history – Page 37

Stand! opens on Nov. 29

Marshall Williams as Stefan Sokolowski and Laura Slade Wiggins as Rebecca Almazoff fall in love in the movie musical Stand! (still from the movie)

The film Stand! comes out in Cineplex theatres across Canada on Nov. 29. Locally, it will play at SilverCity Riverport Cinemas in Richmond. The story of how the independent film got to the big screen is as interesting as the movie itself. And both it, and the musical on which it is based, started with a simple conversation.

The idea for the musical Strike! came over a deli sandwich in 2002. Then-Winnipeg Free Press editor Nicholas Hirst suggested to Winnipeg composer, producer and writer Danny Schur that there might be some musical-worthy drama found in the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Schur – who already had two full-scale musicals on his CV – followed up, coming across a photo of Ukrainian-Canadian Mike Sokolowski, who was killed by one of the “special police” – the actual police force, who sympathized with the strikers, had been fired and replaced with thugs – in what is now known as “Bloody Saturday,” June 21, 1919. Being Ukrainian-Canadian himself, Schur was hooked.

He wrote 18 songs and the script for the musical Strike! by 2003. A workshop of it at the University of Winnipeg connected Schur to director Anne Hodges and writer Rick Chafe, who helped get the production ready for its première – first an abridged version, an outdoor show in 2004; then the full version in 2005. (Chafe is also co-writer of the film with Schur.)

“The idea for the movie first sprang from a conversation I had with Jeff Goldblum in 2005,” Schur told the Independent in an interview. “He was sitting beside me at the Winnipeg world première (he was in a relationship with our Winnipeg female star [Catherine Wreford], whom at that time had a Broadway career). After seeing the musical, he stated, ‘Big story, big ideas, it would make a great movie.’ And I thought, ‘If Jeff Goldblum says it will make a great movie, that must surely be the case.’ I naively believed it would take two or three years to come to fruition and it took 14. Shows what I knew!”

Those years would be filled with adapting the musical from stage to screen, raising the large amount of money needed to film a movie, casting the roles, finding a director, finding a production company, etc., etc.

The considerations in translating the stage production to film were legion, said Schur. “First, some songs had to go, because the average number of songs in a movie musical is eight; the stage show has 18. Some of the cuts were obvious – because some of the actors we cast were not singers. In all cases, it was a matter of what served the story best. What works on stage does not necessarily translate to screen. Rob [Adetuyi] was extremely helpful in this regard, having as much experience as he does with film.

“But the biggest change to screen was Rob’s doing: to make the film more diverse. Emma, the black maid, was a conscious change to reflect history better and have a more diverse film. So, too, was the case with the character of Gabriel [a Métis soldier who served in the war].”

When Adetuyi, the director of Stand! (whose mother is Jewish, as it happens), changed the maid character from being Irish to being a black woman who had fled racist violence in the United States, Schur wrote a new song, “Stand,” which became the title of the film.

Sokolowski is one of the main characters in both the musical and film. He and his son, Stefan, are struggling to earn enough money to bring the rest of their family to Canada from Ukraine. Among their neighbours are Jewish siblings Rebecca and Moishe Almazoff, the latter of whom is based on a real person. (Moishe Almazoff is the pen name for Solomon Pearl.)

Amid the harshness of life and their bleak future, Stefan and Rebecca fall in love. Schur told the JI that he based the interfaith romance on that of his aunt and uncle, “she the Christian, he the Jew.” Of course, the couple’s relationship isn’t welcomed by their families and respective communities. And, of course, the poor living and working conditions, the labour unrest, the threat of deportation and the violence are not conducive to love.

In a neat turn, the making of the film has led to changes in the musical.

“I always say, musicals are never written, they’re rewritten,” explained Schur. “So, where, before, the movie was substantially different from the stage musical, we have now edited the stage version to reflect the movie. So, now they’re pretty close. Having said that, the stage play has more songs.”

The music is certainly one of the highlights of the film. In this regard, and also another of the Jewish connections to the production, Schur noted, “Gail Asper is the hugest supporter of the movie, having invested in the stage show and the movie, and she convinced Montreal’s Sharon Azrieli to do the same. Sharon, who is an opera singer, sang the closing credit song, ‘Change,’ which I wrote for her.”

As for the feat of getting an independent movie a national release, not to mention deals for distribution in the United States and Japan, Schur said, “This is a truly indie release; in other words, there is no distributor involved. We went to Cineplex and said, ‘We have an audience. Please give us some screens.’ Where Cineplex could have given us a token, small number of screens, they provided screens from sea to shining sea, which is a testament to their belief in the film. I cannot say enough good things about the good people at Cineplex for giving us our chance to make a stand, especially in the midst of so busy a late fall season.”

Stand! showtimes and tickets are listed at cineplex.com/movie/stand.

“The movie is a unique opportunity to take the experience of the Jewish community in Canada circa 1919 and apply the lessons of the era to today, be those lessons for the community itself, or the broader community of immigrants,” said Schur. “In an era where discrimination is on the rise, the movie is a metaphor that teaches us that ‘love thy brother’ is the best way forward.”

A story of two of six million

Dr. Michael Hayden delivers the keynote address at the annual Kristallnacht commemorative program Nov. 7. (photo by Al Szajman)

In the 1930s, German Jews were required to register all precious metals in their possession, a prelude to having them confiscated. In Hamburg alone, the Nazis collected 20 tons of silver, much of it Judaica. Of this, they melted down 18 tons. Two tons was deemed by the Nazi curator Carl Schellenberg to be of artistic or other value in its existing form.

After the war, Schellenberg was kept on by the British because his scrupulous indexing of artifacts made him valuable. His love of the city of Hamburg meant he ensured that some of the most precious pieces of stolen art and artifacts made their way to that city’s museum.

