Category: Arts & Culture

Retribution and restoration

Hidden in the spine of a 1947 edition of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, in its original Dutch, is a piece of paper with the German words, “Die Vergeltung,” or retribution. (photo by Shula Klinger)

I ran into Richard Smart in North Vancouver in early September. It was at Urban Repurpose, a nonprofit store that sells used building materials and an eclectic mix of donated household items. Many of these items are vintage and, if you’re interested in local history or looking for artistic inspiration, it’s also a treasure trove.

Employing skills handed down over three generations of his family in England, Smart restores and sells antique books using tools that have “barely changed for centuries.” And, since a homeschooling mom never misses an opportunity to educate the children, I asked him if we could come by the Old English Bindery to see him at work. In mid-October, he invited us to see how a broken book could be repaired.

Smart showed us book presses, tools for applying gold leaf to the bindings of books, piles of ancient, beautifully decorated papers and, of course, the books themselves – travel writing, fiction, nonfiction, massive tomes of human anatomy, bigger than any book you’d see in print nowadays. He also applied gold leaf to the kids’ index fingers, which delighted us all.

photo - Het Achterhuis. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl
Het Achterhuis. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. (photo by Shula Klinger)

Just before we left, Smart showed me a small, bubble-wrapped book. I looked down as he held it out. Its title: Het Achterhuis. Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.

“It’s a first edition,” he said. There was a pause, to let this information seep in. He pointed to the front left edge. “I only did minor repairs on it, here.”

I stared at my hands, holding this 1947 edition of The Diary of a Young Girl, in its original Dutch. Looking down, just breathing. Thinking about how, a mere two years before this book was published, Anne and her sister Margot were still alive. In captivity, but alive. Anne was still writing, contemplating the nature of the human soul.

A moment later, Smart pointed to the inside of the spine, where it had separated from the contents. “Look at that,” he said, and pointed to some words in German: “Die Vergeltung.”

“I looked it up,” he said, and here he became animated. “It means retribution. Or payback.”

I was already choking back the emotion of holding this 70-year-old edition of The Diary, but now this?

I asked how the text had gotten there, when the book had come apart, if it had been placed there during the original binding.

“Bookbinders often used scraps of paper to pad the inside of a spine,” he explained. “But to choose this particular piece of paper? Just think about that.”

By then, my head was full of questions, all competing for my attention. Unfortunately, my two children were also competing for my attention. The little one was extremely curious about the book presses, but the big one was edging toward the door. Also, as interested as they are in world history, this wasn’t the time to tell them about the Holocaust, so we left.

Over the next few days, I learned more about the book’s earlier life and Smart’s plans for its future. “This book needs to go back to its community,” he said. When asked if it there had been any fanfare at the Dutch auction, he said, “It was just an ordinary estate sale.”

Since the original dust jacket was missing, Smart has made a case for it. Working to match it to the cover’s original colour, he chose a pale blue leather inlay for the lid and patterned, or “paste,” paper for the sides.

photo - In the spine of this 1947 edition of The Diary of a Young Girl is a piece of paper with the German words, “Die Vergeltung,” or retribution
In the spine of this 1947 edition of The Diary of a Young Girl is a piece of paper with the German words, “Die Vergeltung,” or retribution. (photo by Shula Klinger)

I also wrote to Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Gertjan Broek replied, saying, “There are still a few mysteries around the first edition of Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis.” He agreed that “randomly available” pages from other books were often used to pad spines – “paper was a scarce resource in those years,” he noted.

This was probably the case with the page used in Smart’s edition of Het Achterhuis. Die Vergeltung was published in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1941 and reprinted in 1944. In Broek’s view, the typefaces were a match. Broek didn’t know if this was true for all of the 3,000 books in this first run, but he said he’d ask his colleagues.

A few days – and a good deal of anxious email-checking – later, Broek wrote again. “Three experts in book restoration have told me they have never seen a first edition copy of Het Achterhuis with this kind of print.”

And that is where the story rests, for now. I would love to paint a more detailed picture of the bookbinder at a workbench in 1947. I picture hands cutting out a page of that German book, laying it into the backbone of Anne’s book. Was the bookbinder just doing a job, or taking a degree of satisfaction in leaving a deliberate, but hidden, commentary inside this now-iconic piece of work?

There’s another layer to the tale.

In an age where people are rushing around permanently plugged into an online world, bookbinders like Smart have an unusual job. Every day, instead of racing ever forwards, he steps into worlds that have passed, touches books first purchased by people who haven’t lived for centuries. As he preserves their books, it’s as if he offers a passage between their time and ours.

Amid all of these remarkable works, Anne’s stands out as a beacon. “Books like Anne’s make this work worthwhile,” said Smart, who is keen to sell his copy of Het Achterhuis, but to an organization, not a private individual. “I had an offer on it but I refused it,” he said. “I have my heart set on it going into an institution that will display the story.”

So, in preserving precious books, Smart is doing far more than simply offering a service, repairing material goods. He is acting as a guardian of history.

Smart also wonders about the binder of this copy of copy of Het Achterhuis, “the moment of looking for a spine liner and putting that particular one in. What was going through his mind, in 1947?” On reading this in Smart’s email, I replied that, really, the book was priceless.

Later that day, he emailed again. “This one copy is priceless, as you say. Not financially but historically. Just imagine the story told by everyone that sees this book in a museum. It would bring people in, just to see this, and talk about it. That is worth so much for everyone in this world.”

Responding to my expression of gratitude for his professional conscience, he said, “Faith is everything.”

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

Imagining a different future

ChiZine Publications is preparing to publish a new book: Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history stories, to be edited by Mark Shainblum and Andrea D. Lobel. Contributors already confirmed include science fiction masters Harry Turtledove and Jack Dann.

