journalism – Page 5

JI awarded for its editorials

The annual American Jewish Press Association’s Simon Rockower Awards recognize excellence in Jewish journalism. Once again, the Jewish Independent has been honoured with a Rockower for its work, winning first prize in its circulation category for editorial writing.

The JI’s editorial board – Basya Laye, Pat Johnson and Cynthia Ramsay – were recognized for the op-eds “How we memorialize the past,” “Sukkah more than symbolic” and “The year it all changed.” All of these editorials – and other opinion pieces and articles published by the JI can be found at jewishindependent.ca.

“The year it all changed” (June 2, 2017) discusses the turning point that Canada’s 100th birthday represented, when we “came into our own as a country,” and the significance of that year for Israel and Diaspora Jews: “The Six Day War, which began June 5, 1967, literally and figuratively reshaped Israel, the Middle East, Diaspora Jewry and global diplomacy.”

“How we memorialize the past” (Sept. 1, 2017) uses the racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., which “was ignited, ostensibly, by the removal (or threatened removal) of Confederate commemorative statues and plaques,” as a jumping off point to talk about how communities and societies commemorate the people and events of the past, including here in Canada.

Finally, “Sukkah more than symbolic” (Oct. 6, 2017) notes, “For most of us, the sukkah is but a symbol of our wandering in the desert all those years ago, a symbol to remind us to be humble, empathetic, grateful. However, for many living in Metro Vancouver, including members of our own community, homelessness is a reality.” It highlights some of the initiatives undertaken by Tikva Housing Society and the barriers to finding housing. It notes that indigenous people continue to represent the highest proportion of homeless, and that there are tens of thousands of people at risk of becoming homeless. It concludes, “there is a lot of work to be done.”

This year’s awards – honouring articles published in 2017 – were presented at the 37th Annual Simon Rockower Awards banquet, held in conjunction with the AJPA’s 2018 annual conference June 17-19 in Cleveland, Ohio. Second place in the under-15,000 circulation category went to the St. Louis Jewish Light, based in St. Louis, Mo. Winners in the 15,000-plus circulation category were the Forward (New York, N.Y.), taking first place, and the Jewish Standard (Teaneck, N.J.) placing second.

A paper covers events

Last week, we published a story about a group of people gathering outside the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver to hold a Yizkor service for Palestinians who died during the March of Return actions at the Gaza-Israel border.

We are not surprised by the reaction from readers, but we are disappointed in some of it. We have been criticized for covering the event. One commenter on Facebook accused us of supporting Hamas.

We are a newspaper. The fact that a group of Jews – it doesn’t matter how many or how few – organized an event like this is newsworthy. We covered it. It is what any newspaper worth the paper it’s printed on would have done. To accuse the Independent of endorsing the event – or Hamas – because we ran a story about it demonstrates a stunning lack of understanding about the basics of journalism. When a newspaper covers a flood, it is not endorsing the river.

At least one critic suggested our approach should have been to publish a raving tirade against those saying Kaddish. Our approach, generally, is to report events in an unbiased fashion and leave the raving tirades to others.

Just one question, really, for those who didn’t like the inclusion of that story in last week’s issue: Would you rather not know what’s happening in your community?

Londres foresaw fate of Jews

Albert Londres was a Parisian journalist born in 1884. He became an international reporter who chose to chronicle human suffering and expose injustice and cruelty. He denounced inhuman conditions in mental asylums, the ordeals of black workers, conditions in a penal colony. His journalistic philosophy: “our profession is not to give pleasure nor to do harm; it is to twist the pen into the wound.”

Why was I drawn to Londres’ The Wandering Jew Has Arrived (Gefen Publishing House, 2017)? For one, I had spotted it in Israel and it was produced by Gefen, a familiar name in the publishing world. Its founder, Murray Greenfield, his late wife, Hana, and I once visited Terezin together and his son, Ilan Greenfield, published a book about the Buchenwald boys I co-wrote with Judith Hemmendinger back in 2000.

Secondly, I quickly read the introduction by Rav Daniel Epstein. He described Londres as a non-Jewish Parisian reporter with an insatiable curiosity. He wanted to inform his French readers, “nurtured for centuries on a teaching of contempt and antisemitic clichés,” about the world of Jews, a world he also did not understand. So he learned. He observed. He made a brief visit to Poland in 1926 and was exposed to the reality of pogroms and ghettos (his word for shtetls). Who would not want to join him on his journey?

In 1929, he began to familiarize himself with the London Jewish community of Whitechapel. Then he traveled to Poland, Russia and Romania. He described observant and secular Jews, Zionists and anti-Zionists, Torah scholars, yeshivah students. From all that he observed and experienced, Londres concludes “the passion for learning is uniquely Jewish,” and links this passion as “undoubtedly the real mystery of Israel and the secret of its survival.”

He discussed the dangerous circumstances of Jews living among hostile nations in 1929. “The Jew,” he writes, “is guilty of one crime; that of being Jewish.” He elaborates, “A Pole or Russian chases a Jew from a pavement as though the Jew who is passing by, is stealing his air.” Londres travels as well to Palestine to witness and observe a “metamorphosis: the cowering Jew of the ghetto now holds his head high … he finds the wandering Jew in Jerusalem.”

Londres’ translator, Helga Abraham, writes, “Still widely read in France, the book came to my attention when the Hebrew translation was published in 2008 (Nahar Books). Surprisingly, I discovered that no English translation was available. An English translation had been published in 1932 but soon was out of print. I use the word surprisingly because it is hard to read this work without being arrested by its enormous significance – as a unique eyewitness account by a non-Jew of a pivotal period in Jewish history, as a major literary work in itself and as a masterful example of journalism at its best.”

Let me take you through some of his journey. In the opening chapter, “A Bizarre Personage,” he describes meeting in London the Jew who would squire him on his journey – a Polish Galician rabbi on a fundraising mission in London.

Londres wrote, “But I had to begin in London. Why? Because England, 11 years ago, had proclaimed to the Jews the same words that God, sometime before, had proclaimed to Moses on Mount Horeb,” assigning him the land of milk and honey.

This time the proclamation had come from Lord Balfour. Londres records both proclamations adding, “England knew how to defend its interests better than God His: God had given Palestine and Transjordan in one stroke. Lord Balfour kept Transjordan.”

Londres writes of the 1917 Balfour declaration as well as the betrayal of the Jews following the declaration, because, although the San Marino conference legalized the promise, by 1922, 78% of the British Palestine mandate was severed from becoming a potential Jewish area. And, only 10 years later, in 1939, unbeknown to Londres, who died in 1932 in a fire that broke out on the boat returning him from Shanghai, the slaughter of Europe’s Jews began.

