Jewish life – Page 2 – Jewish Independent

Reaching for new audiences

Michael Schwartz speaks at the launch of East End Stories on June 24. (photo from JMABC)

When Louis and Emma Gold arrived in Granville, precursor to Vancouver, the merchant family from Kentucky became the first members of what would grow into the booming Jewish community in the Lower Mainland.

Like most of the first Jewish immigrants to British Columbia, the Golds moved to the eastern end of downtown, where they opened a general store. Two waves of European Jews would come to Vancouver in the late 19th century and the Strathcona neighbourhood would become their home. It was an era during which new Jewish arrivals to North America largely found employment as merchants or doing various trades and Vancouver’s East End provided affordable and accessible housing for the working class.

“So many immigrant communities passed through there,” said Michael Schwartz, director of community engagement for the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.

The Jewish history of Strathcona is no secret, and the museum has offered walking tours of the neighbourhood for decades, beginning with a self-guided one in 1986, which grew into the current monthly guided tour. But, while those familiar with Jewish Vancouver may already know about the community’s past, Schwartz is hoping that a new school curriculum and video series created by the JMABC will make that history significantly more accessible.

East End Stories, completed in June, includes six short online videos and a 43-page study guide intended for use with students in grades 7 through 9. In addition to making some of the information offered on the walking tour available to those who can’t attend in person, Schwartz said the project also unveiled new information about early Vancouver Jews.

“It gave us the opportunity to do more research, to dig deeper, to find stuff we hadn’t before,” he told the Independent.

The result is the six videos, covering the first arrivals, the early community institutions and history of philanthropy, as well as Vancouver’s second mayor – David Oppenheimer – entrepreneur and philanthropist Jack Diamond, and the Grossman family. (Among other things, Max Grossman started this community newspaper.) Each running just under five minutes and offering encyclopedia-style capsule histories, the videos feature narrators from the local community. Schwartz said the photographs used were drawn from 17 archives across the world, including ones in California, Jerusalem and Poland.

The study guide covers the material in each video but is structured slightly more broadly, wrapping the Oppenheimer and Diamond biographies into a single lesson focused on how Jews shaped Vancouver, for example.

Schwartz said the impetus for creating the educational resources came after a vice-principal in the city asked whether there was a way to bring the information from the walking tour to classrooms at his school, as the logistics of bringing dozens of students to the neighbourhood itself was too complex. The museum offered the school replicas of wall panels that appear along the tour, but the study guide goes further, and meets current provincial guidelines for social studies curricula. Schwartz said museum staff will attend the B.C. Teachers Federation Conference in October to publicize the project, which was made possible by a $50,000 grant from the Canada 150 grant program.

“That provided the anchor funding and we were able to build the rest of the budget with smaller grants,” Schwartz explained. “It had always been a wish list thing and, when this funding opportunity arose, I thought, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’”

The lesson plans are intended to be used in conjunction with other Vancouver ethnic histories and video series created by Orbit Films, the company that produced East End Stories. The other histories are Black Strathcona, Nikkei Stories, which focuses on Japanese Canadians in Vancouver and Steveston, and South Asian Stories.

“All these different communities … faced struggle, rose to the occasion and relied on each other to be able to do that,” said Schwartz.

Highlighting the Jewish community’s roots in Vancouver and the similarities that the community shares with other immigrant groups is one of the goals of East End Stories, Schwartz said, adding that it could help combat certain stereotypes about Canadian Jews.

“Jews are assumed to have always been successful and that’s just not true,” he said. As can be seen in East End Stories, “many of us are stable or in some cases successful today [but] that’s new history.”

The videos and study guide also highlight a period of Jewish history in the Lower Mainland that was different for the way in which Jews were geographically concentrated in a certain quarter of the city, a phenomenon that remained true even after Jews largely left Strathcona but which has changed in recent decades.

Schwartz said that, during the 1950s, the community left Strathcona and clustered around Oakridge and Kerrisdale. The Baby Boomer generation dispersed but would return to the community to visit parents and attend community functions. But, while community institutions like the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver remain along the Oak Street corridor, fewer Vancouver Jews are calling the area home.

“We’re in a moment of transition,” Schwartz said. “We’re seeing a decline in gathering places and institutions where people come together.”

While online resources like the East End Stories videos, which are available on the Jewish Museum’s website, jewishmuseum.ca, can help bring people together figuratively and in shared knowledge and history, Schwartz said that in-person activities like those enabled by the walking tours and the classroom guide remain essential.

“There’s Jewish history in all corners of the city and it’s important for us to be present in not particularly Jewish areas to share the history of our community and spark dialogue about diverse histories of the city,” Schwartz said.

Arno Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Vancouver. He has covered Canadian Jewish issues for JTA and the Times of Israel.

Okanagan celebrates 25th

Steven Finkleman, vice-president of the Okanagan Jewish Community, takes a moment to enjoy some Israeli dancing. (photo by Misty Challmie)

When the founders of Kelowna’s fledgling Jewish community decided to open a building, they couldn’t call it a synagogue.

The B.C. government of the day would contribute a third of the construction costs toward a community centre but nothing if it were a church or synagogue. So, a small group of dedicated volunteers named it the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre and got the funding.

The building – also known as Beth Shalom Synagogue – features a sanctuary alongside a large kitchen, library and daycare. Twenty-five years after its dedication in the heart of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, a dozen original members and 50 supporters celebrated the milestone with Israeli dancing, humour and heartwarming stories.

Steven Finkleman, who led the event, reminisced about how a few retired couples kept the Jewish religion “alive in these boonies” by getting together at various houses. Members gathered regularly for services at a church after they formalized their community at an inaugural meeting in 1983.

“We met at St. Michael’s Anglican Church. For us, it was St. Moishe’s,” said Finkleman, who grew up in Winnipeg. “The question wasn’t, ‘Do we need a building?’ It was, ‘If someone dies, where do we put them?’ So a cemetery was most important.”

