Books – Page 4

Scribe camp issue launches

The Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia (JMABC) is releasing the 41st edition of The Scribe – which has a summer camps theme – on April 24, 6 p.m., at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture.

The JMABC’s flagship publication celebrates the lives and traditions of British Columbia’s Jewish residents by focusing on one sector each edition. This year’s journal features personal memories from seven Jewish summer camps in the Pacific Northwest, highlighting the lasting impact that camp experiences have had on the development of lifelong connections to Jewish culture and community.

First published in 1989, The Scribe’s mandate is to link the Jewish community’s past with the present to inspire future generations. The publication has documented all aspects of the Jewish experience in British Columbia. Past issues have focused on prominent medical pioneers who have improved the lives of Canadians; top restaurateurs who cultivated Vancouver’s social scene; and ready-to-wear icons who helped British Columbia become an international fashion centre.

“The Scribe: Summer Camps Issue is by far one of the most endearing and nostalgic issues in [the journal’s] 41-year history,” said Daniella Givon, president of the JMABC. “Jewish summer camps have long represented a unique form of organic community-building and Jewish connection. Through the iconic summer camp experience, generations of Jewish youth have developed a sense of resilience and belonging that has strengthened their own connections to Jewish community, personal identity and cultural continuity.”

“The impact and success of Jewish communities in Canada have been significantly enhanced by the collective experiences of summer camp attendees,” said Elana Wenner, JMABC director of programming and development. “We look forward to taking a walk down memory lane with Jewish communities throughout BC with this new issue!”

The launch at the Peretz Centre will be an immersive evening of nostalgia, song and stories, as the summer camp communities of the Pacific Northwest are brought together under one roof.

Tickets are $54 each, and include dinner, a program and a keepsake T-shirt. All proceeds are in support of the JMABC. Copies of The Scribe: Summer Camps Issue will be available for purchase at the event for $20 each. (JMABC members in good standing will receive one free copy per family.) For tickets, visit tinyurl.com/ANightAtCamp.

– Courtesy Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia

Ellis gives needed context

Author Israel Ellis with his new book, The Wake Up Call, after a Feb. 10 talk at Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Toronto, where he joined journalist Dave Gordon in conversation. (photo by Dave Gordon)

In his new book, The Wake Up Call: Global Jihad and the Rise of Antisemitism in a World Gone MAD, author Israel Ellis brings the events of Oct. 7, 2023, into a compelling, fact-based and easy-to-read focus.

Backed up by scores of footnotes and references, the book is a no-nonsense look at the Hamas terror attack of Oct. 7 and, poignantly, the attack on democracy Ellis believes happened in the months prior to them. The addition of personal stories from Oct. 7 survivors and family members adds another level of documentation to an already all-encompassing book.

Ellis weaves in his own lived experience and perspective as a Jewish Canadian in the diaspora with firsthand accounts of contemporary antisemitism and his reflections on being the father of an Israel Defence Forces lone soldier fighting in Gaza. His personal observations allow the reader to connect with him, as well as better understand the interconnectedness of Jews, no matter where they live, and Israel.

For non-Jews, it can be daunting to begin learning about what happened on Oct. 7, and the global repercussions. Many non-Jews do not know the history of the Middle East, how the state of Israel fits into this history, or what the definition of “antisemitism” is. Ellis helps fill in these blanks, and this is why I am so excited to introduce this book to my friends.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Canadians (and people from other countries) have seen large pro-Palestine protests in the streets of all the major cities and in academic spaces, with large university encampments set up across the country. Most people in the Jewish community see these protests for what they are: pro-terror and anti-democratic. But, for a Canadian with little knowledge of what the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is, these protests and encampments can look like a fight for human rights. No doubt, some individuals believe they are marching for human rights while chanting “intifada revolution,” but many are there to show support for Hamas, to some degree or another. This is why the knowledge, geopolitical insight and historical context Ellis brings with his writing is so vitally important.

I read a lot of books on Israel, as a non-Jewish Canadian interested in educating myself, and Ellis’s new book has become a favourite. One of the reasons is that Ellis writes about many protests and political events that are still fresh in our minds. He discusses protests that took place in Toronto and the encampments at McGill University (and others). He shows the utter incompetence of Canadian politicians, such as Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, in handling the rise of radical Islam. He strongly condemns Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly, who shook the hand of Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, in what is a now-famous Ramallah photo-op. These events, along with many others, are documented in Ellis’s book, illustrating a pattern of political complicity and complacency that he says has contributed to the eroding of Canada’s moral backbone.

As a Canadian university student, I have experienced firsthand my peers sympathizing with and rallying for terrorist organizations. The university institutions have been complacent in protecting neutral academic spaces, allowing terrorist propaganda to infiltrate our lectures and giving some professors the ability to promote hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

A quote from The Wake Up Call that gave me chills reads: “There is no coming invasion. It is already here. Jihad has already been invited into our universities, professions, communities and public institutions. October 7 was a wake-up call. It is an example of the hunger for Global Jihad, and what can happen if it is allowed to be satiated. To think that these events are restricted to a narrow strip on the Mediterranean is a complete miscalculation of reality.”