Shainblum and John Dupuis forged a new trail in Canadian literature in 1998 with Arrowdreams, Canada’s first alternate history anthology. Now Shainblum and Lobel propose to do the same for Jewish literature, and explore the rich possibilities of Jewish roads not taken.

Shainblum was born and raised in Montreal, where he and illustrator Gabriel Morrissette co-created the comics series Northguard and Angloman. Shainblum has published science fiction in various magazine and anthology markets, and he also co-edited Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen, in 2016, with Claude Lalumière.

Lobel has worked as a writer and editor for more than a decade, winning two industry awards. An ordained rabbi, she also holds a master’s in religious studies (McGill University) and a PhD in religion (Concordia University). She has taught at both McGill and Concordia. Her book Under a Censored Sky: Astronomy and Rabbinic Authority in the Talmud Bavli and Related Literature is forthcoming from Brill Publishers in 2018.

Other Covenants is open to submissions of short fiction, through Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018, at 11:59 p.m., Eastern Time. Submissions must be between 1,000 and 10,000 words in length, and may be in English or French (the book will be published in English and authors will be responsible for translations). Original stories are preferred, but the editors will consider reprints of significant works on a case-by-case basis. Payment will be eight cents (Canadian funds) per word. Authors may be from anywhere in the world and do not need to be Jewish.

Many individual stories of Jewish alternate history have been published over the years, but Other Covenants will be the first themed anthology collecting such stories under one cover.

Some possible themes to explore are: What if the Holocaust had never happened? What if Joseph’s brothers had not sold him into slavery in Egypt? What if the state of Israel had been established in Uganda? What if Jesus’s followers had not broken with Judaism? What if Jews had proselytized their faith door-to-door for a thousand years? What if the Romans had not destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple? What if Judaism became the dominant Western religion, but was riven by conflicts between the Temple priesthood and reformist rabbis? What if the Spanish Inquisition had never occurred? What if Napoleon had not smashed down Europe’s ghetto walls?

Full submission guidelines and the online submission system are at chizinepub.com/other-covenants-alternate-histories-of-the-jewish-people. Stories must not be submitted by email – they must go through the submission system.

History is constantly new

Laurence Rees, former head of BBC TV History and author of the award-winning book Auschwitz, has written a very compelling and authoritative “new” history of the Holocaust, based on 25 years of research, and on many personal meetings with survivors and perpetrators – The Holocaust: A New History (Public Affairs, 2016).

The “new-ness” of Rees’ book is evidenced in the 100 pages of footnotes, which contain more than 100 references to “previously unpublished testimony,” plus new evidence from heretofore unrecorded diaries, speeches, stenographic reports, Wehrmacht soldiers’ letters, journals, private conversations and interviews. Add to this the results of “hundreds” of visits Rees made to exact killing locations, all of which have their first exposure here.

As with other great one-volume histories of the Holocaust, such as Martin Gilbert’s The Holocaust (1986) and Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), Rees’ history is difficult to read – not because of the writing (Rees’ prose is more engaging than either Gilbert’s or Hilberg’s) but because of what the reader has to face in reading about the Holocaust. The cold, impersonal, machine-efficient systematization of genocide; the brutality, the humiliation, the sadism and the ear-piercing silence of the church: all are offered here in unremitting detail. The silence of the world-at-large is also indicted here – as one survivor told Rees about her “liberation”: “What liberation? No one wanted us. There was no Israel, no England, no America and no Canada, with its wide open spaces.”

book cover - The HolocaustRees lays his cards on the table in his prologue: “make no mistake about it – the Holocaust is the most infamous crime in the history of the world.” Rees’s words echo almost exactly the words of Winston Churchill in July of 1944.

To his credit, Rees sees through the usual “excuses” for the Judeocide – that is, need for “Lebensraum,” for “ridding of the world of a bacillus” or for the preventing of a Jewish plot for world domination. Rather, says Rees, the perversions which truly fueled the killing machinery were mad racism thoroughly laced with sadism and opportunity for profit.

On the usual controversial points: first, Rees agrees with Ian Kershaw that “No Hitler, No Holocaust”: no one who studies Holocaust history, he says, “can help but conclude that Hitler was primarily responsible for the Holocaust.” Second, Rees sides persuasively with the “functionalists” rather than the “intentionalists,” an old dilemma among historians of the period wrestling with the idea of whether the Judeocide was planned out in advance (“intentionalism”), or just came about piecemeal (“functionalism”). Third, as mentioned, Rees is adamant that the Holocaust was unique: “a crime of singular horror in the history of the human race.”

Rees is particularly, and rightly, harsh on the slavish complicity of the Dutch civil service (75% of the Dutch Jewish population perished) and the atrocious treatment of Jews in Vichy France, and bitterly condemns the hideously self-serving complicity of the Romanians in joining up with the German Nazis. But he saves his bitterest attack for the end of the book, vehemently accusing the Hungarians of a major crime for allowing what he rightly refers to as the “Hungarian Catastrophe.” (Nor does Canada escape indictment: Rees reminds us of Mackenzie King’s loud admiration of Hitler in the late ’30s, and of the antisemitic pronouncements of Canada’s Immigration Branch in 1938, preventing any Jewish immigration to Canada.)

