Kolot Mayim

Caring in times of need

Chaplain Sari Shernofsky (photo by Norwegian Cruise Line)

Earlier this month, Sari Shernofsky described her experiences as a chaplain in a Zoom lecture called Stories from a Narrow Bridge: Meeting People in Time of Need. The talk’s title comes from a quote by Reb Nachman of Breslov: “All the world is just a narrow bridge and the main thing is to have no fear at all.” For Shernofsky, a recent transplant to Victoria from Calgary, those words were a call to pursue training as a multifaith hospital chaplain.

Shernofsky’s talk was part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s current lecture series, Building Bridges: Hineini – Answering the Call to Heal the World. It took place on Jan. 8.

Shernofsky worked in hospital and hospice settings for 15 years, with the objective of offering compassionate care to those in need. She also served as the Calgary Jewish community chaplain where, in addition to visiting individuals, she helped set up support groups and various training workshops for synagogues that wanted to become involved in community care.

According to Shernofsky, to care for others in their time of need – whether it be an illness, end-of-life care or simply to connect with those who are isolated or alone – is not a choice but an obligation she views as a profound Jewish value.

A chaplain provides spiritual and emotional support to people in institutional settings. Healthcare chaplains, such as Shernofsky, are trained to work with people of different faiths. Though derived from a Christian word, a current use of chaplain encompasses the work done by spiritual-care providers. Many who go into the field do so later in life, as life experience is advantageous to the job. Shernofsky had worked in the corporate world before entering the chaplaincy. “I wanted at a certain point to work with my heart and not my head – to [be able to] look back at the end of my life and say I did something to help someone else that was meaningful,” she said.

“Maybe we are the bridge, and we are reaching out our hands to others – that is basically what a chaplain does. And there is a chaplain in all of us, to reach out our hands and make tikkun olam [repairing the world] happen,” she said.

As she explains it, her job was to visit people and let them take her into their world. Among the visits was one to someone she met while studying to be a chaplain. One evening, at midnight, she received a message on her pager notifying her that the daughter of an elderly evangelical man was looking for a Bible so she could read scripture to him. Once brought, the Bible did not create the desired effect, so the daughter asked for a hymnbook. Shernofsky returned with a hymnbook, which didn’t work either.

Silence ensued. Shernofsky finally walked over to the head of the bed and placed her hand on the man’s forehead. “I told him what a special life he led and how loved he was. I talked about the family being around and how much love was surrounding him. As I was talking gently to him, the daughter and her friends started humming ‘Amazing Grace’ in the background. I had a back-up group. And it was the most magical moment, a holy, sacred moment. When it was over, the daughter had a wonderful smile on her face. We gave her a moment that she needed. I walked out of the room at two in the morning and I was higher than a kite.”

In another instance, a Jewish man in his 60s came into the hospital in critical condition. At a certain point, doctors considered removing his life support, but his rabbi objected and he remained in hospital for another month.

“I realized that the family had time during that month to get over the initial shock and get used to the idea. Perhaps more importantly, they did not have to make a decision to pull the plug. And I don’t know how families can do that, and how awful it must be because there has got to be a place in the back of your head that says, ‘What if I hadn’t?’ It was a real learning experience for me about timing.”

She also recounted the lesson she received from a woman who had been bedridden in a hospital for several years. The woman was adored by hospital staff, Shernofsky said. “I learned that, when you have so little, you can still make a difference.”

Shernofsky ended with a few words about medical assistance in dying, or MAiD. “People choose MAiD because they are afraid of suffering, they don’t want to be helpless and don’t want to be a burden to others,” she said. “Maybe some of those reasons are a bit misguided. What happens with MAiD is often poor information. People are not told what other supports are available, like palliative home care and hospice. There are lots of good things about hospice, people are not educated about them and that’s a shame.”

The next speaker in the series is McGill University’s Prof. Morton Weinfeld, who recently published an updated edition of his book, Like Everyone Else But Different. He speaks Feb. 5, 11 a.m. To register, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Ukraine’s complex past

Elissa Bemporad (photo from Elissa Bemporad)

During a Dec. 4 Zoom lecture organized by Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria, historian Elissa Bemporad offered a nuanced look at the Jewish experience in Ukraine, as well as perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine

“It was a history marked significantly more by coexistence between Jews and non-Jews than it was by violence,” said Bemporad, a professor at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Centre in New York City. “I am saying this not only in response to the genocidal war that Russia has launched in Ukraine, justifying it by manipulating the past and demonizing Ukrainians as quintessentially violent. We should resist the view of the Jewish experience in the region, as tragic as it might have been, as if it was doomed from the very beginning and enveloped in perpetual violence.”