The Wake Up Call should be read by anyone – uninformed or well-informed, Jew or non-Jew – who wants to better understand the political, social and historical context behind the current rise in anti-democratic, pro-terror narratives that have taken over many Western spaces.

Zara Nybo, a fourth-year student at the University of British Columbia, is a StandWithUs Canada Emerson Fellow. Connect with her via Instagram: @zaranybo.

Hebron key to conflict

The White Rock/South Surrey Jewish Community Centre hosted Yardena Schwartz, author of Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, on Feb. 23.

photo - Left to right: Gay Cohen, organizer of the White Rock/South Surrey Jewish Community Centre Book Club; Helen Mann of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver; author and journalist Yardena Schwartz; and WRSS JCC president Adele Ritch — Left to right: Gay Cohen, organizer of the White Rock/South Surrey Jewish Community Centre Book Club; Helen Mann of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver; author and journalist Yardena Schwartz; and WRSS JCC president Adele Ritch. (photo by Chloe Heuchert)

At the event, held in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, Schwartz – an award-winning producer and journalist – spoke about her book and then answered some questions from the audience.

Schwartz has worked for NBC, among other organizations, and reported for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Foreign Policy. She lived in Israel from 2013 to 2023.

While working as a freelance journalist in Tel Aviv, Schwartz was introduced to a family from Memphis, Tenn., who had a box of letters written by their late uncle, David Shainberg, who was one of the 70 Jews killed by some of the Arab residents of Hebron during the massacre in 1929. He had sailed to Palestine in 1928, and studied at Hebron Yeshivah; he wrote hundreds of letters to his family about how Jews and Arabs were living together, coexisting, peacefully. Schwartz spoke about those letters, and the massacre and how it relates to Oct. 7.

Helen Mann, who works with the Jewish Federation and is also a part of the White Rock/South Surrey Jewish community, told the Independent that reading Schwartz’s book amid growing antisemitism was empowering, that “it felt more important than ever to spread the historical truth of our people and this contentious and tiny piece of land, especially in such a tiny Jewish community we are in, of White Rock/South Surrey.”

Mann said there is so much misinformation being disseminated, on social media in particular.

“Yardena has meticulously delved through and cited sources to do the work for us, and weave that history into a page-turner,” she said. “While I hope this book gets into the hands of anyone who wishes to speak on the current conflict and politics, it’s of high priority that we as a Jewish community are educated on our own history; to know who we are in order to know where we are going.”

The Jewish Independent spoke with Schwartz after the event.

JI: What types of research did you do for the book?

YS: My research started with interviews in Hebron with Palestinians and Israelis living there. And then, from there, I focused on the period of history that preceded the massacre, so 1928 and 1929. That involved looking at archival newspaper articles in places like the Palestine Post and the New York Times, and Arabic press… There’s an archive in Hebron that I spent a lot of time in, archives in Jerusalem, and Hagana Archives in Tel Aviv. This was during COVID, so I couldn’t go to the London archives, but some other authors who had been there and got materials were kind enough to share them with me.

It was a lot of archival research, a lot of interviews: hundreds of hours of interviews with Israelis and Palestinians in Hebron between 2019 and 2023.

I also read as many books as I could that were focused on that period. There were two books that were really helpful in my research. One was Hillel Cohen’s Year Zero of the Arab Israeli Conflict, which tells the story not just of the Hebron massacre, but of the riots of 1929. And it’s very succinct, it just focuses on the riots, like none of the history before or after. Then, a book by Orin Kessler, Palestine 1936, which focused on the Great Arab Revolt from 1936 to 1939.

JI: During your research, did you find any information that surprised you in a way?

YS: Well, the letters that David Shainberg wrote to his family were really eye-opening for me in painting a picture of what Hebron was like before the massacre and what Hebron was like during the British Mandate before the massacre…. I had never known that Jews and Muslims had lived side by side in peace in Hebron and owned businesses and drank coffee together. That was really surprising to me, given what Hebron is today.

But I think what shocked me most during my research was what I discovered about the mufti, the grand mufti, Amin al-Husseini, who was the first leader of the Palestinian people, and, specifically, his role during the Holocaust, his affiliation with the Nazis, his role as a Nazi, and his role in recruiting tens of thousands of Muslims to fight for the Nazis – and the fact that he lived the rest of his life out in the open. I mean, he was wanted for Nazi war crimes and yet he didn’t have to live out the rest of his life in hiding, like so many Nazis did…. He was never arrested, never was prosecuted or put on trial for his crimes.

JI: Since this is your first book, how was the overall experience, and what challenged you the most?

YS: I think what challenged me the most was giving birth to two children during the course of writing this book. I honestly still have no idea how I wrote a book while raising two kids – my kids are now 2 and 4-and-a-half. I was pregnant with my first child when I started this research … and it was really difficult to write about such a depressing, heavy subject while bringing new life into this world. It was really difficult.

