Arts & Culture – Page 115

Journey of memory and loss

Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova found classrooms, textbooks, a synagogue, prayer books, clothing and ritual ornaments, all lovingly cared for, undisturbed, unmolested and somehow cherished since the scooping up of three-quarters of the Jews in the towns of Slovakia in 1942. (photo by Yuri Dojc)

Fascination, horror, admiration, exaltation are the words that come to mind when I search to describe the emotions I felt reading Michael Posner’s book review of Last Folio: A Photographic Memory by Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova (Indiana University Press, 2011) in Queen’s Quarterly (Winter 2016). The personal saga of Krausova, a cinematographer, and Dojc, a photographer, the horror of the Holocaust in Slovakia and the discovery of remnants of the vibrant Jewish communities stripped of their Jews, their culture and their religion, provoked my curiosity and my imagination.

Dojc and Krausova found classrooms, textbooks, a synagogue, prayer books, clothing and ritual ornaments, all lovingly cared for, undisturbed, unmolested and somehow cherished since the scooping up of three-quarters of the Jews in the towns of Slovakia in 1942.

“It was as if he were entering a time capsule, classrooms frozen at almost the precise moment that Nazi transports had taken the students to the concentration camps – and almost certain death,” writes Posner. “Except for the mould and the yellowed, tattered pages, everything was exactly as they had left it: a bowl of sugar on the shelf, books inscribed with childhood signatures, notebooks filled with essays on their aborted life ambitions.”

Yet, for me, there was something more than photographs and meetings with Holocaust survivors that were being revealed. I rushed to buy the book. It is a work of art filled with dramatic testimony and the saga of an epic journey of chance meetings and breathtaking discoveries resulting in exquisite photographs, as well as a documentary film – labours of love and devotion by Dojc and Krausova.

After reading the text and examining the photographs – the most beautiful I have ever seen – I began to meditate on the fact that all these images were found in places abandoned in 1942; their Jewish owners and community members wiped out by the Nazis. Strange place names like Bratislava, Bardejov, Sastin, Michalovce and Kosice became familiar to me, as the tallit, tefillin, prayer books, mikvah and Torah fragments came alive in my eyes. One of the most haunting images is that of a book fragment with the Hebrew word הנשאר, “that which remains,” clearly legible on the delicate paper.

The essays that follow by Azar Nafisi and Steven Uhly commemorate and honour the murdered Slovak Jews and their collective memory. Yet, there was still something that I was missing. I reread the text by Krausova and stopped on the following lines:

“Mr. Bogol’ tells us that he is the warden of the Protestant church, that he and his wife have lived in the same block with the Simonovics for more than 40 years and that following the death of Mrs. Simonovic’s brother, he became the keeper of the keys of a building in the town…. Time stopped still in this building, which housed a Jewish school a long time ago, almost certainly in 1942, the day when Bardejov Jews vanished forever. Mr. Bogol’ proudly shows us how he and his wife have been painstakingly cleaning each bench, each light, each seat, finding – and preserving – every object, religious or otherwise.”

And, they find another building filled with books, also preserved and protected; waiting for Dojc and Krausova to discover them.

photo - Last Folio is a work of art filled with dramatic testimony and the saga of an epic journey of chance meetings and breathtaking discoveries resulting in exquisite photographs — *Last Folio* is a work of art filled with dramatic testimony and the saga of an epic journey of chance meetings and breathtaking discoveries resulting in exquisite photographs. *(photo by Yuri Dojc)*

Here was my phantom question, here was the missing link! How is it that these empty, cold, barren places were taken care of for more than 70 years? Who would do such a thing? Why would they do it? Were the guardians of these precious objects waiting for someone? Why didn’t the municipality tear down the buildings or strip them of everything and renovate them? Who paid for the maintenance and taxes on the buildings?

The guardians and the keepers of the keys took these responsibilities upon themselves, year after year, until they bumped into Dojc and Krausova, convincing the harried and exhausted researchers to take a look.

Embossed on the inside cloth cover of the book we read: “Last Folio Charts a Personal Journey in Cultural Memory / A Reflection on Universal Loss as a Part of European Remembrance.”

These unheralded, unacknowledged guardians were the protectors and defenders of the memory of the Jews of Slovakia and their Jewish community. To them, we owe enormous gratitude.

To see an extended trailer of the 81-minute documentary about Krausova and Dojc’s research and the making of the book and photo exhibition, visit youtube.com/watch?v=0vZeL63l1ok.

Dolores Luber, a retired psychotherapist and psychology teacher, is editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s Senior Line magazine and website (jsalliance.org). She blogs for yossilinks.com and writes movies reviews for the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website.

Past leads to present

For many of us, it is hard to get excited about a subject until we can experience it, or meet someone who has. Historical fiction can bridge the gap between simply memorizing dates and names to empathizing with those affected and taking what we learn into our lives.

Two recent Second Story Press publications do an excellent job of teaching and engaging younger readers. They also provide a starting point for these readers and their parents, family, friends and educators to discuss difficult and sensitive topics that not only relate to the past, but to current situations, as well.

