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History and future combine

Ilana Zackon and Ariel Martz-Oberlander played current-day partisans in the immersive theatre piece Time Machine. (photo from Radix Theatre)

Two Jewish theatre artist-creators, Ariel Martz-Oberlander and Ilana Zackon, teamed up this summer to create an immersive piece based on the Jewish partisan movement, as part of Radix Theatre’s futuristic play Time Machine, set on a boat, the Pride of Vancouver.

The show took place on the yacht over a five-hour journey up Indian Arm (traditionally known as səl̓ilw̓ət) and featured both local emerging and established artists presenting new work of various genres, such as theatre, spoken word poetry, sound installation and more. The artists were asked to create a piece inspired by what Vancouver will look like in the year 2050. Some darker, others playful, the works were all grounded in a strong sense of the artists’ identities.

Martz-Oberlander and Zackon wanted to bring their ancestral roots into their piece. The pair created an immersive show in which they played two rebels helping smuggle climate refugees to safety. The 10-minute piece, which ran on a loop for an hour-and-a-half of the boat ride, took place in the boat’s basement bathroom, which acted as a safehouse. Five to seven audience members at a time were summoned by Zackon, dressed as a soldier, down into the dimly lit bathroom, where they were greeted by a similarly dressed Martz-Oberlander; “Zog Nit Keynmol” (“The Partisan Song”) played in the background.

The invited audience soon discovers they are now refugees who have just escaped fires in California. The soldiers, members of a new wave of partisans called PAP, explain that the refugees are being brought to another safehouse and prepared to enter the new world. The soldiers explain that their resistance cohort has based their movement on the survival lessons of their ancestors, partisan fighters in the forests of occupied Europe. The audience members are given new names, briefed on the types of skills, such as hunting moose, that they will need to survive in their new lives and, eventually, led into a discussion on identity.

“What’s better: start over or remember where you’re coming from?” Martz-Oberlander’s character asks. The two soldiers bicker over their differing views and invite the audience to contribute. After the group has spoken, the soldiers receive word that it is safe to move the refugees. Before leaving, audience members are given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note. The notes lined the stairwell and, as the loop continued, more and more words were added, creating a tapestry of human identity. The notes lined the bathroom walls for the remainder of the boat ride, and included such items as “curiosity and kindness,” “time to think,” “my favourite berry picking spot,” “my knowledge of languages” and “the giggles of my daughter,” among many others.

photo - Audience members were given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note — Audience members were given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note. *(photo by Didier Brûlé-Champagne/DBC Photographie)*

A number of the boat passengers who attended the piece were Jewish and shared how they connected with their ancestors through remembering their stories. Many non-Jews had never heard of the partisan movement and the two artists felt the work they did helped educate people on an important part of history.

Zackon and Martz-Oberlander also received, from the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, transcripts of interviews with Jewish refugees coming to Canada during the 1930s and 1940s. These testimonials were hidden around the safehouse and incorporated into the performance. The two artists hope to receive the opportunity to continue developing and expanding this work and to incorporate more of their own personal family stories about immigration to Canada.

Coping with life’s challenges

Starting Nov. 20, Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman of Chabad Richmond will be leading Worrier to Warrior, a new six-session course offered by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), to help people deal with life’s challenges by accepting themselves and finding meaning in adversity.

Participants will examine factors that prevent us from achieving a more positive outlook – guilt, shame and fear of inauthenticity – in light of the notion that a purposeful life provides the key to well-being. Like all JLI programs, this course is designed for people at all levels of knowledge, including those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. All JLI courses are open to the public.

“Everyone faces personal challenges in life, whether physical, emotional, professional, familial, social or otherwise,” said Baitelman. “How we deal with these issues is crucial for our ability to achieve lasting satisfaction in life. By finding meaning in personal challenges – that is, seeing them as opportunities – we come to accept ourselves and are emboldened to move forward.”

Worrier to Warrior combines positive psychology with Jewish wisdom to explore questions such as, Is there a meaning to life that makes even our difficulties purposeful? Am I just what happens to me or do I have a deeper core? How can I get off the “hedonism treadmill” and the sense that even life’s successes ring hollow?

“All too often people are thrown off their path in life by hardships that sink them into negative emotions or anxiety,” explained Rabbi Naftali Silberberg of JLI’s Brooklyn headquarters. “In this course, we learn to face our challenges by understanding our lives in a deeper context.”

