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The Normal Heart comes to Jericho Arts Centre

Daniel Meron co-stars in The Normal Heart, which runs July 18-Aug. 16. (photo by Javier R. Sotres)

Larry Kramer is an incendiary activist who was among the first – and most irate – to raise alarms about a new disease that began killing gay men three decades ago. Kramer was at the forefront of the movement to direct public – and, notably, government – attention to what would become known as AIDS.

Kramer’s play, The Normal Heart, is a polemical cri de coeur written at the North American height of an epidemic that has become the world’s leading infectious killer and the cause of 36 million deaths to date. That is a number almost equivalent to the number of people currently living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. And, while extraordinary scientific advances have been made in controlling the symptoms of the disease, most of those treatments remain out of reach for the vast majority now fighting the virus, who are in the developing world.

While the severity of the health crisis has now become clear to most people, Kramer was writing in a time when almost no government resources were allocated to the virus and few in the power structure – from media and medicine to the president of the United States – seemed to care or even acknowledge that gay men were dying in exponentially increasing numbers.

A Jewish playwright, Kramer drew parallels to the world’s reaction to the first reports of the Holocaust. A later book by Kramer, in 1989, would be titled Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist.

The Normal Heart opened on Broadway in 1985. Its power remains, with an HBO drama broadcast in May of this year, starring Mark Ruffalo, indicating that social sensitivities to the issue have progressed perhaps as much as the retroviral medical advancements that have made the virus something closer to a manageable disease than the certain death sentence it meant as recently as a decade ago.

The play is now being staged in Vancouver. In it, Daniel Meron, who received a bachelor of fine arts degree in acting from the University of British Columbia, plays Felix Turner, the closeted lover of the main character, Ned Weeks, a stand-in for the playwright Kramer in this barely concealed autobiographical play.

It is a script trembling with rage and Meron sees the topic in a continuum of Jewish activism.

“There is definitely a strong sense of social justice in the Jewish tradition and, like Kramer, I find myself fighting for those who can’t stand up for themselves,” said Meron, who was active in Hillel and the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi during his time at UBC.

“The thing that stands out to me from doing this show was how the U.S. government, the gay community, and the entire world wanted to turn a blind eye to the entire situation,” he said. “As Ned [Kramer’s character] mentions numerous times in the play, the events that took place are eerily similar to the Holocaust.”

Meron, who was born in 1987, said he was struck by the impact The Normal Heart had among gay men who lived through that period.

“Before starting the journey of this play, I wasn’t aware how important The Normal Heart was to so many people,” he said. “It reminds me of speaking to Holocaust survivors. I feel so fortunate to play such an integral part of this story. The greatest thing for me would be to do justice to the story of all the men and women who fought and continue to fight for LGBTQ rights.”

The Normal Heart previews July 14, opens July 18 and runs in repertory until Aug. 16 at Jericho Arts Centre with two other plays as part of the Ensemble Theatre Company Summer Festival. Details and tickets are available at ensembletheatrecompany.ca.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Ignorance in violent protest at Palestine House

The tragedy of four murdered teenagers in Israel has had more than emotional repercussions here in Canada. But it is unfair to blame foreign events for the shameful actions that took place in a Toronto suburb last Thursday, July 3.

The previous Monday, June 30, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, the three kidnapped Jewish teens, were found slain. Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Arab, was subsequently killed in what appears to have been a revenge murder by a group of Jewish assailants.

Into this moment of tragedy and tension, in an act with predictable repercussions, the Jewish Defence League announced it would hold a protest over the murders outside Palestine House, in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

The Palestine House Educational and Cultural Centre bills itself as a not-for-profit organization that “serves as the educational, cultural and social centre for the Palestinian community in the Greater Toronto Area (in particular) and in Canada (in general).”

The Jewish Defence League, which was founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, is viewed by many as a right-wing extremist group with vigilante tendencies. The respected Southern Poverty Law Centre has added the JDL to its hate group watch-list. The Anti-Defamation League has accused the JDL of harboring “thugs and hooligans.”