Rees has some interesting insights on the “Danish Rescue” – the spiriting away to Sweden of almost all of Denmark’s Jewish citizens. Jews were thoroughly integrated into Danish society, and there had been a great number of intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews in Denmark. In never-before-published interviews, Rees offers heart-warming evidence of the bravery of Danish non-Jews in warning, hiding and planning passage for their Jewish neighbours. As a result, says Rees, when the Germans called, “most of the Danish Jews were not at home.” Rees offers “no simple explanation of why this happened in Denmark and nowhere else,” but he guesses that the Nazi functionary (Werner Best), known to have warned the Danish police about the upcoming “Action” in October of 1943, may have been motivated by the need to “avoid bad feeling” in a country that was supplying considerable food supplies to the Reich. No less of a motivating factor, Rees further conjectures, was the fact that Best, who had been appointed in his 20s to a judgeship, was intelligent enough to foresee the Nazis’ future defeat and subsequently “needed to start improving his CV as far as the Allies were concerned.”

Rees’ book reminds us, then, that history, ironically, is always “new” – and we are, therefore, reminded to constantly view it, and to re-view it, through ever-changing historical lenses.

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.

Keeping children safe

Bracha Goetz reads from one of her recent books to her two grandchildren. (photo from Bracha Goetz)

Many of us were raised to not talk to and be wary of strangers, but the sad fact is that kids are much more likely to be taken advantage of or abused by someone they know and think they can trust. This reality was the driving force behind Bracha Goetz’s book Let’s Stay Safe, which was published in English in 2011, and just came out in Yiddish this summer, as Zai Gezunt.

Born in Queens, N.Y., Goetz graduated from Harvard and started on the road to becoming a psychiatrist before heading to Israel for what was to be one summer. However, while in Israel, she become observant, and ended up staying. There, she did a further 11 years of study, got married and had a family.

Goetz and her family have since moved to Baltimore, where she coordinates a Jewish Big Brother Big Sister (JBBBS) program. As well, she writes children’s books and, to date, has published 36 of them. “They are all spiritual children’s books,” she said. “Originally, I was just writing Jewish children’s books, but now I’m also writing spiritual children’s books for anybody.

“I always wanted to write spiritual books for everyone, but I just recently found a publisher that was interested. It’s not easy. It took a long time, but I’m very happy to do that, because, although these are Jewish concepts, they are also actually universal concepts that I’d love to share with any child.

“I try to write books that I wished I could have read as a child, to answer the spiritual questions I had as a child that weren’t answered,” she continued. “They were answered for me when I was 22, but I try to write about the deepest spiritual concepts on a simple level so any child can understand them. I also try to do it in a joyful, delightful way, so that it can go right into their soul.”

In her role at JBBBS, Goetz witnesses firsthand how sexual abuse affected children. This made her think about how she was teaching her own children about such dangers.

“I realized that I didn’t raise my children with an awareness about it,” she said. “I taught my children about ‘stranger danger,’ but, when they were little, we weren’t as aware as we are today that, with most sexual abuse, the perpetrators are known to the children; that’s how they get access. It’s rare that it’s a stranger. It’s most commonly someone the child already knows. There was no book like this in the Orthodox community and some of the books (in the general community) are not culturally relevant for Orthodox people.”

photo - Let’s Stay Safe, which was published in English in 2011, and just came out in Yiddish this summer, as Zai Gezunt
Let’s Stay Safe, which was published in English in 2011, and just came out in Yiddish this summer, as Zai Gezunt.

Goetz wanted to write a book that would be accepted by the Orthodox Jewish community specifically, as the subject tends to be less discussed in these communities. So, she wrote Let’s Stay Safe, but could not find a publisher. That is, not until Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, dean and founder of Yeshiva Darchei Noam in Monsey, N.Y., agreed to help and got the book accepted by ArtScroll.

“He really worked at it, and it was a really groundbreaking book,” said Goetz. “There was nothing like it out there. We wanted readers to understand that these were additional normative safety rules that needed to be adhered to by children to be safe. Of course, the book is also for parents, because, when parents read it to their children, they also gain an awareness.

“It’s not a good idea to leave the safety responsibility of children up to the children. It’s the parents’ responsibility. But, the parents also need to teach the awareness to their children and remind them about it every so often. As they come upon new circumstances, they need to review the guidelines.”

To take the book a step further, especially in Chassidic communities, Horowitz spearheaded a Yiddish version. “In certain Chassidic communities,” explained Goetz, “their mother tongue is Yiddish. We wanted to reach as many people as possible, so that they would bring this book into their homes and share it with their children. Even the pictures were altered to be more Chassidic-looking. We don’t want anything to stop the Yiddish-speaking population from getting this information.”

One of the concepts Goetz wanted to stress in the book was that children speak with a parent even if somebody touched them inappropriately a long time ago. It is important for these experiences to be told, she said, so that survivors can heal, and also so that the perpetrators cannot continue abusing children.

Another concept she wanted to convey clearly is not to trust someone just because she or he is dressed in Orthodox clothing, as that does not automatically mean they are safe people.

“There’s one picture of an older teenaged boy at a camp,” Goetz said, by way of example. “Many times, it’s a familial problem, where it’s an older brother, an uncle, a step-brother who is the perpetrator. Just this week, I was in a community different than I was usually in, but the people knew I was the author of the book … and, this happens a lot, people come to me with questions. I was outside watching my grandchildren and a mother came by and said, ‘Does this seem right? There’s a teenaged boy and he’s playing with all these little children. He’s playing ball with them. He doesn’t live in this community. And why is he here? He’s Orthodox, as well, just as the children, but he didn’t know any of them. Why was he playing with them?’ I said that’s definitely a red flag.

“This kind of awareness was not typical before the Let’s Stay Safe book was published. The incident illustrates the impact that the book has had. Now, there is a general awareness in our community, because there has been consciousness-raising on the issue of child sexual abuse.”

