It hurts and it ain’t at all fair

Families sometimes just have a bad run when it comes to health in the household. From December onwards, it seems like somebody has been sick at our house … but, in between, there were brief periods when most of us functioned OK. It’s been challenging.

Like many folks, I’m also signed up for an exercise class, but I have had to miss it a lot because of all these illnesses. I’m usually game for a long walk with the dog, but not a big fan of exercise – I do it because I should. We need regular exercise to strengthen and care for the body. However, when a kid is home sick, or I am, I have to skip that class, too. Exercising is, in the long run, good for me, but, in the short term, there are days when I just have to sit on the couch.

Figuring out how to care for our bodies is a balancing act. On the one hand, sometimes things hurt, but, on the other, there’s no one else inside each of our bodies, telling us what to do about it.

Some people have a high pain tolerance and, more, we’ve been taught to “walk it off,” “suck it up” or cope with what comes without complaining. Is this choice, to learn to cope with discomfort without complaint, a Jewish thing?

Some might say it is the opposite. If you read the Torah portions about the Exodus from Egypt, you get multiple examples of when the Israelites complained. They wanted meat. They wanted water. They wanted better food. In Numbers 20:5, it says, “Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!”

On more than one occasion, G-d does provide for the Israelites, but there’s also punishment. People get sick, or are bitten by serpents. Complaining isn’t rewarded. It might be natural for some to complain of their lot – even the most strong among us need to let out our frustrations after awhile. However, some of us were taught that complaining too much isn’t OK; that, unless you’re dying, you need to get on with things, and save the cries of pain and complaints for when something actually really matters.

Unfortunately, if you hold the pain in and don’t act like you’re dying, sometimes you don’t get taken care of promptly. In some cases, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Also, if you’re not a big complainer, people may forget that there might be anything wrong, though being stoic, understated and self-controlled can make life less complicated, too.

I’d like to say that folks remembered that some in our family weren’t 100% healthy, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes I felt a lot of pressure for us to be joiners and attempt something that I knew just wouldn’t work out – as I recovered from pneumonia, for instance. I’d have to say things like, “Well, we’re really not up to that, but thanks for inviting us.” I feel like maybe we’ve missed out, but good health is really important. It has to come first.

Jewish tradition teaches us that the body is a temple. We have to take care of it. We wish people “refuah shlemah,” or “complete healing.” We say “la bruit” (“to your health”) when someone sneezes. Midrash teaches us that we wish health to someone when they sneeze because, in the past, some saw sneezing as dangerous and deadly – the soul could leave through the nostrils. It’s a mitzvah (commandment) to do bikur cholim (visiting the sick), and many congregations have committees in place to make food and visit those who are unwell.

We have contradictions here. In our oldest stories, there are complainers and punishments for complaining. In our ritual traditions, we wish people health, help them get well, and have an obligation to take care of others and visit them. We’re also not to abandon those who are sick – when Miriam got sick, the Israelites waited for her to get well before traveling on. Yet, we’re also part of a 24/7, on-the-go culture. It’s hard to reconcile the need for good, old-fashioned rest with our modern lives, but both are necessary. When it hurts, it’s OK to say so, within reason, and to expect others to care and wish you better health.

Here’s a funny story of “it hurts.” While I was in labour with my twins, another expectant mother came in. She came with two people (family members? friends?) and made a lot of noise. It turned out that, when the people with her had to leave the room, she stopped making noise. It felt like we were listening to a performance! This lady felt that part of delivering the baby required making noise about it – and we all heard it, on cue.

It’s traditional to be supportive of someone in their time of discomfort – to support and help – but perhaps Hashem would prefer it if we saved the hysterical screaming for when it really hurts rather than just for when someone can hear us. Complaining for its own sake, it would seem, warrants punishment but, when it really hurts, we’re commanded to visit, bring food and help.

Sickness happens to the best of us, and it sure isn’t fair. But, there’s no point in making it worse for everyone by screaming louder than anyone else.

Joanne Seiff writes 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.

Hesse driven to be an artist

Eva Hesse is the subject of an Aug. 31 episode of PBS’s American Masters series. (photo by Herman Landshoff)

Eva Hesse’s childhood was a rollercoaster of displacement, reunion, destabilization and trauma. In the journals she kept as a teenager and adult, the German-born, New York-based artist recognized the source of her chronic insecurity. Yet, paradoxically, and remarkably, her work evinces no anguish or suffering, and no need to expose or extinguish demons from the past. From her early, brightly coloured drawings and paintings, through the textured, abstract sculptures and installations that made her reputation, her art comprises a series of experiments in forward-looking forms of expression.

Eva Hesse screens Aug. 31 (check local listings) in PBS’s American Masters series. A palpable labour of love, Marcie Begleiter’s densely detailed 2016 documentary is a soup-to-nuts portrait that encompasses the artist’s personal life and times – New York in the 1960s – along with her professional development and impact.

Begleiter’s diligence notwithstanding, Eva Hesse never delivers the aha moment, where the person and her work snap together, and we understand exactly how Hesse’s defining childhood experiences informed her work. I’ll venture, though, that Holocaust survivors, and children of survivors, will identify with Hesse’s internalized struggles, and read between the lines of her journals and the recollections of her older sister, Helen.

In 1962, the art-school grad fell in love with and married a hard-partying Irish-American sculptor named Tom Doyle. Because her father insisted that she marry a Jew, Doyle willingly converted to Judaism.

Doyle, who was the more advanced and accomplished artist at the time, was offered a residency in Germany a couple years later, and the couple ended up living there for more than a year. Their relationship fractured abroad, in part because of his drinking and flirting, but Hesse made a major leap in her art practice from painting to sculpture.

Eva Hesse, which generally unfolds chronologically, uses this period to flash back to Hesse’s chaotic childhood. Born in Hamburg in 1936, she and Helen were sent on a Kindertransport to the Netherlands in 1938. When their parents left Germany several months later, the family reunited and fled Europe for England and, in short order, New York. They were the only members of the family to escape the Holocaust.

