Local – Page 141

Karasick gives to SFU library

Adeena Karasick has donated her archive to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at Simon Fraser University’s Bennett Library. (photo from Adeena Karasick)

Critically acclaimed poet and Vancouver native Adeena Karasick was in her hometown last month to celebrate the donation of her archive to Simon Fraser University.

The Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU’s Bennett Library contains one of the biggest selections of avant-garde poetry in North America. “The collection has been building since 1965,” said Tony Power, the librarian-curator who oversaw the addition of Karasick’s works. “The collection features many of the poets whose tradition Karasick is associated with, such as Michael McClure and Robin Blaser. Karasick was influenced by her teacher, Warren Tallman, who also influenced, for example, Fred Wah, George Bowering and Daphne Marlatt. These are all poets who are featured in the Bennett Library collection.

“Karasick has a very high profile for a poet,” Powers added, “and a certain amount of notoriety for her more daring works.”

Karasick told the Jewish Independent that the Feb. 23 event, in which her personal notebooks became, in effect, public artifacts, was “surreal.”

“I was honoured to be included in this collection, one of the greatest collections in North America of contemporary poets and avant-garde renegades, provocateurs and risk-taking challengers of esthetics,” she said.

Karasick, whose work has been called “beautiful linguistic carnage” by Word Magazine, specializes in non-narrative, intimate works that are most concerned with the play of language itself.

“I am interested in using language to create different effects of meaning production, highlighting language as a physical, material, construct. Play, jouissance [delight], as Jew-essence,” she explained with a smile.

Karasick regularly plays with Jewish themes in her work, whether it’s the invocation of the Kotel (a wall made of words in more ways than one) at the heart of Dyssemia Sleaze, or the Hebrew letter mem, which inspires Mêmewars.

“In the kabbalah, the world is created through language,” she said. “That’s also the way I view things.”

photo - Among Adeena Karasick’s donations to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU’s Bennett Library were books and personal notes — Among Adeena Karasick’s donations to the Collection of Contemporary Literature at SFU’s Bennett Library were books and personal notes. *(photo from Adeena Karasick)*

Karasick’s speech is peppered with words like “intervention,” “transgression,” “disruption,” “nomadicism” and “vagrancy.” She aims, she explained, to “destabilize and subvert linguistic power structures with the hope of instigating new ways of seeing. My poetry uses playfulness and celebrates a sense of creative homelessness, a mashing up of poetry, critical theory and visuality.”

Asked how she felt about being a postmodern artist whose work has been called “an impressive deconstruction of language and meaning” by Canadian Literature, in an age where the American president, it could be said, was much maligned for engaging in similar activity, she pointed to Jewish postmodern philosopher Emanuel Levinas (1906-1995).

“I’m not saying there’s no truth. There is truth. There is what happened,” she said. “The search for the truth cannot be solitary or uniperspectival though, and cannot be an imposition of ‘the truth’ on others in a totalitarian way. Levinas said that truth itself arises out of discourse … it rests in the ethical relation between people, where a search for the truth can take place. Truth requires humility and multiplicity.”

Born in Winnipeg, Karasick’s family moved to Vancouver when she was six months old, and she grew up here. She had her bat mitzvah at Congregation Beth Israel and was very much a part of the local Jewish community. She went to the University of British Columbia for her undergraduate degree, did her master’s at York in Toronto and her doctorate at Concordia, in Montreal, in “French feminist post-structural theory and kabbalistic hermeneutics.”

Karasick now teaches at Pratt Institute in New York and is enjoying a growing distinction as one of the premier avant-garde poets of her generation. She is becoming known for her innovative use of video as well as the printed page.

In 2018, Karasick will release a new book, Alephville, a poem composed of faux Facebook updates. “I was un-nerved by the timing,” she said, referencing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, “by the fact that it is basically a poem composed of ‘alternative facts.’”

Also next year, Karasick will debut her “spoken-word opera” Salomé: Woman of Valour, a feminist reinterpretation of the biblical character. She co-wrote the piece with Grammy Award-winning musician Frank London of the Klezmatics. They met through KlezKanada, an annual klezmer camp that has been meeting in the Laurentians for 20 years, the poetry division of which Karasick has been director for the last six years.

Karasick wrote the libretto for Salomé: Woman of Valour and London composed the music, an original score that blends Arabic, klezmer, jazz and bhangra. The nomadic and subversive piece will première at next year’s Chutzpah! Festival.

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.

Community security update

The following joint statements were issued by the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. They can be read in full at jewishvancouver.com, where readers can also find out more about the community’s security initiatives. On March 14, JCCGV, Federation and the Centre for Jewish and Israel Affairs announced that the Government of British Columbia will provide $100,000 to fund security infrastructure at Jewish community institutions.

March 12:

At approximately 9 a.m. … Sunday, March 12th, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) received another email bomb threat – the second in less than a week. The JCC followed its security protocols and evacuated the building. The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) was on site and cleared the building, which [was] reopened [the same day]. Other community institutions have been alerted.