Predictably – the JDL having given advance notice – they arrived at Palestine House (backed up by some members of the motorcycle club Yidden on Wheels) to greet a large throng of Palestinian Canadians and their supporters already chanting anti-Israel slogans and waving anti-Israel placards and Palestinian (and Canadian) flags. What ensued was caught, as almost everything seems to be these days, on video. It leaves both sides looking like jackasses. Three people were injured as police struggled and failed to separate the mobs of competing thugs, most of the minor injuries seemingly from whacking with flagpoles as both sides paraded their respective ensigns and used them as weapons.

To say the scene was juvenile is an understatement. Jewish extremists show up, knowing their mere presence, let alone their antagonistic actions, will provoke another group at a time of understandable international tension. Not surprisingly, some of the Palestinian supporters took the bait. Mayhem ensued. Chauvinistic slogans and provocative gestures ruled the day. A couple of people were mildly hurt, but it could have been much worse.

By Canadian standards, though, this was a particularly nasty scene. And, while the fact that it happened during the week of Canada Day does not make it worse, it certainly doesn’t make it better.

The JDL and some similar groups view themselves as the embodiment of a “new Jew” that learned the tragic lessons of passivity. But if the JDL represents the future, we reject it entirely.

If the concept of a “new Jew” is at all legitimate, it is most reflected in the state of Israel. This type of “muscular Judaism” is about more than brute force. It is about attempting to defend and exemplify the values upon which Israel is based, and that it continues to strive to represent: rule of law, justice, fairness, humanitarianism, intercultural collaboration and mutual respect regardless of immutable characteristic. These are the same values that have made Canada among the safest, most secure, successful and welcoming nations for Jews, Palestinians and so many other people.

Events outside Palestine House last week suggest that both the JDL and those who engaged with them – pretty much all men, it might be worth noting – have something to learn about Canadian values.

Israel is my home, heart

I was caught completely off-guard by the question: “Don’t you sometimes long to run away from all this war and violence and madness and terrorism? You could always go back to Australia.”

This was when, like every other Israeli, and probably Jews around the world, I was listening to the news every hour, hoping that the three kidnapped boys would have been found, safe and unharmed. At that time, there was no news yet.

I looked at my friend, a tourist from my birthplace. I didn’t know how to answer her. Once I would have known. I would simply have said “yes,” and my eyes would have filled with tears of nostalgia for the comfortable lifestyle, the ordinariness of everyday living, of only bothering to listen to the news if I wanted a sporting result or the weather forecast; all the security – emotional, financial, physical – that I’d left behind when I made aliyah.

She was looking at me strangely and, I suppose, a lot of time must have passed since she asked me the question. To me, the answer had become extraordinarily complex. A simple “yes” or “no” would not suffice.

We were sitting on a park bench in Beit Hakerem, in Jerusalem, where I live. It was Sunday afternoon, and I’d looked at the scene before us hundreds of times without truly registering it. A little boy was walking his dog on a leash. A pretty girl was jogging, music from an electronic device giving her the beat and rhythm. A grandfather wheeled a baby carriage. A young couple sat near us sharing a falafel and looking into each other’s eyes. Nothing special. Nothing dramatic.

All the drama had been played out in the weeks and months and years before her visit. Down south in Gaza. Up north in Lebanon. Rockets from Syria. Weeks of needing to hear the news every hour. Years of watching funerals on TV of beautiful young soldiers and ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Making phone calls to ensure that grandsons in the army, involved in searching for the missing boys in Hebron, were safe.

How could you “run away” from all the things that had shaped your life for decades? Of course, you could leave, but you’d take all that caring and commitment with you. It would feel like an amputation, and you’d never be a whole person again.

Over the years, I’ve been back to Australia for holidays, but they were never successful visits for long. For a few days, I’d bask in the warmth of seeing family and friends, enjoying their attention and the luxury of their lives. But then, someone would make a thoughtless remark about Israel, and I would bristle at their lack of understanding and feel that I had to defend the country. I’d long to be back home in Jerusalem, where I could talk about, even criticize, the government and corrupt politicians, the lack of good manners and the insane Israeli drivers, because I’d be talking to people on the same wavelength. It was different, very different.

The familiar scene in the park suddenly became very dear to me. I didn’t know any of these people, but I loved them. They were my family. I hoped the young lovers would marry; that the grandfather would live to see the baby’s bar or bat mitzvah; that the little boy with the dog would never have to fight in a war.

Finally, I had my answer. “No, I don’t long to run away. It’s not easy, but we understand what all the sacrifice is about. And it’s home,” I added as an afterthought. And, after all, home is where the heart is.

