Judaism – Page 49

Holy colour of blue

A tallit’s tzitzit with threads dyed in tekhelet blue produced from Murex trunculus snails. (photo from Ptil Tekhelet/Eugene Weisberg)

There’s only one thing missing from the comprehensive temporary exhibit Out of the Blue, which opened June 1 at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem (BLMJ) – the reek of the workshops along the Mediterranean coast of Phoenicia and Israel that produced the prized dyes known in antiquity as tekhelet and argaman.

Researchers at the Jerusalem-based foundation Ptil Tekhelet (Blue Thread) maintain that some 8,000 Murex trunculus mollusks were needed to produce a single gram of the luxury pigment. A demonstration of the malodorous dyeing process was carried out – in the garden of the museum – with one of the marine gastropods. A person can only imagine the stink of many thousands of the rotting sea creatures.

The Out of the Blue exhibit documents the significance of tekhelet, together with the Tyrian purple called argaman in the Torah, from antiquity to the present. Not coincidently, the exhibit opened in honour of Israel’s 70th anniversary. It traces the heavenly blue from the time it was a colour revered by the ancient Israelites and other early peoples of the Near East to its use for Israel’s national flag.

“This special exhibition looks at the magnificence as well as the significance of the colour blue in the ancient world, and ties the blue dyed threads mentioned in the Bible and extra-biblical texts to the very design of the flag of the state of Israel today. BLMJ is proud to be the one museum in the world that highlights the relevance and continuity of the roots of civilization in this region and their impact on our world today in a universal and non-sectarian way,” said museum director Amanda Weiss.

Out of the Blue spotlights ancient Near East cultures’ fascination with the colour as a symbol of divinity. In the Egypt of the pharaohs, Mesopotamia and Canaan, lapis lazuli imported at great cost from Afghanistan was used for cultic purposes.

The BLMJ exhibit continues with the lucrative imperial purple dye industry of the ancient Phoenicians, whose name means the “Purple People.”

But, for this reviewer, the core of the exhibit deals with the dyeing of sky blue tzitziyot (ritual fringes affixed to Jews’ tallitot, prayer shawls). In the eighth century, following the Arab takeover of the Levant, that technology was lost. As a result, Jews were compelled to wear white rather than blue ritual fringes on their prayer garments. Research to rediscover the lost dyeing process of the biblical commandment became synonymous with Zionism, the Jewish people’s return to their biblical homeland.

For more than 25 years, Ptil Tekhelet has dyed hundreds of thousands of sky blue tzitziyot coloured with murex snails’ distinctive tint. The azure tzitziyot remind worshippers of the sea, the sky and God’s sapphire-hewn throne, according to Tannaite sage Rabbi Meir, who was a disciple of Rabbi Akiba.

The exhibit includes a collection of the snail (hilazon) shells excavated at Tel Shikmona near Haifa, and dating back to the 10th through seventh centuries BCE, according to Yehuda Kaplan, one of exhibit’s three curators.

“You can see that, for some of them, there is a breach in the shell,” he said during a press tour of the exhibit. It was from those holes that a gland from the snail was extracted, with each yielding only a “minuscule” amount of the rare and highly coveted dye’s raw material.

“These snails, the Murex trunculus, probably about 4,000 years ago it was discovered that they could produce magnificent dyes with the most beautiful colours, dyes that were fast on wool, never faded. And that was something in the ancient world that was simply unheard of, it was priceless,” said Dr. Baruch Sterman of Ptil Tekhelet, co-author of the book The Rarest Blue: The Remarkable Story of an Ancient Colour Lost to History and Rediscovered.

photo - Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue — Baruch Sterman of the Ptil Tekhelet foundation, and co-author of the book The Rarest Blue. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

At some point, added Sterman, those dyed fabrics were “worth up to 20 times their weight in gold.”

Other artifacts on display include garment fragments discovered at Masada during archeological excavations in the early 1960s. More than 30 years later, tests using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) proved the cloth had been dyed with a murex solution.

Out of the Blue concludes with the flag flown outside the United Nations in New York in May 1949, when Israel was accepted as a member state of the international body. A second Israeli flag on display was carried into orbit aboard the American Apollo spacecraft, which docked with the Soviet Soyuz rocket on July 17, 1975, in the first international manned space flight.

Sterman’s nonprofit amuta (foundation) is based on the research, in the 1980s, of Otto Elsner, a chemist at Ramat Gan’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, who discovered that, if a solution of the purple dye made from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex trunculus was exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, it would turn a deep shade of blue.

Popularizing that knowledge has been a slow process. According to the Talmud, tekhelet is a specific azure dye produced from a sea creature known as a hilazon. Rabbinic sages ruled that vegetable indigo dyes were unacceptable.

Over the past 150 years, several marine creatures were proposed for reviving the biblical process of dyeing the tassels, among them one favoured by Israel’s first chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog, father of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog. Rabbi Herzog, who completed his PhD at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1914, believed that the violet pelagic snail, Janthina janthina, was the source of the ritual tekhelet.