Both bomb threats remain under investigation by the VPD, who had already increased their patrols of Jewish community institutions last week. We would like to thank the VPD again for their immediate response, their concern for public safety and their ongoing support.

Anytime a threat is received we take it very seriously, and we encourage you to stay vigilant. If you see something suspicious, say something….

March 7:

At approximately 9 p.m., Tuesday, March 7th, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) received an email bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax. While there was never a real threat to personal safety, we take all matters concerning security very seriously – in fact, the JCC had just conducted a drill last week. When the email was received, JCC followed their established protocols and evacuated the building without incident. It was after regular building hours and so offices and services were closed, however, there was a concert taking place in the theatre at the time.

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) conducted a thorough search of the building and declared the building safe to be reopened…. The incident remains under investigation by VPD, and we will continue to work closely with them. We would like to extend our appreciation to the VPD for their immediate response and concern for public safety.

False alarms such as this are a good reminder to us all to stay vigilant, and we are taking the following extra precautions: we have asked VPD to step up their patrols of Jewish community institutions; we have notified all Jewish community organizations and advised them to ensure they have updated protocols in place; [and] Jewish Federation’s Community Security Advisory Committee is staying on top of the situation and will update Jewish community organizations as needed.

We remain committed to working together to keep Jewish community institutions safe and welcoming places where you and your family can feel comfortable taking part in community activities.

Adding meaning to life

When a group of eight couples in their 40s and 50s meet once a month to discuss different Jewish topics with Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, co-director of Chabad of Richmond, no subject is off limits. The program is called Toward a Meaningful Life.

“I set the agenda for discussion each month, but if there are other subjects the group is interested in exploring, they’ll send me their questions ahead of time and we can have a meaningful, focused discussion when we meet together as a group,” said Baitelman.

The group of friends meets in the privacy of their homes, and rotates houses from month to month. The rabbi is open to any subject on which he can offer an insightful Jewish perspective. So far, topics discussed have included discovering your personal mission statement; marriage, love and intimacy; home and family; and purpose in life. Upcoming topics will include work; charity and wealth; pain, loss and anxiety; and religion and faith.

Jill Topp, a member of the couples group, values these sessions with the rabbi.

“He’s not judgmental at all, and we’re not even members of Chabad,” she said. “I love his style of guided learning, and what’s important to me is that he allows us to be the Jews that we are, and want to be.” She said they discuss issues related to being in healthy relationships of all sorts, from a Jewish perspective.

Debbie Aarons, another participant, said, “Our group is mixed, we’re not all Orthodox Jews, but we’re like-minded Jews and lifelong learners. Being part of this couples learning group sends a good message to our kids. It tells them that being Jewish is not just about going to shul once a week or a few times a year. It’s about continuing our Jewish learning and having meaningful conversations.”

Shay Keil, who also attends the group, finds it interesting to see how the other couples, who are his friends, respond to discussions about relationships from a religious perspective.

“It’s not something we talk about when we socialize, so it’s fascinating to hear their points of view on these topics,” said Keil. He commented that he finds it beneficial that they’re friends coming together, because it adds that social element to it. “I also like that our kids see us going on a Sunday night to a class that’s connecting us to Judaism, and that it’s not just about going to shul,” he added.

“As Jews, we struggle with all sorts of religious and other issues,” said Baitelman. “We’re a people that questions everything and wants to know why – or why not. Life is about purpose and meaning, and people want to understand their role in the world. So, during these couples classes, we explore all kinds of Jewish subjects and everyone has a chance to contribute. Hopefully, by the end of each meeting, couples have a better insight and understanding of Jewish topics, both personally and as part of the Jewish people.”

Anyone interested in joining this group, or starting one of their own, should contact Baitelman at 604-277-6427 or [email protected]. This informal program is open to all Jewish couples, regardless of age or religious affiliation.

Come celebrate our history

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia archivist Alysa Routtenberg holds a minute book from Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El, circa 1920. (photo from Alysa Routtenberg)

The documents and artifacts collected, processed and housed by the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia are part of “everyone’s story,” JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg told the Independent in a recent interview. She encouraged people to donate material, join museum walking tours and visit the archives.

Routtenberg, who was born and raised in Vancouver, did her undergraduate studies in history and art history at the University of British Columbia before heading to Montreal for two years to earn her master’s of library information and archival studies at McGill University. In the summer of 2014, she had the opportunity to work in her field at the JMABC and, when she completed her studies, the museum’s then-archivist, Jennifer Yuhasz, was getting ready to move on and Routtenberg won the job.

“I ended up moving back to Vancouver, and was lucky enough to get this position not that long after I moved back to start my career as an archivist here,” she said.

Routtenberg’s family has been very involved in historical societies and groups for generations, and she always has loved her family’s library and the study of history.

“We did a lot of trips – like Fort Langley and all sorts of museums and things – so I always knew I wanted a career in history,” she said. “It was just a matter of figuring out the practicality of what that looked like.”

