LGBTQ+

The “choosing people”

Angelica Poversky (photo from Angelica Poversky)

Temple Sholom Sisterhood’s social action committee invited members of the community to broaden their understanding of who is Jewish and consider how expansive the community could be in the first of its Tikkun Atzmi Series: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World. The Feb. 4 Zoom event featured panelists Carmel Tanaka, a community engagement professional, and poet Angelica Poversky.

Tikkun atzmi, to repair oneself, is considered the first step on the path towards tikkun olam, repair of the world. Along the way, there are also tikkun bayit, strengthening the family, and tikkun kahal, healing the community.

Tikkun atzmi implies looking inwards and reflecting on what should be taking place within the Jewish community, particularly as it pertains to marginalized groups, such as people of colour, LGBTQ+ individuals and others who consider themselves distanced from the tribe. The past year, the organizers said, has highlighted “so many of the inequities that persist in our world.”

“Not only am I deeply invested in making our Judaism grounded in social justice any opportunity I get, I know and love many Jews who feel as though they didn’t have a home in the community and I am invested in changing that,” moderator Dalya Israel began.

Tanaka spoke about coming to terms with the descriptions that derive from being the child of a multi-racial marriage. Often, she would refer to herself as half-Jewish and half-Japanese. “It wasn’t until years later that I realized I am not half of anything – I am fully Jewish and fully Japanese-Canadian. I can be all of these things and celebrate all of these things,” she told the Zoom audience.

Carmel Tanaka (photo by Manoa1)

Tanaka recalled experiences of her time as director of the University of Victoria Hillel, where she encountered several students who felt alienated from the community because they were not halachically Jewish. Realizing that it can be traumatic for someone to be told they don’t belong in a group, she endeavoured to create a safe space at UVic for anyone who may be Jewish, Jew-ish or Jew-curious.

Poversky referenced the exclusion that some Jews within the LGBTQ+ community have endured. “It is horrible that people are not fully accepted,” they said. “What is our goal if not to uplift everyone? Why create barriers? Those feelings of persecution can be very painful, so why place them on others?”

The discussion touched on the causes for the limited presence of younger and/or marginalized people in synagogues and other areas of Jewish life. Tanaka recounted a story about her mother who, years ago, was told by a synagogue that she was welcome to come to services but was asked to leave her husband at home.

While attitudes may have improved since then, there is still much more room available for inclusion and diversity, said Tanaka. “I feel, in order for the term Jewish to be more expansive, it needs to expand far enough to be a safe space for anyone who wants to identify as Jewish,” she said.

Israel, citing Sarah Hurwitz’s 2019 book Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality and a Deeper Connection to Life – in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There), put forward the notion that, instead of thinking of themselves as the “Chosen People,” Jews could be the “choosing people.”

“Every day, we wake and choose to be Jews, and the way we live our life,” Israel said.

“Community happens when we complete ourselves,” Poversky added. They spoke about moving away from “action-based” assumptions about Judaism or sexual identity and attaching more importance to the declaration of one’s identity. That is, one can say they are Jewish without the acts of celebrating Chanukah or reading Torah. Implicit in Poversky’s statement was the “restrictive construct” within institutions that defines or even “polices” the identity of another individual because that person belongs to a marginalized group.

Tanaka shared experiences of visiting synagogues and being asked about her name, her lineage and her proficiency in Hebrew. This line of questioning to Jews of colour and others, she believes, is what has caused people to distance themselves from the Jewish community.

“It is the dance of having to prove who you are through actions,” Tanaka explained. “It is what we call microaggressions. When you have this happen over and over again, it can be emotionally exhausting.”

Tanaka, a queer Jewpanese woman of colour, is founder of JQT Vancouver (pronounced “J-Cutie”), Vancouver’s Jewish queer trans nonprofit. She also leads a monthly Zoom call for Jewpanese and their families from all over the world.

Poversky is a queer non-binary Russian-Jewish poet who has more than seven years of facilitation experience. They’ve taught poetry workshops in schools, in libraries, with youth groups, in community centres, and at dozens of festivals across North America. Much of their activism has been devoted to queer and trans celebration.

The Sisterhood’s three Tikkun Atzmi panels are designed to fuel the action committee’s dedication to social justice. Future panels will invite participants to elucidate on ways of bringing awareness to systemic inequity and its impacts on the Jewish community. They will also delve into their Judaism and explore sacred teachings for guidance in caring for and making space for one another.

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

Jewish film fest runs in March

Niv Nissim, left, and John Benjamin Hickey co-star in Sublet, one of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival’s many offerings this year. (photo from facebook.com/subletfilm)

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival will take place exclusively online March 4-14. And, while you might think that COVID’s continued presence would necessitate a trimmed-down festival lineup, there are as many high-quality and diverse films being offered this year as in previous years. We give JI readers a small teaser of what’s to come, with more reviews in our next issue.

Sublet explores divides

In the film Sublet, a New York Times travel writer whose shtick is to get a feel for a city in just five days arrives in Tel Aviv. Michael (John Benjamin Hickey) has booked the apartment of film student Tomer (Niv Nissim) but, realizing the student has nowhere to go, the pair end up as temporary roommates.

