Kyle Berger – Page 3 – Jewish Independent

Hockey brings peace in Israel

My new friends! A mixed group of Arab and Jewish kids playing hockey together in Israel.

I have to admit that it has been tough to concentrate on much these days with everything going on in Israel this month.

The country and people that I love – along with every Jew around the world – has been fighting a war of epic proportions. Both in Gaza and in the media.

As I have struggled to come to terms with the reality of how deeply rooted antisemitism currently is around the world and how gleefully willing many people are to remain ignorant and naive, I consider what I can do to contribute.

Sure, there are rallies and gatherings to attend, letters to be written to MPs, Facebook posts to share, all with hopes of spreading intelligent information and support for Israel. But I feel myself needing something more tangible to contribute to.

Those feelings and thoughts almost always take me to a program – or mission – I have already embraced the past few years I have visited Israel.

Myself with Daniel (left) and Ariel Wosk on the Canada Centre ice in Metula.

In the very northern tip of Israel, in Etzpah Hagalil – Vancouver’s P2G Partnership region, there is the lone full-sized (actually, Olympic-sized) hockey rink at Mercaz Canada (Canada Centre) in Metula. I have visited it the past three years to participate in the Israel Recreational Hockey Association Tournament (amazing event!) along with several local friends.

In 2013, while visiting, an Israeli friend told me about a new, growing program at the Canada Centre called the Canada-Israel Hockey School (CIHS). Merely 3 years old, CIHS already featured approximately 400 Israeli kids of all ages, wearing a mish-mosh of donated gear and Jerseys, learning to play Canada’s game.

Just watching these kids had already blown my mind. I was beyond enlightened when Coach Mike Mazeika, a non-Jewish Torontonian who has embraced Israeli culture in more ways than one, informed me that among those skaters was a complete mix of Jewish and Arab children. Hockey had brought Jewish teens who had never once spoken to an Arab teen, and vice-versa, together as teammates. Line mates. Eternal friends. And it was working!

Adding to that, I took a look around the stands and saw the parents of all these children cheering together. Ignoring, at least within this small group, decades of religious and political conflict since Israel had been born.

Hockey, Canada’s game, was doing this!

As I watched in awe I declared, “Someone has to document this!” To which Mazeika replied, “Actually, TSN was here a couple of weeks ago.” (see link below)

I was invited to come back and skate with the school before leaving Israel – an opportunity I called the coolest thing I had done on the ice. I returned home from that trip with a few new friends (Jewish, Christian and Druze) and a new commitment to use my role as the JCCGV’s sports coordinator to develop our community’s connection with the Canada-Israel Hockey School.

Team Vancouver returned this past February to an even larger hockey school as founder Levav Weinberg told me of their plans to reach out to even more communities around Israel.

We are currently working with Weinberg on plans to bring a group from CIHS on a Canadian tour with a key stop in Vancouver in the spring of 2015.

In the mean time, I will be returning in February, with whoever wants to join me, to represent Team Vancouver in the tournament (amazing experience as well!) and continue to develop our relationship with CIHS.

If you are hockey inclined and would like to join us to be part of something truly special in such a desperate time, there are always spots on our team!

Here is the link to the TSN documentary Neutral Zone, http://vimeo.com/70459909.

Kyle Berger is a freelance writer and publisher of the Berger With Fries blog.

Love to win? Or hate to lose?

Pursuing more of my “Love to Win” side at the 2014 Spartan Sprint obstacle race.

Call it ironic, but in my less-than-fit days I was a regular subscriber to Men’s Health magazine.

As I looked upon the cover of each fresh edition I sincerely believed (read: hoped) that this just might be the edition that unveils the ground-breaking discovery that Maple Walnut ice cream contained a fat-burning ingredient that could give me “six-pack abs by summer!”

I eventually decided to take a different route to improved fitness. While I can’t say I would credit Men’s Health for my success, there was one posting that left a long-lasting impression on me.

This specific article effectively split humanity into two simple groups.

Group 1: Those who love to win.

Group 2: Those who hate to lose.

