Motorists in Tel Aviv take cover from an incoming terrorist rocket. (photo from IDF Spokesperson’s Unit via Ashernet)
In Sderot, Simone Mizrachi wearily follows her two-year-old grandson as he happily jumps on the bouncy castle in a large indoor playground. A balloon pops and she jumps. The playground has four large underground bomb shelters in case of rocket attacks.
“Enough already,” said Mizrachi about the dozens of rockets fired at this small town in recent days. “My grandson is the second generation already living through these rockets. When we see smoke from the rockets, I try to tell him, ‘Look at the clouds up there,’ but he knows it’s not clouds. At age 2, he already knows what’s going on.”
Mizrachi has lived in this lower-middle-class town of 24,000 for 32 years and has raised her four children here. For the past 13 years, she said, Sderot has been under constant rocket fire. Because it is less than a mile to the border with the Gaza Strip, there are only 15 seconds to get to a shelter after the siren sounds. The Israeli government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build bomb shelters here – at bus stops, schools and in private homes.
Now, for the first time, rockets are hitting Tel Aviv. Mizrachi said she hopes Israel can end the rocket fire all over the country. But, she added, there is a certain satisfaction in the idea that Israelis in bourgeois Tel Aviv now understand what Sderot has been living with all this time.
“Where have they been for the past 13 years?” she asks angrily. “Now, they are finally getting a taste of what it is like to live here. There are times that we get 60 rockets a day. Maybe now that they feel it, the government will finally do something.”
To some, it was a (peace) camp reunion. To others, it served notice that peace with the Palestinians has returned to its place atop the agenda of Israel’s political left following its dalliance with socioeconomic issues. To the more than 2,000 participants in Haaretz newspaper’s Israel Peace Conference held last week at Tel Aviv’s David InterContinental Hotel, it was an elegant opportunity to mingle with the iconic stewardship of days past – topped by Shimon Peres – while honing the movement’s agenda among those poised to embrace the next wave of leadership, such as opposition head and Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and activist-turned-politician Stav Shaffir, who personifies the bridge from social activism to the politics of peace.
The history of the Israeli Peace Conference was itself microcosmic of the fortunes of the movement it supports. The idea began amid optimism born of word of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace mission, according to conference chief executive officer, journalist Akiva Eldar. “The original idea was to push [Israeli] Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to say ‘yes’ to Kerry but, around April, everything came to a halt,” he told this reporter.
“We kept pushing it off, finally setting it for July,” said Eldar, senior columnist for Al-Monitor. But, by the time the date rolled around, a new set of obstacles had presented themselves in the form of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens followed by the killing of a Palestinian youth. The atmosphere became more toxic to the point where key Palestinian participants, chief negotiator Sa’ib Erakat and businessman Munib Al-Masri, pulled out of the conference. Yet, the decision was made to continue as planned. According to Eldar, “We decided we don’t give veto power to terrorists on both sides.”
Nof Atamna-Ismaeel reacts to her win. (photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 from israel21c.org)
“This is the most exciting night of my life,” said a grinning, teary-eyed Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, upon her selection as winner of the fourth season of Master Chef Israel.
The April 5 broadcast had more than a third of Israel staying at home on a Saturday night to see who among the remaining three finalists would be crowned this year’s culinary champion of the most popular show on local television, even beating its close competition, Chef Games, which debuted this fall.
Israeli-Arab Atamna-Ismaeel ended up besting competitors Ido Kronenberg, a businessman from Savyon, and Meseret Woldimikhal, an Ethiopian-born immigrant in the process of converting from Catholicism to Judaism, who lives in Rishpon.
Atamna-Ismaeel was a judges’ favorite from the get-go. This year’s auditions for the show, based on the British reality program of the same name, involved two steps: a blind tasting of a sandwich prepared behind the scenes by a wannabe contestant, and a second dish cooked on screen by those whose sandwiches met with the judges’ approval.
Talia Safra and Nimrod Eisenberd of Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem interact with a patient. (photo from Dream Doctors Project)
While clowns have brought smiles to the faces of many children, both healthy and sick, the latter clowning generally has been done on a volunteer basis and without the presence of a medical team. Recently, however, Israel became the first place in the world to recognize the medical benefits associated with positive attitude and laughter. Most Israeli hospitals now offer clown therapy and, due to its growing acceptance and success, the University of Haifa will be the first to offer a clown degree.