The current war, she underscored, has brought about the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War, with cities destroyed and civilian populations terrorized. “The aim of this war seems to be putting an end to Ukrainian sovereignty and identity,” she said. “As a historian, one of the most painful moments was reading about how the Russian occupiers were seizing and destroying books. As Jewish historians, we know all too well what happens when a society destroys books.”

Showing images of the destruction of Jewish buildings in Ukraine, such as a synagogue in Mariupol and the Hillel building in Kharkhiv, Bemporad spoke to the irony of one of Russia’s stated goals of the conflict: to rid the country of Nazis. Most of the Jews in these bombed-out cities have left, she said, and there is uncertainty as to whether they will return; many have either fled to Israel or settled in the West.

Bemporad discussed the pre-Second World War period, when 1.5 million Jews lived in what is today Ukraine, the largest community being in Kyiv, where 226,000 Jews resided, or one-third of the city’s population. Addressing the anti-Jewish violence in the region, she spoke about – among other uprisings, dating back to the 17th century – the Russian Civil War (1918-21) and the resulting atrocities committed against the Jewish population by both military units and the civilian population. Many of the pogroms took place in Ukraine and tens of thousands of Jews were killed.

“Jews were thought of as interlopers in the national body and imagined as forces connected to Bolshevism that would tear apart the nation’s fabric,” Bemporad said. “The fact that Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army did not play in favour of the Jews.”

But Bemporad highlighted a history of coexistence as well, stories in which some Ukrainians heroically stepped in to save the life of Jews, notably the writer Rakhel Feygenberg, who, along with her infant son, was hidden by non-Jews during a 1919 pogrom.

About the post-First World War era, she noted the ambivalent attitude the Soviet state had toward antisemitism. “While the state condemned antisemitism on paper, it was often eager to ignore antisemitism or to weaponize it in its best interest,” she said. “With regard to the pogroms, the Soviets shifted between acknowledging and downplaying the anti-Jewish violence. They were ambiguous in their treatment of the Jews, and they were the ambiguous in their treatment of the perpetrators, creating a state-controlled memory. However, when the discussion of the pogroms was perceived as at odds with the regime’s interests and priorities of building socialism based on the brotherhood of peoples, then the memory of anti-Jewish violence was silenced and the Soviets preferred not to investigate and punish the perpetrators.”

In other examples, she said the Soviets would use antisemitism among Ukrainians as a means to demonstrate they were prone to nationalism. And both Ukraine and Russia have provided recent examples of reviving the memories of and glorifying national heroes who were responsible for carrying out pogroms.

In a final slide, Bemporad displayed the results of a Pew Research Centre survey on antisemitism in Europe. Despite Russia’s attempts to portray Ukraine as a hotbed of antisemitism, more Russians had an unfavourable opinion of Jews than Ukrainians. And, in Bemporad’s view, Ukraine, despite its corruption, has become the most democratic of the post-Soviet states, excluding the Baltic countries. Further, as has often been mentioned in referring to the present situation of Jews in Ukraine, the country elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with more than 73% of the vote.

“Siding with Ukraine today does not entail dismissing or forgetting the dark pages of anti-Jewish violence in the region,” Bemporad said. “It is rather a reminder that we can start turning those pages and writing new ones in the book of the Jews of Ukraine.”

Bemporad, a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk and Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets. She is the co-editor of two volumes: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators and Pogroms: A Documentary History.

The next speaker in Kolot Mayim’s Building Bridges series will be Sari Shernofsky, a retired community chaplain from the Calgary Jewish community, on Stories from the Narrow Bridge: Meeting People in Their Time of Need. She will speak on Jan. 8, 11 a.m. Visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Dealing with addiction

Rabbi Allan Finkel of Winnipeg’s Temple Shalom spoke about addiction in the Jewish community and Jewish-based recovery during a Nov. 6 Zoom presentation organized by Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria.

The talk was the first of Kolot Mayim’s 2022/23 lecture series entitled Hineini: Answering the Call to Heal the World. It widened the definition of addictions to go beyond those that are substance-based to include dozens that are behavioural. Finkel also explored new research on the causes of addiction, particularly childhood trauma.

“My name is Allan and I am an addict,” he began. “This was a huge hineini, when I first said ‘here I am.’ This was my declaration 13 years ago. At that time, hineini meant here I am at the bottom of a drug addiction, I am broken and I am open to an unknown path that might lead to recovery.”

That path, starting at Narcotics Anonymous, would take him on a spiritual journey, reconnecting him with his Judaism and leading him to become a rabbi.

For his rabbinical program, Finkel wrote his thesis on addictions in the Jewish community. “I was curious to know what we might learn as rabbis, and how we can carry our journey forward in terms of serving our congregations,” he said. “It is a mental health issue, and there wasn’t very much known about it…. And there are certain issues, particularly within the Jewish community, that made it a topic that I wanted to explore.”

