Arts & Culture – Page 122

What made your list?

Robin Esrock contemplating ancient wonders in Turkey. (photo by Paul Vance/EWM)

Read about Robin Esrock’s visit to a fountain of youth in Colombia, his rail journey across Siberia, his diving lessons in Papua New Guinea. Esrock has traveled to more than 100 countries and, as he writes in the introduction to The Great Global Bucket List, the hybrid guidebook and essay collection “draws together the best of these adventures.” What’s more, Esrock hopes that you won’t just read about his exploits, but make plans for your own.

Esrock is one of the many writers participating in this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs Nov. 27-Dec. 1. The local author and journalist has not only been featured in the Jewish Independent before – for The Great Canadian Bucket List, among other things – but has written for the paper as well, so it was nice to catch up with him in anticipation of his Nov. 27, 5 p.m., presentation at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, appropriately called Travel Dreams.

While his career as an intrepid traveler only started after a bike accident – from which he received a broken kneecap and, eventually, a $20,000 insurance settlement that was “just enough,” he writes, “if used sparingly, to book a solo one-year adventure around the world” – he had traveled before.

“My first trip overseas was to Israel when I was 11, on a discovery tour, with my family and grandparents,” he told the Independent. “It was a hop-on, hop-off bus trip to tick off Israel’s greatest hits. I did a European bus tour after high school, memorable in that I can’t remember much of it, a two-month stint to a kibbutz, and then backpacked up East Africa to Zanzibar. I didn’t get malaria, but I did get the travel bug. I lived in London for a couple years and used that as a base to visit various odd spots in Europe, but the idea of traveling around the world always seemed like an impossible dream. Once it finally manifested, the result of a modest insurance settlement for my accident, I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long.”

The accident occurred as Esrock was approaching his 30th birthday. On that first yearlong trip, he visited 24 countries and was “published in newspapers on five continents.”

He writes, “A year later, my Hail-Mary pitch for a TV show landed on the right desk at the right time and, seven months later, I found myself as a co-host, writer and producer for a 40-part adventure series filmed in 36 countries. Funded by television networks, I was tasked with seeking out experiences that conformed to my bucket list criteria: Is this destination or activity unique? Is it something I will never forget? Will it make a great story? Is it something everyone can actually do?

“Tick off all those subjective items, and the journey began.”

These were the same criteria Esrock used to compile his shortlist for The Great Global Bucket List. Then, he said, “I had to cut 27 chapters for size in my book, but, fortunately, I have a Bucket List blog (globalbucketlist.com) to find them a home, and add new experiences. In my book, you’ll find far-flung adventures (Antarctica! the Galapagos! the Azores! the Amazon!) but you won’t find the Eiffel Tower or Tower of Pisa. This is a book of inspiring stories and photographs, not a guide to popular tourist traps.”

In addition to experiencing many a far-flung adventure over the last decade or so, Esrock has also found the time to start a family. How has that changed his travel plans?

photo - Robin Esrock camping in Antarctica — Robin Esrock camping in Antarctica. (photo by Jeff Topham)

“There seems to be a subtle flow in the career of travel writers: you start with hardcore budget travel, transition into hard adventure, then soft adventure, romance, family, cruise, food, wine, spa, and end up in golf!” he said. “I don’t take the risks I once did, or have the energy to sleep in roach hotels. People have become more important than ever and, since I’ve managed to tick off so much, I’m very drawn to unique experiences. My kids are a little young (3 and 3 months) to start ticking off a family bucket list, but I’d love to take them to countries like India, Cambodia, Israel and Turkey, where locals embrace children. Disneyland can wait.”

And his own bucket list?

“Write a novel that explains, in an entertaining way, everything I have learned on my journey. Raise my kids to be curious and up for anything, so they can join me on future adventures. And I’d love to get to the five ’Stans on the Silk Road in Central Asia, which has a rich history, few tourists, and is undergoing a fascinating modern transformation.”

Esrock added, “There’s too much bad news out there. The 24/7 news cycle dictates that bad news must be happening somewhere, all the time. The goal with my bucket lists, and with my career in general, is to provide some much-needed good news. In all my journeys, I’ve never been robbed, attacked, violently ill or had my organs harvested (at least to my knowledge!). The world is far more welcoming, reasonable, peaceful and beautiful than you’d imagine.

“Some people see bucket lists as a silly, ultimately harmful pastime that creates unrealistic goals. I see them as a mechanism for positive inspiration. You don’t have to go sandboarding on a volcano in Nicaragua or cage swim with crocodiles. You just have to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do, even if it’s just fixing the garden. We don’t have nearly as much time as we think we do. Every chapter in my book concludes with ‘Start Here,’ and an online link to practical info for readers to follow in my footsteps. More important, I think, is to start now.”

For the full book festival schedule and tickets, visit jccgv.com/content/jewish-book-fest.

The idea behind a bucket list is that life is finite and, if there are things we would like to do, we should do them while we can. The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival opens the night of Nov. 27 with San Francisco-based writer and psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom in conversation with Vancouver psychotherapist Larry Green. The title of Yalom’s most recent book, Creatures of a Day, comes from Marcus Aurelius’ The Meditations, to which Yalom refers more than once in his writings, and from which he quotes at the beginning of his latest book: “All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral – both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.” Creatures of a Day is a collection of 10 stories based on his patients’ experiences with loss and illness, and their – and Yalom’s – efforts to live a life of both meaning and pleasure.

