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BGU fosters startup culture

Left to right, at Ben-Gurion University’s Spark to Start-Up gala in Vancouver April 12: David Berson, Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, Michael Fugman, Martin Thibodeau, Caroline Desrosiers, Andrea Freedman and Adam Korbin. (photo from BGU Canada)

Israel is set to catapult into an unparalleled era of economic and creative growth, according to Saul Singer.

Singer is co-author, with Dan Senor, of the bestselling book, Startup Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, and their most recent book, the The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World.

Singer made an analogy to a workout regimen in which people run with weights attached to them.

“The idea is, if you’re running with weights and you take those weights off, it’s really easy to run,” he said. “That’s what’s going to happen with Israel.”

Singer foresees something no less than “an opportunity to re-found the country.”

The generation that has fought in Gaza and in Lebanon are going to return to civilian life and feel like weights have been lifted from their shoulders, he said. “You’re going to see tremendous growth,” Singer said. “A tremendous force of building and optimism.”

Singer was in conversation with Niels Veldhuis, president of the Fraser Institute, at a gala event April 12 for Ben-Gurion University (BGU) Canada. Spark to Start-Up: Resilience Ignites Leaders took place at Beth Israel Synagogue and honoured community leader Michael Fugman. Revenue from the event supports Yazamut 360° Entrepreneurship Centre at Ben-Gurion University (jewishindependent.ca/creating-entrepreneurs).

Like Canada, Israel is a nation of immigrants, Singer pointed out. “Immigrants are natural entrepreneurs,” he said, noting that moving from one place to another takes drive and involves risks.

In their books, Singer and Senor credit mandatory military experience with instilling entrepreneurial skills in young Israelis. Singer has three daughters in the army right now, and one was put in charge of liaising with suppliers around complex weaponries, a subject in which she had no background.

“She said, ‘How am I going to do that? I can’t do it, any of this,’” Singer recounted. “And, sure enough, a year later, she was doing it. Israelis go through this experience time and time again, and it really helps make them entrepreneurs.”

Israeli society also benefits from being a unique hybrid of individualism and collectivity, he said. Most Western societies are becoming more polarized, with citizens dealing with mental health problems, depression and other consequences, which Singer puts down to, in part, “the unbridled march of individualism.”

“What is unique about the Jews is that they’re able to balance these two things: to be individual and yet have community,” he said. “That’s kind of our superpower. I think it’s a big chunk of why we survived for 2,000 years … and I think Israel has doubled down on it.

“You understand that you’re part of something larger than yourself,” he said, something that is emphasized by national service. “Service, by definition, is not just about you.”

The evening’s emphasis on entrepreneurship was underscored by Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, president of BGU. Under his leadership, the university launched a 10-year, $1 billion US global development campaign to double BGU’s physical footprint in Beersheva and expand its research capabilities.

Chamovitz described BGU’s venture capital initiative Cactus Capital, which provides funding to undergraduate students. “What’s unique about it,” he said, “is the advisory committee, which is dealing out the money, are also undergraduate students. We take our undergraduate students … train them as analysts and then give them the venture funds for them to fund different undergraduate ventures.”

Last year, three graduates of BGU’s women entrepreneur program addressed the problem that women in religious, traditional communities, whether Muslim or Jewish, tend not to get routine mammograms. The students developed a wearable app that monitors breast density and uses an algorithm to alert a doctor to call the woman in for a mammogram. The company received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, and garnered seed funding of $26 million.

Chamovitz summarized the ethos of David Ben-Gurion and of his eponymous university: “The possible we can do. The impossible takes a little bit longer.”

Given the closure of Israeli airspace due to ongoing conflict, organizers had a backup plan if Singer could not make it to Vancouver. In the end, attendees got a double bill, with Nuseir Yassin joining the evening’s lineup.

Known online as Nas Daily, Yassin is a social media influencer with 68 million followers. He promotes peace and understanding with one-minute videos that focus on stories that highlight humanity and transcend political conflict.

Yassin was the first Arab Israeli to attend Harvard University.

“After 19 years of being alive,” he said, his arrival at Harvard was an awakening. “I made my first Jewish friend, my first Israeli friend, my first female friend, my first gay friend, my first Black friend and my first Canadian friend. And, to be clear, these are not the same person.”

Attending Harvard in the shadow of Mark Zuckerberg, entrepreneurship was in the zeitgeist, Yassin said.

After an unsatisfying time as a software engineer in New York, Yassin quit the 9-to-5 and started pumping out videos. He made a splash posting 1,000 videos in 1,000 days.

“I made a video and I put it on the internet,” he said. “It failed. Nobody saw it. I made another video, it failed. I made another 270 videos in 270 days, and they all failed until video 271 – and that became the beginning of what we know today as Nas Daily.”

In the past 10 years, Yassin has visited 100 countries, but, when he is looking for fascinating story subjects, he realizes, he keeps coming back to Israel.

“Every time I was looking for people who think different to make videos about, I found them in Israel,” he said. “A vegan steak company: Israel. A technology to make cars drive: Israel. A security startup to hack your phone: Israel. Even my Singaporean team asked me, ‘What’s in the water in Israel?’ And I told them, ‘Nothing. It’s not the water, you fool, it’s the air.’ The air in Israel is really different. If everyone around you is thinking of a startup idea, you think of a startup idea, too. If everyone is into tech, you are into tech. Humans are memetic animals. We mimic the people around us. It’s as simple as that. And, clearly, the startup culture is super-contagious.”

