hope

Hope as commitment

Rabbi Suzanne Singer of Temple Beth El in Riverside, Calif., ended the 2022-23 Hineini lecture series in April on a distinctly positive note. Her Zoom talk, hosted by the Victoria congregation Kolot Mayim, focused on “finding hope in a world of unending problems.”

photo - Rabbi Suzanne Singer — Rabbi Suzanne Singer (photo from endoflifechoicesca.org)

Singer began with the story of the golden calf. When Moses is delayed on Mount Sinai, the people, fearing he won’t return, make an idol to worship – a terrible sin. However, said Singer, God was prepared for this transgression and offered a means to repentance: instructions for the tabernacle.

“The Mishkan was built as a place for God to dwell and to bring God’s presence back among the people,” she said. “By offering the Israelites the opportunity to use their gold for a higher purpose, God is giving them the opportunity to redeem themselves and to resume their intimate relationship to God.”

Yet, she pointed out, the instructions for the tabernacle were given before the calf appears. Among the possible explanations for the inverted order is the notion of hope.

“It’s almost a 100% certainty that, at some point, every human being is going to commit a transgression,” said Singer. “But God is prescient enough to understand this, so, underlying God’s instructions for the Mishkan is the reality of sin. God knows that people are going to sin, but God wants to guarantee that there’s always a possibility of redemption, that there’s always a tabernacle available for every golden calf.”

According to Singer, this knowledge can allow us to live our lives understanding we have the ability to make amends. With all the problems in the world – climate change, wars, economic disruption, gun violence – people need to remember that the tools are there to repair the world (and the soul).

“God is telling us that we can transform our idolatry, our egoism, our greed, our thirst for power into something sacred,” said Singer.

Singer defines hope as a commitment that allows us to picture the future and provides us the energy to build it. Hope requires action and a stubborn determination to produce a positive outcome.

She cited several examples in which hope persevered against extraordinary odds, from the pear tree outside the World Trade Centre that survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to the Ethiopian Jews who trekked through dangerous terrain to reach the airlifts to Israel.

“Resilience is linked to the belief that we can make a difference in our lives and the lives of others. Hope really gives us the will to not only heal ourselves, but to make the world a better place,” she said.

The rabbis of our tradition, said Singer, tell us that, when we arrive in heaven, we will be asked seven questions: the most important one is, did you live with hope?

Using the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Singer noted that Judaism is the only civilization whose golden age is in the future. “If we don’t like what we see in our society or in our world, we have the capacity to make things better,” Singer said. “The Exodus story tells us that our circumstances do not define us, and that we can change those circumstances for a better future.”

Quoting Sacks again, she added, “To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope. In a world serially threatened by despair, every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate.”

Even in the polarized political climate of our age there is hope, Singer said, offering Derek Black as an example. A decade ago, Black was a rising figure in the white supremacist movement. After engaging with and getting to know an ethnically diverse group of students during Shabbat dinners at a Florida university, he renounced his racist worldview.

Acknowledging that many serious problems exist, Singer noted that war is rarer now, genocides are fewer, life expectancy is higher and hunger has diminished.

“No one knows the wars that don’t happen, the family members who aren’t claimed by disease, the children who don’t die in infancy,” she said.

“Hope is a strategy, not a feeling, and it’s within our power to call it forth,” she concluded. “One needs to believe in and build a future, even if we may not be there to experience it.”

Singer, who was a student rabbi at Kolot Mayim in the early 2000s, is active on many fronts. She serves as a member of the Reform movement’s Commission on Social Action and as president of Pacific Area Reform Rabbis.

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

Risk … game vs. reality

Playing the game of Risk. (photo © Jorge Royan)

I’ve always thought of the Nordic region as peaceful. Admittedly, my knowledge of the area is largely limited to Risk, the board game, where Greenland, Iceland and the Scandinavian countries are considered a haven, free of imminent attack from the throw of a dice.