As more Jews moved into the Okanagan, momentum grew. Then-newcomer Mel Kotler, a businessman from Montreal who ran the Western division of Fabric-land, helped launch the community’s first cemetery drive. The committee bought pews, bimah artifacts and an ark from a synagogue that closed in Moose Jaw, Sask. Members contracted Emil Klein, a retired rabbi living in nearby Winfield, to lead services in houses and at St. Moishe’s.

Soon, they picked out a burial site overlooking a lake north of Kelowna, making it the only Jewish cemetery between Metro Vancouver and Calgary. After shifting the focus to establishing a centre, lawyer Robert Levin met with developers of a new subdivision in Kelowna’s North Glenmore area to negotiate a location. They agreed the Jewish community would put in a daycare to serve the neighbourhood as part of the deal.

Plans were drawn up for a $400,000 building, and a successful fundraising dinner followed. Once built, two former members of the Moose Jaw synagogue helped carry in two Torahs for the dedication in October 1992. More than 300 people attended the ceremony, which included a six-foot challah. Among the dignitaries were British Columbia’s former premier, Dave Barrett, member of the Legislative Assembly Cliff Serwa and B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Wilson.

Today, about 60 families – with Orthodox, Conservative and Reform backgrounds – support the centre. Visiting rabbis and cantors lead services, and children learn about Judaism at Hebrew school. Rabbi Shaul Osadchey and Cantor Russ Jayne of Calgary’s Beth Tzedec Congregation currently travel to Kelowna four times a year for Jewish holidays.

“They have the skill set we don’t have,” said Okanagan Jewish Community president Mondy Challmie. “When people have questions of a religious nature that we’re unable to answer, we encourage them to email or call Rabbi Osadchey.”

To celebrate the 25th anniversary, Cantor Russ sang a Hebrew-English version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Israeli dancers – who have practised every week for 14 years at the centre – performed. Member of Parliament Stephen Fuhr and Kelowna Councilor Mohini Singh gave speeches. And everyone shared a nosh, a slideshow and plenty of laughs.

As the party wound down and people folded up the chairs, Finkleman reflected on the biggest challenge for this tight-knit but tiny congregation.

“Generating interest, support and commitment in a small community – distant from a major Jewish centre – was difficult. It still is a challenge, but, when the building opened, it served as a focal point for recent arrivals in the Okanagan. We were very honoured to have some of the original members present. We miss those who are no longer with us.”

For more information, visit ojcc.ca.

Don Plant is a retired journalist and member of the Okanagan Jewish Community in Kelowna. He’s now studying archeology and helped excavate an Early Bronze Age site in Israel last summer.

Money still unclaimed

Thousands and thousands of dollars belonging to Jewish institutions and individuals are sitting unclaimed at the Bank of Canada.

Banks and federally chartered trust and loan companies are required to transfer to the Bank of Canada all unclaimed bank balances maintained in Canada in Canadian currency that have been inactive for a period of 10 years. According to the Bank of Canada’s website (bankofcanada.ca), at the end of December 2016, approximately 1.8 million unclaimed balances, worth some $678 million, were on the bank’s books. More than 93% of unclaimed balances were under $1,000, representing 26% of the total value outstanding. In 2016, the bank paid out $15 million to account holders. The oldest balance dates back to 1900.

At the Bank of Canada, there are many small amounts payable to Jewish organizations, including ones that are currently active. There are also some organizations that may no longer be active, which is why money in their name is languishing at the Bank of Canada. It is unfortunate that money intended to benefit Jewish organizations, charities or other causes, should not be used for the intended purpose, but instead sits unclaimed at the bank. Many of these organizations must have successor organizations or responsible persons that, with a little effort, could prove their right to claim the funds.

To discover whether a group you are now or have previously been associated with has such a balance, you should do the following:

Go to bankofcanada.ca.
Type “unclaimed balance” into the search box.
Once you reach the unclaimed balances registry, type one word of the organization name into the search box and scroll through the results.
If you see a name that is familiar, open the link.

If there is a bank account untouched for 10 years, the organization will pop up, along with the name and address of the originating bank. Then you can make a claim for the money through a process set out on the website. You will have to prove that the account was yours, and the website explains how to do that.

You can search by province, or by “all” (of Canada). Each year, on Dec. 31, the Bank of Canada adds another year’s unclaimed bank accounts to the website.

Members of the Canadian Jewish community should try to reclaim funds that were intended for use in the community.

Here are some of the words searched that found unclaimed balances belonging to Jewish groups or institutions: Jewish, Hebrew, tikvah, congregation, Canadian friends, beth, bnai, b’nai, rabbi, synagogue, temple, Torah, Talmud, Israel, Jerusalem, Moshe, Habonim, Zionist, ohel, Na’amat, chevra, camp, JCC, eitz, beit, chaim, kosher, yeshiva, Yiddish.

For example, the Bank of Canada holds $3,311.02 for an organization called Canadian Friends of Tikvah Lay in Ontario. It also holds $256.94 for Yeshiva of the Northwest, whose last transaction date was in 1992 in Vancouver, and $108.69 for the Edmonton Jewish Women’s Baseball League, untouched since 1997.

There may be some hurdles to jump to establish the right to the $953.08 of the Yiddish Drama Company in Toronto, untouched since 1979. However, there are at least a dozen Jewish community centres and congregations in towns across the country that should have very little difficulty in obtaining their unclaimed bank balances.

Few of the amounts found were large – but should any of the money raised or donated for a Jewish cause, charitable or not, be left at the Bank of Canada? Some effort should be made by the community to locate these funds and use them as they were intended.

You should also check your own name and those of family members, especially those family members who died more than 10 years ago, as there are sometimes bank accounts that heirs were unaware of at the time of death and that show up at the Bank of Canada years later. The process for obtaining personal unclaimed funds is also quite simple, and requires establishing your identity and your right to the funds.

Not to be confused with the funds held at the Bank of Canada, the province of British Columbia has its own, government-affiliated B.C. Unclaimed Property Society. It seems to hold more funds for individuals rather than organizations. Its website (unclaimedpropertybc.ca) says:

“Each year, millions of dollars in British Columbia goes unclaimed in dormant credit union accounts, forgotten insurance payments, unclaimed wages, overpayment to debt collectors, as well as unclaimed proceeds from courts, tax offices and unadministered estates and intestates (death without a will and next of kin cannot be notified). The British Columbia Unclaimed Property Society (BCUPS) helps reunite British Columbians with their forgotten or unclaimed assets. We hold unclaimed property as the custodian for rightful owners under the Unclaimed Property Act.”

