Arts & Culture – Page 138

TUTS takes on light and dark

Dustin Freeland as Link Larkin, Erin E. Walker as Tracy Turnblad, Hannah Williams as Penny Pingleton and ensemble members in Hairspray. (photo by Tim Matheson)

When Theatre Under the Stars announced its lineup earlier this year, I was excited. I’d enjoyed the movie Hairspray, but not seen the stage version, and the last (and only) time I had seen Oliver! was at Winnipeg’s Rainbow Stage when I was just shy of 9 years old. The brutality in that production, in particular Nancy’s death at the hands of Bill Sykes, stayed with me, and I was curious to see how TUTS would handle it.

But first, Hairspray. “Good Morning, Baltimore” is one of the greatest songs. So cheerful and optimistic, its driving beat setting the tone and pace of the entire musical. If only we could all carry such confidence and positive energy out into the world. But I digress. The broad expanse of the movie, in which heroine Tracy Turnblad, sings and dances her way to school through the city that she loves is, of course, not possible on stage, and the added sparseness of Brian Ball’s TUTS set – basically tiered, multi-colored stages with the odd extra prop or flourish – took a little adjustment in perspective. But once I scaled my expectations, I came to appreciate the room his choices made for the dancers. And what dancing! Julie Tomaino’s choreography was not only fabulous, but it was professionally executed by the mainly amateur cast.

Many of the cast members are at least triple threats. Starting with the lead, Erin E. Walker does a commendable job as the boundless Tracy, who, in 1962 Baltimore, sets out to be a dancer on The Corny Collins Show despite her relative largesse, and ends up not only winning a spot on the show but getting its Elvis-like heartthrob Link Larkin (perfectly played by Dustin Freeland) to fall in love with her. Oh, and she also inspires significant social change along the way, succeeding in racially integrating her favorite show. And, she convinces her mother – a pleasantly understated performance by Andy Toth – to come out of the house after a decades-long, self-imposed imprisonment out of shame over her weight.

On her mission(s), Tracy is supported by her best friend, Penny Pingleton, played by the obviously talented Hannah Williams, though the accent she chooses for the role makes her sound incredibly stupid. Thankfully, she sings more than talks. I also had a problem with a couple of the other accent choices – Ryan Purdy as Tracy’s dad sounds like a complete moron, rather than the tenderhearted, somewhat nerdy guy he is; and I’m still trying to figure out how a German prison matron made it to 1962 Baltimore.

For the most part, however, director Sarah Rodgers’ pacing and style are spot on; the costumes by Chris Sinosich are colorful and suit the characters and period; and music director Chris D. King, whose orchestra is fantastic, does an excellent job as Corny Collins. And three other standouts cannot go without mention: Cecilly Day as Motormouth Maybelle and, as Maybelle’s children, David Lindo-Reid as Seaweed J. Stubbs and Marisa Gold as Little Inez.

Oliver! is a much more uneven performance. TUTS valiantly tries to evoke 1843 England beyond the stage and, by the time the show starts, kids (and older folk) have had the chance to see a Punch and Judy show, compete in a 20-yard dash, show their strength in a bell-ringer contest and watch some comedic but able strongmen. While the “village fair” is a lot of fun and a great idea in concept, it sets the wrong tone for the musical – poor orphan Oliver, after all, left in a workhouse after his mother dies giving birth to him, does not get to have much fun.

The first few musical numbers also struggle to respect the darkness of the story. At the workhouse, the main “problem” is the portrayal of Mr. Bumble, who is played much too loudly and vulgarly by Damon Calderwood. At the undertaker’s (to whom Oliver is sold), dancing zombies and more overacting detract one’s attention from Oliver’s plight. A rushed rendition of the beautiful ballad “Where is Love” is a lost opportunity to latch on and care for Oliver, who is well-played by Carly Ronning.

It is only when Oliver manages to walk himself to London and find a home with Fagin’s gang of thieves that director Shel Piercy’s vision becomes more uniform and appropriate to the subject matter.

photo - Stephen Aberle as Fagin, Carly Ronning as Oliver (centre, on floor) and the young cast of Oliver! — Stephen Aberle as Fagin, Carly Ronning as Oliver (centre, on floor) and the young cast of Oliver! *(photo by Tim Matheson)*

The young Nathan Piasecki as the Artful Dodger is one of the highlights of this production, as is his boss, Fagin, played by Jewish community member Stephen Aberle. The connection I felt some 36 years ago to Nancy just wasn’t there, however. Calderwood fares better as the evil Bill Sykes than Mr. Bumble, but again without any refinement, so it is hard to understand why Nancy, played ably by Elizabeth Marie West, would love him. She also was dressed quite fancily and seemed like a lady, so it was a wonder that she would be involved with him and Fagin in the first place. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes during her rendition of “As Long As He Needs Me,” when I should have been sympathizing with her predicament – to be loyal to her (dangerous) man or risk her life to save Oliver. While the character’s death may have semi-traumatized me as a child, I can say this – it was both moving and memorable, neither of which applies as much to this version.

All that said, it is worth repeating that, from the moment Oliver meets the Artful Dodger just over halfway through Act 1, and is encouraged to consider himself part of Fagin’s “family,” TUTS’s Oliver! is a solid, enjoyable production. The ensemble – which includes community members Kat Palmer and Julian Lokash – are an incredibly talented and energetic group well worth seeing and hearing in action. They land the choreography of Keri Minty and Shelley Stewart Hunt and are in perfect tune with the orchestra, led by music director Kerry O’Donovan.

Theatre Under the Stars presents Hairspray and Oliver! on alternate evenings at Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park until Aug. 22 (tuts.ca or 1-877-840-0457).

Shakespeare musical

Left to right, Jay Hindle, Josh Epstein and Daniel Doheny in Bard on the Beach’s Love’s Labor’s Lost. (photo by David Blue)

How do you get more people interested in Shakespeare? Give ’em what they want – music, song, dance, comedy and words that are easy on the ears. Bard on the Beach has incorporated all these elements into its production of Love’s Labor’s Lost, set in a speakeasy in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties.

Think Prohibition, gangsters, molls, spats, fedoras, shoulder holsters, Cole Porter, flappers, the Charleston and vaudeville, all in glorious Technicolor, and you get an inkling of what is to come. Set on the intimate Howard Family Stage in the Douglas Campbell Studio, the fun begins the minute you walk through the tent flaps, as cast members accompany you to your seats with song and dance (and martinis – theirs, not yours). It continues with introductory remarks by a ventriloquist dummy that looks (and sounds) a lot like artistic director Christopher Gaze.

