Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island

Victoria club’s many benefits

Since August 2025, a group of enterprising individuals from the Greater Victoria community has been gathering at various venues to discuss prospects, offer guidance and bounce ideas off one another as part of the area’s Jewish Business Club.

photo. -The Jewish Business Club in Victoria offers business owners the chance to create networks and get to know one another. The next gathering takes place Feb. 26 — The Jewish Business Club in Victoria offers business owners the chance to create networks and get to know one another. The next gathering takes place Feb. 26. *(photo by Joe Mabel / flickr)*

The group was guided into its current form by Elvira Molochkovetski, who took on the role of community connector in Victoria last summer. The role is a joint position of the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island (JFVVI) and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. Other community connectors can be found in the Okanagan, Salt Spring Island, the Comox Valley, South Delta and Squamish.

According to Molochkovetski, some local businesspeople, who had established friendships through their ventures, had been meeting informally and sporadically over coffee for a couple of years.

“We just created something more structured, giving them a space, a reason and a schedule to meet and invite more people,” she said. “The goal was the same goal they always had: create networks, support each other and get to know each other. And many new connections were created through those meetings already.”

Attendees, who come from different backgrounds and places, and represent a range of business sectors, participate in the club, which, Molochkovetski stressed, is open to all. Some, like Molochkovetski, have come to Victoria from Winnipeg, where a similar club was formed at the Rady Jewish Community Centre.

Young entrepreneurs, she said, have also joined because they have ideas for businesses and want to see what other business owners think, or to find out what is happening in a particular market. In some cases, more experienced entrepreneurs have served in a mentor-like capacity.

“When you are business-oriented, you love spending time with other business-oriented people,” Molochkovetski said. “We had a few young people who just … bought a condo and want to rent it out. So, they joined and received some advice from people who had experience in this kind of business before.”

The club’s meetings often start with an introductory circle. Participants can bring promotional materials, share information about their business and ask questions. Meetings can include playing business-oriented games, solving problems or suggesting what one might like to do or invest in within the community.

At one of the Jewish Business Club’s meetings, a member welcomed everyone to his house to sample some of his culinary creations, as his business centres around the food industry.

Molochkovetski added that the meetings have brought in people who have not maintained ties to Jewish organizations yet feel connected to the community through the club.

One regular attendee who has found the gatherings beneficial is Felix Gelman, who runs Alpha Victoria HVAC Ltd., a company that installs residential heat pumps in Victoria and surrounding communities.

“The Jewish Business Club in Victoria is a strong opportunity to connect with fellow Jewish business owners, exchange referrals and build real local relationships,” Gelman told the Independent. “It’s also an effective way for people to learn what you do, while gaining insight from others’ experiences in the Victoria business community.”

Gelman opened Alpha Victoria HVAC in 2022 after relocating from Winnipeg, where he still operates an active HVAC business specializing in furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, ventilation and indoor air quality systems.

Originally from Israel, Gelman, a Red Seal refrigeration mechanic with 30 years of experience in residential HVAC systems, immigrated to Canada in 2005. He is also a licensed general contractor. On Vancouver Island, he helps homeowners build garden suites and lane houses, either to generate rental income or accommodate family members.

In total, roughly 35 people have attended Jewish Business Club meetings in the past six months, with 12 to 15 generally showing up each time. Meetings alternate between mornings and evenings to fit the different schedules of those in the community.

The next get-together is planned for Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m., at a restaurant in the Westshore region of Greater Victoria. The location will be provided upon registration to those who wish to attend.

Billed as the “Jewish Business Club Night Out,” the event will offer opportunities to share and introduce businesses, chat with fellow entrepreneurs and enjoy a light snack and soft drinks.

“Whether you’re just starting out or growing an established business, this is a chance to connect, collaborate and support one another’s success,” said the organizers.

To register for the upcoming event, visit jewishvancouver.com/jewish-business-club.

