Judaism – Page 50

My chat with Ed Asner

Ed Asner stars in A Man and His Prostate, which is at the Anvil Centre Theatre for two nights only: April 27-28. (photo from ACT)

I did my homework. I had read and watched interviews. I had my questions ready. I was prepared. But Ed Asner is a force of nature – a funny, caring and curious one, but a force of nature nonetheless. And nature is more powerful than the proverbial man. I learned that in high school English class – man has a chance against another man or his own internal demons, but not so much against nature.

I was calling Asner about his upcoming performances in New Westminster at the Anvil Centre Theatre April 27-28. He stars in A Man and His Prostate, written by his longtime friend Ed Weinberger, a multiple-award-winning scribe (including a Writers Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award), who has written for countless TV series – for soooo many comedies. Both Weinberger and Asner know funny, so this show promises to be hilarious. But its purpose is also to make a point: “that point being,” Asner told me succinctly, “get examined.” Hear that, guys?

I’ve interviewed famous people before so that wasn’t the reason I got somewhat flustered in speaking with Asner. Admittedly, I loved and watched every episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff drama Lou Grant. I have enjoyed Asner in various other roles over the years, including on Murdoch Mysteries (as Santa Claus, of all things) and, of course, as the voice of Carl Fredricksen, the grumpy protagonist in Up, who made me cry. Hearing such a well-known voice respond to your questions is very cool, and a little unnerving, but there was more to it.

I called Asner at the number I was given by the publicist for the local show. The woman who answered the phone simply said he’d had to leave and that I should try his cell, so I did, thinking nothing of it. The connection wasn’t great, but I reached Asner – he was in an L.A. hospital waiting to get a CT scan. When I wished him well and said we could reschedule the interview, he said, “Let’s try to talk now. It’ll help me pass the time.”

As I started asking him questions, he stopped me: “Are you uncomfortable doing this?”

“No,” I said, “I’m happy to keep your mind off things if that’s going to help.” I got as far as finding out that Weinberger had approached Asner about a year and a half ago to take on this role, but the line really was bad and we weren’t hearing each other – he said he’d call me back. But it was Asner’s righthand man (Nick, I think) who phoned, telling me that Asner had gone in for his CT, and they would call again once it was complete.

Next call: “Are you OK?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Well, maybe a little dizzy,” said Asner. Or, at least that’s what I think he said. After a spike of feedback came through the phone, I admitted, “I can barely hear you.”

In a louder voice, enunciating carefully and speaking slowly, he responded, “I said, maybe a little bit of syphilis.”

I might have taken a beat before saying, “Oh my. Really?! Is that the headline I can put?”

While it may not be apparent on first meeting, I can be bawdy with the best of them, and I enjoy such banter when all involved are of age and it’s in good fun. And this would turn out to be one of the most fun interviews I’ve conducted.

Laughing, I said, “So it all went well, the CT scan?”

It had indeed. He’d had a fall but was OK. I thanked him for calling me back, and he let me know, “Well, I’m reversing the charges.”

“You should!” I said. “You’re paying for this now. Oh my gosh. I was hoping to get my parents to pay for it.” (I was in Ottawa, and was calling him from my parents’ house.)

“Ah, no, no, no,” he assured me. “Anyway, you’ve got a lovely voice.”

“As do you, of course. But a little more famous than mine.”

“Well, I’ve been working at it longer.”

We eventually returned to where we had left off. “Were you involved in any of the writing process, or is there improv involved?” I asked about the show.

“Not on this,” said Asner. “I worked with him [Weinberger] on our book together, called The Grouchy Historian, which came out in October. We worked together on that, but he wrote A Man and His Prostate all by himself.”

“And you obviously liked what he wrote.”

“I love it.”

Asner said his first performance of A Man and His Prostate was in the fall of 2016, but then he stopped the interview again, leaving the phone with Nick – the two were still at the hospital, about to grab a very late lunch. Getting into a rhythm for this interview was proving impossible. Case in point, when Asner returned to the line, he started interviewing me. Why was I calling from Ottawa? I explained I was at home for Passover and asked if he had attended a seder. “No, we were on the road,” he said, going on to ask me about the weather in Ottawa, how many were in my family, whether I had grown up in Vancouver. When I let him know that I had grown up in Winnipeg, he said, “Oh, God.” And, while I fumbled to regain my role as interviewer, he continued his train of thought, “Froze your ass off didn’t you?”

“I did,” I admitted. “And that’s why I live in Vancouver now.”

After some PG-rated politically incorrect exchanges, I managed to get back to my questions.

The first shows of A Man and His Prostate were in California, he said, then they did a few in New York.

“Do you do what the show preaches? Do you get regular prostate exams?” I asked.

“Well, I’m due for one, I must tell you,” he said.

Asner called A Man and His Prostate “wonderfully funny,” and said “it stresses a very important point – that point being, get examined.”

He said the show is “very rewarding to do because the laughter is prevalent.”

At 88, he has no plans to retire. As for his beginnings in the profession, he said his desire to be an actor “didn’t achieve consciousness until I did the lead in the play at university.” He said, “I had done radio in high school, and loved it, but full-fledged stage-acting, I hadn’t thought of that.”

That doesn’t mean he didn’t like the spotlight as a kid. “I loved to get up and sing Adon Olam louder than anyone else,” he said, adding, “My bar mitzvah was a failure.”

He explained, “I spoke too fast, and angered my father. I put my hands behind my back, hovering over my ass, that angered him, as well. I was a prize student … but that bar mitzvah was not of prime quality.”

Asner grew up in an Orthodox home and, he said, “I’d say I pursued acting, probably, as part of my atonement” for his bar mitzvah. He said acting was at least a partial atonement in that it involved “pleasing the crowd, reciting or reading the script correctly and empathetically … all kinds of things.”