Yassin is now moving away from video creation and has launched a new venture. “It’s an AI business platform,” he said. “It helps anybody start a business just by taking a picture of what they want to sell. AI creates the store, it creates the marketing contents, the videos and the pictures and finds the customer.”

Entrepreneurship – and Israeli entrepreneurship in particular – is an antidote to the negativity evoked by world news, he said.

“Open your phone and it’s all depressing,” said Yassin. “But, in these moments, I remember Canada’s greatest contribution to the world: hockey. And, in hockey, you don’t skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck is going. That’s what we’re doing today – we’re skating to where the puck is going. Even if today is super-depressing, the puck is going towards more peace, more collaborations, more entrepreneurship, less death, more prosperity…. So, the only option we have is to pick the damn puck up and push it forward together – and that, we can do.”

The Spark event honoured Michael Fugman, a community leader who has served on the boards of many organizations, including the United Way, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Richmond Country Club and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. A former president of his family’s apparel business, Fugman managed more than 100 staff and oversaw $100 million in annual sales. He is now in business development with PearTree Canada, a financial firm that created a system to help people donate to charities in a tax-efficient way. PearTree and RBC Royal Bank were the event’s presenting sponsors.

Honorary co-chairs of the event, Caroline Desrosiers and husband Martin Thibodeau, who is regional president of RBC in British Columbia, presented Fugman with the BGU Canada Award for Outstanding Leadership. They were joined for the presentation by Chamovitz, BGU Canada chief executive officer Andrea Freedman, BGU Canada regional president Adam Korbin and BGU Canada regional director David Berson.

Fugman credited his family – going back to his immigrant grandparents – for instilling in him Jewish values, devotion to family and commitment to Israel. He noted his cousin Mordechai, who died, at age 17, in Israel’s War of Independence. Fugman acknowledged his family in the audience, including wife Kathi.

Simon Margolis, who has known Fugman since Grade 1 at Vancouver Talmud Torah, was emcee.

Rabbi marks 13 years

Over the weekend of May 8, Temple Sholom celebrates Rabbi Dan Moskovitz’s “bar mitzvah” year as leader of the congregation. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz will celebrate his bar mitzvah for the third time on May 9. Marking 13 years since his arrival as senior rabbi at Vancouver’s Reform Temple Sholom, the congregation is fêting him with a 1980s-themed bar mitzvah party.

Moskovitz may experience a sense of déjà vu, since he had not one but two bar mitzvahs in 1983.

“My dad was president of the Reform congregation and vice-president of the Conservative synagogue,” the rabbi said of growing up in Foster City, in the San Francisco Bay Area. “I’m a Jewish mutt, I like to say.”

He had a Reform bar mitzvah on Friday night and a Conservative one on Saturday morning. The weekend of his Temple Sholom celebration will be similarly packed.

Friday night Shabbat services are open to the entire community, with speakers reflecting on his tenure, something that makes Moskovitz feel awkward.

“It’s weird to say, ‘Can you talk about me?’” he said. “I love showering praise on others. I truly don’t want to be the centre of attention.”

He understands, though, what the moment represents, not just for him, but for the congregation.

“I recognize that I play a significant role in people’s lives at the most important times,” he said. “That’s a privilege.”

Letting people say thank you, he added, is part of that relationship.

Moskovitz, commonly known as “Rabbi Dan,” has no similar reluctance when it comes to the menu for the Friday night Oneg, which will be stocked with his favourite desserts – Rice Krispie squares and caramel apples.

Saturday morning will belong to someone else entirely: a bar mitzvah boy whose thunder Moskovitz is not about to steal. “This is all about you,” the rabbi assured him.

The Saturday night party will be ’80s nostalgia – but tasteful, Moskovitz promised. Members of the congregation will speak, as will Rabbi Philip Bregman, Temple Sholom’s rabbi emeritus, and leaders of the broader community. Tickets are available on the shul’s website, templesholom.ca.

Sunday morning will feature a bagels-and-brunch gathering for the religious school’s 220 kids and their parents.

The festivities are in support of causes that are close to the rabbi’s heart. Funds raised will go into two endowments.

The first is a pastoral care initiative, led by Rabbi Sally Finestone, whose sole focus is seniors, including regular visits, supporting their families, even driving people to appointments. As the congregation has grown to more than 1,000 households, Finestone is able to take some of the burden off Moskovitz, Associate Rabbi Carey Brown and Cantor Shani Cohen. This program, and Finestone’s position, began through an endowment in memory of Michael Jacobson.

The second endowment, originated by Susan Mendelson and her husband, the late Jack Lutsky, supports a scholar-in-residence program, which has allowed Temple Sholom and the broader community to learn from Israeli writer and thinker Yossi Klein Halevi for the past several years.

Though Moskovitz’s visit to Vancouver before being hired was in a typical Vancouver rainstorm, he instantly felt he had found a home.

“I just fell in love with this congregation,” he told the Independent.

What stands out most, he said, is that, in Vancouver, congregants don’t simply attend services, they participate. “They own it,” he said.

It’s a contrast, he suggested, to parts of American Reform Judaism, where it can feel like congregants outsource their religion to the rabbi, drop their kids off at shul and pick them up after. “I call it drive-by Jewing,” said Moskovitz.

