Arts & Culture – Page 136

Canada’s 1936 Olympic decision

Rarely has a book worked me up as much as More Than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics by professors Richard Menkis (University of British Columbia) and Harold Troper (University of Toronto).

More Than Just Games was published by U of T Press in the spring. I got my copy from Menkis, who, biases known, I consider a friend. Even so, it took me months to open. The cover image is of members of Canada’s 1936 Olympic team vying for Adolf Hitler’s autograph. Other than some high-quality archival images grouped in the centre of the book, the text is academic, looking almost as imposing as the topic itself. So I was surprised that, when I finally did start reading, I pretty much couldn’t stop. In just over a week, I had read the 230ish-page book, not counting the notes, bibliography and index.

That the scholarship of academics with the credentials of Menkis and Troper would be impeccable I had no doubt. What I hadn’t anticipated was the immediacy they could evoke with their writing. The amount of detail they provide, though on rare occasion overwhelming, serves to bring readers into the period leading up to Canada’s decision to send athletes to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, when there could be no doubt as to the Nazis’ actions and intentions.

Through ample use of citations from letters, articles and speeches of the pro- and anti-Olympic forces, readers witness almost firsthand the debates that took place prior to the Games, they get a glimpse of the almost dizzying number of internal conflicts within the boycott movement, and they get an idea of the amount of propaganda that was being disseminated by Germany in Canada (and other countries). They even learn of some of the differences of opinion between the German Olympic Committee and the Nazi party as to the value of hosting the Games, when the event’s ideal – no discrimination on “grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise” – ran contrary to the Nazis’ belief in the superiority of the Aryan race, and their efforts to annihilate those they considered inferior.

There were a few outspoken people who tried to waken Canadians to the reality of the Nazi regime – notably journalist Matthew Halton and Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath – but their voices couldn’t rise above the Games’ advocates nor break through the apathy of most of the population. Canada, we are reminded, had closed the doors to Jewish immigration in 1923 – “In distinguishing Jews from non-Jews of the same citizenship, Canada predated Nazi regulations denying Jews and non-Jews equal status under the law by more than 10 years,” write Menkis and Troper.

This is one of the principal reminders of this book, which came out of an exhibit that the professors put together at the behest of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and which opened several months before the 2010 Winter Olympics were held in the city. Canada might have become a model of multiculturalism, but it was not always so.

Another reminder that stands out is that it doesn’t necessarily take evil people for bad things to happen. Many of the supporters – including athletes – of sending Canadians to the 1936 Games sincerely believed in their position on the importance of sport above all, and seem to have been genuinely confused as to why anyone would disagree. Canada’s position was that of a good colony, following the lead of Britain, which saw no reason not to send competitors. It’s not even obvious in hindsight as to whether Canada’s absence at those Games would have made a difference to the Nazis’ progression of violence to war, to genocide.

Sensibly, Menkis and Troper don’t try to examine the issues with the benefit of hindsight. They present numerous viewpoints and historical facts, mostly without judgment. Their opinions, however, pop out here and there via their choice of adjective or use of sarcasm. I found this comforting because they generally reflected my mood at those points in the book. I would be getting all worked up about what was being said at the time and their jibe would make me smile, and not feel like the crazy one. Because that’s what it felt like reading about it – I can only imagine how people like Halton and Eisendrath felt, actually being there, trying to fight against such ignorance, selfishness, pettiness, narrow-mindedness, greed and indifference.

More Than Just Games is an important contribution to Canadian history, and it is not only a must-read but a very good read.

Continuing the legacy

It’s a wonder any of us are alive. And it’s even more a wonder that we are each the result of generations (not to mention stardust). Not only do genes past and present influence who we are, but the actions of our ancestors, both distant and recent, brought us to where we are today. And we are but a moment in time, a link to future generations.

It’s hard not to get sentimental and contemplative reading Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women (PK Press, 2014). In this instance, Volume 4 that Toronto-based editor Liz Pearl has brought to life; though the previous editions are equally thought-inspiring. Volume 5 is already well in the works.

Among the more than 20 contributors to Volume 4 is Pearl with an essay on her name, Lisbeth Anne Ahuva Pearl Katz, though she has been known as Liz since 1990 and rarely uses her husband’s surname. “I have always liked the name Pearl – a rare and precious gem, and have never considered it just my maiden name,” she writes. “Pearl is a central piece of my name and core identity.” As is her namesake, her maternal great-grandmother Liba Sherashevsky Gitkin, z”l. Born in Lithuania, Liba and her family all died in the Holocaust; her grandmother, Sonia bat Liba, “managed to emigrate in 1935 [to Canada], following a brief courtship and quick marriage” – “the sole surviving member of her family-of-origin.”

