Voice will have control

One day, your car might be able to sense your mood and, if you’re agitated, send soothing music. (photo from autospies.com)

Back in 1995, Shlomo Peller founded Rubidium in the visionary belief that voice user interface (VUI) could be embedded in anything from a TV remote to a microwave oven, if only the technology were sufficiently small, powerful, inexpensive and reliable.

“This was way before IoT [the Internet of Things], when voice recognition was done by computers the size of a room,” Peller told Israel21c. “Our first product was a board that cost $1,000. Four years later, we deployed our technology in a single-chip solution at the cost of $1. That’s how fast technology moves.”

But consumers’ trust moved more slowly. Although Rubidium’s VUI technology was gradually deployed in tens of millions of products, people didn’t consider voice-recognition technology truly reliable until Apple’s virtual personal assistant, Siri, came on the scene in 2011.

“Siri made the market soar. It was the first technology with a strong market presence that people felt they could count on,” said Peller, whose Ra’anana-based company’s voice-trigger technology now is built into Jabra wireless sports earbuds and 66 Audio PRO Voice’s smart wireless headphones.

“People see that VUI is now something you can put anywhere in your house,” said Peller. “You just talk to it and it talks back and it makes sense. All the giants are suddenly playing in this playground and voice recognition is everywhere. Voice is becoming the most desirable user interface.”

Still, the technology is not yet as fast, fluent and reliable as it could be. VUI depends on good internet connectivity and can be battery-draining.

Peller said, in five years’ time, voice user interface will be part of everything we do, from turning on lights, to doing laundry, to driving.

“I met with a big automaker to discuss voice interface in cars, and their working assumption is that, within a couple of years, all cars will be continuously connected to the internet, and that connection will include voice interface,” he said.

As voice user interface moves to the cloud, privacy concerns will have to be dealt with, he added. “We see that there has to be a seamless integration of local (embedded) technology and technology in the cloud. The first part of what you say, your greeting or ‘wakeup phrase,’ is recognized locally and the second part (like, ‘What’s the weather tomorrow?’) is sent to the cloud. It already works like that on Alexa but it’s not efficient. Eventually, we’ll see it on smartwatches and sports devices.”

 

Diagnosing illness

Tel Aviv-based Beyond Verbal analyzes emotions from vocal intonations. Its Moodies app is used in 174 countries to help gauge what speakers’ voices (in any language) reveal about their emotional status. Moodies is used by employers for job interviewees, retailers for customers, and in many other scenarios.

The company’s direction is shifting to health, as the voice-analysis platform has been found to hold clues to well-being and medical conditions, said Yoram Levanon, Beyond Verbal’s chief scientist. “There are distortions in the voice if somebody is ill and, if we can correlate the source of the distortions to the illness we can get a lot of information about the illness,” he told Israel21c. “We worked with the Mayo Clinic for two years confirming that our technology can detect the presence or absence of a cardio disorder in a 90-second voice clip.

“We are also working with other hospitals in the world on finding verbal links to ADHD, Parkinson’s, dyslexia and mental diseases. We’re developing products and licensing the platform, and also looking to do joint ventures with AI companies to combine their products with ours.”

Levanon said that, in five years, healthcare expenses will rise dramatically and many countries will experience a severe shortage of physicians. He envisions Beyond Verbal’s technology as a low-cost decision-support system for doctors.

“The population is aging and living longer, so the period of time we have to monitor, from age 60 to 110, takes a lot of money and health professionals. Recording a voice costs nearly nothing and we can find a vocal biomarker for a problem before it gets serious,” said Levanon.

Beyond Verbal could synch with the AI (artificial intelligence) elements in phones, smart home devices or other IoT devices to understand the user’s health situation and deliver alerts.

 

Sensing your mood

Banks use voice-analysis technology from Herzliya-based VoiceSense to determine potential customers’ likelihood of defaulting on a loan. Pilot projects with banks and insurance companies in the United States, Australia and Europe are helping to improve sales, loyalty and risk assessment regardless of the language spoken.

“We were founded more than a decade ago with speech analytics for call centres to monitor customer dissatisfaction in real time,” said chief executive officer Yoav Degani. “We noticed some of the speech patterns reflected current state of mind but others tended to reflect ongoing personality aspects, and our research linked speech patterns to particular behaviour tendencies. Now we can offer a full personality profile in real time for many different use cases such as medical and financial.”

Degani said the future of voice-recognition tech is about integrating data from multiple sensors for enhanced predictive analytics of intonation and content. “Also of interest,” he said, “is the level of analysis that could be achieved by integrating current state of mind with overall personal tendencies, since both contribute to a person’s behaviour. You could be dissatisfied at the moment and won’t purchase something but perhaps you tend to buy online in general, and you tend to buy these types of products.”

In connected cars, automakers will use voice analysis to adjust the web content sent to each passenger in the vehicle. “If the person is feeling agitated, they could send soothing music,” said Degani.

Personal robots, he predicted, will advance from understanding the content of the user’s speech to understanding the user’s state of mind. “Once they can do that, they can respond more intelligently and even pick up on depression and illness,” he said.

Degani predicted that, in five years’ time, people will routinely provide voice samples to healthcare providers for analytics, and human resources professionals will be able to judge a job applicant’s suitability for a specific position on the basis of recorded voice analysis using a job-matching score.

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.

טראמפ צריך ללמוד היסטוריה

נשיאה לשעבר של ארצות הברית, ביל קלינטון, מגיע לוונקובר לקדם את ספרו החדש ‘הנשיא נעדר’, שיצא לאור בימים אלה. עם קלינטון יתארח הסופר ג’יימס פטרסון, שהוא שותפו בכתיבת הספר.