“Our congregation shows up. The parents don’t just drop off their kids. They come in the building. They stay for minyan,” he said.

Something else that surprised him about Vancouver is the level of collaboration among Jewish institutions, exemplified by the inter-denominational Rabbinical Association of Vancouver. It’s a model, he believes, that could reshape Jewish communal life elsewhere.

Of course, not everything has been easy. Rising antisemitism in Canada has forced him into a more public, defensive role than he ever expected. It’s not why he became a rabbi, he said, but it has become part of the job.

Thirteen years in, Moskovitz has no plans to leave.

“I never want to,” he said.

Neither, apparently, does the congregation ever want him to go. They gave him a life appointment, or to age 67: “Whichever comes first,” he said.

Aside from missing his extended family and Trader Joe’s, Moskovitz has no regrets about the move to a new city and country – the citizenship test for which, he noted, he aced, with 20 right answers out of 20.

“My parents are older now. It’s hard for them to travel,” he said. “My father-in-law is older also, so that’s hard. My kids grew up without that drop-by grandparenting, which is so special. So that’s been a trade-off.”

His family has likewise found a home at Temple Sholom, Moskovitz added. His wife, Sharon Mishler, is a true partner in the work, he said.

“When I’m in the front of the congregation leading the synagogue and services, she’s in the back of the congregation creating relationships and connecting people,” said the rabbi. “She takes brides to the mikvah. She meets with our seniors. She takes people out to lunch. She makes phone calls. She’s a great source of information for me when people tell her things that they think I should know about somebody being sick or whatever it is.”

Their son Judah, 20, studies political science and history at the University of Ottawa and works on Parliament Hill for Vancouver Granville Member of Parliament Taleeb Noormohamed. He was just selected as the co-chair of the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee Fellowship.

Son Levi, 18, graduates from King David High School this spring and was accepted early to Western University’s Ivey Business School.

Daughter Estee, 14, also a student at King David, has an aptitude for science and, like her brothers, is very involved with BBYO (formerly B’nai B’rith Youth Organization), where she is vice-president of the chapter board.

“I never thought that I would be the rabbi of a synagogue that I’d want to join,” Moskovitz said. “I thought that I would always have to compromise my spirituality to serve the masses of my community.”

At Temple Sholom, he is truly at home.

“It is Judaism in the way that I like my Judaism,” he said. “It’s traditional but inclusive and egalitarian. Progressive in what I think are all the right ways in terms of trying to adapt and respond to modernity, but not watered down Judaism in the process. And it’s a loving, caring congregation.”

Keeper of VTT’s history

David Bogoch, second from the left in the second row, is one of three generations of his family to attend Vancouver Talmud Torah. (photo from David Bogoch)

“David has been so dedicated to VTT,” Vancouver Talmud Torah head of school Emily Greenberg told the JI about why the school is honouring David Bogoch at their May 14 gala.

“From his dedication to our archives and to his preserving our traditions and our history, to being really forward-focused and really understanding what the school needs to be successful,” she said.

“He’s also been very dedicated to our alumni and, as an elementary school, having an engaged alumni is a bit more challenging than a high school, just inherently, but he’s really been an advocate,” she added, noting that Bogoch has been a mentor to her.

“I came here seven years ago, and he was one of my very first meetings that I had,” she recalled. “He and I meet semi-regularly and he’s somebody I can pick up the phone and call at any time and say I need your advice on this…. And what I know is that he has no other agenda than VTT must be a successful place, and we must make sure we’re doing well to serve the community and to serve Vancouver’s Jewish future.”

Bogoch also connected VTT with Stable Harvest Farm. Syd Belzberg has a named space at the school, so was already a big supporter, but, in recent years, he has focused his philanthropic efforts on the nonprofit community farm. VTT’s partnership with Stable Harvest has been central to the school’s plant-based learning program and most of the students are out there at least once or twice a year, said Greenberg.

“We now have curriculum across all grades where our kids are integrating and learning through plants … not just the growing cycle but environmental technology, environmentalism, how to care for the land, the agrotechnology that’s coming out of Israel – drip irrigation, for example, it’s in our garden and it’s something that Syd uses…. The partnership with the farm and then our Jewish Community Garden … has been just an amazing marriage.”

Plant-based learning is one of the school’s hallmark programs, what differentiates VTT from other schools, said Greenberg. Funds raised from the gala will go towards it, as well as the school’s hallmark athletics, arts and other programs.

“Then, of course, there’s always tuition assistance – that’s a piece that we want to continue to support so that all families who want a Jewish education are able to attain it,” she said.

“This coming year, we’re introducing a universal lunch program, so all of our kids are going to be on a meal plan,” Greenberg said, which means the kitchen will need outfitting and the dining hall updating so that the school can “feed about 600 people a day a kosher, healthy lunch that will be tied into some of our plant-based learning…. That’s definitely a high undertaking of the school that we’re hoping to fund.”

For his part, Bogoch said, “I would love to see record amounts of money being raised – and I’d like to see record amounts of attendance and satisfaction.”

Bogoch’s father, Dr. Abraham (Al) Bogoch, was “Mr. Talmud Torah,” spearheading multiple building campaigns on behalf of the school, among many other things. And David Bogoch has followed in those footsteps. He’s been the keeper of VTT’s archive for more than 20 years and is responsible for the alumni portfolio.