This all started with Jacob Shriqui, an Israeli shaliach to Geneva who went on to work in Israel’s health-care industry. Once he retired, Shriqui returned to visit some friends in Geneva and was invited to a meeting in a hospital in Lausanne. When he entered the hospital, he got lost and, in his wandering, he happened to walk by the pediatric department. To his surprise, he saw a giggling child out of the corner of his eye. Upon further investigation, he noticed the clown who was making the child smile.
“The idea came to him that if there is a thing like that, it should also be in Israel, because, until then, there was no medical clowning in Israel,” said Daniel Shriqui, Jacob’s son and past director of the Dream Doctor Project.
When he returned to Israel, Jacob Shriqui used his connections from the time he was stationed in Geneva to create the Magi Foundation, with its main function being the Dream Doctors Project in Israel. Built with the help of philanthropic members of the Jewish community in Geneva, in September 2001, the project started off with three clowns. After a year of experiments and positive feedback, he went from hospital to hospital proposing the concept.
“This is how we grew from three clowns to 127 today, in nearly every hospital in Israel,” said his son. “The main thing was, when my father came to the hospital, he said, ‘Look, we have a tool. It’s called a medical clown. We’re going to give him all the best training we can, and you’re going to try this tool like any other medical device. We don’t know exactly what it does or whether or not it will be effective. If it’s not, you can end the project whenever you want. If it is, you have to take on the responsibility of operating it.’”
From the start, the medical clowns in the hospitals were part of the medical team, a situation desired both by the hospitals and by the clowns.
“We work as part of the medical team because we believe that medical clowning is a medical profession, just like any other, and that it can be very successful,” said Daniel Shriqui. “But first, we had to convince the doctors and nurses of the benefits of having a clown when you take blood from the veins of a child. The child doesn’t cry because the clown is acting and playing with him.
David Shilman (Dream Doctors) playing with his patient, and the nurse at Rambam Medical Centre, Haifa. (photo from Dream Doctors Project)
“Another example is when a child is taken for a repair surgery after being sexually abused. Typically, the first test after that is done by the doctor, and by the clown paralleling, and everything is recorded.
“We see it really facilitating the work, and being able to work more smoothly with the children, [and] with the parents, too.”
Another part of the hospital-clown agreement is that the hospital gets the clowns’ services for one year for free with no obligation and no contract. If after one year, the hospital is happy with the results and wants to continue with the project, the hospital needs to start participating in the payment for the clown services.
“We knew we were here to stay when, last year, the head of the Ministry of Health in Israel called and said, ‘I need your clowns immediately,’” explained Shriqui. “‘We’re going to vaccinate all the children in Israel under nine years old for polio. We’re going to open almost 1,000 vaccination stations and I need all your staff, more than 100 clowns, to be present in the station to help us to do this.’” For the first three months, most of the clowns went from station to station and helped the nurses vaccinate the children.
“I suggested to one of the biggest hospitals in Israel, two years ago, that they use a clown in the oncology department for adults,” said Shriqui. “A few months ago, there was a budget problem and the hospital told the department we have to stop the clown service. A week later, the hospital manager received a letter signed by 70 patients, doctors and nurses, protesting against no longer having the clowns come to the unit twice a week. They explained why it is so very important, that the clowns transform the unit from a sad [one] to more positive.”
The increasing demand for hospital clowns is coming from within the medical field. The project works to fill the requests for services, but sometimes hospital budgets do get in the way.
“Especially in the oncology department, the children often are in the hospital for a really long time,” said Shriqui. “Unfortunately, many times it ends by the death of the child. But, during these months, sometimes years, there is a special relationship formed between the clown and the child, because our clowns work at the same place for years.
“In Israel, it’s a bit different…. The clown gives their own private cellphone numbers to the parents. I remember one case where the parents called a clown when he was off duty, at home, and said, ‘Listen, tomorrow we have to go to chemo and we’d like you to come assist, because the child asked that you to be there.’”
The project held a conference in October 2011, where clowns from around the world came to Israel.
“We help many clowns that come from all over the world and work with us to learn how to do this work better with medical teams, and then to be really involved in the processes and the medical treatments,” said Shriqui. “My philosophy is that a clown has to work freely. To get the best from the clown, you have to free him to be part of the team – and we have proof that if you free the clown, even to be in the operating room, you get unbelievable results.”