The BCUPS website also provides an easy way to search, but if you find your name, you will find no further information about the amount of funds or the source of the funds being held for you, until you contact the society. You could think of it as a form of treasure hunt, where you expend no money, but you do expend your time, and maybe there will be a treasure chest or at least a few coins at the end of the hunt.

Felicia Folk is a retired lawyer living in Vancouver.

In spirit of Jewish law

The other night, I sat on the couch with my husband in an attempt at togetherness. We watched an episode of Madam Secretary. It was our second attempt. On the first try, worn out, I was about to fall asleep when my spouse suggested that we save it for another time so I could go to bed. It was, he pointed out, supposed to be fun. Sticking to the initial “date time” wasn’t working. Thank goodness for the PVR.

The show we watched was full of allusions to knitting and design, which are parts of my freelance work. I cringed inwardly, preparing for derogatory comments about “women’s work.” To my surprise, the textile theme was respectful. A man with PTSD takes up knitting as part of his therapy – it helps him focus his mind. A first-year university student struggles with a design assignment – she comes away with a couture dress, but not before we hear the sounds of her sewing machine at work in the background. Best yet, when her sister begins to panic at modeling the dress, the student gives her a pep talk, saying, “Pull yourself together, be strong. Do this, I need you.” What started as a frivolous thing – “help me out at this fashion show” – became more. It became a chance to succeed academically, and to use inner strength to prevail over a trying situation. The episode showed strong women and struggling men seeking to be their best selves.

All this came to mind later, in the context of a Talmud class. I signed up for a Jewish Theological Seminary online course. With the wonders of technology, I can hear lectures by Rabbi Dr. Judith Hauptman, who is a gifted teacher and intellect. Her course has an interesting premise – looking at situations when “law meets life.”

She began with basic information, and got started studying talmudic text. Whenever I study Talmud (or any older text), I have to remember the inherent inequalities. Women were seen as subservient, with less agency than we think is appropriate today. Through careful reading, we saw lists of tasks wives are obligated to perform for their husbands (Bavli Ketubot 61a) and a discussion about how one might “wash” – sprinkle water on – a floor on Shabbat (Bavli Shabbat 95a). (This last reference was not cleaning so much as providing a form of air conditioning and reducing dust on an extremely hot Shabbat in Babylonia.)

Hauptman showed us how women’s interpretations allowed them both to obey the spirit of Jewish law, and to accomplish what needed to be done. In more than one place in these readings, the rabbis (all male) allude to the fact that women were smart and had power or agency. Even if the language of the Talmud relegates women to being “property of a man’s house,” the women in these stories shine through as being shrewd and savvy.

We think sometimes that our lives are infinitely more complicated, sophisticated and detailed than those in the nostalgic past. Yet, these talmudic texts reminded me that, more than 1,500 years ago, smart people focused on the details that make our households and lives function. We may have a way to record entertainment now (and a TV!) or access to machine-produced clothing, but our fundamental concerns are similar. How are we to balance the spirit of our commitments with the laws’ requirements? What is the intention of our roles? How do men and women balance and subvert traditional roles in order to cope? How do our household tasks make life comfortable and/or meaningful?

The first text we studied refers to tasks that wives perform for their husbands: grinding grain, baking bread, doing the laundry, cooking, nursing his babies, making his bed, and working with wool. When she has wealth and servants, she can avoid some of these household obligations. As we studied this text together, I was knitting a wool sweater I’d promised to finish for one of my kids. I thought the webcam was trained up, only on my face. No, as it turned out – a friend, also taking the class, in New York, said she could see my knitting.

That’s OK. In the end, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Regardless of your level of observance, we still wrestle with these issues. Women often interpret Jewish law and tradition when it comes to household details. If one doesn’t have enough servants or financial resources, or even enjoys knitting and finds it focuses the mind, one might still be working with wool.

A recent study indicated that, in Reform Jewish congregations, rabbis who are women are paid less than their male counterparts. Women have fewer positions “at the top” as senior or sole congregational rabbis. We continue, even in the most progressive Jewish movements, to struggle with pay equity and gender roles.

The Talmud is an essential part of Jewish oral law, but it’s also literature, with narratives that shed light on daily life. A current TV show portrays a woman as U.S. Secretary of State, and shows that interaction with fibre arts is still an important, useful and viable thing to devote time to creating, no matter your gender.

In both the show’s legal negotiations and this talmudic text, we’re taught that, sometimes, the spirit of the law, the intention, is more important than the letter of the law. Through all the big decisions, it’s sometimes the small household details that make people’s lives rich. I’ll keep knitting handmade sweaters for my kids – and studying Talmud. Even in these times, there’s a place for both.

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Serving the Diaspora

Ayala and Ariel Wilchfort are recent arrivals to Vancouver. (photo from Ariel Wilchfort)

Two years ago, Rabbi Gideon Osher Shmueli donated a kidney to a stranger, saving that individual’s life. These days, he works at Magen David Yeshivah in Brooklyn, N.Y., teaching Hebrew and bringing with that teaching the culture and values of Judaism and eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.

To him, teaching about Judaism is akin to donating a vital organ. “Connecting Jews to Torah and mitzvot is no different from helping someone to live,” said Shmueli, 32, who, with his wife, Leore Sachs Shmueli, was matched with the school by Ohr Torah Stone’s Beren-Amiel Practical Training Program for Educational Emissaries, which trains educators who are sent to teach Judaic studies in both Orthodox and non-Orthodox schools throughout the Diaspora. A similar initiative, the Straus-Amiel Program for Rabbinical Emissaries, trains rabbis for synagogue postings in the Diaspora.

Like Shmueli, Rabbi Ariel Wilchfort is a recent arrival to his new post. He is city director for the National Conference of Synagogue Youth in Vancouver, following his participation in the emissary training at OTS’s Israel campuses.