Threepenny in 2016

Left to right: Ariel Martz-Oberlander (Dolly), Damon Jang (Walt Dreary), Katie Purych (Polly Peachum), Kevin Armstrong (Macheath), zi paris (Bob the Saw) and Adam Olgui (Street Singer). (photo by Colin Beiers)

The Threepenny Opera “has a grassroots design to it and deals with action and issues that are often seen in the streets and politics of major cities throughout the world,” Theatre in the Raw artistic director Jay Hamburger told the Independent. “The play for sure is original and it takes a lot of risks that, if given thought, speak profoundly to today.”

Indeed, violence, poverty, oppression and inequality are not things of the past. And Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 musical – itself very closely adapted from The Beggar’s Opera, written 200 years earlier, by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch – remains both entertaining and thought-provoking. The Theatre in the Raw production of it Nov. 16-27 at the Russian Hall is to be highly anticipated.

“Theatre in the Raw has always strived to provide high-quality performance work,” said Hamburger. “Though the productions can seem minimalist, a theatrical experience is aimed for and often with a message. The Threepenny Opera play, and the Beggar’s Opera that it was based on, inverted the notion of theatre experiences as gaudy, excessive and out of reach of the common person, and instead focused on the underbelly of society. Brecht’s approach to theatre championed breaking down walls between audience and actor, turning the notion of passive viewer of entertainment on its head. These ideas are much in line with Theatre in the Raw’s ambitions and desire to reach out to audiences in profound and innovative ways. Plus, providing a play of this scale with a relatively large cast and crew allows Theatre in the Raw to not only put on the show for the community … but also to have many talented artists perform their craft on stage.”

Among those artists are a few from the Jewish community. Stephen Aberle plays the central figure of Mr. Peachum.

“I play Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, owner and proprietor of the Beggar’s Big Brother, an outfitting and licensing company for all the beggars in the city,” Aberle explained. “Peachum has a monopoly, strictly enforced: anyone caught begging in his territory without a licence gets beaten up; second offenders get ‘the saw.’ His ‘clients’ must pay for their licences with hefty initiation fees, and by turning over half (or more) of their take.

“He’s a crucial plot engine: his daughter Polly marries the hero/antihero Macheath, leaving Peachum outraged. His obsessive struggle for revenge drives much of the action of the play.”

Set in London’s Soho just before Queen Victoria’s coronation, Peachum tries to have Macheath – also a brutal criminal, aka “Mack the Knife” – arrested and hanged, but the police chief happens to be an old army buddy of Macheath’s. Peachum, however, uses his influence and Macheath becomes a wanted man. Polly warns her lover, but, before fleeing, he stops in at the brothel he frequents.

“My character is Dolly, one of the whores who live with Jenny Diver in Wapping,” said Ariel Martz-Oberlander. “Macheath visits them every week and it’s them he goes to see instead of escaping from the police when he gets a chance.”

Adam Olgui plays the Street Singer, who is, in a way, “the narrator of the story,” said Olgui. “Although he’s an observer, he slips in at times to assume different roles to help move the plot along. The Street Singer himself is a smooth, playful, light-hearted being.”

As Brecht adapted Gay’s work, changing the setting, for example, to Victorian England, and highwaymen into gangsters of a sort, Theatre in the Raw will also add its touch.

“We are introducing elements modernizing the style of the characters, their wardrobes, etc., and are not doing the play using English accents,” said Hamburger. “Though the play technically still occurs in an alternate version of 19th-century Soho, we feel our stylistic choices help the piece reflect more universally about the 1920s Germany where it was written and possibly on our pressing modern situations as well. We’ll admit we’re putting a bit of Commercial Drive flavor into it, too, as the play involves a diverse group of characters that are both fun and standout.”

And the characters still speak to us.

photo - Stephen Aberle is Mr. Peachum — Stephen Aberle is Mr. Peachum. *(photo by Colin Beiers)*

“To my mind, the character of Peachum remains bitingly, bitterly relevant today,” said Aberle. “He is Brecht’s critique of capitalism par excellence, a ‘businessman’ whose business, like so many winning enterprises, thrives on human misery. As he observes, ‘The powerful of the earth can create poverty, but they can’t bear to look at it.’ He has learned to profit by this discovery, and has no scruples about doing so – by whatever means necessary.

“Peachum is cynically fond of religious references. He loves to preach, usually (like his middle namesake) to gloomily pessimistic effect (‘the world is mean, and man uncouth!’), and offers verses of scripture to persuade suckers to part with their money. This leaves me as an actor surmising that he may have had a religious education, perhaps even an earlier career as a clergyman, before stumbling into the vocation of extracting value from poverty instead of working to alleviate it. Some might find parallels with today’s professional evangelists.”

As for her character, Martz-Oberlander said, “Dolly represents the way a woman can make a living taking advantage of a very misogynistic and cut-throat society in the play. She has no misconceptions about Macheath falling in love with her and is content to use her body to make a living. She is reasonable, if very naïve. Dolly plays a small part in the story, but she stands the test of time by being a strong woman who makes her way in a system in many ways rigged against her.”

Olgui spoke more generally. “I think that the timelessness of Brecht’s themes and his view of human nature are why his works are still relevant today,” he said.

Hamburger highlighted the play’s “wild sense of humor” and its “rollercoaster” of a story. He noted that both Brecht and Weill “were extremely interested in U.S. entertainment during the early part of the 20th century. Though the play didn’t really make it in the U.S. until the 1950s, both creators looked to the U.S. for some form of success. Weill actually escaped Germany before the Holocaust, knowing he had to get out to save his life. Brecht, on the other hand, before and during the Second World War, fled to 10 different countries in order for him and his family to survive. The play speaks in an extremely original and relevant way to a lot of concerns that face us economically, socially, and the gap between the rich, the middle-class and the poor, and how certain people are often at a disadvantage and seeking ways to survive.”