It is all forecast by him, as he describes Jewish history to that time and modern Jewish history from the days of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). Herzl became a journalist in Paris, where he witnessed the Dreyfus Affair. He wrote a book called The Jewish State. He was particularly shocked by hearing the cry, “Death to the Jews” in Paris, particularly in France where, “if the suspicion that rested on an individual (Alfred Dreyfus) was projected onto all, it meant that a Jew, even in this privileged country was not in his own home.”

Herzl set out to convince monarchs and leaders to establish a home for the Jews. He visited heads of state, royalty and philanthropists, and reunited Israel as a nation, in Basel, for the First Zionist Congress. In London, 10,000 Jews came to hear him. In Vienna, another 10,000.

His schedule was hectic, his leadership challenged and he succumbed to illness at age 44. Londres notes: “Herzl is dead. His dream lives on!” Londres writes, “Three thousand two hundred forty-seven years after Moses, he succeeded Moses.” And, “He awoke a people that had slumbered for nineteen centuries.”

And so, Londres embarks on his mission to describe “the state of the Jews in the world to the French.” In London, he speaks with immigrant Jews and recognizes that, in countries like Poland and Romania, due to antisemitism, “A Jew over there is always a Jew. He may be a man, but he is neither a Romanian nor a Pole. And if he is a man, he must be prevented from growing.”

Londres places into historical perspective the Lord’s designation of Abraham as the patriarch and assigning to him the land of Canaan around 1920 BCE, and the assignation of the land at the San Remo conference, also in 1920, but CE. At San Remo, the Supreme Allied Council gave England the mandate to establish a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. Londres notes wryly that from 1920 BCE to 1920 CE, “the Arabs have not stopped creating an uproar. They deny that Palestine is the cradle of the Jews.”

Londres describes the development of Jew-hatred; the loathing of Jewish adherence to the laws of the Torah, followed by the birth of Christianity and then dispersion to hostile nations. They were ghettoized, marked with yellow badges, forced to give up Judaism in Spain and blamed for cholera in Germany, whereupon they moved to Poland followed by Chmielnicki, the leader of Ukrainian Cossacks, who “passed through all the ghettos to massacre 300,000 Jews.”

The French Revolution led to greater acceptance of Jews, less so in Vienna. But Londres was familiar with the Jews of the West. He wanted to see those in the East, and journeyed to Prague and followed others to Mukachevo, in Subcarpathian Russia. Jews were driven from their homes in Moravia, Poland and Russia into misery and poverty, all described by Londres, the roving journalist.

Even in Prague, in a more civil society in the heart of Europe, he notes, “Chased, beaten, mocked, unable to leave their concentration camp, accused of witchcraft, sorcery, illnesses, their garments marked with a yellow badge, they walk stooped, pale and thin, beards flowing, down the little alleys of yore, with big strides, heads bent, toward this old synagogue. It was their sole homeland.”

What is the vision that prompts him to use the words “concentration camp” for the Jewish area they cannot leave and the yellow badge to mark them, in the year 1929?

The reader will soon enough discover what Londres began to envision. For he discusses as well the absence of Jewish rights, their lack of political power combined with the ever-increasing torment of pogroms, forced conscription and soul-destroying laws. Londres emphasizes that Jews without a land of their own create a space in which to worship and temporarily escape the travails of their wretched lives. He knows there is no future for these Eastern European Jews who happen to number six million, without including those in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

He describes the pogroms of Kishinev in 1903 and the great pogrom of 1918-1920 in Ukraine and eastern Galicia, where 150,000 Jews were murdered and 300,000 wounded. Londres notes there is no particular reason for pogroms except one: “the fundamental cause of pogroms is loathing of Jews. Then come the pretexts.” In Bessarabia, he meets a chalutz (pioneer) from Palestine urging Jews to leave their misery. Alter Fischer had survived a Cossack pogrom and fled to Palestine. Now a proud Palestinian Jew on a mission, he attempts to inspire the Jews of Kishinev. At one point, he rages, “By dint of waiting for him [the Messiah], they will all end up slaughtered. They are like the inhabitants of Stromboli, waiting for the volcano to erupt.”

In contrast to “the wild Jews of the Marmarosh Mountains, the frightened Jews of Transylvania, of Bessarabia and of Bukovina, the begging, beaten Jews of Lwow” stands Warsaw, which is, in Londres’ words, “the Jewish queen of Europe.” Three hundred and sixty thousand Jews – but living in a country where, “One of the main pillars of Poland’s political program is to ‘crunch the Jews.’ A Jew cannot work for the government, or the army, or a university.”

Londres’ descriptions of the depth and intensity of Jewish life reflect an admiration of the commitment to study and education. But, he worries. His travel companion from Prague, Ben, offers these words, “The Jews of Russia? They know they are enjoying a truce now. Bolshevism has brought them peace. But every regime that follows Bolshevism will bring them war. And they will pay the price. It will be even worse than Petliura’s pogroms. Everyone knows this and it will be ghastly. In Poland? The situation is worse than it’s ever been. In Romania, the antagonism is blatant. In Czechoslovakia, there is neutrality but also neglect. That’s the picture. Who wouldn’t want to get out?” Ben adds, “All of us here are not at home. But we are no more than guests wherever we live.” It is 1929.

Londres travels to Palestine on a vessel, the Sphinx. He exclaims, “Here is the sun! I left Warsaw in the year 5690” (on the Hebrew calendar). “Now I enter year 10” (roughly a decade after the Balfour declaration). Londres exults in the discovery of “Herzl Street! Edmond de Rothschild Boulevard! Max Nordau Street! The synagogue, the main monument in the process of being completed, seems to say it all. It is like a flag, floating over a camp. The sole, unrivaled flag. No crosses in its shadow, no minarets in its radius. Just as when the Temple dominated Jerusalem, before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mosque of Omar.”

In discussing the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and its 400-year occupation, Londres states simply, “Victory came. England puffed its cheeks and exhaled. The Arab kingdom vanished. Israel took its place.” He writes, “There is no point labouring over historical texts. Whether the settlement of the Jews in Palestine is called a ‘national home’ rather than a ‘Jewish state’ does not alter the fact. And the fact is this: this time, the Jews were arriving not as beggars, but as citizens. They were no longer asking for hospitality – they were taking possession of the land. They would no longer be a tolerated people, but equal.”