While no longer religious, Asner attributed his activism to “the intensity of my raising, the love of my parents, the constant identification as a Jew, [being] born in the time of Hitler.”

The actor has seven grandchildren. When I asked about whether he actively tries to engage them in the world around them, he joked, “Nope. I don’t like ’em.”

“You only hang out with them when you have to?” I asked.

“Uh huh. They don’t like me. It’s a perfect fit.”

I told him how much I enjoyed the Funny or Die video Old People Don’t Care About Climate Change, in which he took part. I mentioned it because one of his lines in it is, “My grandkids are spoiled anyway. They could use a little hardship.” The video’s message, of course, is that younger people must take action to protect the environment.

“I worship the earth,” Asner told me. “I don’t necessarily worship any god.”

Returning to the reason for the interview, I asked him whether he had anything else to say about A Man and His Prostate. “You’ll be there, and you’ll see how right I was to urge you to come,” he said.

The show is about Weinberger’s “journey to discover his inner self both literally and figuratively,” reads the press material. “This near tragedy is masterfully transformed into a poignant monologue perfectly portrayed by Asner as he visits the hospital in preparation for a surgery he needs but doesn’t want.”

“There’s mostly jokes all the way, or building up to a joke,” Asner said. “But then we get to that little section where I talk about the celebrities who have died – it’s a long list of celebrities – and I make the serious point that, every 16 minutes, a man dies of prostate cancer in the United States.”

As we wound up, he said, “You’re a wonderful interviewer, I don’t care what they say about you.”

“You should only believe half the rumours,” I returned.

A charmer to the end, he said, “I can’t wait to meet you.”

After I told him I didn’t think that was an option for me, he asked, “Why not?”

“Because you’re you!”

He told me to tell the publicist, “Well, say that I asked for you.”

“OK,” I said. “And I’ve now got it on tape, so I can actually prove that I’m not just making that up.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “That’s absolutely right.”

He said, I “could even bring Momma” – my mother had answered the phone when he called back.

“Momma might even fly to Vancouver for that,” I responded before handing the phone over to my mom so she could say goodbye.

For tickets ($75) to A Man and His Prostate at the Anvil Centre Theatre April 27-28, 7:30 p.m., visit ticketsnw.ca or call 604-521-5050.

#MeToo waves reverberate

Rabbi Mark Dratch (photo from Mark Dratch)

In the first of a series of articles on sexual harassment and violence in the Jewish community, the Jewish Independent speaks with Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Council of America and founder of JSafe, the Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment, about child abuse.

The “Me Too” movement was started more than 10 years ago to help survivors of sexual violence. Propelled by the hashtag #MeToo, the long-overdue public discussion about sexual harassment and violence against women has revealed that most women have at one point or other in their lives – and usually on more than one occasion – been belittled or threatened, harassed and/or assaulted.

It also has become clear that much abuse occurs – or first occurs – in childhood, and that such abuse is often perpetrated by individuals considered trustworthy, such as a family member, a family friend or someone in an authoritative role, like a teacher, coach or spiritual leader.

Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) and founder of JSafe, the Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment, first became acquainted with the issue when he was working as a pulpit rabbi.

“It was probably about 30 years ago,” he told the Independent. “When I was a young rabbi, I became aware of instances of child abuse in the Jewish community and I was very displeased – by the way the situations were being handled, by the way victims were being treated, by the way communities were in a state of denial … and that many of our institutions were not responding appropriately to the allegations. Victims were becoming re-victimized and we weren’t protecting the safety of victims in our community.”

In a paper on child abuse within the Orthodox community, Dratch argued that the then-status quo way of handling these cases was, in fact, based on misinterpretations of the spirit and letter of Jewish law. He addressed, for example, the notion that one must not speak ill of others and their actions, using the Torah to explain that, in instances of child abuse, this sanction does not apply. Taking it a step further, he showed that, in situations such as child abuse, people have an obligation to speak up. His paper was distributed to members of the RCA, and also to many Jewish child and family services agencies in the United States.

“People objected to calling the child protective agencies or civil authorities because of what was perceived to be a religious ban against reporting a fellow Jew to the civil authorities,” said Dratch. “So, I advocated very strongly and proved that it’s not the case – that there’s an obligation to call and work hard to share that information, and to establish community policies that advocate the importance of reporting. There is a whole host of other Jewish values that are good and appropriate but, when they’re misapplied, they can be very harmful.

“I started to get more and more involved in the issue and became aware of more issues. I became involved in organizations in the Jewish community, the general community and the interfaith community that dealt with issues of child abuse.

“This was a period of education for me in terms of the nature of the incidents, but also various responses, and I have been involved ever since,” he said. “Also, for a number of years, I’ve been involved in trying to educate the community and address the objections people have … trying to advocate for policy and to change attitudes. Over the 30 years or so, we see that the community is in a very different place than it was then.”

Thanks to movements like #MeToo, many survivors have become less fearful of speaking out. “Many of them had felt that, somehow, the stereotype that this doesn’t happen in the Jewish community further alienated them and made it difficult for them to acknowledge the abuse,” said Dratch.

Although he admitted we still have a long way to go, Dratch said he feels that the topic is now more common in community discussions. He also said there are now more supports in place for survivors to come forward and get the help they need from the community. As well, more institutions are developing policies of prevention and response in regards to child abuse.

“I think we are now way beyond the situation where there was denial that this was happening,” said Dratch. “We’re way beyond a situation where the community denies that it has any responsibility in prevention and such.”

According to Dratch, the RCA has been a leader in this field, giving rabbis the tools to respond appropriately if complaints of child abuse come up.

“We serve as a resource to our rabbis looking for guidance on how to handle specific situations that may arise in their communities,” said Dratch. “And, we’ve also evolved our mechanisms for holding our rabbis accountable if there are complaints against them for boundary violations or abuse.”

