Arts & Culture – Page 72

Healing powers of song

Seattle-based Iraqis in Pajamas, left to right: Sean Sebastian, Loolwa Khazzoom and Robbie Morsehead. (photo from Iraqis in Pajamas)

How do you take the wisdom of surviving and turn it into beautiful things?” asked Loolwa Khazzoom, front woman for Seattle-based punk rock group Iraqis in Pajamas, during an interview with the Independent recently.

One cannot easily classify Khazzoom, a cancer survivor, in a succinct journalistic fashion. Aside from being a musician, she is a writer, an activist, a polyglot and a journalist. Raised in California to an American mother and an Iraqi father, she was heavily involved in the Jewish feminist movement of the 1990s and the founder of the Jewish Multicultural Project, which provided resources about diversity to Jewish groups.

As with her stage presence, she transmits a raw, infectious energy in conversation, ever more so as Iraqis in Pajamas started this month by releasing a new single.

“Life brings with it an endless number of challenges. Negative experiences can be turned into art,” Khazzoom reflected.

“I was diagnosed with cancer in 2010,” she said. “I rejected the conventional option of surgery – despite a doctor proclaiming that I would die without it. ‘You can’t think your way out of cancer,’ he said, to which I replied, ‘You don’t know what I can do.’”

After the diagnosis, Khazzoom researched natural approaches to healing, and radically altered her diet – pulling everything out of her cupboards and moving to an all-organic and vegan diet. Through these and subsequent diet and lifestyle changes, she said she was able to stop the growth of the nodules, which remained stable for the next five years. The nodules began shrinking when she returned to music – her lost passion.

Formed in 2015, Iraqis in Pajamas combines ancient Iraqi Jewish prayers with its own original style of punk rock sung in English, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. The band’s songs examine a wide number of social issues – domestic violence, racism, mental illness, family caregiving, national exile – and cancer.

The band received a grant to produce the song “Cancer Is My Engine,” which was released March 1. “Cancer Is My Engine” combines an ancient Iraqi Jewish prayer with original punk rock, sung in Hebrew and English – challenging conventional medical approaches to cancer and putting forth the concept of music as medicine.

The song was produced by Bard Rock Studio, an independent Northwest music producer, and funded by the Lloyd Symington Foundation, which supports people living with and healing from cancer.

According to Khazzoom, singing has the ability not only to uplift but to heal. “This shift in consciousness is why, after hearing a particular song, our mood may change abruptly, or we suddenly may feel transported back in time. Singing bypasses our mental process, both awakening and soothing us at the core, without effort. Among other benefits, we are able to access, release and heal from the experience of trauma, without having to recount and risk getting triggered by painful memories,” she said.

Iraqis in Pajamas, which also includes drummer Robbie Morsehead and guitarist Sean Sebastian, got its name from a reputation Iraqi expatriates in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan had for putting on their pajamas when they had arrived home and the work of the day was completed.

The band is currently developing its next project: a debut double album. One CD will be an original a cappella version of 10 Iraqi Jewish prayers, which the band incorporates into its songs, along with a story about each prayer and why they chose it, while the second CD will be the 10 songs with those prayers woven through them. The project is sponsored by Allied Arts Foundation in Seattle and, in February, the band launched a fundraising campaign to develop, produce and promote the album: secure.givelively.org/donate/allied-arts-foundation-seattle/iraqis-in-pajamas.

Khazzoom’s first book, Consequence: Beyond Resisting Rape (2002), is a look at sexual harassment in everyday life. In 2003, she edited The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, an anthology of the writings of Mizrahi Jewish women. Her writing has also appeared in the Forward, Tikkun and Lilith, as well as the Jewish Independent and other Jewish publications; she has written several times about Israeli hip-hop for Rolling Stone.

Iraqis in Pajamas hopes to find venues in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island in the coming year. For more information about Khazzoom and the band, and to listen to their music, visit loolwa.com. To purchase their music, go to iraqisinpajamas.bandcamp.com.

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

Artistic visions on belonging

“We are Family” by Cat L’Hirondelle is now on exhibit at the Zack Gallery, as part of he group show Community Longing and Belonging, which runs to March 29.

The new group show at the Zack Gallery, Community Longing and Belonging, is the second annual exhibit in celebration of Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month. Organized by Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s inclusion services and its coordinator, Leamore Cohen, the show is a silent auction. Half of the proceeds will go to the artists, and the other half will be divided between inclusion services and the gallery.

The show consists of 50 paintings by different artists. The size and shape of all the paintings are the same – small rectangles – but the contents and media used are vastly different, indicative of the artists’ various styles and training levels. Some are highly professional. Some are figurative; others abstract. But all reflect their creators’ need to belong, to be part of a community. Each painting tells a story.

One of the prevalent themes of the show is flight. Wings appear on several paintings, emphasizing the yearning for the freedom flight entails, but also for the brotherhood of other fliers. The white ornamental wings on Mikaela Zitron’s multimedia piece are bigger than the background board. They take the artist into the sky, into a joyful aerial dance, while Jamie Drie’s feathers, drifting in a sad emptiness, invoke the feeling of disconnection.

