Category: Local

Preschool at the JCC

In the JCCGV’s program for 2-year-olds, there are only a few spots left for September 2017. (photo from Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver)

Hidden at the end of the hall on the garden level of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver there is a preschool program for 2-year-olds with just a few spots left for September 2017.

Shalom Aleph and Shabbat Shalom are small classes especially designed to be a child’s first introduction to school, a chance to learn through play with other children in an environment rich with materials to spark creativity and critical thinking skills.

Children are welcomed by early childhood educators and invited to choose what learning centres they want to spend time in. There is a place to glue things together, paint and play with play dough. There are blocks for constructing, a toy house for imaginative play, books to look at and enjoy, as well as sand and water for sensory exploration. Songs, stories and conversation fill the room, as children begin to learn how to be together in a group, how to take turns and how to negotiate and share, with kindness and compassion.

This preschool program and all the licensed early childhood programs at the JCCGV’s Simkin Family Child Development Centre are inspired by research from the preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and guided by the B.C. Early Learning Framework from the Ministry of Education. The Child Development Centre is a Sheva cornerstone community and a designated lab school community – Sheva is the Jewish early learning framework of the Jewish Community Centre Association of North America, which celebrates children as competent, capable and curious.

Director Susan Hoppenfeld would be delighted to take interested parents on a tour and share more details about the preschool program. She can be reached at 604-257-5162.

Students pen survivors’ memoirs

Dr. Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, spoke on behalf of the survivors who participated. (photo by Jennifer Oehler)

Emotions were high at a graduation event where survivors of the Holocaust and Langara College students who wrote their memoirs shared their reflections on the experience.

Writing Lives was a two-semester course and a partnership between Langara College, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) and the Azrieli Foundation. In the first semester, students learned about the history of European Jewish culture and the Holocaust. In the second term, groups of three students were teamed with a Holocaust survivor. Students interviewed the survivor, transcribed their recollections and wrote their memoirs, which were presented at the closing event April 20.

“These memoirs will be given to the survivors as gifts for themselves and their families, but they will also be archived and they may possibly be published, and they will also serve as legacies for the survivors, their families and perhaps the research community in general,” said Dr. Rachel Mines, an English instructor at Langara and coordinator of the Writing Lives project. “I’m also the daughter of survivors, so I know how important it is that the stories get told and kept as a legacy for the families and the children and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren and also for the community at large, which I think is something that this particular program has succeeded in very well.”

Dr. Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, spoke on behalf of the survivors who participated.

“I have been interviewed a number of times by different people, of different levels of experience. So, when I was asked if I was willing to be interviewed by some students from Langara, I thought, ‘Oh well,’” Suedfeld said to laughter. “It’s not going to be very interesting. They are probably amateurs who don’t really know what they’re doing.”

He was pleasantly surprised, he said.

“My expectations were not fulfilled at all,” he said. “They had fresh points of view, they had interesting ideas about the Holocaust, they had interesting questions – not the kind of routine things that I’ve gone through before with more professional interviewers who tend to ask the same questions the same ways. Some of the questions made me think about my own experiences in ways that I never had before…. The interviews were always interesting and lively, occasionally funny, sometimes a bit frustrating and rarely, but once in awhile, irritating. But, all in all, a very positive experience and I expect that most of my cohort probably had similar experiences, and I certainly hope that the students did as well.”

Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community.

“This class has been so much more than that in so many ways,” she said. “It’s been a life-changing experience and I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of it. This class has taught me the importance of personal perspectives and historical documentation. Memoirs put a more human face on history and they memorialize what our survivors have been through and create empathy that historical facts and figures just cannot…. These survivors represent living history. These memoirs are a way of honouring survivors and making sure that history will never forget them…. You cannot get that sort of visceral emotion and intense human connection from a book or documentary. This is a living, breathing human being in front of you opening up about their most intimate and painful memories. It is an experience I will never forget.”

photo - Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community
Frieda Krickan, speaking on behalf of the students in the program, saw Writing Lives as an opportunity to honour the survivors, deepen her knowledge of Holocaust history and serve her Jewish community. (photo by Jennifer Oehler)

She added: “I came out of this class with something I did not expect: hope. Amidst all their personal accounts of suffering and loss, our survivors still managed to impart upon us the importance of hope. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a life-affirming experience as talking to these survivors.”

Gene Homel, an instructor in liberal studies at the B.C. Institute of Technology who taught part of the Writing Lives course, said evidence-based and factual history are important at a time when the veracity of events past and present are being called into question.

The collection and preservation of eyewitness accounts is what makes the Writing Lives project so valuable, said Ilona Shulman Spaar, education director at the VHEC.