Finkel discussed a 1962 study of the Jewish community in the United States that tried to find out what percentage of the Jewish community was addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. The answer was zero, compared to a 10% addiction rate in the overall population. Clearly, the study indicated a denial within the Jewish community that Jews can also be addicts. A 1995 study in the United Kingdom produced similar results.

Beginning in the early 2000s, research began to demonstrate that, to understand addictions, one needed to look beyond substances and towards behavioural addictions, which can encompass many areas: shopping, food, internet and gambling, among them. More recently: cellphone use, online gaming and video gaming.

From this standpoint, the number of people demonstrating addictive behaviour reaches 47%, according to studies Finkel cited, though he suggested the number is likely far higher. A commonality among people with addictive behaviours is the inability to stop, no matter what harm it does to those around them and to themselves.

Returning to the denial of addiction in the Jewish community, Finkel proposed that one cause is the long-standing fear of shame, which could be triggered by an admission of a problem at a synagogue, Jewish school or other institution. Looking at areas of the Torah, such as the story of Noah, he explained, one sees that “the Jewish denial of addiction is social and cultural, it is not religious in orientation.”

Within the past decade, there has been a broader consensus within Jewish institutions that addiction is not a moral failing, but instead can be caused by the same factors that result in other mood and psychological disorders.

Using the work of Vancouver physician Dr. Gabor Maté, Finkel noted that all addictive behaviour can be traced to something that happened when a person was very young. “Not everyone who was traumatized becomes an addict, but every addict was traumatized.”

One conclusion Finkel draws is the need to destigmatize the word “addiction.” He stressed that an addiction, as stated in the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 manual on mental disorders, is a means of coping no different from any other mental health disease.

A second takeaway is that adults and not children bear much of the responsibility for addictions; in other words, no child ever dreams of becoming an addict. Children do not have the rational skills to take on and cope in a non-destructive way with trauma that happens to them.

Further, Finkel argued that real recovery is not simply about stopping addictive behaviour, but about going back to one’s past and taking care of the fears and resentments of childhood, as well as the habits that build up over a lifetime.

Finkel told the audience that it has been more than 10 years after his last relapse. He said the rewards of recovery have been immense and have brought incredible relationships with his children, himself and life.

Finkel is an outspoken advocate for interfaith engagement and for the building of strong bridges and partnerships across all denominations within the Jewish community. He currently chairs the Winnipeg Council of Rabbis.

A video of Finkel’s lecture is posted at kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

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Some resources

Rabbi Allan Finkel provided this list of resources for those experiencing addiction and those close to them:

Crisis and suicide line: 1-800-784-2433
Jewish Addiction Community Service (JACS) Vancouver 778-882-2994
Mental health support: 310-6789 (no area code required)
Umbrella Society: support, outreach, recovery, counseling, groups, harm reduction and education, umbrellasociety.ca
Our Jewish Recovery: Facebook group, with 16 active Jewish recovery meetings and classes, virtual retreats, individual and group coaching, led by Rabbi Ilan Glazer
Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah: A Daily Spiritual Path to Wholeness
Rabbi Kerry Olitzky and Dr. Stuart Copans, Twelve Jewish Steps to Recovery, and other of Olitzky’s books, including with co-authors
Rabbi Paul Steinberg, Recovery and Jewish Spirituality: Reclaiming Hope, Courage and Wholeness
Rabbi Shais Taub, God of our Understanding: Jewish Spirituality and Recovery

– SM

Speaker series returns

Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria is presenting a new season of its Building Bridges speakers series. The 2022/23 lineup will highlight the theme of Hineini: Answering the Call to Heal the World.

The Hebrew word Hineini can be translated as “Here I Am.” The series of six talks includes local, national and international speakers who have each in their own way stood up to create positive change in the world from a uniquely Jewish perspective. The monthly talks are offered free of charge and held on select Sundays from November to April on Zoom.

Beginning Nov. 6, 11 a.m. PST, the first speaker will be Rabbi Allan Finkel. Finkel is a Reform rabbi at Temple Shalom in Winnipeg. He will address the topic of Addiction in the Jewish Community and Jewish-based Recovery.

On Dec. 4, Elissa Bemporad, a widely published historian and professor at Queens College and the Graduate Centre – City University of New York, will speak on History is Not Destiny: Thoughts about the Russian War Against Ukraine and the Jewish Past in the Region.

Starting off the 2023 portion of the season will be Sari Shernofsky, a retired community chaplain from the Calgary Jewish community. On Jan. 6, Shernofsky will speak about Stories from the Narrow Bridge: Meeting People in their Time of Need. She will discuss her journey to chaplaincy, the patients she traveled with, spirituality and aging, and medical assistance in dying (MAiD).

