Help celebrate Israel’s 69th

Jane Bordeaux – Amir Zeevi, left, Doron Talmon and Mati Gilad – perform at the Chan Centre on May 1. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

What better way to bring folks together in song and celebration of Israel’s 69th birthday than with folk music. And what better band to unite Diaspora Jews than one that writes and performs American-style country-folk songs in Hebrew!

Tel Aviv-based Jane Bordeaux – Doron Talmon, Amir Zeevi and Mati Gilad – will headline this year’s community Yom Ha’atzmaut concert at the Chan Centre on May 1, 7:30 p.m. The trio regularly plays to sell-out crowds.

Their debut album was well-received, with songs such as “Eich Efshar” (“How is it Possible”) and “Whisky” radio favourites, and the video of their song “Ma’agalim” (“Circles”) went viral. A second album is nearing completion and is expected to be released in June.

Talmon and Gilad met in 2012 at Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. It was in a contest of original songs. “The idea was to perform some of my songs, and get some practical experience of a band format – you know, finding musicians, getting a name for the band and that sort of thing,” Talmon told the Jerusalem Post in a 2016 interview.

“We kept on playing after that one,” Talmon recently told the Independent, “and, when we needed a new guitar player, Amir, who’d been serving with Mati in the military band, had just returned from the U.S., and joined the band.”

Though the band has only been together five years ago, they have all been performing for much longer than that.

“I’ve been singing since I was a little child, always had the attraction to writing songs and singing them,” said Talmon. “After I returned from a long trip in South America, I decided to go and study music professionally, so I went to Rimon school for three years, learning music, songwriting and how to form a band, eventually.”

“I’ve been playing since I was 5, piano and then bass guitar,” said Gilad. “When I went to Thelma-Yellin arts high school in the jazz department, I started also playing the double bass. After high school, I served in the military in an army band and simultaneously studied at the Tel Aviv music conservatory. After the army, I started learning in Rimon school and was there for a year learning both classical, jazz and pop music.”

As for Zeevi, he has been playing the guitar for as long as he can remember. “My high school in Holon had a music major, that’s when I started taking the guitar more seriously, meeting great players and teachers,” he said. “In the army, I’ve played in the air force band and, after my release, I decided to go and learn music in the New School university in New York City, learning both jazz and country music.”

Usually, it is Talmon who comes up with the idea for a song, both the lyrics and melody, then the group starts playing with it, sometimes changing its harmony or structure, and building the arrangement. “Since we perform a lot,” they said, “we often try these new songs in shows, to get the feeling of what it is like to perform with them onstage and how does the crowd react, and each time improving and adjusting the song till it feels complete.”

In true country music fashion, many of Jane Bordeaux’s songs have to do with love and loss – ol’ American hurtin’ songs with a modern, Israeli twist.

“American folk-country, the way we see it, is storytelling, about the dark and the bright sides of life, wrapped in beautiful harmonies and joyful rhythm,” the band members agreed. “How can you not get excited from it? Also, we are addicted to the banjo’s sound and it’s going to feature a lot in our new album.”

“The songs are inspired from life, of course, mine and my friends,’” explained Talmon. “Sometimes, a song may be very close to a personal experience or feeling I had and, sometimes, it can be an idea I borrowed from a book I read or a movie I’ve seen, even a sentence I’ve heard.”

“Ma’agalim” is a bittersweet song about life: “It’s not me that’s progressing / It’s just the time that’s moving on.” The video features a wooden doll in a penny arcade. As the cylinder turns, she walks along her track, bundled up in a coat and scarf, passing people in various stages of life, from cradle to grave. Produced by Israeli animators Uri Lotan and Yoav Shtibelman, it really is a must-see (vimeo.com/ 162052542).

“The minute Uri and Yoav, the creators of the clip, showed it to us,” said the band, “we were so amazed by the beauty and sensibility of the video they made, so we can’t really say we were surprised that it went viral – we never had seen such animation before. We feel that there’s a unique connection between the music and the visuals that’s very moving, so people get excited by it, even without understanding the lyrics.”

No doubt a similar connection will be formed between the band and their audience in Vancouver, where they will sing in both Hebrew and English.

“It’s not going to be the same as in Haifa or Tel Aviv,” they said about the Yom Ha’atzmaut concert. “We love adjusting our set to best fit the place we are going to perform. Since the show date is Israel’s Independence Day, and we guess some of the crowd is English-speaking, in addition to our originals, we’re going to play some English covers and Hebrew all-time favourites – and even some special surprises for the Canadian crowd that obviously we can’t tell in here!”

The group starts their tour in Vancouver, then they have a few shows in North America, including one in Toronto.

“We are super-excited about the show in Vancouver,” they told the Independent. “It’s going to be the first show of our first tour outside of Israel and we’ve got a lot of great stuff planned specially for it, so we’re hoping to see you there!”

