A Visit to Moscow is a beautifully illustrated and haunting graphic novel. In a brief 72 pages, it relates the story of an American rabbi who, on a 1965 trip to the Soviet Union, sneaks away from his delegation in Moscow to visit the brother of a friend – Bela hadn’t heard from Meyer for more than 10 years and was worried.
A Visit to Moscow (West Margin Press, 2022) is an adaptation by Anna Olswanger of a story told to her by Rabbi Rafael Grossman. It is illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg, who captures in her palette, in the angles of her images, in her use of light and shadow, scratches and blurs, the claustrophobic fear that existed in that era in the USSR.
“Although the events of A Visit to Moscow are set before my time, the overall spirit of the Soviet Union feels very similar to what it was throughout my childhood when I lived there. I didn’t have to make a big leap to connect to the time period,” writes Nayberg in a section at the end of the book, where we get to see some of her preliminary sketches.
Olswanger knew Grossman, having collaborated with him on writing projects since the early 1980s. “One of our first projects,” she writes, “was a Holocaust novel with a character based on his cousin, a leader of the Jewish resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. As we planned out the storyline, Rabbi Grossman told me about an incident during a trip he made in 1965 to the Soviet Union, where he met a young boy whose parents were Holocaust survivors. The boy had never been outside the room he was born in.
“We never finished the novel, and then, in 2018, Rabbi Grossman died.”
Years later, Grossman’s daughter sent Olswanger a box of writings that Olswanger and the rabbi had worked on. It inspired Olswanger to revisit the story. But she didn’t have the whole story, so, on the suggestion of her editor, wrote A Visit to Moscow as historical fiction.
The main part of the book is incredibly moving. The tension as the rabbi makes his way to Meyer’s last known address is palpable in both text and images; the KGB are an ever-looming threat. When he arrives, it takes the rabbi time to gain Meyer’s trust and for Meyer to let the rabbi into his flat, where he meets Meyer’s wife and their son, Zev, who has never left their home. The rabbi promises to get them all to Israel.
Visit to Moscow is a powerful, if incomplete, story, written by Anna Olswanger and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg.
This core of the novel is well-written, easily understood and powerful. Unfortunately, this mid-section is bookended by ambiguous scenes. At the beginning, Zev hovers from heaven over his dead body, which is laying somewhere in a mountain range. In the throes of dying, he remembers the story of the rabbi’s visit, which leads into the main story, after which we see young Zev on a plane, remembering the ride and Israel’s beauty. In the midst of this, he wonders, “And later – was it years later? Was he a young man?” In the next panel, a fire burns in the aforementioned mountain range and the text reads: “He remembers a sudden flash. A burst of black smoke. Burning metal.”
I first thought that he and his parents had been killed in a plane crash on the way to Israel, so close to freedom but never reaching it. After madly flipping pages back and forth in the book, trying to figure out what I’d missed, I found what I was looking for in the About the Contributors section: “For over 25 years, Rabbi Grossman visited Zev and his family in Israel. He saw them together for the last time in 1992, the year Zev died at the age of 37, a husband and father, while on reserve duty with his army unit in Lebanon.”
A tragic ending either way, but at least Zev got out of his room and got to live more fully for those 25 years. “Every time I visited Zev in Israel,” wrote Grossman, “he was smiling.”
A Visit to Moscow could have benefited from a few more pages, to make the transition of Zev’s journey from the Soviet Union to Israel more understandable, and to include some aspects of his life in Israel, even if they were fictional. Olswanger and Nayberg have created something special, but it feels incomplete.
Danny Danon, former Israeli envoy to the United Nations. (photo from IGPO / Chaim Tzach)
“Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israel and her eternal capital,” said an Israeli prime minister. “No United Nations vote can alter that historic fact.” This quote, which could have come from any of the country’s leaders, was in fact spoken by the first, David Ben-Gurion, in 1949, just days after the UN voted for the internationalization of the city. Israel’s issues with the agency, in other words, have existed for some time.
One wouldn’t expect a right-wing Likud party stalwart, well-known hothead and self-acknowledged non-diplomat to be one of Israel’s foremost voices to present an unambiguous defence of the UN. But, in his new book, Danny Danon does exactly that.
Danon’s book, In the Lion’s Den: Israel and the World, focuses on his term as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, from 2015 to 2020. Before that, he was a Likud member of the Knesset and a minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government.
He acknowledges that, when he was appointed to the diplomatic post, commentators in Israel and elsewhere suggested that Netanyahu was deliberately poking a stick in the belly of the beast.
“There was an expectation that, because of my background and strong ideological beliefs, I would not fit into the world of diplomacy, that I was too much of a hawk and a ‘hardliner,’ which would make it difficult for me to build relationships and achieve anything of substance,” he writes.
Well, yes and no. He does not fit into the world of diplomacy. But he does claim a litany of successes. Danon devotes nearly 200 pages to justifying Israel’s engagement with the international body. Despite the routine censures of Israel and seeming obsession the General Assembly and several of the UN’s agencies have with Israel, Danon argues convincingly that taking on the haters in that forum is a worthy enterprise.
“What many people don’t understand is that there is a public UN and a private UN,” he writes. “The public face of the UN – at least when it comes to Israel – is aggressive and bullying. But, privately, you can build bridges, forge friendships and create a space for understanding, particularly if you are transparent.”
His own approach – far more bull in a china shop than circumspect diplomat – has its merits, he contends. His calling out of critics by name, apparently nearly unheard of in the hallowed halls of the UN’s Manhattan headquarters, may have drawn gasps, but it also seems to have made some think twice before talking.
“After a few times calling out the French ambassador in the media, not only did he reiterate that he did not appreciate it, which had no effect on me, but, more importantly, it made him much more careful in the words he used and actions he took going forward.” Danon said.
In one segment, the former ambassador goes into extensive detail about the efforts he made to derail two particularly troublesome resolutions. “Both resolutions were pointless,” he acknowledged, which might describe most of the General Assembly resolutions against Israel, but this comment, in turn, raises the legitimate question about why such energy and resources are devoted to fighting them. Danon’s argument is that it is in Israel’s interest not to ignore them and to take up the fight whenever and wherever possible.
