Arts & Culture – Page 104

Bursting with colours and joy

Artist Lauren Morris at the opening of her solo show, Dressed in Colour, at the Zack Gallery Jan. 25. (photo from Lauren Morris)

Dressed in Colour, Lauren Morris’s new solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, perfectly reflects the artist’s relationship with the world. “Everything about me is colour,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “Colours bring this show together.”

This is Morris’s second solo show at the gallery, the first having been in 2015. She is known for her vivid flowers and colour-infused compositions.

“I always explore new colours, always learn, always take new photos. Living in Vancouver makes me want to paint even more colours,” she said.

Inspiration has not always come easily, though.

“About five years ago, I took a sabbatical. I didn’t paint for more than a year, didn’t know what to paint. I was stuck,” she said. “Before that period, I always used someone else’s vision as a starting point: photographs I found online, other artists’ pieces. But it stopped working for me. Then, I realized that it doesn’t matter what I paint. I began taking my own photographs. Now, I base everything I paint on my own experiences. I love nature, I enjoy flowers, and it all comes out in my art.”

Influenced by nature, Morris creates large canvases where colours, shapes and light intertwine into unique flowery abstractions, beautiful but never photographic or even realistic. Her flowers come from her imagination, with depth and texture adding meaning. “There is always something mystical in my paintings, something unknown,” she said. “A lot is going on in every picture, and the multiple layers create reflections.”

Morris paints with acrylics, but this medium, despite its growing popularity, has its quirks. “Acrylics dry fast, and they often become dull when dry,” she explained. “To brighten the images, I use varnish on top of acrylics. Varnish makes the magic come out. People even ask me if I paint in oils.”

photo - “Water Lilies” by Lauren Morris — “Water Lilies” by Lauren Morris.

Her flowers are larger than life. One can’t even see the overall image until one is at a distance from the work. “When I paint, I often stand back a lot,” Morris said of her creative process.

For her, a painting is never finished until it is no longer in her possession. “Yesterday, I saw something wrong in one painting in this show,” she said the day before the exhibit’s opening night. “Something bothered me, so I brought my paints and touched it up.”

Sometimes, she starts a painting with a preconceived image, but, like living things, her pieces frequently have a mind of their own. “My paintings often surprise me, and I always allow them to happen,” she said. “If I planned something else, but the image evolved somehow, I find it fascinating. If something doesn’t work, I fix it. I don’t have an anxiety. I don’t fear the canvas.”

Morris trusts her intuition, and it makes her paintings vibrant. It also makes her an excellent teacher. Lately, she has been teaching adult art workshops at the Designers Collective. “Most of my students are beginners,” she said. “They come to the workshop and they’re unsure. They think they can’t paint. I teach them not to be afraid. I bring art to people. I tell them: there are no mistakes in art. It’s not about technique. Art is a self-exploration. If you don’t like something you already painted, we’ll cover it up with something new. Maybe the old image will peek through, like a reflection of something different…. I try to make people believe in themselves. It’s almost a therapy class.”

She applies the same approach of playful exploration to her own work, fearlessly searching for beauty in her art. “I’m never bored when I paint. My art excites me. I get absorbed by my paintings,” she said happily.

Morris’s canvases seem to thrum with the strands of silent music, a quiet serenade of water lilies in a deep-green pond or a loud trumpeting from the white, extravagant bouquet exploding with elation.

“Before, I always listened to classical music when I painted, but, a few years ago, I stopped,” she said. “Now, I paint in silence. I still love music, but not when I paint. Maybe, it happened because there is so much noise around us, with the internet and the city life.” She doesn’t want the ambient noise of the urban sprawl to interfere with her paintings. “I want to create a mood,” she said. “I want to make people happy.”

Not surprisingly, people find delight in her paintings. In the past five years, she has been participating in the Eastside Culture Crawl, and sales – a challenge for any artist – have been encouraging. She has donated several of her paintings to various medical establishments around Vancouver, and her website also gets lots of traffic.

Her commissions have become almost a business, and she treats them as such. She starts practically every day with a few hours in her studio. “Each painting becomes a project to complete,” she said. “When clients come to me with a commission, my interior designer’s background kicks in. They have a vision of what they want: a size, a shape, a place on a wall in their home. I understand someone’s vision. It doesn’t make me feel constricted. If I’m able to get their vision right – the size, the colour scheme, the overall impression – I’m glad.”

Dressed in Colour is on display until Feb. 24. For more information about Morris and her work, visit lmdesignsstudio.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Peek behind the stage

Left to right: Ryan Beil, Megan Leitch and James Fagan Tait in Jitters. (photo by David Cooper)

Let’s hear it for the play-within-a-play, the vehicle that takes the audience from front-of-house to backstage dressing room, into the psyche of live theatre, chock-full of clever lines, employing slapstick that isn’t overdone and providing first-rate acting and laughs from beginning to end. Jitters is simply a great way to spend an evening.

Similar to Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, which ran at the Playhouse in 2004, Jitters – presented by Arts Club Theatre – follows the launch of a new performance (The Care and Treatment of Roses) from chaotic on-stage rehearsals to backstage conflict and confusion. But, whereas Noises relies on physical comedy, Jitters is more about the frailness and insecurities of actors, particularly Canadian actors who see the United States as a means to success.

In Jitters, the playwright, director and (almost) entire cast are hoping their play will be brought to Broadway by an American producer who may or may not be in the audience.

The play gets its name from opening-night jitters, as director George is doing his best to open Roses on time with the whole cast in attendance – not an easy thing to do when one actor ends up in hospital, another shows up drunk and a third simply walks out. Like a coach in the dressing room at half-time, George’s tactics include mollycoddling, pleading, motivating, scolding, ego-stroking, pacifying and all-around sucking up to get his actors in line. And each one needs a different kind of hand-holding.

Though she is fawned over as the star of Roses, diva Jessica (Megan Leitch) still has self-doubt, but George’s attempt to boost her confidence falls on deaf ears. “You look gorgeous,” he tells her in dress rehearsal.

“Liar! I look like a Barbie doll for octogenarians,” she hisses.

And, in a hilarious moment, George asks, “Can we discuss this like adults?” she answers, “We aren’t adults; we’re actors.”