Morton Weinfeld, professor of sociology and chair of Canadian ethnic studies at McGill University, recently published an updated edition of his book Like Everyone Else But Different. His Feb. 5 talk is titled Like Everyone Else But Different: The Jewish Glass is Half Full.

Pat Johnson, writer, organizer, entrepreneur and Jewish Independent editorial board member, will highlight his work with Upstanders Canada, an organization he founded to mobilize non-Jewish Canadians to stand up against antisemitism and anti-Zionism. His March 5 talk, Standing Up to Antisemitism, will explain coordinated steps anyone can follow to create a positive difference.

Rabbi Suzanne Singer, a former journalist and a Reform rabbi from Temple Beth El in California, will wrap up the series on April 6. With a history of leadership at Kolot Mayim, Singer will talk about Hope: How Do We Find Hope in a World with Unending Problems?

The word Hineini occurs 17 times in Hebrew scripture and is said at pivotal moments when profound change is about to take place. Kolot Mayim Reform Temple is an inclusive, welcoming congregation led by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough, who reminds us that, “Our world today cries out for responsive and responsible change; each of us can do our part in helping with that healing and transformative change.”

To register for any or all of the six talks that comprise the 2022/23 Building Bridges series, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Shira Choir focus of lecture

Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo (photo from Kolot Mayim)

“To repair the often-shattered world, I cannot think of a better way than to give a voice to those less heard,” said Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo, leader of the Montreal Shira Choir, a vocal ensemble comprised exclusively of people with physical and intellectual challenges.

Benlolo was speaking at a Feb. 13 lecture co-hosted by Montreal’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple during Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, or JDAIM.

Born in Morocco, Benlolo settled with his family in Canada in the 1970s and became the cantor of Montreal’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue at the age of 17. He is also a rabbi and an artist who, among other things, designs ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts). Despite his many hats, Benlolo’s true passion, as evidenced throughout his talk, is to provide a stage for those who have seldom been listened to, accepted or appreciated in the community.

While working in Ottawa in 2002, he helped lead the Tamir Neshama Choir, which toured throughout Canada, the United States and Israel.

“It really inspired me and opened my eyes to a new life that I never explored before. To be able to spend time with people of special abilities made my life that much better in so many different ways,” Benlolo said of his Ottawa experience, for which he received a Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award in 2013.

The move back to Montreal came a few years ago. There, Benlolo and his wife Muriel Suissa founded the Shira Choir in 2019, with the assistance of Federation CJA and the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal. The choir, made up of singers from many cultural backgrounds, performs a wide range of music, from liturgical to Broadway and pop.

Not long after the choir’s formation, the pandemic struck in early 2020. Nevertheless, Benlolo has managed to keep the music playing through Zoom rehearsals and socially distanced visits with choir members.

Benlolo stressed that, too often, people with special needs come in and out of our lives, without our taking the time to engage with them. His simple request to the Zoom audience was “to take the time,” as “it could make a world of difference.”

“They teach me more than I could ever teach them,” is the view Benlolo expresses regularly, saying there is no way to place a value on these relationships.

He emphasized the importance of not patronizing anyone in the choir. That is, audiences should give them a standing ovation only because members of the choir deserved one for the quality of their singing, not for the act of performing itself.

“They have hopes and aspirations. Some are going to fulfil them, some are not,” asserted Benlolo.

The future for the choir, he declared, is to continue to spread love, positivity, inclusion and the sense of community, but not tolerance, a word to which he has a particular aversion. “I don’t want to tolerate you, I want to love you. I want to count you in the community as a full member,” he said.

“We want to continue building from here,” he added. “It can only come to fruition if everyone puts in some effort. Just a little bit of an effort, the results will be so satisfactory, both for the individual and the community, [and] we will learn some new things, we will learn a way of life, that for so long has been hidden.”

Benlolo’s talk covered the recently premièred documentary Just As I Am, which can be viewed on CBC Gem (gem.cbc.ca/media/absolutely-canadian/s21e26). The film, a profile of the adults with special needs in the choir, explores the universal language of music and its ability to transform lives.

Benlolo also presented two short videos, both available on YouTube, showing members of the Shira Choir singing Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

In his concluding remarks, Benlolo urged the audience to not look upon those who are differently abled as “different” in a pejorative sense. “Different is great,” he said. “Different is beautiful. There is so much untapped talent out there that I am always in search of these people who are hidden gems.”

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Montreal is the oldest in Canada, tracing its history back to 1760, when the first Jewish settlers arrived in Quebec, making it as old as the province itself.

Now in its 14th year, JDAIM is a unified effort among Jewish organizations and communities throughout the world to build awareness and foster inclusion of people with disabilities and those who love them.