The somewhat uptight middle-aged Ashkenazi American, standing out like a sore thumb in his semi-casual blazer, is contrasted with the hot-tempered, in-your-face young Sabra. The differences between the two men – and, by extension, between two generations of Jews, of gay (or, in Tomer’s case, possibly bisexual) men, of Israelis and Diaspora Jews – form the heart of the leisurely paced film. Just as Tomer ridicules Michael’s touristy ideas of Tel Aviv’s highlights, the cinematography captures the city at some of its grittiest best.

Is it a generational divide or a cultural one that has Tomer and Michael adopting wildly different sensibilities toward the tragedies of recent Jewish history and the experiences of gay men in the AIDS crisis, which Michael’s first book explored?

“It’s so depressing,” Tomer says of the AIDS pandemic. “Why does everything always have to go back to that?”

A more stark response – and one that is darkly humorous but startlingly confusing to Michael and perhaps many viewers – comes when one of Tomer’s friends is discussing fleeing Tel Aviv for a more successful artistic life in Berlin.

“It’s a bit odd that you’re moving to Germany, the place that symbolizes Jewish tragedy,” Michael observes. The Israeli pair pauses for a moment, then burst into hysterical laughter.

“Berlin’s, like, the coolest place,” Tomer assures Michael.

The theme of patrimony runs through the drama. Michael and his partner are struggling to find a surrogate for a baby they want to parent. Tomer, it turns out, is himself the product of a mother who chose the path of artificial insemination. Michael is wondering if he is getting too old to start afresh as a father. Tomer, in his clumsy way, may be struggling with the absence of his own paternal influences.

The bonds and divisions between generations, between conceptions of the past, between Israel and exile are explored but unresolved in this pleasant (if sometimes PG) film. The brief glimpse of Tomer’s hilariously awful horror film is just a bonus.

A shiva from hell

photo - In Shiva Baby, Danielle (Rachel Sennott) gets her comeuppance. — In Shiva Baby, Danielle (Rachel Sennott) gets her comeuppance. *(photo from tiff.net/events/shiva-baby)*

When her parents browbeat her into attending a shiva, Danielle does not expect to run into Maya. The two young women have an entwined past, so much so that other attendees can’t remember which one is which. The film Shiva Baby quickly turns into a subtly riotous adventure in the joys and drawbacks of tight-knit communities and the challenges of keeping secrets in a yenta-intensive environment.

Though their shared history is a source of immense awkwardness and brilliantly snarky sparring, for Danielle (Rachel Sennott), this shiva is a house of horrors. Having told so many lies to cover her failure to launch successfully into adulthood, every turn, every new face at the shiva, is an opportunity for sequential interrogations and fresh humiliation. It becomes an unintentional parlour game to piece together the variety of stories Danielle has told of changing majors, areas of specialization and plans for the future. Family, friends and acquaintances compare conflicting tales Danielle has woven over the years, creating an elaborate narrative of mostly imagined endeavours.

Her parents Debbie (Polly Draper) and Joel (Fred Melamed) seem both oblivious dupes and co-conspirators in Danielle’s web of deceptions. The loving but exasperatingly overbearing parents add to their daughter’s discomfort time and again, leading to an understated climax that literally shoves Danielle’s bad choices in her own face.

This “comedy of discomfort” is a masterpiece of interfering adults and world-weary youth. The unifying bond between generations is a shared art for the backhanded compliment and straight-up insults. After Danielle spills coffee all over herself and a friend’s baby, her mother offers solace: “Well, thank God Sheila’s coffee is always lukewarm.”

Shiva Baby, a Canadian-American co-production, features a musical score that amusingly invokes the horror genre to emphasize the nightmare scenario in which Danielle finds herself, almost exclusively of her own design. Any awkwardness on the part of the viewer is alleviated by schadenfreude that whatever she has coming is probably well overdue.

For tickets to the festival, visit vjff.org.

Novel journeys shared

Ilana Masad participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 23. (photo from the JBF)

Women are at the forefront of two new books. Specifically, how we perceive their (our) roles. Especially, with regard to motherhood.

photo - Myriam Steinberg participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 24 — Myriam Steinberg participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 24. *(photo from the JBF)*

Ilana Masad’s debut novel, All My Mother’s Lovers, is told from the perspectives of a daughter and her mother, and highlights how much we cannot know about the people close to us, while Myriam Steinberg’s graphic novel, Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of Infertility, is a no holds barred sharing of her challenge to become a mom. Both Masad and Steinberg are participating in this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which takes place online Feb. 20-25.

While the premise is a stretch to my worldview, All My Mother’s Lovers is an extremely relatable read on many levels. Twenty-something Maggie’s mother, Iris, dies in a car crash and Maggie must return home for the funeral and shiva. But, along with her will, Iris has left behind six letters – all addressed to men Maggie hasn’t heard of – and Maggie quickly flees the communal mourning to deliver these missives.