Then there’s Phil (James Fagan Tait), the neurotic shlemazl who starts every sentence with, “I don’t want to burden you,” before complaining about his wardrobe, his hairpiece, his life and the fact that there is no prompter (as he tends to get ulcers at the thought of forgetting his lines); Patrick (Robert Moloney), the acrimonious, jealous co-star who would rather be a big fish in Canadian theatre than risk failure on Broadway; and Tom (Kamyar Pazendeh), whose novice uncertainty is a refreshing contrast to the other actors’ cynicism. Tom is going to be a great actor because “he’s got the right combination of empathy and self-absorption.”

Meanwhile, the playwright Robert (played by Jewish community member Ryan Beil – a dead ringer for Eric Idle in this role) is a nervous wreck, wincing and arguing every time his script is changed to indulge the actors.

While Jitters doesn’t highlight physical comedy, as seen in Noises Off, the verbal jousting is far better. The script pillories the treatment of Canadian actors (“Where else can you be a top-notch actor all your life and still die broke and anonymous?”) but it also examines the complexity of the characters who one moment are insulting and backstabbing each other and the next moment hugging in understanding.

The neuroses, capriciousness and insecurities of the actors allow for wonderfully fun performances, but I didn’t find the quality equal across the board. I thought Tait’s hapless encounters and expressive reactions stole the show, while Leitch seemed to be overplaying the part she’s supposed to be overplaying.

Final kudos must go to the set design. The stunning detail of the dressing room after the 360-degree turn of the stage before the second act was so unexpected, it actually drew applause from the audience, which I have rarely seen.

Two jittery thumbs up.

Jitters runs at Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage under the direction of David Mackay (who, by the way, also starred in Noises Off) until Feb. 25. For tickets, visit artsclub.com.

Baila Lazarus is a Vancouver-based writer and principal media strategist at bailalazarus.com.

Chutzpah! opens with Open

Ezralow Dance’s Open comprises many themes. (photo by Angelo Redaelli)

Los Angeles-based Ezralow Dance kicks off this year’s Chutzpah! Festival at the Rothstein Theatre Feb. 15 with, appropriately enough, a work called Open, for its embodiment of myriad ideas and ways in which to express them.

Chutzpah! also features a range of creative expression every year, with performers from around the world in dance, comedy and theatre. As has become tradition, the Jewish Independent will highlight several of the performances prior to the month-long festival. This week, we focus on dance, speaking with Daniel Ezralow, as well as Israel’s Roy Assaf.

* * *

“Open is a testament to what I believe,” Daniel Ezralow told the Independent in an email interview. “When my wife (who collaborated with me) and I were thinking of a title for the show, we played around with a lot of options, but when we came up with the one word Open, it expressed everything that I wanted to say. Be open, open yourself, open to others, open your eyes, open your mind, open your heart and stay open to the world in many senses.

“It was a way of saying, leave your judgments at the door and try, just try, to be open-minded. I find that we are so full of judgment, many times we fail to see the beauty of what is so simple and directly in front of us. I am constantly attempting to open my mind and receive what comes to me. There is a wonderful concept, ‘to want what you get, not get what you want.’ I think Open has something to do with this.”

In his work, Ezralow is certainly open to new ideas and a wide variety of media. In his 40-some years in dance, he has performed with several companies, co-founded others and choreographed for numerous groups around the world, including Batsheva Dance Company, Paris Opera Ballet, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Atlanta Ballet. He choreographed the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics and Cirque du Soleil’s Love. He has created for dance festivals, Broadway shows, gymnastics competitions, television, film, commercials and other corporate projects, awards programs, pop star performances and music videos. The award-winning choreographer, director and multimedia artist has a vast and eclectic resumé, to say the least.

“I remember as a child always asking my father ‘why?’ I asked him why about just about everything. There is no question I am naturally curious,” said Ezralow. “I was once working with Chaim Topol on a project in New York City and we were in a taxi together. I asked him why – why does he work, why does he do the things he does? I’ll never forget the response he gave me. He said, ‘Curiosity.’ At that point, I understood that was the same thing that made me do the things I do. My mother always encouraged me to ask questions and to do what I believed in. I do lose myself in creations, but usually it is not an escape. In my best moments, I also try to live life like a creation and lose myself in it.”

In looking at his body of work, it’s hard to believe that Ezralow didn’t take a formal dance lesson until he was in his late teens, when he was a biology student at University of California, Berkeley.

“Dancing chose me so strong, I had little choice to shy away from it,” he said of his change in career direction.

“At the time, I was deeply disappointed with the American medical system. I felt it had nothing to do with helping people and was mostly about a hierarchy to achieve a status of life. The system was very closed to acupuncture, Eastern ideas and anything alternative. At the time, this made me feel that it was really askew and not for healing and helping people but rather for diagnosing, medicating with pills and cutting in surgery.

“Hopefully, this has changed and we are now entering a period of truer possibilities,” he said. “I just saw a wonderful documentary titled Heal, which delves into the human possibilities to heal ourselves. This is the kind of medicine I would like to get involved with. I also feel that the work I do is healing – dance is healing!”

About his goal as an artist, he said, “As I have grown, I have shed some of my desire to be a performer/exhibitionist and have been humbled with age, which has allowed me to dig deeper to understand that all I ever really wanted was to make people happy. Happy can mean crying, happy can mean laughing, happy can mean many things to me. I really just want to help people to be inspired to live another day of their lives on this planet.”

Ezralow’s father’s family came to Los Angeles via Winnipeg, of all places.

“My grandfather ran from the Russian revolution to Canada and settled in Winnipeg, where my father was born, who was one of a family of five. My grandfather was a carpenter,” he explained. The family moved to Los Angeles, he said, “probably because my grandfather saw there was opportunity. They settled in Boyle Heights, the poor Jewish area of L.A., and he began building houses. One by one, he would build a house, sell the one they lived in and move to the new house. I took a tour of Boyle Heights with my father before he passed away and he pointed out all of the homes my grandfather built and the family had lived in.”

According to the Jewish Journal, Ezralow’s parents met in Los Angeles; his mother was born in Poland, but the family emigrated when she was quite young.

