Tag: JCCV

New leadership at the JCCV

Following 12 years as president of the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria (JCCV), with many accomplishments to his credit, Larry Gontovnick will hand over the reins of the organization to Deborah Bricks at the JCCV’s annual general meeting in December.

A charitable nonprofit, the JCCV houses a deli, gift shop and library. It is also home to the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, PJ Library, Jewish Family Services and Kolot Mayim Reform Temple. Additionally, it provides a location for Bema Productions, the Victoria Jewish theatre, to hold its auditions and rehearsals, and it hosts other Jewish organizations, such as Hadassah-WIZO and Camp Miriam, for meetings and events. Among the activities the JCCV organizes are webinars with guest speakers, a virtual Jewish conversation café, drop-in mahjong, a book club and Israeli dance.

photo - After 12 years at the helm of the Victoria Jewish Community Centre, Larry Gontovnick is handing over the reins to Deborah Bricks
After 12 years at the helm of the Victoria Jewish Community Centre, Larry Gontovnick is handing over the reins to Deborah Bricks. (photo from Larry Gontovnick)

Gontovnick, by far the longest-serving president of the JCCV since its founding in 1989, oversaw the raising of grant monies to renovate the centre’s kitchen, revitalize the interior and exterior of the building, enhance its security system and improve its audio-visual system.

The technical side of operations witnessed the redesign of the JCCV website, which now offers an online calendar and a PayPal option for donations and membership dues. A newsletter was implemented for communications with members and friends, and a payment device was installed at the centre for purchases.

“I am most proud of maintaining the warm, friendly and welcoming environment of the deli and centre, and maintaining this important facility for the Jewish community in Victoria,” Gontovnick told the Independent about his time running the JCCV. “I am very thankful for the wonderful staff and volunteers at the centre and the board members, who have all been a great pleasure to work with.

“I will now turn my attention to three beautiful grandchildren and being the best zayde I can be. My wife and I will continue our travels, as well as thoroughly enjoy living in one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

A notable and ongoing program started under Gontovnick’s leadership is the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival (VIJFF), now in its 11th year.  Bricks is the current director of the VIJFF.

“I am so pleased that Deborah, a current board member and director of the VIJFF, will be standing for president at the upcoming AGM,” said Gontovnick, who believes the energy and enthusiasm he brought to the centre will be furthered by his successor.  

An event planner with deep roots in Jewish culture and community, Bricks has been designing and orchestrating arts and culture events – music, cinema and literature – through Deborah B Event Management, both in Toronto and, for the past 10 years, in Victoria. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in religious and cinema studies and a master’s in media and communications from the New School for Social Research in New York.

“The JCCV president role – a combination of strategic direction, community building and operational oversight – is especially important now,” Bricks said. “JCCV provides a home, a makom [place], for programs, services and events important to communities of Canadian Jews and our culture, such as the Lox, Stock & Bagel Deli, loved by community.

“And there are untapped directions for new, meaningful programs, services and events that build community among Jews in Victoria, seniors and families alike, and with our neighbours in Canada.”

As part of her community-building goals, Bricks is already engaging younger Victoria-area Jews from her own network to join the JCCV and its board, as well as older community members, who may enjoy the experience of Jewish community via the JCCV.

Part of her vision as president, Bricks said, is to direct a new strategic plan for the JCCV that eventually transforms it (i.e., its constitution) into a Jewish community arts and culture centre. As a formal arts organization, the centre could access more local, provincial, federal and other grants.

photo - Deborah Bricks will be both president of the JCCV and director of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival
Deborah Bricks will be both president of the JCCV and director of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival. (photo from Deborah Bricks)

Bricks told the Independent that she sees the JCCV “serving up something Jewish-ish for everyone.”

While president, Bricks will continue as director of VIJFF, leading its planning, film curation and event strategy.

“As Victoria’s only Jewish cultural festival, we try to spotlight Canadian-Jewish filmmaking and filmmakers,” Bricks said. “This year, we have three films by Canadians, ranging from stories about a Franco-Moroccan mother and son, about Yiddish in Sweden, and about the early Jewish immigrant experience in Montreal.” 

