annual campaign – Jewish Independent

B.C. inspires activist’s work

Shoresh executive director Risa Alyson Cooper and Mati Cooper plant a tree. (photo from Shoresh)

Risa Alyson Cooper, who was raised in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, was road-tripping across the country with a friend about 20 years ago when they ran out of cash in Nelson, B.C. That misfortune changed the course of her life – and is making a big impact in Canada’s Jewish community.

“We were invited to a free church dinner for homeless and struggling individuals and we decided to go,” Cooper said of the adventure. “That was, for me, one of those aha moments. It was the first time that I thought religion might have what to say about the food that we eat.”

Cooper is now executive director of Shoresh, a Toronto-area charity that “inspires and empowers our community to take care of the earth by connecting people, land and Jewish tradition.” Cooper is one of four speakers at FEDtalks Sept. 9, the annual campaign opening event for the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

The church supper made her think about something that hadn’t really struck her before.

“I wondered if Jewish tradition has anything to say about food,” she recalled with a laugh in a recent telephone interview. “It was the first time that I really started thinking about food ethics. I’d grown up Jewish, I knew that food was so much of an anchor of Jewish observance, [that] my family’s Jewish identity was about meals to celebrate holidays, but I never really thought about the moral values that we can express through the food that we eat.”

She quickly discovered that Jewish tradition has a great deal to say about food and the moral, social and ethical issues around it. Agriculture is so intrinsic to the ancient texts that, Cooper said, a friend refers to Torah as “the Jewish Farmer’s Almanac.”

“It has very clear rules for how we farm, what we plant, where we plant, when we plant, and it also has rules beyond that,” she said. “It has rules for how we celebrate the harvest, how we hold gratitude for that which we receive from the land, and it also has very, very clear rules about how we share our resources with others in our community.”

There have been a number of Jewish “back to the land” movements – the most consequential being Zionism – but, on the shoulders of all this history, there is something new happening today.

“The idea of there being a Jewish way of thinking about food security is as old as Jewish tradition,” she said, “but what we are seeing now are really innovative ways of addressing food insecurity and also building vibrant Jewish communities”

Shoresh (the name is the Hebrew word for “root”) operates Kavanah Garden, adjacent to the Jewish Community Campus in suburban Vaughan, Ont., and invites children and adults to “participate in experiential programs rooted in Jewish text, tradition and values, and [is] designed to elicit experiences of awe in response to the wonders of the natural world.” Food grown at the garden is used in programming or donated through tzedakah partnerships.

photo - Risa Alyson Cooper beekeeping. Shoresh’s Bela Farm, in Hillsburgh, Ont., is home to an apiary and bee sanctuary — Risa Alyson Cooper beekeeping. Shoresh’s Bela Farm, in Hillsburgh, Ont., is home to an apiary and bee sanctuary. *(photo from Shoresh)*

Shoresh also operates Bela Farm, in Hillsburgh, Ont., a little further outside Toronto. This 100-acre farm, home to Shoresh’s apiary, bee sanctuary and native reforestation efforts, offers “deep, immersive experiences for land-based Jewish learning and living, creating for participants sustained connections with self, community and the earth.”

Their third location is Maxie’s Garden, a partnership between Shoresh and Jewish Family and Child, located in the Kensington Market yard of a Shoresh member. Here, an urban sanctuary in the heart of Toronto’s historic Jewish neighbourhood is “a haven for people, plants and pollinators.” It was envisioned to empower, educate and inspire clients of the social service agency through the power of nature connection and food production.

Beyond these three sites, Shoresh runs programs out of schools and camps, and in green spaces, parks and ravines throughout Toronto.

Cooper’s own agricultural journey, which began here in British Columbia, led her to a master’s degree in which she looked at religious food and environmental ethics. Then she went to Connecticut, where she worked for three years as a Jewish environmental educator at the Teva Learning Center, the only full-time, year-round program dedicated to innovative, experiential Jewish education taught through the lens of the natural world.

She got her hands even dirtier in small-scale organic farming as a member of the Adamah Jewish Farming Fellowship. She grew vegetables on a four-acre farm, worked in a raw goat-milk dairy and dabbled in the art of fermentation.

“I was so deeply in love with the community that I discovered in the States I probably would have stayed there but I had my visa revoked and I got sent back to Canada,” she said, laughing again.

photo - The Shoresh team — The Shoresh team. *(photo from Shoresh)*

Living out Jewish values on the land in the Diaspora raises particular issues, Cooper said.

“What does it mean to be holding a tradition that is in many ways land-based,” she said. “So much about the Torah, so many of our holidays, have agricultural connections. What does it mean to be having these land-based traditions and to be practising them in Canada? How do we honour the elements of our tradition, while honouring the fact that not only are we in the Diaspora – so not on the land where many of these traditions are rooted – but we are also specifically here on Turtle Island, this land that has been stewarded by indigenous communities for thousands and thousands of years?”

In Vancouver next month, Cooper said, she will talk about contemporary Jewish food insecurity issues and will share something about the model that Shoresh has developed, as well as ideas spawned from similar organizations across North America.