“Some students told me that they would never forget the personal encounters that they had with their interviewees and that they will always carry them close to their hearts. Some even mentioned that this program was life-changing for them,” she said. “Some of the survivors shared with me that they greatly appreciated being part of this program. For them, too, it was a unique experience, as most of them never gave interviews to this extent or in such depth.”

Robbie Waisman, one of the survivor participants, said the greatest fear that Holocaust survivors have is what’s going to happen after they are gone.

“What you are doing gives us hope that it’s going to be remembered, to make this a better world,” he said. “So thank you.”

Serge Vanry, another survivor participant, said it was an experience that he hadn’t expected.

“I started out wanting to do this, but feeling uneasy about somehow getting involved in the past, a past that has been put away quite a bit,” he told the audience. “I was talking about events that I had forgotten, things that were difficult, things that were hard to live with and things that can haunt you. As I was looking back at the past, I started to discover a lot of things that I had forgotten – events, situations that really had disappeared for me.”

Turning to the students, he said: “You did extremely well and I am really thankful and I’ve really appreciated what you’ve done for me, for the things that I don’t want to forget, the things that need to be told again for me and for my family.”

Other survivors who participated in Writing Lives were Alex Buckman, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Jannushka Jakobouvitch and Mark Elster. Excerpts from student-participants’ journals have run in previous issues of the Independent (search “Writing Lives” at jewishindependent.ca).

Mines thanked the Azrieli Foundation, for expertise and materials that made Writing Lives possible, and the VHEC, “which has been crucial, essential, absolutely indispensable in supporting Writing Lives … through liaising with survivors, making their library available for research and as an interview room and, generally, just being generous in terms of their time, their advice, expertise and not to mention moral support.”

Mines added that she hoped this pilot project of Writing Lives would become an ongoing program and, in the days following the closing ceremony, she received the news that Writing Lives will indeed run again, starting in the fall semester.

Pat Johnson is a communications and development consultant to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Ring to fund students

Olga Ornstein, the mother of Frank Ornstein. Frank gave his friend, George Szasz, his mother’s ring, which George is hoping to sell to fund a scholarship in the Ornstein family’s name. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

Last summer, community member George Szasz approached the Jewish Community Foundation, hoping to establish a scholarship endowment fund to honour a dear friend’s memory. The friend, Frank Ornstein, z”l, survived the Holocaust and eventually immigrated to Vancouver. With no children or living family members to speak of, Frank bequeathed a family ring saved from the Holocaust to George, which George is hoping to sell to fund a scholarship in the Ornstein family’s name.

Lipot and Olga Ornstein, both of blessed memory, were an affluent couple in the Hungarian city of Szeged and doted on their only son, Frank. Born in 1924, Frank grew from a skilled boy scout to a star athlete with a wide range of friends. They lived peacefully with their non-Jewish neighbours, and Frank began dating a non-Jewish girl.

Even as anti-Jewish sentiment grew around them, the city’s residents lived amiably together. It was a shock when laws mandated division by 1943. Jews, including the Ornsteins, were evicted from their homes, stripped of their property and segregated in ghettos. As a fit 19-year-old, Frank was sent away to a labour camp. Lipot and Olga were forced onto an overcrowded cattle car without food or water for a three-day journey to a concentration camp in Austria.

Life in the camp was grim. Lipot and Olga wrote Frank postcards, holding onto hope that, after the war, the family would be reunited and return to their life in Szeged. In March 1945, the camp buzzed with news that Russian soldiers were near and the captives desperately hoped for liberation. The day before the soldiers arrived, however, German guards marched the camp’s prisoners, including Lipot and Olga, to a local gym and blew them up.

Frank was liberated from the labour camp and, in late 1945, returned to Szeged, sick but alive. There, he found out that his parents, and most of the city’s Jewish residents, would never return. Frank’s girlfriend’s family had secretly stored some of his parents’ valuables, including his mother’s diamond ring, and returned them to him: memories of a life that had vanished.

Realizing life in Szeged would never be the same, Frank took his few possessions and family mementoes and immigrated to Israel. In Israel, he trained as an airplane mechanic and found both a love and an affinity for the trade. He worked for Israel’s El Al Airlines and immigrated to Vancouver in the late 1950s, as a chief mechanic for Canadian Pacific Airlines and, later, Air Canada.

After Frank’s death in 2006, George was bequeathed the Ornstein family’s mementoes. Frank’s life was marked by trials and resilience, and George is determined to honour the Ornstein family’s history and heritage. Of the Ornstein family keepsakes, Frank’s mother’s ring is of particular value, appraised at between $30,000 and $50,000, and George is determined to sell the ring to establish a yearly scholarship for deserving Israeli students studying Frank’s life passion: airplane mechanics.

If you are interested in assisting George to create the Ornstein family legacy, contact Marcie Flom, director of the Jewish Community Foundation, at [email protected].