That is where Dr. Michael Hayden, a Vancouver researcher in molecular medicine and human genetics, and one of the world’s leading researchers in Huntington disease, was able to trace one of the few remaining pieces of his grandparents’ once-extensive collection of Judaica.

A silver Kiddush cup, crafted in 1757 and embossed with a vivid three-dimensional depiction of the story of Jacob’s vision of a ladder to heaven, which belonged to his grandparents, Gertrud and Max Raphael Hahn, has been restituted to the family. It is now on loan, a small artifact in size but one of the most stunning pieces in a just-opened exhibition at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, titled Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy.

photo - Max and Gertrud Hahn, the patriarch and matriarch of the German-Jewish Hahn family of Göttingen. Photo taken in Berlin, Germany, 1918. While their children, Rudolf and Hanni, emigrated to England, the couple did not survive the Holocaust — Max and Gertrud Hahn, the patriarch and matriarch of the German-Jewish Hahn family of Göttingen. Photo taken in Berlin, Germany, 1918. While their children, Rudolf and Hanni, emigrated to England, the couple did not survive the Holocaust. *(photo from Hahn family)*

Hayden delivered the keynote address at the annual Kristallnacht commemorative program Nov. 7, before the opening of the exhibition to the public. The exhibit runs to Nov. 27, 2020.

“It’s a story that it’s taken me a long time to confront,” Hayden told the Independent.

Hayden’s grandparents were transported to Riga, Latvia, in 1941, where they were murdered by Latvian collaborators of the Nazis. Max Hahn had been arrested for the first time on Kristallnacht, three years earlier, but, with Gertrud, had managed to secure the passage of many possessions to safe locations in the neutral countries of Sweden and Switzerland. More importantly, they had sent their two children, daughter Hanni and son Rudolf – Hayden’s father – to safety in London.

After the war, the orphaned pair retrieved the remnants of their family’s material possessions. Rudolf, who joined the British army in 1943 and adopted the less Germanic-sounding name Roger Hayden, moved to South Africa. There, more than a dozen boxes sat undiscussed in the family home. When Roger passed away, Michael Hayden shipped the boxes to his Vancouver home, where they sat, unopened, for another two decades.

When he finally confronted the parcels from his family’s past, he discovered a stamp collection, maps, artworks – and 9,000 original documents relating to his family’s history from the 1850s until 1941. These included heart-wrenching letters between Rudolf in England and his parents still in Germany.

While Michael Hayden was growing up, there were some items that his father had not kept stored away. One was a Paul Ritter violin that Rudolf had received on his bar mitzvah. Michael’s daughter, Anna, now a Vancouver hematology oncologist, played on it as a young person and Hayden hopes to one day hear grandchildren also play it. It is part of the exhibit. It is also a hint of how the family got its name. It was not a coincidence that, in anglicizing his name, Rudolf/Roger chose a variation on the surname of a legendary classical composer.

“There were piano recitals and all kinds of concerts in the Hahn family every Sunday,” said Hayden. “They used to have a little chamber orchestra, it was a totally different world. So, he chose the name Roger Hayden from Rudolf Hahn and I’m sure Hayden had some comfort for him because Haydn was so important in his life.”

photo - The silver gilt kiddush cup adorned with the story of Jacob (Germany, 1757), acquired by Max Hahn in the early 1900s and confiscated by the Nazis in 1939, is the only piece of Hahn’s looted Judaica collection that has been restituted to date — The silver gilt kiddush cup adorned with the story of Jacob (Germany, 1757), acquired by Max Hahn in the early 1900s and confiscated by the Nazis in 1939, is the only piece of Hahn’s looted Judaica collection that has been restituted to date. *(photo © Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre)*

Hayden credits the German government and museums for supporting restitution efforts. His family recently received a grant from the German federal government to hire a researcher to continue the search. Understandably, the challenges are great. The Hahn family’s collection of Judaica was considered one of the finest and most extensive in Germany, rivaling those of the Sassoon and Rothschild families. Because they had lent some objects to museums, and because of Max and Gertrud’s careful recordkeeping, the family has both photographs and detailed inventories of what the collection included before it was looted. Most families do not have such tangible proof.

Hayden emphasizes that any material value of restituted artifacts is irrelevant and the importance is because of personal significance, and that the process represents steps toward reconciliation and restoring dignity of Nazism’s victims.

“For me, personally, it’s been a process of coming to terms with the unimaginable horror and confronting it,” he said.

He has had very positive and some negative experiences during this work. He is impressed with the German government’s efforts to seek forgiveness for their country’s past, including memorializations like the 70,000 Stolpersteine, stumbling stones, that have been installed outside the last homes of victims of the Nazis, and the fact that the vast Holocaust memorial in Berlin is located between the embassies of major countries in the heart of the city.

“When I see Germany and I see what they’re doing, it’s been very instructive for me about confronting your history and confronting it unabashedly,” he said, making parallels with Canada’s reconciliation process with First Nations.

Germany’s response is especially admirable in comparison to other European countries that experienced collaboration and, rather than confronting their past, are actively denying it.

But, Hayden has had negative experiences, including the discovery that the school his father had attended in Hamburg had, as recently as a few years ago, what amounted to a museum to those students who had fought for the Nazis, with not a trace of the fate of the Jewish students who had attended. The Nazi display is now gone and a marker lists the names of Jewish students who were murdered. But he also discovered that the school’s long-held assurance that they had never participated in Nazi activities was fabricated, when photos emerged of the school festooned in Nazi flags and students and faculty making Heil Hitler salutes.

