{"id":34109,"date":"2020-01-31T03:51:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T11:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=34109"},"modified":"2020-01-28T19:06:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T03:06:10","slug":"mark-and-seth-rogen-honoured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/01\/31\/mark-and-seth-rogen-honoured\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark and Seth Rogen honoured"},"content":{"rendered":"

Left to right: Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth Rogen, Mark Rogen, Sandy Rogen and Danya Rogen at the ceremony in New York City at which Mark and Seth were honoured with the Generation to Generation Activism Award from the Workmen\u2019s Circle. (photo from Mark Rogen)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Vancouver\u2019s Mark and Sandy Rogen have good reason to be proud of their children and the Jewish values with which they raised them. Some of those values were highlighted as 2019 came to a close, when Mark Rogen and his actor, writer and producer son Seth were honoured on Dec. 2 with the Generation to Generation Activism Award from the Workmen\u2019s Circle in New York.<\/p>\n

The award recognizes the Rogens\u2019 work promoting Jewish culture and traditions, while also carrying on the traditions of tikkun olam<\/em>, repairing the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made it meaningful for us and for everyone who came was that it was an award about values,\u201d Mark Rogen said in an interview with the Jewish Independent<\/em> after a game of basketball at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about someone giving $2 million to get their name on a hospital. It was about recognizing people living in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogen said he and Sandy have always preached that value to their kids, along with the idea that they should always strive to \u201cbe a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the way Sandy and I tried to raise Danya and Seth \u2013 to try to be a blessing and do what you can,\u201d he explained. \u201cDoing something one-to-one is just as good as doing something internationally. It\u2019s where your heart is and I think Sandy and I are very happy to see that\u2019s how Danya and Seth live their lives. That\u2019s the pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogen noted that, when his kids were young, they experienced many blessings. In those years, he said, the family had little money and institutions like Vancouver Talmud Torah, the JCC and Camp Miriam treated his children well, and \u201cdidn\u2019t charge us a lot. So, Danya and Seth spent their formative years in the Vancouver Jewish community, and their friends today are from those years. Seth met Evan [Goldberg, his writing partner] at the JCC doing karate, and then they did bar mitzvah classes together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing that his children are giving back as adults is important, said Rogen, who worked for the Workmen\u2019s Circle for two years when the family temporarily moved to Los Angeles when Seth filmed Freaks and Geeks<\/em>. Among other things, Seth and wife Lauren Miller Rogen founded Hilarity for Charity, which raises money for Alzheimer\u2019s care, research and support.<\/p>\n

That the recent award was a joint honour made it more meaningful to Seth Rogen. \u201cTo be honoured in any capacity is rare and lovely for me, but, to be honoured alongside my father was truly special and memorable,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cMy dad has always been dedicated to helping others and spreading goodness wherever he can. He worked for nonprofits most of my childhood and always strived to make the world a better place. He is someone I always go to for advice and his guidance is consistently geared towards not just what\u2019s good for me, but what\u2019s good for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Jewishness he often displays on screen, the actor said he rarely separates that part of himself from his work. \u201cBeing Jewish is inseparable from my identity in many ways, so it\u2019s something I\u2019ve always thought was good to acknowledge and integrate into my work,\u201d he explained. \u201cI simply am Jewish and I\u2019m proud of myself and what I\u2019ve done with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seth Rogen\u2019s biggest Jewish role, however, might be coming in the soon-to-be-released American Pickle<\/em>, in which he plays a young man who comes to the United States in 1918 from a European shtetl, then gets trapped and preserved in a pickle barrel for 100 years before being united with his grandson in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

Danya Rogen \u2013 who is currently on the board of Vancouver Talmud Torah, on the personnel committee for Habonim Dror Camp Miriam and a regular participant on the JCC softball league team her father captains \u2013 joined many family members and friends in New York for the ceremony honouring her father and brother. She remembers her parents raising their awareness of important issues at a very young age.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents, and my dad in particular, taught us to stand up for what we believe in and stand up for others who can\u2019t do it for themselves,\u201d she said. \u201cMy parents were also incredibly kind and generous, even when we didn\u2019t have so much ourselves. All of those values have stuck with me my whole life. \u201cI hope to live up to being a blessing and can pass those values on to my own children. I suppose the fact that I have become a social worker isn\u2019t that surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyle Berger<\/strong> is Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver sports coordinator, and a freelance writer living in Richmond.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left to right: Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth Rogen, Mark Rogen, Sandy Rogen and Danya Rogen at the ceremony in New York City at which Mark and Seth were honoured with the Generation to Generation Activism Award from the Workmen\u2019s Circle. (photo from Mark Rogen) Vancouver\u2019s Mark and Sandy Rogen have good reason to be proud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3429,218,8664,5569,1959,9623],"class_list":["post-34109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-family","tag-judaism","tag-milestones","tag-rogen","tag-tikkun-olam","tag-workmens-circle"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}