Ferdinand, aka “the king” of the gangsters (Jay Hindle), decides to shut down his nightclub, Navarre, devote three years of his life strictly to academic study and abstain from all vices including women (ouch!). He talks his friends Berowne (Jewish community member Josh Epstein) and Dumain (Daniel Doheny) into joining him in this escapade and the three sign a pact. However, just as they embark on their chaste journey, they meet blond bombshell Princess (Lindsey Angell) and her two friends, Rosaline (Luisa Jojic) and Katherine (Sereana Malani), each of whom catches the fancy of one of the potential abstainers.

To woo their respective ladies, the smitten men write secret letters and have a messenger, the resident clown Costard (Andrew Cownden), deliver them to the objects of their affection. Meanwhile, a fourth love story is brewing during all of this action, that of Don Amato (Andrew McNee), Ferdinand’s Italian house guest, who has fallen for Jaquenetta (Dawn Petten), one of the Navarre flappers – who has also written a letter to be delivered by Costard. A mix-up occurs (naturally) and what happens next is an hilarious musical romp through courtship interruptus with the men disguised and the women masked.

Princess’ chaperone, Boyet (Anna Galvin), gets into the game as the go between the men holed up in Navarre and the women forced to camp outside the building. Witty repartee abounds as the battle of the sexes heats up, and we all know who eventually wins that battle.

As musical director, Ben Elliott (with Jewish community member Anton Lipovetsky as his assistant) has done a great job of bringing iconic hits from the ’20s into this show. The jazz band (piano, bass, trumpet and drums) is the perfect background for the actors who, during an intense soliloquy, suddenly break into songs like, “It Had to Be You,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Second Hand Rose” and “Blue Skies.”

Epstein – who is the face of this production with Jojic on the season poster – wows with his voice in every number he sings and is certainly one of the standouts along with McNee, who sports a soprano-like gangsta accent and puts on a daring one- “woman” show (accompanied by his sidekick, Moth, played by Lili Beaudoin), and Petten, with her nasal voice and horizontal dance rendition (she rolls down the stairs and right back up).

This is the same cast that performs A Comedy of Errors on the BMO Mainstage (reviewed in the July 3 Independent) and it is a credit to their collective comedic acting talents that they can pull off both shows with success.

The set and lighting provide the feel of an underground Chicago speakeasy. The costumes by Rebekka Sorensen-Kjelstrup are simply divine, sparkly, fringed sheath dresses, rolled-up silk stockings, beautiful headdresses and glamorous fur stoles for the women; snappy suits, hats and Oxfords for the men. Valerie Easton’s peppy choreography is spot on.

Some will say that this production goes too far, and is not really Shakespeare – after all, Shakespeare: The Musical, who would have thought it possible? As with Bard on the Beach’s Comedy this year, purists are going to lament the loss of classical productions but, on Love’s opening night, audience members were humming along with the songs, tapping their feet to the catchy tunes and they jumped up in unison for a standing ovation before the last note was sung in the closing song, “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

You have to give Gaze credit for taking a chance on director Daryl Cloran’s vision, which includes cutting half of the original text and omitting some characters. As he writes in the director’s notes, “Ultimately, that’s what’s so exciting to me about adapting a script – the process of exploring, shedding and inventing to get to the heart of the story and find a way of telling it so that it resonates with a contemporary audience.” It is a safe bet that even old Will himself would be doing the Charleston Stratford-on-Avon way if he saw this version of his play. If you are a lover of jazz and showmanship, this production is a must-see. While it runs until Sept. 20, word on the street is that shows are selling out quickly so don’t wait too long to book your tickets (bardonthebeach.org or 604-739-0559).

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Impromptu interview

After having spent decades trying to visit Wilensky’s lunch counter, made famous by the Mordecai Richler novel and film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, I finally made it to the weekday-only Mile End joint in Montreal a couple of months ago.

It’s a modest place with a tiny menu – two main course options, a few beverages and – for those seeking vegetables – pickles. As I finished my Wilensky’s Special (a fried bologna, salami and mustard sandwich on a kaiser) chased with a chocolate egg cream, I spotted a neighborhood fixture finishing his hotdog: Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin), the Yiddish hip-hop artist and music producer. He has been dubbed “hip-hop’s answer to Mordecai Richler.”

We made our way to a St. Viateur patio for coffee as we spoke about his latest album, his growing up in Gatineau, Que., his love for early Yiddish film, his views on Zionism, and the art of musical “sampling.” Our impromptu interview was interrupted frequently. Like the King of Kensington, Socalled seemed to know everyone in the neighborhood.

Socalled had been on my radar since my husband brought home his Passover album, The Socalled Seder: A Hip-Hop Haggadah, 10 years ago. In that album, ads for Manischewitz, along with Passover dinner table chatter, are sampled over a driving hip-hop beat; the track “The Ten Plagues” features the lyricist rapping that “sometimes bad things happen to bad people for a good reason, you dig?,” the “Miriam Drum Song” features an urgent fiddle, and the hip-hop single called “Who Knows One” is heavily klezmer inflected.

His latest effort, Peoplewatching, is perhaps more accessible musically, and is frequently quite beautiful, though whatever Jewish aspect is there is much more subtle. Still, Dolgin insists that his Yiddish interests influenced him. He explained that the track “Never See You Again” features a chord progression from an Abraham Ellstein song used in the wedding scene of the 1936 film Yidl Mitn Fidl (Am, A7, D7, F7, E7, Am – for readers with a piano or guitar nearby). There are a couple of bits of klezmer. And there is a sad and pretty song about Shabbat candles starting a fire near his Hutchison Street apartment in Mile End.

As for the sampling so integral to his music, Dolgin describes it as “giving you sounds with the atmosphere cooked in…. It’s archeological. It’s like cultural alchemy.”

My fellow Canadians in particular will no doubt be tickled by the final track, “Curried Soul 2.0.” Familiar to radio listeners as the theme to the CBC Radio nightly current affairs program As it Happens, “Curried Soul” is featured here in an extended version of the remix that CBC invited Socalled to produce. In a charming bit of hyperbole, Dolgin told a CBC interviewer that he was daunted and floored by the opportunity to tinker with the show’s theme because he “heard it every single day of my life.”

