history – Page 2

Pop-up exhibit popular

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia director of programming Elana Wenner and JMABC executive director Eli Klasner at the Feb. 11 launch of the museum’s pop-up exhibit You Can’t Spell Delicious Without Deli. (photo from JMABC)

Omnitsky Kosher Delicatessen has been in business for more than 115 years. A community institution, it is the perfect location for the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia’s pop-up exhibit You Can’t Spell Delicious Without Deli: A Look Behind the Counters of Vancouver’s Historic Jewish Delis.

Patrons can grab something to eat – at the restaurant or to take home – and peruse the photographs and blurbs about five different delis that have made their mark on Vancouver history. There’s a printed guide available, which has more information about the exhibit and the delis featured. There is also merch: T-shirts. One has a bowl of matzah ball soup, one a deli meat sandwich, another an assortment of containers, a cereal bowl and a block of cheese with the words, “I can tolerate a lot of things. Dairy is not one of them.”

The exhibit launched Feb. 11, filling the restaurant, the night hosted by the current owner of Omnitsky, Richard Wood. The deli has seen only three owners in its long history: it was started in Winnipeg by Louis Omnitsky in 1910; bought some seven decades later by Eppy Rappaport, who brought it to Vancouver in the 1990s, running it here until 2023; and Wood.

Omnitsky has been in a few locations in Vancouver, including on Oak Street near 41st, where it took over the space of Kaplan’s Deli, when that community institution closed in 2014.

Kaplan’s was started by Ida and Abrasha Kaplan in the 1960s; Serge Haber ran it from 1981-2000, Marshall Kramer for a dozen-plus years and Howie English for its last year or so.

Kaplan’s is one of the five delis featured in the exhibit, along with Omnitsky, which is now on Fraser Street between 18th and 19th avenues. The others are Oscar’s (1943-1956), Rubin’s (1955-1981) and Max’s, which has been in operation since 1949 on Oak Street at 15th Avenue, with various owners over the years.

More than dates and names, the exhibit shares tidbits about each establishment, like where Ida Kaplan learned how to make her famous cinnamon buns, some of the many celebrities that visited Oscar’s and how Rubin’s was a late-night hotspot, open to as late as 3 a.m. in its heyday.

“Sometimes I find myself browsing through the stories of our past, and certain items or documents just speak to me in a way that screams, ‘Tell my story!’” Elana Wenner, director of programming at the Jewish Museum and Archives, told the Independent about the how the deli exhibit came about.

“In this case, I was visiting Omnitsky’s at their new location on Fraser Street, and I had just recently come across some photos in our archives of the old Kaplan’s Deli on Oak Street…. As I browsed the shelves in the new Omnitsky’s storefront, it occurred to me just how poignant it was to be living through this unique moment in Vancouver’s Jewish history.

“As a Vancouver native and historian of local Jewish culture, the transitions of any local Jewish establishment always trigger a certain chord of interest for me,” she explained. “The major move of Omnitsky’s from Oak Street to Fraser Street was a transitional moment that would surely become a marker in the future telling of Vancouver’s many chapters of Jewish culture and growth.”

Wenner leads the museum’s walking tours of the Strathcona neighbourhood.

“I always conclude [them] with an ‘epilogue’ of where the community moved next, as there was a pretty abrupt collective move from Strathcona over to Fairview in the 1940s, and then a slow progression along Oak Street through to the new millennium,” she said.

The story is, of course, still being written.

“As young families continue to populate the areas east of Fraser, the residential centre of Jewish life in Vancouver is transitioning starkly eastward,” said Wenner. “So, while Omnitsky’s move from Oak to Fraser may have seemed like a shock to many of the old-timers … it makes a lot of sense in the grander scheme, in the way that the community seems to be moving now.”

The 2018 edition of the museum’s journal, The Scribe, had the theme of Jewish restaurants. Most of the original content for the pop-up exhibit came from this publication, said Wenner, “all based on oral history interviews with the restaurateurs themselves.”

The initial concept was to feature all the local Jewish-owned restaurants throughout Vancouver’s 140-year history, but there were simply too many, she said. “So, the project shifted to become focused on just Jewish-owned delis.

“As I put the word out that we were looking for more information, I quickly discovered that there had been many more delis owned by Jewish families in Vancouver than I had ever expected,” she said. “We chose the five featured in the current exhibit based on the extent of information available to us, both from existing archival materials, as well as new information collected from interviews with family members, descendants, and gleaned from secondary sources outside the museum.”

The museum’s archives include oral histories, copies of menus, newspaper articles and even some handwritten notes of sale and purchase lists, said Wenner.

Response to the exhibit has been positive.

“On the one hand, we wish we had complete stories for each and every single deli,” said Wenner, “but it’s actually really satisfying when people pop out of the woodwork and say, ‘But wait! My grandparents owned this place!’ and then they have all this new information for us to delve into about a deli that had previously not even been on our list.”

As part of the exhibit, the museum asks visitors to share any information they may have on Pheasant Deli, Barer’s Deli, Lindy Fine Foods, Triangle Café, Moishe’s Deli and Leon’s Kosher.

“We wanted to highlight the fact that we do know they existed, but the archives are only as good as the material we receive, and these are stories we haven’t yet collected,” said Wenner, who expects more pop-ups in the museum’s future.

“What makes this exhibit so interesting,” noted Eli Klasner, executive director of the JMABC, “is the collaboration with a business that is such an important part of our local Jewish history. The museum is committed to preserving Jewish history and retelling our stories in unique and interesting ways, including with entertaining pop-up exhibits in a range of locations and venues.”

photo - Two of the T-shirts for sale at the exhibit, which runs to April 1 — Two of the T-shirts for sale at the exhibit, which runs to April 1. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

The T-shirts are proving to be a popular aspect of the current exhibit, which runs to April 1.