Well, Finland just purchased Israel’s David’s Sling defensive system. For $345 million US. It was one of Finland’s first moves after recently being accepted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And it was the first sale abroad for David’s Sling, an integrated part of Israel’s multi-tier missile defence system. Israel now carries the title of major supplier to NATO.

I guess the world’s a bit more complicated than Risk.

***

So long, Noa Tishby, the Israeli performer appointed by our previous prime minister, Yari Lapid, to advocate for Israel through her strong social media presence. With the formal and former title of special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel – fit that onto a business card! – she was known for sparring with BDS advocate Bella Hadid and others. Tishby was also a vocal supporter of Israel’s anti-judicial reform movement. Giving voice to the many thousands protesting the current government and its extreme shift rightward and into sometimes theocratic territory, Tishby says this was the reason for her dismissal. Well, ya. As the hawkish Jerusalem Post editorialist Ruthi Blum noted, “Tisbhy is free to share [her opinion]. But she shouldn’t have expected the government she’s been bashing to keep her as a representative.” Well, no. But keep on truckin’ Noa Tishby.

BTW, Tishby will be a guest at the JNF Negev event in Vancouver on June 29.

***

Israel’s Tel Aviv Museum of Art is again among the world’s 100 most visited museums. This according to international art magazine The Art Newspaper. TAMA was ranked 49th in 2022, a jump from its 56th place the year prior. I am fortunate to be one of those visitors, on multiple occasions, over the past many years, often dragging my two children there when they were younger – how fun was that!

Paris’s Louvre and the Vatican Museum took first and second place, respectively. Canada was represented with a 60th place win by Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum.

***

Congratulations Milk & Honey, Israel’s preeminent whisky distiller, awarded the 2023 world’s best single malt whisky by the World Drink’s Awards for its Elements, Sherry Cask drink. Described as “[f]ruity aromas of citrus zest and white peach with a dash of wood varnish. Sweet to the taste … with flavours of golden syrup, vanilla, tropical fruit and iced tea.…” Sounds like a palate pleaser to me. But, if I had to choose, my favourite would be Seagram’s Five Star rye whisky. Not so much for its taste but for fond memories of fighting with my siblings for the silver sheriff’s star glued to the bottles.

***

Jerusalem was selected by Time magazine as one of the world’s 2023 top 50 destinations, holding the 48th spot. It’s one of my favourite places to visit on a bustling Friday, starting with a walk through the overcrowded neighbourhood of Mea She’arim and enjoying a freshly baked challah. Then, bargaining my way through the Old City’s Arab Market, its tastes, smells and sights, and eventually making my way to the Western Wall, with the golden Dome of the Rock overhead. Ending with lunch at Machane Yehuda, the popular central Jerusalem food market, which has the freshest of meats and vegetables, and many colourful stalls.

Not to be outdone, Canada held two spots. Churchill was third – can’t beat those Northern Light spectaculars. Vancouver was 38th, for its eclectic cuisine and the beautiful Stanley Park.

***

For sure, difficult days in Israel. Sociopolitical cultures are clashing internally. External enemies are looking on with glee, and testing us. But we’re not sinking into despair. Israel has experienced difficult times before and emerged stronger and wiser. So it will be this time.

Arguably, we are being governed by the worst government in our short history – for many reasons, including recent security challenges. I mean, come on, with someone as inexperienced and reactionary as Itamar Ben-Gvir as national internal security minister. Or Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spouting off on things about which he should know better and doesn’t. But let’s not blame the victims for the terror and rockets. Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, an inept Palestinian leadership with a hateful street – they are to blame, not the government.

Usually, it’s the right-wing governments that muster support for the very difficult realpolitik choices, from Menachem Begin’s 1982 Sinai exit to Ariel Sharon’s 2005 Gaza disengagement. Even Binyamin Netanyahu’s 2021 peace deals with several Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. Unfortunately, Netanyahu’s current government may be too inexperienced and messianic to enable reasonable, democratic, liberal change – read judicial reform – at such a scale. But who knows.

