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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: Henry Abramson

Jewish history’s exciting bits

Jewish history’s exciting bits

Dr. Henry Abramson’s lecture series Jewish History, But Skipping the Boring Parts continues on March 9. (photo from Henry Abramson)

What do country music superstar Shania Twain and Orthodox academic Dr. Henry Abramson have in common? They both spent plenty of time in Timmins, Ont., before moving on to adventures in New Zealand and the United States.

While not as widely known as Twain, Abramson – the dean of arts and sciences at Tuoro’s Lander College in Flatbush, N.Y. – is popular in different circles. For example, during this interview, he mentioned an in-depth article about him in Der Veker, a Yiddish-language journal. He is known as a knowledgeable and entertaining lecturer – facts that the local community can check out for themselves in his five-part series Jewish History, But Skipping the Boring Parts, which began on Feb. 9. Sponsored by the estate of Sara Elias and hosted by Congregation Beth Israel, the series is open to the entire community.

The first lecture zipped through Jewish history touching on, as promised, the non-boring bits of history that are supported by archeological evidence. Many of the earliest artifacts are negative views or accounts of what we now call the Jewish people and Abramson was quick to point out, with humour, that these ancient people wrote nasty things about Jews but we’re the ones still around thousands of years later.

By the end of a well-polished 45-minute presentation, which included lots of images to break up the narrative, and a 15-minute Q & A, the 100-plus attendees were up to speed on the Maccabean revolt. One highlight was numerous examples of medieval depictions of a famous battle in which Judah Maccabee’s brother, Eleazar, kills an elephant. This story was popular with Christian medieval artists but their knowledge of elephants was clearly lacking.

About Abramson

Born in Iroquois Falls, Ont., Henry Abramson was the only Jewish boy in town. His grandparents had fled Lithuania in 1904 and found themselves in this town with a population of about 1,000. Abramson’s grandfather, and then his father, ran the town’s dry goods store. His parents’ commitment to ensure that he had a Jewish home life, education and sense of community are how he found himself in Timmins every Sunday as a child. His parents drove 100 kilometres each way, every week, to take him to learn with other Jewish children from the area. Abramson’s comment about Jews in tiny rural places was, “Break open a roll, out pops a Jew.”

Three years before his bar mitzvah, his parents went one major step further with his Jewish education. They found an apartment in Toronto and enrolled him, for a few years, in Eitz Chaim, a religious day school. His mother stayed with him during the week and his father took the train down on the weekend. Abramson said his father’s greatest talent in preserving the Jewish identity of his family was his ability to listen to the women in his family.

“My whiplash-like experience – going from being the only Jewish kid in town to the only northerner kid who knew what 40-below felt like – tempered my understanding of how Jews fit in the world as a whole,” he said.

After high school, Abramson enrolled at the University of Toronto, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Disillusioned with his studies, he flew to New Zealand to become a ski instructor. There, he fell in love with another ski instructor. Having grown up skiing, Abramson was living the dream and had planned to continue traveling the world, but he was involved in a ski accident that severed his femoral artery. During the six-month recovery that followed, he rethought his future and focus. He and his then-soon-to-be wife Ilana returned to Toronto, where Abramson earned a master’s in history.

Although the pair was involved in a Conservative shul during the early years of their marriage, they became attracted by the BAYT (Beth Avraham Yoseph Shul) in Toronto and began moving towards Orthodox observance. To complete his doctorate, Abramson went to Jerusalem to work at Hebrew University. After earning his PhD, he spent a year learning at Ohr Somayach Yeshivah, cementing his life as an Orthodox Jew. He went on to complete post-doctoral work at universities including Harvard and Oxford, and has written seven books.

To join the lecture series and find out how well Abramson delivers only the most exciting parts of Jewish history, visit bethisrael.ca. The remaining lectures take place on Zoom March 9, April 6, May 11 and June 1, 7 p.m. Visit bethisrael.ca.

Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.

Format ImagePosted on February 25, 2022February 23, 2022Author Michelle DodekCategories LocalTags Beth Israel, Henry Abramson, history, Maccabees, Shania Twain

BI hosts Zoom scholar series

On Feb. 16, Congregation Beth Israel welcomed the first of four renowned Jewish scholars in a made-for-Zoom series, The BI Scholars. Canadian-born Dr. Henry Abramson, dean of Touro College in New York and a specialist in Jewish thought and history, kicked off the series with a talk entitled Becoming the People of the Byte: The Internet, Talmud and the Future of the Jewish People.

photo - Dr. Henry Abramson launched The BI Scholars series on Feb. 16
Dr. Henry Abramson launched The BI Scholars series on Feb. 16. (photo from Beth Israel)

His discourse looked at how Jews, over time, and to this day, use and relate to new information technology, and how it changes our modes of learning and disseminating texts. Abramson explained that Jews are generally early adopters of technology, beginning in the second century CE when, under the guidance of Judah Ha-Nasi, we moved from an oral tradition to the documentation of the Mishna in manuscript form, a big change that encountered significant resistance along the way. This was followed by the era of the printing press and, now, digital technology.

These communications technologies allow for significant democratization, and Abramson pointed out the value of the internet in that learning is available to all, whereas “treasured texts were previously not accessible to 50% of the Jewish community – namely, women.”

However, technology also presents dangers in terms of knowing the authenticity and authority of texts. It is our job, said Abramson, “to discover what we can trust and what we can discard.”

One of the female scholars about whom Abramson speaks is Ilana Kurshan, who has completed a remarkable feat of Talmud study – finishing the whole Talmud in seven-and-half years, Daf Yomi, a page a day. Kurshan will speak at the March 9 instalment of the Zoom series about her award-winning memoir If All the Seas Were Ink, which takes readers on a guided tour of the Talmud, while detailing her personal stories of love, loss, marriage and motherhood.

It is, indeed, one of the most unique Talmud commentaries ever written, as she explains: “The memoir is secondary. The way I happened to write this commentary on the Talmud is through my life.”

During her years studying the Talmud, Kurshan, a rabbi’s daughter from Long Island, N.Y., came to discover the terminology to understand her own daily experiences. “Talmud speaks to the human dimension of experience and, in many ways, that does not change,” she said. According to Kurshan, you cannot divorce the human experience from one’s own experience. “Just as the Talmud is a commentary on life, my life became a commentary on Talmud.”

On April 20, Dr. Benjamin Gampel, the Dina and Eli Field Family Chair in Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary, will speak on the topic Riots, Inquisitions and Expulsions, and the Emergence of the Sephardic Diaspora. Gempel is a specialist in medieval and early modern Jewish history.

The series ends with Yuri Vedenyapin from McGill University, whose topic is The Adventures of a Yiddish Teacher. An actor and a singer-songwriter, his areas of academic interest include Yiddish language and culture.

All BI Scholars Zooms start at 7:30 p.m. To register, visit bethisraelvan.ca/happenings/adult-programs/bischolars.

Posted on February 26, 2021February 24, 2021Author Beth IsraelCategories LocalTags BI, daf yomi, education, Henry Abramson, Ilana Kurshan, Judaism, lifestyle, philosophy, Talmud, technology
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