With respect to the Orthodox community, Dratch has found that the number of females victimized is generally lower than that of males, while numbers in the general community indicate that females are more likely targets of child abuse than males. He attributes the difference as likely being due to the increased segregation of the sexes in Orthodox communities.

“The larger culture, in the Jewish and Orthodox community, has enabled and empowered people to come forward and share their complaints and seek justice,” said Dratch. “We will continue to look for ways to educate our rabbis and our communities, and to make our communities and institutions safer.”

While Dratch deals mostly with the Orthodox community, in previous years, he has been involved with the entire spectrum of the Jewish community. In his view, the phenomenon of abuse does not discriminate between observant and non-observant.

“It doesn’t discriminate at all,” he said. “And we have an obligation, as individuals and as a community, to be there for every member of our larger community. Many people who are involved in these things think that we are no different than the general community. It’s really hard to know what our numbers are. My position is that even one is too many. And we certainly have many more than one victim.”

According to Dratch, in the general community – Jewish and non-Jewish together – one out of seven boys and one out of three or four girls become victims of child abuse.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Rituals can help us with loss

My nephew L’s public elementary school principal just died unexpectedly. She wasn’t old, and it was very sudden. The school closed for an afternoon so everyone could go to a memorial service. He’s upset … as any 9-year-old kid would be. His family lives near my parents, in Virginia, so, when my brother called for grandparent backup, they went right over. They needed to help my nephew start learning and talking about death.

This is so hard, but, in some ways, we are lucky. Judaism has rituals, information and thousands of years of coping with this topic. We can joke about it, sure, but nobody comes out of this thing called life alive. Better to have some things in place ahead of time, so you’re ready for it.

There are those who try to protect kids from sad or upsetting events, and keep them home and shelter them from funerals. This is a disservice to kids, who need to learn how these things work. I experienced several deaths and attended funerals as a little kid, as close family and friends died. Watching my family members mourn, going through shivah and attending services with them to say Kaddish helped me get a grip on the losses of people I loved, even though I wasn’t old enough to do much of this myself.

By comparison, my husband didn’t lose close family members until he was a young adult in his twenties. He didn’t have a deep understanding of traditional Jewish practices, about what would happen and how. In a short span of time, he lost all his grandparents and his mother. Going through the rituals, attending services to say Kaddish and to mourn his mother, was very hard. It was a long year, and we were in grad school, far away from family. However, we used those rituals as a crutch, and it helped us get through it together.

Although my mom is retired, she worked as a Jewish educator and administrator for many years. She still helps manage arrangements for the sale of Jewish burial plots for her Virginia congregation. My mom often helps people as they deal with a sudden death, a long illness or another difficult situation. She was recently invited to talk to the Grade 6 religious school class as they studied Jewish mourning and death.

It turned out that L’s older brother, age 12, was in that class. Although he recognized many of the pictures in my mom’s presentation, he said he learned some new things, too. He recognized the 140-year-old cemetery in Alexandria, where he visits and helps out sometimes. My mom covered basic traditions, but she also talked about how we can comfort friends who lose grandparents – the real details that help us cope with loss. Most poignant for me, though, was the new story my mother told me that she’d mentioned in the class. It was a way to help kids learn to support friends with their losses.

When my mom was 12, there was a phone call in the middle of the night. She heard her dad crying, which she’d never heard before. His father, her grandfather “Poppa,” had died. Her friends at school came up to her. They were sorry to hear about his death. Poppa used to carry around big packets of Juicy Fruit gum in his pockets. He’d hand out sticks of gum to all the kids at the end of High Holiday services. Those friends helped her remember her grandfather in a loving, wonderful way.

In Leviticus, which we read each week at synagogue at this time of year, there are long lists of “shoulds” and “should nots” and instructions for how we should do things. Some of these rules seem rigid. Many aren’t really applicable in a world without ritual sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem. However, we have both rabbinic teachings and the Tanakh sacrifice experience. We’re offered tools for how to mourn and how to manage through hard times. That history can propel us forward.

My family and community “practised” with kids so they were ready. True, it may be bending someone’s rules to recite Kaddish in the backyard over a beloved pet who has died. It may not be exactly correct to light a yahrzeit candle and recite Kaddish over a beloved (non-Jewish) elementary school principal who has died, but this “practising” doesn’t matter to most. The Jewish rituals and traditions that exist around death aren’t really about the person who died. It’s about how the rest of us will move forward.

Death is a part of life. It’s dang hard. However, hard things don’t go away because we decide not to talk about them or face them. Instead, brave people conquer difficult challenges through facing them head on. My nephew L is one of those brave people. He uses a wheelchair, signs and uses an iPad communication device to talk – and shows such compassion. He told my mother, “Now I know how you felt when your mom died.”

This week, my nephew heard that we are about to adopt a new dog. He hadn’t realized that one of our dogs died last fall, right before Yom Kippur. He was reassured that our dog Harry was old, and very sick … and that is how most of us die. However, it’s through talking about this that we can move on towards celebrating a new “family member,” too.

Talking about death isn’t easy, but we need to do it – in calm, peaceful ways – long before something sudden happens to us or our families. Talking about death in a Jewish context and acknowledging the value of the rituals that help us cope with it may be one of the deepest ways we can celebrate life.

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.

Olympian’s North Shore ties

When A.J. Edelman was training in Whistler, he was the guest cantor for Chabad of the North Shore’s Yom Kippur services. (photo from A.J. Edelman)

Chabad of the North Shore community members had a more personal reason to cheer on A.J. Edelman at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Israel’s only skeleton athlete to have made it to the Games, Edelman was training in Whistler around the High Holidays last year. While there, he participated in community life, stepping in as guest cantor on Yom Kippur.