טראמפ צריך ללמוד היסטוריה: טען קנדה שרפה את הבית הלבן בזמן שזו הייתה בריטניה

נשיא ארצות הברית, דונלד טראמפ, מוכיח שוב שהוא אינו יודע היסטוריה וכרגיל מעוות עובדות לצרכיו האישיים והפוליטיים. הפעם מדובר באירוע שקרה רק לפני כמאתיים שנה אותו טראמפ הזכיר, וטעה בעובדות. בשיחת טלפון כועסת עם ראש ממשלת קנדה, ג’סטין טרודו, שהתקיימה בסוף מאי, במסגרת מלחמת הסחר בה פתח הנשיא האמריקני, אמר בין היתר טרודו: האם אנו קנדה מהווים סיכון לביטחון הלאומי לארה”ב כפי שאתה אומר, כדי להצדיק את המכסים שהטלת על הסחורות שלנו? טראמפ השיב בשאלה: האם לא אתם שרפתם את הבית הלבן במלחמת 1812? טראמפ קצת התבלבל כיוון שהכוחות הבריטים הם ששרפו את הבית הלבן ב-1814 במסגרת מלחמת 1812, לאחר שהאמריקנים התקיפו את אזור יורק באונטוריו, שהיה אז מושבה בריטית.

טראמפ שוב הפך את עצמו לבדיחה באמצעי התקשורת האמריקניים, ששאלו שוב ושוב כיצד הידידה הקרובה ביותר קנדה, מהווה סיכון לביטחון הלאומי של ארה”ב?

הנשיא לא נעדר: ביל קלינטון מגיע לוונקובר וידבר על ספרו החדש ועל צפוי שגם על הנשיא הנוכחי

נשיאה לשעבר של ארצות הברית, ביל קלינטון, מגיע לוונקובר לקדם את ספרו החדש ‘הנשיא נעדר’, שיצא לאור בימים אלה. עם קלינטון יתארח הסופר ג’יימס פטרסון, שהוא שותפו בכתיבת הספר. פטרסון והנשיא לשעבר ידונו ארוכות בספר החדש, באופן כתיבתו והחיבור היחודי ביניהם. נראה שהשניים יעסקו במישרין או בעקיפין גם בנשיא השערורייתי הנוכחי של ארה”ב, דונלד טראמפ, שניצח את אשתו של ביל הילרי קלינטון, בבחירות שהתקיימו לפני כשנה וחצי. צפוי שגם לקהל הרחב תהיה אפשרות לשאול שאלות בנושאים שונים. האירוע היחודי יתקיים במרכז הקונגרסים של ונקובר (באולם הבולרום המערבי), ביום שישי ה-29 בחודש, החל משעה 4.05 אחר הצהריים. נותני החסות: תחנת הטלוויזיה גלובל בי.סי, עיתון הוונקובר סאן ועיתון סטאר – מטרו ונקובר. שבוע קודם לכן ב-22 ביוני, יתקיים אירוע עם קלינטון בלבד במרכז התערוכות של טורונטו (באולם בינפילד סנטר), החל משעה 7.30 בערב. נותן החסות עיתון הטורונטו סטאר. מחירי הכרטיסים לכל אחד מהאירועים: 99 דולר, 159 דולר, 249 דולר והיקר שבהם לווי.איי.פי 1,895 דולר.

הספר ‘הנשיא נעדר’ (בהוצאת אלפרד קנוף וליטל ובראון) הוא מותחן בידיוני שעוסק בחטיפה של נשיא ארה”ב, אך כולל גם תכנים אמיתיים מעניינים שכוללים מידע על מה “קורה מבפנים” ומאחורי הקלעים בבית הלבן, בליווי מתח ודרמה למכביר. מדובר ברומן הראשון של קלינטון, שכאמור אותו הוא כתב ביחד עם פטרסון האמריקני, הנחשב לאחד מהסופרים המצליחים ביותר בעולם, ומטבע הדברים לאחד ממוכרי הספרים הגדולים בעולם. פטרסון הגדיר את העבודה עם קלינטון: “שיא הקריירה שלי והגישה לסינון מיד ראשונה תרמה באופן ייחודי לכתיבת הספר הזה”.

קלינטון (בן ה-71) שימש נשיאה הארבעים ושתיים של ארה”ב, במשך שתי קדנציות מטעם המפלגה הדמוקרטית. קודם לכן הוא שימש מושל מדינת ארקנסו. שיעורי התמיכה בקלינטון (הפופולריות שלו בקרב הציבור) היו גבוהים מאוד, גם עם סיום תפקידו. על הקדנציה השנייה שלו העיבה פרשת מוניקה לווינסקי, אך קלינטון ניצל מניסיון ההדחה של חברי המפלגה הרפובליקנית. בימים האחרונים שודר ראיון עם קלינטון ברשת אן.בי.סי האמריקנית, בו הוא ציין כי אינו חייב התנצלות ללווינסקי. הוא הוסיף כי גם בעידן הנוכחי (של ‘המי טו’) הוא לא היה מתפטר. לדבריו הוא הודיע באופן פומבי על כך שהוא מצטער על מעשיו אך לא דיבר עם לווינסקי.

Glimpse of life in the annex

Morgan Hayley Smith as Anne and Gabriele Metcalfe as Peter in Fighting Chance Productions’ The Diary of Anne Frank. (photo from FCP)

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” This iconic quote from Anne Frank’s diary is known the world over. Can you imagine having this outlook after hiding from the Gestapo for two years in an Amsterdam building annex with seven other people, never being able to go outside and living in constant fear of discovery? These words exemplify Anne’s character – innocent yet resilient, courageous and optimistic. But she also personifies the tragedy of the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews – their only crime: being Jews.

Anne’s legacy is her diary, vignettes of daily wartime life in hiding, as seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl. The diary has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into 60 languages. In 1955, husband-and-wife writing team Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett adapted it for the Broadway stage. The result was a Pulitzer Prize for drama and a Tony for best production. However, the script omitted most references to Judaism (to make the show more “universal”) as well as any thoughts Anne had about sex, the latter at the request of her father, Otto, the sole survivor of the annex. Now, a local theatre company, Fighting Chance Productions (FCP), is staging the 1997 Wendy Kessleman adaptation that puts the Judaism and Anne’s budding sexuality back into the script to present a more authentic portrait of what happened in that annex at 263 Prinsengracht.