Not to mention it has some pretty catchy and enduring tunes: “Ballad of Mack the Knife” and “Jenny the Pirate,” to name but two.

Tickets for The Threepenny Opera are $25 and $20 (students) and available at the door or from theatreintheraw.ca/tickets.

We are all connected

Kerry Sandomirsky as Alice, centre. In Long Division, the way in which Alice’s son reacts to bullying “connects all the characters in the play, and it makes my character deeply question herself,” explains Sandomirsky. (photo by David Cooper)

Math, movement, images, text, music and more combine in Peter Dickinson’s Long Division, which will see its première at Gateway Theatre Nov. 17-26.

Dickinson is a professor at Simon Fraser University and the director of SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies. Long Division is his third play, and it features seven characters. Jewish community member Kerry Sandomirsky plays Alice.

“Alice is the single mother of a brilliant math student who is bullied,” Sandomirsky told the Independent. “He responds by making a shocking choice. This event connects all the characters in the play, and it makes my character deeply question herself. What could she have possibly done differently?”

Directed by Richard Wolfe and produced by Pi Theatre, Long Division is “about the mathematics of human connection.” The characters, explains the synopsis, “are linked by a sequence of ultimately tragic events, but there is more to the pattern than first appears. The three male and four female characters use number theory, geometry and logic to trace their connection to each other and to the moment that changed their lives.”

When asked about what challenges the script posed for her, Sandomirsky, said, “Well, have you ever tried to explain Pascal’s Wager using contemporary dance? Or Fibonacci numbers? Or Schrödinger’s cat? We’re dealing with mathematical concepts as metaphors for human stories. So, the first task is to learn the math!”

And to how much of the math could she relate?

“Zero,” she said. “Thank God my son has a math tutor.”

Not only is there the math to master, but the movement. For that, the cast also had help.

“Earlier today,” wrote Dickinson in his Oct. 20 blog, “the choreographer of Long Division, Lesley Telford, invited me to drop by the studio at Arts Umbrella on Granville Island, where she was working … with seven amazingly talented dancers … and they have each taken on a character in the play, drawing from the text … to improvise and develop individual gesture phrases that may or may not eventually get set in some related form on our corresponding actors when we begin rehearsals next week…. I was amazed at how bang-on their instincts were in terms of energy and tempo and line, as well as things like muscularity vs. flow, repetition, different levels and directional facings, and so on. I was also pleased to note that I could also read each character in the movement without reading the movement itself as telegraphing too obviously this or that character’s psychology or profession.”

Projection art also helps “reveal aspects of the characters’ inner lives,” according to the play description. On Oct. 29, Dickinson blogged that it was “useful to have Jamie [Nesbitt] at the table yesterday for our final beat-by-beat read-through of the text, as he asked a lot of tough dramaturgical questions about what exactly was going on in different sections, and how video might support them in some instances, or conceivably work against them in others. Combined with the cast’s similarly probing questions from the rest of the week, the rigorous text analysis has really forced me to justify my choices, and to explain their relevance to the overall structure of the play and the respective inner worlds of each of the characters.”

Playing Alice motivated Sandomirsky to read Sue Klebold’s book A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy. “Her son was one of the Columbine shooters,” explained Sandomirsky. “She experienced a firestorm of hatred. For example, when her family was sent food by her neighbors, her lawyer insisted she throw it out in case it was poisoned.

“This is the third play in a row where I play the mother of a tormented teenage boy. And this is definitely the first one that prescribes algebra as the way to get through life.”

But, Sandomirsky was quick to note, “Long Division is a workout for the mind – without sacrificing heart.”

Tickets for Long Division ($29) can be purchased from 604-270-1812 or gatewaytheatre.com/longdivision.

Keeping things simple

“Overseas” by Ivor Levin. (photo by Ivor Levin)

Ivor Levin’s path to artistic photography was a long and gradual one. “Photography is my hobby,” he said in an interview with the Independent, but one couldn’t have guessed it from his solo exhibition at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery.

Levin’s images reveal an artist’s perception. Where anyone else might see a dirty warehouse, he sees a play of light and shadows, a mosaic of colors and shapes. Peeling paint on a wall or a rivet screwed into corrugated metal transform under the magic touch of his camera into fascinating pieces of art.

By his education and day job, Levin is a dentist. By inclination, he is an artist, walking around Vancouver in his spare time with his camera, capturing amazing and unexpected pictures.

“I like simplicity,” he explained. “I don’t like cluttered images. All my images have one focal point. I’m interested mostly in two genres. One is urban geometry and abstraction: I look for patterns there, for lines and colors. Another is street photography: when I find an interesting geometric setting, I wait there until a person appears, walks into my scene, and then I take a picture. I don’t do landscapes or faces. No mountains. And absolutely no flowers.”

Levin said there was always a camera in the house when he was growing up. He snapped pictures during family gatherings, trips and holidays, but, in the last eight years, his passion for photography deepened.

“I started looking around with more of an artistic eye,” he said. “I also discovered Flickr and opened an account there, saw what other photographers were doing on the site and taught myself to achieve the effects I like. Gradually, people started noticing and liking my pictures, too. Friends and family were the last to notice, and they began saying: ‘Your photos are so interesting; why don’t you have a show?’ It happened about two years ago.”

photo - Ivor Levin at the opening of his exhibit Simplicity — Ivor Levin at the opening of his exhibit Simplicity. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

The idea of a show took root and, last year, Levin applied to the Zack Gallery. “I sent them a link to my Flickr account, and they liked it. They offered me a show. It’s the first time I actually printed my photos. Before that, I only had them digitally, on my computer and on Flickr.”