Tickets for the May 1 community celebration ($18) can be purchased at jewishvancouver.com/yh2017. In addition to this year’s co-sponsors – Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, Consulate General of Israel in Toronto, Georgian Court Hotel, the Jewish Independent and Jewish National Fund – the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver event is supported by 46 other community organizations.

Marking Yom Hashoah

Claude Romney will give the keynote address on April 23. (photo from Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre)

Jacques Lewin, a Jewish physician in Paris, was arrested at the end of 1941 and was sent to Auschwitz on the very first convoy from Western Europe to that notorious death camp. His profession almost certainly saved his life, as he performed a role that the Nazis deemed useful: that of a prisoner-doctor.

Lewin’s daughter, Claude Romney, has studied the Holocaust experiences of prisoner-doctors like her father and has a forthcoming book on the subject. She will share her family’s story, and illustrate aspects of the experience of prisoner-doctors, as the keynote speaker at this year’s Yom Hashoah Holocaust Commemorative Evening, which takes place April 23, 7 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Lewin’s arrest took place two weeks after Romney’s third birthday. She and her mother, Saya, survived the war in Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a small town near the Spanish border that was occupied by the Germans less than three months after they arrived.

Romney’s presentation will begin with some context about the state of French Jewry in the early part of the war, something she said is not as well known as it could be. She will share a bit about her and her mother’s experiences during the war, then turn attention to her father’s story.

That story is something that Romney has pieced together mostly after her father’s death in 1968. “I remember when he died, thinking that so much had remained untold,” Romney said. “He never talked about it.”

Years after her father passed away, Romney’s mother gave her a file containing documents from her father’s past, including a few articles he had written immediately after he returned to France after the war. These had been published in a newsletter distributed by the French resistance and never reached a wide audience.

Romney has obtained the transcript of the testimony her father gave at the 1947 trial of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, but it is not comprehensive.

“The transcript of his testimony looks as though he was so frustrated that he wasn’t given more time to talk about it,” said Romney. “I don’t know if it was 10 minutes or what, but it looks as if he was really frustrated because at one point he enumerates a number of atrocities that he saw and he said, ‘it could take me days and days to tell you about them.’ I think that’s why he never wrote any more. I don’t know whether he was approached to testify anywhere else, but he never did.”

However, other prisoner-doctors did write and testify. Romney’s forthcoming book, Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Written Testimonies of Prisoner-Doctors, is based on the experiences of 60 individuals who survived and told what they witnessed.

When Lewin first arrived at Auschwitz, he and the others in his transport were put to work constructing a new section of the camp – to be known as Birkenau.

Lewin was one of only a few from this group that survived the war, Romney said, because he was a medical doctor. The Nazis decided around the end of 1942 that they could use prisoner-doctors to treat ill and wounded inmates who were doing forced labour. Prisoner-doctors tried their best to help other inmates, but routinely confronted horrific ethical dilemmas. They were faced, Romney said, with what the Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer called “choiceless choices.”

“If they had refused to obey orders outright, they would have sent them to the gas chambers too,” she said.

After the war, Romney studied at the Sorbonne and became a professor of French linguistics and literature, first in Toronto, then Sudbury and finally Calgary, before retiring to Vancouver. She and her husband, also an academic, thought Canada seemed an ideal place since he was English and she was French.

The annual Yom Hashoah evening is presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). It is supported by the Gail Feldman Heller Endowment and the Sarah Rozenberg-Warm Memorial Endowment Funds of the VHEC, and funded through the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign.

In addition to Romney’s keynote address, the evening will feature cellist Eric Wilson, Yiddish singer Myrna Rabinowitz, Cantor Yaacov Orzech and the Kol Simcha Singers. Artistic producers are Wendy Bross Stuart and Ron Stuart of WRS Productions. Holocaust survivors are invited to participate in candlelighting.

Pat Johnson is a communications and development consultant to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

MLA seeks out positive solutions

George Heyman is the member of the B.C. legislative assembly for Vancouver-Fairview. (photo from George Heyman)

George Heyman is one of numerous British Columbia residents who owe their lives to the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. Though born after the Second World War, Heyman is the son of a Polish Jewish couple who were among the estimated 6,000 Jews aided in fleeing Nazi Europe by the acts of Sugihara, who was the vice-consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania.

“That’s a story my parents didn’t spend a lot of time telling me about, which I’ve since found out is actually very common – parents don’t tell their story,” Heyman told the Independent. “But I learned much about it in recent years and it has been well-documented with a number of exhibits telling the story in Vancouver and the United States and other parts of Canada and in Japan.”

Sugihara risked his career – and his life – issuing transit visas to Jews. An estimated 40,000 descendants of “Sugihara Jews” are alive today because of his actions.

Once they had escaped Europe, Heyman’s parents were sponsored by family in Vancouver.