The Ship to Nowhere: On Board the Exodus by Rona Arato (for ages 9 to 13) tells the story of the ship Exodus 1947 through the eyes of 11-year-old Rachel Landesman. I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer and illustrated by Gillian Newland (for ages 7 to 11) tells the story of 8-year-old Irene Couchie, who is forcibly taken from her First Nations family and home to live in a residential school in 1928. Both Rachel and Irene are real people.

Sadly, their stories are representative of what also happened to countless others. And, even more sadly, what continues to happen. The Ship to Nowhere could lead to a conversation about the Syrian refugee crisis and antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere. I Am Not a Number brings to mind some parallels between the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of Canada’s First Nations, as well as the inequalities that still exist in Canada, the treaties that have not been ratified, the reconciliation over the residential schools that is long overdue and has barely begun.

Given the ages of their intended readers, both of these books tread lightly – that said, they deliver powerful messages and succeed in their missions to educate.

The illustrations in I Am Not a Number, a hardcover picture book, are as revealing as the text. Irene and her siblings, as they huddle behind their father when the government agent comes to take her and two of her brothers away; the sadness on Irene’s face as a nun cuts her hair, the anger as she sits in church; and the unbridled joy when she and her brothers are back at home after a tortuous year – these are just some of the emotions Newland movingly captures.

And Kay Dupuis tells her grandmother’s story with such love. This was a family that was strong and, in the end, luckier than many, in that Irene and her brothers didn’t return to the residential school – when they came home for the summer, their family kept them hidden from the government agent.

I Am Not a Number includes a brief overview of the residential school system, and mention of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Kay Dupuis also tells readers a bit more about her grandmother in an afterword, where there are a few photos of the Couchie family.

The Ship to Nowhere has photos throughout, and Arato uses the author’s note at the end to let readers briefly know what happened to Rachel, Rachel’s mom and sisters (her dad was killed in the Holocaust), the ship’s captain, Yitzhak Aronowicz (known as Captain Ike) and one of the journalists who doggedly reported to the world the Exodus’s journey, Ruth Gruber.

Since it is for older young readers, there are parts of The Ship to Nowhere that are quite graphic – the incredible brutality of the British is well-depicted, as are Britain’s efforts to prevent the ship’s 4,500-plus Holocaust survivors from knowing what the media were reporting on their treatment. Even with the passage of time, the anger boils in reading about how these survivors were tear-gassed and beaten (in some cases to death) on the Exodus, forced to live as captives on three other ships after they were turned out of Palestine, and again beaten and manhandled if they refused to leave their ships in Germany, where the British took them eventually, to live in refugee camps.

There are many touching moments between the crew and their passengers and between fellow refugees. It is important to be reminded that France offered to take in all of the refugees; an offer that was declined. And it would be nice to think that, at the least, the Exodus’s plight positively influenced some United Nations members to vote in favour of the creation of Israel.

3,000 years of a language

Let’s say it at the outset: this book is a gem. Every page of The Story of Hebrew by Lewis Glinert (Princeton University Press, 2017) is packed with information about the language, from its beginnings through post-1948 Israel. In addition to this longitudinal approach, Glinert, a professor of Hebrew and linguistics at Dartmouth, also approaches his subject laterally, focusing on various lands where Jewish/Hebrew life and culture thrived, like early Palestine, Babylonia, North Africa, Spain, Europe and Russia, the United States and Israel.

The book shows us how living under Greek and Roman domination affected Hebrew and how vocabulary from those occupiers seeped into the language. Two examples, the first mine, the second Glinert’s: the simple word for shoemaker in Hebrew, sandlar, which comes from the Latin sandalrius; and Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Court, which stems from the Greek synedrion. Jews did not shy away from these foreign influences; their Hebrew language embraced them.

book cover - The Story of Hebrew by Lewis Glinert Glinert also traces the changes in the use of the language from biblical times through the Mishnah (before and after 200 CE), where the Hebrew of that period was more direct and seemingly more colloquial, as can be seen by comparing a text from the Mishnah with any chapter in the Bible. During the next two or three hundred years, written Hebrew then moved on from the Hebrew-only Mishnah to the two-language Talmud, with its mix of mostly Aramaic and much less Hebrew. (In all of this, of course, we only have written texts to go by.)

With sacred books passing from generation to generation orally, correct pronunciation might be lost or distorted. Along came the Masoretes (from the Hebrew word, masorah, tradition), who, by the year 1000, had created above- and below-the-letters signs that ingeniously indicated pronunciation, melody, accent and phrasing.

Jews also contributed to scientific learning by writing about medicine in Hebrew. I am sure it will surprise many readers, as it did me, that in Italy’s first medical school, in Salerno, founded in the ninth century, the languages of instruction were Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabic. And, in southern France, in Arles, Narbonne and Montpellier, the official language of instruction in these medical schools was Hebrew.

Religious attitude also influenced how Hebrew was used. Glinert delves into this divide by showing that, during the 11th and 12th centuries in Ashkenaz (in northern France and the Rhineland), the accent was on liturgy and Torah scholarship – the works of Rashi, for instance – while in Sepharad (Spain) and Italy secular Hebrew poetry flourished, influenced by Arabic poetry, exemplified by Yehuda Halevi and other poets.