The murder of crows in Cat L’Hirondelle’s painting relates yet a different story. “I am a feminist,” said L’Hirondelle. “I was thinking about the importance of being part of a community of like-minded women. My group of longtime women friends is my family, my tribe and, like the crows, I know that they will always be there for me. Since I became disabled, I have felt more and more disassociated with the able-bodied-centric society in general. Just look at the history of people with disabilities in different societies – genocide, forced sterilizations, segregation, isolation, etc. I would love to feel that people with disabilities belong in the world. My piece is trying to impart that sense of longing to be included in general community and how crow communities seem to include everyone: the old, the disabled, the young. I have lived in the crow flight path for many years and have been watching crows’ behaviour; sometimes, I wished people were more like crows.”

image - “Leaving for Awhile” by Daniel Malenica — “Leaving for Awhile” by Daniel Malenica

The second recurring motif in the show is loneliness, the sense of separation. Daniel Malenica’s image is distinctive among such pictures. The woman in the painting stands behind closed garden gates. She gazes at us from the painting, and the naked longing in her eyes is painful to behold. She desperately wants to open that gate and step through, to join us, but she lacks the courage. What if the people inside reject her? So, she just lingers outside, desolate and alone, waiting for an invitation.

Another outstanding piece on the same theme is Estelle Liebenberg’s black and white painting “Solitude Standing.” She told the Independent, “I work primarily as a potter and a metalsmith, but I accepted the challenge to paint something for the exhibition because I’ve had wonderful times working as a substitute art instructor at the JCC. I chose the monochromatic colour palette because, at the moment, I am quite fascinated by shadows, specifically how they change the shape of objects but still remain recognizable.”

image - Estelle Liebenberg’s “Solitude Standing” — Estelle Liebenberg’s “Solitude Standing.”

Her focus for the piece was the idea of a community in general. “I’ve spent my life dealing with different communities and, I guess, for me, the lines have softened over time,” she said. “We spend so much time in our lives working on belonging, or longing to belong somewhere, to someone or something. It’s an integral part of the beauty, the joy, the frustration and the heartbreak of life. For me, this was longing and belonging as an immigrant, as an introvert, as a mother of grown children, as a single person living in a city.”

She explained the title of her painting: “It is a hat tip to a song by Suzanne Vega. For me, her words truly encapsulate the feeling of longing to belong somewhere: ‘Solitude stands in the doorway / And I’m struck once again by her black silhouette / By her long cool stare and her silence / I suddenly remember each time we’ve met.’”

Different artists explore different aspects of community and belonging, and not all the communities are small or local. For Marcie Levitt-Cooper, the community in her painting is the universe, the earth and stars encompassed by love. Esther Tennenhouse, on the other hand, contemplates the darker side of belonging.

“My piece is a photocopy from a pre-World War Two Jewish encyclopedia, Allgemeine Ensiklopedya,” Tennenhouse explained. “It was labeled in Yiddish and issued in New York in 1940, the year Germany occupied France. On first seeing this old map, I found it very poignant. The map had to fit the 16-by-16 canvas given to all participants. The format left space, and I filled it with the music of two nigguns and lyrics of six Yiddish songs.”

That colourful map with Hebrew lettering, published just before the Nazis unleashed the full horrors of the Holocaust on European Jews, made for a tragic, frightening image, despite its bright and cheery appearance.

While the exhibit includes other figurative paintings, the majority of the pictures are abstract, either simple swirls of paint or complex geometric patterns, like Daniel Wajsman’s piece – two irregular overlapping rectangles.

“I wanted to emphasize that we should bring everyone in, not leave anyone out,” he said.

Community Longing and Belonging runs to March 29.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Play’s vital importance

Shepherd Siegel, author of Disruptive Play. (photo by Laura Totten)

Shepherd Siegel is a hardcore idealist. At least, it would seem so, based on his book Disruptive Play: The Trickster in Politics and Culture (Wakdjunkaga Press, 2018).

“What if we didn’t take everything so seriously and capitulate to the competitions of war and business?” he writes. “What if we let our utopian dreams and desires out to play, out of the box? What if we did more than talk about it and constellated our lives around play and art instead of work and commerce?”

While all about play, Siegel’s 358-page analysis is more academic than whimsical. A writer, musician and educator, he earned his doctorate at University of California Berkeley and has more than 30 publications to his credit. Quickly into the book, he admits the inherent difficulties in writing on this topic: “By attempting to put play, an irrational activity, into the rational fictions of words, I fear that naming this magic will dispel it.” And, to some extent, it does, but his prose is clear and engaging; his examples well-explained and well-researched.

Siegel defines three types of play. Original play is what kids up to three years old do; it has no purpose except fun, it is spontaneous and creates a sense of belonging. Cultural play entails games with winners and losers; it involves learning skills through practise, it comprises rules and moral lessons. Disruptive play “disrupts the normal functioning of society”; it is “resistance to contest-based society and a public affirmation of the natural play element that pervades all life.”

Disruptive players – or tricksters – have existed throughout history, in both oral and writing-based cultures. Siegel gives some 25 examples, beginning with the trickster Wakdjunkaga, whose precise origins are unknown, but whose story comes from the Winnebago (or Ho-Chungra) tribe, “which emerged in northwestern Kentucky in roughly 500 BC. From 500 AD and for about a thousand years, they lived in what is now Wisconsin.” He ends with the Yes Men: “Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos are known by many aliases, but they are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno when they are the Yes Men,” and they operate under the motto, “Lies can expose truth,” using guerilla theatre and other tactics, Siegel writes, to “embarrass and proclaim the sins of those who would wage unjust wars, destroy the environment, or cause the suffering and death of other people.”

Siegel discusses in depth several trickster tales from various parts of the world. He analyzes King Lear’s Fool, Bugs Bunny and The Simpsons in this context, as well as real people, such as Alfred Jarry, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Kaufman, Abbie Hoffman and others, and movements like dadaism in art, the Beat Generation in literature and rock and roll in music. He also offers a couple of models on which a play society could be based: the Fremont Solstice Parade in Seattle and Burning Man in Nevada.