Dvora Waysman is the author of 13 books. She has lived in Jerusalem for 43 years.

Delightful – and easy – dairy recipes for summer

Leah Schapira’s and Victoria Dwek’s sunflower salad, from their most recent cookbook, Dairy Made Easy. (photo by Daniel Lailah)

There’s almost no need for me to try out the recipes from Leah Schapira and Victoria Dwek anymore. Their Made Easy cookbooks are “triple-tested” and I’ve reviewed enough of them to know that the recipes will result in delicious meals. But, an excuse to try a new dish, especially a new dessert – I just can’t pass that up.

This time, using Dairy Made Easy, which was released, appropriately, just before Shavuot, I made the sunflower salad, baked roasted veggie pasta and lemon curd ice cream, but there are other salads, pastas and desserts, as well as soups, appies, pizzas and breakfasts. While Schapira and Dwek favor more packaged/frozen ingredients than I prefer, and a little more salt and sugar, I find their recipes amenable to adaptation and feel completely at ease with replacing, for example, frozen cauliflower with fresh, and using less/more of almost anything. Even if the consistency or look isn’t quite as nice, the taste is every bit as good.

SUNFLOWER SALAD

1 head romaine lettuce, chopped, or 5 cups baby spinach leaves
2 mangos, peeled and diced
1/2 red onion, finely diced

Dressing:
4 oz. (115 grams) goat or feta cheese
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

Sunflower brittle:
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup salted hulled sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sugar

In a large bowl, combine lettuce, mango and red onion. Set aside.

Prepare the dressing. In a small bowl, use a fork to mash goat cheese with olive oil, vinegar and Italian seasoning. You can also use a mini chopper for a smoother consistency.

Prepare the brittle. Melt butter in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add sunflower seeds and toast for 30-60 seconds. Remove from pan and set aside. Add sugar to the pan and stir constantly until sugar is melted, about three minutes. It should be brown and completely smooth. Stir in sunflower seeds, pour into a thin layer onto a sheet of parchment paper and flatten as much as possible. Let harden. Chop into small bits, using a mini chopper or the bottom of a can.

Toss salad with dressing. Top with sunflower brittle. Makes four servings.

BAKED ROASTED VEGGIE PASTA

1 lb fusilli or penne pasta
2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
2 red onions, cut into wedges
1 zucchini, cut into half moons
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic powder
kosher salt, to taste
coarse black pepper, to taste
6 oz. (170 grams) feta cheese
1 tbsp chopped fresh or frozen basil

Prepare pasta according to package directions.

Preheat oven to 400°F. In a nine-by-13-inch pan, combine cherry tomatoes, red onions and zucchini. (More veggies can be added to the mix; red peppers substituted for the tomatoes.) Toss with olive oil and garlic powder. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add pasta to vegetables and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to broil and broil for 10 minutes, stirring after five minutes.

Add feta cheese and basil; stir to combine (the heat will melt the cheese). Serve hot or at room temperature. Makes eight servings.

LEMON CURD ICE CREAM

1 graham cracker pie crust
5 egg yolks
juice and zest of 2-4 lemons (about 1/3 cup juice)
1 cup sugar
2 cups heavy (i.e. whipping) cream

1. Crumble piecrust (which can be made using graham cracker crumbs or crushed tea biscuits mixed with some melted butter) and sprinkle crumbs into the bottom of individual serving dishes, or one large serving dish. Set aside.

2. Combine egg yolks, lemon juice, zest and sugar over a double boiler. Cook, whisking constantly, until thickened, six to eight minutes. Let cool.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream until stiff. Gently fold two-thirds of the lemon curd into the cream, a little at a time. It’s not a problem if there are swirls of yellow in the mixture. Pipe or spoon over crumbled crust. Drizzle with remaining lemon curd. Freeze until ready to serve. Makes eight to 10 servings.

Assortment of salads for summer

For those who can’t make it to Pips Neapolitan Pizza in Jerusalem for its panzanella, pictured above, the bread salad recipe here is similar. (photo by Barry A. Kaplan/Jerusalem)

Admittedly, I am very old-fashioned in my kitchen. I have two sets of antique, wood card-catalogue drawers where I store recipe cards, plus another set of drawers that a former neighbor, a wood worker, made especially for me. And, yes, I use these indexed recipes all the time. I have a variation of Post-it notes with a blue tab sticking up that I attach to any recipe cards I use very often so I can find them easily. When thinking about which recipes to share here, I went to the tab labeled “salads around the world,” and picked out these, as they’re perfect for summer.