“At a personal level, for me, it’s trying to give up the stowaway of sorrow and pain on my shoulders that I’ve never confronted and to move forward,” Hayden said. “It’s not that I’m at forgiveness, but I recognize that forgiveness is not so much for those you are forgiving, but for the forgiver. You can give up your own toxic anger and move forward. For me, it’s also been a journey to acknowledge my own German ancestry and come to terms with it.”

photo - Dr. Michael Hayden, the grandson of Max and Gertrud Hahn, discovered in the 1980s that this Torah binder was in the possession of the City Museum in Göttingen. The piece of cloth was used to swaddle his great-grandfather Raphael Hahn for his brit milah (circumcision ceremony) in 1831. With the help of Göttingen’s mayor, Hayden organized for the Torah binder to be returned to his family — Dr. Michael Hayden, the grandson of Max and Gertrud Hahn, discovered in the 1980s that this Torah binder was in the possession of the City Museum in Göttingen. The piece of cloth was used to swaddle his great-grandfather Raphael Hahn for his brit milah (circumcision ceremony) in 1831. With the help of Göttingen’s mayor, Hayden organized for the Torah binder to be returned to his family. *(photo © Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre)*

He hopes that the exhibit, his family’s story and the larger facts of the Holocaust resonate in today’s world.

“We’ve got to be aware of ourselves as Jews of condemning other populations, we have to be aware of stereotyping, we have to be even more acutely aware from our own history about the struggles and making sure that we learn from that in the way that we conduct ourselves, so recognizing, as we look at children on television separated from their parents, that we too can be horrified by that and do whatever we can to make sure that we are not complicit or even silent in the face of all of this,” he said. “In certain circumstances, unless we really hold onto some deep principles of democratic culture and value of life, your neighbours can become your killers.”

As the search for additional family heirlooms continues, Hayden acknowledges the challenges. “I think it is a needle in a haystack to be honest, but it’s worth pursuing.”

Of the entire experience, he said: “It’s been an opportunity to give individuality and identity for two of six million people who were murdered, to rescue them from generalizations and understand who they were and understand their distinctiveness and to bring my grandparents out of obscurity and give them the warmth and respect they deserve.”

The Kristallnacht commemoration where Hayden spoke began with a candlelight procession of survivors. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Maleh Rachamim. Philip Levinson, president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), introduced the event and Nina Krieger, the VHEC’s executive director, introduced the keynote speaker. Rabbi Jonathan Infeld offered reflections after Hayden’s address. Jody Wilson-Raybould, member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, offered greetings, and Councilor Sarah Kirby-Yung read a proclamation from the City of Vancouver. The event was presented by the VHEC, in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund of the VHEC.

On return to Canada, life changes

Victor Neuman (photo from Victor Neuman)

In this eight-part series, the author recounts his life in Israel around the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The events and people described are real but, for reasons of privacy, the names are fictitious.

Part 8: Epilogue

In a backhanded, minor way, I was a casualty of the war, too. The lack of help during the conflict meant I had to work alone trying to preserve the banana crop. One day, on my tractor, I was in a hurry, carrying several sacks of fertilizer to the fields. They had to go into the distribution tank before the irrigation timers flipped a switch and began irrigating another field. Someone at the kibbutz had helped me load them onto the hood of the tractor, with the idea that, at that height, I could drop them easily into the tank at the other end.

It didn’t work out that way. I hit a rut in the road and all the sacks slid to the ground. As fast as I could, I reloaded all the bags – which were 50 kilos each – lifting them from the ground to the tractor hood, and carried on. I felt OK at the time but I had herniated a disc in my back. The pain started later that day and got worse over the next few days. I saw a doctor in Hedera and got a daunting prognosis. My back might need surgery but no surgery would be possible in the near future. Wounded soldiers had priority, so only life-saving procedures were available to civilians. Had I been lucky enough to have been shot as well, they could have done something for my back.

I had to return to Canada to get the operation and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, my time in Israel was coming to an end. My plan was clear in my head. I would go home, get the surgery, return to Israel cured, become a kibbutz member, marry Tamar and live happily ever after. As the saying goes: “Man plans and God laughs.”

Away from Tamar in Canada, I had the growing realization that I wasn’t going back to Israel. The best explanation I can give is to repeat what a friend once told me.

He was a rude bugger but he had the right of it when he said, “Millions of years of evolution have turned men into slobbering idiots around women. Our problem is that we’re always thinking with the wrong head.”

Whatever Tamar and I had going on, it wasn’t happening between my ears. As beautiful as she was, I couldn’t imagine spending my life with her and I had to end things. And, if I ended things, I could never return to the kibbutz after jilting their darling firstborn-on-kibbutz child. And that particular kibbutz was the only place in Israel where I could imagine a life for myself.

It was over in every sense and way. I wrote a painful letter to Tamar. She wrote an even more painful letter back to me, using English expressions I didn’t know she had. She hated me. That made two of us. Lost another woman. Lost a country. Lost my purpose in life. How careless can you get?

Ironically, my back injury, which had started the whole process of turning my life on its head, simply healed itself. No surgery and no pain after just a few months. My life had completely changed direction because a few sacks of fertilizer fell off a tractor. Once again, life turning on a dime.

As much as I loved English literature, I still had no notion of how to use my master’s degree. Teaching wasn’t my thing and, with that degree, there wasn’t much else. I had to change gears – drastically. Then I recalled something from my time doing archeology.

While we tourist-volunteers struggled in the heat and dust, digging endlessly to uncover the ruins of Tel Beersheva, a surveyor stood over us and used his instrument to map out the location of walls as they were discovered. To do it, he spent most of his time staring through his instrument at his survey assistant – a woman in a two-piece bathing suit who was holding the survey rod. I started thinking an archeological surveyor was the job for me. You may think of me as a shallow person. In my defence, I am.

To make a long story short, I began studying survey technology at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. That morphed into surveying fish hatcheries, which morphed into surveying logging roads, which morphed into designing logging roads, which morphed into a lifelong career designing highways for the Province of British Columbia and an engineering firm called Binnie Engineering Consultants. Nowhere along the line did I ever do archeological surveying, and the only survey assistants I ever had wore flannel shirts, jeans and hiking boots.