It had always been a dream of mine to write a book. I’d been a journalist for years, but I don’t think I could grasp, until writing this book, just how difficult writing a book is, especially something that covers 100 years of history. So, it was … a tremendous undertaking. Sometimes, it was torturous, but other times it was really fulfilling and especially now that it’s out there in the world, and hearing from readers is just like an incomparable experience…. I feel really blessed that I was entrusted with these letters by these families. Without them, this book wouldn’t have come to fruition, basically.

JI: What key message do you want readers to take from the book?

YS: I think my key message is that we will never be able to resolve this conflict if we can’t agree on the facts that drive it and the history that precedes this tragic moment we’re in. And, I think, to anyone who wants to see peace in Israel, peace between Israel and Palestinians, I hope they’ll read this book. I hope they’ll learn the lessons of history, so that we can stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

Chloe Heuchert is an historian specializing in Canadian Jewish history. During her master’s program at Trinity Western University, she focused on Jewish internment in Quebec during the Second World War.

Determined to help others

Photos from the book include Joy Karp speaking to a group of people at a Terry Fox Run in Whitehorse. (photo from Rick Karp)

Creating a Lasting Impact: The Amazing Life of Joy Esther Karp was recently published.

Written by Rick Karp, who was married to Joy for 49 years – many of them spent in the Yukon – the account tells of her determination to make a difference and how she made numerous contributions to society, while having to overcome life-threatening issues every few years.

Joy Karp died in 2017.

“I promised Joy a few weeks before she passed that I would ‘tell her story,’ and that is what I have done. People need to know who she was, what she accomplished throughout her life, how caring and supportive she was for others,” Rick Karp told the Independent.

Two of the setbacks Joy Karp faced were a heart attack, after giving birth to twins in her early 20s, and a car accident, in which she was thrown from the vehicle onto a frozen Lake Ontario, smashing the bones in her left foot; she had to wear specially made shoes thereafter.

In 1986, the Karps moved from Ottawa to Whitehorse, where they brought the first McDonald’s to the North and were deeply involved in the economic, social and cultural fabric of the Yukon. But this didn’t protect the couple from life’s vicissitudes.

Joy was kidnapped in 1992 and buried in her car for close to 17 hours. The kidnappers shackled her wrists and ankles, blindfolded her, put a bag over her head and left her there without needed medication, despite knowing she had heart issues.

“After the kidnapping, Joy suffered horribly for years from PTSD and, a couple of years later, her heart gave out and she had to have a quadruple bypass operation,” Rick Karp said.

In addition, Joy’s foot was severely damaged after the kidnapping, and doctors considered amputation. The Karps, though, demanded that the doctors pursue another course, which allowed her to keep her foot.

A few years later, Joy had her first case of cancer and required operations, chemotherapy and radiation. The cancer returned after several years and proved incurable.

“The doctors thought it was a heart issue and all that Joy needed was a pacemaker,” Karp said. “The X-rays that they did to determine the positioning of the pacemaker showed that the issue was a cancerous growth that had developed in her right lung and had reached out and attached to her heart.

photo - Rick Karp’s book about his wife, Joy, was recently released — Rick Karp’s book about his wife, Joy, was recently released. (photo from Rick Karp)

“They said that it was inoperable and that Joy only had about three months left, but she survived for close to 11 months.”

Despite all these adversities, Joy had an innate ability to understand and see the potential in others, to learn what they needed, and then make things happen for them, said Karp. People were always drawn to her, he said.

“This was one of the amazing things about Joy. She thought of others. She was a great listener. As a student, she helped her fellow students with assignments, and she had the ability to resolve issues.”

One of Joy Karp’s legacies is the McDonald’s Hands-On Business Training Program. The story begins in Ontario in the 1970s, with a job she had helping an owner-operator grow to five stores, and managing the head office. Confronted with a high turnover rate in some towns, the owner approached Joy for a solution.

She created a training program in 1978 and implemented it at local McDonald’s restaurants. By the early 1980s, according to Karp, the program was used throughout the fast-food chain.

“This is a three-year program that takes employees, or others that apply, through training and development that solidifies their knowledge of all of the stations in McDonald’s, training in customer service, and all aspects of how the restaurant operates,” he said.

“Then, to the right people, the program offers the chance to rise from crew person to crew trainer, to swing manager, to assistant manager and to manager – it offers career opportunities. Also, embedded in the program is the concept of ‘promote from within,’ which has been adopted by businesses, well, everywhere.”

Among other accomplishments, Joy organized service and customer satisfaction workshops for the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce when the city played host to the Canada Winter Games in 2007. Her efforts, Karp said, were recognized by the event’s organizers.

Additionally, she played a key role in bringing the Special Olympics to Whitehorse, helped arrange for an outdoor play area and training computers at the Yukon Child Development Centre, and was pivotal in obtaining funding to make the Yukon Arts Centre wheelchair accessible. In 2013, she wrote The Power of Service: Service Through the Eyes of Customers, a book that emphasizes the importance for businesses to develop relationships and trust with those they serve.