When Hesse’s mother, who suffered from depression and mental illness, learned in 1946 that her parents had died in the camps, she jumped from a roof to her death. (Hesse’s father had separated and remarried by this time.)

While the documentary is continually interested in its subject’s mental state, neither the filmmaker nor Hesse’s devoted artist friends are especially keen to psychoanalyze her. Perhaps she was scarred by the abandonment of her parents as a toddler, though one could also understand her self-doubt, given the establishment of male gallery owners, museum curators and critics.

Which brings us to another fundamental paradox of Hesse, namely that the insecurities she voiced in her journals, and in letters to artist, mentor and close friend Sol LeWitt, were matched by an unwavering drive to be an artist, an adherence to her muse (wherever it took her) and the awareness that she was pretty darn good at her work.

In fact, Hesse was an extrovert and a lot of fun, by most accounts. From the outset, Eva Hesse is plainly not a study of a tortured artist. Nor was she unrecognized and unappreciated in her own lifetime, for she had a major solo show and made the cover of Artforum before she died of a brain tumour in 1970. She was 34 years old.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Benefits from being bilingual

Dr. Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan University. (photo by Carmit Altman)

“Anna,” a preschooler in the Israeli city of Bat Yam, was thought to be cognitively impaired because testing her in Hebrew showed her cognitive skills lagging behind her classmates. But, when retested in her home language, Russian, she was found to be normal. About half of all Israeli children speak a different language at home than in school, making Israel possibly the world’s best “laboratory” for researching the still little-understood phenomenon of growing up with two or more spoken languages.

One important Israeli discovery is that comparing bilingual kids like Anna to monolingual children is like comparing apples to pears, according to Bar-Ilan University Prof. Sharon Armon-Lotem. For two decades, her lab has studied language-acquisition processes of Israeli preschoolers from English-, Russian- and Amharic-speaking homes.

Roughly 20% of children entering first grade in Israeli secular public schools come from immigrant homes in which the dominant language is not Hebrew. The largest cohort is Russian-speakers, numbering about 1.2 million out of an overall Israeli population of 8.7 million.

Adding more than a million Israeli households where Arabic, Yiddish or African languages are spoken, the percentage of bilingual children climbs to as high as 50% of the general population, Armon-Lotem told Israel21c.

To evaluate bilingualism properly, one must understand that children who grow up speaking two or more languages in everyday life are not using the same brain processes as do monolingual children learning a second language in school, note Armon-Lotem and other Israeli experts. And, if bilingual children like Anna initially have a smaller Hebrew vocabulary, they have better syntax and concept-generation skills in both languages. Overall, they develop language no differently than monolingual peers, unless they have developmental language disorder (DLD).

DLD, estimated to affect five to seven percent of both monolingual and bilingual children, causes dramatic delays in language acquisition not related to other impairments. DLD might manifest differently in each of a child’s two languages, but usually shows up as difficulty with word retrieval and grammar. Since these same phenomena can happen in typically developing bilingual children as they learn the majority language, bilingual children with and without DLD are often misdiagnosed.

Armon-Lotem emphasized that bilingualism does not lead to impairment. From 2009 to 2013, she led a network of researchers from 26 European and five non-European countries in formulating standards for characterizing typical bilingual development and identifying atypical bilingual development in more than 30 language pairs. Research by Natalia Meir in Armon-Lotem’s lab was the first to show that it is possible to disentangle typical and impaired language development, and with 90% accuracy.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in this area in Israel,” said Prof. Joel Walters, professor emeritus of linguistics at Bar-Ilan and now chair of the department of communication disorders at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, which hosts hundreds of specialists at its annual conference on communication disorders in multilingual and multicultural populations.

Walters’ study of the processes underlying how the brain merges two or more languages into a single utterance is informed by recent brain imaging of bilinguals. One of his focuses is “codeswitching,” when a bilingual speaker starts a sentence or word in one language and switches to the other.

“Codeswitching was once thought of as a random phenomenon but actually it’s very systematic and occurs in sentences, phrases and even within words,” Walters told Israel21c. An English-Hebrew bilingual child might tell her sister “muzi,” merging the English word “move” with the Hebrew “zuzi,” for example.

Walters and two co-authors recently published in the International Journal of Bilingualism about their study of Russian-Hebrew bilingual 6-year-olds asked to retell a Russian story to a Hebrew-speaking puppet, a Hebrew story to a Russian-speaking puppet and a codeswitched story to a bilingual puppet. The children were also asked to respond to conversational questions asked in Russian, Hebrew and codeswitched speech about holidays and activities at home and in preschool. In both tasks, the children did more codeswitching from Russian to Hebrew, “because that’s the language of school and street and that’s the language that will help them integrate socially.” However, in children with impaired language development, the directionality is not as predictable, said Walters.

As Israeli researchers formulate better ways of evaluating and treating bilingual children with DLD, Armon-Lotem is planning to establish a global database of voice files sent from clinicians and preschool teachers who work with bilingual children in different language pairs. Data scientists at Bar-Ilan will use new methods in machine learning and big data to better identify existing markers of DLD and possibly find new markers.

Am I Russian or Israeli?

Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan’s School Counseling and Child Development Programs studies the social impact of growing up bilingual, looking at family language policy – what language parents want their child to speak and how they enforce that preference.

One of her group’s frequently cited studies, published in 2014, examined the language policy of 65 Israeli families raising their children in Russian. They found three main approaches: parents with a strict policy of speaking only Russian at home; parents who don’t forbid Hebrew at home and sometimes encourage it; and those who actively promote both Hebrew and Russian at home for speaking and reading. They predicted that the strictest language policy would result in the best performance in Russian but the middle group performed just as well. Children from this group also showed an advantage in Hebrew in tasks predictive of future Hebrew literacy skills. “In syntax, all the kids did better in Hebrew than in Russian, with no group differences,” Altman said.

Altman’s lab also studies how bilingual children and their parents perceive their children’s language abilities, and their sociolinguistic identity and preferences. They invented a “magic ladder” scale on which preschoolers can attach happy and sad magnet faces to rate their agreement with statements such as “I speak Hebrew well.”