While acknowledging that there are many problems in the world, Siegel foresees a time when society will be able to meet all of its members’ basic needs. When this time comes, he writes, “the greatest remaining problem will be one of establishing and maintaining societies of trust. Play, as we shall see, absolutely requires trust in order to thrive, even to exist.” However, until that time comes, disruptive play – which threatens power brokers and structures – is a dangerous venture.

“Playful adults, artists, the poor, people with disabilities and deviators are all sent to the margins,” writes Siegel. “From the 17th-century development of military tactics and the industrial revolution of the 18th century came a more prescriptive sense of the normal and the suppression of carnival celebrations and urges … thus the binding of the Trickster spirit. The concentration of power, by its very nature, requires divesting this spirit, treating the Trickster as the Fool or court jester. But eventually the Fool makes fools of those who would constrain, punish and repress Trickster spirit.”

Unfortunately, while most of the tricksters Siegel highlights do indeed have their time in the sun and they manage, for awhile, to speak truth to power and get people to question their values and society’s direction, their lasting impact has been minimal, even if they themselves have proven memorable. The potential for building a play society – given Siegel’s convincing argument that capitalism or commercialism and play are antithetical – is a long shot. The models of Fremont and Burning Man are small-scale, time-bound events and do not seem feasible as models for society as a whole, for any length of time.

That said, Siegel’s is an exciting vision. “As (and if) our society achieves economic, environmental and social balance, the search for a meaningful life will take on greater importance and become more complex,” he writes. In this utopia, play, which “has meaning but not purpose … is the perfect antidote for existential crisis in a world of questionable purposes. Only by entering a state that discards purpose – that plays – might our true purpose be discovered.”

God and America

Michael Medved’s latest book is God’s Hand on America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era. (photo from Michael Medved)

Most of us would call them close calls or dumb luck – the many things in American history that could have gone terribly wrong, but didn’t. But Michael Medved firmly believes they weren’t merely happy accidents; rather, they were a direct result of God’s guidance.

Medved’s God’s Hand on America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era (Crown Forum) is a chronological sequel to 2016’s American Miracle (Crown Forum), a book that began with the pilgrims in 1620 and ends with Lincoln’s assassination, on April 14, 1865. They share a common theme, he said: “Divine intervention is extraordinarily obvious and important in tracing the course of American history.”

Story after story, Medved builds the case that there are solid “arguments for divine providence in the rise to power, and continued power and prosperity, of the United States.” President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, was shot in the chest but a folded speech in his jacket pocket took the bullet.

In another of many examples, a seemingly lucky moment came during the Battle of Midway, in June 1942. U.S. planes had gotten lost over the Pacific Ocean but, just in time, they suddenly found their way back, to dive bomb Japan’s fleet. History, said Medved, regarded this as a huge blow to the Japanese – at a time when the Americans and British had, up until that point, faced setback after setback, loss after loss, and were struggling to make advances in the Pacific.

“Fate, destiny, providence and the United States is a complicated process. It doesn’t mean America only wins, but it does mean that it’s safe to say that Lincoln, Washington, the Roosevelts, were right; Kennedy and Eisenhower were right; that America has been used as an instrument, or vehicle, for grand purposes by a Higher Power,” noted the Jewish syndicated radio host, whose daily program reaches more than five million listeners, across 300 stations. Medved is also author of 12 other books, including bestsellers The 10 Big Lies About America and Hollywood vs. America.

His thesis isn’t out of the blue, either – since the first landings, ordinary Americans and their leaders have believed that God helped in their nation’s successes, said Medved. For people of faith, it was the most reasonable explanation for the seemingly inexplicable. Their Bible-centred view carried over to an appreciation of Jews, he added, at a time when there were few Jews in the United State, i.e. until the 19th century.

They recognized, he said, “the special place the Jewish people had in America,” especially conscious of the verse in Genesis, which says that anyone who blessed the Jews would be blessed, and anyone who cursed the Jews would be cursed. These beliefs were exhibited in many ways, such as the Hebrew words on the seal at Yale, Urim and Thummim, elements of the ancient high priest’s breastplate, used for obtaining oracles; and the seal of Dartmouth College, which has El Shaddai (God) in Hebrew.

Early colonizers even identified themselves as being “like the Israelites who have crossed a perilous ocean to come to the land that was promised,” said Medved. “That identification of Puritans [goes] all the way back to the founding of New England in the 1630s.… They described themselves as ‘New Testament Hebrews.’ The identification with the Jewish people was very profound.”

While at Princeton, then-future president James Madison’s concentration of study was Hebrew, said Medved. Later in history, Harry Truman formally recognized Israel, minutes after it was declared a country. And then there was Richard Nixon’s military aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War – quite unexpected, said Medved, given the recordings that surfaced of Nixon using insulting epithets against Jews. According to Medved, Nixon’s gesture of goodwill, though not mentioned in the book, saved the Jewish state from annihilation.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Schitt’s Creek in final season

Co-creators Eugene Levy, left, and son Daniel Levy were among the Schitt’s Creek panelists at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Jan. 17. (photos by Rod Morata/Michael Priest Photography)

Fans of Canada’s mega-hit TV show Schitt’s Creek were eagerly eyeing the stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Jan. 17. They had just viewed the first two episodes of the sixth and final season on a big screen and the main cast was about to appear. When the curtain lifted, the audience loudly cheered, as Eugene Levy (Johnny), Daniel Levy (David), Catherine O’Hara (Moira) and Annie Murphy (Alexis) sat smiling.

The moderator, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson, didn’t waste any time asking why they decided to call it quits.

“We had discussed it and thought six seasons would give us enough time to tell our story,” said Daniel Levy, the show’s co-creator, co-executive producer, writer and Eugene Levy’s real-life son. “Working so closely with the show, it almost spoke to me. I felt we built enough to land the plane, so to speak. From day one, I have been aware of overstaying your welcome. I would rather leave people with a real joyful idea of what the show was and what it meant to them.”