Another theory was proposed half a century earlier by Rabbi Gershon Hanokh Leiner, known as the Radzyner Rebbe, who produced blue dye from the black ink of the Sepia officinalis (the common cuttlefish). But chemical analysis identified his dye as Prussian blue, an inorganic synthetic colour derived from iron filings and not from the squid itself.

That dispute continues to reverberate: most of the blue-coloured tzitziyot worn in Israel today are dyed from the inexpensive cuttlefish, acknowledged Ptil Tekhelet. (The tekhelet factory in Radzyn near Lublin in Poland was destroyed during the Holocaust, and the technology was lost but was revived in Israel after 1948 thanks to the prewar research of Chaim Herzog.)

The rediscovery of tekhelet has almost messianic implications – one rabbinic source notes, “The revelation of the hilazon is a sign that the redemption is shining near.”

According to the museum, “The tekhelet blue, which reminded every Jew of their connection to God, remained in the memory of the [Jewish] people and became an integral part of the national symbol of the state of Israel.”

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.

Looking to the future

Rabbi Shlomo Gabay is the new spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Hamidrash. (photo from Shlomo Gabay)

“The Sephardic world has its own customs, its own personality – communicating that to the next generation is a priority for Beth Hamidrash,” Rabbi Shlomo Gabay told the Independent. “They needed someone who could guide the next generation in the Sephardic way.”

Gabay was explaining why he, a rabbi who most recently worked as a high school teacher in the Sephardi community of Gibraltar, was invited to take over the role of spiritual leader at Congregation Beth Hamidrash following the departure of Rabbi Ilan Acoca in August of last year.

Gabay was born in London, England, and attended yeshivah in Gateshead, a hub of Orthodox Jewish life in Britain. He married “the rabbi’s daughter,” Rachel, who works in graphic and web design, and the couple now has three daughters. Coincidentally, Rachel Gabay is the niece of another former Beth Hamidrash rabbi, David Bassous.

After the Gabays married, they spent some time in Israel, where Shlomo Gabay pursued training in kiruv, or Jewish outreach. He then landed his first job, in Gibraltar, where he worked as a teacher of Gemara and halachah at the Jewish boys high school. He also taught other classes and founded and directed the Shovavim Project, an annual six-week learning program, in Gilbraltar.

Gibraltar is a British territory on a peninsula jutting out of southern Spain, across the water from Morocco. The community is almost totally Sephardi and led by Chief Rabbi Ron Hassid.

“Gibraltar is very relaxed, it’s very beautiful,” said Gabay, who earlier this year posted on Beth Hamidrash’s Facebook page a video of himself and some monkey friends on the Rock of Gibraltar. “It’s a holiday place where everybody goes. The population is almost 30,000, but 11 million [tourists] … come a year. The streets are full all the time, you get to meet people from all over the world.”

Gabay sees some similarities between Gibraltar and Vancouver – the natural beauty, the many tourists and a more laid-back culture than London for example – although, obviously, there’s a considerable difference of scale.

Gabay and his family are settling in well and enjoying the West Coast, even the previous winter weather. “London and Vancouver,” he said, “have something in common as well – rain.”

During the interviewing process, the Gabays were invited to come for a trial Shabbaton and Beth Hamidrash decided they had a winner.

“One of the strong reasons we were chosen,” said Gabay, “was because Beth Hamidrash felt they needed to focus on the next generation. Sephardic culture is quite different from Ashkenazic culture – the food, the personality – they didn’t want it to be pulled away in a different angle from what the founders intended.”

Beth Hamidrash has been without a rabbi for a year and a half. Gabay said he is looking forward to reinvigorating what the community is known for – having a warm, family atmosphere, being a community social hub, as well as a place of culture and Torah learning. “We want everyone to be happy here,” he said.

Gabay offers Talmud classes on Tuesdays and has started a Sunday class after breakfast, which covers a different topic of discussion every week. Rachel Gabay is a trained teacher of Judaics, as well as having training in marriage counseling and preparation for marriage.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Lelio’s film terrific

Left to right: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola in Disobedience. (photo from Bleecker Street)

Sebastián Lelio’s beautifully wrought Disobedience is some kind of small miracle. A close-up portrait of three 30-something British Jews grappling with their respective sexual and religious truths, it is a timeless saga that feels utterly contemporary.

It’s a film that probably couldn’t have been made even 10 years ago, because it assumes and addresses a world – or at least a generation or two – that is perfectly comfortable with the fluidity of sexual identity. Disobedience comes from a place where homosexual and bisexual relationships aren’t abnormal or unhealthy, even if they are still taboo in some subcultures.

Adapted from Naomi Alderman’s 2006 novel, Disobedience takes a familiar concept – the return of the prodigal child years after she left her Orthodox Jewish family and community – and spins it on a fresh and unexpected axis.

This type of drama has usually been framed as a dialectic between faith and secularism, and tradition and modernity. The emotional punch typically derives from sympathetic individuals bulldozed by a patriarchy portrayed as tyrannical and anachronistic.

The conflict in Disobedience isn’t between people on opposite sides of an irreconcilable philosophical divide – which would inevitably propel the viewer to identify with one protagonist and condemn the others – but within each person: who am I, and what hard choices do I need to make right now to live an authentic, satisfying life?