FCP presents the piece in the round at the intimate 50-seat Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive on a minimalist set – eight chairs on the bare floor. The first row of seats is also on the floor, so most of the audience is on the same level as the actors, or only a step up, making us part of the narrative.

Anne (Morgan Hayley Smith) and her family – father Otto (Cale Walde), mother Edith (Gina Leon) and sister Margot (Diana Beairsto) – are hidden in a secret annex behind a bookcase in Otto’s office building. Their protectors are friends and neighbours Mr. Kraler (Drew Hart) and Miep (Tori Fritz), who are the provisioners and news-bearers during the family’s sojourn in hiding and their only contact with the outside world. The Franks are soon joined by the van Daan family – father (Bruce Hill), mother (Leanne Kuzminski), 16-year-old Peter (Gabriele Metcalfe) and Mouschi, Peter’s black cat. Months later, they are asked to take in neurotic dentist Mr. Dussel (Thomas King). Within the confines of the annex, these very different people have to learn to live and let live as they try to bring a sense of normalcy into their daily routines. And they manage to do so – until Aug. 4, 1944, when they are betrayed and taken to concentration camps.

On opening night at the Havana, you could have heard a pin drop as the audience experienced this compelling story in the small theatre, which was both cozy and claustrophobic. Some audience members could have reached out and touched the actors as they moved about the shadowy set.

photo - Left to right: Diana Beairsto (Margot), Gina Leon (Edith) and Morgan Hayley Smith (Anne) in The Diary of Anne Frank, which is at Havana Theatre until June 23
Left to right: Diana Beairsto (Margot), Gina Leon (Edith) and Morgan Hayley Smith (Anne) in The Diary of Anne Frank, which is at Havana Theatre until June 23. (photo from FCP)

All of the acting is strong in this production, but Smith is the stand out, seemingly born to play the role of Anne. She is lovely and has the right mix of emotions as she faces the usual teenage girl issues – first kiss, mother problems, sister rivalry. She is coy when she has to be, outspoken on all subjects and feisty when verbally sparring with her fellow annex occupants (Hill, Kuzminski and King are stellar in these moments). Metcalfe presents a believable, shy and awkward Peter, just learning how to navigate his way around girls, and he and Smith have real chemistry on stage – what a tender moment when they first brush lips. Walde is strong as the reliable father figure while Leon and Beairsto lend quiet dignity to their roles. During intermission, the cast stays in character and on set, a reminder that, while we, the audience, have the freedom to move about, Anne and the others cannot escape their prison – a brilliant directorial artistic choice.

There is a last poignant moment just before the group is captured. Peter says that, when he gets out, he is going to make sure that no one knows that he is Jewish, as life would be a lot easier as a Christian. Anne quickly responds, “I’d never turn away from who I am. I couldn’t. Don’t you know, you’ll always be Jewish … in your soul.”

This production, in its simplicity, succeeds on so many levels – the set, the sound design, the muted tones of the costumes, the lighting and, notably, those all-important moments of silence, which often have more impact than the dialogue itself. The Diary of Anne Frank is a rich, powerful drama.

A great responsibility comes with staging this type of play. Kudos to this company and co-directors Ryan Mooney and Allyson Fournier, who have met the challenge – it is essential for Anne’s story to continue to be told.

The show runs until June 23 at the Havana. For tickets and more information, visit fightingchanceproductions.com.

* * *

The JI interviewed Smith (MHS) and Mooney (RM) by email during the rehearsal period.

JI: What made you want to do this show?

RM: I have always been a fan of the Anne Frank story. I remember being drawn to her book when I was in elementary school and seeing the classic movie in high school. I have seen several productions in the past and always wanted an opportunity to direct it myself. The story is timeless and hopeful and I like playing with the dark and light of humanity.

MHS: I played Anne in a drama festival production in junior high. I felt a connection because of this and also because I dreamed of being a writer when I was a teenager. The story moved me even back then and I have always been amazed at how this young girl viewed what was happening in her country.

JI: What was the audition process like?

RM: It was trickier than usual for this show. We saw a lot of people but wanted to take the time and care to ensure we had a perfect cast. I am very happy with how we ended up.

JI: How did you feel about getting the role of Anne?

MHS: I felt surprised and very lucky to be selected, as I actually went in to audition for Margot, her sister. I am an older sister myself and felt I could relate to Margot. It was a nice surprise to be asked instead to call up my bright-eyed inner child and set aside the responsible sister side. It was even better to find that inner child still there as lively as ever.

JI: Has the play impacted your life in any way?

RM: I think seeing how the cast has really come to the table for this one has been touching to me. The way the cast has been affected by the characters has surprised me. It should not though, because they are compassionate and empathetic actors and people.

MHS: I definitely feel an impact. I find myself so thankful that I have the smallest freedoms, like going outside and walking in the fresh air, and that I have been able to grow up and get answers to questions about myself, questions that Anne never got to answer. What might surprise people about this show – and Anne’s diary itself – is how joyful and full of life it is. I have been feeling inspired to take in beauty from the day-to-day and really appreciate things that are taken for granted.

JI: Is the play appropriate for all audiences?

MHS: I highly encourage audiences of all ages to see this play. I think it is very easy to lose a degree of connection when a story is as widely known as this one is. This play shows these characters and their circumstances not as grand ideas, but as everyday people, people with clashing personalities, people who have vices, prized possessions, teenage crushes and lingering questions. Despite the tragedy, at its core it’s a story about people and about the universal experience of growing up.

JI: What would you like audiences to take away from this production?

RM: I hope they walk away with a remembrance of this tragic time and its focus on the individual. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the six million-plus deaths during the Holocaust but it is appropriate to sit and see the effect on one individual, the humanizing factor.