About to volunteer as a chaperone on a March of the Living trip, Pearl reflects on the “strong values of Zionism, Yiddishkeit, tzedakah and Jewish education that were central” to her grandmother’s life, which she gained from her mother and others of that generation, and which she passed on to her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and counting. “My namesake and maternal lineage are firmly embedded with history, heritage and wisdom, and form the roots of my solid Canadian Jewish identity.”

Other contributors echo these types of thoughts and feelings. Local author Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, a child survivor of the Holocaust, dedicates her essay, called “Sacrifice,” to her “beloved grandmother, Kazimira Solomon Boraks (1878-1949).” Describing a moment in Russia in the summer of 2010, she writes, “I stand on the shore of the city of the Bronze Horseman, searching the horizon, scanning it for clues to a woman who was born here long before the city became Leningrad, who spent her life in exile, and who died in exile, away from her homeland and her family. A woman who saved my life – my babushka, grandmother in Russian.”

Boraks-Nemetz briefly recounts some of her memories of her years in hiding, the physical and emotional effects of what she experienced and witnessed, her grandfather’s death in the ghetto, and her father’s death only weeks before her grandmother’s in 1948. She notes some of the similarities in their lives – hers and her grandmother’s – and she explains the sacrifices her grandmother made to keep her alive. It is a loving and moving tribute.

Each essay in Living Legacies has something to recommend it. Not all are as deeply serious but all are personal, yet universal. Gratitude is one of the words that comes to mind after reading this collection. Looking at life in the context of the generations before and still to come is both humbling and empowering.

The capacity for excellence

It’s a wonderful concept. A family flees from Russia in 1928. By 1933, they are running a lodge in Canada – the only place Jews can stay. Among their more known guests are the Marx brothers, in particular for the plot, Harpo. Jump to 2003 and the fourth generation, Emily Kogan runs away to her family’s lodge to escape her unraveling PhD thesis. While her academic future remains uncertain, her research brings clarity of her family’s history and of the connections that truly matter.

The Capacity for Infinite Happiness (Buckrider Books) by Alexis von Konigslow is a solid first novel. Von Konigslow is a talented writer with a gift for language and storytelling. Straight away, she sets up the mystery and the tension, describing the scene as Emily’s great-grandmother, Ayala, prepares to flee Russia with her husband and daughter, Blima, Emily’s grandmother:

“Pay attention,” said the tall man.

He was so long that he seemed to be folded into the hallway. He was standing close to Blima’s mother, his big hands around her smaller ones, pressing papers into her palms. Blima had seen this man before, and she hadn’t liked him then either. She backed away, quietly so that they wouldn’t know she was there.

“Ayala, I need you to listen to me,” the man said again.

Ayala bowed into his chest. Blima shivered.

“I don’t want you to panic, or pretend that you’re bored. Here’s what I want you to do. When the officials ask to see your papers, I need you to pinch the little girl, pinch her hard. Don’t tell your husband that you’re going to do it. That way, she’ll be crying, you’ll both be concerned, everyone will want the scene to be over.”

Blima crouched down. She was the only little girl in the house.

“Also, make sure that your shirt is unbuttoned,” the man said, touching her mother’s blouse. “That will help.”

“I don’t want to do this,” said Ayala.

“As a plan, it’s perfectly safe. You’ll send these back by post. We’ll be together again before the end of the year.”

The questions that arise from this opening passage, notably about the man helping Ayala and her family, are central to the novel and keep you reading as it struggles to find its feet. The book’s format, which alternates between Harpo’s 1933 visit to the lodge and Emily’s 2003 visit, interrupts the flow at first and doesn’t become a tension-increasing device until about two-thirds of the way into the book. As well, while von Konigslow’s poetic writing is succinct, it is also repetitive on a few points: Harpo’s concerns about whether he’d make a good father; whether or not William, who Harpo meets in the woods on more than one occasion, is a real person or a figment of the actor’s imagination; and Emily’s ruminations about her thesis and her successive excuses for putting it off.

For almost 200 pages, The Capacity for Infinite Happiness is an OK read; its last 100-plus pages, however, as it becomes more focused and races towards “the reveals,” are excellent. A few minor edits would have made the novel a standout from start to finish. As it is, it is still worth reading for its unique premise, the quality of writing and its insights into Jewish life in the first half of the last century, the meaning of family, how we impact each other even across generations and, most important, love.