The book devotes two remarkable chapters to the interaction of Christians with Hebrew.

In one of these unholy intersections, two of the noted translators of the Bible from Hebrew, the church father Jerome (fourth century) and Martin Luther (1534), respected Hebrew but disparaged Jews and Judaism. In his notorious 1542 book On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther asserts, “Jews should be expelled before they poison more wells and ritually abuse more children.”

A better relationship ensued with English translators. William Tyndale was the first to render the Five Books of Moses (1530) into English directly from the Hebrew. In so doing, he defied a bishop’s ban on a translation other than the Latin Vulgate. Tyndale’s translation led to the classic 1611 King James version of the complete Bible, whose English rhythms, cadences and even sentence structure enormously affected English.

As Glinert elegantly puts it: these two translations would “inject a Hebraic quality into the syntax and phraseology of English literary usage without parallel in any other European culture.” The author further adds that echoes of this biblical English can be seen from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass poetry collection to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Hebrew also made its mark in the early history of the United States. The Pilgrims saw themselves as the New Israelites, giving their towns name like New Canaan and Salem – even their Thanksgiving was a belated Sukkot to celebrate a bountiful harvest. And Hebrew was at one time ensconced as a mandatory subject in the Ivy League colleges. I recently read that at graduation ceremonies students would deliver orations in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and university presidents, like Ezra Stiles of Yale, would also occasionally give their commencement talks in Hebrew.

Glinert writes that the door to modernity in Europe was opened in 1780 by two books published on different sides of Europe. One, in Germany, was Moses Mendelssohn’s Biur, the first volume of his translation of the Torah into German; the other, in a small town in the Ukraine, was a book in Hebrew about Chassidic thought.

Slowly, from the advent of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, through newspapers, magazines and books, modern Hebrew was being reshaped, culminating with Jews resettling Palestine in the late 19th century, along with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s call, at the turn of the 20th century, for Jews to speak only Hebrew. Glinert shows us how the thrust for Hebraization continued once the British got the Mandate for Palestine in 1922 from the League of Nations. They recognized Hebrew as the language of instruction for public schools, broadcasting, the courts and civil regulations. With the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and mass immigration, Hebrew – which throughout the centuries had always been read, studied and written, and only occasionally spoken – reached its efflorescence.

The Story of Hebrew is a superb book, meticulously researched and beautifully written. Two of my favourites among the many text-enhancing illustrations and photographs are a photo of a page from one of Sir Isaac Newton’s notebooks, where he has a phrase in Hebrew written in his neat printed script; and a page from Franz Kafka’s Hebrew notebook, with two columns of nicely calligraphed Hebrew words on one side with their German translation (in longhand) on the other.

Read this marvelous study – perhaps, if you don’t know Hebrew, it will inspire you to learn it and become part of a more than 3,000-year tradition of transmission.

Curt Leviant’s most recent books are the novels King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son.

Great editor, great memoir

Robert Gottlieb is the most renowned American book editor and publisher in the latter half of the 20th century, much as was the legendary Max Perkins in the first half. And in his riveting memoir – Avid Reader: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) – Gottlieb traces the trajectory of his long and productive life with books and reading.

Gottlieb was born in New York in 1931 to a middle-class Jewish family. His mother was a public school teacher; his father, a lawyer. Little Bobby grew up listening to radio and devouring books. As he asserts in Avid Reader, he didn’t care much for nature or sports. It was reading he loved and this love is summed up in one memorable line: “From the start words were more real to me than real life, and certainly more interesting.”

Since the family was atheistic, Judaism played no role in his life. Yet he considered himself a New York Jew, a terse, self-identifying phrase that occurs like a leitmotif a number of times in his memoir.

Gottlieb went to a private school in Manhattan, whose students were mostly Jewish. “On the High Holy Days,” he writes, “out of my class of 39 only the four gentiles and atheistical me would be in attendance.” When one teacher wondered why so many students were absent, she was told, “It’s Yom Kippur.” Which prompted her to say, “Ridiculous. This isn’t a Jewish school.”

Gottlieb’s parents wanted him to go to Harvard. He applies but flunks the interview. And then, he adds, “there was the notorious Jewish quota. And I was the worst kind of Jew – a New York Jew.”

He attends Columbia, majors in English literature and edits the school’s literary magazine. Later, he gets a yearlong fellowship to Cambridge, where, for the first time in his life, he gets a whiff of antisemitism. He is aware of the “casual antisemitism that punctuates English literature,” but that’s in books and here was real life. The English Jews he met, Gottlieb notes, considered themselves “the other,” and he, too, senses the English disdain of foreigners and Jews.

Later, when he’s an established editor, he has an encounter with children’s book author Roald Dahl, one of whose many nasty anti-Jewish remarks was: “There is always a reason why anti-anything crops up; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” He also has an incident with John le Carré. With both English authors, he briefly recalls what he had felt in England.