Benlolo’s presentation was the fifth in Kolot Mayim’s six-part series on the theme of Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity in Jewish Life. The final session in the series features Indigenous artist Patricia June Vickers and Rabbi Adam Cutler of Adath Israel Congregation in Toronto, which is co-sponsoring the event. The topic on March 20, 11 a.m., is An Indigenous and Jewish Dialogue on Truth and Reconciliation. To register, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

A minority within a minority

Rivka Campbell, co-founder of Jews of Colour Canada. (PR photo)

On Jan. 9, Rivka Campbell, co-founder of Jews of Colour Canada, spoke on the topic Harmony in a Divided Identity: A Minority Within a Minority, the third Zoom talk in Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2021-22 Building Bridges lecture series.

A Jew of Jamaican descent, Campbell seeks to create a sense of community among Jews of Colour in Canada. At the same time, she works to establish dialogue with mainstream Jewish organizations and to provide a better understanding of Jewish diversity and the experiences of Jews of Colour.

Her opening remarks focused on what she labeled “the question” – that is, the unwelcoming, uninviting and off-putting line of inquiry Jews of Colour often confront when entering Jewish spaces. Though born and raised in Toronto, Campbell, like other Jews of Colour, is often asked, “Where are you from?” – the implication being that she is not Jewish.

This question, she points out, is alienating from the start and is not the kind of introduction that Jews of Ashkenazi backgrounds ordinarily face when, say, entering a synagogue.

A decisive period for Campbell occurred after getting married and starting a family. At the time, she wanted to introduce her children to their Jewish roots so that they could understand and appreciate every aspect of who they are.

“We leaped into the community with the assumption that I am a Jew and that this should be a non-issue. I am going to go to synagogue, put my kids in Hebrew school and just do stuff. I was wrong. What I didn’t reflect on was that I did not meet the stereotype, if you will, of what a Jew looks like, and it never occurred to me because I am Jewish, what’s the big deal? And I realized that for some people it was.”

The questions and comments would come even before a hello – Are you Jewish? How are you Jewish? But your last name isn’t Jewish.

“If I am a new face, then fine, we should welcome new faces. But the way to welcome new faces is with ‘Shabbat Shalom. My name is So-and-So, what’s your name? Here’s where we keep our siddurim.’ Welcome me first and the rest will flow naturally,” Campbell said.

She referred to these episodes, when she is singled out and her Jewishness is openly questioned, as “microaggressions.”

“Microaggressions are like mosquito bites at a summer camp. You might spray yourself and take other measures to prevent bites. Nothing works, so you spray yourself more and wear long sleeves and still nothing. After many efforts and layers, you finally say, ‘I can’t do this any longer,’ and you remove yourself from the place where the mosquitoes are,” she said.

For Campbell, there also have been more repugnant full-on aggressions, including having the derogatory term “Schvartze” directed at her.

“Would you continue to want to put yourself in that position? I have met and spoken to quite a few Jews of Colour who have said, ‘I am done. I can’t take it anymore.’ They do not want to subject themselves or their children to that kind of treatment. If we say there is no racism in our community, then we are fooling ourselves. All of us should feel they belong,” she said.

Campbell had a very good experience during an extended stay in Israel, where she met Jews from myriad backgrounds. In Israel, she did not feel she had to explain who she was and did not encounter the same questions she is asked in Jewish spaces in Canada. That trip caused her to realize that the Canadian Jewish community could do better and led her to start Jews of Colour Canada.

Things changed dramatically in May 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which, to Campbell, symbolized the banality of evil.

“That event made me not give a hoot whether people were comfortable or not with what I say because, until we are all uncomfortable, there won’t be change,” she said. “It really flipped the way I felt about diversity and the work that needs to be done. And that is where we sit today. And I see us as a community doing the work – we are listening and not just hearing what people are saying. You fix your own house first before you fix anyone else’s. And you cannot rest on the laurels of others, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.”

Campbell is the executive director at Beit Rayim Synagogue in Vaughan, Ont., and a board member of ADRABA, Toronto’s first 21st-century Jewish high school. She also hosts the CJN podcast Rivkush, which focuses on diversity, Israel and other Jewish topics. She is the sole Canadian recipient of the inaugural JewV’Nation Fellowship from the Union for Reform Judaism. For more information, visit jewsofcolour.ca.

The next speaker in Kolot Mayim’s Building Bridges series is, on Feb. 6, poet, author, literary scholar and internationally recognized speaker on transgender issues Joy Ladin on the topic of Jonah, God and Other Strangers: Reading the Torah from a Transgender Perspective. On Feb. 13, Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo, cantor, rabbi and founder of the Montreal Shira Choir for special needs adults, presents The Power of Music. To register for either or both talks, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Bringing community together

Carmel Tanaka has many diverse community projects on the go. (photo by Heather McCain)

Community engagement professional Carmel Tanaka gave a talk entitled A Day in the Life of a Queer, Neurodivergent, Jewpanese Millennial to a Zoom audience on Dec. 5. The lecture was part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2021-22 speaker series Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity in Jewish Life.