It’s not only Canadian listeners who have been privy to that storied evening broadcast: some Israelis have been featured on the show as well, including Meretz MK Michal Rozen and Tel Aviv-based pollster and political commentator Dahlia Scheindlin.

These days, beyond promoting his new album, Dolgin is busy with a Yiddish barbershop quartet he founded called Julius, in homage to the Oscar Julius Quartet. Many of the songs Dolgin’s quartet performs were originally in Yiddish translated into English, which Dolgin helps put back into Yiddish.

I was curious about what motivated Socalled to seek out Yiddish in the first place (a trip to a Salvation Army vintage record collection supplemented by a textbook called College Yiddish) and whether his continuing interest in the language and culture has anything to do with a rejection of Zionism – the nationalist movement which sought to “negate the Diaspora” in its urgent, Hebrew nation-building project (not so, in his case).

“I don’t believe in countries or nationalism,” Dolgin said, “but if we are going to live in a world with countries or nations, it’s not insane for the Jews to have a country.” He added, “I think Palestinians should have a home, too.” That said, he stressed that he is “more ashamed by how Canada has treated its aboriginal people. I’m more worried about the report on residential schools.”

Politics aside, I wondered whether Dolgin gets to speak any Yiddish these days. He does: at Yiddish festivals around the world, with an “old Jew he met in Russia” and, most often, with his Chassidic landlord. It’s Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood, after all.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com. For an in-depth interview with Socalled, visit jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/oct11/archives11oct07-01.html.

Amy doc a dismal portrayal

Image from the movie Amy. Amy Winehouse died four years ago this month. (photo from epk.tv)

Amy Winehouse, the brash little Jewish girl with the great big voice, died four years ago this month. There are any number of ways to mark that unhappy anniversary and draw inspiration from the British singer-songwriter’s artistic legacy. Subjecting yourself to Amy, Asif Kapadia’s unattractive and superficial documentary, is not the recommended option.

Amy opened on July 10. Strewn with grainy video footage shot by Winehouse, her family and friends over several years, the film is conceived as an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of a very public, very talented figure. Given that Winehouse mined her troubled relationships for her pain- and yearning-filled lyrics, it makes sense to conflate her creative and personal lives. But, rather than highlighting Winehouse’s artistic courage and her commitment to confronting and conveying hard truths, Amy presents its subject as weak, insecure, volatile and vulnerable. In lieu of insight, Kapadia offers amateur psychologizing.

photo - In Amy, filmmaker Asif Kapadia can’t resist focusing on Winehouse’s low points — In Amy, filmmaker Asif Kapadia can’t resist focusing on Winehouse’s low points. *(photo from epk.tv)*

The list of culprits goes way back. When Amy was a toddler, her mother wasn’t strong enough to stand up to her or rein her in. (Had her mother set firm boundaries all along, who’s to say the free-thinking Amy wouldn’t have rebelled and run away as a teenager?)

Her father cheated on her mother for years before they divorced when Amy was an adolescent. We are left to conclude that this is the source of Amy’s neediness, promiscuity, vulnerability and poor judgment regarding men. (Mitch Winehouse resurfaces once her career takes off, which allows Kapadia to imply that he was more concerned with Amy’s income streams than with her health.)

Oddly, no other facts about Winehouse’s upbringing are deemed to be relevant, including what kind of work her parents did or how they instilled her Jewish identity.

We infer that the North London family was lower middle-class, without connections or access to opportunities for their children. From the playful, self-deprecating way Winehouse refers to herself in messages left on answering machines, it appears that she associated being Jewish with being a curiosity and an outsider.

Although lyrics were important to her, there was no literary component to Winehouse’s Jewish identity. Her musical idols weren’t Jewish wordsmiths such as Bob Dylan, Laura Nyro or Paul Simon but vocalist/interpreters Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett. (Bennett’s collaboration in the studio with an awestruck Winehouse on “Body and Soul” for his Duets II album – reportedly her last recording – is one of the more wrenching sequences in Amy.)

The film also casts some responsibility for the 27-year-old’s premature demise on her bad-boy lover and eventual husband Blake Fielder-Civil. She followed his lead into hard drugs out of some twisted combination of love, obsession and need.

Finally, Kapadia tosses the pressures of fame and the pursuit of the paparazzi into the mix. If Amy is starting to sound like the familiar, formulaic shape of an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, your hearing is excellent.

The documentary’s big revelation – which is withheld until late in the film, giving it a sensationalist vibe – is that Winehouse was bulimic. Had Amy presented her illness as a defining (albeit secret) characteristic from childhood instead of withholding it for dramatic purposes, the documentary’s social utility would be infinitely greater.

Regrettably fulfilling the clichés of too many portraits of artists, Amy can’t resist being drawn – like the proverbial moth to a flame – to the sordidness, unhappiness and public embarrassment that denoted Winehouse’s low points.

Thankfully, what will remain long after the details of her life have faded into trivia on a Wikipedia page is that extraordinary voice. The best way to mark Amy Winehouse’s life is to listen to her music.

Amy is screening at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and Cineplex Odeon International Village. It is rated R for language and drug material. It runs 128 minutes.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Bridges built with art

From left to right, Echoes artists Sidi Schaffer, Sorour Abdollahi and Devora. (photo by Olga Livshin)

The term “artistic brotherhood” was coined in the 19th century. Among the most famous of such brotherhoods were the Pre-Raphaelites in England and the Canadian Group of Seven, and every brotherhood was comprised of artists united by similar artistic principles. Recently, such an artistic union appeared in Vancouver, but it is a sisterhood, compromising Sidi Schaffer, Sorour Abdollahi and Devora. They call themselves Echoes.

The trio’s first combined show was at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery in 2008. It was a success, and they have repeated the experience twice over the years. Earlier this month, they opened their fourth show together. Called Three Echoes: Harmony through Art, it opened July 8 at Britannia Art Gallery.

Even though their initial collaboration started by chance, the artists have stayed together as a cohesive group because of their common outlook on life and art. Despite differences in their ethnic and cultural origins, their humanity and the ties of friendship transcend age and space, traditions and societies.

Schaffer was born in Romania, a child survivor of the Holocaust. She received her first artistic education in Israel, but Canada allowed her to thrive as an artist. At various stages of her creative development, she has tried different expressive formats, and now she blends them all. Her paintings have figures in them but they tend towards the abstract, hinting at multiple meanings and deep, complex emotions.

