Vancouverite Gillian Rosenberg, 31, is the first foreign woman to join YPG, the Kurds’ dominant fighting force battling the Islamic State in northern Syria. Rosenberg, who calls White Rock home, attended Maimonides Secondary School, where she was valedictorian in her…
Vancouver Israeli Tech Club Fall Meetup keynote speaker Daniel Friedmann of communications company MDA, left, with presenters Yaron Bazaz, co-founder of the app Downtown and a VIT organizer, centre, and Meir Deutsch of IKOMED. (photo by Baila Lazarus) If you’ve ever…
Approximately 50 students from Richmond Jewish Day School and Az-Zahraa Islamic Academy distributed 1,000 brown bag lunches to the homeless and needy. (photo from Richmond Jewish Day School) They huddled together to warm up on a frosty November morning, but the…
Left to right are Judith Cohen, Rachel Shanken, Alina Spaulding, Ezra Shanken and Diane Switzer. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver) Close to 500 women, inspired and united by one cause – strengthening community through tzedakah – gathered at…
In the dystopia of the Holocaust, pregnancy and childbirth were life-threatening situations – for the mother and the child. In Auschwitz, if a woman were able to conceal her pregnancy long enough to come to term, despite malnutrition and epidemics,…
Change is hard. Ending one thing and beginning another can cause stress, and can even end up feeling like a poignant loss. It’s no different in the realm of synagogue life. When a long-serving rabbi leaves his or her position,…
Gil Gan-Mor of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel will be one of the speakers at Gimme Shelter on Nov. 20. (photo from Gil Gan-Mor) A condominium used to be a potentially affordable alternative to a home for buyers…
An anonymous contribution helped purchase a Magen David Adom ambulance for Israel in honor of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent trip there. (photo from Magen David Adom) Yarin Levi, 16, was moments from death after a rocket exploded near…
Dvori Balshine has served the Vancouver Jewish community, in one capacity or another, for 45 years. She is retiring in November from her latest post – director of development at Louis Brier Jewish Aged Foundation – and she talked to…
Jonathan Fader, left, and his business partner Borhan Jiang show a class at Urban Tactics Krav Maga how to disarm an attacker who has a knife. (photo by Albert Law) When Jonathan Fader copied the Jewish Independent on an open…