One refreshing consequence is there are no villains, whose roles are to constrain and injure the characters, in Disobedience. Furthermore, because the stakes are personal and individual, the film neatly sidesteps or backgrounds big-picture questions such as the modern world’s challenges and threats to the Orthodox community.

The movie opens with the elderly London rabbi of a small shul collapsing in mid-sermon. On the other side of the Atlantic, a dark-haired photographer (Rachel Weisz) shoots a man adorned with tattoos. The introduction of Ronit in conjunction with one of Judaism’s prohibitions instantly illustrates the distance she’s put between her upbringing and her current life. (In fact, if my hearing is accurate, in New York she dropped the “t” long ago and goes by Roni, an act of reinvention and assimilation.)

In a succession of quick shots, Ronit receives some bad news, has anonymous sex with a male stranger and, finally alone, tears her sweater in a Jewish gesture of mourning. The gifted Chilean filmmaker Lelio, who adapted the novel with British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, immediately delineates a wild child who isn’t happy in the present nor reconciled to her past.

Ronit’s return to London for her respected father’s funeral isn’t welcomed by relatives and other members of the congregation, and we get the vaguest hints about the circumstances that led to her self-imposed exile. (Hers was the first act of disobedience, but it won’t be the last.) She receives a slightly warmer reception from the obvious heir to the late rav’s pulpit, the perpetually restrained Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola) and his demure wife Esti (Rachel MacAdams).

We expect the film to portray Ronit as a troubled heroine for choosing a “liberated” life and as the awkward outsider enduring a loss without much support. Lelio’s prior films, A Fantastic Woman (last year’s Academy Award-winning portrait of a grieving transgender woman) and Gloria (centred on an older woman who wilfully pursues a romance with a problematic man), conveyed his respect for women defying the judgment and rules of others.

However, Ronit behaves so selfishly and inappropriately that we are insulted along with the Orthodox characters. Disobedience is a form of rebellion, but people aren’t automatically entitled to hurt others – or to jeopardize their jobs and relationships – in the course of expressing their nonconformity. And that is the crux of Ronit’s entanglement with Esti and, to a lesser degree, Dovid. The great pleasure and power of Disobedience is the skill and subtlety with which Lelio interweaves their desires and responsibilities.

By the end of this terrific film, the various markers and labels that describe – and constrain – the characters have been scrubbed away. They are simply human beings, trying to do the right thing.

Disobedience opened May 18 at Cineplex Odeon International Village. The film is rated R for some strong sexuality.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Torah is part of who we are

Much to the disappointment of their Orthodox brethren, most of the Jewish people outside the Orthodox world probably do not believe that the Torah was literally received at Sinai. This creates something of a problem on Shavuot, the festival on which the giving of the Torah at Sinai is celebrated.

On Passover and Sukkot, even non-believers who reject the literal truth of the biblical stories on which these festivals are based, can find ways to connect to universal notions of freedom from slavery and the temporariness of the human condition that they inspire. On other holidays, too – Rosh Hashanah and Chanukah come to mind – it is possible to relate to broader themes and even to the symbols and rituals that seek to evoke them. Shavuot is different. It is limited in symbolic ritual, and it does not offer an easily identifiable, abstract idea worthy of celebration even by non-religious Jews.

What’s more is that the rabbinic sages seem to make a point of exalting an aspect of the Mount Sinai story that is anathema to modern sensibilities. “Na’aseh v’nishmah” – “We will do and we will hear/understand” – a phrase uttered, according to Exodus 24:7, as the Jewish people accept the Torah, is often glorified in our tradition as an act of blind obedience. The willingness to do first, and comprehend later, is seen as a readiness to receive the Torah unconditionally, regardless of its content. The Midrash praises the Jews for the commitment – unlike that of any other nation – to follow the scriptures without asking why. Had the attempt to alienate Jews of Western, liberal convictions been deliberate, it would not have been more successful.

What are those who question the merits of blind obedience to do with this tradition? How to reconcile teaching our children to question, when we are told to applaud the fact that the Children of Israel did not?

Fortunately, our sources – as always – offer alternatives to this particular approach. For one thing, the text of “na’aseh v’nishmah” provides less evidence of blind obedience than popular wisdom suggests. Chapter 24 of Exodus, where the concept of “na’aseh v’nishmah” is cited, actually stipulates twice (in verses 3 and 7) that the Torah was first read in its entirety to the Children of Israel. The result is a far less dramatic narrative of the Jewish people’s agreement to accept the Torah, after it was heard.

Others offer a softer reading of “na’aseh v’nishmah” to suggest that the Jewish people demonstrates through this phrase not unthinking acceptance of the Torah, but rather the view that it is through the act of doing – of actually fulfilling the commandments – that the Torah will be understood.

More significantly, there is a well-known, and contrary, midrashic tradition that suggests that the Torah was not in fact willingly embraced by the Jewish people at Sinai, but instead coerced upon them. The Talmud, in Tractate Shabbat 88a, drawing from the phrase in Exodus 19:17 that the Jewish people camped “b’tachtit ha’har” – “at the base/under the mountain” – suggests that the Holy One blessed be He covered the mountain over them like an (inverted) barrel, and said to them, “If you accept the Torah, fine, but, if not, there will be your burial place.”