Leaving behind her grief-addled father, who has been the emotional-support parent for her, and her younger brother, with whom she has an older-sister-bossy relationship, Maggie attempts to track down the unknown men. The space from her family and from her current partner, with whom there might actually be a substantial, meaningful relationship brewing, allows Maggie to deal with her long-held insecurities and naïve perceptions of what it means to be married, what it means to be a parent; basically, what it means to be a loving and reliable person. We get to know Iris through the letters and, though Maggie doesn’t get to benefit from these personal musings, she does learn more about her mom, which allows her to connect more deeply with her father, as well as to others in her life.

Masad’s writing is crisp, intelligent, wry and sensitive. The novel starts with a bang – Maggie answering her brother’s call (telling her about their mother’s death) while having sex with her girlfriend. The pace emphasizes Maggie’s confusion as she tries to understand her mother, and herself. Iris’s letters offer slower moments of reflection, but also were a way for Iris to try and better understand her own missteps and successes.

Steinberg’s Catalogue Baby also took me into a world I’ve never personally experienced, though I do know people who have so wanted to have a child but either could not conceive or had great difficulty conceiving. Steinberg’s refreshing openness on a topic that is often spoken about in whispers, if at all, is most welcome. And her voice is amplified by the colour-bursting, energetic and imaginative illustrations by Christache Ross, which take readers right close up into the physical and emotional upheaval and turmoil that Steinberg has lived.

Catalogue Baby takes readers from Year One (starting January 2014), and Steinberg’s admission that her dedication to work, organizing the In the House Festival for 11 years, only occasionally gave her the time to put her “loneliness and unrequited motherhood” front of mind. Almost 40 years old at this point, she “didn’t have time to waste with someone who didn’t eventually want a family.” But, people being who we are, Steinberg nonetheless tries to make an unsatisfying relationship work, all while her biological clock (which follows her throughout the novel’s journey) ticked away. From when she finally decides to go it alone to when she gives birth to twins in late 2018, she goes through much. The list includes 123 blood draws, 31 ultrasounds, multiple fertility treatments, five pregnancies, thousands of supplements, about $100,000, help from dozens of family and friends, etc., etc. – and “25 litres of tears.”

To hear more about and from Steinberg, Masad and many other fabulous writers, check out this year’s Jewish Book Festival: jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Complexities of Poland’s past

Andrzej Mańkowski, Poland’s consul-general in Vancouver, shared some reflections on his country’s history with the Jewish Independent, including about the Ładoś Group, which tried to help Jews escape the Nazis by the issuing of fake passports. (photo from Andrzej Mańkowski)

The wartime actions of Poland and its people provide a prime example of the human capacity for good and evil. Many Poles today proudly point out that there are more of their compatriots recognized in Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations than there are heroes of any other nationality. By contrast, the work of Polish-Canadian historian Jan Grabowski and a team of researchers in Poland chronicles in great detail the collaboration by Polish officials and ordinary citizens in assisting the Nazis in the goal of executing the “Final Solution” in that country.

Poland’s government prefers to focus on the more positive fact. So sensitive and contentious is the history that, in 2018, Poland passed – then, in the face of international outrage, rescinded – a law that criminalized expressions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. At the time, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin acknowledged that many Poles had aided Jews during the war era, but also that “Poland and Poles had a hand in the extermination” of Jews during the Holocaust.

Poland’s consul-general in Vancouver spoke to the Jewish Independent last week and shared some personal reflections on his country’s history – including how his own grandfather was murdered in Auschwitz.

Andrzej Mańkowski wanted readers of the Independent to know of a recently discovered story of a group of Polish diplomats in Switzerland who provided faked passports to help Jews flee Europe.

Called the Ładoś Group, after Aleksander Ładoś, the Polish envoy in Bern from 1940 to 1945, the six individuals included four Polish diplomats, one of whom was Jewish, and two representatives of Jewish organizations that conspired with the officials. The RELICO Assistance Committee for the Jewish Victims of the War, established by the World Jewish Congress, and the Agudat Yisrael worked with Ładoś and his colleagues.

In addition to Ładoś himself, three other Polish diplomats were members of the group: Stefan Ryniewicz, Konstanty Rokicki and Juliusz Kühl. The two members of Jewish organizations in Switzerland who rounded out the group were Abraham Silberschein of RELICO and Chaim Eiss of Agudath Israel.

Beginning in 1941 (or possibly earlier) until the end of 1943, the six men illegally purchased passports and citizenship certificates from Latin American countries, primarily Paraguay. The documents were sent to Jews in nations under German occupation, where possessing them increased chances of survival.

“Many of those passports came too late to save people,” Mańkowski said. “The recipients or the holders of the passports ended up in Auschwitz in spite of already having the false passports in their hands.”

As many as 10,000 forged passports may have been obtained, but most reached their intended recipients – primarily German and Dutch Jews, as well as some Polish Jews – too late. Of about 3,200 passports issued to individuals whose names are known, it is estimated that about 800 individuals – approximately 25% – survived the war.