This article was originally published by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver in e-Yachad and is reprinted with permission.

Who owns the past?

Left to right: Mitchell Gropper, QC; Prof. Guy Pessach, Hebrew University; Prof. Catherine Dauvergne, dean of the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia; and Randy Milner, Vancouver chapter president, Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. (photo from Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, Vancouver)

What happens to the archival materials of a Jewish community when that community no longer has the capacity to maintain itself can be complicated and messy. A 2013 Supreme Court decision in Israel provided a solution but also raised important questions about identity, collective memory and the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora.

On March 17, Prof. Guy Pessach of Hebrew University of Jerusalem presented a lecture as part of the Mitchell H. Gropper, QC, Law Faculty Exchange Program. An initiative of Hebrew U and University of British Columbia, the program’s UBC webpage notes that, since the program began in 2010, each law faculty “has hosted three visiting professors from the other university.”

Pessach’s topic was Who Owns the Past? – Law, the Politics of Memory and the Israeli Supreme Court. He discussed two cases but focused primarily on a lawsuit involving the Vienna Jewish community and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, which is in Jerusalem. He said decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court reflected a propensity for Israel to regard itself as the international arbiter of Jewish cultural property and collective memory.

According to Pessach, Vienna was the second-largest Jewish community in Europe in the early 20th century. The nearly 200,000 Jews in the 1930s were reduced to fewer than 9,000 after the Holocaust. In the early days of Israel’s statehood, the Central Archives actively collected materials from Jewish communities in Europe to safeguard the rich Jewish history of these disappeared communities.

Although the Viennese community continues to decline in population, he said, in the 21st century, it sufficiently reorganized to request the return of its archival materials from the Central Archives. When the archives refused, claiming that the material was given on “indefinite loan,” Vienna’s Jews launched a lawsuit.

According to a January 2013 article in Haaretz, “The collection includes thousands of papers stored in 200 containers, documenting 300 years of the Vienna community from the 17th century up to 1945. After the Holocaust, community leaders decided to transfer the archive to Jerusalem, fearing it would not be stored properly in Vienna, and they continued to add documents to the collection. Yet the Viennese community insists it sent the documents – in four shipments in 1952, 1966, 1971 and 1978 – with the explicit agreement, time after time, that the documents were only on loan and remained the property of the community.”

Vienna lost its case. At the time, Israeli state archivist Yaacov Lozowick, stated, according to Haaretz, that “the depositors felt they were strengthening the cultural importance of the young state of Israel as the centre of the Jewish people; they were proud about their contribution; and they had no intention of the collection ever returning.”

In the case, said Pessach, Israel asserted its place in the Jewish world as protector of Jewish identity and history. He explained the ins and outs of the court’s decision and discussed the issues of cultural property law and restitution. He said restitution is not just the physical return of culturally and historically significant items but also symbolic justice for a community. He noted that similar situations continue to play out in Jewish communities, in the form of art stolen by the Nazis, and that Canadian First Nations and many other groups are also currently seeking restitution for cultural property stolen during colonial times.

For more information on the Mitchell H. Gropper, QC, Law Faculty Exchange Program, call the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University office at 604-257-5133 or email [email protected].

Green leader condemns BDS

B.C. Green party leader Andrew Weaver, MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head. (photo from Andrew Weaver)

Andrew Weaver calls the two-party system that typifies B.C. politics a “dichotomy of dysfunction.” As leader of the provincial Green party, he hopes to hold the balance of power in the next legislature so that his party can “hold to account either the B.C. Liberals or the B.C. NDP.”

“That would be a very, very wonderful situation,” Weaver told the Independent. While he is ostensibly running to be premier of the province, the scientist and MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head acknowledged he would be satisfied with a lesser role. Some opinion polls have suggested that Weaver, the first and only Green elected to the B.C. legislature, may be joined by other Green colleagues after the May 9 election. If the race between the Liberals and the NDP remains close across the province, that could put the Green party in an enviable position in the next legislature.

“I’d be very pleased,” Weaver said of the potential to hold the balance of power in a minority government. “One of the reasons why that’s important for people to know is, frankly, people don’t trust the Liberals right now. I see that all around. But they also don’t trust the B.C. NDP. Our role, if we should if we form the balance of power, is to actually hold to account either the B.C. Liberals or the B.C. NDP because they can trust us. The others can’t be trusted but we are convinced that people could get behind us and trust us to actually ensure that the others, if we were in a balance of power, actually follow through with what they say they would do.”

While touting his party’s comprehensive platform, which he urges Jewish Independent readers to review online, he also emphasized the quality of candidates the party has recruited.