BREAD SALAD
Italians call it panzanella. In Arabic, fatt means “crush” and, with the Turkish suffix oush, it becomes fattoush, particularly popular in Lebanon. Any kind of crusty, heavy, dense, day-old bread will work.

3 medium tomatoes, chopped, or 16 cherry or plum tomatoes, halved
3 Kirby cucumbers, cut up, not peeled
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 another color pepper, chopped
4 green onions, sliced
1/3 cup black olives
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley or cilantro
2 cups cubed bread
8 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive or canola oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Three to four hours before serving, combine oil, vinegar, garlic, paprika, salt and pepper in a jar. Close the lid, shake and set aside. In a salad bowl, combine tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, onions, olives and parsley. Add 1/4 cup dressing, mix and refrigerate about two hours.

One to two hours before serving, add bread cubes and toss; refrigerate for half an hour.

When ready to serve, sprinkle chopped eggs over salad and remaining dressing, and mix. Makes four servings.

ANTIPASTO SALAD
Traditionally, an antipasto is the first course served before an Italian meal, but this salad is a nice start for any meal.

2 cups bite-size pieces romaine lettuce
2 cups bite-size pieces head lettuce
1/3 cup shredded white cabbage
1/3 cup shredded red cabbage
1 small red onion, chopped
1 small red pepper, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
1/3 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/8 cup chopped black olives
1/2 cup artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1/3 cup mozzarella cheese, cubed
1/2 cup any other kosher Italian cheese, cubed

Dressing:
1/3 cup olive or canola oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, crushed
dash paprika
dash oregano
dash basil
dash dry mustard

Mix dressing ingredients in a jar. Close lid and shake well. Set aside.

In a salad bowl, combine lettuces, cabbages, onion, peppers, tomatoes, olives, artichoke hearts and cheeses.

Just before serving, pour dressing over salad and toss. Makes four servings.

ASIAN COLESLAW
When I serve Asian food, particularly stir fry, I sometimes would like a side dish other than rice or noodles, and this coleslaw fits. In Israel, we don’t have water chestnuts readily available, so I substitute with cooked kohlrabi, which is readily available and inexpensive.

1 cup shredded bok choy
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 cucumber, diced
1/2 cup sliced water chestnuts or cooked kohlrabi
1/2 diced red pepper
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup bean sprouts

Dressing:
3 tbsp rice vinegar
1/3 cup sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp ginger (optional)

In a salad bowl, combine bok choy, carrots, cucumber, water chestnuts (or kohlrabi), red pepper, cilantro and bean sprouts.

In a jar, combine rice vinegar, oil, sugar, soy sauce, garlic and ginger. Close with a lid and shake well.

Set aside.

Just before serving, add dressing and toss. Makes four servings.

Sybil Kaplan is a foreign correspondent, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She has compiled nine kosher cookbooks. She leads weekly walks in English in the Jewish produce market, Machaneh Yehudah, and writes the restaurant features for Janglo, the oldest, largest website in Israel for English-speakers.

Family-run Domaine du Castel has achieved many firsts

Eli Ben Zaken, centre, with sons Ariel, left, and Eytan. His daughter, Ilana, is also part of the business. (photo from castel.co.il)

The third in a series featuring nine Israeli wine producers features Eli Ben Zaken of Domaine du Castel, in the Judean Hills, 10 miles west of Jerusalem. The first two articles – on Barkan and Shiloh wineries – were published in the Jewish Independent on May 2.

Christopher Barnes: When did you found the estate?

Eli Ben Zaken: There was no official foundation because I never thought of really making a winery. I planted in ’88 a few vines in a small plot next to the house in the Judean Hills, in Moshav Ramat Raziel. We made wine in ’92, we bottled it in ’95, it was a great success. Not many bottles – just about 600.

CB: How fast did you grow?

EBZ: We grew 2,000, 3,000 a year, and then eight, and then 12, 15, 20. By the year 2000, we made 80,000 bottles. Then we stayed around 80,000.