Noir-ish Toronto tale

Basic Black with Pearls by Helen Weinzweig is having a second life as a 35th anniversary reissue. The novel won the 1981 Toronto Book Award and gained critical acclaim when it was first issued. Yet, it had been largely forgotten by most Canadians until recently, its revival heralded by reviewers in Canada.

The Polish-born Weinzweig began writing comparatively late in life and certainly never became a household name like some of her contemporary Canadian writers. However, she cut ground with experimental writing that, in this novel, employs dreamlike progression as her character assimilates the dramatic stories of ordinary people she encounters as she moves from place to place and mood to mood.

The narrator, Shirley Kaszenbowski, travels the world under the alias Lola Montez. If the reader is not quite sure who Shirley/Lola really is at the start of the book, it is amply clear by the end that she doesn’t know precisely either.

Her dull, although far from normal, home life is bearable thanks to a secret world she inhabits, in which she travels the world meeting her lover, Coenraad. Because of Coenraad’s top-secret role in a spooky intelligence service, rendezvous locations are secretly conveyed through numerical codes hidden in the latest issue of National Geographic, leading her to dramatic forays into remote parts of the world.

The theatrical, noir-ish story (the title marquees basic black, after all) unfolds through furtive, whispered conversations, overheard snippets, recollected traumas and sexual fantasies … or are they real encounters? It is often dark, sometimes dismal and lonely, yet the writing is brisk. Emotions and events transpire and are left behind in quick succession as the story – and Lola’s adventures – speed along. Much is packed into the novel of little more than 100 pages.

And while the book is fiction, it captures a real sense of a Toronto gone by: the original Shopsy’s backing onto the Yiddish theatre, and passing mentions of landmarks, familiar and less familiar, as she trudges the city’s streets like a lost soul.

Some reviewers have viewed this novel as a feminist tome. If so, it is in the sense of illustrating how some women’s lives are dictated and proscribed by the men in their lives. Or, figuratively or literally, not in their lives.

Despite critical acclaim, Weinzweig never joined the famous names of Canadian literature, or even the smaller shelf that is Jewish Canadian literature, and she was well aware of this before she died in 2010.

She wrote to the Globe and Mail once: “Canadians hate success … Basic Black with Pearls has had rave reviews and has been bought by William Morrow Company in New York. Success and 60 cents will get me a ride on the subway. No one can find a copy of my novel in the bookstores.”

The iconic Canadian literary publisher House of Anansi recognized something in this work that deserved to be shared with another generation. Weinzweig would be pleased. If only bookstores were still a thing. Basic Black with Pearls is also available as a digital book.

Tales of courage and sacrifice

Serious topics are at the fore of the books for younger readers reviewed by the Jewish Independent this Chanukah. From the story of a Russian dancer whose life is cut short by pneumonia to Canadian teenagers who must work 13-hour days for little pay to young Danes who take on the Nazis, these recent publications respect the intelligence of their audience and, through the combination of entertaining narratives and compelling images, broaden their understanding and knowledge of the world.

Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova (Chronicle Books) is intended for readers ages 6-8. It is truly a work of art that writer Laurel Snyder and illustrator Julie Morstad (who happens to live in Vancouver) have created. The illustrations are stunning and the placement of the text is also artistically done.

As Snyder explains at the end of the book, Anna Pavlova was born in 1881. Her mother was a laundress, “and Russia under the czars was generally a world where the poor stayed poor. Anna’s life should have been dismal.” But then her mother took her to the ballet. Onstage, “A sleeping beauty opens her eyes … and so does Anna. Her feet wake up! Her skin prickles. There is a song, suddenly, inside her. Now Anna cannot sleep. Or sit still ever. She can only say, dip and spin….”

The story follows Anna as she practises and practises, until finally accepted into ballet school. After which, more practising, “Until one night she takes the stage … Anna becomes a glimmer, a grace.” She becomes world famous, traveling the globe, though never forgetting her humble beginnings, and becomes a ballet teacher when she can no longer perform. “Until a chill finds Anna, hunts her down alone, without her boots and mittens. A wind. A cough beside a stopped train. A rattle she can’t shake.” In the book, as she apparently did in real life, Anna asks for her swan dress from her sick bed. One last performance, if only in her mind. She died in 1931.

For readers interested in knowing more about Anna Pavlova, Swan includes a nine-book bibliography.

* * *

While change may take awhile in coming, it can be achieved. Take, for instance, working conditions in Canada. The title of Anne Dublin’s 44 Hours or Strike! (Second Story Press) comes from one of the unmet demands that led to the Toronto Dressmakers’ Strike of 1931: a 44-hour work week.