“My mother grew up a Sabra in Palestine, before the declaration of the state of Israel,” he said. “All of my family on her side are still in Israel and I would travel every other summer with my family to Israel, so I am connected by heritage to a people I know intimately from my entire childhood. This has given me a sense of Jewishness as natural and surrounding me.

“In Los Angeles, as well,” he continued, “there is a very strong and permeated Jewish community, which I grew up in and was a bar mitzvah. But, after that, I felt that there was too much dogma in religion. I have worked many times with Batsheva in Israel and still have a deep connection to everyone. I am sometimes sad to see what is happening with the conflict there. But I feel a strong sense of Jewish humanity in my soul. It is something that is universal and not selective to one religion.”

* * *

photo - Roy Assaf Dance’s Six Years Later — Roy Assaf Dance’s *Six Years Later*. *(photo by Costin Radu)*

Roy Assaf is both creator of and a performer in the two award-winning pieces he is bringing to the Chutzpah! Festival, starting Feb. 22.

“I dance in both works, the duet Six Years Later and the trio The Hill,” he said in an email. “Back in 2011 and 2012, when these works were created, it felt perfectly natural for me to choreograph and to dance the work at the same time. Nowadays when I create, it is not at all the obvious choice.”

Assaf was born in Israel, and dance has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. About 15 years ago, he started working with Emanuel Gat, initially as a dancer, then as an assistant choreographer. Assaf’s first choreographed work, in 2005, won two awards at the Shades in Dance competition in Tel Aviv. In 2010, he worked with the Noord Nederlandse Dans company in Groningen, Holland, creating for them a work called Rock.

“I was invited by their artistic director, Stephen Shropshire,” said Assaf about that commission. “The amount of trust that Stephen gave me while working with his company strengthened my belief in myself that I could and should keep making pieces.”

Since then, Assaf has created or co-created works for many other companies, including two full-length pieces supported by the Intima Dance Festival, a work for L.A. Dance Project for the Biennale de Lyon, a collaborative piece for the Royal Swedish Ballet, and a piece for the Gothenburg Ballet. This past fall, he began creating 25 People, working with third-year Juilliard students in New York City, where he was on faculty for a semester, which he is resetting with dancers in Israel.

For Assaf, dance is not simply art for art’s sake.

“I would like to give people room to imagine,” he said. “It’s certainly not about distracting people – I really hope we are in the business of encouraging or facilitating engagement in one’s own life. What a pity it would be if dance principally served to distract or disconnect someone from his or her experience. Please do come to a performance and be fully yourself there – see what you see, recognize what you recognize, run with your fantasies, meet your uncomfortable places.”

The duet Six Years Later explores the relationship between two people who have come together after having been separated for a long time, while The Hill is a commentary on war, based on the Hebrew song “Givat Hatachmoshet,” about a particularly devastating battle that took place during the Six Day War in 1967, a battle that Israel won but with great losses.

Despite the different subject matter, Assaf has described both pieces as having a lot in common.

“They share a spine, in terms of physical material,” he explained. “If you look closely, you may discover that they are both dealing with much of the same movement – but that the same movement has undergone a very different treatment in each work. You might say they share a point of origin, but parted ways in their process. Each work followed a path to its logical conclusion. Both, however, deal with the story of human touch: its effect, its consequence.”

For all of the Chutzpah! dance offerings and the full festival schedule, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

The greatest Jewish novel?

What strange quirk brought it about that what may be one of the greatest and most Jewish of Jewish novels should be written not by a Diaspora Jew, nor an Israeli Jew, nor a Diaspora Jew who had made aliyah, but rather an Israeli who relocated to New York?

Further stymying expectations, Ruby Namdar did not write this novel in English, but in Hebrew (it was recently translated by Hillel Halkin). “For who?” asked an audience member at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival event on Nov. 26, when I had the pleasure of interviewing Namdar in front of a small gathering. If Namdar wanted his novel, which he acknowledged to be soundly in the lineage of Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, to be read by New Yorkers, why write it in Hebrew? If he wanted the novel to make sense to Israelis, why write it about a rootless Diaspora Jew with no connection to Israel?

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” said Namdar, “I don’t know who I was writing for, I just wrote.”

The Ruined House is not just a great Jewish novel or a great novel in modern Hebrew. It possesses a structure that is at once talmudic and kabbalistic, a structure that is deep and intricate yet carried off with such a sense of understatement and naturalness, effortlessly unfolding within Namdar’s lucid, lyrical and vivid prose, that most English-language reviewers thus far have not fully noticed it. This structure is what gives the novel its profoundly Jewish resonance, which is at once modern and ancient, rootless and anchored in the archetypal depths of Jewish experience and textuality.

Talmudic structure

The Ruined House is divided into seven books, with its seventh book being the culmination of an obviously Jewish numerical pattern. Each book follows the anti-hero, Andrew P. Cohen, over the course of one year of his life, as he enters what seems to be a midlife crisis from hell (or perhaps from heaven).

Cohen is a successful and wealthy professor of comparative culture, who lives in an idyllic Manhattan high-rise with a view of the river, a pristine Apollonian realm in the skies. He has a beautiful young lover, Ann Lee, and an adoring group of followers and acolytes. He cherishes his controlled, harmonious and detached existence, which he has gained through leaving his wife and two daughters years before.

At the end of the first six sections of the novel are a few pages of text designed to look like a blat Gemara, a page of Talmud. The central text in these inserts tells the story of a high priest preparing and executing the Yom Kippur sacrifices. While he does so, he is watched by Obadiah, a humble Levite who wonders whether the priest is truly pious or just a functionary in league with the elite. Encircling the narrative are passages from the Talmud, Mishnah and Tanakh, which describe the laws, folklore and spiritual significance of the high priest’s duty. They also feature key excerpts from Shaarei Gilgulim (The Gate of Reincarnation), a kabbalist text written by Chaim Vital (1542-1620) to expound the cosmology of his master, the Ari HaKodesh, Isaac Luria (1534-1572).

The insertion of these texts is deliberate and precise. Just as the narrative in the inserts is flanked by canonical Jewish sources, the narrative of the novel is surrounded by ancient Jewish forces. As the hidden, broken nature of Cohen’s life begins to surface, he begins to have intense, waking visions of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. His dreams turn nightmarish, alternating between repressed guilt at his betrayal of his family and dreadful tableaus of the rape of Jerusalem by the Romans and the murder of Jews by the Nazis.

