COVID-19 – Page 2

Christmas Carol goes online

David Adams as Scrooge and Scotia Browner as Tiny Tim in Metro Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol – The Radio Play. (photo by Nicol Spinola)

Metro Theatre was all set to provide socially distanced, safety-first live performances of A Christmas Carol – The Radio Play this month. But then the provincial restrictions on gatherings came down, and the struggling theatre company had to cancel its in-theatre run. But the production team used what holiday spirit it had to film the show and an online version will be available for viewers to watch from Dec. 21 through Jan. 3.

“We are fortunate to have our talented friends Nico Dicecco and [playwright] Erik Gow film the show and put together a beautiful digital stream of it that is available by donation,” stage manager Kat Palmer told the Independent.

Palmer has had a few shows canceled since the pandemic hit. “Right at the beginning of COVID,” she said, “I was in rehearsals for a sweet little concert Wendy Bross Stuart put together called With a Song in My Heart. I was also looking forward to Hello Dolly! at Theatre Under the Stars. And, most importantly, my company, Raincity Theatre, was gearing up for our production of Cabaret. Obviously, intimate, site-specific theatre is not possible during COVID.”

But A Christmas Carol – The Radio Play was created with COVID-19 protocols in mind. The theatre is a large space, enough for patrons to be distanced from one another. “Even the set was designed to keep actors more than six feet apart at all times,” said Palmer. In rehearsals, every cast member arrived masked and wore their mask until they were in their show spacing, she said. For the stage show, they were ready with two understudies, prepared to go on, lest “any actor wake up with any sort of tickle in their throat.”

But those plans went for naught when, last month, large public gatherings were prohibited and the show, which was to open Dec. 3, was delayed to organize the online version.

“It is no surprise that COVID has deeply impacted our arts community,” said director Chris Adams. “The Metro Theatre is a not-for-profit theatre company that relies on ticket sales to get by. Once a thriving arts hub in a former movie-house, Metro has been hit hard by COVID restrictions that have seriously impacted their revenue. The Metro also rents out their space to schools and dance companies over the quieter spring/summer months but, due to our new reality, that was also impossible this year. The Metro Theatre is at risk of closing its doors.”

Nonetheless, the show is also raising money for the charity Backpack Buddies.

“When Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, charitable giving soared overnight,” said Palmer. “The story has forever changed how we celebrate the holiday season and reminds us of the importance of generosity. It is in this spirit that the Metro always selects a charity to support each year at Christmas.

“Early in the show, we meet Abigail – an orphan who speaks of food insecurity. It is shocking to find parallels between children today and the Dickensian era. British Columbia has one of the highest child poverty rates in Canada, with 20% of children living below the poverty line. The Backpack Buddies program provides backpacks of food to children in need so that they do not go hungry over the weekend.”

A Christmas Carol – The Radio Play is an original work by writer Gow, based on the Charles Dickens novel, of course.

“With Christmas Carol, there is an expected order that ghosts appear. Erik has decided to shake it up,”

said Adams. “There are also some scenes that do not appear in the book that add an extra level of character development.”

The radio play stars David Adams as Ebeneezer Scrooge, who meets all the characters in A Christmas Carol, “from Bob Cratchit to Jacob Marley, but with only six actors creating and voicing over 40 of the beloved characters,” reads the play’s description. Joining David Adams “on stage” will be Roger Monk, Jill Raymond, Chris Ward, Emilia Michalowska and Scotia Browner. The COVID covers were Jim Stewart and Courtney Shields, who is also the assistant director of the production.

“All of our actors have created a character for their narrator in addition to playing every character in the piece,” said Palmer. “For the majority of our performers, they play four or five characters each. For the simplicity of the storytelling, David plays Scrooge but has also created a very unique and distinct character for his narrator. While David has played many Jewish characters, like the Merchant of Venice, Tevye and Fagin, he is not Jewish himself. Although, he has had to learn some Yiddish for roles from time to time.”

As for being a Jewish person working on a Christmas play, Palmer said, “At this time of year, I sometimes feel like Scrooge. I despise the commercialism of the holiday season, how it seems to consume the entire month of December and don’t get me started on cheesy Christmas movies. But, as a Jewish person working on this show, it is easy to see Jewish values on every page of the script. Yes, A Christmas Carol takes place at Christmas but, in many ways, A Christmas Carol is really a story of teshuvah, tzedakah and tikkun olam…. It’s a story that celebrates kindness, charity and human transformation – ideals that all parents hope to instil in their children – ideals that have deep roots in Jewish tradition. Don’t we all want to believe even the worst among us has a core of goodness?”

The filmed version of A Christmas Carol – The Radio Play is available by donation at metrotheatre.com.

Orchestra faces crises

Members of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay, are among those helping provide relief services during COVID-19 and after a devastating fire. (photo from IBB)

Times are tough for everyone, but that hasn’t stopped one Vancouver group from organizing an urgent fundraising drive to support an orchestra that is a testament to the transformative power of music.

Instruments Beyond Borders (IBB) is a registered Vancouver-based charity that supports music education in disadvantaged communities. The group is raising funds to support the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay (aka the Landfill Harmonic) as they are dealing with two major crises: not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but a devastating fire in the landfill, next to which they reside.

Since 2014, IBB has delivered donated instruments and funds to the Recycled Orchestra, which was borne out of a desire to teach music to eager children living in the marginalized landfill community of Cateura.

photo - Compounding the hardships wrought by the pandemic, the Cateura landfill recently suffered a major fire, resulting in the destruction of many of the orchestra families’ homes — Compounding the hardships wrought by the pandemic, the Cateura landfill recently suffered a major fire, resulting in the destruction of many of the orchestra families’ homes. *(photo from IBB)*

The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura is internationally renowned, performing all over the world with their instruments made out of recycled materials from the neighbouring landfill. They deliver a resounding message of environmental stewardship and hope and endurance in the face of poverty.