Everything she shares at the event will owe a debt back to that fateful visit to British Columbia’s Kootenay region.

“That was the moment that I can trace all this back to,” she said.

Other speakers at FEDtalks, which takes place at the Vancouver Playhouse on Monday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., are National Young Leadership Cabinet member Dr. Gillian Presner, who will offer “hard-earned wisdom about the power of community and the nature of our true legacies”; Rabbi Brian Strauss, whose Houston, Tex., synagogue and home were flooded by Hurricane Harvey and who subsequently witnessed an outpouring of support from Jewish federations across the continent; and Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former longtime politician, who led Israel’s Labour party and was opposition leader from 2013 to 2018 (featured in the other cover story in this issue).

For tickets ($36/$10) to FEDtalks Sept. 9, 7 p.m., at Vancouver Playhouse, visit jewishvancouver.com/fedtalks.

Campaign’s new chair

Dr. Jonathon Leipsic (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

When Jonathon Leipsic decided to take on the role of campaign chair for the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver this year, it was not because he had too much free time on his hands.

Leipsic is a physician and practising radiologist, with a focus on heart and lung imaging. He holds a number of positions, including being a professor of radiology and cardiology at the University of British Columbia, vice-chair of research for the UBC department of radiology, chair of the department of radiology for Providence Health Care and regional department head of medical imaging of Vancouver Coastal Health. He has published extensively and is the editor of two textbooks; he also speaks internationally on cardiopulmonary imaging.

“I decided to take on this role as campaign chair for a number of reasons,” Leipsic told the Independent. “I am deeply grateful and proud to be part of this incredible Jewish community and am driven to contribute to making it and all of Klal Israel stronger. I have served as board chair at Vancouver Talmud Torah, and currently serve on the board there and at Schara Tzedeck and King David High School.

“The Federation annual campaign leadership, for me, is a tremendous honour and privilege, enabling me to work with such a great team and a group of volunteers with the goal of supporting, nurturing and strengthening our community.”

For Leipsic, Jewish peoplehood and the continuity of the community and Jewish traditions are paramount. He hopes that his passion and commitment will be clear to community members, and that they will share in his vision of further building the community and ensuring that Jewish life is accessible to all who desire it.

“I want to express my gratitude to the entire community for their support and commitment,” said Leipsic. “I feel blessed to be part of a community filled with so many exceptional people and institutions, and I will work tirelessly throughout this campaign to help make it even stronger.

“The community and Am Israel are incredibly important to me, and both Karly and I will continue to volunteer and donate to the greatest extent possible to ensure that our children and, God-willing, our grandchildren, will share in the same blessings we have – to live in a strong Jewish community filled with love and strong institutions, and with a strong and prospering state of Israel.”

Leipsic praised the annual campaign volunteers. “There are nearly 300 volunteer canvassers who take time out of their busy lives to make calls and meet with donors about their gifts,” he said. “They are busy making those calls right now and I want to thank them.

“I also want to thank all of our donors for answering those calls, for meeting with their canvassers and for fulfilling the mitzvah of tzedakah.

“Thank you for supporting the community through the annual campaign. You are helping families struggling with the high cost of living to fully participate in Jewish community life. And, you’re bringing Jewish programs to members of our community who live beyond Vancouver’s city limits – from the Fraser Valley to the Sea-to-Sky corridor. Todah rabah.”

For information about and to donate to the Federation annual campaign, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Feast for mind and soul

Smack in the middle of the Days of Awe, hundreds of members of our community came together for an inspiring, entertaining and occasionally emotional evening celebrating unity and inclusion.

The opening event of the 2018 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign Sunday night once again took the form of FEDtalks, four presentations from individuals with starkly divergent life experiences.

Zoya Schvartzman, whose career now is devoted to improving the lives of individual Jews in Europe and revivifying once nearly obliterated Jewish communities there through her work with the Joint Distribution Committee, talked about how a comparatively simple gesture by the Vancouver Jewish community, when she and her single mother lived here several years back, was a testament to paying it forward. By providing a family in need with a small hand up, probably nobody involved at the time imagined that a kind word and a bag of groceries, including a jar of chocolate spread, would inspire a young woman to positively change the lives of some of the most marginalized Jews in the contemporary world.

Arik Zeevi, an Israeli judo Olympian, talked about the importance of setting goals that seem to exceed our grasp as a means of self-improvement and collective advancement.

Pamela Schuller, a disability activist and stand-up comedian, spoke of how Tourette syndrome went from being her defining characteristic to becoming an integral, appreciated and complementary component of her complex identity. Her endearing and humorous presentation encouraged everyone to look at perceived disabilities as unanticipated gifts.

Rabbi Irwin Kula, in an intellectually packed tour de force, spoke of Judaism’s ability to transform itself, saying that the first Jews of Vancouver would not recognize the Judaism of today and that our descendants a century hence will not recognize our Judaism – and that this is a sign of constructive adaptivity.

