Skip to content

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • JI@88! video
Scribe Quarterly arrives - big box

Search

Follow @JewishIndie

Recent Posts

  • Saying goodbye to a friend
  • The importance of empathy
  • Time to vote again!
  • Light and whimsical houses
  • Dance as prayer and healing
  • Will you help or hide?
  • A tour with extra pep
  • Jazz fest celebrates 40 years
  • Enjoy concert, help campers
  • Complexities of celebration
  • Sunny Heritage day
  • Flipping through JI archives #1
  • The prevalence of birds
  • לאן ישראל הולכת
  • Galilee Dreamers offers teens hope, respite
  • Israel and its neighbours at an inflection point: Wilf
  • Or Shalom breaks ground on renovations 
  • Kind of a miracle
  • Sharing a special anniversary
  • McGill calls for participants
  • Opera based on true stories
  • Visiting the Nova Exhibition
  • Join the joyous celebration
  • Diversity as strength
  • Marcianos celebrated for years of service
  • Klezcadia set to return
  • A boundary-pushing lineup
  • Concert fêtes Peretz 80th
  • JNF Negev Event raises funds for health centre
  • Oslo not a failure: Aharoni
  • Amid the rescuers, resisters
  • Learning from one another
  • Celebration of Jewish camps
  • New archive launched
  • Helping bring JWest to life
  • Community milestones … May 2025

Archives

Tag: Patricia Daly

Community milestones … Pikuah Nefesh Award, community food program, Klein-Thompson wedding, Jerusalem Talmud

Community milestones … Pikuah Nefesh Award, community food program, Klein-Thompson wedding, Jerusalem Talmud

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, left, Dr. Patricia Daly and Dr. Eric Grafstein (photo from Temple Sholom Twitter)

On Feb. 26, Temple Sholom awarded community members Dr. Patricia Daly and Dr. Eric Grafstein with the Pikuah Nefesh Award (to save a life) for their leadership and dedication to our community throughout the pandemic. Mazel tov to both of them! You can watch the presentation on the synagogue’s YouTube channel, along with the evening’s concert featuring Israeli cellist Amit Peled performing “Journeys with my Jewishness.”

* * *

The community cupboard and fridge at Richmond Jewish Day School.

The pilot of the new Richmond Jewish Day School (RJDS) and Kehila Society of Richmond food program to enhance students’ access to healthy and nutritious food is now in progress. With start-up funds provided by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and TD Bank, once a week, JFS Vancouver delivers hot meals to RJDS at no cost to the students or their families. In addition, the funds were used to purchase a community fridge and pantry cupboard that will be kept stocked by JFS, Kehila and the Richmond Food Bank. Students and their families can access healthy snacks, dry goods, fresh produce and meals, during school hours.

* * *

photo - Aden Klein and Nikki Thompson
Aden Klein and Nikki Thompson (photo from their families)

Denise and Wayne Thompson and Gerri and David Klein are thrilled to announce the engagement of their children, Nikki and Aden. A fall wedding is planned.

* * *

photo - Paul and Pamela Austin
Paul and Pamela Austin (photo from CFHU)

The Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University recently announced a transformative gift to establish the Pamela and Paul Austin Research Centre on Aging at the Centre for Computational Medicine at the faculty of medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Pamela and Paul Austin Research Centre on Aging will implement an approach to combating disease by integrating computational data analysis into medical research and practice, and by preparing the next generation of computation-science-trained doctors and researchers. It will bring together leading researchers to leverage the power of data-driven analyses, applying computational methods to study and help combat a variety of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s; pain; psychiatric disorders; genetic disorders; congenital impairment; immune and inflammatory diseases; cardiovascular aging, and the effects of aging on cancer, osteoarthritis, pulmonary disease and metabolic disease.

The Centre for Computational Medicine and its research programs are specifically designed to enable data information flow and collaborative interdisciplinary research efforts with the most advanced equipment and a disease modeling unit, all in proximity to a major medical centre.

Globally, the number of people over the age of 60 is soon expected to outnumber children under the age of 5. As life expectancy rises, so does the prevalence of age-associated diseases, posing a central challenge to healthcare systems worldwide. The gift from the Austins will go beyond the centre, establishing scholarship opportunities for students and an annual lecture.

* * *

A new edition of the Jerusalem Talmud is now available in Sefaria’s free library of Jewish texts – available on sefaria.org and the Sefaria iOS and Android apps.

The Jerusalem Talmud, also known as the Talmud Yerushalmi or Palestinian Talmud, is the sister text to the better-known Babylonian Talmud. It was compiled in Israel between the third and fifth centuries from oral traditions. Like the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud is a textual record of rabbinic debate about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation, structured as a commentary on the Mishnah. However, a language barrier (it is written in a different dialect of Aramaic), reduced elaboration, and complex structure can make it difficult to study.

The new Jerusalem Talmud on Sefaria includes:

  • Complete English translation,
  • Fully vocalized text to assist learners in reading the distinctive Aramaic dialect,
  • Extensive interlinking to the Bible, Babylonian Talmud and other works, providing connections that help with understanding the work and placing it in context,
  • Topic tagging, so searches on Sefaria will surface references from the Jerusalem Talmud,
  • Six of the standard Hebrew commentaries included in the Vilna edition of the Talmud available and linked on Sefaria, including Korban HaEdah, Penei Moshe, Mareh HaPanim and others,
  • Standardized organization of the different published formats of the Jerusalem Talmud so readers can more easily find their place in the text.