Standing, from left to right, are panel facilitator Michael Levy, CFHU board member Stav Adler, Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, Prof. Raphael Mechoulam and Dr. Kathryn Selby. (photo by Michelle Dodek)
It may be a common occurrence in many parts of the city, but it is still a rare thing to pass through marijuana smoke while entering an Orthodox synagogue. But that was the case on June 24, when a panel discussion took place at Schara Tzedeck on the topic Should I Change My Mind About Weed? A small number of attendees, unsatisfied with a merely academic consideration of the topic, opted for a more psychoactive engagement.
The director of the local Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, Dina Wachtel, was inspired to convene a panel on marijuana after watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s CNN documentary on the topic.
Prof. Raphael Mechoulam, a Hebrew University chemist and a leading expert on the subject, said that marijuana has been used in societies from India and China to the Middle East “forever.” Queen Victoria’s doctor, J. Russell Reynolds, used it to treat the queen’s migraines.
Mechoulam said that cannabidiol (CBD), a component in marijuana, may have medical uses “in almost all diseases affecting humans.” Unlike tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the component that causes a high, CBD does not deliver a high and has no known side effects. However, there have been almost no clinical trials on humans, probably because pharmaceutical corporations would not be able to patent it and governments, for various reasons, have avoided the matter.
Cannabinoid receptors are abundant in multiple brain regions, he said, including those affecting movement control, learning and memory, stress, cognitive function and links between cerebral hemispheres. Marijuana can impact appetite, blood pressure, cerebral blood flow, the immune system and inflammation.
In tests on mammals, such as mice, marijuana reduced brain trauma and reduced or eliminated cancerous tumors. There was a clinical trial on its use around epilepsy and its effect on patients experiencing 10 to 30 seizures per day. Cannabinoids were tested on people for whom existing drugs do not work and resulted in positive outcomes in large numbers of adult patients. “This is the only clinical trial that has ever been reported – 35 years ago,” he said.
Infants undergoing cancer treatment that causes vomiting were given small amounts of THC. “We saw a complete stop of all vomiting and nausea,” with no side effects, he said.
In treatment of schizophrenia, current drugs have some extremely unpleasant side effects, he noted, while CBD has none. Even so, in most jurisdictions, marijuana is in the same legal category as heroin.
Dr. Kathryn Selby, a clinical professor in the University of British Columbia’s pediatrics department specializing in developmental neurosciences, spoke on marijuana’s effect on the adolescent brain. She spoke of the “enormous plasticity of the teen brain” and said that THC can alter the brain’s structure and function, and that the neurotoxic effects can be lifelong. Maturing of the human brain continues into the 20s, she explained, and the prefrontal cortex, which involves judgment and executive functions, develops last. There are two peaks in brain maturation and cerebral volume, happening in early childhood and then, for boys, at age 14-and-a-half and, for girls, at 11-and-a-half. Trauma, stress, substance abuse and sedentary habits can negatively affect development.
The effects of marijuana use in the short term can be loss of motivation, fatigue and, in about 10 percent of users, addiction. Neuroimaging indicates that the longer-term impact of marijuana use by adolescents is strongly associated with psychoses such as schizophrenia later in life. Selby said there is a 40 percent increase in prevalence of psychosis among users, with a 50 to 200 percent increase in psychoses among heavy users and, among those who use marijuana daily during high school, there is a 600 percent increase in depression and anxiety later in life. Correlations also include lowered IQ, intellectual and emotional issues.
The frontal lobe, which is not completely formed by adolescence, is also the most affected by alcohol and drugs and leaves users vulnerable to the “adverse developmental, cognitive, psychiatric and addictive effects of marijuana.” Selby recommended that, if marijuana is used at all, that it be “as late and as little as possible.”
Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, Schara Tzedeck Synagogue’s spiritual leader, also has a biochemistry degree. Although the Torah does not say anything specifically about marijuana, Rosenblatt made the comparison to what the Torah and Talmud say about other forms of altered states, particularly drunkenness. If there were any questions about the severity of potential outcomes from inebriation, Rosenblatt said, the drunkenness and castration of Noah is a cautionary tale.
Rosenblatt also mentioned the story of Lot, whose daughters got him drunk and seduced him, resulting in Amnon and Moab, who were both Lot’s sons and grandsons. Rosenblatt cited it as an indication that drunkenness and disinhibition is to be avoided.