MHS: Above anything else, I hope audiences take away from this play what I did: a renewed human connection for the people these events touched, and an appreciation for the privilege it is to be able to grow up.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

* * *

• Last month, researchers using digital technology uncovered two new pages of Anne Frank’s diary, which contained “naughty jokes” and discussions about sex and prostitution.

• A biography about Dutch resistance activist Elisabeth “Bep” Voskuijl, who was of one of Otto Frank’s employees, suggests the possibility that it was Voskuijl’s sister who outed the annex residents to the Nazis.

– TK

New Yad Vashem exhibit

The new exhibit at Yad Vashem features artworks, artifacts, diaries, letters and testimonies that illustrate how Jews yearned for Eretz Israel during and immediately following the Shoah, from 1933-1948. (photo from Ashernet)

“I see a sign that we will meet each other face-to-face in our land, our homeland, Eretz Israel,” wrote 10-year-old Eliezer Rudnik in 1937 to his aunts who had immigrated to Palestine.

The letter, written in Hebrew, is surrounded by his parents’ writing, in Yiddish, as there was a lack of paper. Aryeh and Sarah Rudnik and their son, Eliezer, were the only Jews living in the Ukrainian village of Kosmaczow – they were shot and killed by Nazis in 1942. Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust.

photo - Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust
Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust. (photo from Ashernet)

The exhibit, which opened May 30 in the Auditorium Exhibitions Hall of Yad Vashem’s Museums Complex, features artworks, artifacts, diaries, letters and testimonies collected by Yad Vashem over the years, all of which illustrate how Jews yearned for Eretz Israel during and immediately following the Shoah, from 1933-1948. It is divided into three sections.

The first section presents how Jews viewed their connection to and longing for the Land of Israel during the rise of the Nazi party to power in Germany, until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was during this period that Jews searched for asylum in various countries, including Eretz Israel.

The second section focuses on the years 1940-1944, from the period of the ghettos to extermination. During this stage, Jewish communities in Europe dwindled and, under their daily struggle for survival, many Jews found themselves distanced from Eretz Israel to the point of disengagement; however, their hearts’ yearning for the land remained.

The third and final section focuses on the period immediately after the Holocaust – the displaced persons camps in Europe and the detention camps in Cyprus, and the establishment of the state of Israel. At this time, many survivors felt that only in Israel would they be able to regain their stature and build a full Jewish communal and personal life.

“The longing for Zion and the Land of Israel has been a cornerstone of Jewish identity for generations, manifested in many different forms,” Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said at the exhibition’s opening. “While the Zionist movement was not embraced by the majority of Jews in Europe during the Nazi rise to power, through the course of the Holocaust and in its aftermath, it became increasingly popular. This exhibition portrays the ways in which Jews before, during and after the Shoah expressed their dreams for a brighter future in the Land of Israel, and their fervent hope to rebuild their lives here.”

The exhibition’s title is that of a well-known poem written by Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky in 1923 in Berlin. The poem brings up existential questions that characterized the Jewish people’s struggle in the interwar period, as well as the forces of dream versus reality, and hope versus despair.

Holocaust education needed

Common sense prevailed at a meeting of the Pittsburgh school board in the end, although two of nine board members voted against participation in a Holocaust education trip to Poland.

The educational program is funded by the nonprofit organization Classrooms Without Borders at no cost to the school district. Nevertheless, one board member insisted that Pittsburgh schools are doing enough Holocaust education and that the trip could be seen as taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She contended, despite the fact that the funds were granted specifically for the Holocaust education trip, that they should be reallocated to programs that focus on African-American topics, including slavery.

It’s sort of a tempest in a teapot – especially given all the other things going on in the United States and around the world right now – but it is illustrative. Pennsylvania has an excellent record on Holocaust and genocide education, especially since 2014, when the state passed a law to “strongly encourage school entities in this Commonwealth to offer instruction in the Holocaust, genocide and other human rights violations.” That’s a far more specific directive than the British Columbia curriculum requires.

A representative of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh responded to the board member’s criticism of the Poland trip.

“The notion that a trip to Poland to enhance the quality of Holocaust education in Pittsburgh public schools somehow discriminates against the Palestinian people is incomprehensible at best,” John Sayles told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. “What’s more, the insinuation that in order to most effectively teach about slavery we must allocate resources away from Holocaust education, or vice versa, is disturbing, as teaching about these two very important histories are not and should never be mutually exclusive.”

Coincidentally, but not unrelated, educators in Florida made a dubious decision to provide parents with an opportunity to opt their children out of a presentation by a Holocaust survivor. Parents of students at St. James Middle School in Murrells Inlet, Fla., received a letter saying, “We understand that a firsthand account of the atrocities of the Holocaust may be sad or difficult for students to hear. Students may opt out of this assembly and complete an alternative activity. Students who opt out will watch [a] video about the Holocaust in the media centre as an alternative activity.”

The letter assumes that the survivor speaker would not present at a level appropriate to middle schoolers. Second, and more significantly, it implies that difficult aspects of history should be sugarcoated – that was the word used by the survivor.

No matter the topic – the Holocaust, slavery, current events, writing, reading or arithmetic – effective education is delivered at an age-appropriate level. Survivor speakers understand this as well as any teacher.

The opportunity for today’s young people to hear firsthand accounts from witnesses to the Holocaust is a benefit no future generations will receive. To do anything but try to maximize the number who experience this opportunity firsthand is a tremendous loss.

This is especially true when a recent poll commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany indicates that many Americans are unaware of the most basic facts of the Holocaust. (See jewishindependent.ca/basic-facts-not-known.)

This is fraught territory and headlines can be deceiving, such as the one in Newsweek, which declared: “One-third of Americans don’t believe six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.” Contrary to the headline, the poll suggested not that these Americans have heard the truth and rejected it, but rather that they have not been educated enough in the topic to have the facts. The issue is not Holocaust denial, in this case, but plain ignorance.