“Canada was certainly not falling over to welcome Jewish refugees,” said Heyman. “But they had distant relatives who were from Austria, who had already established here before the war started, seeing the writing on the wall. They sponsored them. My dad enlisted in the reserves, worked as a machinist in a boiler factory – even though he had an engineering degree – until he could get his credentials recognized in Canada, and eventually went on to work in the profession in which he had been trained.”

Heyman was born at Vancouver General Hospital, in the riding he now represents in the B.C. legislature, Vancouver-Fairview. The New Democrat says his family’s experience – and his own experience with casual antisemitism – helped shape his approach to the world and politics.

“I think, as a young child growing up in Canada, I just wanted to be what most children wanted, which was to be accepted,” he said. “I remember the normalization of what we would now recognize as clearly antisemitic jokes or comments or generalizations or characterizations. As a young boy, I had a hard time speaking up against it. It took a lot of courage to say, ‘you can’t talk about Jews that way’ or ‘why are you using the term Jew, my religion, in that way that is clearly not a good one?’”

These experiences, Heyman said, helped him recognize injustice and learn to value other people regardless of their economic class, ethnicity or religion, “to embrace people, not categorize them or shun them.”

“As part of that, I was also learning to stand up for who I was,” he said. “Like many young Jews, I was torn between looking for my identity and wanting to fit in. It’s been a lifelong journey.”

These experiences also helped lead him to careers in the labour movement and public office. Heyman served as head of the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, then executive director of the Sierra Club of British Columbia, before being elected to the B.C. legislature in the 2013 election.

One of the reasons he has taken the opportunity over the years to speak up about his own experiences, Heyman said, has been “to try to deepen understanding and let people know what casual and thoughtless racist comments do to people who are the recipients of them.”

Antisemitic rhetoric and threats in North America and the murder of six Muslims in a Quebec mosque have had a range of unintended consequences, he said. They have ensured that people do not take security for granted and they have caused a coming together of disparate religious and ethnic groups.

“When Muslims at prayer in a mosque in Quebec are murdered, members of the Jewish community stood with Vancouver Muslims at the mosque and expressed their own solidarity as well as horror at the actions,” he said. “And Muslims have come to the [Vancouver Jewish Community] Centre for peace circles, to express their solidarity.… What makes us strong is when we work together, understand each other, support each other, build institutions together; not when we live in isolation or fear, because then we just give encouragement to those people who thrive on creating fear and hatred because it’s the only answer they have for what’s missing in their lives. I’d rather find a positive, constructive answer to those things that are missing in people’s lives, whether it’s spirituality, faith or some measure of economic equality, and build community solidarity that way.”

Heyman said he and the rest of the NDP caucus want to see the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report implemented, including educational components about the history of First Nations.

“The commission talked about ensuring that there is a healthy education component in schools, right from the earliest stages, about the history, what was wrong with it, how we can grow beyond it and heal,” he said. “The same is true of the racist laws that existed in Canada that impacted Chinese, South Asian, Japanese and other immigrants, who actually did the hard labour, in many cases, of building this country that other people weren’t willing to do. The same is true of understanding the history of the Holocaust that happened in Europe, which obviously was overwhelmingly targeted to Jews, but not only. How that connects to other aspects of racism, hatred and genocide, [and to] recognize the genocides that have happened in other parts of the world, as Jewish speakers at Holocaust memorials in the legislature have consistently done.

“We need to educate young people, both about the horror of the past and what it leads to, about the impact of thoughtless words or actions that promote or embody racist thought, but also about the benefits to us all when we live and work together and appreciate each other and embrace each other.… Government has the resources and the authority to both legislate against hatred and racism, but also to animate the actions that can ultimately, if not wipe it out, shrink it to the minimum amount that we would hope.”

On the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Heyman said he supports a two-state solution and does not support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“I’ve never chosen to personally support or even quietly implement on my own behalf a boycott of Israeli products,” he said. “I also think it’s important in this context that we distinguish between tactics that some people choose to make a political point and whether or not that tactic is synonymous with antisemitism. I think, for instance, there are antisemites who express their views through a variety of mechanisms, and I also think there are Jews and other people who are legitimately concerned about government actions and want to find a two-state solution and peace that brings an end to the conflict and brings security to both Palestinians and Israelis who may support that tactic without being antisemitic. Personally, while I support a two-state solution, I very much want to see the hatred and conflict in the Middle East solved and that means, for me, opposing terrorism as well as opposing actions that block the road to peace.”

He added: “I think it’s important for people to recognize that those who call for a just peace and a two-state solution may be calling for justice for Palestinians and justice for Jews and Israelis, and they are not incompatible.”

As voters prepare for the May 9 election, Heyman said there are plenty of topics on the agenda.

“There are issues of affordability, issues of fairness and services for communities, for people needing healthcare, for seniors, for children, for working families, issues of housing and very important issues of, how do we build a modern, diversified economy that doesn’t threaten our children and grandchildren with an unliveable future due to climate change?” he said. “We can’t put off the choices of transitioning to a supportive society, a society that takes care of seniors and kids, as well as a society and economy that employs people productively while respecting and protecting the environment – those are the choices we need to make today.”