The structure of the story and the inserts are not the only mirrors in the book: Cohen’s life is cast as priest-like. His elite status; the pure harmonious realm in which he lives; his having separated from his wife like Moses to live in the skies; even the elaborate meat dinners he cooks up for his dinner guests alone in his perfect kitchen all point to it. His name, of course, highlights both the substance and the irony of his life as priestly metaphor. At one point, his daughter, Rachel, disgustedly mocks people who think that Jews named Cohen are descended from the priestly lineage: “Everyone knows they just gave out those names randomly at Ellis Island.”

As Cohen descends into apparent madness, a grotesque version of the priestly sensibility gets stronger in him. He becomes morbidly obsessed with the impure and averse to the physical, the decaying and the dead. He finds himself horrified by menstrual blood and semen. The explanation of this growing claustrophobic sensibility lies in the paragraphs of Shaarei Gilgulim, which are included in Namdar’s inserts.

Kabbalist elements

Shaarei Gilgulim describes the way that some souls, during the process of reincarnation, unite with other souls in order to complete their own tikkun (repair). In the first pages of The Ruined House, “one shining soul, the figure of a high priest” is suddenly visible above New York among the celestial machinations momentarily revealed as the veil is briefly sundered. The key to the priest’s identity lies in the kabbalist doctrine of ibbur, or impregnation, where a soul from beyond enters into an earthly person in order to help them, to complete their own mission, or some combination of the two. In Cohen’s case, as suggested in a last talmudic insert, he has been “impregnated” by the soul of the high priest in need of tikkun for feeling himself superior to Obadiah, the humble Levite. The high priest and Cohen share a sin in common: arrogance. Their collective confrontation and reckoning with it will be psychically violent and cathartic and come close to doing Cohen in.

Critique of Diaspora?

Some reviewers have read The Ruined House as a critique of the Diaspora Jew, viewing the narrative as a kind of punishment of Cohen, enacted on him by the rising tide of archaic Jewish intrusions into his life. Namdar said this is a moralistic distortion of his ambivalent, questioning text. Instead, Namdar pointed to the shatterings of the illusion of wholeness and perfection that happen in the book. “Where things are broken, there, seeds can take root and grow,” he said.

For example, Cohen’s harmonious life is an illusion that is shattered in the course of the book, leaving a “ruined house.” Yet the figure of the ruined house (bayit asher necharev in the original Hebrew, a phrase that comes from a poem by Yehuda Amichai) is also an allusion to another ruined house, that of the Beit Hamikdash, the Jerusalem Temple, whose pristine world of order and control, Namdar suggests, also was illusory.

The third ruined house is suggested by the timing of the events in the novel. The story begins in the Hebrew month of Elul (signifying its theme of repentance), on Sept. 6, 2000. After the narrative comes to a head on Tisha b’Av, the date of the destruction of the Temple, it jumps from Aug. 1, 2001, to Sept. 18, 2001, leaving a lacuna where Sept. 11, 2001, and the destruction of the Twin Towers, resides.

“I did not want Sept. 11 to appear in the narrative, thus making the novel reducible to being about that event,” said Namdar when I asked him about this. “Rather, I wanted the trajectory to point to its occurrence outside the frame.”

There is much more to talk about in this remarkable novel, which manages at once to be so Jewish, so Israeli, so American and so human. I did not touch here on the attention Namdar lavishes on the details of Cohen’s daily life or Namdar’s subversion of the lineage of Malamud, Bellow and Roth in his intense empathy with the female characters of the novel, and his unsparing deconstruction of Cohen’s narcissistic masculinity. I did not examine his vivid and hilarious slow-motion evocation of a grossly excessive bar mitzvah, or his brilliant parody of the Zionist clichés of a Birthright-like propaganda tour of Israel, and many other delights. I hope this introduction is enough to invite you to step into Namdar’s mesmerizing fusion of a talmudic-esoteric structure with an incandescent evocation of life in Manhattan, and discover what else he has hidden there, of which, I promise you on good authority, there is much.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Celebrating many milestones

Alexandra Gerson, centre, says a few words at a Jewish talent show put on by Radio VERA last year. (photo from Radio VERA)

“I have a dream: I want to bring together Russian-speaking and English-speaking Jews in Canada, to unite them into one seamless whole. All I do, my Radio VERA included, is serving that goal,” said Alexandra Gerson, a co-owner of VERA.

This year, VERA celebrates its 10th anniversary. Timed to coincide with that milestone, the radio station is helping bring the concert Le Chaim to Richmond’s Gateway Theatre on Feb. 3.

“VERA is an acronym of the words Vancouver Jewish Russian Association, in Russian,” Gerson explained. She said VERA’s roots lie in her previous radio program, Russian Voice, a pre-taped one-hour weekly show in Russian, which launched in 2001 with the financial support of David Stevens. The program had mostly Jewish content, but it didn’t last long. From its inception, Gerson said she received multiple antisemitic threats and her car was vandalized. Home-grown Russian extremists were not happy with a Jewish program called Russian Voice, she said, and they kept harassing her. Concerned for her young daughter’s safety, with the police urging caution, Gerson eventually closed the program, but she didn’t give up her love for radio. “You can listen to the radio anywhere, in your car, in your home or office, working or resting,” she mused.

Her radio work brought her into the midst of the Zionist movement in Canada. “I’ve lived in Canada for 24 years,” she said. “My father was a Zionist, and Jewish ideas are dear to me. I’ve always liked being a Jew. I work for the Jews of Canada. I’m an official representative of the World Zionist Organization in Canada, and my Radio VERA is an integral part of my work. It promotes Jewish ideas and is a pro-Israel station. I come to the studio every morning, turn on the microphone, and say, ‘Hello, Jews!’ And feel proud.”

photo - Alexandra Gerson, co-owner of Radio VERA — Alexandra Gerson, co-owner of Radio VERA. *(photo from Radio VERA)*

Gerson’s pride in her Jewishness pushed her towards attending seminars and workshops on Jewish leadership. During one of them, in 2003, she met Dmitry Shiglik, an American businessman and a dynamic figure in the Russian-Jewish world. He became a steady backer of her then-new endeavor, Radio VERA, which broadcasted its first show in 2008.