Books written by Goetz are appropriate for kids ages 2 and up, but are better starting at the ages of 3 or 4.

“This book is often read to 4- to 8-year-olds but, the truth is, older children love reading this book, too,” said Goetz. “And what I find so interesting is that a lot of children tell me it’s their favourite book of mine, which I never expected because it’s all about rules and guidelines. But, they love it. It gives them a sense of safety and security, and children ask for it as their bedtime story.”

Other books written by Goetz touch upon topics like eating healthily (and enjoying it), teaching children sensitivity, and teaching people how to interact more naturally with children with special needs.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Jersey Boys at Queen E.

The Four Seasons of Jersey Boys sings “Sherry.” (photo from Broadway Across Canada)

The multiple-award-winning Jersey Boys comes to Queen Elizabeth Theatre Nov. 14-19. The musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons was written by Jewish community members Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.

Elice spoke to the Jewish Independent by phone from New York. He and Brickman were friends well before they became writing partners on the musical and other projects.

“We became friends somewhere in the ’90s, 1997-’98, around there, and Jersey Boys didn’t present itself as an opportunity until 2002, although we didn’t really do anything about it until the very end of 2003,” said Elice, noting that the day prior to our interview, Oct. 17, marked the 13th anniversary of the very first production of Jersey Boys, which opened at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2004.

When Elice was asked to write the musical, he asked Brickman to collaborate with him.

“I had spent a couple of decades in advertising and I was no longer doing that,” he explained. “I was working at a movie studio in California and a former client called – this was right after Mamma Mia! had opened on Broadway – and he said, ‘Hey, I have the rights to the Four Seasons’ music.’”

Initially, Elice thought he meant Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” After setting him straight, the former client asked, “‘Well, would you be interested in doing the Mamma Mia! [concept] with the music of the Four Seasons?’ And I said, ‘No, somebody already did that, somebody already did Mamma Mia!’”

But Elice agreed to have lunch with Valli and Bob Gaudio, principal songwriter of the Four Seasons, and he called Brickman.

He and his friend “had been flirting with the idea of maybe writing something together,” said Elice, “which we assumed would be a screenplay because I was working at a studio and Marshall is, of course, an Oscar-winning screenwriter of some renown; I mean, he’s a legend. And I said, ‘Suppose we were to write a Broadway musical?’ And he said, ‘I’ve never written a Broadway musical.’ ‘Well, neither have I! But no one’s going to pay us anything, so we’ll just be wasting our own time and maybe we’ll have some fun. Let’s go to lunch and see what these guys are like.’”

During lunch, they asked Valli and Gaudio what it was like growing up in New Jersey, said Elice. “They started to tell us these jokes and anecdotes that were so, by turn, hilarious, tragic, stunning, but all of them engaging and compelling. We found ourselves leaning forward like anyone would when being told a really good story. And we said, ‘Hey guys, if you wanted to do this, if you wanted to do your warts-and-all life story, life of the group, that would be something that would be interesting because, look at us, we’re on the end of our seats. Other people would probably respond similarly, too.’… And they said, ‘OK, go ahead, knock yourself out. If we like what you do, then we’ll give you the gig.’”

Valli and Gaudio liked the first few scenes that Elice and Brickman wrote, so the writers began shopping the musical around. “The stars were in alignment,” said Elice, “as we wrote in the show.” The perfect producers, a director and venue were all lined up. “The only thing we didn’t have was the show,” he said. But, within a couple of months, he and Brickman had completed a script and, by August 2004, the production was in rehearsal in Southern California.

“And audiences loved the show from the very first performance,” said Elice. “We were always there in the back with our pads, ready to edit and make changes and do all the things in previews you’re supposed to do, but the show was really solid. Fundamentally, the show didn’t change. We improved certain things about it but there was no big surgery to be done on anything.”

He attributed the success to the music, which “underpins all our lives,” and to the fact that the group’s story is “a compelling one.”

“That’s always the secret to good theatre,” he said. “Tell a good story with characters the audience cares about.”

He also credited director Des McAnuff with being “a great visionary and a great field marshal for the project. He created this rocket ship that we all got on. It was a super-happy experience that could have amounted to nothing, and it ended up changing all of our lives.”

photo - Rick Elice, left, and Marshall Brickman, co-book writers of Jersey Boys
Rick Elice, left, and Marshall Brickman, co-book writers of Jersey Boys. (photo by Joan Marcus)

Part of the happy experience was writing with his friend.

“Writing for the theatre is like talking something into existence,” said Elice. It’s much harder to talk something into existence when you’re talking mainly to yourself, working as the sole writer, he said. “What I love about working with Marshall is that he taught me that, before you do anything, you take very long walks together and talk and talk and talk and talk, until you know how the characters sound, you know how to voice them, you know what happens, you’ve argued about plot and story and then, at some point, you have nothing left to do but sit down and actually write it. But the writing itself, the act of writing, is a product of extensive thinking and arguing and talking.”

There were no rules or a specific format for how the collaboration worked, said Elice. “If he wanted to write a scene, he would; if I wanted to, I would; then we would swap. And then, eventually, we were together combing through it.”

Elice said that he and Brickman weren’t involved in the making of the film version of Jersey Boys, which was directed by Clint Eastwood. “Generally, what the theatre offers that the film doesn’t offer is the live event,” said Elice.

He explained, “The existence of theatre ought to have ended by now – there are many, many other things to do. The theatre is expensive, it only happens in certain places at certain times of the day, it’s not convenient, it’s not particularly user-friendly as a medium, and yet it still exists. It’s actually doing better now than it did last year and, the year before that, it did better than the year before that, etc. So, why is that the case? Because, I think, we’re hardwired as a species – you and I and everyone around us – back to the days when cave-dwellers sat around fires and told each other stories. We like the idea of sitting in the dark and being told stories and experiencing them with other people sitting in the dark at the same time, experiencing the same story that will never be told in exactly the same way because it’s never the same. While the material may be the same, the performing of it is different, the audience is different, the chemistry in the room is different – everything changes.