CB: Tell us a little about the terroir, the soils and the climate in the area that you make your wine.

EBZ: It’s a very good wine country. In fact, the region was making wine for the Temple thousands of years ago. It’s very good, it’s clay and limestone, it’s stony, it’s well drained because it’s hilly. It has a good influence from the sea compared to other regions, which are also very good, but different, like Upper Galilee and Golan Heights. They don’t have an influence from the sea because they are more continental. The days would be much warmer, but the nights also much cooler. They will have maybe more color and more body, but certainly they will lack the elegance that we have because of the influence of the sea, which is always keeping us at a balanced level of temperature. Usually, the heat is not too hot, and the summers are less cool, it’s true. Today, we can know the difference.

When I was the first to plant vines, by mistake maybe, in the Judean Hills in [the] modern era, today we have in dunam – a dunam is a 10th of a hectare – we have about 300 dunams, and the region has nearly 3,000 dunams. That means all the industry has understood the importance of the hills around Jerusalem and have planted vines.

CB: How many different wines are you making right now?

EBZ: We were making, at the beginning, one wine. In ’98, we added a second red wine. Our wines are blended wines with Bordeaux grapes, like cabernet, merlot, petit verdot, cabernet franc, malbec, they are always blended. The white is a chardonnay, 100 percent, barrel-fermented, classical Burgundy wine method. We’ve made a rosé for the past four years, which is merlot, cabernet franc, malbec – early picking, pressed like a white wine, and really it is very fresh and light, a nice summer drink.

CB: Tell us a little bit about the influences in terms of your winemaking. You mentioned that you made Bordeaux blends. Was that something intentional that you decided on, or how did you come about that?

EBZ: I really started making the things I like to drink. I was not bored drinking wine and, actually, I didn’t like it [at first] because I was given low-quality wine to taste. When I got into wine I was already in my thirties, and got more and more into gastronomy and drinking wine. When I decided to make some wine at home, it was really as a hobby.

CB: How would you say your wines are unique versus the other types of wines that are made in Israel?

EBZ: I don’t think I like the word unique in the sense that everyone is unique, not mine as opposed to the mass of the others. They’re also unique. As I said, what is very, very interesting is the terroir of the Judean Hills, the elegance of the wines. Someone was pointing out in an article I read lately that all the wines from Israel got top marks from Parker – the really “top, top” were Judean Hills wines. Somehow, at the end of the day, this is what appeals most, but then, I’m biased.

CB: Of course, of course. Is it a family business now?

EBZ: It is, yes. I have three kids. They aren’t kids anymore, the youngest is 41! They’re running the winery. I am the winemaker, but I have to ask for permission to do things. My daughter and my sons are in the business. I have a daughter and two sons. I let them make their own decisions.

I can say, at my age now, I can look back. I was led in that path without [the] intention … of becoming a winemaker or making a business of wine. I was led through that path by God, destiny – it’s hard to tell, but certainly I did things which, by chance, were firsts: the revival of the Judean Hills as a wine region, I brought the petit verdot first in Israel, I made blended wines when blended wines were the cheaper wines in the wineries in Israel and top wines were single varieties. I was lucky in the way I went, doing firsts.

– This article is reprinted courtesy of the Grape Collective, an online publication for all things wine. For more information, visit grapecollective.com.

Israel master chef hopes to foster peace through cooking

Nof Atamna-Ismaeel reacts to her win. (photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 from israel21c.org)

“This is the most exciting night of my life,” said a grinning, teary-eyed Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, upon her selection as winner of the fourth season of Master Chef Israel.

The April 5 broadcast had more than a third of Israel staying at home on a Saturday night to see who among the remaining three finalists would be crowned this year’s culinary champion of the most popular show on local television, even beating its close competition, Chef Games, which debuted this fall.

Israeli-Arab Atamna-Ismaeel ended up besting competitors Ido Kronenberg, a businessman from Savyon, and Meseret Woldimikhal, an Ethiopian-born immigrant in the process of converting from Catholicism to Judaism, who lives in Rishpon.

Atamna-Ismaeel was a judges’ favorite from the get-go. This year’s auditions for the show, based on the British reality program of the same name, involved two steps: a blind tasting of a sandwich prepared behind the scenes by a wannabe contestant, and a second dish cooked on screen by those whose sandwiches met with the judges’ approval.