“VERA broadcasts live five days a week, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.,” Gerson said. “It’s the most expensive time, when everyone is in their cars, heading for work. We exist because of our generous donors: Yosef Wosk, Alex Kivritsky of the HiFi Centre and, of course, Dmitry Shiglik, my co-owner.”

She stressed that VERA is not, and hasn’t been for a long time, a Russian radio broadcast. “It stopped being ethnic years ago. We do interviews about what is of interest to everyone. For example, North Korea is on people’s mind these days, so we did an interview with the editor of the Russian newspaper in Seoul.”

Every morning, listeners of VERA can expect relevant and time-sensitive interviews in two languages: Russian and English. “We do interviews in whatever language our guest prefers,” said Gerson. “Our hosts switch languages fluidly, as the situation demands. We’re the only radio station in Canada, maybe in the world, with such an approach. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Russian- and English-speaking people often have different mentalities, born in different cultures, so we have to use different techniques of conducting interviews.”

VERA, which is part of Fairchild Radio 96.1 FM, has interviewed most Canadian politicians, top people from the Russian and Israeli governments, international performing artists and athletes, writers and musicians. They usually conduct two interviews each show.

“At first, our listeners were almost exclusively local Russian pensioners, listening for the language,” said Gerson. “As we continued our bilingual policy, a middle-aged group joined in for content in both languages. Then we added overseas and non-Russian speakers, who regularly tune in to our programs. In a way, they know us better in the U.S.A. than in Canada. We have listeners in Israel, Russia and Europe. There are two ways to access our programs: live on the radio during the broadcast or online through our website, where we keep the archives of all the programs we’ve done in 10 years. Our site has up to 15,000 visitors a day.”

Despite the large amount of traffic and the work needed to produce a two-hour program five days a week, VERA has only three employees. “Pavel Manugevich and Denis Manzar are both my co-hosts, and Alex Kivritsky is our CEO,” Gerson said. Manugevich “has been with VERA since the beginning; he is a professional journalist. Denis Manzar has been co-hosting VERA programs for two years; outside the studio, he is a lawyer and a documentary filmmaker.”

Through her work on VERA, Gerson personifies a cosmopolitan blend of Jewish, Russian and Canadian. In 2014, she was named Russian-American Person of the Year in the media category. According to its website, the honour is presented by Universal Awards Management and the World Forum of Russian-Speaking Jewry, with support from the American Council for World Jewry. Gerson – the only Canadian to have received the honour – shared her award with American-Russian journalist Victor Topaller, who is also Jewish.

But Gerson isn’t resting on her accomplishments. She is always looking for ways to bring the Jews of Canada together, no matter their points of origin. As an example, three years ago, VERA started a new multi-faceted platform that goes beyond the radio.

“We have our annual sports day,” Gerson explained. “We organize the annual festival of Jewish children’s art and various Jewish holidays. Every year, we take 40 of our listeners on a trip to Israel, and we frequently promote concerts of Jewish performers.” It is in the latter regard that VERA is sponsoring the upcoming gala concert Le Chaim, which is the brainchild of Mikhail Gluz, artistic director of the Solomon Mikhoels Cultural Centre in Moscow.

“I’ve known Mikhail Gluz for several years,” said Gerson. “We first met in Moscow and, afterwards, regularly exchanged emails and swapped ideas. He told me about his new project, Le Chaim, a traveling show of Russian-Jewish performers from Russia, Israel and North America. He wanted to tour Le Chaim across Canada and the U.S., performing in any major city that would offer a venue, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the state of Israel. It is the first such project in Canada organized by Russian Jews in celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut.”

In addition to celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, the concert, which will also feature a documentary and historical footage, commemorates the 20th anniversary of the International Solomon Mikhoels Festival of Arts and is dedicated to International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“When I heard about Le Chaim, I wanted to bring it to Vancouver, to coincide with the 10th birthday of Radio VERA,” said Gerson. “Mikhail was not eager at first. He said it wasn’t a commercially viable suggestion, the Vancouver Jewish community being much smaller than the other cities on their itinerary. But Yosef Wosk supported the idea and donated the money to make it possible.”

One of the performers in Le Chaim, Jewish jazz singer Alla Reed, has visited Vancouver before. “I loved it,” she said on the telephone from Russia. “Other cities have clean air or beautiful nature or thriving culture or receptive audience, but Vancouver has it all together. And it also has wonderful people, like Sasha [Gerson] and her Radio VERA. I look forward to meeting my friends and singing in Vancouver again.”

For more information on VERA, visit veracanada.fm. Tickets for Le Chaim on Feb. 3, 7 p.m., can be purchased via VERA or from Gateway Theatre at 604-270-1812 or gatewaytheatre.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Singing adds to health

Choir director and singer Earle Peach, seated at centre, with members of Highs and Lows Choir. (photo by Kathleen Yang)

For more than 20 years, Highs and Lows Choir has brought music back into the lives of its members. Established as a four-part choral group in the mid-1990s, its mission is the mutual support of singers, in a way that nurtures mental health and wellness. Auditions are not required for new members; musical activities and instruction are built into their weekly rehearsals. The main thing, according to choir director and singer Earle Peach, is “the desire to participate and the willingness to learn.”

Accompanied by pianist Elaine Joe, the choir of about 20 voices practises a wide repertoire of songs, which it performs at numerous venues around Vancouver. In December, the songs were festive and drew on a range of traditions – songs from Christmas in Victorian England, and a Chanukah song from Spain called “Ocho Kandelikas.” Between the seasonal items, the choir performed the satirical “Parking Lots and Strip Malls,” “Blue Moon” and, a favourite with swing bands, “Jump, Jive and Wail.”

“We’ll sing music from any place or time period, as long as it has beautiful harmony and isn’t too difficult,” said Peach of the set list.

The atmosphere at rehearsals is buoyant, even amid the hard work of managing tricky intervals and rhythms, as in, for example “A La Ru,” a Spanish lullaby. The choir sings in a range of languages, performing works in English, Latin, French, Swahili, Ladino and Haitian Creole. The music is “challenging but manageable,” according to Jewish community member Rachel Mayer, an alto singer who is also a member of the choir’s board.

