Dr. Ayelet Erez, a visiting clinician scientist from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, was invited to speak at B.C. Children’s Hospital earlier this month.
The group was comprised of clinicians, researchers and clinical lab scientists. The event was organized by Dr. Hilary Vallance, a Weizmann Vancouver chapter member, who is director of the B.C. Newborn Screening Program and the Biochemical Genetics Lab within the department of pathology at the hospital.
Erez gave a talk on argininosuccinic aciduria (ASA), a rare inherited disorder caused by a lack of the functional gene necessary to make an enzyme called argininosuccinate lyase. Her talk led to a discussion with members of the hospital’s metabolic division in attendance regarding various aspects of her research and how her findings could potentially improve the practice of treating patients with argininosuccinate lyase deficiency here in British Columbia.
For more information on Erez or Weizmann Canada events in Vancouver, contact Jan Goldenberg, [email protected], or call 1-855-337-9611.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor speaks in Vancouver on Feb. 3 and in Victoria on Feb. 4. (photo from Ron Prosor via Jewish National Fund Vancouver)
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations says Canada’s foreign policy is at the “heart of the world’s moral compass.”
In an email interview with the Jewish Independent, Ambassador Ron Prosor credited Canada as being a voice of reason and justice.
“Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper and Foreign Minister John Baird have proven time and again to be true friends to Israel,” Prosor said. “They are at the heart of the world’s moral compass.… Canada is standing with Israel as we stand on the frontline in the battle against terror. They are often the first to denounce the anti-Israel bias and stand up as the voice of justice and reason. There are many examples of this bond: Canada was a strong proponent of the effort to make Yom Kippur an official UN holiday; it partnered with us to organize the upcoming special session in the General Assembly on antisemitism; and was one of the few countries to condemn the Syrian delegate … for comparing Israel’s policy to that of the Nazis.”
Prosor spoke to the paper in advance of his visit here in early February, hosted by Jewish National Fund of Canada, British Columbia. He will speak Feb. 3 in Vancouver at Congregation Beth Israel, at 7:30 p.m., and in Victoria the following day, at 7:30 p.m., at Congregation Emanu-El.
Prosor criticized efforts by the Palestinian Authority to gain recognition at the UN and at the International Criminal Court, saying it is an effort to avoid a negotiated resolution to the conflict.
“The Palestinians have found every possible opportunity to avoid direct negotiations with Israel,” he said. “They have engaged in a never-ending string of political games, literally shooting in all directions and missing the real target. The fact of the matter is that their habit of bypassing negotiations by taking unilateral action and blaming everyone but themselves will only move us further from peace. It’s time for the Palestinians to aim higher and find constructive solutions – beginning by engaging in meaningful dialogue.”
The United Nations is the body that, in 1947, passed the Partition Resolution intended to create a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine. Israel’s critics routinely note that the very agency that is responsible for its existence is repeatedly on record condemning Israeli policies. Prosor responds that the UN is not the same body it was nearly 70 years ago.
“The landscape of the UN has changed dramatically since its founding,” Prosor said. “Today, fewer than half of its member states are democracies. The halls of the UN used to ring with calls for human rights and human dignity; today, they ring with voices demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state. This year, the UN passed 20 resolutions condemning Israel. In comparison, the world’s worst human rights abusers – Iran, Syria, and North Korea – each received one condemnation. This anti-Israel bias pervades the UN system.”
Many of the UN’s most vociferous condemnations of Israel emanate from the UN Human Right Council (UNHRC).
“For years, the Human Rights Council has singled out Israel for condemnation,” Prosor said. “I have to note that some of the world’s most repressive regimes, including Saudi Arabia and Cuba, are members of the Human Rights Council.”
Saudi Arabia is currently in the international spotlight for carrying out the first of 20 court-ordered floggings of democracy blogger Raif Badawi. After Friday prayers a week ago, Badawi, who created the blog Free Saudi Liberals, was lashed 50 times over the course of 15 minutes in a public square in front of a mosque in Jeddah. He is scheduled to receive the same punishment for a total of 20 successive Fridays, or 1,000 lashes. This is in addition to his sentence of 10 years in prison.