“In terms of the T-shirts – honestly, people are obsessed,” Wenner said. “There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the deli exhibit in general, but the limited-edition T-shirts being sold alongside the display have garnered a lot of unexpected public attention. We keep receiving requests for more, and plan to release a new line of designs in the coming months to meet the demand.”

Wenner urged readers to check out the new JMABC website, jewishmuseum.ca, where there is information about upcoming programs, including for Jewish Heritage Month in May, as well as many online exhibits.

“Our summer 2026 season of walking tours is coming up soon,” she said, noting that the tours sell out quickly.

The museum offers four different tours throughout Vancouver and Victoria, she said, “each telling the fascinating stories of early Jewish life and community in BC, from 1858 to present day.” They also offer private tours, which can be booked by emailing [email protected].

Garden City of Tel Aviv

Liebling Haus’s exhibit Life, Plant, City: 100 Years of Geddes’ Plan for Tel Aviv’s Garden City, which documents how Sir Patrick Geddes’ vision continues to shape the city’s urban fabric, includes multidisciplinary works by dozens of artists (photo by Yael Schmidt / Liebling Haus)

On April 11, 1909, 60 families gathered on the beach north of Jaffa to draw lots for the parcelization of the sand dunes they had purchased north of the ancient port. This moment in Israel’s history has been much mythologized, but one thing is clear – those garden suburb pioneers were clueless about urban planning. They turned their backs on the site’s most notable feature – its iconic Mediterranean beach.

The village that the founders initially named Ahuzat Bayit (Homestead), now called Tel Aviv, grew haphazardly, house by house, with an interruption during the First World War, when the Ottoman Turks expelled the newly established town’s Jews. In 1921, following the arrival of the British during the war and the replacement of their military rule with a civil administration, the growing suburb was granted township status separate from the neighbouring Arab-majority city of Jaffa.

It became clear that the township’s slapdash growth needed to be regulated. Into this planning chaos stepped Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), a Scottish-born polymath who was at once a biologist, sociologist, landscape theorist and pioneering urban planner. The 62-page plan for Tel Aviv that he drew up a century ago remains among the most important documents in the history of the city. Liebling Haus – an architectural and cultural centre located in downtown Tel Aviv – recently opened the exhibit Life, Plant, City: 100 Years of Geddes’ Plan for Tel Aviv’s Garden City. It documents how Geddes’ vision continues to shape the city’s urban fabric, featuring not only archival materials but multidisciplinary works by dozens of artists and other contemporary interpretations of Geddes’ ideas and reflections on the city’s future.

photo - Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a Scottish-born polymath who was a biologist, sociologist, landscape theorist and pioneering urban planner — Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a Scottish-born polymath who was a biologist, sociologist, landscape theorist and pioneering urban planner. (photo from shbt.org.uk/knowledge)

In 1925, Geddes – who earned a reputation for his urban planning in 18 cities in British India – was invited by Tel Aviv’s mukhtar, Meir Dizengoff, to prepare the first master plan to guide the town’s growth. (Tel Aviv achieved city status in 1934.)

Geddes believed that cities were living organisms, shaped by the interplay of nature, society and culture. This holistic approach – unusual for its time – made him particularly attractive to Zionist leaders, who envisioned Tel Aviv as both a future-facing modern metropolis and a cultural project rooted in Jewish history.

His plan was deeply influenced by the Garden City movement, but Geddes adapted it to the climate and social context of the Levant. It emphasized shaded streets to mitigate the Mediterranean heat, wide boulevards that encouraged airflow and social life, and parks and squares as communal anchors. Human-scale residential blocks were arranged around shared green spaces and courtyards.

Geddes’ plan expanded Tel Aviv north from its early neighbourhoods to the Yarkon River. It was delineated by the Mediterranean Sea to the west and what is now Ibn Gabirol Street to the east. Into this flat and featureless space, Geddes laid out a skein of streets with a clear hierarchy. Main north-south and east-west arteries allowed for speedy movement across the city. Secondary streets were narrower and designed for local circulation. Small residential lanes fostered neighbourhood intimacy. The goal was to create a walkable city that balanced efficiency with livability.

photo - On display at Liebling Haus: One of the artworks inspired by Sir Patrick Geddes’ century-old plan for Tel Aviv — On display at Liebling Haus: One of the artworks inspired by Sir Patrick Geddes’ century-old plan for Tel Aviv. (photo by Yael Schmidt / Liebling Haus)

The plan also contained what later scholars have identified as anarchist or cooperative elements. It emphasized worker-led housing blocs and resisted speculative land practices. These ideas resonated with the social and economic conditions of Tel Aviv in the 1920s and 1930s, when workers wanted architecture that reflected their egalitarian values.

Although Geddes’ plan was not executed in its entirety, its core principles shaped the development of the White City, which was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. By the 1930s, Tel Aviv had some 4,000 white Bauhaus-style buildings constructed within the distinctive blocks, boulevards and public gardens Geddes laid out.

Bauhaus was a school of arts, crafts and architecture that operated in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The rise of the Nazi party led to the shuttering of the academy. Some 60,000 Jews left Nazi Germany and Austria for Mandatory Palestine, including architects who didn’t study at the Bauhaus school but were greatly influenced by its style. There, they created a revolutionary, streamlined architectural style that suited the modernist ethos of Zionism.

Tel Aviv’s amalgam of Bauhaus (also called International Style) buildings arose from an accident of historical coincidence: first came Geddes’ town plan; then the wave of mass aliyah triggered by the Nazis’ ascent to power in 1933, which triggered an urgent demand for housing; and, thirdly, the International Style’s lack of expensive decorative features made the cost of construction relatively low. No decorative tiles or ornamental plasterwork meant cheaper construction that could be executed by less-specialized craftsmen.