The Jewish Independent’s provincial election coverage continues with interviews with other candidates in future issues.

A healthy relationship

An interesting exchange occurred last week between four members of Israel’s Knesset and a Diaspora Jew who warned them that Israel risks losing the support of people like her.

In a forum in Boston, an audience member said Israel had responded disproportionately during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge.

“You are losing me and you are losing many, many, many people in the Jewish community,” the audience member warned. “I want to know what you are doing to make peace with the Palestinians.”

Amir Ohana, a Likud MK, made clear where he stood. “War is horrible. I lost friends, I lost family,” but the audience member was ignoring the thousands of rockets sent from Gaza to Israel, he said. “Each and every one of them [was] targeted to kill us. And if I will have to choose between losing more lives of Israelis, whether they are civilians or soldiers, or losing you, I will sadly, sorrily, rather lose you.”

Rachel Azaria, an MK belonging to the Kulanu party, was similarly critical of the American’s approach. “One of the challenges is that when you’re thousands of miles away, it looks simple,” she said. “To think that we enjoy living in terror and living with our rifles, we hate it. We all hate it. But we can’t seem to find a solution that will keep us strong and sheltered.… If it would be easy, we would be there … I wish reality would be easier, God knows I wish, unfortunately it’s not. And that’s something we need to live with every day of our lives in Israel.”

So, who is right? The alienated Diaspora Jew, or the members of Israel’s parliament? Unsatisfyingly, but perhaps appropriate Jewishly, they all are.

Israel has to make decisions based on the security of Israel, not on the emotional well-being or political ease of Diaspora Jews. Likewise, Jews everywhere have an obligation to stand up when they perceive injustice.

These two positions may seem antithetical, but they are not necessarily. Israelis and Diaspora Jews have always had a deep connection. Both in the state of Israel and in the Diaspora, political ideologies span the gamut. But particular issues and events, like the 2014 war, can exacerbate conflicts in the relationship. Ultimately, though, if we consider Israel and the Diaspora not as two entities but as Klal Yisrael, these disagreements are part of a dynamic discourse that is not only unavoidable, but necessary.

Diaspora Jews frequently criticize Israel and sometimes Israelis act as though these voices are not welcome. Yet the Diaspora provides financial and political support to Israel and, more importantly, the Law of Return means that every Diaspora Jew is a potential citizen. This means something.

And, while Azaria is correct that sometimes things can look overly simple from a distance of tens of thousands of kilometres, it is conversely true that distance can give perspective. Israelis and Diaspora Jews should listen to one another, not reject alternative voices.

Still, as at least one MK noted, it is not the children of Diaspora Jews who are conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces. It must certainly confound some Israeli parents to hear their North American or European cousins complaining about this or that Israeli policy while their own children are on the frontlines of the latest conflagration with Hamas, or are patrolling dangerous neighbourhoods in the West Bank.

Just as politics in Israel is combative and engaging, so it is – and it should be – in the Diaspora. We do not need to agree on everything, but some syntheses should develop that allow for dialogue and progress.

While we fret about the state of Israel-Diaspora relations, though, we should perhaps be more concerned about a different development. We may be heading for a schism that makes our past differences pale.

A new generation of Jews coming up in the Diaspora is much more critical of Israel and tends to be more dovish than their parents or grandparents. There are exceptions, of course, but the young Jews who blockaded the AIPAC conference recently represented a growing cohort, not a diminishing one. Some of their critics say these young people have been taken in by the anti-Israel propaganda on campuses and lack the courage to stand up to it. This may be true in some cases but, by and large, this is a dismissive and insulting suggestion. The different perspectives of young Jews are a real phenomenon and something that leaders – in Israel and around the world – need to respect and respond to.

Above all, we should not fear dissenting voices, but welcome them as part of the Zionist discourse. It is heartening to remember that the degree of passion expressed on all sides of this debate is a symptom of intense engagement. Disinterest would be a far greater threat to Jewish and Israeli life.

Record-breaking campaign

The record $8.5 million generated through the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign will support programs and services on which thousands of Jewish community members rely, and includes $300,000 for community security initiatives. This campaign result is unprecedented and will provide more financial resources to address community needs than ever before.

“I would like to thank everyone who made a gift to the campaign. This record $8.5 million result ensures that our partner agencies can continue to provide critical programs and services, and is already funding important community security initiatives,” said Alex Cristall, campaign chair.

Funds from the campaign support social services, Jewish education, community-building, seniors services, youth services, and arts and cultural programs in the local Jewish community. Funds also support social services and programs for at-risk youth in Federation’s partnership region in northern Israel, and help Jewish communities in need around the world.

