annual campaign

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.

Making discourse civil

Rabbi Jay Henry Moses will speak at FEDtalks on Sept. 13. (photo from Rabbi Jay Henry Moses)

While hate groups and their opponents across North America rally, and sometimes brawl, proponents of civil discourse are teaching people to communicate effectively across divides.

However, Rabbi Jay Henry Moses, who will speak in Vancouver this month, admits that those at the extremes may not be fertile soil for seeding civil discussion. It’s the vast majority in the middle of the bell curve he is interested in, the great number of people of goodwill who wish to debate agreeably but sometimes lack the skills to do so.

Moses is vice-president of the Wexner Foundation, which was founded by Ohio philanthropist Les Wexner in the 1980s to focus on the development of Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America, and public leaders in Israel. Moses will visit here as one of five speakers at FEDtalks, the opening event of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign, on Sept. 13.

The Wexner Foundation has an upcoming summit on civil discourse and the topic permeates everything the organization does.

“The topic is of particular interest to us because, built into the fabric of all the programs that we run for leaders is the element of diversity,” he told the Independent in a telephone interview. “We have, since the very beginning of our work, always been very clear that we serve the entire Jewish people and the entire state of Israel and that the leaders who go through the programs that we run will be stronger and better leaders for having encountered those with different viewpoints, and learn from them. It’s actually long been part of the secret sauce of what makes our program successful … that we’ve managed to be able to bring together people who disagree with each other about important things but who share a common mission of one type or another. We’ve been able to bring them together and have the resulting cohorts be greater than the sum of their parts precisely because of that diversity.”

Nurturing an openness to diversity of opinion, particularly in the frequently contentious realm of Jewish and Israeli leadership, allows alumni of Wexner’s varied programs to bring some of that wisdom to the other circles of influence they occupy, he explained.

Inside and outside of the Jewish world, there are challenges and opportunities around civil discourse, Moses said.

“I am optimistic in the long run but realizing in the short run the hill that we have to climb is pretty steep,” he said. In the aftermath of Charlottesville and other conflicts, the chasm between the ideal and the real is evident.

“The ideal may be that everybody will be able to participate in conversations with people they disagree with and do so in the spirit of openness and learning and growth and not necessarily agree, but at least be able to occupy the same space and have the spirit of open-mindedness in their conversations and maybe get to better solutions because of talking with people who are speaking differently and so on,” he said. “That’s the ideal that we are working towards. The reality is that we have extremes on both ends. We have people whose adherence to their worldview and ideology is so extreme and so rigid that they have no interest in, nor ability to, engage in conversation – civil conversation – with people they disagree with.”

Focusing on these extremes is not a recipe for success, said Moses.

“We have to start by not focusing on them, [and] actually focus on those in the middle of the bell curve who may be on one side or another of any given ideological divide, but who are not closed off entirely to engaging with people they disagree [with],” he said. “I think the vast majority of North American Jews, if you want to talk about the universe that we are mostly influencing, are mostly in the middle of that bell curve somewhere. They are not extremists and [are] candidates for the kind of experiences that can enrich them, and enrich our community, by bringing people together who disagree in the right way.”

Providing people with the tools to express themselves and to listen to those with whom they disagree is an art, not a science, and Moses acknowledges he doesn’t have the silver bullet. But working toward civil discourse may be more urgent now, in the age of social media.

“When conversation is left to its own devices, especially in an era of social media, we often lead with less than our best selves,” said Moses, dryly. “So, having a structure within which to safely and carefully and slowly approach sensitive topics is really important. Letting it unfold organically, as it often does in social media is, in many cases, a recipe for miscommunication and breakdown of civil discourse.”

Bad experiences on social media, Moses fears, have actually made people more wary of having potentially difficult conversations in person.

“They are more hesitant to have conversations in person because they’ve seen online how quickly it can devolve into personal attacks or other really uncomfortable and difficult situations,” he said. “I think we are encountering people we disagree with all the time but I feel like we’re actually talking to them less because we feel we have nothing to talk about. We don’t know how to start those conversations, or we have had them end badly. We’ve had personal relationships damaged and much of that damage has happened online because things happen more quickly and at a greater distance. So, face-to-face conversation is suffering as a result.”