In time, my road design work left me feeling a little parched, culturally. I decided to join the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir. There, I met the gal who has been the love of my life for the past 31 years and counting. After meandering through life for what seemed like an eternity, what I wanted was crystal clear to me. I wanted her. And I learned something about finding my purpose in life. The main deal is to find the right person. The rest is just commentary.

We had our first date on New Year’s Eve. We were engaged by February and planning to be married by May. Her family was apoplectic about the timeline so we pushed the marriage date to September. I’ve stuck by her and she is stuck with me. And so, more than 30 years after puberty, I was finally all grown up. And you know what? By all I hold dear, she is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Time is a river, they say, and this river may have almost run its course to the sea. But I remember the stream that became that river. I can never get Israel out of my mind, after all this time. And my leaving that country to lead the easy, secure life in Canada will always haunt me. It was 1974 and I still remember, clear as a bell, the sign I passed in Lod airport on the way to my plane home. In Hebrew and English, it said: “Will the last one to leave the country please turn off the lights.” Even believing I was soon coming back, I felt like a traitor.

A long time ago, when I was courting the dear lady I married, I did something very old-fashioned. I wrote her love poems. She may have married me because of them or in spite of them, I’m not sure which. I reread one of them recently and something dawned on me. It wasn’t a poem just for my beloved. It was also a poem for everybody in that land; everybody trying to hold onto their place in the sun or everybody trying to find it. It’s called “Magic”:

On this shattered summit / Over plains flooded red by sunfall / Where insect armies sullen, blooded / Crawl craters in search of victim’s missed / We perch uneasily / And wonder at a lethal world

But then, conjured by you / I felt for one bedazzled, high moment / We were magicians such as none before / And with our silk top hats / And our crimson capes, love-woven / We could pluck rabbits out of a hat / Launch birds out of a box / Or trick the world into decency.

(Previously: “Learning the lay of the land”; “When Afula road went quiet”; “Tending the banana fields in war”; “Weapon training begins”; “Near tragedy on guard”; “Fighters return to kibbutz”; “The fire-like impacts of war”)

Victor Neuman was born in the former Soviet Union, where his family sought refuge after fleeing Poland during the Second World War. The family immigrated to Canada in 1948 and Neuman grew up in the Greater Vancouver area. He attended the University of British Columbia and obtained a BA and MA with majors in English literature and creative writing. Between 1968 and 1974, he made two trips to Israel, one of which landed him on a kibbutz at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Upon his return to Canada, he studied Survey Technology at BCIT and went on to a career of designing highways for the Province of British Columbia and the firm of Binnie Civil Engineering Consultants. When he retired, he reconnected with his roots in creative writing and began writing scripts for Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir concerts and articles for the Jewish Independent. Neuman and his wife, Tammy, live in southeast Vancouver and enjoy the company of friends, their extensive extended family and their four sons.

History and future combine

Ilana Zackon and Ariel Martz-Oberlander played current-day partisans in the immersive theatre piece Time Machine. (photo from Radix Theatre)

Two Jewish theatre artist-creators, Ariel Martz-Oberlander and Ilana Zackon, teamed up this summer to create an immersive piece based on the Jewish partisan movement, as part of Radix Theatre’s futuristic play Time Machine, set on a boat, the Pride of Vancouver.

The show took place on the yacht over a five-hour journey up Indian Arm (traditionally known as səl̓ilw̓ət) and featured both local emerging and established artists presenting new work of various genres, such as theatre, spoken word poetry, sound installation and more. The artists were asked to create a piece inspired by what Vancouver will look like in the year 2050. Some darker, others playful, the works were all grounded in a strong sense of the artists’ identities.

Martz-Oberlander and Zackon wanted to bring their ancestral roots into their piece. The pair created an immersive show in which they played two rebels helping smuggle climate refugees to safety. The 10-minute piece, which ran on a loop for an hour-and-a-half of the boat ride, took place in the boat’s basement bathroom, which acted as a safehouse. Five to seven audience members at a time were summoned by Zackon, dressed as a soldier, down into the dimly lit bathroom, where they were greeted by a similarly dressed Martz-Oberlander; “Zog Nit Keynmol” (“The Partisan Song”) played in the background.

The invited audience soon discovers they are now refugees who have just escaped fires in California. The soldiers, members of a new wave of partisans called PAP, explain that the refugees are being brought to another safehouse and prepared to enter the new world. The soldiers explain that their resistance cohort has based their movement on the survival lessons of their ancestors, partisan fighters in the forests of occupied Europe. The audience members are given new names, briefed on the types of skills, such as hunting moose, that they will need to survive in their new lives and, eventually, led into a discussion on identity.

“What’s better: start over or remember where you’re coming from?” Martz-Oberlander’s character asks. The two soldiers bicker over their differing views and invite the audience to contribute. After the group has spoken, the soldiers receive word that it is safe to move the refugees. Before leaving, audience members are given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note. The notes lined the stairwell and, as the loop continued, more and more words were added, creating a tapestry of human identity. The notes lined the bathroom walls for the remainder of the boat ride, and included such items as “curiosity and kindness,” “time to think,” “my favourite berry picking spot,” “my knowledge of languages” and “the giggles of my daughter,” among many others.

photo - Audience members were given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note — Audience members were given the option of writing down “one thing about their identity they don’t want to lose in the new world” on a sticky note. *(photo by Didier Brûlé-Champagne/DBC Photographie)*

A number of the boat passengers who attended the piece were Jewish and shared how they connected with their ancestors through remembering their stories. Many non-Jews had never heard of the partisan movement and the two artists felt the work they did helped educate people on an important part of history.

Zackon and Martz-Oberlander also received, from the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, transcripts of interviews with Jewish refugees coming to Canada during the 1930s and 1940s. These testimonials were hidden around the safehouse and incorporated into the performance. The two artists hope to receive the opportunity to continue developing and expanding this work and to incorporate more of their own personal family stories about immigration to Canada.