Tanaka, who founded and helms Vancouver’s JQT (pronounced J-Cutie), a nonprofit that advocates for the Jewish queer and trans community through dialogue and education, began her presentation by discussing her Jewish and Japanese heritage and the generational impact of both the Holocaust and the Japanese internment camps in Canada.

She introduced her family through numerous photographs going back two generations; her mother is a first-generation Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli from Haifa and her father is a third-generation Japanese Canadian.

Though she had an opportunity to meet three of her grandparents, they all passed away when she was relatively young. “I was definitely at an age when I was not nearly old enough to ask them the questions that I would desperately want to ask them now, particularly what they went through in the Holocaust, and Japanese Canadian internment,” Tanaka said. “The traumas of those two periods have greatly affected my family and informed the social justice work that I do.”

Fast-forwarding to December 2020, the screen shifted to the scene around the table during her father’s 75th birthday party. On what she described as a “completely normal to me” dining room table were doriyaki (Japanese steamed, sweet-filled pancakes), Jewish coffee cake, Japanese tea and Chanukah candles.

“Perhaps many of the tables in the local community have a similar melding of traditions as well,” she mused.

The offspring of two gifted cooks, Tanaka became a foodie in her own right. Many of her recipes – these include miso maple steelhead trout for Rosh Hashanah and matcha cheesecake for Shavuot – can be found on the internet, on such sites as My Jewish Learning.

With her recipes available online, many people of mixed Jewish and Japanese descent from around the world have reached out to Tanaka, making her realize that the global Jewpanese community is larger than she first thought it was.

Tanaka segued to the importance of names, and how her name differs depending on which group she may be addressing. For example, she uses Carmel in Jewish settings and Aya in Japanese setting because the name Carmel can be difficult to pronounce for Japanese speakers.

She then discussed JQT, which dedicates itself to creating connections and seeking space to celebrate the intersectional identities of Jews of all ages, diverse sexual orientations, as well as gender and sex identities, by “queering” Jewish space and “Jewifying” queer space.

One of the ways she queers Jewish space is through food. A pre-pandemic photo featured her selling community-donated rainbow challot glazed with apricot jam and rainbow sprinkled hamantashen at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

JQT is also a partner organization of a project called Prism, a North American initiative that brings together Jewish artists of colour and is a place where, Tanaka said, she can celebrate all of her identities.

Another JQT venture is the B.C. Jewish Queer and Trans Oral Project, a collection of oral histories conducted in partnership with the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, and the first project of its kind in the province. Its objective is to make the archives more complete by providing the stories of older queer and trans members of the community. The first phase of the project was to conduct the interviews from May 2020 to July 2021. The second phase, now underway, is to use the material for a public online exhibit to give a voice to “a marginalized community within a marginalized community.”

Lastly, and fitting for the time of year, Tanaka spoke about JQT’s Hanukkah Hotties initiative, a daily set of Facebook livestreams throughout the holiday, in which a different guest lights their chanukiyah or shares another tradition. Guests chat about their life, art, activism and intersecting Jewish, queer, trans identities for the duration of the candles’ burning. This year’s lineup included, among others, Karen Newmoon, an Indigenous Jew-ish farmer; the Klezbians, “a band of unruly, chutzpah-licious musicians from the Isle of Klezbos”; and the Empress Mizrahi, a nonbinary/queer Persian Jewish Instagram content creator and activist in Los Angeles.

The pandemic has clearly not slowed Tanaka down by any means. She continues to be involved in another group she founded, Genocide Prevention BC, a cross-cultural collective of provincial representatives committed to the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity.

She also works on her initiative, the Cross Cultural Walking Tours, a grassroots endeavour celebrating the multicultural history of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. These tours build awareness of the contributions of early immigrant communities and take place in May, which, in Canada, is both Asian Heritage Month and Jewish Heritage Month.

Tanaka, who once served as Hillel director at the University of Victoria, was recently named one of seven LGBTQ+ Jews of Colour You Should Know by Be’chol Lashon, a group that gives voice to cultural diversity in the Jewish community. She was also one of four local leaders featured in the article “The Push for Progress,” which was in the Fall/Winter 2021 issue of BCAA magazine.

Tanaka sees herself as well positioned to bring communities together. “As a mixed-race person, I have felt what it’s like to not be fully accepted by my own community. The art of bridging communities and bringing people together is my humble craft,” she said.

On Dec. 19, 6 p.m., Tanaka will take part in a discussion with Sara Yacobi-Harris from the Toronto-based group No Silence On Race, hosted by Victoria’s Temple Emanu-El, called Let’s Talk About Diversity, Equity and Belonging in the Victoria Jewish Community. For more information, visit congregationemanuelnews.wordpress.com/2021/11.