“Although he [Edelman] could have attended services at a larger synagogue in Vancouver, he was committed to spending Yom Kippur where he could be useful and have an impact,” said Rabbi Mendy Mochkin, spiritual leader of Chabad of the North Shore. “We had a cantor during Rosh Hashanah, but not for Yom Kippur.

“It worked out great. Our community was very excited to learn that a skeleton athlete representing Israel was training locally and was very touched that he chose to join us. They were very moved by his … melodies and heartfelt prayers. We all prayed together with him that he should attain his dream to be an ambassador for Am Yisrael. Our prayers were answered!”

Edelman was born and raised in Boston, in a Modern Orthodox, Zionist family, and he attended an Orthodox Jewish day school. When he was 2, his parents strapped a pair of skates onto his feet. By 22, he was a good hockey player, but not good enough to become a professional.

“I decided that, if I wanted to continue doing sports, it had to be on a high, elite level that could really give a platform to whatever I would choose to do afterward,” Edelman told the Independent. “So, I decided to represent Israel, because it was going to be the only way I was going to do it. As it happened, as I was thinking about this, skeleton appeared on the TV for the team trials for the United States for Sochi. And I thought it looked like a terrific sport – eye-catching.”

For some athletes, they become good at a sport and then look for a country that will let them compete under its flag. In Edelman’s case, he was mainly spurred by the idea of representing Israel. Then, he began searching for a sport.

“It could certainly help me achieve my goal of inspiriting people,” said Edelman. “I didn’t know how difficult it was or how painful it was. I didn’t know how bad, at first, I would be at it. But, I did dive full on into it.”

Edelman had to go from zero to 100, so to speak, in less than four years. While many along the way tried to tell him his goal was unattainable, the naysayers only fueled his resolve to succeed.

“It’s not like swimming or other sports where you have to hit a time relative to previous Olympics times, you have to hit an absolute performance standard of world ranking in that specific year. It’s a quota system,” explained Edelman of skeleton.

Edelman had to become one of the top 30 skeleton athletes in the world in about 48 months. His last year of training was focused – with help from the other athletes on the Israeli skeleton team – on maximizing his point collection at competitions.

“Positioning Israel to be the beneficiary of one of 10 single-sled nations through points I accumulated through specifics results and races was important – and it involved a lot of mathematical calculation,” said Edelman.

Edelman finished 28 out of 30 at the Winter Olympics.

photo - A.J. Edelman was Israel’s only skeleton athlete to make it to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea — A.J. Edelman was Israel’s only skeleton athlete to make it to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. *(photo by Joern Rohde)*

“Making the Games was an insane accomplishment in that we were the only ones who did it without any coaching,” said Edelman. “We had absolute zero coaching for the first two years of my journey…. It took a huge physical toll and mental toll, and a massive financial toll. So, yes, 28 out of 30, I was very pleased.”

Edelman learned the sport from YouTube videos, and fundraised the money he needed to participate in competitions, buy equipment, and cover hotel stays and training facility fees. As far as trying to compete at the next Olympics, Edelman said, while he’d like to do that, it’s just not feasible.

“The financial strain is insane – $40,000 a year,” he said. “And only about 40% of it was covered from over the last four years by sponsors, family, friends – and complete random strangers. Doing it for another cycle would be too much of a financial strain. And I think I’ve accomplished what I was looking to accomplish, and am able to remain involved in Israel’s sports and help the next generation achieve their goals. I now have that platform.”

Although Edelman was at the Games – or maybe because he was at the Games – he said he felt disconnected from the Olympics as a whole.

“I only saw my own thing,” he said. “Otherwise, the experience at the end, or during the competition, of representing Israel, it was an honour unparalleled to anything in my life. There were a few moments I felt like I could cherish forever – the thoughts and feeling that this is what it’s like to represent a country and how it feels to be that individual. It was absolutely terrific.”

Edelman said he is not sure about what might come next for him, but that he is aiming big. For now, he is focused on transitioning from being a full-time athlete back into normal life. But life will never be the same for him, now that he has proven his potential to himself.

“If you apply yourself so completely and fully, and you just dedicate yourself the most you can, a lot can be accomplished,” he said. “But, not everything … I am never going to be able to make the NBA.

“I don’t usually tell people anything is possible. I tell them what I learned in the streets – that no one can tell you what you can’t do, and that you shouldn’t let others’ opinions dictate what you can do.”

As far as his experience with the Jewish community while training in Whistler, Edelman said, “My Jewish heritage is everything to me. It’s the entire reason why I did this. This journey was terribly difficult – it was the Jewish heritage aspect of it that kept me going.

“I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to give up, quit or just take days off,” he admitted. “But, then I’d remember I was representing the entire Jewish and Israeli community. Every night before I went to bed, I’d thank God for allowing me to be what’s called a Kiddush Hashem [sanctifying God’s name by living by example, in a holy way]. This means being a positive role model for my community and that means everything to me.”

Edelman connects with Jewish communities wherever he goes, seeing himself as an ambassador of the Jewish state. So, for him, joining the North Shore Jewish community when he was training in Whistler was a foregone conclusion.

The 2019 World Championship will be held in Whistler and, although Edelman has retired from athletic life, he wants to attend.

“When I tried out,” recalled Edelman of his first skeleton trial, “the Israel scouting report said that if I could just get down the track, that would be it … that I wouldn’t make it to the Games no matter how hard I tried. I think everybody can have that kind of moment … when they think they can’t do something or are told they can’t do something – but they should absolutely try and expect success.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Unique coming of age

Richard Newman and Gina Chiarelli in Bar Mitzvah Boy, at Pacific Theatre until April 14. (photo by Damon Calderwood)

The number 13 means different things to different people. To a baker, it’s that extra pastry that he adds to a dozen; to the superstitious, it’s considered bad luck to the extent that some buildings do not have a 13th floor. To a Jewish boy, it means his right of passage into manhood, a journey fraught with both angst and joy.