If his own account of his time there is to be believed, Danon achieved many victories.
He caused the UN to officially recognize Jewish holidays so that, for example, no major meetings occur on Yom Kippur. He managed to get a small amount of kosher food onto the menu at the UN staff cafeteria – and it was promptly snapped up by non-Jews who view a hechsher as proof of healthy, quality food.
More substantively, he hosted more than 100 ambassadors on delegations or missions to Israel.
Partly as a result of a conference that Danon organized for fellow ambassadors on the subject of antisemitism, the UN issued its first-ever thorough report dedicated entirely to anti-Jewish racism.
After successfully pressuring for a UN bureaucrat who is Israeli to be promoted (apparently a challenge), he took on a more entrenched problem. The UN unofficially boycotts Israel, he writes, passing over Israeli options in the agency’s not-insubstantial procurement process. He set out what he called the three T’s.
“We would sell our relevant technology, offer training and provide troops,” he said. The first two he succeeded in.
“I believe the last T, providing troops to UN peacekeeping missions, will come in time,” he writes. “Sending troops is still an ongoing effort on our part. We have one of the best trained militaries in the world, and it knows how to deal with many difficult conflicts. We have so many security challenges that require us to engage in prevention, deflection and defence that it puts us in a unique position of having both the know-how and the experience on the ground. This gives us an advantage in comparison to others. We have the expertise to train UN forces, such as search and rescue, medical treatment in the field, and addressing acute emergency situations…. It has not happened yet, but I am hopeful. It remains a goal for the future.”
For all its flaws, Danon argues, the UN is a unique environment where an Israeli ambassador can shmooze with people he would never get to meet otherwise.
“Think of this: anytime a special envoy from Israel travels to an Arab country, it has to be done with the utmost discretion. If such visits were to be discussed publicly, they could become an issue that could result in political backlash or even violence from extremists and terrorists. At the UN in New York, you can meet anyone, anytime, in a legitimate and open forum, free from the anxiety of those who are determined to see you fail. Indeed, such exchanges between adversaries and friends are expected, which is why the UN is a useful tool despite criticisms about its effectiveness in the 21st century.”
UN ambassadors aren’t nobodies, either, and the connections an Israeli envoy can make there can bear fruit later.
“Once a term at the UN is over, you can be assured that many ambassadors turn their attention to political positions in their home countries, some going on to become heads of state or ministers of foreign affairs,” he said. “It is useful to have existing relationships with such people.”
The Israeli delegation at the United Nations has managed to peel away a few European countries from the European Union’s consensus position against Israel.
“As the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria grow more confident and economically strong, one of the ways they have and will continue to show their independence and sovereignty is the approach they have taken toward Israel. We have a great opportunity to continue to strengthen our bond with the people and governments; as young countries striving to grow, they understand and relate to Israel’s challenges. I believe they will continue to reject Western Europe’s automatic pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiment.”
More remarkably, Danon also managed to peel away members from the Arab bloc. In a secret ballot, Danon became the first Israeli ever elected chair of one of the UN’s six standing committees. There were far fewer votes against his candidacy than there are Arab countries at the General Assembly, he notes.
“I had the courage and vision – and the will,” he writes of the chutzpah he showed in his role. “I was often told, great idea, let’s do it next year. I always said, let’s do it now, we can get it done in two months.” (Memoirs are rarely testaments to humility.)
Though Danon argues that he made headway in his term at the UN, predictably, he didn’t make many friends. But he certainly made one. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador appointed by Donald Trump, became fast pals with Danon, apparently joyfully collaborating to stick it to the enemies. (Haley wrote the foreword to the book.)
This alliance and the many other overt and covert bridges he built during his term were overwhelmingly with representatives of governments that are on the right of the political spectrum – sometimes on the far-right, like Brazil’s and Hungary’s.
Though he doesn’t address this fact, he would no doubt make the case that Israel must take its friends where it can find them. In the bigger picture of Danon’s time in the belly of the beast, perhaps the words of the late Yitzhak Rabin prove true: “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavoury enemies.”
Ida Halpern, right, with Chief Harry and Ida Assu in Cape Mudge, 1979. Chief Assu was the son of Chief Billy Assu. (Image J-00562 courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)
In 1947, ethnomusicologist Dr. Ida Halpern and hereditary Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs Billy Assu and Mungo Martin, among others, began a decades-long collaboration. They recorded more than 300 sacred and traditional songs that otherwise would have been lost because of the Potlatch Ban and the suppression of Indigenous culture in general. The exhibit Keeping the Song Alive explores these preservation efforts and highlights how these songs are inspiring Indigenous artists today.
Co-developed by the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art and the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, Keeping the Song Alive is at the Bill Reid Gallery until March 19. The exhibit is co-curated by Michael Schwartz, former director of community engagement with the Jewish Museum, and Bill Reid Gallery’s Cheryl Kaka’solas Wadhams, a practising artist who also is an active member of the local Kwakwaka’wakw Cultural Sharing Group and a participant in the Kwak’wala language program through the First Nations Endangered Language Program at the University of British Columbia.
Ida Halpern with her audio recorder, circa 1960. (Courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)
“I first learned about Ida Halpern at a B.C. Museums conference in Victoria in 2017,” Schwartz told theIndependent. “My colleagues at the B.C. Archives shared the news that they had recently submitted the Ida Halpern Collection to be considered for inclusion in the Canadian UNESCO Memory of the World register. The collection was inscribed in the register in March of the following year but, at that conference, I was inspired by the story of Ida Halpern and thought it would be an excellent topic for an exhibit or project by the JMABC.
“A few months later, I ran into [curator] Beth Carter from the Bill Reid Gallery and we agreed to collaborate on the exhibit. Doing so would expand the possibilities and improve the final project, which definitely turned out to be true. Shortly thereafter, we brought in Cheryl Wadhams, who brought lived experience and essential connections as a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw community.”