Inspired by nature and by her beloved Israel, Schaffer uses mixed media – painting, collage, glue, melted wax and a number of others – in her imagery. Her art minimizes the gap between abstract and figurative, between dreams and life. Playful and nostalgic, her paintings infuse the show with the elemental simplicity of her early childhood.

“We keep the name Echoes,” she said, “because our art is echoing our lives and our pasts, our different backgrounds, and our common present. We regard art in a similar way, although we’re inspired by different matters. Devora draws her inspiration from inside. I find inspiration in nature, while Sorour seeks hers in the rich cultural heritage of Persia.”

Like the other two Echoes, Abdollahi is an immigrant. She came to Canada from Iran in 2000. But, unlike the other two, she is not Jewish. Ancient Persian culture permeates her paintings with generational memories. “My paintings are a bridge between the old Persia and the young Canada, a negotiation between history and modernity,” she said.

Abdollahi’s paintings are as much a declaration of her inner manifesto as they are a mystery for viewers to explore, often on the visceral level. “Many old buildings in Iran have mysteries in them. A half-hidden corner. An invisible door. Architecture has layers, some showing, others not, through the centuries of history. I like to reflect that in my paintings. I say with my art: look, there is something here, but I don’t say everything. I let people guess and imagine.”

She explained that both her Iranian roots and her Canadian experience have influenced her works enormously, creating a conversation between the old and the new, juxtaposing West and East. “Ancient ruins play a pivotal role in my paintings,” she said. “They enable me to express the conflict between different cultures and societies…. My paintings capture the process of change and its effects through the use of layers and textures.”

Although her works’ essence leans towards the abstract, playing with bright colors and enigmatic shapes, there is always a core of reality in every painting, that hidden door through which we are invited to glimpse the artist’s private landscape.

“Our art connects us,” said Abdollahi of Echoes. “We complete each other as artists. Each one of us, like everyone else, in every city and country, is reaching for peace, for the world without borders between people and nations. We are trying to achieve such a world through our art.”

Devora is the one who brought Echoes together.

She met Schaffer during the Gesher Project, which the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre website describes as a “project undertaken by Vancouver Holocaust survivors, child survivors and adult children of survivors. They met over a six-month period in 1998 to examine the impact of the Holocaust on their lives. They explored these experiences through painting, writing and discussion assisted by facilitators…. The project culminated with the mounting of the Gesher [Bridge] exhibit.”

Devora attended an art class with Abdollahi. Later, she introduced her two new friends to each other, and Echoes was born as an informal collective.

A transplanted American, Devora is a firm believer in dialogue between cultures. Her paintings are fully abstract, with colors flowing around each other, energy spiking, and whimsical forms unfolding into new revelations.

“My art reflects my personal search for clarity,” she said. “I am fascinated by dreams and fantasy and the interplay with the concrete and tangible. I am interested in what is hidden, how it informs what is revealed, and the tension and symbiotic relationship between the two.”

In her introductory remarks during the show’s opening, Devora talked about the closeness of the three Echoes members, despite their seemingly contrasting cultural foundations.

“When we go to an art show of some other artist, we always end up in front of the same painting, and our reactions are similar,” she said. “We have the same artistic taste. Our mutual experience as immigrants in Canada forms one of the many bridges that connect us. Our artistic ideas enrich each other, allow us a deeper understanding and lead to transformative commonalities…. Our esthetic communication is a model of a peaceful world, a microcosm of a greater ideal of partnership, a proof that it can be done.”

Three Echoes: Harmony through Art is on display until July 31.

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

Constant musical evolution

Babe Gurr’s Butchart Gardens Summer Festival concert on July 24 is the first of several in July/August. (photo from Babe Gurr)

Musician Babe Gurr has a busy summer ahead with concerts at Butchart Gardens Summer Festival, Islands Folk Festival, Harmony Arts Festival and as part of the PNE’s Mosaic Concert Series.

The multiple-award-winning singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer is well-known to many in the Jewish community, having performed at Rothstein Theatre and in the Chutzpah! Festival a number of times, including opening for Idan Raichel last year. Her most recent CD is Hearts Up to the Sun, which has earned deserved praise. On her website, Capilano University’s Gary Cristall – who, among many other career milestones, was a co-founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival – describes Hearts: “Musically, it is as hot as Louisiana hot sauce and the horn arrangements sound like they might well have come from there. Babe’s voice is sounding as good or better than ever. The band is great. But the songs … wow! The songs mark a step forward. They are even better than the ones she won awards for with her last release, SideDish.”

The Jewish Independent recently interviewed Gurr about her work and its beginnings.’

JI: I understand that it wasn’t until you were in your 20s that you joined a band and set off on a musical path. How did you end up joining a band, and what type of band was it? What were you doing (or planning on doing) as a job/career at the time?

BG: I joined my first band when I was 25 and it was a jazz/pop band, which was very stupid and daring of me as I knew nothing of jazz music other than what I heard of my parents’ album collection. I was living in Victoria at the time and working as a dental assistant, which never really fit as a job for me, but when I graduated high school, my parents didn’t think music could or would ever be an option and so steered me toward something respectable like working with teeth. Nothing against teeth – we all have and need them but, ugh, not for me. I really wanted to be involved with music and so I auditioned for this jazz/pop band and, amazingly, they took me under their wing and taught me the ropes of being in a band and, on the side, the lead guitar player, Dave English, would give me lessons on how to play the jazz chords on the guitar. Later on, I also started to sing and joined various bands over the years, playing rock, jazz, folk and top 40, before I started to write my own music.

JI: What was it about music that made you so passionate about it that you wanted to create it and try to make a living at it?

BG: That is a hard thing to put a finger on. I knew from a very young age I liked music and would lay on the floor with my head near my parents’ stereo speakers listening intently to the music. But I guess the pivotal point was seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show when I was a little girl – I just was completely wowed!

JI: You released Hearts Up to the Sun earlier this year, your fifth CD, I believe. How would you say your music/style has changed/evolved since your first recording?

BG: My music is a mash up of so many genres these days, pop, roots, blues, rock, world and a hint of jazz. I guess that is the result of the freedom one has when you are an independent artist and you have been around awhile, you just stop worrying about fitting in and create what you like, and then hope that you still have an audience for it.

JI: Do you have a specific creative process? If so, could you share how, in general, an idea becomes a song?

BG: I am fascinated by how a song will come to me – not that they are brilliant or complex but, still, it is a strange process, creativity. The music comes as a result of noodling on my guitar until I find something I like and the lyrics can be inspired by so many sources, some personal and others influenced by all that is happening around me.