But what if you missed that momentous occasion, for whatever reason, and now, as a grandfather, as your grandson’s bar mitzvah approaches, you have an urgent need to have a bar mitzvah ceremony? This premise forms the basis of local playwright Mark Leiren-Young’s Bar Mitzvah Boy, a two-hander being staged at the intimate Pacific Theatre in Vancouver until April 14. It won the American Jewish Play Project’s prize for best new Jewish play last year, with successful staged readings in New York, Boston and Charlotte, N.C.

Joey Brandt (Richard Newman) is a successful Vancouver divorce lawyer who wants to study privately with Rabbi Michael (Gina Chiarelli) in order to have his bar mitzvah before his grandson’s big day. He is surprised to learn that she is female, and even more surprised when she refuses him as a student, suggesting that he join Cantor Rubin’s bar mitzvah class instead. Joey is obviously a man used to getting his way and, not surprisingly, his stint in Rubin’s class turns into a fiasco, as Joey disrupts the class and takes all the boys out for Hawaiian pizza (you know, the kind that has ham on it). The rabbi eventually relents, in light of both Joey’s advocacy skills and a big donation to the synagogue’s renovation fund.

The chemistry between the two actors is palpable. The audience is led through a witty pas de deux, and both teacher and student experience personal metamorphoses through their weekly interactions. Joey – who has not been to shul for 52 years – learns to put on tefillin, as well as studying the liturgy and history of his people, in a crash course in Judaism. Meanwhile, the somewhat bohemian rabbi (she jogs and smokes marijuana – for “medicinal purposes” only) works through her own demons, which include an almost-12-year-old daughter with cancer and a husband who cannot cope with the illness. In an engaging twist, the professional roles reverse as the players grapple with the existential question of whether G-d is a metaphor or a real entity on which to base our faith.

Newman, who says that he is “Jewish on both sides” is stellar in his role as Joey (and his Hebrew is not too bad, either) but it is Chiarelli who steals the show with her sublime portrayal of a working mom having to deal with a sick child and an unsupportive husband. Kudos to Chiarelli, who is not Jewish, but who has mastered the dialogue and rituals of the script.

The set design is sparse but effective. One side is a backlit bimah with a lectern and a dove-shaped eternal flame hanging above. The other side does double duty as the rabbi’s study (replete with a library that includes Kosher Sex by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and the Kama Sutra) and Joey’s office. The costumes are simple and the music – klezmer, what else.

Leiren-Young peppers the play with local references that will resonate with some of the community audience – names like Cantor Rubin, Rabbi Solomon, Schara Tzedeck, the astronomical prices of the real estate – some contemporary quips about the Broadway musical hit Hamilton and singer Kenny Rogers, and a multitude of Jewish clichés. He is the master of witty repartee, as anyone will know who has seen his play Shylock, which was, most recently, at Bard on the Beach last year.

“I had a truly crazy bar mitzvah at the Beth Israel,” said Leiren-Young when asked in an email interview by the JI about his own bar mitzvah experience. “There was a snowstorm and my mom’s car was hit en route to the shul for Friday night services. After that, standing at the bimah

and singing was easy! I drew a lot of inspiration for this play from real experiences – a mix of my own and stories from friends – but I just realized I left out the snowstorm. Maybe that’ll go in the movie.”

As to whether or not you have to be Jewish to get the play, he said, “No more than you have to be Catholic to ‘get’ Doubt or Mass Appeal or Sister Mary Ignatius (three ‘Catholic’ plays I love). But there are definitely moments that will hit harder for a Jewish audience and, I suspect, there will be jokes only Jewish audience members will laugh at.”

It is somewhat ironic that the world première of this play is being held in the basement of an Anglican Church, but that is part of its cachet.

The audience take-away from any play is deeply personal but, as Joey says in his bar mitzvah speech at the end of this journey into his faith: today, I am a man here to honour my family and ancestors, to celebrate being a Jew and becoming a member of a community with all the rights and responsibilities that go along with that membership. And, to that, we say, amen.

For tickets, visit pacifictheatre.org or call the box office at 604-731-5518.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Inspired by cultures, nature

Artist Monica Gewurz’s “Woven Tallit” was inspired by her father.

Judaism’s history, traditions and clothing and my Peruvian upbringing are always latent in my inspirations,” artist Monica Gewurz told the Independent.

Gewurz will be one of more than 90 exhibitors at Art! Vancouver, which takes place April 19-22 at the Vancouver Convention Centre East.

“Both of my parents were Polish Jews,” said Gewurz. “My mother left Poland before the war to Palestine as part of the youth aliyah to help establish Israel. My father left Poland to study in France where, after completing his studies, he went to Peru to work for a French mining company. During the British Mandate, my father volunteered to help build the underground tunnels as part of the Jewish resistance. He met my mother and, in three weeks, they were married. My father had to return to work in Peru, where they both stayed. I was born there and left in 1976.”

Though Gewurz’s mother was a nurse, she “had a passion for rendering still life in pastels and watercolours.”

Gewurz left Peru, she said, because of the military situation there, “and the increased level of antisemitism in Peru and in South America in general.” She obtained both her bachelor of science and her master’s in landscape architecture and environmental planning from the University of Guelph, in Ontario, then worked for the federal government in Ottawa until 1987. She moved to Montreal, she said, “to work in the private sector for pension funds and, later on, for Canadian Pacific Railway, working on both environmental decontamination and commercial real estate planning, marketing and sales until December 1997. I moved that year to Vancouver because of the rise of the separatist movement in Quebec and the lack of professional opportunities because I was not fully bilingual.”

Monica Gewurz will be participating in Art! Vancouver, which takes place April 19-22.