A 2020 grant from the B.C. Arts Council made it possible for Schwartz and his colleagues to visit the Kwakwaka’wakw communities in Alert Bay, in Campbell River and on Mudge Island. They did so in early summer of this year.
“The impact is still revealing itself,” said Wadhams of guest curating the exhibit. “In general, it is causing me to think more deeply about my relationship with my community. Our research helped me to reconnect with community leaders back home in Alert Bay. Living in the city, this is so important to me.”
In addition to the historical elements, Keeping the Song Alive includes contemporary art, artist talks, Kwakwaka’wakw dance and drum group performances, and more.
“We were honoured to receive permission from the families to share certain songs,” said Wadhams. “All of the artists in the show are directly speaking to the recordings, the Potlatch Ban, or the contemporary flourishing of Kwakwaka’wakw potlatches. Barb Cranmer is an influential filmmaker whose important films are all based on our culture.
“We first approached Sonny Assu as the great-great-grandson of Chief Billy Assu,” she said. “He has explored the ideas behind these recordings for several years and created a new work for the exhibition. Andy Everson is also sharing a personal family story in his work. Maxine Matilpi supports the community with her beautiful regalia and her deep cultural knowledge.”
Several Kwakwaka’wakw community members and cultural leaders are featured in the exhibition, said Wadhams. “They speak directly to the value of the recordings and their meaning for the community. They are the leaders of today who are teaching our youth for the future.”
“At a time when historic injustices are in the spotlight and racial tensions and hate crimes are high, stories of cross-cultural collaboration can soothe and provide inspiration,” said Schwartz, who described the exhibit as a “capstone” to his time at the Jewish Museum. (He recently became a director of development at Ballet BC.) “The JMABC’s last physical exhibit was in 2015, Fred Schiffer: Lives in Photos. Eight years later, it’s nice to produce another one,” he said.
In an interview with the CBC in 1967, which can be found on the Royal B.C. Museum website, Halpern describes the preservation of these local Indigenous songs as a project close to her heart.
“Some have suggested that Ida’s experience fleeing the Holocaust informed her work, and that this experience may have given the chiefs confidence in trusting her. But it’s difficult to know for certain,” said Schwartz. “It is apparent in her writing that she felt other academics had misrepresented and oversimplified this musical tradition and she sought to remedy this perceived wrong.”
Ida and Georg Halpern fled Vienna shortly after Kristallnacht and, by way of Shanghai, made their way to Vancouver, said Schwartz. “Ida had been a promising pianist as a teenager and intended to pursue a career as a performer, but a spell of rheumatic fever landed her in the hospital for a year, making her practise and training impossible. Her health restored, she studied musicology at the University of Vienna during a time when the field was flourishing and some of the best minds in the discipline were teaching there. It was a transformative time for her.
“Arriving in Vancouver, Ida set out to record and analyze the song traditions of local Indigenous nations,” he said. “She spent close to a decade building trust and often spoke of all the time she spent in kitchens, helping the women prepare food for community events. These efforts paid off when she was invited by Chief Billy Assu to record him singing 100 songs at his home in Cape Mudge.
“Over the course of a week, the two recorded 88 songs, complete with explanations of the history, meaning and significance of each song, when it was to be sung and by whom. This encounter was the initial spark for Ida’s research. Assu was a widely respected leader and his endorsement opened the doors for her to meet with other Indigenous leaders, including Mungo Martin and Tom Willie.
“Selections from these recordings were later published through Smithsonian Folkways Records, through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, giving them an audience far beyond the academic community. Many of the people we worked with in developing this exhibit spoke to the importance of these records and the fact that they were many people’s first encounter with their own tradition.”
Hereditary Chief K’odi Nelson was one of the people the research group met in Alert Bay, said Schwartz. “He’s an extremely kind and welcoming person, who told us about the classes his mother and aunties started to teach the children the old songs. In the early days, they couldn’t persuade any of the elders to come sing in person, so his mom swiped a copy of one of the Folkways records from the band office. K’odi had a visceral memory of being about 5 years old and hearing the needle drop as he waited behind the curtain to start dancing.”
Kwakiutl: Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest was published in 1981 by Folkways Records.
It is important to note that Halpern and the chiefs’ recordings were made during the Potlatch Ban, Schwartz said. The ban came into effect in 1885 and was in place until 1951.
“By working with Halpern, the chiefs were breaking the law and putting themselves at risk,” he said, “but they saw the necessity to do so. Their children were distancing themselves from their cultural tradition and showing a lack of interest in learning the old ways. Members of the community felt it was safer to assimilate and blend into the dominant society. The chiefs feared that their tradition would die with them; by recording with Halpern, they were essentially crafting a time capsule, making it possible for a future generation to reconnect with the tradition, which we’re seeing happen now and over the past decade.”
Schwartz was quick to point out that the recordings weren’t the only way that the traditions were kept alive during the Potlatch Ban.
“Kwakwaka’wakw leaders violated the ban or navigated tightly around the edges of it in various ways, including by holding gatherings under the guise of Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners,” he explained. “While technically not a potlatch, they were opportunities to undertake the ‘business’ of the potlatch: namings, agreements, honours and so forth.
“These creative solutions in the face of attempted erasure brought to mind for me the story of Hanukkah,” said Schwartz, “How the dreidel was used as a mask for study groups, and the old adage that an idea can’t be killed.”
About the importance of keeping these songs alive, Wadhams said, “Speaking to the singers in the Urban Dance Group, and also back home, I have learned that they find them so valuable. They have them on their phones and listen on YouTube, Spotify, all the time. Living in the city, I started my journey 25 years ago to learn the songs and dances. Having access to these songs really made it possible for me to connect in a new way with my ancestry.”
To watch the Nov. 2 opening celebration of the exhibit and for more information, visit billreidgallery.ca.