The clever, funny, quirky Schitt’s Creek is a fish-out-of-water sitcom in which the ultrawealthy Rose family – Johnny and Moira and their two adult children, David and Alexis – goes into bankruptcy and loses everything. With no money and nowhere to live, they have little choice but to relocate to Schitt’s Creek, a Podunk town that Johnny once bought David as a joke. Their new home is the town’s no-frills one-storey motel, and the foursome, who had previously been preoccupied with their own extravagant lives, learn to become a real family. “When you get down to it, the stories are about who people are, not what they are,” said Eugene Levy.

Once settled into their new life, the Rose family has to contend with the town’s scruffy mayor, Roland Schitt (Chris Elliott), his wife, high school teacher Jocelyn (Jennifer Robertson), the sarcastic motel receptionist, Stevie Budd (Emily Hampshire), and café waitress Twyla (Eugene Levy’s real-life daughter, Sarah Levy).

Schitt’s Creek, filmed in Ontario, premièred in 2015 on CBC in Canada and Pop TV in America. It’s produced by Not a Real Company Productions Inc. In 2017, the show started airing on Netflix as well, and viewership soared. The series has won numerous awards, including Canadian Screen Awards, and an MTV Movie and TV Award for Daniel Levy.

Initially, Daniel Levy came to his dad with the show’s premise and a script. “In the beginning, it was a way to do something with your son,” recalled Eugene Levy. “We started it as a great project and wanted to make it as far as we could. We ended up getting it on the air in Canada on a real network – and I thought that was great. Cut to five years later and, thanks in a major way to Daniel, who has guided this to a brilliant conclusion, Schitt’s Creek has received so much acclamation and passion from fans.”

photo - Pop TV’s Schitt’s Creek: A Screening and Conversation featured, left to right, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy, and was moderated by Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson — Pop TV’s Schitt’s Creek: A Screening and Conversation featured, left to right, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy, and was moderated by Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson. *(photo by Rod Morata/Michael Priest Photography)*

Each season, the writers have been able to advance storylines without crossing the line into absurdity, and the actors have been able to develop their characters’ unique personalities and eccentricities.

“I wanted to make sure the actors were challenged and excited about coming back [each season] to do their parts,” said Daniel Levy. “When you have a cast of this quality, an ensemble as extraordinary as we have, it would be a dishonour not to show up each season with great storylines, given the calibre of work that they do. The actors need to feel challenged and excited to come back to do their part – that’s what keeps them motivated. When things flatline, people check out.”

He continued, “When you create characters the audience loves, you can take them on a lot of terrific story rides. With the growth of the characters, we were able to add in a layer of sentimentality. Without sounding shmaltzy, there was such a collective sense of excitement with our cast and crew, that actors showed up to watch scenes that they weren’t even in.”

The show’s writing has revealed the characters’ different layers. Take Alexis, for example. While she is self-involved, mostly oblivious and enjoys referring to past relationships with Hollywood celebrities, she is still charming. “When we met Alexis on paper, she was not that likeable – she was quite shallow and selfish,” said Murphy about the character she plays. “But, when I got the breakdown for the audition, at the end it said, ‘a young Goldie Hawn,’ who is bubbly and effervescent, but grounded. I wanted to play her as a fully fleshed out human being. The writers did a good job letting her grow as a human. I have so much fun playing her.” (Alexis often exaggerates her hand gestures and is fond of saying, “Ew, David!” to her brother.)

Moira, the family matriarch, has become an iconic figure over the years. Before moving to Schitt’s Creek, she was a socialite, actress and inattentive mother – she didn’t even recall her daughter’s middle name! While she remains eccentric, self-absorbed and theatrical, she, too, is likeable. “Originally, I wanted to come up with a character I would have fun playing and people would love watching,” said O’Hara, who wears a variety of wigs in every episode. “I didn’t know anyone would care. But the writers kept giving me great opportunities.”

Moira accentuates inappropriate syllables when she speaks. How does she choose which syllables to accentuate? “In the moment, it just makes sense,” O’Hara said, laughing, and raising her voice at the word “sense.”

The character of David has a few obsessive-compulsive tendencies, is occasionally hypochondriacal, is into pop culture, has a keen eye for fashion and is often sweetly sarcastic. He opened the store Rose Apothecary and started to date Patrick (played by Noah Reid), his business partner. As the series progressed, the two fell in love and, in the last season, they plan their wedding. When asked if the sexuality addressed in the series caused advertisers to push back, Daniel Levy said he wasn’t aware of any advertiser having done so. “The networks have given us a lot of freedom,” he said, “and, for that, I am so grateful.”

From the beginning, Schitt’s Creek was a low-budget show. “We were just a little Canadian television show,” Daniel Levy admitted, adding that they didn’t exactly have the budget of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. “But not having money helped. We had to maximize our budget and were forced to be creative and put the little money we had on the screen. As the expression goes, diamonds are formed under extreme pressure. Great work happens where you are pushed to the limits.”

The final episode will air April 7. “It’s a beautiful conclusion to the series,” said Eugene Levy.

Daniel Levy wrote the last episode of the show in half a day. “Because we had exceptional writers who helped me make this show what it was, the last episode essentially wrote itself,” he said. “We didn’t want to backload a ton of stories, which can happen in some series finales. I didn’t want to be burdened with expectations of making it any bigger than it is, because it’s a small show. I didn’t want it to feel any bigger than any other episode we had done. I wanted our last episode to be just a great episode of TV.”

