{"id":47738,"date":"2025-10-10T01:41:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T08:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=47738"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:19:08","slug":"from-the-archives-social-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/10\/10\/from-the-archives-social-life\/","title":{"rendered":"From the archives \u2026 social life"},"content":{"rendered":"
Oct. 10, 1935: This week, 90 years ago, community members were coming and going from the city. There was a Folk Song and Dance Festival and Arts and Crafts Exhibition coming up. Beth Israel, Young Judaea, AZA, BB Junior Auxiliary, Junior Council and Sub-Junior Council all had meetings and other events. China Seas and Page Miss Glory were screening at the Capitol Orpheum and Heart\u2019s Desire was playing at the Strand.<\/em><\/pre>\n
The Jewish Western Bulletin \/ Jewish Independent<\/i> has always covered the arts and culture scene. Amid the harder-hitting news, there have been society and social notes columns, social and club news sections, synagogue calendars, event listings, notices and advertisements, as well as articles promoting, reviewing or otherwise profiling various creatives (including community organizers) or their creations\/events.<\/p>\n
One of the longest-lasting social columns is Between Ourselves (Tsvishn Unz Alein) by Lazar, which started on April 14, 1949, when the JWB<\/i> was run by the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Organization (akin to our Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver) and Abraham Arnold was managing editor. When Sam and Mona Kaplan took over the paper in 1960, Mona Kaplan penned her first Between Ourselves (Tsvishn Unz Alein) by Lazar columns, in the Aug. 5 issue of that year, and she continued to be \u201cLazar\u201d until the paper again sort of changed hands in mid-1995. While the Kaplans still owned the JWB<\/i>, it came under new management, as they were beginning their retirement journey. At first, the new publisher, Andrew Buerger, kept the Lazar column \u2013 minus its Yiddish flavour \u2013 but editor Ariela Friedmann bid \u201cFarewell to Lazar\u201d (then written by Cara Loebl) a couple of months\u2019 later, on Aug. 18, 1995.<\/p>\n
Its replacement was Menschenings, which, Friedmann noted, would \u201cgive voice to all ages and aspects of the community, from social news, to what\u2019s new, who\u2019s new, some schmoozing, a bit of this and that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Initially, the column was alternately written by two different writers, Jacqui Roitman and Alex Kliner, both of whom had experience in\u00a0<\/span>theatre and film. As many readers will know, Alex became the sole face of Menschenings, continuing through the Kaplans\u2019 sale of the paper in mid-1999 to Kyle Berger, Pat Johnson and me. From his first column to his last, in 2016, when he retired, Alex\u2019s writing was infused with Yiddish, having a heimishe<\/i> (homey and familiar) quality like Lazar\u2019s, meaning that Between Ourselves\/Menschenings lasted some 67 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\"image<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oct. 10, 1935: This week, 90 years ago, community members were coming and going from the city. There was a Folk Song and Dance Festival and Arts and Crafts Exhibition coming up. Beth Israel, Young Judaea, AZA, BB Junior Auxiliary, Junior Council and Sub-Junior Council all had meetings and other events. China Seas and Page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[371,6638,24394,4242,24395,24393,8302,3760],"class_list":["post-47738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-abraham-arnold","tag-alex-kliner","tag-cara-loebl","tag-history","tag-jacqui-roitman","tag-lazar","tag-lifestyle","tag-mona-kaplan"],"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\/47738","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=47738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}