Left to right, Katherine Matlashewski (as Shayna Schneider), Advah Soudack (as Margaret Grant) and Amitai Marmorstein (as Jankl Schneider) in Courage Now, playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until Dec. 4. (photo by Youn Park)
One does not often get a chance to see a world première of a play in Vancouver. After writing my preview article on Courage Now in the last edition of the Independent, I was looking forward with great anticipation to seeing the final product. I was not disappointed.
It is a difficult story to tell but it is done with such sensitivity and style that I highly recommend seeing it. As a child of a Holocaust survivor, any story of courage and heroism arising out of that era resonates with me – this one in particular had me in tears.
From the moment you walk into the intimate Firehall Arts Centre theatre, you know you are about to see something special. The set is austere – a desk, a bench, a lattice-like trellis, an empty wall-mounted picture frame – with a pagoda-style roof and an archway backlit with vibrant colours. (Kudos to set designer Kimira Reddy and lighting designer Itai Erdal.)
To summarize the backstory, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1940, against the instructions of his government, issued more than 2,300 handwritten visas in a 30-day period to save Jews trying to leave Poland and Lithuania. He was supported in his decision by his wife, Yukiko, who knew the price the family would pay for going against the government edicts. And a price was paid: career loss, humiliation and Sugihara’s self-imposed postwar exile to Russia for 16 years.
The play follows what appear to be two separate narratives that intersect in an unexpected way in the final scene. In 1986, Yukiko (playwright Manami Hara) is forced to revisit wartime when a visitor from Vancouver, Margaret Grant, born Shayna Schneider (Advah Soudack), comes for answers from Sugihara as to what happened to her father after he put her on a train out of Kaunas when she was 13 years old. She has resented her father through the years, feeling abandoned and betrayed by his sending her off alone; she is also coping with a difficult divorce and her own daughter’s hatred. Sugihara has recently died, however, and Margaret must turn to Yukiko for answers instead.
The play opens with Yukiko waking from a dream where she is visited by the ghost of her husband. Then Margaret enters her garden. She tells Yukiko, “I am a Sugihara Jew, Sempo saved my life.” The play then moves through a series of memory flashbacks, as the audience is transported back and forth between 1940 Kaunas and 1986 Japan.
Katherine Matlashewski plays the teenage Shayna and Amitai Marmorstein plays her father, Jankl. Jankl visits Sugihara (Ryota Kaneko) to plead for visas on behalf of the thousands of Jews who have been lining up every day outside the consul’s office. In a touching and poignant scene, something as simple as a shared cup of coffee gives you a sense of the integrity and honour of these two men as they strive to do the right thing. Kaneko plays Sugihara with a quiet intensity and Marmorstein portrays Jankl with dignity. The scene where he sees Shayna off at the train station is heartbreaking – he watches his only child (his “little mouse,” as he calls her) walk away from him, tattered suitcase in hand, in a fog of smoke and the eerie sound of a train whistle in the distance.
Ryota Kaneko plays Chiune Sugihara and Courage Now playwright Manami Hara takes on the role of Yukiko Sugihara. (photo by Youn Park)
In many ways, the journeys of the two women are love stories. Yukiko grapples with the grief of losing her husband, moving through the stages towards acceptance, and Margaret comes to the realization that it was her father’s love that put her on that train in 1940. Both characters become conduits for the other’s catharsis. When Yukiko shares her husband’s journal from that time, Margaret says, “My father lives in that journal.”
All five of the actors do credit to their roles in this ensemble piece but Hara and Soudack’s performances are sublime. The play is particularly effective when all five actors are on stage at the same time in the memory flashback vignettes.
My one criticism is that there is quite a bit of Japanese dialogue between Kaneko and Hara and it would have been helpful to have either a reader board translating or a program insert with translations.
Hara has penned a lovely tribute to Sugihara and I, for one, am grateful to her for her work.
Courage Now is at the Firehall until Dec. 4. For tickets, visit firehallartscentre.ca.
Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
When someone loves what they do or is passionate about a certain topic, it’s obvious. In the case of a book, if this someone is also proficient with words and excels at writing, their enthusiasm figuratively jumps off the page and inhabits the reader, getting them as excited as the author. This is how I felt reading Jonathan Berkowitz’s latest book, Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You(FriesenPress). Excited about the wonder that is language – in this case, the English language.
With the help of his wife, Heather, Berkowitz has compiled a collection of essays adapted from his segments on CBC Radio 1’s North by Northwest over several years as the Word Guy. Noting that people “perceive the spoken word differently from the written word,” he writes: “Adapting the radio columns into written essays requires a sensitivity to the difference between listening and reading. Heather has that sensitivity, not to mention a keen sense of style and grammar.”
North by Northwest host and producer Sheryl MacKay has written the book’s foreword.
“I first met Jonathan when he came in to talk about the National Puzzlers’ League convention, which was taking place that year in Vancouver,” she writes. “I was struck right away by his enthusiasm, his depth of knowledge (in the field of puzzles and beyond), his sense of humour, and by the fact that he could identify patterns in words and numbers everywhere. It’s like a superpower he has!
“I immediately asked him to do a regular column on the show. Jonathan, who is always up for a new adventure, agreed and, for the next year, he was our Puzzling Professor. Every month, he’d appear on the show and introduce listeners to a different kind of puzzle, talk about its history and then challenge them to solve a few. It was such fun and so mind-bending!
“The next year, Jonathan changed focus a little and became the Word Guy for the show. Each month, he takes us on a radio journey through some of the vagaries of the English language. As Jonathan owns more dictionaries and language reference books than anyone I know, he’s well equipped to lead this particular expedition!”
In Tales From the Word Guy, Berkowitz admits that his favourite books are dictionaries, followed perhaps by thesauri (I admit that I Googled the plural of thesaurus). “In fact,” he writes, “thesaurus comes from Latin, meaning ‘treasure,’ and the first dictionary definition of thesaurus is treasury or storehouse. Indeed, what a treasure house it is.”
Words have always been a passion for Berkowitz, but he is also a fan of numbers and mathematics, having chosen a career as a statistician. With his facility for words, numbers and problem-solving, it is no wonder that MacKay, in 2015, invited him to present puzzles on her show. I never heard him in that role, but I did very much enjoy the book those puzzles led to: The Whirl of Words, also published by FriesenPress. (See jewishindependent.ca/playing-with-words-and-more.)
