Arts & Culture – Page 47

A great diversity on screen

A still from the documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen.

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs March 3-13, and features more than 30 films, all of which will be available online for the duration of the festival. As always, there are shorts and features, fictional narratives and documentaries – presenting a great diversity of perspectives. This month, the JI offers readers a peek into the lineup.

Fifty years of Fiddler

Like a lot of people, Norman Jewison thought Norman Jewison was Jewish. When he was growing up in Toronto’s east end, other students would call out, “Hey Jewy!” Decades later, when he was one of Hollywood’s acclaimed filmmakers, it would come as a shock to many that someone with the word Jew as the root of their surname was, in fact, not Jewish. It hit Jewison earlier, when he tagged along to synagogue with one of the only actual Jewish kids in his school.

“When the melamed at the temple told me to leave, I thought, ‘What’s going on?’” he said. “Where do I belong?”

The feature-length documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen purports to tell the story of how the stage play based on Sholem Aleichem’s Anatevka tales turned into the cinematic blockbuster Fiddler on the Roof. It does that, but it is also very much a story of Jewison’s trajectory as an interpreter of historical and current events.

Jewison had already made a splash with his 1967 race-focused movie In the Heat of the Night when he conjured the idea of filming Fiddler. Friends and foes predicted failure. Too Jewish. Not a large enough potential audience. But Jewison forged ahead, certain that his version would universalize the story into “a film for everybody.” Arriving at a time of social upheaval in the United States and elsewhere, Fiddler’s underlying themes were relatable to many, Jewish or not.

Case in point: the film was huge in Japan. There may be next to no Jews in that country, but, in the early 1970s, when Fiddler was released, Japanese society, like many countries, was struggling to balance modernity and tradition.

The documentary Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen comes a half-century after Fiddler on the Roof’s screen debut. It interviews surviving contributors and actors, many of whom saw their early careers explode with the popularity of the movie. Rosalind Harris, now 75, played Tzeitel both on Broadway (after understudying for Bette Midler) and in the film. Her thrill at the film and her place in it is undiminished by time and she nearly steals the documentary.

The enthusiasm of Jewison himself seems equally undiminished. He tells of how he sought out Isaac Stern, perhaps the 20th century’s greatest violinist, to dub the music of the titular character. He dismissed Frank Sinatra’s entreaties to play Tevye and scored Topol, the Israeli actor (né Chaim Topol), who had played the lead in Israel and then in London, casting aside, in the process, Zero Mostel, Broadway’s longtime Tevye.

Diplomatic relations with the Soviet bloc at the time made it impossible to film in Ukraine, where Anatevka is set, so Jewison struck a deal with the “non-aligned” Yugoslavia and much of the filming took place in Lekenik (now in Croatia), in wooden buildings constructed based on historical architectural records. One commentator in the documentary notes the irony that the film about a disappeared community was filmed in what is now referred to as “the former Yugoslavia” – “another place that is no more.”

Jewison speaks emotionally about watching the film’s Israeli debut beside Golda Meir and a meeting he had with David Ben-Gurion, who told Jewison that whoever is crazy enough to choose to be a Jew is Jew.

“If I’m crazy enough to want to be Jewish, then I’m Jewish,” Jewison interprets Ben-Gurion’s words.

But when he received an Academy Award, he cheekily acknowledged the truth. “Not bad for a goy,” he joked.

Not bad for a Canuck, one might add.

The documentary’s director, Daniel Raim, will participate in a live Q&A on March 7, 7 p.m.

Shorts of all sizes

Since this year’s Jewish Film Festival is online and on demand, you can choose to view the numerous short films as a binge or watch one or two between features as a sort of visual amuse bouche.

At about 30 minutes, Paradise is on the long end of the “shorts” spectrum. It features Ala Dakka, who will be recognizable to Fauda fans, as the doe-eyed Palestinian boxer, Bashar. In real life, Dakka is an Arab Israeli who, in media interviews, has been open about his struggle with his identity. In this film, he plays Ali, who has just arrived at Eilat airport from his home in Berlin, to attend his sister’s wedding. After a fight over the phone with his father (it was cheaper to fly to Eilat than to Tel Aviv, so now he is going to miss the pre-wedding dinner), he decides to skip the festivities altogether and hitchhike to the Sinai. (This after a five-hour interrogation by border security at the airport, which doesn’t help either Ali’s frame of mind or his ability to make the celebratory banquet.)

Picked up by a group of Israeli partiers, Ali opts to introduce himself as Eli, and so begins a subtle and, of course, inevitable succession of miscues and small betrayals. It is a tightly told story of self-identity and the perceptions of others. Dakka is a rising star in Israeli film and he brings memorable depth to his character in this short, charming drama. A subtext of the film is the happy-go-lucky Israelis’ perceptions of Egypt (or perhaps the broader “other”) and a degree of paranoia that one of the party crowd acknowledges doesn’t require pot-smoking to ignite.

A slightly shorter film, at about 20 minutes, is Pops, which pits grieving siblings against each other, as they try to do what they each think their recently deceased father would have wanted regarding his burial. The uptight son and the hippy-ish daughter come to an unorthodox compromise.

image - A scene from the short film Pops, in which two siblings must compromise on their father’s burial plans — A scene from the short film Pops, in which two siblings must compromise on their father’s burial plans.

You’re Invited sees a rabbi’s daughter invite her friends to a funeral when she learns that the deceased has no kin. Charming in concept and cheesy in execution, with uneven acting and heavy-handed writing, the short film is sweet enough, although anyone who has been a pallbearer will recognize an empty box when they see one carried in a movie. Explicitly based on a true story, the 13-minute film is neither too long nor too short.

For a quick laugh, at seven minutes, The Shabbos Goy follows a religious woman as she deals with the unexpected activation of a personal electronic device – a very personal electronic device – during Shabbat lunch. She runs into the street to find a non-Jew who she can entice but, due to halachah, not overtly request to turn the humming device off before the men in the house discover the source of the noise. (The women of the house, notably, remain blasé.)

The Jew who defended Nazis

image - Ira Glasser, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the focus of the documentary feature Mighty Ira — Ira Glasser, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the focus of the documentary feature Mighty Ira.

Ira Glasser was the director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001, a period when the organization exploded in size and relevance – and also when it took on some of the most contentious topics the country has ever faced.

Perhaps not a household name, Glasser and his contributions to civil liberties in particular and to American society more broadly are examined in the documentary feature Mighty Ira.

It is easy to admire Glasser in theory and to support his principles in principle. It is harder to swallow when he champions what Oliver Wendell Holmes termed “freedom for ideas we loathe.” This challenging conflict is at the heart of Glasser’s life’s work and the heart of the film.