The fire-like impacts of war

Life for many kibbutz members changed after they served in the war. (photo by Victor Neuman)

Part 7: The Ceasefire

The ceasefire came on Oct. 25, 19 days after the war had begun. It was a short war, if you look at it one way. In another way, it was a short episode in a long war going back to 1948 and stretching forward to a distant and indiscernible point. With the Yom Kippur War, we came to realize that Israel’s enemies could fight and lose many wars and still exist, while Israel could not afford to lose even one.

Still, we were grateful for the end of hostilities and longed for the return of all of those who had gone to fight from the kibbutz. Remarkably, they all survived to return. Remarkable because kibbutz soldiers had a reputation for aggressive leadership and devotion to duty. At that time, the statistic most often referenced was that only five percent of the population of Israel lived on kibbutzim but 20% of the officers in the Israeli military were kibbutz members. Correspondingly, they routinely made up a high percentage of war casualties.

But, just because no one was dead did not mean that nothing had died.

Tzvie and Ari seemed unfazed by the experience. They were back in the bananas with me and back to their joking ways. We were all sitting around having lunch, heads down in our plates when Tzvie popped up, threw a banana peel at Ari and then pretended to be eating like everybody else. Ari first faked a return throw and then threw it in earnest, hitting Tzvie on the side of the head.

“Hey! Why do you think it was me?” said Tzvie.

“I didn’t know at first so I just pretended to throw back. Only you ducked. The one who ducks is the guilty party.”

When they weren’t pranking each other, they were happily preparing for their return to Europe. The kibbutz had voted to give them another vacation to replace the one they had cut short to help in the war.

Others who returned were not the same. Yossi, a quiet youth, was a medic in the war. I had never worked with him nor had a close friendship with him, though, as I did everybody on the kibbutz, I saw him around a lot. Now, I was not seeing him around much. Not in the dining hall, not in the recreation room, not in any of the places kibbutzniks normally gathered. I passed by his flat and noticed a tray of food outside his door. When I asked a friend of his what was going on, he told me that Yossi hadn’t come out of his room since coming back. His friends decided that, if they couldn’t coax him out, at least they could make sure he didn’t starve to death. They would leave a food tray and he’d retrieve it when no one was around, and then put the empty tray out to be picked up. This went on for two weeks before Yossi finally began to appear and made the attempt to begin living again.

Yossi on the one hand, Tzvie and Ari on the other. I suppose war is a fire that can melt some metals and harden others.

Then there was Aryeh, one of our youngest who went to fight. He was still undergoing the three-year service requirement when the war broke out.

Aryeh drove an armoured personnel carrier and had been patroling in his vehicle near the ceasefire lines in the Golan. Night-driving conditions on the border required that headlights be cut or suppressed to reduce the vehicle’s visibility to the enemy. A member of Aryeh’s crew pestered him to let him drive the vehicle. The man was not an experienced driver but Aryeh let him take over the wheel. In a short time, the new driver lost control of the carrier and rolled it off the side of the road – Aryeh’s neck was broken and he was rendered a quadriplegic.

Aryeh was released from the hospital when they had done all they could for him. He required ongoing care but his doctors felt he needed to be home, where his family and friends were. They equipped his bed and room with every gizmo known to mankind and left him to make what he could of his life.

We all were horrified by what had happened to him and it became a kind of required pilgrimage to visit Aryeh and pass some time with him. Tamar was particularly determined to be at his side as much as she could. When we visited him, we were all so damned cheerful.

“Try to keep his spirits up,” we told ourselves. So, we joked, we gossiped, we kibbitzed, we pretended. Tamar was better at it than I was. She was naturally talkative, inherently upbeat and she carried on beautifully.

Aryeh was like Tamar – relentlessly cheerful. He never complained about his condition, never even talked about it. Those were conversations that were kept in his own head and I could only imagine the price he paid for what he couldn’t say.

Thinking about it later, I came to realize I’d do the same in Aryeh’s situation. Here you are, 20 years old, with no working arms or legs, no future to speak of. Perhaps no wedding or kids or life. All you have are your friends. Do you really want to drag them into your abyss to the point where they start avoiding you? Lose the last thing that gives you any semblance of contentment? And so, you let the tears flow when you are alone and the jokes flow when you have company. As I said, relentlessly cheerful.

Our next door neighbour, Shmuel, came home to his wife and two kids. I was incredibly glad to see him. When Shmuel was called up, he was in the middle of a birthday party for one of his two daughters, the 9-year-old. He finished the party, got into his uniform, grabbed his gun and then stopped in to see me before he headed north.

“I have a favour to ask, Kanadi.”

I knew that, in two hours, he would be on the front lines in the Golan. And that, three hours after his daughter’s birthday party, he could be dead. I was ready to give him any damn thing he wanted.

“I understand your parents in Canada shipped you a crate with a stereo system – the one you have on Tamar’s bookshelf. I was wondering if I could get the wood crate from you. I want to make a wagon for my kids.”

“Yes, take it,” I said. “And take the stereo, too.”

He treated it as a joke but I was only half-kidding. In that moment, there wasn’t enough I could do.

But Shmuel came back. I wanted to give him a bear hug when I spotted him walking up the path but his family called dibs.

The war was over. Or, to put it more accurately, this war was over.

(Next Time: Epilogue)

Important finds in Usha

A 1,400-year-old hammer and nails, found at the ancient city of Usha. (photo by Yoli Schwartz/IAA via Ashernet)

An Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) excavation some 15 kilometres east of Haifa at the ancient city of Usha revealed a 1,400-year-old hammer and nails, confirming that the ancient inhabitants of Usha manufactured iron tools.

photo - One of the broken wine glasses found in Usha — One of the broken wine glasses found in Usha. *(photo by Yoli Schwartz/IAA via Ashernet)*

The IAA’s community excavation, carried out predominantly by youth and volunteers, has exposed part of a Jewish settlement with ritual baths, oil presses and winepresses. Indications are that the primary occupation of the Usha inhabitants was the large-scale processing of the olive trees and vines they cultivated on the surrounding hills. The discovery of the ritual baths indicates that the Jewish press workers took care to purify themselves in the ritual baths in order to manufacture ritually pure oil and wine.