The holiday of Purim is of particular interest in this discussion and Rosenblatt said there is a modern interpretation of the old dictum that Jews should become so drunk on Purim that they cannot tell the difference between the names of the villain Haman and the hero Mordechai. The modern view, the rabbi said, is to drink a little, get tired, fall asleep and, when asked who is Haman and who is Mordechai, to roll over and snore.
Rabbis in recent years have overwhelmingly concurred that use of, say, morphine for terminal patients is justified, but the use of untested alternative measures is not.
“Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence,” said Rosenblatt. If studies indicate that marijuana were clinically proven to assist in recovery or treatment for various diseases, he said, it would almost certainly become acceptable.
Prof. Raphael Mechoulam at CKNW. (photo from CFHU)
The panel was moderated by Michael Levy, CKNW radio and Global TV personality. Stav Adler, president of CFHU Vancouver chapter, introduced the evening. Hodie Kahn, president of Schara Tzedeck, invited the audience to stay around for munchies after the event.
Were minds changed? After Mechoulam’s presentation, he received an enthusiastic standing ovation from about half the audience of 200 or so. After her presentation, Selby was greeted with polite applause, while one man jumped to his feet.
An Israeli border policeman patrols the area of the Judean desert, near the Jordan border. After swift victories in Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorist group is setting its sights on Jordan, threatening to drag Israel into the global jihadist conflict. (photo by Nati Shohat/FLASH90)
Emerging from the chaos of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has gained the world’s attention for its brutal medieval-style justice and its swift victories in Iraq, threatening to overrun the weak U.S.-backed government there. But now ISIS is also setting its sights on Jordan, threatening to drag Israel into the global jihadist conflict.
“They are a vicious and brutal group, and have even done some things that al-Qaeda thought were unwise,” Elliot Abrams, who served as deputy national security advisor for former President George W. Bush and is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told this reporter. “More people, more money and more guns. They do constitute a real threat.”
The goals of ISIS are clear from its name. Alternatively translated as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (the Arabic name for the Levant region) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the group seeks to control the entire region, which, in addition to Iraq and Syria, includes Jordan, Lebanon, and even Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Graduates of NCSY’s Impact leadership program at the spring regional awards banquet in Harrison Hot Springs, with Rabbi Samuel Ross. (photo from Rabbi Samuel Ross)
In a Jewish community with one of the highest assimilation rates, the role of youth groups such as the Vancouver chapter of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) has become more important over the years. NCSY Vancouver’s parent organization was founded in 1954 and the local chapter, which emerged about a decade later, is helping celebrate the 60th anniversary milestone.
NCSY works to develop a connection with Jewish youth before they embark on their university and professional lives. Rabbi Samuel Ross, NCSY Vancouver director, spoke about the “unique, beautiful situation” in which the chapter works. He said they “cater to anyone and everyone, which is an ongoing challenge but it’s really reaping rewards.” Indeed, many of those who join or take part in NCSY activities develop lifelong connections to Judaism and Israel, which was Nicole Grubner’s experience.
Grubner grew up in West Vancouver and became involved with NCSY when she was in Grade 9. She started attending their Shabbatons, and loved the warm atmosphere and Jewish connection that she felt at these events. By the end of high school, she was on the NCSY student leadership board, began keeping Shabbat, and had signed up for a post-graduate year at a seminary in Israel.
“I think the goal of NCSY is for it to be a jumping off point for you, so I used it as that and continued my Jewish education after high school,” said Grubner, 25. “It brought a lot of meaning into my life and week and I enjoyed the sense of community that it brought.”
NCSY Vancouver hosts a mix of educational and social programs, everything from a mock casino night to sushi in the sukkah to Shabbatons, trips and leadership programs.
“The city is growing, the chapter is exploding, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I’m actually bringing in someone else to come work for me next year,” said Ross, who has been leading NCSY Vancouver for the past three years. “We do the best we can to inspire them enough so that they’ll want to continue their Jewish growth once they get to university.”
In Grubner’s case, after her year in Israel, she studied at Stern College in New York, returning to Israel every year.
“I actually went back to NCSY and staffed summer programs in Israel for three years,” she said. “I had an amazing Israel experience and it was important for me to give that to someone else.”
Her love of Israel and connecting with the Jewish people didn’t dampen after university ended. In October 2012, she made aliyah.
“In Vancouver, we know that assimilation is a really huge problem, so NCSY is really important to the Jewish community in Vancouver because it’s a connection point, one that many kids don’t get the opportunity to be a part of.”