Alice Burdick Schweiger is a New York City-based freelance writer who has written for many national magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day and The Grand Magazine. She specializes in writing about Broadway, entertainment, travel and health, and covers Broadway for the Jewish News. She is co-author of the 2004 book Secrets of the Sexually Satisfied Woman, with Jennifer Berman and Laura Berman.

From baseball player to spy

Moe Berg as a catcher during his time in Major League Baseball. (photo from Irwin Berg)

Near the end of John Ford’s essential 1962 western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor coins the credo, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The fact, as we all know, is that Americans are all-star myth-makers and myth-lovers. Many American Jewish boys caught the bug via the improbable immigrant saga of Moe Berg, a paradoxically brilliant professional athlete who led a secret second life as a spy for the U.S. government. How much of Berg’s story is true, though, and how much was legend passed among kvelling kids in the schoolyard?

Aviva Kempner, who hit a home run with her 1998 documentary about another Jewish ballplayer, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, was the obvious, natural and best-equipped filmmaker to take on the mid-20th-century mysteries at the heart of Berg’s minor celebrity.

The Spy Behind Home Plate, which screens at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival March 8 at the Rothstein Theatre, is a testament to Kempner’s determination and persistence. Chock full of dozens of contemporary and archival interviews, and packed with rare photos and even rarer film footage, The Spy Behind Home Plate is a definitive record of Berg’s achievements.

Although it’s an effective way to impart information, the dogged, dog-eared marriage of talking heads, vintage visuals and period music can’t fully evoke the shadowy stealth and deadly risks of Berg’s wartime activities. Hamstrung by her budget, Kempner wasn’t able to stage reenactments or employ other strategies to illustrate the unfilmed and unrecorded liaisons and conversations that Berg had in Europe in 1944 and 1945. The Spy Behind Home Plate, therefore, is like the steady everyday player who notches the occasional three-hit game but never achieves the transcendent grace and power of a superstar.

Morris (Moe) Berg, international man of mystery, was born in New York in 1902. His father had fled a Ukrainian shtetl for the Lower East Side, where he started a laundry before buying a drugstore in Newark.

The family moved to New Jersey when Moe was a boy, and he grew into an excellent student and a terrific baseball player. After a year at New York University, he transferred to Princeton, where he was a star shortstop (back when the Ivy League was the top, if not the only, sports conference) and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

While his older brother Sam fulfilled Dad’s wishes and went to medical school, Moe signed a contract to play pro ball. He acceded to his father’s demands up to a point by attending Columbia Law School in the off-seasons, earning his degree and passing the New York bar in 1929.

It was a false bargain: Moe despised the idea of being a lawyer, while Bernard Berg never accepted a baseball career as a legitimate pursuit. In fact, the old man refused to go to the park and see his son play.

From an athletics standpoint, his dad wasn’t missing much. A knee injury early in Moe’s career, compounded by primitive diagnosis and treatment, severely slowed him. Over 15 years as a backup catcher, Berg notched exactly 441 hits in 663 games.

What set Moe apart was his charm, charisma and erudition. He studied Sanskrit at the Sorbonne one off-season, and read multiple newspapers every day. When he went to Japan on a barnstorming tour with Babe Ruth and other Major League stars, he learned Japanese.

Berg carried a camera everywhere on that trip, and made a point of checking out the roof of a tall Tokyo hotel in order to shoot a 360-degree panorama of the city. It’s not altogether clear if he was already working officially (albeit surreptitiously) for the U.S. government, but his film was of significant help when the United States went to war with Japan after Pearl Harbor.

In fact, in early 1942, Berg recorded a radio segment in Japanese that was broadcast in Japan and drew on the goodwill he’d accumulated over two prewar visits.

photo - Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942 — Moe Berg in a military jeep in California with his brother Sam during the war, July 1942. *(photo from Irwin Berg)*

Berg had been sent on research missions to South America, but that was too far from the real action. It appears he found a home in 1943 in the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the intelligence branch that evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency after the war.

His primary and crucial assignment was to ascertain how close the Germans were to having a nuclear weapon, and to sway Italian scientists from the Axis to the Allies. To successfully carry off his cover story, Berg was briefed on the science and strategy of the Manhattan Project.

One biographer recounts, “The OSS had given the Manhattan Project its own spy, in effect, its own field agent to pursue questions of interest wherever he could in Europe. And that was Moe Berg.”

Kempner accords a great deal of screen time to this episode in Berg’s clandestine career as a professional spook. It’s a great story, in which the solidly built former catcher is assigned to attend a conference in Switzerland and determine – from the keynote speech by a visiting German scientist, Werner Heisenberg – if the Nazis are within reach of perfecting the bomb.

Berg carries a pistol to the symposium, with orders to use it on Heisenberg if he deems it necessary. It would be churlish of me to recount the outcome of Berg’s suicide mission except to say that the catcher-turned-spy who spoke seven languages lived unhappily ever after the war.

Kempner leaves us wanting to know more about Berg’s later years. By the weirdest of coincidences, Sam Berg headed a group of doctors sent to Nagasaki to study the effects of radiation poisoning. Incredibly, Moe and Sam never knew about each other’s exploits. This lone fact reveals that there’s still more to know about Moe Berg’s story.

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs until March 8. For tickets and the movie schedule, visit vjff.org.

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

Belief in God gives strength

Author Cheri Tannenbaum gives a talk about her book, A Woman of Few Words. (photo from Gefen Publishing House)

“Happiness is a choice,” writes Cheri Tannenbaum in her book Woman of Few Words: My Creative Journey with Dystonia (Gefen Publishing House, 2019).