“They guided me and helped me choose positions,” said Wilchfort, 33, who relocated to Vancouver with his wife Ayala and their two young children.

Wilchfort, who attended the emissary training from 2015 to 2017, said he found his current job when a representative for NCSY, the youth arm of Orthodox congregations in North America, visited with him and other emissaries.

Based in Israel, OTS is a modern Orthodox network of 24 institutions on 12 campuses, founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin with a mission in part to demonstrate that Judaism’s “laws and traditions remain profoundly relevant to the contemporary world,” Riskin has said.

As part of that mission, OTS has some 200 emissary families serving in more than 50 countries, according to Rabbi Eliahu Birnbaum, who directs the emissary programs. Shlichim (emissaries) serve on average five to six years, with some who have been at their posts as long as 18 years.

They serve not only in large Diaspora communities but also in places that are far afield and have few Jews, such as Quito, Ecuador; Guangzhou, China; Cochin, India; and Harare, Zimbabwe. “We believe that people need to work with people, and the only way to influence other people and strengthen their Jewish identity, as well as the community itself, is by having emissaries and creating personal connections,” Birnbaum said.

OTS annually receives at least 150 applications for the program, and chooses 25. “We accept only applicants who have advanced Torah knowledge and yeshivah background, high academic level and, most important, very good people and leadership skills,” said Birnbaum.

The training program consists of weekly classes with educators, rabbis, experts in halachah (Jewish law) and advisers. Shlichim assignments range from teaching positions, to youth directors to pulpit positions.

In a smaller Jewish community like Vancouver, Wilchfort occupies several roles on the community scene, mentoring young people at Congregation Schara Tzedeck and running a religious education program called Torah High, in which Jewish students can attend afternoon classes and gain a few credits toward earning their high school degree.

Originally from Englewood, N.J., Wilchfort’s family immigrated to Israel when he was a child, and he received his rabbinic ordination from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate at the same time that he was enrolled in the Beren-Amiel program. He said he was drawn to the initiative by a desire to serve Jews in the Diaspora and help them enrich their Jewish lives.

“I entered the program out of a care for other Jews, a love for our nation, and especially a love for our fellow Jews who have not had an adequate religious education,” he said.

Wilchfort has enjoyed settling into Vancouver, which he credits for having a vibrant Jewish scene. “Our community has a great infrastructure; it’s a very pro-Israel community here,” he said. “As for the area itself, it’s beautiful. In Vancouver, we live between forests and the ocean, and everyone is so health-aware, nature-aware.”

For Wilchfort, whose wife’s first language is Hebrew, not English, it’s a true cross-cultural experience. “It’s a new city, new country, new culture. It’s really an adventure, and we feel so excited to be here.”

The greatest Jewish novel?

What strange quirk brought it about that what may be one of the greatest and most Jewish of Jewish novels should be written not by a Diaspora Jew, nor an Israeli Jew, nor a Diaspora Jew who had made aliyah, but rather an Israeli who relocated to New York?

Further stymying expectations, Ruby Namdar did not write this novel in English, but in Hebrew (it was recently translated by Hillel Halkin). “For who?” asked an audience member at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival event on Nov. 26, when I had the pleasure of interviewing Namdar in front of a small gathering. If Namdar wanted his novel, which he acknowledged to be soundly in the lineage of Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, to be read by New Yorkers, why write it in Hebrew? If he wanted the novel to make sense to Israelis, why write it about a rootless Diaspora Jew with no connection to Israel?

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” said Namdar, “I don’t know who I was writing for, I just wrote.”

The Ruined House is not just a great Jewish novel or a great novel in modern Hebrew. It possesses a structure that is at once talmudic and kabbalistic, a structure that is deep and intricate yet carried off with such a sense of understatement and naturalness, effortlessly unfolding within Namdar’s lucid, lyrical and vivid prose, that most English-language reviewers thus far have not fully noticed it. This structure is what gives the novel its profoundly Jewish resonance, which is at once modern and ancient, rootless and anchored in the archetypal depths of Jewish experience and textuality.

Talmudic structure

The Ruined House is divided into seven books, with its seventh book being the culmination of an obviously Jewish numerical pattern. Each book follows the anti-hero, Andrew P. Cohen, over the course of one year of his life, as he enters what seems to be a midlife crisis from hell (or perhaps from heaven).

Cohen is a successful and wealthy professor of comparative culture, who lives in an idyllic Manhattan high-rise with a view of the river, a pristine Apollonian realm in the skies. He has a beautiful young lover, Ann Lee, and an adoring group of followers and acolytes. He cherishes his controlled, harmonious and detached existence, which he has gained through leaving his wife and two daughters years before.

At the end of the first six sections of the novel are a few pages of text designed to look like a blat Gemara, a page of Talmud. The central text in these inserts tells the story of a high priest preparing and executing the Yom Kippur sacrifices. While he does so, he is watched by Obadiah, a humble Levite who wonders whether the priest is truly pious or just a functionary in league with the elite. Encircling the narrative are passages from the Talmud, Mishnah and Tanakh, which describe the laws, folklore and spiritual significance of the high priest’s duty. They also feature key excerpts from Shaarei Gilgulim (The Gate of Reincarnation), a kabbalist text written by Chaim Vital (1542-1620) to expound the cosmology of his master, the Ari HaKodesh, Isaac Luria (1534-1572).

The insertion of these texts is deliberate and precise. Just as the narrative in the inserts is flanked by canonical Jewish sources, the narrative of the novel is surrounded by ancient Jewish forces. As the hidden, broken nature of Cohen’s life begins to surface, he begins to have intense, waking visions of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. His dreams turn nightmarish, alternating between repressed guilt at his betrayal of his family and dreadful tableaus of the rape of Jerusalem by the Romans and the murder of Jews by the Nazis.

The structure of the story and the inserts are not the only mirrors in the book: Cohen’s life is cast as priest-like. His elite status; the pure harmonious realm in which he lives; his having separated from his wife like Moses to live in the skies; even the elaborate meat dinners he cooks up for his dinner guests alone in his perfect kitchen all point to it. His name, of course, highlights both the substance and the irony of his life as priestly metaphor. At one point, his daughter, Rachel, disgustedly mocks people who think that Jews named Cohen are descended from the priestly lineage: “Everyone knows they just gave out those names randomly at Ellis Island.”