Despite this immediate example and other atrocities perpetrated by elected members of UNHRC, the body’s attentions are overwhelmingly focused on the Jewish state, Prosor said.
“To date, there have been 22 emergency meetings of the HRC to deal with situations around the world – 33 percent of them dealt with Israel,” Prosor said. “Additionally, Israel is singled out during regular sessions. Article 4 of the Council’s agenda examines the abuses of every single country in the world, except one. Israel – and Israel alone – has its own permanent place on the agenda: Article 7. This isn’t just a double standard, it’s a triple standard. One standard for democracies, one standard for dictators and a whole other impossible standard for Israel.”
“Another example is the UN’s UNISPAL [UN Information System on the Question of Palestine] website,” Prosor said. “It has advertised ‘apartheid tours’ in Israel and promoted a petition calling for the Canadian prime minister to cancel a visit to Israel.
“The UN could be playing a more constructive role by investing less time targeting Israel and more time advancing peace and security, economic growth, women’s rights, minority rights and so on,” he said. “None of this will be possible so long as the institution is held hostage by the world’s most repressive regimes.”
Though he is the lead representative of Israel at an organization that sometimes seems to have condemnation of the Jewish state as its primary mission, Prosor insists he is not intimidated.
“I walk the halls of this organization tall and proud of my extraordinary nation, one of the freest and more democratic countries on earth,” he said. “At the UN, I feel it is important to show the world what Israel is about beyond our conflict. We have so much innovation and ingenuity to share in agriculture, medicine, high-tech, education and more. We are a nation of just eight million that has produced 12 Nobel prizes, that sends satellites into space, puts electric cars on the road and develops the technology to power everything from cellphones to solar panels to medical devices. I feel privileged to represent Israel and the Jewish people.”
Prosor said he is bringing a message to Canada that emphasizes the parallels between the two countries.
“Israel and Canada share the same value system – we believe in democracy, justice, human rights and peace,” he said. “Together, we are standing firm amidst the stormy seas of global diplomacy to make the world a more peaceful place. The UN needs more countries like Canada – countries that are willing to take a stand and defend our common values.”
Ujjal Dosanjh will receive the inaugural Civil Courage Award at the 10th annual Raoul Wallenberg Day on Jan. 18. (photo by Patrick Tam)
In honor of the 10th annual Vancouver Raoul Wallenberg Day, the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society will present its inaugural Civil Courage Award to the Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh on Jan. 18.
WSCCS was formed by members of the Swedish and Jewish communities in 2013, with the goal of continuing the legacy of the Wallenberg Day in Vancouver and commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara and others like them through the establishment of an award for civil courage. The award is given to an individual associated with British Columbia who has helped improve the lives of others and society while defying unjust laws, norms, conventions or unethical behaviors of the time and place. The choice of Dosanjh as a recipient was unanimous in the panel of three, which includes Thomas Berger, a Canadian politician of Swedish descent and retired Supreme Court justice, Georgia Straight publisher Dan McLeod, and Thomas Gradin, honorary Swedish consul, former hockey player and a scout for the Canucks. Dosanjh was selected as the award recipient “for his actions as a critic of sectarian violence and his advocacy for social justice, often at great risk to his personal safety. As a critic of extremism and champion of liberal democracy he has been a great benefit to Canada and an inspiration to us all.”
Dosanjh is well known as Canada’s first Indo-Canadian provincial premier and for his roles as attorney general, federal health minister and a member of Parliament until 2011. Back in 1985, after the Indian army attacked the Golden Temple in the Punjab to flush out Sikh extremists, Dosanjh warned the Canadian government that sectarian violence could spill over into Canada. His warning fell on deaf ears. Four months later, on June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was bombed, killing 329 people, 280 of whom were Canadian. In the wake of this tragedy, Dosanjh consistently and publicly denounced violence as a means of establishing an independent Sikh homeland in India.
As a result these calls, Dosanjh has been subjected to death threats since the 1980s, he was attacked and severely beaten with a metal bar outside his law office and he had a Molotov cocktail thrown into his constituency office in 1999. He recalls a Facebook page set up in 2010 to discuss openly how to execute his murder. Despite these harrowing encounters, Dosanjh said he has always felt “safe enough” living in Canada. “Canadians are a peace-loving people who respect each other’s right to speak, no matter how distasteful one’s remarks might be,” he said. The threats subsided after 2010 but by then he had learned to live with them. “You can’t let these threats beat you into fear,” he added.