The four speakers offered very different perspectives, which, together, reminded all of us at the Vancouver Playhouse that unity and diversity are complementary and not exclusive.

Everyone in the audience certainly left with a lot think about. However, standouts as we reflected afterwards included the idea that, while Judaism treasures tradition, its millennia of continuity is due at least in part to a willingness to break existing paradigms and make room for new ways of being and thinking, as well as fresh voices, being inclusive of multiple identities and ensuring that successive generations are welcomed and included even – perhaps especially – when they challenge the way things have always been done.

Also underlying much of the evening was the concept that our actions have powerful ripple effects that we cannot forecast. Small actions – teaching judo to a 7-year-old, standing up for a classmate with a disability, reaching out to members of the community in their times of need – can lead to life-altering consequences.

Underscoring these messages were words from leaders of our local Federation and campaign, including Federation board chair Karen James, past chair Stephen Gaerber, women’s philanthropy chair Megan Laskin, chair of this year’s campaign Jonathon Leipsic, and Federation chief executive officer Ezra Shanken, all of whom, in particular ways, reminded attendees of the obligation and privilege of participating in a collective movement that changes lives in British Columbia, Israel and around the world.

Leipsic singled out members of his generation, pleading that they maintain and expand upon the institutions and infrastructure that previous generations built for us. He made special note of Charles Diamond, whose funeral had taken place earlier that day. Diamond’s parents were among our community’s pioneers and the Diamond family, through generations, have been role models of the involvement needed for a community to thrive.

In these days of introspection, teshuvah and transcendence, FEDtalks proved a perfect opportunity to come together, reflect, celebrate, think big and rededicate ourselves to making positive contributions individually and collectively.

Jewish history’s next chapter

The JDC’s Zoya Shvartzman is part of the FEDtalks lineup Sept. 16. (photo from JFGV)

In returning to Vancouver, Zoya Shvartzman is retracing the route that has seen the Moldova-born woman help “write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

Those words, while spoken by Shvartzman, are not about herself – she was crediting North Americans and others who support the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) with helping revivify communities that were almost annihilated under Nazism and then suppressed by communism. But the work Shvartzman does in her role at the JDC means she could rightly claim to be among a number of authors altering the future for Jews in Europe.

Shvartzman and her parents made aliyah from the East European nation when she was 8 years old. At 15, she and her mother migrated to Vancouver. Here, the family had some hard times and they turned to the Jewish community.

“The Jewish community welcomed us with open arms and gave us almost a second home,” she recalled recently in a phone interview with the Independent. “It was a very, very fond memory of my time there and it has a lot to do with the Jewish community that became our family.” She will speak about this time when she presents as one of four speakers at FEDtalks, the opening event of the 2018 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, Sept. 16.

Shvartzman chose to pursue a degree in international development studies and political science at McGill University and so, after four years on the West Coast, she and her mother decamped for Montreal.

“After that, I decided to move to Budapest to pursue my master’s in political science because I was focusing on Eastern European politics and transitions from communism to democracy,” she said. “Because I’m from that part of the world, it made sense to go back and be there, be where it’s taking place.”

She completed her studies at Central European University, which was founded and funded by the democracy philanthropist George Soros, and, after graduation, worked for the Canadian embassy in Budapest. In 2007, she was offered a position at the JDC, where she is now director of strategic partnerships.

Shvartzman’s role is to identify on-the-ground needs of Jewish communities in Europe and convey those needs to potential funders, primarily in North America. Federations, foundations and philanthropists then contribute to help the JDC complete its projects.

“In Europe, basically, our main mission is that we build resilient communities,” she said. “We help build communities where they were shattered after the Holocaust and after communist regimes.

“In Eastern and Central Europe, we help poor Jews with basic services like food and medicine and winter relief, help to pay their utilities,” she explained. “Most of the elderly are Holocaust survivors. We work extensively with Holocaust survivors together with the Claims Conference funding. In the last 10 years or so, we developed services for children and families, modeled on the JFS [Jewish Family Services] model that you’re familiar with in Canada and the U.S., addressing the needs of poor children and families.”

Examples of projects that the JDC has spearheaded or supported include a Jewish community centre in Warsaw and a summer camp in Hungary, where children from 25 countries come to strengthen – or, in some cases, learn about for the first time – their Jewish identity. But the work is not limited to Eastern and Central Europe.

In France, the JDC has opened a “resilience centre,” to help Jewish schools, social workers, teachers, children and families respond to threats experienced by Jews in the country. Several acts of anti-Jewish terror in recent years in France have compounded existing anxieties about the security of its Jewish population and institutions.

The decade-plus that Shvartzman has been with the JDC has been a time of challenge for Jews and others across the continent.

“Especially the last four or five years have been particularly tumultuous for Jews in Europe,” she said. “There are different threats – external, internal threats. We see communities that have nearly collapsed, like the community in Greece, in terms of the economic crisis that really, really shattered it.”

In addition to the generalized economic challenges experienced by people in many countries, Jews have faced particular difficulties. Rising antisemitism and political extremism in places like Hungary and Poland have stoked once-dormant apprehensions.