The essence of his message to the Vancouver audience will be that struggling to communicate civilly is not a new phenomenon, but it is made more urgent by contemporary developments.

“This problem is not new – it’s been part of our community’s challenge for centuries,” he said. “At the same time, we are in a moment where, because of a combination of a lot of these factors, it’s a crisis, you have a level of urgency that it may not have had before. I want to make the point that, although unhealthy disagreement has a long history in Jewish life, we also have baked into the fabric of our tradition amazing resources and a time-tested recipe for creating a culture of dissent that allows us to engage in a healthy way as a community. I’d like to address some of the ways we can use those principles from our tradition and from our history, sort of repurpose them for the 21st century, and create a new model for how we can rebuild that culture of healthy dissent using our own DNA and adapting it to our day.”

Before becoming vice-president of the Wexner Foundation, Moses was head of the Wexner Heritage Program. Originally created as a stand-alone foundation, and now based within the larger foundation, the Wexner Heritage Program’s mission is “to expand the vision of Jewish volunteer leaders, deepen their Jewish knowledge and confidence, and inspire them to exercise transformative leadership in the Jewish community.”

“As the director of that program for many years,” he said, “I worked with Jewish communities across North America to identify and then train volunteer leaders – high potential, promising, up-and-coming volunteer Jewish leaders who engage in a two-year program of study of Jewish history and Jewish thought and also of Jewish leadership. We basically are investing in these leaders to give them knowledge and inspiration to go back to their Jewish communal volunteer work with broader vision, more confidence, a deeper network and a sort of bolder vision of what the Jewish future can be and their own sense of responsibility for bringing us toward that future.”

There are several connections between the Wexner Foundation and other speakers at FEDtalks, Moses noted. Also at the Chan Centre podium will be Eric Fingerhut, president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, of which the Wexner family has been very supportive. He also noted that Ruth Wasserman Lande, another speaker (profiled in the Independent Aug. 18), is a Wexner alumna.

Moses has a request for the Vancouver audience: “Judge me kindly if I’m sharing the stage with Ruth, who is an extraordinarily impressive and charming person.”

For the full speaker list and to purchase tickets, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Tzedakah not charity

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin will be in Vancouver for FEDtalks on Sept. 13. (photo from HarperCollins)

A group of elderly retired men routinely gather in a Tel Aviv coffee shop and talk about current events. Given the world situation, their chats tend to be very downbeat. One day, one of the men in the group declares, “I am an optimist.”

His friends look at him in puzzlement and one of them asks, “You’re an optimist? So why do you look so worried?” And the man replies, “You think it’s easy to be an optimist?”

This is a joke Rabbi Joseph Telushkin tells when he speaks about Jewish humour – a topic on which he literally wrote the book. It also sums up his response to a question posed by the Jewish Independent in a recent telephone interview.

Telushkin is the author of more than a dozen books, including the two-volume A Code of Jewish Ethics, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History and The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living. He is routinely cited as one of North America’s most engaging thinkers and writers on Jewish topics and he has devoted his life to Jewish education.

“I am by nature an optimist,” he said, explaining that his study of Jewish history inspires pessimism, but Judaism’s promise of messianic redemption makes him an optimist. “Hence, I end up as an optimist with a worried look on my face,” he said.

Telushkin is one of five leading thinkers – originally there were four scheduled – who will speak at FEDtalks, the kickoff of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign next month.

Telushkin’s lifetime devoted to Jewish education was motivated in part by his concern that Jewish religious devotion tended to emphasize ritual observances “as if ethics were necessary, but sort of an extracurricular activity.”

Judaism, he said, has important and uplifting rituals, such as Shabbat and the observance of the holidays. “But there are these incredible insights in Judaism that apply to us in every day of our lives.” That is why he wrote The Book of Jewish Values, which is an exploration of ideas and lessons that can be applied day after day.

Exploring these ideas, he said, can ameliorate some of the challenges facing the Jewish people, such as assimilation and intermarriage.