Back in the United States, Gottlieb gets his first job as an editor with Simon and Schuster, where he would stay 11 years and publish amazing books, including one of my all-time favourite novels, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. That unique title deserves mention. Heller had called his manuscript Catch-18, until Gottlieb saw that a new novel by Exodus author Leon Uris would be called Mila 18. The number in Heller’s title would have to be changed. Heller suggested 14, but that number was nixed as flavourless. In the middle of the night, Gottlieb had a revelation: 22. He called Heller: “I got it. 22. It’s even funnier than 18.” The book went on to sell millions of copies.

With his success at Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb was invited to head Knopf. He was only 36 and looked years younger. By this time, he was so famous that his move to Knopf was front-page news in the New York Times.

For Gottlieb, this was a dream job. For him, Knopf was the great literary house of the century. He had been nurtured on the great novelists Knopf was respected for Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, D.H. Lawrence. Under his leadership, the house brought in celebrities like Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham to write their memoirs, all of which, with Gottlieb’s magic touch, became bestsellers. Also added to the Knopf list were writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Milan Kundera.

For Gottlieb, editing is not shaping a book according to the editor’s wishes but making it the best book the writer can write. The key to Gottlieb’s success is his constant devotion to his writers, often spending days with them to help them with their books.

Other famous Americans of Jewish origin who are adamantly secular have tried to hide their Jewishness. Gottlieb does not. It bubbles throughout his entire career. Even when he is coaxed into going to Marlene Dietrich’s funeral in Paris and to Berlin by a fellow editor, who is editing a book about the famous German entertainer, his Jewish sensibility is engaged and his trip to Berlin is full of qualms: “I’d never been to Berlin – a child of World War Two, and Jewish, I’d never got past my resistance to everything German (except the music) and had stayed away.” He notes that the Germans had mixed feelings about Dietrich. “On the one hand, she was probably the most famous and admired woman in their history; on the other, she had vehemently sided with the Allies against them during the war.”

Another one of the blockbuster books – two million copies sold – Gottlieb edited at Knopf was Bill Clinton’s autobiography. From the outset of their meetings, he decided to call him Bill. “I couldn’t envisage myself saying things like, ‘I think we need a semicolon here, Mr. President.’” And, when Clinton describes himself as very easy to work for, Gottlieb feels “that was the moment of truth.” In his view, if equality and balance between writer and editor is not established, the relationship will fail. And so, Gottlieb “cheekily” tells Clinton, much to the shock of Clinton’s aides, “Actually, I have to point out that, in this instance, I’m not working for you, you’re working for me.”

What is most revealing about Gottlieb’s irresistible personality and talent for friendship is that he goes on to form personal relationships with the writers he’s met that last for decades.

From Knopf, Gottlieb was appointed editor of The New Yorker (again front-page news in the Times), where he stayed for five years before finally retiring.

In the dozen or so years since, Gottlieb has nurtured another of his passions, classical ballet. “Dance liberated me,” he writes, “from the bondage of language, and balanced my life.”

After writing a biography of his hero, the great choreographer Georges Balanchine, Yale University Press lured Gottlieb to write the first biography in their new series, Jewish Lives. His assignment, Sarah Bernhardt, whom he calls “the most famous of all French women other than Joan of Arc.” Although this book is the bestselling short biography of that series, in typical Gottlieb self-denigration, he asserts that its success is not so much about him as it is about the book’s heroine.

Only a great editor like Gottlieb would have the sensitivity to list in the acknowledgments pages all the editors and assistants, friends and colleagues who helped him with Avid Reader.

It’s hard to believe that Gottlieb is 86 years old; he doesn’t look it, and his energy and creative spirit belies that advanced number. Some people are just fated to remain 44 – or 22 – forever.

Curt Leviant’s most recent books are the novels King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son.

About the Passover cover art

“Basket on the Nile” by Carol Racklin-Siegel. “She could not hide him any longer, so she took for him a wicker basket and smeared it with clay and pitch; she placed the child into it among the reeds at the bank of the River.” (Exodus 2:3)

This image – created with gutta resist and fabric dyes on silk – is the cover art for The Brave Women Who Saved Moses, the eighth book in a series of children’s Bible books published by EKS Publishing. The books are available on Amazon or from ekspublishing.com.

You can see more of Racklin-Siegel’s artwork on pomegranatestudios.com or “The Artwork of Carol Racklin-Siegel” on Facebook.

Family History series launch

Don’t Break the Chain is the first publication of what the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia hopes will become a Family History series.

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia has released the first book in what it hopes will become a Family History series. Don’t Break the Chain: The Nemetz Family Journey from Svatatroiske to Vancouver was published in collaboration with the Ben and Esther Dayson Charitable Foundation, and was researched by Shirley Barnett and Philip Dayson.

photo - Abraham Nemetz, Toba Nemetz, Esther Wosk, Bill Nemetz (driving), Chava Wosk holding baby Sonny, and Abrasha Wosk; taken at the hollow tree in Stanley Park, 1927 — Abraham Nemetz, Toba Nemetz, Esther Wosk, Bill Nemetz (driving), Chava Wosk holding baby Sonny, and Abrasha Wosk; taken at the hollow tree in Stanley Park, 1927. *(photo from nemetzfamily.ca/gallery)*

Barnett described her family as founders and workers behind the scenes of the Vancouver Jewish community.