Even so, Shvartzman is bullish about Jewish life in Europe and plans to share her enthusiasm with Vancouverites.

“There are many causes for optimism,” she said. “When you look at the revival of Jewish life in Europe and how these communities have gone from survival to really thriving Jewish communities, I think that’s a big cause of optimism.

“This is quite remarkable when you consider the history and some of the deep, deep traumas that this community has suffered and, today, Jews are reclaiming their heritage and are proud to be Jewish,” she continued. “All of this gives us great causes of optimism that Jewish life in Europe is thriving.”

Shvartzman’s Moldovan childhood and her current work both reflect and embody the JDC’s mission to save and build Jewish lives, said Michael Geller, the JDC’s North American director of communications.

“In her professional life and her personal life and in her life’s journey, she understands quite deeply the importance, the critical importance, of the work we do every day to ensure that needy Jews have the basic needs to continue to live their lives and, in addition, to have a strong Jewish identity, one that is their own, that they make themselves, and one that we help strengthen and empower through the kind of work that we do,” he said.

Returning to the theme of writing the next chapter of European Jewish history, Shvartzman credits overseas allies with making possible all of the achievements she and the JDC have realized.

“It’s only possible because of the support of the North American communities, North American Jewry, that chose to invest in that part of the world over the past 20, 25 years,” she said. “If I had to underline one message, it would be that: North American Jewry helping to write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

FEDtalks features keynote speakers Rabbi Irwin Kula, Pamela Schuller, Arik Zeevi and Zoya Shvartzman. The event takes place at the Vancouver Playhouse on Sept. 16, 7 p.m. Tickets ($36) are available from jewishvancouver.com.

Love your uniqueness

Pamela Schuller will share her story at FEDtalks Sept. 16. (photo from JFGV)

On Sept .16 at Vancouver Playhouse, as part of FEDtalks, Pamela Schuller, an internationally known disability and mental health advocate and professional stand-up comedian, will share her story. Her aim? To inspire attendees to remember and cherish what makes them unique.

Schuller divides her time between being running a Jewish teen mental health initiative in New York City and traveling the world, using her own experiences to discuss inclusion and the importance of embracing differences and disabilities.

“I tell my story of growing up with a severe case of Tourette syndrome (TS) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) … and how, over time, I learned how to be more than OK with those things,” said Schuller. “I learned to love them and embrace them, and found that they add positive, incredible things to my life when I allow them to.”

According to the website tourette.ca, TS is “a neurodevelopmental or brain-based condition that causes people who have it to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics.” And, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association (cmha.ca), OCD is “a mental illness … made up of two parts – obsessions and compulsions. People may experience obsessions, compulsions or both, and they cause a lot of distress.”

Growing up in America’s Midwest, Schuller felt she stood out as the oddball kid with TS. Her mom had a hard time raising her. And, as her mom struggled, so did Schuller – dealing with having TS, as well as with numerous trips to the hospital for broken bones and depression. It took a boarding school environment for Schuller to be able to come out of her shell.

“I’d always felt like I was something my community had to work through, that I was a nuisance,” Schuller told the Independent. “But, at this boarding school … well, I’m not going to tell the whole story … I’ll save that for when I’m in Vancouver. But, I can tell you that the school knew that, if I was going to pull myself out of this space of feeling worthless, I’d need to have something about myself that I loved. So, their goal was to help me find one thing about myself that I loved. And we used that to catapult me into realizing that the one thing I love about myself translates into other areas of my life. And that, maybe, I don’t love this thing despite TS, but maybe, in actuality, TS adds to this thing that I love.”

Schuller speaks openly about being depressed before experiencing this mental shift, and of not having wanted to be a part of this world.

“To be honest, I think it’s a journey that doesn’t stop,” she said. “I still have days where it feels like having TS is bad, embarrassing or painful. And I have to remind myself that it’s OK and that there are still things I love about myself … and that, a lot of them, I learned because of TS.

“The first thing I learned that I love about myself was my sense of humour. But, it took some time to channel that sense of humour from snarky and sarcastic … to a more channeled sense of humour.

“Then, over time, I started talking seriously, not using humour, about what it means to love differences, to love the most challenging thing about yourself, the thing you struggle with the most.

“A few years ago, I realized that stand-up and talking about disabilities don’t have to be separate. So, I combined them into a talk, with humour and storytelling.”

A few years ago, Schuller earned a master’s degree in child advocacy and policy, with an emphasis on creating inclusive communities.

She believes that much of celebrating differences is about believing it is possible – that, whatever you bring to a community, you can be a part of that community.

Stand-up comedy serves as a sort of therapy for Schuller. “When I’m on stage, it’s not that my TS calms down … but, even on a tough day, I’m reminded that I love my brain,” she said. “And my brain allows me to do stand-up and have TS.

“That reminder allows me to see other things about me that I love. I think I’ve always seen the world from a different point of view, in part, because of TS. Comedy allows me to point those things out and, in a way, speak without being judged.”

Schuller encourages people to find the one thing that makes them incredible and unique.