The pandemic has suspended the capacity of the orchestra to travel internationally – which was a major source of their revenue. Compounding the hardships wrought by the pandemic, the Cateura landfill recently suffered a major fire, resulting in the destruction of many of the orchestra families’ homes. Consequently, this has all but eliminated the opportunity of the parents to derive much-needed income from the gathering of saleable recyclables from the landfill.

photo - The students of the Recycled Orchestra, along with the Orchestra’s Parents Association, have become the hub of relief services — The students of the Recycled Orchestra, along with the Orchestra’s Parents Association, have become the hub of relief services. *(photo from IBB)*

In 2014, IBB donated $10,000 towards the building of a music school in Cateura. Fortunately, the school was not damaged by the fire, and today it is temporarily being used as a food relief centre – for the preparation and distribution of upwards of 5,000 meals daily to the devastated local community. Incredibly, the students of the Recycled Orchestra, along with the Orchestra’s Parents Association, have become the hub of relief services.

In the midst of these crises, Favio Chavez, the orchestra’s founder and director, is determined to keep both the orchestra and the hope of music alive, and to support the orchestra’s education program.

The IBB fundraising drive aims to assist the orchestra recover from these dire circumstances. To jumpstart this urgent appeal, the Ben and Esther Dayson Charitable Foundation has pledged to match the first $5,000 donated.

The Recycled Orchestra was the subject of an award-winning 2016 feature film Landfill Harmonic, the trailer for which can be watched on YouTube. Donations can be made at instrumentsbeyondborders.org.

That glitter gets everywhere

I’ve been thinking about Caillou, a TV show for toddlers and preschoolers. It’s been on television since 1997. Caillou is a little bald French-Canadian kid. He’s broadcast in both French and English, and offers gentle lessons to kids everywhere. My twins watched a lot of Caillou.

The episode I’ve been remembering offers something basic that we should all know. The summary: Caillou’s doing art at preschool with glitter. When he finishes, he doesn’t clean up or wash his hands. The rest of the episode shows off exactly where the glitter ends up, from light switches to friends’ bodies to snack and the table and chairs. That’s why it’s so important to wash your hands after playing with glitter.

The glitter message sticks with kids. It’s also a remarkably easy way to explain germ theory – useful during a pandemic. Glitter, like germs, gets everywhere.

As an early glitter fan, I found this lesson powerful. As a kid, I had several surgeries for birth defects by the time I was 5. I was in the hospital a lot. During one recovery period, I was brought to a big sunny room in the pediatrics ward to do arts and crafts, including glitter, which I loved. My mother still jokes about this more than 40 years later – remembering the day the surgeon came to check my incisions. My mom likely hovered, anxious, as he checked my abdomen and sides. He looked up and grinned when she asked how things were healing. He said things were coming along nicely and were “very colourful!”

What does this have to do with Judaism? I’ve been studying Tractate Pesachim as part of my pursuit of Daf Yomi (a page of Talmud a day). Pesachim’s topic is Passover. In Pesachim 15, the issue is how to burn all the chametz (leavened bread) that we get rid of right before the holiday. It’s considered “impure.”

Impurity here is often defined as something “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” There are many reasons why something is considered impure. The questions the rabbis are weighing are interesting. They wonder, “Is it OK to burn two different kinds of impure things together?” They imagine the Temple priests having to get rid of all this and finish cleaning by the start of the holiday.

The other impure things brought up – and this rabbinic impurity topic is complex – are pigul and nottar, two categories of sacrificial meats that have gone wrong. Jane Shapiro, in introducing this issue on the My Jewish Learning website, explains that pigul is something sacrificed “with improper thought.” That is, something sacrificed in error; that is, the priest thought it was to be burnt or eaten at the wrong time. Nottar was an offering made at the right time and not eaten – basically, leftovers, which are then considered impure. There’s common sense in this. Sometimes we cook things incorrectly (pigul) or, lacking refrigeration, we might just have to get rid of leftovers (nottar) to avoid food poisoning. In these cases, the impurity’s a mess-up. It’s not an unclean animal, another source of impurity, but, rather, a human mistake that leads to the disposing of something.

As the rabbis sort through what can be burned together, they examine how one kind of impurity causes a first-degree impurity, which, if it touches something else, becomes a second or a third degree of impurity. Something in this discussion reminded me of glitter and, then, germ theory.

Even the most careful person can be surprised by a sneeze, or get too close to someone when they are supposed to be social distancing. In fact, keeping oneself safe from invisible germs, like the coronavirus, can be difficult. Even healthcare workers, swathed in protective equipment, can slip up. In a sense, this rabbinic concept of impurity is a lot like catching germs. If we accidently mix items or people inappropriately, we pass along impurity, or germs.

If we visualize germs like Caillou’s glitter or my preschooler hospital craft project, we better understand how tricky a time we’re in. We’re still facing a long haul.

Yes, we hear a vaccine is on its way, but we don’t yet know how long it will take for enough Canadians to be vaccinated. We don’t know how effective the vaccine will be, or if enough people will be willing to take it. Meanwhile, COVID-19 is spreading just like that glitter. It’s everywhere that we are, and it’s scary. There’s every chance that we might encounter the virus through an inadvertent slip up (like the rabbinic impurity of pigul or nottar) but, since it’s germs and not glitter, we won’t know until later. We must act as if we are impure because the virus isn’t visible.

The most poignant part of this whole complicated impurity narrative is that the rabbis just can’t figure it all out. They say more than once that we’ll just have to wait for the prophet Elijah to return to give us the right answers. Reading it, you can imagine their shoulders shrugging as they struggle with what they don’t know and can’t figure out.

Scientists and doctors everywhere are also figuring things out as they go. They have to learn to live with the mystery. We don’t know everything – about the pandemic, how it works, when it will end and about those germs that spread like glitter.