According to Yair Amitzur, director of the excavation and of the Sanhedrin Trail Project for the IAA, “the settlement of Usha is mentioned in the Jewish sources many times in the Roman and Byzantine periods, as the village where the institution of the Sanhedrin was renewed, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and after the failure of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE. The Sanhedrin was the central Jewish council and law court, and it was headed by the president, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the Second, who presided in Usha, and then his son, Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi. Here, in Usha, the rabbis of the Sanhedrin made decrees to enable the Jewish people to recover after the war against the Romans, and to reconstruct Jewish life in the Galilee.”

Fighters return to kibbutz

Stacking the banana bunches in the wagon required a type of superpower. (photo from Victor Neuman)

Part 6: War Comes Home

My first inkling of how fighting is done in this region of the world came in 1969, when I was working on the pipeline near Arad. Our crew was encamped at a motel and so were some Israeli soldiers. At that time, there were infiltrators crossing from Jordan into Israel and planting bombs wherever vehicles were likely to pass. Tourists like myself were warned to hitch rides while standing on the paved part of the road – never the soft shoulder. Similarly, the cars picking you up never pulled over; they simply stopped in the travel lane and waited.

The Israeli patrols were setting up ambushes in wadis in the area. When they came back to the motel to warm up, I talked with them about what they were doing.

As darkness came, the soldiers drove out to a wadi that showed signs of human activity, positioned themselves and waited. It was damn cold, they told me, especially when you had to remain still for a long time. Their jackets and leggings kept most of their bodies warm but their hands became very cold. You can’t properly operate a weapon with gloves on.

“So, what did you do to keep your hands warm?” My question got laughter in response.

“Shall we tell him?”

“Yes, who cares? Tell him.”

“Well, if you must know, we all sit around with our hands in our crotch. That’s the only way to keep them warm.”

Still the greenhorn, I asked them if they had any luck or taken any prisoners. Again, they looked at each other – in more seriousness this time.

“It’s dark and you can’t see what they have in their hands even when their hands are in the air. We just kill them all.”

I had no more questions.

Now, it was 1973 and the war had been going on for two weeks. The tide had turned. Syria had been pushed back from the Golan and Egypt had been cut off in the Sinai. To the relief of all of us on the kibbutz, Jordan’s only contribution to the war had been to send some soldiers to fight alongside the Syrians. There was no Jordanian third front in the war.

A trickle of kibbutz members – mainly the older reservists – began returning from the front lines. One of them was a good friend and a fellow banana worker named Moti.

Moti’s talent in the fields showed itself during our time of kateef (cutting, or harvesting). Moti received the bunches and quickly stacked them in the wagon, usually about eight rows high. His superpower was being able to do this in a way that the row would not collapse before the next row shored it up. I tried it once and produced a banana avalanche. It was one of those things that is funny in hindsight – at the time, we had to empty the whole wagon and start over. Time was wasted, bananas were bruised, Lev was pissed.

Moti told me he hadn’t been on the front but had heard stories from those who were. They told him that they had retaken outposts that were overrun in the first days of the war. They found Israeli soldiers tied to the four corners of their bunk with their bellies cut open. I asked him if he had seen any of this; he told me he hadn’t. They were just stories he had heard, but he believed them.

Having Moti back was like old times. Moti, Lev and I were all back in the bananas, along with a number of tourist-volunteers. We were able to properly tend the fields again and we wished to think that life was returning to normal.

Still, the war came home whenever someone else came back on furlough and brought their stories. Next to return were Tzvie and Ari – good friends who, in peacetime, worked the fields together and, in wartime, shared a tank. Just before the war, they had completed their three years of military service and were off on a tour of Europe. No one on the kibbutz could afford to do such things, so the kibbutz rewarded everyone who completed their army stint with an all-expenses paid trip to Europe. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the world before settling down and all the kibbutz kids dreamed of their time abroad.

Tzvie and Ari were two weeks into their trip when the news reached them that Israel was under attack. Ari wanted to carry on with the tour, arguing that the war would be over before they got home, but Tzvie would have none of it. He told Ari that he would go insane if he were walking around Europe while his country was at war and he became so agitated that Ari agreed to return.

One of the war stories they shared was that, on one of their forays, their tank was hit by a wire-guided missile – a portable device enabled the operator to fire the missile and control it in flight by means of a wire that played out as the missile flew on its path. The Egyptian army had many of these missiles and they took a deadly toll on Israeli tanks in the opening days of the war.

When Tzvie and Ari’s tank was hit, it was immediately disabled and the entire crew had to abandon it quickly. With the enemy nearby, they couldn’t exit from the top of the tank so they dropped the hatch at the bottom and escaped using their tank’s track-and-wheel assembly as cover. They were tripping and stumbling over anti-tank wires from an earlier battle but managed to haul their guns and a box of ammunition to a nearby hill. They were grateful to be alive but less so when they realized they had brought the wrong ammunition; it was compatible with one of the tank’s machine guns but none of the weapons they were carrying. In despair, they hunkered down and waited to be attacked. Then they began to notice how quiet it was. In fact, there was no one around but them. They came down from the hill to investigate and found that their tank had actually hit a land mine.

Ari said of the experience, “Yes, it was scary, but at least our job is driving a tank. It’s worse to be a paratrooper. There they tell you that, if your chute doesn’t open, point yourself head down toward the ground. That way they can reuse your boots.”

At this point, Ari and Tzvie smacked each other on the back and laughed their heads off. Seeing our cue, we all laughed as well.

Now I had the whole range of it. War, murderous and savage. War as slapstick.