Glasser’s vigilance for justice was born at Ebbets Field, the now-disappeared home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, which Glasser calls his cathedral. The Dodgers were gods to the kids in Glasser’s Flatbush neighbourhood, no less so when Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball, in 1947. At age 9, Glasser discovered that Robinson was forced to stay in hotels and eat at restaurants apart from his teammates while on road trips to parts of the country. That injustice stirred in young Ira a lifelong mission.

But devotion to racial equality can seem to come head-to-head with First Amendment rights to free expression, as when neo-Nazis sought to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., in 1977. The provocative plan to wear fascist regalia and parade through a town whose population was half Jewish – and which included one of the world’s largest communities of Holocaust survivors – was thwarted by town officials, who used a backdoor ordinance to prevent the event. (There was a 500-member B’nai B’rith chapter in town at the time, all of whose members were survivors.)

Glasser’s ACLU took up the case, and the backlash against the unpopular cause was enormous. It tested the mettle of the ACLU leadership – to say nothing of their fundraising department – and their commitment to free speech. But the leadership, which included a great many Jews, were almost unanimously steadfast.

The documentary shows how the ACLU’s relevance grew in the time of Glasser’s leadership, not solely because of his actions but also because the country was struggling with a range of social and moral conflicts. While the rights group had been at the forefront of issues like the Scopes “Monkey Trial” (addressing the place of religion in public education), the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War and Brown v. Board of Education (banning school segregation), the ACLU’s docket really filled up in the time Glasser was at the helm in large part because the country was confronting and struggling with so many divisive issues.

Mighty Ira is the story of a remarkable man, but it is also a history of American free speech in the second half of the 20th century.

Director Nico Perrino will be a guest at the March 9, 1 p.m., screening of the documentary.

More information about the festival will soon be available at vjff.org.

Leading amid change

Michelle Ray’s latest book is Leading in Real Time: How to Drive Success in a Radically Changing World. (photo from espeakers.com)

Michelle Ray was recently inducted into the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame, which is bestowed, in part, for excellence in “educating others to excel.” Of course, it is awarded to exemplary speakers, but Ray also educates using the written word. Her articles have appeared in various publications and she is now the author of two books: Lead Yourself First! Indispensable Lessons in Business and in Life, which was released in 2014, and Leading in Real Time: How to Drive Success in a Radically Changing World, which just came out in the fall of 2021.

Originally from Australia, Ray started her career in media and advertising while living there. She established her own business – as a professional speaker, leadership educator and consultant – in 1995, after she settled in Vancouver. In the conclusion of her new book, she shares what she learned from her parents, who were Holocaust survivors and faced several other challenges in their lives. Though they passed away many years ago, Ray writes, “the enormity of their respective losses is still with me…. They were truly my greatest mentors, and I believe there will never be another generation like theirs. As leaders, we have much to learn, appreciate and apply from their timeless legacy.”

The three lessons Ray highlights in this chapter are to be prepared for unanticipated events, to be optimistic and resilient in the face of difficulties, and to control what you can: “The now is all we know. It’s what we have. It’s the sum total of present moments and what we choose to do with them that prepares us for the unknown.”

Ray started writing Real Time in 2018, taking notes while traveling for speaking engagements and doing other work. Her schedule got so busy that the book project was set aside until January 2020. “Several months into the process,” she writes, as the pandemic hit, “it occurred to me that my teachings about leaders remaining relevant, flexible and open to new ideas applied to me. Realizing that the world had forever changed, I found myself questioning not only what lay ahead, but my own identity as a leadership expert and whether or not I had the energy to persevere in the face of so much uncertainty. I developed a deeper affinity with the challenges and struggles my clients faced, wanting to explore them further. I became more intrigued by their passion, ongoing success and commitment to the well-being of their workforce during a very difficult period.”

There are eight traits of a “real-time leader,” according to Ray. A real-time leader is transformative, emotionally intelligent, open-minded, humble, exceptional at listening, optimistic, consistent and trustworthy, and authentic. She explains each of these characteristics in more depth and examines the ways in which the workplace, workers and the economy have changed, and continue to change. She offers takeaways at the end of every chapter, as well as some homework, or what she calls real-time action steps. She suggests ways in which leaders having trouble with any aspect of leadership can improve, including hiring a coach or working with a mentor.

It’s not just a matter of personal growth. “There is a high cost to poor leadership choices,” she writes. “Especially when rolling the dice on leaders who are unprepared or who are incapable of immediately assessing real-time situations, including ongoing volatility, pressure from key stakeholders, and shifts in employee expectations.”

And yet, according to Gallup research cited by Ray, “companies in an array of industries put the wrong leaders into the wrong job over 80% of the time” and “65% of managers are not engaged or are actively disengaged. That’s not the workforce,” she writes. “That’s the leadership.”

It might sound obvious that disengagement compromises employee retention but Ray notes how often leaders do not move with the times, and hold on to outdated approaches. She recommends change management education so that leaders can model behaviour for their team regarding adapting to such things as technological innovation, as well as social advances, like women’s equality. Accountability is key and Ray offers readers of her book many ways “to recognize when they have a me problem rather than a we problem.” For example, do you step in to help when needed, are you respectful of others, do you keep your promises?

In the chapter on the human factors at play in running a business, Ray notes that “intelligence and self-awareness are traits that do not always come hand in hand.” But being self-aware and capable of learning – from experiences and from other people, including those working for you – is vital for someone wanting to be a capable leader.

For more on Ray, her books and learning programs, visit michelleray.com.

Novel informed by life

Alina Adams, author of The Nesting Dolls, spoke at a recent Zoom webinar organized by the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria. (photo from alinaadams.com)

New York City-based writer Alina Adams, author of the 2020 novel The Nesting Dolls – about three generations of Russian-Jewish women – spoke at a Jan. 27 Zoom webinar organized by the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria.

Adams began with her personal story. Born in the port city of Odessa, she spent the first seven years of her life in a communal apartment: a dwelling, including kitchen and bathroom, that was shared by two families.

“As I mention in The Nesting Dolls, these relationships were not always positive. My parents were lucky in that they got along well with the people they were assigned to share with,” said Adams.

In 1976, her parents decided to emigrate. Two years earlier, the United States had passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which linked U.S. trade with the free movement of Jews and other groups in the Communist bloc.

“I like to say we were traded for wheat,” Adams quipped.

To those leaving the USSR, she said, “it was like stepping off the edge of the earth. You didn’t know where you were going, you didn’t know what life would be like when you were there, and you certainly knew you couldn’t come back.”