After their father is laid off, Rose must leave school to work in a dress factory. When their father dies from tuberculosis and their mother becomes ill from an unknown ailment (at least at first), 14-year-old Sophie must join her 16-year-old sister at the factory. The working conditions are appalling and they include a lecherous foreman.

When the workers go on strike, there is little empathy. Immigrants (especially Jews) are resented and not trusted, and the Depression has left many people in dire poverty. In an altercation 10 days into the strike, Rose – who did nothing wrong – is arrested with some other strikers and, without due process, is sentenced “to 30 days at the Mercer Reformatory for Women or a $100 fine – as if she had ever seen that much money in her life!”

Sophie must continue her strike duty, as well as care for her mother. She receives some comfort from the friendship of Jake, a paperboy who, unfortunately, is not Jewish.

44 Hours or Strike! – aimed at readers 10 to 14 years old – covers a lot of issues in its 124 pages. The archival photos really help put readers in 1931 Toronto, and brief biographies of some of the labor activists at the time are included at the back of the book. Dublin also lists many options for further reading on the topic.

* * *

The incredible true story of a group of Danish teenagers who, during the Second World War, fought against the Nazis through acts of sabotage is told by Phillip Hoose and Knud Pedersen in The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

This book is comprised of Hoose’s narrative and excerpts from his nearly 25-hour interview with Pedersen in 2012, as well as photos, illustrations, scans of documents and sidebars. At times, it’s hard to know where to look on a page and what to read first. But that shouldn’t be a problem for the 12-to-18-year-olds for whom the book is written.

Pedersen was in Grade 8 when, on April 9, 1940, Germany attacked both Norway and Denmark. The Norwegians put up a valiant, if short-lived, resistance. “Jens [Pederson’s brother] and I, and our closest friends, were totally ashamed of our government,” Pedersen says. “At least the Norwegian victims had gone down in a country they could be proud of. Our small army had surrendered to the German forces within a few hours on April 9…. One thing had become very clear: now any resistance in Denmark would have to come from ordinary citizens, not from trained soldiers.”

The brothers with a few others started their rebellion in Odense, where they were living. They called themselves the RAF Club, after the British air force. They would do things like change or damage road signs and cut telephone lines.

When their father was posted to Jutland and the family moved, the brothers organized the Churchill Club; named, of course, after Winston Churchill. They continued their acts of resistance, which came to include blowing up train cars full of material the Nazis needed. Eventually, after about a year, all of the Churchill Club boys were discovered and sent to jail in 1942. The brothers spent two years in prison. Hoose lets readers know what happened to them and their co-saboteurs. There is a selected bibliography and author’s notes on each chapter. This book would be great as the basis of a school project.

Hotel’s history full of stories

Harpo Marx and the Bodnes in the Rose Room. The hotel’s list of illustrious guests is almost literally endless. (photo from Algonquin Kid)

Michael Elihu Colby had the unique privilege to be brought up in New York’s legendary Algonquin Hotel. Well, not exactly brought up in it, but his grandparents owned it from 1946 to 1987 and he was there a lot.

Colby’s book, The Algonquin Kid (BearManor Media) is chock-a-block with stories from his experience as a youngster hanging around and also tales handed down through the years.

photo - Grandma Mary and Grandpa Ben Bodne — Grandma Mary and Grandpa Ben Bodne. *(photo from Algonquin Kid)*

Grandma Mary and Grandpa Ben Bodne loom large in the book, as they did in the hotel and, by extension, cultural life in New York City in the 20th century. The grandparents were from the southern United States and Ben became wealthy through oil during the Second World War and afterward sought to parlay his money into something else. Despite having no hotel experience, the couple threw themselves into the adventure.

The hotel was a dilapidated shadow of its former glory. On top of the million dollars the hotel cost, the family had to sink another $300,000 into making it decent. This renovation was not welcomed by all the guests. The hotel had residents who had lived there for 20 years and who were highly averse to change.

The book is fabulously gossipy and it would have been shorter, maybe, if Colby had listed the celebrities he didn’t run into. Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, William Saroyan and John Cheever were among the literary lights.

Although this was well past the hey-day of the famed Algonquin Round Table, some of those names were still hanging on, too.

Show biz figures included Ingrid Bergman, Kitty Carlyle, Tallulah Bankhead and Angela Lansbury, the latter two of whom lived at the hotel. Rosemary Clooney, Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Ella Fitzgerald … the list is almost literally endless.

The Algonquin was welcoming to actors and artists blacklisted during the McCarthy era and also to African-Americans at a time when this was unusual. Among the bold-faced names in this category: Maya Angelou, Coretta King, Thurgood Marshall and Oscar Peterson.