Prof. Steven M. Southwick, MD, of the department of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine has endorsed this course, saying, “It is well known that positive emotions rest at the heart of overall well-being and happiness, but how to effectively enhance positive emotion remains challenging. Worrier to Warrior approaches this challenge from an insightful perspective grounded in contemporary psychology and Jewish literature.” Worrier to Warrior is accredited in British Columbia for mental health professionals seeking to fulfil their continuing education requirements.

The course starts Wednesday, Nov. 20, 7:30 p.m., at Chabad Richmond. To register and for more information, call 604-277-6427. The cost is $95/person or $160/couple and includes textbook. Classes are 1.5 hours long.

Worrier to Warrior course is also being offered at the Lubavitch Centre (604-266-1313) in Vancouver, beginning Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m., and at Chabad of Nanaimo (250-797-7877), starting Nov. 12, 7 p.m.

Registration for all of these courses is possible at myjli.com.

Critical, short look at Nazism

Oxford University Press launched the first of its “Very Short Introductions” in 1995. Since then, the series has reached more than 600 volumes, which have been translated into 45 languages. To write the most recent in this series, Nazi Germany: A Very Short Introduction (2019), OUP made the happy choice of venerated Oxford historian Dr. Jane Caplan.

In what seems like an almost insurmountable challenge, Caplan succeeds in describing the details of the “horrifying” main events of this historical catastrophe, and identifying its main criminals, without simplifying. And she writes with an “edge” that is missing in many history narratives: thus, she speaks of the “insolence” of the Nazis’ manipulation of language into “sickening euphemisms”; of the “fraudulent artifice” of Nazi political and social institutions; and of the “ultimate disgrace” Nazism proved to be, to the Germans and their country.

In describing how ordinary citizens lived through “the horror of Nazism,” Caplan offers many quotations from speeches, newspapers, memoirs, journals and diaries to demonstrate the reich’s totality of control over German culture and communications. This total control led to “a redefinition of automatic habits of thought and behaviour,” from clothes to be worn, to facial expressions to be shown, to the demands for “Hitlerschnitt” (forced sterilization), and even to the details of the “Hitlergrusse” (that is, “Heil Hitler”) and what happened to those who didn’t raise their arms in the prescribed way and time.

More than 20% of this compact volume is given over to details of the Holocaust, which Caplan describes with both insight and anger, although rightly insisting that a study of Nazism must not be “confined” to this “ultimate horror.” For there are other lessons to be learned from Nazi Germany, especially for citizens of the 21st century, with its alarming return to populist beliefs and behaviours. Nazism reminds us, she says, of the dangers of “the exploitation of popular fears and resentments, the retreat of confidence in public institutions, the structural power of economic and political elites, the weaponization of prejudice, and the eternal temptation to turn a blind eye.”

In brief, anyone who likes history served at the traditional historian’s arm’s-length would be well-advised to avoid this caustic, openly judgmental, short, but long-remembered volume.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Turning FOMO into JOMO

Adrienne Gold is a participant in this year’s international Shabbat Project, Nov. 15-16. (photo from Shabbat Project)

FOMO: fear of missing out. Four letters that encapsulate the human hankering for absolute control, and the profound anxiety we suffer from knowing we will simply never satisfy it.

FOMO is an impulse exacerbated by social media, by scrolling through the Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat lives of others, consciously and unconsciously measuring ourselves up to their non-existent standard of living. Comparing our brats to their seraphs, our tiresome drudgery to their idyllic island getaways, our 1980s-style kitchens to their gleaming open-plan masterpieces. And, while social media does not itself cause narcissism, it certainly can help flick the switch of those tendencies latent within us. Especially those of us who suffer from FOMO by nature.

When I was a young girl, I constantly worried that I had missed something, anything that would change the tone and balance of my carefully curated life. In our family, kids came in for the night “when the lights went on” in the street. Many of my neighbourhood friends could stay out later than that, and I remember like it was yesterday sitting in my room fretting over the potential new allegiances that would be formed without me; the stories and games and fun that I would not be privy to. I would be gripped by a terror that things would not be “as I left them” and that the next day would begin leaving me in the dark.

This mindset remained with me through my teens. Wherever I was, I wondered what was happening somewhere else. Whoever I was speaking with, at whatever party, my eyes roved the room to see what else was happening, who else was there? It was as though I had internalized that whatever I was engaged in could not possibly be where the “action” was; that I was missing something that could only happen if I were not there. And this unease continued into my dating life and well into my 20s. There was no me without my agitating the universe, without my scrambling and “hustling for worthiness.”

So, imagine my horror when, many years later, I learned about Shabbat. No phone. No computer. No car. No shopping. No way! What possible benefit could there be in living 24/6 in a 24/7 world? And what if someone needed to reach me? What would I fill those gaping 24 hours with? I was a human doing, with no clue how to be. Or who to be.