No one would blame Tannenbaum for not being happy, for staying in bed, for giving up. But that’s not who she is. “From the first day of my illness to this very day,” she writes, “I wake up each morning, say Modeh Ani (the prayer said upon waking in the morning), push myself out of bed, and consciously and deliberately choose life.”

Born in Edmonton, Tannenbaum is the oldest child of Samuel (z”l) and Frances Belzberg; the family moved to Vancouver when she was 16. With refreshing honesty, Tannenbaum shares her struggles with anorexia, but also some of the ways in which she was a “happy, fun-loving, gregarious, outgoing flower child” when she was in her teens. She writes about how she became religious, and it is her strong belief in God that has buoyed her since she became ill with dystonia at the age of 20, the first sign of which was that her “handwriting suddenly became totally illegible.” As well, her voice became monotonic, and other symptoms appeared, including severe difficulties in walking and, eventually, speaking, a symptom that, very much later in life, was remedied, as the unexpected result of medication intended for another purpose.

Woman of Few Words details Tannenbaum’s life with dystonia, which, according to the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, which was founded by her parents, “is characterized by involuntary muscle contractions and spasms.” She openly talks about the time she attempted suicide and the difficulties she had in having children. She offers thoughts on living with the illness and lessons she has learned, as well as several pages on dystonia and many inspirational quotes from various sources.

Tannenbaum has a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in human development. She has followed her passion – art – in more than one creative direction. She has a long-lasting marriage, three children, grandchildren, and family and friends who care about her, and she has lived in several places in the world, making her home in Efrat, Israel. As she writes, “Dystonia is not my essence, nor does it define me.” It does, however, present many challenges.

“If I didn’t have the belief that there is an all-loving, all-powerful G-d who runs the world and has a master plan, then all challenges are just random; things that happen are just occurrences coming from nowhere…. Most probably, those challenges would feel meaningless and purposeless,” she told the Independent.

Tannenbaum responds to every reader who sends her a note. “The notes I have gotten have been extremely positive, telling me how I have helped them or given them a different perspective, etc.”

She said, “If I were to have gotten only one response that I have touched one person’s soul then I have accomplished what I set out to do – baruch Hashem, I have gotten more than one.”

Tannenbaum’s mother shared some of the ways in which her daughter’s illness affected the family.

“Cheri’s illness was slow in showing itself so, at first, her tripping or falling or dropping things was almost a joke for her siblings,” said Belzberg, who has three other children. “I took her to our family doctor, who said it was just teen angst, then that it was physiological, so she saw a psychiatrist, who said she was fine, so back to the GP.

“As her condition became worse, I began shopping for different kinds of medical advice locally and even to Scripps Clinic in California, and still no answers.

“In the meantime,” said Belzberg, “Cheri met Harvey, married and moved to Los Angeles … and her condition worsened.”

Belzberg said it took almost five years for them to get a diagnosis and a name for her daughter’s condition: dystonia muscular deformans. “There were, at that time, three known patients,” said Belzberg. “Today, we have several hundred on this continent alone.”

With no known patients and no known treatment or cure, Belzberg said, “My husband mobilized with the help of two doctors from UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], Dr. John Menkes and Dr. Charles Markham; we gathered about five or six known neurologists from across the U.S. and began to do research. Meetings were set up for every two weeks and both my husband and I monitored the meetings between the experts … with the whole purpose of finding everything there was to know about the disease and how to treat it.

“Word got out that this was being addressed and there was more interest from within the research community,” she said. “We got a grant from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], plus our own … financial support, to establish ourselves, and began a series of research conferences with different doctors with different specialties. That was almost 40 years ago and, this June, there will be the Samuel Belzberg 6th International Dystonia Symposium in Dublin, Ireland, the latest in our international annual meetings.

“Through our persistence, as parents, we have created an international research body with a large patient list and researchers waiting to have their grants financed,” said Belzberg. “We also – as parents and ones who are crucially and emotionally involved – started our own scientific board and monitored them ourselves. We set a precedent – no other research board that we know of allows lay people to actually participate, verbally, in the discussions as they ponder their findings.”

Belzberg noted that funding is always a concern because dystonia “is not a well-known disease or a recognizable name, though we fall in the category of MS [multiple sclerosis] and Parkinson’s.”

Asked what advice she would have for a parent of a child with a chronic illness, Belzberg said, “Every family has to deal with their own crises emotionally, spiritually, within their own strengths, and persist in finding answers. Chronic illnesses can be very wearing both for the patient and the family, so it takes a great deal of tolerance and understanding on the part of each to make it through the day.”

For someone who just found out they have a chronic illness, Tannenbaum said, “I would first give them a big hug and sit with them, hold their hands and just listen to them vent – how they feel about the diagnosis, their anger, their fear, their hopelessness, their ‘why me?’

“When they would be ready to hear me, I would tell them that there is a G-d, master of the universe, who loves you more than anyone else loves you in the whole wide world. Everything G-d does is for the good, even though I know it doesn’t feel that way right now. This is a test that G-d knows you can pass; otherwise, He wouldn’t have given it to you…. This is an opportunity for you to grow and to bring out your hidden potential and strengths that you never knew existed within you. Through this test, you can create miracles. Through this test, you can bring good and G-d into the world. Depending on your attitude and perspective, you will be able to help and change other people’s lives. This test is bringing you farther along to fulfilling the potential that only you can do.”

Life with inherited trauma

Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma. (photo from Gita Arian Baack)

Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma, was in town earlier this month to speak at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival and hold a three-day experiential workshop with the Second Generation Group in Vancouver.