The hotel staff included its own characters, like a telephone operator who had the skills of the CIA at tracking down anyone anywhere, and a quick-thinking maître D’: “When a guest found a fly in her salad, he popped it in his mouth, swallowed down the evidence, and exclaimed ‘Delicious! A raisin.’”

This is a book of family stories and such stories, especially when the family is filled with characters, can improve with the telling. The author may or may not believe some of his own tales.

“Grandpa Ben claimed he first met a celebrity selling her a paper: he believed that woman, who tipped him generously, was Helen Keller,” writes Colby. Think for a moment about how likely that story is to be true.

How about this story of Grandma Mary welcoming Marilyn Monroe: “After greeting each other, Grandma remarked, ‘Marilyn, that’s the most beautiful mink you have on!’ Marilyn replied, ‘You think that’s something, you should see what’s underneath.’ She pulled open the mink, and wasn’t wearing anything. Not every kid can claim his grandmother was flashed by Marilyn Monroe.” Well, every kid can claim it.

Legendary Broadway librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe were working in a ninth-floor hotel room, below the family’s 10th-floor apartment.

“One evening, Grandpa could no longer stand the ivories tinkling in Room 908 – one light below – disturbing his sleep. He phoned the hotel operator to ask Lerner and Loewe to quiet down, complaining, ‘I wouldn’t mind if they were writing something good, but this is just noise.’ It turned out Lerner and Loewe were creating the song ‘I Could Have Danced All Night.’”

Unlike others who visited or lived at the Algonquin, Colby is not among America’s greatest writers, but his stories are well worth the read.

Duo’s message is “laughter heals”

The comedy team of Rabbi Bob Alpert and Ahmed Ahmed on their August 2015 Laugh in Peace Tour. (photo from Laugh in Peace)

“Both Jews and Muslims have a lot in common. What are we fighting over? Jews and Muslims don’t eat pork, we don’t celebrate Christmas, we both use ‘ch’ in our pronunciation, and we are both hairy creatures of God,” says comedian Ahmed Ahmed. “The only real difference between Jews and Muslims is that Jews never like to spend any money and Muslims never have any money to spend.”

So goes one of the dozens of jokes featured in the Laugh in Peace comedy routine of Ahmed and Rabbi Bob Alper. It’s one Arab, one Jew, one stage. The unlikely duo’s show was in Israel (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa) and the Palestinian territories (Ramallah) for the first time from Aug. 12-17. Together, Ahmed and Alper have performed more than 150 times during the last 14 years – throughout the United States, Canada and England – at synagogues, churches, mosques, theatres and college campuses.

Their story began as a gimmick by a savvy publicist, said Alper, a Reform rabbi who spent more than a decade at pulpits in New York and Philadelphia – or, as he calls it, “14 years of performing in front of a hostile audience.”

Alper admits he was at first resistant to the idea of the combined show. “My publicist calls me one day and says, ‘Bob, why don’t you do a show with an Arab comedian?’ I said, ‘Do you have any other ideas?’”

Ahmed was skeptical, too. “I got this call, ‘My name is Bob Alper and I am a Reform rabbi.’… He says, ‘I have an idea. I thought it would be great to do a show together.’… Well, I said, ‘That sounds good, where do you perform?’ He says, ‘Well, I perform in synagogues.’ … I thought someone was playing a joke on me.”

But the timing was right. In 2001, at the height of the terrorism of the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) in Israel, people were primed for comic relief. Alper says, when people are tense or sad, “comedy is even more important.”

Over time, the two have been more than just a successful and sought-after show. They’ve become good friends. The women in Alper’s small Vermont town fell in love with Ahmed through his visits and regularly inquire about his well-being. Alper has eaten in Ahmed’s parents’ California home.

“Ahmed’s dad asked about my family,” Alper recalled. “When I told him my wife would be having shoulder surgery the following month, he looked gravely at me and ordered, ‘You must stop twisting her arm.’”

They also believe they have played a role in breaking down barriers between Muslims and Jews. On college campuses, where Jewish-Muslim tension and antisemitism run rampant over the issue of Israel, Ahmed and Alper perform for mixed audiences. Jewish males wearing yarmulkes and females in hijabs sit side-by-side, smiling and laughing.

“When people laugh together, it is hard to hate each other,” said Alper, recounting how at the University of Arkansas it occurred to him that they were guests of the Razorbacks – a Muslim and a Jew performing at a school whose mascot is a pig.