“We have a number of challenges ahead of us as a community,” said Stephen Gaerber, board chair, “including the dual issues of affordability and accessibility, engaging young adults and young families, addressing the needs of our growing seniors population and developing programs for the nearly half of our community who now live in underserved regional communities. The record result will help Jewish Federation and our partner agencies address these challenges.”

Over the past year, Federation has become increasingly aware of and concerned about the changing security landscape, and identified community security as one of five areas of opportunity in its 2020 Strategic Priorities.

“We listened to the concerns about community security expressed by our partner agencies, our donors and community members. We responded by making community security a central focus of the campaign and developed a matching gift program funded by a group of generous donors. This helped fuel the record result and enabled us to invest strategically in an issue that is front and centre in our community,” said Cristall.

The $300,000 raised is already at work addressing security needs faced by some high-traffic local Jewish organizations, including security guards and specialized security assessments, as well as additional security for several high-profile community events.

“Jewish Federation has taken the lead on community security for years, and our proactive approach was recently commended by Chief [Constable Adam] Palmer of the Vancouver Police department,” said Gaerber. “Given the threats received recently by our JCC, the fact that we were out in front of this takes on added significance. Every donor to the campaign can be very proud of having played a role in addressing this important issue while supporting the full depth and breadth of community needs at the same time. The record $8.5 million raised is a real testament to how we all care for our community.”

Fielder gives to VHEC

Vancouver-born writer and comedian Nathan Fielder has donated more than $150,000 US to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). The funds represent the profits of the Summit Ice outdoor apparel line, founded by Fielder to raise awareness of the Holocaust and to support the education and remembrance mandate of the VHEC.

“We are honoured to be the recipient agency for Nathan Fielder’s Summit Ice initiative,” said Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC. “It is especially meaningful that Nathan appreciates the work our centre does to advance anti-racism education in his hometown.”

This significant contribution will help the VHEC deliver more programs to more people at a time when the centre’s work is as relevant as ever. This gift will strengthen the VHEC’s outreach programs, educational resources and exhibitions that engage students, teachers and the general public in British Columbia and beyond.

“We receive countless letters from students affirming that participating in a VHEC program, particularly when this features a Holocaust survivor speaker, is among the most meaningful and memorable experience of their school years,” said Phil Levinson, president of the VHEC board. “Nathan Fielder’s generosity will help advance the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s vision of a world free of antisemitism, discrimination and genocide, with social justice and human rights for all.”

The VHEC relies on the support of members of the community to fund education and remembrance programs.

UBC referendum proceeds

Last week, the B.C. Supreme Court rejected a petition to stop the University of British Columbia’s Alma Mater Society from holding a referendum April 3-7. The question being posed in the referendum is the same one the AMS asked of students in 2015: “Do you support your student union (AMS) in boycotting products and divesting from companies that support Israeli war crimes, illegal occupation and the oppression of Palestinians?”

The question was brought to the AMS by the UBC branch of the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), which collected the required number of signatures to have a referendum that was initially scheduled to take place in March. It was postponed when UBC third-year commerce student Logan Presch filed a petition against it. He and his legal representation secured a court order that resulted in the referendum’s delay.

Presch’s petition stated the proposed question “is divisive, creates a toxic atmosphere for students supportive of the state of Israel, and is destructive of open and respectful debate on an important issue.” It also raised safety concerns, he said, noting the 2015 referendum “drove a wedge between religious groups on campus who had previously enjoyed interfaith outreach and collaboration. Students outwardly opposed to the [referendum] encountered a hostile reaction and there were reported acts of antisemitism on campus.”

In an affidavit, Rabbi Philip Bregman, executive director of Hillel BC, recalled that, at that time, anti-BDS lawn signs at UBC were pulled down. He also cited a climate of “a lack of personal security that many Jewish students experience on campus that is exacerbated by referenda such as the proposed question. There is an important line between robust political discourse and circumstances where I am compelled to deal with the personal security of students who study and live on campus who feel threatened by the consequences of this type of proposed question, which I believe foments the antisemitism and hostility I have described…. I believe that these students’ concerns for their personal safety are justified, as acts of violence have often followed hostility to Jews.”

While not Jewish, Presch is a member of the Jewish Students Association and the historically Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He declined requests to comment but, in an affidavit filed with his lawyer, Howard Mickelson, Presch recalled that the first referendum created a “toxic environment on campus.” He said the question being posed by the AMS was contrary to its mission statement, which is to “cultivate unity and goodwill among its members” and to “encourage free and open debate as well as respect for differing views.” Presch also noted that the AMS code of procedure requires referendum questions to be capable of a “yes” or “no” answer, but that this question is “so loaded with assumptions (which are themselves highly controversial), that it will not be clear what a yes or no vote by my student colleagues will actually mean.”

Mickelson said the court recognized that the question was loaded and that the intention of a “yes” vote could be unclear for the AMS to act on, but denied the petition because the court determined “the society’s bylaws do not require that a question be fair as long as it can be answered yes or no. The standard for a qualifying question is a low one.”