Londres’ remarkable work – of a period of time wedged in between two world wars, the latter resulting in the destruction of European Jewry – deserves a wide readership. Londres, the journalist, captures the essence of Jewish life and foreshadows what is to come through his awareness that Jewish survival is not possible and that the wandering Jew is destined to return home.

Dr. Robert Krell is professor emeritus, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia, distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

JI gets Rockower, Shore a WIBA

The Jewish Independent is among the winners of this year’s American Jewish Press Association Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. The awards were presented at the AJPA annual conference, held in conjunction with the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Los Angeles, Nov. 13-15.

The JI won first place for excellence in editorial writing for a trio of opinion pieces: “Let’s talk about Nini …” (Feb. 26, 2016), “Much more yet to learn” (Oct. 7, 2016) and “Inspired by Standing Rock” (Dec. 9, 2016). Placing second in the same circulation category (14,999 and under) was Intermountain Jewish News, based in Denver, Colo.

About the Independent’s “Let’s talk about Nini …” submission, the AJPA’s Rockower jury commented that it demonstrated “great writing, clear intent and galvanized a call to action in support of Jewish Federation’s decision to host an Israeli singer with controversial political views. Readers took heed.”

The editorial “Much more yet to learn” was about the need for Holocaust education and “Inspired by Standing Rock” connected the story of Chanukah, “of standing for one’s beliefs (and existence) and triumphing in the end,” with that of the protesters in North Dakota, who stood up against the U.S. government’s plans to run an oil pipeline through a cemetery and under a water reservoir near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

***

Jewish community member Paul Shore of Whistler won this year’s Whistler Independent Book Awards (WIBA) non-fiction prize for his memoir Uncorked, set within the rampart walls of a village in Provence. Farida Somjee of Vancouver won the WIBA fiction prize for her novel The Beggar’s Dance, set in the streets of coastal Africa.

The winners were announced by WIBA organizers Lynn Duncan and Kilmeny Denny at the Whistler Writers Festival’s improvisational Literary Cabaret at the Maury Young Arts Centre. Two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Canadian Humour Terry Fallis said, “It is wonderful to see talented, up-and-coming, independent authors recognized. It is a challenging process to start out on your own and work to have your creativity discovered.”

“In Uncorked, Shore’s use of the game of pétanque as a point of entry to address areas of personal alienation is a great literary and narrative choice,” said J.J. Lee, one of the judges for the non-fiction award, and CBC radio host, author and Governor General’s Literary Award finalist. “This memoir made me laugh; especially Paul’s foil Hubert, who is a star. And its funny and illuminating stories contain a soul that is touching, too!”

[For the Independent’s review of Uncorked, click here.]

Brown’s model for success

Journalist Jesse Brown takes a humourous look at his homeland in The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), written with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki.

Jesse Brown has emerged in the last few years as an important voice in the Canadian media landscape, hosting popular podcasts on media and current affairs. Brown’s CANADALAND, which started as a single weekly podcast about Canadian media hosted by him, has expanded to include a permanent staff producing a full website and a roster of podcasts covering politics, arts, media and current affairs.

A former CBC documentary producer and host, Brown is most known for breaking the Jian Ghomeshi scandal in the Toronto Star with Kevin Donovan in 2014. But it’s Brown’s media startup and podcast roster that will likely make a more lasting mark.

Brown’s pugnacious self-assurance sometimes teeters on the edge of the obnoxious, but his dogged fair-mindedness mostly outweighs small annoyances. More importantly, his content fills a necessary niche: media analysis that lacerates Canada’s haughty self-image, provocative critiques of specific people and organizations, and deep dives into under-covered Canadian stories. The mixture of salaciousness and nerdiness create an alchemy that puts the listener in the thick of critical conversations in Canada.

photo - Jesse Brown — Jesse Brown *(photo from twitter.com/@jessebrown)*

In addition to the growing news organization, Brown hasn’t lost touch with humour, arguably the way that he gained some of his first public exposure, through elaborate jokes and pranks in his university years. His book The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki, came out this spring. It’s an irreverent rundown of Canadian history, politics and social mores, including a ranking of how f-able Canadian prime ministers are and a cover illustration of Drake tenderly embracing a moose.

Brown can easily pass as a generic Canadian. But he is a Jew – a fact he neither hid nor discussed until recently. In an episode of CANADALAND this spring, Brown highlighted his Jewish identity in a discussion with members of the Jewish ethnic press about being Jewish in public, given attacks on Jewishness from both the left and the right. The CANADALAND website has begun to cover additional Jewish media stories, including the circumstances of the recent resignation of left-leaning columnist Mira Sucharov from the Canadian Jewish News.

The Independent interviewed Brown recently to ask him about his business, Jewish media in general and his new book.

Jewish Independent: CANADALAND started as a podcast where you had a single weekly conversation with someone in the media. You’ve expanded. Is everything going as planned or are you surprised at the success of this project?

Jesse Brown: Wildly surprised. When I launched the crowdfunding campaign a year into the project, I was terrified I wouldn’t get to the first goal: $1,000 a month so I could keep making the show as a part-time job. I threw “$10,000: CANADALAND the news org/podcast network” up as a fantasy reach-goal. I never expected to get it.

JI: CANADALAND the book is on-brand in the sense that it’s an irreverent takedown of fusty Canadian tropes, but it’s essentially a comedy book, which seems outside of your core mission. How did this come about?

JB: If you’re going to stick a pin in Canada’s smug superiority and its convenient mythologies, I can’t think of a better way to do that than in an hilarious book of rude jokes with good cartoons. Anything else would be a grim slog.

JI: For CANADALAND the media startup, about $200,000 comes from subscribers and another amount from sponsorship. Is it self-sustaining?

JB: It’s totally self-sustaining from crowdfunding and sponsorships. It’s not my vanity project, not something I’m ever going to bankroll out of my private bank account.

JI: In a sense, it’s not so different from what the JI does (subscriptions and advertising). The product is available for free (online, at coffee shops), but some people still buy subscriptions to get it mailed to their door. But this and other newspapers continually struggle financially. Do you think your funding model is applicable to ethnic presses?

JB: Similar model, yes. Also similar to NPR, who pioneered the model of flipping “exclusivity.” Instead of paying for content that nobody else can have, people pay for content so that everyone can have it. Ten percent of our readers and listeners make it possible for everyone else. As for tips … podcasts are generally more successful than articles at inspiring support. It’s the intimacy of the medium, the relationship between podcaster and listener. So, you should make a podcast!

JI: Community papers need to balance freedom of speech and the financial reality that the people who pay for the product are usually older and more conservative than the ones who are getting it for free. Subscriptions are lost when something controversial is published, but nothing is gained from the people who appreciate the content but don’t pay for it. Do you feel any pressure not to cross certain lines because of audience or advertisers?