The JMABC originally started out as the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia in 1971. Its founding president was Routtenberg’s grandfather, Cyril Leonoff, who passed away last year. Since its beginnings, the museum’s mandate has evolved, but the core objective has stayed the same – to preserve, collect and share the history of Jewish people in British Columbia.

The museum and archives makes information “accessible so people can come in and research,” said Routtenberg. “Then, we try to use that material in our public programming, whether that be with walking tours, lectures or physical exhibits. It’s all about celebrating and sharing the history. It’s a fairly short history compared to Jewish people in other provinces, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less important.”

The oldest material in the archives is from 1862 – from Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria. While not Canada’s oldest synagogue, it is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the country. It’s been open and operational ever since it was started a couple years after Jews first arrived in the province.

“They were mostly coming up from California during the gold rush,” said Routtenberg of these pioneers. “And then, they developed businesses and, within a couple years, wanted to start a synagogue. So, that’s our oldest material. They are pretty special … very beautiful … handwritten notebooks and things.”

The first Jewish arrivals, she said, “set up businesses where they sold supplies to the guys who were going off panning [for gold]. So, that’s what allowed them to build a community. They built a business, a home, then a synagogue…. A couple guys called themselves wholesalers, selling every kind of supply. And then, as soon as there were actually people staying in Victoria and wanting to live there … I know there were a couple clothing stores and then a women’s clothing store, specifically, and a fur store … that sort of thing.”

As others did, Jews kept trickling into British Columbia, moving west with the hope of a better life, with more space. In the 1920s and 1940s, the Jewish community got big population boosts and communal groups began to be organized. Some community groups and businesses have now been around for three or four generations.

“There were furniture and scrap metal dealers … and we’ve collected a lot of those stories, fortunately, while those people were still with us,” said Routtenberg. “We’ve been able to write a couple of books about them,” she said, referring to the JMABC’s annual journal, The Scribe. The museum also publishes a newsletter, The Chronicle, twice a year.

Routtenberg’s job is to collect and preserve all the historical artifacts from the Jewish community, and the artifacts are divided into two major groups.

One group is family collections, which includes letters, photos, certificates and any other correspondence or paper material a family produced over the years. In that area, the JMABC has many great collections from a range of people.

“They were involved with any number of organizations,” said Routtenberg. “We’ll have their handwritten notes from meetings from the 1950s. We’ll have their letters back and forth with relatives across the country. Those are the sorts of things we have in the family collection.”

The second group focuses on community organizations, with collections from the Jewish Community Fund and Council, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Hebrew Free Loan Association, as but three examples. The material in these collections includes correspondence, meeting minutes, agendas, publications they produced, information relating to events, etc.

“We’re very lucky in that most of the synagogues in the city have agreed to donate their materials to us,” added Routtenberg. “We collect the material related to the synagogue’s administration, meeting minutes, member lists, committee minutes, photos, events and publications.”

One important aspect of Routtenberg’s job is to reach out to and speak with people and organizations, to explain what it is that the JMABC does, what types of things it collects and, at times, making house calls to help sort materials.

“Once materials have been fully processed, everything is in a file and we know exactly what it is, what the dates are, and where to find it,” said Routtenberg. “So, that’s the main job we do.

“We deal with a lot of research requests as well,” she added. “A lot of people call or email and they are researching their family, asking what information we might have about them. Also, a lot of students, from high school to doctoral students, contact us when they are doing projects and want to know about a theme.

“I’ll make notes about those. I’ll try to answer right away, but often it requires some searching. Usually, looking through material in the archives needs to wait for a volunteer to be available or I encourage people to come in themselves.”

Routtenberg especially enjoys getting to dig into a box, and she has made some exciting discoveries.

“Something I love finding are handwritten letters,” she said. “We have a number of collections in the archives that are very thorough. There’s one that’s [between] a couple who was in Vancouver and Montreal in 1920, and they wrote letters back and forth.

“They met in Montreal, I believe, and then were secretly engaged for I think six months or so. And they wrote letters everyday, sometimes twice a day, back and forth. It’s those kinds of things that people don’t necessarily think is important, but they tell us so much about what life was like back then – things they struggled with and thought about. They are just beautiful.”

The archives are meant to preserve everyone’s history, not just the visible part of the community, stressed Routtenberg.

“If we don’t preserve our history, no one else will,” she said. “That’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. It’s really easy for people to think they’re not important, that their stuff isn’t important, thinking there is no reason why we would want it. People, all the time, bring stuff from the 1970s and 1980s, and they think it’s not important … but, if we don’t do it now, it never gets to be 150 years old.

“And we get so many research requests – we average 650 to 700 per year. These are all people with a wide range of questions wanting to know about the Jewish community. I don’t want to have to sit there and explain something, because I happen to know it – I want the evidence to back it up, providing the original documents for people to be able to come and look through.

“We’ve really been trying to promote community ownership of these archives,” she said. “They’re not this thing to be locked away from the public. They’re really everyone’s story.”

