Arts & Culture – Page 141

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.

Cookbooks for the summer

While it might be hard to contemplate cooking on these hot summer days, there are a few recent cookbooks enticing enough to draw you into the kitchen – with savory results.

Jewish Soul Food: From Minsk to Marrakesh (Schocken Publishers, 2014) is Janna Gur’s third cookbook. It follows The Book of New Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey (Schocken, 2008), and she also edited and published Fresh Flavors from Israel (Al Hashulchan, 2010).

Gur’s family immigrated to Israel from Riga, Latvia, in 1974. She completed a bachelor’s degree in English literature and art history and a master’s degree in translation and literary theory. In 1991, she and her husband founded Al Hashulchan, a Hebrew food magazine.

In an interview with thekitchn.com, Gur explains that she wrote this new cookbook “to give the North American audience a taste of what Jewish foods could be – how diverse and wonderful they are, and how possible it is to make them a part of our modern cooking.”

Gur’s aim was to make a focused, edited and approachable collection of 100 recipes from as many Jewish communities as possible. She wanted them to be authentic, to fit the modern kitchen and to answer the question, What is the soul of the dish “that makes us relish it and want to make it ours?”

The eight chapters include starters, salads and noshes (23 recipes); cozy soups for chilly nights (14 recipes); meat balls, fish balls and stuffed vegetables (10 recipes); braises, pot roasts and ragus (13 recipes); meatless mains (12 recipes); savory pastries (11 recipes); Shabbat state of mind (10 recipes); and cakes, cookies and desserts (20 recipes).

There are 94 color illustrations, which are beautiful and mouth-watering.

For me, as a cook, the three most useful aspects of a cookbook are all here: every recipe has its country of origin, a brief story and numbered instructions.

And what wonderful countries of origin for these recipes – Morocco, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Algeria, Libya, North Africa, Georgia, Kurdistan, Russia, Persia, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Iraq, India, Yemen and America. As the book’s promotional material notes, the cuisines from most of these countries may be “on the verge of extinction … because almost none of the Jewish communities in which they developed and thrived still exist. But they continue to be viable in Israel, where there are still cooks from the immigrant generations who know and love these dishes. Israel has become a living laboratory for this beloved and endangered Jewish food.” And the hope for Jewish Soul Food is that it will help “preserve traditional cuisine for future generations” by encouraging people to cook it.

For more about Gur, visit jannagur.com.

***

Former Wall Street lawyer Ronnie Fein decided to become a freelance food and kitchen appliance writer. This led to the Ronnie Fein School of Creative Cooking, lecturing and cooking demonstrations – and cookbooks. She has written several, but describes Hip Kosher: 175 Easy-to-Prepare Recipes for Today’s Kosher Cooks (Da Capo Press, 2008) and The Modern Kosher Kitchen: More than 125 Inspired Recipes for a New Generation of Kosher Cooks (Fair Winds Press, 2014) as “more labors of love.”

She writes on her website (ronniefein.com): “They are, like this website, my efforts to bring the world of kosher cooking into 21st-century America. Just as our kosher ancestors cooked the same foods as their neighbors in Eastern Europe or the Middle East or wherever they happened to live, and adapted it to the dietary laws, why shouldn’t we, right here in America?”

Fein says she wrote The Modern Kosher Kitchen “to try to inspire all home cooks who keep kosher and would like to prepare the kinds of foods that informed, sophisticated – hip – folks want to cook today.”

And the focus is, indeed, on modern American recipes – “multicultural, innovative and interesting.” Every recipe is marked meat, dairy or pareve, and every recipe has some introductory remarks, which I think make the recipe so much more personal and interesting. As well, every recipe has a “Did you know?” or serving suggestions and substitutions. Most recipes also have a boxed tip, piece of advice. When a recipe runs to a second page, it is always opposite, so the cook does not have to turn the page while working.