The show at the Zack – called Simplicity – reflects the artist’s vision not only of Vancouver, his hometown, but also of some other places he has visited. One of his favorite hunting grounds for images is Granville Island, and a few of the images exhibited came from there. Others he found during his international travels, like “Overseas,” which originated in Cape Town, South Africa. “There is the ocean there, and a swimming pool on the other side of the walkway, and the sky above. Everything is blue, but different shades of blue. When I saw a woman in a blue dress on that sidewalk, I knew I had to take the picture,” Levin explained.

Most of his images depict bright and cheerful colors.

“I can appreciate black and white, too,” he said, “but only when the image demands it.”

One such image is his black and white street scene “Piano Man.” He shot it under an overpass in Brooklyn, and its punchy graphics are only slightly enhanced by computer editing.

“I rarely use the images straight from the camera, but most of my modifications are minor,” he said. “I adjust exposure and saturation. Sometimes, I crop or tilt the images.”

Unlike many photographers, he doesn’t use Photoshop, but rather the online program PicMonkey. He taught himself to use it, like he taught himself the other aspects of photography. “I learn from the other photographers’ photos and from some internet sites,” he said.

As the years go by, Levin spends increasingly more of his free time on his hobby, although he confessed that taking pictures absorbs him much more than the editing process. “I prefer creating with the camera, not with the computer,” he said. “I’m always on the lookout for the ‘Wow!’ factor. In the beginning, I kept everything, thousands and thousands of images. Now, I’m much more selective. When I see an image, I know: it’s a keeper. Otherwise, I just delete them.”

Titles for his images are also important to him.

“I’ve always liked to play with words, make puns. For me, it’s half the fun to find the right title for the image. Each one needs a catch phrase to catch the people’s attention.”

Despite his love for photography, he doesn’t have plans to abandon his day job.

“I like my job,” he said. “Of course, if I could make the same living with photography as I do as a dentist, I’d probably choose photography.” He didn’t sound too sure.

Simplicity is at Zack Gallery until Nov. 20.

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

Mixing of cultures, religions

Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt, authors of JewAsian, will be at the Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 28. (photo by Matthew Zimmerman Banderas)

The recently published book JewAsian: Race, Religion and Identity for America’s Newest Jews by Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt was crafted out of a seven-year study of 39 mixed couples, as well as their own successful marriage. The couple will be in Vancouver later this month to share their findings at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival.

For Kim, who was born a few years after her parents moved from Korea to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s, finding a Korean guy to date was a virtual mission impossible, so looking outside the community was accepted.

“My mother was totally fine with it, in large part because she’d thrown away her expectations that I marry somebody Korean a long, long time ago,” said Kim of her marriage with Leavitt. “I think, in part, because I grew up in a community that was predominantly white with very few people of color, I think she quickly realized that, demographically speaking, it was probably going to be unlikely I’d meet, date and eventually marry someone of the same ethnic background as me.”

Leavitt, who is of American Jewish origin, said, “My mom was super-excited about the fact I had met somebody I was so smitten with. She and Helen, early on, established a great rapport that has continued ever since. I think my mom just had an expectation that I’d settle down with somebody I really loved, who I was challenged and inspired by, and saw that in Helen … so she was excited.”

Leavitt grew up in a household that was somewhere between the Reform and Conservative denominations. He went to a Jewish community Sunday school growing up that was housed at Cornell University and he had his bar mitzvah at Ithaca College through their Hillel.

Kim and Leavitt met in 1997 and both were drawn to the complexity of their Jewish-Asian mix, an interest that increased with the births of their children.

“This was the era where, I think, we started to see a lot of interracial pairings, dating and marriages,” said Kim. “And it was also right before the U.S. census gave multiracial individuals the option of choosing more than one race on the census … really, an interesting time, demographically speaking, where the context around us was contributing to our thinking about how common are pairings like ours and maybe other interracial or Jewish-not Jewish pairings.”

Leavitt and Kim contacted a number of universities that were repositories of large-scale demographic studies. They were aware that the study of intermarriage to that time had been focused on interfaith marriage, but had not delved into how interracial marriage factored into the larger picture.

The couple reached out to the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Through this connection, they were able to do an initial recruiting of couples with whom to speak for their book. In the end, their study included 39 couples from the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Orange County, and from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas.

“We focused there, in part, because of the high percentages of individuals who identified as Jewish and Asian,” said Kim. “Then, there was the likelihood and demographic reality that interracial marriages are taking place predominantly in those areas … with the West Coast having, by far, the highest rates of interracial marriages.”

“We had a lot of people volunteer to be part of the survey and what we made a decision to do was to try to find the most expansive look at Jewish-Asian combination that we could,” said Leavitt.

Within the 39 couples, one was gay and three were lesbian, with the remainder being heterosexual. The study also included a second set of interviewees who were young adults that were children of Jewish-Asian households.

“The first thing by far that I think was quite surprising that we found was that, for the couples as well as the adult kids, they are definitely Jewish – not just in terms of the self-identification perspective, but in terms of some strikingly traditional religious practices,” said Kim. “So, the couples we interviewed were in the midst of or had created homes where there was a lot of traditional Jewish religious practice – everything from observing Shabbat consistently, to consistent synagogue attendance, to kids becoming bar or bat mitzvah, to children going to Jewish day schools.

“Then, for the adult kids we interviewed, they affirmatively claimed they were Jewish. But, they also talked about having been raised in traditionally religious households and communities that, to a great extent, mirrored what we were finding with the couples we interviewed.”

While only six of the racially Asian individuals had converted to Judaism, the overwhelming majority of couples celebrated Jewish religious events and cultural tradition alongside Asian ethnic traditions.

“There was neither a conflict of religion nor a blending of religions,” said Kim. “It was more of a cultural hybrid, but steeped in Judaism as the religion of the household.”