The Jewish tradition demonstrates a constant tension between unquestioning obedience to God, and struggle with Him. Both are valued, neither absolutely. We are told of the Abraham who obediently agreed to sacrifice Isaac, and of the Abraham who argued with God to spare the innocents of Sodom. And, in the case of the Torah at Sinai, we are relayed two distinct rabbinic narratives – one, of a people eagerly accepting their canonical text, and the other, of that text being forced upon them.

When taken together, these conflicting narratives seem to be saying that we can either embrace the Torah or fight against it, but in either case we cannot escape that it is ours. In the same way as we cannot choose our parents, we cannot choose our spiritual ancestry. Whether out of choice or out of coercion, the Torah is our spiritual home. We can quarrel with it, turn from it, reinterpret it or embrace it whole, but it is the unavoidable reference point from which we chart our path.

I have always been struck by the fact that the Gemara cited above strangely says that the Jewish people will be buried “there” rather than “here.” After all, if the message is about the coercion at Mount Sinai, wouldn’t the threat be to accept the Torah or to perish at the foot of the mountain? Instead, the implication of the text is that the risk of burial is at a later time and place, as if to suggest that the impact of rejecting the Torah will not be immediate.

In this sense, the text can be seen as a kind of warning. A people that is not familiar with its foundational texts, that is not engaged with them – whether in agreement or in argument – risks withering away. Our burial place is not at the moment of rejection; it is “there,” further down the road, when the connection of future generations with the conflicting and profound stories that shape our tradition is severed.

Shavuot need not only be seen as a celebration of the acceptance of the Torah. It also celebrates acceptance of the idea that who we were is part of who we are. It is an embrace of, and reconnection with, our story and our texts, not necessarily because we accept them literally and wholeheartedly, but because they are part of the DNA of Jewish civilization.

We do not enter the earth free and clear to invent ourselves from naught. Like it or not, we are born into a legacy, a tradition and a set of values that should draw us into a dialogue and shape our identity and sense of meaning. That dialogue may be one of reverence, or of rebellion, or of something in between. But, at its heart, it prizes the idea that, for the Jewish people to stake a claim to a truer and healthier future, we must be honest, learned and engaged in the claim our heritage has upon us.

Dr. Tal Becker is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a senior fellow of the Hartman Institute’s iEngage Project. More articles from the SHI can be found at hartman.org.il.

Jewish Heritage Month

York Centre Liberal MP Michael Levitt and Sen. Linda Frum hold copies of Bill S-232, the Canadian Jewish Heritage Month Act. (photo from CJN)

From now on, May will be Canadian Jewish Heritage Month across the country. The bill proclaiming the annual event passed its third and final reading in the House of Commons on March 28. The vote was unanimous.

The Canadian Jewish Heritage Month Act, known as Bill S-232, passed in the Senate before heading to the House. It received royal assent and became law on March 29, making this month the inaugural Jewish Heritage Month.

Sponsored by Conservative Sen. Linda Frum and Liberal MP Michael Levitt, the bill was introduced in December 2016, though the groundwork for it was laid in 2015, when former Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler introduced the substance of the bill.

Canadian Jewish Heritage Month “will provide an opportunity for all Canadians to reflect on and celebrate the incredible contributions that Jewish Canadians have made to our country, in communities across Canada,” said Levitt in a statement.

“I am delighted that Canadian Jewish Heritage Month will be enacted into law in time to celebrate in May,” Frum said in a statement to the CJN prior to the royal assent being given. Jewish Heritage Month “will provide many opportunities for all Canadians to learn about the significant contributions of the Jewish community in Canada.”

The evening before the bill’s passage, several MPs spoke warmly of the Canadian Jewish community’s history and contributions to the country.

Referring to Toronto’s Jews, Toronto Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin said, “We have made our mark in the city, showing all the things we can contribute in so many ways through our cultural centres, art and food.”

She noted Toronto’s many Jewish cultural offerings, including the Ashkenaz Festival, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and classes at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre. Jewish Heritage Month “is going to be a chance to celebrate so much of what we have,” Dabrusin said.

British Columbia Conservative MP Dan Albas said, “in virtually every Canadian endeavour, in virtually every decade since the 1930s, Jewish Canadians have made significant and important contributions to virtually every area of Canadian life.”

It was a “proud moment” in February 2016 when 229 MPs passed a motion condemning the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, Albas stated. He made special mention of those running the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre in his riding.

London, Ont., NDP MP Irene Mathyssen mentioned Canada’s “none is too many” policy in regards to the admission of European Jews between 1933 and 1945, and of the ship MS St. Louis, which carried 907 German Jews and was refused entry to Canada in 1939, sending 254 passengers to their deaths in the Holocaust.

In the years following the Second World War, nearly 100 Holocaust survivors found their way to the southern Ontario city. Many “became active in the life of London as business leaders, doctors, academics, retailers, developers and political activists. They also developed religious organizations, corporations and charities,” Mathyssen said.