In an interview with the Independent, Dosanjh said he was “totally humbled” when he learned he would be receiving the award a few weeks ago. Though he’d not heard of the WSCCS, he was familiar with the story of Raoul Wallenberg. “To be honored in his name is something I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams,” he confessed. “I’m extremely honored to be associated with Wallenberg’s name, though what he did was under much more difficult circumstances and, therefore, all the more important. Still, to be acknowledged in your own lifetime for things you stood for, that some may find disagreeable, is great because it’s good to have friends.”
Dosanjh is presently writing a memoir and said though he misses the “gut and thrust” of politics, he has no longing for the weekly commutes to Ottawa and, prior to that, to Victoria.
WSCCS will present the award at the Wosk Auditorium at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Sunday, Jan. 18, 1:30 p.m. B.C. lieutenant governor, the Hon. Judith Guichon, will attend the ceremony, which will include a screening of the film The Rescuers by Michael King, which tells the story of 13 heroic diplomats who saved tens of thousands of lives during the Second World War. Admission is by donation.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach will speak at the Rothstein Theatre on Jan. 17. (photo from Shmuley Boteach)
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach will be in Vancouver later next week to talk about his most recent book, Kosher Lust: Why Love is Not the Answer. Boteach, a rabbi, author, television host, pundit and in-demand speaker who has been called “America’s Rabbi,” is being presented by the North Shore Jewish Community Centre/Congregation Har El with support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. His talk will be followed by a Q&A and a meet and mingle over refreshments.
Boteach described Kosher Lust as “a revolutionary book,” in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “Most books about marriage, about sex or about romance, are about how you can create love in a relationship, how you can increase love. This book argues that love has been the problem all along. Why do we have such a high divorce rate? Why, if [marriages] do work, they work on a practical level but not on a level of deep desire? And my book argues the reason is that love has always been the problem.” He stressed, “The foundation of a marriage is supposed to be lust and desire, rather than love and friendship.”
In recognizing that “we live in a modern world where marriage as an institution is in common decline,” Boteach said he is “trying to make arguments for sustaining, enhancing and promoting marriage.” The bestselling author said his newest book “gives us three rules of lust. Number one, unavailability; number two, mystery; number three, sinfulness.” The book “teaches couples how to bring the three rules of erotic lust into their marriages and relationships.” These three rules of lust are from the Song of Solomon on which, he explained, the book itself is based.
Untangling the first rule, Boteach said that unavailability is “what we call erotic obstacles, erotic impediments [or] things which frustrate desire.” These include “things that get in the way of desire … that actually increase desire,” he said.
A problem with modern marriage “is that there is no mystery,” he said. “Marriages today are based on openness and a lack of mystery, and constant availability…. I actually argue a different kind of marriage.”
When asked how an ideal marriage would look, Boteach said, the “whole belief that marriage is about this constant openness and constant availability is incorrect.” Jewish law, he suggested, argues instead “for ‘sinful’ marriages. Notice that husband and wife become forbidden to each other for a period [of time] every month [during niddah]. Then, you have the element of sinfulness under the laws of modesty that are all about things being concealed, mysterious, covered, not just always available.”
Are there dangers or limitations to lust? “From a Jewish perspective, all things in life are neutral, and it really depends on their application as to whether they are positive or negative,” he said.
“There is unkosher lust,” Boteach added, “like what a husband will feel towards a woman who is not his wife. Unkosher lust is the kind of lust that is generated by pornography and the objectification of women and demeaning women.” Kosher lust, however, “like the desire that a husband has for his wife and that a wife has for her husband, is a beautiful thing and a ‘kosher’ thing.”
His book contends that “women are as lustful as men are,” Boteach explained. “One of the central arguments in my book is that women are much more sexual than men, and female sexuality has been belittled in our time and prior to our time.” Women “lust in a uniquely feminine way … in a much deeper more emotional way,” Boteach suggested, while men “lust in a uniquely physical way, that is often very two-dimensional, very predictable, very monotonous and very boring.”