“One of my mother’s sisters helped build Congregation Schara Tzedeck, the Louis Brier Home and funeral chapels, while another sister founded Jewish Family Services and visited the poor, people in prisons and mental hospitals. My mother ran charity events for Jewish Vancouver from the age of 18 and her brother started Camp Hatikvah,” she said. “They brought a lot of strength to the community. The next generation, which was mine and included 23 of us, has made significant contributions to Jewish Vancouver, too.”

There was plenty of raw material to draw from for the book, given the fact that Barnett’s six brothers had created memoirs and Dayson had begun creating family trees 25 years ago. The project became challenging when she opted to include charts and photographs of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I established contact with members of the family I never knew, siblings who’d had arguments and people estranged from the family, and it took a very soft approach, getting them to respond with photographs,” she explained. “I wasn’t looking to mend fences or interfere in anyone’s life, I just wanted to write a book!”

photo - A Congregation Schara Tzedeck testimonial evening in honour of Abrasha Wosk, 1977. Left to right are, in the back row, Joyce and Sonny Wosk, Esther and Hymie Aheroni, Rosalie and Joe Segal, and, in the front row: Abrasha and Chava Wosk — A Congregation Schara Tzedeck testimonial evening in honour of Abrasha Wosk, 1977. Left to right are, in the back row, Joyce and Sonny Wosk, Esther and Hymie Aheroni, Rosalie and Joe Segal, and, in the front row: Abrasha and Chava Wosk. *(photo from nemetzfamily.ca/gallery)*

Ultimately, with the assistance of graphic designer Barbi Braude and Facebook, she was able to source all the photographs required to complete the book.

Michael Schwartz, director of community engagement at the JMABC, said the Nemetz family journey would resonate among many other Jewish families in Vancouver.

“The story of leaving Europe, getting here and eventually bringing their family to Canada has parallels for many in our community and is a fascinating tale,” he said. “The Nemetz family has a very interesting history and many siblings of the early generation have accomplished great things and had an important impact on the community as a whole.”

The museum is hoping to partner with other families who are interested in creating similar books. Barnett described the creation of the book as a joint venture. “My brother and I contributed the money to the museum and archives, which then allowed us to use their name, resources, and to co-publish this,” she said. “I’d like to see the Wosk, Groberman and Waterman families – all large, extended families with deep roots in Vancouver – do a book like this.”

The launch of Don’t Break the Chain is being celebrated at a hosted brunch at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on April 2, 11 a.m. If you are interested in attending, call the museum 604-257-5199.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Adding jazz to people’s lives

Although he plays several instruments, the trumpet remains Gabriel Mark Hasselbach’s first love and his first choice. (photo from Gabriel Mark Hasselbach)

Music is a dazzling mistress. Once Gabriel Mark Hasselbach fell in love with it, he could never let it go. His music brought him from Denver, Colo., to Vancouver, where his jazz performances have been in high demand for many years.

“When I grew up in Denver, they had a new school education system. They allowed good students, and I had 4.0 average, to choose classes. I devoted almost all my junior and senior years to the art and music classes,” Hasselbach told the Independent.

He started playing professionally in his teens. “I’ve been an opportunist, in the best sense of the word, all my life,” he said. “When I recognize an opportunity, I follow it. When I was 14, I wanted to perform, so I went to the local restaurants and ski resorts and fashion shows and asked, Do you need a musician? Maybe on certain days, when the business is slow? And I offered to play.”

Gifted in multiple creative disciplines, he had a choice of several careers paths in high school. “At some point, I contemplated making ceramic sculptures as a career,” he said. “I liked it, but ceramics take time. You give it all, and then it cracks in the oven. Unlike ceramics, music is immediate.”

By graduation, he was sure he wanted to be a musician. “I hit the road when I turned 18,” he recalled. “I answered an ad for an audition for a band. It was in a bad, dangerous part of town, but I went there anyway and I got the job, with the soul band Nitro. All the other players were 10 or 15 years my senior.”

He played with that band and toured the Midwest with them for awhile. He also got a recording his first year.

When Hasselbach returned to Denver, he worked a few non-music jobs, but his calling wouldn’t allow him a long respite. In the 1970s, he came to Canada as a musician, and here he stayed.

“I brought my bicycle, my trumpet and a stack of music books,” he said. “That’s how I learned. I never went to a conservatory, but I read the books, I practised a lot and I performed a lot, alone and with the others. I think, this way, I kept my musical self, my uniqueness as a musician.”

In his early years, he was known in Vancouver by his middle name, Mark. “I changed my performer’s name to my full name, Gabriel Mark Hasselbach, in 1992,” he said. “Gabriel is my first name, and Gabriel was the original angel with a horn – it fit.”

Time and again, his creativity pushed him to explore other avenues besides music. “I used to write for several music magazines,” he said. “I also wrote a wine column for awhile.”