Berkowitz’s breadth and depth of knowledge can be overwhelming at times. To build off his metaphor of this latest book as a box of chocolates, you might get the equivalent of a sugar rush if you read too much of it in one sitting. While the chapters are short, amusing and easy to read, there is just so much information “filling,” from the erudite to the silly to Berkowitz’s trademark puns. (Among those he shares is one of his favourites: “The only thing flat-earthers have to fear is sphere itself.”)
I learned so much in Tales From the Word Guy. For example, I knew that A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are vowel letters – but also sometimes W?! Berkowitz gives the example of the “uncommon word, cwm, a synonym for cirque, [which] means ‘a deep steep-walled basin on a mountain usually forming the blunt end of a valley.’ Linguists sometimes refer to Y and W as semivowels,” he writes. “Conversely, U and I sometimes represent consonants, as in quiz and onion, respectively.”
I can understand the U being considered a consonant in quiz, but remain confused about the I in onion. But in a good way. I enjoy having my mind challenged, my assumptions upended.
I also enjoy being wowed and there are many “really?!” moments in this book, such as W being a vowel sometimes, albeit rarely. To name just a few of the other things that made me ooh and ah – the origins of the terms uppercase and lowercase; the number of words Shakespeare created (and some examples); and the name for and function of “um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” all those annoying sounds or words most of us unconsciously insert into our sentences when we talk.
But it’s not just the many fun facts that make Tales From the Word Guy such fun to read. Berkowitz shares a bit of himself, from more serious topics, like how his mother and father influenced his life, to his favourite, or most beautiful, words, his language pet peeves and his efforts at making up new words. It is easy to see why CBC’s the Word Guy is so popular.
Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You book launch with author Jonathan Berkowitz in conversation with Sheryl MacKay; adapted from radio by Heather Glassman Berkowitz. Nov. 29, 7pm, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. No registration required.
Tales From the Word Guy: Jonathan Berkowitz talks about his new book with Daniella Givon. Dec. 12, 7:30pm, at Beth Israel. bethisrael.ca.
Ben Caplan stars in Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. (Stoo Metz Photography)
Ben Caplan is narrator and co-creator (with Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch) of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. It is a fantastic show, well worth seeing, which was last in Vancouver for the 2020 PuSh Festival.
“The show hasn’t changed all that much,” said Barry, artistic director of Halifax’s 2b theatre company. “We have a brilliant new drummer and keyboardist working on the show and, on top of that, the team has more skill and experience just by virtue of having had more opportunities to refine our show through repetition. But, ultimately, the reason we are bringing [it] back to Vancouver is all about access. In January 2020, we were only able to perform six times at UBC as part of the PuSh Festival. It was a lovely run with full houses and boisterous responses, but we think there were many people who just didn’t have the chance to see the show. We were thrilled to receive an invitation from SFU to bring the show back, and to perform in downtown Vancouver.”
Margaux Wosk makes pins, magnets, necklaces and other items. (photo from the artist)
Last year’s Affordable Art Show at the Zack was such a success that the gallery is repeating it in 2022, just in time for the winter holidays. Gallery director Hope Forstenzer hopes it will become an annual tradition.
Everything in the show is less than $250, and the selection is wide enough to appeal to a variety of tastes. The participating artists are a mix of repeat appearances and newcomers. Some of the newcomers have exhibited in Zack group shows before. For the others, this is their first event at the gallery.
Margaux Wosk is one of the new artists. Their company, Retrophiliac, produces pins, magnets, necklaces and other items, many of which are priced below $20.
“I’m an autistic, self-taught artist, designer, writer, entrepreneur and disability advocate,” Wosk said. “I have been a ‘retrophiliac’ for a long time. I am inspired by retro and vintage styles, but I also want to celebrate neurodiversity.”
In addition to their company’s distinct merchandise, Wosk creates vibrant, retro-inspired paintings and mixed media work. “I hope to break down barriers and eliminate the stigma of neurodiversity,” they said. “With my art, I want to open a dialogue about what autistic and disabled people are capable of.”
Aimee Promislow, another new artist, works with glass. Her company, Glass Sipper, produces reusable drinking straws. “I met Hope [Forstenzer] a number of years ago,” she told the Independent. “We were both members of the same glass co-op. When she joined the Zack Gallery, she began reaching out to me for various events and shows. Last year, I participated in the Hanukkah show here. I’m excited to be part of the Affordable Art Show this year.”
Aimee Promislow works with glass, making reusable drinking straws. (photo from the artist)
Promislow summed up her creative path and why she chose it. “I have always, since a young age, dabbled in art,” she said. “My mother is an artist, Nomi Kaplan. She had introduced me to various art forms. After high school, I tried pottery, then glass enamel, then I played with resin. Eventually, about 15 years ago, I started melting coloured glass. I love colour and I love watching things form in fire. Glass is hard when cold, but, once heated, it is malleable, and I love moving it around.”
At first, Promislow made glass beads and sculpted little animals out of glass: dogs, cats, turtles. “At the same time, our family enjoyed smoothies,” she said. “The kids wanted straws for their smoothies, but the only smoothie straws I could find were plastic ones.”
Concerned about the environment, she combined her passion for glass with her care for nature. “I had a ‘eureka’ moment,” she recalled. “I realized that, instead of making glass beads, I could make reusable glass drinking straws and decorate them with my tiny creatures. That night, Glass Sipper was born.”
She also makes glass mezuzot and yads (the pointers used to read Torah). “They are perfect gifts for bar and bat mitzvah,” she said. “And everything I make is under $100, ideally suitable for the Affordable Art Show.”
Another glass artist in the show is Sonya Labrie. Her company, SML Glassworks, produces vases and other elements of home décor, as well as jewelry. “I’ve always created pieces that could be in anyone’s home,” she said. “The idea that art is to be loved and available to everyone in our community is very important to me.”