“Each performance of a live event is a unique performance … and somewhere in there, somewhere in that unique experience, is something that’s thrilling for us,” he continued. “And what Des does specifically with Jersey Boys is to create a variety of roles for the audience because you’re not just sitting watching a show – you’re also the audience in the saloon, you’re the audience in the recording studio, you’re the audience at the concert, you’re the audience at the stadium. And there’s alchemy that happens with Jersey Boys on stage, where the audience, I think, really forgets that they’re watching actors playing these four guys and begins to believe that they are the Four Seasons and we are the people watching them. And so, the audience responds like they would at a rock concert, and not like they would do politely at a Broadway musical.”

He added, “It also happens to be a feel-good show and, as the world winds its way, a feel-good experience doesn’t feel out of sorts, because the rest of our days, we’re constantly facing greater challenges individually and collectively…. There are problems, there are bad things, so, you go to the theatre and feel good, it feels like a nice gift to give people.”

On Oct. 17, Jersey Boys’ 13th anniversary, a new company started rehearsals for another run of the show, said Elice. He dropped in to say hello to everyone and let them know of the significance of the day. “It’s a little like teaching,” he said. “If you’re a teacher, every year, the students stay the same age and you keep getting older … and I feel a little bit that way about Jersey Boys companies. I show up on the first day of rehearsals and, at the first production [in 2004], I was the same age as everybody in the show, and now I’m this old guy, because so many years have gone by but, of course, we’re still telling the story of a boy band, so you’ve got a cast in their 20s, and that’s a misty distant memory for me now.”

For tickets to Jersey Boys in Vancouver, visit ticketmaster.ca or call 1-855-985-5000.

What if shul had been sold?

Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria is the subject and setting for The Original Deed, which opens Nov. 15. (photo by Sid Tafler)

Established in 1863, Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Canada. As the saying goes, if those walls could talk. Well, journalist and author Sid Tafler, a longtime member of Emanu-El, has given them a voice, of sorts.

Tafler, who has worked in theatre as a writer, actor and producer, has created The Original Deed, an historical drama about the synagogue.

Despite being such a landmark, Emanu-El “was nearly lost forever a generation ago, when a move was afoot to sell the old building and relocate to the suburbs,” reads the description. “The play tells the story of Sam Abelman, a Holocaust survivor and downtown jeweler, who fights to save the shul from the wrecking ball, while his son Morry tries to sell out and move the congregation to the suburbs. As the father/son struggle reaches a climax, Sam invokes ‘the Original Deed’ and a ghostly figure from his past emerges to salvage his dreams and his memories.”

Performed in the sanctuary, it features Toshik Bukowiecki as Sam, Zuzana Macknight as Rivka Abelman and Bobby Cleveland as Jack Abelman. John Roebuck plays Morry, while the rest of the Abelman clan is performed by Maureen Van Wyck as Leah, Annika Hupp as Esther, Nolan Hupp as Young Sam, and Ava Fournier, 12, who plays Ellen. Bill Taylor takes on the character of Phil Cogan, the lawyer.

“The play is set circa 1980,” Tafler told the Independent. “I say circa because the issue of selling the shul was discussed a number of times over 15 to 20 years, so 1980 is an average.”

photo - Sid Tafler
Sid Tafler (photo from Sid Tafler)

Tafler mined the synagogue’s archives and online historical information, as well as the book Sefer Emanu-El, which was published by the synagogue on its 150th anniversary in 2013.

“I found that much of the written history about the shul is about the dynamic era of the founding in 1863 and the colourful figures of the gold rush and late 19th century,” said Tafler. “There is comparatively little about recent history. Some older members of the congregation knew about the proposed sale, which was discussed at board meetings, but not much detail about the how and why – specifically, why the idea was dropped.”

Tafler was inspired “by the intrigue and thinking behind this idea of selling the shul and moving to the suburbs, which many communities have done. When it first came up, the building was not the lovely restored heritage landmark it is now. It was covered in stucco and the ceiling had been lowered to exclude the balcony.”

In the real-life situation, there were proposals to buy an old church or to purchase land near the Jewish Cemetery on Cedar Hill Road, said Tafler.

“I created a family called the Abelmans to embody this story,” he explained. “Sam, an aging Holocaust survivor, is desperate to keep the old building, while his son Morry, head of the building committee, wants to sell out and move to a waterside location in Gordon Head (near the University of Victoria). Everyone gets involved: Sam’s wife Rivka, his granddaughter Ellen, his other son Jack, a wanderer; even his lawyer, Phil Cogan, who holds his finger to the wind and listens to his mother to decide which side he’s on.

“The stakes are very high for Sam,” said Tafler. “As a boy, he looked out the window of his home in Germany and saw his shul being destroyed on Kristallnacht. Soon after, he was shipped off to England in the Kindertransport, and never saw his family again.”

In addition to the history, Tafler said he was “also inspired by Zelda Dean, Emanu-El’s theatre maven, who suggested I write a play about the shul.”

It took two years and nine months for this production to go from idea to the stage, he said. “But, in some ways,” he said, it took 20 years. “My last play, Ghost on the Road, was produced at the Victoria Fringe Festival in 1997.”