Healing effects of medical clowns

Talia Safra and Nimrod Eisenberd of Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem interact with a patient. (photo from Dream Doctors Project)

While clowns have brought smiles to the faces of many children, both healthy and sick, the latter clowning generally has been done on a volunteer basis and without the presence of a medical team. Recently, however, Israel became the first place in the world to recognize the medical benefits associated with positive attitude and laughter. Most Israeli hospitals now offer clown therapy and, due to its growing acceptance and success, the University of Haifa will be the first to offer a clown degree.

This all started with Jacob Shriqui, an Israeli shaliach to Geneva who went on to work in Israel’s health-care industry. Once he retired, Shriqui returned to visit some friends in Geneva and was invited to a meeting in a hospital in Lausanne. When he entered the hospital, he got lost and, in his wandering, he happened to walk by the pediatric department. To his surprise, he saw a giggling child out of the corner of his eye. Upon further investigation, he noticed the clown who was making the child smile.

“The idea came to him that if there is a thing like that, it should also be in Israel, because, until then, there was no medical clowning in Israel,” said Daniel Shriqui, Jacob’s son and past director of the Dream Doctor Project.

When he returned to Israel, Jacob Shriqui used his connections from the time he was stationed in Geneva to create the Magi Foundation, with its main function being the Dream Doctors Project in Israel. Built with the help of philanthropic members of the Jewish community in Geneva, in September 2001, the project started off with three clowns. After a year of experiments and positive feedback, he went from hospital to hospital proposing the concept.

“This is how we grew from three clowns to 127 today, in nearly every hospital in Israel,” said his son. “The main thing was, when my father came to the hospital, he said, ‘Look, we have a tool. It’s called a medical clown. We’re going to give him all the best training we can, and you’re going to try this tool like any other medical device. We don’t know exactly what it does or whether or not it will be effective. If it’s not, you can end the project whenever you want. If it is, you have to take on the responsibility of operating it.’”

From the start, the medical clowns in the hospitals were part of the medical team, a situation desired both by the hospitals and by the clowns.

“We work as part of the medical team because we believe that medical clowning is a medical profession, just like any other, and that it can be very successful,” said Daniel Shriqui. “But first, we had to convince the doctors and nurses of the benefits of having a clown when you take blood from the veins of a child. The child doesn’t cry because the clown is acting and playing with him.

photo - David Shilman (Dream Doctors) playing with his patient, and the nurse at Rambam Medical Centre, Haifa — David Shilman (Dream Doctors) playing with his patient, and the nurse at Rambam Medical Centre, Haifa. (photo from Dream Doctors Project)

“Another example is when a child is taken for a repair surgery after being sexually abused. Typically, the first test after that is done by the doctor, and by the clown paralleling, and everything is recorded.

“We see it really facilitating the work, and being able to work more smoothly with the children, [and] with the parents, too.”

Another part of the hospital-clown agreement is that the hospital gets the clowns’ services for one year for free with no obligation and no contract. If after one year, the hospital is happy with the results and wants to continue with the project, the hospital needs to start participating in the payment for the clown services.

“We knew we were here to stay when, last year, the head of the Ministry of Health in Israel called and said, ‘I need your clowns immediately,’” explained Shriqui. “‘We’re going to vaccinate all the children in Israel under nine years old for polio. We’re going to open almost 1,000 vaccination stations and I need all your staff, more than 100 clowns, to be present in the station to help us to do this.’” For the first three months, most of the clowns went from station to station and helped the nurses vaccinate the children.

“I suggested to one of the biggest hospitals in Israel, two years ago, that they use a clown in the oncology department for adults,” said Shriqui. “A few months ago, there was a budget problem and the hospital told the department we have to stop the clown service. A week later, the hospital manager received a letter signed by 70 patients, doctors and nurses, protesting against no longer having the clowns come to the unit twice a week. They explained why it is so very important, that the clowns transform the unit from a sad [one] to more positive.”

The increasing demand for hospital clowns is coming from within the medical field. The project works to fill the requests for services, but sometimes hospital budgets do get in the way.

“Especially in the oncology department, the children often are in the hospital for a really long time,” said Shriqui. “Unfortunately, many times it ends by the death of the child. But, during these months, sometimes years, there is a special relationship formed between the clown and the child, because our clowns work at the same place for years.