The Ottawa-based counselor began her festival presentation with a quote from the late Israeli novelist Amos Oz, who wrote, “Our past belongs to us, but we do not belong to it.” For Baack, the quote underscores her message to inheritors of the Shoah – that “we were given life and an obligation to bear witness and honour the martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust. And that we also have the right to live full and joyful lives.”

“Generational trauma stems from devastating events which transpired before we were born,” Baack told the Independent. “In the case of the Holocaust, we have experienced it from birth; it is as if we were there. We carry an unrelenting sadness, sense of absence and betrayal.”

The ultimate question her book explores is: “How can we live a full life despite the difficult trauma we inherited?”

Prior to writing The Inheritors, Baack conducted doctoral research into the subject of intergenerational trauma and resilience, yet what she uncovered did not fit or go deeply enough into either. Often, resilience is described as bouncing back with support from others. But, she said, “You don’t bounce back from the Holocaust!”

She was resolved to unravel answers to these and other questions, such as why are so many of us resilient and compassionate despite our inherited trauma? Do we carry memory from one generation to another? How do we move forward, when the usual therapies for trauma have proven not to work for us?

“We are also faced with the difficulty of piecing together our family stories,” said Baack. “Much of our family stories are full of holes, unknowns and even secrets, our roots destroyed. Understandably, we have strong emotions but don’t know how to deal with them; for example, excessive sadness, fear of authority, worry, lack of trust, lack of safety, etc.”

Further, inherited trauma is often frozen, embedded in the brain stem, also known as the primitive brain – accessing it is difficult, but it can be done, she said.

Baack noted that ancient wisdom, the Bible and new epigenetic scientific research explain that trauma is passed onto generations in the DNA, and even the cells, for as many as seven generations. She strongly believes that this is the case if it is acknowledged and processed; if it is not, then it can take longer than seven generations.

Though Baack’s own experience is being a child of Holocaust survivors, The Inheritors encompasses others who have been victimized: Canada’s indigenous population, survivors of the Rwandan genocide and of several other horrible episodes of recent history. The book also looks at trauma on a personal level, from those who have suffered as a result of natural disaster, an accident, economic hardship, the justice or education system, illness or loss of a loved one.

The intent of The Inheritors is to serve as a tool for moving forward, said Baack. The book is filled with dialogues, poetry and stories from people of different backgrounds. Readers are invited to explore their story, and there are questions at the end of each chapter to help them process that story and, in so doing, transform their pain. At the least, in the end, they will have a written story as a legacy to their descendants.

The Inheritors has had other, unexpected, impacts. For example, the conductor of the North Carolina State University orchestra commissioned composer and flutist Allison Loggins-Hull to write a piece for an upcoming performance and she has chosen to write a work inspired by the book – Inheritors Overture will première on April 5 in Raleigh, N.C.

The group dialogues that Baack conducts offer a means of validation through other people with similar experiences and various experiential tools that can help further a deeper exploration of their trauma stories, the “undiscussables” and the unknowns. Group participants, she said, are often surprised by the creativity, laughter and camaraderie that arise.

The Inheritors is dedicated to (and inspired by) Baack’s two half-siblings. “From my earliest beginnings, I remember carrying a great sadness for my siblings, Henush and Halina Arian, who were only 4 and 3 years old, respectively, when they were killed,” she writes. There was no information about the circumstances of their death or burials, “But their existence was real and has mattered to me in an extraordinary way. And so I don’t fight the sadness; I embrace it. It has a special place. I am the carrier of their memory. This burden is the most cherished of all my burdens.”

At the age of 4 or 5, Baack had what she describes as a “knowing” or “inherited memory.” A “felt sense” told her, even at that young age, that her siblings, two of 1.5 million children killed by the Nazis, had both been shot in the back. When she asked her father how her half-siblings died, he said he didn’t know. Nonetheless, the memory (and feeling) she had inherited persisted, and could be placed on a spot in the middle of her back, with a knowing that her half siblings had been shot in that place.

Her research revealed that the timing of their deaths was before gas chambers had been built, and children under 5 were regularly shot. In 2019, a tour guide in Krakow pointed to the very street where the children and their mother were shot. To Baack, it was a stunning confirmation of her lifelong memory.

Baack has been consulting and coaching individuals and organizations for more than 30 years. She recently founded the Centre for Transformational Dialogue to help individuals and communities that have inherited devastating legacies. She also has written a book of verse, Poems of Angst and Awe, published in 2017.

For more information, visit gitabaack.com. Baack continues to research inherited memory and wishes to hear from others on the subject. She can be reached at gbaack@rogers.com.

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

Goldstein’s Snapshots in Montreal

Part of Dina Goldstein’s 11-photograph series Snapshots from the Garden of Eden is “Princess in the Tower” (2017). (image © Dina Goldstein)

On Feb. 20, Vancouver-based artist Dina Goldstein’s Snapshots from the Garden of Eden opened at the Museum of Jewish Montreal (imjm.ca). The exhibit will be on display until May 17.

A collection of 11 large-scale black-and-white photographs, Snapshots re-imagines modernized versions of characters and passages from Jewish fairytales, folk stories and legends collected in the book Leaves from the Garden of Eden by award-winning folklorist Howard Schwartz. Drawn from Jewish oral and written traditions across the centuries, the stories span the Jewish world – from Italy to Afghanistan – bringing to life the diversity and vibrancy of this overlooked area of Jewish storytelling and heritage.

Renowned for her reinterpretations of cultural symbols, Goldstein’s Snapshots reframes Jewish lore both famed and forgotten through the eyes of the 21st century. “The resonance of Goldstein’s work stems from her ability to weave intricate visual narratives,” said curator Alyssa Stokvis-Hauer, “where the history of Jewish folklore is catapulted into the modern era with a cast of characters and film noir-esque scenes that are provocative, imaginative and layered with meaning.”