For more information, visit jewishmuseum.ca.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Return of looted art

“Young Man as Bacchus” by Jan Franse Verzijl was among about 400 works owned by Max Stern that were forcibly sold by the Nazis in the 1930s. (photo from Max and Iris Stern Foundation)

When the painting “Young Man as Bacchus” by Dutch master Jan Franse Verzijl (1599-1647) went on display in New York City two years ago, the FBI moved in and seized the work. In the possession of an art gallery in Turin, Italy, the painting was among about 400 works owned by Max Stern that were forcibly sold by the Nazis in the 1930s.

In 1935, Stern was a successful gallery owner in Düsseldorf, Germany, but because he was Jewish, his collections were confiscated and sold by the Nazis. Stern would later move to Montreal, where he became a leading figure in the Canadian art world. After Stern died, in 1987, the beneficiaries of his estate learned of Stern’s Düsseldorf gallery and an extraordinary project began to seek restitution for the confiscated artworks.

Dr. Clarence Epstein, director of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project and senior director of urban and cultural affairs for Concordia University, will speak in Vancouver March 23 about the successes and challenges of the project.

The beneficiaries of Stern’s will are Concordia University, McGill University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a result, the art restitution project may be the only program of its type with three academic institutions working collegially to a common goal, said Epstein. His visit here is presented by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and Congregation Schara Tzedeck and is sponsored by Heffel Gallery and the estate of Frank and Rosie Nelson.

The Dominion Gallery, Stern’s Montreal business, remained in operation for more than a decade after his death. During this time, the beneficiary universities became aware of Stern’s prewar history.

“There was an entirely additional gallery business in Düsseldorf that his family had run before the war but had been closed by force as a result of Nazi persecution,” Epstein told the Independent in a telephone interview. “It wasn’t public knowledge. I think some people were aware of Dr. Stern’s past, but it coincided with the time when the issue of restitution was just starting to gain a little bit of traction in the art world and so it merited questioning. We just didn’t know how far to take it.”

The Max Stern Art Restitution Project has become a significant entity, with staff in Montreal, Ottawa, Washington and New York, as well as researchers in Europe. In addition to the obligation Epstein has to maximize the financial outcome for the beneficiaries of Stern’s will, there are other factors driving the project.

“There were fiduciary obligations, which is part of estate management,” he said. “There were moral implications, because this was something that was right for the universities to do on behalf of their great benefactor Max Stern. And then there were educational opportunities that this could open up in the fields of art history, of social justice, of art and law, the mechanics of the art market – and this enticed all kinds of academics to get involved in the project.”

The return of “Young Man as Bacchus” is among 16 successes the project has seen so far. While the restitution of that piece involved law enforcement, it also exemplified the good faith response of the gallery into whose possession the painting had fallen.

Every country has different rules and statutes of limitations around the return of art that has been stolen or forcibly sold, and the Stern project navigates the law as well as less litigious means of restitution. Through the recommendation of the German Friends of Hebrew University, the German government recently announced tax receipts for the owners of returned artworks. In the cases of galleries or museums, the reputation of the institution could suffer if they are known to be in possession of a work of dubious provenance, so this encourages cooperation. Individual collectors may not have the same impetus for preserving a reputation, but once a piece of art is identified as coming from Stern’s Düsseldorf collection, it bears a figurative black mark that makes it valueless on the open art market. Even so, Epstein said, the project does not seek to punish anyone for unwittingly possessing such a work.

“We don’t intend to be the bearers of bad news about the state of the work that is in their possession,” he said, “so if there’s any way that we could alleviate that kind of misfortune with some kind of tax relief, we would do so. But it hasn’t been tested yet.”

One example of an innovative solution found is the case of a work that was discovered in a Düsseldorf gallery. While the ownership was transferred to the Max and Iris Stern Trust, the universities agreed to lend it back to the gallery for long-term display.

“In their case, everybody kind of got their cake and ate it, too,” said Epstein. “It is owned by the Stern Foundation but it is lent to the Düsseldorf Museum.”

While Canada does not have the sort of art sector that New York or the capitals of Europe have, Epstein credited the federal government, specifically Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly, for expressing the Canadian government’s commitment to restitution.

What happens to the artworks when they are returned varies. In the Düsseldorf case, the gallery in possession maintained custody. In some instances, the pieces have been sold to fund additional work of the project. (Once returned, the black mark is eliminated and the piece can be exchanged in the legitimate art market.) Others are loaned to museums and public institutions.

Next year, an exhibition of works from Stern’s collections will open in Düsseldorf, later traveling to Haifa, Israel, then Montreal.

Popular culture has taken on the topic of art restitution, Epstein said, and this is a good thing. For example, Monuments Men is about Allied soldiers charged with rescuing cultural artifacts before the Nazis destroyed or hid them, and Woman in Gold focuses on an American woman’s legal fight with the government of Austria to return a painting by Gustav Klimt that was stolen from her family by the Nazis. There have also been documentaries on different aspects of pillaging during the war. Epstein credited Helen Mirren, the star of Woman in Gold, for personally taking up the cause of restitution and making it more public.

“Any way we can make more public the challenges of the recovery of these kinds of objects, and the more we keep it in the spotlight, the more I think we’re going to be able to generate sympathy and attention from the groups that are in possession of those works,” he said.