(Next Time: The Ceasefire)

(Previously: “Learning the lay of the land”; “When Afula road went quiet”; “Tending the banana fields in war”; “Weapon training begins”; “Near tragedy on guard”)

Vital, relevant culture

Tale of the Eastside Lantern’s Shon Wong and Rosa Cheng. (photo by David Cooper)

Among the many artists participating in this year’s Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is Jewish community member Elliot Polsky. The multi-percussionist joins the Son of James Band in Tale of the Eastside Lantern, a workshop presentation of a new hybrid Chinese rock opera.

From Oct. 30 to Nov. 10, the annual Heart of the City offers 12 days of music, stories, theatre, poetry, cultural celebrations, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, mixed media, art talks, history talks and history walks. More than 100 events are scheduled to take place at more than 40 locations throughout the Downtown Eastside. This year’s theme – “Holding the Light” – has emerged from the need of Downtown Eastside-involved artists and residents to illuminate the vitality and relevance of the Downtown Eastside community and its diverse traditions, knowledge systems, ancestral languages, cultural roots and stories.

Tale of the Eastside Lantern is one of the top festival picks: “In the streets and shops of Vancouver’s Chinatown, Jimmy wrestles with his personal demons and sets out to solve a mystery that is guarded by Chinese opera spirits of the underworld. Jimmy is led by the sounds of rock music and motivated by the oldest feeling in the world … love.” Written and composed by Shon Wong and directed by Andy Toth, the rock opera is produced by Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Son of James Band in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre. Performed in English and Cantonese, the workshop presentation takes place Oct. 31, 8 p.m., at CBC Studio 700. Tickets ($15) are available at the door or in advance from eastsidelantern2.eventbrite.ca.

Another top pick is Sis Ne’ Bi -Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks, written and performed by Taninli Wright (Wet’suwet’en) about her Messenger of Hope Walk – she walked 1,600 kilometres across British Columbia to give voice to First Nations children and other marginalized youth. Developed in collaboration with Laura Barron, Jason Clift, Julie McIsaac and Jessica Schacht, the play is produced by Instruments of Change. There are several performances Oct. 30-Nov. 3 at Firehall Arts Centre. For advance tickets ($20/$15), call 604-689-0926 or visit [email protected].

Written and performed by Yvonne Wallace (Lilwat) and directed by Jefferson Guzman, ūtszan (to make things better) follows the journey of a woman to reclaim her language; in the process, she uncovers indigenous knowledge, humour, strength and resilience. The play has three shows at the Firehall Oct. 31-Nov. 2, with tickets ($20/$15) available at the door and in advance.

Of special interest to the Jewish community, whose oral histories form part of Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter’s Opening Doors: Vancouver’s East End, is the dramatization of that book, which was first published in 1979. Directed by Donna Spencer and co-produced by the Firehall and Vancouver Moving Theatre, Opening Doors has several performances Nov. 6-9 at the Firehall, with tickets $20/$15.

While there are these and other ticketed shows, most of the festival events are free to attend. For example, on Nov. 2, 11 a.m., at CRAB Park, there is a mini-landing of canoes, featuring a welcome ceremony, after which paddlers and guests journey on land to the Police Museum and the exhibition Healing Waters, an exploration of how communities heal through connecting to cultural practice. This landing, in honour of the inaugural Pulling Together canoe journey in 2001, launches a year of story gathering and history sharing in preparation for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Pulling Together Society at next year’s Heart of the City.

In Speaking in Tongues, guests Woody Morrison, David Ng, Grace Eiko Thomson and Dalannah Gail Bowen discuss mother tongues and how their interactions can give birth to hybrid languages such as Japanese Pidgin, which is unique to the West Coast of Canada. This conversation is part of Homing Pidgin, an interactive installation by Haruko Okano, and takes place on Nov. 2, 1 p.m., at Centre A (205-268 Keefer).

Meanwhile, Irreparable Harm? is by Sinister Sisters Ensemble – activists and theatre folk, young and old, First Nations and settlers, many of whom were arrested in the protests against the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. It uses videos, transcripts of the court proceedings and statements that were read in the courtroom to shine a light on the justice system. It is at Carnegie Theatre on Nov. 8, 3 p.m.

For full festival details, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

Near tragedy on guard

Patroling the kibbutz perimeter. (photo from Victor Neuman)

Part 5: Night Guard Duty on the Kibbutz

Lev, the banana boss, was in his early 30s and a miracle worker. He was back on the kibbutz and strolling toward me. He had talked the army into releasing him so he could save his banana fields. I was not surprised he had pulled it off. Lev was originally from the United States and a dedicated Zionist. He had long ago concluded that the only proper place for a Jew was in Israel and so he immigrated. Always determined in what he wanted, he bulldozed his way through kibbutz apprehensions to single-handedly create the banana crop as a major branch of our agricultural sector. And he was fearless to a fault.

“Fearless to a fault” may sound like a contradiction. It’s not. The right amount of fearlessness is courage. The wrong amount is stupidity. In my opinion, Lev was sometimes at the wrong end of that equation. Here’s an example.

Before the war, Lev was fed up with the theft from our banana fields and had no confidence that the village police from the nearby Arab town would take any action. The culprits were likely from the town and might even have been relatives of the cops. I had to agree with Lev – the only time I had seen any action from these police was when they drove up to the kibbutz to extort chickens for their next village wedding.

One day, Lev had six of us arm ourselves with clubs and do a stakeout in the banana fields. We had a German Shepherd named Ledie to help take down anyone we caught. Before long, two Arab teenagers appeared, checking for ripe bananas. They came toward where I was hiding. I jumped up but I had moved too early and they raced for their village. Only Lev, the dog and I were near enough to give chase. It was a farce. The teens were lean and fast. Lev smoked two packs a day. Our dog was never trained to be aggressive and was an older dog as well. So, it was the two teenagers way in front, me next, Lev a distant fourth and the dog in last place – tail wagging madly the whole time. I gave up and stopped, but Lev ran past me and yelled, “Come on!”