The 12 chapters include appetizers; soups; salads; grains, beans, pasta and vegetarian dishes; fish; meat; poultry; vegetables and side dishes; breakfast, brunch and sandwiches; budget meals; Passover dishes and desserts. Ingredients are listed in imperial measurements as well as metric.

Although there are 127 recipes, there are only 39 beautiful, mouth-watering color photographs – but that is certainly not a reason to pass up this book. My only criticism about the cookbook is that the instructions are in paragraphs and not numbered, which I find easier to follow.

***

Rounding out these reviews is not a kosher cookbook per se, however, by eliminating the cheese or using pareve chicken stock, some of the recipes could be adapted.

Amy Riolo (amyriolo.com) is an Italian American whose ancestors came from Calabria. She is the author of many cookbooks, a chef and a TV personality, so I felt that her most recent publication – The Ultimate Mediterranean Diet Cookbook (Fair Winds Press, 2015) – was worth noting.

The 101 recipes in this book were included because of their taste, authenticity and nutritional value. They are low in fat, cholesterol and sodium, and packed with vitamins, minerals and healthful properties. There are also seven recipes specifically listed as alternatively gluten free.

The recipes are organized according to the Mediterranean diet pyramid with fruits, vegetables, grains, olive oil, beans, nuts, legumes and seeds, herbs and spices at the bottom, for every meal to be based on these foods. Above them are fish and seafood to be served twice a week. Above them are poultry, eggs, cheese and yogurt to be served in moderate portions daily or weekly. At the top of the pyramid are the least-served foods – meats and sweets.

Categorizing the recipes to give the reader an idea of what is included, one can find recipes for seven soups, five fish meals, four breads, six pasta, eight appetizers and sauces, five dips, three egg dishes, one sandwich, five poultry meals, eight side dishes, eight salads, eight main dishes, nine vegetables, 10 fruit dishes and six desserts.

Each recipe has a little story, the list of ingredients opposite the instructions (regrettably, not numbered) and a boxed Mediterranean lifestyle tip to “enhance the daily living aspects of the eating plan,” along with meal plans and serving suggestions.

At the end are a glossary with pantry foods defined, a bibliography and a selection of websites, magazine/newspaper articles and journals for further reading.

The 69 color illustrations are so tempting cooks will be motivated to rush to the kitchen to start making these dishes.

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, foreign correspondent, lecturer, food writer and book reviewer who lives in Jerusalem. She also does the restaurant features for janglo.net and leads weekly walks in English in Jerusalem’s market.

Handmade by artists

Left to right are artists Robin Adams, Jan Smith and Julie Kemble. (photo by Olga Livshin)

In common perception, the word “manufacture” is associated with industrial production and machinery, but it wasn’t always so. The word’s origins are found in manu factus, Latin for “made by hand,” and the new show at the Zack Gallery, Manufacture: From the Hand, takes visitors back to these roots.

The show presents beautiful handmade jewelry and wall hangings by 33 artists and craftspeople, members of the Vancouver Metal Arts Association (VMAA). Crafts are not a regular sight at the Zack, but gallery director Linda Lando explained, “The Vancouver Metal Arts Association has been welcomed to the Zack Gallery, as they … approach metal in a unique way. They use metal as one would use paint and canvas, so their creations bridge the gap between art and craft.”

The exhibition is eclectic in both imagery and materials, with each piece reflecting its creator’s personality. The entire show emphasizes the participants’ diversity in cultural backgrounds and artistic interests. The only common factor is metal – gold, silver, copper, brass and others – as the basis for their art.

The Independent talked to several of the featured artists. One of them, Julie Kemble, is a recently retired communications teacher from a local university, although she always enjoyed various artistic hobbies. “I started working with metal around year 2000,” she said. “I used to work with fibres. I guess I love body adornment, so it was a natural transition for me from fabrics to jewelry. They both adorn the body.” A Kemble sculpture could be used as a desk decoration or worn as a pendant. In both incarnations, they are charming.