Yet, in that struggle with the very idea of Shabbat came the deep epiphany that radically changed not just my world, but my psyche. In advance of this year’s international Shabbat Project, which will be taking place in cities around the world Nov. 15-16, I’m inspired to share this journey.

I was 40 when I started to keep Shabbat. (How that came about is too lengthy and labyrinthine a tale for this space.) Married with two children, deep into my career and as afflicted by FOMO as ever. Nevertheless, I was determined to do this. While the anxiety clung in the early stages of my “disconnecting in order to connect,” it was less than a year before I began to understand something that had eluded me my entire life – apparently, the world turned and ran quite nicely without my help. The control I was seeking could be found by relinquishing it. The Mishnah tells it straight when it says, “Who is rich? He who rejoices in his lot.” I learned to be still, to rejoice in my lot, to be in the moment. I felt rich.

In short, Shabbat forced me to stop trying to play God, to stop long enough to recognize that He did just fine without me. I discovered that “letting go and letting God” gave me the freedom to find value and purpose, and even joy – not in productivity but in simply being. I felt in touch with my soul and grasped in a deep sense its primacy over the body.

Over 20 years have passed since the therapeutic benefits of Shabbat first liberated me from my FOMO and gifted me perspective and clarity on what it means to be a human being; since I first tasted the indescribable spiritual delights of the Jewish day of rest.

Today, I have the pleasure and the privilege of introducing thousands of women every year to Shabbat and more. Momentum – formerly known as the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project – has, to date, taken more than 18,000 women from 27 countries on an eight-day journey to Israel to grow as people, connect to Jewish values, engage with the Jewish homeland, foster unity not uniformity, and return to take action as leaders in their communities.

As a leader on these trips, I have seen thousands of women try to make Shabbat more meaningful in some way or another. These women saw the power of what disconnecting in order to connect might do for their families, and for themselves.

Shabbat is the only mitzvah described in the Torah as a “gift.” Tragically, it’s a gift that too many of us never take the time to unwrap. I was one of them. What I didn’t understand was that ceasing to create would make me more creative, that not exerting myself would give me more strength, that being where I am, limited, constrained, here and nowhere else, has alerted me to the joy in my heart and in my life.

You were wondering about that pesky FOMO? It has become JOMO: joy of missing out.

Adrienne Gold, a participant in this year’s international Shabbat Project, was a fixture on Canadian television for more than 15 years, hosting her own daily fashion and beauty program. Today, she is a trip leader for Momentum (formerly, the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project).

The fire-like impacts of war

Life for many kibbutz members changed after they served in the war. (photo by Victor Neuman)

In this eight-part series, the author recounts his life in Israel around the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The events and people described are real but, for reasons of privacy, the names are fictitious.

Part 7: The Ceasefire

The ceasefire came on Oct. 25, 19 days after the war had begun. It was a short war, if you look at it one way. In another way, it was a short episode in a long war going back to 1948 and stretching forward to a distant and indiscernible point. With the Yom Kippur War, we came to realize that Israel’s enemies could fight and lose many wars and still exist, while Israel could not afford to lose even one.

Still, we were grateful for the end of hostilities and longed for the return of all of those who had gone to fight from the kibbutz. Remarkably, they all survived to return. Remarkable because kibbutz soldiers had a reputation for aggressive leadership and devotion to duty. At that time, the statistic most often referenced was that only five percent of the population of Israel lived on kibbutzim but 20% of the officers in the Israeli military were kibbutz members. Correspondingly, they routinely made up a high percentage of war casualties.

But, just because no one was dead did not mean that nothing had died.

Tzvie and Ari seemed unfazed by the experience. They were back in the bananas with me and back to their joking ways. We were all sitting around having lunch, heads down in our plates when Tzvie popped up, threw a banana peel at Ari and then pretended to be eating like everybody else. Ari first faked a return throw and then threw it in earnest, hitting Tzvie on the side of the head.

“Hey! Why do you think it was me?” said Tzvie.

“I didn’t know at first so I just pretended to throw back. Only you ducked. The one who ducks is the guilty party.”

When they weren’t pranking each other, they were happily preparing for their return to Europe. The kibbutz had voted to give them another vacation to replace the one they had cut short to help in the war.