Parents of both English-Hebrew and Russian-Hebrew bilingual children think their children prefer Hebrew, but the kids say they prefer their home language, Altman found. And, while the kids consider themselves hyphenated Israelis, their parents consider them totally Israeli.

There were also differences in performance perception. “In Russian-Hebrew families, both children and parents think the children perform similarly in Russian and Hebrew. In English-Hebrew families, children feel they perform better in English, while parents think the children have similar abilities in both languages,” said Altman.

In collaboration with Armon-Lotem, Altman’s group is developing tools to help researchers understand these differences and to help preschool teachers detect which bilingual children may need a DLD evaluation.

Advantages of bilingualism

The ability to speak more than one language is widely accepted as beneficial in ways from the practical (business, academics, travel) to the medical (possibly delaying symptoms of dementia). When Altman was doing a post-doc in New York, she and her husband spoke Hebrew to their children at home. She feels that raising kids bilingually “is a gift you can give your child for life” and that cross-generational communication is one strong motivation for doing so.

“Having more than one language and more than one culture is definitely a huge advantage in life,” agreed Armon-Lotem.

It is less clear whether bilingualism sharpens “executive functions,” such as shifting attention and inhibiting instructions, as was believed in past decades.

“In one study, we found that English-Hebrew bilingual children with DLD show an advantage in executive function over monolingual children with DLD,” said Armon-Lotem. “But we didn’t find the same in Russian-Hebrew bilinguals. We might be able to find cognitive advantages for certain populations at certain age ranges and within certain tasks.”

Armon-Lotem and her colleagues are beginning to study bilingualism in children with autism and Down syndrome, and will provide tools to help bilingual preschool children, including Eritrean asylum-seekers in Jerusalem, tell coherent stories in Hebrew and their home language.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Golden discovery

A Hellenistic-era golden earring, discovered in the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David National Park. (photo from IAA courtesy Ashernet)

A Hellenistic-era golden earring, featuring ornamentation of a horned animal, was discovered in the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David National Park encircling the Old City walls. The discovery was made during archeological digs carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University. According to the researchers, “It is unclear whether the gold earring was worn by a man or a woman, nor do we know their cultural or religious identity, but we can say for certain that whoever wore this earring definitely belonged to Jerusalem’s upper class. This can be determined by the proximity to the Temple Mount and the Temple, which was functional at the time, as well as the quality of the gold piece of jewelry.”

 

אייר קנדה במקום השלושים

(צילום: abdallahh from Montreal)

כמדי שנה חברת סקייטרקס מפרסמת את מדד מאה חברות התעופה הטובות בעולם. במדד של השנה: סינגפור איירליינס הגיעה למקום הראשון ואילו אייר קנדה הגיעה למקום השלושים.

להלן עשר חברות התעופה הטובות ביותר בעולם לשנת 2018: סינגפור איירליינס במקום הראשון (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), קטאר אירוויס במקום השני (ירידה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), אול ניפון איירוויס מיפאן במקום השלישי (אשתקד גם כן במקום השלישי), אמירייטס מאיחוד האמרויות במקום הרביעי (אשתקד גם כן במקום הרביעי), אווה אייר מטייוואן במקום החמישי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), קתאי פסיפיק מהונג קונג במקום השישי (ירידה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), לופטהנזה מגרמניה במקום השביעי (אשתקד גם כן במקום השביעי), היינאן מסין במקום השמיני (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד), גארודה מאינדונסיה במקום התשיעי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד) ותאי איירוויס במקום העשירי (עלייה של מקום לעומת אשתקד). אייר קנדה היא חברת התעופה הקנדית היחידה שנכנסה למדד מאה הטובות בעולם. אייר קנדה תופסת את המקום השלושים כאשר אשתקד היא הגיעה למקום העשרים ותשעה.

אייר קנדה תפסה את המקום הראשון בקרב סקר חברות התעופה הטובות ביותר בצפון אמריקה ב-2018. החברה שנוסדה ב-137 מחזיקה כיום ב-185 מטוסים בגדלים שונים. לחברה יש חמש חברות-בנות: אייר קנדה ג’אז – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות פנים במטוסים קלים, אייר קנדה טאנגו – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות למקסיקו וארה”ב, זיפ – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות לחוף המערבי של ארה”ב’, אייר קנדה רוג’ – המתמחה בעיקר בטיסות לואו-קוסט לדרום אמריקה, אירופה וישראל וכן אייר קנדה אקספרס.

אייר קנדה טסה ל-222 שדות תעופה שונים ברחבי העולם (64 בקנדה, 60 בארה”ב ו-98 בשאר רחבי העולם), בהן 7 טיסות שבועיות בקו טורונטו – תל אביב במטוסי הדרימליינר, וכן 2 טיסות שבועיות עונתיות בקו מונטריאול – תל אביב במטוסי הדרימליינר. אייר קנדה הסיעה אשתקד 48 מיליון נוסעים.

החברה הקנדית מנסה להפעיל מחדש את תוכנית הנוסע המתמיד “ארופלן”, בשותפות עם הבנקים הקנדים טי.די וסי.איי.בי.סי וחברת ויזה. רכישת “ארופלן” נאמדת בכ-2.25 מיליארד דולר קנדי אך לא ברור אם תצא אל הפועל.

האדסון ביי העיפו את המוצרי איוונקה טראמפ מהמדפים ומעתה הברנד לא קיים עוד

רשת בתי הכלבו הקנדית הוותיקה האדסון ביי החליטו בחודש שעבר שלא למכור עוד את קו מוצרי האופנה של איוונקה טראמפ, בתו של הנשיא האמריקני הבעייתי, דונלד טראמפ. המוצרים של טראמפ הבת כמעט ולא נמכרו בקנדה, ויש שיאמרו כי החרם על קו האופנה של מי שמזוהה כל כך עם אביה – עשה את שלו.