For the Yekke newcomers, many of whom had to leave significant assets behind, cheaper housing that didn’t sacrifice style was a major draw. The streamlined design with porthole windows, curved walls and balconies was a snub to the values of Central Europe, which the newcomers had barely escaped.

Liebling Haus, built in 1936, is an example of this architectural era. While not designed by Geddes, it manifests the urban environment his plan envisioned. The house’s clean lines, functional design and integration with the surrounding streetscape reflect the synergy between Geddes’ urbanism and the architectural modernism that followed. The Life, Plant, City exhibit runs to May 31.

Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide based in Jerusalem.

Musical legacy re-found

Zusman Kiselgof, member of S. An-sky’s ethnographic expedition, recording folklore in Kremenets, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), 1912. Four events relating to the An-sky expedition take place in Vancouver Feb. 20-22. (photo from YIVO)

On Feb. 21, Or Shalom hosts Christina and the Zamlers in a special concert, as part of the congregation’s Light in Winter music series, co-sponsored by the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture and KlezWest.

photo - Christina Crowder — Christina Crowder *(photo from Peretz Centre)*

Presenting pieces ranging from lively freylekhs to elegant mazurkas, Jewish wedding melodies to nigunim, Christina Crowder (accordion and tsimbl) and Pacific Northwest klezmer performers Jimmy Austin (trombone) and Mae Kessler (violin) will take the audience on a musical journey. Joined by Ashkenazi dance leader Maia Brown, they will draw from a repertoire of music gathered from shtetls across the Russian Pale of Settlement more than 100 years ago.

Along with the band’s musical performance and dance session, Crowder will recount the remarkable story of this trove of Ashkenazi music manuscripts, how they came to be collected, largely forgotten and then “rediscovered” in 2017.

The story begins in 1912, when Yiddish writer and ethnographer S. An-sky, with funding from the Russian government, led a collecting “expedition” to approximately 70 shtetls in the Pale of Settlement. Aware that traditional ways of Ashkenazi life were fading and that people were emigrating, An-sky was determined to gather and preserve both tangible and intangible aspects of the Ashkenazi cultural legacy.

photo - Jimmy Austin — Jimmy Austin *(photo from Peretz Centre)*

While not against “modernity,” he believed in the importance of Jews knowing their own history and traditions in order to maintain their identity in a changing world. Members of the project took photographs, collected ceremonial and everyday objects, compiled folk tales and noted local lore.

Collecting music manuscripts was an important part of the project. Music played a prominent role in community life, not only for entertainment or religious purposes, but to accompany and set the tone for many lifecycle experiences, especially weddings. Professional musicians in the shtetls offered more than 1,000 handwritten manuscripts with original and traditional compositions.

When the Russian government withdrew funding in 1914, with the onset of the First World War, the An-sky expedition ceased to exist. The collection appears to have been stored in different locations at various times and, although relatively intact, its location was either uncertain or access was consistently denied.

However, in 2017, the music collection, stored at the Vernadsky National Library in Kyiv, became accessible. This was the result of a series of serendipitous events, beginning when two attendees at a Tokyo klezmer workshop met, one of them fluent in Ukrainian. She was allowed to view some of the collection at the library and copy 600 manuscripts to a memory stick.

photo - Mae Kessler — Mae Kessler (photo from Peretz Centre)

While klezmer music has developed a following over the past many years, the number of known traditional Ashkenazi melodies was quite small, approximately 300 pieces. The recovery of the An-sky expedition’s repertoire has had a significant impact on the revival of klezmer around the world. The Klezmer Institute, of which Crowder is a co-founder and the executive director, has played an important role in helping musicians, the public and academics view and use the collection.

Through their Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project, volunteers have translated and transcribed more than 1,300 of the handwritten musical manuscripts, which have been digitized and are universally available on the Klezmer Institute’s website (klezmerinstitute.org).

photo - Maia Brown — Maia Brown (photo from Peretz Centre)

In connection with the Feb. 21 concert event, which will take place at Or Shalom’s temporary home (Cityview Church), there will be two workshops offered at the Peretz Centre on the afternoon of Feb. 22 – one for musicians, led by Crowder, the other for dancers, led by Brown. In addition, at the Peretz Centre’s Fraytik tsu Nakht Cultural Shabbes and Potluck on Feb. 20, Jess Goldman will lead a discussion on An-sky’s ethnography expeditions and more.

Tickets for the concert and for the workshops are available at orshalom.ca and peretz-centre.org. Admission for the concert is a minimum donation of $18 (suggested amount is $36); both workshops are by donation; and the potluck and talk is $18 or a contribution of a food dish to the dinner (see peretz-centre.org for more information).

Ann Daskal is a member of Or Shalom, with an interest in facilitating community art and performance.

Life’s full range of emotions

Bonny Reichert will be in Vancouver on March 4 to talk about her new memoir, How to Share an Egg, as an epilogue to the JCC Jewish Book Festival, which runs Feb. 21-26. (photo by Kayla Rocca)

When Bonny Reichert was a kid, living in Edmonton, her baba, who had come to Canada as a teen on her own in the early 1900s to escape pogroms in Ukraine, would come to stay with her family for the weekend and “the house brightened,” writes Reichert in How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty. “She arrived as though she were fleeing all over again, with parcels and packages and a giant soup pot wrapped in a tea towel, knotted to make a handle. Things were hot or cold or frozen. I didn’t know to wonder if she’d stayed up all night rolling and pinching and stuffing for us. Pekeleh, she called her bundles, little packages. Pekeleh also means burdens. Yiddish is like that.”

As with pekeleh, meaning both treats and worries, there have been many contrasts in Reichert’s life, opposite things or states of being existing simultaneously. Her memoir is fascinating for the challenges she has faced and the way in which she has dealt with them. Readers can hear the award-winning writer in conversation with Marsha Lederman on March 4, 7:30 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, in a JCC Jewish Book Festival epilogue event.