With such a mindset, when Forstenzer invited her to participate in this show, Labrie’s answer was an unequivocal yes.
“I started working with glass in 2005,” she said. “The first glass class I attended was at Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alta. Then I went on to complete a three-year advanced diploma in craft and design at Sheridan College, majoring in glass. I’ve also had the opportunity to study glass at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School in northern Washington.”
Glass artist Sonya Labrie creates vases and other elements of home décor. (photo from the artist)
Labrie said she can’t imagine her life without creating beautiful things out of glass. “My body of work includes blown glass, flamework and kilns-cast items,” she elaborated. “Glass has endless possibilities, it is a challenging medium, and I keep discovering new ways of working with it.”
She also teaches glasswork for the Vancouver School Board. “I teach students grades 8 to 12 and I teach continuing education workshops for adults at the Terminal City Glass co-op.”
Unlike these company-owning creators, fibre artist Deborah Zibrik doesn’t consider herself a full-time artist. Not yet.
“I am a registered dietitian,” she said. “I’m still working part time, finishing a career that started in 1975. I will retire soon, after a research project at the B.C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute is completed. Until then, I simply don’t have enough time each day to work as a full-time artist. However, I consistently carve out ‘me time’ every day to complete some stitching. Ideas are constantly percolating in my head. Typically, many pieces are framed up or in the sketchbook phase at any one time. Perhaps the best descriptor for me is a part-time artist.”
Zibrik makes elaborate embroidered pieces. Some of them are like miniature tapestries, landscapes emerging out of fabric and threads. Others are tiny blossoms, beetles and butterflies that could be used separately or together, each one a delightful surprise. She also does golden embroidery.
“Smaller pieces are often whimsical and stitched quickly, with a minimum of stitches. On the other hand, my gold work requires hours to complete, and the materials are much more costly.”
Zibrik started learning needlecraft when still very young. “Like many girls growing up in rural Canada, I was taught by my mother and grandmother. They wanted to make sure I had all the critical homemaker skills, from crocheting blankets to mending socks…. Later, after 10 years of part-time study at Gail Harker Creative Studio, I completed Level 2 Design (based on a City and Guilds of London Institute in the U.K. curriculum) and Level 4 Diploma for stitch. Luckily for me, the studio is located in La Connor, Wash. That made it possible for me to attend sessions in-person to complete the evidence-based curriculum.”
Fibre artist Deborah Zibrik makes elaborate embroidered pieces. (photo from the artist)
After receiving her diploma in 2015, Zibrik decided to share her skills with others. “Time permitting, I have been teaching workshops for specific needlework techniques,” she said. “Guild members are my usual students. There is currently a discussion among the guilds about the lost generations of children who haven’t learned any of the needle arts, including embroidery; they haven’t had the exposure. Because of that, membership in the guilds is declining, as members age. I am considering ways to fix that. Perhaps I could offer embroidery classes to youngsters, maybe at the community centre level, to teach basic skills and prime creativity to future artisans.”
When asked where they see themselves on the scale of art versus craft, artists’ replies varied.
“I’m an artist and a designer,” said Wosk.
Promislow said, “I am a craftsperson. I use my medium to make things that are functional and beautiful.”
“My work rides a fine line between both,” said Labrie. “There is a fluid movement in my practice.”
“My personal journey suggests that, especially for women, craft and art are inextricably linked,” offered Zibrik. “More, they have been connected for thousands of years. They are but different places on the same continuum. In that sense, I am privileged to say: I am an artist.”
The Affordable Art Show continues until Dec. 30. And, if you’re visiting the exhibit Dec. 5-7 or 12-14, check out the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Chanukah Marketplace, which takes place in the centre’s atrium.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
An oil painting by Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy.
An ink drawing by Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy.
Vancouver’s Furniture & Art Concierge, owned by Elliot Nitkin, has received the sole right to bring the work of Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy to Canada.
Karabinskiy, a Russian Jew, uses diverse techniques to express his artistic ideas: oil on canvas painting, tempera, pastel, ink on paper and lithography. In his work, Karabinskiy follows the artistic tradition of Eastern European Jewry, carrying on the work of Jewish painters such as Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Anatoli Kaplan.
Since 1989, he has participated in more than 200 solo and group exhibitions, including ones in Norway, Germany, Holland and the United States, and he has been featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles. His works are exhibited in museums in many countries, and are part of private collections around the world.
Suzy Birstein amid her work, some of which visitors to her studio will see during the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Britt Kwasney)
“I am most looking forward to healthily connecting with fellow artists and art lovers in real time, real space. Art is always more powerful in person,” artist Suzy Birstein told the Jewish Independent about the East Side Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Craft Festival, which returns to its traditional format Nov. 17-20. Some 400+ artists will open their studios to the public.
“The sense of community, commitment, excitement, inspiration, appreciation – all that brought me to Parker Street [Studios] and East Side Culture Crawl originally is happening again,” she said. “It feels like a renaissance.”
Photographer Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Adam P.W. Smith)
“After the two-year pandemic rollercoaster ride, I am thrilled we are back to a ‘new normal,’” said Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the Crawl, as well as a participating artist. “I do say ‘new normal,’ as we don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t really speculate how this year’s Crawl will play out. Personally, I am excited to get out and see all of the new and amazing art that has been created and to catch up with the artists. It’s also a real pleasure for me to meet members of the public as they share their enthusiasm for the event, the art and the connections they will be making with the artists.”
Birstein (clay, painting, sculpture) and Rausenberg (photography, Georgia Art Studios) are only two of many Jewish community members who will open their creative space to the public over the four days of the festival, which also features gallery displays, and artist demonstrations and talks. Other community members include, from Parker Street Studios, Shevy Levy (painting), Olga Campbell (clay, mixed media, new media), Mia Weinberg (painting) and penny eisenberg (drawing, painting); from Eastside Atelier, Lauren Morris (mixed media, painting), Ideet Sharon (assemblage, mixed media, painting), Stacy Lederman (mixed media, painting) and Karly Leipsic (mixed media); and, from the Arc, Lynna Goldhar Smith (installation, painting). Overall, festival-goers can explore about 68 buildings and studios in the Eastside Arts District, the area bounded by Columbia Street, 1st Avenue, Victoria Drive and the waterfront.