She noted the launch, in 2006, of the Shoah Project at London’s Jewish community centre to record survivors’ testimonies, and she quoted from them.

Luc Berthold, a Quebec Conservative, noted that Canada is not the first country to create a Jewish heritage month. In 2006, former U.S. president George W. Bush signed a resolution proclaiming the month of May as the time to celebrate the contributions of the American Jewish community.

Berthold praised Quebec’s Jewish community and listed many household names from the province: poet and singer Leonard Cohen; television host Sonia Benezra; Alan B. Gold, who, in 1970, became the first Jew appointed chief justice of the Provincial Court of Quebec (now the Court of Quebec), and then the chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court in 1983; Dr. Victor Goldbloom, the first Jew appointed to a provincial cabinet; Maurice Pollack of Quebec City department store fame; real estate tycoon Marcel Adams; grocery magnate Sam Steinberg; and the Reitman family, owners of the women’s clothing chain.

In his remarks, Levitt paid lengthy tribute to Cotler, his “dear friend and mentor” and “one of the world’s preeminent international legal minds and human rights advocates.”

This type of initiative “helps Canadians understand one another by allowing different communities and cultures to be showcased and celebrated,” stated Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “Understanding and appreciating the contribution different communities make to Canada brings us close together as Canadians.”

To mark passage of the bill, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre released a 72-page resource guidebook, available to community groups and school boards across the country, to enhance participation in Jewish Heritage Month.

Ontario passed the Jewish Heritage Month Act in 2012. It, too, sets aside each May to mark various events on the Jewish calendar, including the UJA Walk for Israel, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, Jewish Music Week and Israel’s Independence Day.

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com

The ethics of cloning

Prof. Arthur Schafer, head of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. (photo from Arthur Schafer)

After a few Chinese researchers recently released a report about their successful cloning of monkeys, the ethics debate about both cloning and the use of monkeys for research reignited.

“It’s not the first time primates have been cloned,” University of Manitoba philosophy professor Arthur Schafer told the Independent, “but it is the first time it has been done by this method.”

A primate is a zoological classification for mammals such as humans, apes and monkeys that are distinguished by, among other things, higher intelligence than other animals.

“The method previously used for cloning primates was called ‘embryo splitting.’ That’s what happens when a mother has identical twins,” explained Schafer, who heads the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics at the U of M and lectures on the ethics of cloning. “The method they used [in China] is called ‘the Dolly Method,’ named after the famous cloning of Dolly the Sheep. Dolly the Sheep was cloned from the breast tissue of the animal being cloned. (Dolly was named after Dolly Parton.) They used an adult cell.”

An advantage of this method over the cell-splitting technique is that you have the potential of getting many more clones, said Schafer. With cell-splitting, you can only get two.

With respect to the ethics of cloning and of using monkeys for research, Schafer said, “The first point is that the success rate is very low – two out of 60. They produced a number of additional embryos that didn’t result in live births or healthy animals.

“With Dolly the Sheep, the success rate was even lower…. Well over 200 clones of Dolly were produced to get one successful live birth of a healthy Dolly clone.”

Another important question is whether or not this research will make human cloning more likely. At present, a major reason why creating a human clone would be unethical is because the chances of the baby being born severely impaired physically or mentally are very high. “No ethical physician would want to use this as reproductive technology or would participate in it, because the chances of getting a healthy baby would be small,” said Schafer.

He said, “The technology will get better and better and could, eventually, maybe in the not-too-distant future, be safe and effective. And, at that point, it might become a viable way for a couple to have a baby. So, if you think this reproductive technology is ethically objectionable for humans, then you’d be opposed to primate experimentation on those grounds.”

For those whose primary objection to human cloning “is that it’s ineffective and unsafe” and “that you have a lot of stillborn babies and that those born alive would have a high chance of being severely impaired,” improvements of the technology could be a reason for primate testing.

Schafer said that human reproductive cloning could become as effective as in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“People got very irate in 1978 when a baby was born by IVF,” he said. “They thought this was a method that was morally wrong – a crime against the baby, against society. But somehow, it is turning out to be not so unsafe, not significantly less safe than natural childbirth. And it can enable, maybe a couple million couples, to have babies who wouldn’t otherwise be able to.”

Schafer postulated that, just as IVF is no longer on the current ethics chopping block, so too cloning may someday reach the point of being considered safe enough to be an acceptable reproduction method.

“The whole debate is about if it is unethical and, if yes, why?” said Schafer. “I think everyone agrees that safety and effectiveness is critical. But, once we get beyond that, some feel it is a case of playing God.”

Currently, human cloning research will land you in prison. But, animal cloning research is allowed in some countries on the grounds that it is for the purpose of making higher-producing animals – a chicken that can lay more eggs, for example, or a cow that can produce more milk or is better at putting on meat. Cloning research for such purposes has been allowed and has been given large financial resources.

“So, where it’s permitted, the rationale is that this technology will enable us to do medical research and to advance scientific knowledge in a way that will improve the quality of lives,” said Schafer. “It’s a matter of weighing and balancing your hope for benefit against your fear of repercussions.