The family’s first stop was Vienna. From there, they took a bus to Rome, where they stayed for four months before traveling on to North America in January 1977, first to New York and then to San Francisco.

Adams recounted some of the reactions upon coming to America in the 1970s as a young child: for example, the surprise of watching a television screen in full colour. It was television, namely soap operas, that Adams later credited for helping her learn English.

The young immigrant started out in a Jewish day school, where the differences in various customs – her life in the new versus the old world – became very apparent. Parents in North America, she recalled, did not send their kids to school in the same dress every day; they used Band-Aids instead of green antiseptic to treat cuts; and, if their child had the sniffles, they did not place the child’s feet in hot water and then into socks filled with dried mustard.

Over time, Adams and her family got the hang of life in America. She graduated high school and college. All along, she knew she wanted to be a writer.

“My parents claim my first words were ‘pencil’ and ‘paper,’” said Adams. “And what’s the advice all writers get? Write about what you know. Well, what did I know? I knew about being a Soviet immigrant. I knew about living a culture that wasn’t mine.”

Publishers, at first, were not interested in those themes. Nonetheless, an editor at Avon Publishing did like her writing and contacted Adams, asking if she would write a Regency romance. This would become The Fictitious Marquis, a unique book in the Regency romance genre in that Jews are central characters.

Adams now has more than a dozen titles to her credit, including mysteries, books on figure skating (non-fiction) and other romances.

About four years ago, Adams’ literary agent told her that editors were becoming interested in Russia, and this led Adams to write The Nesting Dolls. The novel begins in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and ends in 21st-century, pre-pandemic Brighton Beach, in New York City. It focuses on the lives of three generations of Russian Jewish women in one family; the periods parallel those of Adams’ grandmother, mother and herself.

For Adams, it is the everyday events that are the most fascinating part of writing historical fiction. “Anyone can look up which date Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin, but it is the small details which make historical fiction compelling,” she said.

As an example, she pointed to a personal account she used in the novel. According to her mother, Adams did not want to be breastfed. This caused her mother to go to a doctor and ask him to write up a prescription for yogurt. “These are the little things, in this case how difficult it was to get regular foodstuffs in the Soviet Union, that bring a situation to life and show the reader what an era was like,” said Adams.

The novel was scheduled to be released in 2019 but was delayed to 2020, which, for Adams, turned out to be a blessing for the story’s timeline, in that she wasn’t finishing it during the pandemic. The last section of the book takes place in pre-pandemic Brooklyn in summer. “The things my characters do in the summer of 2019, they could not have done in the summer of 2020,” she said.

Adams lives in New York with her husband and their three children. She has written about her interracial, interfaith and intercultural family for Interfaith Family Magazine and the Forward, and has written columns and articles for dozens of publications.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Turning tragedy to hope

The year 2016 was a milestone for Kalman and Malki Samuels. It marked the inauguration of a dream years in the making – the opening of the Shalva National Centre, one of the largest centres of disability care and inclusion in the world. Built not far from the entrance to Jerusalem, the 12-storey world-class complex features an auditorium, a gymnasium, hydrotherapy and semi-Olympic pools, a virtual reality therapy suite, a research and study institute, a café, some of whose workers have developmental disabilities, and accommodations for 100 respite sleepovers per night.

How was it that Kalman and Malki Samuels came to create this extraordinary organization that assists 2,000 children with disabilities each week, while empowering families and promoting social inclusion? The answer lies in the subtitle of Vancouver native Kalman Samuels’ Dreams Never Dreamed: A Mother’s Promise That Transformed Her Son’s Breakthrough into a Beacon of Hope (Toby Press, 2020) – it was a mother’s promise.

In 1977, the couple’s healthy, lively baby boy, two weeks short of his first birthday, was checked by a doctor at a Jerusalem clinic before receiving his second DTP inoculation; and all his developmental milestones were fine, so the nurse gave him the shot.

But Malki knew the same day that something was wrong. “I took Yossi home and followed the instructions they’d given me at the clinic…. I bathed him, gave him baby paracetamol and let him sleep. The moment he woke, I knew my baby was gone. He looked up at me with shiny eyes as if to say: ‘What have you done to me?’”

Only later did the couple discover that, on that October afternoon, “Israel’s health authorities had already known for almost five months that the vaccine batch they were using … was dangerously flawed.” The defective pertussis (whooping cough) component was from the Connaught Laboratories of Canada. The diphtheria and tetanus components were from the Israeli company Rafa, which had combined the three.

Thus began a saga of almost 40 years of anguish, faith, research, perseverance, legal battles and, ultimately, the realization of dreams, not only for the injured Yossi, but for thousands of other children with disabilities.

Dreams Never Dreamed is written chronologically, beginning with Kalman’s personal story of visiting Israel as a college student in the 1960s, eventually becoming Orthodox, making aliyah and marrying his life partner. He writes his family’s spellbinding story with an honesty and openness that opens and pierces our hearts as well.

Yossi was ultimately diagnosed as legally blind – though he loved to wear glasses because it helped him feel more competent – and legally deaf. He is also severely hyperactive.

The Samuels left their home in Israel for New York, following every medical lead in search of help for their son. While her son was attending the Lighthouse – a famous specialized school for the visually impaired – Malki made a pact with God: “… I promise You this. If You ever decide to help my Yossi, I will dedicate my life helping so many other mothers of children with disabilities whom I know are crying with me for their children.”

Some challenges were especially painful, like when children teased Yossi, or when an important Jerusalem rebbetzin, visiting New York, said to Malki, “It’s not fair to yourselves or your healthy children…. You should consider moving this child out of the house, so you can get on with your lives.” Malki answered her: “You have no faith in God.” She invited the rebbetzin to wait 20 minutes, till Yossi came home from school. She saw a child nicely dressed, with glasses and hearing aids, carefully navigating the steps and hugging and kissing his mother, happy to see her. The rebbetzin cried and asked forgiveness.

A few years later, the couple learned that a lawsuit could only be filed in Israel, since that was where the vaccination had been administered. They found an excellent Israeli lawyer and doctors willing to testify, and the family returned home. Samuels describes the legal battles in excruciating detail. In October 1983, five years after the vaccination and after exhaustive paperwork and research, the couple filed suit against the Canadian Connaught Laboratories, the Israeli Rafa pharmaceutical company, the city of Jerusalem and the State of Israel. (The lawsuit ended in a settlement that, even according to the judge, was less than they deserved, but would save them more years of expensive and aggravating legal action.)