They keep their shows apolitical, though they do touch on their personal religious experiences in the 90-minute performances, which generally are divided between solo acts of 30-35 minutes and a joint opening and closing. The closing includes stories from their travels.

Holocaust memorial music

Musical memorials to the Holocaust tread on sensitive ground. On one hand, they perform a crucial function for humanity’s collective memory. On the other hand, there is significant risk of belittling the topic in the name of artistic expression. Two composers who have successfully navigated the risky waters of this endeavor to produce musically significant works with dignity and veneration are Charles Davidson and Sheila Silver. Released by the Milken Archive of Jewish Music earlier this year, Out of the Whirlwind: Musical Reflections of the Holocaust gives both works their rightful place in the archive’s pantheon of music of the American Jewish experience (milkenarchive.org/volumes/view/19).

Davidson’s I Never Saw Another Butterfly cantata is based on the 1960s publication (of the same name) of poems written by children interned at Terezin, a ruse camp set up by the Nazis to throw off the scent of those who suspected the mass murder of Jews under Hitler’s reign. Though it was simply a waypoint en route to the Auschwitz death camp, Terezin depicted a scenario where prisoners enjoyed relative freedom and produced significant artistic output.

Davidson’s tribute to the child poets comprises nine poem-settings for children’s choir and piano, performed here by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. From touching beauty to foreboding, despair and all points in between, his composition gives unique expression to the range of emotions contained in the poems while conveying its own identity as a work of art. I Never Saw Another Butterfly has been performed more than 2,500 times, including in 1991 at Terezin, in the presence of former Czech president Václav Havel.

Silver’s string trio To the Spirit Unconquered was inspired by the writings of Italian poet and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Silver uses a variety of techniques to convey different aspects of the concentration camp experience described in Levi’s writings: fear, through dark string tremolos and crashing, dissonant piano chords; memory, through floating piano lines and swooning strings; barbarism, through quick, syncopated rhythms, staccato stabs, and angular melodies; transcendence, through the soaring melodies of the final movement. In a 1998 interview with the archive (milkenarchive.org/videos/view/112), Silver claimed To the Spirit Unconquered as her most successful piece, stating that it had been widely performed and won over audiences skeptical of modern music. In her own words, it is “about the ability of the human spirit to transcend the most devastating of circumstances, to survive and to bear witness.”

Though both of these works can be appreciated on their artistic merits alone, their grounding in the maxim to never forget imbues them with an inescapable urgency. They command listeners of all faiths and backgrounds to approach them with undivided attention.

Refugees painted village blue

“Running Again” by Joyce Ozier, part of her current exhibit at Fazakas Gallery. (image from fazakasgallery.com)

Chefchauen is a village in Morocco. Founded in 1471, it was home to many Jewish refugees escaping the Spanish Reconquista during medieval times. No Jews live in this village now and haven’t since the late 1940s, but this little tourist town in the Rif Mountains was the inspiration for Vancouver artist Joyce Ozier’s latest exhibit, Blue Refuge.

“I discovered Chefchauen by accident,” Ozier told the Independent. “Last year, while I was getting ready for my show at the Zack Gallery, I received lots of emails and newsletters. One of them mentioned Chefchauen, a blue town in Morocco, and included a few photographs. I was knocked out by the magic of its blue colors, but my first response was purely esthetic. I imagined how these different shades of blue – blue stucco walls, blue doors, blue roofs – would change throughout the day in the strong Mediterranean sunlight.”

photo - Joyce Ozier — Joyce Ozier *(photo by Pink Monkey Studios)*

After her initial fascination wore off, she became curious. What was the reason for the town being blue? “There was a one-line explanation for the unusual color: a group of Jews running from the Nazis in the ’30s painted the town blue in gratitude for it being a safe haven. After I read that line, I wanted to know their story,” she said.

Ozier started researching the history of those Jews who gave the town its charming blue attire, while simultaneously creating her own visual narrative – the nine abstract panels reflecting their intriguing story. But, while her artistic endeavors were successful, her research path was littered with disappointments. Nobody knew much or even anything about Chefchauen and its Jewish history.

Determined to learn all she could about the people who made the town blue, she embarked on a quest to understand those long-gone Jews. After various online searches, she tried the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library, but to no avail. “Then I found a Jewish tour company in New York that specialized in Jewish Morocco,” she said. “I called them, thinking that they would be able to answer my questions, but they had no idea either. Their advice was to try the Jewish museum in Casablanca, Morocco.”