The book has received several positive reviews in mainstream media, but also a critical review in Haaretz, Boteach said. In his opinion, this is “no coincidence … because Jews are the ones who always have an issue with a rabbi giving them advice about sex, because so often we belittle our own religion.”
Boteach continued, “I am not looking to write specifically to a Jewish audience. I am writing to a mainstream audience…. Jews have to learn how to assert their Jewishness in the midst of a multicultural society. And that’s what I do … I’m promoting Jewish identity, which can be affirmed and asserted anywhere and everywhere. We can’t create ghettoized Judaism that is only affirmed in the presence of other Jews. But I also believe that the universal teachings of Judaism are universally applicable and, therefore, it’s not just for Jews.”
The prolific author – he has published 30 books to date – will continue to focus his writing on relationships, but he is also continuing his foray into television with a new pilot for a show to be broadcast in Canada on Vision TV.
Boteach will speak Jan. 17, 7 p.m., at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre. Tickets are available online at harel.brownpapertickets.com.
As the 2014 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign draws closer to a record $8 million mark, preparations are well underway to build on that success in 2015.
Cindy Behrmann, campaign director since 2012 and one of the primary drivers behind this year’s campaign will be heading off to a well-deserved retirement. Over the past few months, Federation was hard at work reviewing the financial resource development (FRD) department in advance of Behrmann’s departure at the end of December and has announced the following changes.
Michelle Pullan (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)
Michelle Pullan, Federation’s women’s philanthropy director since 2011, will assume the role of campaign director. Pullan has considerable experience in philanthropy and fund development, having enjoyed success as a fundraising manager at Ballet BC and director of development at Vancouver Heritage Foundation before joining Federation’s FRD team. She has taken on leadership and volunteer roles on behalf of Jewish schools in the community and has served on the boards of Camp Solomon Schechter and Camp Hatikvah.
Campaign coordinators Eva Bach and Anna Vander Munnik have been promoted to the role of campaign managers. Vander Munnik, with Federation since 2011, will focus her effort on managing the men’s philanthropy division, while Bach, who joined Federation in 2013, will manage the women’s philanthropy portfolio. Also returning in January from maternity leave will be director, marketing and communications, Becky Saegert.
Led by associate executive director Marcie Flom, the FRD team is well positioned to capitalize on and sustain the success enjoyed in 2014.
Young philanthropist Yosef Nider receives recognition. (photo from Naomi Nelson Photography)
On Sunday, Dec. 21, the Centre for Judaism in Surrey/White Rock held its annual menorah lighting at Semiahmoo Centre, and awarded its inaugural Young Lamplighter Award to Yosef Nider, pictured here. The young violinist, a student at Vancouver Hebrew Academy, received the award for raising more than $10,000 for cancer research. Mayors Wayne Baldwin and Linda Hepner presented the award.
The lighting was attended by local city councilors and Jewish community members, all welcomed by the centre’s Rabbi Falik and Simie Schtroks.
To nominate for next year’s award a youth between ages 5-18 who is illuminating his or her part of the world by promoting goodness and kindness, email c4j@shaw with Lamplighter Award in the subject line. Nominations will be accepted through September 2015.
This year’s Gold Plate Dinner marks 40 years that Lubavitch B.C., led by Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg, third from the right, has been in Vancouver. (photos from facebook.com/LubavitchBC)
Chabad Lubavitch BC held its 39th Annual Gold Plate Dinner, paying tribute to the Rebbe, his vision and 40 years in British Columbia on Dec. 2, at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. Guests enjoyed a reception, followed by a five-course meal, during which several speakers shared how Chabad Lubavitch has impacted their lives. Throughout the evening, several prizes were raffled, including hockey tickets, vacation packages, 40-year-old scotch and the grand prize of a 2014 BMW i3. The evening concluded with an entertaining performance by comedian Marc Schiff.
Harvey Dales, 2014 Federation annual campaign general chair, speaks at a Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver donor event. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)
As he tallied up the fundraising dollars earlier this month for this year’s Federation annual campaign, Harvey Dales noted with satisfaction that almost $7 million had been pledged in Vancouver since the campaign began in September. With a month to go until it wraps up in January, he’s aspiring to reach the $8 million mark.