JB: Not really. We only take ad money from people we don’t cover and, as for our patrons, they are of no one political stripe. I’m mindful of what I say for fear of being dumb or wrong. I don’t mind offending people when I believe what I say and, generally speaking, if I lose one patron because they disagree with me, I gain another who likes what I said. Most patrons understand that they are funding an organization with many voices, that does important original journalism in addition to punditry, and that it’s not mandatory that they agree with me in order to support CANADALAND.

As for people not paying for a Jewish newspaper, the problem is that it’s a newspaper. If someone did something like Tablet [an American Jewish online magazine] in Canada and it was really good, people would pay for it.

JI: You don’t think our community is especially thin-skinned?

JB: I think smart Jews, of which there are many, value good debate. I think some older Jews are getting calcified in their opinions, are drifting rightwards as they age, feel like they are under siege, and see themselves as defenders of the tribe, not as people engaged in a good faith conversation.

JI: In the CANADALAND podcast “Being Jewish in Public,” you said that, because attacks on you as a Jew had reached a certain threshold, it wasn’t tenable any longer to be taciturn about your Jewishness in the media, and you wanted to foreground it in a discussion with a few people who explicitly talk about Jewishness all the time. Did something change for you after doing that episode?

JB: Yes, but I’m still working it out. I increasingly feel that the public discourse around all things Jewish has been abandoned by everyone except for those with radical positions: hawkish Zionists on the one side who are increasingly in cahoots with flat-out racists, Islamophobes and even neo-Nazis. And anti-Zionists on the other side, who decry Israel in absolute terms while, in my opinion, offering little in the way of viable solutions to the conflict. So, these two camps scream at each other and the rest of us have left the building.

JI: It sounded on that episode like you thought you were the only person who believes in Israel’s existence but has strong criticisms of the government. Do you really feel so isolated in your views, which are pretty typical for centre- or left-leaning Jews?

JB: I suspect most Jews feel the same, but we keep quiet because we don’t really know what to say. I don’t pretend to know what should happen in the Middle East, but I don’t like the way that extreme views from extreme people are increasingly defining not just the Israel debate, but Jewishness itself.

JI: Ezra Levant, another notable Canadian Jew, is also running a website media startup – The Rebel – which you talk about a fair bit on CANADALAND. Is the sparring between the two of you a symptom of a healthy rivalry?

JB: Ezra is not my rival. Nobody who funds The Rebel would dream of funding CANADALAND. Our business interests are not in conflict. We cover him a lot because our job is to cover the media and The Rebel is a media company (among other things) that is being ignored in large part by the big news organizations. They claim he is beneath their contempt or that they don’t want to feed a troll but, in truth, he is very litigious, he fights dirty, and they can’t afford to hold him to account. So we do it.

JI: How can you afford it?

JB: I dunno, maybe because we have less to lose? I don’t live in fear of a legal challenge from Ezra, and his doxxing and public mobbing tactics don’t scare me. I think he’s building a hate machine, I agree with the courts that he has no regard for the truth, and I consider his harassment and disinformation campaigns quite dangerous. So, I’m not sure what we’re here for, if not to scrutinize him and hold his organization to account.

JI: You just did a show recently about the newspaper bailout proposal suggested by a newspaper industry group. Under the proposal, it sounds like small community papers like us would be eligible but not web-native reporting startups like you. You’re against the proposal. Do you think there’s a way to subsidize news that would be good?

JB: Maybe, but I’m doubtful. I think various approaches would do some good for some people, but the overall effect would be terrible, for reasons explained on the show. But there are other things the government could do that would be very helpful; for example, removing the policies that inhibit charities from doing journalism. Nonprofit donor-based models would be a good choice for the ethnic press. And prohibiting the CBC from selling digital ads, but funding them well to do (mandatory) local news reporting online, which would be available for any publication to run or build on as free wire copy content – this would be a huge boon to small news organizations.

We make the most popular Canadian podcasts. We sell companies ads on them. We turn a small profit and pay our taxes. Meanwhile, the CBC is making podcasts with tax dollars and selling ads to the same companies that we do, and they can undercut us on ad rates because they don’t need the money to survive, as we do. I support a strong public broadcaster, not some weird commercialized but subsidized broadcaster that competes with tiny startups.

Maayan Kreitzman is a PhD student in conservation biology at the University of British Columbia, who dabbles in editing, podcasting, and knitting. Follow her on Twitter at @maayanster.

Diverse DOXA festival offerings

In the very talented ensemble of The Road Forward by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John, left, and Jennifer Kreisberg. (photos from National Film Board of Canada)

This year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival features several films with Jewish community connections. They explore a wide range of topics: First Nations activism, Fort McMurray and the oil sands, real-life mermaids, bigotry against larger people, and being a freelance journalist in the Middle East. They will make you question your assumptions, ponder the various ways in which humans find connection, and introduce you to ideas, people and places you probably didn’t know existed.

Opening the festival, which runs May 4-14, is The Road Forward. In the very talented ensemble of this musical documentary by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John and Jennifer Kreisberg. As many of us do, St. John and Kreisberg have multiple cultural heritages that form their identity; in their instances, First Nations and Jewish are among them. In addition to performing, Kreisberg also composed and/or arranged many of the songs; the main composer is Wayne Lavallee.

The Road Forward began as a 10-minute performance piece commissioned for the Aboriginal Pavilion at the 2010 Olympics, and premièred as a full-length theatre show at the 2015 PuSh Festival. The documentary has mostly traditional components – interviews, archival footage, news clips – but these are broken up by a number of songs, which add energy and emotion to the film.

The documentary uses as its starting point the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, which were established in the 1930s, when First Nations people were not permitted to meet and organize. The groups’ “official organ,” the Native Voice, was the first indigenous-run newspaper in Canada.

“The idea was to honour B.C.’s history, so I started researching and reading online and came across the archives of the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the oldest Native organization in the country. Their parent organization, the Native Fishing Association, is located in West Vancouver, close to me,” explains Clements in the press material.

The Road Forward touches on many issues along its journey to current-day First Nation activists, who carry on in their ancestors’ paths. Though their goals are varied – some fight for particular legal or policy changes, others for restitution and reconciliation, yet others for their own voice and place in the world – they are all seeking justice, equality, understanding.