As Cohen descends into apparent madness, a grotesque version of the priestly sensibility gets stronger in him. He becomes morbidly obsessed with the impure and averse to the physical, the decaying and the dead. He finds himself horrified by menstrual blood and semen. The explanation of this growing claustrophobic sensibility lies in the paragraphs of Shaarei Gilgulim, which are included in Namdar’s inserts.

Kabbalist elements

Shaarei Gilgulim describes the way that some souls, during the process of reincarnation, unite with other souls in order to complete their own tikkun (repair). In the first pages of The Ruined House, “one shining soul, the figure of a high priest” is suddenly visible above New York among the celestial machinations momentarily revealed as the veil is briefly sundered. The key to the priest’s identity lies in the kabbalist doctrine of ibbur, or impregnation, where a soul from beyond enters into an earthly person in order to help them, to complete their own mission, or some combination of the two. In Cohen’s case, as suggested in a last talmudic insert, he has been “impregnated” by the soul of the high priest in need of tikkun for feeling himself superior to Obadiah, the humble Levite. The high priest and Cohen share a sin in common: arrogance. Their collective confrontation and reckoning with it will be psychically violent and cathartic and come close to doing Cohen in.

Critique of Diaspora?

Some reviewers have read The Ruined House as a critique of the Diaspora Jew, viewing the narrative as a kind of punishment of Cohen, enacted on him by the rising tide of archaic Jewish intrusions into his life. Namdar said this is a moralistic distortion of his ambivalent, questioning text. Instead, Namdar pointed to the shatterings of the illusion of wholeness and perfection that happen in the book. “Where things are broken, there, seeds can take root and grow,” he said.

For example, Cohen’s harmonious life is an illusion that is shattered in the course of the book, leaving a “ruined house.” Yet the figure of the ruined house (bayit asher necharev in the original Hebrew, a phrase that comes from a poem by Yehuda Amichai) is also an allusion to another ruined house, that of the Beit Hamikdash, the Jerusalem Temple, whose pristine world of order and control, Namdar suggests, also was illusory.

The third ruined house is suggested by the timing of the events in the novel. The story begins in the Hebrew month of Elul (signifying its theme of repentance), on Sept. 6, 2000. After the narrative comes to a head on Tisha b’Av, the date of the destruction of the Temple, it jumps from Aug. 1, 2001, to Sept. 18, 2001, leaving a lacuna where Sept. 11, 2001, and the destruction of the Twin Towers, resides.

“I did not want Sept. 11 to appear in the narrative, thus making the novel reducible to being about that event,” said Namdar when I asked him about this. “Rather, I wanted the trajectory to point to its occurrence outside the frame.”

There is much more to talk about in this remarkable novel, which manages at once to be so Jewish, so Israeli, so American and so human. I did not touch here on the attention Namdar lavishes on the details of Cohen’s daily life or Namdar’s subversion of the lineage of Malamud, Bellow and Roth in his intense empathy with the female characters of the novel, and his unsparing deconstruction of Cohen’s narcissistic masculinity. I did not examine his vivid and hilarious slow-motion evocation of a grossly excessive bar mitzvah, or his brilliant parody of the Zionist clichés of a Birthright-like propaganda tour of Israel, and many other delights. I hope this introduction is enough to invite you to step into Namdar’s mesmerizing fusion of a talmudic-esoteric structure with an incandescent evocation of life in Manhattan, and discover what else he has hidden there, of which, I promise you on good authority, there is much.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Immersed in Judaism

Abigail Pogrebin, author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew. (photo from Abigail Pogrebin)

A few years ago, author Abigail Pogrebin spent an immersive year studying the Jewish calendar and attempting to observe it. She chronicled her experience in a column in the Forward and, subsequently, in the book My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew (Fig Tree Books, 2017). On Nov. 19, she was in Winnipeg for the city’s Tarbut Festival.

“I did not approach this as a gimmick,” she told the Independent. “It was really a sincere stab at an understanding I never had, which is the origins for all of these chaggim [holidays] … and also, not just the origins, but the underpinnings, because these are obviously … human-created milestones that have endured for thousands of years. I wanted to understand both how and why they were conceived – what they’re supposed to mean for us today, not just to our ancestors. I definitely had a hunch that, for something to have endured for as long as it has, it has to resonate wherever you are in your life – at least for a large swath of people who live by this calendar.”

Pogrebin recognizes that there is a segment of the population that adheres to it simply because they inherited it, without questioning. Yet, for many people, Jewish observance, particularly of holidays, is a deliberate choice.

Pogrebin grew up in New York City. Her mother, writer and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, was instrumental in promoting women’s rights in the 1970s, and her writing includes analyses of what it means to be Jewish and female.

“I was not someone who celebrated nothing before this,” said Abigail Pogrebin. “I had sort of the five or six tent poles of Jewish holidays in my life…. I grew up with Shabbat…. It wasn’t enforced, but it was observed when we were together as a family. I went to synagogue on the High Holidays. We had always lit the menorah for eight nights, and I went to two seders back-to-back. Then, also, the feminine seder, which was a tradition that was started in mid-1970s by a group of women, including my mother.

“So, those were the basics that I’d grown up with. But, obviously, I was missing the majority of the signposts of the Jewish year. It bothered me that I didn’t know [them]. I also wanted to experience them in a way that might lead me to more meaning in my life.”

As examples of what she learned on her journey, Pogrebin said she had never understood before that the process of atonement and introspection needs to start far in advance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“During the month of Elul, we’re supposed to do what is called, in Hebrew, cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul). And, when I asked various rabbis how I might go about that, because there’s not a clear blueprint for observance, quite a few suggested taking the middot (characteristics) and breaking them down, exploring one a day. So, I chose to do that for 40 days leading up to Yom Kippur.

“I did this with a friend, a study partner, essentially. So, my friend, Catherine, and I took these 40 middot that a rabbi had posted online. One day, you’d do anger, another you’d do courage, another envy, another humility.”