Of course everyone prefers winning and, thus, would rather not lose. But most people, if they really think it through, can probably identify what fuels them more; the rush of victory or resentment toward loss.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was a hate-to-lose kind of dude. If my team, in any sport, was winning life seemed in order and under control. There was balance in the Force. But if we were losing my emotions would take over in an effort to avoid failure. I would walk away from any loss feeling frustrated, unsettled and pondering what I could have done to avoid it. I didn’t need to celebrate the wins as much as I needed to avoid the feeling of loss.

I embraced that discovery and used it to make me better. In hockey I became a defensive, shut-down centre, eventually turning to a pure defenseman where my emotional drive to avoid getting beat could feed my game. It proved to be a good move for my career (boy, do I use the word career lightly).

In the last couple of years, however, I considered if perhaps my friendship with the hate-to-lose side of me had led to complacency and, in some cases, boredom! (we’ll get to that nasty word in a later post)

Generally speaking, of course, hate-to-lose people might play the game of life a little on the safe side. They could miss out on hidden opportunities while choosing to avoid opportunities to test their limits. They are less likely to take risks or seek adventure. Their theory being, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The love-to-win type is ready to take those risks and fly by the seat of their pants for the possible thrill of success. On the flip side, they might take unnecessary risks, act without calculated consideration of consequence, risk losing a lot for the sake of winning a little. Their theory being, “Let’s break it ‘cause maybe we can rebuild it better.”

So which one is better? I could give you all sorts of analogies of how either approach has a proven track record of success.

But the key is to find out who you are and challenge yourself to bring the other element into your life a little more. I’ll use a hockey analogy (get used to it) to show you what I mean. It is commonly preached that “defense wins championships.” But it is also a fact that you can’t win the Stanley Cup without scoring goals. Even the defensemen need to contribute to the offense for a team to be a serious contender. More specifically, the great players who lead their teams to the big games are the ones who find the right balance of defense and offense. Those players aren’t born playing like that. They all enter the league with one style of play that has gotten them to where they are. Then they develop that balance over seasons of growth, experience and hard work. The most successful players develop their weaknesses to complement their strengths.

This is a concept we should all adopt for the sake of growth, inspiration and diversity. Whether you are more of a hate-to-lose or a love-to-win type, heighten your awareness to that and consider the areas of your life where a lack of balance has possibly challenged your growth or development. Then make the effort to approach the opposite way of thinking from time to time.

It worked for George Costanza!

Kyle Berger is a freelance writer and producer of the Berger With Fries health, fitness and entertainment blog. Follow him on Twitter @kberger16.

Let the search for life begin…

A couple of years ago, somewhere between the family-sized bag of Miss Vickies chips (190 lb Kyle) and the Trader Joe’s Edamame Crackers (165 lb Kyle), something triggered inside of me that led me to one of the most profound personal discoveries of my adult life.

It had little to do with the weight loss itself. Losing 25 lbs in two months wasn’t the result of some magic pill, any as-seen-on-Dr. Oz diets, or by bathing in ice water 20 minutes each day (though you could actually lose weight that way). I simply learned how calories worked and decided to see how it would apply to my life. That basic exercise led to a fast education, a welcome (and still developing) change in some key areas of my regular diet, a commitment to fitness and voila: a fitter, healthier me.

I didn’t see that weight loss as anything more than an isolated, solitary accomplishment. Until I stood in front of a mirror and stared into the eyes of a man who, long before then, believed and accepted that he would never have the will power, focus or determination to drop that extra 20-30 lbs of fat. I had proved that S.O.B. wrong! And that changed the game for me.

That kick to the groin of the demon I now refer to as “Complacency” opened my mind to a whole realm of possibilities I had previously written off or accepted as limitations in my world. I suddenly became aware of the many walls I had subconsciously erected around me as safety mechanisms.

With the gusto of Ronald Reagan, I began to tear down those walls. Within the next year I set my mind on accomplishing more fitness goals, kicked off my life-long desire to learn to speak Hebrew, created the Berger With Fries blog just so I could write the way I wanted again, revitalized my approach to my home life, parenting and my job, learned to juggle a soccer ball and do a handstand (in no particular order). Every single aspect of my life had become open for re-interpretation, re-evaluation and re-definition.

Why? Why the heck not!?