“Our campaign had been relatively stagnant for the past few years, with only slight increases,” he reflected. “This year, which is my last year as campaign chair, I felt it was important to reach the $8 million mark because there are just so many needs.”
Dales and his team established a matching fund, where six donors promised a total of $125,000 in matching funds; that meant every unrestricted dollar of increase to the campaign made by any other donor would be matched. Another matching campaign was established with a focus on 20-to-35-year-olds, this one a two-for-one match.
The two matching funds have been so successful that Federation found itself on the verge of running out of matching funds a few weeks ago. “We went out and raised further funds, another $30,000, to top up the fund and ensure we could continue with the matching,” Dales said. “We’re still seeking additional funds for the match fund, and I’m very confident it will bring us to our $8 million goal.”
For the first time in many years, each one of Federation’s divisions has seen an increase in the dollars pledged compared with gifts from the same donors last year. That includes major donors, men’s philanthropy, women’s philanthropy, community and young adults. “The gifts that have come in have been incredible,” he told the Independent. “One individual who hadn’t made a gift before pledged $750. Another newly wedded couple explained they’d really stretched their budget by giving us $360 last year, but this year they were giving us $540 because of the matching funds.”
“I believe it’s so important for the community to know how vital Federation is,” he continued. “It’s our social needs network for the community, whether it’s funding for social services, education, youth, outreach or seniors. Both here, overseas and in Israel, there are so many recipient agencies that rely on Federation for the bulk of their funding to provide desperately needed services.”
Vancouver’s community is extraordinary for how many individuals commit to volunteering and canvassing for the annual campaign, he added. “In campaigns in other cities, the canvassing is done by professionals, but here in Vancouver our community is just so involved.”
The consecration of Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster in 1929. Eliya Ahroni, left, shammas of the synagogue, with shul president Chaim Leib Freedman, who was also founder of the Vancouver Chevra Kadisha in 1910. (photo from Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia L.00306)
The organization that oversees three of Metro Vancouver’s Jewish cemeteries does not want to discourage anyone from planning ahead and purchasing plots right now. They do, however, want to dispel rumors that the cemeteries are running out of space.
“I’m not trying to discourage people from buying plots,” said Howard Jampolsky, executive director of the Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board, “but we do have adequate land in New Westminster [for now]. We feel that we have probably between 25 and 40 years left in New Westminster of burial land available, based on projections and current rates.”
The Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board operates Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster and a newer one in Surrey. It also is involved with the City of Vancouver in overseeing the Jewish area at Mountain View, the city-owned cemetery on Fraser Street.
Other Jewish cemeteries in the area are run by Temple Sholom, the Reform synagogue in Vancouver; Har-El, the Conservative congregation on the North Shore; Beth Israel, the Conservative congregation in Vancouver; and Beth Tikvah, the Conservative congregation in Richmond.
In an interview with the Independent, Jampolsky clarified the administrative structure of Jewish funerals and burials in the Vancouver area. Although other congregations have cemeteries, the Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board is solely responsible for everything that happens in the preparation for Jewish funerals, regardless of affiliation or denomination.
The Chevra Kadisha, the Jewish Burial Society, effectively operates as an adjunct to the cemetery board, which is an independent organization originally created in 1929 under the auspices of Congregation Schara Tzedeck, the oldest and largest Orthodox synagogue in Vancouver. The Chevra Kadisha, which literally means the “holy society,” consists of volunteers who prepare the deceased for burial. More than three millennia of Jewish rites are embodied in the rituals performed by the Chevra Kadisha.
Beyond this most intimate act, the cemetery board also oversees the entire process before the service at the cemetery.
“We provide all the funeral services,” Jampolsky said. “[These include] the registration of the deceased, the picking up at the hospital or the home, taking them out to our funeral home, which is attached to the cemetery in New Westminster, providing the ritual preparation for burial, services of the Chevra Kadisha, which include sitting with the deceased from the time they come to us until the burial, and everything to do with the conducting of a funeral.” Rev. Joseph Marciano is Schara Tzedeck’s funeral director.
If the funeral is at one of the Schara Tzedeck cemeteries, the entire process remains under the board’s purview. If the deceased is to be buried in another cemetery, the cemetery board is responsible for everything up until they transport the person to the cemetery, where the rabbi and congregation take over. As a result, regardless of denomination, all Jewish deceased in Metro Vancouver receive full Orthodox preparation for burial.