“They’re not career politicians, they are stepping aside from their careers because, honestly, they can’t stand by and watch what’s going on anymore, this dichotomy of dysfunction,” he said.

Weaver, who was elected MLA in 2013 and became party leader in 2015, was the Canada Research Chair in climate modeling and analysis in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. He has been at UVic for 25 years and has degrees from UVic and Cambridge University and a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of British Columbia.

On issues of community security and culturally appropriate delivery of services, Weaver insisted that, before committing to any actions affecting ethnocultural groups, his party would consult with the communities in question.

“The first thing you would do is consult with those ethnocultural groups to ensure that what you think is the best approach is also what they think the best approach is,” he said. “I think that, in government, we do not have all the solutions.”

On threats and violence against minority groups, such as the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in his hometown of Victoria, Weaver said leaders have a role in shaping public opinion by “expressing clear and unequivocal disdain for hatred – hatred in all forms. There is nothing positive that can ever come of it.”

Supporting cultural events and other avenues where communities can learn about one another is critical to society’s cohesion, he said.

“Celebrating our diversity is one of the strongest things that can happen,” said Weaver, noting that his wife, who is Greek, grew up when Greeks were discriminated against in Canada and his mother, who is Ukrainian, faced discrimination growing up in Montreal.

“Celebrating our diversity is critical to embracing diversity,” he said. We have cultural festivals in Victoria and Vancouver – these need to be supported and celebrated because you break down barriers when people meet each other. When people get together and they talk … they share more commonalities than they do actual things that they disagree on. What’s important is the celebration of our multicultural values, ensuring that there are funds available, ensuring that there are places available that will bring cultures together, rather than apart.”

Education is another key to multicultural success, Weaver added.

“We’ve gone through extensive reevaluation of the curriculum to ensure that indigenous values and rights and culture is covered appropriately in our K-to-12 system, but that should be true of all multicultural values,” he said. “When a child is born, they don’t even understand what prejudice is. Prejudice is a learned concept, it’s not something that a child understands. So, if one is able to develop an educational system that promotes tolerance, promotes respect for diversity, promotes multicultural values, promotes religious tolerance, you’re not dealing with any perceived kinds of barriers to inclusion early on. [The Green party has] a major investment that we propose in the K-to-12 system and one of the things we’re hoping to do is ensure that teachers can deliver the new curriculum, which does have more multicultural values expressed in it, and to ensure that barriers early on are not put up.”

Involving cultural communities in the delivery of social services is good for the communities and the government, Weaver added.

“You are going to get a lot further partnering, for example, with the Jewish community to provide social support for those who share the Jewish values, culture, religion, than you would trying to impose a one-size-fits-all model,” he said.

This extends to Green support for independent schools.

“Continued funding for the independent system is critical because there are people who determine that their children are best served by an education system that provides the curriculum – because that’s provincially mandated – but does so in a manner that shares the values and cultures that the child is being educated in. So, for example, a Jewish school, we would support the independent funding to continue there, same with a Sikh school, same with a Christian school. It’s important though that the province maintain control of the curriculum to ensure that it’s consistently taught across society.”

Weaver has been an outspoken opponent of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

“Solutions to complex issues come through dialogue and bringing people together, not dividing and picking winners or losers,” he said.

Last year, the federal Green party passed a resolution endorsing BDS. Weaver condemned it forcefully and publicly.

“It’s just not my style,” he said. “It’s not the B.C. Greens’ style to be divisive and hurtful. We are here to be inclusive and bring people together…. You’re there to actually broker solutions and that’s what troubled me so much about the federal Green party. What had happened there, clearly, was they had had a large sign-up of members going into the convention and it was just outrageous that this policy – I’m not a member of the federal Green party, just so you know – but it was outrageous that this would end up on the floor for discussion.… It’s not something that would have made it to the floor of the B.C. Greens, it would never have got past our policy committee.”

He is particularly passionate on this matter in part because of the experience of his mother’s family in Ukraine.

“They were kulaks,” he said, referring to a category of independent peasant farmers who were declared “class enemies” under Stalinism. The family’s farm was collectivized, Weaver’s grandfather was sent to Siberia and his mother and grandmother were interned in a camp.

Another experience that impacted him was meeting a survivor of the Holocaust who came to see him when a billboard in the Victoria area, paid for by a group called Friends of Cuba, called for a boycott of Israel.

“She was devastated,” Weaver recalled of the meeting. “People who live these horrific stories and bring them home, when you hear them, you can only imagine what they’ve gone through. And when you see people really taking positions that I don’t think are fully informed, comments that are divisive positions … they don’t understand the hurt that they are doing. By putting that up, they don’t understand that they are hurting people.… It is tone deaf.