Mańkowski’s own family history is deeply impacted by the horrors of the Nazi era. His grandfather, Emeryk Mańkowski, fled Ukraine after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and settled in central Poland, where his wife’s family owned land. Part of that land was forested and, during the German occupation, Nazi officials discovered a radio communications device in the forest on the property. Unable to identify the owner of the contraband device, they arrested 10 members of the local intelligentsia – including Emeryk Mańkowski – and sent them to Auschwitz as a warning to the rest of the population.

At the time, Polish inmates were permitted 100 zlotys per month from their family. During the second month of his incarceration, Mańkowski’s family had their monthly stipend returned, with a message telling them that the prisoner was no longer present in the camp.

“The German Nazi bureaucracy was so precise and honest to send back money after killing the victim,” said his grandson, the consul-general.

image - As many as 10,000 forged passports may have been obtained, but most reached their intended recipients too late. Of about 3,200 passports issued to individuals whose names are known, it is estimated that about 800 individuals survived the war — As many as 10,000 forged passports may have been obtained, but most reached their intended recipients too late. Of about 3,200 passports issued to individuals whose names are known, it is estimated that about 800 individuals survived the war. *(image from Andrzej Mańkowski)*

While Poles suffered at the hands of the Nazis, Mańkowski acknowledges the magnitude is incomparable. Three million Polish Jews died during the Holocaust and, during the same period, three million non-Jewish Poles also died, he said. This represented about 10% of the larger Polish population, but 90% of the Jewish population. After the war, he said, a Polish family of 10 would have a relative missing from their holiday table. A Polish Jew from a family of 10 would be alone.

The consul lamented that Poles and Jews have incompatible narratives.

“We have two separate histories,” he said, citing the visits by Israeli students to the memorial sites of the Shoah in Poland. “These groups of Jewish youths from Israel walk around in Warsaw and see only ghetto, only death all around. They never see us, living Poles. They are coming with bodyguards, they are insulated from Poles.”

The controversy around the now-rescinded law proscribing discussion of Polish complicity led to a major diplomatic eruption with Israel, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki acknowledged that it was not any respect for civil liberties or historical veracity that led to the reversal, but international pressure.

“Those who say that Poland may be responsible for the crimes of World War II deserve jail terms,” Morawiecki said at the time. “But we operate in an international context and we take that into account.”

Chrystia Freeland, then Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, wrote on Twitter that Canada is “concerned by the potential impact on free speech” of the Polish law and urged that country to “ensure open discussion and education about the horrors of the Nazi death camps.”

The consul emphasized that the law didn’t apply to scientific publication, research or artistic activity, as these fields were excluded from the jurisdiction of this law.

World attention has focused on Poland in recent years not only because of concerns around free expression and inquiry into Holocaust-era history. Poland has been called the worst country in the European Union for gay rights. Expressions of hate speech are leveled against LGBTQ+ Poles by individuals at the highest levels of government. There is a lack of legal protections for sexual minorities and criminal charges have been laid against individuals exhibiting Pride flags. Dozens of Polish communities have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.”

Mańkowski acknowledged that Poland is a conservative country. Last month, a new abortion law was promulgated, banning abortion in almost all cases.

“It’s a question of some conservative attitudes and opinions on the part of Polish society,” he said. “We are quite conservative, that’s true…. It’s a hot discussion within Polish society and, if you follow polls and opinion research, you will see the real judgment of Polish society and maybe the political system is not following the tendencies of the changing trends.”

Recording LGBTQ+ history

Embarking on a new archival project: left to right, Ye’ela Eilon-Heiber, Lily Hoenig, Mickey Morgan, Madison Slobin, Carmel Tanaka, Holly Steele, Avi Grundner and Alysa Routtenberg. (photo from JQT and JMABC)

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia (JMABC) and JQT Vancouver are seeking to document the history of local LGBTQ+ Jews through a joint initiative called On the Record: The BC Jewish Queer and Trans Oral History Project.

While the JMABC has an extensive – closing in on 1,000 – and diverse collection of oral histories, the experiences and stories of LGBTQ+ Jewish community members are not prominently featured. This is something the museum would like to change.

“We do a lot of oral histories and we typically target people in their 70s and 80s, for a number of reasons,” explained JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg of the process. “Generally, it’s a good age because people begin to feel reflective. They may have grandchildren with whom they would like to share their stories, they have wound their professional lives down and they are not yet suffering from memory or health issues.”

In addition, she said, given that a whole life history requires a significant story to tell, the interviews tend to feature older people.

And this might be one of the reasons why many of the oral histories of LGBTQ+ Jews have not yet been shared, according to Carmel Tanaka, JQT project coordinator.

“I have a friend who takes oral histories of LGBTQ seniors through UBC,” Tanaka told the Independent. “She says it’s hard to get people to stop talking about their lives once they get started. That is not the Jewish experience. We have a close-knit community and many older members fear being out in the Jewish community. They may be out in other aspects of their lives but not in the Jewish context, so many of them have remained silent.”