Predominantly, though, he remained a jazz musician, and he was among the original members of the jazz/pop/blues band Powder Blues, which was founded in 1978 in Gastown. “I toured the world with this band,” said Hasselbach. “We played often in Canada and the U.S. We garnered several multiplatinum record awards and the JUNO Awards. I was with the band for five years.”

But he wanted to play and record on his own, so he left the band and made his first solo recording in the early 1980s. By this time, he had more than a dozen albums to his name and multiple awards, including JUNOs and Smooth Jazz Awards. He’s had numerous top 15 and higher Billboard hits and he represented the Vancouver jazz scene at the Beijing and Vancouver Olympics in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

Since settling in Canada, Hasselbach has performed with many renowned national and international musicians. From 1996 to 1999, he hired Michael Bublé to sing with his band. When Bublé achieved stardom, Hasselbach worked for him as his music director from 1999 to 2003. Hasselbach also has performed or recorded with Nikki Yanofsky, Jim Byrnes and many others.

Although he plays several instruments, including trumpet, flute, flugelhorn and trombone, trumpet remains his first love and his first choice. He also writes music. Most of the pieces he performs and records are his original compositions.

In the early 1980s, Hasselbach added a new kind of gig to his repertoire. He began performing at Jewish events.

“I’m an honorary Jew,” he joked. “I was first hired to play at a Jewish wedding by a Jewish man who knew me from my restaurant playing. The word spread, and many others invited me. By now, I know all the music pieces required at a Jewish wedding. I know all the procedures and ceremonies. I’m the go-to guy and bandleader for many organizers of Jewish events and rabbis in Vancouver and Winnipeg, have been for years.”

In addition to his active schedule as a lounge musician and at Jewish events, he frequently plays at high-level corporate bashes. “I performed for Bill Gates twice, once in his home. He likes jazz,” Hasselbach said proudly. “I played for the president of Singapore at his birthday gala in Singapore, at the Montreux Jazz Fest, Switzerland, and the North Sea Jazz Fest in Netherlands. I played for the international APEC congress and for the world ice-skating convention.”

The impressive list will continue to expand this year.

“I’m going to perform at the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans and St. Lucia Jazz Fest,” he said. “I’m also going to have a week of concerts in Tel Aviv in 2018.”

But Vancouver is home. He performs here regularly, most Saturdays and Sundays. For upcoming shows and more about Hasselbach, visit gabrieljazz.com. His corporate and wedding website is sassabrass.com.

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

Hear My Music premières

At the première of Hear My Music at Labia Theatre in Cape Town on Feb. 15, are, left to right, Ntandazo (Didi) Gcingca, associate producer, and Dizu Plaatjies, the documentary’s subject, with Wendy Bross Stuart and Ron Stuart of WRS Productions. (photo from WRS Productions)

Dizu Plaatjies is a performer, scholar and cultural activist who has devoted his adult life to indigenous African music. His journey from childhood in the Eastern Cape and Langa Township to concert stages worldwide is the compelling story that is the focus of the documentary Hear My Music: The Dizu Plaatjies Story.

Cultural Odyssey Films and WRS Productions (comprised of Vancouver’s Ron Stuart and Wendy Bross Stuart) premièred the documentary on Feb. 15 at Labia Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa.

Plaatjies has a vast international following, both of overseas students at the University of Cape Town, where he teaches, and fans of his recordings and concert work. Throughout his career he has maintained a commitment to nurturing a younger generation of artists, and founded the Amampondo ensemble. Among the first African musicians to tour extensively, they became familiar to world music lovers in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and throughout Africa. They were a personal favourite of the late Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Plaatjies recognized the need of local musicians for access to authentic and reasonably priced indigenous instruments, and has embarked on a program of instrument-making with apprentices from the region. His love of traditional African melodies and rhythms from various cultural sources has led to significant “salvage ethnomusicology” work. Apart from his own Xhosa heritage, he has promoted the musical styles of groups throughout southern Africa.

Despite his accomplishments and wide recognition, Plaatjies remains an approachable and humble individual. He is at home teaching children in a township school, exchange students at the university, and specialists in African music. On stage, he still exudes the enthusiasm he had when busking on the streets of Cape Town as a young musician in the early 1980s.

Envisioning the world

Brothers Tony and Ryan Smith are in the process of bringing the feature film Volition to the screen. (photo from Smith Brothers Film Company)

Local Jewish brothers Ryan and Tony Smith have worked in the film and television industry in Vancouver for most of their careers, and their latest project, a feature film, is set to begin filming in May 2017.

“Volition is a film about a man named James, who is afflicted with clairvoyance – the ability to see snippets of his future, out of order, before they happen,” Ryan told the Independent. “James gets involved in some shady dealings, using this ability. However, he soon has a disturbing clairvoyant vision: he sees his own imminent murder. At that point, he realizes that, if he has any chance of survival, he must go on the run.”

Tony has always loved metaphysics and both brothers are fans of the cerebral science fiction genre. The inspiration for Volition came during Tony’s film school days, and returned many years later, when he was going through a period in his life where he was feeling stuck.