“This year’s event has a distinctly celebratory tone,” said Levy. “It is a reunion for Vancouver’s established art community, a chance to reconnect, to have meaningful discussions around art, not just with artists, students and educators, but with those who display art, like galleries and art management, and everyone who is excited to work together again.”
During the pandemic restrictions, painter Shevy Levy started a new direction with her abstract work. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Thinking of the last couple of years, she noted, “What was fascinating about the immediate impact of COVID-19 was the sudden loss of collective connection – both human (face-to-face) and the collective understanding of what the future might bring…. When we were forced to isolate, I appreciated the introduction of art to the digital and virtual world, and how it helped the art world, in many aspects, to find new ways to connect with society. However, now I understand how much I, like so many of my colleagues, urgently need constant interactions with the community – 2022 Crawl is here to fill some gaps.”
Goldhar Smith – a multi-disciplinary artist who has spent more than 30 years in theatre performance with painting very much in the background – is excited about the chance to show her visual art to a lot of different people. “I especially love the opportunity to see their responses to the work and engage in lively conversation when it’s possible,” she said.
Lynna Goldhar Smith (photo from Chutzpah!)
Interested in integrating her visual art practice with her performance practice, Goldhar Smith said, “I have been building installations in my studio to that end and so, among my paintings and prints, visitors will see the beginnings of more conceptual ideas in some of the physical objects and paper sculptures in the studio.”
Whether abstract or figurative, Goldhar Smith seeks to express the intangible qualities of human experience in her work. “If I paint a landscape, it is as much an emotional or psychological landscape as a place,” she said. “Yet, at the same time, if I paint an urban crow or a heron, it is more an expression of honouring the urban wildlife, and reminding myself that I am in their domain. I hope that makes sense. Whatever I paint, I am like an improvisational actor, responding to the moment, with one brushstroke informing the next. The meaning emerges after the fact. It is not so much I make my art, as my art makes me.”
For Goldhar Smith, the pandemic was a dramatic reminder “that we need to behave more responsibly, more cohesively, with more compassion and care for each other – with more understanding of our connection to each other – and to view ourselves as part of nature and part of one planet all together. Yet, we are so divided. If there was ever a time for artists to get focused, this would be it.
“Gloria” by Lynna Goldhar Smith (image from Chutzpah!)
“Artists, and art, have the privilege and responsibility of their voices,” she continued. “We need to use our voices to contribute to the global change that is necessary. We need to speak up with courage and make brave art.
“We need to be endowed with the respect that what we do is of great importance and we need to be valued, supported and encouraged because artists bring meaning and perspective and also disruption and confrontation with the status quo. We need to see how our art fits, not so much into the art marketplace, but as a central driver of change that can address the pressing needs of our time.”
Levy expressed a similar view.
“So many artists, myself included, produce artwork with an outcome in mind, such as an exhibition or career step,” said Levy. “The challenges of the past few years forced me to take the time to reflect on my own art practice, taking it to the next level by exploring new avenues and fresh approaches. I had to remove and free myself from that outcome. I was able to experiment and create work that connects me better to the meaning of being a better human and better artist, as opposed to a ‘professional artist’ operating within the structures of a commercial art world.”
Birstein also used the pandemic period for self-reflection. “The enforced isolation of the pandemic,” she said, “gave me the gift of time: time to create, experiment, reflect, all day, every day. This is a first in my art practice and I was very productive.”
Birstein created two bodies of work for two solo exhibits in 2021 and 2022.
“Tsipora: A Place to Land was exhibited at the Zack Gallery,” she said. “Tsipora is my Hebrew name, meaning Bird. Pre-COVID, the bird symbolized a freedom of spirit while taking flight. With COVID, it was a time to nest, to find a place to land.
“Frida: When I Have Wings to Fly was exhibited at POMOArts. Frida is a continuation of my art historical portraits, Ladies-Not-Waiting, inspired by Velasquez’ masterpiece ‘Las Meninas.’ This series speaks to Frida Kahlo as a symbol of feminine strength and empowerment: a person who transcended tragedy and transformed it into beauty. My sculptures and paintings invite the viewer to converse in intertwined stories of myself, my mother, Frida and other historic figures that embody resourcefulness, resilience and beauty.
“Materially, both bodies of work involved much experimentation with structural techniques, surfacing with fired and cold materials, addition of repurposed objects.”
For Levy, the last couple of years allowed her to start a new direction with her abstract work. “Slowly, I developed large-scale canvases that were marked by bold and expressive brushstrokes,” she said. “I am excited to share with the public my new collection, A Portrait of a Flower. My work demonstrates the flowers as a source of lines, shapes, negative space, gesture, colour and value, or another source of abstraction.”
The pandemic period also gave Levy the chance to explore more remote art communities. “Pre-COVID,” she said, “I used to share and exhibit my art within my immediate community. In the last two-plus years, I had more time to develop my social media presence and expertise. As an outcome, 2021 was the best year ever of showing and selling my work.”
Birstein also pointed to the technological silver lining of COVID. “With the necessity of communicating virtually while globally isolated,” she said, “I see the world of art opening in terms of compassion, imagination, inclusion, respect – all of this so apparent at this year’s Venice Bienale, from which I have just returned.”
In addition to the open studios Nov. 17-20, the East Side Culture Crawl features a multi-venue, salon-style curated exhibition called NEXT, which “explores the after-effects of living through a pandemic as we long for and ponder about what’s next.” There are also several other events. For more information, visit culturecrawl.ca.
A scene from Site: Yizkor as it was performed in Sichów Duży, Poland, this past June. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Site: Yizkor is both an intensely personal work and a powerful, universally meaningful work. It is ever-changing and spans the past, present and future.
