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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: Avie Estrin

Segal valued Yaffa’s work

Segal valued Yaffa’s work

Joseph Segal plants a fruit tree with Yaffa Housing president Avie Estrin and Tracy Penner, back in 2010. Says Estrin: “Like a tree bears fruit only when properly nurtured and cared for, so too must we take responsibility and care for the most fragile and vulnerable amongst us, if we are to be healthy and fruitful as a community.” (photo by Susan J. Katz)

Until the final hours of his life, Joseph Segal was continuing a life of philanthropic engagement. On the weekend before his passing, the 97-year-old Segal had a meeting with Avie Estrin, president of Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society, of which the Segal family are leading supporters.

According to Estrin, in that meeting, Segal “reiterated his commitment towards helping bring Yaffa House the profile and community support he understood was so necessary and deserving.”

Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society group homes provide food, shelter, programming and on-premises support, within the context of Jewish traditions, culture and practice, for up to 18 Jewish adults struggling with mental illness. Segal’s backing of the organization goes back to the beginning.

“Joe was always a great supporter of Yaffa, right from the early days when my father Aaron Estrin (z’l) met with him in 1999 to discuss a capital campaign to raise the money to build the very first Yaffa House,” Avie Estrin said. “Even after his death, Joseph Segal was true to his word. Rabbi [Andrew] Rosenblatt’s eulogy reminded us of this in Joe Segal’s final wishes: that the Jewish community recognize Yaffa Housing Society’s work, and donate to our cause. While we have lost a great friend and supporter in the passing of Joseph Segal, he will always be remembered as the catalyst for our first house, and a champion for our mission.”

Segal’s support helped Yaffa through its entire history, not least in recent years, when the pandemic added hurdles to the delivery of service.

“Because kosher meal provision is so central to maintaining the Jewish aspect of our home, it was a terrible blow to our operations when we suddenly lost our arrangement with the Louis Brier Home and Hospital in January 2022, after 20 years’ cooperation,” Estrin said. “Fortunately, we were able to cobble together a new arrangement whereby JFS’s [Jewish Family Services’] Kitchen provides two wonderful meals per week. Café 41, along with L’Chaim Adult Day Centre, have been generously preparing subsidized meals the rest of the week. Our small band of volunteers pick up the meals from these different meal providers and bring them to Yaffa House every day. It goes without saying, we can always use more volunteers.”

The organization is also seeking new board members, including a treasurer.

Yaffa Housing has a permanent contract with Vancouver Coastal Health to provide funding to staff the facility part-time, said Estrin. “But we still depend on donations and community support to supplement this. Frankly, it’s not enough. Jewish Federation has been indirectly contributing to Yaffa House’s staffing the last several years but it’s very difficult to plan into the future without knowing for sure those funds are going to be there the year after next.”

Yaffa has no paid staff other than a 20-hour-a-week in-house mental health support worker.

“We have no budget for an operations manager, executive director, or weekend or evening staff,” said Estrin. “In the end, it comes down to our volunteer board to pick up the slack, but it’s wearing. As Yaffa has grown and matured over the last two decades, so too has our board. In fact, one of Yaffa’s original founding board members still actively serves on our executive – my mother, Tzvia Estrin, I am very proud to say. But the old guard can’t forever sustain Yaffa’s daily operations and a paid management is long overdue.”

Estrin said the organization is vital for the community.

“Yaffa is unique in so far as it represents the only dedicated Jewish mental health group home in Canada, west of Toronto. Over the course of more than 20 years developing our in-house supportive model, we’ve attracted interest and attention across the country as well as internationally…. Despite this, Jews in Vancouver remain largely unaware of the essential service the Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society provides our community. Despite the more recent public awareness, mental health has historically taken a backseat relative to other more mainstream community health concerns. The sad reality is that unless mental illness has somehow touched you personally, it’s simply not on people’s radar. This speaks to why, after so many years, Yaffa House remains virtually the only option for Jewish families struggling with this issue.”

To donate, volunteer or learn more, visit yaffahouse.org.

Format ImagePosted on June 24, 2022June 22, 2022Author Pat JohnsonCategories LocalTags Avie Estrin, Joe Segal, Joseph Segal, mental health, Yaffa House, Yaffa Housing
Growth, change at Yaffa

Growth, change at Yaffa

Avie Estrin at Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society’s new laneway house. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Fred Dexall used to live in a group home in Kerrisdale. “I didn’t like it there,” he recalls. “The problem is they were very unfriendly. Everybody [kept] to themselves.”