מכל מקום החלטת האדסון ביי היוותה סממן שלילי נוסף לעתיד הברנד של טראמפ הבת, שלא הצליח להתרומם לאור התנהגותו השערורייתית של טראמפ האב. עד שלבסוף החליטה הבת בסוף יולי להפסיק לחלוטין את קו האופנה הכושל.

איוונקה טראמפ (36) הקימה את קו מוצרי האופנה שלה ב-2014. בעת הקמפיין הפוליטי המלוכלך של אביה המכירות זינקו. לאחר מכן החלו להישמע טענות שהבת מקדמת את מוצריה בדרך לא הוגנת, ופעילותה בבית הלבן ליד אביה יוצרת בעצם ניגוד אינטרסים. כן נטען שהועסקו עובדים זרים תוך ניצולם במפעלי הברנד בחו”ל.

רבים בארה”ב ומחוצה לה קראו להחרים את המוצרים של טראמפ, ורשתות שיווק שונות החליטו להפסיק ולמכור אותם. האחרונה הייתה כאמור האדסון ביי הקנדית ומעתה מוצרי איוונקה טראמפ לא קיימים עוד.

קנדה: “זה הבית שלי”

פעם שנייה: סוכן כפול עיראקי-ישראלי לשעבר נלחם למנוע שוב את גירושו לתוניסיה. (צילום: Amy Keus)

סוכן כפול לשעבר של שירותי הביטחון של עיראק בתקופת הרודן סאדם חוסיין, וכן של “המוסד” הישראלי, חוסיין עלי סומדייה, מנסה למנוע את גירושו לתוניסיה בפעם השניה. סומדייה (53) יליד עיראק שמחזיק גם באזרחות תוניסאית (ששם נולד אביו), הגיש ערעור לבית המשפט הפדרלי של קנדה. זאת, לאחר ששרותי ההגירה המקומיים הפקיעו את תושבות הקבע הקנדית שלו. כשהכוונה היא בעצם לגרשו בשלב השני שוב לתוניסיה.

סומדייה עבד עם מנגנון הביטחון הסודי העיראקי לשעבר – המחובראת, במהלך שנות השמונים, עת למד באנגליה. הקשר עם המחובראת נוצר בעקבות היכרותו של סומדייה עם בניו של הדיקטטור העיראקי: עודאי וקוסאי חוסיין. הוא מסר מידע נרחב למחובראת שהביא בין היתר לחשיפת כשלושים וחמישה איש ובני משפחותיהם. לדברי סומדייה הוא הוטרד מהעובדה שהוא עובד בעצם “למען המפלצת סאדם ומכונת ההרג שלו”, ולכן החליט לחצות את הקווים ולהתחיל לעבוד עם “המוסד” הישראלי. סומדייה טען אז כי במסגרת עבודתו עבור “המוסד”, הוא אסף מודיעין על השגרירות של עיראק בבריסל, וכן ריגל אחרי חברי הארגון לשחרור פלסטין. בגלל שחשש לשלום משפחתו שוב חצה את הקווים וחזר לעבוד עם המוחבראת, עד שב-1990 עזר אומץ וברח לקנדה וביקש מקלט מדיני כאן.

שלטונות ההגירה הקנדיים לא רצו שסומדייה ישאר בקנדה בטענה שיש סבירות גבוהה שבעבודתו כסוכן, חשף לא מעט אנשים למעשי עינויים ואפילו הוצאה להורג. בעצם מדובר בפשעים שהוא ביצע נגד האנושות. לפיכך לאחר שנים של הליך משפט ארוך שכלל ערעורים אין ספור של סומדייה שכולם נדחו, הוא גורש לבסוף לתוניסיה ב-2005.

סומדייה טען שברגע נחיתתו בתוניסיה הוא נעצר על ידי רשויות החוק המקומיים. הוא הובא לחקירות קשות שכללו מעשי אלימות ועינויים. לאחר כשנה הצליח סומדייה לברוח מתוניסיה לאג’יריה, עבר דרך אמסטרדם והציג לרשויות בהולנד מסמכים מזוייפים של בקשת מקלט מדיני בקנדה. לאור זאת ההולנדים העניקו לו דרכון חרום וכך טס בחזרה לקנדה בקייץ 2006. מאז שוב עניינו נדון בבית המשפט בזמן שרשויות ההגירה מסרבות להעניק לו תושבות קבע, לאחר שעשה שימוש במסמכים מזוייפים. לאחר שנה (ב-2007) רשויות ההגירה הסכימו עם טענתו של סומיידה שאם הוא יגורש שוב לתוניסיה, צפויה סכנה לחייו. עם זאת ב-2016 החליטו ברשויות ההגירה לבדוק שוב את התיק שלו, לאחר שהושמעו טענות שהמידע שמסר על כך שכביכול עונה בתוניסיה אינו אמין (ובו בזמן שתוניסה לא משמשת עוד הבסיס של הארגון לשחרור פלסטין). סומדייה לא וויתר והגיש שוב ערעור על עמדת הממשלה האומרת, כי לא נשקפת סכנה עם יגורש לתוניסיה. הוא טען לעומת זאת כי כאחד ששיתף פעולה עם ישראל נשקפת לו סכנת חיים ממשית, אם יחזור למדינה ערבית כלשהי. לעיתון הטורונטו סאן אמר סומדייה: “המילה “המוסד” היא המילה הכי מפחידה והשנואה ביותר בעולם. כל אחד יודע שמי שקשור למדינה היהודית, יעשה לו לינץ’ על ידי ההמון ברחובות של כל עיר ערבית אליה יגיע”.

בינתיים בעת שהותו בקנדה במשך כשלושה עשורים הספיק סומדייה להתחתן בפעם השלישית, ויש לו כבר שלושה ילדים. המשפחה גרה כיום בהמילטון (במחוז אונטריו) והוא אף מחזיק בחברת בנייה. בראיון לעיתון הנשיונל פוסט אמר סומדייה: “אלו היו עשרים ושמונה שנים. יש לי את החיים שלי, יש לי את המשפחה שלי, יש לי את העסק שלי. מיקמתי את עצמי כאן בקנדה. זה הבית שלי”.