The only fully extant manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud was set down by Rabbi Jehiel ben Jekuthiel Anav in 1289, which formed the base for the first printing in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1524. Sefaria has manuscript images from both of these editions visible in the resource panel, to see the original format of the texts alongside the modern, digital version.

The English translation of the Yerushalmi was completed in 2015 by Heinrich Guggenheimer, a mathematician who also published works on Judaism. He spent the last 20 years of his life working on translating the Jerusalem Talmud. With his blessing, Sefaria approached his publisher, de Gruyter GmbH, who agreed to partner on this open access version of Guggenheimer’s historic work. Guggenheimer passed away on March 4, 2021, at the age of 97.

Format ImagePosted on March 25, 2022March 24, 2022Author Community members/organizationsCategories LocalTags Aden Klein, Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, CFHU, Eric Grafstein, Jerusalem Talmud, Jewish Vancouver, JFS Vancouver, Kehila Society, Nikki Thompson, Patricia Daly, Paul and Pamela Austin, philanthropy, Pikuah Nefesh Award, Richmond Food Bank, Richmond Jewish Day School, RJDS, Sefaria, TD Bank, Temple Sholom
Need more women leaders

Need more women leaders

Dr. Patricia Daly (photo from vch.ca)

Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, provided an illuminating but discouraging perspective on the status of women in leadership positions in medicine during a National Council of Jewish Women of Canada webinar Oct. 14.

A familiar media presence in Metro Vancouver since the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier in the year, Daly touched upon the history of women in medicine in Canada and their underrepresentation at board tables and in positions of authority.

Daly, who is also a clinical professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health, pointed out that, at the time she graduated from medical school in the mid-1980s, one in three students were women. “I am at the stage in my career where physicians would traditionally be in leadership positions,” she said. “Yet, when I look around the tables where I sit, I don’t see one-third of those leaders as women, and I don’t see leadership reflecting the current reality that most students are now women.”

By 1995, there were more women entering medical school in Canada than men. By 2018, 63% of the student body nationwide was female. Nevertheless, only two of 17 Canadian medical school deans were women in that year and the Canadian Medical Association board was comprised of 20 men and six women.

Some of the theories put forward as to why there is a lopsided domination by men in positions of leadership include “unconscious biases” against women, family demands and a confidence gap between the genders, said Daly.

In the Vancouver Coastal Health region, just over 40% of doctors are women, reflective of the national average. Still, she said, fewer than 20% of all VCH leadership roles are filled by women, and that percentage decreases at more senior levels.

Recommendations of how to address this problem encompass leadership training, mentorship opportunities for young female employees and the creation of structures that would incorporate, among other things, the provision of childcare.

“We need to think about how we can support women (and men) who want a work-life balance so that they can advance in their careers and they can achieve leadership roles,” she maintained.

Daly then went into a wide-ranging overview of public health, a field with the mandate of improving the health of entire populations – through prevention of disease and injury, promotion of good health, and protection from potential harms.

Among public health’s many achievements in the past century are vaccinations, family planning, motor vehicle safety, healthier foods, control of infectious diseases, fluoridation of drinking water, safer workplaces and recognition of the hazards of smoking. Recent areas of focus in public health have been climate change and the prevention of substance abuse.

According to information provided by Daly, the average lifespan of Canadians has increased by 30 years since the 1900s, much of which can be attributed to advances in public health.

She added, “A lot of the work we do is centred on maternal-child health. In order to maximize someone’s health potential, we need to start in early childhood; in fact, in utero. Brain development is most important in the first two to five years of life. About 80% of our resources, including public health nurses, are focused on early childhood, supporting women to have healthy pregnancies, to help vulnerable mothers and for childhood immunizations.”

Public health also works on what is known as the “social determinants” of health, said Daly. These include levels of education and income, social connections and risk behaviours, i.e., diet, exercise and smoking.

“People living in poverty are at much greater risk of illness and disease, as well as injuries, despite universal healthcare,” she said. “The goal of public health is to reduce these disparities and bring the system towards one of health equity.”

The third part of Daly’s lecture was about public health and how it handles pandemics. In 1918, Vancouver’s chief medical officer, Dr. Fred Underhill, had to deal with the deadly outbreak of the Spanish flu. (The photos presented at the lecture from at that time showed an exclusively male and Caucasian medical leadership.)

COVID-19 has been Daly’s primary focus for the past eight months. As is broadly known, public health policies during the current pandemic have focused on the need to isolate cases and contacts for 14 days until a person is non-infectious; restrict travel; limit public gatherings; encourage people to physically distance; and have physicians provide virtual care when possible.

“Having access to tests is an important public health measure,” said Daly. “The single most important intervention is to isolate people who test positive and to identify their close contacts and quarantine them. We are fortunate that COVID-19 has a long incubation period. If we can identify cases, then, even if they get sick, they are not going to pass the virus onto others.”

She warned, “Despite the relatively draconian measures taken, we are not going to stop this virus without a vaccine.”

Daly also brought up some of the unintended consequences of the pandemic response, such as the growing number of overdose deaths, increased social isolation in long-term care facilities, suspended elective surgeries and the effects on the broader economy.

She concluded, “The good news is that vaccine development is very promising.”

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

Format ImagePosted on October 30, 2020October 29, 2020Author Sam MargolisCategories LocalTags coronavirus, COVID-19, health, NCJW, Patricia Daly, public health
Proudly powered by WordPress