In the break, members talk about upcoming events in the community. In December, the calendar was full of choral visits around town, including two events at Douglas Park Community Centre and a lunch at Carnegie Community Centre. At the end of January, the choir will be singing for the Suzuki Elders and, in February, they will join other choirs at the Home Ground Festival in Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside.

Bass singer Kevin Elwell has managed or co-managed Highs and Lows Choir since 2003, and has been a peer support worker and English-as-a-second-language instructor with Vancouver Coastal Health since 2006. He has seen firsthand the tremendous difference the choir has made in the lives of its members: a difference recognized by the Mayor’s Arts Award, which was given to Peach in the fall of 2017, for community-engaged art. A conductor for three other choirs in the area, Peach is also a performer, teacher, producer and recording artist.

Alaric Posey (bass) described the choir as “the highlight of my week.” Having sung in children’s choirs, he had been away from music for many years before joining Highs and Lows in 2003. This opened the door to a life full of music, as he is now the choir’s assistant conductor and co-manager. He also teaches music and performs with a number of other groups around Vancouver.

The singers explain that, while singing is good for you, the social element is equally important. “There’s more of an effect the more people you sing with. You’re a community with a common purpose,” said Posey.

Academic research confirms the views of the singers. A 2016 article on the neuroscience of singing reports that social singing evolved to serve the needs of early humans. By singing and dancing together, groups shared important information, forged strong social bonds and fended off enemies. While we may not need to scare away predators, our modern brains still benefit from the endorphins released into our bodies as we sing. These endorphins make us happier, healthier and more able to think creatively. Choir librarian Dale Sweet (tenor) sets a good example with his commitment to singing in seven different choirs around town.

While the choir was founded to nurture the mental health of its members, the lows are left at home during rehearsal. The choir is a place to be task-oriented while making music and laughing at the endless stream of bad puns emanating from the conductors. Still, the members always know that others have their backs. True to the choir’s name, soprano, chair of the choir board and Jewish community member Penny Goldsmith observed, “People look out for each other. If someone doesn’t show up, we call them.” Aptly named, the choir helps the spirits of its singers take flight.

The choir sings weekly every Tuesday from noon to 1:45 p.m. at the Unitarian Church at Oak and 49th in Vancouver. New members are always welcome. More information about the choir can be found at highsandlowschoir.ca.

Shula Klinger is an author and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at shulaklinger.com.

Ever-changing job landscape

Prof. Ilana Gershon’s latest book is Down and Out in the New Economy. (photo from Ilana Gershon)

An increasing number of people in their 50s and 60s are needing or wanting to find work – and are finding that next job elusive.

Indiana University anthropology professor Ilana Gershon has been researching the (often unsuccessful) ways in which job seekers look for work. One result of this research is her latest book: Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Long gone are the days that employers just want an extra pair of hands to do a job, said Gershon.

“We used to have an idea of ourselves as workers, in which we imagined we owned ourselves, as if we were property,” she explained. “This was the metaphor – that we were renting ourselves to an employer for a certain period of time and, when the time was over, we’d get ourselves back. The idea of renting ourselves as though we were property really affected the ways you could have particular ideas, of what was a just work relationship.

“So, you thought you could have arguments about whether you should have a 40-hour work week or not, about how much time you should be able to rent yourself to an employer … and people would have legal cases and legislation around the boundaries of work. Should people be paid for putting on a uniform that would make them be work ready or should they put on a uniform in their own time, and should employers only pay for them once they put on the uniform?”

Gershon said this metaphor very much shaped how people thought about what was appropriate and what was not.

“One of the other consequences of that is that unions were able to argue that, in fact, people were not just renting a portion of their day,” she said. “Unions argued that they were renting a portion of their lives and, as a result, the companies owed them health insurance or a pension … that they should be reimbursed for giving over a portion of their lives to the company.”

On the other side of the equation were the companies, which were very interested in ensuring there was some form of company loyalty.

According to Gershon, in the United States and the United Kingdom, after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher took power, respectively, things began to change. People began to imagine themselves as though they were a business – as a bundle of skills, assets, qualities, experiences and relationships that had to be consciously managed like a business. And, as a business, continual enhancement was required.

“When people are entering into an employment contract, that now means they are entering into a business-to-business contract, in which they are offering temporary solutions for market-specific problems a company experiences,” explained Gershon. “So, now you have all these self-help articles that talk about being the CEO of Me Incorporated.

“One of the other consequences of this is people now talk a lot about having a personal brand. Because, if you imagine yourself as a business, then you should have a personal brand, as businesses have brands. So, a lot of the ways in which people understand what the employment contract can now offer them is being shaped by this change in metaphor.”

Gershon’s research on the topic began in 2012, with the interviewing of people around Indiana University and her attending one or two job search workshops available to undergrad students. In 2013/2014, while being a fellow at Stanford’s Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, she did field work in the Bay Area in California.

Not everything regarding the job market is new, she said. “People already know a lot about hiring, because they participated in hiring in their previous workplaces … and they shouldn’t ignore everything that they already know.

“I was trying very hard not to make it a Silicon Valley project,” she said of her research. “I was very concerned about that, because, what I wanted to do was think about the hiring ritual in general. I interviewed people in the Midwest and East Coast about this – not as many people as I interviewed in the Bay Area, but I wanted to check if I saw any difference.

“The major difference I saw was that the people had a very different idea of how much time you should spend at a job. People in the Bay Area thought the ideal time you spend at a job was two to three years. And, in the Midwest, it was something more like seven to 10. On the East Coast, it was more like five to eight.”

According to Gershon, she worked hard to produce an “anti-advice book.” Her aim was to focus the book on the implications of thinking of yourself as a business and how that has changed hiring and affected what employment contracts have become. Further, she wanted to explore how one should present themselves as an employee, and what employers feel are desirable traits in candidates.

One of Gershon’s findings is that the new concepts are now standard fare in all job search workshops.

“People are being told to do this, but people in the trades and blue collar workers don’t seem to find this way of thinking terribly useful yet,” she said. “So, the people for whom it fits their situation best are going to be white collar workers for the most part.”

But, whether or not everyone finds the ideas useful, they are being encouraged.

“People working retail are constantly being told they have to brand themselves,” said Gershon by way of example. “I don’t think this particular way of trying to brand yourself constantly or imagine yourself as a business is making all that many people happy.