Denial of the facts is one thing, ignorance of them is different and far less malignant. In both cases, the answer is more education, not less.

Record-breaking Courage

The 2018 Courage to Come Back Award recipients, left to right: Suzanne Venuta (mental health), Josh Dahling (addiction), Ingrid Bates (medical), Jim Ryan (physical rehabilitation) and, in front, Alisa Gil Silvestre (youth). (photo by Norman Tam)

photo - The event was chaired by Lorne Segal, pictured here with his wife, Mélita
The event was chaired by Lorne Segal, pictured here with his wife, Mélita. (photo by Alex Law)

A record $3.1 million was raised at the 20th anniversary Courage to Come Back Awards on May 10 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. The event was chaired by Lorne Segal, president of Kingswood Properties Ltd., and more than 1,800 people gathered to celebrate the extraordinary stories of triumph over adversity of the five awards recipients. Funds raised will go directly to Coast Mental Health to support those living with mental illness.

This year’s recipients were Josh Dahling (addiction), Ingrid Bates (medical), Suzanne Venuta (mental health), Jim Ryan (physical rehabilitation) and Alisa Gil Silvestre (youth). Venuta captured the essence of the evening: “If there’s only one thing you remember from my speech tonight, may it be this: that connections save lives. It did mine. Connections are what hold hope together and hope allows us to dream.” For more inspirational stories, visit couragetocomeback.ca/2018-recipients.

Each year, Coast Mental Health (coastmentalhealth.com) provides services to more than 4,000 people living with mental illness so they can find a meaningful place in their communities – a place to live, a place to connect and a place to work.

Digital impact on our lives

(photo from publicdomainpictures.net)

Dr. Simon Trepel, child analyst and psychiatrist at the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre, is seeing an increasing number of children and teenagers using phones – even during sessions.

“I was hearing more and more from parents about some difficulties they were having around technology and screen time,” said Trepel. “I was noticing, even in my own family, how pervasive screens are becoming … as a preferred source of entertainment, as well.

“When this stuff marinates in you for awhile, it makes you curious about deeper questions about what’s going on. It ultimately behooves anybody who is working in mental health to start wondering about all the ingredients that might be contributing to someone’s mental health…. I became more curious about how these devices and screen time might be affecting, not just kids and teens, but, really, all of us.”

According to Trepel, using technology in daily life is no longer a choice. It is a fundamental part of how we all get by. Most of us check our phones several times a day, and conduct business and communication on our phones or tablets almost exclusively.

He said there are about four billion people using the internet right now worldwide, and a third of those people are children and teens. There are about five billion people using mobile phones and a little over three billion people on social media at any given time, he said. And, these are all increases of anywhere from five to 15% in comparison to the previous year.

“These trends are changing how we communicate,” said Trepel. “They are changing how much face-to-face communication we have and the nature of the communication itself. The previous generation would use words and texts. Now, videos, pictures and memos are the preferred way to communicate. It’s changing the very ingredients we use to communicate with one another.”

There are implications to this change, especially in children, whose not yet fully developed brains are particularly susceptible to getting into trouble online. But, Trepel said, there is something that can be done – and it starts with adults getting off their phones and other screens, especially when around young people. We also need to start talking about these issues, as kids who come from homes that discuss such topics tend to be less at risk.

“When there’s a more negotiated amount of technology use and supervision and things like that, that is a good thing,” said Trepel. “But, there are many, many kids who have a combination of not a lot of supervision combined with having an immature brain, and these kids are the ones we are most worried about getting into trouble online.

“We worry that screens are displacing a lot of other activities that might be healthier than being on technology – things like getting adequate sleep or being outside. The amount of hours spent outside is now at about half of what it used to be. It’s gone from about 18 hours a week to about seven hours a week in one single generation.”

Getting a handle on this will not be easy, but it starts with parents making the time to fully understand the tech diet of their kids. Just like we monitor their food intake, we need to monitor their tech intake.

“Sit down with them and let them take you through a typical day,” advised Trepel. “What types of sites are they using and for how long? What types of interactions are they are having on this site? The timing of this is important. Is it the first thing they do in the day, getting on their device? Is it the last thing they do before bed? Do they themselves detect any problems with their screen use? Are they running into any cyber-bullying or being taken advantage of? Do they feel better or worse after using their phones? Do they notice phones cutting into their sleep, or do they notice themselves having a difficult time stopping themselves from checking? This is the beginning of getting data about how your kids and teens are using their phones. But, it’s also starting to ask the question of whether or not this is becoming a problem for your kid or teen.”

Trepel suggested that, when you monitor your kids, you want to make sure it is active monitoring – that you are co-viewing and discussing the sites that they are on. It is also important to avoid spy-type programs, he said, as kids will find ways to work around them.

Aim to be playing together, following each other on social media. Use any opportunity for educational guidance – not so much making it a single conversation, but, instead, an ongoing dialogue about the device. You can ask for their help learning about social media, for example. “I think that’s a very elegant way to cover a lot of bases,” said Trepel. “It allows the parent to learn a lot about what the kid is using, in terms of technology use. But, it also updates the parents as to what these social media sites are all about – how they are navigated, how they are used.

“It may also be a great way for kids and parents to spend more time together, interacting with each other, teaching each other. While they might teach you about Twitter, you might be able to point out various ways they are using the technology that might be helpful or harmful. You might, if the child teaches you Twitter, find out if the child has a public account and is being followed by hundreds of people the child has never met before.

“It’s not only a way to have a child feel good about helping a parent, but, once the parent knows more about the technology, the parent can start to look for red flags.”

Studies have shown that parental behaviour is one of the most powerful influences on a child’s behaviour. So, Trepel suggests taking an honest look at yourself as a parent, about how embedded these devices are in your own life. And then, start to change that for yourself, while also becoming a good role model for your kids.

“You want to be proactive with your kids,” said Trepel. “You don’t want to wait until there’s a problem. You want to educate them to the possibility of problems.