“Why? Because it’s a good puzzle,” he told the Independent. “Trying to find every person that went to TT since 1918, trying to identify them, whether they’re living or dead, what’s their current email address and phone number, their mailing address.”

He noted that, every decade or two, the names one sees on various boards and in other community activities and volunteer positions change. For example, when more Israelis started coming, there were more Israeli names. “Same thing happened in the ’50s, when all the Hungarian kids showed up, so they had different names. When Soviet Jewry ended up leaving Russia and coming over…. When Yugoslavia broke up, there was an influx in kids at Talmud Torah with unusual last names.”

photo - David Bogoch, curator of Vancouver Talmud Torah’s archive, will be honoured at the school’s May 14 gala — David Bogoch, curator of Vancouver Talmud Torah’s archive, will be honoured at the school’s May 14 gala. *(photo by Jennifer Shecter)*

It is from exploring the school’s archives that Bogoch sees such trends.

“Every time somebody adds something to the archives, whether it’s photos or documents, it’s always adding to the inventory, so now we’re well over 50,000 documents, photos, in the archives,” he said. “And it’s growing like crazy because we haven’t included [yet] a lot of the digital stuff that Jenn [Shecter] or the other people at the school are taking. And, each year, there are new alumni.”

The archives has benefited from past presidents keeping material from their time on the school’s board, said Bogoch. He also has gone through every Jewish Western Bulletin/Jewish Independent from 1925 to about 2010, copying every mention of Vancouver Talmud Torah.

“We got so much of the information about the history of the school through the Jewish Independent, through the Jewish Western Bulletin,” he said, listing off some of the many types of fundraisers the school has had over the years. “The most weird one,” he said, “was a Gentleman’s Smoke, where they got together, they drank some whiskey and they smoked, either cigarettes, cigars or pipes.”

Seeing how the community has evolved and how the city has changed are two of Bogoch’s favourite aspects of working with the archives, “finding out the early stories of Strathcona,” and stories from when most of the Jewish community moved “to False Creek, and then to Oakridge, and spreading all over the Lower Mainland.”

In preparation for the gala, he’s been going through material with his son, Adam, who knows the school’s history as well as his dad and grandfather, having not only attended VTT but also having written and directed the one-hour documentary Vancouver Talmud Torah Onward: The 100-Year History, which was released in 2017, as part of the school’s centenary celebrations.

While the most visible Bogoch link to VTT is via the paternal side, from father to son to grandson, David Bogoch’s mom, Margaret, was also involved – in the PTA and in fundraising – as well as with other Jewish organizations, such as Hadassah.

The gala event honouring Bogoch is aptly called The Roots We Share.

“There are families that have four generations who have gone to TT. That’s pretty amazing,” he said.

“Right now, the school is so strong, I could not see it failing. You never know what happens in the future, but I can almost guarantee that, if you have people in the background who are willing to step up and make sure it doesn’t fail, it’ll stay. That’s the way I look at my role – behind the scenes. I don’t like to be up front, that’s why this is so unusual, to be up front,” he said about being honoured.

He hopes that people will be inspired by what fellow community members have done to keep Jewish communal life going. He wants people to feel as excited about the school as he is.

At the May 14 event, guests will enter through a passageway of photos from throughout VTT’s history. Adam Bogoch also will create a video tribute to his dad, as well as a video for the night’s formal fundraising ask. He has been tasked with creating other event exhibits that highlight his dad’s archival work.

“Time capsules, in a sense,” said the younger Bogoch. “Guests will be transported into different decades of the school’s history, seeing themselves as children, their parents/grandparents and their old teachers/colleagues, visually experiencing where the school has been, where it is today, and hopefully how it will continue.

“The event is called The Roots We Share and, whether those are old roots or ones just taking shape, what will hopefully be realized is a continuum of values, experiences and purpose.”

“When we understand that we’re part of that history,” said Greenberg, “we understand the purpose of what we’re doing – and no one understands that more than David – that we are linked to our history, we’re linked arm and arm with it, and that’s what will help propel us into the future. We have to have that proper respect and honour for the past, and also the shoulders we stand on, and he really understands that…. He’s such a bridge in so many ways for the school.

“He’s a bridge between the past and the future, he was a bridge to Stable Harvest Farm, he’s been a personal bridge for me to this community and I’m just so grateful for his ongoing engagement in the school,” she said. “He obviously gets great joy from it and I always tell him, he’s not allowed to go anywhere.”

For tickets to the gala, go to talmudtorah.com.

Gala fêtes Infeld’s 20th

Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, centre, with his wife Lissa Weinberger, and their kids, left to right, Yair, Naomi and Avishai. Congregation Beth Israel’s Be the Light Gala on June 4 celebrates Infeld’s 20th year as the synagogue’s spiritual leader. The rabbi says he and his family have “been very lucky to raise a family here and help build a synagogue.” (photo from Beth Israel)

At Congregation Beth Israel’s Be the Light fundraising gala on June 4, the star of the show will be Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, who is celebrating his 20th anniversary as the congregation’s spiritual head. Known for his warmth, charisma and approachability, the rabbi has spearheaded profound changes in the BI community, both physically and spiritually.