“It had a very big impact on my life, so much so that I made my best friends and closest connections in NCSY. I’m really grateful for the base it gave me, for the fact that I was able to get so involved and so connected in high school,” she said. “In Vancouver, we know that assimilation is a really huge problem, so NCSY is really important to the Jewish community in Vancouver because it’s a connection point, one that many kids don’t get the opportunity to be a part of. NCSY has really changed the face of Vancouver’s Jewish community,” she said.
NCSY is a globally recognized organization that connects Jewish youth through social, recreational, educational and spiritual programs.
“It’s about connecting kids to their roots and to their Jewish identity. Whether kids become religious or not, to me, that’s almost less important than kids thinking about their Judaism and it being something important to them in whatever way they choose to practise,” said Grubner. “It shouldn’t be a part of their identity that passes them by because of apathy or lack of knowledge.”
In Vancouver, the number of Jewish youth involved in NCSY programming has been growing. This year, they’re sending 16 youth to programs in Israel. Some of their programs draw 100 kids, and there are already 25 applicants this year for the NCSY Vancouver youth board.
“When I first came three years ago, we had to beg kids to be on that board,” said Ross. “Now, it’s really hard to get on. The kids have to write an essay why they like NCSY and what they can add, and it’s beautiful. You see how they write how Judaism has made such a difference in their lives and how passionate they are and how much they enjoy coming.”
Vicky Tobianahis a freelance writer and editor based in Toronto. Connect with her on Twitter, @vicktob, or at [email protected].
Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha’er and Naftali Fraenkel z”l (photo from mfa.gov.il)
On Monday, June 30, the bodies of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who were kidnapped June 12, were found northwest of Hebron. The sad discovery was the result of an extensive search effort led by the Israel Defence Forces, the Israel Security Agency and the Israel Police. A joint funeral was held July 1. Jewish groups and others around the world join in mourning.
In Vancouver, there will be a community memorial service, coordinated by the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver and led by Rabbi Berger, Rabbi Moskovitz and Cantor Szenes-Strauss, on Thursday, July 3, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver at 7:30 p.m.
As well, to share your thoughts and express your condolences to the families of the boys, visit the Jewish Federations of North America’s “Remember Our Boys” page.
From left to right, the Hon. Robert Henderson; Gary Schneider, Confederation Forest Project; John Horrelt, chair, PEI 2014 community advisory committee; and Penny Walsh McGuire, executive director, PEI 2014 Inc. (photo from pei2014.ca)
Prince Edward Island is where the idea of our country first took shape. On Sept. 1, 1864, the Charlottetown Conference brought together representatives of the Maritime colonies and the province of Canada (present-day Quebec and Ontario) and the “Fathers of Confederation” laid the groundwork for Confederation, which became reality on July 1, 1867.
This summer marks the 150th anniversary of that conference and the historic moment will be celebrated in what many consider to be the birthplace of Canada – Charlottetown, P.E.I. There will be more than 150 different festivals, events and activities in the province.
“P.E.I. is proud to have hosted such an important meeting in our nation’s history in 1864,” said Penny Walsh McGuire, executive director of PEI 2014, which is organizing the celebrations. “One hundred and fifty years later, Prince Edward Island is very proud to be playing host yet again – this time to all Canadians and visitors from around the world as we celebrate the creation of our nation.”
Constructed between 1843 and 1847, Province House is Canada’s second-oldest legislature building and it is still in use, as the home of the Prince Edward Island House of Assembly. (photo from en.wikipedia.org)
The 70 days of celebration, from July 1 until Sept. 7, feature daily concerts, theatre performances and comedy on the Atlantic Lottery/Red Shores Main Stage, cultural arts and heritage exhibits in the Canada Pavilion, chef demonstrations and local food tastings in the Culinary Pavilion, interactive activities in the Kids Pavilion, as well as historical walking tours.
While celebrating Prince Edward Island’s history, and our nation’s, it would be remiss to not also highlight the long history of the province’s small but strong Jewish community.
Prince Edward Island’s first Jewish settlers were recorded in a newspaper article about a celebration of Passover in 1908. The community grew very slowly, with only a dozen Jewish families reported as residing there before the Second World War. In the 1970s, a Torah scroll was brought to the island for the first time and there were the first recorded High Holiday services; 1976 marked the celebration of the first bar mitzvah there.