“You also want to be proactive about texting and driving. This really might be the drinking and driving of our generation. I remember, when I was in high school, there was MADD, Mother’s Against Drunk Driving. I think we need some sort of revival of that, looking at parents being concerned about texting and driving. The stats from Manitoba are striking that, just five or 10 years ago, we were seeing maybe 3,000 collisions per year. And, in the span of just a few years, it’s now up to 11,000 collisions involving distracted driving per year – a four- or fivefold increase, about 30 distracted driving collisions a day.”

Trepel said it is best to avoid taking technology away without offering an alternative. Make it easy for kids to see their friends in real life, he said. Let them go over to their friends’ houses, take them places they want to go, and do things they want to do – provide them with in-person opportunities. Play a board game, do arts-and-crafts, encourage them to learn to play an instrument or participate in a sport. Off-screen activities, he said, have a greater likelihood of making your kids feel happy as compared to on-screen activities.

Trepel suggested having your kids turn off their phone notifications at important times of the day, like sleep time, family time, meal time, school time, and so on. And make sure that you do the same.

“Every time we get a signal from our phone, it could be someone liking our photo or giving us a compliment, or something we anticipate might be good,” said Trepel. “And that reward system in our brain kicks into gear and compels us to want to check what the notifications are. Once our screen is on and in our hands, we might end up surfing or doing something else we weren’t even intending to do – at the expense of whatever original activity we were doing before the notification occurred. So, we have to make sure that we turn off all those attention stealers.”

Trepel recommended that parents turn off the wifi after 9 p.m., or even earlier, if they think there will be a significant battle to have their kids turn off their screens in the evening or if it is affecting their ability to do homework.

Or, he added, you can get your kids a phone with no internet capabilities. Some executives, he said, have even switched back to such phones, as they were wasting too much of their time when they had a phone with more tech capabilities.

For starters, Trepel said, begin the conversation. Ask your kids for ways to keep things under control. Dialogue, go back and forth, and find ways that work for your family.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

אירועים אנטישמיים בטורונטו

תלונות הועברו למשטרת טורונטו בנוגע לסיטקרים האנטישמיים והפוסטרים להחרמת ‘ארומה’ והמוצרים מישראל. (צילום: booledozer)

ארגון בני ברית בטורונטו מדווח על התגברות האנטישמיות בעיר, ובפעילות להחרים מוסדות ישראלים ומוצרים ישראלים. לדברי הארגון סיטקרים אנטישמיים עם צלבי קרס והסלוגן: “צעירים נאצים נמצאים כאן” הודבקו לאחרונה, ברחבי טורונטו על עמודים ברחובות ובמקומות נוספים, בהם במסעדה. במקביל הודבקו פוסטרים להחרים את רשת בתי הקפה הישראלית ‘ארומה” ומוצרים מתוצרת ישראל.

תלונות הועברו למשטרת טורונטו בנוגע לסיטקרים האנטישמיים והפוסטרים להחרמת ‘ארומה’ והמוצרים מישראל.

לדברי בני ברית בשנת 2017 אירעו 1,752 אירועים אנטישמיים בקנדה, לעומת 1,728 ב-2016. בחלוקה לאזורים להלן ארבעת המחוזות המובילים: במקום הראשון אונטריו עם 808 מקרים, במקום השני קוויבק עם 474 מקרים, במקום השלישי אלבטרה עם 206 מקרים ובמקום הרביעי בריטיש קולומביה עם 165 מקרים.

הערים הטובות למגורים: ונקובר, טורונטו וקלגרי בעשירייה הראשונה

שבועון החדשות הבריטי האקונומיסט מדרג כמדי שנה את הערים הטובות בעולם למגורים. מאה ארבעים ערים דורגו לשנת 2017 על פי הפרמטרים הבאים: היציבות הכלכלית, רמת שירותי הבריאות, התרבות והסביבה, החינוך והתשתיות. כרגיל בשנים האחרונות ערים מקנדה ואוסטרליה שולטות בעשירייה הראשונה של הערים הטובות בעולם לחיות בהן. זאת על פי מחלקת המחקר של האקונומיסט.

הנה הן עשר הערים הטובות בעולם למגורים:

ראשונה-מלבורן (מאוסטרליה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 95.1), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95). הציון הכולל של מלבורן הוא: 97.5.

שנייה-וינה (מאוסטריה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 94.4). הציון הכולל של וינה הוא: 94.4.

שלישית-ונקובר (מקנדה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95), התשתיות (ציון 92.9). הציון הכולל של ונקובר הוא: 97.3.

רביעית- טורונטו (מקנדה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 100), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 98.1), התשתיות (ציון 96.4). הציון הכולל של טורונטו הוא: 97.2.

חמישית- קלגרי (מקנדה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 96.4), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 89.1). הציון הכולל של קלגרי הוא: 96.6.

שישית-אדלייד (מאוסטרליה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 96.4), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 94.2). הציון הכולל של אדלייד הוא: 96.6.

שביעית- פרת’ (מאוסטרליה): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 88.7). הציון הכולל של פרת’ הוא: 95.9.

שמינית-אוקלנד (מניו זינלנד): בולטת בתחומי החינוך (ציון 100), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 97), רמת שירותי הבריאות (95.8), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 95), התשתיות (ציון 92.9). הציון הכולל של אוקלנד הוא: 95.7.

תשיעית-הלסינקי (מפינלנד): בולטת בתחומי רמת שירות הבריאות (ציון 100), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 96.4), החינוך (ציון 91.7), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 88.7). הציון הכולל של הלסינקי הוא: 95.6.

עשירית-המבורג (מגרמניה): בולטת בתחומי רמת שירותי הבריאות (ציון 100), התשתיות (ציון 100), התרבות והסביבה (ציון 93.5), החינוך (ציון 91.7), היציבות הכלכלית (ציון 90). הציון הכולל של המבורג הוא: 95.