“Everybody recognizes that the situation in the Middle East is one where there is a lot of tension. But we also have to recognize that there is one stable democracy in the Middle East and we have to work with that democracy and ensure that the values that we instil within our society are consistent with the embrace of inclusive values that we expect others to follow.… We need to be very careful about how we approach the situation. It’s very volatile and we need to understand it better before we just start blindly picking winners and losers.”

The Independent invited the leaders of the B.C. Liberals, the New Democratic Party and the Greens to be interviewed for our election coverage. The Liberal campaign did not make their leader available. An interview with NDP leader John Horgan appeared in the March 31 issue and is available at jewishindependent.ca.

NDP values in kishkes

Selina Robinson, current MLA and NDP candidate for Coquitlam-Maillardville. (photo from Selina Robinson)

Coquitlam is not known as a hotbed of Jewish life, yet Selina Robinson notes that the area has been represented by three Jewish members of the legislature over the past few decades.

Riding boundaries frequently change, but the area was represented by Dave Barrett, when he was premier of the province, later by Norm Levi and, since 2013, by Robinson, in the riding now called Coquitlam-Maillardville. She appeared initially to lose last time around, but won by 41 votes in a recount. She’s not counting on a landslide this time, she said – she’ll be happy just to win on election night.

Robinson’s roots run deep in the Jewish community. Moving from Montreal to Richmond as a teen (she was Selina Dardick then), she remembers standing in the school hallway with a boy in a turban – two non-Christians excused every morning while their classmates recited the Lord’s Prayer. After high school, she went to Israel for a year, where she did an ulpan and Livnot U’Lehibanot, a program exploring Israel and Jewish heritage through hiking, community service, seminars and interactions with Israelis.

Returning to British Columbia, she was an administrator for Habonim Camp Miriam and later ran Lubavitch’s Camp Gan Israel. Meanwhile, she was studying at Simon Fraser University, obtaining a master’s degree and beginning a career in family therapy. She was headhunted to become director of counseling at the Jewish Family Service Agency and later served as associate executive director there. Her political career began on Coquitlam city council. In the legislature, she has been the New Democratic Party spokesperson for local government, sports and seniors.

She understands issues of affordability, she said, because she and her husband were on the Jewish cutting-edge putting down stakes in Coquitlam when they married 30 years ago. Part of the solution to affordability, she said, is providing more diversity of housing. Now that her kids are grown, they do not require the single-family suburban family home and could free it up for a larger family. They want to stay in the neighbourhood, where they are longtime active members of the Burquest Jewish community, but there are no townhouses or other appropriate options for them.

Different kinds of housing, such as the co-op model that is more secure than rental and not as expensive as individual homeownership, could improve the situation, she said. “We need to look at purpose-built rental and how to influence and encourage market-built rental.”

Affordable, accessible daycare in the province is also a pillar of affordability, according to Robinson, who calls daycare expenses “another mortgage payment every month.”

Another issue where Robinson has a personal perspective is her party’s promise to reinstate the B.C. Human Rights Commission, which the B.C. Liberals disbanded more than a decade ago.

“It speaks volumes that we take this seriously and there is a place for you to go to if you believe you’ve been discriminated against,” Robinson said. She was a surrogate mother for a friend’s baby and, in 2001, went to the Human Rights Commission over the legal definition of who was the baby’s mother.

“I had to register the birth under my name as the mother,” she said, even though she was not genetically related, as the baby she carried was conceived from the mother’s egg and the father’s sperm.

“Fatherhood is determined based on genetics but motherhood is based on from whom the baby was ‘expelled or extracted.’ That’s discriminatory. It should be based on genetics. So we took the government to court and the Human Rights Commission accepted the claim and then the government caved.”

Without the commission, someone who feels discriminated against would be required to go to court at their own expense, she said.

Robinson commends the provincial government for providing $100,000 to the Jewish community for increased security, and she recently signed a letter of support for a mosque in her area that is also seeking security funding.

“I think we have to address immediate risk,” she said. “But I think there’s a lot of work for us to do around making sure that people understand that this isn’t tolerated and to challenge discriminatory practices that do exist.”

Cuts to education over the past 16 years, she said, have led to reductions in things that might be considered “extras,” like taking opportunities to explore other cultures. Combined with these reductions, there are more families in which both parents are working, so few can get involved in providing extracurricular activities, as Robinson did when her kids were young, inviting classes to their sukkah and visiting to discuss Jewish topics with their public school classes.

“Those are the things that went by the wayside,” she said. “It allows for ‘others’ to be unfamiliar and, therefore, to be not trusted. And, therefore, hate can grow because of that gap.”

As NDP spokesperson for seniors, Robinson visits facilities and appreciates the role ethnocultural communities play in the delivery of social services.