As for Kolot Mayim’s Building Bridges series, Rivka Campbell, co-founder of the organization Jews of Colour Canada, is the next speaker. On Jan. 9, Campbell will talk on the topic Harmony in a Divided Identity: A Minority within a Minority. To register, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Finding the goddess in the Torah

(photo by Yochi Rappeport)

Rabbi Gila Caine of Edmonton’s Temple Beth Ora was the lead-off speaker in November for Kolot Mayim’s six-part 2021/22 series Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity in Jewish Life. Her talk, Toratah / Her Torah: Women Rabbis Revealing the Goddess in Torah, looked at the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) from a less patriarchal perspective.

“It’s not new to have women involved in Jewish life. Women have always been involved in Jewish life in the home and in the family,” Caine began. “The new thing about recent generations is that women are publicly active. That’s a big difference.”

For the last few decades, she said, scholars have gone back into the text and started digging to find hints and remains of ancient goddesses. By goddess, Caine means the “sacred feminine.” The scholars search the texts to see if they can unveil clues, much like archeology, which will allow them to tell different stories than the ones that have already been told.

“It’s not that the researchers find the old stories useless; rather, they see it as just one part of the whole. To expand the story, the researchers pose questions, such as what did women believe in, how did they worship, and what were their lives like and what did God look like to them at that time?” Caine explained. The text is reinterpreted, and turned into commentaries and midrashim. As an example, she introduced the audience to two recent books: Dabri Torah: Israeli Women Interpret the Torah (published this year, in Hebrew) and Torah: A Women’s Commentary (WRJ Press, 2008).

Throughout her talk, Caine wove connections of Asherah, the mother goddess in ancient Semitic religions, to the heroines of the Torah, such as Sarah and Eve (Chava). Asherah is perceived as hiding within the texts. (Asherah, too, was connected to the Tree of Life, which, in images shown during Caine’s presentation, resembled a menorah.)

One midrash highlighted in the talk related to the Binding of Isaac. In it, Sarah goes and spends the night with King Abimelech. She does not sleep with him but still comes back pregnant, leaving Abraham furious. He hears voices telling him he must kill his son. As he raises his hand to slaughter Isaac, suddenly he sees a deer in the bushes.

This is interpreted as the moment of transition into patriarchy. The deer represents the mother goddess who wants to save her son. “As Sarah dies right after the Akedah, she perhaps does so to save her son,” Caine said.

On the subject of Eve, Caine quoted Rabbi Rachel Adler: “the world of patriarchy cries out for mending. A mending world would commit itself to equality and power sharing, to working collectively to fulfil needs and solve problems. Reunited again with the rest of Creation, men and women could learn again to be loving friends as the traditional rabbinic wedding blessing portrays them.”

Caine pointed out that Adler – through her rereading of the text and reinterpreting what a Jewish relationship is about – restructured the Jewish wedding ceremony. She took the Jewish language of covenant into the ceremony and not kinyan, which implies taking ownership, and created a brit avuhim, or lovers’ covenant. (See ritualwell.org/ritual/brit-ahuvim-lovers-covenant.)

Lastly, Caine spoke about a project, led by Israeli-American artist Yael Kanarek, to rewrite and regender the Torah, i.e., a male in the traditional text is now referred to as female and vice versa. Though the story remains the same, there would now be, for example, a female Jacob with 12 daughters and four husbands. “Suddenly, we have a mirror image of Torah,” said Caine. “It’s very interesting to read it and the immense midrash that it creates for Torah, as well as for our own understanding of who is telling the story and who is part of the story.”

When looked at this way, Caine said, new things come up and are discovered in Torah. By finding the sacred feminine in the texts, she said she is able to understand how she relates and could be part of the process of studying Torah.

“It’s part of a larger question of how do we heal our tradition and take a Judaism that seems at times very disconnected from the earth. By being able to access the language of goddess, it has enabled me to reimagine and to rethink how I do ritual and Judaism, and how I do everyday life – that aims not at the goddess at all – and create a Judaism that speaks to us now in our lives today.”

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Caine graduated the Hebrew University with a master’s in contemporary Judaism and received her rabbinic ordination at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Israeli program in 2011. Her rabbinic thesis explored liturgical, spiritual and ceremonial aspects of birth in Jewish tradition and contemporary practice. Stemming from that, as well as her years as volunteer at a rape crisis centre, she is one of the founders of the Israeli rabbinic women’s group B’not Dinah, creating a female and feminist rabbinic tradition of healing after sexual trauma.

For more information about Beit Toratah visit beittoratah.org. To register for the next Building Bridges lecture, go to kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Diverse learning series

Rabbi Gila Caine (photo from Kolot Mayim)

Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria welcomes back Rabbi Gila Caine, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Ora in Edmonton, to speak on the topic Toratah/Her Torah: Women Rabbis Revealing the Goddess in Torah.