“In discussions I’ve had with Jewish authorities, who although are divided amongst themselves, the predominant strand stresses that one value trumps all others – that being human life. So, you could use that as the basis for an argument that any technology that would hold promise of saving human lives would be favoured by Judaism.”

There is still the concern about conducting research on monkeys.

“Many people, and not just animal rights advocates, regard primates as the last animals, eligible animals, for experimentation,” said Schafer. “They are the most intelligent, the most like us. They have highly developed brains and nervous systems. They are, in many ways, more intelligent than human beings who are impaired or adults who have dementia or are in a vegetative state. We don’t allow medical research on severely cognitively impaired human beings, so how could it be ethical to do research on these closest relatives in the animal world, primates?”

Schafer said there has been a drastic decline in the amount of research done on primates in general, and monkeys in particular.

“You can’t justify the risks of severe harm on primates,” said Schafer. “Either they shouldn’t be used at all or, a compromise position, they should only be used as a last recourse for medical research – only used when incredibly necessary and for a supremely important goal.”

It is on these lines that scientists justify some of the research being done on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“They believe this technology will allow them to produce animal models that will facilitate research on diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” said Schafer. “So, do we need to do this research? Are there other better alternatives? Is the moral [price of] experimenting on primates too high to justify the medical benefits it hopes to achieve? These are all issues that are critical to the debate.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Civil dissent: a Jewish value

Last week, I participated in a survey on Canadian Jews done by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with Prof. Robert Brym of the University of Toronto and Prof. Rhonda Lenton of York University. It’s considered a “landmark national survey of Jews in Canada in 2018.”

The phone call came at 5 p.m. This time coincides with making dinner, school lunches for my kids, feeding our dogs, and keeping the twins and dogs from roughhousing too much in the meanwhile. (Did I mention my biologist husband was away, doing field work?)

However, I knew this was important. This was a situation where my opinions and experiences mattered. I needed to contribute despite being the only adult present to address the chaos at my house.

Often, we think of politics, religion and money as things to avoid. They’re too emotionally laden to make good dinner conversation. Still, we need to talk and think about this to figure out where we stand. If one looks only at the Torah portion of the week, you might see it as black and white pronouncements about how one should behave or observe the commandments. Yet Oral Law is also part of Judaism. We care what the rabbis thought and discussed. Over thousands of years, our ideas developed, changed and grew. Those talmudic discussions include majority and minority opinions, as well as stories and sayings.

In our tradition, subtle differences matter. Opinions matter. According to the joke, if you ask two Jews, you’ll get three opinions.

That’s why I was stunned by the reaction to actress Natalie Portman’s choice to decline the Genesis Prize. In her statement, she lovingly celebrated her Israeli identity, her friends and family and her citizenship. She also explained that she felt uncomfortable with the current government, specifically, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s choices, and its “violence, corruption, inequality and abuse of power.”

A torrent of media and political reaction followed, some of it hysterical in tone. The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Mort Klein, was downright misogynistic. He called the Harvard-educated actor and director “beautiful, but not too bright.”

Portman carries two passports as a dual American-Israeli citizen. Some called for her to be stripped of her Israeli citizenship. Since when is it OK to tell someone they can no longer be a citizen of a democratic country because she spoke out on political issues that concern her?

I’m a dual American-Canadian citizen. If I speak out on a political issue, I am within my rights as a citizen of (either) democratic society. I hear comments on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government or U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tweets wherever I go. All that said, some of those survey questions made me realize – I no longer feel comfortable publicly writing about or speaking either in support of Israel or criticizing Israel’s policies. Why?

All subtlety has dropped out of the conversation.

Old guard, right-wing Zionists who say “I stand with Israel” bristle whenever anyone says something critical of the current Israeli government’s policies. Meanwhile, anyone with liberal or left-wing politics feels uncomfortable with the notion that Israel would deport asylum-seekers, never mind the current violence with Palestinians or the reactions to their using the word “occupied.”

Many have given up even trying to discuss the issues. They don’t want to be attacked. Getting vitriolic responses from friends, acquaintances and family members, or a stream of emails about those “antisemites,” or worse, seems par for the course now.

A New York magazine article online, “Natalie Portman and the crisis of liberal Zionism,” helps explain the dilemma. Many younger North American Jews embrace liberal North American politics about equality and human rights, and feel disconnected from Israel. The old notion of a liberal Zionist or progressive supporter is no longer courted by Israel, either. The support of Christian evangelicals and a growing block of Orthodox, conservative voters might mean that some in Israel believe they no longer need the support of those liberal Zionists of old.

You may wonder why my columns don’t discuss Israel much. I’d respond with what Israelis told me as a teenager, living on an Israeli kibbutz. “If you want to weigh in on Israeli politics? Move to Israel and vote. Otherwise? We’ve heard enough from you North Americans.”

I tend my garden, as Voltaire says – I write about Judaism, religion, family and about where we stand as Canadian Jews. Our religion teaches us to learn, analyze and form opinions, like the rabbis do. As a citizen of both the United States and Canada, I defend wholeheartedly Portman’s right to speak out on politics and human rights issues that matter to her. It’s an essential part of free speech and the democratic ideal. One has to wonder whether the virulent reaction to her statement says more about Portman, or about the people who have responded so negatively.