JI: Could you tell me a bit about your band, how you guys got together, how long you’ve been playing together?

BG: I love the guys I play with, whether it is my three-piece or eight-piece band, they are all such talented players and so fun to work with. I have been playing with Nick Apivor, percussion/piano, for many years – I think we started to play in a duo in the late 1800s; actually, we met in our 20s. Then, I guess, violinist Tom Neville has been with me for about 10 or 12 years. The newer additions to the band are sax player Steve Hilliam, Malcolm Aiken on trumpet, Liam MacDonald on drums, Adam Popowitz on lead guitar and Darren Parris on bass.

JI: Are there any projects on which you’re currently working that you’d like to share with readers?

BG: There is a really interesting project that I will be involved with and we will be starting to workshop this summer, that puts together various dancers with a variety of musicians, but I am not able to talk about it yet – mum’s the word, for now.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to add, please do.

BG: Another hat I like to wear is that of a record producer and I have been lucky enough to have produced a number of talented singers’ CDs along with my own. It probably is my favorite thing to do in the music business. I compare it to a painter who sits with a blank canvas with an idea and then takes that idea and expands and enhances it with colors and strokes or, in the musical sense, arrangements and various instruments and sounds. It is so exciting to hear a song come to life in the studio.

For information on Babe Gurr’s upcoming shows, visit babegurr.com.

Painter and sculptor David Aronson passes away

“The Golem,” by David Aronson, 1958, encaustic on panel 57” x 64”. (all photos from David Aronson Archive via Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

photo - David Aronson in 1956. — David Aronson in 1956.

American painter and sculptor David Aronson, 91, of Sudbury, Mass., passed away on July 2, 2015. He was one of the most important representatives of the Boston Expressionist movement of the 1940s, an influential force in the development of the arts in Boston for more than 60 years and professor emeritus at Boston University, where he founded the fine arts department and taught from 1955 until his retirement in 1989.

Born in Shilova, Lithuania, in 1923, Aronson immigrated to the United States at the age of 7 and lived and worked in the Boston area for his entire career. While earning his diploma at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Aronson studied with the innovative German-born artist Karl Zerbe.

Aronson’s reputation was quickly established and his art has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, among others. His work is included in the permanent collections of more than 40 museums worldwide including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago. He received both the Judges Prize and Popular Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 1944 and was one of the youngest artists included in the “14 Americans” exhibition of 1946 curated by Dorothy Canning Miller of MoMA. In 1979, the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, the Jewish Museum and the National Academy of Design in New York all hosted retrospectives of his painting and sculpture. Later in his career, Boston University also hosted a comprehensive retrospective of his work in 2005, and the Danforth Museum featured a solo exhibition of Aronson’s work in 2009.

photo - David Aronson’s “The Door David,” 1963-1969, bronze, 94” x 50.5” x 12.25” — David Aronson’s “The Door David,” 1963-1969, bronze, 94” x 50.5” x 12.25”.

In addition to his exhibitions, Aronson received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960, election as Academician at the National Academy of Design, New York, Purchase Prize in 1961, 1962 and 1963 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, and honorary doctorates from both Hebrew College and Boston University.

Throughout his career, Aronson continued to experiment with new subjects and materials, frequently choosing dynamic subjects such as musicians, alchemists, magicians and mystics. He also used charcoal and pastel to exploit the power of black and white with the immediacy of drawing to convey profound human emotion in such works as “The Moonworshippers,” 1960, charcoal, 80″ x 84″ (private collection). His explorations in the 1960s also led him into sculpture, first in relief, extruding the forms from the two dimensional surface, and ultimately into major three dimensional works in bronze such as “The Door,” 1963-69, bronze, 94″ x 50″ x 12″ (collection Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Aronson leaves his wife of 60 years Georgiana (Nyman) Aronson, daughters Judy Webb and Abigail Zocher and son Ben Aronson, and three grandchildren (Jesse, Alex and Max) and great-granddaughter Isabella.

Alt-neu klezmer sound

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, as well as concerts on Vancouver and Salt Spring islands. (photo from Vancouver Folk Music Festival)

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will be right at home among the top talent that will gather at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival July 17-19. As did their previous recordings, the group’s fourth CD, Eastern Hora, received critical acclaim – it also resulted in the band’s nomination as group of the year in the 2014 Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Shtreiml is composer, pianist and harmonica player Jason Rosenblatt; trombonist Rachel Lemisch, originally from Philadelphia, who met Rosenblatt at KlezKanada (the couple dated long-distance for a few years, marrying in 2004); drummer Thierry Arsenault; bassist Joel Kerr; and composer, oud player and vocalist Ismail Fencioglu, who harkens from Istanbul.

Rosenblatt met Fencioglu a couple of years after Shtreiml was formed. The two played together at Festival du Monde Arabe in 2004.

The festival’s artistic director, Joseph Nakhlé, is “very forward-thinking, and he wanted the festival to be “more inclusive and, of course, Jewish people have had a presence in the Arab world for thousands of years, so he wanted to have a Jewish group,” Rosenblatt told the Independent in a phone interview from Montreal. While Shtreiml is not a Mizrahi or Sephardi group by any stretch, he said, Nakhlé wanted to add another element of the Middle East, “so he introduced us to Ismail, and we started this collaborative project.

“The first concert, we played all traditional tunes … traditional Jewish or traditional Turkish melodies, and we’ve just been working ever since at creating our own music. He writes music for the group, I write music for the group, and we created this hybrid sound.”

Rosenblatt attributes the success of Shtreimel to several factors. “First of all, I think when we perform live, it’s engaging in the sense that … you have the instrumentation that people don’t see very often … it’s instruments that people aren’t necessarily familiar with … so, to see someone from Turkey playing the oud and also singing in a style (microtonal), getting the notes in between the notes, I think that’s interesting.”

Another factor, and Rosenblatt said he never thought he would describe the band in this way, but “people like to see an Orthodox Jew and a Muslim playing together. He’s a secular Muslim and I don’t make a secret that I’m an Orthodox Jew, I wear kippa on stage, but I think there’s something heartwarming about it.” The two have been friends for a long time now, and they still get along really well, said Rosenblatt.

And, of course, there’s the music. “We try to stay away from cliché compositions … and, if we do play something that’s super-traditional, we try to add our own flavor, our own spin on it.”

Rosenblatt grew up in a musical family.