“I would go broader and say that, for the most part … we didn’t really hear too many stories about conflicts related to religion overall,” added Leavitt. “There were a few examples where the non-Jewish partner had a religious or spiritual practice that they adhered to, but it was something they did on their own and didn’t bring into the household.”

Both Kim and Leavitt said the findings were representative of their own Jewish-Asian mix. “Judaism, for me, is a religion and a cultural tradition that is easier for me to instil in my family,” said Kim. “I, as a second-generation child of an immigrant family, did not grow up with a lot of Korean ethnic and cultural traditions.

“Through the adult kids [in the study], it was reinforced repeatedly that you have to expose [them to the culture], no matter what your comfort level as a parent, no matter your knowledge as a parent. The kids really appreciated when the parents went all out in terms of trying to expose them to a particular culture or ethnicity, though they themselves as parents were afraid they might not do it right.

“So, I think just hearing from the kids and imagining my own kids in 10 to 15 years was kind of affirming to me, [that I just need to] try as much as I possibly can. The kids will end up picking up things here and there and will then, on their own, become curious and want to learn on their own. That was reassuring for me.”

“I had a lot of the same reactions,” said Leavitt. “For me, when Helen and I decided to make a commitment to this project, it was fairly close in time to when we were also starting to think about having our own family. When we got this investigation underway, our son Ari arrived. As a first-time parent, I had a lot of worry and anxiety about a household that seemed to combine so many different kinds of traditions, cultural heritage markers and, to some extent, religious differences. I think I had a lot of worry about the ability of all those things to be in a household together … in part, because I didn’t have an upbringing where there were lots of differences within the household. So, I had a lot of fear about that.

“One of the things I’ve been liberated by, in working on this project and having two children arrive, is there is a lot of flexibility and resilience in households. Where even something may seem like a long list of differences, the people inside that household are able to find ways where things can come from different directions, but meet at the same point.”

Kim is excited about coming to Vancouver, especially to have the opportunity to speak with a non-American audience, “to understand how it is that they think about these different dimensions of identity, tradition, culture and religion, as a way of getting out of our predominantly U.S.-focused lens. I’m really looking forward to that comparative perspective.”

Leavitt said, “I think the chance to be in as diverse, global and multicultural a city as Vancouver … maybe there are lots of households coming together with this mix of Jewish-Asian backgrounds in Vancouver. I think this may propel us to continue researching more in this international comparative way.

“Helen and I feel very fortunate to have been working on this project at a time in the U.S. when the exploration about the diversity of the Jewish community in our country is really something that is front of mind for so many congregations, synagogues. We aren’t the same people we were years ago.”

“If we are acknowledging that this is what American Judaism looks like,” added Kim, “what then is the responsibility we have in regards to action based on the changes in the demographic and how do we act based on how we’ve changed?”

Kim and Leavitt are on a panel with Daniel Kalla on Nov. 28, 6 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. For more information, visit jccgv.com/content/jewish-book-fest.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Theatre arts support

Langara College Foundation’s Langara Studio 58 Legacy Fund campaign reached and exceeded its original $250,000 goal, raising more than $273,000 in support of theatre arts at Langara. Most than 538 individual donors contributed to the success of the campaign, among them 219 Studio 58 alumni and 55 present and former faculty, directors and designers.

“The response from our Studio 58 community was amazing,” said Moira Gookstetter, executive director, Langara College Foundation. “We are humbled by their generosity. With their support, we raised over $136,729, which, when matched by the college, will create an endowment of $273,458.

“We are especially thankful for our volunteer campaign chairs Jane Heyman and Joey Lespérance. They are the real heroes of this campaign. Their enthusiasm, dedication and tireless support have helped to create a foundation that will launch Studio 58 into the future.”

Established to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Langara’s Theatre Arts at Studio 58 program, the Legacy Fund’s mandate is to support the expansion and scope of the program’s productions, training and learning opportunities.

“The remarkable success of the Studio 58 Legacy Fund campaign will mean future generations of students will have access to working on productions beyond the normal scope of Studio 58, will be offered special workshops, and will have the possibility to mentor with professionals,” said Kathryn Shaw, Studio 58 artistic director. “The Legacy Fund will allow Theatre Arts at Studio 58 to remain a leading force in theatre training in Canada. All of this could not have been possible without our caring and generous donors and supporters.”

Langara College’s Studio 58 provides practical, hands-on training for students looking for careers in professional theatre. It offers two streams – acting and production.

Printmaker comes to city

Ian Kochberg at work. (photo from Ian Kochberg)

Next week, at the Circle Craft Winter Market, local community members will have a rare opportunity to meet Ontario artist Ian Kochberg and buy some of his work.

Kochberg has been a professional printmaker for 39 years. His studio is located in Richmond Hill, part of the Greater Toronto area. As a child, he didn’t dream of being a printmaker. In fact, he has a degree in animated film, but “to the chagrin” of his professors at the time, said Kochberg in an email interview with the Independent, “I had decided during my final year that film was not something I could pursue.”

He cited several reasons for his decision. One of them was his aversion to computers. “Although computer animation was in its infancy,” he said, “I knew that, in due course, computers would take over the animation industry. I have always had little interest in computers. Both professors and fellow students thought me insane.”

Another reason to opt out of a film career was his realization that he didn’t compromise easily. “I never worked well with others,” he said. “In college, the final year’s work was a group film. I was the only one who decided to go solo. I went in the first day to get the assignment parameters and came back the last with a finished film. Later, the college entered my film in numerous film festivals. It won a number of awards, but that was not how the industry works. Film requires a collaborative effort – printmaking does not.”