Creating a Lasting Impact can be purchased on the Bookstore page at rwkarp.ca. A signed copy can be ordered by emailing Karp at [email protected].

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

What your tchotchkes think

Ever wondered what your leather-bound journal thinks about you? Your menorah? The bowl you made in a pottery class? What astrological sign your keepsakes might be? How they’d like to be handled, cared for? Where they’d like to be in your home?

For most of us, the answer is probably no … to all of the above. But Elisabeth Saake has thought of all these things. And, after reading her latest book, Tchotchkes and their F*cked-Up Thoughts: The Messed-Up Minds of Your Trinkets and Treasures (Collective Book Studio), you will too. It’s a follow-up to her 2023 Houseplants and Their F*cked-Up Thoughts: PS, They Hate You, which she wrote with Carlyle Christoff.

Divided into five sections, no knickknack is spared. Saake covers the whimsical (lava lamp, rubber chicken, etc.), vintage and collectibles (antique compass, souvenir spoon, etc.), cultural and artisanal (woven tapestry, ceramic urn, etc.), spiritual and mystical (worry stone, crystal ball, etc.) and functional and decorative (novelty salt and pepper shakers, participation trophy, etc.).

About your journal, don’t worry, it thinks “your poetry is profound” and is “totally listening and deeply moved”; it only appears to be setting itself on fire.

But your menorah would like to be treated as more than a “fancy candleholder”: “Fill my branches with holy oil from trees grown on the Mount of Olives, just a day’s worth, and watch me burn for eight! Or cram in cheap candles from your big box store’s Hanukkah display. That works, too. Way to honour your ancestors, nudnik.”

And your handmade pottery is a “real bowl,” even if it “was made in a beginner’s night class at the community college”: “I’m round enough, I’m stable enough and, doggone it, people like me!” Though, it’s “a bit wobbly,” so perhaps no soup … maybe just display it on a kitchen shelf, as the “mantel is for the perfect porcelain.”

Tchotchkes and their F*cked-Up Thoughts would make a great gift to any friend (with a sense of humour) who’s a collector of things, or to any friend who has judged others’ collections of things. It’s snarky, a little dark at times, but will bring many chuckles and laughs, even if every joke doesn’t land. It’s colourful and beautifully put together. Hopefully, it will think as highly of you, its place in your home and how you care for it – and have an astrological sign that’s compatible with yours.

Enthralling must-read

We Are Here! We Are Alive! The Diary of Alfredo Sarano, with historical commentary by Roberto Mazzoli and translated from the Italian by Avigayil Diana Kelman, is a book of double magnitude.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is a riveting diary, with fiction-like suspense and drama, written in northern Italy during the Second World War under Mussolini’s fascist regime and Nazi German occupation, combined with an outside scholar’s comments, which set the diary into its day-to-day historical events. To make the reading easier, the diary is astutely printed as though typewritten, while the commentary is in regular book font.

Originally published in 2017 by noted Italian publishing house Edizioni San Paolo, in Milan, We Are Here! We Are Alive! garnered wide praise in Italy’s general press and from the country’s leading officials and public figures.

It must be accented that first-person Holocaust memoirs were usually written after the war, and the memoirist had to choose from past events and sort them out in the calm of peace time. A diary like this, composed in situ, while in hiding, is rather rare – and likely more reliable than one written with the fluidity of memory after events.

“This is the story of how this chapter of the history of Italian Jewry unfolded, which I experienced day by day,” writes Sarano. Kept for more than 70 years in a drawer by his daughters Matilde, Vittoria and Miriam, Sarano’s diary reemerges from the past, adding new, precious pages of history to the record of the genocide of the Jewish people.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is the result of Mazzoli’s research, the Italian literary scholar who brought Sarano’s diary to light, placing it in the historical context of the time. The book accents the heroism of Sarano, who portrays himself humbly and with modesty. Yet, he was the farsighted secretary of the Milan Jewish community, the man who saved thousands of lives by hiding from the occupying Germans the lists of community members. The fact that he knew the entire list by heart, names and addresses, bore heavily on Sarano, and he realized he would have to escape detection by the Germans for the safety of the entire community.

The Germans relied thoroughly on these communal lists in various cities for their roundups and deportation of all known Jews to the death camps.

One tragic incident revolves around the Venice list. When the Germans came, they ordered the president of the Jewish community, Giuseppe Jona, to hand over the list. He quickly found a secure place to hide it and then committed suicide before the Germans could get to him.

In Sarano’s diary, we also learn about, and take joy with, the Jewish soldiers from the Land of Israel who fought the Germans in Italy during the Second World War as members of the Jewish Brigade, and helped save countless Jewish lives.

In his introduction, Mazzoli describes the fascinating background as to how this remarkable book came to be written. It is the combination of persistence, good luck and serendipity.