The synagogue building itself has been completely transformed, but the heart of BI has grown exponentially, too, both in congregation numbers and in participation. Gary Averbach, a BI member since the 1970s and chair of the committee that fundraised for BI’s rebuild, recalled a younger Infeld, who was 33 when he first applied for the position at Beth Israel.

“He was young and was anxious to live in Canada, and especially in Vancouver,” he said. “He and his wife had decided on their honeymoon that, if there was one place to live other than Israel, it was Vancouver. That impressed me because we didn’t want a rabbi who would see Vancouver as a steppingstone to Los Angeles or New York. We wanted someone who would see Vancouver as a home and a place to raise their family.

“The total change in the physical and human structure of Beth Israel over 20 years is a testament to Rabbi Infeld,” Averbach continued. “As an overseer of the community, he is humble, never arrogant. One example of this is his reluctance to sit on the bimah during services. He designed the bimah such that he could sit with the congregation because he felt the rabbi’s place was with the congregation, not above the congregation. That shows his humility.”

Peter Lutsky, a past board member and past president at BI, spoke fondly of Infeld. “He’s caring, approachable and able to blend the practical and the spiritual,” said Lutsky. “For me, from a Jewish perspective, he’s connected the head and the heart, truly endearing himself not just to me, but to all shul members over the years.”

Infeld is proud of what the congregation has achieved over the past two decades. “The best part of it has been the building of a community with so many people involved,” he reflected. “We’re the largest egalitarian, twice-daily minyan on the West Coast, and we’ve been able to maintain that. When my family and I first arrived in Vancouver, BI Shabbat morning attendance averaged between 35 and 40, but today it’s grown to 150 to 200. And that’s on an ordinary Shabbat! Seeing that growth is fabulous.”

Beth Israel’s “culture of chesed” is also a point of pride for the community, Infeld noted. For example, One Heart Dinner delivers a free monthly meal to those with food insecurity, and the Soup Troupe offers a litre of soup each month to families receiving assistance from Jewish Family Services’ the Kitchen. The Vancouver Jewish Community Garden, a partnership between BI, JFS and Vancouver Talmud Torah, allows students, seniors, congregants and others to participate physically and meaningfully in the act of growing fruit and vegetables. Last year, the garden team donated 1,000 pounds of produce to families in need.

Emily Greenberg, head of school at VTT, worked closely with Infeld on the vision for the community garden. “We envisioned a place where everyone could come together to be Jewish and get their hands dirty in what it means to be Jewish and part of the community,” she said. “It’s been a tremendous project to do together alongside JFS.”

Greenberg said VTT is deeply indebted to Infeld for the many years he has committed to actively promoting Jewish education.

“He truly understands how important it is that we plant the seeds of Jewish education early, and he works with our Grade 5s all year, investing in those relationships and getting them jazzed up for their b’nai mitzvah. As a parent whose kids went through Beth Israel for their b’nai mitzvah, I’ve gotten to know him well. Rabbi Infeld just exudes so much care about what he does. His work is incredibly genuine and purposeful.”

Looking back on his job acceptance 20 years ago, Infeld said it was a great decision to come to Vancouver. “We’ve been very lucky to raise a family here and help build a synagogue,” he said. “All our kids have gone from preschool at the JCC, to VTT and then to KDHS, so we’ve been direct recipients of the excellent Jewish institutions in Vancouver.”

In terms of what he’s accomplished at Beth Israel, he insisted “it’s never about me – it’s always about us. At Beth Israel, we’ve built our community together, and it’s taken fabulous leadership, lay and spiritual. Yes, we rebuilt the entire physical structure of the synagogue, but we’ve also worked on the soul, and continue to build the soul of the congregation.”

Infeld reflected on the growth of key Jewish organizations since 2006, including JACS, JFS and the Jewish day schools. “When we first arrived, KDHS was just getting off the ground and now it’s one of the vibrant hearts of our community,” he said.

A rabbi’s job is never easy, but Infeld said he and his family are grateful to have found a warm, lovely home in Vancouver and at Beth Israel.

“We’ve found people who are extraordinary, and who are more than just congregants, but who are friends and family,” he said. “They’ve been there for us in challenging times and in times of celebration, such as the gala. I’m looking forward to the gala, and kudos to Jacci Sandler, the gala committee, donors and participants, who are working hard to make it a success.”

Infeld’s contract takes him through to retirement, and Averbach said he hopes that’s a long way away. “He’s still young,” said Averbach, “and I hope this 20th anniversary represents not even half of his term in Vancouver!”

For gala tickets, go to bethelightgala.com.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.

Building JWest together

A rendering of JWest as seen from above. (image from JWest)

There is a version of the JWest story that is easy to tell – the renderings, the numbers, the names on the donor wall. However, there’s another story that came before that: the story of what this community had to agree to before a single dollar was raised publicly, and what it took to get there.

JWest is, at its core, a collaboration between three independent institutions – the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, King David High School and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. Each has its own governance, its own mandate and its own community of stakeholders. Over decades, each has built something distinct and worth protecting. Getting all three to formally commit to a shared campus, shared planning and shared accountability wasn’t a given. It required a multi-party agreement that had never been attempted at this scale in Vancouver’s Jewish community. It required each organization to trust the others with something it had always controlled on its own.

That trust didn’t emerge from enthusiasm alone. It was earned through years of consultation, through difficult governance conversations and through a shared recognition that what any one of these institutions could build alone was smaller than what all three could build together. The agreement that confirmed this partnership wasn’t a formality; it was the trust in one another and a level of collaboration that our Jewish community had never tested before.