Fortunately, he stumbled into printmaking while still in college, and it was love at first sight. “I worked my way through college and university, hiring out as a freelance artist for ad agencies. I did everything: from illustration, to fabric design, to designing seat covers and bulkheads for a new fleet of Air Canada jets,” he said.

Among those agencies was a company that sold framed art to people in the legal profession. “They hired me to create a set of legal-themed illustrations, which they printed and framed,” explained Kochberg. “I received payment for each drawing, along with royalties on each sale. Life was good! The owner of the company, in an attempt to maintain control, told me ‘how expensive’ it was to print up those reproductions. Shortly thereafter, I discovered his lie. It was actually cheap to make copies of art.”

He decided to strike out on his own. His first foray into the life of an independent artist was a set of three drawings of old Ontario houses. “I had them printed up on a very high-quality paper, meticulously hand-painted each copy and then signed and numbered each as a limited edition. Being young, naïve, and not knowing any better, I brought these pieces into a real art gallery. The owner was highly knowledgeable and very gracious. He unashamedly heaped praise upon my work and my talent, employing an imaginative mélange of artsy adjectives.”

But, when Kochberg attempted to close the sale, the gallery owner gave him a lecture on the difference between original prints and reproductions. “I felt the proverbial light bulb go on over my head,” Kochberg recalled.

The gallery owner did purchase the prints that day, however. “He didn’t sell copies in his gallery, but he told me they were going to hang in his own house,” said Kochberg. “Whatever his motives, whether he actually liked them that much or it was simply a ‘pity sale’ matters not. Unbeknownst to him, he had forever altered the course of my life. The very next day found me in the library, where I researched printmaking techniques. Before I had even set foot into a printmaking studio, I had taught myself everything I needed to know to get started.”

He also got some exciting ideas of his own and took a 10-week course to get access to printmaking equipment. “When I finished the course, I purchased my first etching press,” he said.

Once he became involved in printmaking, Kochberg never looked back. For him, printmaking is a fascinating combination of research and intuition, design and fine art, creativity and technology.

“It is a cerebral, controlled process,” he said. “It is also unforgiving. Sometimes, I’ve spent up to 180 hours working on a single screen for a single color, with no way to make a correction if I made a mistake…. At one point, I actually counted how many times I had to pick up each and every piece of paper in an edition, do something to it, and put it down. As I recall, the number was around 120.”

According to his records, large pieces typically take him six to eight months, working full-time, to complete an edition. “The longest I’ve spent creating an edition has been 13 months,” he said.

Kochberg’s limited editions usually range from 100 to 300 original prints, all signed and numbered, and the source plates and screens are always destroyed after the edition is finished.

photo - Ian Kochberg’s “House Blessing” — Ian Kochberg’s “House Blessing.” *(photo from Ian Kochberg)*

Despite the demanding, labor-intensive technical process, every stage of printmaking still makes him feel “like a child in a toy store,” he said. “When these things no longer generate that kind of wonder and awe, it will be time to move on to something else.”

So far, after four decades of printmaking, it hasn’t happened yet. New ideas still swirl in the artist’s head, and his fans continue to admire his imagination and work. Some of his fans are celebrities. One of his prints even hangs in the Vatican. “I don’t recall the details – I have a horrible memory – but it was purchased for some special occasion involving the last pope. It was interesting shipping out a package to the Vatican,” he said.

“There have been countless warm stories and anecdotes about where my work hangs, for whom it was purchased and what individual pieces have meant to patrons,” he continued. “These are humbling and keep me grounded. The incident that stands out most clearly in my mind is that of a young lady who came to us at a show some years back, along with her baby daughter in a stroller. She told us that, when she was her daughter’s age, her mother similarly brought her to us in a stroller and purchased one of my works for her – to start her daughter’s collection. Now, all grown up, the young lady was doing the same for her own daughter – buying her child’s first ‘Kochberg.’ I felt quite honored, but it did make me feel old.”

Many of his pieces sport his signature combination of funky drawings, music notation, Judaic themes and a Celtic pattern. “Aside from my name, Ian, I have no Celtic or Irish connections,” he admitted. “One of my earlier Judaic pieces had an interlaced border. I copied the structure of the design from a Havdalah candle. People assumed it was a Celtic design. I don’t like arguing.”

The infusion of musical notes echoes his love of music, though he downplays his own talent in this realm. “I have no formal music training,” he explained. “I have played piano, but am not a pianist. I enjoy playing guitar and have written a number of songs, but am not a guitarist. I sing and, if you heard me sing, you’d know I am not a vocalist. I also play recorder, banjo and upright bass. In any event, I definitely do not consider myself a real musician.”

His family is musical though. His wife and children have all had formal musical training, and musical activities often feature as their family pastime. “About a year ago,” he said, “I started playing upright bass and joined the nonprofit community orchestra in which my wife, Arlene, plays a violin and our daughter, Toni, plays cello and bass.”

He finds both inspiration for his work and a relief from it in his family and in his various recreational pursuits. For many years, one of those was ballroom dancing, a hobby and part-time job.

“My wife and I taught social ballroom dancing for the local continuing board of education,” he explained. “This was not so much for extra income but to get us out of the studio and away from our work. When you have your own business, it never ends. We enjoyed our teaching very much. We taught for a full 20 years, until we realized that we just weren’t enjoying our classes as much. It was time to move on.”

Another of his lifelong interests is dogs. “We’ve had dogs for about 40 years,” he said. “Currently, we have a 10-year-old Black Russian terrier. I’m actually the ‘go-to dog guy’ in the neighborhood. Whenever people have questions or problems about their pooches or need information on specific breeds, they come to me. Friends of ours know that I enjoy talking dogs much more than art. Art is usually about me, while dogs are ‘just’ dogs.”