For most, 2020 has been a rocky year. As we turn towards the secular year 2021, it’s important to remember that a vaccine might not be an instant fix. We face the future much as the rabbis faced some of these difficult questions about impurity long ago, and the researchers do today. We don’t know all the answers. We must do our best, square our shoulders, and keep on keeping on.

Yet, every week, as we end Shabbat, we sing about Eliyahu (Elijah) and we welcome him to every Passover and every bris. It’s in yearning for Elijah that we find the faith to keep trying.

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2021! I hope your home celebrations are great – and without glitter!

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Views on various occupations

COVID-19 changed a lot of people’s perceptions as to what types of jobs are essential. Not only doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers are on the front lines, but so are retail clerks, maintenance workers, truck drivers and many others. In this context, it is interesting to think about what occupations, if any, have been promoted or praised in Judaism.

As it turns out, Jewish scholars gave work considerable attention. Talmudic sages advocated for working rather than living off charity. Indeed, this principle provides some food for thought for modern-day Israel, where many ultra-Orthodox do live off charity. According to a January 2020 report by Dr. Lee Cahaner and Dr. Gilad Malach for the Israel Democratic Institute, between the years 2003 and 2018, about 50% of ultra-Orthodox men aged 25-64 and 76% of women in the same age bracket worked.

Scholars had a great deal of respect for labour. The Talmud abhorred idleness and argues that it leads to mental illness and sexual immorality. (See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 59b, at jlaw.com/articles/idealoccupa.html.)

“Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Judah HaNasi would say: Beautiful is the study of Torah with the way of the world, for the toil of them both causes sin to be forgotten. Ultimately, all Torah study that is not accompanied with work is destined to cease and to cause sin.” (Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, 2:2). Midrash Rabbah Bereshit (Vayetze chapter) goes even further, saying that practising a craft saved lives.

Yet, the sages believed that being absorbed with making money is not the ideal for an individual. Again referring to the Pirkei Avot (4:10), Rabbi Meir asserted: “Rather limit your business activities and occupy yourself with the Torah instead.”

Historically, teachers were valued – but only to a point. The high priest Joshua ben Gamla (circa the first century CE) issued an opinion that “teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent.” Where the boy had a father, it was the father’s responsibility to make sure his son had a basic education. Significantly, between the third and the fifth century CE, providing the salary of the Torah and Mishnah teacher became a communal task. Even those without children contributed to the teacher’s wages.

But teachers were not fully trusted. The Mishnah of Tractate Kiddushin 82a teaches that a single man or single woman should not become a teacher. The Gemara explains that the rabbis worried that such a teacher might have an affair with a parent of one of the students.

On torahinmotion.org, Rabbi Jay Kelman contends that the Gemara initially suggests that the Mishnah is afraid that an unmarried teacher might molest his students, but then rejects this explanation, noting that molestation is not something we need to suspect happening. Kelman, however, says, “this is something which no longer can be said with any degree of certainty. What we can say with certainty is such a fear is warranted even with those who are married and that, while rare, when it occurs, the results are devastating and tragic.”

While on the subject of sexual misconduct in certain occupations, here is an idea that might resonate with the #MeToo movement: the Talmud lists certain precarious trades that require men to often be alone with women. For example, a male goldsmith who makes jewelry for women. Talmud scholars were uneasy that such a businessman would be tempted to sin.

Curiously, harsh words were said about doctors. Tractate Kiddushin 82a ends with this statement by Rabbi Yehudah: “The best of physicians deserves Gehenna.” Why do they deserve a damned place? An article on talmudology.com contends that the opinion was based either on the belief that doctors were haughty before G-d or the fact that their treatment sometimes killed the patient.

Even though Israeli citizens highly value their army, Shalom Sabar points out in a Forward video that, in Medieval Haggadot, the “bad son” was portrayed as a soldier. This was because, at the time, non-Jewish soldiers would come to kill Jews.

Sailors, on the other hand, “are mostly pious … with many a ship sinking, sailors were in constant fear causing most to be super honest in the hope that G-d would protect them.” As Kelman summarizes, there really are no atheists in the foxhole.

On myjewishlearning.com, Rabbi Jill Jacobs states that, since Mishnah Zeraim (Seeds) deals solely with agricultural issues, we have proof that Judaism emerged from an agriculturally based community. Yet, in the Torah, farmers get off to a really bad start. Early in Genesis, we learn that Cain was the first farmer. Notwithstanding, G-d refused to accept his offering, accepting only his brother Abel’s. Cain couldn’t accept this rejection. In a jealous rage, Cain killed his brother and hid what he had done. G-d, consequently, reduced Cain to a life of wandering.

At a time when, around the globe, people are learning more about the extreme misconduct of some police officers, it is worth looking further into the Torah to see what Deuteronomy 16:18 and later commentators wrote about the police. Deuteronomy points out that both judges and police should be appointed to govern the people with due justice. Drawing on various Jewish sources, Rabbi Jacobs divides the function of the Deuteronomy-based police into several specific, but integrated parts: the patroling police person who “reminds the public to obey the law”; the roving inspector who ensures fair pricing and compliance with local ordinances; the arresting police officer who, while assuming the person is innocent until judged guilty, nevertheless begins the judgment process by arresting the suspect; the bill collector police officer who extracts payment from the obligated party to give to the aggrieved party; and the police officer who is a leader in his/her community. From Jacob’s assessment on truah.org, it would appear that today’s police have what to improve, especially when it comes to trust-building measures.

Over the centuries, Jewish scholars have taken into account the fallibility of people engaged in certain occupations. With tremendous insight into human behaviour, our sages apparently realized progress is not always in a forward direction. We have a long way to go in (re)establishing the integrity that Jewish scholars outlined for certain professions.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

***

The abstract of the article “Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions or Minorities?” (The Journal of Economic History 65, no. 4 [2005]), Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein reads: “Before the eighth-ninth centuries CE, most Jews, like the rest of the population, were farmers. With the establishment of the Muslim Empire, almost all Jews entered urban occupations

despite no restrictions prohibiting them from remaining in agriculture. This occupational selection remained their distinctive mark thereafter. Our thesis is that this transition away from agriculture into crafts and trade was the outcome of their widespread literacy, prompted by a religious and educational reform in Judaism in the first and second centuries CE, which gave them a comparative advantage in urban, skilled occupations.”