As far as what people can expect to get out of her talk, Schuller said, “It doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not, the message is pretty universal. So, you can expect to laugh, to think about things and, maybe, sometimes, to cry, because feelings come up.

“Some of these conversations are tough. We’re all afraid of what we don’t know or maybe we don’t feel so great about ourselves or what we bring into this world. I think, by pairing humour with some of these messages and storytelling, it makes people think – about themselves and how they treat others, how they treat people in their community and what their community is doing.

“I walk into teen communities and I have everyone laughing and thinking,” she said. “And, when I finish, the teens line up to talk to me, share with me or ask questions. So, I think that my goal is to not be preachy, but to be a conversation starter.

“Typically, when communities bring me, they’ll have me perform for everyone. Then, I’ll do workshops, classes and programs. I’ve been working with communities around being inclusive for years, professionally, sharing ideas and talking about the tension points in your community around inclusion and how can we come up with some ideas that might help that.”

Schuller and her family have realized that, sometimes, the things they struggle with the most can also be their greatest strengths.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t still end up in the hospital from broken bones, from TS, but, even in those tough moments, as a family, we’re able to find humour … and to find those moments where, we’re like, ‘OK, this is so amazing … how cool that we’re learning this, doing this or experiencing this.’”

For tickets to FEDtalks ($36), visit jewishvancouver.com.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Record-breaking Federation campaign

Alex Cristall, chair of the 2017 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, with Federation board chair Karen James, centre, and Megan Laskin, women’s philanthropy chair. (photo from JFGV)

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign surpassed its 2017 goal and generated $8.7 million to meet community needs, including $850,000 in targeted funding. An additional $1.1 million in funding was generated outside the campaign for specific projects. Nearly 500 new or lapsed donors were inspired to give for the first time or to renew their giving, which is a record.

As the local community’s primary fundraising initiative, the annual campaign supports programs and services delivered by 35 partners locally and globally, reaching thousands of community members who rely on them.

Targeted funding supports specific programs that address particular community priorities. Many steadfast supporters of the campaign have the capacity and motivation to fund such projects or programs and Federation works with these donors to connect them to the priorities that align with their philanthropic interests.

Exceeding the campaign goal and growing the donor base positions Federation and its partners to continue to address the many needs identified in Federation’s 2020 Strategic Priorities. It’s a clear indication that partner agencies can continue to rely on the campaign as a consistent source of ongoing funding.

“The strong campaign achievement means we can make an impact on the issues of affordability and accessibility of Jewish life, which affect people across our community,” said Alex Cristall, chair of the 2017 Federation annual campaign.

In the emerging Jewish communities outside of Vancouver, Federation is focused on extending its reach and that of its partners to develop grassroots Jewish programming, such as its Connect Me In initiative. In Vancouver, with its very high cost of living, the focus is on keeping the cost of Jewish programs and services low, and on funding more robust subsidies for those who need additional help.

“At its heart, Jewish life is about community, and this year’s campaign reflected that. We could not have achieved this incredible result without the support of our nearly 3,000 donors. I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who donated,” said Cristall.

Overall, Federation generated an unprecedented $18.5 million this year. This includes a record $8.7 million in contributions to endowment funds at the Jewish Community Foundation, along with the $8.7 million campaign total and the additional $1.1 million in targeted funding.

“Diversifying the ways in which Jewish Federation generates funds is a key factor in being able to address growing and evolving community needs,” said Karen James, Federation’s board chair. “Jewish Federation is adapting to changing philanthropic trends and working proactively with donors to meet these needs. At the same time, we continue to deliver a strong annual campaign that benefits thousands of people, and that is great news for our community.”

Seniors are a growing force

Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver publishes its own magazine, Senior Line, three times a year.

During the 20th century, thanks to advances in medicine, technology and quality of life, average life expectancy in the Western world increased by 30 years. Adults of the retiring age are now the fastest-growing segment of the population. The 2016 Canadian census showed more seniors (5.9 million) than school-age children (5.8 million). And the majority of these seniors are healthy and active, willing and able to share their knowledge and experience with the wider world.

Unfortunately, many people still apply the same negative stereotypes to older folks as we did decades ago: wrinkled, grumpy, fragile, forgetful, out of touch with reality, a burden and so on. Although “wrinkled” is mostly true, the rest is not, overall. We, society at large, need to change our views and policies towards the elderly, and how we treat the senior population.

“The most pressing issues seniors face are loneliness and isolation, retaining financial independence, staying involved and being physically active,” Ken Levitt, president of the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver (JSA), told the Independent. He added to that list the lack of affordable or subsidized housing for seniors, inadequate nutrition, and the need to successfully manage personal health problems. He talked about protecting seniors from financial predators, including greedy relatives and unscrupulous investment counselors.

“This broad scope of issues affects all seniors, not just Jewish,” he said, “And the solutions should be all-encompassing, on the federal level. Poverty is a symptom of a greater problem, and we must address the cause. What we do now is just patchwork, temporary solutions.”