“The fact that we have the Louis Brier and that it’s so established, and the Weinberg [Residence] … it’s so important,” she said, “for this community and not all communities have that.… I think government should support that, in helping ethnic groups make sure that their seniors have the comforts that they need and they can live their lives as the people that they are and how they’ve lived their entire lives.”

On the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, Robinson said she has “real problems with it.”

“My understanding of the BDS movement is to destroy the state of Israel,” she said. “I think that’s not OK. I support the state of Israel. I think the idea of not having a state of Israel is destructive and I do think that’s antisemitic.”

While she opposes BDS, she emphasized that people are free to make choices about where they invest or spend, and she defended the right of people to criticize any government.

“I didn’t like what [Stephen] Harper was doing. It doesn’t make me anti-Canadian, it just makes me an engaged person, an engaged Jew who is paying attention to what’s going on in the world around me.”

As British Columbia addresses economic development issues, Robinson urges them to look to Israel.

“When people talk about resource development here in Canada, particularly here in British Columbia, and they say, ‘Well, what else would we do?’ I say, ‘Well, take a look at Israel.’ They have no resources except people and they invest in their people and their people are amazing.… I want to see British Columbia take parts of that model – yes, we have resources and we should develop them wisely – but we have people and, when we invest in people, anything and everything is possible, and I think Israel’s an excellent example of that. I think we have a lot to learn from Israel. I would like to see a lot more of that.”

As Jewish voters ponder their options for the May 9 election, Robinson insists the NDP is the natural choice.

“I think that, in our hearts, our Jewish hearts, in our kishkes, we are New Democrats,” she said. “Jewish values are New Democrat values.”

Apartheid impacted views

Michael Barkusky, Green candidate for Vancouver-Quilchena. (photo from Michael Barkusky)

Michael Barkusky was a teenager when he canvassed for Helen Suzman’s anti-apartheid Progressive Party in South Africa’s 1970 election. Now, he is the Green party candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena. An old friend told him, “You were always good at spotting trends ahead of time.”

“I thought that was a great compliment,” Barkusky told the Independent. “I’m kind of used to being with small parties that everybody writes off as not really relevant yet that, over time, become very relevant.”

He has given a great deal of thought to the ethical behaviour of governments.

“If you were a morally aware individual, you kind of knew that there was this huge moral question about how the whole society ran in South Africa,” he said.

Barkusky left South Africa in 1980 and came to Vancouver to do a master’s in business administration at the University of British Columbia. He obtained a certified general accountant designation in 1985, the same year he became a Canadian citizen. He has run an accounting practice since then, while also at times working for nongovernmental organizations like the Rainforest Solutions Project and the Coastal First Nations alliance.

While he said the Green party is seeing a surge in the campaign – a recent poll showed the party in first place on Vancouver Island – Barkusky admitted his bid is a longshot. He is running in one of the safest Liberal seats in the province. Vote-splitting may result in interesting upsets in some ridings, but Quilchena would be a shocker.

“I’ve taken on a very tough riding,” said Barkusky, who served with incumbent Liberal MLA Andrew Wilkinson on the board of the B.C. Mountaineering Club. “What I want to do is have a very issue-oriented, respectful-of-my-opponents contest in which we talk about ideas and we talk about where the province is heading.”

He wants British Columbians to see the environment and the economy as inextricably related.

“People often tend to think of the environment as a side issue, a minor issue in politics, and tend to say, well, the Green party is mostly for that, so it’s not really concerned about the economy,” he said. “In my view, these things are all very closely interconnected. We believe in an economic strategy that will give us prosperity but not at the expense of our future, and my worry is that the B.C. Liberals, in particular, with their focus on traditional economic indicators – particularly what will make the GDP go up the most – give up a tremendous amount in terms of stewardship of our natural capital, or the innate riches that make British Columbia such a spectacular place to live.”

Addressing recent incidents in Canada and elsewhere, in which Muslims and Jews have been targeted, Barkusky said there are opportunities for intercultural solidarity, adding that it is important that communities stand together at times like these.

“Some of those who are threatening both vulnerable groups are the same people with the same racist attitudes,” he said.

Confronting prejudice is a matter of education, but it can also be a matter of modeling behaviour, he suggested.

“We should look to what we can do through education because dealing with it through criminal law is really the last resort. It’s what you do when all else has failed,” he said. “The education area is where we should be most active. I think we’re doing quite well, really, in teaching tolerance in the schools in a jurisdiction like B.C. I think we can perhaps model it a bit better in our public life and the way we conduct politics. A slightly less sneering, adversarial style of politics would be helpful. In the Jewish community, we can do that, too, in the way that we have our own internal debate as Jews about Israel.”

Barkusky is well versed in the diversity of discourse in the Jewish community.