We cannot despair. At a very esoteric level, Israelis have hope. In fact, hope is the theme of our national anthem, Hatikvah, The Hope.

***

According to the World Happiness Report, published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Israel remains one of the happiest countries in the world. (See jewishindependent.ca/measuring-happiness.) Rising to fourth place in 2023, just behind Finland, Denmark and Iceland, Israel’s showing likely reflected its reputation as a “villa in the jungle,” as dubbed by former prime minister Ehud Barak – despite being in the Middle East, one of the most contentious spots … on the Risk board.

Bruce Brown is a Canadian and an Israeli. He made aliyah … a long time ago. He works in Israel’s high-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. Brown is the winner of the 2019 AJPA Rockower Award for excellence in writing, and wrote the 1998 satire An Israeli is…. Brown reflects on life in Israel – political, social, economic and personal.

Hope in the presidency

There is no perfection in human affairs. We are imperfect beings and our creations are always flawed. But this does not stop us from striving for perfection, knowing that our reach should exceed our grasp.

The preamble to the United States Constitution begins with, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union …” and then sets forth the things that the founders agreed to aspire toward, knowing that perfection is unreachable but that aiming for a “more perfect” future is still an ideal to pursue.

This idea is central to Judaism also, that the world was created imperfect and unfinished because it is the role of humanity to complete that work – or, rather, to advance in the direction of completion/perfection even knowing it is unattainable.

This theme appeared also in the poem by Amanda Gorman, the first United States National Youth Poet Laureate, at the inauguration last week of President Joe Biden. “Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed / a nation that isn’t broken / but simply unfinished,” she said.

That day, Inauguration Day, felt to many like a collective swerve away from an abyss. After the violence at the Capitol two weeks earlier, after four years of chaos and cruelty at the top of the U.S. administration, and at what we hope is the beginning of the end of the pandemic of our lifetimes, it felt like a move in the right direction, a reversal from the trajectory of spiraling rancour. The violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, so horrific and deadly, may have been the wakeup call that enough Americans needed to recognize the destination to which the “Trump train” was always headed.

The most fundamental component of a democratic society – the peaceful transition of power – was assaulted on Jan. 6, a day most of us never dreamed we would see, an experience that people in autocratic societies know too well but we hoped we never would. We may never know how close the United States came to genuinely losing its democracy but we can hope that the shock of the violence and the widespread refusal to accept the outcome of a properly run election opened enough eyes to the dangers of that approach. As President Biden said, “enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward.”

Regardless of party affiliation, the transfer of power seemed to many like a return to the project of a more perfect union.

By the skin of their teeth, the Democratic party held the House of Representatives and reclaimed the White House and the Senate. The new Biden administration better reflects the diversity of the country’s racial, religious, gender and other components, not least of which is exemplified by the first female vice-president and the first one who is not white.

The refusal of the outgoing president and his wife to adhere to longstanding decorum and decency and their petulant retreat to Florida before the inauguration was a slap in the face for the very idea of democracy itself. To the credit of the vice-president, Mike Pence, he stepped up where the president would not. So, too, did all the living former presidents, three of them in person at the inauguration and the fourth, Jimmy Carter, calling Biden the night before the inauguration to offer wishes of support. This was a powerful show of respect for the office that Trump never exhibited when he held it and which he further despoiled while leaving it. But he is gone now from there, ideally forever, and we trust that a less divisive and corrupt government will carry that country forward.

It is notable that our hopes for 2021 focus so much on a vaccine. The idea of this science – that injecting a dose of a virus into a body to develop an antibody to a more destructive manifestation – might be extrapolated into our body politic. The virus of extremism, tyranny and violence that we saw on Jan. 6 may have inoculated some Americans to combat the spread of such threats. As we strive for herd immunity in our public health, we can perhaps seek a similar degree of protection in our public life. There will always be bad people and bad ideas. Ensuring that they are kept in check and not permitted to reach pandemic levels is as close to perfection as we can possibly attain. We can hope that, in the spirit of Biden’s words, enough people will come together in defence of the great values that country was founded on to carry all of us forward.