The Abelmans are not real people, said Tafler, “but I have grown up with Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren from my earliest years. When I was still a toddler, my parents took in two teenage survivors from Hungary, a boy and a girl, who lived with our family in Montreal for a few years. In school, many of my classmates’ parents were survivors and I heard these stories firsthand. Here in Victoria, the survivors were a major presence in our shul.”

So, on whom is Sam based?

photo - Sam (played by Toshik Bukowiecki) and his granddaughter Ellen (Ava Fournier) listen for the sounds of voices in the synagogue walls in The Original Deed, at Congregation Emanu-El this month
Sam (played by Toshik Bukowiecki) and his granddaughter Ellen (Ava Fournier) listen for the sounds of voices in the synagogue walls in The Original Deed, at Congregation Emanu-El this month. (photo by Gayle Mavor)

“Sam Abelman is one part Jack Gardiner. One part Peter Gary. One part Willy Jacobs. One part Ray Rose. One part each of my grandfathers, Sam Tafler and Eli Shetzer,” said Tafler. “But mostly, Sam, the lead character in The Original Deed, is himself, played by Victoria actor Toshik Bukowiecki.

“Jack, Peter and Willy were Holocaust survivors and members of our shul at different times,” Tafler explained. “They taught us about terrible loss and despair, redeemed by liberation, healing and building a new life.

“Ray was born in Victoria in 1920 and operated Rose’s Jewelers on Douglas Street, a business started by his father Joseph in 1912. He was a bombardier in the RCAF in the Second World War and flew 33 missions over Europe,” said Tafler.

“Sam and Eli were both born in shtetls in the Ukraine and immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century. They found work and raised families in Montreal and their many descendants now live across North America.”

As to some of the reasons Morry, or community members like him, wanted to abandon the historic building and move to the suburbs, Tafler provided several excerpts from the play, all spoken by Morry (Morris):

  • “‘… there’s not enough room in this building. We can’t keep holding seders and Hebrew classes in this little space.’ (gestures at back, behind pews)”;
  • “It’s a new age, Dad. We need a real school if we expect the kids to keep coming.”
  • “Dad, this building is old, it’s small, there’s no room for a school, for offices.”
  • “(At the site in Gordon Head): ‘Use your imagination. Two lovely, modern buildings. A social hall, parking lot over there. Open space for the kids. And for expansion.’”

The Original Deed runs at Congregation Emanu-El Nov. 15-16 and 18-19, at 7 p.m. Tickets ($20/$15) are available at Ticket Rocket, ticketrocket.co/event/details/101436/the-original-deed.

Granirer paints with words

I am the proud owner of a Pnina Granirer work. More importantly, I am privileged to know the wonderful human being who is Pnina Granirer. After reading Light Within the Shadows: A Painter’s Memoir, I now know more about her art, its influences and styles, and her life, its joys and challenges. I also discovered that she writes as beautifully as she paints, and has a warm sense of humour.

Each chapter features a relevant quote from people throughout history, something they said or, most often, wrote; people as diverse as Roald Dahl, Anne Frank and Shakespeare. In these and her own words, Granirer imparts not only her life story but her philosophies on creativity, education, identity, family, business.

“There are people who plan their lives meticulously, step by step – I have never been one of them,” she writes. “Of course, I had goals, but these were like signposts to be reached one by one, short-term endeavours without a specific plan for the faraway future. I rather liked the idea of floating along, steering my boat from time to time and hoping that I would reach my destination, whatever it was meant to be.”

And the 82-year-old has experienced many destinations on her continuing journey. In a May interview with the Vancouver Sun, she talked about having written a book twice the size of what was published.

“There were a lot more historical references, many stories about family members and some more memories – it was too long and had to be cut,” Granirer told the Independent.

About the possibility of another book, she said, “I’m thinking about this and how I could use some of the chapters that have been cut, but, at the moment, I’m far too busy with getting through with the exhibition. I need a quiet space in order to begin thinking about writing and hope that I’ll begin doing just that early in 2018.”

book cover - Light Within the Shadows Granirer will do an artist’s talk at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery on Nov. 16 to open an exhibit of her work mounted in conjunction with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival because the occasion also represents the launch of her memoir. The event is sponsored by National Council of Jewish Women. This is especially appropriate because one of the topics that Granirer explores in her memoir is the difficulty of being a mother, a wife and an artist. About the 1970s, when her two sons, David and Dan, were young, she remarks, “I had little contact with the visual arts community in general and its avant-garde segment in particular. I didn’t have much time for forging professional ties, as my world consisted of my husband and my sons, who were a great source of joy and a well of inspiration for my art.” In this period, she not only produced much work, but also took on teaching.

Her memoir – which includes pages of colour photographs of her work – is divided into three acts. It takes readers from Romania, her birthplace and where she grew up, surviving the Holocaust; to the safety of Israel in 1950, to where first her father, then the family, fled from the dangers of communist Romania; to the United States in 1962, where her husband Eddy, a math professor, could find work, as the recently initiated American-Russian space race saw Americans “pouring money and resources into research, hoping to be the first to put a man on the moon…. Mathematics, the cornerstone and essential building block of scientific research, was suddenly in high demand all over North America.” Three years later, the Granirers would make their way to Vancouver.

Granirer talks about luck throughout the memoir and, specifically, about a couple of “old hackneyed sayings” being true, that of being “in the right place at the right time” and of being “born under a lucky star.” “Events beyond our control do change the course of our lives,” she writes. And, while they don’t always do so for the better, Granirer chooses, at least in looking back, to appreciate her good fortune.