“If you haven’t been in the workforce for 15 to 20 years and you’re suddenly going to these job search places where they’re telling you everything is new and the ways you used to look for jobs no longer make sense … it’s all very confusing. I’m offering the context for that, explaining why things might seem new, and what’s genuinely new and what isn’t.

“I think figuring out how to get a job is actually something you have to do specifically for your particular industry,” she added. “People offer a lot of standardized advice, as though there’s a magic bullet that works in every context. What I’m talking about is how not to engage with that kind of standardized advice. Instead, figure out how to do the research so that you can understand those communities on your own.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Life-giving practice

On Feb. 1, Sarah Peyton speaks at Or Shalom on the topic Why Love is Not Enough: Family Heartache and the Path of Repair. (photo from Or Shalom)

Have you ever longed for someone who would be able to listen to you without judgment, to every concern, fear, yearning or hurt you might have? Someone able to hold you in gentle understanding and with deep compassion all the time? Such a person does exist – within yourself. And you can find out how to meet them through the work of Sarah Peyton.

Peyton is a neuroscience educator and certified trainer of nonviolent communication, which was pioneered by American psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg. She will introduce the latest understanding of neuroscience and the part it plays in building social and family relationships in her talk at Or Shalom on Feb. 1, called Why Love is Not Enough: Family Heartache and the Path of Repair. Peyton will show how deep, resonant empathy for oneself and the other can connect conflicting parties, even as the conflict resides within one’s own inner voice of criticism.

I met Peyton in the summer of 2015. My husband was assisting in a nonviolent communication retreat, and I had been asked to facilitate a writing session as a part of it. At the last minute, I painfully withdrew. My mother’s death, less than two years before, had left me paralyzed and in deep grief and mourning. I was not up to the task of supporting anyone, not even myself. Tearfully, I watched as my husband left for the weekend. Miraculously, my husband forgot something he needed and returned home to retrieve it. “Come back with me,” he urged. “Don’t facilitate. Just sit outside, swim, write under the trees. Get well.” I said, “Yes.”

That weekend changed my life. Peyton warmly guided a group of participants in her process of resonant language and connection. Peyton, I would come to learn, had lost her beloved son just the year before. Given that, how was it possible that she could contribute with such presence?

Over the next two years, I worked privately with her, learning about resonant language and how to live it. Last year, Norton Press published Peyton’s first book, Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing. I interviewed her recently, in anticipation of her Vancouver talk.

DAS: What began your work with resonant language?

SP: I began this work when my 33-year-old adopted son was dying. His death took a long time, eight years. His dying began when he had a reawakening of the trauma in his family. I was desperate to save him. I began to learn and practise a way to share life and our experiences, a way to enhance life. We were all sustained by this practice, through his dying and afterwards, through our mourning. Relational language allowed us to find each other through the dark cloud of loss and death. It took me five years to write the book. I began writing it in the last year of my son’s life.

DAS: What is resonant language?

SP: Our brain has two hemispheres, and the structures of each side are different. The language centres of the left brain are instructional-based. They help us to take action, plan and strategize…. Our right brain creates a relational language where you and I are experienced together. Relational language is resonant and is the language of poetry, metaphor, visual imagery, longing, dreaming. Warmth is a way to navigate to this resonant relational right brain and create connection to ourselves and others.

A lot happens in family when we live in a world of doing in our caring for each other. A different way of being together happens in a world of relational language and resonance. This work is the work of awakening remembrance of what it’s like to reclaim our birthright, the birthright of being relational beings in a world of warmth.

What stops us from engaging in this relational right-brain language is fear. We have made, early on in our lives, promises in our hearts to prevent pain or disappointment in and for ourselves. When we recognize our own fear and the ways that we closed our hearts, we’ve taken the first steps to remember what we have forgotten. We will be reminded of what we know and have lost. We’re learning what the “garden” in our brains needs. It needs warmth.

DAS: What is your hope for your work and our world?

SP: We’re looking at a world that is split between doing and being. Brain by brain, we can change our world and change our planet. We will look at a world that is not split.

I hope that those who come to our evening will be able to discover a way to listen and know themselves differently, and to discover the pathway to their own warm, beating hearts.

* * *

Though I will always miss my mother, the terrible grey numbing grief has lifted. My heartache has become touchable, a renewal in the richness of my life lived with her. I have learned that being able to touch heartache in its many guises provides us with life-giving renewal in our relationships. Peyton’s relational emotional language is one that continually restores me to compassion and connection, with myself and others.

Dael Adams Segal is a writer and a mentor of writers. She writes midrash and prayer and facilitates women’s-centred Torah study at Or Shalom Synagogue, where she is a member.

Healing after tragedy

Mishelle Cuttler has the challenge of supervising the musical elements of The Events, which features a different community choir every show. (photo from Pi Theatre)

In 2011, while he was out with his son, who was then 12 years old, writer David Greig read the news that Anders Breivik had killed 77 people in Norway – eight using a car bomb in Oslo, which also injured more than 200 other people, and then traveling to the island of Utøya to a summer camp for teens, where he shot and killed another 69 and injured more than 100.

“My son saw I was very affected and, because he was wondering why, I began to try and tell him what the news was and its implications,” said Greif in an interview with BBC Writersroom. “He just kept repeating the question why? why? why? and I found the discussion quickly became very profound, about the nature of evil and whether it is ever possible to understand someone who shoots children for a political reason. I found trying to answer these questions became a compulsion I had to try and understand.”

The result was The Events, which came into being when Greig met producer Ramin Gray at the Edinburgh Fringe. Gray had been having similar thoughts, said Greig. “That meeting made me know it had to be a play.”

It’s a play that has been staged around the world, and presenting it in Vancouver are Pi Theatre and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. After every performance, there will be a post-show discussion and, after the Jan. 17 preview, Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at Vancouver School of Theology, will speak about various aspects of the play.

While its initial questions came from the terrorist attack in Norway, The Events centres on Claire, a priest who works and lives in her community, including leading a community choir. When The Boy attacks that choir, Claire survives the shooting, setting her on a quest similar to Greig’s – and that of most of us, when such a horrific act is committed. She needs to know, why?