At the age of 8, Yossi experienced a “Helen Keller” moment, when Shoshana Weinstock, a warm and loving teacher who was deaf herself taught him his first word – shulchan (table) – using finger spelling. “All of a sudden, he lit up and he got it,” Kalman is quoted as telling the Jerusalem Post. “She taught him the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Another speech therapist taught him how to speak Hebrew and, slowly, he began to talk.” After that, Yossi was unstoppable. He learned to type on a Braille typewriter, to pray and to speak to those who were able to understand him.

Spurred on by their son’s breakthrough, in 1988, the couple wrote the first proposal for an outreach program that would help other families with children with disabilities. In 1990, that proposal became Shalva, the Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, which began as an afterschool program for six children in the Samuels’ Har Nof apartment. The name Shalva is derived from Psalm 127 and means serenity, but, like any new enterprise, the road to success was challenging. The book is filled with anecdotes about how chance meetings on airplanes, or through conversations with a friend or a neighbour, Kalman reached donors who kept Shalva going and led to its development and expansion.

In addition to giving her life and creativity to making sure the professional programs would be the best they can be, Malki, the powerhouse engine behind Shalva, was involved in every aspect of the design and building of the Shalva National Centre, right down to the tiles. She was determined that it feel like a home, not an institution. Renowned Israeli artist David Gerstein, deeply moved by the Shalva story and appreciating Malki’s vision, created a magnificent 20-foot-high mobile of metallic butterflies that hangs in the Shalva atrium.

Around 2005, a gifted young musician, Shai Ben-Shushan, offered his services to Shalva. He had been a member of the Duvdevan special forces unit in the Israel Defence Forces and suffered severe injuries from a grenade attack while pursuing terrorists. He told Kalman, “Like a baby, I had to learn again to eat and to talk. My life was destroyed … I learned what it was like to be helpless and dependent on others … and I began to think about going back to music and sharing it with others who have similar challenges.”

By the end of a year, Shai had created the now world-renowned Shalva Band, signaling to all that having disabilities does not mean one cannot reach for the stars and make dreams come true.

In 2020, Shalva graduated its first program of young men who entered the IDF as soldiers in the Home Front Command unit. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs brings heads of state and diplomats to Shalva, just as they take them to Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Centre and to Mount Herzl, the burial place of soldiers who died defending the state of Israel.

Dreams Never Dreamed is alternately inspiriting, infuriating, funny and enlightening, but, for me, Malki’s voice and her photograph are missing. If you want to “meet” her, you can watch a mesmerizing Shalva-produced film on YouTube, About Yossi – A Film About Yossi Samuels.

The Yossi of today is smart, learned, eloquent and brave, with a sharp sense of humour. He can type, read, and daven in Braille, and particularly enjoys high-level Torah literature and magazines. He has traveled the world, met with celebrities and presidents (in Israel and America), is a horseback rider and a certified wine connoisseur. Kalman writes, “[Yossi’s] close friends number in the hundreds and acquaintances in the thousands.”

As his walking ability and balance worsened, Yossi eventually required a wheelchair. “Our blind and deaf son said, ‘For the first time in my life, I feel handicapped,’” writes Kalman. “Yossi had never referred to himself as blind or deaf, but rather ‘low vision’ and ‘hard of hearing.’”

Kalman recalls in the book how his daughter, Nechama, told him that he was like Forrest Gump: “Mommy had her dream and told you, ‘Run, Kalman, run!’ You’ve never stopped; it has coloured your life and all of ours.”

And the lives of thousands more.

Toby Klein Greenwald is an award-winning journalist, the artistic director of Raise Your Spirits Theatre, a poet, a teacher and the editor of wholefamily.com. This review first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Jewish Action.

Singing on social issues

Mike Kobluk (the Chad Mitchell Trio) is one of the musicians featured in Under the Radar, by David Eisenstadt. (photo from Trail Times)

Under the Radar: 30 Notable Canadian Jewish Musicians, which I wrote with Alan L. Simons (editor), takes an historical approach, covering musicians of most genres and genders, some alive and others having passed on, all skilled, but excelling somewhat out of sight. This is the third in a three-part series of excerpts from the book, which was released last November, and is available in paperback and as an ebook from amazon.ca. The excerpts feature performers with B.C. roots: Robert Silverman, Ben Mink and Mike Kobluk.

In 1958, as students attending Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., William Chadbourne Mitchell, Mike Kobluk and Mike Pugh formed the Chad Mitchell Trio. Their repertoire criticized the Cold War and the Vietnam War while championing civil rights. Many of John Denver’s early songs were part of their songlist.

Kobluk, who is Jewish, was born in Trail, B.C. As a child, he sang for fun, but “singing for a career … never entered [his] mind.” He majored in English and math at Gonzaga. He spent 10 years – the longest-serving vocalist with the trio – before leaving in 1969.

But, going back. In the summer of 1959, a friend of Mitchell’s “hatched the plan that started us on a professional career” and the trio journeyed to New York to begin that chapter in their lives, according to Kobluk.

By May 1960, they signed with Harry Belafonte’s management company and performed with Belafonte, Pat Boone and Arthur Godfrey.

After two albums were pressed – The Chad Mitchell Trio and In Concert – Everybody’s Listening – Pugh left the group in the fall of 1960 to return to university. Mitchell and Kobluk auditioned more than 150 vocalists, including Tom Paxton. They chose Joe Frazier and, according to The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, the group cut nine albums together.

Initially, the trio recorded on the Colpix label. Their sound soared recording for Kapp Records, with tunes like “Lizzie Borden” (about the accused axe murderer), “Mighty Day” (remembering the Galveston, Tex., hurricane of 1900) and the Prohibition-era tune “Rum by Gum.” Other songs included “The Ides of Texas” (about financier Billie Sol Estes) and “The John Birch Society.” On their live album, they sang “Moscow Nights” in Russian, a controversial decision at the time.

Interviewed by the Trail Times, Kobluk said that, “in the early 1960s, we worked with Belafonte, culminating in a Carnegie Hall concert he hosted featuring Miriam Makeba, Odetta, the Belafonte Singers and us.” As part of a U.S. cultural exchange program, the trio also toured South America in 1962.

“Over time,” he added, “we’d renew our association with Belafonte and, years later, when the Selma, Ala., march with Dr. Martin Luther King was being organized, our reputation put us on Belafonte’s list.”

They left Belafonte Enterprises in 1962 for Mercury Records, adding provocative songs like “The Draft Dodger Rag” and “Barry’s Boys,” the latter of which lampooned Barry Goldwater’s Republican 1964 presidential run.