JSA does what it can to ease seniors’ problems, given the limits of its budget. It has about 400 registered members and publishes its own magazine, Senior Line, three times a year. “The articles deal with issues and challenges relating to seniors,” Levitt explained. “These issues are not only discussed, but we make recommendations for their amelioration.”

The alliance also offers outreach programs, advocacy and research into the problems of seniors, and peer support services. “JSA advocates senior issues through a number of organizations, including the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C., the B.C. Health Coalition and the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition,” said Levitt.

About JSA’s peer support services, Levitt said, “We have 150 trained volunteers in the peer support services. Each one of them undergoes 55 hours of special training – 11 five-hour sessions. These volunteers offer friendly visits to seniors who are lonely. They answer phone calls. They can’t solve all the problems by themselves but they can help others to solve a variety of problems. They help those in need to reconnect with community. They provide bereavement support, when necessary. That they are seniors themselves adds credibility to their recommendations.”

Of course, there is always more to be done. “We have more demands for our services than we can meet,” said Levitt. “If we secured more funding, we could train more volunteers and expand the peer support services. We could hire more staff.”

He added, “We could, perhaps with a partner agency, create something similar to the Cumming Centre in Montreal. It is a dedicated community centre for seniors. Such a centre could offer comprehensive services, recreational and social programs, and rehabilitation after a stroke. It could offer a wide range of programs for persons with Parkinson’s, aphasia, arthritis, mental illness, etc. The aim would be restorative and maintenance or prevention.”

JSA is engaged in networking to start something similar in Vancouver. “We don’t have to start all these programs at once. We can start small and build up from there,” said Levitt. “Bits and pieces of such programs are already in place at different locations and organizations – we should concentrate them in one place. But, to establish such a centre in Greater Vancouver, there would need to be more cooperation amongst agencies, a willingness to share their services and resources.”

JSA’s funding comes from a variety of sources, from private donations and foundations, plus government grants. About 10% of its funding comes from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Shelley Rivkin, Federation’s vice-president of planning, allocations and community affairs, said that 14% of Federation’s allocations go to seniors. “We fund agencies, not individuals,” she said. “In 2016, all our partner agencies received an increase in their allocation as a result of an increase in the overall campaign. The increase to seniors was approximately two percent, which was consistent with the other increases…. Federation funding for seniors goes to the following agencies: Jewish Family Services Agency (JFSA), contribution toward their seniors department; JCC [Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver], contribution toward the JCC seniors programs [and] we also cover the rent for the JCC L’Chaim program; Kehila [Society], contribution toward their seniors wellness program and the Richmond bus, which takes Richmond seniors to programs; and JSA, contribution toward their advocacy and peer counseling programs.”

Rivkin added, “We provide JFSA with funding for financial support to clients, including assistance with food vouchers and rents. A growing number of those clients are seniors.”

She explained that, while 14% of the funds “are specifically directed toward programs serving seniors, approximately 30% of our funding goes to social services. Seniors who are recipients of social services benefit through these programs also.”

And Federation is trying to help local seniors who face poverty. “According to the 2011 National Household Survey,” Rivkin said, “there are approximately 4,500 seniors in our community, and 16% of them have been identified as living below the low-income cut-off. The majority of them are older, unattached women. We are looking at issues of seniors and poverty through the Food Security Task Force and we intend to hold a forum on seniors in 2018 to gather community priorities.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

A fine line we all walk

Left to right: Choices co-chair Debra Miller, Choices co-chair Sarah Marel-Schaffer, keynote speaker Lisa Friedman Clark, Choices co-chair Judith Blumenkrans and Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver women’s philanthropy chair Megan Laskin. (photo from JFGV)

This year marked 13 years since the inception of Choices and some 450 women gathered in the Beth Israel reception hall to mingle over dinner and support Jewish women’s philanthropy. The keynote speaker was Lisa Friedman Clark, a New York native who commanded the floor as soon as she described herself as the “luckiest unlucky woman alive.”

Clark’s story is compelling. Diagnosed in 1995 at age 23 with a rare form of ovarian cancer, she endured chemotherapy and survived the illness against incredible odds. Andy Friedman, her boyfriend at the time, stood by her side throughout and, two years later, the couple married and began what she described as a “storybook life.” The arrival of twin boys completed their new family and both were pursuing successful careers up until Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, Andy went to work on the 92nd floor of One World Trade Centre and never came home.

There were audible gasps from the audience as Friedman Clark described the details of the morning her life changed forever. “He called me after the second plane had hit and said he was in a room with all his colleagues and they had plenty of air,” she recalled. “Later, we found out that the plane had hit one floor above him and the damage to the stairwells was so bad that he and his 68 colleagues could not get down. His floor was the line of demarcation between life and death. Those on floor 92 and above died.”

“I was 39 years old with two 11-year-old boys whose hero had just been killed in one of the most horrific manners one could think of,” she continued. “One minute you’re rushing to get the kids off to school and, in a split second, your husband has been murdered and life as you knew it has ceased to exist.”