The philanthropic chapter of this story required the same kind of leap. The JWest campaign has now secured more than $147 million from our community, a figure that reflects confidence in the project’s direction and the people steering it. Major donors took their positions early, when the vision was still largely on paper and the path forward still unknown. They weren’t simply giving gifts – they were signaling to our Jewish community that this project was worth investing in, and the community responded by expanding that circle, one family at a time, with each gift a vote of confidence in the ones that came before.

What that philanthropic momentum produced is something harder to quantify but just as important: proof of what the Jewish community can accomplish when it organizes around a shared long-term vision and commits to making it a reality. That proof compounds. Each milestone – the matching funds, the families who stepped in at every level – made the next conversation easier, and the project’s momentum more visible to everyone watching.

The move to a public campaign this spring marked another milestone. For the first time, JWest opened its doors to the full breadth of our community, including JCC members, KDHS families, Jewish Federation supporters, and people who have never thought of themselves as major donors but who care deeply about what Jewish life in Vancouver looks like for the next generation. That broadening matters not just for what it raises, but for what it means: this campus is being built by our community, not simply for it. Ownership is the point.

We are now approximately $14 million from completing the philanthropic goal. That number is not small. But it is the most achievable it has ever been, because of everything that came before it. The governance works. The partnership holds. Our Jewish community has shown, at every stage, that it is willing to bet on itself.

Every milestone in this project has asked something of us, whether it’s a new level of coordination, a new threshold of trust or a new circle of participation. This one is no different. The final milestone belongs to whoever chooses to step into it.

For more about JWest, visit jwestnow.com.

Emily Pritchard is executive director of JWest Foundation and Alex Cristall is chair of JWest Foundation.

Challah Mom comes to Vancouver

Anat Ishai, aka Challah Mom, leads a women’s bake session on May 13. She teaches challah baking as a form of therapeutic self-care, mindfulness & spiritual grounding. After years marked by grief, conflict & collective trauma, this gathering is an intentional, welcoming & apolitical space for joy, connection & togetherness. (photo from thechallahmom.com)

Click here for tickets (by donation) to the Vancouver in-person event presented by NCJW Vancouver and sponsored by PJ Library.

– NCJW Vancouver

What to do about media bias

photo - Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post — Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post. *(photo from Upstanders Canada)*

Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post, will discuss bias and truth in media with writer and journalist Dave Gordon, a regular contributor to the Jewish Independent, at Upstanders Canada’s first-ever live event.

Media Bias and What to do About It will take place in Vancouver on May 24. Janet Dirks, a veteran CTV news reporter, who served six months in Jerusalem among her decades in front of the camera, will contextualize the changed media landscape. Pat Johnson, president of Upstanders Canada and a member of the JI editorial board, will welcome the audience and explain the work of Upstanders, a national organization that is responding to the antisemitism crisis in Canada by developing innovative initiatives and assembling a broad network of non-Jewish allies in every demographic sector.

Presented live in Vancouver at 2:30 p.m. on May 24 (location to be announced), the program will also be livestreamed nationally. More information and tickets, $18, are available through UpstandersCanada.com.

– Upstanders Canada

Education offers hope

Left to right: Minister and Solicitor General Nina Krieger, Holocaust survivor and keynote speaker Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, Premier David Eby and survivor Leo Vogel at the Legislative Assembly on April 14. (photo from Province of BC)

The annual Yom Hashoah commemoration ceremony at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia took place on April 14, with political leaders, Holocaust survivors and representatives of the Vancouver and Victoria Jewish communities in attendance.

Raj Chouhan, speaker of the Assembly, started the proceedings. “Now, more than ever, it is important that we reflect on and remember the atrocities of the Holocaust and I stand in solidarity with you as we honour survivors today,” he said.

“When I think about the Holocaust, I think of the six million lives of men, women and children lost, the grief, the decimation of entire communities,” said Premier David Eby. “Beyond that, there is the extinguishment of so much potential that could have improved the world.”

Trevor Halford, interim leader of the BC Conservative Party, echoed the premier’s sentiment, calling the Holocaust a genocide unprecedented in its scale. “We lost men, women and children. We never got to see their full potential of what they could be or how they could change and impact this world,” he said. “We must call out hate every time we see it. Every time. Each one of us.”

Jeremy Valeriote, representing the BC Green Party, said that Yom Hashoah is not only a day of mourning but a call to action. “It reminds us of the dangers of hatred, antisemitism and indifference, and challenges us to confront injustice wherever we see it,” he said.

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, an author, educator and survivor, was the keynote speaker. She described a happy, ordinary childhood in Poland in the 1930s. Hers was an assimilated family that participated in Jewish life. Her father was a lawyer and her mother had a large social circle consisting of many friends, both Jewish and not Jewish. That all changed in September 1939.

“There isn’t a day that I don’t ask myself why I survived. How did I survive when six million of us perished, and 1.5 million were children? And one of them was my sister. I lost my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, and the list goes on and on,” Boraks-Nemetz said.

Commemorations, such as the one in Victoria, will hopefully ensure that an “apocalyptic event” like the Holocaust never happens again, Boraks-Nemetz said. Through education, she said, we sow the seeds of truth and understanding, the lesson that racism, intolerance and prejudice must have no place in society.