Hope amid challenges

Lillian Boraks-Nemetz’s latest collection of poems offers comfort, even though she does not shy away from the tragedy of her Holocaust experience and ever-present memories of that period. From the very title, Out of the Dark, she gives hope. If she can still see beauty and love, then we can, too.

An established and award-winning writer, Boraks-Nemetz has published many books and her poems have appeared in literary anthologies. A child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, she is an eyewitness to some of the most cruel aspects of humanity and openly wrestles, in these poems, with the death she has seen, with the hiding she was forced into and can’t completely shake the habit of, with the stark contrast of her life before coming to Vancouver and the world she has created here. While deeply marked by suffering, she makes space for the pain that others experience.

Out of the Dark is divided into three sections: Survival, Flickers in the Dark, and Into the Light. Even the most sombre first part, which includes poems about those murdered in the Holocaust, the impacts of war and the existence of antisemitism, starts with a poem called “Flowers of Survival,” in which a daughter recalls the words of her father, from whom she has been separated, forever: “‘Let the wind thrash us if it will // And the foul earth open to swallow us,’ you said, / ‘for in the end / neither the violent wind nor / the foul earth will succeed.’”

In midsection of the book, Boraks-Nemetz gives voice not only to her sadnesses and joys of making a new life in Vancouver, but of the immigrant experience in general. She writes of the difficulties of living in another place, both with regards to location but also in her mind and body, as well as in time, so different is British Columbia than Poland, so changed is Warsaw now from how it was during the war, so renewed a person is she, yet, she advises, in the poem “Identity,” “when they tell you / forget the past – let it go / they are in error // your past is your memory / and memory – a bridge / to you.”

As people are marked by what happens to them, internally and externally, so is nature, and Boraks-Nemetz has included several poems about its splendour, what it has witnessed and how we humans are threatening it, despite its strong will to survive.

There are many poems in Out of the Dark that are dedicated to family, friends, poets and others, but the bulk of them are in the final section. Boraks-Nemetz seems to be saying that, despite our capacity as humans for brutality and destruction, we need one another and we are the only ones who can fix what we have wrought, and make the world a better place.

Healing after tragedy

Mishelle Cuttler has the challenge of supervising the musical elements of The Events, which features a different community choir every show. (photo from Pi Theatre)

In 2011, while he was out with his son, who was then 12 years old, writer David Greig read the news that Anders Breivik had killed 77 people in Norway – eight using a car bomb in Oslo, which also injured more than 200 other people, and then traveling to the island of Utøya to a summer camp for teens, where he shot and killed another 69 and injured more than 100.

“My son saw I was very affected and, because he was wondering why, I began to try and tell him what the news was and its implications,” said Greif in an interview with BBC Writersroom. “He just kept repeating the question why? why? why? and I found the discussion quickly became very profound, about the nature of evil and whether it is ever possible to understand someone who shoots children for a political reason. I found trying to answer these questions became a compulsion I had to try and understand.”

The result was The Events, which came into being when Greig met producer Ramin Gray at the Edinburgh Fringe. Gray had been having similar thoughts, said Greig. “That meeting made me know it had to be a play.”

It’s a play that has been staged around the world, and presenting it in Vancouver are Pi Theatre and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. After every performance, there will be a post-show discussion and, after the Jan. 17 preview, Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at Vancouver School of Theology, will speak about various aspects of the play.

While its initial questions came from the terrorist attack in Norway, The Events centres on Claire, a priest who works and lives in her community, including leading a community choir. When The Boy attacks that choir, Claire survives the shooting, setting her on a quest similar to Greig’s – and that of most of us, when such a horrific act is committed. She needs to know, why?