As the women went through the days, they aimed to look at themselves as deeply and honestly as they were able and to write their reflections on each characteristic at the end of each day.

“By the time I got to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I felt like I was in a very different zone for reflection,” said Pogrebin. “On Yom Kippur, I went to a mikvah [ritual bath] for the first time, and that was extremely meaningful.”

Pogrebin spent Sukkot in Los Angeles, interviewing four rabbis in two days, with each one discussing a different aspect of Sukkot that she never had understood before.

“One emphasized the fragility, the impermanence of our structure, and our shelters in our lives,” she explained. “How resonant that is today, with natural disasters and poverty, and all kinds of things that should shake our foundations, both literally and metaphorically.

“Another talked about the fertility, the imagery that is in Sukkot – the shaking of the lulav and etrog, which was much racier than I ever understood. Another talked about agriculture, and the land and connecting – reconnecting with the earth in ways we don’t do in other times of the year.

“Another rabbi talked about wandering, the importance of being lost and being comfortable with being lost; embracing the idea of the most important lessons and reckonings when we don’t know where we are going.”

Pogrebin also mentioned Yom Hashoah, which commemorates victims of the Holocaust. According to her, not many people know when it takes place. “I think it’s just not in the fabric of how many of us were raised, but it seems to me to be a crucial holiday, even though it could never be adequate to mark such a vast and devastating history and persecution,” she said.

“I went to B’nai Jeshurun, which is a Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side that, in partnership with the JCC in Manhattan, does something called the naming of the names, where they have this book from Yad Vashem … devastating lists of families who perished. Starting at 10 p.m. and going all night into the next day, people tak[e] turns reading those names,” said Pogrebin.

About how the yearlong experience has changed her and her family, Pogrebin said, “In a way, it’s changed completely and, in a way, it hasn’t changed radically. I’d say it’s changed completely in the sense that I don’t look at time, relationships, obligations, the same way anymore. I think, if the holidays do anything, they are constantly reminding us to ask ourselves who we are in the world and whether we are doing what we could be doing to alleviate someone else’s suffering or pain.”

Pogrebin is always looking for ways to bring the lessons of her journey into her day-to-day life, to make them come alive in a way they didn’t for her when she was a child.

About the book, she said, “If one wants to understand the arc of the year, you will. It’s not that there are not people who might disagree with this or that, but it was researched and tested with people who live this and teach this at a very high level. So, it’s not just Abby saying it to be true. It’s me putting on my journalist hat and making sure when I explain something that it’s definitely rooted in scholarship. I hope … it’s an enjoyable and entertaining book.

“The people who read it are coming along with me and my experience with the holiday for the first time. They are also getting, I think, a fairly thorough template of what a Jewish year involves and demands. I think that, whether you’re Jewish or an interfaith family that wants to explain or introduce … some of these holidays in your own home and you’ve never done them before, it’s absolutely a door into learning how.

“There is something magical,” she said, “about not just living by someone else’s clock, but by an ancient roadmap…. I think there’s something very powerful about embracing … whether it’s Judaism or any religion, what it imposes on you, in terms of [laying out] what you should be thinking about besides your own needs and wishes – to me, that’s an important takeaway that I think other people should explore.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

The beauty of the light

(photo from flickr.com/photos/scazon)

The sky turns shades of orange and mauve as I glance outside my dining room window and notice the sun slipping behind the trees. The havoc and chatter in the house has peaked. I call my daughter to come and light the Shabbat candles with me. It’s time. Eighteen minutes before sunset.

We light the candles, nine for me, representing each of our family members, and one for her. We cover our eyes and circle the flames three times with our hands as we say the blessing that ushers in the holy Shabbat. “Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzeevanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat kodesh.” (“Blessed are you, G-d, our Master of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His mitzvah, and commanded us to light the candle of the holy Shabbat.”) Instantly, the chaos subsides and peace and serenity reign. It’s visceral, and a mystery to me how it occurs every Friday evening.

The Shabbat candles warm the atmosphere of the Shabbat table. Their soft glow draws us in. All week, we run from home to work and school, activities and errands that fill our days. Many of us do not share meals or spend time together at all!

Only on Shabbat do we have the opportunity to have precious moments with family and share meals, discuss our week’s events, share Torah thoughts and stories of the parashah, to enjoy each other’s presence as well as that of our Shabbat guests.

Shabbat, the seventh day of the week, is the gift that G-d has given us in order to reconnect with family and friends, and teach us, by His example, to rest as He did after creating our beautiful world for us in only six days. We reconnect with our G-dly souls and recharge our batteries for the busy week ahead. We pray at home and in a synagogue and get a special spiritual feeling as we connect to G-d and our community.

We also have Chanukah, an eight-day festival of lights, falling yearly on the 25th day in the winter month of Kislev. Chanukah recalls the Jews’ victory, with a small army, over the huge Greek army in the second century BCE. It also commemorates the miracle of the tiny bit of light, enough to burn for one day, which lasted for eight days, until the rededication of the Temple was possible after the struggle.

The Shabbat candles are placed inside our homes, while the Chanukah candles are placed so they can be seen from outside our homes. Why the difference?

On Shabbat, we are supposed to enjoy and benefit from the holy glow of the Shabbat candles as they shine over the beautifully set Shabbat table, with its white tablecloth and lavish settings. It is the main attraction for those fortunate to have a place around the table.

On Chanukah, we are forbidden to use the light of the menorah for any practical purpose. As the Chanukah candles melt, we are not supposed to do any housework at all. Only after they’ve melted, can we celebrate the miracle of the oil with food and games.

From this, we can extrapolate an essential difference between Shabbat and Chanukah. Shabbat is for us, the Jewish people; it nourishes and reinforces us weekly. Chanukah reaches beyond the warmth of the home to light up the darkness of the outside world. It reminds us not to be afraid, even in the harshest times. And Chanukah candles teach us to stand up and speak out for those who do not possess this strength. This feeds a pride that transcends ego. This is our proud Jewish heritage and our gift to the world.