Eclectic mix of plays at Bard

Left to right are Jennifer Lines, Quelemia Sparrow and Marci T. House, who form part of the cast of Lysistrata. (photo by David Cooper)

At Bard on the Beach this summer, there is an eclectic mix of plays. There is Macbeth, set in its proper period, which runs in repertory on the BMO Stage with a Beatlemania version of As You Like It. On the more intimate Howard Family Stage, there is an experimental gender-role reversal take on little-known Timon of Athens and Lysistrata, a somewhat X-rated farcical romp through an ancient Greek tale, with a contemporary twist.

For Lysistrata, University of Victoria professor Jennifer Wise (Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition winner) collaborated with director Lois Anderson to adapt Aristophanes’ 411 BCE comedic protest play about a group of Athenian and Spartan women who, tired of their husbands’ endless war-mongering, reluctantly decide to withhold sex until the men vow to give up fighting and stay at home with their families. You can probably guess what ultimately happens. But, to get there, the audience is led through a Monty Python meets Saturday Night Live series of misadventures replete with double entendres, an interesting use of plastic pool noodles and plenty of rollicking action.

The play’s backstory is Bard’s scheduled production of an all-female Hamlet that morphs into a dramatis interruptus as the company decides, at the last minute and with profuse apologies to the audience and artistic director Christopher Gaze, to stage Lysistrata this one night only to protest the pending rezoning of Vanier Park to make way for a shipping terminal. This leads to a lot of backing-and-forthing through ancient Greece and modern-day Vancouver interspersed with the ever-sublime Colleen Wheeler, as Hamlet, trying to get her “to be or not to be” soliloquy in, despite the change in plans, as she hauls “poor Yorick’s skull” around the set.

This is truly an ensemble cast and every member shines, but special mention must be made of Luisa Jojic’s role as the eponymous ring leader, Jennifer Lines as Mother Earth and Quelemia Sparrow’s poignant performance as an indigenous actor.

Mention must also be made of the two male artists (Sebastien Archibald and Joel D. Montgrand) who, as uniformed police officers, “stop” the performance to arrest one of the actors – who has defaced the rezoning signs and plastered graffiti all over the crab sculpture in front of the Planetarium – for public mischief. It all seems very real and is very funny, especially since one of the cops plays Wheeler’s husband, Ross.

In addition to Wise, other Jewish community members play prominent roles in the production. Mishelle Cutler makes her Bard debut as music director and one-woman orchestra. She uses 1930s Weimar cabaret-style music for the contemporary scenes, and opera and choral works for the more classic Greek theatre bits. Choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg takes that music and provides novel dance moves, especially for the quirky geriatric men versus women Athenian reel.

In keeping with the environmental theme of the night, the costumes and accessories are simple, to give credence to the improvised nature of the show. Head gear is made of hand bags, recycled water bottles and paper toilet rolls, a Starbucks cup does double duty as a wine chalice, costumes made from curtain rods and drapes (à la Carol Burnett’s iconic Gone With the Wind outfit) mix in with the actors’ own street clothes.

Ultimately, this mélange of Shakespeare, Greek theatre and contemporary activism should resonate with all of us, as we grapple with the reality of development in this city and its impact on our heritage and our way of life. While this show is a lot of fun, it may not be suitable for children under the age of 13.

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Sometimes, you have to take risks with Shakespeare and director Meg Roe certainly does so with this adaptation of Timon of Athens. She admits in her notes that it is a “difficult play” and that it may not have been written solely by the Bard. It is the tale of a wealthy Athenian who wines and dines his friends and showers them with expensive gifts until he gets into financial difficulty. When he approaches those friends for help, they refuse. This sends him into a rage and, ultimately, to his death.

In the original version, the cast is predominantly male. In this adaptation, it is 2018, the set is a high-end condo in Vancouver and the cast is reminiscent of the Real Housewives women – uber wealthy, stiletto-heeled and shallow, constantly on their pinging/chirping phones.

Wheeler is sublime in her role as Timon and her manic meltdown into madness alone is worth the price of a ticket. She literally destroys the set. You have to give kudos to the stage crew, who have to rebuild the set for every performance, and to the costumers, who have to replace her white pantsuit every show. The set is stylish and sleek and the couture frocks divine. But, in the end, the basic takeaway is that money can’t buy you friends.

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This summer’s Macbeth is the way Shakespeare intended it to be – in its proper Elizabethan period, with a stark set and eerie smoke and lighting effects. Perfect for a tale of greed, lust for power and revenge.

Early in the play, Macbeth (Ben Carlson) encounters three witches (the ones with the famous brew that includes the “liver of a blaspheming Jew”) who predict that he will be king of Scotland. Once Lady Macbeth (Moya O’Connell) hears of this, she sets out to convince her husband to murder King Duncan when the king visits their castle so that he, Macbeth, can reign. And so begins their downward spiral towards murder, death, destruction and madness.

Carlson and O’Connell are the crème de la crème of Canadian acting and exude an intense chemistry as the plotting Scots. Special mention must be made of Andrew Wheeler as a gruff Macduff and Craig Erickson as a ghostly Banquo.

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Bard’s As You Like It is the must-see show of the summer. It is definitely a crowd-pleaser. And you will want to see it over and over again. Director Daryl Cloran has taken out half the Shakespearean text and inserted 25 of the Beatles’ top hits where appropriate in this tale of four pairs of young lovers (and the obstacles in their paths) so that, when one of the pairs, Rosalind (Lindsey Angell) and Orlando (Nadeem Phillip), locks eyes the for the first time, he breaks out in, “She loves you, ya, ya, ya.” Every situation easily morphs into a Beatles’ moment through songs like “Help,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Eight Days a Week” and so forth. The 1960s setting is split between urban Vancouver and the Okanagan, where various characters are exiled by the new duke on the block. There, in the wilderness, the four love stories unfold.