“Coming here for the first time was almost like coming to Israel the first time. I felt like I belonged,” said Leslee Sack, a New York native who moved to Prince Edward Island in 2007. She is now the secretary of the P.E.I. Jewish Community (PEIJC).
“This place is what Brooklyn was like in the ’50s,” she said. “Everyone wants to talk to you, everyone wants to know your story.”
For 40 years, Sacks worked as a travel agent in New York; her office was in a building across from the World Trade Centre. She wasn’t at work on Sept. 11, 2001, but later found out her boss had sent everyone home after the first tower fell.
“I would’ve been under building two waiting for the train,” she said. Deciding to make a change, she went on a Maritimes cruise and, after some deliberation, chose to settle and retire in Charlottetown.
“I came up here knowing no one and now I cannot walk the streets of Charlottetown without saying hi to someone,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place, terrific sightseeing, nice people. I’ve never looked back.”
Sacks estimated that there are about 150 Jews in Prince Edward Island. The province is the only one in Canada with no synagogue or rabbi, she said, but she insisted that the community is doing well. “We celebrate every single holiday except for Shavuot, which somehow gets left in the dust, in someone’s home. People volunteer to host, it’s always potluck. And, we recently acquired two different kinds of kosher wine, you can get kosher cheese, fish, but not kosher meat.”
If you haven’t made the trek to the other Canadian coast, this summer would be the perfect time to do so. Here are some highlights to check out:
• Visit the PEI 2014 Celebration Zone at Confederation Landing Park on the Charlottetown waterfront on July 1 for a fireworks show, as well as daily concerts, interactive walking tours, cultural exhibits and more continuing through until Sept. 7.
• Immerse yourself in the province’s history by attending a Belfast Historical Society Lecture Series event.
Delegates from the legislatures of Canada, gathering on the steps of Prince Edward Island’s Government House for the Charlottetown Conference in 1864 (photo by George P. Roberts via en.wikipedia.org)
• Pay tribute to the Fathers of Confederation during Founder’s Week from Aug. 28-Sept. 8, which features concerts, fireworks and other activities.
• Get an inside look at the controversies for and against Confederation by visiting the Eptek Summer Celebrations from June until October.
• Attend the Summerside Highland Gathering, filled with Celtic gift shops, live Celtic music and different clan tents.
• If you’re interested in visiting Prince Edward Island, PEIJC tries to answer every email they receive through their website, peijc.org.
Vicky Tobianah is a multimedia writer, editor and strategist based in Toronto. Connect with her on Twitter, @vicktob, or by email at [email protected].
Sara Dent of Young Agrarians, which hosts farm tours, potlucks, workshops and a website with networking tools like connecting retiring farmers with land to young farmers seeking it. (photo from Sara Dent)
Whether it’s visiting a farmers market, signing up for a CSA (community-supported agriculture) box or just paying attention to where the produce in the grocery store was grown, local and sustainable eating has been in the zeitgeist for nearly a decade and it shows no signs of flagging. For many North Americans, food has proven an accessible entry point into issues of consumption, environment, community and health. All this, of course, doesn’t happen by itself.
Meet Sara Dent, one of British Columbia’s behind-the-scenes farm organizers. Dent is the co-founder of Young Agrarians, a network and community that supports young farmers as they attempt to start and develop farming businesses. She is also starting to do farm business development consulting, and teaches workshops in permaculture, a design philosophy focused on long-term sustainability. On top of that, she maintains a photography blog, mainly documenting the farmers with whom she visits and works.
As anyone who speaks to Dent will soon realize, the vibrancy and growth of Young Agrarians can be largely attributed to her specific abilities: as a fundraiser, organizer and speaker. Dent is perhaps predisposed to seek respite from some of the harsher aspects of urbanization. Her parents relocated to Vancouver in the 1970s, seeking a healthier, less crowded environment.
In her twenties, Dent did administrative work for nongovernmental organizations around youth, social change and community building. But, in 2006, she said she was broke and decided to take a break from the city, volunteering on three farms over four months. That summer, a light bulb turned on. Since then, Dent has photographed and volunteered on dozens of farms, completed the Linnaea Ecological Garden Program on Cortes Island and become a certified permaculture design teacher. All through this period, she continued to do contract fundraising work.
