KDHS – Page 3

Artistic Pesach midrashim

“Question Mark” by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles is among the works created by King David High School Grade 12 students. (photo by Nancy Current)

In conjunction with their current show at Zack Gallery, Visual Midrash, artists Robin Atlas and Nancy Current conducted a two-day workshop with the Grade 12 students of King David High School. Rabbi Stephen Berger, head of the school’s Judaic studies, and some of his more outgoing students talked to the Independent about the project.

“Every year, we do a project for Passover with our Grade 12 students,” said Berger. “The Haggadah is one of those Jewish texts that’s had the most number of interpretations throughout our history, as every generation and every family bring their own understanding. So, I ask the students every year to write their own versions, a short essay on one of the aspects of the Haggadah. This year, we decided to combine the writing with the visual component. The students pitched their ideas, which topic they wanted to explore. I tried to limit the same topics but I didn’t force anyone. They were free to choose. Now, after all the art is done, we’ll put the project online. We’re also going to publish a hardcopy as a pamphlet. One of our former students, Daniel Wiseman, is helping me with the particulars. We will distribute the copies at the JCC, at the synagogues and Jewish delis.”

The rabbi joined his students in creating his own interpretation of the Haggadah, using a sheet of matzah as the base for his artistic journey. “Matzah represents both our slavery and our freedom,” he said. His piece opens the pamphlet.

Like the rabbi, most of his students hadn’t done much visual art in years and were not going to pursue art as a career, but they enjoyed working on Visual Midrash for this assignment.

“They put so much thought into their pieces,” said Current. “Some of them first tried to come up with concrete images, but it’s hard without artistic training. Then Robin and I suggested they should think about some abstract interpretations. What ideas come to mind? What concepts are associated with those ideas? The results were amazing.”

One of the students, Izzy Khalifa, chose the most fun-filled tradition of Passover – the search for bread. “When I was a kid, it was a game in our home. I loved it,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I think it’s not simply a search for bread but it has a deeper meaning, like a search for yourself.”

“Judaism grows on you,” the rabbi remarked, and Khalifa agreed. She also liked working with the abstract concept. “People can take more from an abstract picture, interpret it in different ways,” she said.

photo - “Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris — “Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris *(photo by Nancy Current)*

Classmates Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris decided on more concrete imagery. Their blue heart on a blood-red background symbolizes the first plague of Egypt – the plague of blood. “The blue heart is like the heart of the Nile,” said Rosenkrantz. “The abrupt color change, from blue to red, from water to blood, disrupted the Egyptian way of life.” Their heart is almost anatomically precise. “I just did a unit on cardiovascular system,” Rosenkrantz explained, “and it was fresh in my mind.”

Ma’ayan Fadida and Shmuel Hart’s illustration was more metaphorical. They selected a controversial theme for their work – the wicked son. In their artistic interpretation, the wicked son walks a black path, which winds its way across the pink and orange brightness of other family members.

“We wanted to do one of the sons,” Fadida said. “This one makes the decision to separate himself from the others; that’s why his path is black. And the abstract allowed us to show how he was thinking.”

One of the most powerful pieces is a mixed media collage: a large black question mark with the background of newspaper snippets. Created by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles, it also touches on the story of the four sons but focuses on the son who doesn’t know how to ask.

“We wanted to take a complicated topic and present it as a symbol. The black mark blocks our ability to ask,” explained Freedman.

“The information is all there. You just have to be willing to look for it,” Pekeles elaborated. “It is a challenge. Sometimes, we choose not to ask when we should.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Little Shop fills the Rothstein

The full cast of King David Players’ Little Shop of Horrors. (all photos from King David High School)

On March 16 and 17, the Rothstein Theatre was alive with music and a giant flesh-eating plant, as the King David Players presented this year’s theatre production, Little Shop of Horrors. Featuring a cast of students from every grade, the actors and musicians brought to life the dark comedy/musical. They played to full houses both nights.

Teachers Aron Rosenberg, Johnny Seguin and Anna-Mae Wiesenthal created the production, which involved 50 students, as well as other staff, parents and community supporters.