JQT (pronounced J-cutie) is a relatively new Jewish queer and trans group. Established in 2018, it aims to promote diversity and inclusion by “queering Jewish space and Jewifying queer space,” said Tanaka. The group approached the JMABC about the oral history project last year and interviewer training for the project was completed in January.

“We had six JQT members who trained as interviewers. They were ready to go and then COVID hit,” said Tanaka. “We had hoped to get 30 interviews done in three months. It’s been hard to get interviews done because the technology is difficult for some of our interviewees.”

Routtenberg agreed that people tend to prefer an in-person interview than one over the phone or via Zoom. “The interviews take between one and two hours,” she explained. “It’s a long time to be on the phone or in front of a computer.”

That said, a number of interviews have been completed, so the first phase of the project is underway, with the goal of 30 interviews conducted and transcribed. “Our objective is to reach a cross-section of LGBTQ Jews from across the province,” said Tanaka.

Both Routtenberg and Tanaka stressed that anonymity is provided for those who would prefer to keep their identities private.

The next phase of the project is to translate the interviews into a public program.

“What the interviews tell us will inform us as to the most appropriate form the material will take,” said Routtenberg. “Among our options are an online exhibition, a podcast, a physical exhibition…. There are so many possibilities. Hopefully, there will be many phases over many years.”

Routtenberg explained that the JMABC is always looking to build relationships with individuals and organizations both within and outside of the Jewish community. She said she was thrilled when Tanaka approached her to do this project together, and Jewish Family Services Vancouver is also helping, supporting the interview experience as needed.

Having the oral history of LGBTQ+ Jews as part of the JMABC records is helping accomplish the mission of JQT. “LGBTQ people have always been in our community,” said Tanaka. “This is an opportunity to make them feel included.”

For more information on how to participate in this project, or to nominate someone to be interviewed, contact Routtenberg at [email protected] or 604-257-5199.

Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.

Hurdles to become a doctor

Ruth Simkin with her dog, Kelly. (photo by Chris Wilson)

Feminism is really true equality between women and men; nothing more, and nothing less,” Ruth Simkin writes in her new book, Dear Sophie: Life Lessons in Feminism & Medicine, a memoir dedicated to her great-niece.

“There are many people who scoff at the word ‘feminism,’” Simkin adds. “But consider this – when I was in my first year of medical school, I, and any other woman, could not get a credit card in our own name. Until 1974, a husband’s signature was needed for women to have credit cards. At that time, I met women who were teachers who lost their jobs because they and their husbands wanted to start a family and they became pregnant – a no-no for working teachers until 1978. I could go on and on with examples like this to show why feminism was, and still is, such an important part of all our lives.”

Born in Winnipeg in 1944, Simkin has prevailed over many obstacles throughout her life and career. In Dear Sophie, readers join her as she struggles to get into medical school.

“There was stiff competition to get into an innovative medical program launched at the University of Calgary in the late 1960s,” she told the Independent from her home in Victoria. “I was one of 32 of roughly 1,200 applicants to be accepted.”

Admission to the program, however, would turn out to be an easier hurdle than those that were yet to come during her schooling and subsequent training. The length of her time in med school is replete with stories of sexual harassment and discrimination by both fellow classmates and senior members of the faculty.

“Male doctors, on more than one occasion, did all they could to get me expelled from med school, but I stood my ground,” Simkin said.

She managed to complete her residency, despite being blocked at almost every step, and clashing with the established medical community. But she prevailed. She was the first U of C med school graduate to open a practice – one that thrived – while also working as a professor and preceptor at the school.

In the memoir, Simkin details her experiences from that time to the present and uses her account as a way to demonstrate to Sophie, and to other women, how to live a happy, feminist life. She hopes that Sophie, a pre-adolescent during the time Simkin was writing the book, will learn from her experiences before entering adulthood.

Simkin’s long and varied career has seen her undertake many ventures. In the 1980s, she learned acupuncture in Shanghai and, ultimately, became the first physician to be approved by the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons to incorporate acupuncture in a medical practice. Later that decade, she went to London, England, to study with Dr. Katharina Dalton, who brought premenstrual syndrome to the world’s attention and also coined the term.

Upon her return to Canada, Simkin opened the first PMS clinic in Western Canada. She also has opened Western Canada’s first hologram gallery, produced concerts, been involved in theatre projects and started the lesbian and gay political action group CLAGPAG.

In the 1990s, she moved to Salt Spring Island, where she became a farmer – growing “yuppie” veggies. A return to medicine saw her become the first fellow to study palliative care at the University of British Columbia. In 2014, she was honoured with a life membership from the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Among her other published works, Simkin has written What Makes You Happy, a collection of short stories, both autobiographical and fictional; The Y Syndrome, a medical thriller set in 1990s Calgary; and Like an Orange on a Seder Plate, a feminist Haggadah. The Jagged Years of Ruthie J (2012) is an autobiographical account of her experiences in Winnipeg before medical school.