While the Stern project has seen the return of 16 works and has located several more that are the subject of negotiation, it is impossible to know precisely how many cultural artifacts were stolen and remain unidentified.

“There is a number circulating on the internet in the hundreds of thousands in terms of objects that remain unrecovered,” said Epstein. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to nail down that number … because we are talking about an historic loss that is multiplied over millions of people’s losses, that is also somewhat effaced as a result of time and lack of memory and archives. But that’s really the tip of the iceberg in terms of losses because in terms of material losses, everything that was in the possession of a Jewish family that was oppressed could still be in circulation now – musical instruments, jewelry, the list goes on. But those items were a lot harder to trace in terms of ownership and attribution than a painting has been. Works of art that are under a certain value and have not been researched historically are probably still circulating in the tens of thousands.”

Epstein added that Stern also had significant B.C. connections. His gallery represented E.J. Hughes and Emily Carr, two of this province’s most noted artists.

Admission to the March 23, 7:30 p.m., talk at Schara Tzedeck is free but an RSVP is requested to [email protected].

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

Creating dialogue, friends

The Peace Factory founders Joana Osman and Ronny Edry spoke at the University of British Columbia on Feb. 6. (photo by Zach Sagorin)

“Israel loves Iran,” “Palestine loves Israel,” “Israel loves Palestine,” “Iran loves Israel & Palestine.” The Peace Factory uses social media to connect people in the Middle East, to build relationships and see one another as human beings with visions of peace.

“People may not like the idea of inclusion, the idea of welcoming everyone, but that’s why we are here – to invite those people to learn about the various cultures and faiths that are around us,” said Shem Arce when introducing the Active Community Dialogue (ACD) event Make a Friend, Make Peace. “With some dialogue and understanding we can create a community for everyone – no matter their religion, culture or ethnic background.”

Arce, a University of British Columbia film studies student from Mexico, recently began ACD with the goal of combating discrimination through meaningful, respectful dialogue and interactions.

ACD’s Make a Friend, Make Peace event on Feb. 6 featured a presentation from the founders of the Peace Factory: Ronny Edry, an Israeli graphic designer living in Tel Aviv, and Joana Osman, a Palestinian living in Munich. The pair also spoke at King David High School.

image - Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry sent this poster out in 2012, when Israel was considering a preemptive strike against Iran — Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry sent this poster out in 2012, when Israel was considering a preemptive strike against Iran.

The UBC event drew dozens of people, and Edry showed the crowd a poster he uploaded to Facebook in 2012, when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “was calling for preemptive strike on Iran,” when “it was quite stressing.”

The graphic designer decided to send something else to Iran. He designed a brightly coloured poster with a photo of him holding his daughter and bold text declaring, “Iranians / we will never bomb your country / We ♥ You.” Edry told the audience that the “five first comments were ‘delete it’” but, after leaving the poster online, he was surprised to find that “Iranians were commenting on the picture” and a line of communication was created.

“If something works, do it again,” said Edry. Soon, he added, “a lot of Iranians and Israelis started having a conversation.”

Interestingly, the security guard of the ACD event, an Iranian-Canadian man, had participated in the Peace Factory movement.

“When you don’t know someone and you close your eyes and think of the enemy, you end up thinking of some kind of monster,” said Edry. In Israel, “most of the time on the TV, they won’t show you the nice people of Iran.”

But, after starting the “Israel loves Iran” campaign, Edry received pictures from Iranians wanting to join. The movement has enabled many Iranians and Israelis to connect and build friendships online. And it continues to grow, with more than 121,000 likes and more than one million unique visitors each week to the “Israel loves Iran” Facebook page and more than two million views of Edry’s Ted Talk. The movement is continuing, with “both sides sharing stories and pictures of themselves,” said Edry.

With the success of “Israel loves Iran,” Edry said people were “coming up to me and saying, ‘Why don’t you do the same campaign with the Palestinians?’”

Soon after, Osman founded the group “Palestine loves Israel” to create a platform for Palestinians and Israelis to get to know one another through social media.

Together, Edry and Osman created the Peace Factory to “try to rehumanize the [other side] and give them a face and a story.”

Osman said building these connections “changes everything because, once you make a friend on the other side, everything changes for you.”

Osman said she asked herself, “As one person what can you do?” Her answer was, “You can be part of the change and you start communicating … if you can change one person’s mind, that may be enough.”

She added, “The enemy is nothing like you have in your mind … and, when you get to see his face and you see nice people,” you realize “they are not that bad.”

The Peace Factory’s vision is of a free and democratic Middle East, and they intend to build bridges and friendships to connect people with the same vision.

“It is not that we deny there is a conflict,” Osman said. “We have to pay attention to it, but I strongly believe that the solution can’t come from politics, it comes from people, real people connecting to each other…. Once you understand the other side is a real people with real pain … you come to the conclusion we are one people, one human race, with one goal to live in peace.”

To learn more, visit thepeacefactory.org. Anyone interested in future ACD events can find out more at acdmovement.com.