Through the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Boraks-Nemetz and other survivors have spoken to thousands of schoolchildren in the province. She thanked Eby’s government for mandating Holocaust education for students in Grade 10. “Through such actions, we may find a glimmer of hope for a better future,” she said.

Boraks-Nemetz is the author of several books that reflect on her experiences as a survivor and subsequent life in Canada. Her award-winning young adult novel, The Old Brown Suitcase (1994), is used in school curricula to teach about the Holocaust and multiculturalism. Her most recent books are volumes of poetry, Out of the Dark (2020) and Hidden Vision: Poems of Transformation (2024), written under the name Jagna Boraks.

Towards the end of the commemoration, survivors Leo Vogel and Arlette Baker joined Boraks-Nemetz on stage to honour the victims of Nazi terror.

During the ceremony, Rabbi Meir Kaplan led attendees in prayer, and he reflected on how, over the last 20 years, the room had gone from being filled with survivors to having just a handful. Local community member Ari Hershberg read Boraks-Nemetz’s poem, “A Survivor Remembers the Six Million.”

Nina Krieger, minister of public safety and solicitor general, and former executive director of the VHEC, essentially led the proceedings.

“It’s by engaging with the Holocaust that we consider questions like, What is at stake to remain a bystander?” she said. “What are our obligations in times of moral crisis? We learn about the dangers of denial and distortion of history and memory.”

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

Remembrance – a moral act

Malka Pischanitskaya, centre, told her story of survival at the Vancouver community’s Yom Hashoah ceremony. Her daughter, Inna Turner, and granddaughter, Sophie Turner, also spoke at the April 14 event. (Rhonda Dent Photography)

Even before the Holocaust upended her life, Malka Pischanitskaya’s family was hobbled by poverty. Her father left before she was born, and she was largely raised by her grandmother and great-aunt while her mother worked elsewhere. After the Nazi invasion reached Romaniv, Ukraine, in 1941, when Malka was 10 years old, she saw Jews murdered in the streets. On Aug. 25, 1941, Romaniv’s Jews were rounded up for mass execution.

On that day, there was a pounding on the family’s front door and orders to assemble at a central location. What followed was chaos, crowds converging from all directions, families separated. Men were taken away and executed.

“The screams of men were just horrible,” she recalled.

Malka and her mother survived only because, after hours of terror, some mothers with children were unexpectedly released. Most of their family and community were murdered.

What followed were years of hiding, near-starvation and repeated brushes with death. The title of Pischanitskaya’s memoir, A Mother to My Mother, published by the Azrieli Foundation, comes from the reversal forced on her by war: her mother was so traumatized that young Malka often became the more practical, protective figure, begging for food and helping keep them alive. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-harrowing-survival-story.)

Pischanitskaya shared her story April 14 at the annual Yom Hashoah community event, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, in conversation with Ellie Lawson, education manager of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Each day, Malka left her mother hidden – in a haystack, a trench, wherever they could remain unseen – and went from door to door in nearby villages, begging for bread. Malka had gone to a Ukrainian public school and spoke Ukrainian fluently, while her mother was identifiably Jewish by her accent. Sometimes people helped, sometimes they could not, but two people in particular probably ensured Malka and her mother lived.

One of those people was Lydia. When Malka first approached her, Lydia demurred. “My home is so empty,” she said. “Like a crystal bowl.”

Malka proposed that, if Lydia would hide her and her mother, she would continue to gather food and share it. Lydia agreed and, for more than a year, Malka and her mother lived hidden in Lydia’s home.

Eventually, neighbours became suspicious. Malka and her mother moved, this time to the home of a young orphan who, like Lydia, chose to help despite the risks.

Both women would be recognized at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

“They needed us as much as we needed them,” Pischanitskaya said of the relationships forged in desperation.

By the end of the war, nearly 40 members of her family were gone – and she began to rebuild a life. “I was not sitting and crying,” she said. “I was mobilized.”

They returned to Romaniv to find almost nothing left. Malka finished school, earned a teaching diploma in Zhytomyr in 1954. She married, had two children, lived in Tashkent and Uzhhorod, and immigrated to Vancouver in 1975. For decades, she did not speak about her Holocaust experiences.

Pischanitskaya’s daughter, Inna Turner, who joined her at the Yom Hashoah event, grew up with the emotional weight of that silence.

“I didn’t know she was a Holocaust survivor,” Turner said. “But I felt it.”

Turner said the silence had a profound effect on her life.

“I think many Holocaust survivors suffer from PTSD,” she said. “And, in the olden days we didn’t know much about it. We know more now, or at least we think we do, and we know that it affects an individual. But it affects not just an individual, it affects people who are the closest to the individual, like children, grandchildren, spouses, siblings, the family. Being a child of a Holocaust survivor, well, what can I say? Not a walk in the park, that’s for sure.”

Only years later did Pischanitskaya begin to speak – through a community of survivors, art and writing.

Pischanitskaya’s granddaughter, Sophie Turner, introduced her not only as a survivor, but as a grandmother who is strong and resilient. She sees her grandmother’s story as a responsibility she and others of her generation are obligated to sustain. “This is not only history,” she said. “It is living memory that we carry with us.”