How to Share an Egg is the telling of Reichert’s dad’s survival story – a story he so wanted her to share. Experiencing years of difficulty putting pen to paper, she approaches it through her own journey with intergenerational trauma, which she has felt deeply from childhood. Her mother grew up with “a dad who was quick to anger” and an “exacting” mother who taught there was only one way to do things. “That this was the same person who rubbed my feet as I fell asleep seemed impossible,” writes Reichert about her efforts to reconcile her beloved baba with her mother’s mother.

Reichert’s maternal grandfather, who had come to Canada in 1913, died before she was born. On her paternal side, she had no grandparents – her dad was a 17-year-old orphan when he came to Canada in 1947. His parents and five sisters were all killed in the Holocaust. He was one of the 1,123 war orphans Canadian Jewish Congress helped enter the country when the doors were only just starting to open again for Jews.

The Jewish Independent spoke with Reichert by email about her memoir.

JI: You were 9 when your dad first mentioned the possibility that you would write his story. Then there was the trip to Poland in 2015 that was a breakthrough. When did you actually write the first words and, from that point, about how long did it take for you to write How to Share an Egg?

BR: The very earliest work on the book started on that first trip to Warsaw with my dad. I took a few notes and some important photos, but I didn’t yet know where I was headed. After the second trip to Poland, in 2016, I had even more research and notes, but I still wasn’t sure I had a book. The more formal outlining and writing began in late 2020, in the depths of the pandemic. Including the time I spent waiting for my editor’s feedback and the editing, the book took about four years to write. I was earning a master’s degree at the same time.

JI: You write about your personal journey with inherited trauma, and you share some of the healing milestones on that journey. In what ways was the process of writing the book cathartic?

BR: When you write a memoir like How to Share an Egg, your job is to look at yourself very closely, but with objectivity, because the self becomes the central character of the book. In that close examination, you come to name feelings you previously couldn’t name, and evaluate experiences and situations that your younger self might not have understood. All of this leads to greater understanding and greater self-compassion. This, coupled with the relief of finding a way to write this book my dad always wanted me to write, has indeed led to healing and catharsis.

JI: What does your dad think of the book?

BR: He loves it and says that it has given new meaning to his life at 95. A wonderful outcome.

JI: One theme of How to Share an Egg is you finding your voice, being able to stick up for yourself when bullied, to be yourself in the face of others’ expectations (notably, your father’s). From where did you get the courage to be this open?

BR: You can’t decide to write a memoir and then hide from the personal. Readers want to see all of that raw emotion on the page. For the memoir to be successful, the true, honest person in the book should resonate with the true person inside the reader. At a certain point, I realized all of this, and I came to see I was writing about the universal human experience and there is no shame in being human. In other words, I practised radical self-acceptance to get the job done.

JI: You comment in the book about pekeleh meaning both bundles and burdens. Judaism is full of those instances, holding joy and sorrow at the same time. Can you speak about that, in the context of How to Share an Egg?

BR: People often hold a pretty stereotypical idea of what Holocaust survivors and their families are like – severely traumatized, loaded down with psychological and emotional problems, etc. I wanted to address that – to challenge it and expand on it. There is sorrow and trauma, of course, but there is also so much joy and gratitude and celebration. So, the book is meant to express this fuller range of emotion. Part of my decision to write it as a food memoir was to offer the reader pleasure and comfort, even against the backdrop of the Holocaust. A Jewish approach, for sure.

JI: Hedy Bohm, who you mention in your memoir, just had her own survivor memoir published by the Azrieli Foundation. What is the importance of having these stories out in the world?

BR: Yes, I’m so happy for Hedy. She is a wonderful person. Preserving these stories has always been of the utmost importance – firsthand testimony is obviously critical. I also believe a plurality of stories and approaches brings the humanity back into the unfathomable numbers and statistics.

JI: How often have you been to Vancouver, and what are you looking forward to most about your March visit?

BR: I was just there in the fall for the Vancouver Writer Fest! I have friends I’m looking forward to seeing and I’m hoping for some nice weather so I can walk and admire your beautiful city.

For the full schedule and tickets to the book festival, go to jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Chronicle of a community

The past and future of Jewish journalism were on the agenda when Cynthia Ramsay addressed the Jewish Seniors Alliance of British Columbia, Jan. 27.

In a Zoom presentation that was part of the alliance’s Empowerment Series, the publisher of the Jewish Independent spoke on the history of the newspaper and discussed the future of Jewish newspapers in general and the Independent in particular.

Ramsay spoke about the history and future of the Jewish Independent at the Jewish Seniors Alliance of British Columbia Empowerment session Jan. 27. (photo by Karen Ginsberg)

While the paper celebrated its 95th anniversary last year, Ramsay said it could be a century old, depending on how one begins the count.

A Vancouver Jewish Bulletin was published in 1925, printed by Dr. J.I. Gorosh and this was succeeded by a mimeographed newsletter produced by the Jewish Community Centre and dubbed the Jewish Centre News. The name Jewish Western Bulletin dates to the 1930s.

Publishing transitioned to the Jewish Community Council of Greater Vancouver, a forerunner of today’s Jewish Federation, though it appears to have evolved a degree of independence under publisher Abraham Arnold, who took the helm in 1949, in conjunction with his wife Bertha.

The newspaper became formally separate from other institutions a decade or so after Sam and Mona Kaplan took over in 1960.

The Kaplans were very much committed to advocacy journalism, Ramsay said, most notably advocating freedom for Soviet Jewry.

The Kaplans ran the paper for 35 years and, after a period when it was contracted to an American Jewish media chain, it was sold to Ramsay and two partners, Kyle Berger and Pat Johnson. The latter two later left the business but Ramsay says she is happy that they remain friends and that Johnson is on the editorial board and still writes for the paper (including this story).