Over the years, she has written scores of medical papers and contributed to textbooks, as well as mixed media presentations. Having travelled extensively, she has an (as-yet) unpublished book, Come Away with Me, about her journeys through China.

Dear Sophie received the 2019 Rainbow Award in the LGBT biography/memoir category. In its review of the book, the prize committee said, “Dear Sophie is a flawless memoir that is not only a story of Dr. Ruth Simkin, but a story of feminism and women in Canada and the field of medicine, skilfully woven together with valuable life lessons.”

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

Mystery photo … Jan. 31/20

Congregation Or Shalom members and others at the 19th annual Pride Parade, 1996. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.01103)

If you know someone in these photos, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected] or 604-257-5199. To find out who has been identified in the photos, visit jewishmuseum.ca/blog.

Last Cabaret almost sold out

Joanna Garfinkel is part of the creative team behind the world première production of Berlin: The Last Cabaret, part of the PuSh festival. (photo from the artist)

The world première of Berlin: The Last Cabaret, presented at Performance Works Jan. 23-26 by City Opera Vancouver in association with Sound the Alarm: Music/Theatre, is almost sold out. Part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the only tickets that remain will be sold at the door, though writer and Jewish community member Joanna Garfinkel told the Independent, “I hope we are able to add more presentation opportunities, as well, since this is truly becoming an exciting and rich production.”

Set in Nazi Germany in 1934, a group of artists must decide whether or not to perform their new political show – which, reads the press release for Berlin, “challenges state media, calls out the Nazi classification of gay individuals as ‘degenerates’ and includes parodic inflection that women are being marginalized” under the new regime – or save themselves.

The opera takes place “two weeks after ‘the Night of Long Knives,’” said Garfinkel, “when the future had been cast, but many were not yet seeing it, including my own family. One thing that interested me a great deal is how people are forced to make compromises under oppression, and even make excuses for what’s happening around them.”

The “Night of the Long Knives” was the June 30, 1934, purge by Hitler of more than 85 members of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party’s initial paramilitary wing.

Rather than being a satire itself, Garfinkel explained that Berlin: The Last Cabaret “is more an unearthing of the under-heard Jewish and queer artists who flourished in the Weimar era and were crushed by the Holocaust. The humour we employ is their urgent satire, which feels fresh and relevant with all that is going in the world right now.

“My own family escaped from Berlin to Winnipeg (eventually), so I am both bound to respect and honour the history, and also privy to the dark humour we employ about it.”

City Opera Vancouver approached Garfinkel last spring, she said. They had “heard about me from my dramaturgical work with Playwrights Theatre Centre and the historically based Japanese Problem for my own company, Universal Limited. I was excited by the opportunity to work with an opera company, which would be new to me, but on something quite close to my heart, history and interest.”

The relevance of the opera was one of the reasons she joined its creative team. In regard to choosing projects in general, she said, “Right now, it feels like art must be speaking to the world and on behalf of marginalized voices. Theatre is too much work, and the world too messed up, to work on projects that don’t resonate on an activist level. I am lucky right now to get to choose to work on things that are so resonant.”

Garfinkel, who is billed as librettist for the production, clarified that categorization.

“I contributed story, structure and additional dialogue for this piece,” she said, “but it’s important to note that the songs themselves are historical, written by composers Eisler, Spoliansky, Hollaender and Weil, so I am not, technically, the librettist. However, building a story and play around preexisting songs presents its own challenges. It was of central importance to me that the Jewish/queer and other marginalized artists of the time were centred in our story.

“We were working with excellent (but unavailable!) collaborators in our composers and, together with director Alan Corbishley, music director and historian Roger Parton and choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, tried to honour their work and build a vital story around it.”

Cheyenne Friedenberg is also a member of the Jewish community.

Berlin: The Last Cabaret stars actors with a background in music and spoken theatre, rather than traditional opera singers, and each performer, according to the press release, “was involved in the creation of their on-stage characters and storylines.” The production features a live four-person band.

For more information on PuSh, visit pushfestival.ca.

Doing work he believes holy

Irwin Keller will share some of his eclectic interests at Limmud Vancouver in March. (photo from Limmud Vancouver)

Irwin Keller is the kind of person most of us would like to be: curious about everything, smart, creative, always learning, always teaching. As one of the invited presenters for Limmud Vancouver ’20, he’ll be sharing some of his interests with the local community.

Keller’s first career was a long stint as a human rights lawyer specializing in AIDS and HIV-related discrimination. But, as a lifelong amateur musician, he also co-created the drag group the Kinsey Sicks. In 2006, he ended up serving as a lay leader for his congregation, which finally pushed him to go to rabbinical school, where he is now finishing up his training.

“I had always wanted to be a rabbi. When I had finished my undergraduate and was looking at applying to rabbinical school, in those days, there were no seminaries that accepted openly gay students,” Keller said. “I couldn’t do it unless I was willing to go back in the closet that I had just come out of – the closet was still warm – and I wasn’t willing to. It felt wrong. It was important for me to be in the rabbinate as who I was.”