“Jewish music was always in the house,” he said, “but the main form of music that my parents listened to was folk and blues, early jazz, that type of thing. But we always had klezmer greats, Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwein, somewhere in the background; Yossele Rosenblatt [no relation] from cantorial music, my grandmother sang Yiddish folk songs. But my main love of music was – I was influenced by my parents to get into – blues and early jazz.”

Rosenblatt’s dad is a doctor but he plays guitar, and he would play for the kids when Rosenblatt was growing up. His mother is a folksinger, Abigail Rosenblatt, with recordings of her own, and she has accompanied Rosenblatt’s bands on various occasions and on recordings. He has four siblings, who all played an instrument when they were growing up, but did not choose music as a profession, or at least not their main profession, as one of his brothers, Eli, who is a lawyer, has made recordings.

Rosenblatt grew up singing in synagogue, leading services; he took piano lessons. He said he picked up his first harmonica when he was 15 years old because his dad had a bunch lying around. He thought that “Oh Susannah” might have been his first tune, then his parents gave him a tape of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, “an African-American duo that were big in the ’30s, and then, with the folk music revival of the 1960s, a bunch of white, Jewish people rediscovered all these amazing African-American musicians, and it kind of brought them out of retirement. While these guys were out of style for the black community, for these young Jewish people that were rediscovering blues-roots music, these guys became stars again.”

Later, when Rosenblatt started getting into the electric harmonica and Chicago blues, his parents gave him other records to inspire him, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, for example.

While he majored in economics, many of his undergraduate credits were in music, he said, and, during his subsequent MBA, he was still playing weddings and other gigs.

He headed to Israel for about five years, in the latter half of the 1990s, to work in software design. It was an educational multimedia firm, he said, “so they had these various videos and diagrams explaining certain things, historical tours, they did different projects. One of them was the genius of Edison, and Leonardo da Vinci, so they explained various inventions and each invention that was being explained was in a video and I was doing the music for those videos, and then, at night I would play [music] in bars.”

In terms of college-level music instruction, Rosenblatt said he had “one year of serious music education,” the rest was on his own and through mentors, such as Howard Levy, a well-known harmonica player.

“I studied European music at the Rimon School of Jazz [and Contemporary Music] in Israel,” he said. “Then, toward my mid 20s, I started getting into Jewish music a little more seriously, the roots of Jewish music, klezmer and cantorial music, through an organization called KlezKanada…. And I really got into listening again to klezmer greats, trying to apply the repertoire, the ornamentation, etc., to the harmonica, and also to the piano.

“Out of that experience of learning these tunes,” he continued, “I needed some sort of outlet and I formed a band called Shtreiml…. I formed it with Josh Dolgin, who’s known as Socalled … and it started off as a young group playing traditional klezmer music with somewhat untraditional instruments because I was playing harmonica, my wife was on trombone, Josh Dolgin was on accordion, and then we had bass and drums. The group kind of morphed, we played traditional repertoire, to a certain degree, until we felt we couldn’t take the repertoire much further. Then, I started writing a bunch of new material, Jewish instrumental music based on traditional modes, using traditional ornamentation and improvisation, and that’s how the band started.”

As to his compositions, Rosenblatt said, “I listen to a lot of music and I come up with ideas. I don’t just compose in the Jewish realm, I also … have a new album coming out of ragtime and jazz, and not just instrumental music but vocal music as well…. Especially with regards to the Jewish material, I saw a need for it because we were researching a lot of old klezmer tunes and we kind of got tired of always having to research and look for something old, why not create something new? We always say that we have great new music that has a reverence for the past.”

Eastern Hora follows Harmonica Galitzianer (2002), Spicy Paprikash (2004) and Fenci’s Blues (2006). Between Eastern Hora and Fenci’s Blues, Rosenblatt was working with a group called D’Harmo, “and I came out with an album with them, I was working quite a bit with them. I was doing another project, called Jump Babylon, which is a Jewish rock project. It’s difficult, we are self-managed, in other words, I manage everything…. So, to try to do projects simultaneously, especially recording projects, it’s difficult, so that’s the reason for that gap in recordings for Shtreiml because I was doing other things in between [including his continuing role as artistic director of the six-year-old annual Montreal Jewish Music Festival, which will take place in August]. But that doesn’t mean that the band was on hiatus. We were still performing and, since the new record came out, I’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on trying to book the group because it’s fun and we get along, it’s fun to tour together. I think also that the playing of the group matured quite a bit between 2006 and 2014, and I think audiences see that the compositions are little more complex and I think our stage presence is better.”

Shtreiml and Fencioglu will be doing four gigs in British Columbia. He and Lemisch are bringing the whole mishpocha with them: four kids, 7, 5, 3 and seven months. “I’m looking forward to coming to Vancouver, it’s our second time. We were there last year for a wedding…. We have what we call functional music and then we have original music, and so we’re excited to be playing our artistic project for what I know is going to be an appreciative audience because whenever we go to folk festivals, it’s always people are there because they want to hear music.”

Shtreiml and Ismail Fencioglu will be at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival July 17-19, Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria July 15, Vancouver Island Musicfest in Comox July 10-12 and Fulford Hall on Salt Spring Island July 9.

Community talent in TUTS

Left to right: Nathan Piasecki (Artful Dodger), E. Marie West (Nancy) and Stephen Aberle (Fagin) in Theatre Under the Stars’ production of Oliver! Aberle also plays Mr. Brownlow. (photo by Tim Matheson)

Actor Steven Aberle describes Theatre Under the Stars as “a thrilling combination of enthusiastic, amazingly talented youth and, as they say, ‘seasoned’ pros.” In this instance, Aberle – who plays both Fagin and Mr. Brownlow in TUTS’s Oliver! – counts among the seasoned pros, while fellow Jewish community member Kathryn Palmer, who plays Strawberry Seller and is in the ensemble, is one of the talented youth, though Aberle and the other seasoned pros also have plenty of that, of course. The Independent caught up with both actors by email earlier this month.

More than just luck

JI: You’re a relative newcomer to the Vancouver stage. Could you share some of your performing background?

photo - Kathryn Palmer is Strawberry Seller / ensemble in Oliver! — Kathryn Palmer is Strawberry Seller / ensemble in Oliver! *(photo from TUTS)*

Kathryn Palmer: I have always had a deep-seated passion for music and performing. When my home life started getting rocky, my Auntie Kathryn, who was a professional opera singer, seized the opportunity to get me out of the house for a few hours a week and into her studio for voice lessons. I was hooked and completely inspired! It wasn’t long before I was accepted into the voice program at Canterbury Arts High School, taking Royal Conservatory Exams, singing in choirs, competing in music festivals across Canada and performing in as many musicals as I could.