Robin Adams has been a jeweler for more than 20 years. “I owned a jewelry shop before,” said the professional craftsman. “I sold my own jewelry there, but for a shop, you produce several copies of the same pieces. Now, everything I make is one of a kind. I’m an artist.”

Another jeweler in the show, Jana Kucera, currently manages a pub. “Art, making jewelry, is a hobby for me, but I hope it could become more,” she said. “I’ve always been an artist at heart. I graduated from the VCC [Vancouver Community College] Jewelry Art and Design program in 2005 and I enjoy making jewelry. I sell through shows like this one.” Her original copper necklaces are delightfully graceful.

photo - One gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks, which combine copper etching, enamel and photography — One gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks, which combine copper etching, enamel and photography. *(photo by Olga Livshin)*

The exhibition showcases not only jewelry but other metal art, as well. One full gallery wall is dedicated to Dana Reed’s series of hanging disks. Each about the size of a hand, the disks combine copper etching, enamel and photography.

Reed has been working with metal for a few years. “My day job is in administration and tech support,” she said, but “I’ve always made stuff; my whole family made beautiful things.” Her brother is a metalworker, too, and although Reed doesn’t have a formal artistic education, she has been taking classes in different artistic media. “I find metal to be pleasing to work with. It stays in place,” she joked before turning serious. “I can achieve precision with metal, while enamel allows more of a free-fashion imagery.”

Among the other wall pieces in the show is a selection of life-sized garden tools, made of Damascene by Karin Jones – a decidedly unexpected item – and a small but picturesque installation called “Changing Values,” made of pennies by Peggy Logan.

Logan has been a professional artist for 30 years. Currently, she is teaching jewelry art at Langara. “I started collecting old pennies when they went out of circulation,” she said. “Before 1993, all pennies were made of copper, and I used them for this piece.” The pennies, strung together and covered with multicolored enamel, glint on the wall, defying the government’s decision to stop producing them.

Another professional artist in the show is Jan Smith, VMAA founder and past president. Her elegant enamel and silver jewelry is represented by galleries in Montreal, San Francisco and Seattle.

“I’ve been an artist for over 20 years,” she said. “It’s not easy to make a living as an artist, especially not here in B.C. I’ve often had to supplement my income by teaching art or working as an art therapist. I’m a member of the International Enamel Association. It’s a small world and we all know and talk to each other. I must tell you that other countries support their artists much better than Canada. Britain, even America, offers better conditions to artists. Their art donations are larger. I’d love to have my art better known here but, so far, collectors in the U.S. know my art better. Even the East Coast is better for artists; I have representation in Montreal but not here. Maybe it is because Vancouver is such a young city.”

Three years ago, Smith founded VMAA to improve the situation. Current VMAA president Louise Perrone told the Independent a little more about the association. “The VMAA was founded by Jan Smith in 2012. Before moving to Salt Spring Island, she lived in Seattle, where there is a thriving metal arts guild. Jan felt Vancouver needed something similar. Unlike Seattle, there are no specific jewelry galleries and no jewelry and metal BFA programs. There is no community of artistic jewelry collectors in Vancouver supporting us either. That is why we started VMAA – to give art jewelry a platform and educate the public, to build a community of jewelry and metal artists.”

Manufacture: From the Hand opened on June 25 and will continue until July 26. To see a selection of the jewelry on display, visit jccgv.com/content/metalart.

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

No errors in Comedy

Josh Epstein, left, and Andrew Cownden in Bard on the Beach’s production of The Comedy of Errors. (photo by David Blue)

It’s summer in Vancouver and with it comes sun, surf and Shakespeare – that is, Bard on the Beach under the iconic red and white tents at Vanier Park. Celebrating its 26th season, the festival serves up an interesting mix this year: A Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labor’s Lost and King Lear, from the pen of the Bard himself, and a contemporary piece, Shakespeare’s Rebel, by local author Chris Humphreys.