Friedman Clark’s message was devoid of self-pity. “We all walk a fine line between being a donor to Federation and being a recipient of its generosity,” she told the crowd. “We never know when our lives will change.”

Federation counselors, social workers and support groups in New York were trained to deal with families affected by terrorism and came directly to the aid of her family and others in the same situation, she said. “They were uniquely able to understand our needs, and they were also there with financial aid for anyone who needed it. This help was invaluable and, had it not been for the many people that helped me at Federation, I’m not sure where I’d be today.”

Another story that touched a chord with Choices attendees was that of Ronit Yona, an Ethiopian Jew who, as a child, was rescued during Operation Moses. She lived in Israel for several years and more recently moved to Vancouver with her husband and two sons. Yona recalled her early years as a child in Ethiopia, growing up in a village that was home to 1,000 Jews and a life that revolved around home, school and synagogue. At the age of 9, everything changed. “The Ethiopian government wouldn’t allow us to practise our customs,” she explained. “I found myself following my father through the jungle at night as he led our donkey and horses, all loaded with our entire life. My father told me that, if the soldiers found us, they would kill us.”

Yona and her family became refugees in Sudan, in a tent camp where there was no sanitation and dysentery was rife. She recalled walking four hours a day to fill heavy jugs with water for the family. Then, at 10 years old, she found herself on an airplane with other Ethiopian families en route to Jerusalem. “What I didn’t know then, as a child, was that we weren’t walking alone on that journey,” she said. “ORT helped my father train as a nurse in Ethiopia and, later, the global Jewish community gave its money, time and energy to the Jewish Agency to rescue the Jews of Ethiopia who were stranded in Sudan.”

“We are all here this evening because we care about the future of the Jewish community, here at home, in Israel and around the world,” Megan Laskin, chair of women’s philanthropy at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, told attendees. “We’re celebrating making good choices for ourselves as strong women and setting a lasting example of l’dor v’dor. Women’s philanthropy is truly a force and your contributions are changing and saving lives.”

Last year, Choices generated more than $2.1 million. For information on this year’s campaign, visit jewishvancouver.com.

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

A widening community

Alex Cristall, general chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign, has pledged $250 for every new donation this year or donation from someone who didn’t donate last year. (photo from JFGV)

The hashtag for this year’s Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign is #WeCan’tAffordToLoseThem. “We want to make everybody feel needed and part of the community. For the health of our community, we need everybody,” explained Alex Cristall, general chair of the campaign.

“Last year, due to the times, we focused on security. This year, it’s about affordability and connectedness,” he said. “If you live in the core, where we have a lot of infrastructure, it is extremely expensive, even people of means struggle. When you add being Jewish on top of that – sending your kids to Jewish day school, going to summer camp – it’s costly. It’s also very expensive for seniors. People are making decisions that it’s too expensive to be Jewish. That’s a big issue. We want to make it easy to live a meaningful Jewish life.”

For this year’s campaign, Cristall has pledged $250 for every new donation or donation from someone who didn’t donate last year, a fact he’s eager to get out to the community. “The last couple of years, we’ve had some real success with the growth of our campaigns, but we’ve also had a number of donors that we’ve lost,” he said. “We want people to know that every donor counts, no matter what the dollar value is, because when people get involved and give, that’s how you grow community.”

Federation has been working to expand its reach to the Jewish communities developing in regions outside of the city. “This is the first time that half of our growing population lives outside of Vancouver,” said Cristall. “We have to figure out a way to get services out to Surrey, Burnaby, Langley, the Tri-Cities, North Vancouver. We’re going to see continued Jewish growth in the suburbs. The big push is to help our partners reach these people and connect them to the community.

“To that end,” he said, “the Federation has had events in Port Moody, [and supported] a camp out in the Tri-Cities, with kids coming in from Langley. We’re increasing our subsidies to schools, camps, the JFSA [Jewish Family Service Agency], so that everyone who wants to participate can find a way to participate. If you live in the city, we want to make it affordable and accessible and, if you live out in the suburbs, to make them feel part of the community and to embrace them.”

This is the second year of Cristall’s time as campaign chair. “I have a great cabinet with me,” he said. “We’re all equals but, for these two years, I’m the voice of the campaign. The core message we’re trying to convey is ‘building community,’ helping people to live meaningful Jewish lives.”

Despite the centrality of fundraising to the Jewish Federation’s activities, giving money is not the only way to help Federation serve the Jewish community.

“Volunteering, reaching out to more donors, canvassing, boards, different agencies, coming to events – our job is to fundraise for these agencies, give up some time. There is a spot for everybody to help,” said Cristall.

Asked how he got involved serving the community, Cristall pointed to his parents, Lorne and Sylvia Cristall, decades-long philanthropists and volunteers in the Jewish and general communities.

“As a kid,” he added, “I also went to Jewish day school, to summer camp. I was always very involved in the community. I’ve benefited from being part of the community and it feels good to give back.”