JI: You’re a graduate of the Canadian College of Performing Arts in Victoria. Are you from Victoria? Can you share some of your personal background, including what role, if any, Judaism or Jewish culture or community has played (plays) in your life?

KP: Born and raised in Ottawa, I moved to Victoria to study at the Canadian College of Performing Arts. I was very fortunate to graduate with about two years of paid theatre work … beginner’s luck, I call it.

At school, we were always told to use what makes us different and unique. One of the things my auntie had taught me was all about Jewish folk music. Being able to sing folk songs in Yiddish and Ladino was definitely something that made me unique but also grounded me. Being Jewish doesn’t exclusively impact the work I choose to do but it definitely infuses it. When I’m doing these musicals that are set in the past, I always wonder that would my life be like a young Jewish woman during this time. I also get excited to perform in shows with a more Jewish theme, like Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof at the Gateway Theatre or Louise Philo in Girl Rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria.

JI: What are some of your aspirations regarding a career in performance?

KP: I adore theatre. I love musical theatre. I also love working with kids. I want to go back to school within the next few years and do my ECE [early childhood education]. I’m hoping to one day move back to Ottawa and start a theatre school there. Hopefully, I can inspire children the same way my auntie inspired me.

Not just the beard

JI: You seem to have been very busy on stage in the last couple of years. Can you share with readers some of your performance highlights since the JI last spoke with you in December 2013 about Uncle Vanya?

Stephen Aberle: I have been blessed with busy-ness these past several years, yes, kein ayin hara [no evil eye]. I guess I’m at that stage in my career where, if one remains alive, willing and (unfortunate but still true in today’s theatre) male, opportunities arise. Since

Uncle Vanya, I’ve had the good fortune to perform in Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook, with music by Stephen Schwartz (of Godspell and Wicked fame) at Studio 1398 on Granville Island last fall. That was an opportunity to work on some amazing material with a wonderful company, including director Chris McGregor and Wendy Bross Stuart as music director.

I’ve been fortunate to perform with Wendy many times, including a couple of shows together at TUTS. We’ll be doing Snapshots again this coming fall [late October, early November], at Presentation House in North Vancouver, this time to be directed by Max Reimer.

I got to be part of a workshop of Hamelin: A New Fable by Leslie Mildiner (another member of the Jewish community) for Axis Theatre, although, unfortunately, scheduling didn’t make it possible for me to be in the touring production. And, earlier this year, I was in What You’re Missing, a lovely new play by Vancouver-born playwright Tamara Micner (she’s now based in London), at the Chutzpah! Festival.

JI: What most attracts you to, and repels you about, the character of Fagin? How are you approaching the role?

SA: Well, Fagin is one of the great characters of 19th-century literature – and, in Dickens’ novel at least, one of the great antisemitic caricatures of all time. That kinda sums up both the attraction and the repulsion: the character and his motives and passions are grand, fascinating, delicious for both performers and audiences; he’s also, let’s not mince words, a brutal travesty – again, as Dickens originally conceived and presented him in the novel Oliver Twist.

I want to rise to the level of the challenges the character offers. He’s big, and I need to honor and own that and, at the same time, find the truths in the character and his situation. Lionel Bart, who was Jewish and who created the musical Oliver!, trod a careful line in dealing with Fagin. There are no explicit references in the play to Fagin’s being a Jew, but Bart wove klezmerish themes into a lot of his music. The late great Ron Moody, also Jewish, who originated the role in London and who played it in the movie, followed that line, playing into Jewish nuances in the music and in the character’s accent.

The story of Oliver Twist and of the musical Oliver! deals with some dark themes – themes that are very much still with us, here and now. Grinding poverty rubbing shoulders with enormous wealth and privilege; love, hatred, loyalty and betrayal; violence against women; criminality, justice and injustice; prejudice; legitimacy and illegitimacy and the arbitrariness of those categories. Our director, Shel Piercy, is not shying away from that darkness, and I’m interested in his approach, his color palette. There can be a tendency, sometimes, for musical comedy to be cutesy, all fun and games and sweetness and light; that’s not the intention with this production. So, I’m looking for ways to explore Fagin’s breadth and depth. He’s devious, avaricious, by turns fearful and bold, can be selfish and brutal; he’s also probably the closest thing to a parent most of his gang of little thieves have ever known. He uses them, but he also feeds them and shelters them and plays with them and teaches them the only way he knows how to make a living, which happens to be thieving.

Shel has made some intriguing casting choices. One actor – Damon Calderwood – plays both Mr. Bumble and Bill Sykes, and Shel has me playing both Fagin and Mr. Brownlow, the kind gentleman who strives to rescue Oliver from Fagin’s clutches. I get to play both the wicked and good father (or grandfather) figures, if you like. A practical consequence of that choice is that I spend a lot of time on stage, so one important goal for me as an actor will be to remain upright. It’s going to be a workout.

JI: You were Buffalo Bill in a prior TUTS season. How did you come to start auditioning with TUTS, and have there been other roles? Does performing on an outdoor stage present unique challenges?

SA: I first worked at TUTS (in those days it was called Theatre in the Park, or TITPark) in the mid-’70s as a carpenter and stagehand, and I’ve had the pleasure of performing there each decade since – in Anything Goes in ’87, as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in ’97 and as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun in 2008.

I started auditioning for TUTS soon after I graduated from Studio 58, and I keep auditioning there when I’m free and I think there might be a role for me. I love it there. The people are great, a thrilling combination of enthusiastic, amazingly talented youth and, as they say, “seasoned” pros. There’s a lot of love around the place. A special smell pervades the atmosphere, although it no longer carries as much of the whiff of pigeon droppings as it had in the old days. I’ve probably been just about everywhere it’s possible for a human being to get to in that building, including all over way up in the gridwork, where I spent a great deal of my time during those summers in the ’70s.

Playing outdoors presents some curious and inspiring challenges, yes indeed. There are obvious ones, like wildlife, for example. You never know when you might be joined on the stage by a raccoon or a squirrel or a crazed moth, and every actor knows that small children and animals – even insects – are far more interesting to watch on stage than we are because they’re unselfconscious and unpredictable.