As I polish my Shabbat candelabra, candlesticks and our family’s chanukiyah, I smile as memories of past Shabbatot and Chanukah celebrations mingle with anticipation. This year, Chanukah begins on the evening of Dec. 12 and continues until the 20th. Wishing you a very happy and festive Chanukah.

Esther Tauby is a local educator, writer and counselor.

House no longer home

South Side Hebrew Congregation. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)

“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the L-d breathes on this poor grey ember of Creation and it turns to radiance – for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light.” (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004)

Once I had turned onto Chicago’s Congress Parkway, I shut off Waze. I told myself that, from here on, I could navigate from long-stored memory. My destination: my old South Shore neighbourhood. My objective: by means of an on-site visit, to share recollections of my Chicago-based formative years with our four Israeli-bred children, so they could have a real sense of where I came from and why I am the way I am.

I expected the community I’d lived in from birth until halfway through my adolescence to be much changed. It’s a fact of life, people change, places change. Certain relatives and friends, however, discouraged my visiting where I’d grown up; some even informed me the local press had renamed the area Terror Town.

Consequently, with a bit of trepidation, we drove into South Shore to begin my guiding and reminiscing. South Shore (named for its proximity to the southern shore of Lake Michigan) had been a middle-class neighbourhood. Some upper-middle-class (probably closer to the lake), some lower-middle-class, lots of solid middle-class.

As I explained to my children, when I was growing up, my area was a religiously mixed Caucasian neighborhood, but we got along with our non-Jewish neighbours. I played with the Christian kids on our block.

Moreover, when it came to schooling, my parents likewise wanted my brothers and me to be broadly exposed, meaning we attended both Chicago Board of Education public schools (not Jewish day schools) and a five-day-a-week afternoon Hebrew school and Hebrew high school. But, even though we attended a public school, there were different rules for different people. For instance, a special bell rang in our elementary school one day a week at 2 p.m., signifying that practising Catholic kids were free to leave for catechism lessons. When we missed school for a Jewish holiday, we had to return to school with a note from our parents explaining why we had been absent. Needless to say, we had to make up whatever work or tests we missed.

Significantly, in those days, Chicago had other forms of “acceptable” discrimination. Jews and other minorities were not allowed to live in certain areas and were not given membership in certain clubs. The nearby South Shore Country Club was one such restricted place. In the late 1960s, when the rules changed (because of hard-fought anti-discrimination legislation), one of my parents’ closest friends, a history professor, was belatedly invited to join. He relished responding, “I don’t want to belong to any club which hadn’t wanted me.”

Now that I had the chance, I wanted to see the inside of the club. It had been converted into a municipal public park, golf course and cultural centre, close to where former President Barack Obama’s library will be constructed. Either the grounds had not been maintained at their previous level or the previous standard had been over-imagined, but I was underwhelmed by what I saw. Spontaneously, my children – who have all visited the remains of Nazi concentration and death camps – commented the club’s gatehouse reminded them of the entrance to Auschwitz.

Though we had lived in a mixed neighbourhood, there was a Jewish community centre, plus seven synagogues (representing various streams of Judaism) within walking distance of our apartment – more than in my current Jerusalem neighbourhood! Because my parents had “shopped around” until I was about 6 years old for the synagogue that best met our family’s needs, I was acquainted with just about all of them.

photo - Deborah Rubin Fields went to Hebrew school five days a week in this building owned by South Side Hebrew Congregation. The Men’s Club also met there. For awhile her grandfather was the president — Deborah Rubin Fields went to Hebrew school five days a week in this building owned by South Side Hebrew Congregation. The Men’s Club also met there. For awhile her grandfather was the president. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

Now, as I drove my children through South Shore, I saw that South Side Hebrew Congregation, Congregation Habonim, Congregation Bnai Bezalel, Congregation Agudat Achim and South Shore Temple had become churches. Beth Am Congregation was now a school. The buildings by and large looked the same, except for the signs identifying the churches that now occupied the premises, and the occasional cross on the windows. The brick menorot were still on the façade of Torah Synagogue and the mikvah, but at least part of the complex had become a beauty supply shop.

I recalled one story from my club at the Jewish Youth Centre. My group went for a picnic supper at Rainbow Beach. My neighbour and friend, D., disregarded our warnings, returning home with what she called a gift for her mother, a long-dead alewife. When D. entered her apartment complex, the rest of us raced to the back of the building to snicker at D.’s mother screaming about the smelly fish.

And, speaking of social functions, my old synagogue, South Side Hebrew Congregation, played a social role, as much as it did a religious role. It wasn’t just a place for praying, as are many Israeli synagogues, it was a place to meet up with people with whom we shared a common core. For synagogue members like us who felt like part of a minority group, SSHC offered a sense of belonging, of comfort and of security.

Hence, every Shabbat morning, I went to the junior congregation. One our Hebrew teachers, Mr. Wolfson, with his heavy eastern European accent, directed our tefillot. My parents often went to the adult service. I have lots of good memories about SSHC, especially listening to Sparky Rosenstein, the president of the shul trying, but never really succeeding in blowing the shofar; stringing fresh cranberries and popcorn to hang in the giant communal sukkah (though we traditionally ate dinner in the sukkah of family friends, wrapped up in our coats, as Chicago was so cold already); walking around with a flag, apple and chocolate Kisses on Simchat Torah; and going up on the bimah to get the cantor wet when we started reciting the prayer for rain.

Years ago, I had gone on tours of old Jewish neighbourhoods with Prof. Irving Cutler. Back then, I had marveled at how Jews had established themselves in so many of Chicago’s districts. Yet now, seeing what had become of the Jewish institutions of my childhood, I was saddened no one had stayed around to keep them going. I whimsically thought it was too bad the Jews of South Shore hadn’t called on the Golem to protect these synagogues. Of consolation was the fact that people have continued to use most of the buildings as houses of worship.

During the entire trip, way-back-when scenes flooded my mind. Many I shared with my family. If the content wasn’t always complete, the emotion was. And this feeling my children will always have and it will be enough.