“When deciding what play to explore this year, we were looking for a musical that was light and fun and that was not too heavily based around social commentary (as is my usual inclination),” said Rosenberg in his director’s note. “I looked through a list of musicals and, remembering childhood evenings watching Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis, Steve Martin and Bill Murray, I sent an e-mail to the administration ensuring it would be an appropriate choice.”

On closer look, the musical wasn’t that light.

“Three of the most problematic characters are Mushnik – the caricature of a greedy Jewish merchant – Audrey – the caricature of a helpless victim in an abusive relationship – and Orin – Audrey’s abusive boyfriend, and a caricature of a dentist with a self-acknowledged appetite for causing pain,” noted Rosenberg. “Perhaps this play’s innocuous reputation comes from an outdated attitude that treated ethnic stereotypes as playful, sexual violence as bland and dentists as inevitably painful. However, in 2016, our modern sensibilities force this play to take on a new life. The dark and irreverent humor of the play remains but, along with it, our cast has worked to uncover a respectful and critical look at the struggles of ethnic shop-owners in low-income neighborhoods, the horrors of domestic abuse and the ridiculousness of gender-inequity in relationships (not to mention the reality that dentists are no longer painful … usually).

“With all the creative commitment and hard work from our cast, crew and community, we are left with something not unlike our original goal…. The plot may not be light but the musical numbers are. And, as for social commentary and all this hullabaloo about the self-destructiveness of greed and power, you can take it or leave it. However, if you leave it, don’t be surprised when a giant human-eating plant comes a-knocking….”

photo - Seymour (Daniel Shuchat) and Audrey (Sydney Freedman) — Seymour (Daniel Shuchat) and Audrey (Sydney Freedman).

photo - Audrey II, played by Alisa Bressler and Hannah Marliss — Audrey II, played by Alisa Bressler and Hannah Marliss.

photo - Stage managers Rachel Pekeles and Matty Flader — Stage managers Rachel Pekeles and Matty Flader.

Better access to education

Aaron Friedland at Semei Kakungulu High School in Uganda. Friedland has written the book The Walking School Bus, both as a first reader but also as a means to generate funds for students to access education. To get it published, he has started an Indiegogo campaign. (photo from Aaron Friedland)

During high school and elementary, “it was too easy for me to miss school,” said Aaron Friedland, currently a master’s in economics student at the University of British Columbia. In other parts of the world, children walk great distances to attain an education.

“Five years ago, I wrote a children’s book called The Walking School Bus,” Friedland told the Independent. It was “written with the realization that students in North America really take access to education for granted.”

It was on a trip to Uganda and South Africa, he said, when he really began to understand “the distances students had to walk to obtain an education and it was startling.”

Data from the Uganda National Household Survey Report 2009/2010 indicate that 5.5% of children aged 6-12 do not attend school because it is too far away, and the average high school-aged student must walk a distance of 5.1 kilometres to the nearest government school, more than 10 kilometres every day.

“I wanted the book to serve a purpose and the purpose was twofold. I wanted it to raise awareness … that students have to walk,” Friedland said about The Walking School Bus. “But I also wanted it to be a means to generate funds for students to access education and so, in that case, I’d say the school bus itself is metaphoric and it represents access to education.

“I submitted my manuscript to a publishing house just under a year ago and it was well received, so we started moving forward. But, in order to really have a book come to fruition, it costs quite a bit of money.”

On Nov. 9, Friedland started an Indiegogo campaign to raise $15,000 to cover the costs of publication, “everything surrounding the book,” which includes editors who specialize in children’s books and the illustrations. The campaign runs for 60 days.

The Walking School Bus has the capacity to “act as a first reader and, while it does have a picture book component, I’d also like it to serve as a coffee table book and a symbol for interfaith collaboration,” said Friedland.

Friedland’s concern about and involvement in interfaith work began in 2010, when J.J. Keki, a member of the Ugandan Abayudaya Jewish community and founder of the Delicious Peace fair-trade coffee cooperative, was invited to King David High School. Many students, including Friedland, “formed a pretty special bond with him.”