Mazzoli had been looking for information about a good-hearted Nazi officer, Erich Eder, who, in 1944, when the German army had already occupied northern Italy, had at great risk disobeyed orders and helped save local refugees, including Jews, from deportation. Mazzoli had read a few details in a memoir written by an Italian friar and wanted to contact Eder, but in vain.

Then, through a series of coincidences, he ran across the three Sarano sisters and learned about their father’s diary. It is here that Mazzoli learned more about the humane German officer, whose family back home in Bavaria had also saved a Jewish woman by hiding her in their house.

When the Sarano sisters became acquainted with Mazzoli, they entrusted him with their father’s precious manuscript with the touching words, “These pages have been waiting for you.” And then Mazzoli spent several years reading and notating the diary.

In We Are Here! We Are Alive!, we learn how ordinary peasants and kindly friars in the small town of Mambroccio and other places were able to thwart the Nazi plan of total annihilation of the Jews by hiding them in remote villages and sustaining them until liberation. There is even a moving description of how the Sarano family, with the help of the villagers, was able to celebrate a seder while in hiding.

Sarano served for decades as the secretary of the Milan Jewish community, until he made aliyah in 1969. That year, some 25 years after the events, in the town of Bnei Brak (near Tel Aviv), a memorable, emotional reunion took place, when Padre Sante Raffaelli, the friar who was instrumental in saving the family, visited the Saranos.

We Are Here! We Are Alive! is a must-read, enthralling book. It is so beautifully translated from the Italian by Kelman that one would think this diary was originally written in English.

Curt Leviant’s most recent novels are Tinocchia: The Adventures of a Jewish Puppetta and The Woman Who Looked Like Sophia L.

Costumed counting fun

Ten Purim Bears: A Counting Book for Purim introduces kids to Purim, numbers 1-10.

Fans of Once a Bear: A Counting Book by Ron Atlas (words) and Zach Horvath (illustrations) will be happy to find that their bear friends have returned – this time, in Ten Purim Bears: A Counting Book for Purim. Both 24-page board books are published by the Collective Book Studio, which has produced several well-written and -designed books reviewed by the Independent.

Ten Purim Bears features all the same adorable bear characters as the first book, and follows the same format. Each scene spreads over two pages, with the numbers one through 10 written out on top and appearing numerically on the bottom, as borders. In the middle are 10 chairs, the first scene with mostly empty chairs, except for the one on the far left, where sits a baseball-costumed bear wondering, “Where is everyone?” As we progress through the story, we get more bear bums on seats, each dressed in a different costume. As each new bear enters, the new number of bears is highlighted in white on both the top and bottom borders.

image - Adi, bear #6, takes her seat in Ten Purim Bears: A Counting Book for Purim by Ron Atlas (words) and Zach Horvath (illustrations), published by the Collective Book Studio — Adi, bear #6, takes her seat in Ten Purim Bears: A Counting Book for Purim by Ron Atlas (words) and Zach Horvath (illustrations), published by the Collective Book Studio.

Directed to readers up to 6 years old, their reader-helpers will enjoy a laugh or two, as well. For example, Flor, “who lives next door,” sits down and says, “I’m saving a seat for my friend.” Turning the page, Pete, “from down the street,” has sat next to Flor, saying: “I’m the friend.” I hear him doing it in a deadpan voice and it makes me chuckle every time.

There are two short narratives for each scene – one introducing the next bear and the bears talking among themselves. It’s a nice touch, kind of like having a parent narrator and then the kids’ views on things. As we are told by the narrator that Adi’s sister, Mandy, “brought some sweets – lots and lots of Purim treats,” we see Mandy handing them out: “There’s some for everyone,” she says. “Thank you,” says her sister. The hamantaschen that Amari Bear baked to share with his friends are his favourite, he says, while Adi agrees, “Yum!”

Kids learns not only how to count, but a bit about Purim and its traditions. Sharing, politeness and a sense of community are encouraged. As is a sense of fun, with the various costumes. And the arts! The bears have all gathered to watch a Purim spiel, of course. And we get to see a scene of the play, with quadruple-threat performers – acting, dancing, singing and playing instruments – looking like they are having a good time. The 10-bear audience certainly is.

Ten Purim Bears and Once a Bear can be purchased at thecollectivebook.studio. Check out the publisher’s website further when you’re there, as there will no doubt be another book or two you’ll want to add to your collection.

Jews against Spanish fascism

The new historical novel by Vancouver writer David Spaner, Keefer Street, is as much about the idea of Keefer Street as it about the real East Vancouver avenue. This is appropriate, because the book is a reflection on the Spanish Civil War and its Canadian, especially its Jewish, volunteers. For the dead and the survivors, the war was a living hell. But for the survivors and anyone else with a direct or inherited memory of the 1936-39 conflagration, it is an idea. It has been called the Last Great Cause – and that is the underpinning of Spaner’s story.

Spaner takes part in the Feb. 26 JCC Jewish Book Festival event Jewish Fiction from Western Canada, in which Saskatchewan writer Dave Margoshes (A Simple Carpenter) is also featured.