Mickelson said the court recognized the “concerns for student safety” and acknowledged “the responsibility of the AMS and UBC to ensure student safety and respectful debate by all means necessary.”

“Although this case involves the political hot potato issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of BDS on campus, we argued that this was about the interpretation of this society’s bylaws,” said Mickelson, who represented Presch’s petition pro bono. “One of the arguments made by proponents of the question was that, in the context of a referendum, one party that is ‘funded’ or has ‘connections’ may be able to shut down the question against those that may not have the same level of funding…. I thought it was important for the court to understand that I was doing this pro bono.”

Though “disappointed” about the ruling, Bregman said “we really won the battles because the judge didn’t disagree with any of our arguments. We lost because the judge felt he was bound by a very poorly written bylaw by the AMS. So, we go forward fighting this nefarious referendum aimed at marginalizing and demonizing not only Israel but, by extension, those who support Israel.”

Bregman recalled that, in the spring 2015 referendum, UBC had the largest “no” vote ever seen in Canada at that time. “We’re ready to fight the referendum,” he said, adding, “But really, what we’re all about is dialogue and this is something that the SPHR has never taken us up on. Whereas we have dialogue with all sorts of groups on campus, the SPHR has rebuffed all of our efforts.”

The referendum question was to be directed at students starting Monday, as the Jewish Independent was preparing to go to press.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net. This article was originally published by CJN.

The importance of memoirs

This is the third of a three-part series on Writing Lives, a two-semester project at Langara College, coordinated by instructor Dr. Rachel Mines, in which second-year students are teamed up with local Holocaust survivors to interview them and write memoirs of their experiences before, during and after the Holocaust. The course is a partnership between Langara, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Azrieli Foundation. As part of their course work, students are keeping journals of their personal reflections on their experiences as Writing Lives participants. This week’s journal is entitled “The Importance of Memoir.” Here are some excerpts.

Our survivor has repeatedly stated that he and his peers greatly fear that, once they are gone, no one will remember what they went through. Survivors worry that, once they are no longer here as living testaments, their suffering and the people they lost will be forgotten. Our class, and other projects like it, is working to ensure that does not happen.

We must preserve the experiences of Holocaust survivors in written form so that, once they are no longer physically here, their story will be. We are not only archiving personal anecdotes, we are putting a human face on history. Facts are important for historical validity, but personal perspectives are essential in creating empathy. This program is chronicling history in such a way as to touch people and make them care about what happened to the Jewish people (and others) during the Holocaust. Empathy is one of the greatest tools in breaking down intolerance. Once we see the humanity in others, it becomes harder to hold onto prejudice and hatred.

Now, more than ever, it is vital to create this historic empathy. Prejudice and persecution are becoming ever more prevalent in our society, and it is up to us as a nation to halt such hatred. It is essential to remind the world what can happen when hatred is met with social apathy. These memoirs are a documentation of the horrors that unchecked hatred can lead to. I believe in the power of memoirs, the power of living history. I am honoured to be a part of such an important project at such a crucial time.

– Frieda Krickan

***

The first time I interviewed a Holocaust survivor, I was nervous, and rightfully so. My interview partner and I had been preparing for months before our first meeting but, nonetheless, when our interviewee arrived, I was so star-struck that I briefly lost my aptitude with the English language altogether. All I could manage to say was multiple renditions of the same sentence, thanking him again and again for his time and for agreeing to meet us.

Our interviewee, R., was gracious and didn’t miss a beat. He chimed in every time by thanking us in return just for listening and told us on multiple occasions, “I am so grateful for what you are doing. This is very important to make sure that the Holocaust never happens again.” His response surprised me but, the more I listened, the more I realized that this project meant more to him than just sharing his story; it was his personal call to tikkun olam, to repair the world the best that he can.

I learned that every Holocaust survivor’s greatest fear is not what you would expect. It is not death camps or gas chambers – instead, R. told us that their greatest fear is that no one will remember their stories when they are no longer alive to tell them. They are afraid that, with today’s ugly resurgence of antisemitism, everything they endured will be meaningless in the face of a society that cannot wait to forget. In a world that wants us to keep silent, it is every survivor’s hope that we raise our voices – that we proclaim the truth until our breath runs out. Our sacred duty is to empower the ones who can no longer empower themselves, and the key to making sure history never repeats itself is to tell their stories.

– Zoe Mandell

***

During this course, my group members and I spent a concentrated amount of time with a child survivor of the Holocaust. Time and time again, he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the Nazi regime…. His story is inspiring, heroic, terrifying at times, and very emotional. He tells his story with such grace, in such detail, that we could clearly visualize in our minds what he had experienced.