In addition, there is a pre-show display of Wildcat Wrestling, a psychedelic VW van parked on stage, a terrific four-piece band led by musical director Ben Elliott who does double duty as love-struck Silvius and is one half of a memorable and raunchy pas de deux with Jojic as Phoebe the shepherdess. That girl can belt out a song.

The standouts are the protagonists Angell and Phillip – they both sing and dance up a storm – Kayvon Khoshkam, who is simply terrific as the wrestling master of ceremonies and then later as the court fool, Touchstone, and Ben Carlson who, as the stereotypical beatnik, intellectual elitist, gives the audience a new take on the “all the world’s a stage” speech.

This is a fast-paced, fun night of music, song and dance that will have you humming these tunes all the way back home. Even old Will himself is probably rocking in his grave over Stratford-upon-Avon way.

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Bard on the Beach runs to Sept. 22. For tickets to any of the shows and more information, go to bardonthebeach.org or call the box office at 604-739-0559.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Creating with the land

Dalia Levy, left, and Ariel Martz-Oberlander (photos from Vines Art Festival)

“Good art is accountable to the community, raises up voices rarely heard and is vital to repairing our world.” This is a quote from Jewish community member Ariel Martz-Oberlander’s bio. It is little surprise that she was the associate producer for Vines Art Festival last year and is once again one of the artists this year.

Martz-Oberlander will be joined at Vines by several fellow Jewish community members: interdisciplinary artist Barbara Adler, textile artist Dalia Levy and performer and storyteller Naomi Steinberg, as well All Bodies Dance, of which Naomi Brand is a co-founder and facilitator. The multidisciplinary eco-arts festival features more than 70 performing and visual artists at parks throughout Vancouver.

According to its mission statement, Vines “is a free public event that creates platforms for local artists and performers to create with and on the land, steering their creative impulses toward work that focuses on the environment – whether a deep love of nature, sustainability or climate justice.”

“Everything I create is in relation to the land I find myself on and the times I was born into,” Martz-Oberlander told the Independent. “I create from a place of wanting to live in good relation to the land and those who have been protecting it since the beginning. I also create with the hope of telling the stories we need to bring about tikkun olam, the stories that have been buried or hidden as we struggled to survive by assimilation. Telling my stories is part of my larger work of decolonizing theatre and performance – making space for other silenced stories, and dismantling and rethinking the ways we tell stories in the first place.”

About the specific work that she will present at the festival, Martz-Oberlander, who divides her time between theatre and community organizing, said, “My piece, entitled on behalf of my body, explores living in the body after sexual trauma and touches on the intersectionality of sexual violence, PTSD, dissociation and separation from the self. The piece is also an exploration of how the settler body can live in Turtle Island, as approached through the story of my Ashkenazi diasporic and refugee ancestry.

“I am making this piece because I struggle with my place on this land, having no homeland of my own, but still being an uninvited guest. My people have been wandering for 2,000 years, and now I find myself here – my body a site of so many struggles, politicized without my permission by the forces of antisemitism, racism, nationalism, Western medicine, patriarchy and rape culture. How do I walk back into my body after being forced from it in so many ways? What does recovery mean when I’m not sure what was there before or whether I can get back there. Was there a before?

“This is the journey I invite you to go on with me – it’s going to be a wild ride.”

Levy will be presenting Connective [T]issue at Vines.

“Inspired by women’s Arpilleras [brightly coloured patchwork images] of [Augusto] Pinochet’s Chile, this knit/sewn/embroidered piece protests the Pacific garbage patch and extractive economies, like bitumen on our coast,” Levy explained. “As the same criminal mentality of supremacy exhibited under a dictatorship disappears our earth and our humanity, the piece simultaneously contrasts the powerful sources of life embedded into all of us. Representative of the underground connective channels that create the webs of mycelium our entire planetary eco-system grows from, the netting gives further conceptual insights of life woven into all DNA. With women’s traditional textile knowledge as a means to subvert and survive, the piece protests the private and normalized plunder blanketing earth and the interwoven convergence of issues in an era of global crisis.”

Connective [T]issue builds off her performance art installation at the festival last year, which was called Knit Piece, she said. “I used natural red dye from local berries to cover myself in the blood of the earth and proceeded to knit a giant umbilical cord drawing fundamental connections between humans and Mother Earth. The umbilical cord was then attached to knit anatomical hearts, and left in the park as a ‘yarnbomb’ installation. You can see a photo of one of the hearts here: permacultureartisan.com.

“Knit Piece and this year’s piece will be accompanied by a relevant sound art soundtrack to encourage further reflection,” she added.

About her work in general and how it relates to the environmental justice focus of the festival or connects to Judaism or Jewish culture, Levy said, “My work is very much focused on using the traditions of my Jewish foremothers to highlight the massive injustices of today. By reconnecting with these folk traditions that women used to pass down through generations, I am able to find a voice for myself beyond the domestic craft sphere while keeping these ingenious skills alive. My work is in protest of the extractive, discard culture embodied in consumer culture, as every inch of my work has been hand-stitched by myself from upcycled and found materials headed for the landfill. The environmental themes I work with relate directly to Vines as a vehicle for system change and awareness-raising about the destruction to our sacred planet.

“My Jewish ancestors that escaped Eastern Europe stitched their way across an ocean, escaping dictatorships that were extremely antisemitic, and began working as tailors and settling in Winnipeg’s Jewish community,” she continued. “My work is, therefore, informed by this family history that literally survived the pogroms because of our ability to stitch and make and adapt. I feel strongly that our future rests in this spirit of humble handmade [things] that is full of sustainable, ‘slow’ knowledge adaptable to climate change and a post-carbon economy.”

Vines Art Festival is an all-ages event and, while it runs from Aug. 8 to 19 in various Vancouver parks, the main program takes place Aug. 18, 1-7:30 p.m., at Trout Lake Park. All of the festival presentations are free. For the schedule, visit vinesartfestival.com.