Mitchell quit the band in 1965, replaced by John Denver, then a relatively unknown singer/songwriter. The musicians retained the well-known Mitchell Trio name with Denver, “who stayed for three years, writing many of the group’s songs,” notes The Virgin Encyclopedia. In 1966, Frazier was replaced by David Boise. In 1969, when Kobluk departed, Michael Johnson joined. Because of contract legalities, the Mitchell name could no longer be used and the group became known as Denver, Boise and Johnson. But it was shortlived – they disbanded in 1969.

Kobluk told the Trail Times, “[We] performed songs of political and social commentary, not exclusively, but such material was an important part of any program. Equal opportunity and voting rights for all were high on our personal and professional priority list and fodder for such commentary.”

Kobluk, Frazier and Boise moved to careers outside the music business, Mitchell cut various solo albums and Denver’s career as a solo performer soared. Johnson recorded more than 15 solo albums and Frazier became an Episcopal Church priest.

On Nov. 15, 2014, in Bethesda, Md., the trio shared a final stage at a “farewell” concert, with singer/guitarist Ron Greenstein replacing Frazier, who died in March of that year.

A chance to journal, create

Kathy Bilinsky’s two-page collage makes us wonder what story – or two or three or more – we could find behind the mysterious ornate blue door. (photo by Byron Dauncey)

The Sketchbook Show officially opened at the Zack Gallery on Jan. 12. The brainchild of Hope Forstenzer, gallery director, and Lisa Cohen Quay, coordinator of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Adults 55+ program, the exhibit is the culmination of a journaling workshop.

“We wanted to give JCC members the opportunity to say what they felt about COVID and everything else in their lives,” Forstenzer told the Independent. She offered the gallery as a place for the in-person workshop and invited instructor Lex Ireton to lead it.

photo - Lex Ireton led the workshop that resulted to the Zack Gallery’s current exhibit, the Sketchbook Show — Lex Ireton led the workshop that resulted to the Zack Gallery’s current exhibit, the Sketchbook Show. *(photo from Lex Ireton)*

Ireton, a graduate of Alberta College of Art and Design, and Forstenzer know each other through their work as glass artists.

“I recently went back to school to get an art therapy diploma,” said Ireton. “When Hope contacted me about the workshop she had in mind, I was excited. I’ve taught art classes before, but this one was my first class for adults.”

Putting It All Down: A Creative Journaling Workshop started in the fall of 2021, well into the second year of the pandemic.

“The beauty of journaling is that you don’t have to be an artist,” said Ireton. “We provided all the participants with blank journals plus writing, drawing and crafting supplies. And they had the gallery space itself to work together and create.”

Although more people initially came to the workshop, only six participants stayed to the end. “We met once a week for eight weeks,” Ireton said. “Everyone wore masks, of course. I came up with an exercise, and we did it during the session, sometimes timed, sometimes not. Often, people were so involved, they continued the work at home.”

One of the exercises was called 30 Circles. Ireton explained: “I gave each participant a sheet with 30 empty circles and asked them to fill each circle in any way they chose: a line, a colour, words, images. The circles could be filled thematically or not. Nobody was forced to fill all the circles. Just a few could spark a direction the person wanted to go. It was a warm-up activity, a way to explore the materials and ideas without the pressures of a final completed project. Later, we used the circles as inspirations for journal pages or utilized them for collages.”

Another exercise was a thematic prompt to fire participants’ imaginations, so they could write or draw on a subject. Some wrote poetry or essays. Others did collages using materials they wanted: old magazines, coloured paper, their own paintings or drawings, dry leaves and flowers, fabric fragments.

photo - A page of Judy Stern’s sketchbook expresses a lamentation familiar to any writer — A page of Judy Stern’s sketchbook expresses a lamentation familiar to any writer. (photo by Byron Dauncey)

“As the workshop progressed, participants wanted to know more about each other. We talked a lot. People shared ideas and finished pages. Everyone became more confident with the techniques and media,” Ireton said. “Each session was a joyful social event as much as a journaling workshop. We were all tired of the isolation restrictions caused by COVID.”

While the JCC supplied materials for the workshop, local artist Susan Lee created the empty journals everyone used. “Susan donated the journals for the workshop,” said Forstenzer.

This month, Forstenzer mounted the show, which comprises selected pages of participants’ journals.

“This show is a tangible result of the workshop,” she said. “It is imbued with the energy of the participants putting their imagination to work, creating something meaningful regardless of their personal history as art-makers. The show reflects the child-like pleasure everyone experiences while playing with glue and paper and colours. The weeks of working on their creative sketchbooks has yielded a look into the beauty of putting thoughts on paper in words and images.”

The show is anonymous – there are no names attached to any of the pages, but each image serves as a window into the author’s personality. Some are humorous, like a tongue-in-cheek collage of two pages from a magazine. The collage contains two contradictory lists: What Men Love in Women juxtaposed with What Women Love in Men.

Other images are colourful and lyrical drawings, like a leafy branch with no words. And others combine drawings with poetry and cuttings.

Several workshop participants agreed to talk to the Independent about themselves and their journals.

Judy Stern, a retiree, didn’t have any artistic experience prior to the workshop. “In high school,” she said, “art was the only subject I ever failed. This took away any confidence I might have had, so I have never taken an art class, although I often thought about doing so. Last fall, I received information from the JCC about the upcoming journaling class. I enjoy writing and do have an interest in art, so I asked whether I needed any art experience. I was told, absolutely not…. I was so excited about this, as it was my first group social activity since the beginning of COVID. I was eager to be out and about again, doing something different.”

At first, she was nervous, but the welcoming atmosphere of the workshop soon put her at ease. One image from her journal, cranes flying away among the clouds, integrate her poem – a lamentation familiar to any writer – into a beautiful metaphoric collage.

“I would’ve been happy for the class to go on indefinitely,” she said. “I hope that something similar will be offered again. I am already thinking about my next journal.”

Kathy Bilinsky, another retiree, admitted to having some previous artistic exposure. “I’ve always enjoyed the creative process,” she said. “I have taken various art classes over the years, including two certificate programs at Emily Carr.”

Bilinsky, joined the workshop at the recommendation of Stern, who is a friend. “Judy said I might like it, and she was right. Before, when we could still travel, I always worked in sketchbooks. I have many travel journals documenting our trips with sketches, watercolours, and a bit of cut and paste. As we’re not traveling these days, I looked at this workshop as the opportunity to create.”

Her adjoined journal pages, “Keys and Door,” feature a key ring and a keyhole, above which is written, “Every key tells a story.” We wonder what story – or two or three or more – we could find behind the mysterious ornate blue door depicted on the opposite page.