Others who returned were not the same. Yossi, a quiet youth, was a medic in the war. I had never worked with him nor had a close friendship with him, though, as I did everybody on the kibbutz, I saw him around a lot. Now, I was not seeing him around much. Not in the dining hall, not in the recreation room, not in any of the places kibbutzniks normally gathered. I passed by his flat and noticed a tray of food outside his door. When I asked a friend of his what was going on, he told me that Yossi hadn’t come out of his room since coming back. His friends decided that, if they couldn’t coax him out, at least they could make sure he didn’t starve to death. They would leave a food tray and he’d retrieve it when no one was around, and then put the empty tray out to be picked up. This went on for two weeks before Yossi finally began to appear and made the attempt to begin living again.

Yossi on the one hand, Tzvie and Ari on the other. I suppose war is a fire that can melt some metals and harden others.

Then there was Aryeh, one of our youngest who went to fight. He was still undergoing the three-year service requirement when the war broke out.

Aryeh drove an armoured personnel carrier and had been patroling in his vehicle near the ceasefire lines in the Golan. Night-driving conditions on the border required that headlights be cut or suppressed to reduce the vehicle’s visibility to the enemy. A member of Aryeh’s crew pestered him to let him drive the vehicle. The man was not an experienced driver but Aryeh let him take over the wheel. In a short time, the new driver lost control of the carrier and rolled it off the side of the road – Aryeh’s neck was broken and he was rendered a quadriplegic.

Aryeh was released from the hospital when they had done all they could for him. He required ongoing care but his doctors felt he needed to be home, where his family and friends were. They equipped his bed and room with every gizmo known to mankind and left him to make what he could of his life.

We all were horrified by what had happened to him and it became a kind of required pilgrimage to visit Aryeh and pass some time with him. Tamar was particularly determined to be at his side as much as she could. When we visited him, we were all so damned cheerful.

“Try to keep his spirits up,” we told ourselves. So, we joked, we gossiped, we kibbitzed, we pretended. Tamar was better at it than I was. She was naturally talkative, inherently upbeat and she carried on beautifully.

Aryeh was like Tamar – relentlessly cheerful. He never complained about his condition, never even talked about it. Those were conversations that were kept in his own head and I could only imagine the price he paid for what he couldn’t say.

Thinking about it later, I came to realize I’d do the same in Aryeh’s situation. Here you are, 20 years old, with no working arms or legs, no future to speak of. Perhaps no wedding or kids or life. All you have are your friends. Do you really want to drag them into your abyss to the point where they start avoiding you? Lose the last thing that gives you any semblance of contentment? And so, you let the tears flow when you are alone and the jokes flow when you have company. As I said, relentlessly cheerful.

Our next door neighbour, Shmuel, came home to his wife and two kids. I was incredibly glad to see him. When Shmuel was called up, he was in the middle of a birthday party for one of his two daughters, the 9-year-old. He finished the party, got into his uniform, grabbed his gun and then stopped in to see me before he headed north.

“I have a favour to ask, Kanadi.”

I knew that, in two hours, he would be on the front lines in the Golan. And that, three hours after his daughter’s birthday party, he could be dead. I was ready to give him any damn thing he wanted.

“I understand your parents in Canada shipped you a crate with a stereo system – the one you have on Tamar’s bookshelf. I was wondering if I could get the wood crate from you. I want to make a wagon for my kids.”

“Yes, take it,” I said. “And take the stereo, too.”

He treated it as a joke but I was only half-kidding. In that moment, there wasn’t enough I could do.

But Shmuel came back. I wanted to give him a bear hug when I spotted him walking up the path but his family called dibs.

The war was over. Or, to put it more accurately, this war was over.

(Next Time: Epilogue)

(Previously: “Learning the lay of the land”; “When Afula road went quiet”; “Tending the banana fields in war”; “Weapon training begins”; “Near tragedy on guard”; “Fighters return to kibbutz”)

Victor Neuman was born in the former Soviet Union, where his family sought refuge after fleeing Poland during the Second World War. The family immigrated to Canada in 1948 and Neuman grew up in the Greater Vancouver area. He attended the University of British Columbia and obtained a BA and MA with majors in English literature and creative writing. Between 1968 and 1974, he made two trips to Israel, one of which landed him on a kibbutz at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Upon his return to Canada, he studied Survey Technology at BCIT and went on to a career of designing highways for the Province of British Columbia and the firm of Binnie Civil Engineering Consultants. When he retired, he reconnected with his roots in creative writing and began writing scripts for Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir concerts and articles for the Jewish Independent. Neuman and his wife, Tammy, live in southeast Vancouver and enjoy the company of friends, their extensive extended family and their four sons.

People are not bricks in a wall

Shabbat, Nov. 2
Noach, Genesis 6:9-11:32
Haftarah, Isaiah 54:1-55:5

W.C. Fields said, “Never work with animals or children, [they steal the spotlight].” Though no one ever accused him of being a Torah scholar, his insight was certainly applicable to last week’s Torah portion.