The new leadership brought fresh policies, including accepting notices of interfaith and same-gender weddings, as well as coverage of a broader range of topics that were previously considered off limits. The paper opened up to a wider range of opinions, including on Israel.

In 2005, Ramsay renamed the paper the Jewish Independent.

“I changed it because I didn’t think Bulletin really said ‘newspaper,’” she explained. “We got rid of the word ‘western’ also. By that point we were online … and it wasn’t just people from BC who were reading it.”

The paper walks a line between supporting the community and providing a critical eye where necessary, she said.

“I think there are concerns that should be played out in public, but then there’s others that really should be dealt with privately,” she said. “We’re not a gossip rag and we’re also not sensationalist or alarmist.

“We don’t ignore the bad stuff that goes on in our community or in the world, but we do try to cover stories in a way that doesn’t depress or paralyze,” said Ramsay, quoting from an article she wrote in the paper’s anniversary issue last May. “We want, rather, to open the door for solutions and at least positive attempts at change. We don’t want you to put down the paper in despair, but rather [consider] what you can do to contribute to making the world a better place.”

Above all, she said, the paper tries to provide a record of the community, a role it has played for most of a century.

image - The first issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin, Oct. 9, 1930 — The first issue of the Jewish Western Bulletin, Oct. 9, 1930.

“The Jewish Western Bulletin, the Jewish Independent, has been the only consistent historical record of the community since 1930,” she said.

“Now, of course, we miss a lot of stuff,” she acknowledged. “We have a very small staff. We have a limited number of pages every issue, we’re not going to cover everything.”

She provided an insider view of how the paper operates in terms of the amount of advertising determining the size of each issue, and how decisions are made about what is covered in each issue and on what page things appear.

The pandemic was deeply challenging to the economic viability of the paper, said Ramsay, and it was at that time that the publishing schedule shifted to twice monthly from weekly.

image - The Jan. 23, 2026, issue of the Jewish Independent — The Jan. 23, 2026, issue of the Jewish Independent.

The Independent has survived when other Jewish newspapers in Canada and across North America have not, she noted, even including Federation-owned publications that have gone under in some cities. She wants the paper to reach 100 and she also has her own retirement in mind, tentatively at age 60.

“I’m 56,” she said, noting that almost 30 of those years have been devoted to the paper.

“I’m already starting to think about succession plans,” she said. “I’ve kind of got a five-year window at this point where I’m looking and wanting to responsibly pass over [the paper].”

Innovation could make the publication more sustainable, perhaps a monthly format, she said.

All in all, she takes pride in her achievements and the longer history of the paper’s contributions to the community.

“I think we’ve been a great success, not just because we’re 96 years old, but … [almost] every year we’ve won an American Jewish Press Association Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism, mostly for our editorials, but occasionally for other articles,” she said.

The Jewish Seniors Alliance session was opened by Jeff Moss, the organization’s executive director. Fran Goldberg introduced Ramsay.

Broadway’s Jewish storylines

David Benkof, the Broadway Maven, spoke on Jan. 11 as part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2025-26 Voices of Jewish Music series. (photo from David Benkof)

David Benkof, the Broadway Maven, visited Victoria recently, to give a talk titled Spotlight on Jewish Broadway, on Jan. 11. He began with a clip from the musical Spamalot, which, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, asserts that a potential show may have the finest sets, the loveliest costumes and the best shoes, yet it “won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews.”

“The joke is that Jews wrote Broadway, Jews perform Broadway, Jews produce Broadway – and that’s true. It’s historically true, it’s statistically true, and it’s been said so many times that it barely counts as an insight anymore,” Benkof said.

Although seemingly innumerable Jews – Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Barbra Streisand, to name a mere few – may be associated with Broadway, Benkof encouraged the audience to consider the meaning of “Jewish Broadway” as something beyond the names of those who created and performed in well-known shows. Rather, he asked those attending in person and on Zoom to think in terms of Jewish-related themes: assimilation, reinvention, insecurity, exile, visibility and ambivalence.

“I want to go a step further,” he said, “and argue that Broadway isn’t primarily Jewish because of the people involved, but because of the very sensibility of the art form. Broadway is Jewish because its plots, themes and character arcs reflect the Jewish experience in North America.”

With clips from Hairspray, Hello, Dolly, A Chorus Line and Chicago, Benkof demonstrated that, while characters and plots were not overtly Jewish, or Jewish at all, there are invariably elements – such as restlessness, striving and defensiveness – that make them feel deeply Jewish.

“It grows out of histories of conditional welcome, where excellence becomes a survival strategy and visibility is both opportunity and danger,” said Benkof. “Broadway characters don’t assume that the room loves them. They hustle to make the room need them. That’s why Broadway feels Jewish even when Jews are nowhere in sight.”

Hairspray, for example, makes no claim that the characters are Jewish. It is method, not identity, according to Benkof, that makes it Jewish. The lead character does not want to tear down the system; she seeks to join it, he pointed out.

“The belief that assimilation is both a strategy and an ethical good is deeply Jewish in a North American context,” Benkof said.

“The combination of idealism, anxiety, and faith that the system can be nudged towards justice if you appeal to its conscience is not universal,” he argued. “It’s a Jewish sensibility operating inside a story that never needs to say the word Jewish out loud, which makes Hairspray slightly subversive, like quite a bit of postwar Jewish art.”

By the end of his Victoria lecture, audience members were able to find Jewish themes in musicals that, on the surface, seem far removed from the Jewish experience: The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music, even The Book of Mormon (think reinvention).

In the example of The Sound of Music, audience members found that its themes of escape, persecution and fear were elements that could be perceived as related to the Jewish experience.

Congratulating the audience, Benkof said, “We could have said, Richard Rodgers was Jewish and, therefore, The Sound of Music is Jewish. That is true and boring. What we have been able to do here today is think about how you won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jewishness, as opposed to just Jews.”