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

Lessons from past for today

At the Kristallnacht commemoration in Victoria on Nov. 6, Congregation Emanu-El’s Rabbi Elisha Herb led a community pledge of mutual respect and support, joined by local politicians, faith leaders and law enforcement. (photo by Penny Tennenhouse)

“Hate has no boundaries and needs to be resisted wherever and against whomever it is found. This is necessary to protect our whole society. The history of the Shoah teaches us the dangers of complacency,” said Micha Menczer in his opening remarks at the Nov. 6 commemoration in Victoria of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

Menczer is a founding member of the Victoria Shoah Project, which held the community’s commemoration at Congregation Emanu-El. The project is a group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, as well as educators and other individuals, dedicated to Holocaust remembrance and education.

photo - Micha Menczer — Micha Menczer, a founding member of the Victoria Shoah Project, gave the opening remarks at the Nov. 6 commemoration in Victoria of Kristallnacht. *(photo by Penny Tennenhouse)*

After Menczer spoke about the increase in hate crimes in Canada – of which Jews are often the target – Kristin Semmens, a history professor at the University of Victoria, spoke about Kristallnacht, the organized anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria on Nov. 9-10, 1938. The violence sent a clear message to Jews that they were not welcome in Germany, said Semmens, noting that, although Jews had already faced extreme persecution, no one foresaw what would come.

“Even after November 1938, even after the destruction and horror and humiliation and fear, even after the shattered storefronts, the burning synagogues, the mass arrests, the physical assaults and murders, few could have imagined how much worse things could get,” she said.

Semmens stressed that, while people came on Nov. 6 to commemorate what happened in the past, it is also fundamentally important to act in the present, to differentiate among people when it comes to basic human rights today.

“We cannot turn a deaf ear or a blind eye to defamation and demonization,” she said. “We must find the courage to challenge the wrongs we see in our society. And, as the events leading to Kristallnacht reveal, we must beware of the beginnings.”

Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s solicitor general and minister for public safety, was the keynote speaker. Due to inclement weather that evening, she spoke from the Lower Mainland via Zoom.

“How can we, today, fathom six million lives cut short solely because they were Jewish?” asked Krieger, who, before entering politics, was the executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC).

“Sadly, as we gather to remember events of 87 years ago, our historical imagination, I think, is less challenged than we thought. With the recent Manchester synagogue attack and the graffiti scrawled on this congregation, the echoes of the past are particularly and painfully resonant.”

In August, antisemitic graffiti was painted at the entrance of Congregation Emanu-El. According to a September post by the synagogue, Victoria police have since found the suspected perpetrator, who “has been charged on two counts: mischief relating to religious property and wilful promotion of hatred.”

Krieger noted that, during the pandemic in Canada, contingents within the anti-vaccination movement borrowed symbols from the Holocaust, such as yellow stars and photos of Anne Frank, to portray their feelings of being marginalized and victimized for the requirement to carry proof of vaccination. She said a commitment to history and memory is the necessary antidote to such Holocaust distortion and trivialization, “which we are seeing with increasing frequency as the Holocaust transitions from lived to mediated memory.”

She pointed to the VHEC’s use of primary sources when engaging with the 25,000 young people the centre educates each year. “Fragments of the Shoah – artifacts, photographs, documents – provide tangible entry points into the past and to individual human experiences during an event that might otherwise be an abstraction of numbers,” said Krieger, who reminded the audience that, in a time of rising antisemitism, the Holocaust may not simply be a lesson but a warning, “an inescapable fact that speaks to what is possible.”

Remembrance of the Shoah, she said, “provides an opportunity to wrestle with fundamental questions about the fragility of democracy and our responsibility as citizens today.”

Music performed by Kvell’s Angels, a local klezmer group, and the Capriccio Vocal Ensemble of Victoria, conducted by Adam Jonathan Con, was interspersed between speakers at the commemoration.

Politicians, leaders from other faith groups and members of the Victoria Police Department rose at the end of the ceremony to recite a pledge of mutual respect and support.