Also playing will be Sabbath Queen, which follows the story of Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis who became a drag queen and the founder of Lab/Shul, an experimental “God-optional” congregation based in New York. It will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Sandi DuBowski (via Zoom) and Victoria drag king Dublin Tendre.

This year’s festival runs Oct. 18-23 and features seven film events at the Vic Theatre. For more information, visit vijff.ca. 

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

The first Shtisel book

Maurice Yacowar and wife Anne Petrie. (photo from Yacowars)

Shtisel, the unlikely yet addictive hit television series about a Charedi family in Jerusalem, is now the subject of a new book, Reading Shtisel: A TV Masterpiece from Israel, an episode-by-episode analysis penned by Victoria writer and critic Maurice Yacowar, which he will share at the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria June 2.

Yacowar, a retired film professor, began his project in December 2018, as Netflix started airing the series that has become de rigueur viewing among Jews and non-Jews alike. As with many of the show’s aficionados and binge watchers, he was hooked, but his is the only book on Shtisel written thus far. The book’s first printing took place in March.

From his perspective, the show transcends what some may initially dismiss as soap-operatic tendencies. Not a character, not a scene, not an action in the two-season, 24-episode show is out of place, according to Yacowar.

“People (and animals) come and go, some questions may seem unanswered, but those elements are not relevant to the story. Nothing in the show is superfluous or unnecessary. Everything has a reason. We enter their domain, and we leave it, just at the right time,” he recently told the Jewish Independent at a Victoria restaurant.

Hence, the use of the word masterpiece in the book’s subtitle. “People from all cultures are able to relate to the drama and the compassion,” Yacowar explained.

“What’s more, no character stands for a safe idea,” he added. Shulem, the patriarch of the Shtisel family, is the most confounding of them all. At times, he is bullying to the point of being dictatorial; at other times, gentle and caring.

All involved do things that are not “in character,” said Yacowar, which takes viewers along various side streets or smaller stories within the story. There is the studious Zvi Arye, who, after watching a video taken in childhood, laments having had a shot at singing stardom thwarted; the scheming Lippe, who, for a time, abandons his family, though exhibits moments of great kindness and affection to those closest to him; and the show’s least sympathetic character, Nuchem, who doesn’t want his daughter, Libbi, to marry a deadbeat artist, aka his nephew Akiva, Shulem’s son.

Throughout the series are connections to the world outside the strict ultra-Orthodox confines of the Geula neighbourhood in Jerusalem, said Yacowar. Grandmother Malka is fixated by American daytime dramas, Giti’s need for money after her husband departs for Argentina leads her to seek work as a housekeeper for a clothing store manager, and cellphone use among this set of Charedim is ubiquitous.

It is Akiva’s desire to be an artist, though, which perhaps represents the greatest struggle between the secular and the religious in the show, not to mention the personal psychological conflict for the character himself. There are times, particularly those when he is immersed in his art, that Akiva appears to shift seamlessly from one world to another. And others, such as the scene where Akiva is presented with an award and funds for his art at an elite gallery, when the distinction between the pious Shtisel family and mainstream Israeli society could not be more pronounced.

Akiva, Yacowar pointed out, manages to rise in his battle and become his own person as the series concludes at the end of Season 2, no longer shackled by the vagaries of his father’s moods. In contrast, Shulem’s flaws – his conceit and ego, his inability to accept his son’s success in that other world – are on full display.

Yacowar doesn’t expect everyone to agree with his assessment of the series. “Other critics may well choose different points of emphasis, different connections and implications in phrase, situation or device,” he writes. “That’s the beauty, magic of connecting with a drama of such extraordinary richness and complexity.”

There is one point, however, on which he does expect readers of his book to be in agreement: “Let there be the illumination of a Season 3 – but only from the same creators and the same depth and integrity.”

Yacowar has written more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from the films of Alfred Hitchcock to the comic art of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. He has written two books about The Sopranos and a humorous work, Mondays with Moishe.

Reading Shtisel: A TV Masterpiece from Israel is available online and at Congregation Emanu-El and the JCC of Victoria. Yacowar’s June 2 presentation at the JCC will start at 11 a.m.

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