By the time we arrived at the village, the two thieves had vanished and our dog also had disappeared, likely returning to the kibbutz. I wanted to go back, too, but Lev wasn’t done and I couldn’t leave him on his own. Like a gunslinger minus the gun, he walked us right into the first building we came to. It was some kind of coffee house, full of locals sitting at tables sipping their drinks. All conversation and sipping ceased when we barged in. They all stared at us. I felt like I was in a bad Spaghetti Western. I was convinced Lev was going to get us killed.

Lev stomped around, demanding to know if anybody had seen the two boys. Heads were shaking. Not satisfied, he gave a description of what they looked like and the clothes they were wearing. Heads kept shaking. He then demanded that everybody keep an eye out for these banana thieves and report them to our kibbutz. To my astonishment, heads nodded. I think we had caught them by surprise and then Lev’s pure chutzpah had won the day. Walking out in one piece was a win for me, while Lev was angry at not catching anybody; surviving was not one of his concerns.

Now you know what I mean by “fearless to a fault.” And now, here was fearless-to-a-fault Lev walking up to me.

“Shalom, Victor. I’m back so I’ll be taking over the irrigation. I wanted to keep you on it, but Gidon says he needs you for guard duty. You better see him. And thanks for looking after the bananas. I expected half of them to be dead but they are all good. Nice job.”

High praise from Lev, who rarely expressed gratitude to anybody. The bananas were like children to him and I was the babysitter who, surprisingly, hadn’t murdered any.

Gidon told me I was to patrol the kibbutz from dusk to dawn for the next week at least. He gave me an ammunition belt, a flashlight and a first-aid kit with pressure bandages to patch up anybody I shot inappropriately. He also gave me Chauncy, the English guy. Chauncy was one of those hapless tourist volunteers who came to experience kibbutz life and was experiencing more than he bargained for. Though he wasn’t Jewish, he gamely agreed to be my assistant on patrol.

Our first patrol had a slow start. Chauncy begged me to let him hold the Uzi long enough to get his picture taken. I didn’t want to, but figured it would be better to get it out of his system. I removed the ammunition clip and handed him the Uzi. He gave me his camera and I took a half-dozen pictures of him, empty gun at the ready, looking steely-eyed and staring into the dark. I was thinking he was an idiot but then remembered the photos I had made Tamar take when I first got my weapon. She thought I was an idiot. Israelis would never think of getting this kind of snapshot, as Canadians wouldn’t think of getting their picture taken in their kitchen holding a spatula. Why record it? In this country, everybody has a spatula.

We walked the perimeter for about a week. Early evening was the best, as kibbutz members stopped to chat and the time went quickly. Adding to our duties was the requirement that we join others in checking cars that were coming up the driveway and searching them for bombs. I was particularly happy to intercept the village police who had come on another of their chicken runs. We made them get out of their car and stand around while we did a thorough, very slow check of their vehicle. The chicken-stealing cops were not nearly as annoyed as I had hoped. I was thinking we’d need to do a strip search next time.

As the night wore on, everybody went to sleep and it was just Chauncy and I walking the perimeter. As per Gidon’s instructions, we didn’t go to the dining hall to scrounge for food and thus take ourselves away from our rounds. We carried our lunches and ate under the security lights. I was always conscious of how dark it was beyond the reach of those lights and how impossible it would be to see anyone coming. On the other hand, Chauncy and I, walking directly under the lights, were highly visible from far away.

It became a nagging question in my mind as to how effective night guard duty was when Chauncy and I were always in plain view while the bad guys were always hidden. I confronted Gidon about it one day and his reply was, “When you are shot, it will alert the rest of the kibbutz.” I wished he had had a grin on his face, but he didn’t. I was just thankful he hadn’t ended with “Are we understanding?” We were not.

I never told Chauncy about that conversation but I think he detected my increased wariness. A certain morbidity came over me. In trying to come to terms with the possibility of death, I tried to control the fear by embracing the notion. I decided one night we would have our meal in the kibbutz cemetery. Chauncy was freaked but I put it to him that the dead were dead and gone. Also, I argued, the headstones made good back rests for eating in comfort. To pass the time, I read the Hebrew on some of the stones; the easiest part to grasp being the date of death and age of the departed. Many were in their 20s and had died in 1948, likely in the War of Independence. They were close to my age and Chauncy’s. It made me think of how endless the fighting was in this land. The dead of one war pondered by participants in another, with two other conflicts in between. We only had lunch in the cemetery that one time.

I never had to shoot anybody during my stint as night guard but I did come close once. Chauncy and I were in the area of the mechanical shop at around two in the morning when we heard noises coming from the shop and saw the lights were on. The kibbutz was generally very quiet at night. There was no shift work besides guard duty so everyone should have been in bed.

I told Chauncy to stay behind me as we entered the shop to investigate. For the first time in all my guard duty, I slid the thumb switch of my Uzi from safety to automatic.

Chauncy whispered, “Jesus!”

We got as close to the noise as we could and then I stepped around a corner with my Uzi leveled.

It was a kibbutz teenager named Uri. Apparently, Uri had a bout of insomnia and decided he might as well go to the shop and keep working on his project. He was trying to make a go-kart out of discarded tractor parts. Uri had almost gotten a permanent cure for his sleeplessness. I had almost shot a 15-year-old kid.

(Next Time: The War Comes Home)

(Previously: “Learning the lay of the land”; “When Afula road went quiet”; “Tending the banana fields in war”; “Weapon training begins”)

Mystery photos … Oct. 25/19

Dancing at a Jewish Community Centre party, 1984. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.11733)

If you know someone in these photos, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected] or 604-257-5199. To find out who has been identified in the photos, visit jewishmuseum.ca/blog.