The songs highlight the immense struggles. As but two examples, “1965” is about the decades upon decades that First Nations have been denied the basic rights that most other Canadians have long enjoyed, and “My Girl” is a heartbreaking tribute to the aboriginal women who have been murdered along British Columbia’s Highway 16, the “Highway of Tears.” The Indian Constitution Express, a movement organized by George Manuel in 1980-81 to protest the lack of aboriginal rights in then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s plans to patriate the Canadian Constitution, receives somewhat more attention than other activist achievements, and the song “If You Really Believe,” based on a speech by Manuel, is quite powerful.

The May 4 gala screening of The Road Forward is the official launch of Aabiziingwashi (#WideAwake), National Film Board of Canada’s Indigenous Cinema on Tour. For the length of 2017, NFB is offering films from its 250-plus collection to all Canadians via [email protected]. The film also runs on May 10 and Clements will participate in a Q&A following both screenings.

* * *

Limit is the Sky follows a handful of 20-somethings who have moved to Fort McMurray to follow their dreams. A few years before the price of oil plummeted in 2015 and the 2016 wildfire decimated the northern Alberta city, the average family income in “Fort Mac,” was $190,000 a year, according to the film. Working on the oil sands was where the real money lay, but others were drawn to the college or to places that serve the oil workers (and others), such as hairdressing salons and restaurants.

photo - The seven young dreamers featured Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years) — The seven young dreamers featured Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years). *(photo from NFB)*

Most striking about the population we meet in Limit is the Sky is their diversity: they not only come from other Canadian provinces and the United States but from much further afield. The seven young dreamers featured include Max, from Lebanon; Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years); and KingDeng, a former child soldier from South Sudan, who had to help support his wife and children (in Edmonton) while at school in Fort McMurray.

“I was looking for young people who’d just recently arrived in Fort Mac, full of hopes, dreams and naïveté,” says filmmaker Julia Ivanova in the press material. “I wanted to walk the viewer through their ups and downs in a place where the men seem tough and the women even tougher. I wasn’t looking for tough characters, though: sensitivity and beauty – both inner and physical beauty – were important to me.”

Ivanova, who has Jewish roots, migrated to Canada from Russia many years ago.

“Being an immigrant myself,” she notes, “I could feel what was at stake for these young people and the challenges they face on a very intimate level.”

The main filming ran from fall 2012 to spring 2015. She felt welcomed by the people in the city, though not by the industry. “That was a brick wall I hit over and over again,” she says. “There was no filming of anyone allowed, anywhere, period.”

By the end of the film, most of the millennials featured had left the city, along with many others. “The town felt almost deserted, compared to how I had seen it in 2012 and 2013,” says Ivanova. “So many people were leaving. There was so much anxiety. I went to all the places I loved – and they’d all changed.”

Ivanova’s film shows the hope, the drive, the challenges, the loneliness of her interviewees. The dynamics are much more complex than one might assume of a city that relied on the oil sands for its prosperity. The environment is of crucial importance, obviously, but people matter, too, and this documentary shines a necessary light on that fact.

Limit is the Sky screens May 5.

* * *

Falling into the who-ever-would-have-thought category, Ali Weinstein’s Mermaids introduces viewers to real-life mermaids, of a sort.

photo - Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy — Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy. *(photo from DOXA)*

Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy. Vicki and a group of former Weeki Wachee Resort (in Florida) swimmers recall their mermaid days, including a show for Elvis and a 50th anniversary performance. Being a mermaid helps Cookie, who was abused as a child and has mental health issues, manage life, and she and her soulmate, Eric, who makes her mermaid tails, are married in a mermaid wedding, after being together for some 30 years. Last but not least, Julz, a transgender woman who was bullied as a child and disowned by her father, discovers acceptance and love in a Huntington Beach, Calif., mermaid group.

Weinstein intersperses these stories with brief summaries of long-told mermaid tales, “from the 3,000-year-old Assyrian figure of Atargatis to the Mami Wata water spirits of West Africa.”

It really is a fascinating documentary, showing just how resilient and resourceful the human spirit is.

Mermaids plays twice during DOXA, on May 6 and 13, and Weinstein will be in attendance at both screenings.

* * *

Think of the cartoon villains and the hapless sidekicks. How are they often portrayed? As fat, dumb and/or oversexed? If those weren’t your first thoughts, think again. The documentary Fattitude convincingly shows how widespread bigotry against larger people is – so much so that it can be overlooked, until pointed out. Then, you wonder how you ever missed it.

image - From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes — From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes. *(image from DOXA)*

From the old woman in the candy house that eats Hansel and Gretel, to Star Wars’ Jabba the Hut, to the evil squid in The Little Mermaid, these are just a few of the villains. Then there is the heavyset and dumb Hardy, sidekick to thin, smart Laurel; the stereotypical chubby best friend in so many movies; and the archetypal black nanny, forever cast in the caring, subservient role. Miss Piggy is a more complex character, both strong and confident in herself, but also sex-crazy over Kermit. And, in the entire Star Trek franchise – where have the larger people gone?

From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes. When all put together, it’s quite depressing. However, Fattitude is a rather upbeat documentary, as its interviewees are spirited, determined and intelligent enough to effect some change, mainly via social media.

Filmmakers Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Lieberman speak to almost 50 people and, to a person, they provide an interesting perspective, connecting the body images depicted in films, television shows, cartoons, magazines and advertisements with their effects on viewers and on our perceptions of ourselves and others. The film discusses the links between race, socioeconomic status and weight, as well as the reasons why Michelle Obama’s campaign to end childhood obesity was misguided.

Fattitude screens May 9.

* * *

Being a journalist in a war zone seems dangerous and frightening, and it is. But it is also tedious and lonely. At least this is what it seems from watching Santiago Bertolino’s Freelancer on the Front Lines.

photo - Jesse Rosenfeld with peshmerga combatants, Santiago Bertolino and Ayar Mohammed Rasool — Jesse Rosenfeld with peshmerga combatants, Santiago Bertolino and Ayar Mohammed Rasool. *(photo from NFB)*

Bertolino follows Toronto-born, Beirut-based freelance journalist Jesse Rosenfeld as Rosenfeld hustles to get story ideas and budgets approved, waits in sparse hotel rooms for fixers to connect him with interviewees, and ventures into Egypt during its post-Arab Spring elections, the West Bank during an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and to Iraq, where they witness the fight against ISIS from the front lines.

Some of the more disturbing images are of the bodies of Palestinians gunned down in a home by undetermined executioners and the corpses of dead ISIS fighters dumped in the back of a truck, as well as tied to its back bumper. In another memorable part, Rosenfeld yells questions to a caged Mohamed Fahmy, when Fahmy and two fellow Al Jazeera journalists were on trial in Cairo. (Fahmy, who holds both Canadian and Egytian citizenship, spent almost two years in jail of a three-year sentence.)