During her career, Gewurz has worked in both large-scale commercial real estate development and sales; eco- and cultural tourism planning and marketing; environmental assessment; and for the Canadian government dealing with aboriginal issues. Her work in jewelry, photography and painting began as hobbies. However, in 2014, she received a fine art certificate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and embarked on a new career as a professional artist. She is currently enrolled in Emily Carr’s advanced study certificate in painting.

“My textured paintings strive to reflect and connect cultures through the use of ancient and modern materials, colours and techniques,” she said. “I use texture to blur the line between painting and sculpture, integrating man-made elements such as paper, natural elements like semi-precious stones and gravel, and traditional textile designs from various cultures, including Israel and my native Peru.”

Gewurz also travels a lot, which has allowed her to study different art forms, she said. She has been to Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bali, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, India, Israel, Turkey, China and several islands in the Caribbean. She said she always tries to visit museums and historical sites when she’s traveling. Last summer, for example, she participated in a guided art tour through the rivers of Holland, which included visits to UNESCO sites.

Her travels and love of archeology and tribal symbolism inspire her art, she said, and lend it broad dimensions.

“I am attracted to the abstraction of stylized figures done in wood, metal or in textiles that are decorated with simple colours … the myriad high relief textures and multicolour metallic patinas that have been created by weathering and the use of metals to indicate status or ceremonial purposes.

“I am also attracted by their simplicity, honesty and inventiveness, and the fact that they are all made with natural materials and pigments,” she said. “Distorted yet primal in its raw geometry, it provides my inspiration to create a new artistic language with new forms, colours and meanings.

“In my paintings, I use an earthy, quiet palette echoing the colour found in metallic patinas, Raku pottery and ancient glass. To accomplish the above, I use intense turquoises, luminous teals and yellows, haunting blues, earthy ochres and siennas, deep burgundies and mysterious charcoals and blacks. I also use metallic paints and foils to accent textures to give my paintings more luminosity.”

Gewurz really does seem to communicate with the earth. Her sea- and landscapes are alive with colour and texture. In some paintings, it’s almost a wonder how the water stays within the frame, its flowing movement captured somehow into a moving stillness.

“My studio is located amidst the rainforest with an ocean vista,” she said. “I am surrounded by the subtleties of changing skies and rhythms of the ocean. Hikes into the local mountains, forests and beaches up the north coast inspire my abstract work.

“The abstraction of the constant changing of shapes, colours and patterns of light in the reflected water and changing skies during sunrises and sunsets mesmerize me and are a source of my inspiration. I am fascinated with the contrasting nature of the organic and how that can provide an escape to a dream-like place.”

As for works in which her Jewishness played an important role, Gewurz offered the Independent a few examples.

The mixed media piece “Woven Tallit,” she said, “was inspired by the one my father wore until he passed away.” It not only depicts a tallit in the early stages of being made, but also symbolizes, she explained, “the tapestry that we call life, where individually we are nothing much more than a single thread intertwined with others, and also the ‘woven’ aspect of the various cultures and religions that have come together to create modern Israel.”

Gewurz created “Rachel de Matriarch I” and “Rachel de Matriarch II” to honour her mother, whose name was also Rachel, and who was “an artist, and had similar abilities and qualities as Rachel the matriarch,” one of the four spiritual matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible, she said, noting that “Rachel means a small lamb, and she is described as ‘beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance’ (Genesis 29:17).”

“Although she is no longer alive,” said Gewurz of her mother, “she continues to guide me in my daily life and artistic journey.

photo - Monica Gewurz’s “Rachel de Matriach” was inspired by her mother — Monica Gewurz’s “Rachel de Matriach” was inspired by her mother.

“In terms of symbolism,” she added, “the pose of Rachel is of deep thought, dreaming and hoping for the well-being of all people in the world. The texture, patinas and colour palette of copper, earth tones and turquoise are inspired by the simple but colourful clothes, jewelry and headdresses that Rachel would have worn while working in the fields.

“The many layers of this painting are reminiscent of the layered depth of a person’s life, and like looking into ourselves. While the surface layer is easily recognized and understood, deeper exploration is needed to reveal the complex and veiled richness of the person within.”

The last example Gewurz gave was her “Friendship Shawl,” which she described as “an abstraction of a silk and gold scarf which can be wrapped around the shoulders of two friends. Friendship is one of the key values of Judaism and a fundamental building block of the global community.” This painting was also inspired, she said, “by the patterns formed by the warp and weft of the friendship bracelets woven over the centuries by aboriginal people from Central and South America. According to tradition, a person will tie a string or fabric bracelet around the wrist of a friend while making a wish or prayer for them … the wish will come true if the bracelet is worn until it falls off by itself.”

Gewurz is represented by four different galleries. “I have been represented by Ukama since 2016, the Kube Gallery and Sooke Harbour House Gallery since 2017 and, this year, I will be also represented by Mattick’s Farm Gallery in Victoria,” she said.

In addition to paintings, Gewurz also creates “wearable art.”

“They are all based on my paintings,” she said of these works. “I take a portion of the image and expand it so it is an abstraction of a painting rather than the whole painting. I have been doing it only for one year, mainly as part of participating in the Slow Clothes fashion show held as part of the Harmony Arts Festival every year, and to give them away as a thank you for people that buy my artwork, i.e. somebody who buys a large painting receives a scarf or a pillow as a gift.”

Gewurz also donates a percentage of her sales to the Brooke Foundation, whose mission is to improve “the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules” around the world, and to the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in Vancouver. She has donated art to numerous organizations, including the B.C. Cancer Foundation, the Children’s Heart Network Foundation and the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign.

“It is a way of giving back to the community that has supported me in the past and continues to support me,” she said. “I like to donate art, money and time: ‘it’s better to give than to receive.’ I also like doing something useful and helping others, which makes me feel good about myself, which increases my self-esteem, and greater personal empowerment and better health.”