The full article is available at jstor.org.

– DRF

Gift of doing nothing at all

Recently, one of my twins convinced me we needed to look at an online mindfulness app. It featured ocean beaches, a sunset, a waterfall, a forest, a rainstorm …. you get the picture. The notion was that one could stare at each image, take deep cleansing breaths and feel restored. Except, with the twins crowding my iPad screen, within moments we had hopped from one view to the next. The app kicked us out, as we had “seen” all its tranquil views. What was supposed to be meditative became a crazed, erratic two-minute virtual tour of all the outdoors, at once. Oops. That didn’t work out right.

There’s a lot of discussion online and in the media about how the pandemic has caused mental health issues because people are lonely, restless and bored, and many have a hard time with restrictions and lockdown. This may well be true for many people.

For those of us with kids, it feels more like a Ferris wheel/merry-go-round mash-up, where both rides have the music playing, it’s all set on a fast speed and there’s NO. WAY. TO. GET. OFF. We’re crazy busy staying home. We chose remote schooling for safety. This gives no breaks from parenting, and no way to get all the work done. My house is a mess. The housework and cooking? – seriously out of control.

My parents, living alone in Virginia, have an opposite experience. Due to their age and health, they, too, are staying home to stay safe, with lots of time, not enough socializing in person, feeling adrift without their usual travel plans and volunteer activities.

Our extended family is far away and cannot help us in Winnipeg. We can’t support them in person either, so we’ve had a long stretch of time, including holidays, on our own. Chanukah won’t be different. My parents are sending fun toys in the mail, ordered online, to keep the kids busy during the hours and hours ahead indoors this winter, which we will appreciate, whenever they arrive.

We’ve also been planning way in advance. When you celebrate Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, etc., on your own as a nuclear family, it takes more thought to make it special. Giving ourselves time to prepare has meant we have had some amazing meals and meaningful home-based observances, without going farther than our back deck sukkah.

My husband and I prepared for Chanukah by worrying if we had enough candles or if we had to shop for them – were Chanukah candles considered essential by the Manitoba government? To our relief, unless the kids insist on lighting all the chanukiyot at once, we’re fine. We’ve got plenty left over from last year, no need to go out and buy more. This, and internet ordering for kids, has been the extent of our preparations.

My twins, however, started the Chanukah countdown much earlier than usual. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I discovered they were making paper chains and complicated construction paper cut-outs of dreidels, jugs of oil, a menorah, and more. The cut-outs were carefully hung up on our living room’s French doors – approximately 17 days before the first candles would be lit. Anticipation makes a holiday special.

However, the gift I love the absolute best these days won’t come on Chanukah. It’s Shabbat, which happens every week. It’s an opportunity to just sit on the couch. We stream services and I cook ahead so there’s nothing to do on Saturday. We sometimes magically find take-out appearing on the table Saturday night, when the leftovers don’t seem appealing. We’re not shomer Shabbat, and I’ve been known to disappear for a cozy chair and some knitting or to spend time with my sewing machine to deepen my relaxation, but Jewish traditional practice was really onto something with Shabbat.

Since having twins – they are now 9 years old – I’ve had people ask what would help, if I could have absolutely anything. I’d say: going to a quiet place in the country, alone, with a big bed with clean white sheets, lots of good food prepared, and time to just sleep, eat, read and hang out by myself. In reality, I felt that leaving my household for any length of time might result in worse chaos when I returned. My husband is well-intended, but an absentminded professor. He often forgets to feed the kids snack or the dog dinner if I don’t remind him over and over.

However, Shabbat at our house has become that oasis, where I get the chance to just be. It’s not the sunset, waterfall, rainfall, forest walk, ocean waves vision that the mindfulness app thinks we need. Not at all. It’s nothing idyllic – or tidy – but it’s a time to step away from social media, the chores, the craziness, and just be. Nowadays, I don’t have to get everyone dressed up for Shabbat services. I can’t invite guests or stress about getting a fancy meal made. I have many fewer work deadlines. And while, yes, there are some negatives in that, there’s a whole lot of positives, too.

We’re facing so many things that aren’t like anything we’ve experienced before. The unexpected can be scary. It can also be an amazing opportunity to let go, embrace and learn something different. Shabbat has long been my favourite holiday, but it took a pandemic for me to settle even more fully into one day a week of rest.

Turns out I don’t need to gaze at a mindfulness app to unwind. I’ll stick with making a huge Shabbat dinner, sleeping (late!) until 8 a.m., and participating in services from the couch, surrounded by the kids’ Lego and Playmobil congregation.

This year might be a chance to discover new gifts within this very challenging experience. Mine might be the best thing I could imagine – doing nothing at all.

Making sense of chaos?

Earlier this fall, the National Film Board of Canada released the short Come to your senses, co-created Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis. It is part of NFB’s The Curve, an online series “featuring the talents of 40 creators and filmmakers, giving a voice to millions whose lives have been touched by COVID-19.”

Eisen, a member of the Jewish community, is an animation filmmaker and visual artist, while Jarvis is a writer and director. Both women are based in Vancouver and have worked together before.

“We met in 2015, when Alicia was in pre-production on her first short film, Old Man,” they co-wrote in an email interview with the Independent. “A mutual friend introduced us, as he knew that Sophie was interested in learning more about stop-motion. It turned out that we live across the street from each other, and a wonderful friendship was formed.