Keefer Street toggles back and forth between the Spanish Civil War and a 1986 reunion of fighters and hangers-on (with occasional detours to family vignettes in other eras and areas). The storyline follows veterans of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the ragtag Canadian volunteers who made their way to Spain in direct defiance of their own government, joining American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, as well as French, Poles and others signing on in a pre-Second World War proxy against Hitler and Mussolini and their Spanish incarnation, Francisco Franco.

The narrator, Jake Feldman (later Jack Fields), is a Mac-Pap from the neighbourhood – that is, the Strathcona area of East Vancouver, specifically Keefer Street, where waves of immigrants have planted their first roots in Canada. By the time we join Feldman’s spirited (if predictably stereotypical) Jewish family, Strathcona’s Jews have already begun moving to the Oak Street corridor and its environs, but the Jewish element remains prominent among the multicultural milieu of the area.

Spaner, who has written extensively about Vancouver’s left-wing (see Solidarity: Canada’s Unknown Revolution of 1983, jewishindependent.ca/history-of-left-coast), list-ticks a raft of momentous and minor Vancouver signposts and events, including Stanley Park’s hollow tree, the Sylvia Hotel’s Jewish roots, the lost, lamented Woodward’s flagship department store, Theatre Under the Stars (still going), Eastside firebrand Rose Barrett and her boy Dave, the Carnegie Library turned Downtown Eastside community centre, and the blacklisted singer Paul Robeson singing at the Peace Arch for binational audiences.

Obscure local trivia is also tucked into the pages. The Industrial Workers of the World got their nickname Wobblies here in Vancouver. David Oppenheimer, Bavarian Jew, became the city’s second mayor and has an eponymous park in the Downtown Eastside where the fictional Feldman family frolics. Local gal Sadya Marcowitz became Mary Livingstone and married Jack Benny, going on to become a major radio star.

More momentous local events are introduced, including the On-to-Ottawa Trek, the 1935 Ballantyne Pier riots and the upheaval around the visit of the Nazi warship Karlsbad earlier that year.

The life of Jake/Jack takes on a bit of a Forrest Gump feel with his uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, such as when he just happens to be watching an amateur baseball game in Toronto when Nazis descend in what we know now as the infamous antisemitic (and anti-antisemitic counteroffensive) Christie Pits riots.

Keefer Street is sometimes a didactic (perhaps necessarily, given the times) 101 on antisemitism in Canada, including Toronto’s Swastika Club and Quebec’s philo-fascist Adrien Arcand.

The flashbacks feature the parents’ hardscrabble migrant experience and their engagement in the shmata and fur trades, as well as the moderately idyllic life of Vancouver kids and teens in the 1930s. Apparently before the advent of Netflix, something called “shooting pool” was a popular pastime.

Hindsight allows Jake to reflect on the legal proscriptions against enlisting with a foreign militia, then the social ostracism on their return due to the associations of Spanish partisans with communism, then McCarthyism, then the apathy and ignorance of the Me Generation and its aftermaths, in which successive generations don’t know the role the Spanish Civil War or its belligerents played in 20th-century history.

The 1986 reunion allows for the exploration of the emotions of former fighters, wondering what their impacts were and what their lives have become.

Jews played a major role in the Spanish Civil War, as Keefer Street’s central protagonists demonstrate. This was understandable as a first military salvo against fascism, but Spaner illuminates another massive historical consonance that may be overlooked.

“Along with everything else the Civil War stood for, it meant a Jewish return to Spain after centuries in exile,” says one of the characters at the reunion. “During the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th century, the country’s considerable Jewish population, though it had lived there for eons, was given the choice of conversion or expulsion. Many were expelled. In the 1930s, Jews returned to Spain, volunteering in disproportionately large numbers – over half of the American nurses, for instance, from a country three-point-something percent Jewish. One personal note. In 1937, I crossed the same ocean going to Europe that my parents had fled across, coming from Europe just a generation earlier. My parents fled the barbarism of pogroms, inquisitions. I came back to fight it.”

Says Spaner through his character Jake: “Funny how a short time can define a lifetime. For a lot of the volunteers, the Spanish Civil War years are the big memory but, when you think about it, the war lasted less than three years. I was there about a year-and-a-half and so much of it’s a blur.”

The JCC Jewish Book Festival runs Feb. 22-27. For tickets and the full schedule, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

How Jews are indigenous

Last month, Ben M. Freeman spoke about his latest book, The Jews: An Indigenous People, as part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2024/25 speaker series. (PR photo)

Ben M. Freeman, founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, spoke from his home in London, England, about his work and ideas in a Zoom webinar on Jan. 12. Titled Building Jewish Pride and Recognizing Jewish Indigeneity, the virtual event was hosted by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple.

The author of Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People and Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride, Freeman’s latest, The Jews: An Indigenous People, will be released this month.

Freeman began by calling into question the perception that indigeneity implies people who have lived on the land and are primitive or oppressed.