New NFB series on basketball

Ryan Sidhoo’s new docuseries, True North, looks at the youth basketball scene in Toronto. (photo by Yasin Osman)

“Wherever I travel, I go play pickup basketball and I always make friends, and maybe end up at someone’s house for dinner … you go ask to play basketball on someone’s court, there’s always that moment of, ‘Who is this guy?’ but, once you get out there and you start playing, it’s an inviting, universal sport that you don’t need a lot to participate in,” filmmaker Ryan Sidhoo told the Independent in a phone interview from Toronto.

Sidhoo is the creator and director of True North, a nine-part online docuseries produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Red Bull Media House about the youth basketball scene in Toronto.

“More and more young Canadians are playing basketball – over 350,000 according to the 2014 Canada Youth Sports Report – and the trend is particularly pronounced in and around Toronto, where a wave of second- and third-generation Canadians are shaping Canada’s new game,” notes an NFB blog about the series. It also notes that, “Canada now has over a dozen players in the NBA [National Basketball Association], more than any other outside country.”

In episodes ranging from 15 to 23 minutes, True North examines “the rise of the Toronto hoop dream through the stories of five young athletes.”

The series – which was three years in the making – “has a multigenerational appeal,” said Sidhoo, who spoke with players, coaches and families. Given the subject matter and format, he said younger viewers enjoy it but that, also, people closer to the age of the parents of the kids featured get something out of it from a parenting point of view.

In the series format, he said, we can tell in-depth stories, “but then that 15-minute episode has to be focused on one kid and their journey. I think that’s an appeal of the series, because they’re highly personal episodes and they’re not trying to do too much at once.”

Sidhoo has worked on various projects, including for Pulse Films, MTV and NBCUniversal, and he has produced and directed content across various VICE platforms; he was the creator and executive producer of Welcome to Fairfax, a 10-part docuseries for Participant Media about a group of young entrepreneurs in Los Angeles.

Born and raised in Vancouver, he’s since lived in California and New York. It was in New York that he earned his master’s in media studies, with a focus on documentary filmmaking, from the New School, in 2013.

“The seeds of the project were really planted at that time,” he said, referring to True North. At the New School, he wanted to do a project “on this old streetball legend named Fly Williams, who I’d read about in a book my dad had given me as a kid called Heaven is a Playground.”

In his search for Williams, Sidhoo ended up at a few different basketball tournaments. At the time, YouTube was just taking off, he said. “What I was seeing at these gyms in New York were these parents marketing their children as the next best basketball phenom. You started to see this cottage industry around youth basketball.”

Fascinated by this, Sidhoo said he kept his finger on the pulse of that world. He noticed that Canadians were having a lot of success getting into the NBA and the question of how basketball became significant in Canada led him to Toronto, “the epicentre of it all.”

“For me,” said Sidhoo of his love of basketball, “growing up in Vancouver, and, especially, having immigrant roots on both sides – my mom is Ashkenazi, they came from Poland and Winnipeg and eventually Vancouver, [while] my dad’s side of the family is from India – I just think that the popular sport in Canada is, obviously, hockey, and winter sports in general have more of a built-in tradition … [but] basketball lends itself to newcomers to a country, so my dad gravitated towards basketball as a kid. For me, growing up, basketball was always in the house, it was always on TV, it was something that I was around and I, naturally, through my dad, was introduced to the sport…. Of course, I like hockey and Wayne Gretzky and all that, but basketball was the thing that was a part of my identity … I always felt comfortable in the niche community of basketball in Vancouver because it was really diverse and it was very multicultural. As someone who had these mixed backgrounds, I felt at home in that world.”

Sidhoo played in various leagues in Vancouver, as well as participating in more than one JCC Maccabi Games. He described as “pivotal,” the Kitsilano Youth Basketball, run by Mel Davis, a former Harlem Globetrotter. Davis’s son, Hubert Davis, directed Hardwood, a documentary (also produced by the NFB) about his relationship with his father and basketball. When Sidhoo saw that film, he said he had two thoughts: “one, that’s amazing, because I know Mel and remember Hubert refereeing the games but then, secondly, it’s projects like that that plant the seed that, hey, maybe I could be a documentary filmmaker, too.”

As a kid, Sidhoo and his brother were encouraged to do what they wanted creatively. “I’d go out back and make videos of myself playing basketball,” he said. “My dad was always showing us films that maybe he shouldn’t have been showing us at that young an age, but explaining why he was showing them. So, basketball was always there and these offbeat films, or films that were aged above my viewing in terms of age appropriateness, that was always a constant, too.”

Growing up, he was also exposed to books, art shows and other culture. Sidhoo recalled his father taking him to one of the first Slam City Jams, a skateboard competition, in the early 1990s, when Sidhoo was 5 or 6 years old. “Back then, skateboarding wasn’t as corporate as it is now, it was still pretty punk,” he said. And, while it was a bit different to be at such an event, “at the same time, it’s normal because I’ve been consuming this kind of content and going to different, what you could call counter-culture, events, with my dad. So, the fascination with subculture was always there, along with basketball.”

True North is Sidhoo’s first project with the NFB. He called the film board with his idea while in Vancouver, and spoke with Shirley Vercruysse, executive producer of NFB BC & Yukon Studio. “She was open-minded,” said Sidhoo and connected him to the paperwork he’d have to submit for the NFB to consider producing the documentary.

“What I think attracted the National Film Board,” he said, “was that basketball is shaping Canadian identity, because we’re exporting so many amazing basketball players to the south that the perception of Canada is not just hockey anymore … basketball is part of the shifting Canadian identity. On a global, macro picture, that resonated with the film board. And then, also tapping into the human, story-driven documentary approach that I wanted to take is what the film board has been doing for a really long time. It spoke to a story that was big, but then also was told through the intimate, personal narratives of these kids. It was a nice combination for them, I think.”

True North is the first online docuseries for the NFB. It can be viewed on the NFB’s YouTube channel and on Red Bull TV.