Opening night of Comedy of Errors on June 13 saw the always dapper artistic director Christopher Gaze welcoming the crowd under the big tent of the BMO Stage and, for the first time in the history of the festival, acknowledging that the land upon which the tents are pitched for their annual sojourn is ancestral, traditional and unceded aboriginal territory. Deborah Baker of the Squamish Nation gave greetings and performed a traditional drum song.

Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, the shortest in his repertoire, and it contains the zaniest of his plots. It is the tale of two sets of identical twins, one aristocratic, the other, their boy servants, with the pairs separated in the aftermath of a shipwreck. The family patriarch, Egeon, has spent years looking for his lost progeny and servants. His search takes him to the town of Ephesus, where he is captured and sentenced to death (no one is supposed to come to Ephesus without permission) but receives a last-minute reprieve to look for his sons and to find money to pay the fine.

It just so happens that one of the sons and his servant ended up in Ephesus while the other two ended up in Syracuse. Both sons are named Antipholus and both their servants, Dromio – all of this sets the stage for a frenzied journey through mistaken identities, hilarious hi-jinks and the ultimate sibling reunification when the Syracuse pair show up in Ephesus.

But what a journey. Think Edward Scissorhands meets Little Shop of Horrors meets Metropolis, and you have director Scott Bellis’ (who does double duty as Egeon) fantastical steampunk version of this production. What is steampunk? A mix of sci-fi electronics and gadgets set against a pseudo-Victorian era background as stylized by authors like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley.

The production is a bit over the top with its madcap bits and bobs – a hand-eating Venus fly trap, a communal lobotomy by a mad scientist, a creature trying to escape from a boiling soup pot, a Michael Jackson-like moonwalk, a bubble-shooting gun and a flatulation moment – and its frenetic pace. It is mostly fluffy fun although if you are looking for some meaning, there are three love stories intertwined with the humor. Shakespeare purists will probably cringe in their seats. But the opening night crowd was eating it up and this unique approach should bring in younger audiences and make the Bard’s words more accessible to a wider demographic. This reviewer loved it!

The acting is solid from the ensemble cast, many of whom do double and even triple duty in various roles: Ben Elliott as one Antipholus, Jay Hindle as the other, Jeff Gladstone as the mad Dr. Pinch, Andrew McNee as the grunting cook Nell, Daniel Doheny as the chambermaid, Lilli Beaudoin as the foxy courtesan, Jewish community member Josh Epstein as the smuggler, Andrew Cownden as the goldsmith, Sereana Malani as the Ephesean Antipholus’ overbearing wife, Lindsey Angell as her nerdy sister and Anna Galvin as the abbess, who makes her first appearance on stage in stilts. But it is the pint-sized Dromios, played by Dawn Petten and Luisa Jojic, who give the standout performances of the production. In their aviator hats and goggles, they really do look like identical twins. Petten, in particular, takes her role and runs with it with impeccable comedic timing and one of the best “ad lib” lines in the play, “Call before you dig.”

What really makes this production sublime are the visuals. The set is fantastic, a wall of steam-powered widgets, sprockets and gears dominated by a one-handed clock with a mind of its own, all kept in working order by shadowy, silent engineers constantly tweaking the machinery with wrenches and hammers. The play begins with one of the engineers pushing a big red button and, all of a sudden, the empty stage becomes a mélange of color and activity as the cast appears through a smoky haze, some through the many trapdoors in the floor, some out of the bowels of the machines, some appearing to drop out of the sky – all courtesy of community member Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s terrific choreography.

This dreamlike mechanical dance sets the tone for the whole evening. Mara Gottler has outdone herself with the costumes – lots of leather, lace-up boots, corsets, garters, black lace and accessories like aviator goggles, gas masks and leather bat wings. Gerald King’s lighting and Malcolm Dow’s sound design are the icing on this macabre cake.

Just as the action starts with a push of a button so does it end, with the shutting down of the machinery after the final revelations. This is one production that you can just sit back and enjoy, pure and simple fun.