In a democracy, we should be able to express well-considered opinions and disagree about things in a civil way, without fear of threats. Why would anyone consider it acceptable (Jewish) behaviour to threaten, embarrass or demean someone else? Many rabbis taught us: threats, embarrassment or denigrating others are just not Jewish things to do.

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.

The tough choices

The value of ahavat ha’beriot, the love of God’s creations, is open to broad interpretation. The animal world, the environment, as well as other people, can all fall under this crucial tenet of Judaism.

Like positive values and most good things, of course, this is easier in theory than in practice. We all want a clean environment and a better world, but we also want the convenience of automobiles, abundant and varied food, and the panorama of disposable consumer goods that we associate with the “good life.”

Awareness is, on the one hand, the most important factor in social change. On the other hand, it can overwhelm us to learn the full scope of our impacts on the world. Leave aside the huge looming catastrophe of climate change and consider for a moment the impact of a single, almost universal item of clothing: the cotton T-shirt.

Some bumper sticker wisdom urges us to “live simply, that others may simply live.” We do not always think of our wardrobe when considering our carbon footprint. Yet, after housing, food and transportation, for many people, clothing is one of the largest expenditures. Since voting with our wallets is one important way of making change, it is worth considering the impacts of our wardrobe choices. And what we wear on our backs says more about us than merely our fashion sense. It speaks (whether we know it or not) about our views on the environment and matters like child labour and fair wages.

To this end, one might think that a basic T-shirt would be a good choice. Yet it can take up to 2,700 litres of water to produce the cotton required for this simple garment, according to the World Wildlife Federation. Caring for the T-shirt over its lifespan takes further resources: each load of laundry takes more than 150 litres of water. Throwing it in the dryer (with a full load) consumes even more energy resources than the washing machine – about five times as much. Hanging it instead on a clothesline would reduce the shirt’s carbon footprint by one-third, but who remembers those? (Walk down a back lane in Vancouver a generation ago, and clotheslines snaked across almost every yard.) That few of us would be prepared to make this comparatively small shift indicates the glacial – to use an ironic term in the context – pace of human change in a time of rapid change in the environment.

Our food choices are even heavier with impacts. Researchers at institutions including the Weizmann Institute of Science calculated the use of land area, water and nitrogen fertilizer in animal food production. Potatoes, wheat and rice require half to one-sixth of the resources needed to produce pork, chicken, dairy and eggs in a calorie-for-calorie comparison. (Beef takes as much as five times the resources as chicken.)

Livestock for food are estimated to create about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions while using vast amounts of agricultural and water resources. Reducing or giving up meat consumption results in a huge reduction in resources. Producing a kilogram of protein from beef requires about 18 times more land, 10 times more water, nine times more fuel, 12 times more fertilizer and 10 times more pesticide than producing a kilogram of protein from kidney beans. But, again, many people love a steak or roast chicken and giving up these pleasures is not on the agenda.

This is not to instil hopelessness that even our simplest choices are leading to environmental disaster. Rather, it is to be aware of the power of small changes to have significant results.

We can extrapolate the outsized impacts of larger choices. When faced with the realities of carbon fuels on our environment (and health), most of us will not choose to sell our cars. But we might use them more judiciously. Or buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. And, when it comes to making big political decisions that impact our environment and health, we might consider that, on balance, we should be moving toward investing in alternatives to fossil fuels, not pouring public or private billions into perpetuating deleterious and nonrenewable resources. We may not go cold turkey on gasoline and oil overnight, but our discrete choices should be leading incrementally in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Experiencing a renewal

More than 100 people came out to Burquest Community Association’s Purim carnival this year. (photo from Burquest)

At the end of a short, upward-sloping driveway in Port Coquitlam, what was originally a Jehovah’s Witness centre was converted into a Jewish community centre a couple of decades ago. The community the centre houses, Burquest, has been active since 1973. As the Jewish presence in the Tri-Cities grows, it is playing an increasingly essential role in providing services and connecting Jews to one another and to our culture and traditions.

The Burquest Jewish Community Association is dedicated to the “religious, social, cultural and educational needs of the Jewish population of the Fraser Valley,” with a membership of around 70 families, according to their website. The membership is diverse, with roots in five continents and a wide variety of Jewish backgrounds and interests, ranging in age from infants to grandparents. Yet, two years ago, the community’s future was uncertain – the board was considering continuing under the auspices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, until Shoshana Szlachter stepped up to offer new leadership. She became board president just over a year ago.

“We were suffering from an onerous debt, it didn’t look like there was enough membership to keep it going,” Rudy Rozanski, Burquest vice-president, told the Jewish Independent. “A few of us got together, and Shoshana was at the head of that, and we decided that we do believe in the future of Burquest and we decided we did want to re-invigorate it. We had many ideas and they were instituted by Shoshana in a clear and positive way. We transformed it into a centre for Jewish learning, as well as being a community centre.”

Part of Burquest’s new success seems to lie in going back to their origins. “When I first joined Burquest, we were non-denominational, and then went Reform. But that didn’t work out as an experiment,” said Rozanski. “In a sense, we’ve returned to our roots.”