I used to joke (kind of) that my life – married with two beautiful young daughters – was pretty much locked in for the foreseeable future. Meaning that, other than a few more grey sprouts, 35-55 didn’t have much wiggle room for me in terms of possible major life changes. I had kids to love, job stability to focus on and I was very busy following the cookie-cutter society in which I had been raised.

Today I realize how absolutely absurd and limiting that line of thinking was. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, what you are doing or what your status is. Show me a life filled with the pursuit of excitement and inspiration and I will show you a life without regret or any sense of time wasted.

That hunt is what this Berger Time blog is about. It is about challenging ourselves to look beyond the narrow path that’s laid out directly in front of us as life wizzes by. To ask the question: what if we could re-shape that cookie-cutter to whatever we want it to be that day? To boldly go where no one…… Ok, I’ll stop there. But that Star Trek way of thinking isn’t so bad!

We are going to have some fun, meet some interesting people, share some interesting stories, try out new things (permit me to be your guinea pig!) open our minds and step outside of our comfort zones in search of inspiration and excitement.

Some of you may be familiar with my work as a former regular and current freelance writer at the Jewish Independent (shout out to my fans at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital!). Being part of this publication will always be important to me as I appreciate the vital role it plays in the community.

I am excited to be back on a regular basis, on this beautiful new website, with this incredible opportunity to once again connect with the community and to boldly go where…

Kyle Berger is a freelance writer and producer of the Berger With Fries health/fitness/entertainment blog. Follow him on Twitter @kberger16.

FreshGigs now accepts Bitcoin

Cousins Michael, left, and Sam Zipursky co-founded FreshGigs.ca. (photo from Michael Zipursky)

When FreshGigs opened for business four years ago, they took the job-hunting business by storm, generating quick growth and interest. So it makes sense that they would link themselves up with another up-and-coming concept taking the world by storm.

FreshGigs.ca, a Vancouver-based jobsite that focuses on marketing and creative talent, has become one of the first companies in the city to accept the new, revolutionary Bitcoin currency as a form of payment.

Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency. Ideal for conducting international transactions due to the lack of fees or bank-adjusted exchange rates, Bitcoin has gained popularity since first being introduced in 2009.

“We see it as another currency and option for people to make payments to post their jobs,” FreshGigs.ca co-founder Michael Zipursky explained in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “Employers can pay for their jobs with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Paypal and, now, Bitcoin. We focus on providing our clients the best service possible and giving them choices is part of that.”

Bitcoin made its first splash in Vancouver in the fall when the first Bitcoin ATM was installed in a Waves Coffee House in Downtown Vancouver. There, customers need to have their palms scanned in order to make transactions worth up to $3,000.

Zipursky said FreshGigs.ca is moving with the times because they see it as another step in fulfilling their original mission. “We started FreshGigs.ca because many people we knew were very skilled at what they did, they were great at marketing, advertising and design, yet they had trouble finding a job,” he said. “At the same time, employers are looking for qualified talent and didn’t have any good options in these industries. We saw an opportunity to create a jobsite that would connect these two groups in a meaningful and effective way.”

Today, FreshGigs.ca is serving companies like Best Buy, Canada Post, Tourism Whistler, Vancity and the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

FreshGigs.ca went ahead with the decision to accept Bitcoin despite the controversy that has surrounded its introduction into the marketplace. Financial institutions have cautioned that the electronic currency can too easily be used for money laundering or to fund illegal activities. The European Banking Authority has cautioned that Bitcoin lacks adequate consumer protection, as it can be stolen and chargebacks are impossible. The government of China recently restricted Bitcoin from being exchanged for local currency and, last year, the FBI seized 144,000 Bitcoin worth $28.5 million from an online black market. However, the use of Bitcoin continues to grow as its value increases. As well, more large or reputable international companies have jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon, leading many to believe that it is here to stay, despite the pushback. Virgin Galactic, the Richard Branson-owned company aiming to send people to space is accepting Bitcoin, as has popular blogging platform WordPress. Many other organizations, such as PayPal and eBay are making plans to follow suit.

To use Bitcoin with FreshGigs.ca, a client simply needs to go to the Bitcoin payment page and enter the required information to process the order.

Kyle Berger is a freelance writer in Richmond.