There are only two actors in the production. In Vancouver, Luisa Jojic will play Claire, while Douglas Ennenberg will play six characters opposite her, including The Boy, a grief counselor, the shooter’s father, a school friend of the shooter, Claire’s lover, and various others to whom Claire speaks in her effort to find understanding. A unique aspect of this play is that the choir is “played by” real community choirs, who have practised the music (score by John Browne), sing some songs from their own repertoire, and have some lines to read, but are not given the script.

Jewish community member Mishelle Cuttler has the challenge of being the musical supervisor and accompanist for the local show, which is directed by Richard Wolfe.

“The great thing about The Events is that the choirs are given ownership of the music,” Cuttler told the Independent. “We’ve provided each choir director with the material they need to learn, and my job is to facilitate their integration into the show each night…. I’ll be visiting each choir during their regular rehearsals and hearing how they’ve interpreted the music. I’ll talk them through how they will fit into the play, but they don’t ever see the full script. There will certainly be a lot of variables onstage each night, and that’s what makes this piece so exciting. The singers will be witnessing the show for the first time along with the audience.”

And the focus will be on the dialogue and music, without many other distractions.

“There will be a very small amount of recorded sound in the show,” said Cuttler, “but the majority of the aural experience will come from the singers, the actors and one upright piano.”

Pi Theatre has spent several months planning the logistics. “Essentially,” notes the press material, “more than 220 community members from 12 different choirs will participate over the show’s run.”

It also notes that, while Claire “struggles to understand the event that changed her life, we are asked to decide whether love and hope can survive in the wake of an inexplicable act of violence.”

The Events previews Jan. 17 and runs Tuesdays to Sundays until Jan. 28, with evening and matinée performances, at the Russian Hall, 600 Campbell Ave. Tickets ($31/$26) are available from pitheatre.com/the-events.

Perpetrators offers new insights

Who could shoot at close range two million children, women and men who were standing at the sides of graves they had just been forced to dig? And then, when this process proved inefficient, who could herd four million more into cement bunkers and drop cyanide pellets on top of them? Were they monsters?

“Monsters do exist,” Primo Levi once said, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.”

Christopher Browning, in his famous 1992 study of Holocaust perpetrators, Ordinary Men, came to the same appalling conclusion: the killers were simple, middle-class working men, “believing Christians” from all walks of life (including thousands of priests and seminarians), just witlessly and anxiously “following orders” and blindly obeying peer pressure, not, in most cases, virulent antisemites.

The controversial nonagenarian scholar Guenther Lewy, the author of Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers (Oxford University Press, 2017), and son of a camp survivor, begins his new study of Holocaust perpetrators with the same question: “How could such terrible deeds happen in the heart of Christian Europe and among a nation known for its poets and thinkers? What had converted so many seemingly ordinary people into killers, willing participants in what is the worst crime in modern history?”

Lewy’s study is the first English-language volume to make use of the 49-volume collection of 929 German trial records of Holocaust perpetrators recently published by the University of Amsterdam (it is not made clear why the records were not published in Germany). He also draws upon an enormous accretion of “previously untapped” sources such as the 50,000 letters and diaries of Wehrmacht soldiers recently released by German archives, as well as victim recollections and, most importantly, hundreds of trial records of Nazi functionaries, beginning in Nuremberg in 1945 and continuing to the present day. Of the 1,200 citations in the 25-page bibliography and the 600 footnotes, by far most of them are from the late 1990s to the present.

Lewy’s conclusion is similar to Levi’s and Browning’s: the perpetrators were not characteristically sadists or psychopaths, or even necessarily antisemites, but simply obtuse followers of orders, vassals to peer pressure, or simply “ordinary people” trying to advance their careers.

Lewy’s graphic details and conclusions will be familiar to readers of Saul Friedlander’s monumental Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination (2007), but Lewy’s access to the most recent documentation brings some new and important facts to light.

First, the whole notion of a “clean Wehrmacht” can now be dismissed. Lewy proves conclusively that there was close contact between the Wehrmacht and the SS and particularly the 38 “Totenkopf” (“Death’s Head”) divisions of the Waffen-SS: new evidence shows that Jews were “squarely in the crosshairs of the Wehrmacht” and that the number of members of the Wehrmacht who took part in the murder of Jews “is in the tens of thousands.”

Second, Lewy’s close study of the new material available allowed him to conclude that “not a single person who asked to be relieved [from duty in the killing squads] was tried by a military court” and, in fact, “most of their requests were granted.” Lewy found 85 cases of Wehrmacht soldiers who refused to shoot civilians: all were simply transferred to other duties. The significance of this finding, of course, is that it puts the lie to the excuse frequently made by the killers that they “had no choice” and “had to follow orders.” (Lewy points out, significantly, that Yad Vashem has in fact recognized 45 Wehrmacht soldiers as “saviours of Jews.”)

In the sixth chapter of Perpetrators, “Flawed Justice,” Lewy makes his most significant mark. Here, Lewy reveals that, of the 200,000 or so former Nazi killers who, through 2005, were investigated by German authorities, fewer than 10% had charges brought against them; and, of these, only half were convicted. Light sentences were the norm; and only eight of the 2,000 former members of the Einsatzgruppen investigated received life sentences. Most of these examples of “flawed justice,” Lewy concludes, had to do with the fact that so many judges were “tainted” as former party members, and that German law (unlike Canadian law) distinguished between perpetrators and accomplices, usually finding the latter innocent, as they were “only following orders,” that they were only “tools” or were not “unseemingly zealous” in their murderous actions. (Two years ago, German courts finally adopted Canadian/American style “common design,” sharing the guilt between perpetrators and accomplices.)

In his final chapter, “Explaining the Holocaust,” Lewy concludes that nobody, ultimately, can simply give up his freedom. Situation, genetics, conditioning are all significant, but “they do not dictate or determine character.” In fact, recalling how anxiously in 1945 the Nazis strove to cover up what they had done led Lewy to conclude that “even Hitler and the members of his immediate entourage probably knew deep down that they were doing wrong.”

And, as Lewy concludes, in his last sentence, “The fact that so few avoided evil orders remains an ineradicable blot on an entire German generation and a cross that their descendants continue to bear.”

Perpetrators is a valuable addition to a long story, one which may never be conclusively told.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.