Within just a year of deciding he couldn’t be a closeted rabbi, the AIDS epidemic began to tear through the gay community, and Keller began working on civil rights cases.

“Things can happen to people whether they’re legal or not. Often through some sort of ruse, or subterfuge,” he said. “As long as people didn’t want people with AIDS renting from them or working for them, they were going to find some way to get rid of them. That was our work.”

This work, which Keller describes as both holy and harrowing, led to the creation of the Kinsey Sicks. “Our community needed to laugh, needed to be delighted out of what we were experiencing every day.”

Momentum built and, after a few years, the group had an offer to produce their show off-Broadway.

“That was the point when we all quit our jobs. That was the last I ever practised law,” he said.

In all, Keller performed with the group for 21 years. Along the way, he taught himself enough Yiddish to be able to bring Yiddish music into the show, to both hilarious and touching effect. He had a recording of his great-grandmother singing the heart-tugging “Papirosn,” about an orphan boy trying to get by selling cigarettes on a street corner. Usually sung by women performers to mimic a child’s voice, Keller performed it in his drag persona Winnie, channeling the spirit of his great-grandmother and Yiddish theatre divas of a bygone era. You can watch it on YouTube: Keller playing a much older Jewish woman playing a young boy – gender collapses à la Victor/Victoria.

“Over the course of the maybe 18 years that I performed it, it was the most commented-on piece of music that we performed,” he said. “People were so moved – including non-Jews – that they were getting a window into Jewish culture that they were not getting from modern American culture.”

Keller’s U-turn into the rabbinate is perhaps long in coming, but not surprising. He describes both his civil rights law career and his drag performing career as holy work: the yin and yang of what a gay community needed at a devastating moment in its history. Moving onto the pulpit only took that energy to a different place.

“I moved to Sonoma County and joined a synagogue whose rabbi was in the process of leaving and there was a lot of turmoil. I volunteered to do some of the rabbinical work while they were searching,” he said. “But what came out of me was a lifetime of longing.”

And the congregation needed his brand of leadership, too. “I think my being the singing drag queen rabbi gave people a different kind of welcome,” he said.

At Limmud Vancouver, Keller will be sharing two more of his interests: Yiddish poetry, and queer readings of Torah. In a session on the Yiddish poet Itsik Manger, Keller will lead discussion on the playful Bible-inspired poem cycle known as the “Khumesh lider.”

“The way he plays with the looping of time, the anachronisms, in a way that is also invited by rabbinic tradition – there is no before or after Torah, everything can take place in any order,” explained Keller. “So you can get the Turkish sultan visiting Hagar, you can get Ruth and Polish peasants, and it’s still Torah.”

Keller’s other Limmud seminar will examine the story of Joseph.

“I try to identify where there are queer currents running through Torah,” he said. “I don’t specifically mean exclusively gay-themed moments, but moments that seem to suggest a certain kind of outsiderness and outsider outlook and alternative biography from what you’ve come to expect from ancient tales.”

Joseph falls into this category because of his distance from the normative family. Joseph spends most of his life at odds with a family that made him unsafe. His power comes when he is able to be away from this family and incognito, and his unmasking is both dangerous and liberating.

“What’s interesting to me here,” said Keller, “is that the rabbinic tradition finds him to be problematic. They have a tendency to locate his problematicity in his gender and sexuality. So, it’s not like we as modern people are for the first time noticing that there might be a queer angle to this story. For 1,000 years he’s been alarming the rabbis.”

Keller speaks of human rights, Jewish drag, Yiddish poetry and queer Torah with unflagging energy. But this isn’t even all. Get Keller talking about angels in the Jewish imagination, and it’s off to the races again: “There is a tradition around angels who densely populate all our mystical texts, as well as running rampant through Torah,” he said. “It’s interesting to me the worldview that holds angels as present in every space and every function. Every natural force is controlled by an angel, every period of time. Every hour of the day has an angel that oversees it.”

Perhaps another year, Keller will share more at Limmud about angels. In the meanwhile, his joyous brand of learning and thinking will be available in two presentations on March 1 at Limmud Vancouver, held at Congregation Beth Israel. Registration is now open at limmudvancouver.ca.

Faith Jones is a librarian and Yiddish translator in Vancouver. She is a regular teacher and attendee at Limmud Vancouver.

Safe spaces, diverse voices

Bradley West and Shayna Plaut (photos from conference organizers)

As part of Winnipeg Pride Week in May, local organizers put on the first-ever Queer and Faithful Conference.

A grassroots event created to give voice to LGBTQ2+ people of colour and their experiences with faith and spirituality, the conference featured two panel discussions with opportunity for informal roundtable discussions. The keynote speaker at the May 25-26 conference at Robert A. Steen Community Centre was writer, facilitator and performer Jenna Tenn Yuk. She spoke about exploring identity and the intersections of race, queerness and faith through personal storytelling, spoken word poetry and facilitation; encouraging interfaith conversations around intersectionality, privilege, social location and other aspects; creating safer spaces for LGBTQ2+ people of colour in faith-based environments; and ensuring safe spaces to ask questions and explore the issues as a community.