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Topham appeal denied

The appeal of Arthur Topham, convicted of promoting hatred against Jewish people in November 2015, was rejected last month by the B.C. Supreme Court. On his website, radicalpress.com, Topham wrote that Jews should be forcibly sterilized. He described Canada as being “controlled by the Zionist lobby” and said Jewish synagogues are “synagogues of Satan.”

Harry Abrams, who was the representative for B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights in 2007, when he was first to raise the alarm about Topham’s antisemitic writing, said he’d like to see Topham receive the maximum sentence of two years.

“He was convicted in 2015 by a jury of his peers and he’s dragged it out, kept everything up on his website since then and added to it over all this time,” said Abrams, who now serves as chair of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island. “It’s all been hateful, deliberate and with the intention of causing maximum pain and fear to Jews. He’s a sick guy and there has to be some kind of backstop on this.”

The Feb. 20 ruling is an important one, said Adam Fishman, who worked closely with Amanda Hohmann, national director of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights on this case.

“The argument by Topham’s lawyer, Barclay W. Johnson, that the law that criminalizes hate speech in Canada is unconstitutional, had no merit in my opinion,” Fishman said. “Basically, they were arguing that the presence of the internet and the fact that information is more widely available because of it, changes whether that material is constitutional or not. The judge firmly rejected that argument. He wrote in his decision that it actually makes the offence even more serious, by virtue of the fact that it’s much easier to disseminate hate today.

“This also means that when faced with incidents of hate, especially online, police and prosecutors should press charges because there’s no evidence those charges won’t succeed – so there’s no excuse for not enforcing them.”

Abrams speculated that Topham might try to appeal this conviction again in the B.C. Court of Appeal. Johnson said he had not received any instructions from his client on this matter.

Johnson had shared office space with Topham’s former lawyer, Doug Christie, who died in March 2013. “On his deathbed, I told [Christie] I’d look after the rest of his files, and this was one of them,” Johnson explained. “My interest was piqued by going over the issues related to freedom of expression. Ninety-nine percent of the material Arthur Topham posted from other sources is available on the internet, so the question is, what do you do about all this wickedness? I don’t think you use the Criminal Code. We argued that the protections afforded in Canada are of little assistance if you weigh them against what’s available worldwide.”

Johnson said Topham does not have a criminal record and was hopeful he would not serve time in jail. But Abrams begged to differ. “I really think he should spend a couple of years in jail. He’s sadistic and racist, and he’s worked really hard for it.”

Johnson added Topham’s sentencing is scheduled for this Friday, March 10.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published by CJN.

Or Shalom cemetery

Vancouver City Council has voted in favour of an agreement giving Congregation Or Shalom the right to develop a section of Mountain View Cemetery for use by the synagogue’s members. This follows three-and-a-half years of discussion and negotiations with the city, which owns and operates the historic cemetery.

The agreement will provide 64 burial plots (128 if shared) for purchase by Or Shalom members. The section is located along the west side of Fraser Street, extending south from 33rd Avenue, slightly north of the original Jewish section managed by Congregation Schara Tzedeck.

The Or Shalom cemetery committee is now focusing on the layout and landscaping of the site, developing policies for rights of purchase, and planning for a formal dedication of the section.

On April 19, Rabbi Hannah Dresner and Rabbi Susan Shamash will present a teaching on halachic issues that will help the congregation shape its burial practices. A community information and feedback meeting is planned for May 11, with the dedication ceremony tentatively scheduled for June 11. Policies relating to the cemetery will be available for comment before the community meeting.

The creation of a cemetery marks a major milestone for Or Shalom, giving it, for the first time, the opportunity to provide “cradle-to-grave” services for members. All purchases will be made directly with Mountain View after being authorized by Or Shalom.

Mountain View Cemetery dates back to the early days of Vancouver. Land was set aside for the cemetery in 1886, the same year as the city’s incorporation. The second mayor of Vancouver, David Oppenheimer, secured a portion of Mountain View for Vancouver’s Jewish community.

Mountain View remains the only cemetery within the city limits of Vancouver. A visit to the grounds, open to the public, gives a view of the past 130 years, with graves dating from the Gold Rush era, through two world wars and other military conflicts and various epidemics. It provides a glimpse at the ongoing growth of diversity in the city’s population.

The idea for an Or Shalom section of Mountain View came about somewhat coincidentally, when, in October 2013, several Or Shalom members – including Dodie Katzenstein, Marty Puterman, Pat Gill and John Fuerst – attended a walking tour of the cemetery sponsored by Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. This ad-hoc planning committee, with the board’s consent, began to explore the possibility of finding space for the Or Shalom community. Working with the cemetery’s manager, Glen Hodges, the committee was able to negotiate a legal contract with the City of Vancouver, which City Council approved on Feb. 8.

The cemetery committee, in addition to its four original members, now includes Dresner and Shamash, with input from Dave Kauffman. Catherine Berris, an Or Shalom member and an experienced landscape architect with a special interest in cemeteries, has volunteered her assistance in planning the site.