Comedy runs to Sept. 26. For the full Bard schedule and tickets for any of this season’s offerings, visit bardonthebeach.org or call the box office at 604-739-0559.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

The same old stories

Aubrey Joy Maddock as John the Baptist, left, Andrew Cohen as Judas and Jennifer Copping as Jesus in Arts Club Theatre’s Godspell. (photo by David Cooper)

Before I attended Godspell, I was not familiar with the story or with the parables of the Gospel of Matthew, from which much of the content is taken. I did, however, know what a parable was, I knew that the play has been extraordinarily successful and I recognized the name of at least one song – “Day by Day” – so I assumed I had nothing to worry about.

I was wrong. By the end, I still didn’t get why this play has been so popular.

Godspell is essentially a series of vignettes that draw analogies between Matthew’s words and day-to-day life. It includes lessons such as, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” “He that is without sin among you, …” the Prodigal Son, etc. Jesus relates these didactic stories to a group consisting of nine people that include a police officer, a waitress, an architect and a vamp. Judas and John the Baptist round out the cast of 12.

In each presentation of Godspell, the setting of the play, the costumes and some of the characters change. Updated scripts allow for the inclusion of cultural or geographic references that are familiar to the audience.

In the Arts Club production, the cast meet in a train station and the play unfolds as a game show where contestants participate based on the color of the shoes they’ve been given. Gospel analogies are acted out using modern story lines, including characters from Star Wars or rap songs.

To me, the play came across as a bunch of children’s shows that had been stitched together. I felt like I was back in elementary school, only instead of Smokey the Bear talking about forest fires, it’s Jesus and he wants you to avoid being stoned to death.

I found some of the skits infantile. In one case, the cast sing and talk like goats; in another scene, an audience member is pulled up to participate on stage resulting in some bad improv. And don’t get me started on the slapstick.

Godspell was an instant hit. It went from being a college student performance at Carnegie Mellon University to an experimental theatre production in Greenwich Village to being re-scored and opening off Broadway in 1971. John-Michael Tebelak originally wrote the play for his master’s thesis, having become enamored with the Gospels. Stephen Schwartz, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus was brought in to score. The award-winning Schwartz has become famous for his work in Wicked, as well as Enchanted and The Prince of Egypt. Tebelak was actually named most promising director of 1971 by the New York Drama Desk, but passed away at age 35 of a heart attack.

The show ran for five years off Broadway with an astounding 2,100 performances. The 2015 run in Vancouver is its sixth revival.

It had a particularly famous yearlong run in Toronto in 1972 with a cast that included Victor Garber, Gilda Radner (in her stage debut), Martin Short, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin and Dave Thomas. When I read about this production, I thought what an amazing show it must have been – staged at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, with that magnitude of talent. Maybe a show about the Bible needs a venue of biblical proportions, along with fire-and-brimstone effects that stun the audience with shock and awe. Perhaps the performance at the Arts Club was just too small.

Either way, despite my lack of interest in this particular telling of the parables, I have to tip my hat to the high calibre of quadruple-threat talent (singing, acting, dancing and, in many cases, playing an instrument) on stage. Andrew Cohen in particular stands out in his supporting role of Judas.

Godspell runs at the Arts Club Granville Island stage until Aug. 1 (artsclub.com).

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer and media trainer in Vancouver. Her consulting work can be seen at phase2coaching.com.

Human rights at fore

One would be hard-pressed to find anyone involved in human rights around the world who has not heard of David Matas.

A Winnipeg-based lawyer, Matas has helped countless victims of human rights violations, and written or co-written numerous books on various atrocities in an endeavor to shed light on them and educate the general public about them. In his latest publication, he aims to explain why he has chosen the work that he has, in the hope of motivating others to get involved in human rights advocacy and create change. Why Did You Do That? The Autobiography of a Human Rights Advocate (Seraphim Editions, June 2015) is his first autobiography.

photo - David Matas — David Matas (photo from David Matas)

Matas was moved to pursue a career in refugee, immigration and international human rights law for a number of reasons.