“We first worked together on a short film for kids that blended live action (Sophie’s arena) with stop-motion (Alicia’s arena) and was basically a vessel for us to learn more about each other’s practice and to test the waters of a working relationship. It was an intense experience that threw every obstacle at us, and we came out stronger and ready for more. Which leads us to the stop-motion short film we are currently working on with the National Film Board, Zeb’s Spider.”

When their work was interrupted by the pandemic back in March, they said, “It was very disorienting to have that full-time routine stopped cold, so, when the NFB offered us the opportunity to contribute to their pandemic series, The Curve, it was a blessing to focus our creative energy into something new, and completely different from anything we have ever created before.”

Using the format of a group Zoom, Come to your senses explores the question, “Is the human need to make sense of chaos an inherently chaotic pursuit?”

“The five senses can be a somewhat intangible subject to explore, especially through film (which is an audiovisual medium). We aimed to evoke the other three senses with these limitations, which meant that we had to get a little weird with imagery and sound,” said Eisen and Jarvis. “A large part of our process was to let our intuition guide us; instead of planning what footage we needed to collect to complete the film, we issued open guidelines to ourselves and our artistic collaborators and worked with what we received…. It was exciting to see the patterns and instincts that were shared amongst the group (who were all working remotely from each other), and these similarities helped guide our process into the next phase: the edit.

“Our editor, Kane Stewart, was integral to helping organize this experimental film and to creating what you see in the final cut. We gave him direction on the tone and the arc, and detailed notes on the material that we wanted to include, but ultimately let him organize the material with fresh eyes. Our sound designer, Eva Madden, took the core intention of the project and brought her own spin to the film, which was exciting. The score really sets a tone, and we were thrilled to work with Yu Su, whose personal work we admire.”

The film is voiced by an AI voice-generator, said Eisen and Jarvis. “This way, we could manipulate the speed of the voice and revel in the tech restrictions that come with that choice (which are mirrored in the group video call). We landed on a voice named Tessa, who struck the right tone – gentle but commanding, like a self-help audiobook.”

The artists collaborating on the film were people with whom Eisen and Jarvis had worked over the years: Mona Fani, Suzanne Friesen, Meredith Hama-Brown, Charlie Hannah, Kara Hornland, Arggy Jenati and Janessa St. Pierre.

“We gave everybody a list of creative prompts designed to be completed within two days … things like ‘choose a spherical item from your home and interact with it using each of your five senses.’ We asked each person to approach each prompt with a design sensibility informed by our mood board, but to ultimately bring their own flair and artistry to it, so what we received from each person was unique, yet fit into the collage that ultimately makes the film.”

To watch the short, visit nfb.ca/film/come-to-your-senses.

Breathing life into patients

Dr. Liran Levy, left, and Dr. Milton Saute. (photo from IMP)

Sheba Medical Centre in Israel and Canada’s Toronto General Hospital are collaborating to advance the field of lung transplantation in Israel and to enhance medical education in both countries.

In the last year, Sheba’s Institute of Pulmonary Medicine has established a new lung transplant program, headed jointly by Dr. Liran Levy – who, in 2019, completed four years of clinical, research and surgical training at Toronto General – together with surgeon Dr. Milton Saute, an expert in lung transplantation. According to Sheba’s head of pulmonary medicine, Dr. Amir Onn, collaboration with Toronto General will “put Sheba on the map of lung transplantation,” due, in large part, to revolutionary technology that can increase the number of donor lungs by almost 50%.

Toronto General is renowned for having performed the world’s first successful lung transplant, in 1983. They have since expanded their lung transplantation program, both clinically and in terms of research. One of the most groundbreaking discoveries was made in 2013 by Dr. Marcelo Cypel, a staff thoracic surgeon at Toronto General and director of their ECLS (extracorporeal life-support) program. This technique, said Cypel, “effected a change in paradigm for how we do lung transplants.”

photo - Dr. Amir Onn, left, and Dr. Marcelo Cypel — Dr. Amir Onn, left, and Dr. Marcelo Cypel. *(photo from IMP)*

The innovation, called ex vivo lung prefusion (EVLP), doubles the amount of time that the donor lungs can remain outside of the body. “Previously, donor lungs could be kept for only six to eight hours,” Cypel explained. “Patients had to uproot their lives to live near a transplant centre, and staff had to race against the clock to transfer the organ from the donor to the recipient, often forced to perform the complex surgery in the middle of the night.”

The valuable hours gained don’t just optimize the logistics of the operation, they actually allow for recovery of the organ itself.

“As a rule, over 80% of donor lungs are unsuitable for lung transplantation, due to poor functioning, infection, blood clots or injury,” said Cypel. By pumping a solution of oxygen, proteins and nutrients into the injured donor lungs, the EVLP system enables injured cells to heal themselves, or to be prepared for more sophisticated repair techniques. “The method doubled the number of lung transplants performed in Toronto in the last seven years,” he said.

With the help of Toronto General, Saute estimated that the EVLP program will become operational at Sheba by the middle of 2021. “We anticipate that [EVLP] will make a huge impact and significantly increase the pool of donors for lung transplantation in Israel, especially now, during COVID, with donors reduced by more than 50%,” he said.

According to Cypel, some of the reasons for the reduction in donor lungs during the pandemic include deaths that occur at home, due to reluctance of patients to seek hospital care, and the fewer car accidents (whose victims supply donor lungs) that occur while populations are in lockdown.

Collaboration will encompass clinical care, as well, including consultations regarding challenging patients, as well an exchange of trainees, in both directions. “We hope to send members of our team to Sheba to learn from their unique expertise,” Cypel said.

Onn added that COVID-19 has created new potential candidates for lung transplant. He is currently treating patients in Sheba’s designated post-COVID clinic who present with an unusual combination of symptoms – shortness of breath, chest pain and forgetfulness. Some, he said, have sustained irrevocable damage to the lungs.

A growing population of “COVID-19 survivors,” are being referred to the lung transplant centre. “We are in the process of identifying those who may be potential transplant cases,” said Levy.