More information will be provided as the project proceeds.

How best to treat addiction

The Feb. 22 panel discussion at Congregation Schara Tzedeck featured, left to right, moderator Dr. Auby Axler and panelists Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, Dr. Jenny Melamed, David Berner and Rebecca Denham. (photo by Zach Sagorin)

Approximately 5,000 Jews in the local Jewish community need support around addiction, according to Jewish Addiction Community Services Vancouver.

JACS offers various support programs for those battling addiction, and their families and friends, and organizes events for community education and awareness. On the evening of Feb. 22, at Congregation Schara Tzedeck, the agency partnered with Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver for a panel discussion on the fentanyl crisis and addiction in the Jewish community in general. Participating panelists were Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, addiction medical specialist Dr. Jenny Melamed, addiction therapist David Berner and director of services at JACS, Rebecca Denham; the moderator was Dr. Auby Axler.

“JACS Vancouver is a new agency trying to tackle a taboo and shame-filled topic that can ignite passionate responses and strong resistance,” explained Denham in an email. It is committed to supporting community needs relating to substance use, and values a diversity of perspectives on addiction treatment.

At the panel discussion, Rosenblatt spoke about some of the community concerns and the internal conflicts that some people experience when trying to determine the best approaches to addiction support.

Melamed, an addiction doctor who has been treating people with opioid addiction for 15 years, said, “People have been dying from heroin, people have been dying from all drugs…. There are many drugs out there that are as dangerous. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs out there, 90% of the trauma seen in the [emergency room] after midnight is from alcohol. A heroin addict is a calm, sedated person who is nodding off in a corner, he’s not violent; he’s a danger to himself, and he’s not a danger to anybody else.”

She explained, “Addiction is a … disease situated in the primitive part of the brain…. The addiction goes and sits there and it says, ‘if you do not use me, you will die, you need me.’ This is where the team comes in…. We’ve got the ability to say, ‘I’m not going to listen to you anymore.’ But the power to overcome that is what is needed and it is strong and it requires meetings, it requires therapy, it requires a team, it really is a village to keep somebody sober in the long term.”

About 40 people attended the discussion and Melamed commented, “When you look at how big the Jewish community is and how small the attendance is here tonight … we live with our heads in the sand and we don’t realize how many of us have family members who are in addiction.

“We need to remove the stigma related to addiction. When we tried to get somebody in recovery to talk tonight, we couldn’t find anybody in the Jewish community who would come and stand up, because we put that big addiction sticker on people’s forehead. But we all know that it can happen to anybody. Yes, there is an enormous genetic component, a 40% genetic component when it comes to addiction, but there is trauma. Sexual abuse happens in any religion. Everything happens across the board.”

While the Downtown Eastside is often considered the centre of addiction and drug use, Melamed said this is not the reality. “The people on the DTES make up maybe one to five percent of the drug-using population. Seventy-five percent of people using drugs are what we call functional … nobody knows what is going on out there. If you can afford your heroin habit, then you’re OK until you overdose and it takes you over to the other side.”

Berner, founder and executive director of a residential treatment centre for drug addicts and alcoholics, has conducted almost 11,000 therapy groups.

“Addictions are coping mechanisms…. I’ve never met someone in addiction who hasn’t had a terrible upbringing, who hasn’t had severe trauma, serious trauma,” Berner said. “I’ve rarely met anyone who has addiction who hasn’t suffered physical or sexual abuse, or emotional-psychological abuse, or financial abuse.”

Berner posed the rhetorical question, “Can you change? No.” But, he said, “You can change the things you do, including picking up [drugs or alcohol].”

He said, “Every week I give a lecture, every Tuesday morning, and then do group therapy. One of the things I say week in and week out is, I don’t want to hear about your substance.”

Berner also commented on the government’s spending on addiction services in Vancouver.

“We’ve got harm reduction, that’s it!” he said. “And then prevention, treatment and the law are not only ignored officially … they are officially denigrated by the health department, by the ministry of health, and anyone that can make a decision.”

In response to an audience question – “How does the word recreational fit in with the level of risk that’s involved in drugs?” – Melamed responded, “I think you have to replace the word recreational now with Russian roulette because that’s the word we’re using. There is no safe use.”

“Even with marijuana?” asked another audience member.

Melamed said she knows, based on urine samples she has taken, that “some of the marijuana is laced with fentanyl.”

However, a man in the audience, identifying himself as a federal prosecutor who works with the police on narcotics, countered that assertion. “My understanding, after looking at various police files on where this has been reported, [is that] marijuana laced with fentanyl … is anecdotal. It is from people who have overdosed in a non-fatal manner and have reported it to hospital authorities, doctors, police officers, [saying] ‘all I used was marijuana,’ and this is to avoid, in my understanding, the stigma of being labeled a hard drug user…. There has been no actual seizure by police in B.C. of marijuana laced with fentanyl.”

However, the prosecutor added, “We see cocaine laced with fentanyl, we see a lot of heroin laced with fentanyl, we see methamphetamine laced with fentanyl.”