When the Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society opened the first home for members of the Jewish community with mental health issues, in 2001, Dexall was the first resident. He remains there today.

“I’m happy here,” he said. There is more freedom to do one’s own thing than in the “dictatorial” group home he left, he said. Plus, the residents enjoy a Jewish lifestyle, celebrate the holidays, have Shabbat dinners on Fridays, attend the Bagel Club on Mondays and participate in other aspects of Jewish communal life. Every day, volunteers shuttle kosher meals from the kitchen at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital for Yaffa residents.

“Some of us have other disabilities besides mental illness,” said Drexall. “I have epilepsy and it’s all looked after.”

The organization is in the midst of a significant expansion. The house where Dexall has lived for 17 years is operated by Yaffa under a lease from the Vancouver Resource Society, a nonprofit providing accessible housing to people with disabilities, which owns the home in a quiet south Vancouver residential neighbourhood.

In 2010, Yaffa bought the house next door, welcoming more residents. Now, a sparkling new two-storey laneway house has just been completed behind the second home and renovations are taking place on the two houses to further increase capacity. Yaffa also has five units in a 51-unit building in Dunbar, which offers more intensive 24/7 care for residents. In an agreement with the Coast Foundation, B.C. Housing and the City of Vancouver, Yaffa has perpetual lease of these five spaces in return for funding a kosher kitchen in the facility.

Avie Estrin, the president of the society, is carrying on a family tradition. His parents, Aaron and Tzvia Estrin, were among the founding members of the Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society and Aaron was pivotal in raising the capital to launch the residential facility and purchase the second home. Their collective passion comes from firsthand recognition of the need. Avie Estrin’s brother, Marc, is a resident.

“I think it was front and centre for us because we had the awareness that many people – most people – simply aren’t privy to,” said Avie Estrin. “You see what people go through and the reality is, there was no other option. Remarkably, even though mental illness has been around forever, there was simply nothing in the Vancouver Jewish community to address it. Montreal had Jewish mental health housing facilities, Toronto had facilities. Vancouver had nothing.”

An ad hoc group of families came together to form the Vancouver Yaffa Housing Society, with no organizational support at the outset.

“We had to do something and it was meeting after meeting after meeting in somebody’s private home and, ultimately, they did make it happen,” said Estrin. “Once it got a little bit of momentum, then there was a little bit more attention. It got the ball rolling, but those first few years were very much uphill.”

Now, the facilities house 13 people. With the completed laneway house and upcoming renovations to the unfinished basement in the second house, the organization will welcome five more residents.

With 13 people in the south Vancouver homes, plus five in Dunbar, that makes 18, Estrin noted, “which is chai, which, again, is quite significant to us.”

photo - Avie Estrin outside of Yaffa’s new laneway house
Avie Estrin outside of Yaffa’s new laneway house. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Estrin said that, even with this expansion, the organization is only making a dent in the demand. With a rule of thumb that 10% of the population has a mental illness and half of those are acute, the Vancouver Jewish community, he estimates, probably has about 1,200 people who would meet Yaffa’s criteria for residency, which is based on DSM-IV Axis 1: “Schizophrenia, manic-depressive, things like that,” Estrin said.

He acknowledges the organization’s limits.

“We are doing what little we can,” he said, “and you might say, ‘well, it’s a little,’ but I would respond by saying something is better than nothing.” With the increase in capacity to 18, he reframed his response: “At this point, I would suggest to you that more is better than something.”

One of the other things the renovation project will ameliorate, Estrin hopes, is the gender imbalance. Because the nature of Yaffa House is a collective living model, there have been logistical challenges in mixing genders.

“By happenstance, we’ve become kind of an all-guys facility as things stand right now and it’s not because there are less women out there who are affected. There is an equal number of them,” he said. As the redevelopment continues, plans will incorporate accommodations for women, adjacent to the men’s accommodations, but with added privacy.

To complete the development and to support daily operations, Estrin is making a call for support, not only financial – though he stresses that is most welcome – but also for volunteers who can fill various capacities either as members of the board or in helping out at the homes.

For more information, visit yaffahouse.org.