“I didn’t fill all the pages in my journal,” said Bilinsky, “but so many ideas have been circulating in my mind that I would like to fill in the remaining pages.”

The show can be viewed in person at the Zack Gallery or online at online.flippingbook.com/view/892314086. It runs until Feb. 11.

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

Iconic musical at Studio 58

Left to right: Sofie Kane, Zachary Bellward and Angus Yam in Studio 58’s The Rocky Horror Show, with costume design by Donnie Tejani and makeup by Weebee Drippin. (photo by Emily Cooper)

“It’s the fun and freaky escape we’ve all been craving!” announces the press release for Studio 58 at Langara College’s The Rocky Horror Show. And it’s a statement that’s proven true, with an almost sold-out run as the JI went to press this week.

At least two Jewish community members are involved in the production, which takes place live in the theatre Feb. 3-20. Josh Epstein directs and Itai Erdal created the lighting design.

Amid the happy news regarding ticket sales, COVID continues to cause challenges. “We have multiple Plan Bs and we update them often,” Epstein told the Independent. “Enough of the show has been learned that I know, wherever we end up, this incredible group of performers can entertain.”

While Epstein has done other creative works over the past two years, and so has experience dealing with all the pandemic regulations, this show has been “way harder,” he said.

“I was involved in Craigslist Cantata, which was a filmed production; and a workshop of a new musical at Studio 58 I co-wrote, it was basically an outdoor concert. With Rocky Horror, the cast is large, the lighting, sets and costumes are all world-class. We are being extremely careful to follow all regulations, Studio 58 guidelines and avoid infection. We took a week on Zoom when needed and made other adjustments as needed. I also have two kids under 2 – that’s really the harder part!”

Erdal also has been busier than many in the performing arts sector, but he, too, is finding the situation difficult.

“I have been luckier than most designers I suppose, but still, the last couple of years have been a real struggle, both financially and mentally,” said Erdal. “Just last week, I had to postpone my one-man show How to Disappear Completely, which was scheduled to run at Presentation House in North Van – one of the toughest decisions I had to make.

“Making a living as a theatre artist is tough in the best of times,” he added. “Right now, it’s damn near impossible. It’s been tough mentally too – I basically sat at home for a year between November 2020 and 2021. Fortunately, I’ve been writing a play about my military service [in Israel], so that kept me busy and sane for that year.”

That Erdal is also a writer, producer, performer and artistic director (of the Elbow Theatre) must help in his design of lighting for a production, which begins with his reading of the play in question, “taking notes of things like locations, time of day, mood, atmosphere, effects (lighting, gun shots, smoke, haze, etc.).”

He then meets with the director to “hear their vision of the piece and if they have any specific ideas about lighting. Ideally, this is before the set is designed so I have some input into the set design – Is it an abstract set or a naturalistic one? If the set has walls on the sides, then I can’t use side lighting; if it’s staged in the round, it will obviously change my design.”

He takes more notes while watching rehearsals and, for a musical, like Rocky Horror, he needs to know exactly where the performers are for every song.

“Then I will go home and draw the lighting plot – this show has about 150 lights and the crew needs to know where every light is hung, which way it’s facing and what colour or pattern it takes. Then we hang all the lights, circuit them and patch them to the lighting board.

“After the hang is finished,” he said, “we focus all the lights and then we record the cues. A musical will typically have anywhere between 200 and 300 lighting cues, so that will take awhile to record, at least 12 hours. I use light walkers and ask them to stand where the performers will be standing and we record all the cues and put them all in the prompt script so the stage manager can call the show.”

The performers are then shown their every cue, being told “where to stand, making sure the director likes how it looks and the stage manager knows exactly when the cue is called. In a musical like Rocky Horror,” said Erdal, “the vast majority of the cues will be called with the music, so I would give the stage manager a detailed cue list that includes bar numbers so the show can be called musically. After practising all that for a few days, we add the costumes and all other design elements and do a tech dress and then a dress rehearsal. After that, the audience comes in for previews and we do a few last tweaks before we open the show.”

Collaboration is crucial and it’s one of Epstein’s favourite parts of directing this show – working with the students and the creative team. “After a few years away from this process,” he said, “there is nothing that gets me jazzed more than bouncing artistic ideas off each other and then guiding them to life.”

Given the popularity and longevity of The Rocky Horror Show – first staged in 1973 and then made iconic by the 1975 film adaptation – one might be intimidated when faced with staging it, but not Epstein.

“I love and trust my artistic team and give them a lot of ownership over where we’re headed. If we each dream big and make it happen, it will be unlike any other production – and I think we’ve done that,” said the director.

“Usually,” he added, “I avoid any other productions or history of a show but Rocky Horror has had such a unique life. I researched its beginnings, looked for lyric changes, did consultations with different communities, made conscious decisions about context and intention. I really took to heart ‘Don’t dream it, be it’ and have made that a touchstone of our show – that you can be whoever you want to be and, more importantly, be fabulous.

“One thing that’s going to happen,” Epstein concluded, “is we’re going to honour the audience that this show created, in a big way.”

For showtimes and tickets, visit studio58.ca.

Secret Jewish fighters

Leah Garrett has pieced together the most comprehensive story yet of a little-known but fascinating footnote to the Second World War, and she shares her findings in her new book, X Troop. (photo by Deb Caponera / Hunter College)

Using recently declassified military records and interviewing family members, author Leah Garrett has pieced together the most comprehensive story yet of a little-known but fascinating footnote to Second World War history – and the role that a few score of Jewish men played at pivotal moments in the conflict.

Garrett is a professor at Hunter College, in New York City. As part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, she will speak about her new book, X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two, in a virtual event on Feb. 6.

X Troop tells of the 87 men – 83 of them Jewish – who made up the No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop. The secret weapon X Troop members shared was that most of them were from German-speaking parts of Europe, had escaped occupied countries and, as Jews, had a deeply personal drive to defeat the Nazis.

Formed officially on July 2, 1942, the unique commando unit would, among other things, allow British forces to expedite interrogation of captured Axis soldiers.

“X Troop would be Britain’s secret shock troop in the war against Germany,” Garrett writes. “They would kill and capture Nazis on the battlefield. But that would not be all. They would also immediately interrogate captured Germans, be it in the heat of battle or right afterward. The men’s fluency in German would enable them to get essential intelligence that would guide the next moment’s choices rather than having to wait to interview prisoners until they were back at headquarters.”

No less than Winston Churchill himself gave the group their nickname.