I have heard many stories of those who survived, and the stories they tell of those they lost. I have learned what it was like for a child survivor from Paris, a teenage survivor from Amsterdam and an adult survivor from Warsaw. I have heard the stories of their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters: how they watched their father get shot, or saw their mother walk toward her certain death, or said goodbye to a brother they knew they’d never see again. Telling their stories, writing their stories, is not only a therapeutic technique, but a preventative one. It is important for those who survived to tell as many stories as they can, not to let the memory of their loved ones perish like they did during that awful time in history. It is important to tell the story of their loved ones to keep their memory alive in as many beating hearts as possible. And it is important to tell the stories of the Holocaust, for both survivors and those who perished, to stand up and say, “We survived. We won’t forget. Never forget. And never let it happen again.”

– Marni Weinstein

***

During and after each interview my group conducted with R., he thanked us multiple times. He thanked us for taking the time to listen to his story, for writing his memoir, and even for sharing parts of our lives with him. Every time he thanked us I was taken aback: why was he thanking us for listening to him, when we were the lucky ones? We were being given the opportunity not only to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak but to write a memoir that would continue his legacy throughout time. At first, I struggled with his gratitude; I was almost uncomfortable with how genuinely thankful he was that we were spending time with him and listening to his story. Yet no matter what I said, he was grateful.

It took me quite awhile to grasp exactly why R. felt the need to continually express his gratitude. In fact, R. did not grow up in a world that accepted the events of the Holocaust as facts and wanted to learn more about it. He grew up in a world where no one wished to speak about the Holocaust and its events were contested. He did not conceal his experiences only because they were too painful to revisit, but also because no one wanted to listen.

Not only did those affected by the Holocaust lose their families, their homes, their childhoods and years of their lives, but in many cases they lost their voices. For years, the world refused to listen and, because of that, we lost many valuable stories. Memoirs are important not only because they give survivors the opportunity to share their stories, but because, on a very small level, they begin to give a voice back to the voiceless. Although we can’t bring those survivors back and prove to them there are people who care and will listen, we can make sure the survivors who are still alive do not go unheard.

– Lucy Bogle

Women try to right wrongs

Elizabeth Cady Stanton – suffragist, social activist, abolitionist. Susan B. Anthony – social reformer, women’s rights activist. Ernestine Rose – who?

Bonnie Anderson taught history and women’s studies for 30 years at Brooklyn College and at the Graduate Centre of City University of New York. She has written three books on women’s history, the latest being The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter (Oxford University Press, 2017).

When Anderson wrote Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860, she learned about Rose, who was born in 1810 in Poland to an Orthodox rabbi and his wife. Her father taught her Hebrew and Torah but, by age 14, she had rejected Jewish beliefs and identified as an atheist. Betrothed at 15, she broke her engagement but her fiancé would not agree – he wanted her inheritance and brought a suit against her. At age 17, Rose went to the district court 65 miles away and presented her case personally, arguing that “she should not lose her property because of an engagement she did not want.” She won.

Moving to Berlin, Rose lived there two years before heading to Paris and then to London, where she embraced the belief system of Robert Owen, who had a utopian socialist vision; she became a disciple. Also in London, she met William Rose, a free-thinking atheist, jeweler and silversmith. They married when she was 20 and he was 23 and emigrated to the United States.

Rose became a pioneer for women’s equality and an accomplished lecturer, speaking to the public for the free-thought and the women’s rights movements.

“A good delivery, forcible voice, the most uncommon good sense, a delightful terseness of style and a rare talent for humour are the qualifications which so well fit this lady for a public speaker,” wrote a reporter in Ohio in 1852.

She lectured extensively, including against slavery, during her years in the United States, from 1836 to 1869, and became a U.S. citizen. She went back and forth to England between 1871 and 1874.

“She embodied female equality in both her everyday life and her political activism,” writes Anderson. “She was a true pioneer, working for the ideals of racial equality, feminism, free thought and internationalism.”

The book concludes with 44 pages of notes and eight pages of bibliography. Readers should find this biography of an “international feminist pioneer” a fascinating reading experience about an amazing woman.

***

In 2005, the movie Woman in Gold portrayed the story of a painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer I that was painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907 and owned by her and her husband. She died in 1925 and her husband fled Austria in 1938, ultimately dying in 1945. During the war, the Nazis seized the painting, which had ended up in a Vienna palace. The will of her husband designated Maria Altmann, niece, as heir and Altmann sued the Austrian government for the painting, and won the court battle. The painting was subsequently bought by Ronald Lauder and is now in the Neue Galerie in New York.

The novel The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2017) alternates between Vienna in the 1930s and England in the 1940s, as well as Los Angeles in 2005 and 2006 and New York in 2006.

Rose Zimmer, her older brother Gerhard and her parents, Charlotte and Wolfe, live in Vienna in 1938. Unable to escape, they send Rose and her brother on the Kindertransport to England. Rose, 12, lives with a childless Orthodox Jewish couple; her brother lives elsewhere. By the time the war is over, Rose is living with a girlfriend and working; her brother is in the service and their parents’ whereabouts are unknown. Rose goes to college, is supported by her brother and his wife, meets a young man, marries and moves to Los Angeles, where she teaches.