Jampolsky stressed that one does not need to be a member of Schara Tzedeck to be buried in one of their cemeteries, one need only be Jewish.
The board, which is made up of eminent community members, is co-chaired by Jack Kowarsky and Charles Diamond. Diamond’s father, Jack Diamond, z”l, initiated the board’s current structure decades ago.
The Mountain View Jewish Cemetery has been undergoing a restoration this year, after decades of limited attention. J.B. Newall, the monument company located across from the cemetery, has renovated many of the oldest headstones.
“The headstones that are 100 years old look like they’re brand-new,” Jampolsky said. “It’s going to be a really remarkable place to walk through.”
In addition to the physical restoration taking place under the leadership of Shirley Barnett and a committee of volunteers, a campaign aims to raise funds for perpetual care to maintain the cemetery as it should be.
The oldest Jewish cemetery in the metro area – and the only one inside Vancouver city limits – still sees one or two funerals a year, Jampolsky said, despite the widespread belief that it is full.
Unlike the cemeteries in New Westminster and Surrey, which are fully operated and maintained by the cemetery board, the Jewish section of Mountain View remains under the ownership and operation of the city, like the larger cemetery from which it is separated by a hedge.
The Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board operates Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster (pictured) and a newer one in Surrey. (photo from wikimapia.org)
Jampolsky said a leading cemetery architect told him that the New Westminster cemetery is among the nicest in North America, in terms of natural beauty, upkeep and maintenance. Hollywood North has noticed, too.
“We’ve had movie companies come and want to film there and we’ve turned them away,” Jampolsky said. “We don’t need the revenue from that. We don’t think it’s respectful to the deceased.”
The board is a nonprofit organization and costs are covered by funeral expenses – $11,000 includes every aspect of preparation and the funeral if the deceased is being buried in a Schara Tzedeck cemetery; $5,575 if they are to be buried in one of the other Jewish cemeteries. The cost of the plot is also currently $11,000 at the Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster. Twenty percent of all plot fees are set aside in trust for perpetual maintenance.
Families with financial constraints are offered discreet, compassionate assistance, said Jampolsky. “We believe that every Jewish person has a right to a Jewish burial, a full halachic Jewish burial that is like any other, and we’ll never turn back from that.”
Jewish tradition makes funerals not only plain in style and appearance, but comparatively simple in terms of planning, Jampolsky noted. Every Jewish person is buried in identical caskets, made of plain unadorned wood and no metal, with holes in the base to hasten decomposition and return of the body to the earth. There is none of the competitive materialism typical of the funeral industry, where anecdotes abound of families being upsold on higher-end caskets and elaborate ceremonies.
Jewish funerals are almost identical, he said, regardless of the individual’s position in life. The same care is given to respect the individual throughout the preparation.
“I really believe that we do an important, invaluable job for the community and that we do good and holy work, we do it well, every single person is treated with the utmost care, respect, whether they’re living or they’re deceased.”
At NCJW’s 90th anniversary party, left to right, Robyn Lenn, Ezra S. Shanken, Debby Altow, Catherine Stoller, Sharon Allentuck and Cynthia Ramsay. (photo by Joanne Emerman)
Left to right: Gloria Hendin, longtime supporter of NCJW Vancouver section, hosted Sharon Allentuck and Robyn Lenn and members of the organizing committee following the celebration of the section’s 90th birthday. (photo by Linda Arato)
The Vancouver section of National Council of Jewish Women of Canada welcomed national president Sharon Allentuck of Winnipeg and Robyn Lenn, president of International Council of Jewish Women, to a jam-packed 90th anniversary party at VanDusen Botanical Garden on Nov. 16.
Vancouver president Catherine Stoller and anniversary committee members greeted the approximately 125 people to a farmers’ market of food, bubbly and partner-agency displays. Council members had a chance to renew friendships, visit the displays of B.C. Transplant Society, Vancouver Coastal Health, HIPPY/MOSAIC, the JCC Jewish Book Festival, Children of the Street, Elizabeth Fry Society, and Council’s signature projects, Books for Kids, Operation Dressup and ALUMA of Israel.