In the program notes to the commemoration, the organizers drew attention to the events that transpired in Germany 87 years ago, when at least 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were forced into concentration camps, Jewish homes and institutions were ransacked, businesses destroyed and synagogues burned. It was, the notes read, “a reflection of the inability of ‘polite society’ – of Jews and non-Jews – to comprehend that the institutions at the very heart of civil society (the police, uniformed people, political representatives) would be at the very core of this violence inflicted on the Jews of Germany and Austria, or contribute … to its devastating effect.”

The commemoration was sponsored by Congregation Emanu-El and the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island.

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

Community milestones … October 2025

Jewish Addictions Community Services (JACS) welcomes two members to its team.

Jordana Jackson, JACS’s new addictions specialist, is a certified addiction counsellor. In addition to having a wealth of experience working in addiction and recovery spaces throughout Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health authorities, she is the founder and director of AWARE (Addicts With Aspirations Recovery Entertainment), a therapeutic performance-arts program. Jackson is already making a difference at JACS, creating navigation support structures and providing counseling for clients.

Elana Epstein, JACS’s new group facilitator, is a certified recovery coach. More importantly, she has years of experience being a mother of a child who struggled with addiction and is now in recovery. At JACS Family Circle, Epstein is using both her spiritual and professional skill sets to hold space for individuals whose friends and family have been affected by addiction. These group counseling sessions are an important aspect of JACS.

* * *

Elvira Molochkovetsk takes on the role of a community connector in Victoria. This position is a joint Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island (JFVVI) and Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver project. Her goal is to connect and engage all community members but, in particular, those who do not attend any existing synagogue or Jewish association.

Over the past two years, Molochkovetsk has been part of the JFVVI as a PJ Library parent, volunteer, connector and, for the past year, as PJ Library coordinator for Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. PJ Library has focused on connecting people with children up to the age of 13 and, in her expanded role as a connector, Molochkovetsk will be expanding it to reach out to teenagers, seniors and young entrepreneurs.

The parents of four kids, Molochkovetsk and her husband, Dimitri, have run family businesses for the last decade. Almost three years ago, they moved to Victoria from Winnipeg, where they lived for seven years. They both grew up in Israel and have family there.

CANCELED Statements on The Runner

The Jewish Independent received the following statements regarding the play The Runner after the Belfry Theatre in Victoria canceled the scheduled March performances of the play, which is set to run as part of the PuSh Festival in Vancouver Jan. 24-26.

Since this article was published, PuSh has canceled the production. For the statement, click here.

Christopher Morris, artistic director of Human Cargo and playwright of The Runner:

As a playwright who values the role of theatre as a platform to explore ideas about the complexities of life, I was disappointed to learn that the Belfry removed The Runner from its programming. I also empathize with the challenging situation they were facing. I am saddened that people in Victoria – especially those with very divergent views and those traumatized by the atrocities in Israel and Gaza – will be denied the opportunity to come together in a theatre to explore their common humanity, share their grief and perhaps discover a flicker of solace and hope.

Since it premièred in 2018, my play The Runner has been seen by audiences in six cities, received numerous awards and unanimous critical acclaim. I am humbled that theatre companies have produced this play, which is a nuanced and thoughtful conversation about the preciousness of human life. Their endorsement tells me that they also see its effectiveness in creating a dialogue with their audience.

I am deeply traumatized and saddened by humankind’s capacity to wage war. As a Canadian, I want our politicians to do all they can to make the violence in Gaza and Israel stop. I hope theatre companies and playwrights do all they can to give audiences the opportunity for dialogue and to build bridges between our silos. I believe The Runner is an excellent opportunity for those things to happen. And Vancouver audiences will get the chance to experience this production in a few weeks, at the upcoming PuSh Festival.

***

Gabrielle Martin, director of programming, and Keltie Forsyth, director of operations, PuSh Festival:

The PuSh Festival recognizes the pain of those watching or connected to the conflict in Gaza and Israel and the feelings of hurt and helplessness, knowing our experiences here in Vancouver are nothing like those who are suffering direct violence or who have lost homes, friends and family members.