Parashat Noach, the second portion in the Book of Genesis (and my bar mitzvah portion) is perhaps the most universally known and, at least by children, most adored portion in the entire Torah. This is in part, no doubt, because it has not one animal, but all animals – and they come in pairs! So beloved and recognizable is this Torah portion that we tend to forget that there is more to it than the animals coming on the ark, two by two, the dove sent to find dry land, the rainbow, and our ancient ship builder, Noah. Tucked in at the end of the portion that bears his name is a small, poignant story about how the people (Noah’s descendants) focused their energies after the waters and fear receded, and they were once again on dry land.

We are told: “All the earth had the same language and the same words … they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there…. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!’” (Genesis 11:1-:4)

A midrash explains: “Many, many years passed in building the tower. It reached so great a height that it took a year to mount to the top. A brick was, therefore, more precious in the sight of the builders than a human being. If a man fell down and met his death, none took notice of it: but, if a brick dropped, they wept, because it would take a year to replace it. So intent were they upon accomplishing their purpose that they would not permit a pregnant woman to interrupt herself in her work of brick-making when she went into labour. Molding bricks, she gave birth to her child and, tying it round her body in a sheet, she went on molding bricks.” (“Yashar Noah,” in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 1909)

How do you measure your day? I once asked my friend who is a bricklayer this question, and he explained that the universal standard for a good day of bricklaying is 1,000 bricks day. It got me thinking, what would my 1,000-brick-day look like? What is my universal standard for a successful day?

As a parent, I could say it’s getting all the kids washed, fed, off to school and then to soccer or hockey, and back home again. Then it’s getting them to do their homework, brush their teeth and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

As a working adult, I could say it’s getting to work on time and responding to all my emails and messages – the modern-day equivalent of bricks. Then it’s meeting with constituents, handling synagogue programs and business, and getting home in time for dinner with my family.

What makes those days good days is not the quantity of work I do or the number of interactions I have, it’s the quality. The bricklayer, if reasonably competent at his task, can be irritable, antisocial, half asleep and day dreaming as he lays each brick. He can take his anger out on the bricks; he can curse at the bricks as he shleps them up the wall. He can listen to music, talk on his cellphone; it doesn’t matter. As long as the wall is solid at the end of his day and it contains 1,000 new bricks, it’s a good day of bricklaying.

But people are not bricks: we can’t take out our anger on people without consequence. We can’t ignore them or tune them out if the purpose of our day is to interact with them with care, compassion and attention. The great sin of the Tower of Babel’s builders was that they treated people like bricks and bricks like people. They wasted the one thing that set them apart from machines, which, had they existed in ancient times, could have helped build the Tower even better – they neglected their own humanity. When the bricks of our life become more important than the people in it, we, too, build a tower that is an affront to the purpose of our creation.

The midrash continues that, after God confounded the people’s language and scattered the people throughout the globe, the tower

remained: “a part sank into the earth and another part was consumed by fire; only one-third of it remained standing. The place of the tower has never lost its peculiar quality. Whoever passes it forgets all he knows.” (ibid., Ginzberg)

When we treat people like bricks, we forget what we know about ourselves and about others. We forget that the measure of our day is not how many bricks we lay, how many emails we answer, how many lunches we pack, how many children we shlep: the measure of our day is whether each person we touch, including ourselves, feels valued as a person, a blessing and a gift from God in our lives – not a brick.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and author of The Men’s Seder (MRJ Publishing). He is also chair of the Reform Rabbis of Canada. His writing and perspective on Judaism appear in major print and digital media internationally. This article originally appeared on reformjudaism.org.

Making death a friend

I used to wake up each morning wondering if I had Alzheimer’s yet. I dreaded the thought. Who wouldn’t? I used to imagine the torment of dealing with cancer; the diagnosis, the surgery, the chemotherapy, the radiation, losing my hair! I no longer think that way. I am no longer holding my breath waiting for the diagnosis that will lead me to my imminent death. What happened? I am now a cancer survivor; that is, after two years, my gynaecologist told me that I can now come in for a checkup once a year, rather than every six months.

Let me backtrack. I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer in October 2017. After denying the symptoms for three months, I finally went to my family doctor, then to the gynaecologist, then for an ultrasound examination, then a biopsy. The diagnosis: endometrial cancer, stage 2. I asked the medical students who board with me while doing their electives at Vancouver General Hospital about the cancer, the treatment and the prognosis. The most encouraging of their comments was, “Well, if you have to have cancer, that is the best kind to have.” Really?