Benkof also discussed a Canadian connection to Jewish Broadway, Come from Away, a musical about the care of thousands of travelers, who, after Sept. 11, 2001, had their flights diverted to Gander, Nfld.

In 2024, Benkof made a trip to Gander to see a performance of the show, written by Canadians David Hein and Irene Sankoff.

“I got to go and meet some of the people who had done it,” he said. “They welcomed people into their home and their community, and that, I think, is a very Jewish theme.”

Benkof’s website, broadwaymaven.com, offers five to 15 classes every month. In January, for example, the online educational community had classes on the musicals of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, on Pal Joey, and a 50th anniversary roundtable on Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. Upcoming events include classes on Sweeney Todd, Evita, Kiss Me, Kate and Cats, among others. Benkof also posts weekly about Broadway on Substack: substack.com/@thebroadwaymaven.

Benkof’s talk was the third lecture in Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2025-26 Voices of Jewish Music series, part of the Vancouver Island shul’s annual Building Bridges program. The next in the series will be from Naomi Cohn Zentner, an ethno-musicologist at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, on Feb. 8. Her talk – Music and War: An Optimistic View – will examine how Israeli musicians have responded to recent historic events and explore music’s role in processing grief, inspiring resilience and connecting community in times of crisis. Visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Four Peretz pillars honoured

As the owner of the 95-year-old Jewish Independent, I know full well that our Jewish community is built on the shoulders of those came before us. It is upon this foundation that we continue to grow, keeping our institutions going, while also starting new ventures and winding up groups that have served their purpose. Sometimes an organization will rebrand and recreate itself, sometimes it will reconnect with and reestablish its roots.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I watched the short documentary film Four Pillars of Peretz, which premiered last month at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. But it was also more personal than that, as I knew the four women being profiled: Bluma Field, Sylvia Friedman, Claire Klein Osipov and Gallia Chud, all of whom have passed away. To me, these women exemplified grace and grit. They were doers and they lived by their beliefs – most important, to me, though, was that they welcomed me, made a place for me, treated me as if I mattered, despite my holding very different views than they did on many things.

screenshot - Bluma Field, left, and Claire Klein Osipov — Bluma Field, left, and Claire Klein Osipov. *(screenshot)*

Nothing in filmmaker Michael Kissinger’s 36-minute documentary shattered the notion that they treated everyone with such respect, for which I’m grateful. I want to remember these women this way. A key element I feel is missing in the world today is this ability to be friends, or at least be civil to, people with different opinions. We are so polarized that our own views – and our need to express them – often take precedence over making another human feel, well, human.

I know that this phenomenon is nothing new. As is the case with most organizations, the Peretz Centre was started to fill a need that wasn’t being met by other groups at the time. Secular and socialist in nature, the Peretz has rarely “fit in” with the mainstream Jewish community over its 80-year history. While its politics held no interest for me, its focus on Yiddish culture, its choir in particular, did appeal to me and I was involved for some 30 years, having been introduced to the centre by Claire, who was the epitome of class – and, wow, what an incredible voice. She was close friends with my aunt, who also, sadly, has passed away.

Going down memory lane with Four Pillars of Peretz was truly a pleasure. For people who don’t know the four women profiled, I would still recommend watching it, if only to demystify the Peretz Centre. Community unity shouldn’t mean community uniformity, and everyone should be so lucky as to have at least one place where they feel welcome. We don’t need to belong everywhere, but it’s vital to our health, I think, that we belong somewhere.

screenshot - Sylvia Friedman with her son, Michael Friedman — Sylvia Friedman with her son, Michael Friedman. *(screenshot)*

Four Pillars of Peretz is also an example of what other organizations could do to honour their founders. Keeping history alive is so important, in my view. It’s not an inexpensive endeavour, but it’s worthwhile. In the case of this documentary, Kissinger really captures the spirits of these women and the way in which they still inspire others. Bluma, Sylvia, Claire and Gallia were by no means the only pillars of the Peretz Centre, but they were particularly driving forces, and they were so for decades.

“These stubborn old ladies, you know, they get sh*t done,” says Faith Jones, providing the first comments in the film, which features clips from interviews with other Peretz members and with members of the women’s families. Through these snippets, as well as photographs and other archival material, you get a sense of the enormous amount of effort and love that it takes to start an organization and keep it running.

The film starts with an overview of the four women, then each gets their own spotlight. The snappy music and the way in which Kissinger has edited the film makes it move along smoothly, both communicating the challenges these women – and others in their generation – faced with tenacity, but also with joy.

“I think all of these women, if they were here today, would say that they got just as much out of it as they put into it, because it’s community,” says one of Gallia’s daughters, Rita Chudnovsky, near the end of the film. “And there’s no replacement for a sense of community, and that’s something that’s, I think, getting harder for people to find.”

For more about the film, go to peretz-centre.org/post/four-pillars-of-peretz-short-documentary-film-project.

History as a foundation

In her talk at the White Rock South Surrey Jewish Community Centre on Nov. 23, Elana Wenner articulated what many in the room felt: that understanding our local history is not only a matter of dates and facts, but of recognizing the people and decisions that shaped Jewish life in British Columbia.

Wenner is director of programming and development at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia (JMABC). She offered participants at the WRSS JCC an opportunity to learn, ask questions and connect with a narrative that continues to inform how communities develop today.

photo - Elana Wenner, director of programming and development at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia — Elana Wenner, director of programming and development at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. (photo from JMABC)

Wenner framed the museum’s work as a living effort: one rooted in storytelling, preservation and accessibility. Since its founding in 1971, the museum has aimed to collect and safeguard materials that reflect the breadth of Jewish life across the province. While the JMABC’s office is in Vancouver, the physical archives are in Steveston, and much has been digitized. The museum’s holdings include an extensive collection of photographs, oral histories, community records and artifacts that trace the evolution of BC Jewish communities from the 1850s to the present. As Wenner explained, the goal is not only to document the past, but to continually bring it forward through tours, public programs and exhibitions that invite ongoing engagement.