With Purim approaching, Rosenblatt noted, “Drinking on Purim happens a lot, especially in the Orthodox Jewish community, because there is a statement in the Talmud – a person is obligated to drink on Purim until they don’t know the difference between cursed be Haman, who is the villain of the story, and blessed by Mordechai, who is the hero.”

He said, “Maimonides says the way you should be happy on Purim is by spending most of your effort feeding the poor on Purim. Why? You would think that maybe Maimonides was democratic and would say something very nice like the poor deserve a holiday, too.… That’s not what Maimonides says at all. Maimonides says that there is no greater joy in the world than helping another person.”

“JACS was born out of a necessity and I think it is important to remind you that JACS is here to support you,” said Denham in wrapping up the event. “If a question doesn’t get answered tonight or if an issue gets triggered for you, reach out to us and we will support you just as the community has supported us. We wouldn’t be here today without the kind accepting spirit that runs deep throughout this community. From the support of the rabbinical leaders, professionals, individuals, family foundations, the support of the Federation … all of whom continue to strengthen JACS services … we are bringing this much-needed discussion away from shame and into a supportive light.”

To learn more about JACS Vancouver, Denham can be reached at [email protected].

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Treating intergenerational trauma

Left to right: Nina Krieger (Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre), speaker Mark Wolynn, Richard Fruchter (Jewish Family Service Agency), Nicky Fried (Congregation Beth Israel) and Shanie Levin (Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver). (photo by Rhonda Dent Photography)

On Feb. 15, Mark Wolynn, director of the Family Constellation Institute, spoke to an audience of almost 1,000 people at Congregation Beth Israel on the topic Understanding Intergenerational Trauma: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. The crowd sat in rapt silence as he unfolded his own story and the stories of some of the people his therapeutic approach has helped.

Introduced by Rabbi Adam Stein, assistant rabbi at Beth Israel, and Richard Fruchter, chief executive officer of the Jewish Family Service Agency, Wolynn quipped upon taking the stage, “The last time I stood at a synagogue pulpit was at my bar mitzvah.”

Wolynn said his work on intergenerational trauma has particular relevance for those who have survived genocide and war, such as First Nations people, refugees and Jews. His efforts to understand the effects of trauma began when, as a young man, he found himself going blind. He had “the bad kind of central serous retinopathy,” he said, “the five percent kind where it can lead to becoming legally blind.”

Plagued by grey blotches and blurs distorting his vision, Wolynn said he was terrified. He tried a litany of alternative medical cures, which didn’t help, and headed off on a quest for enlightenment.

After marathon meditation sessions and audiences with several gurus, Wolynn said he waited for hours for a satsang (sacred meeting) with a swami in Indonesia. When he finally made it to the front of the line, the guru looked at him for a moment and said, “Go home and make peace with your parents.” It wasn’t until he heard the same message from the next guru he visited that Wolynn returned home to begin his journey into healing his relationships with his family.

Years later, after making both personal and scientific study of the impact of family dynamics and inherited trauma (and healing his blindness), Wolynn has emerged with a persuasive vision of the role that unaddressed trauma can have in our lives – even if the trauma happened in previous generations, and even if you didn’t know about it. “Many of us spend our whole lives believing we are the source of our own suffering when we are not,” he said.

Wolynn presents his findings in terms of epigenetics, the study of how life experience can turn on or off certain genes. He points to findings in both humans and animals showing that the children of traumatized parents react with stress, fear or aversion to stimulus that traumatized their parents, even if the children themselves have no previous negative exposure to the trigger. “We think the effects – the alteration in the genes – may last for three generations,” he said.

Wolynn described several case studies in which patients had symptoms that could be addressed only after patients understood their source in something that had been done to (or by) a mother or grandfather. Wolynn challenged the audience to ask themselves what their greatest fear was and to put it into words, explaining that this was a clue to their “trauma language,” which could, in turn, be used “like breadcrumbs” to lead them back to the unrecognized traumas in their past.

Wolynn laid out a series of steps for uncovering intergenerational traumas and healing the brain. He also shared stories of his use of visualization, ritual and family communication to free both adults and children from chains they didn’t fasten themselves.

Alan Stamp, clinical director of counseling at JFSA, a co-sponsoring agency of Wolynn’s talk, told the Independent, “What Mark is doing is putting a new spin on how to get to the heart of it and resolve the difficulty. The past is alive in the present.”

Stamp said he knows of two people who attended a follow-up training session offered by Wolynn in Vancouver after the public lecture, and who have had success applying Wolynn’s method clinically; one of them being a counselor at JFSA. “It works,” said Stamp.

JFSA offers counseling for a wide variety of issues, and Stamp is hoping that attendees at Wolynn’s talk will be inspired to pursue healing, through JFSA or elsewhere.

JFSA, the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver, Congregation Beth Israel and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre partnered to bring Wolynn to Vancouver, and the talk was additionally sponsored by the Lutsky families and Rabbi Rokie Bernstein. Banyen Books hosted Wolynn the day after his talk at the synagogue.