Rosenfeld has strong views and isn’t afraid to share them, though he struggles to make eye contact with the camera when he makes his pronouncements. Some of the best exchanges in the film are between him and Canadian-Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky, who hold different opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Freelancer on the Front Lines screens May 13 at Vancity and will include a post-film discussion.

For tickets and the full DOXA Documentary Film Festival schedule, visit doxafestival.ca.

News, democracy and trust

The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and Trust in the Digital Age, released on Jan. 26 by the Public Policy Forum, shines a light on the news industry in Canada, revealing it is reaching a crisis point as the decline of traditional media, fragmentation of audiences and the rise of fake news pose a growing threat to the health of our democracy.

When the PPF began thinking about a study on the state of the news media in Canada, in early 2016, the headlines were all bad. Within a fortnight in January 2016 alone, Rogers Media and Postmedia announced new rounds of staff reductions, Torstar revealed plans to close its printing plant, and Confederation-era newspaper titles in Guelph, Ont., and Nanaimo, B.C., were shuttered, the first of six daily papers to close, merge or reduce their publishing schedules before year’s end. The situation wasn’t much better on the broadcast news side, where revenues, especially in local television, followed the downward track of the newspaper industry, inducing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to step in.

A parliamentary committee was formed. News companies and industry associations queued up with complaints of inequities in the marketplace. The Government of Canada contracted with the PPF, a non-partisan and independent think-tank, to assess the situation and make recommendations on what, if anything, should be done.

“The question for Canadian policy-makers is not whether given news outlets are in trouble, but whether democracy itself has been placed at risk in the process,” states The Shattered Mirror. “To the extent public policy has a role to play, it should be focused on maintaining the flow of information essential to a healthy society and ensuring the development of the digital arteries of the new information system – not preserving the press as we know it. The digital revolution is real, but with it have arisen challenges: fragmentation, distortion and adjusting to new business and storytelling models.”

After six months of study and discussions with close to 300 people, the report proposes recommendations aimed at ensuring that the news media and journalists continue in their role as the watchdogs over elected representatives and public institutions, and the connective tissue within communities.

“This report is not about the journalists, with whom I feel great solidarity, but rather the role they play, and what we may be putting at risk if we are inattentive,” writes Edward Greenspon, president and chief executive author of the PPF and the report’s author. Greenspon spent more than 30 years as a journalist before joining the PPF.

“[Digital] platforms, with daily audiences 10 times larger than those of major newspapers or TV broadcasters, are not just the new intermediaries of the public square but control the commanding heights of the marketplace of ideas,” the report says. “Their models are based on truth neutrality. Moreover, they only give the appearance of being a common space. Rather, they calculate and reinforce the prejudices of the like-minded, who either assign themselves to echo chambers or find themselves invisibly assigned by algorithms into filter bubbles. Both run counter to the concept of the media as an agent of common understanding.”

The dominance of Google and Facebook delivers another blow to Canada’s main providers of news: the loss of revenue with which to fund quality journalism at scale. “They pocket two of every three digital ad dollars spent in Canada and, in recent months, have generated 82% of the ads served up with digital news.

“Google’s share of the Canadian digital market is almost 10 times that of the daily newspaper industry and 60 times that of community newspapers. A comparison of digital revenues for all newspapers and TV programs shows they bring in about one-seventh of the total of the two U.S. platform giants.”

One result of this inequity? “Since 2010, there have been 225 weekly and 27 daily newspapers lost to closure or merger in more than 210 federal ridings,” notes the report. Small market TV stations have closed and many others, like surviving newspapers, have cut service and journalistic staff. Information supplied by Canada’s main media unions points to an estimated 30% reduction in journalism jobs since 2010.

Among the 12 recommendations are proposals for a new “local mandate” for Canada’s national wire service, The Canadian Press, ensuring there are more journalistic “boots on the ground” to supplement coverage of courts, legislatures and city halls; an indigenous journalism initiative to put more resources into communities and governments that are often overlooked; the launch of a service that provides much-needed legal advice to smaller outlets providing investigative and accountability journalism; and the creation of a research institute that would examine news and democracy issues more closely, including the distribution of fake news.

The report also calls for changes to Section 19 and 19.1 of the Income Tax Act to support civic-function journalism in Canada, whether by incentivizing Canada-centred news organizations to do more reporting or, for those that don’t, creating a revenue stream to support a Future of Journalism and Democracy Fund.

Three recommendations deal with CBC’s special role in Canadian news, including a call to relieve the CBC of the need to sell online advertising in order to promote production of civic-function journalism over chasing clicks.

Included in the PPF study is public opinion research by Earnscliffe Strategy Group, which conducted focus groups and surveyed more than 1,500 adult Canadians. Respondents “were very aware that ‘a lot of bogus and untrue news and information appears online’ (83%)…. Whereas seven out of 10 respondents completely or mostly trust their newspapers, radio and television, the figure drops to 15% for news acquired via social media.”

As chronicled by Craig Silverman, media editor of BuzzFeed, false news stories in the United States began to spike in August after the firing of Facebook editors, on top of the downgrading of material posted by established news organizations. Between August and election day in November, stories from hyper-partisan and hoax sources actually pulled ahead of real news, registering 8.7 million acts of engagement versus 7.4 million.

“While fake news takes just moments to make up, real news often requires days, weeks and even months of digging and verifying,” notes the PPF report, the title of which, The Shattered Mirror, pays homage to the 1970 groundbreaking Senate report on the mass media called The Uncertain Mirror. “Unfortunately, the state of the news media’s job in reflecting society back to itself is no longer uncertain,” Greenspon said.

“Never have Canadians had access to more information,” states the report. “But the capacity to produce original news, particularly of a civic nature, is severely constrained by the unsolved riddle of how to finance the cost of journalism in the digital age.”

The PPF media study was partially funded by Canadian Heritage and ISEDC (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada); the McConnell, Atkinson and Max Bell foundations; and four corporations, CN, TD Bank, Ivanhoe Properties and Clairvest Investments. However, the findings and recommendations are the PPF’s alone.

Greenspon concludes that Canada has already reached a “crunch point” in terms of the state of the news industry and its ability to fulfil its democratic responsibilities. “This report is meant to offer insight into the state of news two decades into its existential crisis, as well as ideas for how to respond,” he writes. “We hope it will stimulate a necessary debate and necessary action, while understanding no story is ever at its end.”

The full report can be downloaded at shatteredmirror.ca.