“I started doing it because different people asked me to do it, including people at the law firm,” he explained in an interview. “It’s also something I’m interested in, because I’m interested in politics and human rights. So, I’d say, it was a coincidence of an opportunity to do the work and an interest in it that got me into it.”

Matas had refugees from around the world coming through his doors every day, seeking help. “My immediate effort was to try to get them protection, but the ultimate solution to their problems was the ending of the human rights violations that caused them to flee,” he said. “I felt trying to help them in some sort of systemic way, that I should be directed to that as well.”

Around this time, Matas also ran as a candidate in the federal election for the Liberal party (in 1979, 1980 and 1984) and B’nai Brith Canada approached him, requesting that he chair the local BBC League for Human Rights, largely because of the profile he had developed through his candidacies.

“But, again,” said Matas, “it’s something that, once I got into it, struck a chord of response in me. I got interested in it, involved much more, given the opportunity, because of the resonance it had with me.”

Also around that time, Kenneth Narvey – someone Matas knew from university – was scheduled for a speaking engagement in Manitoba on war-crime issues. Unsure if he would be able to make it, Narvey asked Matas if he would be willing to substitute for him, which Matas agreed to do. As it happened, Narvey ended up being able to attend the lecture, which gave him the opportunity to hear Matas speak and, Matas said, “He [Narvey] really liked it.

“At this time, Irwin Cotler had just become president of the Canadian Jewish Congress [CJC]. Irwin had appointed a chair for a war-crimes committee, as he wanted to do something about the issue himself, and the chair had resigned.”

Narvey lobbied Cotler to have Matas appointed as chair, and Cotler did just that. “So, I got involved in that issue, too, again sort of by coincidence or circumstance,” said Matas.

Another chance encounter was with Harry Schachter, a friend of Matas’ who was involved with Amnesty International, which had been holding meetings throughout the country. Through Schachter, Matas became involved with Amnesty International, which fit well with everything else he was doing.

“The combination of these events, more or less all at the same time, is what really got me into human rights in a very systemic and wholehearted way,” said Matas.

The Holocaust also influenced Matas’ life path. “I, personally, wasn’t affected by the Holocaust, my family wasn’t,” he said. “But, it just struck me. I thought, from an early age, that if the Axis rather than the Allied powers had won World War Two, I nor any other Jewish person would be alive today.”

He explained, “Generally, what I’ve been trying to do is learn the lessons of the Holocaust and act on them, which I saw as protecting refugees, bringing war criminals to justice, combating hate speech and protesting human rights violations around the world wherever one may find them. So, I’ve been trying to act on those four fronts simultaneously throughout my career.”

In his previous books, Matas has focused on specific atrocities or topics related to human rights – from hate speech, to trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, to humans rights violations, to refugees, to organ harvesting, and other topics. His autobiography was launched on June 9 at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg.

“I go through the various issues I’ve been involved in and explain why I’ve been involved with them, issue by issue,” said Matas about Why Did You Do That? “There’s a chapter on refugees, so I explain what I did in terms of trying to help refugees. And then the rest is why people should help refugees, why everybody should do it. That’s the way it’s structured, chapter by chapter.”

For Matas, this book is a way for him to answer the most frequent question he is asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“I would say the 20th century was a century of genocide,” said Matas. “It wasn’t just the Holocaust. There was one genocide after another. My hope is we will be better, but I don’t think that it comes from hope. It comes from action. So, I’m trying to mobilize people to make things better, so we don’t repeat in the 21st century the vast array of tragedies we saw.”

In Matas’ view, people tend to focus on the problems immediately in front of them.

“People will get really worked up if their neighbor doesn’t mow their lawn, but they get less worked up if people in China are getting killed for their organs,” he explained. “I think there’s a real problem with distance, culture, language and geography, which really makes it difficult to mobilize concern for human rights violations – which is what the Jewish community faced with the Holocaust.”

Why Did You Do That? The Autobiography of a Human Rights Advocate can be purchased online from Seraphim Editions, Amazon and various other booksellers online and in bookstores.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.