Levy remarked that he is looking forward to working with his former colleagues and mentors from Toronto General. Looking back on his years spent in Canada with his wife and four children, he admitted that it was hard to leave. “The Jewish community made us feel very much at home, and we still miss Toronto,” he said. “But I think we have a very important mission here in Israel.”

When the teams from both hospitals met one year ago to discuss collaboration, Cypel and Saute were delighted to discover that they both hail from the same city in southern Brazil. “Although we didn’t meet in Brazil, Dr. Saute told me that he knew my grandparents quite well, and that was very emotional for me,” Cypel shared. Saute added that they both had the same mentor in thoracic surgery and, thus, “We have the same ideas.”

The scope of research and complexity of cases at Toronto General have made it a national and international source for discovery, education and patient care. Sheba Medical Centre, home to the ARC Innovation Centre, and where 25% of all clinical research in Israel takes place, has likewise distinguished itself in patient care, particularly in the era of COVID-19. Patients in both countries, and worldwide, can look forward to the fruits of this collaboration.

– Courtesy International Marketing and Promotion (IMP)

Little hat store that could

SherlockS has a window display starring a two-foot-high teddy bear dressed like Sherlock Holmes. (photo by Micha Paul)

There is a small, magical hat store right in the heart of Jerusalem, called SherlockS. It’s not hard to find. Just walk along King George Street until you see a two-foot-high teddy bear dressed in a SherlockS deerstalker hat and Inverness cloak, holding a pipe in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, perched on a table in the display window.

SherlockS is packed with hundreds of hats for both men and women. The store specializes in hard-to-fit heads and carries hats by Stetson, Bailey, Kangol, Christys’ and many other quality hat companies. There are even Borsalinos, the kind the snazzy Italians wear. SherlockS is also the home of handmade hats by local milliners like Danielle Mazin and Justine. And SherlockS makes their own Panama hats, as well.

Owner Yaacov Peterseil decided to create this store after his dermatologist warned him about the damage the sun’s ultraviolet rays were doing to his head. “You must wear a hat outside in summer and winter,” said the doctor.

photo - Yaacov Peterseil is owner of SherlockS — Yaacov Peterseil is owner of SherlockS. *(photo by Micha Paul)*

“I was just looking for something to do, having left publishing,” Yaacov explained. “Could a hat store afford me the opportunity to help people by keeping the sun’s rays at bay and be financially rewarding, as well? I wondered. I had to try. So, in 2016, I opened SherlockS Hats in my garage. Before long, people came in droves to the store, which was way too small to hold both the hats and the people. So, I moved to Diskin Street, in an underground mall. But, soon, that store was too small, too. Finally, I moved to King George Street, where people could stop by, relax, get a cappuccino and a muffin, and even buy a hat.”

When Yaacov was choosing a name for his business, Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes were already taken. “So, I thought of SherlockS. SherlockS Hats has a nice ring to it. And there’s no need for an apostrophe,” he said.

Peterseil was born in 1946, in Salzburg, Austria, in a displaced persons camp. His family moved to the United States in 1949. Eventually, his father opened a wholesale clothing shop, selling ladies sweaters and T-shirts to all the big chains in New York.

“I worked with my dad for awhile,” said Yaacov. “It was there I developed a love of quality clothing.”

Yaacov believes that his varied business endeavours all led him to SherlockS Hats. He worked as a copywriter for Prentice-Hall, had his own byline in the Nassau Herald, taught journalism at the University of Michigan, was a speech writer for B’nai B’rith, founded Enjoy-A-Book Club, and owned K’tonton Book Store on Long Island. He also found time to get his rabbinic degree, and joined the rabbinate in the United States and in Newfoundland, where he taught Jewish studies at Memorial University.

In 1986, he, his wife Tamar (a family and sex therapist) and their (then) six children made aliyah. Once they settled in, Yaacov kept busy as public relations director for his mentor, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, and developed Pitspopany Press for Children.

It was while he was busy publishing Jewish children’s books at Pitspopany that Yaacov asked me to review some of their titles. Since then, our paths have crossed a number of times.

“One of my first hat purchases was the deerstalker hat,” said Yaacov. “It was made famous in 1891 when Sidney Paget illustrated one of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, putting a deerstalker hat on the detective. Today, I sell about 50 deerstalker hats a year in Israel.”

When COVID-19 forced him to keep his shop closed for weeks and months at a time, Yaacov took his store online. He created sherlockshats.com, which features a 3-D tour of his hat-filled store, as well as hundreds of hats from which to choose.

“I write two kinds of blogs for the website,” he said. “One is a story-type blog called The Adventures of the Mad Hatter. The blog tells the story of some of the strange and unusual things that happen in my hat store. The other blog gives a bit more practical information about hats and how to wear them. I’m writing one now on how to fit the hard-to-fit head.”

Next time you get to Israel, you’re invited to visit SherlockS at 31 King George. It’s not as famous as 221b Baker St. yet, but it’s getting there. And, if you want to talk hats with Yaacov, call him at 972-50-361-2342 or message him via the website.

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

Pandemic rouses memories

Simon Fraser University’s Prof. Lauren Faulkner Rossi, left, interviews child survivor Marie Doduck in a Zoom presentation Nov. 5. (screenshot)

For some survivors of the Holocaust, the COVID pandemic has brought back the traumas of the past. Marie Doduck spoke recently at a virtual event, recounting her survival story and her life in Canada, including her response to the initial lockdown in the spring. It is a response, she said, that is paralleled by many others in Vancouver’s group of child survivors of the Shoah.

Born in Brussels, the youngest of 11 children, Doduck spent most of her childhood hiding in orphanages, convents and strangers’ homes. In 2020, she found herself opening her front and back doors, reminding herself that she was free to go for a walk, yet haunted by the long-ago memory of hiding.