For more information about the campaign and to donate, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Sumekh swipes out hunger

Rachel Sumekh is one of five speakers who will participate in FEDtalks Sept. 13. (photo from Rachel Sumekh)

University students with meal plans often end a semester or term with a surplus on their cafeteria swipe card. Whether because they skip a few breakfasts, go on vacation or eat in a restaurant the occasional night, some of the meals they pay for go unpurchased. In most instances, students are not reimbursed for uneaten meals.

When Rachel Sumekh was studying history at the University of California Los Angeles in 2010, she and some friends went to the cafeteria, stocked up on to-go food using the amounts remaining on their swipe cards and handed it out to hungry people on the streets of the city.

The dining provider didn’t like the gesture of goodwill, as it created an unanticipated run on to-go food. Sumekh talked it out with the administrators and created the pilot project for Swipe Out Hunger, an initiative that is now on 32 American college campuses, helping feed hungry people across the country. Sumekh will talk about the project here on Sept.13 at FEDtalks, the opening event of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign.

The original idea, she admits, came from her friend Bryan Pezeshki, but he was busy continuing his studies – he’s now a doctor – and so Sumekh and a few friends carried it on as a side gig, meeting on Sundays and creating Swipe Out Hunger. In 2013, they decided to see what would happen if a full-time staff person were devoted to the project and Sumekh took on the job.

In such a venture, the humanitarian impulses of dining providers compete with their bottom line – unused amounts on meal cards means lower operating costs for them. So, in getting suppliers on board, Swipe Out Hunger organizers emphasize doing the right thing, while also implying there might be bad publicity if campus media discover food providers’ reluctance to participate in a program that fights hunger. Nonetheless, it is a challenge. Sumekh said students from about 300 different campuses have approached Swipe Out Hunger to start their own chapters, yet only about 10% of those have been successfully launched.

“So, it comes down to how difficult it is for universities to actually agree to implement this,” she said.

Originally focused on feeding hungry people in the communities around campus, Swipe Out Hunger has transitioned to focus mostly on addressing the hunger of students on campus.

Ironically, the problem of student hunger is exacerbated by an increasing accessibility of post-secondary education, she said. Financial aid and need-based scholarships are making it easier for young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to attend college. But, once there, they confront the realities of student life without money.

Educational institutions are giving financial aid, even full tuition in some cases, Sumekh said, but the students still have no money. “So who’s going to pay for their housing or their meals or their books or their transportation and all the other stuff?” She estimates that 75% of those benefitting from Swipe Out Hunger now are college students.

Sumekh says hunger leads to increased absenteeism, poor grades and dropping out. She pointed to a Canadian study that suggests 39% of Canadian college students cannot afford balanced meals and fear not having enough food at all. Almost half of the more than 4,000 students who participated in the study said they chose books, tuition and rent over healthy meals, one-quarter said the lack of good food affected their physical health and one in five said their mental health was affected. While there are no Swipe Out Hunger chapters in Canada yet, a similar program, Meal Exchange, exists here.

Universities are slowly coming to the awareness that their students’ well-being depends on healthy, sufficient diets, among all the other factors, Sumekh said. This is evidenced by the shift her organization has seen in the type of people who are approaching Swipe Out Hunger.

“Previously, 100% of the interest in our program was from students,” she said. “Now, over 50% of our interest is coming directly from administrators.… Universities are finally recognizing that they have students on their own campus who are going hungry and they have to do something about it.”

There has been a stigma around colleges acknowledging hunger among their students, she added, but this is diminishing in the face of recognition of the need.

Swipe Out Hunger also had a recent advocacy triumph. In June, thanks to pressure from Sumekh’s organization, the California state legislature and Governor Jerry Brown approved $7.5 million in funding to encourage colleges throughout the state to adopt a Swipe Out Hunger program, establish food pantries and hire staff to help students access nutritious food. So far, 1.3 million meals have been shared – and that number is likely to grow, as Swipe Out Hunger catches on in California and nationwide. Despite this success, Sumekh hopes her organization goes out of business.

“If there’s anything we believe, it’s that the old model of charity doesn’t work,” she said. “We don’t want to exist 20 years from now.”

Swipe Out Hunger is aiming for a systemic shift, where universities take it upon themselves to ensure that students’ needs are met, a universalization of an ad hoc program now on some campuses in which meals are provided to students in need.

While Swipe Out Hunger isn’t aimed specifically at Jewish students or any other cultural demographic, Sumekh credits both her Jewishness and assistance from the Jewish community for inspiring the initiative. The daughter of refugees from post-revolution Iran, Sumekh is excited to be sharing the stage at FEDtalks with Eric Fingerhut, chief executive officer of Hillel International, because she was involved with UCLA Hillel and got lots of support from the campus group when she was starting Swipe Out Hunger.

“When I was getting the program off the ground, I would go to Hillel and they would say, Rachel, whatever you need, tell us and we’ll make it happen,” she said. “It was an amazing way to see the Jewish community say, let’s just support this young Jew, even though what they’re doing isn’t just for Israel or just for Jewish people. If they’re doing something that’s living out our values, we should want to support that.”

For the full FEDtalks lineup and tickets, visit jewishvancouver.com/fedtalks2017.