We’re playing in Vancouver in the summer and the days are long, so the first half or so of the show is hard to light – you can’t use light to draw the audience’s attention very effectively because it’s hard to compete with the sun. Shel pointed this out to us in rehearsal: “Your movement is my spotlight.” We as performers need to provide focus through our actions, positions, motions and stillnesses. We’re also quite far away from the audience, so we have to use our bodies fully. Someone in the 20th or 30th row may barely be able to make out my features, so I need to release my thoughts and emotions into my body: to smile and frown and laugh and wonder, not just from the neck up but with all of me….

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to share with readers, please do.

SA: Well, there is one other thing. It’s interesting to me that, especially in the last few years, so many of the characters I’ve played have been Jewish. Tevye in Fiddler, Jacob in Joseph … plays at the Chutzpah! Festival, now Fagin. I think I get called to audition for most of the film and TV rabbi parts that come into town.

I guess it’s the beard.

Oliver! alternates evenings with Hairspray from July 10-Aug. 22 at Malkin Bowl (tuts.ca).

Ben-Gurion the leader

The story is told that the idea of building a modern city in Beersheva came from David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. He appointed a committee of experts to examine the idea. The committee reported back that it could not be done. When Ben-Gurion was asked how he wanted to respond to the report, he replied, “Appoint a new committee.”

Accomplished Israeli historian Anita Shapira recounts the apocryphal anecdote in David Ben-Gurion, Father of Modern Israel (Yale University Press). Shapira, whose book Israel: A History won the National Jewish Book Award in 2012, presents Ben-Gurion as the person who did more than anyone else to establish the state. He inspired a nation of idealists and wartorn refugees to achieve the impossible. But does your overcrowded bookshelf need another Ben-Gurion biography? I can think of three strong reasons to recommend Shapira’s book.

Although not the definitive biography, Shapira offers a fresh perspective on Ben-Gurion’s life based on newly available files of the Israel Defence Forces and extensive work in the archives at kibbutz Sde Boker, where Ben-Gurion lived. She sets out his considerable accomplishments through colorful anecdotes and well-crafted prose.

As well, despite the passage of years, Ben-Gurion remains a central figure in contemporary debates, a touchstone for politicians from all parties. He is invariably quoted during heated arguments over Israel’s relations with Germany, its borders with its neighbors and its treatment of the Palestinians. He is often cited for his work in forging a partnership with the religious communities in the 1930s. Shapira offers solid scholarship for those who wish to reflect on his work.

And, for those with big ambitions, the new biography offers a vivid portrayal of how he scaled the heights of domestic and international politics. His biography may not be a roadmap to glory but aspiring leaders could pick up a few tips.

Shapira writes in detail about the years after the state was declared in 1948, and especially about Ben-Gurion’s role leading up to the Sinai campaign. However, the most engrossing part of this book is about his unlikely development as a leader. With a knack for telling stories, Shapira effectively tracks how the unexceptional youngster, not particularly well liked by his peers, developed pragmatic organizational skills, sharp elbows and incisive political instincts that propelled him into the forefront of the Zionist movement.

Ben-Gurion, born in 1886, grew up in Plonsk, a backwater shtetl three hours outside of Warsaw. Shapira found nothing in his birthplace, his lineage or his education that hinted at his future role in history. She sees no notable qualities in his personality that foreshadowed his destiny.

His mother died in childbirth when Ben-Gurion was 11. He quit school after his bar mitzvah, although he had a lifelong love of learning.

By 14 years old, he had embraced the Zionism of his father, who had been swept up in Theodor Herzl’s dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. However, Ben-Gurion was not in a rush to make aliya. At 18, he moved to Warsaw with the intention of becoming an engineer. The engineering schools rejected his applications.

Here is where destiny steps in. He happened to be in the city at a crucial moment in history. He was swept up in the heady events of the days before the Russian Revolution.

He joined Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion), a party that combined his newfound enthusiasm for Marxist socialism with Zionism.

Although his grasp of Marxism was considered shallow, he rose to a leadership position, recognized as a strong debater and speaker.

He finally immigrated to Palestine in 1906, but his early years in Palestine were not particularly auspicious. He often said one thing and did another.

He firmly believed that Jews would reclaim Palestine only by working the land. He said the land would belong to the Jews only when the majority of its workers and guards were Jewish.

He worked in the fields at Petach Tikva and then in the Galilee but he was frequently sick and, when he was healthy enough to work, he was miserable, Shapira writes. Throughout the following decades, he described himself as an agricultural worker while, in reality, he was doing other work in and outside of Palestine.

He had a strained relationship with his father and, according to Shapira, a distant relationship with his wife, who was the mother of his three children. He was excluded from clandestine groups and collectives in Palestine that were forming in those years.

Also, he misunderstood political realities. He was convinced that the Turks would remain in control of Palestine, never anticipating the British Mandate.

Ben-Gurion’s rise to prominence began slowly after the First World War. He expanded the Histadrut, the national federation of trade unions, into one of the most powerful institutions in the country. Elected leader of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency in 1935, he became the recognized leader of the Jewish community in Palestine. By the mid-1940s, he was exactly the type of leader that was required for the state of Israel to be born. Shapira shows that, from these ambiguous beginnings, a giant of history was formed.

The book has little to say about the lasting significance of some of his initiatives. She writes about his authorization of the forced expulsion of some Arabs, his reluctance to define Israel’s borders and, despite his secular lifestyle, his partnership with the religious community, but does not mention the social and political tensions arising from these initiatives. Shapira does not hold him accountable for creating conditions that led, although unintentionally, to many of the difficulties now confronting the country.

Regardless, Ben-Gurion’s accomplishments overshadow everything else. He transformed armed militias that were focused on fighting the British into a military force that could stand up to the armies of neighboring Arab countries. He ensured that tanks, artillery and aircraft were available to defend the land and its people. He hammered together a provisional government from the fiercely competing factions among the Jewish people in Palestine.

In sharp contrast to prominent Zionists of his era, Ben-Gurion advocated for a Zionism of practical achievements and put little faith in diplomacy and international proclamations. He demanded that Hebrew names be given to every aspect of government-related activity. He ensured that the religious community became partners in this ambitious nation-building project. He also had a hand in shaping the cultural, religious and intellectual character of the new country right from the start.

Shapira says that Ben-Gurion liked to argue that history was made by the masses, not individuals. She shows that, beyond a doubt, his role was decisive.

Robert Matas, a Vancouver-based writer, is a former journalist with the Globe and Mail. This review was originally published on the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website and is reprinted here with permission. To reserve this book or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman library.