His affection for dogs in general, and his terrier in particular, has spilled into his writing. Kochberg’s hilarious true story about his dog was published in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, The Dog Did What?: 101 Amazing Stories of Magical Moments, Miracles and … Mayhem (2014).

The Circle Craft market runs Nov. 9-13, and Kochberg will be located in booth #318.

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

Stories from Europe

Teaching Racism, which looks at discrimination against Roma in the Czech Republic, is one of nine videos currently comprising the Global Reporting Centre’s Strangers at Home project. (photo from strangers.globalreportingcentre.org)

Shayna Plaut has long been concerned with the plight of minorities in Europe. Her doctoral thesis focused on the Roma, and she has gone back and forth to Central and Eastern Europe to advocate for migrants, refugees and minorities since 2001. She speaks Romani fluently and, during her phone interview with the Independent, words from the Romani and other languages came out of her mouth with ease, pronounced perfectly. Plaut is clearly someone who deeply respects the details and uniqueness of different cultures.

In January 2014, Plaut began work as research and project manager on Strangers at Home, a Global Reporting Centre initiative featuring short films by a range of talented people in Europe – filmmakers, writers, cartoonists, musicians, scholars, as well as average citizens. The film project was aired at the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in April 2016, and had its Canadian debut at Simon Fraser University Harbor Centre in September. It will screen at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library on Nov. 19 during Media Democracy Days.

Most of the films are from the perspective of minorities – Jews, Roma, Muslims – but some are from the perspective of nativists who are acting out of fear of the increased presence of migrants and refugees. As the project website says, “Extremist voices are gaining political power, inspiring white Europeans to take to the streets to ‘claim back’ their place in Europe. As a result, millions of people in Europe are feeling like strangers at home.”

The nine videos, which can be viewed online, are rich and varied. Hate Poetry features Germans with “foreign sounding last names” reading hate mail, Queen of the Gypsies discusses how life has improved for Roma in Macedonia, Fascist Logic details the fear of immigrants felt by an Italian national, Teaching Racism looks at the discrimination against Roma in the schools of Czech Republic, Exceptionally Greek looks at the struggles of migrants in Greece, Hatschi Bratschi features a racist children’s book that continues to be a bestseller in Austria and Defending Russia presents the perspective of a paramilitary warrior in training to protect what he considers traditional Russian values.

Two videos deal specifically with Jews in Europe: Chasing Ghosts, by a non-Jewish cartoonist, examines the antisemitism present in Serbia despite the virtual absence of Jews, and Breaking the Silence looks at what the filmmaker sees as a conspiracy of silence about rampant antisemitism in Malmo, Sweden.

“We asked them, ‘What do you want people in North America to know about what’s happening in your country?” explained Plaut. “News coverage here can be sensationalistic, or overly simplistic. We wanted to hear from the people themselves, their stories. The way to do this is not to send another American journalist but rather to solicit the stories from the storytellers themselves.”

In Plaut’s view, the media jumps too quickly to simplistic narratives like “it’s 1938 again,” or lumps different countries with different problems together too quickly.

“Take Greece, for example,” she said. “The media is often quick to associate the rise of the right-wing with austerity, but we found Greek xenophobia to have more to do with deep cultural ideas about fears of impurity. When countries are portrayed in caricatures, that’s how they are engaged with. If diagnosis is incorrect, then the solution will be incorrect.”

Of the pieces that present the perspectives of nationalists themselves, Plaut said she was torn over whether to pay nationalists to present their views, but decided that, ultimately, it is important to hear their stories and understand where they are coming from as human beings as well.

“We can’t just write people off and say they are crazy,” she said. “People need to hear and understand that story, too. We can’t just shut off stories we don’t like.”

While the Strangers at Home project currently consists of nine pieces 60 to 90 seconds long, Plaut would like to see it expanded into 10-to-15-minute films comprising a feature-length documentary to go on the festival circuit, as well as being used online as an educational tool. Fundraising efforts are underway. For more information and to watch the videos, visit strangers.globalreportingcentre.org.

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

Becoming who we are

One of the best parts of Moos, which screens Nov. 10 as part of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, is the friendship between Moos (Jip Smit) and Roel (Jim Deddes). (photo by Greetje Mulder)

Moos is a delightful and unpretentious film. The title character is a truly nice person, so busy taking care of others that, not only do her dreams fade into the background, but she does. When a close family friend toasts everyone at the Chanukah dinner table but forgets Moos, she drops her news – she’s going to audition for theatre school.

In this light and uplifting Dutch contribution to the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which runs to Nov. 13, no one believes that Moos has the talent or confidence to pass the auditions and, well, she doesn’t, but her attempt starts her on a path of self-discovery and self-assertion. On their own personal journeys are Moos’ father, who must also become more independent and move through the loss of his wife, and Sam, a childhood friend of Moos who returns from 15 years in Israel for a visit and discovers that maybe he belongs in Amsterdam.

“I wanted to make a film about ordinary people in a world where beauty and appearance are everything,” writes director Job Gosschalk. “Not a glamorous romantic comedy but a film about two people who were not first in line when they were handing out good looks. There are enough stories about heroes. This would be a small story about daily troubles. I wanted to give the audience characters they could easily identify with.”

Sam, Moos and the other characters do seem like people viewers might actually know. And, while as predictable as most rom-coms, Moos has its own sense of humor and style. In addition to telling a good story, the film reinforces the importance of trying something (more than once) and of supporting (and being supported by) your family and friends – one of the best parts of the film is the friendship between Moos and Roel, who does get into theatre school. The value of tradition and ritual also play a large part in the film, which starts on Chanukah and features a bris and a bar mitzvah – for different boys. Moos is a really enjoyable hour and a half.