“Because they will be unknown warriors … they must perforce be considered an unknown quantity. Since the algebraic symbol for the unknown is X, let us call them X Troop,” declared the then-prime minister of the United Kingdom.

One of the many consequential incidents, which could have turned disastrous, was when two troop members, whose anglicized noms de guerre were Roy Wooldridge and George Lane, were captured by the Germans and taken to a command post. The next day, they were driven to the French countryside and, instead of being summarily executed as they had feared, found themselves in the château that was serving as headquarters for field marshal Erwin Rommel.

“During his training … Lane had been taught to give only his (fake) name, rank and serial number if he was captured,” writes Garrett. “But instead he found himself having an extended conversation with the field marshal over tea. Lane fortunately recovered his composure and didn’t say anything that would give him and his comrade away.”

Later, when they were transferred to a POW camp in central Germany, which was filled with 300 British officers, the pair was able to share their knowledge of Rommel’s location – information that was surreptitiously conveyed back to London through a hidden homemade wireless radio.

“A few months later … during the Normandy campaign, Rommel’s staff car was strafed by RAF Spitfires as he drove from Château de La Roche-Guyon to the front near Saint-Lô. The attack left Rommel, one of Germany’s best and most creative generals, with serious injuries, and from that moment on his participation in the war was effectively over,” notes Garrett.

The irony was that some of the members of X Troop suddenly transformed from prisoners of war – Jews of German or Austrian origin, who were viewed as “enemy aliens” – to members of an elite British military troop.

“I found it rather odd that one day I could not be trusted with anything more lethal than a broomstick and the next I was told that I was going to be a spy for the British,” said one member, Tony Firth. “But who said that the English are logical?”

The men faced a fourfold risk if captured. Hitler had ordered Allied commandos to be shot on sight. As refugees from Europe who may have still had family in Nazi-occupied areas, they risked not only their own lives, but those of their families. As Jews, they were the explicit target of state-sanctioned murder and, as German or Austrian nationals, they would be considered traitors to their homelands if captured.

The commandos were trained in a Welsh village and, though each had each created a false persona, it took wilful blindness for the village folk to not realize there was something odd about these particular British soldiers. Recalled one townswoman, “… when we would ask them what nationality they were, they would say: ‘Vee are English.’” (A memorial to X Troop in that Welsh village today ostentatiously omits the fact that almost all of them were Jewish.)

Though trained together and with a tight-knit sense of camaraderie, the troop was deployed not as a group but across the British military. The book follows members of the troop through heroics and horrors at Normandy and in Egypt, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. In the end, half of the men would be killed, wounded or forever missing in action.

Some reviewers have drawn parallels between the real-life exploits of X Troop and a 2009 Hollywood blockbuster, but Garrett contrasts the facts and fictions. “Whenever possible, the X Troopers used their intelligence to outmanoeuvre the Nazis and to capture them before a shot was fired,” she writes. “In this regard, the X Troopers were the opposite of Quentin Tarantino’s vengeful Jews in his film Inglourious Basterds. Rather than wreaking personal revenge on the Germans, they followed the rules of war. They coolly collected battlefield intelligence from the enemy and outwitted them using their intellect rather than brute force. And even in extreme instances, such as when Colin Anson confronted the man who had been responsible for his own father’s death, they refused to compromise their own moral standards.”

Among the lessons the author aims to convey is the heroism of Jews in the fight against Nazism, adding a new layer to a growing literature on resistance of various forms.

“Through their exemplary and courageous service,” Garrett writes, “their story challenges the idea that only in Israel did the Jews become armed warriors who fought to try to establish a safe life for themselves and their families.”

Garrett’s Feb. 6 book festival event starts at 3:30 p.m. For tickets, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Poetry and painting flourish

Pnina Granirer launches her new book, Garden of Words, at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 9. (photo from JBF)

“Unexpected and unplanned, like small gifts offered by a kind friend, poems have been forming in my head ever since I was a child,” writes Pnina Granirer in her most recent book, Garden of Words. “Unexpected” is the perfect word for Granirer, who continually reinvents her artistic self.

Garden of Words is a beautiful mix of Granirer’s painted “words” and her written ones, her more distant past and recent experiences, including the loss of her life-partner of more than 65 years, in August 2020. The book is dedicated to Eddy and the final poem (“Goodbye”) and image (“Eddy Studying During Power Outage,” 1957, charcoal on paper) are of him.

This collection is a very personal work that shows Granirer’s powers of observation, both in her paintings and drawings, as well as in her poetry. It also shows her strength via her willingness to be vulnerable.

photo - Pnina Granirer — Pnina Granirer *(photo courtesy JBF)*

Two poems are part of the book’s foreword. The first, explains Granirer, who was born in Romania, “expresses the joy and happiness of a 10-year-old when on August 23, 1944, the Soviet Red Army entered our town, on the day that the cattle cars were waiting at the train station to take us away to the concentration camps. It had been a narrow escape, indeed!” The second is the title poem, in which Granirer notes that she is a painter, “I speak with paint and brush / my words are written / with colour and with line.” But, she recognizes the power of words, their ability to “conjure a Universe”: “I should so like to plant / a garden of words / in my field of colours // and watch them grow.”

Garden of Words has six sections: Sea and Stones; Pandemic; Dancers; Memories of Spain; This and That; and Closure. Her poems are short, concisely capturing the ephemerality of life – not even stones are permanent, the ebb and flow of water covers and exposes them, reshapes them, while they absorb past lives (fossils) and form sculptures. Stones offer inspiration and company to Granirer, who listens to their “quiet whispering.”

While all of the paintings Granirer has selected for this book interact wonderfully with her poems, reinforcing their themes, particularly powerful is the interplay between the poems about COVID-19 and artworks that had, of course, other meanings when they were created years ago. The new poem “All Together Now,” which starts, “This novel enemy is democratic. // In its indifference / all prey is equal,” is followed by the 2008 painting “Utopia – All Together Now,” which features four people dancing within a diamond-shaped boundary. One dancer’s head and their left foot cross the barrier. With dancing as one of the activities that has been restricted during the pandemic and the fact that we’ve all had to create bubbles (diamonds?) within which we can socialize safely, this probably once-joyous painting takes on a more sombre joy.

There are also sparks of sombre humour in various poems, including “Visit with El Greco” and “City Woman.” And the fear is palpable and relatable in the prose poem “Grenada,” which includes the stark reflection: “Five hundred years after the Inquisition, the burnings and autos-da-fé are pushed out of memory, conveniently forgotten, but the ceremonies persist; the dark past is not taught in Spanish schools. It has been turned into an Easter celebration, a parade, a fun event.” But, for Granirer, the crowds are ominous, evoking images of the Inquisition: “I am a Jew and it is coming for me. I am a Muslim and I am afraid. I am a Black woman and here is the KKK coming. I am terrified. The sight of those pointed hoods unleashes a flood of emotion I did not know I was capable of. My anxiety is close to panic.”