Bradley West, who has been involved with Winnipeg’s queer community for more than 20 years, and Shayna Plaut, a former Vancouverite who now lives in Winnipeg, were part of the conference’s Jewish panel.

“I think the conference came about because there were people who had been talking about the importance of keeping their faith, while also celebrating their gender and sexual diversity, and there were some people who were finding that to be a little difficult,” West told the Independent.

Explaining that it was an uncomfortable topic for many people in the broader queer community, he said, “In fact, one of the members said, on Saturday, that, ‘because faith rejected us so soundly, we have rejected faith.’ We need to create a safe space where we can come together and have these conversations – where people from the various faith communities and also from the queer community can come together in a mutual space.”

While such conversations have been going on for some time, typically led by faith leaders and queer community organizers, the aim of the recent conference was to offer a more personal approach.

“The organizers wanted to have voices of the people who are more marginalized in our community, because of their skin tone, or religion, or spirituality, or faith,” said West. “They wanted to make sure it wasn’t just centred around white voices; white, Christian voices….. Oftentimes, when we are having conversations about faith in this Canadian landscape, we default to the dominant voice which, in our historical context, is Christian.

“So, they definitely had a lot of Christians who were there and who were involved, but, in terms of the planning and the panel speakers, and in terms of how they wanted people to think, was thinking of how we might be able to create an open dialogue with each other … to be able to, first, honour our own faith journey, but then also to understand the faith journey of others, especially when that faith journey is very different from our own.”

According to conference organizers, 70 to 80 people attended over the two-day period, with attendees coming from Winnipeg, as well as from surrounding areas, such as Morden, Selkirk, Steinbach and Portage La Prairie.

“From what I experienced, everyone … was approaching it with a spirit of reflection,” said West. “They were definitely gently challenged by the speakers to reflect on their own personal participation in terms of do you really believe your faith is the only faith or the true faith … and does that subtly reinforce this idea that those who are different are ‘less than’?”

The speakers, he continued, “were gently challenging people to think about how we interact – not only with the different denominations in our faith, but everyone of Abrahamic faiths, with different strings of denominations, and also those outside of some of the faiths … different groups practising different versions of the larger faith. Sometimes, we have a tendency to think that our journey and our view is the view that is shared by everyone in our faith … and so, there were those gentle reminders to reflect on that. Overall, as a participant, I would say there was a sense of a call to self-reflection, and there wasn’t any resistance in terms of the intent to self-reflect, for sure.”

For West, one thing that struck a chord was that, even though he was in a room full of strangers at the beginning of the event, everyone got to know one another very quickly. “I think it was very much about, yes, we have differences, but we also have commonalities and, as we move forward, we need to look at both … have a bifocal lens in honouring our differences – not minimizing or whitewashing, or asking us to abandon our differences in order to get along … just focusing on our similarities. We’re going to honour that and work together, and look at how we’ll create spaces and places within our own lives. And then maybe, by extension, our own communities will allow more of these dialogues.

“The gathering had the flavour of us coming together and having these conversations, and continuing to do so outside of this space,” he said. “That core that comes from great changers, like [Mahatma] Gandhi, talking about that idea of, if you want to change something, first, change yourself, because, wherever you go, there you are. If you change yourself, you’ll automatically change the spaces you go into, because you are no longer the same person.”

Plaut’s faith has changed over the years. Born into a Chassidic home in the United States, her family decided to follow Conservative Judaism when she was 5.

“The joke I like to say is, I’m queer, I’m Jewish, I’m a mom, I have seven tattoos, 13 earrings, and I keep a modicum of kosher,” said Plaut. “I teach at the University of Winnipeg and work in the field of human rights and journalism.”

When asked to help organize the conference, Plaut jumped at the chance. She took on the role of food coordinator and ensured all the food was vegetarian, so that everyone could eat, regardless of their religious or dietary restrictions. She also took it upon herself to make sure that not only the Abrahamic faiths were represented, but also Hindu or Sikh, by reaching out to some of her students.

“Folks would use their own experiences and explore some of the strengths that they found within their faith and also some of tensions,” said Plaut about the conference. She said that some people feel like they have to choose, in terms of their identities – religious, cultural and sexual – and that the conference encouraged an exploration of various faiths’ strengths and limitations in terms of guiding people, and what it means to find acceptance within a faith.

The conference attracted a range of attendees.

“Many of the folks who came, not all, but a good proportion, may not have identified as being queer themselves,” said Plaut. “Many of them were grandparents, actually, or parents who wanted to know how to better support their children or grandchildren. They wanted to learn.”

While organizers worked hard to share with and connect people, they left it up to the participants whether to exchange their contact information with one another. Some attendees expressed interest in continuing the conversation beyond the conference and organizers are working on determining the next steps. Many of the participants joined the nearly 50,000 marchers at the Winnipeg Pride Parade, which took place June 1.

“It was amazing, our biggest Pride ever in terms of participants in the parade,” said Plaut. “There were over 112 organizations that registered either floats or walking groups.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.