In the documentary realm, Mr. Gaga is a joy to watch if you’re a fan of contemporary dance. Full of excerpts from his masterful choreographic creations, the film also features many video clips of Ohad Naharin – as a boy dancing, as a young man trying out moves in his apartment, as a student, as a performer and as a teacher.

Naharin has been artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company since 1990 and is the founder of his own language of movement, Gaga. His brilliance is evident from his work and, while Mr. Gaga, oddly enough, doesn’t tell viewers much about Gaga, it does offer a meaningful introduction to Naharin, his career path, relationships, method of work, love of dance.

“Dance started in my life as long as I remember myself,” he says. But, when asked by a reporter why he dances, instead of simply saying, there is “no one clear answer,” as he does in the documentary, he makes up a fantastical story about a tragedy involving a fictional twin brother and a grandmother dying in a car accident. It would be an understatement to say that Naharin has an active imagination and the courage to use it.

Naharin only started formal dance training at 22, and he credits his late start as a reason for his success: “… I was a lot more connected to the animal that I am.” A dance teacher notes, “what he did was different.” It certainly was – and is. Mr. Gaga shows just how creative and exacting a person Naharin is, some of the challenges he has faced, the losses he has mourned, the temper he has tried to quell, and his efforts to become a better communicator and teacher. As we all are, Naharin is a work in progress.

Another documentary in the festival is a local community project: A Life Sung Yiddishly about singer Claire Klein Osipov, made by Haya Newman. For viewers unfamiliar with Osipov and her accomplished lifetime career performing Yiddish folksongs – for the most part with pianist and composer/arranger Wendy Bross Stuart – the film touches on some highlights and serves as an important video record.

For the full festival lineup, visit vjff.org.

A fine collection of poems

When I saw the table of contents of The Poems of H. Leivick and Others: Yiddish Poetry in Translation by Leon H. Gildin (Finishing Line Press), a lovely little book of translated Yiddish poems by Leivick and other noted poets, two images came immediately to mind. One was a scene with Leivick, a slight figure with a beautiful etched face and a halo of white hair, sitting alone on a circular stone ledge in front of the Hebrew University library, in Jerusalem, seemingly lost in thought. The other, and this goes back decades, is a gathering of Yiddish poets, including almost all the ones collected in this book, in a meeting hall in New York. What a thrill it was for a college boy to be at such a meeting and seeing face-to-face the famous poets he had known before only by name.

book cover - The Poems of H. Leivick and Others The poems of Leivick (1886-1962) range in subject matter: a poem about a very small poem “no longer than an epitaph”; the recollection of a birch rod beating given by his father; a prisoner in a cell at night “swallowing as if it were wine the moon’s bright light”; a man looking for work without success. Leivick was a paperhanger when he came to the United States. He was also a noted playwright; his most famous is The Golem, originally produced by Habima Theatre when it was still in Moscow, and later translated into other languages.

Here, too, admirably rendered into English by Gildin, are the voices of other famous American Yiddish poets – all born in Eastern Europe – singing songs of longing, love and the Sabbath. About half the poems are by Leivick: the rest are by luminaries like Chaim Grade, Yakov Glatstein, Avraham Reisen, Itzik Manger, A. Leyeles, Mani Leib and Avraham Sutzkever. Most of the poems here have a modernist lilt regarding imagery and tone, yet all have traditional rhymes.

My only caveat with this fine ingathering of poems is that too much space is devoted to a relatively minor but good poet, Anna Margolin. Where Grade has only one, why six for Margolin? Additional poems by the other poets would have been welcome.

My favorite poems here are those that have a Jewish core. Hence, Grade’s loving poem “The Sabbath,” recalling his war- and postwar-years wanderings in Russia and Europe, resonates, as does Ephraim Auerbach’s prayer-poem “God of Abraham,” which begins with the opening lines of Havdalah – the prayer for the departing of the Sabbath – and takes wing from there.

In his short introduction, Gildin accents the secular aspects of Yiddish poetry but, by so doing, he puts an artificial divide between religiosity and secularism. He says that, while Yiddish was the street language of the Orthodox, the secular Yiddish created a culture. But Gildin neglects to note that Yiddish was used far beyond the street for Orthodox Jews. Religious Jews also used Yiddish in shul, in studying and in translating Chumash and Talmud, and in creating commentaries and translations of the siddur and the machzor, the daily and the holiday prayer books, respectively. Women created their own prayers in Yiddish, which were collected into separate volumes. This same “street language” was used by the secular poet Yehoash in creating his masterpiece: his magnificent translation of the entire Bible into Yiddish.

In Grade’s “The Sabbath” and Auerbach’s “God of Abraham,” the boundaries between piety and secularity are blurred. The distinctions are not as separate as they appear to be. In a classic photo of Yiddish poets sitting at a long dinner table at a wedding, one can see secular poets like Leivick, Grade, Glatstein, Reisen and noted critic Shmuel Niger, all wearing either fedoras or yarmulkes.

Sholom Aleichem was thoroughly secular. He was not observant and did not keep a kosher home. In fact, he spoke Russian, not Yiddish, to his family. Yet, when his son died in Denmark, he went to shul to say Kaddish every day in New York. And, in his will, he asked those who are willing, to say Kaddish for him, too.

Most significantly, the obviously secular translator of this volume, Gildin, along with his brother, founded a university Yiddish department, not in the secular Hebrew University, Haifa University or Tel Aviv University, but at Bar-Ilan University, the only religious-sponsored university in Israel.

For those who know Yiddish poetry, The Poems of H. Leivick and Others revisits old friends; for newcomers, it is a cogent introduction.

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