There are only two actors in the production. In Vancouver, Luisa Jojic will play Claire, while Douglas Ennenberg will play six characters opposite her, including The Boy, a grief counselor, the shooter’s father, a school friend of the shooter, Claire’s lover, and various others to whom Claire speaks in her effort to find understanding. A unique aspect of this play is that the choir is “played by” real community choirs, who have practised the music (score by John Browne), sing some songs from their own repertoire, and have some lines to read, but are not given the script.

Jewish community member Mishelle Cuttler has the challenge of being the musical supervisor and accompanist for the local show, which is directed by Richard Wolfe.

“The great thing about The Events is that the choirs are given ownership of the music,” Cuttler told the Independent. “We’ve provided each choir director with the material they need to learn, and my job is to facilitate their integration into the show each night…. I’ll be visiting each choir during their regular rehearsals and hearing how they’ve interpreted the music. I’ll talk them through how they will fit into the play, but they don’t ever see the full script. There will certainly be a lot of variables onstage each night, and that’s what makes this piece so exciting. The singers will be witnessing the show for the first time along with the audience.”

And the focus will be on the dialogue and music, without many other distractions.

“There will be a very small amount of recorded sound in the show,” said Cuttler, “but the majority of the aural experience will come from the singers, the actors and one upright piano.”

Pi Theatre has spent several months planning the logistics. “Essentially,” notes the press material, “more than 220 community members from 12 different choirs will participate over the show’s run.”

It also notes that, while Claire “struggles to understand the event that changed her life, we are asked to decide whether love and hope can survive in the wake of an inexplicable act of violence.”

The Events previews Jan. 17 and runs Tuesdays to Sundays until Jan. 28, with evening and matinée performances, at the Russian Hall, 600 Campbell Ave. Tickets ($31/$26) are available from pitheatre.com/the-events.

Replace your fear with hope

David Diamond, Theatre for Living, directs Reclaiming Hope. (collage graphic design by Dafne Blanco, photos by Wolfgang Rappel)

Starting on March 10, Theatre for Living (formerly Headlines Theatre) will be presenting a new event. Called Reclaiming Hope, it will “engage communities in identifying and transforming the narrative of fear that permeates our culture.”

Reclaiming Hope, led by Theatre for Living’s co-founder and artistic director David Diamond, will take place 12 times from March 10 to April 2 at various locations.

“The work that I do is really based in using theatre as a way to create dialogue in the community. We are a professional theatre company, but one that is really committed to collaborations with people in all communities,” said Diamond.

Diamond originally trained as a professional actor and came out of theatre school in 1975. He worked in professional theatre, radio, television and film for a few years before creating Theatre for Living with some of his peers.

“A number of us, writers, directors, actors, became frustrated in the late ’70s with the kind of work we were being asked to do. We wanted to do some kind of theatre work that was socially relevant. After complaining about that for a very long time, we decided we would stop sitting around and complaining, and we would do something about it.”

In 1981, Diamond and his peers created a play about affordable housing. It was a hit, and thus began the establishment of Theatre for Living.

Reclaiming Hope, Theatre for Living’s newest work, was born out of an unexpected turn of events. Diamond and company were initially planning a new project entitled Freedom, which would focus on the idea that corporations may unethically possess the freedom to generate exceptional wealth. But, as Theatre for Living was raising money for this production, the Canadian federal election took place.

“The impulse for that project was grounded, frankly, in Harperism. It isn’t that those issues have now gone away, the issues still exist out there, but the juice of it changed dramatically. Changing the government hasn’t solved all of those problems, but changing the government has changed the perception of those problems.

“We had to really reframe the project. Added to that, we were having trouble raising money for that project, because it was really challenging the financial structures that we have built around us. One of the elements of Freedom that we decided to focus on in Reclaiming Hope is that we are being asked to be afraid, we are being asked to live in fear from so many different sectors,” said Diamond.

Theatre for Living decided they would mount a series of theatrical events that would look at the different ways that various communities are experiencing being asked to live in fear. They would use theatre to identify those voices of fear that take up residence in the community’s psyche. They would also use theatre to try to change the community’s relationship to those voices, so that, according to Diamond, society could move into a more actively hopeful realm.