“We want to look at agriculture as a dynamic entrepreneurial sector where people have many on-ramps to farming.… New farmers need to marry business skills with production skills. People are starting their farming careers in all different stages on the spectrum, with different levels of experience.”
But all this was just a warm-up to co-founding Young Agrarians, which was dreamed up in 2011. The group – which is a partnership with the Vancouver nonprofit Farm Folk City Folk – has turned into a vibrant community with regular activities for both farmers and for the interested public. The main target, however, remains building capacity with young farmers. Dent explained, “We want to look at agriculture as a dynamic entrepreneurial sector where people have many on-ramps to farming.… New farmers need to marry business skills with production skills. People are starting their farming careers in all different stages on the spectrum, with different levels of experience.”
Young Agrarians hosts farm tours, potlucks, workshops and a website with networking tools like connecting retiring farmers with land to young farmers seeking it. The next big project is building a program to offer business coaching for farmers and startups. That program will provide 20-50 hours of human resource support essentially free, or on a sliding scale.
In order to do this, and to expand Young Agrarians beyond its current B.C. focus, Dent is trying to broaden her funding base beyond goal-oriented grants from foundations that require specific program deliverables. According to Dent, a challenge for many NGOs is to raise enough funding for general operations. Eventually, she hopes, Young Agrarians will increase donations from individuals and through public events, which can more easily provide operating funds.
When asked whether starting her own farming business is in her future, Dent matter-of-factly said, “I have no equity. You can get 10 acres outside of Montreal for $100,000-$200,000. Those 10 acres cost one million in the Lower Mainland.”
Aside from the financial reality of buying land, Dent said that the farmers she works with don’t want her to stop being an organizer. As a person with a background in fundraising, and general macher qualities, the value she provides as a consultant and community builder may well exceed that of starting her own farm. And this is where she sees her future: Dent said that, in her 40s and 50s, she would like to make her primary living from consulting.
The term permaculture was coined in 1978 by Australian Bill Mollison as a contraction of “permanent agriculture.” The term has since expanded into a set of principles for all aspects of human planning, design and engineering, which emphasize long-term sustainability through modeling human systems on natural ecosystems. A common theme of permaculture designs are concentric zones around the home from the most frequently used herb and vegetable beds, to main cropping areas, to perennials, to the semi-wild and wild. Permaculture principles are applicable on multiple scales, from small gardens that only contain one or two zones to larger farms that contain all zones. Permaculture emphasizes maximum collection and storage of abundant resources (energy, water, calories) in order to be financially viable and sustain a year-round system.
Critics of permaculture contend that the concept has devolved into quaint urban gardens with herb spirals and flowers, instead of modeling economically viable production systems that grow food for the masses. Dent didn’t disagree, but emphasized that the incorporation of permaculture concepts into agriculture is fairly new territory, and can create success. “Things can get lost in the conceptual realm if people are trained in permaculture, but have no agricultural training,” she explained. “But the people that are hybridizing those models are having a lot of success…. Joel Salatin, a permaculture agriculturalist, is very much modeling that out on the ground.”
“On any sustainable organic farm, you’re going to want to have both annual and perennial systems running at the same time.”
An example of holistic management using a permaculture approach is to look at perennial plants as a savings account (longer maturity, high-value yield) and your annual plants as a chequing account (for cash flow in the early years of the business). “Farms right now can have really interesting diversified revenue streams, like cut flowers, edible flowers, herbs,” she said. “On any sustainable organic farm, you’re going to want to have both annual and perennial systems running at the same time. These are new territories in terms of practitioners being able to adapt and use the ideas together and in different combinations.”
Other permaculture concepts are on their way to becoming mainstream, said Dent. As concentrated areas of food production like the central valley of California face severe drought and uncertain climate changes, land contouring techniques like keylining and swales, which capture rainwater and soak it into the soil instead of allowing it to flow over the surface, will be essential, and will be incorporated widely, she said.
As for her Jewish heritage, Dent said that she does the work that she does because of the work that her grandmother did and that which her father did. “I very much come from an activist, Yiddish, left-wing, socialist family tradition. Those values, of culture, unions, education, affordable university, all of those things were things that my family fought for … my grandmother was a union organizer and was a member of the communist party.” Her family history, “from poverty to solidarity,” is a source of pride for Dent.
There are a handful of other Jewish food organizers that she gets to work with from time to time, as well. “As someone who very much grew up in a non-Jewish society, it’s nice to work with other people that have that shared cultural background,” she said.