The idea of the observer being responsible for the existence he or she sees resonated, “so, if I see the world positively, I might see the world positively; if my thoughts are negative, I’ll see the world that way,” he said. “I started to think that, what if where I’m stuck is because of my thought process, and those thought processes are almost creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then I thought, what would it take to get me off my ass and try something different – that turned into the character [in Volition] seeing his own death. What if that is what it takes to finally motivate somebody to change?”

Born in South Africa, and raised for the better part of their childhood in Vancouver, Tony and Ryan were exposed to the magic of illusion at an early age. Both their father and grandfather were professional magicians in South Africa. One of Tony’s earliest memories is of his dad performing a magic trick, ending with his mother locked in a trunk.

When they moved to Vancouver in 1990, their dad continued his work as a jewelry designer but remained a part of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Their dad is still a great storyteller, and is also a budding actor – “Our dad wants to really be cast in it [Volition], but we can’t afford him,” said Ryan.

The early exposure to magic is, as Ryan puts it, related to filmmaking in terms of “what you’re presenting, where the twist is and what the audience is watching, when.”

Oxford Dictionaries defines volition as “the faculty or power of using one’s will.” About how the film’s protagonist will employ this faculty, Tony said, “That’s what it’s all about. James doesn’t believe he has free will, because he sees pieces of his future ahead of time, and his visions always come true. He almost has an arrogance to him, in that he knows something the rest of us don’t. Through the narrative, he’s faced with the daunting task of not only trying to avoid his murder, but of attempting to undo his own belief system. He needs to believe in free will, even though his life has shown him that its existence is an illusion.”

Tony is a director, writer and editor, whose short film Reflection earned five Leo Award nominations, including for best picture and best director. Ryan is a full-time writer for television (Reboot: The Guardian Code, Mr. Young, Some Assembly Required), which has earned him two Leos.

Reflection and Volition seem to share similar themes of loss, regret, isolation, hope and the need to be understood. Tony said he and his brother like writing redemptive, honest stories. Ryan added that, underlying these two films, “there is a hopefulness of returning to a truer sense of self – the character is going through something, a struggle, and they’re hopefully getting to a place of self-understanding and growth even though it can go through some dark places.”

photo - Filming for Volition is set to begin in May — Filming for Volition is set to begin in May.

Tony will be directing Volition and Ryan will be the film’s producer; both brothers are credited as writers. When asked about the challenges of working together closely, as brothers, Tony, who is the oldest, said, “Because I came to this world first and it was my kingdom first,” he has that older brother “of course, I’m right about this thing” mentality. He said he even went so far as to coerce Ryan into signing a contract (with no expiry date) at a very young age, which states, “Ryan will shoot the scene whether he wants to or not, he won’t go crying or wimping.”

Nevertheless, as Ryan grew up, he started speaking his mind. “We have so much video evidence of the short films and the things that we’ve done through the years,” said Tony. “I found this moment when Ryan is an early teenager and he’s starting to give me lip. He’s actually on-camera starting to disagree with me!”

The brothers said they come from a relatively traditional Jewish family. Ryan attended King David in South Africa and then, on moving here, enrolled in Vancouver Talmud Torah. He said his days at these two Jewish schools and his engagement with the Torah stories “were, in a way, early touchstones for story and myth.”

For Tony, Judaism’s spiritualism and mysticism also inspire his storytelling. “I still have my first Bible,” he said.

“I love the Genesis story, I love the Noah story, and my mum, at an early age, I asked her, ‘How did the world get made in seven days?’ ‘Well it’s a metaphor,’ she said. At an early age, she was letting me in on abstract ideas and symbolism,” said Tony.

Filming for Volition is expected to begin in May, and Ryan and Tony are currently in the process of gathering the crew and auditioning for the two lead roles. Veteran Vancouver actor John Cassini has signed on for the role of the villain, Ray, a corrupt businessman, and his brother Frank Cassini will also feature. Tony and John worked on Comedy Network together, and Tony said John is “such a presence … he could read the phone book and make it interesting.” Tony also noted that John brings “an authenticity to the role – it’s not a two-dimensional villain, it’s a very textured antagonist.”

The latest casting announcement came just this past Monday, on Feb. 27. Canadian actor Bill Marchant will play, according to the film’s website, the “mentor character, Elliot Williams, a troubled psychologist with a dark secret.”

The Smith brothers are taking a unique approach to their pre-production process, documenting the journey through semi-monthly webisodes.

Volition is being produced by Smith Brothers Film Company in partnership with Paly Productions Inc., and Paly has been a “driving force behind doing this indie webisode marketing,” said Tony. The brothers, who are normally private about their creative process, liked the approach of “getting to know our audience from day one and welcom[ing] them into the process so we can build a grassroot connection with them.”

Readers can check out the webisodes and follow the brothers’ journey on volitionthemovie.com.

Alice Howell is a graduate of the University of Otago in New Zealand, with a bachelor of arts in film and media studies and a bachelor of science in psychology. She is a writer and actor based in Vancouver.