There is danger in autocracy

Last week, an Israeli artist erected a life-sized golden statue of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. Reminiscent of the golden calf with its connection to forbidden idolatry, artist Itay Zalait said he was making a statement about freedom of speech in Israel and what he sees as a type of idolatry growing around the man sometimes called King Bibi.

Citizens gathered around the statue, arguing about its meaning and various interpretations. Because the installation was erected without a permit, city officials ordered it removed but, before the artist could do so, it was toppled by a bystander and left laying on its side like the figure of a deposed despot.

In addition to the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu occupies the portfolios of foreign minister, economy minister, minister of regional cooperation and communications minister.

In this latter role, Netanyahu has appointed figures to oversight positions that have allowed them to put a finger on the scale in support of media outlets that are sympathetic to the government. Similarly, American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bankrolls the newspaper Israel HaYom, which is widely seen as a propaganda machine for Netanyahu.

The Netanyahu government is also seen as threatening the broadcast news sector, having undertaken an effort to replace the state-run broadcaster with a more complimentary version, only to reverse course when it appeared the new agency would also be insufficiently uncritical. Like other politicians in democratic countries, Netanyahu has found some popularity among his supporters by picking fights with the media, including individual reporters who report things unfavorable to the prime minister.

While discourse in Israel remains legendarily vibrant, evidence that the government may be attempting to influence or control aspects of journalistic freedom are rightly drawing deep concern. And this concern is exacerbated by evidence of other tendencies within Israeli society that seem to reflect authoritarian, anti-democratic and discriminatory inclinations.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett is having “ethical rules” drawn up for what university lecturers can and cannot say about politics. Culture Minister Miri Regev has promoted a bill to retroactively cut funding to cultural institutions that do not meet the government’s standard of “loyalty” to the state of Israel.

On a different, but similarly ham-fisted front, there is the attempt to legislate the public broadcast of the muezzin, the five-times-a-day call to Muslim prayer, which begins before dawn. Granted, not everyone is keen to have daily pre-dawn loudspeaker broadcasts, whatever the purpose, but such a move against a religious minority already experiencing myriad forms of discrimination calls into question fundamental issues of multiculturalism and respect for religious freedom and pluralism that need to be addressed.

The rabbinate has also weighed in on a few issues that have outraged progressive and feminist Israelis.

Crediting a 15th-century scholar, the Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef declared that women and yeshivah scholars are forbidden from serving in the Israel Defence Forces or performing national volunteer service. He claimed that women had been permitted to go to war at times in Jewish history, but only to cook and clean. The comments come at a time when Israel has seen a four-fold increase in the number of women combat soldiers and as some segments of the political spectrum and civil society are speaking up against what they see as the unsustainable tradition of military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.

Then there is Eyal Karim, who was recently sworn in as chief rabbi of the IDF. During his confirmation hearings, Karim was forced to explain earlier comments that seemed to justify the rape of non-Jewish women during wartime. He apologized, saying that his comments were a theoretical consideration of biblical permissions and prohibitions. Karim has also stated that women should not serve in the IDF, or sing at army events.

These and other developments have combined with the Netanyahu government’s warm reaction to Donald Trump’s election to raise alarm among some that Israel is on a path similar to the populist, authoritarian phenomenon seen in the United States and much of Europe. In so many ways, Israel’s body politic is sui generis, utterly unlike any other democracy on earth. Yet it should not surprise that what emerges among its closest allies should also find a place among Israelis.

Trump, tweeting from his gold-embossed chambers in Manhattan, is exhibiting plenty of monarchical characteristics. European political upstarts are glorifying strongmen of the past and, in some cases, of the present, in the form of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. When these sorts of autocratic inclinations arise in Israel, they should be opposed there, just as they should be everywhere.

Does the truth still matter?

A recently released study from the graduate School of Education at Stanford University engaged 7,800 middle school, high school and college students to evaluate the information they received on the internet. The report said there was a “stunning and dismaying consistency” in the responses from the students, demonstrating an inability to discern information based on whether it originated from activist groups, neutral sources or advertising, and students routinely could not tell the difference between news articles from legitimate sources and unreliable webpages, nor between ostensibly balanced news coverage and opinion pieces.

The aftermath of the recent U.S. presidential election has seen commentators raise alarms over “fake news” – stories planted on social media with the deliberate intent to mislead. Obviously, this is another wrinkle in the whole issue of discerning fact from fiction. Then there is the ability of wholly unchecked assertions to go viral and be taken as fact by hundreds of thousands of people.

The New York Times analyzed one example of how these things can happen. In Austin, Tex., a man with just 40 Twitter followers saw a lineup of buses in downtown Austin on Nov. 9, the day after the election. That evening, crowds gathered in Austin, protesting the election of Donald Trump the night before. The man put two and two together and tweeted that “Anti-Trump protesters in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the buses they came in. #Fakeprotests #Trump2016 #Austin.”

The due diligence the man performed was a Google search to determine whether there were any major conferences being held in Austin and he found none. It turns out the buses were hired by a software company that was holding a conference for more than 13,000 people. Nevertheless, the tweet, which implies that the anti-Trump protesters were bused into town by some nefarious organizer, was shared 16,000 times on Twitter and 350,000 times on Facebook.

This was an example of a “story” not being adequately researched and proven. It is a slightly different species from the deliberately false “news” stories that popped up during the election with headlines like “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president” and “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide.” Both of these, and countless more like them, were intentionally false, yet shared by thousands of people who believed – or wished – them to be true.

Comedian Jon Stewart used to refer to his program The Daily Show as “fake news,” but in fact it was parody and satire, taking a grain of truth and riffing humor and social commentary from it. This differs as well from sites like The Onion or Canada’s The Beaverton, which are not intended to be taken seriously, but sometimes are.

Then there is, to bring it full circle, the forms of legitimate journalism – news and analysis – which are generally well-researched, with facts corroborated and sources verified, but are often received by consumers as something else. In other words, people will take falsified news as fact and decry factual reporting as made-up.

On Sunday, Trump himself tweeted, without a shred of evidence, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” With vote counting (inexplicably) still underway, Trump has easily won the electoral college and, therefore, the presidency, but Hillary Clinton is currently 2.2 million votes ahead of Trump in the popular vote.

This sort of assertion from a sore winner is typical of the man, who seems to lie even when there is no advantage, as if to keep in practice. Throughout the campaign,

Trump routinely told untruths, which helps explain why the Oxford dictionary chose “post-truth” as its international word of the year for 2016.