“I have great issue with that because the idea of those things being inherent is to destroy the great diversity of the indigenous experience,” he said.

The United Nations, he explained, set up seven criteria used to determine the indigeneity of a people to a particular land. Freeman, in his writings and talks, argues that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel even by the UN’s criteria.

“[The UN] also created rights for indigenous people: the ability to have self-determination, the ability to practise your own religion, have your own language, all of these different things. But, again, many of them are still rooted in this idea that indigenous people are inherently oppressed,” he said.

“We’re not here to say that indigenous people have not experienced oppression. That would be ludicrous. Many indigenous groups do experience that, but we can’t necessarily say these things are inherent….”

To view certain groups as only victims, he contended, strips them of agency. Freeman would define an indigenous people, rather, as a group whose collective identity begins in one specific land, and it is in that land they remain rooted either physically, spiritually or culturally.

“This is their home and is where they originated, developed and continue to be fixed through a connection to the environment and natural resources, living systems, culture and practice as a people, irrespective of their sovereignty in the land,” he said.

This definition, Freeman believes, not only applies to Jews in Israel but also refers to the experiences of the Maori in New Zealand and First Nations in Canada, and other peoples in other countries.

From his perspective, Jews were a small group of tribes that developed into a civilization over time. The Torah played a large part as it codified Jewish civilization by taking practices that already existed, reshaped some of them and retold some of the stories, creating a culture that contains religion.

“Almost all the practices were rooted in the land. Pesach was two different festivals: one was a matzah festival and one was a sacrifice festival. Rosh Hashanah, our new year, was the beginning of the agrarian year. Shavuot is an agricultural holiday,” Freeman said.

“One of the odd experiences of being Jewish is that we exist in this cognitive dissonance almost because we will describe ourselves officially in many ways as a religion, but then we have so much of our practice rooted in land.”

Freeman also put forward that a distinguishing characteristic of Judaism is that, unlike Christianity, it can be a religion but not exclusively a faith or creed.

“Christianity has creed. My partner is a Christian and I sometimes ask him, ‘Could you be a Christian without believing in Jesus?’ And he’s like, ‘no.’ We don’t have that,” said Freeman. “That’s why you can have atheist, secular or agnostic Jews who are part of Am Yisrael. There is nothing we have to believe to be Jews.”

Freeman went on to discuss Jewish pride, which, for him, bears three central tenets. The first is to encourage and empower Jews to reject the shame of antisemitism – to wear one’s Jewishness as a badge of honour.

The second point is to repudiate non-Jewish definitions of Jewish identity.

“I just feel it’s so egregious to me that non-Jews think they have a right to tell us what it means to be Jewish or any aspect of that experience. This is my identity. I will tell you what it means to be a Jew,” he said.

The third tenet is for Jews to go on a journey to explore their identity through a Jewish perspective. “We have to be able to say this is who we are,” he said, “but we have to humbly accept that takes time. We need to be doing real work to investigate our Jewishness and then, most importantly, [do it] through a Jewish lens.”

Freeman is scheduled to travel to Canada in March to discuss The Jews: An Indigenous People, with appearances in Toronto, Windsor and Edmonton. His schedule may include stops in Ottawa and Vancouver, as well.

Next up in the Kolot Mayim 2024/25 lecture series, on March 2, 11 a.m., is Jonathan Bergwerk, author of the Audacious Jewish Lives books, who will speak about Jewish innovators who changed the world. Go to kolotmayimreformtemple.com to register.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Robinson kicks off book fest

The JCC Jewish Book Festival opens Feb. 22 with Selina Robinson talking about her memoir, Truth Be Told. (photo from JCC Jewish Book Festival)

This year’s JCC Jewish Book Festival opens Feb. 22 with Selina Robinson talking about her recently published memoir, Truth Be Told.

Most Jewish Independent readers will be familiar with the events that propelled Robinson to write this book. The first chapter, called “Four Fateful Words,” starts at what some people may think is the beginning – when, during a Jan. 30, 2024, webinar, Robinson said the state of Israel was reestablished on a “crappy piece of land.” But she believes she had been targeted for months.

“It was sloppy language, nothing more, but it provided the Gotcha! for anti-Israel extremists to build a case that I was racist, Islamophobic, intolerant and an evil monster that needed to be canceled,” she writes.

“In an ideal world, it would have been the extremists who were dismissed, not me. In an ideal world, we would be blessed with leaders who can differentiate between right and wrong.”

Truth Be Told covers the fallout from her comments. Premier David Eby initially seemed prepared to stand by Robinson, but the political pressure – including from a group of Muslim clergy who threatened the NDP’s access to Muslim voters unless Robinson was dismissed – soon led to him firing her from cabinet, though he never used the word.

“I told the premier that if he wanted my resignation, I would give it to him, but he needed to ask for it,” writes Robinson.

“In the end, he didn’t fire me and I didn’t resign, although the undeniable conclusion of the call was that I was no longer in cabinet.”

After taking some time to absorb the situation, Robinson rallied.