“I went to a Jewish high school in Cape Town, Herzlia High School, and our headmaster was probably more of a Likudnik than a labour Zionist, but my mother was more of a labour Zionist. So, there were always debates … about South Africa, about Israel, about other things that were going on in the world.”

Growing up in the apartheid era caused ambivalent feelings, he said, because Jews “had to deal with our role in a society in which we were actually legally classified with the privileged.

“It was a complex history because Jews were very prominent in the struggle against apartheid, but there were plenty of Jews who thought, ‘thank God they’re persecuting someone except us.’ They were maybe not enthusiastically participating in making the lives of black people miserable, but they weren’t too concerned about it and were more concerned about whether the establishment of the time might dislike them if they were too strong in their opposition. Those tensions ran through the Jewish community of South Africa the whole time that I lived there.”

Barkusky has a nuanced perspective on the use of the apartheid label against Israel.

“To me, apartheid wasn’t just a monstrous system that I read about in a book,” he said. “It’s a system that I saw in action.”

Even so, he rejects the idea that comparisons can’t be made.

“You can compare anything to anything,” he said. “The point is, what conclusions do you draw when you compare it?… I don’t like a simpleminded comparison because the situation is different in a number of ways, the history is different, but I don’t think it’s something that should be silenced.”

There may, in fact, be something to be learned, he said. The way the current constitution in South Africa was arrived at may have some lessons for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, he suggested.

On the issue of the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, Barkusky said he doesn’t agree, but avoids getting on a moral high horse about it.

“I personally think it’s not the greatest way to conduct politics,” he said. “Persuasion, discussion and education, thinking things through, looking at the evidence, makes much more sense.”

Boycotts can also harm the people they are intended to help, he warned.

“I continued to buy South African wines after I moved here from South Africa, not because I particularly wanted to support the government but because I thought that boycotting the wines would put farm workers out of work and the farm workers were mostly not white,” he said.

Barkusky blames the Israeli government for some of the criticism aimed at the country.

“I do find the current government in Israel so far to the right that it’s very hard to not see them as, in some sense, the author of their own misfortune,” he said, but added: “I think a situation in which Israel is treated as the worst example of human rights abuses on the planet is really just ridiculous. It’s just not in keeping with the evidence.”

Affordability a priority

Gabe Garfinkel, Liberal candidate for Vancouver-Fairview. (photo from Gabe Garfinkel)

Whether the B.C. Liberals or the NDP win the riding of Vancouver-Fairview in the May 9 provincial election – and any other result would upend every prognostication – the riding will have a Jewish MLA.

There has never been a great number of Jewish politicians in British Columbia – though some, like David Oppenheimer and Dave Barrett have made history – and so it is an unusual situation that two members of the province’s Jewish community find themselves head to head in this election.

The riding has been held since 2013 by New Democrat George Heyman, who was profiled in the Independent’s April 7 issue. Gabe Garfinkel, a former assistant to Premier Christy Clark, won the Liberal nomination for the riding in February; Louise Boutin is the Green party candidate in Fairview, Phil Johnston is the Libertarian and Joey Doyle is running for Your Political Party of British Columbia.

Garfinkel was profiled by the Independent during his nomination run (Dec. 2, 2016). For the Independent’s election coverage, we posed to him the same questions we asked all candidates we interviewed.

Responding to threats to ethnocultural communities, Garfinkel said security should be a partnership between government and the community.

“When Premier Clark announced $100,000 of security funding for the Jewish community, I think that makes a tangible difference because it allows us to hire security,” he said, adding that incidents of threats and violence have had the unintended consequence of building bridges between communities. “When we heard about the devastating attacks in the mosque in Quebec, that really gave the Jewish community and the Muslim community an opportunity to work together to address racism and hatred and intolerance.”

Having strong representation in the legislature, he said, is important in times like these.

“We need to work as a community to ensure these voices are heard in government and to ensure that we have the right representation out there standing up for our interests, which is what I plan on doing,” said Garfinkel. “As we look across the world at the instability and the insecurity in some areas, and even in our own backyard, we must be united and we must have an effective voice in government that is able to look after us.”

Changes to the education curriculum that increase attention to indigenous issues including residential schools is a good thing, he said, and further exploring the histories of B.C. multicultural communities will make the province better.

On partnerships between the government and multicultural communities, Garfinkel said the Jewish community is a model.

“The Jewish community has always been a community that takes care of those who most need our support,” he said. “That’s what makes our community who we are and makes us so strong. That’s why I’m so pleased to join Premier Clark and her team, who have continuously funded these services, which are funded by the strong economy.”

Affordability is an issue all parties are addressing and Garfinkel said he takes it personally because his family has been in Vancouver-Fairview for four generations.