The Nov. 7, 11 a.m., lecture on Zoom kicks off a six-part series of talks called Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity in Jewish Life. The community is invited to listen and learn from Indigenous, Black, Asian, feminist and differently-gendered and differently-abled advocates who are working to make our world a better place.

As a people who have experienced the devastating impact of antisemitism and hatred, Judaism commits us to the responsibility of tikkun olam (repairing our world). In that spirit, Kolot Mayim’s series of speakers will lead attendees on a journey to deepen their understanding of these contemporary issues and how they can support those who do not feel included.

Kolot Mayim’s Rabbi Lynn Greenough describes the series as “an opportunity to build bridges – bridges that enable us to link to what is and what can be, to step beyond our own particular experiences.” The Hebrew word for bridge is gesher, she explained, pointing to the song, “Kol Ha’Olam Kulo,” “the whole world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid.”

In the series opener, Caine will explore how, throughout the millennia, rabbinic tradition, and especially written tradition, was composed from within a man-focused and -experienced perspective. Now, after around half a century of ordaining women, there is a growing corpus of documented writing flowing from within woman’s experiences and interpretations of Torah and life. In her talk, Caine will read a few Torah commentaries written by (women) rabbis from North America and Israel, as examples of weaving together rabbinic and women’s experience into something new.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Caine graduated Hebrew University with a master’s in contemporary Judaism and received her rabbinic ordination at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Israeli program in 2011. Her rabbinic thesis explored liturgical, spiritual and ceremonial aspects of birth in Jewish tradition and contemporary practice.

Stemming from that, as well as her years as a volunteer at a rape crisis centre, Caine is one of the founders of the Israeli rabbinic women’s group B’not Dinah, creating a female and feminist rabbinic tradition of healing after sexual trauma. She now serves as rabbi at Temple Beth Ora and her Building Bridges talk is co-sponsored with her shul.

Other speakers in the 2021/22 series are:

Carmel Tanaka, founder and executive director of JQT Vancouver (Jewish Queer and Trans Vancouver) on A Day in the Life of a Queer, Neurodivergent, Jewpanese Millennial (Dec. 5);
Rivka Campbell, executive director of Jews of Colour Canada, on Harmony in a Divided Identity: A Minority Within a Minority (Jan. 9);
Joy Ladin, poet, author and first openly transgender professor at a Jewish institution, on Jonah, God and Other Strangers: Reading the Torah from a Trans Perspective (Feb. 6);
Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo, director of the Shira Choir, Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Montreal, on The Power of Music: In Honour of Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (Feb. 13); and
Patricia June Vickers, Indigenous artist and independent consultant, and Rabbi Adam Cutler, senior rabbi of Adath Israel Congregation in Toronto, on An Indigenous and Jewish Dialogue on Truth and Reconciliation (March 20).

Kolot Mayim has been active for 20 years and this is the fourth year that the synagogue is offering this speaker series. Talks are free and held on the scheduled Sundays from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. PST. To register, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

– Courtesy Kolot Mayim

Worshipping with joy

On May 2, Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria welcomes singer, songwriter, teacher, music producer and cantorial soloist Len Udow to speak on Worship with Joy. Drawing on both secular and cantorial music, Udow will recall his journey from 1960s coffee-house folk singer to cantorial soloist at Temple Shalom, Winnipeg’s Reform congregation, where he helps to officiate and teach.

photo - Cantor Len Udow — Cantor Len Udow *(photo from Kolot Mayim)*

By sharing both his own story and performing live with vocals and guitar, Udow wants to show how we can “carry our ancient narratives to other hearts and souls … respecting the old traditions while introducing innovation in prayer and spirituality.” As he describes it, “In Judaism, we see ourselves enlivening prayer with breath and melody, revealing the joy, praise and gratitude embedded in our heritage.”

For Udow, the phrase iv’du b’simchah (worship with joy) has been “a call to service, putting this musician on the bimah (altar) of a little prairie shul … where I have been privileged to lead a kahal (assembly) to a closer musical fellowship and learning.”

With humour, Udow quotes his mentor, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom: “When Jews talk they argue; when they sing, they sing together.” To Sacks, “Words are the language of the Jewish mind; music is the language of the Jewish soul.”

Udow has performed on concert stages, at festivals, on radio and television, and on numerous recordings. As well as playing the piano, banjo and guitar, he was a featured vocalist and music producer with fellow Winnipegger, Fred Penner, for more than two decades.

Worship with Joy is the final lecture of Kolot Mayim’s six-part series called Building Bridges: Language, Song and Story. It starts on Zoom at 11 a.m. and registration is via kolotmayimreformtemple.com.