We understand the objections to our programming of The Runner as a part of that shared hurt. When we see death, particularly civilian death, on this scale, we feel the injustice and the inhumanity at work, and we want to do something about it. Here in Canada, far from the conflict, it’s easy to feel helpless, to feel like contacting politicians, rallying or protesting isn’t enough. At PuSh, what we do is present live art, and sometimes we share the feeling that what we do isn’t sufficient.

Art reflects the world and the times in which we live. At its best, it’s an essential cultural force that builds empathy and understanding. Our aim is that PuSh brings us together and inspires us to have complex conversations; to challenge ourselves and each other not only to think differently, but to feel differently. The festival experience is greater than the sum of its parts and defined in how each piece sits in conversation with the other. These pieces share a sense of cultural urgency and, together, welcome generative friction through plurality as a cultural strategy.

The Runner is situated within a program that explores our shared humanity in ways that transform the political into the personal, intimate and domestic. This play, by Canadian playwright Christopher Morris, is a story about triage that’s set in Israel. It is not funded by the Israeli government, and Christopher has no direct ties to any country in the region. The play unpacks one character’s dilemma between humanist impulse and socially imposed morals, as he advocates for seeing all human life as equal. In its commitment to examining the polarizing tensions and conflicting ideologies at work within its Israeli protagonist, it exposes painful racism behind the dehumanizing sentiments encountered by the character. Christopher shares: “I lack the experience, or expertise, to speak on or write a play about the extremely complicated conflict that’s happening right now in that part of the world. And what I’ve been offering since 2018 is a play, from my Canadian perspective, that explores the complexities, and limitations, of empathy and kindness.” Ultimately, he frames The Runner as “an offer for discussion.”

We believe this work offers one voice in a diversity of perspectives that diverge in specifics of identity and experience, but that all advocate for empathy and compassion. Dear Laila, playing parallel to The Runner, offers an autobiographical perspective on the forced displacement of Palestinians through one family’s experience of war and exile. Basel Zaraa, the artist behind the project, is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. Dear Laila features a miniature model of his destroyed family home in Yarmouk camp, and three stories that represent the three generations who lived in the house. Intimate and interactive, the experience invites each audience member to connect with this story of “[a] family, like many families of our communities, who are stuck in a loop of losses.” Basel further frames it as “a way for me to face and express and understand the trauma that we live with.”

These two works form part of the wider 2024 festival ecology, and each plays an integral role to a balance that has been curated with care. In the face of violence and atrocity, presenting live art can feel small. We hope that, collectively, the performances and multimedia experiences of this year’s festival offer opportunities for self-reflection, better understanding others’ experiences, and dialogue – actions that, in our view, can sometimes offer building blocks for meaningful political change.

***

The Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island is disappointed by the decision of the Belfry Theatre to cancel its production of the acclaimed play The Runner.

It is regrettable that the Belfry Theatre felt the need to cancel an artistic production, for the first time in its 46 years of existence, because it featured an Israeli Jewish man.

It is regrettable and disheartening that, when the Belfry Theatre attempted to have an open dialogue, it was vandalized and threatened by a “pro-Palestinian” mob, which ultimately led to a very quick decision without any meaningful consultation. The Belfry’s stated reasons for this decision were: “we believe that presenting The Runner at this particular time does not ensure the well-being of all segments of our community … this is not the time for a play which may further tensions among our community.” This decision does not reflect the wishes of the community as expressed in competing petitions: 1,400 against showing the play vs. 2,400 wanting the play to proceed.

We fear this decision will lead to other cultural events being canceled, as other venues may also give in to mob mentality and bullying. This is not what we expect from our cultural institutions, nor our community. It is not too late for the Belfry Theatre to reconsider their actions, as we hope they will.

The decision does not bode well for artistic and cultural expression in Victoria and Vancouver Island. It matters to stand up for what is right.

To read the Jewish Independent’s interview with playwright Christopher Morris, click here. To read the Independent’s op-ed on the Belfry Theatre’s choice to cancel its March run of The Runner, click here.