“For me, this project is a gesture of healing,” co-creator Maya Ciarrocchi told the Independent. “My goal for audiences and participants is that, through the process of shared commemoration, we may put aside our differences and look towards a reimagined future.”
Part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival, Site: Yizkor is a collaboration between Canadian multimedia artist Ciarrocchi and American composer Andrew Conklin. It is an evolving “interdisciplinary project [that] explores the physical and emotional manifestation of loss through text, video and music.” It is an installation (of video, prints and drawings) and a performance, and includes workshops “where participants are invited to create their own Yizkor pages as a way to mourn and commemorate lost people and places.”
“Yizkor books are documents written by Holocaust survivors to commemorate the villages they lived in before the Second World War,” explained Ciarrocchi. “They capture the spirit of these places by describing the day-to-day life of their Jewish citizens. They include lists of the Jewish residents, the structure of political systems and where the best shopping could be found. They also include photographs and maps of the villages drawn from memory. They document a time and place that no longer exist but the traces of which are visible in the contemporary landscape.”
In introducing the project to workshop participants, Ciarrocchi said, “I tell them that, while Site: Yizkorexamines displacement through the lens of Yizkor, which is an inherently Jewish framework, the project is not limited to the Jewish experience. Site: Yizkor is centred on creating a space for shared commemoration and the universal experience of loss.”
For the local presentation, Conklin works with a local string quartet for the performance, while Ciarrocchi creates “video projections for the performance that include references to the known and erased histories of Vancouver,” and installs the exhibit in the gallery. She leads the workshops, which include both Jewish and non-Jewish community groups, and participants “are invited to read their text as part of the performances or share them as written documents or drawings as part of the exhibition.”
Site: Yizkor has been presented in New York City and in San Francisco. In June of this year, it was presented in Poland, from where Ciarrocchi’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada; Ciarrocchi was born in Winnipeg.
The project began in 2018, when Ciarrocchi was a fellow in the Laboratory for Jewish Culture program in New York City. “At the time,” she said, “I was working on a series of drawings depicting former Polish and Lithuanian wooden synagogues layered with memory maps sourced from Yizkor books. As part of the project, I gave a performance lecture where I read passages from Yizkor books, accompanied by projections of my drawings, maps and photographs from Yizkor books. I concluded the performance by prompting the audience to ‘describe a vanished place of personal importance.’ I collected these texts, and they were incorporated into future performances.”
Andrew Conklin (photo from Chutzpah!)
She met Conklin around when she was in residency at Millay Arts in upstate New York. “He expressed interest in using my drawings of maps as a musical score,” she said. “We then started working on a sound/video project comprising his compositions and my animated maps and drawings.”
In 2019, Ciarrocchi was invited to attend an international meeting of interdisciplinary artists in Poland.
“The group gathered in Sichów Duży, a rural area not far from Staszów, a small town that was once an important centre of Jewish life,” said Ciarrocchi. “The site once belonged to an aristocratic family who lost their lands and titles during the Second World War. The buildings had been restored except for one and, one evening, I projected the video on its surface and played Andrew’s music from speakers inside. It was then I knew that I needed to return to this place and present the work live with musicians inside the structure. In June 2022, after three years, a pandemic and a war, I returned to Sichów with a team of musicians from the U.S., Germany and Poland. We presented Site: Yizkor inside the ruin to an audience comprised of Ukrainian refugees who were being housed on the site. The following week, we presented Site: Yizkor in another ruined manor home outside of Kraków. That iteration included dancers as well as musicians.”
It was an emotional experience.
“Gratitude and relief,” said Ciarrocchi about what she felt afterward. “Gratitude to Andrew and the incredible team of performers we assembled and to the funders who supported the work. Relief after all the planning and delays that we were finally able to bring the work to Poland. It was also exciting to see the project come together so beautifully. In many ways, my first research trip in 2019 was where I felt all the sadness and grief. This year, I was too busy to let myself go into the dark crevasses of my emotions. In 2019, though, I spent most of the three weeks I was there crying. I visited my grandmother’s shtetl, which was incredibly powerful. While sitting on the ground in the old Jewish cemetery there, I released all my grief. Poland is filled with ghosts. One does not help but feel their presence.”
It is in this context that the question asking workshop participants to “describe their dreams of the future” was added to the project.
“I added this part of the prompt in Poland,” said Ciarrocchi. “I realized that, understandably, so much of the Jewish experience there is about memory and the past. I’m two generations removed from the Holocaust and, while its effects are written into the code of my body, I am also interested in how we create something new from the residue of this loss. This also comes from these past years of the pandemic, when there has been such a huge loss of life. We’ve had to reimagine how we live now and in the future.”
The performance and exhibition of Site: Yizkor in Vancouver is the Canadian première of the work.
For a recent grant proposal, Ciarrocchi wrote about the première, “This event will also be a coming home. Site: Yizkor is rooted in research into the land and architecture of a place in relation to the known and mythological histories of my ancestors who fled Poland and Lithuania before the Second World War. My ancestors emigrated to Canada to form a new life for themselves and their descendants. On the surface, their story is one of success. My great-grandfather was a seminal figure in Winnipeg’s garment industry, and my family still benefits from his accomplishments. This story belies how the effects of trauma and displacement have persisted from their origins in Eastern Europe so many decades ago. Forming cross-cultural connections through Site: Yizkor’s performance and workshop model, first in Poland and now in Canada, irrigates ancient inherited wounds.”
Site: Yizkor is co-presented with the Zack Gallery and in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, with the support of the Jewish Community Foundation. The performance takes place Nov. 19, 8 p.m., at the Rothstein Theatre, and it will livestreamed and available on demand; it will include a facilitated talkback and a reception with the artists. The exhibition and workshops take place Nov. 12-19 in the gallery. For tickets and more information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
A Visit to Moscow (West Margin Press, 2022) is an adaptation by Anna Olswanger of a story told to her by Rabbi Rafael Grossman. It is illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg, who captures in her palette, in the angles of her images, in her use of light and shadow, scratches and blurs, the claustrophobic fear that existed in that era in the USSR.
