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September 10, 2010
A Jewish heritage weekend
Annual conference highlights culture, social justice, fun.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
On Labor Day weekend, the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture hosted members of its Victoria, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles sister organizations for workshops and other activities intended “to engage the intellect, creative spirit and sense of community.”
“J-West: Connections and Continuity is the name we’ve given to the second annual regional conference of cultural and secular Jews on the West Coast of North America,” explained Leslie Dyson, one of the coordinators of the three-day event. “The first conference was held last year in San Jose and hosted by the Tri-Valley Cultural Jews, a secular humanist Jewish community in the San Francisco Bay area. That group is headed up by Rabbi Judith Seid.”
The gathering brings together members of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO), which comprises almost 30 North American organizations “that promote a secular expression of its members’ Jewish heritage, with particular emphasis on the culture and ethics of the Jewish people,” and the Society for Humanistic Judaism, whose “mission is to mobilize people to celebrate Jewish identity and culture consistent with a humanistic philosophy of life, independent of supernatural authority.”
Karen Knecht of the Pacific Community of Cultural Jews (whose members live in/near Orange County, Calif.) is chairperson of CSJO. She gave sisters Ya’el and Shoshana Seid-Green the credit for initiating and organizing the inaugural West Coast conference.
“They were at the CSJO conference on the East Coast and said, ‘Why can’t we have an entire organizational one here?’ And we explained the dynamics, because the majority of our people live on the East Coast, predominantly the young people, and we wouldn’t be able to get that here. [But] they decided, wouldn’t it be great to do a West Coast regional.... It was such a success that Vancouver said, you know what, we’ll do it again next year for the second annual.”
Shoshana Seid-Green graduated from University of California-Irvine in 2009 and moved to New York City last September, while Ya’el Seid-Green is now working towards her master’s in marine affairs at the University of Washington. Nonetheless both also played a role in this year’s conference, the former leading a talk on Jews in musical theatre and the latter leading a discussion about the future of secular Judaism. They were among the approximately 60 attendees at the Vancouver conference, the idea of which was also youth-motivated, being “sold” to the Peretz Centre’s executive board by younger members Kerry Dyson, Ben Neuman and Mark Neuman, who attended the previous year’s conference and “were so excited and energized by what went on that they blurted out during a plenary session that the 2010 conference would be held in Vancouver!” said Dyson.
A year of planning went into the weekend, parts of which also took place at the Coast Vancouver Airport Hotel. “The level of effort [was] surprising to all of us until we realize that we’re planning a four-day party. Or, as Shane Dyson, one of committee members, observed, ‘a weekend with three weddings!’ because we’ll have dancers, musicians, cooks and a few speeches,” explained Dyson to the Independent prior to the event.
The weekend began with a Fraytik tsu Nakht and potluck supper on Friday night. On Saturday and Sunday, there were workshops, group meals, opportunities to socialize or relax, and other activities, such as Theatresports on Saturday night and a talent show on Sunday night. Sing-alongs, games and a “Stretch & Kvetch” also took place.
Steve Kaplan emceed the welcome potluck and mixer on Saturday afternoon at the Peretz Centre, and the keynote speakers – representing the older and younger generations – set the stage.
Vancouver’s Bernice Bloom Kastner has a PhD in math education and remains involved in the department at Simon Fraser University, while also being a writer, recently publishing If Wishes Were Horses: The Proverbs and Stories of Bernice Bloom Kastner. She spoke of many things, including the religious, ritual-oriented Judaism of her grandmother, to which she couldn’t relate, and then explained why, for her, secular Judaism is not an oxymoron.
Rather than seeing Judaism as a religion, said Kastner, “My experience is that it’s actually a set of values, about humanity, about life, and these are all embedded in the original biblical stories.” She later listed some of these values: “warmth of Yiddishkeit ... sense of personal responsibility ... we are responsible for our own behavior, we’re responsible for our own lives and there’s no outside party that’s going to do it for us.... But then we have social responsibility, responsibility as a community and that’s another one of our values. And, added to that, there’s the whole concept of social justice. I mean, if you look at our heritage, the idea of social justice is really prevalent.... Another thing you cannot fail to notice is humor.... And the last one I wrote down is the examination of issues from many sides ... examining things and questioning.”
Sam Ruben, who is from San Francisco, has worked in communications and development for the United Religions Initiative, an international organization working to transform religious tension into positive social change. He picked up on some of Kastner’s themes, particularly that of social justice.
“Indeed, by its very nature, humanism requires we recognize our connection to the rest of humanity, no matter the creed, location, race, economic status, whatever. And, as Jews, our history of persecution has tasked us with working so that no one faces the hardships we had to,” he said. “We go to these lessons from an early age. They take the form of songs sung and stories told during the holidays, classes taught in Sunday school, papers researched and written and the community service performed for bar and bat mitzvahs. To be a secular humanist Jew is to carry this connection to humanity ... wherever we go.”
Ruben challenged conference participants not to become “social justice crusaders” necessarily, but to “think about the little things: the clothes you buy, where your food comes from, the companies that you support with your purchases, and that you make your decisions with intentionality.... Each of us has to do our part to leave this world a better place than when we found it. The people and traditions that we’re connected to demand that we at least try.”
With the tone set, the workshops began. They covered a wide variety of topics, for both the younger and older participants, and ranged from the political to the cultural, the physical to the intellectual. All of the sessions included a lot of interaction between the speakers and their audiences.
Keff L’Olam Israeli Dancers discussed the origins and popularity of Israeli dancing, performed a few pieces and taught a few numbers; Prof. Gene Homel of the British Columbia Institute of Technology led a discussion on changing attitudes toward the Holocaust; sisters Karen and Cheryl Kaplan helped participants make komish broit; Victoria duo Kouskous (Gary Cohen and Amber Woods) explained and demonstrated different types of Jewish music; and facilitator Avril Orloff gave a workshop on the Compassionate Listening Project.
On Sunday, Faith Jones, head of reference and information services at the New Westminster Public Library and Yiddish editor for Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, gave a workshop on Yiddish poetry; the Peretz Centre’s Mark Neuman led a session on secular Jewish pop culture in the form of a game show (Jewpardy); photographer Dan Jackson, who has been writing, photo-illustrating and producing a secular Haggadah for several years, shared his ideas and research about the Exodus; now-Vancouverite Joanne Naiman, professor emerita of sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto and member of Independent Jewish Voices, spoke about the lack of community debate on the Israel-Palestinian conflict; Vancouver film critique Ken Eisner gave an overview of Jews in film; and Ruben examined the role that secular humanist Jews have to play in working with different communities to turn religious tension into positive social change. The workshops led by Ya’el and Shoshana Seid-Green also took place on Sunday.
“Having all of us take these few days out of our insanely busy and productive lives to come together and share a few laughs, exchange some good ideas and commiserate in our troubles will set us on the course for a good new year,” Dyson told the Independent. “How more perfect can that be on the ‘eve’ of Rosh Hashanah?”
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