She made the call and spoke with the museum’s curator, but still no luck. “By this time,” she said, “I decided to imagine my own version of what had happened, how those Jewish refugees got to Chefchauen, what they went through, why they decided to paint everything blue, and what happened after. Over the years, I’ve read many personal accounts of the Holocaust and, based on those, I wrote the texts for my show, the short write-ups on each of the nine panels that comprise the show.”

Ozier wrote about the hardships the refugees would have encountered on their flight from the Nazis, about their joy at finding a safe haven, and about why they painted the town blue.

“Blue is the symbol of divinity in Judaism, being the color of sky and ocean,” she explained. “Observant Jews are required to have a blue thread in their prayer shawls, so when they pray, they are enveloped in divinity. To express their appreciation for being alive, for being able to reach Chefchauen, the refugees painted the whole village in shades of blue. The divine blue created an environment that gave them the hope they needed to go on. It helped them stay positive in a terrifying and insecure political situation. It prodded them to resume relatively normal lives once they had settled in.”

Unfortunately, as soon as the Vichy government took over Morocco, the persecution of Jews started there, too. “Their safe haven was a dream,” Ozier wrote, and her panels follow the rest of the story, as most of the Jewish citizens of the blue town left. Nobody knows what happened to them, but Ozier hoped they had headed for Israel.

“My show was almost ready, but then I panicked,” she recalled. “I needed a confirmation for my fictional story. Was it based on fact, or even a possibility of fact, or was it just my imagination?” The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre came to her rescue.

“Phillipa Friedland, the centre’s education coordinator, was wonderful,” said Ozier. “She had not heard of Chefchauen and its blue world but she was visibly excited to see the photos and hear my story. She suggested that I contact Yad Vashem, the Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, the Museum of Jewish People in Tel Aviv, the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem and the Museum of the Diaspora at the University of Tel Aviv.”

One by one, Ozier contacted each of the leads Friedland gave her, but most of the institutions couldn’t help. Some only did family research. Others specialized exclusively in the war years. “I wrote an official request for information to Yad Vashem and got a response from them much sooner than I expected. Timorah Perel from their reference and information services explained to me that most of their testimonials are written in languages other than English and would require translation. She sent me the only English testimony that came up in her search in English. It was very interesting but it did not mention Chefchauen.”

Eventually, Ozier’s persistence paid off. She contacted Tel Aviv University. “The receptionist who answered the phone told me that they had a professor who specialized in the Jews of Morocco, Dr. Yaron Tsur. She gave me his university telephone number and his email address. Excited to have a real lead after all the dead ends, I immediately wrote Dr. Tsur a long email, explaining my upcoming show and including all my photos and my texts. I asked him whether he thought my story could be based on reality or it was a total fantasy.”

She received no reply, and no response to several phone calls. “Frustrated, I called the receptionist again, thinking perhaps I’d written down the wrong number. This time, she told me Prof. Tsur was in America. He was on sabbatical this year.”

Ozier finally was able to reach him. And Tsur confirmed her story, saying in an email that “the story of the Jewish refugees that you relate and the asylum that some of them found in Morocco is historically true.” She could go ahead with her show.

“They still paint the town blue,” Ozier said, “even though no Jews live there any longer. It’s a tourist attraction now, and the local government pays for the paint, so they could retouch it annually. One more little factoid I found in my research: the blue changes during the day, resembling running water. It repels mosquitoes.”

Blue Refuge is at Fazakas Gallery, at 145 West 6th Ave., until Dec. 17.

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

Israel as a problem, not a partner

Ambassador Dennis Ross was in Winnipeg as part of the city’s Tarbut Festival to promote his new book. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

Ambassador Dennis Ross was in Winnipeg earlier this month to promote his latest book, Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He was one of the participants in the city’s Tarbut Festival.

Ross is the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown. He has been very involved in American peace efforts in the Middle East, especially during the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Among other accomplishments, he helped Israel and the Palestinians reach an interim agreement in 1995, helped broker the Hebron Accord in 1997 and facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty.

In his new book, Ross explores the attitudes and approaches of every U.S. president toward Israel, and the Middle East in general. He highlights some of the lessons that could have been learned from leader to leader, but were not, and how American presidents have shaped their country’s policies toward Israel.

Ross’ Nov. 15 talk in Winnipeg sold out a week in advance, with more than 200 in the audience at Rady Jewish Community Centre’s Berney Theatre. He began with a few words about the Paris terrorist attacks, describing them as “a sobering event.”

“This was an intelligence failure,” he said. “You had three terrorist cells that were able to operate, to acquire a substantial amount of weaponry, to wear suicide vests with explosives – to orchestrate, plan, and carry it out. My guess is they did rehearsals before they did this.”