A significant portion of the talk focused on the formation of early Jewish communities here, with Victoria serving as the central example. Wenner outlined how Jewish settlement in the province grew in tandem with broader economic shifts – particularly, the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1858, which drew thousands of newcomers, including Jews, arriving largely from San Francisco. Unlike many immigrant populations fleeing hardship, early Jewish settlers often came from stable or middle-class backgrounds, equipped with professional experience and communal networks established during prior periods of Jewish emancipation in Western Europe. This shaped the type of roles they took on upon arriving in British Columbia.

Rather than heading directly into the goldfields, Jewish settlers tended to create the infrastructure that supported the prospectors. Businesses, supply stores and service-oriented ventures were the backbone of Jews’ early contributions. By the 1860s, Jews owned a notable portion of the establishments in Victoria’s commercial district, helping transform what was still a young settlement into a functioning hub. One example highlighted in the talk was the Victoria Dry Goods Store, run by Kady Gambitz. Far more than a retail space, the store became a gathering point where members of the small but growing Jewish community could meet, organize, and exchange news. It became, as Wenner described, “a community centre before the community had a centre.”

This comment led into a discussion about what it takes to build a Jewish community from the ground up. Drawing on both historical evidence and contemporary observations, Wenner outlined several elements: a critical mass of people, stability and safety, access to kosher food and religious rituals, a cemetery, communal leadership and, eventually, the capacity for self-organization. In Victoria, one of the first formal steps was the creation of the Victoria Hebrew Benevolent Society around 1860/61, which coordinated charitable efforts and helped fund essential communal needs, including education and welfare. The society’s earliest priority, Wenner noted, was establishing a Jewish cemetery; a cornerstone of Jewish communal life reflecting the importance of honouring the dead according to tradition.

Wenner also spoke about the construction of Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El. While today it stands as the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Canada, its path to completion was complicated. Tensions between more reform-minded members, who preferred a church-like architectural style, and traditionalists, who insisted on a recognizably Jewish structure, stalled progress. The turning point came through the efforts of the Victoria Ladies Hebrew Aid Society. Through fundraising events, including a community ball that attracted attendees from across the city, they raised sufficient funds to move the project forward. In the end, both visions were incorporated: a subdued exterior aligned with contemporary preferences and a traditional interior complete with a women’s gallery. The synagogue, completed in 1863, remains a testament to compromise, cooperation, and the decisive leadership of Jewish women, who often worked behind the scenes.

Throughout the presentation, Wenner emphasized how women’s contributions extended far beyond fundraising. They maintained communal spaces, organized cultural events and helped establish social services that supported families and newcomers. Their work, preserved through handwritten receipts, event notes and donation lists – all of which can be found in the archives – highlights a broader pattern: that community endurance is rarely the work of a few visible leaders, but of the collective efforts of many.

Wenner also touched on the political influence of early Jewish settlers. Figures such as Lumley Franklin, Victoria’s mayor and the first elected Jewish mayor in North America, and David Oppenheimer, Vancouver’s second mayor, were presented not merely as historical footnotes but as individuals whose civic engagement reflected the integration and ambition of the province’s early Jewish community. Henry Nathan, Canada’s first Jewish member of Parliament, who represented Victoria in Ottawa, and Samuel David Schultz, the country’s first Jewish judge, further illustrate the ways in which Jews have contributed to the shaping of public life in the region since they arrived.

As Wenner’s talk moved into the Q&A session, attendees asked about migration patterns, economic networks, and how early Jewish settlers balanced maintaining tradition with adapting to a rapidly developing province. Wenner’s responses blended archival detail with broader social insight, giving the discussion a conversational quality that matched the curiosity in the room.

By the end of her presentation, what emerged most clearly was a sense of continuity. Early Jewish settlers faced many of the same issues we do today surrounding organization, leadership, collaboration and identity. The history Wenner shared was not distant; it was grounding. It provided a reminder of how communities form, evolve and endure through intention and shared purpose.

Chloe Heuchert is an historian specializing in Canadian Jewish history. During her master’s program at Trinity Western University, she focused on Jewish internment in Quebec during the Second World War.

Music can comfort us

On Dec. 3, in the second webinar of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2025/26 Building Bridges Lecture Series, Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz guided an interactive examination of the potential to harness the power of music, especially that which provides solace, be it secular or liturgical.

Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz, director of prayer and music at the Hadar Institute in New York. (photo from Hadar Institute)

The director of tefillah (prayer) and music at the Hadar Institute, an educational organization in New York City, Sacks Mintz showed how, through text study, deep listening and participation, comfort (or anchor) songs can ignite creativity and provide strength, resilience and hope in an individual – and also serve communities in times of disruption.

“Tumultuous times are unfortunately nothing new. Times have been tumultuous since the dawn of humanity. And, also since the dawn of humanity, folks have drawn comfort from a variety of modalities,” she said, emphasizing that one of those modalities is communal song.

The talk began with a listening and reflection exercise around the question of comfort. Before playing a version of Hashiveinu, performed by Sacks Mintz and members of the Nigun Circle at Hadar, she asked participants to write down something that gives them comfort. The answers were varied and dynamic, ranging from prayer, food and song to family, friends and nature.

The role of comfort music in Jewish text was explored, starting with 1 Samuel: “So, it came about whenever the [evil] spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand, and Saul would be refreshed/re-expanded, and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.”

Some in the Zoom audience described what happened in this passage as a possible early form of music therapy, bringing Saul healing and comfort.