BDS’s lacrosse to bear

Before a soccer match with Maccabi Tel Aviv last week, the Hungarian football team Ferencváros Torna Club paid tribute to István Tóth in what is being heralded as a meaningful move against a creeping antisemitism that has permeated the European sporting world among other spheres.

Tóth was a Ferencváros Torna player and coach in the 1940s before joining the anti-Nazi resistance and saving hundreds of lives, including Jews who he helped escape detention and probable death. Tóth was captured and executed in 1945.

Last week’s game in Budapest was dedicated to Tóth’s memory.

North Americans who were swept up (or bemused) by global soccer mania at the height of the World Cup last weekend can almost appreciate the depths of feeling the sport evokes in much of the world. National feelings – and other high emotions – understandably permeate fan expressions. What is more baffling from afar is the manner in which antisemitism has seeped into the culture of European sport. Among other manifestations, fans from some teams will ridicule or intimidate those of opponents by implying the players or their supporters are Jews. In one instance, fans plastered a town with images of Anne Frank in the opposing team’s uniform. Elsewhere, fans suggested the opponents lacked foreskins. It’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around: that accusations of Jewishness have been used as a tool of intimidation on a playing field. The closest analogy, perhaps, might be the example more common in North American sports, in which opponents are accused of homosexuality. But, with Europe’s history of antisemitism, and the alarming growth of extremist politics across the continent, this hints at a deeper problem. This is why the Budapest event, which was coordinated with the assistance of World Jewish Congress, was as significant as it was. It was an official statement against antisemitism in sport and a testament to a hero of the Holocaust era.

Meanwhile, in a sports competition some distance away, a variant form of political activism, not unrelated to antisemitism, was playing out.

The BDS movement has been trying to isolate Israel in social, economic and cultural spheres. Athletes from Iran and countries with other Israel-hating governments have thrown matches rather than legitimize the Zionist entity, or athletes have refused to shake hands with Israeli competitors. There are even groups urging a boycott of the next Eurovision song contest because, as Israel’s Netta Barzilai was the 2018 victor, Israel will be the host country for next year’s round.

The latest attempt at a boycott, though, comes with a happy ending – and a Canadian twist.

The Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team recently arrived in Israel to participate in the World Men’s Lacrosse Championships. Soccer may be “the world’s game” and hockey may be where many Canadians’ invest our emotional energies, but lacrosse is, officially, our national game. (In a bow to popular demand, Parliament some time ago declared hockey our national “winter” sport and lacrosse our national “summer” sport, but details.) While many Canadians have an almost religious devotion to hockey, the Iroquois refer to lacrosse as “the Creator’s Game.”

The Iroquois team arrived at Ben-Gurion airport with indigenous passports. A few years ago, the team was forced to forfeit their games when the host country, the United Kingdom, refused to accept their travel documents. Israel, on the other hand, welcomed the Iroquois passports after interventions from the Government of Canada and the Canadian embassy in Israel.

While diplomats and respected figures like Irwin Cotler intervened to help, the BDS movement tried to prevent the team from attending. It was a particularly nasty effort, since the Iroquois invented the game. It may have been in this very fact that the BDSers smelled a potential symbolic victory, no matter how offensive the impact would have been on the individual players and the tournament more broadly had the First Nations team – one of the sport’s powerhouses – been excluded. And, as is often the case with the BDS movement, their success would have hurt Arabs as much as anyone. The Iroquois Nationals will lead a coexistence lacrosse clinic for Arab and Jewish young people.

There is a history of friendship, however unlikely, between the Iroquois and Israelis, both indigenous in their homelands. Earlier this year, the Seneca Nation, one of six groups that comprise the Iroquois Confederacy, celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, issuing a proclamation stating that “the Seneca Nation and the state of Israel share in common a passion for freedom and a willingness to fight for and defend our sovereignty and our shared right to be a free and independent people.”

The lacrosse tournament, which brings together 46 teams in the largest-ever such event, culminates this weekend. It may not elicit the rapturous fandom we saw last weekend in the World Cup. But we certainly have our sentimental favourites.

Consul general speaks with JI

Consul General Galit Baram was in Vancouver last month. (photo from Consulate of Israel)

Galit Baram, consul general of Israel to Toronto and Western Canada, was in Vancouver last month.

“The visit was very good,” she told the Independent in a phone interview. “It included some political meetings and an academic meeting and I addressed the Jewish community and I attended the Negev Dinner of the JNF…. I had the opportunity to see the city, which is beautiful, and the weather was nice.”

Baram will be returning to Vancouver in November, when the late Dirk Pieter and Klaasje Kalkman will be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations for the assistance they provided to Jews during the Holocaust. The ceremony will be held in conjunction with Yad Vashem Canada and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Baram’s June meetings explored the opportunities of expanding cooperation between Israel and British Columbia in innovation and entrepreneurship.

“I believe that there is great potential in economic cooperation between Israel and British Columbia,” she said.

The provincial government, she said, “is making its initial steps now…. There is interest, there is curiosity, there is awareness of what Israel has to offer in innovation, in the medical field. When it comes to pharma, when it comes to cybersecurity, Israel is a leading country in the international arena in many of these fields.

“We had very good relations with the previous government and we hosted a mission … in November of 2016, a mission that was led by then-minister of finance [Michael] de Jong; there were representatives of different business sectors in British Columbia…. [It] is our intention to work very closely with the current government as well.”

The change in the federal government in 2015 also hasn’t affected Canada-Israel cooperation. On May 28, in Montreal, François-Phillippe Champagne, minister of international trade, and Eli Cohen, Israel’s minister of the economy and industry, announced the signing of the modernized Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

Cohen spent two days in Canada, said Baram, adding, “I hope that Minister Champagne will soon reciprocate and visit Israel as well.

“I believe this is very important to have visits on such a high level … because I believe that governments can contribute greatly to bringing countries together. But we have to remember that, at a certain point, governments have to take a step back and leave it up to the business sector and the private sector to build bridges and to bring the countries together, but, as governments on both sides, Israel and Canada, we do as much as we can in order to strengthen and broaden our bilateral relations.”

Baram also sees the possibility of building a groundwork for peace in Israel through business and trade.