Ross then discussed the spate of terrorist stabbings that has been occurring in Israel, referring to this as “a new normal” that we will need to get used to for the next while.

According to Ross, every administration, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, has had people in the back office advising their president against siding with Israel. As such, to varying degrees, every president has considered Israel a problem, and not a partner.

“This mindset that tends to look at Palestinians and Arabs as something we have to be careful around … if we are going to be criticizing them, it will create a backlash against us … this is a mindset that has existed in every administration,” Ross said.

In his book, Ross conveys that the only American president who did not listen to these back-office advisors was Clinton, who saw the United States as Israel’s only friend.

“Because of that, we can have differences with Israel, but he [Clinton] believes that if we create a gap between us and Israel, it will give encouragement to Israel’s enemies,” said Ross. “With Clinton, the constituency existed, but it had no influence.”

Jumping from one president to the next, Ross provided glimpses of the eras and issues covered in his book. For example, Ross said, Ronald Reagan was “the only one to suspend [the supply of] F-16s to Israel as a punishment … because the Israelis bombed a [nuclear] reactor in Iraq. Reagan later acknowledges that it wasn’t a bad thing,” meaning Israel’s actions.

“Reagan goes back to his roots of being a very strong friend of Israel,” said Ross. “He feels a deep moral obligation to the state of Israel … going back to who he was, to his instincts. He believes the U.S. has a moral obligation to Israel.”

With the Reagan administration, Ross said, “For the first time, you have a constituency that arises with expertise that counters the other constituency, and sees Israel as a partner and not a problem … sees Israel as someone the U.S. should be working with.”

In Ross’ view, the constituency that views Israel as a problem has been guided by a set of assumptions that have endured since before Truman to today. In Doomed to Succeed, he lists three assumptions: “If you create distance from Israel, you’ll gain with the Arabs; if you cooperate with Israel, you’ll lose with the Arabs; [and] you cannot transform the Middle East unless you solve the Palestinian problem.”

Ross provided supporting evidence for each of these assumptions. “I’ll give you some examples from the book,” he said. “The most outrageous example was [Richard] Nixon. In March of 1970, Nixon decides to suspend F4 Phantoms to Israel. Now, I said that Reagan suspended F16s as a punishment. Nixon doesn’t do it as punishment. He’s trying to reach out to [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser. He thinks if he suspends arms to Israel, he’ll gain with the Egyptians, gain with Nasser. What makes this an outrageous example is that he did it at the very moment that the Soviet Union was sending military personnel to Egypt.” While Nixon expected to be rewarded by Nasser, Nasser instead demanded more.

About the title of his book, Ross said, “Fundamentally, we [America] and Israel share interests and threats. That has always been true. It’s especially true now, as you look over the next 10 to 20 years, the struggle with ISIS and also Iran. We have two proxy wars. Who will dominate the region? The fighting is over identity. You fall back on the fundamental instincts.

“You have the Arab state system itself under threat now. Against that backdrop, there’s one state that actually has institutions – a rule of law, a separation of powers, independent judiciary, elections where the loser accepts the outcome, where there is freedom of speech, of assembly, and where women’s and gay rights are respected. Israel is the only democracy in that region and that’s why the title of the book is called Doomed to Succeed.”

The talk concluded with a few questions from the audience. Ross was asked about the Iranian nuclear deal and how he felt about it. Ross said he felt the deal needed tweaking to ensure a positive outcome.

“Sanctions would erode, eventually,” he said. “I still wasn’t prepared to favor the deal because, after 15 years, Iran gets treated as if it’s Japan or the Netherlands. They can build as large a nuclear infrastructure with no limitations at all. So, I identified, for me, five conditions that need to be met before I could support the deal. These conditions have to deal with how to bolster deterrents. I felt you can’t wait for 15 years to say, ‘Now, we are serious.’

“I wanted a firewall now if we see them moving toward a weapon. If we don’t do that, I can’t support it. I wanted us to make our declaratory policy much blunter, to make it clear they can’t use enriched uranium after 15 years. I wanted us to spell out now what happens if there are violations along the margins. For every transgression, there’s a price. They don’t escape. I wanted us to target new sanctions.

“I’ll tell you, the Iranians will cheat around the margins. They will test the verification. When they do, there has to be a price. If you buy 15 years, what do you do with it? I laid it out publicly before the deal was done. I wasn’t shy about this.”

In thanking Ross at the event’s conclusion, attendee Howard Morry said, “You asked the question, ‘Who has been the best friend to Israel for the past 30 years?’ It could be argued that you’ve been Israel’s best friend in the White House.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.