“If two percent of Jews were intermarrying, you could make a big fight and just do everything in your power to stop intermarriage,” said the rabbi. “Once you’re dealing with intermarriage rates approaching 50%, you can either write off the future of the Jewish people … or you can say, guess what, Judaism has things to teach Jews and non-Jews. If Judaism has something to offer people, it can offer it to non-Jews as well. That’s the role that Jewish education can play. We can model values that people can look at and feel enriched by.”

If Jewishness plays a central role in one’s life, Telushkin said, a person should want to share that with a spouse and model Judaism “in a way that would also make them want to share in Judaism.”

With Dennis Prager, Telushkin wrote the book Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism. The provocative thesis suggests that something particular about Jews inspires Jew-hatred; that Jews bring it upon themselves.

“Antisemitism, we argue, is ultimately a reaction to Judaism and its values,” Telushkin said, “to the Jewish concept of God, which denied the gods of the others, to the Jewish concept of law.”

The centrality of education in the Jewish tradition has led to personal and collective successes that, in turn, have inspired jealousy, he continued. This jealousy leads to antisemitism and it is indeed, Telushkin said, something inherent in Judaism that provokes this response.

“The reason Jews have succeeded, often much more than their neighbours, is because Judaism entered the world with a demand that no other religion had made: that everyone has to be educated – and you shall teach it to your children – and that focus on education led to greater success.”

Antisemitism, he added, is also inspired by the unique theological relationship between God and the Jewish people.

“There is no other religion that fuses religion and peoplehood the same way,” he said. “When Ruth converts to Judaism in the Bible, she says, amech ami, your people shall be my people, Elohayich Elohai, your God shall be my God.”

This connection between religion and peoplehood also defined antisemitism and the way it morphed during the Age of Nationalism. Until around 1800, when the world in which Jews lived was primarily a religious one, antisemitism focused on the God of the Jews and the rejections of the prophets of Christianity and Islam.

“When nationalism emerged, antisemitism was increasingly focused on the people who were Jews,” Telushkin said. Conversion to another religion would no longer erase Jewish national identity, and membership in a peoplehood, a nation, became the focus of antisemitism. “Hence, the greatest antisemitism in the world today is anti-Zionism.”

The most catastrophic forms of tyranny in recent history, Telushkin added, were direct refutations of Jewish values.

“What was Nazism if not a rejection of all the values that Judaism was trying to bring into the world? What was Soviet communism if not a rejection of all the values the Jews bring into the world?” he said. “Nazism and communism were both radical repudiations of the Jewish notion of God. They held that the state had the highest value. That’s why Soviet dissidents used to chant the song ‘I Fear No One Except God,’ because, in a totalitarian society, people who fear God think that there is something higher than the government, higher than the party. Today, of course, there is the danger of Islamists, people who claim to believe in God but who certainly don’t believe in a God whose primary demand of humans is ethical behaviour.”

At FEDtalks, Telushkin will speak on the topic, Tzedakah is Not Charity. The word charity, he said, suggests something done voluntarily, out of love. “While the word tzedakah derives from the word justice, which suggests that it’s not only a voluntary thing to give tzedakah, it’s an act of justice, which means not doing so becomes an act of injustice,” he explained. “What I want to emphasize is that Judaism is rooted in the notion of not just volunteerism but also obligation.”

By example, he suggested comparing two types of diets. People go on diets, he said, usually for one of two reasons – to be physically more attractive or healthier – but few are able to maintain a strict diet for a month or longer without breaking it.

“Because, in the final analysis, it’s voluntary,” he said. “Everyone knows people who keep kosher, who can go for years without eating foods that are forbidden because they feel commanded … when we do something out of a sense of commandment, we do so with a greater sense of consistency.”

Charities often suffer during tough economic times, he added, because people see charity as voluntary. But, even during tough economic times, people pay their taxes because they are afraid of the consequences of not doing so.

“So the notion of mitzvah in

Judaism is a notion of commandment, something is obligatory,” he said. “I emphasize that point because people consider mitzvah a good deed, but it’s really a commandment.”

FEDtalks takes place at the Chan Centre on Sept. 13. For tickets and more information, visit jewishvancouver.com/fedtalks2017. The Independent has invited all of the speakers to be featured in advance of the event. Last week: Ruth Wasserman Lande. Next week: Rabbi Jay Henry Moses.