“Of course, I never even thought of being lucky at the time,” she admitted to the Independent. “One just lives one’s life as it comes along and only later, in retrospect, one sees the whole picture. Getting older allowed me to have a better perspective of the past and writing the memoir brought it all together. We kept saying for years how lucky our family was to live in Vancouver, but day by day there were ups and downs and the occasional complaints when unfortunate events happened – and they did. The memoir was a watershed for me and helped me see the serendipitous moments in my life when fate could have gone easily the other way.”

The light and shadows of the book’s title not only apply to the vividness of remembered moments and the darkness in which forgotten moments lie, but also the grey areas through which we must travel in life – the uncertainties, the aforementioned circumstances beyond our control.

When asked if she was a naturally optimistic person or developed into one, she said, “I probably am more of the former, although that does not mean that there are not times when I feel as if the world is collapsing on me. There have been hard times for me in the past, but somehow I seem to manage to get through. I just try to deal with the black thoughts, when they come. Nothing is really black-and-white, it’s through the shadows that we have to find our way.”

In addition to geopolitics, health and other uncontrollable issues, Granirer also had to negotiate the politics of the art world, in which she had to deal with many curators who “did not seem to be interested in art and artists, except as tools for enhancing their own careers.”

“… meeting someone who loves a painting and wishes to live with it, who wants to learn the details of its creation and is convinced that owning it will enrich his or her life, is the most rewarding experience for an artist.”

Nonetheless, she persevered – “Early in my career,” she writes, “I decided to follow my own course, regardless of the cost.” She did so, even as she realized that, in her profession, “being different was not considered an asset, but a liability.” Though admitting that all artists, including herself, crave recognition, she writes that “meeting someone who loves a painting and wishes to live with it, who wants to learn the details of its creation and is convinced that owning it will enrich his or her life, is the most rewarding experience for an artist.”

To mark her 80th birthday, in 2015, and her 50th year in Canada, Granirer gave many others a gift. “Established galleries usually charge the artist 50% commission for each work sold, in exchange for space and promotion,” she explains. “Why not invite the public … for 10 days and offer the commission to my collectors instead.” It was because of this generosity that I was able to buy my first Granirer.

After this exhibition and sale, Granirer and her husband headed back to Romania, 65 years after they had left the country. It was a meaningful visit with at least three serendipitous occurrences. But, back in Vancouver, she ended up in hospital. Sixteen days later, after two surgeries for diverticulitis, she made it home. “I counted my blessings and told myself how much worse it could have been,” she writes. “What if it had happened while I was in Romania?”

She returns to the memoir’s opening paragraph about getting older, in which she remarks, “Simple words like ‘later,’ ‘next year,’ ‘tomorrow,’ ‘not now,’ become risky, unsure and speculative.” But there is also much to look forward to, she says. At the time of writing, it was an international exhibit in Costa Rica and one in Spain. Currently, she’s preparing for the Zack Gallery exhibit and the launch of the memoir. The event takes place Nov. 16, 6 p.m., and admission is free. It will be a great opportunity to meet the artist – and pick up a copy of Light Within the Shadows.

Calendar Girls now at Metro

The cast of Calendar Girls, at Metro Theatre until Nov. 25. (photo from Metro Theatre)

It takes courage for a small semi-professional theatre to tackle a play that was made into an internationally acclaimed film, with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters in the title roles. But that is exactly what the Metro Theatre has done. And they pull it off beautifully. Their new show, Calendar Girls, opened Oct. 28.

The play, like the movie, is based on the true story of a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women, one of whom was recently widowed. After her husband died of leukemia in 1998, she and her friends decided to produce a nude calendar, with photos of themselves, to raise funds to buy a settee for the visitors lounge in the hospital where her husband had been treated. The calendar for the year 2000 was released in 1999 and became a phenomenal success. The women made calendars for several successive years, and the proceeds from this original fundraising campaign resulted in several million pounds for cancer research in England.

These wonderful women inspired Juliette and Tim Firth to write a screenplay, which became a movie in 2003. Later, Tim Firth adapted it to the stage, and the play premièred in England in 2008. The North American première took place in Winnipeg in 2011.

The director of the Metro production, Alison Schamberger, writes, “I approached directing this beautiful play with a degree of apprehension. There seemed to be many pitfalls attached to it…. Luckily, I was able to surround myself with very talented people who always make the director look good! This play is a true testament to friendship that endures all hurdles.”

The play opens in a village church in Yorkshire, where a group of six women do tai chi and listen to lectures about such scintillating topics as broccoli. Everything is ordinary, bordering on the dull. We meet Chris and Annie and their friends, and learn some of the mundane details of their lives and a bit about their very different personalities. When Annie’s husband, John, dies of leukemia, the women come together to support Annie.

They also want to buy a new settee for the hospital – more than one of them has had to sit for hours in the facility’s uncomfortable waiting area. They come up with the idea of a (tasteful) nude calendar. Not everyone is open to the radical approach at first, but eventually they all do it for John. The photo shoot scene is hilarious and heartbreaking in its intensity. The six actresses actually disrobe on stage, but the audience sees less skin than they would on a beach.

The second act is the aftermath. The media attention. The fame (or infamy), which none of the women expected, and the different ways they deal with it. Tempers collide, but friendships endure, even as the sales keep rising.

Music plays an important role in this production, perhaps as important as the actors. It supports the classy feel of the story, as does the simple, stationary set, the interior of a church, and the lighting, which produces the church’s colourful stained-glass windows, as well as the sunlit field into which the women venture on a couple of occasions.

The actors playing the calendar girls are on stage almost the entire length of the play. Their monologues and sharp banter are in turn sad or funny, poignant or irreverent. They take the audience on an emotional journey. Each of the six shines in her unique way.

Chris (Rebecca Walters) is the heart of the show. Her courage and optimism have no bounds – she is the one who comes up with the nudity idea – but she is as fallible as everyone else.