My son came from Ontario to be with me for the surgery, a hysterectomy. My gynaecologist was excellent. I experienced one bad night in the hospital. I wanted to get out of the hospital so badly that my blood pressure went sky high (white-coat syndrome). I had to sign several waivers in order to march out of the hospital – against their advice. I never looked back.

That was on a Wednesday. On Thursday morning, a friend picked me up and we attended the advanced Hebrew class at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, as usual. On Saturday, I drove to the supermarket. On the way to the cashier, I bumped into my gynaecologist, Nancy Mitenko. She had a surprised look on her face, so I said, “Hi, it’s Dolores, your patient.” “Oh,” she said, “I know who you are, what are you doing here?” We both laughed. I felt great.

My physical trainers and my family knew of my situation but I did not tell my friends and associates about the diagnosis, the surgery or the radiation until it was almost over. I discovered that the reactions of most people to the situation is fear, for themselves, as they empathize with me. I read the look on their faces as panic and dread. It made me want to comfort them. At that point, I did not have the patience to tend to their anxiety. I knew exactly what they were feeling because I used to experience that dread when I thought about cancer.

Several months later, February 2018, I began radiation therapy at the cancer centre at VGH – 25 sessions, convenient parking in the building, pleasant technicians who, generally, were on time with their appointments; the hardest part was drinking the four glasses of water before the procedure. The treatments were painless, but, they did cause some side-effects, which were manageable. This month, at my two-year checkup, Dr. Mitenko told me that I am clear. “See you next year,” she said.

I have been on an intense learning curve, researching cancer treatments, analyzing my feelings about what had happened, dissecting my behaviours and my capacity to proceed under duress and, especially, I have given much thought to dying and death. The idea of dying does not frighten me anymore. We all will die, it is just a matter of when and how we will approach the process. I now assume that cancer may eventually reappear in my body, why not? The denial I experienced has been banished. I accept my death as inevitable – but I have taken control of the process.

I have given instructions to my sons to donate my body to the University of British Columbia Medical School’s body donation program, having completed all the forms necessary for that to happen. I have joined the organization Death With Dignity, which has a chapter here in Vancouver. I attended a meeting of DWD and was informed of the MAiD program, Medical Assistance in Dying. I have read about the requirements of the MAiD program and now know of several doctors who participate in it. I made an appointment with my lawyer in order to update my will and the various documents related to my requests for treatment and care if I should become incapacitated. My four sons have been advised of all these procedures and have the most up-to-date documents.

I am not in the least bit sad, or anxious or depressed. Rather, I am proceeding to do exactly what I wish to do with my life. I have a plan. I feel that I now have some control of my life and my dying and my ultimate death. This is empowering.

I recently celebrated my 80th birthday with a large, extended-weekend celebration including dinners, a party and a brunch. Three of my four sons were there, as well as my daughters-in-law, and five of my nine grandchildren. The most important element of that weekend for me was to watch the relationships between them deepen and become more meaningful. I am grateful to have lived this long. Anything more will be a bonus. I have accepted my mortality, I do not feel greedy, I do not ask for more. I am happy to welcome each day, to contribute to my family, to volunteer for the causes that I feel are important, to make a difference wherever and whenever I can. Death is my friend, and accepting the inevitable has freed me to be the most that I can be.

Dolores Luber, a retired psychotherapist and psychology teacher, is editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s Senior Line magazine and website (jsalliance.org). She blogs for yossilinks.com and writes movie reviews for the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website.

From beginning again

Recently, I decided to conquer an inner anxiety and do something new. It wasn’t skydiving or anything dangerous. I was hoping to follow a pattern and sew myself some clothes. I write knitting patterns, so am very familiar with the notion of “winging it” and making my own design, but I needed to go back to the beginning with sewing.

As a teen, my mom insisted I take sewing lessons and my dad did them with me. (My dad was good at it and made himself a bathrobe and the upholstery for a convertible he restored!) The sewing assignment was to counteract my terrifying enthusiasm for my mom’s fabric and yarn stash. I’d dive into her stuff, grab scissors, cut fabric up and make things. For instance, I made myself shorts out of some old Winnie-the-Pooh curtains – and my mom was livid. Why? Well, she’d sewn those curtains for me as a kid in the first place. As a teenager, I couldn’t figure what she was saving them for, and I likely upset her by “taking her stuff” and hurting her feelings. She made something, and I remade it without asking. Worse than that, I didn’t use a pattern to do it!