There are happier reflections. “Pas-de-deux,” for example, describes two men, each flying their own kite, but close together: “They leap / they dance / they bend and kneel / they sway from side to side / and turn as one.” When the men and their kites finish their dance, they receive “scattered applause from the small gathered crowd.”

At age 86, Granirer continues to create in new and meaningful ways. She launches her new book at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 9, 1 p.m. Visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Poetic auto/biography superb

Lisa Richter, author of Nautilus and Bone, joins the Jewish Book Festival Feb. 7 (photo from Lisa Richter)

Nautilus and Bone: An Auto/biography in Poems by Toronto poet Lisa Richter – who takes part in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 7 – will send readers down many proverbial rabbit holes. They will want to know more about the writings and life of Yiddish poet and journalist Anna Margolin – not only to better understand Margolin, but to appreciate more fully Richter’s poetic biography of Margolin and her conversations with Margolin’s works.

Margolin is the pen name of Rosa Lebensboym, who was born in Brisk (now Brest, Belarus) in 1887. She immigrated to New York City in 1906, “spent time in London, Paris, Warsaw, Odessa and Palestine before eventually settling permanently in New York in 1913, where she died, in 1952.”

Says Richter: “I was enticed by this Russian-Jewish-American woman writing a hundred years ago about myth-making, roots, identity, alienation, gender fluidity, Eros and desire (at times unmistakably queer, arguably pansexual). Her poetry felt bold and subversive, even by modern standards: H.D. meets Patti Smith.”

Richter does not speak Yiddish, so has relied on Shirley Kumove’s Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin, a translation of Margolin’s volume of poems, Lider (Poems), with a “thorough and comprehensive introduction to Margolin’s life and work.” Richter also accessed Margolin’s files at YIVO and read Reuben Iceland’s (Ayzland’s) memoir, From Our Springtime: Literary Memoirs and Portraits of Yiddish New York, as well as other source material.

Richter discusses her many reasons for feeling connected to Margolin, including that, as Lebensboym adopted the name Margolin upon arrival in New York, Richter’s maternal great-grandfather, born Samuel Margolin, “changed his surname to the more Russian-sounding Lapitsky to avoid antisemitism when he immigrated to Montreal as a young man in 1903.”

Richter writes, “I like to imagine him meeting Miss Rosa Lebensboym. In my imagination, he passes his old birth name to her, much in the way one would pass along a string of heirloom pearls to one’s daughter (though they would have been roughly the same age, both born in the 1880s).” Richter notes that the name Margolin and its variations come from the Hebrew margoliyot, meaning pearls.

The emotional and spiritual connections come through in Nautilus and Bone. Richter does not claim to explore every facet of Margolin’s life and work. She explains, “The persona I have enacted in these poems hovers on the periphery of my imagination, filtered through my own dreams, preoccupations, (dis)pleasures, experience. I try my best to give a lyric voice to the most essential, enduring aspects of the poet’s life and work as I see her, and to engage in conversation with those parts of myself that are most closely, most symbiotically intertwined with her story.”

And she does so in a wide variety of poetic forms, all of which she wields with great skill. Among the recognition the book has garnered are the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry (United States) – “the first time a Canadian poet has ever received this honour,” Richter shared with the Independent.

In Nautilus and Bone, most readers will encounter forms of poetry they’ve never encountered before. “A City at the Sea’s Mouth” is a homolinguistic translation (in this case, English to English). “Primeval Murderess Night Talks Back to Anna Margolin” is a Golden Shovel poem – the “end-words of each line make up the first two lines of Anna Margolin’s poem ‘Primeval Murderess Night,’” notes Richter, crediting the creation of the form to Terrance Hayes. And, as the name suggests, “Anna Margolin Cento” is a cento, in which a poem is composed of lines from other poets’ poems.

“A poem’s form and content are inextricably linked, in the same way that a particular dish can only be made or served in certain kinds of containers,” Richter told the Independent in an email interview. “The same raw dough can be shaped into dinner rolls, pretzels or challah bread – the way you present and shape the material will affect the way it’s consumed and experienced.

“In some cases,” she said, “the form came to me later (the prose poem form of ‘So Uncommonly Smart for a Girl,’ for example) after a traditional, lineated form didn’t seem to be working. In other cases, the form came first, and the poems later. For instance, the long sequence of sonnets at the end of the book became the vehicle for telling the love story of Anna Margolin and her final life-partner, the poet Reuben Ayzland, as the sonnet has a long and distinguished history of wrestling with matters of the heart.

“The process of homolinguistic translation, or ‘re-translating’ a poem from the same language, is a means of engaging/wrestling/ conversing with a source text, and keeping it alive by breathing new life into it, using fresh grammar, syntax and language. I see it as an act of homage and tribute.”

Some of the poems were written as early as 2017, said Richter, shortly after her first book – Closer to Where We Began – was published, but “the bulk of the poems were written over the course of a year-and-a-half, from 2019 to spring 2020,” she said. “The original manuscript was much more autobiographical, but once I started researching and writing the Margolin poems, it became clear that the book was to become ‘an auto/biography in poems,’ as the book is subtitled, and was much more about Anna Margolin than it was about me. I have to credit my editor at Frontenac House, Micheline Maylor, for her vision and encouragement for this project. Both she and George Elliott Clarke, my mentor at the Sage Hill Spring Poetry Colloquium, were extremely supportive.”

While Richter’s conversations with Lebensboym/Margolin left her with more questions than answers, Richter said, “I think that’s a good state of mind for a poet to live in. As Rilke famously put it in Letters to a Young Poet, ‘Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.’ I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely ‘done’ with Anna/Rosa, but it’s not entirely up to me. For all I know, she’ll be with me for some time…. I would love to learn to read Yiddish someday so I could read and appreciate her work in its original form.”

As for what she hopes readers take away from the conversations, Richter said, “Mystery, uncertainty, history, complexity, ambiguity, ancestral lineage, eros/sensuality, mythmaking. But if a reader just finds one poem in the book that speaks to them, I’m happy.”

Richter will be joined Feb. 7, 6 p.m., by local translator Rachel Mines (Jonah Rosenfeld: The Rivals and Other Stories; see jewishindependent.ca/stories-that-explore-the-mind) in a discussion with moderator Faith Jones. Visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.