“As part of my t’shuvah [repentance], the premier asked that I make a series of calls to Muslim community leaders,” she shares. “I began to think: What if I could engage with these groups and bring the Jewish community and the Arab and Muslim communities together in some way? These two heartbroken communities, both fearful for their families overseas and feeling powerless to effect change, could find commonality in that shared experience, at the very least. Action is always an antidote to hopelessness and helplessness. I could do this as part of my role as an MLA and the government could take credit for doing something meaningful that makes a positive difference for both these aching communities. For me, this would be a profound form of redemption, of t’shuvah, and also of tikkun olam [repair of the world].”

But this ray of light was soon extinguished, the idea being deemed “too political.”

“I knew in that moment that this was no longer my place, no longer my government, no longer my political party,” writes Robinson. “A place and a party where I belonged would recognize the opportunity for someone who was seen to have transgressed to do some good. My place, my party, would recognize the value of bringing people together. A place where I belonged would not be afraid to try something unique and potentially powerful.”

Robinson quit the NDP and finished her term as an MLA as an independent. She was going to retire anyway, but this was not how she wanted her political career to end.

And it was quite a career. With a master’s degree in counseling psychology, Robinson spent most of her working life as a family counselor and in senior roles in various social service agencies.

“I never planned to enter politics,” she writes. “The first real engagement I had was speaking to Coquitlam City Council, my hands shaking, in support of an emergency cold weather refuge for homeless people proposed by a church in my neighbourhood.”

One of the councilors suggested she run for council, and she did. She was elected to Coquitlam City Council in 2008 and reelected in 2011. Truth Be Told gives readers a glimpse of what that experience was like, what Robinson accomplished as a councilor, and more. We find out how and why she made the leap to provincial politics in 2013 – a decision in which the late John Horgan played a pivotal role. The memoir is dedicated to Horgan, for whom Robinson had great respect and a close relationship. As premier, Horgan was the one who appointed Robinson minister of finance after the 2020 election that gave the NDP a majority government. She held that position through COVID, the government managing to file budget surpluses despite the challenges the pandemic brought.

“What saddens me right now is that people are losing faith in government,” writes Robinson. “That is especially distressing because if anything should have renewed people’s faith in government, it was the collective response to the pandemic.”

When Horgan stepped down as premier in 2022 because of the toll his cancer treatments were taking on him, Robinson began to more seriously reflect on her own future. She had been in public service for so long, she wanted to spend more time with her family. In Truth Be Told, we learn more of her own fight against cancer – a fight that started in 2006, a fight she seems to have won, finding out on Oct. 6, 2023, that her cancer had disappeared. The celebration was short-lived. That evening, news started coming in of Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel.

Robinson’s ambivalence about running for reelection was one of the reasons she didn’t pursue the party leadership vacancy Horgan’s departure opened. Other candidates bowed out, and Eby was anointed the new leader of the BC NDP and became premier in November 2022.

Robinson calls herself an “eternal optimist,” and that attitude has served her well. Despite being effectively demoted by Eby after he became premier, Robinson threw herself into the position of post-secondary education and future skills minister. It is interesting to read about some of the issues in that sector, and of the other portfolios Robinson held, as well as get some insider knowledge of how politics works and about the personalities of the people who represent us.

The crux of Truth Be Told is Robinson’s “four fateful words,” the reactions to them, and what was said and done – or, more importantly, what was not said and what was not done. Many of her colleagues were “quiet allies,” not willing to speak out.

“There are lessons from my experience that transcend my personal story,” she writes. “There are lessons for our democracy about the necessity to stand up to coercion from interest groups and harassment from mobs. There are lessons for leaders about how to act (and how not to act) when presented with choices between what is easy but wrong and difficult but right. There are lessons about speaking up rather than remaining silent.”

Truth Be Told is about a person doing what they passionately believe in, a person living their values – some of which were instilled at Camp Miriam, where Robinson was a counselor in her youth – and trying to make what they feel are positive contributions to the world.

Given what happened to her, Robinson could be forgiven for giving up and going quietly into obscure retirement. But that’s not who she is. She asks Canadians to have the courage to speak up, while recognizing that we should not “kid ourselves that a millennia-old problem will be resolved in a day.” She ends her book with calls to action, suggestions of what we each can do to counter antisemitism, as Jews (for example, don’t hide, “engage respectfully or not at all” and don’t give up) and non-Jews (speak up and engage with Jews, among other things), and as a society (for instance, protect students and nurture real inclusion). She includes some resources for readers wanting to explore various topics more.

In the “Final Reflections” chapter, Robinson writes, “We will never be perfect. The world will never be faultless. But repairing the world must always be our guiding star. Our reach must always exceed our grasp.”

Profits from the sale of Truth Be Told will be donated to the Parents Circle-Families Forum (theparentscircle.org/en) and Upstanders Canada (upstanderscanada.com).

The JCC Jewish Book Festival runs Feb. 22-27. For the full list of events and participating authors, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.