Tens of millions voted for Trump despite, or possibly because of, his awkward relationship with the truth, suggesting that truth doesn’t matter like we once assumed it did. Or that people don’t care what the truth is, so long as what is said, published or posted conforms to or supports their preexisting opinions. People are willing to hear (or read, say or write) falsehoods and accept them as true if they wish them to be, rather than question their own beliefs or situation at all.

The unwillingness or inability to differentiate truth from fiction has long been a concern. Purveyors of lies – in advertising, politics, daily life – have been doing their deeds for centuries. Yet the ability in the internet age for people to select “news” that supports their worldview, or to be duped by people with agendas, has opened whole new universes of falsehood. Scarier, by far, is the apparent insouciance with which many people approach the issue. Some of us are satisfied with fiction if it suits our preferred version of fact. In such a case, we are not facing a problem of media literacy. We are facing a more serious affront to the very idea of reality.

Making a life in Israel

Emily Rose and Aviv Eisenstat in the Israel Defence Forces’ officer’s training school in 2008. (photo from Emily Rose)

When Emily Rose, 28, moved to Israel almost 10 years ago, her plan was to serve in the Israel Defence Forces and then return to Winnipeg. It didn’t happen quite as planned.

Rose was born in Odessa, Tex., and grew up in Winnipeg. Taking a similar road as many Jewish kids in the city, Rose studied at Gray Academy of Jewish Education (GAJE).

“The Winnipeg Jewish community is truly saturated with role models for social justice and it had a major impact on me growing up,” said Rose. “I grew up watching my aunt, Faye Rosenberg, who works for our Jewish community, help bring hundreds of Jews to Winnipeg from Argentina, where they suffered from antisemitism, and watching my best friend’s dad work tirelessly in court to help victims of residential schools receive compensation from the government.

“Winnipeg is an incredibly Zionist and supportive community,” she added. “The longer I am away, the more I appreciate what a wonderful community it really is.”

When Rose was 14, she went to Israel on a Jewish Federation of Winnipeg Partnership 2000 (or Gesher Chai) trip, which sent 10 high school students from GAJE to their sister school, Danziger, in Kiryat Shmona.

She fell in love with the city and the people. “My host family had three sisters and I was thrilled because, up until then, I only had big brothers. And, I remember writing to my mom, ‘Now I have three sisters!’ on the first night. I realized at that point that all my new friends in Israel would be going to the army soon and I remember thinking I had the responsibility to do that as well.”

This is what led Rose to move to Israel at the age of 18, starting with a mechina (a pre-military program) in her first year there.

She lived in Sde Boker in southern Israel and volunteered as an English teacher’s aide in an unrecognized Bedouin village. “Can you think of anything more polar opposite to a very cold Winnipeg, Man., than the middle of the Negev Desert?” she quipped.

“Your first year in Israel is always the most challenging, I think. There were a lot of tears. I was the only foreigner in the program, so I had to learn Hebrew very quickly. But, the program itself was also very intense, because we had classes every day and political tours and hikes every month.”

Something Rose was especially thrilled about in Israel was getting to sleep outside. As a child, she eagerly anticipated going to summer camp for canoe trips and sleeping under the stars.

“When you see the stars in the Negev, you really think it’s got to be the best seat in the house,” said Rose. “And, that first year, my roommate used to wonder why I’d always drag my sleeping bag out of our room to sleep outside.”

The next year, Rose joined the IDF as a lone soldier and served as a combat fitness officer. She recalled that some of her trainees used to call her “M&M,” as she was “hard on the outside, but sweet on the inside (and very small).”

She added, “My first job was training infantry soldiers on a combat training base where I worked with a unique battalion of Druze soldiers. The soldiers I worked with spoke Arabic. This really sparked my interest in the language, which is why I studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in school.”

Today, Rose serves in reserve duty in Jerusalem’s Homefront Command. Her job is to communicate with the civilian population in Jerusalem during times of emergency.

A few years after her IDF service, Rose volunteered at the Michael Levin Centre for Lone Soldiers, which helps soldiers before, during and after their service. At the centre, the first thing she was asked to do was to tell those thinking about joining the IDF “don’t.”

Rose explained, “If we couldn’t convince them not to, then we’d help them as much as we possibly could. Nobody told me not to join the IDF, but also no one would have been able to convince me not to. And, the day I joined, I remember I wasn’t nervous – I just knew it was the right decision.

“I also didn’t plan on staying. I thought I’d serve for two years and then return to Canada. Here I am, almost 10 years later.”

After the army, Rose took Middle Eastern studies (along with MSA) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She still lives in Jerusalem, where she recently started writing for the Times of Israel.

Just prior to that, she was an editor at Israel National News, where, she said, she mostly wrote the breaking news but also covered longer form stories. “A few weeks ago,” she said, “I broke a story with exclusive footage of a former Australian minister who got caught in a firefight clash between Kurdish forces and ISIS in Iraq.

“The plight of the Kurdish people is an issue that is very close to my heart. I jumped at the chance to write about it. I’m also so proud to say I come from Winnipeg, [as] our Jewish community sponsors Operation Ezra, bringing Yazidi refugees safely to Canada.”

When on leave from the army a few years back, Rose returned to GAJE to speak to the students. When she visited Winnipeg this past summer, some community women stopped to say hello to her and her mom. “One of them told me that her grandson was going to be a lone solider, an IDF paratrooper, this fall … and she said that I’d spoken to him when he was in high school,” said Rose. “That was very nice, like coming full circle.”

Currently, Rose is working on a short story collection, a novel and three plays.

Her first play was presented at the JCC Berney Theatre in Winnipeg in 2006, the year she graduated high school. Called Radyo, it is about a group of high school kids in Kiryat Shmona who run their local high school radio station during the Second Intifada.

“The second play is a children’s musical I wrote called Don’t Touch the Glutch, which was performed as a part of the Next Wave of Musicals Festival in Montreal and then at the Centaur Theatre children’s series in 2013. It’s about a boy who gets lost in the zoo on a school field trip and discovers that the zoo has a whole host of strange creatures that only come out at night. My brother wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book. The show has an anti-bullying theme, because it’s a topic we both feel very strongly about.”

When asked about her feelings about Israel, Rose quoted Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: “The truly righteous do not complain about evil, but rather add justice; they do not complain about heresy, but rather add faith; they do not complain about ignorance, but rather add wisdom.”

She added, “Israel is in everything I write, in some form or another, and, though I may not always succeed, I try my best to contribute justice, faith and wisdom with my words.

“For now, I love reporting the news as it happens. Israelis, and those who care about Israel, want to stay informed and I feel privileged to be working with a team that is very committed to keeping our readers updated at all times.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.