Playing with visual and narrative archetypes, Goldstein creates new connections and relevance by merging the traditional and whimsical with contemporary themes of technology, desire, justice and identity, exploring and reinvigorating the history and role of Jewish folk narratives in broader cultural memory.

Commissioned in 2017 by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco for an exhibition on Schwartz’s Leaves from the Garden of Eden, Goldstein’s photographic series has already been exhibited across Europe and North America. (For more on Goldstein, see jewishindependent.ca/modern-ancient-jewish-tales and jewishindependent.ca/challenging-viewers-beliefs. Her website is dinagoldstein.com.)

Couple cartoons about love

Yehuda and Maya Devir and their self-drawn webcomic characters in One of Those Days. (image from Devirs)

Fans always do a double take when they see Yehuda and Maya Devir at a comics convention or in a New York City subway, or wherever. The young Israeli couple looks like they jumped right out of their virally popular webcomic One of Those Days.

“I suppose it’s like meeting a real Bart Simpson in the street,” mused Yehuda. “We act exactly the same as our characters.”

Indeed, about seven million social media followers know that Maya loves super-hot showers and hates folding laundry. They know Yehuda’s a big baby when he’s sick and is willing to say “I’m sorry” after an argument. They sympathized with the couple’s struggle to get pregnant.

Most of all, fans smile at the humorous spin the webcomic puts on everyday scenes in a marriage, from dishes in the sink to kisses on the couch.

“We get lots of emails and messages from around the world about how we changed the way couples look at their relationship and how they talk to each other,” Yehuda told Israel21c. “It’s amazing that we can make such a difference for people, that our work can connect Muslim, Jewish, black, white, rich, poor … it doesn’t matter.”

One of Those Days won the Most Creative Content Maker Award at the Inflow Global Summit 2019 Awards for social media influencers.

“We dedicated our award to our followers and supporters around the world. We have fans in Brazil, Japan, Trinidad, Iran, Iraq – basically, every country,” Yehuda said. “People thank us for making them happy once a week and making them feel they are not alone. It’s an amazing journey we’ve been on.”

The Devirs’ journey began in September 2016, when they packed up their diplomas in visual communication from Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and moved to Tel Aviv.

The newlyweds hoped to find an affordable apartment in a nice neighbourhood. And they hoped to make a living in illustration and design. Neither aspiration was terribly realistic.

“A friend suggested we post a selfie on Facebook asking friends to help us find an apartment,” said Maya. “We didn’t know how to take a good selfie, but we can draw really well, so we did a cartoon of ourselves and posted that.”

Not only did that illustration help them find an affordable flat in a very expensive city, but it also formed the kernel of One of Those Days.

While working as a freelance illustrator in the fashion, music and startup industries, Yehuda posted funny snippets on social media about being a new husband.

“Very quickly I joined him because I wanted him to make me look good,” Maya said with a laugh, “and because the story belonged to both of us. The concept was to illustrate moments we both experienced.”

In May 2017, Bored Panda posted a piece about the Devirs that went viral. “After a week, we gained half a million followers on Instagram,” Maya said. “Since then, we never stopped gaining followers. We got tons of emails and Yehuda couldn’t manage by himself. So, I left my job as art director in an ad firm and joined him full-time in October 2017. This was our dream – to create something of our own.”

They take complementary roles in each cartoon. “We start the idea together and the actual illustration is Yehuda’s talented hand,” said Maya. “Then I add my suggestions about colour composition and typography. I also manage the business.”

She said, “I opened an ecommerce shop. At first, we sold only autographed A5-sized prints of One of Those Days comics and Yehuda’s other comic illustrations. People who were into art and comics appreciated that.”

The online shop now sells three One of Those Days books plus merchandise, including apparel, shower curtains, calendars, phone skins and other items imprinted with favourite cartoons.

The Devirs’ YouTube channel has 46,000 subscribers. They have a Patreon subscription content service. They’ve appeared at comic-cons in Europe, India and will soon visit the United States. They are in great demand to give talks and lectures.

“Everything we do is because our fans suggested it,” said Yehuda. “Now, they want a TV show and we are going to try to do it. We are working with a scriptwriter at a studio in the U.S.”

photo - The online shop sells three One of Those Days books, plus other merchandise — The online shop sells three One of Those Days books, plus other merchandise. *(image from Devirs)*

Relationships proved to be a universal kind of language for the Devirs. “When we decided to move into the stage of being parents and saw it wouldn’t be that easy for us, this was a turning point,” Yehuda confided. “Would we really talk about the unpleasant experience of trying to get pregnant? It’s a super-personal subject.”

Maya felt that Yehuda’s humorous and colourful style would put the right spin on the topic and could be supportive for other couples in a similar situation. And so they introduced comics about ovulation, periods and lovemaking on demand. Messages offering support and advice came pouring in. It was like a worldwide group therapy session, Yehuda said.

The cartoon announcing Maya’s pregnancy got 16 million likes and shares. The first illustration of baby Ariel got 13 million. As of Dec. 1, she had 219,000 Instagram followers at just six months old.

“It was unbelievable to see the amount of love we got from people we didn’t know,” said Yehuda. “As Israeli and Jewish people, it was especially unbelievable to get supportive reactions from our huge fan base in the Arab world. The Israeli part is not important. We’re just the cartoon couple about love.”

Now living on Maya’s childhood kibbutz, the couple puts Ariel in the care of her two grandmothers when they travel to shows and lectures. The difficulty of parting with their baby became another comic that went viral because it was so relatable.

“It’s hard for Maya and me to leave her,” said Yehuda, “but, when she’s older, she’ll join us.”

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.