A year into Burquest’s renewal, things are looking up.

“Financially, we’ve come along really well,” said Szlachter. “When I came in, I thought, there’s still some life in this old donkey, let’s give it a kick and see what happens.”

The community reduced the cost of seats for the High Holidays and gave free memberships to those who bought tickets – this tripled membership. The centre has also gotten key grants, including from Federation, the Waldman Foundation and the City of Coquitlam. They have partnered with PJ Library to offer activities for children, as well as expanding their programming overall. For example, Burquest now has a Seniors on the Go program, covering yoga for seniors, mah jongg, art and piano gatherings, and a lunch-and-learn program on Jewish genealogy. There is a women’s class led by Devorah Brody, a teen club, Maccabee Kids (with optional Hebrew lessons) and a parent-and-tot drop-in program called Coffee and Knishes. Cantor Steve Levin leads religious services, and holiday events have been well-attended, with some 100 people joining the Chanukah and Purim celebrations.

“For a small community, our calendar is pretty full,” said Szlachter.

“I really enjoy the wide range of programming that Burquest is now offering,” said Sandra Hochstein, who has been involved with Burquest for 20 years. “When my daughters were young, I participated in all the child-oriented activities and am glad to see they are still there and going strong. Now that I am an empty-nester and newly retired, I love being able to participate in the adult activities, such as lunch-and-learn sessions and Monday morning yoga. I still appreciate the sense of community that I feel when attending Shabbat or High Holiday services.”

Asked about Szlachter’s role in Burquest’s “renewal,” Rozanski said, “Shoshana is an outstanding leader who is genuinely effective and concerned about our community, and her decisions regarding Burquest’s future have been unanimously applauded. Renewal is the right word for what our community is going through.”

More information about Burquest can be found at burquest.org.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

A girl’s rite of passage

Mia holds a Havdalah candle. (photo by Miriam Leo Gindin)

Many Orthodox Jews wait until a boy’s third birthday before giving him his first haircut in a ritual called upsherin, a Yiddish word meaning to “cut off.” In recent years, this custom has spread outside of the Orthodox world to be embraced by other Jews and, as a recent upsherin in Vancouver showed, some are beginning to include girls in the custom as well.

On March 17, Noam and Val Dolgin invited family and friends to their house for the upsherin of their daughter, Mia.

“For me, this was an opportunity to connect with tradition. I love the lifecycle traditions of Judaism,” Val Dolgin told the Jewish Independent.

Noting that they had done the same thing for their son Erez, who is two years older than Mia, she said, “I think it’s really important for kids to see themselves as being a part of a multi-generational community that cares about them, that makes them feel safe; that they can know they’re part of something bigger than themselves, that there are lots of people around rooting for them to succeed. For me, it was a chance for Mia to be affirmed in her community, to mark a transition, and to connect with tradition in a way that’s meaningful.”

Val Dolgin’s parents, who did not grow up with the upsherin tradition, were present at the ceremony. “My parents are very proud that they have Jewishly involved children,” she said. “They had never been to an upsherin before Erez and Mia’s. For them, they enjoy any opportunity to celebrate their family.”

Traditionally, the upsherin marks when, at the age of 3, a boy officially begins his Torah education and starts to wear a kippah and tzitzit. It was first mentioned in Sha’ar HaKavonot by Rabbi Chaim Vital, a student of 16th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria. The ceremony’s origins are mystical, and it was seldom observed outside of the Orthodox world until recently. The traditional ritual includes the haircut (leaving peyot), eating cookies shaped like Hebrew letters and dipped in honey (to show learning is sweet) and the wearing of tzitzit and a kippah for the first time.

The idea of three years as the transition time derives from the mitzvah of orlah. The Torah says that if you plant a tree, all fruits that grow during the first three years are orlah, or off limits (Leviticus 19:23). Given the kabbalistic comparisons of people to trees, many Orthodox Jews leave a child’s hair uncut during the first three years.

“The ritual of upsherin was special for us on a few levels,” said Noam Dolgin. “First, the ecological connection, which reminds us that we are part of nature. Two, it marks an important transition from baby/toddler to child. And, lastly, it is an important moment when our child is old enough to start learning and internalizing Jewish and communal values and mitzvot.”

He added, “I believe the practice has even more significance today as we better understand child development and re-explore our ecological connections. And, of course, we would do it for our daughter – it’s just as relevant to her development and place in our community as it was our son.”

“The upsherin marks a Havdalah between freest babyhood and, at age 3, the first increment of teaching and training a child,” said Or Shalom spiritual leader Rabbi Hannah Dresner, who led the ceremony. “What a great ritual to promote and renew! For us, of course, it is an egalitarian marking of readiness. Traditionally, the first snip is taken from the centre of the forelock, the place of the third eye or of insight, the spot that will, someday, at the next big milestone of readiness, receive the tefillin shel rosh, the tefillin box that sits on the forehead. For those in progressive Jewish circles, kippah, tzitzit and tefillin are all ritual wear promoted for girls and boys alike. The upsherin can be a sweet, celebratory beginning of Jewish education and the beginning of mitzvah-doing in the lives of all our children.”