Annie (Peg Keenleyside) is grieving for her husband. Her involvement in the calendar is for his sake alone; she wouldn’t do it otherwise. Her main reason for participating is to contribute to the fight against cancer.

photo - Jewish community member Judy McLellan plays Cora in Metro’s Calendar Girls
Jewish community member Judy McLellan plays Cora in Metro’s Calendar Girls. (photo from Metro Theatre)

Cora (Jewish community member Judy McLellan) is a single mother worrying about her daughter’s reaction to the calendar, and all mothers would understand her concern. McLellan provides many singing interludes, and her voice is charming.

Jesse (Joan Koebel), a retired teacher, is full of pluck and laughter. She is the most comical of the cast, while Celia (Yasmin Tayob) and Ruth (Helen Martin) wrestle with their own demons.

The women’s friendship triumphs over their adversities, and their story is thought-provoking. It brings up important issues, such as how we deal with death and what we consider beautiful. As we watch the play, we contemplate our own imperfect bodies. We ask ourselves for what cause(s) would be willing to expose our vulnerability and literally ourselves to the entire world.

The play is not simply a slightly risqué comedy of manners. It raises moral questions and examines our relationships. What would we do for a friend? How would we weather the test of fame? The protagonists of Calendar Girls came out of their adventure better friends and, arguably, better people. Do we have it in us to be as brave as they were?

Calendar Girls runs at Metro Theatre (metrotheatre.com) until Nov. 25.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

Film festival underway – Ben-Gurion & Pinsky

Five years before the end of his life, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave six hours of interviews to an American who had recently made aliyah and moved near to Ben-Gurion’s Negev kibbutz retirement home in Sde Boker. The 1968 video footage sat undisturbed in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem until it was rediscovered, but the audio was missing. Eventually, it too was found – in the Ben-Gurion archives at Sde Boker. Reunited, the six hours were whittled down by director Yariv Mozer to the one-hour film Ben-Gurion, Epilogue, which is part of this year’s Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.

Mere months after the death of his wife, Paula, Ben-Gurion reflected on his personal and public life. His Zionism was born in his Polish childhood, when the larger-than-life visionary Theodor Herzl traveled the Pale of Settlement. “When Herzl arrived in our little towns, they said, ‘Messiah’s come!’ And I believed it,” Ben-Gurion shared.

Ben-Gurion created a new life at least twice, first making aliyah and bringing to life the Jewish state, then, again, in retirement, when he retreated to the life of a simple kibbutznik in the Negev. His fascination with the desert was sparked in 1954, he said, when he was driving from Eilat back to central Israel and saw a cluster of rudimentary homes by the side of the road. He asked what they were doing there. “We were fighting in the War of Independence in this place,” the pioneers told him. “I decided to join them, to start building up, in the desert, where there is no soil, no water, no grass, no rain.”

The human side of the Ben-Gurion couple is on display through interspersed earlier footage of David and Paula together. In an interview with the BBC’s Malcolm Muggeridge, Paula says she was opposed to David’s retirement from politics. “Because he could not exist without politics,” she says.

“I can exist without politics,” he replies, without looking up.

“No you can’t,” she says. “It’s born in you.”

Likewise, when David gives a ponderous explanation of why he no longer defines himself as a Zionist, Paula deadpans, “I married a Zionist and you are not a Zionist?”

The interviewer draws Ben-Gurion into reflections on his tumultuous time in politics, including the riots that emerged in response to his decision to accept reparation payments, arms and military training from the West German government. But if the viewer is anticipating any earth-shattering revelations, Ben-Gurion is largely glib. Israel needed support and West Germany was offering.

As the Jewish people have a special role in the world, Ben-Gurion says, so does the Jewish state: to reflect the virtues set out by the Prophets. “To be just, truthful, helping all those who need help, and love other men like yourself,” the statesman says. “These are the virtues.”

“Do you think Israel is carrying out that mission?” asks the interviewer.

“Not yet,” Ben-Gurion replies instantly.

Ben-Gurion, Epilogue screens Nov. 6 and 11.

– Pat Johnson

***

In the American film Pinsky, the main character, Sophia Pinsky, has a good life: a job, a girlfriend, an apartment. But then her girlfriend leaves without saying goodbye and Sophia’s life unravels. She moves back home, to join her father, grandmother and brother, all still living together (what a miserable prospect), and the cheerless family dynamics are the focus of the movie.

The family are Russian Jews, and they are all unhappy for various reasons. Sophia works at a Russian grocery store. She feels alone, underappreciated and vulnerable. Nobody understands her. Her grandma tries to set her up with a nice Russian Jewish boy. “You’re too pretty to be a lesbian,” grandma declares, which drives Sophia bonkers.

She misses her girlfriend, she is searching for something big and beautiful, but, unfortunately, nothing even remotely resembling her dreams enters her drab life.

Depression seems to run in the family. Sophia’s brother is an alcoholic. Her father isn’t dealing well with aging. The grandmother, the only colourful character in the movie, is meddlesome and tactless, bossing around everyone in the family.

Everyone is lonely. Nobody understands one another. But, the truth is: none of them even tries to understand anyone else. Everyone concentrates on their own melancholy, hides inside their own bubbles of misery.

This movie reminded me of Chekhov’s plays: everyone is whining and nobody does anything positive. Unlike Chekhov though, this is a fragmented series of moments in the lives of different family members over a few days. The entire dysfunctional family comes under the director’s scrutiny, and all are found wanting.

Pinsky screens Nov. 9. The festival runs until Nov. 12. For the full schedule, visit vjff.org.

– Olga Livshin