“It brought back a terrible time for us at the beginning of COVID,” she said during an interview that was webcast as part of Witnesses to History, a series presented by the Simon Fraser University department of history in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. “I know the other survivors feel the same way. I would say that was the hardest of all.”

When the war began, Doduck (then Mariette Rozen) was 4 years old. Her father died when she was a toddler and some of her older siblings were already married and had their own families. After the occupation of Belgium, those who remained at home set out on foot headed for Paris, where a sister lived, unaware that Paris, too, was under occupation. She remembers riding on the shoulders of her brother Henri and seeing what she thought was a magnificent sight.

“I saw this beautiful silver bird in the sky and I thought that was so beautiful,” Doduck recalled. It was surrounded by stars. “The next thing I know, I was flying into the ditch on the side of the road. Of course, the bird and those stars were planes diving and, even now, I can hear the whistle of the diving and the shooting. They were killing people on the road. That was my first contact with death and blood. It was all over the place.”

Soon, the family dispersed and Mariette began a years-long succession of shuttling between hiding places in various countries of northwestern Europe. A facility for languages began then and Doduck is now working on learning Mandarin, her 10th tongue.

In some homes where she was hidden, she would sit under the table while the family’s children did their homework. Then, after others had gone to bed, she scoured the homework to educate herself.

She also has something of a photographic memory and she realizes now that she served as a messenger, repeating what she had been told when asked by siblings who had joined the resistance and who could make occasional contact while she was in hiding.

As is the case with many survivors, Doduck has stories of almost-miraculous near-misses.

As is the case with many survivors, Doduck has stories of almost-miraculous near-misses.

While being hidden in a convent, she was exposed. The mother superior of the convent knew that Mariette was Jewish, but presumably most of the nuns did not. When one sister discovered her secret, she denounced the child to the Gestapo.

“Being a good nun, she went to the mother superior and told the mother superior what she had done,” Doduck recounted. “The mother superior had woken me up and taken me to the centre of the convent to the sewers and dumped me in the sewer. They came to the convent to search for me and they didn’t find me.”

In the sewer, filled with fetid water and rats, Mariette held her breath as she heard the boots of the Gestapo officers above her.

“I killed some rats to make a mountain so I didn’t have to stand in the cold water,” she said. “The mother superior saved me and that night I left and went to another place.”

Even more frighteningly, Mariette was rescued from a train almost certainly headed to catastrophe in the east.

“I was caught and I was put on a train,” she said. “I was the last one put on a cattle car and I was lucky because the cattle car had slats so I was able to breathe because they pushed us like sardines.… I remember the gate shouting and the clang, clang, clang, I can hear it now, and the lock.… Then the train stopped. I have no knowledge of places.”

The gate opened and Mariette saw a Gestapo officer.

“Black uniform, black hat, swastikas on his lapel, black boots, a leather strap with a revolver, a leather strap attached to a baton,” she recalled. “And, in German, he said, ‘What is my sister doing on this train?’ I looked left and I looked right. There was no other child but me.… This Gestapo that had probably killed hundreds of people, children as well probably, took me off the train, put me on his motorcycle and took me [away]. Years later, I found out that this Gestapo went to school with my brother Jean and used to come to my house on Friday to have dinner with us and he recognized me, that I was Jean’s sister.”

In the course of research for her memoir, Doduck recently discovered that her mother and one brother, Albert, were arrested and sent first to a transit camp and then on to Auschwitz. Her brother Jean, who was in the French resistance, was arrested elsewhere but was on the same train. Another brother, Simon, survived the war but died at Auschwitz in the weeks after liberation. Like thousands of others, he succumbed after well-intentioned Allied officials provided food to the starving inmates, whose stomachs could not assimilate it.

Including Doduck, eight siblings survived and somehow found one another after the war. One brother, Jule, chose to remain in Brussels with his family. Charles, who was also married before the war, moved to Brazil. Sister Sara went to the United States. Brother Bernard went to Palestine with Hashomer Hatzair, the socialist-Zionist youth movement.

Doduck, aged 12 at the time, and the three other siblings – Esther, Henri and Jack – were four of 1,123 Jewish child survivors of the Holocaust sponsored to come to Canada under the auspices of Canadian Jewish Congress in 1947.

Her recollections of arrival in her new homeland are not warm.

As the children disembarked the ship in Halifax, they found themselves in a compound surrounded by barbed wire, as though they would try to escape. From there, they were moved to a room with bars on the windows.

“I wasn’t called by my name,” she said. Each refugee had a number pinned to their chest. Hers was 73, she thinks, or possibly 74.

“Nobody talked to us,” she said. “Nobody really welcomed [us]. We were just a bunch of probably wild children. I can only describe that I had an adult’s mind in a child’s body. We survivors saw too much dirt, too much killing, too much that a child should ever see.

“We were treated like we were nothing at all,” she recalled.

She wanted to go to Vancouver. She had seen a map and knew that there were beaches there.

“I remember as a child we used to go to la plage, the beach, with the family,” she said. “That was happy times.

“And just like Brussels, it rains a lot too,” she added, laughing.

The four siblings were fostered by four different families in Vancouver. While not all the 1,123 children who were sponsored found loving homes, Doduck believes that she and her brother Jack were among the luckiest.

Doduck was taken in by a couple, Joseph and Minnie Satanov, who had no children and, weeks after Mariette arrived, celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. The couple would become surrogate grandparents to Doduck’s three daughters and Doduck would care for them in their old age.

Still, the early months were difficult. The Satanovs spoke Yiddish, but it was a “highbrow” variation, Doduck said. Hers was “street Yiddish” and the initial communication was largely pointing and miming.

While her foster family was wonderful, Doduck, like some other survivor refugees, said their treatment by the broader Jewish community was inhospitable. Asked if the community welcomed her and her peers, she replied: “I hate to say it, they didn’t.”

As a child, she didn’t understand it. As an adult, especially now, as she plumbs her experiences in the process of writing her history, she thinks she understands and empathizes.