Wildlife takes over the Zack

The Intersection of Science & Art, now at Zack Gallery until March 24, features the works of Joanne Emerman and Mike Cohene. (photo by Olga Livshin)

The Intersection of Science & Art exhibit at Zack Gallery features the works of two artists – Joanne Emerman, professor emerita of physiological sciences at the University of British Columbia, for whom photography has been a hobby for decades; and Mike Cohene, whose woodcarving unfolded unexpectedly in the past few years, after a lifetime of other pursuits.

Emerman explained that, for her, science and art have always intersected. “I worked for 33 years in cancer research. I only retired four years ago. I’m a scientist. I often used my photo camera, attached to the microscope, to photograph cells.”

Her hobby, especially her photos of animals, seems an extension of her scientific imagery.

“My photographs show how animals adapt to their environment. Every feature you see in the pictures is a result of natural selection, the survival of the fittest,” she said. “The individuals with adaptations suited to their environment will live long enough to breed and pass down those traits to their offspring, whereas the individuals that don’t adapt will die off. For the natural selection to work, several factors must be present, including the overproduction of offspring. They must ‘reproduce like rabbits.’ Also beneficial are variations due to mutations. They increase the likelihood of survival.”

Because of her scientific leanings, Emerman tries to capture in every shot the most significant characteristics of each animal, the ones that contributed to the survival of the species, like the stripes of a zebra, the legs of a tortoise or the fins of a turtle. She also documents the endless variations in nature in her thousands of photo frames.

Of course, to photograph exotic creatures, she has had to travel widely.

photo - Joanne Emerman tries to get as close to the animals as she can with her camera, as is evidenced by this blue-footed booby photo — Joanne Emerman tries to get as close to the animals as she can with her camera, as is evidenced by this blue-footed booby photo. *(photo by Joanne Emerman)*

“I’ve always traveled a lot,” she said, “all over the world, and photographed during my travels…. I love animals but I love them in the wild. I never photograph animals in cages. The pictures in this show are all of animals and birds in their natural habitat. I took them in the Galapagos Islands and several South African game reserves. I tried to get as close to the animals as I could with my camera.”

The quality of the images reveals Emerman as a master photographer, although she is mostly self-taught. “I never took any classes on photography until I retired four years ago,” she said. “Then I decided to learn, and enrolled in a basic photography course at Emily Carr. I thought I would know everything they had to teach, or almost everything – I mean, it was called basics – but I learned so much!”

Eventually, the time was right for this show, her first gallery exhibit. “I was retired. I thought, maybe I should exhibit my pictures. I never did before. I submitted to the Zack Gallery, and the jury accepted me.”

Another first for her was meeting Cohene. Linda Lando, the gallery director, introduced them.

“Linda said, ‘We have a wonderful carver. He carves fish and birds. His works will complement yours.’ She put us together,” explained Emerman.

Cohene’s artistic journey started in 2009.

“In the summer of 2009, I visited Steveston Farmers Market,” he recalled. “They had a booth of the local woodcarvers club. I looked at their works and thought, outstanding! I could never do anything like that. I’m not artistic, though I always whittled. Professionally, I had a clothing business until I sold it awhile back. The man in the booth talked to me and said, come to the club in September. You can do it. So I went.”

His first carving was a baby bear, and he loved it. After that came a dolphin and then some fish.

“I felt good about my carving but I wanted to learn more,” said Cohene. “I started attending woodcarving classes at the Richmond Carvers Society – enjoyed it so much, took a course at Emily Carr.” He also participated in an intensive 10-day workshop with world-renowned master fish carver Dale Barrett of Redmond, Ore.

photo - Mike Cohene began woodcarving in 2009 — Mike Cohene began woodcarving in 2009. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

Cohene carves what interests him: wildlife, fish and birds mostly. “I’m a fisherman, have been all my life, but I never studied the fish anatomy before. I caught a fish and tossed it into a bucket. Now, I catch a fish and study it: the fins, the tail, the colour of scales. I look at fish from a different perspective now.”

To carve and paint his creations as realistically as possible, he uses reference material. “I take photos of what I catch or search for photos online,” he explained. “Sometimes, when I take commissions, people send me photos of the fish they caught and they want me to carve it.”

An active member of the Richmond Carvers Society, he regularly participates in the carvers’ juried exhibitions in British Columbia and Oregon. He has already collected a few “best in the show” awards for his work. However, as with Emerman, the exhibit at the Zack is his first gallery show.

Cohene has a second line of woodcarving, totally unrelated to his life-like creatures: Judaica. “A couple years ago, I brought 12 kilos of olive wood from Israel,” he said. “Each piece of wood was reclaimed from trees that had been in the fire of Har Carmel. I make mezuzot and dreidels from this olive wood, and people like them.”

To learn more about his carving, visit his website, mikecohene.com.

The Intersection of Science & Art opened on Feb. 23 and runs until March 24. Emerman is given an exhibit-related talk – Looking through the Lens of a Microscope and the Lens of a Camera – on March 21, 7 p.m., at the gallery. The suggested admission is a donation of $5. For more information, visit jccgv.com/content/jcc-cultural-arts.

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