My mom’s discipline as a seamstress came from required dressmaker/tailoring coursework she’d taken at Cornell University. When she was a student there, young women had to take home economics. My mom already could sew like nobody’s business, but she learned a lot from those required courses. It made her crazy to see me break all the rules.

Her reaction to my freeform creativity is probably what made me so anxious about my ability to follow a pattern as an adult. It was a mental block. Even though I am fully capable of it, I still feel anxiety when I face the tissue paper cutouts and instructions.

Now that I have sewn one dress, following a pattern exactly, I’ll let the truth out. I’m halfway through a second sort of vest/tunic based on the first dress pattern, and I’m already winging it. Once I started again from the beginning, I regained my crazy freeform gusto. I can’t hold back!

Each year, we, as a Jewish people, start something right from the beginning. We begin reading the Torah, starting with the creation of the world. We jump into B’reishit, Genesis, and we hear a familiar story. Some people roll their eyes, saying, I’ve heard this before. However, like learning anything new (sewing, for instance), the learning curve is steep. There is a lot in there.

As a sewer, I saw things I missed the first time I followed a pattern. I didn’t do something wrong, I was just less practised before; I was a beginner. Those of us who have been studying Jewish texts every year, reading the Torah portion or commentaries or Midrash – well, we all start out as beginners and eventually become more immersed in the material. There is always something rich, new and different to consider or pursue as we read it again.

It’s like rereading a favourite novel. Now that I know how it’s going to end, I don’t have to rush. I can enjoy all the twists, the foreshadowing, the way the writer uses the language in telling us the story. I see and understand things that I might have missed in a first reading.

I’m not going to lie. Just like sewing, knitting, cooking or building something you’ve made before, rereading the text can feel rote, like you are on autopilot. Sometimes reading a familiar text is actually an opportunity to meditate on something different altogether.

This morning, I dug into making that vest because I needed something with pockets to go with my Shabbat skirts or dress pants. I wanted to make something that would come out OK in a life or world that sometimes seems very unpredictable.

By the time you read this, Simchat Torah and the Canadian federal election will be weeks over, but our new year is really just beginning. It’s a time of great potential, even as the light fades earlier each day. We have so much good and creative work ahead of us. Rereading B’reishit gives a chance to relive something magical and important to our identity as Jewish people – an origin story. At the same time, the characters of Genesis offer us insights into today, into our lives, identities, families and communities.

It’s true that sewing is an old-fashioned skill that I’m getting a hold of again. However, like Genesis, we can say “Look! Everything old is new again!” and jump into learning with emotion – and enthusiasm.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Important finds in Usha

A 1,400-year-old hammer and nails, found at the ancient city of Usha. (photo by Yoli Schwartz/IAA via Ashernet)

An Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) excavation some 15 kilometres east of Haifa at the ancient city of Usha revealed a 1,400-year-old hammer and nails, confirming that the ancient inhabitants of Usha manufactured iron tools.

photo - One of the broken wine glasses found in Usha — One of the broken wine glasses found in Usha. *(photo by Yoli Schwartz/IAA via Ashernet)*

The IAA’s community excavation, carried out predominantly by youth and volunteers, has exposed part of a Jewish settlement with ritual baths, oil presses and winepresses. Indications are that the primary occupation of the Usha inhabitants was the large-scale processing of the olive trees and vines they cultivated on the surrounding hills. The discovery of the ritual baths indicates that the Jewish press workers took care to purify themselves in the ritual baths in order to manufacture ritually pure oil and wine.

According to Yair Amitzur, director of the excavation and of the Sanhedrin Trail Project for the IAA, “the settlement of Usha is mentioned in the Jewish sources many times in the Roman and Byzantine periods, as the village where the institution of the Sanhedrin was renewed, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and after the failure of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE. The Sanhedrin was the central Jewish council and law court, and it was headed by the president, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the Second, who presided in Usha, and then his son, Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi. Here, in Usha, the rabbis of the Sanhedrin made decrees to enable the Jewish people to recover after the war against the Romans, and to reconstruct Jewish life in the Galilee.”

לא מכונה ולא כביסה

סטנלי פארק (Jester7777 at English Wikipedia)

התמקמתי סוף סוף בדירה החדשה בסמוך לסטנלי פארק הגדול, היפה והירוק (בניגוד למה שאנו רגילים לו בישראל). אמרתי לעצמי בשקט: “ברוך הבא למשכנך החדש והיפה. סוף סוף תוכל לכתוב בשקט כך שרק נשימותי ישמעו להן ברחבי חדר העבודה או בסלון שלך”.