“‘Hope’ is a verb. ‘Hope’ isn’t just sitting in your living room wishing things were different. ‘Hope’ is getting up off your ass and doing something to make our communities safer in a really human type of way for everybody.

“Somehow,” he said, “we have decided on this little blue speck of a planet, that there is a ‘them.’ That decision that there is a ‘them’ out there, that there is more than just ‘us’ living here is fueled by voices of fear.”

Diamond believes that he and his peers are not inventing something new, but rather reaching back into something ancient. Moreover, he intends to bring back the ancient idea that art itself can once again be seen as the psyche of the community.

Diamond and his company believe that the community may reclaim its collective hope through art.

“Years ago, both as an artist and as an activist, I got really tired of working against a world that I did not want. I made a real choice to work towards a world that I do want. So, at the heart of our theatre work, is the sense of reclaiming positive action,” he said.

An audience member unfamiliar with Theatre for Living’s style should expect to be very active when attending Reclaiming Hope. The event, though structured, will be different every night, as it unfolds with the stories of its nightly participants. As each show will be sponsored by different co-hosts, Diamond anticipates that the chemistry of the audience will be different every night. (For the schedule and tickets, visit theatreforliving.com.)

Diamond will begin each show with a discussion about the idea of living in fear. The audience will then choose one story that resonates the most. The person whose story that is will assume a role on stage, interacting with other audience members who will act out the voices of fear found in the story.

“Audience members will come to play those characters not because they want to play a theatre game,” said Diamond, “but because they have information to share, they understand the ‘voice.’”

Each event will be highly improvisational, and Diamond expects both funny and profound moments to occur. Judging by past events, Diamond expects about 60 to 150 people per night.

On April 3, the series of events will culminate in a day of action planning. This day will only be open to individuals who have attended at least one of the Reclaiming Hope performances. The daylong session will consist of a facilitated workshop where people will form groups based on ideas gathered from Reclaiming Hope. These groups will then make concrete plans for actions that will be the ultimate realizations of Reclaiming Hope.

“On some level,” said Diamond, “I think it is important as a culture, as an over-arching Canadian culture, that we understand and reclaim this idea that culture is not a commodity, that theatre is not a commodity, but it is a language, and we are all supposed to speak. And if we were all of us in our daily lives speaking more art, we would be living in a healthier world.”

Jonathan Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His writing has appeared in the Canadian Jewish News, and various other publications in Canada and the United States.

The Chanukah lights

The nights were getting longer already, but when we changed the clocks a few weeks ago, it seemed to change very suddenly into a new season. For our cousins in

Israel, the days might be a bit brighter – a video of shirt-sleeved Tel Avivians dancing last week as an antidote to the terrorist mayhem was an inspiring and somewhat envy-inducing scene – but the spectre of violence there is real and immediate.

It was 68 years ago last Sunday that the United Nations voted for an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state in Palestine. That was a day of jubilation, of momentous light, for Jews worldwide. Yet there is never total victory, never a moment when our enemies have permanently laid down sword, or stone or missile or knife.

In Jewish life, we light candles both to mark times of joy, as well as of grief. In Jewish rituals, the happy moments are tempered by the recollection of not-so happy moments.

At Chanukah, we light candles and curse the darkness. Hatred will not prevail. This is the message of Chanukah.

We see the darkness, but we do not succumb. We dance, as we saw in Tel Aviv. We give thanks for what we have, for the self-determination that is Israel and for the freedoms we enjoy in Canada. We rally ourselves and our neighbors to sponsor refugees and to raise funds for the Joint Distribution Committee to aid those who need it. Because we remember, or our parents do, what it is like to be refugees and to be in need. We advocate against climate change. We teach our children the values of tzedakah. We gather blankets and jackets for those in our own city who need warmth.

We will make our own light. We will celebrate not only our historical and contemporary victories, but life itself. We will love, laugh, dance, eat. L’chaim.