“In Israel, it’s a bit different…. The clown gives their own private cellphone numbers to the parents. I remember one case where the parents called a clown when he was off duty, at home, and said, ‘Listen, tomorrow we have to go to chemo and we’d like you to come assist, because the child asked that you to be there.’”

The project held a conference in October 2011, where clowns from around the world came to Israel.

“We help many clowns that come from all over the world and work with us to learn how to do this work better with medical teams, and then to be really involved in the processes and the medical treatments,” said Shriqui. “My philosophy is that a clown has to work freely. To get the best from the clown, you have to free him to be part of the team – and we have proof that if you free the clown, even to be in the operating room, you get unbelievable results.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Bubble tea: artsy, tasty sugar fix

Tapioca pearls cluster at the bottom of a green apple Calpis green tea. (photo by Lauren Kramer)

It’s a typical summer barbeque scene: parents clustered in groups catching up on each other’s lives and kids running amok in games of barefoot tag, stopping only briefly for refreshments as afternoon turns to evening. When they refuel, though, it’s bubble tea they’re reaching for, that sweet, sticky, frothy beverage that’s slurped through giant straws. Part meal, with its candy-like tapioca beans, and part beverage, bubble tea has become a natural choice for many kids and preteens. A mixture of fruit juice and tea, it’s a drink that’s both a plaything and a thirst quencher. What’s more, it delivers an explosion of flavor, an instant sugar rush that’s as fun to drink as it is to look at.

“At bubble tea shops, young people are ordering their bubble tea the way coffee aficionados order their Starbucks,” said Julia Montague, a bubble tea fan and my companion on this hot afternoon. We’ve just taken a seat at Zephyr Tea House in Richmond (7911 Alderbridge Way), positioning our massive pink straws into a shared glass of taro milk tea. A burst of taste that can only be likened to a gummy candy milkshake hits our palates, an energizing, refreshing encounter that brings us right back to childhood.

Enter a bubble tea shop and you have to be decisive. First choice is the type of tea – black, green, milk or herbal? Each category has some 30 varieties, from kiwi black to mango green, pudding milk to sesame and hazelnut milk. Once you’ve narrowed that down, you choose the bubbles you want: pearl, otherwise known as tapioca balls, coconut jelly, pudding, grass jelly or coffee jelly. Finally, you determine if you want your tea hot or cold.

We order a tall glass of Zephyr milk tea next, the house special that comes with coffee jelly, black sugar, creamer and black tea, served with whipped cream on top. The mocha-colored drink is punctuated by balls of black jelly, delivering another major whammy of sweetness – one that almost demands a food accompaniment, just to neutralize the sugar.

Bubble tea made its first inauspicious appearance in Taiwan in the 1980s, when some food entrepreneur mixed the light taste of tea with fruit flavoring, shaking it up to even out the flavors and naming it for the bubbles that would form when the mixture was combined. Later, someone reinforced the name by adding tapioca balls to the drink, as well as a large straw through which they could be consumed.

The beverage became a hit, particularly with younger folk. Bubble tea shops started popping up all over Asia and in parts of North America heavily populated by Asian immigrants, like Vancouver and Richmond, where you don’t have to search hard to find bubble tea and, when you find it, it’s eye candy in the purest form.

At the Pearl Castle Café (3779 Sexsmith Rd.), which is not far from Zephyr, the bubble tea menu features an entire page of listings for each of the black, green, milk and green milk tea. Between innovative flavors like green apple Calpis green tea, tangerine green tea with dried plum, caramel green milk tea and wheat germ green milk tea, it’s hard to narrow it down.

Our Calpis tea arrives looking like a piece of art. A layer of beer-like foam sits on the top, the drink’s bright green hue contrasts with the black tapioca pearls that cluster at the bottom. For contrast, we try hot jasmine green tea, whose soothing, subtle jasmine flavor is combined with sweetened condensed milk, providing another major sugar rush.

We exit the restaurant fired up with energy and ready to take on the day, a heady mixture of calories and sugar coursing through us as four tall glasses of bubble tea work their way through our bodies. One thing’s for sure: this is no end-of-the-day soother.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

This week’s cartoon … July 11/14

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