Other Jewish artists in the exhibition include Art! Vancouver director Lisa Wolfin – “I am doing a forest with a pipeline going in front of the forest to show what is going on in B.C.,” she told the JI. As well, Wolfin’s sister, LeeAnn Wolfin, and daughters, Taisha Teal Wayrynen and Skyla Wayrynen, will be showing their work. The event also features artist demonstrations and workshops, speakers and panel discussions, dance and other performances. For schedule and ticket information, visit artvancouver.net.

Art and act of prayer

Alden Solovy leads two sessions at Limmud Vancouver, which takes place April 14-15. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

Alden Solovy would like you to fall in love with prayer. His own love of prayer has been fueled by his aliyah to Israel, learning Talmud and Torah in Jerusalem, and the liturgy of the siddur. It has been deepened by the tragedies he has experienced, including his wife’s multiple suicide attempts and her sudden death from catastrophic brain injury in 2009.

Solovy will present two sessions at Limmud Vancouver, the festival of Jewish learning that takes place this year on April 14-15 at Congregation Beth Israel. He will speak on An Israeli Life – in which he shares his experience of two wars, a refugee camp and of living in Israel as an older, liberal oleh (immigrant) – and offer Spiritual Chevruta, a workshop-style session in which participants will study a passage of prayer, then break into pairs to delve into personal prayer.

Prior to and in partnership with Limmud, Solovy will be a liturgist-in-residence at Temple Sholom. His program there will include his workshop The Art and the Act of Prayer.

Solovy grew up in Chicago and made aliyah in 2012. Living in Israel, he said, nurtures his emotional and spiritual well-being. When asked to elaborate, he highlighted a couple of the cultural differences between the United States and Israel. In the United States, he said, following a tragedy, people typically react with pity whereas, in Israel, his experience has been of empathy and of interest in the rest of his life. As well, he said, in the United States, independence is highly valued, while Israelis place more value on interdependence.

Solovy has faced some challenges in Israel. In 2015, he was attacked and injured as he celebrated Torah with women at the Kotel. In an opinion piece following the attack, he cautioned readers to not use his experience as justification for hate and prejudice. Instead, he asked them to continue to rally against misogyny and in favour of justice.

Solovy is a liturgist whose work has been used by people of all faiths. He has written nearly 700 pieces of liturgy and has an extensive publication list. His books are available on Amazon. (His most recent publication, This Grateful Heart, from CCAR Press, has enriched my own daily prayer practice.)

Solovy is a talented teacher and writing coach, and an award-winning essayist and journalist. He shares his work online at tobendlight.com and he also teaches at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem.

Solovy has energized learners at Limmud conferences in the United Kingdom and in the United States. He loves the enthusiasm and joy of learning that bubbles through the conferences. He finds this energy whenever he engages with adults who are active in choosing what they want to learn, which is a central value of all Limmud conferences.

In addition to Solovy’s sessions, Limmud Vancouver offers more than 40 other learning opportunities, everything from current events to Torah, history, music, art and food. This year, Limmud also offers a full day of programming for children and youth. For more information and registration, visit limmudvancouver.ca.

Leora Zalik is a volunteer with Limmud Vancouver.

Vancouverites excel at Chidon

Left to right, Rabbi Yerachmiel Benjaminson, executive director of Tzivos Hashem, philanthropist George Rohr, Grade 7 gold trophy winner Mendel Bitton and his father, Rabbi Binyomin Bitton. (photo courtesy)

Out of some 4,000 kids from 96 schools worldwide, four B.C. students qualified to attend this year’s Chidon Sefer Hamitzvos Shabbaton two weeks ago in New York: Mendel Bitton (Grade 7) and Levi Bitton (Grade 5), Sholom Baitelman (Grade 5) and Mendel Kaplan (Grade 5). All of the boys did well, receiving plaques and medals, and Mendel Bitton took home the gold trophy for Grade 7, one of only 15 trophies awarded.

Students from the 96 schools competed over several months, roughly from September to February. During these months of study, they took three major tests. Based on the results, 853 qualified to attend the Shabbaton weekend and the grand finale in New York. These 853 students from grades 4 through 8 competed in the individual competition, where there were gold, silver and bronze winners in each grade.

“The competition was inspired by the Rebbe’s request to unite Yidden through the study of the 613 mitzvos of the Torah. The Rebbe repeatedly emphasized that this effort will hasten the coming of Moshiach,” explains chabad.org about the tournament.

Transforming Judaism

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Svara, in Chicago, taught Talmud at Congregation Or Shalom earlier this month. (photo from Or Shalom)

“For all you straight folks, let me tell you – you’re all queer. Your job is to find that queer part of you, wear it on you, walk it through the world. That’s how the world changes.”

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Chicago’s Svara: A Traditionally Radical Yeshivah, made this observation during a lecture at Congregation Or Shalom on March 10. Lappe is a passionate and unique teacher of Talmud, who is “dedicated to bringing the Talmud to the 99%,” meaning the majority of Jews who do not study it.

As Lappe explained at Or Shalom, there are three kinds of queer. The first refers to, as she put it, “me, a lesbian woman, and other people with non-heteronormative sexualities or folks who are trans or non-gender-conforming. The second refers to those who ally themselves with queers, embracing queer culture and rights. The third category is someone profoundly ‘othered’ or marginalized, who owns that experience and walks it through the world as a critique to the mainstream.”

It is in the third sense of the word that Lappe addressed the audience. “The rabbis who wrote the Talmud were a small group of queer, fringey people,” she said, explaining that the talmudic sages were a small group of Jews who responded to a time of crisis in Jewish history with radical creativity. When the Temple was destroyed after centuries of colonization at the hands of the Romans, only one group was poised to respond effectively – the sages who wrote the Mishnah, and their spiritual descendants, who later wrote the Talmud. “When the master story doesn’t work anymore,” said Lappe, “it matters how you respond.”