“I believe that economic mobility plays an integral role in bringing communities together,” she said, “and we are watching with pride the growing high-tech sector in the Israeli-Arab community, especially in the Greater Haifa area, in cities such as Nazareth…. We would like to see more Israeli-Arab students concentrating on science, concentrating on business, in business management and innovation and entrepreneurship.

“When it comes to building social bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, not necessarily Jews and Arabs, there are many activities that concentrate on that … and they are conducted by civil societies in Israel and it is heartwarming to see that. I would like to mention the activity of an organization such as Save a Child’s Heart … [which] brings children to Israel [for cardiac care] from Arab countries, from the Middle East, from Muslim countries in general, and they do wonderful, wonderful things in building bridges…. Another example I can give you is the upcoming visit of Dr. Yossi Leshem, one of Israel’s greatest experts on bird migration – he is going to be in Vancouver towards the end of August and he will be accompanied by his friends from [elsewhere in] the Middle East, and they are going to present beautiful regional projects in a conference that will be held in Vancouver…. Two other organizations that I would like to mention … are Ultimate Peace, that organizes Frisbee tournaments for youth … and another project, by Danny Hakim – Budo for Peace – teaches martial arts to Israeli Jews and Arabs, Palestinians, Jordanians and others, and they have instructors coming to Israel from Japan and from other countries…. I believe that such organizations can do so much good for Israeli society in general, for the Palestinians and for neighbouring countries in the Middle East.”

Of course, there are significant obstacles to peace, not the least of which are the ongoing altercations at the Gaza border.

“When it comes to the situation on the Gaza border, we are facing some very serious challenges,” admitted Baram. “It is an uphill battle. We see that there is sometimes a deterioration, sometimes the situation stabilizes a little bit and then there is another deterioration, the situation changes constantly.

“There are many, many challenges on a daily basis that are facing not only IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers and the Palestinian civilian populations, but also the civilian population on the Israeli side of the border. Sometimes there is a tendency to forget about them but there are families, there are entire communities, that raise their children on the Israeli side of the border and because of this intifada of burning kites and balloons, they have to deal with arson cases on a daily basis, with a loss of crops and forest in the south of Israel, and it’s heartbreaking to see that because so much work has been put into making the desert bloom, especially in those regions.”

She added, “The one very disappointing thing for me to see as a former director of the department for Palestinian affairs was the fact that the Kerem Shalom border crossing that was built in the first place to enable trucks to enter Gaza was burned down by Hamas activists and by other terrorists and it’s a shame to see that because so much money was invested in that, so much effort was done in order to make trade between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and especially Gaza, easier and simpler for us but especially for the civilian population in Gaza. And it’s difficult to see a civilian population that is being held captive by a terror organization…. Of course, there is awareness of the situation in Israel and understanding that the main enemy that has to be dealt with is definitely Hamas and not the people of Gaza.”

As for the Canadian government’s initial statements after the violent March of Return protests – in which Canada admonished Israel, saying its “use of excessive force and live ammunition is inexcusable,” and called “for an immediate independent investigation to thoroughly examine the facts on the ground” – Baram said, “I would like to mention that, after Hamas started attacking Israel, [with] renewed rocket attacks to the south of Israel, there were statements that were released by Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau and by Minister of Foreign Affairs [Chrystia] Freeland condemning Hamas for this activity and I believe we should concentrate on these statements.”

And Canada’s reluctance to move its embassy to Jerusalem?

“When it comes to Jerusalem,” said Baram, “we believe that all countries should move their embassies to the capital of Israel and the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. Every sovereign country has the right of defining and choosing its own capital and we believe that we don’t have to prove over and over again the story connecting the people of Israel and the land of Israel, between the people of Israel and its eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

With respect to the almost 40,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel, Baram said, “We have to remember that the first Western country that these people from Africa, from Eritrea, from Sudan, asylum seekers, work migrants – define them as you wish – the first Western country they encounter is Israel. And, several years ago, many of them came to Israel…. This is never an easy issue to deal with because the personal stories are very emotional and very difficult, and these people, many of them have been through terrible ordeals, until they reached Israel.

“The issue of migration in general … is an issue that is dealt with in Europe and in other parts of the world,” she said. “In the Middle East, for example, the issue of Syrian refugees is a very big issue that many countries deal with and, now, Syrian refugees, for example, are coming knocking on the doors of European countries, as well, but this is a problem that many Middle Eastern countries have dealt with for quite awhile, a long time now.

“With the African refugees or asylum seekers or work migrants, definitely a solution must be found in order to protect them, protect their rights. On the other hand, we have to keep the sovereignty of the state of Israel and we cannot allow floods of refugees entering Israel because we have to think about our population and … providing an answer that would satisfy all parties involved. This is not easy,” she said.

And neither is Israel’s relationship with Diaspora Jews always easy.

“When you look at Israeli society, you see that the public debate in Israel is very heated and emotional,” said Baram. “This is how we do things in Israel. People are very opinionated … they don’t hide their views and opinions, and I think this is wonderful. This is the strength of Israeli democracy.”

She recalled a statement made by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin about a year ago. “He talked about the four tribes of Israeli society, and he referred to secular Jews, to Orthodox Zionists Jews, to the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel and to Israeli Arabs…. And he called for these four tribes to join hands to discuss the future of Israeli society for the benefit of the country. Later on, he added the fifth tribe … and I believe this is very important to mention that the fifth tribe is Diaspora Jews because Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people…. I am actually very encouraged when I visit Jewish communities throughout Canada and people ask me sometimes challenging questions … about the nature of Israel and about the nature of Israeli society, and what should be done and what is done correctly, or what should be corrected in Israel. I encourage that and I welcome it, because it shows love and devotion and interest in Israel.

“And I encourage people to come visit Israel and express their opinions and to keep us Israeli diplomats on our toes … and I thank Jewish communities for participating in this ongoing discussion. I think this is vital not only for Israel by the way – this ongoing discussion is vital for Diaspora Jews as well.”

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