מעבר מדירה לדירה נחשב אצלי לפרויקט חיים גדול ממש כמו ההליכה של עם ישראל ארבעים שנה במדבר ואולי יותר מכך.

השינויים האלה דורשים ממני מאמץ פיזי ונפשי אדיר! ומתישים אותי לחלוטין. ההחלמה פרויקטים נוראים שכאלה נמשכת אצלי לפעמים אפילו שנים.

התמקמתי סוף סוף בדירה החדשה בסמוך לסנטלי פארק הגדול, היפה והירוק (בניגוד למה שאנו רגילים לו בישראל). אמרתי לעצמי בשקט: “ברוך הבא למשכנך החדש והיפה. סוף סוף תוכל לכתוב בשקט כך שרק נשימותי ישמעו להן ברחבי חדר העבודה או בסלון שלך”.

כמעט והתקנתי מזוזה בכניסה לבית מרוב שמחה וסיפוק על ההישג הגדול שלי: הצלחתי לעבור דירה ונשארתי בחיים. האם מישהו שומר עלי מלמעלה? או שמה מלמטה? או מכל מקום אחר?

התעוררתי בבוקר בבהלה לאור רעש ממספר שכנים שגרים בדירה למטה. ניחמתי את עצמי במחשבה כי זה בוודאי רעש זמני שיחלוף מן העולם מחר.

התה הרותח ליווה אותי לשולחן הנוח בסלון הענק שלי שמזכיר מגרש כדורסל של הפועל ירושלים ללא יציעים. “למה זקוק עוד בנאדם” מילמלתי לעצמי בשימחה מול התה המהביל. “יש לי את כל התנאים הדרושים לעצמי לשבת ולכתוב. אין תירוצים ושלא יהיו תירוצים – ברור?” הוספתי לדבר אל עצמי בשקט.

פתחתי את המחשב הנייד שלי שרק לאחרונה השקעתי סוף סוף מצלצלים בשיפור התוכנה שלו. הצצתי ברשימת הרעיונות הארוכה שהכנתי לעצמי עוד מוקדם בבוקר, אחרי שהרעש בחוץ נרגע קמעה. כך נראה שיש תשתית לא מבוטלת לתחילת כתיבת סיפור חדש. “הגיע הזמן, הגיע הזמן” אמרתי לעצמי מספר פעמים.

ממש ברגע הקלדת המשפט הראשון שמעתי את הדלת הבית נפתחת בזעם שכמעט מוטט את הצירים, הקירות והרצפה כאחת. “מה קרה?” שאלתי בפחד תוך שאני רועד מההמולה הנוראית, את בת זוגתי אהובתי שתחייה. היא שהזיעה כל כולה כנראה מאמץ ההליכה הביתה ובטח גם מפתיחת הדלת בצורה הדרמטית הזו כמו בסרט אימים, אמרה לי חלושות: “אהובי היקר. מכונת הכביסה האהובה שלנו התקלקלה לה. אני כל כך עצובה וממש נואשת. הנה הנה מגיע הטכנאי שיטפל בה כראוי ויחזיר אותה למוטב”.

נדהמתי מהצרה החדשה שנפלה עלי ורציתי מייד להחזיר את בת הזוג היקרה שלי למוטב, ולהעיף אותה ואת המכונה שלה לקיביני מט. “שילכו שתיהן כמה שיותר רחוק ממני. רק שילכו. ומה ביקש בן האדם? רק קצת שקט ולכתוב כמו שאני אוהב. האם זה מוגזם?”, שוב מילמלתי לעצמי. אז משום מקום חטפתי קריזה ופני האדימו כמו שמיים סוערים לפני סערה קשה. נעמדתי ליד שולחני וצעקתי על הגברת שלי תוך שאני מנפנף את הידיים למעלה, כך שאולי אלוהים ישמע ויצילני מצרותי החדשות: “האם את מבינה שאני צריך לכתוב! לא אתן לך ולמכונה המזויינת שלך להפריע לי. עברתי לכאן בשארית הכוחות שלי ואני מרגיש ממש כמו לימון שנסחט עד תומו. לא מכונה ולא כביסה -מבינה?”

בת זוגתי צנחה על הכיסא ליד החלון ונראתה כמו גופה לפני קבורתה. חששתי שמה הגזמתי בתגובתי והשפעתי על בריאותה שמימילא לא הייתה כל כך טובה. לשמחתי ראיתי שהיא מתאוששת די במהירות וצופה ארוכות בנוף היפה שנראה מהחלון. כן אלו העצים העתיקים של סטנלי פארק שגילם נאמד במאות שנים, בדיוק כפו שאני הרגשתי.