Survivors lit candles representing six million lives lost, including one and a half million children. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim and US Consul General Shawn Crowley were among the dignitaries who attended. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, senior rabbi at Temple Sholom, which hosted the event with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, with support from the Jewish Federation’s annual campaign and the Province of British Columbia, welcomed attendees.

“We live in a time when the language of the Holocaust is being used in ways that empty it of meaning,” said Moskovitz, “Words like genocide, once anchored in specific historical reality, are now invoked casually…. Comparisons are made that collapse moral distinctions rather than clarify them. And, perhaps most troubling, the Holocaust itself is sometimes inverted – Jews recast not as victims, but as perpetrators. This is not just inaccurate, it is dangerous. The Holocaust was not a metaphor. It was not a slogan. It was the systematic, industrialized attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. Six million Jews were murdered, families were erased, entire communities were destroyed. That reality demands precision, honesty and reverence. And when that truth is blurred, something else is lost as well. Empathy is lost. Understanding is lost. And the moral clarity that the Holocaust calls us to carry into the world begins to fade.”

“Remembrance is not a passive state of being,” said Hannah Marazzi, executive director of the VHEC. “It is an act of moral choice … an act of resistance.”

In addition to mourning those murdered, she said, Yom Hashoah is about honouring survivors. “Those who endured unimaginable suffering and yet found the strength to go on,” she said. “Many rebuilt their lives here in Canada. Their resilience, wisdom and testimony have shaped not only this community, but the city of Vancouver, and continue to shape the work that we undertake at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.”

A musical program included Abbygail Sandler, Cantor Michael Zoosman, Cantor Shani Cohen, Lisa Kesselman and Ellie Sherman. They were accompanied by Eric Wilson on cello, Erin Marks on oboe, Wendy Bross Stuart and Perry Ehrlich on piano. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted the memorial prayer El Moleh Rachamim.

What makes us human

Michael Posner, author of Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, was Kolot Mayim’s final speaker in this season’s Zoom lecture series. (photo from Michael Posner)

Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2025/26 Zoom lecture series on Jewish music concluded April 12 with a talk by Michael Posner on Hallelujah and Beyond: Leonard Cohen’s Torah of Song.

Posner, a playwright, author and journalist living in Toronto, penned Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, covering the musician’s life from his early years in Montreal to his death in Los Angeles in 2016. Posner drew on more than 500 interviews with Cohen’s family, friends and others to offer a complete portrait of the man and his art.

“It won’t surprise many of you to know that Leonard was a very complex character, a very complicated individual,” Posner said. “In fact, when I speak about the Jewish soul of Leonard Cohen, it’s necessary to attach what I would call an asterisk to that description. The asterisk is actually very appropriate to Leonard, and maybe essential, because he was a man of many moods and many masks, many manifestations and many contradictions.”

Cohen had a profoundly Jewish soul, according to Posner. Not only was he a kohanim (descendant of Jewish priests), but an ancestor was the unofficial chief rabbi of Montreal, his grandfather was a talmudic scholar and portraits of Cohen’s forefathers feature prominently on the walls of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal.

“From the time that he starts writing, as a teenager in the early 1950s, Jewish themes and motifs, Jewish imagery and history infuse his art – they are a very essential part of the first four books of poetry that he wrote,” Posner said.

It is through his music, however, that Cohen achieved international fame, and many of his songs “cleverly exploit Jewish ideas and scripture,” said Posner.

In “Who by Fire,” for example, which echoes the Unetaneh Tokef prayer of the High Holy Days, Cohen is not rejecting faith, so much as trying to establish, in the wake of the Holocaust, the grounds of continuing faith, argues Posner.

“The metaphor here,” he said, “is a kind of corporate secretary fielding phone calls on behalf of humanity itself, some of whom will live and some of whom will die in the next year, according to the decree of the caller. But who, exactly, is the caller? Who is at the other end of the line? Dear God, it’s me, Leonard. Are you still there? Can you please identify yourself? This is a theme that Cohen mines continually.”

In “Hallelujah,” Posner spots irony in the line, “There was a time you let me know / What’s really going on below / But now you never show it to me, do you?”

The song is often perceived as a celebration of God, but, Posner said, “I don’t think people have paid close enough attention to the lyric, because the lyric is really saying, we want to believe in you, God, but it’s not that simple.”

Posner discussed Cohen’s struggles with established Judaism and his spiritual exploration that delved into other faiths, including Christianity, I Ching and Sufism; Cohen was devoted to Rinzai Zen Buddhism and ordained as a monk in 1996. Nonetheless, there were several aspects of Judaism that Cohen honoured.

“In the 1970s, he began to study with a Chabad rabbi in Montreal and routinely traveled when he was on tour with his tallis and tefillin bags,” Posner said. “In later life, he joined a synagogue in Los Angeles, whose rabbi, Mordecai Finley, was deeply steeped in kabbalah. And, later still, he studied online with Yakov Leib HaKohain, another rabbi who was immersed in the mystical aspects of Judaism.”

Cohen, in Posner’s view, touched upon everything that is human – magnificent, brilliant, humorous and generous, yet capable of being cynical, depressed, angry and jealous.

“I think that is really what I ultimately draw from this fantastic human being – that enormous complexity, an enormous soul that tried to reach beyond our everyday lives and look at the enduring qualities that make us human,” Posner said.

Kolot Mayim’s next series starts in November, with the theme of “Lech Lecha: Journeys of the Soul.”

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