 

Format ImagePosted on June 22, 2018July 2, 2018Author Pat JohnsonCategories LocalTags affordability, Avie Estrin, housing, mental health, Yaffa Housing
Estrin captures essentials

Estrin captures essentials

Avie Estrin in Colombia. (photo from Avie Estrin)

On Dec. 4, Avie Estrin’s solo show Blessed People opened at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery. Many of Estrin’s photos are taken in far-away places. There are Tibetan lamas gardening and a Yemenite bride in her fantastic headgear. An old man in a turban looks as if his perceptive eyes can see straight into your heart. A group of yeshivah students dance in the street. A young girl peeks out from behind a large heavy door. The door is ajar, and only fragments of the girl’s face are visible, but there is joy in her curious eyes. She has escaped her handlers, if only for awhile, and relishes her fleeting moments of freedom. Each picture tells a story.

In an interview with the Independent, Estrin talked about his life with photography, its challenges and rewards.

JI: What prompted you to mount an exhibit of travel photos? Do you shoot photos locally?

AE: Interesting question. I never understood this exhibit as a travel theme per se. While there are images from everywhere, a good number are taken right here, in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. On the other hand, if “travel” is what others see, I’m OK with that. I can’t dictate what the show is about, since in the end it’s about what you see, not what I think I saw. I would only say that for me, it’s about real people, it’s about real life. It’s about all of us.

JI: Tell me about this show.

AE: The photos span from the early ’90s to as recently as six months ago. Photos were taken with an array of different cameras, from an old-fashioned SLR to early digitals, but nothing more modern than 2004. While I was always very particular about quality, my equipment is modest and minimal.

Photos range from hiking the Himalayas to horse trekking the Andes and Amazon basin, to more domestic venues right here in Vancouver. I could go on about harrowing experiences forging flooded rivers on horseback in Ecuador or negotiating at gunpoint with Colombian guerilla in the outback. While it makes for great storytelling, the real point is that, by and large, my experiences were joy-filled encounters with gracious peoples from across cultures, people who embraced me, brought me into their homes and shared with me the little they had. I hope the exhibit illuminates this sentiment in some small way.

JI: What do you look for in a frame?

AE: Whatever the subject, I am looking for what is essential to it. I don’t for a moment deceive myself that whatever I am experiencing in a given moment can be accurately represented or reproduced in a static concrete format … with any degree of authenticity. But if I can capture just a fragment of whatever the catalyst in that ephemeral moment, that indefinable but quintessential essence of a thing, then maybe I have done it some justice.

JI: Is there a connection between photography and your profession?

AE: It’s been said before, “all things are connected.” When we attempt to compartmentalize our lives, we are merely hanging veils between our bedrooms. The common thread is not so much what we do but how we do it.

JI: You write poetry, too. Are your poems and your photos linked?

AE: To answer this question I would simply recommend going to the exhibit, seeing the work, reading the poems, and then you decide.

JI: Do you ever use Photoshop?

AE: Photoshop? What’s that? Seriously, without getting too technical or mundane, there is no such thing as “untouched” digital photography. The moment you take a jpeg image with your point and shoot, your camera’s firmware is instantly doing a circus act to compress that eight mega-pixel shot you took down to a one or three megabyte image. Aside from losing at least 60 percent of the original image data, you are also letting your camera indiscriminately dictate what 60 percent to throw away. Even in raw format, there is no getting away from post-processing. For better or worse, the days of “untouched” photography are gone forever.

JI: Do you give copies of your photos to your subjects and, if so, do you offer them free of charge?

AE: Various images in Blessed People were taken in the pre-digital era, so showing people immediate results was in many cases not an option. I had a strict practice of sending people hard copies of their images, but often practicalities. such as remoteness, non-existent postal services, etc., didn’t allow for this either. As to charging people for the privilege of capturing their image … isn’t there something in halachah against that? There should be.

JI: What are the biggest challenges and rewards of your work?

AE: I have no idea what a real travel photographer does. For me though, doing is reward in and of itself. Doing without intentionality isn’t “doing” at all. It’s merely a happening. And intentionality implies challenge; otherwise, it would be a redundant endeavor. I love challenge. I love to do.

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

Format ImagePosted on December 12, 2014December 11, 2014Author Olga LivshinCategories Visual ArtsTags Avie Estrin, photography, Zack Gallery
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