Moving ahead several centuries, Sacks Mintz quoted Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s encouragement for all to sing a niggun (wordless melody, often used in prayer): “It is good for a person to accustom oneself to reviving oneself with a niggun, because niggun is a powerful and mighty tool, and it has the great strength to awaken a person and point their heart towards the Blessed Name.”

Nachman called everyone to music, even those who could not play an instrument or were able to sing, said Sacks Mintz, for music has the power to revive the self, “for the lift of a niggun cannot be measured.”

She explained, “[He’s] not saying, wow, you should become a pro jazz musician and an amazing singer, and then you too can be sustained by song. You just have to be willing to engage in it on your own, and that can revive the self. It’s about being in a relationship with your internal world.”

Sacks Mintz shared two different pieces from the Jewish canon that comfort her, while asking the audience to reflect and unpack what might be core elements in the language of comfort they offer. She also asked the audience to consider what constitutes a comfort song for them.

One piece was by Rabbi Menachem Goldberger, a prolific composer of niggunim. It was an example of the various feelings one can experience in a piece of music. Reactions ran the gamut from feeling rejuvenated and uplifted to grounded and anchored. Similar feelings were expressed after “Mi Yiten Li Ever,” a song based on Psalm 55:7 by Rabbi Miriam Margles and the Hadar Ensemble, was played. The translation on its Bandcamp page reads: “Who will give me the wings of a dove, that I might fly away and find rest? I would flee to the wilderness; finding refuge from the tempest, from the sweeping wind.”

As well as being a facilitator of Jewish communal music, Sacks Mintz is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. As a performer and composer, she has collaborated on more than two dozen albums across the Jewish soundscape, including her original spiritual works The Narrow and the Expanse (2020) and Yetzira (2023), with Rising Song Records. A third album is expected in early 2026.

Sacks Mintz received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, holds a master’s degree in women’s and gender studies, and earned degrees in music and religious anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Founded in 2006, the Hadar Institute strives to build communities in North America and Israel, offering various programs to support the development of Judaism that is both traditional and egalitarian.

The next lecture in the Kolot Mayim series will feature Broadway historian and lecturer David Benkof on Jan. 11 at 11 a.m. Benkof will deliver his talk – Spotlight on Jewish Broadway with the Broadway Maven – in Victoria in person and on Zoom. For information, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

From the JI archives … camp

image - article from Sept. 3 1937 JWB — Sept. 3, 1937: “It is practically impossible in the space of a short article to fully describe the happy holiday enjoyed by eighty-five children at the Council of Jewish Women Camp at Crescent Beach this summer,” begins this article by Mrs. M. M. Grossman. I know the first “M” refers to Max, but I couldn’t find his wife’s name before we went to press.

What strikes me every time the Jewish Independent does a Camp Guide issue is the staying power of our Jewish summer camps.

Camp Hatikvah was started in 1937 at Crescent Beach by the National Council of Jewish Women. It was run under their auspices until 1944, when, according to the camp’s website, “members of the Young Judaea youth organization arranged to first rent, and then later acquire, the property to create Camp Hatikvah.” The camp is located on Lake Kalamalka in the Okanagan Valley.

The site quotes the Independent’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin, noting that a 1949 article in the JWB stated that “Camp Hatikvah provided early participants with a ‘place where they could live and express themselves as Jews, unhampered with fear of others and free from the out-of-place feeling that is so often a part of North American Jewishness.’ Developed in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Hatikvah existed to ‘produce proud, happy Jewish youth who were earnest and sincere in their beliefs’ and committed to the re-building of the Jewish people.”

image - April 22, 1955: Camp BB Riback comes into existence. — April 22, 1955: Camp BB Riback comes into existence.

And the camp wasn’t territorial, it appears. According to a 1948 article in the JWB, Camp Hatikvah allowed Habonim Machaneh (Camp) to use its facilities for two weeks. By 1949, Habonim was renting a camp on Gabriola Island and, by 1951, Habonim Camp Miriam was in its third year, but, it seems, its first with the name Camp Miriam.

Camp BB Riback, in Pine Lake, Alta., was founded in 1955, led by Ted Riback of Calgary, who was chair of the B’nai B’rith Camp committee. There were two articles in the April 22, 1955, JWB about it, one about the camp and one about the upcoming B’nai B’rith convention, the highlight of which was anticipated to be a discussion about the camp.

image - July 13, 1956: Kids from Vancouver have always attended Camp Solomon Schechter in Washington state. — July 13, 1956: Kids from Vancouver have always attended Camp Solomon Schechter in Washington state.

While Camp Solomon Schechter was established by rabbis Joshua Stampfer and Joseph Wagner in 1954, the first mention I could find of it in the JWB was in 1956. The week-long camp at Echo Lake, Wash., was also under the supervision of Rabbi Bert Woythaler of Vancouver’s Congregation Beth Israel and the Pacific Northwest Region of the United Synagogue sponsored it. The camp has been located near Olympia, Wash., since 1968.

image - Dec. 29, 2006: Even before Camp Kalsman had a summer session, they were part of the Jewish Western Bulletin’s Camp Guide — Dec. 29, 2006: Even before Camp Kalsman had a summer session, they were part of the Jewish Western Bulletin’s Camp Guide.

Relative newcomer Camp Kalsman started in 2007, and the JWB has followed it since its beginnings, as well. In 2006, the camp ran an ad looking for a director and, in our Dec. 29, 2006, Camp Guide, David Berkman, the newly appointed director, spoke to the paper about the Union for Reform Judaism camp, in Arlington, Wash. “The buildings are under construction. Staff and campers are being recruited; programs are being planned and we must buy everything – bunks, bats, balls, arts and crafts supplies, mops…. I have a long wish list,” he said.

As that 2006 article by Pearl Salkin noted, “The camps might not have big brass bands, but the excitement is already building. If you want your children to join in the fun, sign them up now, before the parade passes by.”