“… the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Scottsdale’s beauty and fun

The view of Camelback Mountain from Mountain Shadows resort. (photo by Masada Siegel)

On a late Thursday afternoon in August, my husband arrived home from work and excitedly said, “You have to come out front and see the double rainbow – it’s stunning!” I picked up our little boy and rushed outside to see the mystical wonder that glittered through the raindrops of the Arizona sky.

When I turned to go back inside, I noticed an Orthodox Jewish man on a cellphone standing outside our neighbour’s house, which is an Airbnb. Every few days, a new group of people arrives, but this time I walked over and introduced myself. He told me that 10 yeshivah boys from all over the United States and Canada were staying in the house for two weeks on a summer trip to see Scottsdale and explore Arizona. I told him I was a travel writer and would be happy to help with any suggestions on what to see, where to go, where the kosher restaurants were located and about the local synagogues.

They had chosen the home because it was in walking distance of Ahavas Torah, an Orthodox synagogue, where the community warmly welcomed them. I laughed and said, “There is actually another shul in walking distance, Beth Tefillah, which is led by Rabbi Allouche, who is an amazing leader who gives incredibly insightful sermons, and someone also to check out.”

The conversation then turned to kosher restaurants that are nearby. One is Milk and Honey, located inside the Jewish community centre, which boasts food like chipotle salmon wraps, kale tacos and shakshuka. The other kosher restaurant is Kitchen 18, which has an eclectic menu, from Israeli food to Chinese to sushi.

My new neighbours had done their research and had also koshered their kitchen, so they were ready to explore their beautiful new surroundings that I call home.

Chaim, who was from Toronto, was the ringleader, otherwise known as the organizer of the group, so he told me about some of their travel plans. Every other night or so, we got a report about their activities as we bumped into them outside their home of the next two weeks.

photo - Butterfly Wonderland offers wonders you can touch — Butterfly Wonderland offers wonders you can touch. *(photo by Masada Siegel)*

Scottsdale is known for its outdoor activities and one fun hike is Camelback Mountain, where the views are phenomenal. There are two trails, one is shorter and more vigorous, and the other is longer but not as steep. After a few-hour walk, locals and tourists alike often head to downtown Scottsdale to indulge at one of the many breakfast places, as well as to stroll around. The Scottsdale Civic Centre is a park filled with fountains and is close to the Scottsdale Centre for the Performing Arts, which has a great gift store. Pop into the library, too, just to see the architecture, buy a book or have a coffee in their café.

Nearby is one of my favourite casual restaurants, called AZ88. Often in the winter months, there are international festivals in the park across the way.

Scottsdale has the most gorgeous winter weather and also provides engaging activities for families. A perfect place for a picnic, especially with young kids, is McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park. Visitors can ride the 1950s-vintage Allan Herschell carousel and then jump on the mini-train and ride around the park. There is also a 10,000-square-foot model railroad building where trains zip around. Check out the museum, which houses the Roald Amundsen Pullman Car, best known for being used by every president from Herbert Hoover through Dwight Eisenhower.

For more active adventure, iFLY allows you to experience skydiving without actually jumping out of a plane at 12,000 feet. I call it “reverse skydiving” because you don’t jump down, you start standing as opposed to falling. The new facility is state-of-the-art and it has activities for the whole family.

For the tamer at heart, all in one complex are Butterfly Wonderland, OdySea Aquarium and Dolphinaris, where people can swim with dolphins.

Butterfly Wonderland is the largest indoor butterfly pavilion in the United States and is home to thousands of butterflies from all over the world. Prior to entering the pavilion, visitors also can see the emergence gallery, where the little creatures are in various states of life, many in metamorphosis.

photo - OdySea is the largest aquarium in the southwest — OdySea is the largest aquarium in the southwest. *(photo by Masada Siegel)*

And OdySea is the largest aquarium in the southwest. It features more than 30,000 animals, 50 exhibits and an aquatic presentation, where guests sit in a theatre and rotate around an enormous tank filled with sharks, sea turtles, seals and sea lions.

A must-see while in Arizona is the Musical Instruments Museum, which displays more than 6,000 instruments and is the world’s only global instrument museum, with items from 200 countries and territories. The museum is an award-winning Smithsonian Affiliate and guests can see and hear the instruments, as well as watch them being played.

Scottsdale has many public parks, such as Cactus Park and McDowell Mountain Ranch Park, where visitors pay a mere $3 per person to be able to use the Olympic-size swimming pools and gym facilities.

While being my next-door neighbour is optimal, if you want a personalized tour, the house is often rented, but there are several resorts in the area.

Mountain Shadows provides views of Camelback Mountain, offers gym facilities with myriad classes and has an award-winning chef. The hotel restaurant, Hearth 61, an open kitchen concept, has excellent meals, a friendly and helpful wait staff and incredible views. And guests can sign up for a class with photographer Erik Merkow.

While Mountain Shadows is a modern resort, it was completely rebuilt from the ground up, and takes the place of a hotel with a Hollywood past, welcoming such stars as Bob Hope and Lucille Ball.

Another accommodation option is the Scottsdale Resort, which has a relaxed, charming atmosphere, comfortable rooms, swimming pools and Kitchen West Restaurant, where every meal is delicious. The hotel also has lots of open spaces to walk around and explore, and is a perfect place for a family with kids.

The Shabbat before our temporary neighbours returned home, they invited us to come over and spend some time with them. They marveled at Scottsdale and a few of them said they were definitely coming back, as the community had welcomed them with open arms. It was nice to see my hometown through their appreciative eyes, as often we forget to notice in our own community the beauty that surrounds us and the people who lovingly embrace us.

We need such reminders every so often. And, sometimes, it’s as simple as rushing out of your house to see a double rainbow and getting a double surprise, making new friends as well.

Masada Siegel is a writer living in Scottsdale. Follow her on Twitter @masadasiegel.

Selected resources:

Mountain Shadows (mountainshadows.com)
Photography class (mountainshadows.com/resort/events/photography-essentials)
Scottsdale Resort (destinationhotels.com/scottsdale-resort/resort)
Kitchen 18 link (thekitchen18.com)
Milk and Honey (milkandhoneyjcc.com)
Ahavas Torah (ahavastorah.org)
Beth Tefillah (bethtefillahaz.org)