“The community did not accept us,” she said. “They were fearful. I understand this now. They were fearful of what we knew, of what we saw. As a child, I didn’t understand that. As an adult, I understand it today.”

Her process of assimilation is akin to a split personality, she explained. She encompasses both the child Mariette and the adult Marie.

“Survivors – this is a secret but I’ll tell the world today – survivors are two people. Mariette is the child who is still in me and is trying to come out, and Marie [is] the person I created to become a Canadian and to fit into our society here in Vancouver.”

“Mariette is a child from Europe. Marie is the name I took in Canada to hide who Mariette was,” said Doduck. “Survivors – this is a secret but I’ll tell the world today – survivors are two people. Mariette is the child who is still in me and is trying to come out, and Marie [is] the person I created to become a Canadian and to fit into our society here in Vancouver.”

That internal dichotomy is most evident when she speaks with school groups and others about her war-era experiences.

“When I do outreach speaking, I speak as Mariette,” she said. “When I leave the school, Mariette is put on a shelf and Marie takes over and becomes a Canadian. Marie cannot survive with the memories if I don’t put Mariette on the shelf…. I can’t live the memories. It takes a lot out of me to relive.”

The stories she has to share can be harrowing and there are still details that she is only now learning as she works on writing her memoirs. Lauren Faulkner Rossi, an assistant professor at SFU’s department of history interviewed her for the Nov. 5 event and is collaborating on the memoir.

While the pandemic may have jogged loose deep-seated memories, Doduck sees other alarming parallels in the world today that hearken to the dark past.

“We are again being persecuted, we are again being hated, we are again being hit, we are again being abused constantly,” she said of rising authoritarianism and antisemitism in parts of the world. “I see what I saw as a 4-year-old, 5-year-old. I’m seeing it around the world and nobody seems to see it, that the hate is coming again.”

Past helps decode present

My husband saw the pair of decoder rings in a catalogue, long before our twins were old enough for them. Still, he ordered them and put them away. At the time, it amused me. How could he predict the future? Would our kids want these someday?

Fast forward to one October 2020 pandemic weekend. I’m not sure how he knew it was the right time. Before I knew it, two 9-year-olds were whizzing around the house, holding onto rings much too large for their fingers, and sending each other secret messages in code.

When they returned to school that Monday, they continued with the crazy codes, trying to teach their classmates about it. Unfortunately, this fun was short-lived. About a week later, we got an email from the school. It said that remote learning “may” be offered, and that we could sign up if we “might” be interested.

The situation was worsening in Manitoba, so we clicked through late on a Saturday night. This seemed wise, if we indeed understood the confusing letter correctly, that this remote learning might be happening. In any case, if some people signed up for the remote learning, it would allow more room in our older, smaller school building for others to social distance. Well, surprise! We were contacted on Monday morning and, by that Wednesday, our kids were at home again, learning with us. In the long run, this is the right choice – Judaism teaches us to value life above all else.

Both my husband and I are already working from home. At the beginning of my career, I used to teach school. Although I’ve never taught Grade 4 before, we’re muddling through. The remote learning we’re offered doesn’t continue the Hebrew curriculum we had before. It started with a single Hebrew packet, but, when it looked like we were nearing the end and I asked the school if it had more to share, I got a stern “no” in response. Remote learning offers only the basics, even if we can see via Instagram that, in class, the kids’ schoolmates are still doing fun projects without us.

It’s hard on children to feel left out. However, since there’s already been a COVID virus exposure at the school, we made the safe choice for us. My kids are lonely for their friends. My husband, a biology professor, thinks that schools should shut down now, until the infection rate lessens and the health system isn’t so overburdened.

Yet, here we are, with an everyday virtual, multi-age “school lesson” that lasts an hour. We do the reading, writing, math and science on our own. We also do something Jewish. One night, it was a discussion about Mezritch, which was a centre of Chassidism. Another day we talked about tefillin. On a third day, we learned about Sigd, the Ethiopian Jewish holiday celebrated 50 days after Yom Kippur, which is now a national holiday in Israel. The kids keep up their Hebrew as best we can, with my support and by using a free language program online.

Today, we hit the very last page of the Hebrew packet sent home by the school a couple weeks ago. There were moans about how hard it was and further cries when they realized there was no more of the “packet Hebrew.” For me, the last page left a special, coded gift.

This page taught about how each letter of the aleph bet, the Hebrew alphabet, also signified a number. Aleph is one, for instance. The numerical values of the letters of chai, the word for life, add up to 18.

My kids struggled with this page for entirely different reasons. But, if we can learn to write the numbers in Arabic numerals (also called the Hindu-Arabic system), we can learn the Hebrew ones. We’ll learn to spell out the number names in Hebrew. Like magic, I’d been given a gift, a secret decoder system to share. We just have to learn all the symbols together!

I won’t lie. I wish my kids’ class had all gone “remote” together, so they could see their classmates for an hour a day. I wish the pandemic hadn’t happened. I wish I’d gone to bed earlier over the weekend, instead of staying up late, reading the huge obituary section – but wait, that’s not right.

My biggest wish that puts all these little ones to shame? I want to honour every life that’s in those obits, every life that has been lost. There’s so much suffering, death and loss right now, and we’re all working our way through it.

I also want to honour the diverse positive ways we’ve innovated and managed during a scary, singular experience. Studying a textual tradition like ours, that’s thousands of years old, means we have deep resources. We can hear about deaths and the first obituaries in the Torah portions this time of year. We imagine similar chaotic experiences like Noah’s ark in the flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are plenty of opportunities to think through our rich history during remote or home school.

On the plus side? It also means that I have a Hebrew lesson plan for tomorrow and beyond. We have access to an ancient, special Hebrew numerical code, called Gematria, and a mom teacher who now gets to figure out how to use that, along with those fancy decoder rings, for good – for the twins to learn math, puzzles, Hebrew and more … in Grade 4.