A bond that continued for Friedland. “When I was in first year [university] – while all my friends were going to Mexico and hilarious holidays – I went to Uganda with my family,” he said. “It was an amazing experience for us. We benefited so much more than the ‘recipient’ community. I recognized quite quickly that our aid had been negligible, but what it did for me was it provided me with a clear trajectory, which guided me for my four years at McGill.… At McGill, I started working with the Abayudaya community in Uganda, specifically with Delicious Peace…. What most amazed me – and my rationale for getting involved – was that they employed an interfaith collaboration model in which they united these previously disparate communities, the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, and formed one solid frontier in which they collaborated. In collaborating, there were a variety of positive spillover effects … you see higher levels of economic prosperity in that region on Nabagoya Hill than you do in comparable areas, you see how there is much more religious tolerance.”

About his experience in Uganda, Friedland, who has worked with UN Watch, said, “I have only seen the us-against-them mentality, and this is one of the first times I have ever seen this collaboration.”

About his most recent trip to Uganda, Friedland said, “Essentially, I have been working with three schools there as well as King David over here, kind of empowering their educational sector in the interfaith forum. And the three interfaith schools I’ve been working with are the three I’m the most motivated to help provide school buses.”

While interviewing students in Uganda, he said, “One of the girls that really stood out to me was a girl named Miriam, a lovely Jewish girl from [Semei Kakungulu] high school, an 18-year-old. She was telling me that, when she walks to school, she walks six kilometres in either direction. And, in extreme rainfall events, which is pretty much all of the rainy season, she will cross a river to school and, when she goes back, the river is often flooded and she cannot cross back, so that night she’ll spend at a friend’s.”

Friedland added, “When I think about the struggle that our counterparts make to go to school and we do not – we don’t have that drive. That is something I’d like to impress on people in North America. I’m not saying you have to feel bad, just appreciate your access and your ease in getting an education and take it seriously.”

The website thewalkingschoolbus.com was created by Friedland to support the book and bus project, and sales of T-shirts and various other merchandise go towards his efforts to increase access to education. He said, “I think, as a Jew in Vancouver, in a more liberalized society, that this is the model that we should be going for … we should be supporting interfaith.”

Friedland has most recently worked with a team to connect King David’s Marketing 12 class with the entrepreneurship class at Semei Kakungulu. About his master’s degree, he said he will likely be writing his thesis on “the positive economic spillover effects from interfaith collaboration and employing interfaith collaboration, as an economic development growth model in other places, particularly Israel.”

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

United in community

Purim Project co-chairs Rachael Lewinski and Rivka Moreno with premier sponsor, Remo Mastropieri of Real Canadian Superstore. (photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)

What do you get when you put 90 people in an auditorium filled with delicious snacks, drinks, piles of boxes and mounds of packing materials? The Greater Vancouver Jewish Day School Purim Project Packathon, of course! GVJDSPPP, for short. 😉

photo - Some 90 volunteers put together 1,300 mishloach manot packages — Some 90 volunteers put together 1,300 mishloach manot packages. *(photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)*

Each year, Vancouver Hebrew Academy, in partnership with King David High School, Pacific Torah Institute, Richmond Jewish Day School, Shalhevet Girls High School and Vancouver Talmud Torah, join together to promote community and raise funds for Jewish education.

photo - Students Kyla Charach, Lola Belzberg and Juliette Sandler were among the many volunteers — Students Kyla Charach, Lola Belzberg and Juliette Sandler were among the many volunteers. *(photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)*

Assembling the more than 1,300 mishloach manot packages is a huge undertaking, requiring planning, strategy and oversight. Not to mention an army of volunteers! As in past years, the packathon took place in the KDHS auditorium, and this year’s volunteers included VHA’s Grade 6 and 7 students, VTT’s Grade 6 students and more than 15 community volunteers. The pre-packing and labeling were done by students from VHA and PTI the day prior.

Purim is a time to promote unity and togetherness, and the packathon is an amazing opportunity to do just that. When students help and give back to a community that supports and gives to their school, the good will created goes full circle. “What a great way to start off Simchah Week at VHA!” said one of the VHA teachers.