In the background is Rose’s quest for a Chaim Soutine painting that was important to her mother.

Alternating with this story is that of Lizzie, a 37-year-old lawyer whose sisters live in Los Angeles, where their father lived and died. She meets Rose at her father’s funeral and learns of the Soutine painting. The work had been bought by her father and had hung in their home when she was a teenager, until it was stolen during a party.

A friendship blooms between the two women and Lizzie learns Rose’s background, that her parents were sent to a concentration camp and their home, along with the painting, seized. The “fortunate ones” are the ones who survived the war, but at what cost?

Lizzie’s story is far less interesting. She grew up in Los Angeles, her mother died when she was 13. She became lawyer, lives in New York, then moves back to Los Angeles after her father dies, and starts the search for the painting.

Both women have issues with loss and forgiveness. The novel is emotional, sentimental and suspenseful, and engaging enough not to want to put it down and to keep reading.

As to whether Umansky was influenced by The Woman in Gold in writing this book, she said she had not read the story or seen the movie, “although I was certainly aware of them and interested in the true events that inspired them.”

As to why she wrote the novel, she said, “That’s a hard one to answer in a few sentences! The contemporary story of Lizzie has its roots in something that happened when I was growing up in Los Angeles: my family was friendly with an ophthalmologist who lived lavishly and had a prized art collection, the crown jewels of which were two paintings, a Picasso and a Monet. In the early 1990s, those canvases disappeared without a trace. I was fascinated by the incident and, later, when the stories of Nazi-pilfered art came into the news, I began to imagine a storyline that brought both of these threads together.”

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machaneh Yehudah, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.

International partners

Left to right: Larry Fisher (Lark Group), David Berson (Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), Daniel Blumenthal (Centre for Digital Innovation Negev), Dianne Watts (South Surrey-White Rock MP) and Rowena Rizzotti (Health and Technology District). (photo by Yvonne Chiang)

The Health and Technology District in Surrey and the Centre for Digital Innovation in Israel have formalized a number of collaborations on health-related technologies, creating an international network between partners to support health-tech innovations in Israel and across North America.

The Centre for Digital Innovation (CDI) is located in the Advanced Technology Park in Be’er Sheba, Israel, the growing “Silicon Valley” of the Middle East. CDI is a nonprofit created through the collaborative efforts of Israeli entrepreneurs and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. CDI operates in the areas of digital healthcare, healthy aging, education and smart cities, and brings together experienced entrepreneurs, start-up companies, innovators, researchers, industry leaders, academics, the public sector and investors to generate a high return on innovation for the challenges of the 21st century, such as the cost of healthcare and chronic diseases.

“Both CDI and Surrey’s Health and Technology District [HTD] have aggressive goals to drive innovation across the health sector and Canada stands to deeply benefit from the mentorship and leadership that Israel can bring to our innovation agenda here in Canada,” said Rowena Rizzotti, vice-president of health and innovations for HTD.

The memorandum of understanding between HTD and CDI will co-create and share respective solutions to global healthcare challenges by expediting the implementation of innovations in critical healthcare improvements for both countries.

“It’s great to see that Canada and Israel have parallel visions and focus in developing high-level innovations,” said Ziv Ofek, CDI founder and chief executive officer. “We are excited about this partnership with Canada and with the Health and Technology District and we look forward to collaborating and working together to create technologies that will benefit the world in which we live.”

The partnership was finalized during a recent trade mission organized by the Conference Board of Canada, where participants studied the culture and key success factors that have led to Israel’s groundbreaking developments in innovation and commercialization.

“Israel is a hotbed of high-tech innovations and boasts world-class skills and capabilities with universities and forward-thinking organizations developing some of the world’s latest technology breakthroughs,” said Paul Preston, Conference Board of Canada. “It’s hugely beneficial for Canadians to learn from this success and assist us in developing the talent and capacity to lead a culture in innovation in Canada.”

Every year, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) brings more than 100 Canadians to visit and learn firsthand from the “start-up nation,” and has facilitated trips in recent years for the City of Surrey, the Government of British Columbia and the Conference Board of Canada.

“This exciting partnership is a prime example of how, in bringing the best Canadian and Israeli minds together, we can achieve remarkable things for both countries,” said Jason Z. Murray, CIJA Pacific Region chair.

HTD held a celebratory reception on March 23 with CDI and special guests Dianne Watts, member of Parliament for South Surrey-White Rock, Ofek and members of CIJA.

Developed by the Lark Group, a Canadian-based company, HTD is a series of high-tech buildings located immediately adjacent to Surrey Memorial Hospital, creating an ecosystem for clinicians and health-care providers to work alongside innovators, entrepreneurs and tech companies.