“My great-grandparents lived here, my grandmother grew up here and then my parents did as well,” he said. “I want to stay in the community I live in today. Being able to find affordable housing is a difficult challenge that I’m facing personally as well. I can relate to a lot of other people in our community who are going through the same thing.”

He highlighted initiatives of the provincial government aimed at improving affordability, including a 15% foreign homebuyers tax, the B.C. Home Owner Mortgage and Equity (HOME) Partnership program, which he said will get 42,000 families into the housing market while also making rental space available, as well as the first-time homebuyers grant.

“At the same time,” he said, “housing affordability is a complex issue and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.” He said the government will see if there are ways to work with Metro Vancouver municipalities to expedite the permitting process on 100,000 housing units currently in the planning stages.

While foreign affairs is a federal matter, the boycott, divest from and sanction movement against Israel seeks to target Israel at every level of politics and society.

“I am absolutely 100% against BDS and I have no problem saying that,” Garfinkel said. “Israel needs more friends in this world and B.C. as a province, under the leadership of Premier Clark and International Trade Minister Teresa Wat, has increased and promoted trade with Israeli companies and also its universities and government.”

In addition, Garfinkel said the BDS movement demonstrates that “we have to teach more about antisemitism.”

“We have to talk about the harmful and hateful rhetoric that we’re hearing on campuses across our continent,” he said. “I’ve dedicated my life so far to serving my community, working with CIJA [Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs] as well as Federation and CJPAC [Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee] to help increase our voice against harmful forces like BDS and I want to continue doing that at the legislature and I want to continue fighting antisemitism there.”

Gathering in solidarity

Attendees spoke to one another at their tables, following a list of questions to guide discussion. (photo from Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan)

A small group of Jews and Christians gathered at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on April 4.

After the first bomb threat at the JCC, Richard Topping, principal of Vancouver School of Theology, reached out to the Jewish community. He approached Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of Inter-Religious Studies at VST and rabbi emerita of Congregation Or Shalom. Yael Levin of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and JCCGV executive director Eldad Goldfarb then organized the dialogue, at which members of the United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches were present.

The evening opened with the singing of an egalitarian version of “Hinei Mah Tov” – “How good it is when brothers dwell together as one,” with achim, brothers, changed to kulanu, everyone. Topping then took the podium.

“When the first bomb threat was made at the JCC,” he said, “people at VST began asking is there anything we can do to show our solidarity with the Jewish community? We understand that a hoax like this is scary and it makes our friends feel vulnerable. In a post-Holocaust world, we don’t want to wait and see how a threat turns out. We want to assure you that we stand in solidarity with you against antisemitism. We are here to assure you that we stand with you against violence and against threats of violence.”

Sharon Dweck, development director of the JCCGV, gave an overview of the JCCGV’s activities within the Jewish community and beyond. She then shared her recollections of the first threat. “I broke my rule about keeping my nose out of daycare and rushed to hug my child,” she said. “Days after, as ‘manager on call’ after the bomb threat, I felt afraid and vulnerable, as well as a great sense of responsibility. ‘Would another threat come on my watch?’”

In total, the JCC received two threats, both of which were hoaxes.

Attendees spoke to one another at their tables, following a list of questions to guide discussion. People talked about everything from the importance of tikkun olam to Jewish humour, people they knew in common, their Jewish or Christian upbringings, and concerns over the then-upcoming vote to support the boycott, divest from and sanction Israel movement at the University of British Columbia, which was defeated.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Levi’s first haircut

Levi Mochkin celebrated his third birthday and his first haircut last month. (photo by Shula Klinger)

On March 26, Mendy and Miki Mochkin of Chabad North Shore celebrated their son Levi’s upshernish (or “cutting”). This occasion marked both Levi’s third birthday and his first haircut.

In the Orthodox tradition, a boy’s hair is not cut until his third birthday. This is because the Torah compares the little boy to a tree – the tree does not bear fruit until it has grown for three years. The upshernish is a community affair; all of the guests are invited to cut off a section of the child’s hair.

With the start of his formal education, the 3-year-old can begin to share his unique gifts with his family and community. And, just like the tree, a child must be nurtured consistently if he is to flourish in later life.

This is the time when the son receives his kippah and tzitzit. He also begins his Jewish studies in earnest. Along with learning the aleph-bet, he is taught to recite blessings and say the Shema.

At Levi’s upshernish, a booklet shared Torah passages from Deuteronomy and Genesis. These were a selection from the 12 verses that the Lubavitcher Rebbe taught children to recite each day. According to Rabbi Mochkin, “they contain many of Judaism’s foundational beliefs and principles.”

The Mochkins hosted the upshernish at their West Vancouver home, with members of their extended family from New York. Members of the Chabad community from Vancouver, East Vancouver and the University of British Columbia were also present, along with many local families.

Shula Klinger is an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.