According to Lappe, for the Jews of that time, some retreated into the old story and built walls around it, many abandoned the Jewish story and assimilated, and a small group remained faithful to the Torah while radically transforming and updating it. The Talmud, she explained, records for posterity how the rabbis evolved Judaism. “The rabbis knew that master stories change,” she said, “and they encoded a set of mechanisms into their new master story that enabled constant change.”

photo - Talmud workshop at Or Shalom — *(photo from Or Shalom)*

The “new master story” is embedded in the Talmud, which was updated to reflect changing moral and social sensibilities. It shifted Judaism from a Temple-based religion practised in Israel to a home- and synagogue-based one founded on a communal and personal discipline of halachah (Jewish law) that could be practised anywhere. Lappe believes that, through studying the Talmud in a non-fundamentalist way, in a way that gives primacy to the power of our reason and moral intuition in confrontation with the text, we can learn lessons for how to transform and vitalize Judaism today. (Reason is “svara” in Aramaic, the name of her yeshivah.)

According to Lappe, Judaism is once again going through what she calls a “crash,” a shattering of its master story, and the study of Talmud provides us with case studies in how to respond.

Lappe has an enthusiastic supporter in Or Shalom’s Rabbi Hannah Dresner.

“I have known Rabbi Benay for many years; we shared a spiritual community in Chicago,” said Dresner. “She is fun and funny and tough and with the quickest mind. Her crash theory is a different languaging of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s theory of paradigm- shifted halachah. This is based on the truth that halachah, as a path, is meant to evolve and move forward, alive in the pilpul, in the wrestling of how we can enact Torah now, in our authenticity.” (Schachter-Shalomi is the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement to which Or Shalom belongs.)

“I always thought I was at the margins of Judaism, being a queer Jewish woman,” said Alicia Jane Fridkin, who attended the weekend teachings. “Rabbi Benay helped me to realize that queer people are not at the margins: we are at the forefront of an ever-changing religion. She illustrated how each era of Judaism began with radical Jews who sought to practise in new and meaningful ways, including the era of rabbinical Judaism that we have been practising for the past 2,000 years.”

Fridkin added, “I immediately blocked off the dates in my calendar for Queer Talmud Camp at her yeshivah, Svara, which I hope to attend this summer.”

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

Champions of Jewish values

Left to right, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Sean Spicer and Ron DeSantis, at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York on March 8. (photo by Dave Gordon)

What do an American soldier, a former athlete and a former U.S. press secretary have in common? According to the World Values Network (WVN), they are all – in their own way – defenders of the Jewish people and Israel.

The Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala took place on March 8 in New York City at the Plaza Hotel. The event was led by well-known rabbi and author of 32 books Shmuley Boteach, director of WVN.

Several awards were given out, honouring individuals who, according to the network, have shown exemplary actions to further the causes of human rights and the defence of Israel in the public forum.

Former Olympian and reality star Caitlyn Jenner was given the Champion of Israel and Human Rights Award.

“I’ve been thinking about the Jewish community, and how it has affected me several times in my life,” she said. Her father, William Jenner, was part of the unit that liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. Later in life, he showed Caitlyn the pictures that still haunt her to this day.

Jenner broke the decathlon Olympic record in Montreal in 1976. In the 1972 Olympics in Munich, a then-22-year-old Jenner witnessed the terror activity from an adjacent dormitory.

About Israel, she said the Jewish state’s example “should be followed, as a nation that has succeeded in dissolving many of the prejudices against the trans and gay communities. It is now celebrated as having the best city in the world for gays – Tel Aviv.”

She added that Israel is one of only 19 countries where members of the trans community can serve in the army.

In an overall message of inspiration, she said, “Our communities have no borders and our love is without borders. Every person in the world deserves to receive dignity.”

The Elie Wiesel Award was posthumously given to Yonatan Netanyahu and Taylor Force. Netanyahu was killed in the line of duty in the 1976 Entebbe rescue, and Force was a U.S. soldier killed by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv on March 8, 2016, exactly two years prior to the gala event.

During his life, Wiesel, among other things, wrote the book Night, in which he narrates his own experience as a young boy in Auschwitz death camp, as well as more than 35 other publications dedicated to the subject of the Holocaust.

In introducing the award, American television show host Dr. Mehmet Oz noted, “Elie Wiesel saw a spark of dignity in everyone that he met.”

In presenting the award, Elisha Wiesel (Elie’s son), spoke about how the Force family is advocating for the cessation of American aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops financially rewarding terrorist acts. It is through the Forces’ efforts that the Taylor Force Law has been passed by Congress and now only needs a signature by President Donald Trump to become law.

Accepting the awards were Yonatan’s brother, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, via a previously recorded video, and Taylor’s father, Stuart, mother, Robbi, and sister, Kristen.

“Elie Wiesel showed such devotion to our people and showed that we control our destiny,” said Netanyahu in his remarks. “Elie spoke to the soul of our consciences. He was a great warrior on the battlefield of conscience, and can inspire many of us on our own quests for justice.”

As for other honours that were given out, Florida congressman Ron DeSantis was given the Falic Family Defender of Israel Award. In his acceptance, DeSantis said he led a trip to Israel last March to look for appropriate sites for the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. The embassy is slated to open May 14, coinciding with the 70th birthday of Israel. DeSantis ended his speech by saying, “At least in terms of the embassy we can say, ‘this year in Jerusalem.”’

Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary, was given the Friend of Israel Award. Of Trump, he said, in regard to how the president would treat Israel, “We knew he was going to be a real friend who was going to get results.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.