Holy colour of blue

A tallit’s tzitzit with threads dyed in tekhelet blue produced from Murex trunculus snails. (photo from Ptil Tekhelet/Eugene Weisberg)

There’s only one thing missing from the comprehensive temporary exhibit Out of the Blue, which opened June 1 at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem (BLMJ) – the reek of the workshops along the Mediterranean coast of Phoenicia and Israel that produced the prized dyes known in antiquity as tekhelet and argaman.

Researchers at the Jerusalem-based foundation Ptil Tekhelet (Blue Thread) maintain that some 8,000 Murex trunculus mollusks were needed to produce a single gram of the luxury pigment. A demonstration of the malodorous dyeing process was carried out – in the garden of the museum – with one of the marine gastropods. A person can only imagine the stink of many thousands of the rotting sea creatures.

The Out of the Blue exhibit documents the significance of tekhelet, together with the Tyrian purple called argaman in the Torah, from antiquity to the present. Not coincidently, the exhibit opened in honour of Israel’s 70th anniversary. It traces the heavenly blue from the time it was a colour revered by the ancient Israelites and other early peoples of the Near East to its use for Israel’s national flag.

“This special exhibition looks at the magnificence as well as the significance of the colour blue in the ancient world, and ties the blue dyed threads mentioned in the Bible and extra-biblical texts to the very design of the flag of the state of Israel today. BLMJ is proud to be the one museum in the world that highlights the relevance and continuity of the roots of civilization in this region and their impact on our world today in a universal and non-sectarian way,” said museum director Amanda Weiss.

Out of the Blue spotlights ancient Near East cultures’ fascination with the colour as a symbol of divinity. In the Egypt of the pharaohs, Mesopotamia and Canaan, lapis lazuli imported at great cost from Afghanistan was used for cultic purposes.

The BLMJ exhibit continues with the lucrative imperial purple dye industry of the ancient Phoenicians, whose name means the “Purple People.”

But, for this reviewer, the core of the exhibit deals with the dyeing of sky blue tzitziyot (ritual fringes affixed to Jews’ tallitot, prayer shawls). In the eighth century, following the Arab takeover of the Levant, that technology was lost. As a result, Jews were compelled to wear white rather than blue ritual fringes on their prayer garments. Research to rediscover the lost dyeing process of the biblical commandment became synonymous with Zionism, the Jewish people’s return to their biblical homeland.

For more than 25 years, Ptil Tekhelet has dyed hundreds of thousands of sky blue tzitziyot coloured with murex snails’ distinctive tint. The azure tzitziyot remind worshippers of the sea, the sky and God’s sapphire-hewn throne, according to Tannaite sage Rabbi Meir, who was a disciple of Rabbi Akiba.

The exhibit includes a collection of the snail (hilazon) shells excavated at Tel Shikmona near Haifa, and dating back to the 10th through seventh centuries BCE, according to Yehuda Kaplan, one of exhibit’s three curators.

“You can see that, for some of them, there is a breach in the shell,” he said during a press tour of the exhibit. It was from those holes that a gland from the snail was extracted, with each yielding only a “minuscule” amount of the rare and highly coveted dye’s raw material.

“These snails, the Murex trunculus, probably about 4,000 years ago it was discovered that they could produce magnificent dyes with the most beautiful colours, dyes that were fast on wool, never faded. And that was something in the ancient world that was simply unheard of, it was priceless,” said Dr. Baruch Sterman of Ptil Tekhelet, co-author of the book The Rarest Blue: The Remarkable Story of an Ancient Colour Lost to History and Rediscovered.

photo - Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue
Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue. (photo by Gil Zohar)

At some point, added Sterman, those dyed fabrics were “worth up to 20 times their weight in gold.”

Other artifacts on display include garment fragments discovered at Masada during archeological excavations in the early 1960s. More than 30 years later, tests using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) proved the cloth had been dyed with a murex solution.

Out of the Blue concludes with the flag flown outside the United Nations in New York in May 1949, when Israel was accepted as a member state of the international body. A second Israeli flag on display was carried into orbit aboard the American Apollo spacecraft, which docked with the Soviet Soyuz rocket on July 17, 1975, in the first international manned space flight.

Sterman’s nonprofit amuta (foundation) is based on the research, in the 1980s, of Otto Elsner, a chemist at Ramat Gan’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, who discovered that, if a solution of the purple dye made from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex trunculus was exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, it would turn a deep shade of blue.

Popularizing that knowledge has been a slow process. According to the Talmud, tekhelet is a specific azure dye produced from a sea creature known as a hilazon. Rabbinic sages ruled that vegetable indigo dyes were unacceptable.

Over the past 150 years, several marine creatures were proposed for reviving the biblical process of dyeing the tassels, among them one favoured by Israel’s first chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog, father of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog. Rabbi Herzog, who completed his PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1914, believed that the violet pelagic snail, Janthina janthina, was the source of the ritual tekhelet.

Another theory was proposed half a century earlier by Rabbi Gershon Hanokh Leiner, known as the Radzyner Rebbe, who produced blue dye from the black ink of the Sepia officinalis (the common cuttlefish). But chemical analysis identified his dye as Prussian blue, an inorganic synthetic colour derived from iron filings and not from the squid itself.

That dispute continues to reverberate: most of the blue-coloured tzitziyot worn in Israel today are dyed from the inexpensive cuttlefish, acknowledged Ptil Tekhelet. (The tekhelet factory in Radzyn near Lublin in Poland was destroyed during the Holocaust, and the technology was lost but was revived in Israel after 1948 thanks to the prewar research of Chaim Herzog.)

The rediscovery of tekhelet has almost messianic implications – one rabbinic source notes, “The revelation of the hilazon is a sign that the redemption is shining near.”

According to the museum, “The tekhelet blue, which reminded every Jew of their connection to God, remained in the memory of the [Jewish] people and became an integral part of the national symbol of the state of Israel.”

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.