-Merka has fallen in love with him and, once his research is complete, he stops visiting the fish market, much to her – and his – sadness. In the second tale, Chana-Merka heads to YIVO herself to make sure that Max Weinreich, its director, knows from whom all of Rubinshteyn’s material came: she makes lists of curses for Weinreich, such as “May you speak so beautifully that only cats understand you,” and “May you be lucky and go crazy in a more important city than Vilna.”
“The method in Hilarious Hebrew is aimed at teaching vocabulary rather than whole sentences because the whole point of it is to teach a Hebrew word in the context of a sentence in English that would convey the pronunciation and the meaning of the new word (in Hebrew) through a familiar, easy context (in English),” explained Hebrew teacher Yael Breuer, who co-authored the book with musician Eyal Shavit.
In addition to teaching Modern Hebrew, Breuer writes for the Jewish Chronicle; she also has had her articles on British culture published in Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv. From Rehovot, Breuer moved to Brighton 27 years ago, she said. “My husband, David, is English and, although he is originally from London, he already lived in Brighton when I met him.”
However, the final essay in Sacks’ Gratitude is called “Sabbath.” In it, he recalls his parents’ observance of Shabbat, a day that “was entirely different from the rest of the week.” He recalls how the family would mark the day, how he became bar mitzvah, his break with his family and community in England after he qualified as a doctor and moved to Los Angeles, his “near-suicidal addiction to amphetamines,” his recovery and how he “became a storyteller at a time when medical narrative was almost extinct.” In addition to being a neurologist, most readers know, Sacks was an author – he wrote more than a dozen books, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars.
Bronfman died at 84. It is particularly fitting to be discussing his book Why Be Jewish? as Passover nears. Two of the nine chapters are directly related to the holiday: Chapter 8 is about its rituals, the story, the symbolic aspects, its importance, while Chapter 9 presents the principles and practices of leadership as demonstrated by Moses – not Moses the manager, but rather, “Moses the man who, as flawed as he was, executed brilliant strategies that ultimately transformed much of the world. These principles are also relevant to everyday leadership, from parenting to day-to-day responsibilities at work.”
